by Mack Maloney
Batman pushed his new mountain of chips forward and smiled madly.
“All in,” he said. “And may the best man win.”
20
Indian Ocean
SNAKE NOLAN COULDN’T believe he was still alive.
He’d been beaten about his face and shoulders. His feet had been hit with bamboo sticks. His torso had bruises from the ribcage on down. His head felt like it had been split open.
But it was his knuckles that told the tale. They were scraped, cut and bloody. He’d fought back. That’s why he’d been pummeled to within an inch of his life.
It was all still hazy, but bits and pieces were coming back to him. He and Emma had climbed down to the fishing boat to get a ride to the nearby Lackshadweep Islands when the toothless man had pulled a gun on them. In that moment between freedom and captivity, Nolan realized what a fool he’d been. The toothless man was a Bom-Kat. The pirates had taken over one of the Omani fishing boats and when the others departed, it had lingered to offer them a ride to the islands. In a hundred years Nolan wouldn’t have thought the Bom-Kats could be that crafty. But then again, he didn’t know how obsessed their top man was with Emma Simms.
He remembered throwing punches around when the Bom-Kats started manhandling Emma, but there were too many pirates on the stolen fishing boat for him to defeat.
While being beaten, he recalled one of the pirates holding a knife to Emma’s throat and threatening to slit it if Nolan continued to resist. And he remembered Emma saying to the guy: “Don’t be afraid. There’s no reason to be afraid,” and he realized at that moment, it had been the perfect thing to say.
Nolan finally stopped struggling when someone hit him over the head with a bottle. He was just now waking from the deep, painful fog that blow had caused.
He was in a dark compartment, with a single weak lightbulb providing the only illumination. Machinery was chugging all around him and the air was stifling and full of oily steam. As he began to get his wits back, he realized he was locked in the fishing boat’s tiny engine room and that they were underway.
Two pirates opened the door and came down the ladder just as Nolan was getting to his feet. They started shouting at him as soon as they realized he was awake.
They were talking in rough pidgin English—but Nolan got the idea. The stolen fishing boat’s engine was acting up, and for some reason the Bom-Kats just assumed that he, being an American, knew how to repair it. As they were telling him this, the engine sputtered to a stop, as if on cue.
Nolan knew enough about engines to change the oil in a car, but that was about it. Still, when one pirate stuck an assault rifle in his ribs—oddly it was an old M-16—Nolan knew he had no choice but to try to fix the damn thing.
He took off what he guessed was the access panel and found himself looking at what was basically an old Chevy eight-cylinder engine. Half of the eight spark plug wires were off, causing the problem. It was an easy fix, but Nolan was smart enough not to repair it very quickly. As they had recently stolen the fishing boat, it stood to reason the Bom-Kats knew little about how its engine worked, especially since it was an American design.
So he told the Bom-Kats he needed a gallon of cold water and a screwdriver and that they should be quick about it.
When they hesitated, he yelled at them: “Do you want to sink or not?”
They finally left and only then was Nolan able to fall to the seat of his pants and catch his breath.
He figured he’d been a captive of the Bom-Kats for about ten hours now. He was sure it was dark out and he could hear the wind picking up outside. Once again, he became furious with himself for falling for the Bom-Kats simple ruse. After he had beat them so successfully during their murderous assaults on the Taiwan Song, the pirates had skillfully tricked him when his guard was down. It was a real blow to his ego.
Worst of all, though, he had no idea where Emma was.
The pirates returned with the water and screwdriver. They left just as quickly, but not before spitting at him.
Nolan drank the water greedily, and poured some over his wounds. His head began to clear a little more. He went back to the engine, connected two of the four hanging spark plug wires and then started the engine manually. It coughed to life.
He heard the pirates up top let out a cheer. Someone in the control room hit the throttles and the boat started moving forward again.
Nolan’s instinct told him they were heading east, back toward India, and the Bom-Kats hideout. This was not good. He knew once they reached the pirates’ lair his chance of survival would be nil. As for Emma? Who knew what awaited her—if she was still alive.
He had to find out. He located a sturdy steam pipe and climbed on top of it just under a deck brace. With much effort, he unscrewed the brace and gently let the plank it was holding fall down a bit.
He peeked through the opening and saw … nothing, except the bare feet of pirates on the deck above, lit by torches. Nolan returned that brace, unscrewed another and peeked through that opening, again, to no good end.
He unscrewed and replaced a dozen braces until he finally saw what he wanted to see. Another pair of bare feet on the deck, but definitely not belonging to any of the pirates.
It was Emma. She was bound to a crude wooden stool on the starboard side of the boat, next to the railing. She did not look bruised or cut, but she was very frightened and crying.
Even worse, she was not wearing the combat suit Nolan had last seen her in. Rather, she was clad in a very small woman’s bathing suit. And he could see many pirates were crowded around her, poking at her, laughing at her, but mostly ogling her. These brigands were getting inebriated as well; it was obvious by the way they were stumbling about.
Nolan replaced the brace and tightened it back up.
