by Alan May
26
The meeting with Phillip had gone well, to Anika’s great relief. He’d been tight-lipped and gruff but had kept his hands to himself and made no mention of their last encounter. He had okayed the coffee night, and said he didn’t care where it took place. He would be on the bridge, in any case, keeping watch.
Perfect, Anika thought. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t have a preference. It would suit their purposes much better to stage the entertainment in the mess rather than out on the bow, but she had not wanted to seem as if it made any difference. And she greatly preferred gruff to overly friendly.
Now, after the dinner cleanup, the kids and teachers were assembling for the show. As Anika had predicted, the Floaties had thrown themselves into the project. They set out coffee, soft drinks, and Jarred’s famous butterscotch chocolate-chip brownies, rigged up an old sail against one wall as a backdrop, and arranged themselves around the mess tables, surrounded by musical instruments, hastily contrived costumes, and an odd assortments of make-do props. A couple of small groups remained out on deck, polishing their acts.
Juan had said he had no interest in kiddie shows and stayed in the first-aid room with Stefano, but Polo, Esteban, and Severo were lined up expectantly along the walls of the mess. They seemed unsure about the propriety of sitting down but gave every indication of looking forward to the entertainment. They were already enjoying the refreshments.
Juan had been reluctant at first to let them go at all. Not a good idea, he had thought, for them to start thinking about these people as people—especially the kids—in light of what they were going to have to do to them soon. He had relented in the end, though, because he could see that the strain was getting to them. Severo especially was getting more and more fretful, and soon would be completely useless if he didn’t lighten up un poquito. And if being around the Inspiration’s crew made them too squeamish for what had to be done, well, he and Stefano could take care of it on their own.
Michael and Nancy, declaring themselves devoid of any talent, had volunteered to emcee. “The first act of the evening,” Michael announced, “would be none other than” —here Nancy dimmed the lights, Trudy beat a tattoo on a skillet-lid drum with a spoon, and Evan and Chris wielded flashlight “follow spots” across the stage— ”all the way from Québec City” —big drum roll—”that incredibly talented rock star, Pierre Rouleau!”
The crowd whistled and cheered and stomped as the spotlights picked out Pierre, in regulation Floatie garb, his hands in pockets, standing alone at center stage.
“I am afraid there’s been a little, um—misunderstanding?” Pierre said, a sheepish grin flickering over his face. “What I told them was, my only talent is rock climbing.”
The crowd erupted in a roar of laughter.
“But,” Pierre went on, “this is not something I can very well show you in the middle of the ocean.”
Another wave of laughter crested as the image of Pierre demonstrating his rock-climbing prowess on the high seas sank in.
“So instead, I am just going to sing for you a song I learned when I was a little boy at home in Québec. It is called ‘Un Canadien Errant’—‘A Wandering Canadian.’ When you hear how bad I am, you will know why I have to go first. I do not want to come after anyone who really knows how to sing.”
Pierre took a deep breath and then quietly began his song. In truth, his voice was not the best, yet he sang with such sweetness and simplicity, a capella, that the audience, hushed now, straining to hear, was nearly moved to tears—especially those who understood the French words.
“Et ma patrie, hélas, je ne la verrai plus,” he sang. (Alas, my country, I’ll ne’er see thee again.) “Non, mais en expirant, O mon cher Canada! Mon regard languissant vers toi se portera.” (When death comes, Oh, my dear Canada, My languid gaze will turn toward you.)
Pierre sang the final words and the crowd was utterly silent for a moment. They all knew it was all too possible that this handsome, vibrant young man, like the man in the song—and like every one of them onboard—would die, never to see home again.
