The Wrecking Crew

by Taylor Zajonc

  “Oh God,” said Alexis, holding her stomach and turning a distinct shade of green. She slammed the plate of food onto the nearest console and ran out of the room towards the bathroom.

  “Must you play the psychopath?” asked Dr. Nassiri.

  “Hey, free food,” said Jonah, taking Alexis’s plate and scooping the contents onto his own with his fingers. “You know what would go really well with this?”

  “A piss-flavored American beer?” volunteered a thoroughly unimpressed Dr. Nassiri, scowling at him for both the treatment of Alexis and the meal.

  “I was going to say a nice mint tea, would really compliment the lamb. I’m not a total barbarian.”

  “I prefer a glass of Sangiovese myself,” said Dr. Nassiri, getting up from his seat.

  “Is that a red or a white?”

  Dr. Nassiri rolled his eyes, not rising to Jonah’s obvious bait.

  “Hold up, Doc,” said Jonah. “Tonight’s the night.”

  “You believe so?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Jonah licked his fingers. “Come with me.”

  Dr. Nassiri followed Jonah up the boarding ladder and into the claustrophobic interior of the conning tower. Jonah twisted the large wheel of a hatch built into the side of the vertical passageway. The hatch released, opening into a tight chamber where Jonah had stacked diving gear from the Scorpion’s ample armory.

  “It’s a diver’s lockout chamber,” said Jonah. “We don’t even have to surface. We flood this chamber, I swim out, get your mother, bring her back here.”

  “What’s this?” asked Dr. Nassiri, picking up a large pack with straps on it. It looked almost like a backpack with a hard skin, albeit with two regulators and an inflatable buoyancy-control vest.

  “Don’t touch that,” said Jonah. “That’s a rebreather. Very finicky, dangerous as hell. You can just be swimming along, tra-la-la-la-la, one moment you take a breath and everything is groovy, the next moment you take a breath and die. It’s the CO2 mix … the body doesn’t have a mechanism to tell you that the air mixture is off besides passing out and dying. Incredibly, incredibly dangerous.”

  “Then why use it? Why not use a traditional scuba tank? I know there must be some back there—”

  “The rebreather system doesn’t leave any bubbles. Recycles every breath, very stealthy. And who knows? Maybe the technology has improved over the past few years.”

  “You think so?”

  “Probably not. Engineers have been working on it for more than a hundred years.”

  “Oh,” said Dr. Nassiri.

  It wasn’t Jonah’s intention, but he could tell he made the doctor feel a little foolish. Foolish and worried, to be exact.

  “Let Alexis know tonight’s the night and then meet me back here in a half hour. I’m going to need your help getting all this shit on.”

  Thirty minutes later, Dr. Nassiri watched with a surgeon’s impassive face as Jonah stripped down to his skin. Next came the wetsuit, the same one Jonah had worn when the Fool’s Errand came under attack. Jonah had patched the worst of the holes with silicone, giving the pricy wetsuit a ragged, secondhand look.

  “I assume you’re taking more than a knife,” said the doctor, nodding at the blade stuck in Jonah’s belt.

  Jonah held up a plastic dry bag with a polymer pistol. “Sixteen rounds, one in the chamber, and a spare mag.”

  “Of course,” the doctor murmured. “I’m sure the pirates only outnumber your bullets three or four to one.”

  “Maybe they’ll come at me in single file.”

  “One can only hope they won’t come at you at all.”

  “OK, I’m all set. Close the hatch behind you,” Jonah said, waving the doctor away and busying himself with the dive computer. On paper, this was going to be the simplest dive he’d done since his Basic Open Water certification at the age of fourteen. In real life … well, it was Somalia. Anything could happen.

  “Jonah?” asked the doctor before closing the hatch. Jonah turned around, a little annoyed that the Moroccan hadn’t left yet.

  “What?”

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Nassiri, his arms open, a strange mixture of irritation and earnestness written all over his face. “You’re an arrogant, insufferable bastard … but thank you.”

  Jonah smiled a sly kind of half smile. It took a lot to get that kind of acknowledgement out of the uptight doctor.

  Dr. Nassiri exited the dive chamber, clanging the massive steel door shut behind him.

