By the time he opened the clinic, I was holding O’Brien up, while he mumbled, “Don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve had five cups of coffee, and I’m still . . .”
Beau had him on the table with his shirt off before he could tell us his symptoms. “Holy, Magnolia!” Beau exclaimed, standing behind O’Brien. “Luz, look at this rash.”
I went around to look, but O’Brien’s back was smooth and white except for some freckles on his shoulders. Beau nudged me, so I said, “Really awful, man.” And to Beau, “Anything we can do for the poor guy?”
“Damn right,” said Beau. “Mr. O’Brien, you’ve got shingles.” The Irishman stared at him stupidly. “It’s a particularly nasty version of the chicken pox virus. Fortunately, we have anti-virals now. Otherwise, you could experience agonizin’ nerve pain for the rest of your life.”
O’Brien kept repeating words after Beau. “Rash? Chicken pox? Pain?”
“Here, Luz, rub some of this salve on his rash so he isn’t bothered with the typical burnin’ itch when that starts up.” He handed me something that said Adult Acne Cream, and I rubbed it on O’Brien’s freckles as Beau prepared the shot, and O’Brien kept mumbling that he didn’t like shots; couldn’t he take a pill?
“You won’t feel a thing,” Beau assured him and stabbed him in the arm while O’Brien stared soulfully at me and said I had hands as sweet as the Holy Mother’s. Then he keeled over against me. Beau tied his feet to the stirrups at the end of the table with rubber tubing and then his hands to the legs of the table. Made me feel like we were a couple of serial killers planning something really nasty.
On our way back to the Grand Salon, we ran into John Killington, who asked, “What’s up, Beau? Wanna get a drink? No crew in the bars. No bartenders either, but the liquor’s still there.”
“Killington! Carolyn’s computer hacker, right? Listen, if you want to get into the computer room, the keycard’s probably in the pocket of this guy we tied up in my clinic.” Killington’s eyes lit up, and Beau passed him a keycard to the clinic. “Just leave him there, an’ once you get on a computer, see if you can find any e-mails from any of the people who’ve been carryin’ around the guns. Meanwhile, we’re takin’ the ship from them.”
“No way!” exclaimed Killington. “Hartwig, Patel, Froder, and the tall blonde, right?”
“Patek with a ‘k,’ an’ the woman’s name is Hanna Fredriksen, i-k-s-e-n.”
“I’m on it,” said Killington, and he headed back to the clinic at a trot.
Carolyn
We decided to divide up into two teams since we weren’t sure that the hijackers had actually succumbed to the avocado soup. After all, Mr. O’Brien had reeled in, and Mr. Hartwig had been seen peering into the Grand Salon when he should have been unconscious. Our plan was to sneak around the halls, checking on the crew dormitories and locking them up if they were full. If we came upon anyone in the corridors, we would pretend to be singing, reeling drunks, and try to overpower whoever it was by crafty maneuvers and sheer numbers.
When Luz returned, she said that was a stupid idea, and a man with an automatic weapon could kill a whole hell of a bunch of crafty, unarmed people. Since a lot of our volunteers were already somewhat the worse for cocktails consumed at the bridge tables, they disagreed violently; they liked the idea we’d come up with. I thought it was good enough myself.
Barney wanted to head straight for the engine room and Froder, so Luz volunteered to go with him. She whispered to me that Barney might be an old fart, which I thought was a very rude remark, but at least he was military. As a result, Beau went off with one half the volunteers; I left with Owen and the others, and Luz went off with Barney, down to “the bowels of the ship,” as he put it.
Luz
First we checked out the dormitory, and Barney said it looked like a whole shift sacked out there, plus a few more. Then we crept into the engine room, which was one noisy place—worse than a frigging rock concert. We found some more crewmen snoozing beside various hunks of machinery, and an officer snoring in a room full of dials. No Froder. “What about his cabin?” I asked. “Carolyn said the officers’ names are on their cabins.” Barney pointed out that we didn’t have a keycard. Those had gone with the two other teams. “Hey, I can kick in a door,” I assured him. “I’ve kicked in a hell of a lot of ’em in my time.”
