by Alan May
Mac was nowhere below, Dave was sure. He passed several more Floaties as he continued his search. He could tell before he even talked to them which ones had heard the news and which had not. Those who knew had a faint glimmer of hope in their faces, a purposeful way of walking. Don’t look too purposeful, he had to remind them. Just keep walking and spreading the word as quickly as you can, but without appearing to rush—and if you see Mac anywhere, tell him to go to his locker and stay there.
Where else could the man possibly be, Dave wondered—assuming, of course, that he was still among the living? Was it conceivable that he’d secreted himself somewhere in the mess, in some infinitesimally tiny recess—he was a small and agile fellow, after all—and was biding his time now, waiting until it was safe to emerge?
Dave decided to have one more look in the bosun’s locker before searching above again, just in case one of the Floaties had come across Mac and relayed the message to him.
He scurried down into the boxy space again, disappointed but unsurprised to see no sign of the bosun.
“Mac?” he whispered, knowing full well there would be no reply.
A soft nasal rumbling met his ears, followed by a whistle of expelled air.
“Mac!” he started to shout, then modulated his voice into a whispered croak.
“Mac?”
His voice reverberated against the gray steel walls. The metal chair by the small, cluttered workbench was unoccupied. Mac’s jacket lay folded on one of the steel shelves built into the wall, his small kit bag sat on the shelf above.
Dave heard another soft rumbling, faint but unmistakable. Where in the world—?
Along one side of the locker, where two gray steel trunks hugged the wall—that’s where the gentle sound seemed to be coming from. The trunks, Dave knew, were full to the brim with seldom-used tools and emergency equipment. Whatever anybody needed, Mac could find it in there somewhere if he hunted around long enough. On top of the trunks lay a precarious jumble of ropes, wires, and oddly shaped metal doodads of indeterminate usefulness; over them hung several old sails in need of repair.
Dave’s eyes roamed over the piles of stuff. It was a wonder Mac ever found anything at all in this hodgepodge. Funny, though—that one back corner of the trunk on the right, he saw, was clear. It wasn’t a big space, less than a foot long, he’d guess, and not as wide, but not a thing was in it—except a little silver flask, with its lid off.
Dave yanked the sails aside.
“Mac! Wake up! Mac!” he cried, shaking the bosun’s shoulder. Mac grunted, his hand swatting the air around his face as if at a mosquito.
“For God’s sake, Mac, wake up!”
Mac’s eyelids flew open. If he was surprised to find Dave in a dither beside his hideaway, he gave no evidence of it as he unfolded his body and, catlike, hopped from the narrow shelf down to the trunk and then to the floor.
“What’s the matter then, lad?” he asked, now wide awake.
Dave told him, as calmly and concisely as he could.
“Bloody hell,” Mac said.
Melissa sat on one of the lower bunks in her cabin, looking at nothing in particular, clutching Pierre’s hand. Nancy and Michael sat across from them, on the other lower bunk, Michael’s arm around Nancy’s shoulders. Trudy, Kathy, Dan, Evan, and Chris hovered nearby, sitting on the floor or leaning up against the ends of the bunks. The tiny cabin had barely enough space for its usual four occupants, much less the four more from Pierre’s cabin and Michael, as well, but none of them could bear the thought of being apart.
No one could think of anything to say. They’d been through their situation a dozen times or more already and there were no answers, only unanswerable questions. The light buzzed overhead. Every little sound was magnified: Every throat clearing, every tummy rumble seemed an irreverent intrusion into their silence.
Melissa was still trying to comprehend how her life could have gone in a heartbeat from the unparalleled highs of the past few days to this unparalleled low. She was trying hard not to think that this might in fact be the end of her life altogether.
Her family! Her dear, wonderful parents. And Eric. And Uncle Jack. Would she ever see them again? Would her parents rue for the rest of their days their decision to allow her to apply to Blue Water Academy? And yet, if she had not applied, she never would have had these most amazing, most wonderful experiences of her life, and she never would have met Pierre. Getting through this without Pierre was unthinkable. If indeed they did get through it.
