The Wrecking Crew

by Taylor Zajonc

He zoomed in closer. Then closer again.

  He could see now—the two figures were women, one young and one older, both with dark hair. The young one wore hers in a close-cropped, androgynous style. He scrolled over to the other woman … and then he saw her.

  Dr. Nassiri climbed the boarding ladder and exited through the open hatch in the top of the conning tower. Jonah sat at a fold-out seat at the top, binoculars strung loosely around his neck, massive deli sandwich in hand he’d made himself, watching the African sun settle low over the horizon in a spectacular sunset. He nodded at Dr. Nassiri in acknowledgement, a friendlier gesture than the doctor had expected.

  “Hey Doc,” said Jonah. The American split the sandwich in half and tried to hand it to Dr. Nassiri.

  “No thank you,” the doctor said.“But that is very kind.”

  “Take it,” said Jonah. “It’s what Americans do when somebody we care about dies. We feed each other. I’d give you a casserole, but all I have is this sandwich.”

  “What type is it?” said Dr. Nassiri.

  “It’s turkey,” said Jonah. “I don’t know if that’s your thing or not, but there’s no ham in it or whatever.”

  Dr. Nassiri looked at Jonah quizzically for a moment, realizing the offer was completely genuine. He almost felt a little foolish for not taking it to start, especially once he realized how hungry he actually was.

  “Why not?” said Dr. Nassiri. He smiled and accepted the sandwich. Both men ate in silence.

  Jonah spoke first. “I’m sorry about your cousin,” he said. “I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed like a decent enough guy.”

  “Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t,” admitted Dr. Nassiri. “Technically speaking, he was killed in the commission of a crime.”

  “Nobody back home needs to know that.”

  “There’s only so much of the truth that one can sanitize,” said Dr. Nassiri with a shrug.

  “Doc, I know the timing sucks,” said Jonah. “But I have more bad news.”

  “More than usual?” asked Dr. Nassiri.

  The doctor had met cocky Jonah and warrior Jonah, but not this Jonah. Not sympathetic Jonah.

  “Probably not by comparison to the last couple of days,” continued Jonah. “But I really need you to listen to me on this. I shouldn’t have yelled at you when all that shit was going down. I had no idea what you were doing—I thought you froze up.”

  “It would have taken me too long to explain,” said Dr. Nassiri.

  “Nice job, by the way. Hell, it was a masterful job. I thought he was fucking dead, bam-bam, done for. You stick your hands in him; get a needle in his vein and he’s up and walking around like fucking Lazarus. And you did it with me yelling in your ear the whole time. Couldn’t have made it any easier. Think we can trust him?”

  “No. And he’s not your admirer right now.”

  “Well, I’m not a big fan of his either. How’s he doing?”

  “As good as to be expected. I have him on a full course of antibiotics. He’ll be getting all of his fluids and nutrition intravenously for some time, and as much supplemental oxygen as we can spare. It probably doesn’t help that we have him handcuffed him to the bunk, but I suppose that’s necessary.”

  “He’d better be happy he’s alive. He and his crew put the hurt on us in a big way.”

  “He is.”

  They both took another bite of their shared sandwich at more or less the same time, leading to an awkward bout of synchronized chewing before anyone could speak.

  “You’re not going to want to hear this,” said Jonah. “But we can’t go to the crash site, not now. Charles Bettencourt will have the area staked out; they probably already have drones on it, maybe even a ship. They’re going to want this submarine back.”

  “You think they know we’ve taken the Scorpion?”

  Jonah looked up, surprised the doctor didn’t challenge him on the decision to scrub the mission.

  “The submarine chirped its coordinates and status back to Anconia Island seconds after we resurfaced,” said Jonah. “I cut it off, but not in time. They probably don’t have the full picture, but they know the Scorpion is on the water and not under their command.”

  “And this limits our options to simply running,” said Dr. Nassiri.

  “It does. But at least we have that Russian kid. He seems to know his way around the controls. I’m decent with a ship, but Jesus, I can’t make sense out of half of these systems. Same for Alexis, I’m sure. Submarine training’s not something you generally get in marine engineering school.”