What would happen to Emma when the pirates really got drunk?
He didn’t want to know.
Just about that time he noticed the boat was beginning to rock. It was strange because since they’d left Gottabang in the old Taiwan Song, the sea conditions had been nothing but smooth and calm, almost too much so.
But now, with each passing second, he could tell the seas were getting rougher. Then he heard the sound of rain beginning to spatter on the deck above. Then came the sound of thunder, the crackling of lightning, and finally footsteps frantically running in all directions right over his head.
The wind began to screech and soon enough, waves were crashing violently against the side of the fishing boat.
The typhoon hit full force about a minute later.
* * *
IT HAD BLOWN up so quickly, Nolan could barely stay on his own two feet. Still, he climbed back up on the steam pipe, unscrewed the specific plank brace and looked up onto the deck. He saw that Emma was still bound to the seat, getting very wet, her hair blowing crazily in the wind. Meanwhile he could see the drunken pirates staggering around the deck not knowing what to do, even as the storm grew worse.
Now was the time for him to act. He went back to the engine, reached into the access panel and unplugged six of the eight spark plug wires, bringing the engine as close to a stall as possible without it actually going dead.
This brought the same two pirates back. Nolan barked at them as soon as they appeared: “You want to save that girl? You want to ransom her? Then get her down here. And give her a life jacket.”
The pirates seemed confused about his orders, but they didn’t question him. They were too scared.
One disappeared but returned a minute later, and Emma was with him.
Nolan pretended to be engrossed with the engine—and he yelled at the pirates: “Tell everyone up top to strap in and hold on tight. I’ll try my best to get this running again.”
The pirates didn’t hesitate an instant this time. They went back up the ladder as quickly as they could.
Once they were gone, Emma fell into his arms. Soaking wet and crying, she would not let him go.
The boat began bouncing around the
wild sea. Water was splashing up top and draining into the engine room. It hit the hot pipes, caused them to steam, and before long the steam filled the small compartment. But she did not let go.
Nolan managed to free one hand and replace two of the disconnected spark plug wires. The engine surged and the boat started moving a little faster through the gale.
Still, she would not let go.
They were being thrown all over the engine room, and when they stumbled together, she just held on tighter.
Finally, still without a word between them, they both sank to the dirty, oily floor, to ride out the storm together.
* * *
THE SEA GREW even wilder, and the wind began to absolutely howl.
The stolen fishing boat was made primarily of wood and aluminum, meaning it bobbed in the rough water like a toy. Nolan could hear the pirates running around up on deck, ignoring his orders to find a place and strap in. They were all drunk and obviously inexperienced in how to properly take a vessel like this through a storm. They had given Emma a life jacket when they brought her below, though—and at the moment that was the only comfort Nolan could find. If the boat broke apart and she had a life jacket on, then at least she had a chance to survive, small as it might be.
The storm grew even more. She was hugging him so tight, Nolan could barely breathe, but that was OK with him.
Finally, she spoke.
“You’re brave and you’re strong,” she said. “Can you share some of that with me?”
“Like I told you back on the freighter,” he replied. “You’re one of the bravest people I know.”
“But what did you think of me before that?” she asked him. “Before what happened happened? Tell me the truth…”
Nolan was stuck for a moment. It was a strange conversation to be having as a typhoon roared outside.
“I guess I thought you were the type of girl who’d sit in a guy’s lap even while he was standing up,” he finally replied.
She would have laughed had she not been so scared.
“I guess that’s better than you thinking I was someone who liked to pull the wings off flies,” she said. “Or stomp little bunnies.”
“It was never that bad,” he lied.
“I know it was—and worse,” she said as a massive wave hit the fishing boat. It was so powerful it seemed to knock them sideways. “I’ve done so many stupid things in my life—and I’m not that old. I’ve screwed people over. Ruined careers. Destroyed marriages. Lives. I was born to be a monster.”
“The best thing to do with those kind of memories is to just forget them,” he told her.
“But what if you can’t?”
“Then just get drunk,” he replied. “That’s what alcohol is for.”
Another massive wave hit them. It sounded like the boat would come apart at any moment.
“I guess I figured that out when I was about twelve years old,” she finally replied. “When I was a little kid, I used to hear a voice in my head. I thought it was God. Hell, we talked all the time, though He did most of the talking. I finally got worried about it and told my mother. She was an actress and she was making a movie at the time. I thought sure she’d send me to a shrink, but instead, she and my father decided that it was ‘precious’ and never did anything. I started boozing right after that.”
The boat was hit again by a huge wave. Nolan waited for the vessel to settle down.
“So what did this voice tell you?” he asked her. “Did it say you should become a movie star?”
“No,” she replied through some tears. “The voice told me I should save the world and do it some good—but I did the exact opposite. I became an actress.”
Nolan thought a few moments and said, “Someone told me once that when a person goes to sea, they should forget about everything that happened on shore. It took me a while to figure it out, but I did eventually. Do you know what I mean?”
