Red Sand (12 page)

Tucker ran through his mental checklist one more time. All clear. Now, the
coup de grace
.

“Colin!”

“Yes, sir!”

“The bridge is yours.”

Colin stammered. “W-what?”

“You said you wanted some responsibility? Well, you got it. You’re taking night watch. Everything is on automatic anyway. Don’t touch anything. If you get worried for any reason, just push this button and get me on the com. You got it?”

“Yes, SIR!” Colin snapped a salute, beaming.

“Do me a favor. Don’t get worried. I don’t want to be called up here unless you see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Capiche
?”

He only said that to make Colin nervous. The less Colin questioned the better. It worked.

“Now, Colin. I know you’re new, but this post is part of your training. We’re depending on you. Make me proud.”

“I’ll give it 110% tonight sir.”

“I know you will, Colin. Good luck.” Tucker closed the door.

This was a stroke of genius. He’d been agonizing over who to put on the bridge at night. Who wouldn’t notice the AIS out? Who wouldn’t obsess about being off course? Who wouldn’t call the weather service every five minutes to check on the storm?

Colin was perfect. And he actually thought he was doing him a favor! What a chump.

Now, Tucker had a poker game to get to. He didn’t give a damn what his cards were tonight. He was a champion bluff.

Tucker learned long ago the art of avoiding guests. It protected him from time-wasting elderly admirers, but it had practical reasons as well. The typical American cruise ship patron physically fills a hallway, making it impossible to pass.

This evening, despite his best efforts at evasion, he was unsuccessful. The young married woman he’d seen earlier, the one with the little girl, accosted him outside her stateroom. “Captain?”

Fuck off
, he thought, as he beamed a stellar smile. “How can I help you?”

“Would you please come inside?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I…”

“My daughter would love it if you would read her a bedtime story.”

He blushed. His embarrassment propelled him in. “Oh, right. Sure. But just a few lines.”

In a stateroom identical to all the others, a little girl lay bundled up pink pony pajamas. She squealed. “Are you a real Captain?”

Tucker picked his way through a pink plastic minefield. “Yes, I am. How old are you?”

“Four.”

“Really? You and I have a lot in common. I was four when I was your age!”

She giggled. Her mother smiled from the doorway.

I need a scotch.
“What can I do for you?” Stellar smile.

“Read me winipoo?”

He took the book she proffered and turned it toward the light. On the cover, Winnie the Pooh fussed with an umbrella in a rainstorm.

“You want me to read this? Okay.”

He sat down with the book and started to read…

"I ought to say," Explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, "that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends."

“Depends on what?”

“On whether I’m on the top of it or underneath it.”

A superstitious man, he didn’t like the inference. “And that’s all for tonight. Sweet dreams!”

“But Captain…” she cried as he scuttled out the door.

Two hours of scotch pushed that memory aside. Tucker, Angel, Sammy, Dragos, and Mike sat around a green felt table just outside the engine room. They shouted over the noise. Ados, the Principal Medical Officer, joined them. He was a tall, thin Portuguese man with impeccable style and a patrician air. When he wasn’t attending to his medical duties, he holed up in his quarters with a library of scientific works. Only Poker Night brought him out, though he played conservatively, spoke little, and insisted on drinking Port.

“You don’t seem to mind it when I take your money,” Angel said, hauling Tucker’s chips across the table.

“I don’t think anyone would object to you taking their money.”

“It’s not my fault I’m bigger than you.”

“It’s your mother’s fault you’re uglier,” Mike added.

“What do you mean? She looked just like me.”

“Your father must be a blind man.”

“A blind priest, actually.”

If Angel’s mother bore six ugly children, Angel was the ugliest. He called himself a Pinoy, which was the same thing as a Filipino. A former military officer who fought Islamic terrorists, Angel had chosen to leave the military for something more peaceful. Tucker always invited Angel to the table and deliberately lost to him. As the Safety Officer, and a total bad-ass, Angel was an ally Tucker wanted to keep close.

Mike turned to Tucker. “The way you’re losing money, I’d think you found yourself a job.”

Tucker winced. Was he that obvious? Unconsciously his fingers reached in his pocket to touch that notebook and the bank slip. They all knew he’d sent out 217 resumes without so much as an interview. Cruise lines, ferries, containers, bulk carriers, tankers, and tugboats turned him down. Desperate, he even sent his resume to amusement parks. Not one interview. Too many letters littered his table with postmarks from Greece, Germany, Sweden, Korea, Panama, and every other port in the world starting with those poisonous words, "Thank you, but..."

That's what happens when you spend five years with a failing brand. Every newspaper in the world carried the plight of this cruise line, the fights with the bankers, the dropping rates of passengers, the pooling red ink. Maybe he'd waited too long, held out too much hope for a recovery.

Tucker felt tipsy. He’d been liberal with his chips and enjoyed this devil-may-care attitude. He didn’t mind playing away his pay knowing he had three quarters of a million dollars deposited in a Cayman account and another bundle on its way to him tonight in a Gucci suitcase on a Liberian tender.
Special delivery.
Good thing, too. If it hadn’t been for that money, he’d be sunk. All the other Captains had found their postings, beating him to the punch. 

“No, I didn’t find anything. I just stopped caring. Call.” He pushed another chip out in front of him. He had nothing, but bluffing was becoming a way of life for him. “What did the rest of you get? I know Mikey here’s going to be a Captain, too, next week.”

Mike went red. “Well, of a tug boat. My wife wants me closer to home. I’m really looking forward to it. Just like having a root canal every day for the rest of my life. Sammy? What about you?”

“Same old, same old.” Sammy found jobs as fast as other people change clothes. He was already posted to another cruise line.