  Here goes nothin’. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Besides being spit-roasted by pirates or dying of a faulty rebreather, of course.

  Jonah pulled the lever, flooding the dive chamber. Cold water swirled around his ankles as he pulled the dive fins on, and in moments, the water was up to his waist, then chest.

  Remember to breathe, he thought to himself as he cleared his ears. The first breath was always the hardest. A diver had to fight the small primal voice in his own mind that told him he was about to drown.

  The seawater wasn’t as cold as he’d been expecting. A lowering tide had pulled beach-warmed water away from the shores, making the experience not altogether unpleasant. A rush of intense memories hit him almost at once. Floating through the ghostly halls of the Costa Concordia. Hiding from sharks in the massive steel pillars of an offshore oil platform. Seeing the first glint of silver buried deep within the ancient wreckage of Roman caravel. He’d never realized how much he loved diving, he’d never allowed himself to think about it during his time in prison.

  Jonah opened the outer door to the chamber and floated out, adjusting his buoyancy to gently float on the bottom of the sea floor, the massive bulky form of the Scorpion protecting him from the current.

  Navigation was going to prove a challenge. The sunlight was fading quickly and the Scorpion disappeared from sight after just three strong kicks as he entered the dark waters of the harbor. No matter, blackout conditions were no mystery to him. Hands stretched in front of him, Jonah drifted forwards under the inertia of the kicks for just a moment. Contact—he’d found the jetty wall. Jonah cracked and dropped a chem-light, watching it as it tumbled down and landed on the sea floor. When he returned, he’d know just where to push off from the jetty to find the submarine. Now it was just a matter of following the jetty into the harbor.

  Seconds turned into minutes and the minutes into more than an hour. Finally, Jonah found his target—a long, dark trimaran shape in the water above him, a streamlined racing hull saddled with a large pontoon on either side. Jonah pushed up from the sea floor and allowed himself to slowly rise to the surface. He emerged from the water between the main body and the starboard pontoon, just as he’d intended. Stashing the flippers, he pulled himself and the lightweight rebreather apparatus up a small boarding ladder on the side of the racing yacht.

  Stepping onto the moonlit deck, Jonah found a dark corner and drew his pistol. It was a last-ditch option at best, possibly only buying seconds when considering the kind of ordnance the pirates had at their disposal. For instance, the long tubular weapon mounted to one of the nearer Toyotas looked like anti-tank artillery. Christ.

  Jonah pulled the small radio from his vest and pulled it out of the plastic bag.

  “On board,” he whispered, no louder than he dared. As far as he could tell, the pirates only stopped by once an hour or so, but it wouldn’t have been terribly difficult to spot him from the nearby dock.

  Shit. The radio was ruined. Seawater had seeped inside, destroying the sensitive electronics. Triple-bagging the device and wrapping it all up with duct tape hadn’t been enough. The screw up, minor as it was, made him feel rusty, off his game.

  Jonah ducked through the main entranceway to the cabin of the yacht and crept inside. As beautiful as the ship was from the outside, it was ugly on the inside. Just a few bunks, an open galley and a marine toilet with a curtain for the door. Everything smelled strongly of paint, salt and disinfectant. At least the cockpit was something to brag about,
twin lightweight seats facing consoles that would have been at home in a fighter jet. The controls were all inert, with a thin layer of dust covering them. The Horizon hadn’t sailed an inch since first arriving in the harbor as a pirate trophy.

  The American pulled back the curtain of the nearest bunk. A single beam of starlight fell on the pale face of the young woman he’d seen through the periscope. She wasn’t conventionally attractive, not with the boyish haircut and small frame, but something about her struck Jonah deeply. Pity he couldn’t help a second hostage escape.

  He carefully replaced the curtain and went to the next bunk. Pulling back it’s curtain, he saw the sleeping form of Professor Fatima Nassiri. Though easily over sixty years in age, she still retained the features of an exceptionally beautiful woman, black hair, dark skin, but the facial lines of someone who laughed too little. She wore a loose button shirt and shorts, revealing endless rows of cuts and bruises. She’d been through hell.