Dave Cameron started the applause, and the rest soon joined in. The somber mood was dispelled as Pierre took exaggerated bows and the spotlights made wild arcs on the ceiling. Trudy banged away on the pot lid until Nancy walked over, removed it from her hands, and showed her to a seat at a front-row table. Michael, meanwhile, was ushering the next act onto the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Casey Kennedy and Sandy McNeill, from Cape Breton Island, Canada, who are about to bowl you over with their feats of virtue! No, that’s not right! I mean to say, with their virtuoso feet,” he said, pointing at his own outstretched foot, “in a lively performance of traditional Cape Breton step dancing. Accompanying them is Bobby Briley, from the state of North Carolina, a place where they know a thing or two about fiddling around!”
Bobby tipped his hat to the crowd. Then, with a nod to the dancers, he lit into a set of reels. Casey and Sandy’s shoes beat out the rhythm of the dance. They had not brought their hard-soled dance shoes with them, so were improvising with soda-bottle caps attached to their sneakers. The effect was very like the typical percussive sound of this centuries-old style of dancing.
The sound was further amplified by the old (and slightly warped) steel cupboard door Anika had insisted they set down to protect the floor from the bottle caps: every step, every shuffle, reverberated throughout the mess. The crowd was captivated, and began to clap along with the beat—thereby providing even further cover for Pierre and Dave, who slipped down the galley stairs with no one the wiser.
Earlier in the day, Dave had found in the bosun’s locker two carabiners, a harness, and a line strong enough to pull Pierre back from the Coincidence. He’d stowed them near the transom, where he had stood trying to convey as best he could to Mac that someone would be crossing over to talk to him at about 2000 hours that night.
Now Dave and Pierre crept through the classroom to avoid being spotted by Phillip on their way to the transom. The night was clear, the sky illuminated by thousands of stars. Pierre donned the harness and Dave attached the small line to the buckle. Pierre easily climbed up and over the transom, clipped the first carabiner to the towline, and then, just to be extra safe, clipped on the second as well. He launched himself away from the ship, using a hand-over-hand technique to propel himself along the taut line.
Dave watched as Mac swiftly unhooked the harness and disappeared below with Pierre. Then he turned and walked through the classroom again to the mess, where he poured himself a cup of coffee and made a point of standing near the hijackers and applauding wildly for Ryan and a girl named Sonia, who had teamed up to produce an epically melodramatic “silent movie.”
He had come in just at the climactic scene in which Sonia, bound to the railroad tracks (portrayed by Ryan’s surfboard, with crossties neatly indicated by duct tape), was thrashing her voluminous scarves about and screaming—silently, of course—at the top of her lungs. Ryan held up a large cardboard sign with “HELP! HELP!” printed on it, just in case there was any question about the nature of her wailing, then flung it aside, and, drawing his cardboard scimitar, arrived at Sonia’s side in the nick of time to save her from the oncoming locomotive—a small suitcase with a flashlight strapped to its end and a sign proclaiming, “CHOO! CHOO!” taped to its side.
Ryan slid the suitcase along with his left foot as he bent to wield his sword against the ropes that bound the damsel in distress. And then he helped her up. Her body swaying as she pulled out from her gown another sign—“MY HERO!” Just then he gave the suitcase a sharp kick. It rolled past the spot where Sonia would have met her Certain End, then fell over with a thud and flew open, revealing Ryan’s soiled laundry.
Polo doubled over with laughter at this, and Esteban and Severo nearly doubled over laughing at Polo.
Dave exaggerated his own laughter as he moseyed past them on his way to the refreshment table again. He picked up two brownies as M
ichael introduced the next performance—an all-girl barbershop quartet—then stepped into the galley and eased down the stairs once more, making his way back to the transom. He was just finishing one brownie when Mac and Pierre reappeared. He brushed the crumbs off his hands, hauled Pierre back over to the Inspiration, helped him remove the harness—noting with elation the walkie-talkie Pierre had with him. Now they’d be able to communicate with Mac whenever they needed to.
