Thomas Prescott Superpack (63 page)

“Oh, we were happy for a couple years. Then she got this thyroid thing and she just started packing on the pounds. She hit one fifty and I hit her with the papers.”

“She got sick and put on some pounds and you divorced her?”

“I can’t walk into a room with a cow.”

I thought Frank was going to pick him up and throw him through one of the glass dividers.

I was tempted to ask Gilroy about weddings one, three, and four, but I wasn’t sure I could stomach any more of his megalomania without ramming my fist into his face.

Anyhow, I peered over at Marge and Walter and said, “How bout you old bats, did you guys get married by a woolly mammoth or what?” Actually, I said, “How did you two get married?”

Marge lolled her head to the side, already annoyed, and said, “We got married in Boston.”

No shit.

“We got married at a Red Sox game,” she supplemented. She had a twinkle in her eye that told me she was back on that day in 1935 or 1312. “Walter coached them back then.”

“You coached the Red Sox?” Frank’s eyebrows nearly jumped off his forehead.

Walter nodded.

Marge said, “He was a hitting coach, 1957 to ‘70.”

“1956,” Walter chimed.

“It was May 21
st
, 1959, a couple hours before the Sox played the Orioles. We got married on home plate.”

“Was Ted Williams there?” asked Frank, taking up the seat next to Walter.

“Of course he was there,” Marge scoffed. “He was Walter’s best man.”

This was almost too much for Frank to handle. This led to a series of tangents that I couldn’t follow, nor cared to, and I went back to my
Sports Illustrated.
I had just mentally eloped and consummated with the cover girl when I heard, “Ta-da.”

I looked up. Berta and Reen stood holding hands in front of Susie, Lacy, and Trinity, looking timid and meek. Berta’s hair was light brown with red highlights. Reen’s hair was platinum. I’d expected both girls to come back with crew cuts, but apparently Trinity learned most of the ins and outs before she was dishonorably discharged from cosmetology school. I also suspected that while Trinity had been doing their hair, Susie and Lacy had done the women’s makeup, and both looked for lack of a better word, heterosexual.

“Well, what do you think?” Susie asked.

Frank whistled.

“You girls single?” I catcalled.

The lesbians thought this was funny and Berta even struck a pose.

Lacy plopped down next to me and said, “I did the make-up.”

“Oh, is that why they look like hookers.”

She slapped my leg.

“
Who’s next?” asked Trinity.

I looked around. Walter desperately needed to get his ears done and Gilroy needed to run some thinning shears through his chest hair.

Lacy pointed at me and said, “You could clean up around his neck.”

“I’m fine,” I assured Trinity.

“Real quick.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

But Trinity was already behind me with the clippers. She turned them on, stuck them to my neck, and then screamed, gouging me with the clippers.

I cringed, then saw what had made her scream. Little Wayne was standing just feet from us. His gun was out in front of him. “Up. Wey move.”

DECK 4

1:44 p.m.

T
he pirates, two in front, two in back, marched the small group forward. To Thapa, they resembled a herd of cattle being funneled into the chop shop. Some of the hostages looked terrified, as if they knew exactly what lay ahead. Others, just numbly followed behind.

Thapa had been ordered to move all the hostages to two larger areas. He decided on Transvaal, the show lounge, on Deck 6 and Pretoria, the four-star restaurant, on Deck 2. Both were large enough to hold over 200 people and had limited entry and exit points.

The group in front of them, one of the mini-groups from one of the Deck 4 double suites, approached the winding glass stairwell and began stumbling down. A lone woman at the back of the group, wearing purple pajama bottoms and a large white T-shirt, wasn’t moving quickly enough for one of the pirates and he began screaming at her to move faster.

She wailed about having a bad hip, but this did nothing to appease the pirate. He jabbed the muzzle of his gun into her back and shoved her forward. She quickly took two steps down, tripped, and then fell forward the final three stairs, landing face first on the Deck 2 lobby.

Thapa watched as the two pirates laughed uncontrollably. Thapa couldn’t understand how they could get so much satisfaction from the woman’s fall. Thapa desperately wanted to help the woman to her feet, but he couldn’t. The caring, compassionate Ganju was dead. No more.

After one of the people in the group had helped the fallen woman up, the group made their way past two pirates guarding the door to the nearly half-full restaurant. They entered the large room, scanned the individuals seated in the high-backed chairs surrounding the many white-tablecloth-clad tables then quickly dispersed to seats of their own.

Thapa and the four pirates exited the room. There were still two more groups of cattle that needed herding.

≈

Kimal had searched high and low. He had looked in every place imaginable. The girl was gone.

He took a deep breath. How would The Mosquito take the news? Kimal had thought The Mosquito was going to kill him earlier, surely he wouldn’t survive another disappointment. Kimal had been the one responsible for finding the girl. That had been his only job. And he had failed.

Maybe he would plead with The Mosquito. Beg for his life. But he had heard stories of the man. He was ruthless. He had wiped out entire villages. Killed hundreds. Raped and beaten countless women. It was even rumored he’d executed a group of small children just for the hell of it.

Kimal looked out on the vast ocean, the softly rolling cobalt extending as far as the eye could see. The sun was directly overhead and had been beating down on him for the last twenty minutes. Sweat dripped off his forehead and ran down his cheeks. He looked down, his chin catching on the top of the orange life preserver. He pulled the black nylon straps tight as he’d been taught. He didn’t want the life jacket coming off.

He picked the silver blow-up lounge chair off the deck. It was surprisingly light. He thought of how he’d watched the woman floating on it in the pool. A bottle of beer held snug in one of the lounge’s two cup-holders.