  Before waking her, Jonah produced her son’s passport from a plastic baggie. With one hand, he held it out in front of him, opened to the doctor’s picture. With the other, he firmly placed his hand over Fatima’s mouth.

  The doctor awoke suddenly, struggling and clawing at his wet, neoprene-clad arms, her eyes flashing. She caught sight of the passport photo and her eyes locked on the image of her son. She froze, unable to tear herself away from the photo. Jonah slowly loosened the pressure of her mouth. Once satisfied she wouldn’t scream, he removed his hand.

  “Do not speak,” said Jonah. “Do you recognize this picture?”

  Fatima nodded.

  “Good. Your son sent me to get you out of here. I came in using SCUBA gear. We will leave using SCUBA gear. You will cling to my back and use my spare regulator. You will not open your eyes. It took me an hour to infiltrate the harbor; it could take twice that leaving. You must mentally prepare yourself for what’s to come.”

  Fatima nodded again, but with a hint of defiance this time. The more she gained her faculties back, the more Jonah could see that she had her own ideas about how this would go down.

  “You’re an experienced diver, right?”

  Fatima shook her head. “Once only,” she whispered. “At a resort.”

  “Seriously? I thought you were an oceanographer or some shit—look, nevermind. Just hold on, control your breathing and keep your eyes closed. We have a sub—I mean a ship waiting just outside the harbor.”

  “How many men are with you?” asked Fatima.

  “No time for questions,” said Jonah, turning around. “Let’s get moving.”

  “But what about Klea?” demanded Fatima, dangerously loud.

  “Jesus! Lower your voice!” said Jonah. “She’s not my problem. I have one spare regulator, and it’s yours. Time to go.”

  “I will not leave without Klea,” insisted Fatima. She rose to her feet. Though a foot shorter than Jonah, the professor stood toe to toe with him as if she were a titan facing a mere mortal. Un-fucking-believable.

  “Fatima, it is theoretically possible to evacuate you unconscious,” threatened Jonah.

  “We’re watched during the night,” she hissed.

  “We don’t have time!” Jonah said. Then hearing footsteps behind him, he whipped around, pistol in hand, only to see the bright glint of the steel blade flash just below his chin, millimeters from his exposed throat.

  The young woman from the first bunk stood before him, chef’s knife in hand. Jonah’s hand instinctively went to protect his throat, his fingertips brushing the tangled, severed lines of his regulator tubes. She’d slashed them in half, both his main and his spare. Air rushed out unimpeded with a hoarse roar, expending the reserve oxygen tank in seconds. Repairing them wouldn’t do a goddamn thing; the entire system was useless without the reserves.

  Rage rushed through him like a flash flood in a bottleneck canyon. Reaching forward with his left hand, he grabbed Klea around her neck, his massive hand constricting her airflow as the other hand tightened his grip on his pistol.

  She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t beg for her life. She just looked at him. His surveillance from the submarine hadn’t done her justice, not her smooth, pale skin or dark Audrey Hepburn eyes, glassy under the moonlit sky.

  “What in the actual fuck?!” demanded Jonah, shaking her.

  Still she didn’t react, didn’t even fucking blink. Through his grip, Jonah felt the slightest muscle movement, the faintest twitch. He looked down to see her adjusting her grip on the weapon. His prison instincts told him she was intently considering stabbing him. With a knife that size and her obvious commitment, she had a good chance of grievously injuring him before he ended things. Not a good situation for either of them—she’d be dead and he’d be gutted.

  He loosened his grip. Klea didn’t need another sign; she wriggled herself loose and stepped back. Fatima stood frozen, looking at both as they faced each other down, Jonah with pistol drawn, Klea with her fierce, dark eyes and sharpened blade.

  “Talk,” said Jonah.

  “I have a plan to get us out of here,” she said, her voice hoarse from his grip. “All of us. So drop the frogman gear and come with me.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Fatima,” said Klea as she flipped the knife around to hold it by the handle. “Take this. Cut the mooring ropes down to a thread. They must appear normal but break with the slightest pull.”

