INHUMANUM: A THRILLER (Law of Retaliation Book 1)

by Bradley Ernst

  When the man awoke, he was both humiliated and furious. “You cheated! There are rules in this discipline. There are methods. You think you’re ready to spar with me?” Bonn stood quietly while the man adjusted his uniform. “How dare you. This is my gym. My rules. You want me? Let’s go!”

  The more the grandmaster ranted, Bonn realized, the less he had to learn from him. This was no battle-worn soldier. This guy smelled nice, sort of floral. Still, there might be an opportunity to learn something. If the guy had a trick, he’d use it now.

  “OK,” Bonn said in what he hoped was a deferent tone. “Let me know when you are ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Ready for anything. Ready for me to attack you. Get yourself ready. Let me know when you are. It’s your gym. Just give me a nod, or a bow, or whatever makes you feel prepared for what’s to come so I know when we’ve started.”

  The man fussed about. He put in a mouth guard. He jumped up and down. He stretched. He walked back and forth and popped his hands in and out of fists. It became apparent he was unable to formulate an attack, so Bonn baited him. He turned his back to the man and yawned. The Japanese hero Miyamoto Musashi might use better techniques to get inside an opponent’s head, but Bonn couldn’t think of one offhand.

  It didn’t matter. The grandmaster had lost already.

  He’d let his own fear, his own self-doubt in. In addition, he had needs. He needed to save face in front of his students. His reputation—his very livelihood—depended on how the next few moments played out. Bonn, however, had something to gain if he lost the contest. He lay on his back and slid his hands behind his head. The students looked pensive and tense.

  “Tae kwon do is an art form!”

  That sounded like a disclaimer.

  The students had honest faces. These weren’t Olympic hopefuls, just people hoping to learn some defense skills.

  It was a shameful charade.

  Shortly, the gym owner would prove himself an impotent blowhard and they’d realize the time they’d wasted. He pitied them. They sought empowerment, but found this charlatan—glad to take their money. Pleased to bully them in scripted ways.

  “Stand up! You need to leave!” The instructor seemed adequately enraged, so Bonn stood.

  “It’s your gym. Let’s spar on your terms.”

  The man leered. He adopted a silly stance. Bonn threw a slow and sloppy right-handed haymaker. Most choreographed attacks in martial arts classes began with similar nonsense moves. The man stepped left and performed an inside block. Bonn’s right kidney was exposed. His foe attempted a right-handed jab. In a flash, Bonn had the man’s right wrist in a lock. He yanked down sharply, then up and to the side, then stepped back with his right foot and pivoted hard toward his adversary with his left leg, driving his left palm into the man’s right elbow. Once contact was made with the elbow, Bonn slammed his rival facedown on the mat. The stunned man tried to turtle. He pulled his left arm in to protect his neck and tucked his legs beneath his body so they couldn’t be used against him. Bonn shifted his left hand up to the man’s shoulder and released his grip on his wrist. He shot his arm under the man’s chin and grabbed the collar of his uniform. He stepped over the immobilized man’s head with his right foot and used his arm for leverage. He choked the man-turtle until he became limp. When movement ceased, Bonn placed him in recovery position. He watched closely until he began to breathe again. “I guess I’ve got the hang of it.” The speed of Kung fu, the techniques of Judo, the strategy of Kendo … Tae kwon do, however?

  Useless.

  It was not, however, wasted time. He did feel inspired to read more about Miyamoto Musashi. The drooling black-belt on the floor may have performed better if he hadn’t been enraged. Today he learned something about fight psychology. Bonn considered the crumpled man and glanced at his stunned classmates. Inspiration came soon enough. He removed the man’s garish black belt.

  Bonn had no interest in posturing or a gentleman’s battle. He didn’t intend to learn a new “art form.”

  He hog-tied the grandmaster with the showy belt. Once finished, he waved the students over to show them how to untie the knot. Two students, both boys, wore grins ear to ear. One had a hard time containing laughter. “When should we untie him?” Bonn regarded the small boy. It was likely the child was sent here by parents hoping to encourage an intact self-esteem.

  “Whenever you like. If left to me, I’d wait until he verbalizes something approximating humility.” The boy blinked and smiled so big Bonn could count his teeth.