Of course, if she had not become a Floatie and met Pierre, there wouldn’t be this horror to get through in the first place. But not having met Pierre at all was just as unthinkable. Her thoughts went round and round in circles. Her head began to ache.
What time was it anyway? Would this awful day never end?
And if it ever did, how would it end?
20
He heard the voices long before he could make out the words. A vague burble at first, indistinguishable as voices, then clearer. Yes, human voices … two of them, verdad? He recognized one … didn’t he? Sí, he was sure … claro …
The next time he woke his brain felt a little less fuzzy. How long had he been sleeping? That was Phillip’s voice, no cabe duda, but who was the other guy? He pried his eyelids open.
Where the hell was he?
The light was blinding. His eyelids snapped shut again.
“Stefano?”
He half opened one eye, bracing himself for the excruciating brightness.
A face was bending over his, one he’d never seen before. It was blurry, but it seemed to belong to a gringo, a sandy-haired gringo with a neatly trimmed beard, blue eyes, and a steady gaze. A warm hand—did it also belong with this face?—was picking up his own hand, turning it over, feeling his wrist. Suddenly another face appeared on his left.
“You’re doing great, hombre! You had us worried there for a while, man, but Dr. Williams got the bullet out okay. The infection ought to be clearing up in a few days. You’ll be back on your feet in no time!”
Stefano turned his head slightly to the left. It seemed to weigh a ton.
Phillip was peering into his half-open eye. He was blurry, too. His face looked pale—even paler than usual—but he was smiling and nodding his head up and down, up and down.
What was he talking about—bullet? Infection? Why couldn’t he get his own mind to think straight? His mouth felt like sludge. He tried to form the confusion in his brain into a coherent question, but the words wouldn’t come together. Even if they had, he doubted his lips and teeth and tongue would have known what to do with them.
“You’ve had surgery, Stefano,” the voice that wasn’t Phillip’s said.
Stefano rolled his leaden head toward the right and squinted at the face.
“You’ll be a little groggy for another half hour or so, but the effects of the anesthetic will start to wear off quickly now.”
This must be Dr.—Dr. What? The doctor Phillip was talking about.
“I was able to get the bullet out with no problem. The infection was pretty nasty—a few more hours without treatment and I believe you’d have lost that leg—but it’s responding nicely to the antibiotic. You’re very lucky.”
Now the doctor was helping him lift his head up a few inches. Propping him up with more pillows. Holding something against his lips.
“It’s too soon for you to drink anything, but see if these ice chips help a bit.”
Stefano struggled to find the muscles that would open his mouth, that would allow his lips to curve around the ice chips and deposit them on his parched tongue. At this moment, that cup of ice chips was the most desirable object in the world.
The name came to him: Dr. Williams. Sí, that was his name, that’s what Phillip had said, sure. The ice was making little channels of moisture as it melted, forging a narrow path through the forest of fuzz coating his tongue and throat. He swallowed. He took another mouthful, losing less down his chin this time; he l
et it slide down his throat, then took another. The swallowing was easier now. The cool liquid seemed to be penetrating the fog in his brain, too.
“Now,” Dr. Williams was saying, “suppose you tell me what exactly is going on.”
“You don’t need to know,” a different voice said. “In fact, your services here are no longer needed. Muchas gracias. Now get out. You, too, Phillip.”
Juan was standing at the door.
Anika hated being called “perky.” She knew she was young looking for thirty, and she was enthusiastic and cheerful, she would grant you all that. But perky? No. Perky was for airheads, Gidgets, all those too-cute types.