  Dr. Nassiri nodded. Even the yacht had been a total mystery to him, the idea of piloting a submarine seemed absurd at best, suicidal at worst. More silence, more eating. Jonah passed Dr. Nassiri a cold beer, something imported from Italy. When the cool amber liquid touched his lips, Dr. Nassiri almost felt human again.

  “Where are we going?” asked Dr. Nassiri.

  “Right now? Doesn’t matter, we’re just running. Just trying to get the fuck out of here without getting sunk or captured.”

  “And after?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I feel like we’re sitting on a potential jackpot with this submarine. Even beat to shit, she’s probably worth, twenty, maybe thirty million to a motivated buyer. I don’t mind cutting you and Alexis in on it, couldn’t have done it without you. I can promise we’d get your family out of hock at the very least.”

  “I’m not certain I have a home to go back to,” said Dr. Nassiri. “Not if any word of this gets out. Charles Bettencourt has deep pockets and a great deal of influence with the government of my country.”

  “If we sell the sub to the Columbians, you could probably buy your way into whatever country you want. That being said, I’m not sure of a way to arrange it where we don’t all get cartel neckties in the process.”

  “I’m not familiar with that aphorism.”

  “Slit throats.”

  “Ah,” said Dr. Nassiri. He took another drink.

  “Maybe one of the smaller, unpopular militaries,” said Jonah. “Libya. Burma. I can put some feelers out. But one thing is certain—we can’t stay here.”

  “Burma had a change in government,” said Dr. Nassiri. “As did Libya.”

  “No shit?” Jonah looked up from his sandwich. “Did not know that. But what I do know is this—Anconia Island will be fully mobilized and looking for the Scorpion. We may be a needle in a haystack, but there’s going to be a lot of firepower looking for that needle.”

  “I suppose it is incumbent upon us to make their efforts fruitless,” said Dr. Nassiri.

  “Sure,” said Jonah, taking a sip of his beer. “It’s simple, but sometimes the old tricks are the best ones. We’ll steam south, close to the coast as we can, skirt Madagascar. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, best as we can. Surface all night, submerge all day. At least until we are far, far away from here.”

  “I’m not certain there is any place in the world far enough from the influence of a man like Mr. Bettencourt,” mused Dr. Nassiri. He leaned back against the railing for a moment and grimaced. He felt the weight of the tablet computer in his hands. “Mr. Black—Jonah,” he began. “I’d like to show you something.”

  “As long as it isn’t more bad news,” said Jonah, choosing to ignore his change in status from Mr. Blackwell to Jonah. He finished his sandwich and clapped the last of the crumbs off his hands.

  Dr. Nassiri pressed the tablet into the American’s hands, showing him the bird’s eye image of the older woman he’d discovered in the reconnaissance photos.

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s my mother,” said Dr. Nassiri, tears welling up in his eyes. “She’s alive.”

  Jonah scowled as he zoomed out, discovering for himself her predicament in the midst of a pirate compound.

  “When was this taken?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Jesus, Doc …” Jonah shook his head.

  “I don’t expect this to change
anything,” said Dr. Nassiri. “Not after the way Youssef died. And I wouldn’t even entertain the notion of using any leverage on you to force a rescue. You’ve kept us alive, Jonah. And for that alone, your debt to me is more than repaid. I will fulfill as much of my obligation to you as I am able.”

  “I don’t need you to cut on my face or tuck in my ears or whatever,” said Jonah, still scowling at the tablet computer. Dr. Nassiri saw something flickering across Jonah’s face, recognizing it for what it was—could the American actually be formulating a plan?

  “Jonah—” began Dr. Nassiri again.

  “I’m going to stop you there, Doc,” said Jonah. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I’m reasonably certain they tried to kill us because of your mother’s research. They wouldn’t have tried to sink the Fool’s Errand like that if the issue was over the stolen yacht.”

  “It’s been bothering me as well. Why not simply detain us at Anconia Island?”

  “Because we could still talk if we were detained. Tell the world what we were after. Killing us would close the loop permanently. We would have simply disappeared. They would have blamed it on Somali pirates and everyone would’ve believed them.”