  “Judo’s kind of fun,” Bonn added. “Go try it out.”

  ~Homesick

  On a layover Henna reread the article that inspired her trip. An advocate of sustainable fishing practices wrote it. The article argued that though cumbersome, the need to establish an infrastructure to successfully police protected waters was crucial. Many marine parks had poorly defined borders. Add a lack of consequences for lawbreakers? A free-for-all. Diego Garcia was only one example of the all too common problem. The British Indian Ocean Territory administration in London frowned upon commercial fishing near the military base but didn’t take action. Soon they might declare the atoll and surrounding areas entirely free from commercial fishing, but neither UK personnel or US troops were prepared to patrol the waters. Since boats came from as far away as Zanzibar, it would be difficult and expensive to enforce a ban. Many of the Chagossians evicted from Diego Garcia in the 1960s found work fishing. They knew the waters. After all, they used to fish the area to subsist. Since they couldn’t come back to the island itself, they came back to their waters in boats. Big boats. With big ice machines. Boats that carried metric tons of exotic seafood away on ice.

  Hungry mouths don’t ask questions.

  Henna studied a picture captioned: Bycatch in Uncertain Waters. A dark-skinned fisherman posed with a shallow basket brimming with sea life. One of the snails, a fish eating species, appeared to be an enormous Conus geographicus. It wasn’t, however.

  It was something new.

  Well, new wasn’t correct—the Chaggosians probably had a name for it. It was, however, not a species known to the scientific community. She couldn’t clearly see the pattern on the shell, but it was certainly a Conus. It looked longer than typical—and darker.

  Recently, some of the boats led to the atoll by the ousted Chagossians began dragging heavy iron bars over the seafloor. It was wrecking fish habitats. Everything the bar pulverized floated into a fine mesh net. Sea turtles drowned by the thousands. The article had various photographs of fishermen posing with drowned turtles. In a particularly distasteful one, a young man sat astride the wide back of a dead hawksbill like a bronco buster—he looked happy. He smoked a cigarette while he dug his heels into his majestic victim. Though illegal, the turtle would bring a premium on the black market. This type of gruesome picture was the spark environmentalists needed. It woke up the public. A toll-free number allowed wealthy, sympathetic callers to pledge money to stop the practice. It was a grassroots operation. When Henna called the number, the author herself answered. Henna made a donation and kept the woman on the line for a while.

  “There’s a picture of a man holding a variety of bycatch in a basket. One of them is a cone snail—”

  “Yeah—one of them zapped a guy when he stuck it in his pocket. Served him right.” The turtle advocate paused, perhaps worried her enthusiasm for a human death wouldn’t be well received. “He died quickly,” she added in a solemn voice. “Who’d you say you were again?” Henna provided an alphabet of credentials. The woman brightened. “You think the snail’s a new species? This is great! If it’s rare I’ll showcase that in a follow-up article. Would you stay in touch? I want to know what you find out. What if the snails hold the key to a new medicine or something? If that’s the case, they’re robbing us all.”

  Henna promised to stay in touch. The exuberant woman told her what she knew about Diego Garcia and the surrounding waters. She even gave Henna a p
lace to start. There was a building in Malé where non-Muslim fishermen cut loose. It wasn’t a bar—the local religion didn’t allow them—but it was a good lead. Malé was the nearest port to have a boat serviced if anything malfunctioned.

  Fishing boats always malfunctioned.

  Each plane Henna took on the way to Malé was smaller than the last. She was glad to stretch her legs when the last one touched down. Henna found the building the woman told her about without much trouble. It was blue with a flat roof, just off the boat harbor. A young man sat on an empty crate by the door. He held a book. Henna suspected he was a gatekeeper of sorts. Since alcohol was banned in the Maldives, the tropical speakeasy needed a lookout.

  “Salaam,” Henna offered. The man startled. He was much younger than she thought. More boy than man. He looked up and then quickly looked away. Henna tried to guess his thoughts.

  She obviously wasn’t Muslim, so she may be there to drink, but she could also be a spy. If she were a tourist and he let her in, other tourists would soon overrun the place. She’d be the only woman in the bar if he did let her in. That made him nervous too. What has he got to lose?