Angel didn't say where he was going, and Tucker pitied anyone who got in the way. Ados remained stoically silent about his situation. Without this job, his visa was up. He referred to a return to Portugal as a "death sentence" but wouldn't elaborate. Dragos hadn't even applied to anything. He said he wanted to go home to his mother's cooking, yearning for something "authentic".

Mike leaned over to whisper confidentially to Tucker. "What are you going to do?"

"I have a little stashed away for retirement.” That was no lie. “Guess I'll find me a little island to take some time off till something comes my way."

"Bermuda?"

"Good as any."

But it wasn't like that at all, and only Tucker knew it. Charlie Pips, the owner of the cruise line, called him into the office last week and asked him a simple question. "How would you like a $1.5 million retirement package?" All Tucker had to do was steer this final voyage to Liberia, hand it off to the pirates who were scheduled to come aboard, and disappear. Of course, Mr. Pips didn’t spell this out directly. He alluded to it in a hypothetical scenario so he could maintain plausible deniability if Tucker went to the authorities. Tucker agonized over the decision for about five minutes. Then they got into details.

He thought about cutting in his colleagues. It would be easier if they were in on it, but greed and distrust decided it. He'd known these men for five years, but he couldn't trust them with a secret this big. He could just hear himself saying tonight, "I'm stealing this cruise ship. You want in?" Besides, he'd seen enough heist movies to know that the more people involved, the weaker the weakest link.

Speaking of the weakest link, he’d better make sure Angel was out cold when the machine guns showed up. Tucker held a small capsule of chloral hydrate under one of his cards. He poured another round of drinks for everyone and dropped the pill in Angel’s glass. Hell, he might even take a shot at winning his money back before the ugly brute started cutting logs on the table.

Tucker felt inspired to give a toast. He stood up, brandishing his glass with a flourish. “Well, you know what they say.” The ice tinkled. “I’d rather be on a ship with a drink on the rocks, than in the drink with a ship on the rocks.”

“Here, here” they shouted.

A sudden jolt slammed everyone in the room up against the wall. Poker chips pinged off the pipes and whiskey glasses shattered. Tucker hit the bulkhead hard and felt the weight of two other bodies smash into him. They collapsed in a heap.

Picking himself up out of the dogpile, Tucker staggered to his feet in shock.

“What the
fuck
was that!” shouted Mike.  He had taken an elbow to the face that broke his nose. Blood streamed out prodigiously.

Everyone looked to Tucker.
Oh, shit
, he thought.
The AIS. Someone hit us. The game is up.
He gathered his courage, tried to look appropriately surprised. That wasn’t hard. “The ship stopped. We’ve run into something!” Tucker gave orders, “Angel, get down below and see if we’re taking on water. Meet me on the bridge in five minutes with a status report. Ados, check the passengers. The rest of you come with me!”

Mike held his nose as he ran. “What could we hit out here? Another ship? It must have been something big!”

Before they reached the upper deck, the ship listed to port, groaning all the way down like a sick cow. An abrupt stop shook the ship and passengers as it settled on its left side at a 45 degree angle. The pools sloshed over in great waves and took deck chairs and umbrellas over the side. Everything loose slid downward. A cascade of debris, water, and bodies flowed out over the rails down into the ocean. Screams filtered through the night air.

Tucker leapt up a stair. He held tight until the ship stopped and then pulled himself up to the bridge. Colin lay coughing on the floor.  Blood poured from his mouth. He bit his tongue off and held the bloody morsel in his hand. Whatever he’d seen, he wouldn’t be telling anyone.

Mike and Dragos stumbled in behind Tucker. “Jesus,” Mike started as Dragos ran to the boy’s side.

Tucker cut in. “Mike, go fetch Ados. Now! Colin, you’ll be fine. Ados’ll get this sewn up. Don’t swallow the blood; spit it out. Don’t try to talk. I know what happened.”

While Tucker attended to Colin, Sammy lingered near the fore windows. “Sir, you better see this.”  

On the deck below, chaos reigned, but that didn’t compete with the view above the ship. Ghostly in the moonlight, a black cone loomed over a long island of sand. A volcanic atoll. Phosphorescent waves crashed over a reef that stretched up to the hull like a scythe.  The ship clung to it, half on, half off. To one side lay a calm bay, to the other, a black angry sea.

“We ran aground!?” Tucker shouted. “That’s impossible. There isn’t an island out here for 500 miles!”

Dragos tapped at his screen. “Uncharted.”

“So where are we?”

“Dragos does not know, sir.”

Tucker lashed out at Colin. “What the hell did you do, Colin? Two hours at the helm, and you destroyed the whole ship!” He shouldn’t have said it. It was like kicking a crippled dog. The poor boy was obviously crushed.

Tucker tried to remain calm on the outside, but inside he panicked. In one instant, all his plans fell apart. He ran through a mental checklist. He turned southeast because of the storm. They steamed southeast all night. He could defend that. The AIS was out – they would see that now. He hadn’t intended that to be found. They’d realize someone tampered with it.

It wasn’t his fault they hit an uncharted island!

It didn’t matter, and he knew it. You don’t captain a ship into an island and get excused. There were people dying outside, right now. The shipped tossed all those brittle old people like croutons in a salad. Some of them were over the side. He had fatalities, and he’d take the fall.

No ship. No money. No job. Hell, he’d be lucky if he didn’t end up in jail.

Goddamn Colin! And he thought that was the best part of his plan.

Suddenly, he remembered the pods.  If the reef destroyed even one, Rolls Royce was receiving a message. There was no way he could stop them. It was over. Rolls Royce would send out a search party. The only thing for him to do now get on the radio and try to raise help himself. At least it would appear that he tried. Then he could sit back and wait for the authorities.