Barney was worried about my knees, but I wanted to finish this before someone got hurt, so I said I’d just take extra meds when it was over. We ran into some of the others on the floor above the engine room. The Barbers were checking crew dormitories, which amounted to opening doors, taking pictures of sleeping waiters and cooks, then shoving wedges under the doors so the sleepers couldn’t get out.
They came along with us to Froder’s door, where Harriet claimed she could hear snoring. Good, I thought, and kicked it in. It took two kicks, but I hadn’t lost my touch. Then we all piled inside. The door crashing in woke Froder up, and he kind of mumbled at us. Not a guy to let any grass grow under his golf shoes, Barney grabbed the gun, which was leaning against the bathroom door. Harriet yelled, “Get him, Randolph,” and Randolph responded by taking a picture of Froder, who had been trying to get up. Not what Harriet had in mind if her expression was anything to go by.
“Out of the way,” Barney yelled, because, as any fool would know, he didn’t want to shoot any of us; he wanted a straight shot at Froder. He didn’t have any luck, because Harriet, letting out the mother of all pissed-off snorts, grabbed the camera from Randolph and beaned the chief engineer with it. Pre-Harriet, he’d been weaving around, knees bent; post-Harriet, he fell down and went back to sleep. Since she was carrying those drapery cords looped around her neck and draped over really, really big knockers, we tied Froder up and left him in his room, with another wedge under that door. So that was two down—O’Brien and Froder, and I’d been in on both. Kind of fun to get into the action again. And I had Carolyn to thank for that. If it weren’t for her, I’d be at home walking my dog and watching TV, which is no life for a cop as good as I’d been.
45
Three to Go
Carolyn
Owen and I and our team checked some dormitories, planted some wedges, checked out some officers’ quarters, and couldn’t find Hartwig. He was the one we really wanted to get, although I didn’t like the head steward, Umar Patek, either. I’d have settled for him. Beau and his gang had gone after Hanna Fredriksen and Patek, whoever got to him first. I could see that Beau was disappointed when Luz elected to go off with Barney. Maybe she was getting ready to dump the good doctor. Actually, I couldn’t see her in Atlanta as a doctor’s wife, even if Beau was a pathologist. “What about their offices?” I suggested to Owen.
We headed upstairs, ready to sing and reel if we had to, but there wasn’t anyone around except a clerk who had collapsed behind the reception counter. Since she’d fallen with her skirt hiked up in an unladylike manner and some of the men were staring at her, I tiptoed around the counter and made her decent before they tied her up. Wanda Sue found a barman sprawled on a couch clutching an empty bottle, so she and Hank stayed to tie him, while Owen and I went down a hall to peek into Hartwig’s office. When the handle to his door turned in my hand, I stepped back and whispered to Owen that we shouldn’t go in there without weapons. Owen pointed out that we didn’t have any weapons, but that Hartwig undoubtedly had a visitor’s chair in his office, with which Owen could hit him if he was awake.
I spotted a fire extinguisher—they were everywhere, after all. We should have gotten one for each person we’d recruited before we started this. So I put my finger to my lips, tiptoed down the corridor, and tried to get it off the wall. It wouldn’t come off. Fortunately, the wig lady and her husband Morty were with us, and he seemed to know how the stupid things worked, but he didn’t hand the extinguisher to me. He took it for himself. Meanwhile, Rebecca had armed herself with a long nail file, and I had nothing but a half bologna sandwich I’d brought along in case I got hungry. Owe
n counted down from three, and at one we all burst in the door.
Mr. Hartwig, who had been slumped over his desk, which had coffee spilled everywhere, popped up. Rebecca began to sing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” while she rushed over to the befuddled Mr. Hartwig and jabbed him with her nail file. Since he was gaping at her, he didn’t notice her husband aiming the fire extinguisher at him. Once covered with foam, Hartwig let out a roar and lurched forward.
“Hands up,” Owen snarled in a very convincing tough-guy voice. He had Mr. Hartwig’s gun pointed at Mr. Hartwig’s chest. Mr. Hartwig fell forward onto his desk, seemingly fast asleep once more. I could see all that coffee soaking into his white uniform.