She had cut off her long blonde ponytail during her second year of grad school in an effort to look professional, or at least less like an incoming freshman—had, in fact, donated it to a program that wove shorn hair into wigs for children with alopecia. Surely that wasn’t something most perky persons would have thought to do. She had tried to dress professionally, too, purchasing tailored slacks and jackets when she had started her student teaching. Now, of course, as a BWA teacher, she had to wear the same outfit all of the crew, teachers, and students were required to wear.
She was wishing she had something considerably more mature and professional looking on now as she made her way across the deck to where Phillip was standing. She’d have felt much more confident in her ability to get him to see the wisdom of her request if she’d been clad in something other than a casual T-shirt.
Oh, well, she thought, taking a deep breath, throwing her shoulders back, and putting on her most self-assured expression. It was a wise request, never mind how she was dressed.
Phillip eyed her as she walked toward him. Cute little thing, that one. Nice, trim figure—and that snug little T-shirt sure showed if off, too. But his thoughts turned almost at once back to Stefano and to Juan. He hadn’t liked the way Juan had looked at him, or the way he’d dismissed him from the first-aid room like that. Like he’d been nothing more than a stand-in, like he hadn’t taken control of a desperate situation and handled it like a pro. Yeah, well, Juan. Juanito. Your big brother would be dead by now if it hadn’t been for me.
The little blonde was coming over to him. She was close enough to touch.
“Could we talk for a minute?” she asked.
“Sure. What about?”
“I’m the shipboard director and I’m resp—”
“Shipboard director? Aren’t you kind of young?”
“I am the shipboard director,” Anika began again firmly, looking him in the eye, “and I am responsible for the education and well-being of the students onboard this ship. There are thirty-two students aboard. The last thing you would want, I am sure, is for those kids to start getting restless.”
She paused for a moment to see how this was going down so far, then continued.
“They’re good kids, every one of them, but you know how it is when teenagers get bored. And these kids are scared besides. They don’t know what to think. They could easily get out of control.”
She gave Phillip the warmest, most conspiratorial smile she could muster.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen. The best thing for everybody concerned would be for the kids to go on with their regular routine.”
“And what’s that exactly?”
So far, so good.
“Well, they’re in class several hours every day. They also share in the galley work and the maintenance of the ship. They’re each on watch duty twice every day, once in the daytime, once at night. And we all meet on deck at eight every morning to go over the day’s activities.”
Phillip could see it would be best to keep the kids occupied. The babe was smart, too. And she was plucky. He liked that.
“Okay. I have no problem with that,” he said. “Just make sure they understand we are in control of the ship. Orders will come from me, not from your captain. And I don’t want anyone on the bridge except my men.”
His men. Yes. Screw Juan.
“What’d you say your name was?” he asked as she turned to go.
I didn’t say, she thought. Didn’t want to, either. “Anika,” she mumbled.
Then she lifted her head defiantly, looked him in the eye, and said in a clear voice, “Anika Johnson.”
“Mine’s Phillip. A pleasure to meet you.”
21
Mac sat in his locker, drumming his fingers against the metal of the workbench. He’d seen a great deal in his long and varied life—well, lives, really, would be more a more accurate way to put it. For his years on this earth had been sharply divided into three quite distinct phases: his childhood in Glasgow, his few years of relative contentment as a young man in Africa, and now his life at sea.
“At sea.” Now that was accurate. He had been at sea, adrift, cut loose from his moorings, whatever you cared to call it, since Caroline had left him. It had been his own damn fault, too; he’d not deny it. But that would nae bring her back again, now, would it?
Och! Would he never stop plowing these useless furrows of grief? What he had started to think was, he’d seen a great deal in his life, but this—this was of a different order entirely. Far beyond any one man’s personal heartbreak.
The kids were foremost on his mind. They must be kept safe at all costs. And it was up to him to see that they were.
He opened up the tin of peanuts he kept on the bench and gobbled a handful, wishing he had a cold McEwan’s to wash it down. Dave had promised to try to sneak some food down to him, but it wouldn’t be easy with the hijackers patrolling the deck. But he could do with a bit of sustenance before it was time to put their plan into operation.
