The red hot flare hit the fumes of the gas on the water‘s surface, causing it to burst into flames. I reloaded and fired another volley into the stream of fuel, and it had the same effect. Almost immediately the stream grew from a few fires to a wall of white smoke that rose up toward the men on the deck and shadowed our true position.
Galveston whipped the boat back around to the other side of the ship, as the pirates looked on in dismay at the burning fuel and smoke on the surface of the water. We neared a long wooden ladder that led to the deck of the ship, and I grabbed it as we went by, almost jerking my arms out of their sockets as I stopped the boat. I slung the assault rifle and backpack over my shoulder and scrambled up the wooden ladder. Galveston followed closely on my heels. I stopped only long enough to shoot a flare at the small boat, and it landed near the midsection. The boat began to burst into flames as the heat from the flare hit the fuel we had sprinkled inside it.
The white smoke plumed toward the sky, and thanks to a generous bit of wind, began to waft over the deck, hiding us from view. I heard the yells of the pirates as they tried to grapple with the chaos and what had just transpired on the ocean below.
It was a slow climb up the wooden ladder, and it swayed with every movement we took. I finally pulled myself onto the steel deck of the ship and helped Galveston the rest of the way. Thankfully the pirates were down farther on the deck, still trying to figure out where we had gone. I ran toward the nearest set of large containers and moved out of sight as the pirates moved toward our position. Galveston reached me just as a marauder made it to the ladder we had just climbed. Galveston then pushed me farther between the piles of containers.
“We have to get into the superstructure,” Galveston whispered.
“This way,” I motioned, and I began a crouched run back into the open area of the deck toward the giant superstructure that housed the bridge and living quarters.
I realized there had been no random gunfire at the boat or where the pirates thought we were. They must have been confused from our clothing and quickness in setting the water ablaze. The pirates thought we were one of their own, because who else could possibly be on this island. Their confidence bought us the right amount of time to make our entry onto the ship.
I walked cautiously toward a water tight door at the bottom of the superstructure and reached for the handle.
“Get to the side,” Galveston ordered as he raised his gun.
I opened the door slightly to give Galveston a look. The opening led to a stairwell up to the other decks. Galveston proceeded slowly and kept his fingers poised over the trigger of the gun as he walked up the stairs. I followed facing backward, to ensure we wouldn’t be surprised from behind, pointing my gun in that direction.
As we reached the next deck I could hear the faint sounds of men talking furiously over a radio. News of the events on the ship had spread, and the pirates were beginning to realize something was amiss. They were now figuring out how to find us. Galveston peered around the corner and saw two pirates talking into their radios, oblivious to our position.
I tugged on Galveston‘s parka. “I have an idea,” and showed him a tub of bacon grease from my bag. I had procured it from the meteorological station.
“You just thought of everything,” he beamed as I began to rub the stairway, rails, and landing with the grease, until the entire area smelled of cooked bacon.
“Ready?” Galveston inquired as he knelt down.
“Go for it.”
Galveston leaned his head around the corner and yelled, “Hey, freeze!” Galveston allowed the pirates to see him, and before they could raise their guns, he disappeared with me back down the stairway.
I heard the rustle of steps as the pirates began to run toward our position, but when they tried to slow down, the bacon grease was waiting. The first man slid violently as his feet gave way from the absence of friction, and he began to careen down the stairs toward us. The second man, seeing the first man‘s folly, slowed before hitting the grease, but as he tried to descend the stairs toward the other man he lost his footing.
Galveston raised his gun and pointed it at the man who was trying to maintain his balance. The pirate saw the gun aimed at him and tried to respond, but couldn’t hold his balance on the grease and raise his gun at the same time. The man slipped back, smacking his head against the steel stairs and toppled down them until he ended up on top of the first man, right at our feet. The men groaned in pain from the fall, and we pounced on them. I grabbed the first man and began to bind his hands, feet, and mouth with duct tape from my backpack. Galveston seized the second man and turned him over so I could tie him up as well. When we were satisfied they were out of commission, we took their weapons and radios and slid the pirates to a small room at the base of the stairs with the aid of the excess bacon grease on their bodies.
We shoved them into the room in a questionable position and closed the door. I pulled the extra guns onto my shoulder, and we nimbly made our way up the stairs, avoiding the remaining grease lining the stairwell.
A total of six pirates had been subdued, but we had no idea how many more there were. There were at least three more remaining on the deck, and I was running out of tricks in my bag.
“We need to find the crew,” Galveston said.
We arrived on the second deck which had a long hallway and storage compartments.
“Let’s check these rooms and see if the crew is in them.”
“Gotcha.”
Galveston and I split up momentarily and checked each room on the deck carefully. Most were storage areas, and my mind raced on how impossible it was going to be to find the crew on a ship this enormous.
The spread of panic was racing through the ship as we heard the desperate calls over a radio we took from the pirates. There was confusion in the ranks and confusion was just what we wanted. The element of surprise was still on our side, and we needed to act quickly before they could regroup. The search through the remaining rooms came up empty. I knew we would have to move to the next deck.