  Since he didn’t know how to proceed, he employed a technique used by administrators worldwide: he ignored her. Henna spoke to the boy in Arabic. “I need a boat headed to Diego Garcia.” He peeked up at her curiously out of the corner of his eye.

  White tourists don’t speak Arabic.

  Henna stood tall and squared herself to the boy. He was a poor boy who spent too much time in the sun because he had to. There were obviously conditions she didn’t meet to be allowed inside the building, or he would’ve let her in already. Henna let her mind relax. Like most problems, this was simply a puzzle. The boy looked Indonesian. He wasn’t local. If he were local, his neighbors would ask him why he lingered here. She doubted he was Muslim. Henna looked at the boy’s book. It was written in Arabic, but the binding was pristine.

  Was the book a prop? Ahh. He can’t read.

  Henna spoke in Indonesian. “Do you miss home?”

  Bingo.

  His eyes flew wide. She’d correctly guessed his nationality. The boy began to sweat. He was clearly terrified. He forced his nose toward the middle of the book and turned his head side to side with furious exaggeration.

  I’m reading, lady. I can’t be bothered. Leave me alone.

  Henna looked toward the harbor for a moment, then back to the boy. He glanced at Henna but kept his face sheltered inside the book. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

  Yes. He missed home.

  The boy’s guilt-laden eyes darted about, as though punishment raced toward him, but he couldn’t see it yet. Henna nodded back discreetly. “I need to find a boat headed to Diego Garcia. Is there anyone inside that can help me?” The boy nodded tentatively. He looked at the door and back to Henna. He frowned.

  He wanted to help, but he couldn’t.

  “Do you know someone inside who has such a boat?” The boy’s frown spread. He let the book drift down to his lap and his shoulders drooped. He nodded with unmistakable melancholy. There was nothing left for him to do. He shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth.

  Someone had cut out his tongue.

  Henna nodded sadly. His meaning was clear.

  He couldn’t help if he wanted to.

  The boy had taken risks to interact with her.

  It was time for her to take one.

  With a deep breath, Henna stepped past the boy and went through the door. The boy didn’t try to stop her or follow her. She stood in a hallway of sorts. Rudimentary diving gear hung from hooks on the walls. A sour mildew smell hung in the room. Henna heard voices. A door was cracked open at the end of the hall. Slurred speech and laughter came from the room beyond. She walked through the door with confidence. It was dim inside. When her eyes adjusted, she saw an open chair at a table. She sat and nodded greetings to the men who gawked at her. There were two small tables in the room. Bottles of bootleg alcohol sat in the middle of each. A muscular man in a faded orange tee shirt approached her. He wore jeans rolled up to his knees and dingy white sandals.

  “You must be lost,” he said in English. “Come outside. I’ll give you directions to your hotel.”

  Henna ignored his offer. “I’ll buy a drink for everyone. I’m looking for a boat headed to the waters near Diego Garcia.” Henna tossed £100.00 on the table. The climate in the room changed. A dirty glass was placed in front of her and she sipped the foul fluid politely. After a few minutes a short dark-skinned man in swim trunks and a sun visor spoke in his awkward English from the other side of the table.

  “I take you. We do not land in Diego Garcia, but we fish nearby. It is expensive passage. What do you pay for this?”

  “£400.00. I want to see the boat first.”

  “£700.00. You have private place on the boat.”

  “£500.00. I keep any specimens I want from your bycatch.” The man smiled. He had uneven gold teeth. He approached and poured Henna’s glass full of the evil alchemy resting in the nearest bottle.

  “We drink to £500.00, but you bonus me a per-sample fish fee—twenty for big fish, ten for small fish.”

  “Snail shells,” Henna countered. “Ten for each.”

  “No.” The gold-toothed man poured his own glass full, “All shells twenty. Big fish fee.” Henna struggled to down the drink. The short man tossed his down easily and poured even more into each glass. “Boat is nice. Nicest. Big. Safe for you. You pay now.” Henna shook her head and stood to leave.

  “We drank to the agreement already. I’ll pay your captain after I see the boat. The drinks were on me so don’t look for an advantage.” The man frowned. The blood vessels in his neck bulged.

  “Wait at dock. Freezer done soon. You pay me. I am captain.” Henna made it outside before she vomited. The caustic liquor burned her again on the way out.