He tossed the raft off the side of the ship and watched as it flipped and floated and fell the sixty feet, then stuck silently to the water, a sliver of silver tape on the rippling blue. The small waves carried the raft to the ship’s hull where it rocked against the side.

Kimal wasn’t stupid. He had packed a small survival bag, mostly water, some food, a blanket. He’d even packed a couple of magazines. Who knew how long he would be out there? He’d stuffed everything into trash bags, taped it secure, and then stuffed it into a large backpack. He slung the backpack over his shoulder, climbed up the railing, and before he could talk himself out of it, he jumped.

He surfaced, shaking the water from his eyes. He’d done it. The raft was a couple feet away and he swam to it, clutching it in his arms. He pushed away from the hull of the ship and paddled with his arms. The anchor was directly ahead of him and he pulled himself around the half-foot diameter chain.

The current picked up the raft and silently carried him free of the ship. He would live. Soon, when Baruti made his demands, there would be planes moving over the area. Ships even. Kimal smiled. He would be picked up within the day. He clutched the bag to his chest. And if not, he had enough to survive for three or four days.

The current turned the raft slightly and Kimal faced the ship, which was now a hundred yards away and growing smaller by the second. The water was fairly calm and he pulled the life jacket over his head and tied it to the backpack. He would put it back on if the waves began to intensify. He opened the backpack and fished out a bottle of water. He took a sip from the bottle, then placed it snugly in the cup holder. He almost laughed.

He squinted at the glistening white ship, specifically the nose of the ship. There was a man standing there. He was holding something large and black. Kimal could just make out the beret sitting atop the man’s head.

The Mosquito.

Kimal flipped onto his stomach, dug his arms into the dark water, and began to paddle and kick frantically. He did so for a long minute, then turned and looked over his shoulder. The bullet hit him in the left eye. The young African’s body slipped in the blue chasm then slowly began to sink.

SHOW LOUNGE

2:52
p.m.

The Transvaal Show Lounge was located at the rear of the ship on Deck 6. There were large ivory chairs, twenty to a row, concentrically spaced outwards from the stage. The chairs were arranged on a steep slope, with two aisles splitting the audience into three sections. The sections funneled down to a brassy stage being dusted by a heavy purple curtain.

Two days earlier, Lacy and I had been in the show lounge for fifteen minutes. It would have been far less if I’d had any say in it.

Lacy had said, “We have to go watch this stand-up comic tonight.”

Now, J.J. Watkins might not be the worst stand-up comedian on the face of the earth, but he was in the top ten, maybe even the top seven. I mean, the guy did ten minutes on SPAM. And not the e-mail type of Spam. The actual, meat product, SPAM. And then he’d started in on the cruise ship. The last joke I’d heard before I’d grabbed Lacy by the ear and drug her out was, “And how about that breakfast buff-A, more like a breakfast buff-C-minus.”

I’m serious. He said those words. In that order. If Frank had been there, we might have had a man overboard two days ago.

Currently, the show lounge held roughly 140 passengers—sorry
hostages
—and three African pirates holding their automatic rifles at the ready. For some reason, I had an uncanny feeling that this stint in the show lounge would be a tad longer than my last and just
slightly
more painful.

The ten of us had been the first to enter the room and we had walked down the sloping red carpet and filed into the first three rows on the left side.

Berta, Reen, Gilroy, and Trinity were in the first row. Frank, Susie, Lacy, and I had taken seats in the second. And Marge and Walter had taken up seats behind us.

Over the course of the next hour, we watched as another small group and four large groups were ushered through the doors. Each of the large groups contained anywhere between 25 to 35 people. Most of the men were clad in underwear; mostly boxers, and boxer briefs, with a sprinkling of embarrassing whitey-tighties. A couple of gentlemen wore shirts. One man was donning a robe. The women were a split between bra and panties and T-shirt and panties. Many of the women tried to cover their bodies as they walked into the room, then found their way to a seat.

At one point, Berta and Reen stood and joined a group of eight women that had taken up seats in the center section. The lesbians embraced each other and I noticed when they sat down all of them were holding hands. A couple of people had joined a familiar face here and there, but apart from the lesbians, most had stayed with their initial group.

Keeping a watch on the lot of us were three pirates standing near the only entrance. Little Wayne and two others. One of the others was wearing black jeans, no shirt. He was light skinned, with a shaved head and a beard. Sticking with the rap theme, I mentally named him Common. The third pirate was wearing a red shirt and a black bandanna. Tupac. Behind the three pirates two double doors were pulled closed.

Common walked up and down the aisles, his large gun held to his chest. On closer examination, he had two matching scars running diagonally down his cheeks. They were perfectly symmetrical and I had a feeling they were self-inflicted. As he passed our group, I noticed he paid special attention to Lacy with his red stained eyes.

I mentally cut off his dick and shoved it up his ass.

Frank, who was on my left, jabbed me in the ribs and said, “Where do you think they’re keeping everybody else?”

I thought about this for a moment. The logical thing would be to take everyone from Decks 5 and above to one place and everyone from Decks 4 and below to one place. I was guessing this was exactly what they’d done.

Lacy said, “I bet the rest of the passengers and all the crew are in Pretoria. You just have that one entrance and the place could hold at least two hundred and fifty people.”

I agreed with her.

Frank said, “It’s probably mostly crew down there.”

He was right. Wherever they were holding the other hostages, there were fewer than 70 passengers. The rest were cooks, maids, waiters, and the many other personnel that made up the crew. I thought about Mika and his aging parents, the cruise ship band, Rikki, and all those others.