Their plan—well, he reckoned, it was stretching it a bit thin to call their highly tentative ideas a plan.
Whatever the hijackers were involved in—and the captain’s assumption of drug running did seem the likeliest possibility—they had too much to lose now to leave any survivors on the Inspiration. Everyone aboard, adults and kids alike, had seen the hijackers clearly. Had seen their boat. Covered with some sort of blue plastic, Dave had said, so presumably stolen. If they left it covered, it was easily identifiable by anyone aboard; if they removed the covering, there was the stolen boat.
Suppose, Mac had said to Dave, suppose they were to help the hijackers concoct a new disguise for the stolen boat? The Inspiration had plenty of paint onboard, probably enough to repaint the cabin, and surely enough to paint over the name with a new one. But even as he was putting the idea forth, Mac realized it wasn’t a workable solution. No matter how helpful the crew was in camouflaging the Coincidence, it wouldn’t be enough. The hijackers would never trust them to keep their mouths shut after they sailed away.
Dave had gone off to report to the captain that Mac had been found, and to remove all traces of Mac’s belongings from the cabin he shared with Charlie. Mac, they had agreed, was their wild card, the one hope they might have of coming out of this mess alive.
What would they do in the hijackers’ shoes? That was where they needed to start, Mac thought, as he waited for Dave to return. The men had weapons and wouldn’t hesitate to use them if necessary. They had, seemingly, been using them when the one fellow got himself shot in the leg. But would it make sense for them to take their weapons and just mow down the entire population of the Inspiration, then set it adrift, to be discovered God only knows how much later?
It would not, Mac decided. Too dicey. After all, there’d been the radio messages from the Coincidence about the man—what was his name? Stefano? Something like that—about whoever the fellow was who needed the doctor. That would directly link the Inspiration with the Coincidence. The hijackers couldn’t take the chance of getting wherever they were heading and into hiding before the ship full of dead bodies might be found.
Far better, Mac thought, to make the deaths look like an accident—but how would ye go about orchestrating a thing like that, with the number of people involved? Sink the boat, maybe … But how? No icebe
rgs in these parts, that was for sure, and any structural damage to the hull would, eventually, be examined minutely; any suspicion of intentional damage would, once again, lead back to the Coincidence. Besides, boats took their own good time to go down. The Inspiration had a superfluity of equipment for any such unlikely emergency; there was no way in the world everyone onboard would go and drown in such an event.
Poison, then? But where would they be getting a poison lethal enough to kill everyone aboard? And, even supposing that they “just happened” to have come prepared with a supply of some such toxin on the Coincidence—and that itself would be too great a coincidence by half—how would they go about delivering the stuff? Offer to cook them all a lovely little dinner in honor of the host ship’s hospitality?
Scratch poison.
An explosion might work. It would have to be carefully rigged, though: big enough to blow the Inspiration to kingdom come, leaving not a single survivor; yet timed perfectly so that the hijackers’ own boat would be well enough along its way not to get blown to bits into the bargain. But, even assuming they could get hold of the necessary materials, they could hardly start rigging up massive explosive devices unobserved. And if they were observed to be doing something that would lead to the sure and certain demise of everyone aboard the Inspiration, then some of those aboard—and he’d be the first among them, too—would give up their own lives to save the rest.
The hijackers, Mac was beginning to believe, had very few viable options open to them. Chances were good, he thought, that they were as much in the dark about how to get out of this god-awful situation as anybody else.
Bloody fools! Why had they had to go getting their legs infected and endangering his kids in the first place?
22
It was an uneasy confrontation for both men, but they had no choice. There were decisions that had to be made, boundaries that had to be set. Neither the captain nor Phillip had ever expected to be in such a predicament. Neither wanted to precipitate any violence and neither wanted to lose control of the situation. Their conversation was like a game of chess, each man trying to think several steps ahead as they negotiated their course of action for the next few days.