  “There’s no reason to suspect they won’t try again.”

  “I’m assuming they will try again. But next time, I’m going to know why. Let’s just say they’ve aroused my curiosity.”

  “You—you would do this? Assist me in rescuing my mother?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Jonah. “Losing Buzz hurt us. I know he was an idiot, but he was a reliable idiot. I’m in, but I need Alexis as engineer. If she’s not in, it’s no-can-do, full stop. We can’t risk an engine problem leaving us dead in the water.”

  “Fair. More than fair.”

  “I’d like to say I’m doing it for you.” Jonah tipped his head back and finished his beer. He chucked the empty over the side and into the ocean.

  But he’s not, the doctor thought to himself, mentally finishing Jonah’s sentence. Finding my mother might provide the only leverage we’ll ever get.

  As if summoned, Alexis popped her head out of the conning tower hatch, just in time to see the last rays of the sun dip beneath the horizon, rewarding the three observers with a thin flash of soft green as it disappeared.

  “Got the autopilot workin’,” she said in a sing-song voice, laying on the Texan accent as thick as she could. “Soon we will be mother-fucking-fuck the fuck out of here.”

  Dr. Nassiri and Jonah looked at each other.

  “Uh oh,” she said. “What now?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Sunset descended over the pirate outpost, an intense paint-streaked display of light filtering through third-world dust and smoke. Two large stone towers guarded the concrete and stone walls of the small harbor, vestiges of a decaying public works project of some long-ago Marxist regime. Much of the stonework and concrete underpinnings of the jetty were gone, as were dreams of a better future for the nearby city. The unnamed patch of settlements were little more than a loose collection of dusty tower blocks and tin shacks.

  The guard towers overlooked a sheen of oil, plastic, and sewage coating the harbor water as it lazily seeped into the ocean. As poor as it was for the aesthetics of the harbor, it couldn’t have been better cover for the Scorpion.

  Temporarily roused from his medical sedation, Vitaly had done a masterful job of steering the Scorpion into position just outside the harbor. The Russian helmsman set the submarine down on the shallow, sandy seafloor, deep enough to remain undetected. Even the largest pirate ships could pass overhead without colliding. More importantly, they were shallow enough to use the periscope to spy on the harbor.

  “Raising periscope,” said Jonah, more to himself than anyone else.

  Vitaly was back in his bunk, but he didn’t seem to mind the handcuffs. In fact, he didn’t act like he minded much of anything—except Jonah. He never missed an opportunity to flash Jonah a scowl thick with a millennia of Russian indignation. It was as if he believed receiving two gunshot wounds from point blank range—while unarmed, no less—was a cosmic imbalance in need of eventual rectification.

  Earlier, Jonah had tried to ask him why the Scorpion had been deployed against the Fool’s Errand.

  “Sometimes goat eat wolf,” was his only reply.

  Jonah suspected that particular folk saying may have lost something in the translation. And that was that, as much as anyone could get out of him. Even Alexis took a flirty soft-touch run at him to the Russian’s complete disinterest and total lack of cooperation.

  He’d been compliant, but Jonah resolved not to leave his back turned to him, not if it could be prevented. People were funny about revenge, especially Russians coming down from a healthy dosage of opiate painkillers.

  Jonah reached down and unlocked the periscope, leaving the device hanging from the ceiling. He felt a sense of satisfaction that the Scorpion had one of the old-school types with actual mirrors and lenses instead of a video screen. An old-school periscope couldn’t fail if the power was ever knocked offline, and no pixel-smoothing algorithm could match a well-trained human eye.

  The American started with a full 360-degree swivel to check if the pirates had noticed the periscope pierce through the sheen of oily water to spy on the harbor. For a moment, a small collection of plastic garbage washed by, obscuring his vision. With any luck, even if spotted, the periscope would be mistaken for trash.

  He checked on the two stone guard towers first, adjusting the angle upwards to see the bored guards within. In the taller of the two towers, the single guard was dimly illuminated by the screen of his cell phone. In the other tower, two guards played an endless card game by lamplight.

