The Sensory Deception (38 page)

Farley dropped his goblet and froze. Panic flooded him. He wanted to drop to the ground, but the ground seemed to be a cloud of rising dust. Within seconds, though, as the level of adrenaline settled, he felt overwhelmed by responsibility. He turned to his right, where Chopper should have been. Of course, Chopper was ten thousand miles away. He looked to where Sy had been standing a second before. He now stood outside the tent, his head turned away and his eyes covered by a hand.

Manny Carrasquillo appeared next to him, between the line of gunfire and the tightening crowd. “Get in the middle,” Manny ordered, and Farley complied.

Those on the perimeter crouched down. Fists hardened and ready, they formed a ring. Farley found himself on his knees in the center of this ring. Julia Nowak was on the ground next to him in a fetal position. The gunfire stopped. The AK-47 barrels rose until they were trained on Farley’s team. A gun pointed at each person. For an instant, the only sound was Julia whimpering.

Tahir had insisted that the volunteers be battle-hardened. Farley and Julia were the only ones without military experience. Now Farley rose, his hands in plain sight. The barrels of two guns rose with him. He could almost feel them. One trained on his heart, the other on the spot between his eyes. Farley looked back at Sy. Sy walked away.

With adrenaline fueling his brain, Farley understood at once. He remembered the comment Sy had made the night before: “I pray that you’ll understand my situation.” Sy must have had to choose between his camp and his visitors. Farley examined the militia before him. The turbans didn’t look right on them, didn’t have any signs of wear and lines of dust that they get when worn every day, and some were askew, as though about to fall off—nothing like the turbans worn by the men of Sayyid Hassan’s village. He thought he recognized one of the men. Yes, it was pretty
obvious. The pirates who had guarded the waste site were now taking hostage the people who would clean that waste.

Tahir’s disappearance made even more sense: He was the well-known hero of the raid. They’d have taken him first. Farley knew that Tahir wouldn’t surrender, and since he was unarmed, there was little hope for him.

One of the pirates snapped a command in Arabic. Two of the men stepped back. With their rifles hanging from their shoulders, they walked to a large canvas bag at the tent’s perimeter. They removed a wad of cable ties and a chain with manacles spaced three feet apart.

In front of him, Farley watched Manny crouch just a bit lower. The muscles in his back and arms tightened. Others in the ring seemed to recognize Manny’s movement. The men on each side of him made eye contact. They exchanged the slightest of nods. One of the men was the giant, Spencer, and the other was named Deshawn. If they had a chance to overpower the guards, this was it. Manny dove at the feet of the guard. Spencer went for his torso, knocking him to the ground, and Deshawn went for the gun. It took the better part of a second for Deshawn to wrestle the gun into his hands. The shoulder strap was still around the arm of the pirate. As a unit, the other pirates fired their weapons into the ground, redefining the perimeter. The leader fired a burst that tore into Deshawn’s head, destroying his nose and eyes and ripping his jaw open. His body slumped to the ground.

The tent went silent again. The leader spoke in accented English. “Don’t be stupid.” Then he spoke in Arabic. The pirate on the ground, underneath Deshawn, replied. The pirate was unscathed. Spencer and Manny rose slowly, holding out their hands.

The leader shifted his hands on his rifle. There was a faint click. He then fired a single shot.

A well of blood formed on Manny’s left shoulder.

The leader motioned with the rifle and said, again in broken English, “Join your people. Please to try another trick. Give me reason to kill you.”

The tackled pirate rose, retrieved his weapon, and kicked Manny to the ground. The stout former SEAL didn’t make a sound.

Directed by hand commands reinforced with short bursts of gunfire, Farley’s team formed a line. One by one, their hands were tied behind their backs with thick plastic cable ties that bit into the skin. Their right feet were manacled to the chain. All but Julia Nowak, who was still curled in the fetal position. They ignored he until everyone else was locked up. Then the leader nudged her with a foot.

Another wave of fear broke over Farley. They had treated the three other women on the team as they had the men. Why would they treat Julia different? Because she was the only obvious civilian, other than himself?

“You are the waste scientist?” the leader asked.

“No!” Farley yelled. “I am the waste scientist.”

But Julia had already nodded. The leader answered with two shots to her head.

The supreme ordinariness of it shocked Farley. He’d never seen someone die. The simple observation that her body lay prostrate and motionless less than ten meters from Deshawn’s clashed with the understanding that these vibrant people were gone, their bodies converted to lifeless meat and their minds turned off forever.

He couldn’t peel his eyes away, even as the chain pulled on his ankle and his captors shepherded them out of the tent. More pirates stood outside. No villagers were in sight.

The guards guided them, shackled and cuffed, to the face of the ridge and into the cave prison. Just as Farley stepped into the darkness, a huge explosion erupted behind them. They fell like
dominoes. Some of the guards fell with them. Dirt and gravel rained down from the rocky ceiling. Farley feared they’d be buried alive, but the cave settled in a few seconds. The guards ordered them up and then guided them down a tunnel.

There were no rooms, just branches of caves. They were lined up along a wall and told to sit down. None of them spoke. Leaning against a dirt wall, Farley was locked between Manny and Spencer. Manny’s shoulder oozed blood and the brave man fell asleep.

Farley looked down the line. It was dark. Soon, he fell asleep, too.