Dave put the walkie-talkie in his pocket. He handed the second brownie to Pierre and pushed him toward the classroom. He hid away the carabiners, rope, and harness. He was anxious to know what Pierre and Mac had worked out, but forced himself to walk nonchalantly to his cabin to stash the walkie-talkie out of sight. Then he sidled in to the mess and poured another coffee, nodding in agreement with Mary Wilson about the amazing creativity of the kids.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Pierre sitting at a table to his left, nibbling the brownie and waving his hand high. Dan was on stage, a towel wrapped swami-style around his head, a black paper moustache stuck on his upper lip, asking for a volunteer from the audience.
“So many victims!” he crowed. “So many kind volunteers, I mean. I cannot decide from among them all. I shall turn the decision over to my lovely assistant here.”
He clapped his hands, and a statuesque young lady emerged from behind a screen, her bare arms undulating, snakelike, to the strains of the eerie Middle Eastern refrain from Evan’s harmonica. She was clad in what had not long before been a sweat suit, transformed now, by a bit of cropping and the application of dangly strips of tin foil, into a harem outfit. Her face was veiled with the head of a mop.
“What do you say, Mademoiselle Melissa? Whom do you choose?”
27
Rob Montgomery kept his eye on his boss as Coast Guard representative Alasdair “Flipper” Markman outlined his assessment of their options on a flip chart, his pet visual aid. Elizabeth, Rob knew, was not a fan of Markman’s charts at the best of times, and this time none of the options looked good.
The first priority of all three agencies present at this initial meeting—the DEA, the Coast Guard, and the State Department—was, of course, the survival of the students and crew aboard the Inspiration. Second was apprehending the hijackers before the drugs could be distributed on U.S. soil.
Two basic strategies were possible, Markman said, flipping to page two of his color-coded chart.
“Number 1 is to simply maintain full surveillance of the two ships,” he said, using his ruler as a pointer. “We have contacted the Air Force,” he continued, flipping to page three, where number 1 was subdivided, in blue marker, into A and B. “They are en route to the area now to do a high-altitude flyover to ascertain the existence and position of the Inspiration and the Coincidence—or Two Wise as it is more properly called. They will take photos,” he said, pointing to 1B, which indicated just that, “so we can more effectively analyze the situation.”
Elizabeth’s right foot, toes down, tapped the carpet. Not a good sign.
Markman flipped to page four and took a sip of water.
“To recap, under number 1, we would keep the ships under surveillance and wait until the drugs leave the vessel, presumably at Easter Island, to apprehend the hijackers.”
Elizabeth’s foot tapping doubled in pace.
“Strategy number 2, on the other hand,” Markman went on, as he turned over another page, “calls for deploying a Coast Guard cutter to the area, and, as soon as we have analyzed the flyover photos, approaching the Inspiration, boarding, and apprehending the hijackers before the drugs can be distributed.
“There are three options under strategy 2.”
Markman was hitting his stride now, and Rob winced to see that page six was subdivided into three levels, with green ink joining the red and blue. He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“As you can see in 2A, the first is to have the bosun, in hiding on the Coincidence, drop the towline during the night and escape. Then our cutter, the Serendipity, currently about a thousand nautical miles east of the hijacked Blue Water Academy vessel, approaches and challenges. A launch party boards and apprehends the hijackers.
“Alternatively—shown here in 2B—if the bosun drops the towline at dawn, the hijackers will see their boat, with a fortune in drugs aboard, floating away. One or more of the hijackers might well attempt to reach the boat in the Inspiration’s dinghy to recover the cocaine.
“If we assume, as in 2B:1, that the most likely scenario would be for three of the hijackers to attempt to recover the boat, and three to remain behind—the wounded man, another man to guard him, and a third to keep watch on the bridge—then the doctor could sedate the man with the gunshot wound, and the crew could possibly overpower the other two.
“Now, looking at 2B:2—”
Much more of this and Elizabeth would tap a hole right through the carpet, Rob thought. Maybe he ought to try to—but all at once his cell phone began to vibrate in his pocket, distracting him from plotting ways to derail Markman’s presentation.