Then we tied him up while Owen held the gun on him and gave directions about square knots, which were hard to tie with slippery, braided drapery cords. I was glad Luz hadn’t been here to see our attack on the frightening Mr. Hartwig. She’d have thought us dreadfully amateur in our methods.
Luz
Barney and I were on our way back up to find the others, dragging Froder with us. “Sounds like they’re around the corner,” I said. God, but I needed to take a pee. “You mind hauling him on down the hall while I stop in the Ladies?” Barney went off, dragging Froder by the drapery cord around his feet, while I ducked inside and took the first open booth. Wouldn’t you know? The frigging toilet paper fell off the holder and started to roll. When I bent down to catch it, I spotted someone in a booth a couple of doors away. Looked like she sitting on the floor facing the toilet. Puking, probably.
You couldn’t pay me to sit on the floor of a public toilet. I managed to snag the roll, took a couple of yards of paper off it, and used some of the clean stuff. I had a mother who was always lecturing us kids on the dangers of public toilets. Don’t sit on the seat. Don’t use the first layers of paper. When you flush, run like hell out the door before all the wet germs get to you. Well, my mother usually knew what she was talking about, and I can still get myself away from a flushing toilet faster than anyone my age and most people younger. That’s why I never use those rotten self-flushers. Either they don’t flush at all, or they catch you by surprise.
These weren’t self-flushers, so I got out fast, and guess who I found on the floor a couple of booths away? She hadn’t even closed the door. Her legs were so long they folded into the next cubicle, and she was fast asleep, lying half across the john. Maybe the avocado soup hadn’t agreed with her. She was lucky she didn’t fall in and drown. I hauled her up and out, and she never woke up, but she had vomit all over her camouflage shirt. Lucky again. It smelled, but it didn’t show up too much.
Beau met me coming out of the Ladies. “Hey, sugah, you got number four.”
“Yeah, who’s still missing?”
“Patek,” Beau replied. “Not in his cabin, not in his office.”
“We-all there, Miz Vallejo,” boomed Hank, the rancher type.
He mispronounced my name. All his cowhands were probably my color, and he mispronounced their names, too.
“You get that one all by your own self?”
“Whew!” exclaimed Wanda Sue. “She smells.” And the two of them went right to it with the drapery cords and tied up the hotel manager. “You know,” said Wanda Sue, as both teams gathered, “they got a big ole safe back in their office. What if the last one is tryin’ to get that open? Ah got my birthday diamonds in there that Hank gave me. No tellin’ what all else they have locked up. The ship must keep cash money, don’t you think? We should—”
“Say, Carolyn.” The computer guy from Silicon Valley was trotting down the hall, waving at Carolyn and Owen. “You guys found the head steward yet? I hacked into a Dell in the computer room and picked up an e-mail in the trash bin— like he thought it was gone for good if he deleted it twice. Most people have no idea how long stuff stays on a hard drive and how easy it is to get it back if you know how.”
“So are you going to tell us what you found?” Owen asked irritably. We were all getting pretty tired, Carolyn looking like she’d lost interest in the whole thing and wanted to get to bed.
“Patek e-mailed someone in Morocco named Muhammad,” said Killington. “Told him to meet the helicopter and kill everyone on it but Hartwig and him. Said they’d torture the Swiss account number out of Hartwig.”
There was a lot of conversation about what helicopter, and who Patek really was if he was e-mailing a Moroccan named Muhammad to double-cross the other hijackers. “Muslim terrorists,” was Harriet Barber’s guess. Sounded reasonable to me.
After that, the whole crowd headed for the room behind the reception desk with the big safe. Some stayed outside to keep watch in case anyone showed up looking for trouble. The signal was “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer.” Wanda Sue and Rebecca both insisted on going in since they had jewelry in the safe. Me, I wanted to get back to the suite and rub some chili cream into my knees. I was finding out that I wasn’t really up to kicking in doors anymore.
