Thomas Prescott Superpack (59 page)

Ben—at least that’s what it said on his name tag—looked down at his beeping watch.

It was almost time.

He peered up from the swimming pool. He saw no one. He dropped the long silver pole with the debris catcher and watched as it sank swiftly to the bottom of the turquoise water, listing towards the edge closest to him. Ben walked past the hot tubs, past the gleaming bar and its twenty askew stools, and pulled open the door marked Deck 7. He stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for Deck 2. He exited and walked briskly to the crew corridor. He made his way to his room and silently opened the door. His roommate, a thirty something guy named Joe, turned over and said, “What time is it?”

Joe was one of only a handful of white crew-members. White, like
Ben’s
father. According to his mother, his father had been a mercenary. A man who had taken his mother by force. Ben’s skin was a soft nutmeg, seven shades lighter than every person in his village, and he easily passed for Indian, Mediterranean, or even American, which is why he suspected he was picked for this mission. Ben found it amusing that he’d ended up taking on the same occupation as the man he so much despised.

“A little after six. Go back to sleep,” Ben answered in near-perfect English.

Ben didn’t mind Joe. All Joe cared about was getting drunk and getting laid. They worked like dogs of course, sometimes sixteen hours a day, but the little free time they did have was used very efficiently. Joe more efficiently than anyone. Joe had even gotten Ben laid once. He’d been sleeping when Joe had entered with two women. They were both in their mid-forties. Australian from what it sounded like. The lights had dimmed and a moment later a woman sat on his bed, pulled off his underwear, then straddled him. Yeah, Joe wasn’t all that bad. A shame he would have to die.

Joe pulled the covers up over his head and quickly fell back asleep.

Ben pulled out his luggage, pried off the plastic cover, revealing a small compartment inside a false bottom. Seven days earlier, when he’d reported for work, he’d watched as head of security for the ship, a man everyone called Stoves, spent twenty minutes inspecting his luggage and room, looking for any contraband. He, of course, found nothing.

Ben folded the heavy plastic lid down and retrieved the small pistol. Then he looked down at his watch and waited.

≈

Thapa bypassed the group waiting to board the elevator and headed up the winding glass staircase. He exited the stairs on Deck 7 and made his way to the port railing. The sun was a couple of inches off the horizon and he squinted into the reddening water. The ship had begun its large arc back to where the man had allegedly jumped ship and the fishing boats were slightly off starboard. They were closer now, maybe three miles off.

Thapa ran to the radio room, walked past two staring officers, and stuck his key into a black door that hadn’t been opened since their last inspection. He opened the door and entered the small chamber. His radio squawked and he hit the button to silence it. He needed to concentrate. There was a long safe at the back and he entered the ten-digit code from memory. The safe whirred open and Thapa appraised the various firearms. He opted for the Beretta 9mm pistol, slipping it into the small of his back.

He closed the door, feeling the stares of the two men. He exited the radio room, walked the thirty feet to the Bridge and pulled the door open. The Bridge was mostly comprised of electronics; radar, weather, computers for anything and everything. Looking out on the water was a series of rectangular windows, each with their own set of industrial black window wipers. Seven white uniforms—the captain, the first officer, the second mate, three additional officers, and Stoves—were observing the approaching boats.

“Where have you been?” Stoves asked. “We need to abandon course. We need to mount the LRAD and send out a distress signal.”

“I advise you do no such thing,” replied Thapa.

Stoves looked puzzled. He looked even more puzzled when Thapa pulled the Beretta from the small of his back and shot him between the eyes.

SUITE 03

6:16
a.m.

I wouldn’t say I knew something was wrong the moment I’d laid eyes on the African gentlemen, but really I had. Just one of those sixth sense, pit-of-your-stomach feelings you get from dealing with sick individuals for a third of your life.

Now would probably be a good time to mention that in another life I’d been a consultant to the FBI’s Violent Crime Unit. Although these days it felt as if it were two lifetimes ago. Almost as if I’d stumbled into one of those psychic huts and the crazy woman told me in my previous lives I’d been an otter, a Russian immigrant, and something in the general proximity of a detective. But, as I said, that was in another life.

After the man had jumped, I’d watched as a group of three people ran to an officer walking along the track and animatedly recounted what they’d seen. He instantly pulled the radio from his hip and began speaking. A moment later there had been three loud blasts.

I wasn’t overly concerned until the boat started into its wide arc. This slow turn to the left led me to believe some idiot had decided to circle back and pick up the jumper.

Here are a couple of simple rules I live by:

1)
 
Waffles are delicious frozen, cooked, or burned

2)
Never stretch before a run, you might pull something

3)
Always add a smiley face to sad texts, i.e., DEAR ERICA, THIS ISN’T WORKING OUT. I’M TAKING MY SISTER ON THE CRUISE INSTEAD :)

4)
Don’t watch
The Walking Dead
while you’re eating

5)
If someone wants to jump to their ultimate death into the Indian Ocean, let them

What concerned me more than the Captain’s judgment were the three fishing boats, which I hardly believed carried so much as a single fishing lure. No, I suspected there were far more expensive toys on those little boats. The kind of toys that put holes in people. The toys that had put two holes in
moi.
Which might have been the reason I had sprinted down the stairs to the room I was sharing with Lacy.

I pulled my blue
Afrikaans
ID card from the side pocket of my red board shorts—the photo they snapped of me on arrival took up the better half of the left side (looked like I might have been picking my nose in the photo)—and I slipped it in the reader. The light turned from red to green and I pushed through the door. The 477 square foot suite was one of the six presidential suites aboard the ship. It was carpeted in thick scarlet shag. The tables and cabinets were trimmed in a light oak. There was a walk-in closet, as well as an impressive bathroom with a state-of-the-art Jacuzzi tub. Two leather couches and a set of ocean-blue designer chairs surrounded a 52-inch flat screen. The TV was set on the default channel that displayed a continuous loop of how much fun you were supposed to be having on your cruise.