“We have to buy some more time to find the crew,” I said to Galveston as we met up at the next stairwell. “Let’s try calling them.”
“I’ll try it,” Galveston responded.
He pulled up the radio and in his worst French accent to date, began to yell incoherently into it. “Hold zit,” he screamed, banging the gun against the steel frame. “Zhey are on ze deck, port side, moving to ze bow,” he yelled again. And then, without warning, raised his gun and fired it down the hall.
I jumped from the reverberation on the walls and the pure cacophony of noise of the gunshot. It caused my ears to ring momentarily.
“Help, si vous pleis, ve are pinned. Need men to ze bow!” Galveston smiled and let out another gunshot before he took his finger off the transmit button.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed loudly, not even able to hear my own words.
“We have the time we need,” he replied back loudly.
If I wasn‘t impressed with his creativity, I would have flattened him for not warning me, but the idea produced the desired effect. The pirates were more confused than ever.
Galveston raced up the next stairway which led to the living quarters. The hallway was quiet, and as on the previous deck, we began a search of each room. In the middle of the hall I noticed a room with a padlock attached to the door.
“Galveston!” I whispered loudly, motioning him over.
Galveston looked the lock over and took the butt of the assault rifle and whacked the lock from the top a few times, loosening its position until it fell off. I cracked the door open as Galveston kept the rifle trained on whatever we would find inside. As the door opened wider, I could barely make out a group of men at the back of the small room, huddled together in the dark. The men in the room cringed from the burst of light from the outside and peered with apprehension as we moved in.
“Are you the crew of the Trusian,” I asked as they looked at me dumbfounded. I
realized it must have been a stupid question to them. They were standing together on the very ship I was talking about.
One of the men piped up. “Yes, sir. We are the crew. Are you here to rescue us?”
The posed question seemed as stupid as mine. Why else would we be here, to sell Girl Scout cookies? But I realized these men had gone through quite an ordeal.
“Yes,” I answered. “Who is in charge?”
“Our chief mate is somewhere on the ship,” a small Taiwanese man answered. “My name is Pi. I am the second officer on the Trusian.”
“Do you know how to use this?” Galveston asked, pointing to one of the guns we took from the pirates.
“I’ve had some training,” Pi answered.
That was all Galveston needed to know.
“We need to capture all the pirates. Who else knows how to use one of these,” he said, holding up another assault rifle.
A man from the back of the room raised his hand. “I’m a hunter. I can use it.”
Galveston threw him the remaining gun.
“Does anyone know how many pirates are aboard?” I asked the group of men collectively.
“We think ten or twelve, but they wear masks. They don’t come in much,” Pi answered quickly.
“We’ve taken down six, but we have to move before the other pirates find them. Here’s what we’re going to do.” Galveston knelt down between the men and laid out the plan on the floor.
The crew knew the ship well and could stay concealed. We didn‘t want to get them injured, so the plan consisted more of staying concealed, followed by spreading havoc. The men would split into two groups and attempt to move the pirates toward the stern of the ship where there were fewer containers. This offered a better chance of corralling them in one place.
“Where do you think the chief mate and captain are?” Galveston asked.
“Not sure,” Pi answered. “Dimitri Petsoro is our Chief Mate. He was shot in the leg during the boarding by the pirates.”
Galveston flashed me a look. We weren’t sure how to interpret Pi’s answer. We still didn’t know to what degree Petsoro was involved, and he could have been faking a leg injury.
“Are you positive he has a leg wound?”
“Oh, yes, I treated it myself,” Pi answered assuredly. “His cabin is on the upper deck near the captain’s. We heard that they killed the captain.”
We looked each other again. The two people we suspected to be the catalysts in this event seemed out of the picture. Our information about the true demise of the captain would have to wait, as would our questions about who the captain really was. For now we had to focus on getting control of the ship. I shook my head at Galveston as an indication not to press the issue further.
Galveston nodded and gave the order for the men to move out. I followed the last seaman out of the cramped room and thought to myself that if this worked, it would be a miracle. The nearest military support was a half-day away in Tristan de Cunha, and it was only a guard post, incapable of handling the firepower of the mercenaries aboard the Trusian. We were on our own.
-Chapter 42-
Galveston instructed the men again not to engage the pirates, but instead to drive them toward the stern of the ship. The crew of the Trusian was not capable of handling the skills of these pirates, so we had to out think them and hope for the best.
The time was nearing five P.M. and the sun was beginning to lower in the sky. Our operation had to succeed before nightfall because we weren‘t sure of the capabilities of the pirates at night. They boarded a ship in the middle of the night without being detected, so it was logical to assume they had the latest night vision equipment.
Each group of the crew was lead by a man with a gun, and the remaining men picked up objects they could use as weapons. The two teams of sailors fanned out toward the stern of the ship, while Galveston and I proceeded up the stairs to the deck that housed the bridge and the living quarters of the captain and chief mate.