Oh, damn, he thought. If there was anything the Dragon Lady hated more than wasting time belaboring the obvious, it was having a meeting interrupted by phone calls. He eased the phone out of his pocket and glanced, unobtrusively, he hoped, at the name and number on the tiny screen.
Jim Oliver.
Jim never made a call that wasn’t necessary. And if he had news about what was happening with those kids—and even the teachers were barely more than kids—out in the middle of the ocean, well, the strategies on Markman’s tedious charts might be moot anyway.
Rob stood up, held up a hand to stanch the flow of Markman’s verbiage, apologized for the interruption, and took the call.
28
Kathleen Tutty set down the telephone yet again, dumped out her second cup of coffee gone cold, and poured herself a fresh cup. It had begun to seem as though the BWA office had turned into a news clearinghouse, and she herself into a mere conduit of information. Already this morning she had talked to Mac, who had told her the wonderful saga of Pierre’s rope descent onto the Coincidence.
“Like a lemur he was, scuttlin’ doon the towline,” was how he described it. “I’d not seen anythin’ like it since I was in Madagascar.”
That they had managed to get the second walkie-talkie over and now had regular communication between the two boats was a godsend, the first glimmer of hope that a safe resolution might be achievable.
Kathleen had immediately called Edward Flynn, who was on his way back from South Africa, and Jim Oliver, now in Washington, to tell them the news. Jim had in turn called Rob Montgomery, reaching him right in the middle of his meeting.
Within ten minutes, Rob was on the line to Kathleen, outlining the plan that those at the meeting had agreed upon given the change in circumstances, a variation on Flipper Markman’s option 2B:1.
Kathleen was to decide on a code word and let Mac know what it was when he called her next. Mac would then wait for Dave to call him on the walkie-talkie (they had agreed that it was too risky for Mac to initiate any calls) and tell him the code word, which Dave would then relay to the captain. When the captain gave Kathleen his routine report, he would listen for the code word. If he heard it, he would know the time was right to put the plan into action.
When the Coast Guard cutter Serendipity reached the vicinity, Mac would sever the towline and set the Coincidence adrift as soon as night fell, trying to get about fifty miles from the Inspiration before dawn. In the morning, the hijackers would realize their boat was gone, stop, and turn around. If all went as expected, they would launch the dinghy, most likely with three men in it, and set out to find the Coincidence. The Coast Guard cutter would intercept and apprehend them while the Inspiration crew subdued the three men left onboard.
“What we need you to find out is what the injured man’s condition is now,” Rob said. “That way we can determine whether the doctor can immobilize him easily. We a
lso need to know the size, capacity, and range of the dinghy, and whether there are any weapons—or items that might be used as weapons—on board the Inspiration.”
“I can give you the specs on the dinghy right now,” Kathleen replied, opening the left middle drawer of her file cabinet.
“Let’s see … the Inspiration is equipped with a sixteen-foot hard-bottomed Zodiac. It’s got a fifty-hp Yamaha motor, and can travel up to about twenty knots. As for weapons, they are strictly banned on all BWA vessels. But there have been occasions, now and then, when someone has brought one aboard anyway. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had one of those scofflaws this time! Anyway, I’ll see what I can learn about that and about the injured man and let you know.”
Kathleen stood up and stretched her arms over head, allowing a tiny sliver of optimism to penetrate her defenses. She’d been trying to stay calm, stay focused, to do what needed to be done, without dwelling on what was going on in the Pacific. She’d found that the best way to ward off complete despair was, paradoxically, not to feel too optimistic about it either but to erect a wall of non-feeling. Now that there was the beginning of a plan, a concrete course of action, she could feel her wall start to crumble.
She realized that her body had been like a wall, too, held stiff and unyielding to maintain her inner wall. Now she could feel the tension beginning to slip away from her shoulders. She laughed, and then, without warning, was engulfed in a flood of pent-up tears.
She was still hiccupping when the phone rang again.
“Hey, how ye doin’ there, lass?”
Mac. His voice was, as always, such a comforting presence that she burst into tears again.