He awoke some hours later in total darkness. He assumed it was night. Alone with his thoughts, pieces of the puzzle settled into place. The response of the assailants to Manny’s attack proved that these were not Somali pirates. The misplaced turbans argued that they were not even Somali. Then Farley realized that the leader hadn’t spoken with a Somali accent. After five months here, he’d have recognized it. No, this accent sounded European, French or Belgian, perhaps Swiss.

How could he have been so naive?

F
rom her two offices, one in Silicon Valley and the other in Santa Monica, Gloria now lived the life of a high-powered executive. She had to consult with Bupin on major equipment acquisitions, but leases for VirtExReality Arcade sites, strategic brand management decisions, and product road maps were all hers. VirtExArts’ income stream doubled every week, and six of the twelve new VirtExReality Arcades were set to open simultaneously two months from the opening of the original, giving the company coast-to-coast exposure.
Her
venture was on the fast track to success, and Sand Hill Ventures was happy. Thoughts of other start-ups had begun to percolate in her mind. As soon as Farley returned, she’d be ready to switch gears.

The previous night, before she turned out the light in her suite at the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey, she’d seen video of Farley leading his team. Seeing his excitement, the way people fell in line behind him, and the radiance of his dedication had lulled Gloria into dreams of how she would greet him. Just a month or so now and he’d finally be home. Once they no longer had a conflict of interest, who knew what might happen?

Everything was on track.

Her phone woke her. “Gloria, have you seen the news?” It was the Sand Hill Ventures receptionist, a woman with whom Gloria
used to eat lunch when she was a junior analyst. The woman sounded frantic. “Something horrible has happened in Somalia.”

Light leaked through the curtains. The alarm clock said it was a few minutes after six. She grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV. Now the receptionist was barely coherent. The only words Gloria caught were “pirates” and “terrorists.”

She switched to the news channel and saw a jerky, low-resolution video transmitted by satellite telephone that had obviously been taken aboard a ship. It showed white speedboats racing through the water in the foreground and a shoreline in the background. She recognized it from Farley’s documentary. The crawler at the bottom of the picture said “Terrorist attack in pirate country—27 Americans believed dead.”

The phone fell from her hand. She lurched to the end of the bed, closer to the TV, and managed to raise the volume before dropping the remote. The camera zoomed in on one of the boats. Rocking through the surf in dim sunlight, it held three men, two grasping the helm and the third hanging on to a small rocket launcher.

The TV reporter’s voice was piqued with excitement. “The highly publicized toxic-cleanup team inspired by the documentary
Survival in Somalia
has been attacked by terrorists.” The video switched from the live, late-evening ocean scene to one taken with the sun still well above the horizon. In the foreground, a white tent was engulfed in flames. “This is the scene of the terrorist attack on the Somali coast, which occurred just one hour ago. A suicide bomber detonated himself as the environmentalists sat down to dinner.”

The camera returned to a live feed showing a tall, thin man standing on the gunwale of a ship with the ocean behind him. “My cameraman and I were aboard ship when the tent exploded.” He wiped his brow, took a clearly agitated breath, and continued.
“After spending the day preparing to remove toxic waste from the coastline, the team adjourned for dinner. Sayyid Hassan, leader of the refugee camp featured in
Survival in Somalia
, was hosting a welcome dinner. We have reports that Mr. Hassan was badly injured in the blast. He may be the only survivor. The producer of the documentary, Farley Rutherford, and its hero, Tahir Baradaran, are believed dead at the scene with the entire crew of volunteers.” The words were repeated in a trailer scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

It couldn’t be true.

Her father had survived far worse. He had promised—
promised
—to watch out for Farley. She pushed back the panic and pulled on a pair of jeans.

Chopper’s room was on a lower floor. He would know what to do.

She ran down the stairs and through the hall to Chopper’s room. She knocked. No answer, so she knocked again. Then she realized that the sun had just risen. She ran back to the stairs and zipped down another flight.

She burst into the lobby, scanned the area, and ran out the door. She sprinted around the harbor and onto Venice Beach. She stopped, looked back at the sun, then ahead to the sea. She ran up the beach. She passed the Venice Pier and kept going. Sweat and tears ran down her face. Then she saw Chopper sitting in the sand, smoking a cigarette.

“My father and Farley are dead. There was an explosion, and…” But the words could no longer work themselves around her sobs.

Chopper stood and gripped her by the shoulders. His hands anchored her, confining the sob-driven spasms to her rib cage. In a matter-of-fact voice, he said, “No, no, no. Farley isn’t dead. I would know.”

He said it with such certainty that, for an instant, Gloria expected Farley to appear next to them as though she’d been the victim of a bad joke. Then the image from the news broadcast came back, the flaming tent and the text along the bottom of the screen: “Terrorist attack in pirate country—27 Americans believed dead.”

Chopper’s arms tightened around her. They felt real and alive. Maybe he was right. She tried to settle into his comfort, but a numb feeling of loss and loneliness came over her, calming the sobs, if not stemming the tears. He guided her into a sitting position next to him, facing the ocean the way they had so many mornings in Santa Cruz. He lit two cigarettes and handed her one. She drew in the smoke, and the nicotine brought that strangely comforting mix of dizziness and nausea.

Exhaling the smoke, she told him what she had seen on television. When she finished, Chopper said the most comforting words she’d ever heard: “You believed it?”

He looked away from her. The embers of his barch glowed as he inhaled.