Galveston reached the top of the stairs and found the hall eerily quiet. There had been a crackling of life through the radio in French and German, but nothing we could understand.
“Cover me,” Galveston ordered as he bound around the corner and located the first mate’s cabin.
As Galveston stopped at the door, I scanned the opposite direction and noticed black clothing appear farther down the hall.
“Down, down!” I screamed as the first volley of gunfire blazed past my position.
Galveston threw himself on the ground and then propped himself onto his elbows. He raised his rifle to a shooting position as another burst of gunfire pierced the steel walls of the hall. I immediately pulled up the submachine gun we had taken and sent a spray of bullets towards the marauders. The pirates flew back behind the wall and tried to return fire. As their bodies appeared again, I let off another stream of bullets.
Galveston noticed I was providing adequate cover, so he moved to the padlocked door. He furiously worked at the lock with the butt of the gun until it finally gave way and popped open. Galveston disappeared inside and soon came out with a man hobbling on his left leg. The man appeared disoriented and dehydrated, but otherwise in decent condition.
I let out another burst of gunfire to keep the pirates at bay as Galveston propped up the man with his arm and moved toward me in the stairwell. My ears stung from the sound of bullets that bounced along the steel walls as the pirates tried a barrage of random gunfire. I fired back again and heard a yell from down the hall as one of my bullets caught the leg of a pirate. Galveston and the man from the cabin were close now, and I helped them from the hall into the protected area of the stairwell.
“I think you winged one of them, Roger!” Galveston said to me, breathless from the ordeal.
I didn‘t feel proud about it, but I had been left with no choice in the matter. I was just glad it was him and not me.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said with as much calm as I could muster. “Who’s this?” I asked as we moved backward down the stairs.
“Dimitri Petsoro, Chief Mate,” the wounded man answered softly. “Who are you two?”
“Just the welcoming committee,” Galveston announced, scanning the upper stairs for any signs of pirates.
We helped the man to the bottom of the stairs and sat him down against the hall wall.
“Roger, I’m going after the other guy up there,” Galveston told me, already running up the stairs.
“Wait!” I tried to yell, but he had already disappeared. “I hate it when he tries to be a cowboy,” I said to Dimitri who clutched his leg and winced in pain.
I heard a series of gunshots and the sound of a struggle emanating from the upper deck. I peered around the corner and saw Galveston back at the top of the stairs with a pirate in a choke hold. He twisted the man around facing forward and ran him into the frame of the doorway that led into the hall. The man grunted in pain and dropped to his knees as Galveston pushed the pirate onto his stomach.
“Roger, get up here and bring some tape!” Galveston yelled breathlessly.
I bound up the stairs with the tape and saw the grunting pirate. Galveston was sitting on top of him with sweat pouring from his face.
“Tie him and drag him to Dimitri’s cabin.”
I did as Galveston ordered and quickly bound the man’s hands, legs, and mouth, and began to drag him kicking toward the room. Galveston ran down the hall and grabbed the pirate I had wounded and began to drag him to the room. A trail of blood followed the man from the wound I had made on his leg with my gunshot.
“Get something to wipe this blood up,” Galveston ordered again, as he threw the man in the room and tied him with the duct tape.
I was appalled at the sight, but quickly grabbed a sheet from the bed and began to mop up the blood on the floor to the hall. I understood Galveston’s command. We didn’t need a trail so other pirates could find the ones we had captured. In order to keep the wounded pirate from bleeding out, I used a
clean portion of the sheet to make a tourniquet for his leg.
“I hope we remember where we put everybody,” Galveston said from down the hall.
“We may need a map,” I called in return as I finished my custodial job.
The operation to subdue the two men had only taken a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. We were up to eight pirates captured and hoped there were really only four to go. Now it was time to claim the bridge.
-Chapter 43-
Captain Marquette and Balboa stood on the bridge scanning the deck. The pirates on the deck were ordered to change to a different radio frequency when Balboa transmitted a series of clicks. There were only four pirates reporting positions, and they had no idea where the others were. It was pure chaos and not going according to their plan.
Balboa checked his watch and the time was only ten minutes from seventeen hundred hours, their extraction time from the ship.
“All men to zhe bow, have the package ready on zhe deck. Shoot any intruders,” Balboa ordered coldly over the radio.
“What the hell is happening,” scowled Captain Marquette. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I don’t know.”
“It was supposed to be a smooth plan. What happened?”
“I zaid, I don’t know,” Balboa shot back with a look of disdain.
Marquette stepped back and composed himself when he saw the angry look in Balboa’s eyes. “Are the explosive’s set?”
“Jes, I have the detonator. I vill blow zhe ship once ve are aboard the helicopter.”
“Good, blow it to pieces.”
Balboa nodded his head and reached for a small electronic device from his pocket and kept it in his hand as the two men raced from the bridge.
The other remaining pirates had moved to the bow. Marquette counted only four men remaining in their original group.
“Should we go after the others?” Balboa asked Marquette.
“No, we leave on that helicopter immediately,” Marquette answered with defiance.
Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 02 - Peeking Duck Page 18