Since this was my first cruise, I didn’t have much to compare it to. But Lacy—who had been on a number of different cruises and always joked about how tacky and over-the-top they were, almost like she was stuck in the middle of an off-off-Broadway production—had marveled at how, “classy and tasteful,” the
Afrikaans
was. On our initial walk through, Lacy had remarked, “And not one palm tree.” Apparently, the other ships were chock-full of these.

The point I’m driving at is, if your run-of-the-mill cruise ship was the Best Western, the
Afrikaans
was the Ritz Carlton. If your average cruise ship was a peanut, the
Afrikaans
was a macadamia nut. From the bellhop with white gloves who had greeted us on our arrival, to never-ending caviar, to heated toilet seats, to fresh flowers in your suite every afternoon, the
Afrikaans
was the epitome of luxury.

Damn shame I would be jumping off it any second.

I made my way to the large plate glass window that stretched the length of the room and pulled apart the thick ivory curtains. Bright light filled the suite, clawing its way to the king-size Tempur-Pedic and the lump in the top right corner. “What the hell are you doing?” the lump grumbled.

Lacy was not what you would call a morning person. For eight years, from seventh grade until her junior year at college, by 6:00 a.m. Lacy would have a mile in the pool under her belt, then crank out another two over the course of the next hour. She was diagnosed with MS her junior year at Temple University and they decided it would be in good taste to strip her swimming scholarship from her. I’m not sure she’d been out of bed before noon since.

I peered out over the water. Saw nothing. I walked over to the bed and said, “You need to get dressed.”

She opened one eye. “What’s going on?” It must have been something in the tone of my voice.

“I think, although I’m not positive, that some angry fishermen want to take over this boat.”

She sat up. She was still wearing her lime green bikini. “What kind of fishermen?”

“The kind that don’t fish.”

She picked up some tattered jean shorts and began to shimmy into them. Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Do you feel that?”

I’d felt the teeter-totter of the ship for the past five days and I could feel little else. I shook my head.

“We’re slowing down.”

She was right. The boat was slowing. I walked back to the window and peered down at the water. The usually large wakes that fell away from the hull were slight, barely making ripples of white-water. I guessed the boat would be at a complete standstill within minutes. And I had a bad feeling about what would happen shortly after that.

I said, “Hurry up.”

She nodded.

I grabbed the small backpack we’d taken on the safari—it still had a couple water bottles and a few energy bars, a deck of cards, and suntan lotion—and Lacy’s zebra-striped fanny pack with her medicine and said, “Let’s go.”

We were walking out the door, when Lacy turned and said, “Wait! Where’s Baxter?”

Baxter is my sister’s dog, though dog is a bit of a stretch. Technically it
is
a pug, but it looks more like a wadded up newspaper. Lacy hadn’t planned on bringing Baxter on the cruise, seeing as it wasn’t allowed, but when she’d gone to unpack her luggage, she’d discovered the little stowaway. Did I mention that Baxter was narcoleptic? Well, he is. He would fall asleep on a whim. During a walk, chasing after a rabbit, taking a dump. Didn’t matter what he was doing, he would just turn to jelly and flop over on his side. It used to be for a couple minutes at a stretch, but as he’d aged, the
naps
had gotten longer and longer. His record was 51 hours. He was also a concerto of barks, snores, and farts. When he licked you, he left this residual slime that smelled like rotten tuna fish and you’d have to wash your face with lye to get rid of it.

Anyhow, Lacy wasn’t exactly sure how Baxter had gotten out of her fiance's car at the airport in France and into her luggage, let alone passed through security, but she’d long ago stopped trying to figure out how he got into the places he did. He’d been in two Kibbles commercials without her even knowing. Checks came in his name each month.

“Shit,” I muttered and started searching.

It didn’t take long to find him. He was asleep in his water bowl, his face submerged. Lacy held him up to her ear, cocked her head to the side,
then smiled. “Alive.”

I gave her a very enthusiastic thumbs up.

We made our way into the hallway and up the stairs. We didn’t pass anyone as we ran up the two flights to Deck 8. We pushed through the door leading outside and then navigated a small set of stairs that led to the sundeck at the far back of the ship. It was the highest point on the vessel, offering an unobstructed 360-degree view.

Lacy and I gazed out over the water.

If the
Afrikaans
was at the center of a clock face, numerals two, three, and four would be fishing boats.
Quickly
approaching fishing boats.

“How long do you think we have?” asked Lacy.

The cruise ship was now at a crawl and I guessed we had two minutes before the boats reached the ship. We were what people refer to as a sitting duck. Which brought about a couple of questions;
why weren’t we trying to outrun these pirates?
And
what evasive action was the cruise ship taking?
I would have felt a tad more at ease if there were a bunch of officers aiming RPGs at the incoming boats. There weren’t.

“Five minutes tops,” I answered.

Lacy said what we both were thinking. “Lifeboat.”

I nodded.

“Think we can get one in the water in time?”

I gave one last glance at the fast approaching boats and said, “Let’s hope so.”

≈

When you initially set foot on a cruise ship, one of the first things you do—are forced to do in fact—is a lifeboat, or muster, drill. Everyone puts on their life jackets, they blare this obnoxiously loud alarm, and everyone is mandated to reenact the
Titanic
. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have played
Angry Birds
instead.