She thought about it a moment and then nodded. “I think so,” she said, pulling him even closer.
“People can be whatever or whoever they want to be as long as they are fighting for something,” he said. “And you gotta take a stand. I mean, if you don’t believe in God or the devil, you’re never disappointed. But what fun is that?”
He actually got her to laugh at that one.
And about a minute later, the sea around them started to calm down.
They heard the rain stop. The wind died away. The thunder was gone.
The storm had passed quickly—and they had talked through almost all of it. The sun eventually poked through the cracks between the fishing boat’s beams. They were highlighted by the steam coming off the still-chugging Chevy V-8, giving the engine room a surreal noir look.
Finally Nolan could see her face again and she could see his.
He said to her, “Throughout those battles on the freighter, I smelled a bit of your perfume on me and I knew I would have given my life just to see you one more time.”
She replied, “I don’t know anything about war or politics—but I believe in you. And what you do must be right. You know, brave men are never forgotten. And like I said before, you are a brave man.”
He laughed. “Well, that might be true, but sometimes they don’t last long enough to be remembered.”
She looked him straight in the eye.
“I’ll remember you,” she said.
Nolan felt like he was floating in space. He was dirty, wet and wounded—yet nothing around him had any effect on him. He was lighter than air. He figured, it was now or never.
He went to kiss her—and just as their lips touched, there was a huge explosion.
It nearly knocked him out, the concussion was so bad.
All he could think was: Wow!
But then he opened his eyes and realized that this was not from the kiss—someone had fired at the fishing boat, and in fact a shell had come right through the hull, passed through the engine room and gone out the other side.
Before they could say anything, there was a second explosion; this one on the top deck. It shook the vessel from one end to the other.
Four pirates quickly appeared. Nolan had never seen these guys before. But it was clear they were all scared and angry.
They grabbed Emma and began dragging her away. Nolan tried to stop them but they began beating him with their rifle butts. He retaliated by stabbing them with his screwdriver, but this just made them beat him more.
All the while, Emma was screaming and crying as they carried her up the ladder way.
“I will remember you!” was the last thing Nolan heard her say.
One pirate stayed behind. He was the fiercest-looking one of them all. He pointed to the engine and screamed at Nolan: “Make fast, now!”
Then he, too, hustled up the ladder.
Another shot came in. This one blew off a large chunk of the hull just in front of the engine. The resulting hole was so large, Nolan could see out onto the water. About 1000 feet off their port side, a police boat was firing at them. He could clearly see the flashes coming from its deck gun.
“Make fast … now!” another pirate screamed down at him.
But Nolan did the opposite. He knew this was their only chance to get out of this thing alive. So he pulled out all the spark plug wires and the engine ground to a halt. A few seconds later, the fishing boat stopped moving.
Nolan tore off his battle suit top, ripped off his white t-shirt from underneath and frantically started waving it through the hole in the hull, hoping to attract the attention of the police boat.
But whether they saw him or not, he would never know, because they fired their deck gun again and this shell exploded on the other side of the engine, effectively cutting the fishing boat in two.
The boat’s fuel tank went up a second later, blowing Nolan right out of the engine compartment and high into the air. He stopped in midair just long enough to see the fishing vessel sink in a ball of flames. Then he came down and hit the water hard, plunging at
least twenty feet under, before he was able to stop himself.
He madly fought his way through the turbulence to get back to the surface. But when he reached the top again and looked around for Emma, all he saw were the dead and the dying amidst the smoking remains of the fishing boat.
He began swimming through the burning wreckage, searching for her—but then he noticed the water was snapping all around him. The police boat was now just 100 feet away and they were machine-gunning anything that was moving in the water. As there was no way they could tell him from the bad guys, they were shooting at him, too.
He had no choice but to swim for it.
He went under and with all his might began swimming away. When he surfaced again, the police boat was circling the wreckage, still firing into it as if doing it for sport.
He looked around and saw there was an island about 1,000 feet away from the scene. With tears spilling out of his one good eye, Nolan started swimming toward it, Emma’s last words still ringing in his ears.
It was not an easy go. The current carried him one way for a while and then the other. Though the small island was always right ahead of him, it never seemed to get any closer.
But then came a shift of tide, or a lucky wave, or something else, because one moment, Nolan was close to going under for good, and in the next, he’d been thrown up on the island’s rocky beach.
Still, he couldn’t move, he was having trouble breathing and he could barely feel his legs. He had water in his lungs and his stomach. He began throwing up and didn’t stop for a long time.
Only after this nausea finally passed, did he try to crawl further up on the beach, but his legs still didn’t want to work. No matter how hard he tried, he was stuck in the same position.
He thought: “I meet the girl of my dreams—and then my life is over? Thanks for nothing, God—you bastard.”
And at that point, he just gave up. Emma was gone. He was out in the middle of nowhere. And the tide that had swept him up onto this beach was now about to overwhelm him and drown him after all.
So, he stopped trying to move.
He stopped trying to breathe.
For Snake Nolan, it was finally time to die.