Sure enough, when we burst into the office, there was the head steward, stuffing jewelry and money into bags. We’re lucky he didn’t shoot us all. The gun was right beside him, and he got his hand on it about the same time Sven got to him, hoisted Patek right over his head, and started whirling him around, gun and all. I think what happened is that frigging little creep couldn’t get his finger on the trigger before Sven tossed him into the wall. When the gun hit the wall, it fired and blasted the hell out of this picture of a bunch of flowers in Bountiful Feast colors. One or two of his own bullets turned Patek’s foot into a bloody pulp, and hitting the wall knocked him out. No one ever figured out how he stayed awake after the avocado soup, but he sort of slithered down the wall and lit among the glass fragments from the flower picture.
“That was Sven’s famous Viking Merry-Go-Round,” said his wife, Frieda. “He was a wrestler before he founded the Man’s Gym chain. Then we merged that with my Fit and Feisty, Inc.”
Owen picked up the gun. “Well, that’s all five. Let’s stow them in the brig. Would you know where that is, Barney?”
“What are you people doing?”
We all whirled around to find Sandy Sechrest, the ombudslady, staring at us. She was wearing a nightgown, a robe, and fuzzy slippers, and her hair was rolled up in those big, pink plastic curlers my older sister used to use before her boyfriend came to call and caught her in them.
“Miss Sechrest, thank goodness you’re here,” said Carolyn, cutting through the crowd to the door. “We just found Mr. Patek looting the safe.”
“But—” Sandy looked at the jewels and money scattered around the door of the safe and the three bags stuffed with them, and I could see that she didn’t know what to say.
However, my friend Carolyn did. “We have to get Mr. Patek to the clinic. As you can see, he shot his own foot, not to mention the picture over there. And we have to lock the other hijackers up.”
“Hijackers?” echoed Sandy in a wobbly voice.
“Yes, so as the only representative of the cruise line here, could you take responsibility for putting all these things—” Carolyn waved at the loot “—back into the safe?”
Poor Sandy, who had been so excited and in charge when she was seeing that my missing clothes got replaced with stuff about forty times the value of what I lost. Now she looked completely bewildered, but we left her to it.
Sven picked up Patek and went off with Beau and me to the clinic to patch the alleged terrorist up and check on O’Brien, who was awake and shrieking when we got there. He wasn’t making much sense, but evidently he thought, because of the stirrups, he was going to be given a gynecological examination, which scared the poor guy shitless. I don’t like them myself, but I never make that much fuss if I have to have one. I couldn’t resist telling O’Brien he had nothing to worry about, that Beau could get to his vagina through his penis. He fainted.
So that’s how we captured the hijackers. There was a surprise waiting for the others in the brig, but I wasn’t in on that. Beau told me to stop bein
g a wuss and help him with Patek’s foot, which was bleeding like a son of a bitch.
46
Early Morning Discoveries
Carolyn
Barney led us off in triumph to the brig with our prisoners, all of whom were unconscious for one reason or another and had to be transported. With our full contingent together, we were able to carry rather than drag them. Frankly, I’d just as soon have gone to bed, but I felt I had to see the mission through since I’d been the one to suggest it in the first place. Lurking at the back of my mind was the uneasy thought that if I’d been mistaken, if they hadn’t hijacked the ship, if, in fact, only a work stoppage had occurred, I and everyone else in our party would be in big trouble.
Consequently, I was reassured to find locked up in the brig five security officers and Captain Marbella. That poor man! His handsome uniform was rumpled and dirty, his hair uncombed; he looked as if he’d lost an appreciable amount of weight, and a stream of Italian was issuing from his mouth. Happily, no one could or would translate it; no doubt it was unfit for respectable ears. However, when he realized that we’d taken back his ship and had every intention of restoring him to his command, I thought he might weep. He called us angels of the seas and embraced those of us he could get his hands on.
I must say, he didn’t smell very good, but perhaps his captors hadn’t provided baths and deodorant. While our captives were carried into the brig and deposited in the cells just vacated, Captain Marbella spat on them as they passed. Since they were still unconscious, they couldn’t take offense. He did notice the absence of Patek and asked, “Where is that traitor, Patek?” Owen explained that the head steward had shot himself in the foot and was being patched up in the clinic.
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