  At first, Alexis, Dr. Nassiri, and Jonah had tried to divvy up the spying duties equitably, each taking a few hours at a time. As time wore on, Jonah took up longer and longer shifts until the other two found it best to simply leave him in peace. Jonah kept elaborate notes on the comings and goings of the pirates—shift changes, food delivery, prayers, even visits by girlfriends. In Prison 14, the only timekeeping was the movement of men, and Jonah had developed a seemingly inexhaustible patience for the practice.

  Jonah twisted the periscope, allowing his vision to fall on the Horizon. The hijacked racing trimaran yacht gently rocked in protected waters of the harbor. She looked like a long-since broken wild stallion, grime and dust coating her matte-black carbon fiber skin, poorly patched bullet holes across her hull. She’d been at dock nearly four years and looked like every day of it.

  I don’t belong here, the yacht whispered. Set me free.

  For the seventeenth time that day, Jonah decided he’d rather see this beautiful vessel on the bottom than tied up in a pirate harbor, crumbling away. She was a mechanical work of art, pure function over form. She’d been captured long ago, so long that Jonah had actually remembered a bit about the incident.

  It seemed the pirates more or less left the two female occupants of the Horizon to their own devices. They were not free to come or go, but they had reign of the imprisoned ship, spending long periods of time sitting on the rear fantail, sometimes in silence, sometimes in conversation. A guard was always watching from shore. When they eventually went below decks, the pirates did bed checks every four hours, their timing just random enough to make Jonah nervous.

  The older of the two women was Fatima, Dr. Nassiri’s mother. She came out less than the other one and spent too much of her time pacing. She’d clearly never been confined for any significant period of time.

  “She’s very beautiful,” Alexis remarked when first seeing her two days ago during her shift.

  Darkness fell and Jonah switched over to night vision. The Scorpion had a decent third-generation system, capable of taking starlight alone and rendering it into green tones.

  The second woman stepped onto the fantail. Jonah found himself breathing a little faster. She was young; maybe mid-twenties, but the youth he assumed could have
been just her utilitarian pixie haircut. Like Fatima, she had dark hair and a small stature. Unlike the scientist, her skin was pale and fair.

  Dr. Nassiri sat down next to Jonah and set a plate of food on his lap. The incredible richness of the smell pushed Jonah from his prisoner’s concentration, forcing him to take notice. It smelled so good he could have almost cried, it smelled better than he remembered food could ever smell.

  “De Laa lamb,” said Dr. Nassiri. “Grilled chops with dates, mint, and orange sauce.”

  Jonah dug in with his hands and shoveled it into his mouth. Amazingly, it tasted even better than it smelled.

  “The larder is surprisingly well stocked with Moroccan staples,” said Dr. Nassiri.

  “Thanks. Are all Moroccan surgeons this good at cooking?”

  “I certainly hope not,” said Dr. Nassiri. “This was always my secret weapon when courting a woman.”

  “Well, I’m not going to let you seduce me,” said Jonah. “But this is still crazy good.”

  Alexis walked into the command compartment holding her own plate of food.

  “I hate to be a bother,” said Alexis, “but we’re going to have to deal with this eventually. The bodies in the forward compartment? They’ve been in there for, like, three days.”

  Dr. Nassiri sighed. “I can do it,” he said. “I imagine I’ve dealt with worse in the past. The deceased hold little mystery to me.”

  “No,” said Jonah, his mouth full of food. “Don’t worry about it, I’m already on it.”

  “On it?” asked Alexis. “That door hasn’t budged in three days! I wake up thinking I can hear them in there! Seriously, it just … freaks me out.”

  “No worries,” said Jonah, still chewing. “I reconnected the HVAC system and hacked the environmental controls. I’ve been blowing 110-degree humidity-free air in there for the last thirty-six hours.”

  Dr. Nassiri considered this, and seemed a little taken aback. “That’s actually a very clever idea.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Alexis.

  “Let me put this into Texan,” said Jonah. “I’m making beef jerky. That should make the whole clean-up process a lot less of a hassle.”