  The boy was gone.

  She walked awhile and found a woman selling bottles of water. She bought four of them and took greedy gulps from the first bottle. She tucked the rest into her satchel and made her way to the dock.

  The man with the sun visor waved at her. “The freezer fixed. This is it. You see it? The boat. You pay now.”

  Henna stepped onto the rusty hulking vessel. The boy with the book was there. He held his hand out for her bag. Henna smiled but kept her satchel. The boy shrugged and let his arms hang limp. He looked at the deck as if wondering what to do. She pulled the captain’s money from a pocket and paid him.

  The tongueless boy led her to a small, light green room off the galley. A thin, stained mattress had been tossed on top of crates containing breadfruit, coconuts, bags of rice. The door had a lock on the inside and a vent in the ceiling. Henna nodded to the boy.

  “It will work.” Next, he showed her the head, usually reserved for the boat’s kitchen staff. It was surprisingly modern. She turned a fixture. Clear water flowed into the stainless steel sink. The toilet had blue chemicals floating in the water. For a toilet used by fishermen, it looked clean.

  “Thank you.” The boy straightened for a moment. He gave her a small salute and a grin. As he walked away, however, his shoulders drooped and he appeared tiny—a mute orphan off to accept a beating. Henna locked the door to the head and ran the water in the sink. She held her hand in a scoop and tasted it. Her sinuses stung. Her eyes teared up. The water had too much bleach.

  Better than none I guess.

  She spat out the water, but refilled the empty bottles in her satchel anyway.

  Should have bought more.

  Henna took some deep, even breaths. She still felt woozy from the alcohol.

  If she hadn’t thrown up, she’d be in worse shape.

  A deep horn sounded. The ship inched free from everything solid, from everything trustworthy. Creaking and thrumming sounds filled her head as she made her way to the storage room. Once inside, she saw that the lock was broken. She took some cord from her satchel. She tied one end around the door
handle. A thick black pipe ran up the wall behind the boxes of breadfruit, and she looped the cord around it. She finished the improvised lock with a trucker’s hitch. The smell of diesel exhaust came from the air vent. Henna’s head felt brittle. She felt like she’d swallowed broken glass; somehow the jagged shards now rested just inside the back of her skull. Henna focused. She needed to think of something pleasant. Had this been a mistake?

  The diesel fumes. They drowned the sting of the bleach.

  It was all the optimism she could muster. Henna untied the hitch and opened the door. The fumes were everywhere, so she tied herself back in. Reaching into her satchel, things seemed backwards. As if even the piece of familiar luggage was playing tricks.

  There.

  The sarong had been in plain sight. Wrapped around the water bottles. Puffing out her cheeks, disgusted and woozy, Henna cast the thin layer across the filthy sleeping mat like a bait net and collapsed. The world spun. A thrumming drone increased as the big boat picked up speed.

  Sleep would come quickly if she let it.

  Henna hoped the wolves would leave her alone. She couldn’t smell the fumes anymore and felt her guard dropping. Each blink stayed on a little longer. The ship’s big engine slowed to a cruising speed. It settled into a deep iron heartbeat.

  Maybe the sound would scare off wolves?

  It was a very big boat. The African Queen would fit in the boat’s kitchen. She’d watched the old Humphrey Bogart movie with Stephan. She wished he were here now. She pictured Stephan in the Maldives’ clear waters. He had his shirt off. The imaginary Stephan pulled the boat into the Indian Ocean behind him, just like Humphrey Bogart did in the part of the movie when you thought all was lost. Stephan grew. Soon he was big as the Colossus of Rhodes. He casually pulled leeches the size of potato cod from his chest. He called back to Henna over his bus-sized shoulder. “It’ll be OK, old girl. Nothing we can’t deal with here.” He continued to grow. As the water became deep, he grew proportionally. “Just a spot of trouble on the horizon, but we’ll emerge from this just fine.” Stephan was now a skyscraper-sized man. His voice drowned out the sound of the boat. “Could you heat a spot of tea for me? I’m catching a chill here in the depths.” The boat grew too. Stephan turned to glance back at the vessel. The whiskers on his chin were the size of old growth redwood stumps. His eyes were not his own. His pupils reminded Henna of her blue-ringed octopus.