  Jonah grimaced. The plan was to wake up Fatima and only Fatima, stick an air regulator in her mouth, jump overboard, and sayonara, suckers. If Klea woke up, Jonah had planned to say some bullshit about a second diver coming just for her. Or a helicopter. Or a goddamn aircraft carrier group. It didn’t matter. A lie was a lie.

  Fatima took the knife from Klea, pulled a black hijab over her head and disappeared out of the main hatchway.

  “What are you?” demanded Klea. “US Navy? Special Forces? Private contractor?”

  “Escaped convict,” answered Jonah. “And if your plan is to use this boat to outrun the pirates, your plan sucks.”

  “You know nothing of my plans,” said Klea. “And at least I intend to get us all out of here together.”

  “This shit-box has been shot to pieces. Look at this!” said Jonah, waving his hand past a particularly ugly streak of stitched-up bullet holes in the fiberglass upper works.

  “I fixed it,” she spat back.

  “Let’s see if you can follow my train of thought,” he said, hissing out every word as he holstered the pistol into his dive suit, took off his goggles and dropped them to the deck. “This ship, fast as she may be, was captured by pirates. Therefore, this ship is not fast enough to outrun pirates.”

  “She doesn’t run,” said Klea. “She flies. Follow me.”

  Klea lead Jonah into the engine room at the extreme rear of the ship, accessible below the main hatchway. The amount of damage was shocking, even to an experienced salvage diver like Jonah. Thick black marks streaked the interior walls, evidence of a vicious fire. Exposed wires dripped melted silicon insulation. Crudely patched bullet holes polka-dotted most of the compartment. The pirates had directed most of their fire at the engine room in order to disable the ship and capture it intact.

  “She was scrap when I started,” said Klea. “Even the biodiesel tank was shot up and mixed with seawater. Our captors kept it all around anyway. They don’t really throw anything away here. They mostly wait for it to fall apart or sink on its own.”

  Jonah looked closer at the bullet-scarred metal, his eyes straining under the dim solar lighting. Something was wrong about this damage …

  Ah, clever girl.

  The scarred-over engine compartment was all for show, an illusion. The massive twin biodiesel engine blocks certainly looked shot to pieces—but when Jonah ran a finger over a particularly nasty hole in the intercooler, he felt a perfectly welded patch. The “leak” was painted on. Same for the valve guides, cylinder liner, and the oil pump. The damage had been long since repaired, as awful as it’d look to
the untrained eye. She’d done a similar job to the battery bank, repairing the ones that weren’t too badly damaged and bypassing the ones that were. Maybe the Horizon could still fly after all.

  “Seawater in the fuel lines still is a problem,” said Jonah, not yet ready to fully acquiesce to her suicidal plan.

  “Well, duh,” said Klea. “That’s why I distilled it. It’s now completely pure. Probably better than when we first bought it. They know I work on the ship once in a while, but I’ve been charging the batteries off of the excess juice from one of the shore generators. Reprogrammed the arrays to work more efficiently, and I managed to boost their capacity by twenty percent.”

  “I’m still waiting to be impressed,” said Jonah, crossing his arms. She had his attention, but they were still a long way from an effective escape plan.

  “I re-engineered the engine to run diesel and electric simultaneously,” she continued. “It will give us a significant extra boost of power before the pirates can completely mobilize, easily pushing her past thirty knots.”

  “Bullshit,” said Jonah. “I saw the propellers when I swam in. They’re built for efficiency, not speed. How are you going to deal with the supercavitation issue? Those props spin fast enough, they’re just going to chop the water into foam and leave you stranded.”

  “This is a hybrid,” explained Klea with no small measure of irritation.

  “So?”

  “So I programmed the engines to pulse.”

  Jonah stood back for a minute to consider this. He’d read about this technology in a journal a lifetime ago. How could one engineer, a prisoner on her own ship no less, duplicate it with zero resources in Somalia?

  Jonah nodded. “That’s some next-level shit,” he said. “I mean, we’re dead the moment we approach those two guard towers at the mouth of the bay, but I’m genuinely impressed. How much range have you sacrificed?”

  “We’ll have enough electricity and fuel to get us to Oman.”

  Jonah did the math in his head. Oman was optimistic, even foolhardy. The plan was reckless, overly complicated, and relied entirely on a series of untested assumptions.