Thomas Prescott Superpack (94 page)

Roger told him about the job offers. One job in particular was for Paul to be the new face of US Steel. It would pay seven figures.

“No shit.”

After a lengthy pause, Roger said, “But, that’s not why I’m here.”

They stared at each other in silence. Finally Roger said, “The ship exploded.”

Paul cut his eyes at him. “How many dead?”

“The last lifeboat was being lowered when it exploded. So however many that holds. Fifty from what they tell me. Plus an entire team of SEALs.”

Paul let out a deep exhale. “What about the pirates?”

“Apparently, all the pirates are dead.”

“Do you know anymore?”

“Nope. All the passengers are being transported to Durban as we speak by the South African Navy. We’ll track down the passengers within the next couple days and get the story.”

“What about Gina and all the Africans in that village? I haven’t heard from her in nearly a day.”

“Nothing we can do. The South African Army isn’t letting anybody else in. Soon enough the Africans will up and leave. And Gina. She’ll be okay.”

Paul walked over to the bar and poured himself another couple fingers of scotch. He turned to his father and said, “Has the press got wind of it yet?”

“Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time.”

Paul nodded. It was always just a matter of time. For the first time he wondered who his replacement would be. Of course, there was a chance he hadn’t lost his job, but he didn’t want his job. He had publicly resigned on live television.

His father took up a chair in the far corner and Paul took the chair next to him.

They were silent for a while.

Finally Paul said, “Tell me something dad.”

“What.”

“If you could do it all over, would you have played it all the same?”

Roger took a sip of his drink, rattled around the ice cubes. “I guess it’s always natural to second guess your decisions. If you’re asking would I go back and cave to the pirate’s demands? Would I send medicine for all those people and hope they gave up the hostages unharmed? Maybe those fifty hostages would still be alive. Maybe that team of SEALs would survive to see another mission.”

Paul smiled. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Roger finished off the last of his gin. Stood and walked to the doorway. He thought about everything that had led to this moment. He turned, stared down at his only son, and said, “If I could go back and do it all over, I would do it exactly the same.”

DAY 4

DURBAN NAVAL BASE

5:32 a.m.

Rikki, Bheka, J.J., Lacy and I had been sitting in a locked room for the past three hours.

By the time the
SAS Isandlwana
—a South African Navy warship—had loaded all the passengers from all seven lifeboats, what was left of the
Afrikaans
was comfortably asleep on the ocean floor. Everyone was in a state of shock. Including myself. Though there were times during the ordeal when things looked grim, I never imagined that people would actually lose their lives. Yes, I know the Captain and his officers had been murdered in cold blood, and I know Gilroy was in the process of dying, and I’d always known there was a good chance I would get myself killed playing Batman, but the other 370, the inconsequentials, I’d always figured they would make it out okay.

But 50 of them hadn’t.

As for Gilroy, he was airlifted from the ship to King Edward VIII hospital in Durban, which I hoped had better surgeons than it had a naming board. Trinity was so shaken that Susie and Frank had accompanied her on the helicopter. We promised to meet them at the hospital as soon as we could.

Meanwhile, after scouring the ship to make sure Mika was okay (he was), I spent the two hours it took to reach shore trying to get someone to take me seriously about the impending genocide of a quarter million sick Africans. I was repeatedly told that the South African Army had had a presence in
Ptutsi
for the past 36 hours and that it was most assuredly safe from attack. Yes, but
not
from a huge fucking missile. After being laughed at by several officers, then nearly getting in a fist fight with two officers who refused to let me see their commander, then being handcuffed when I tried to make my way to the Bridge of the ship, I gave up.

Currently, the five of us were in a small briefing room. When the warship docked, a kaleidoscope of media lights could be seen on the outskirts of the naval base a half-mile inland. The five of us were the first off the ship and once the handcuffs were removed, we were ushered through the gray stucco naval base and to a room with four walls and no windows. On his departure, the officer promised that we would be heard
momentarily
, which he was obviously confusing with
not for a really long time
. Over the course of the last hour, I’d purged everything Baruti had told me to the others and the collective theory was that someone was going out of their way to make sure we were not heard.

Twenty minutes ago, Lacy had banged on the locked door and said that she had to pee. I was beginning to worry when the door was ripped open and Lacy stuck her head in. “Let’s go,” she
yelled.

The four of us popped up from our seats and made our way to the door. Lacy was holding keys in her hand. Keys the guard had held twenty minutes ago. “How did you get those?” I asked.

“I told him to come into the bathroom with me. Then I let him play with Queen Latifah and Amelia Earhart for a couple seconds, then I handcuffed him to the toilet.”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Who are Queen Latifah and Amelia Earhart?” asked Rikki.

“My boobs,” she confessed. “Now let’s go.”

The five of us began a slow trot down a long gray corridor. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re going to that village, stupid. We’re gonna save all those people.”

Oh.

“We need a car,” I said.

“How about a bus?”

Idling perpendicular to the walkway was a compact bus. Army green with SAN stenciled in white on the side.

“Do I even want to know how you got the keys to this?”

Lacy looked down at the ground in mock shame and said, “No, you do not.”

This made me laugh.

I composed myself, looked at Rikki, Bheka, and J.J. and said, “You guys don’t have to come.”

“My mom is there,” said Bheka sprinting onto the bus.

“I’m bloody well not staying here,” spat Rikki and followed suit.

J.J. just shrugged and said, “Why not.”

That’s the spirit.

I shook off my grin, ran up the steps and sat behind the wheel. I was good with a stick shift and rammed it into first, then did a tight U-turn in the lot, testing the laws of physics. Lacy ran up from the third seat back and said, “Don’t forget this,” and slapped the little hat her boyfriend had been wearing on my head. I told the four of them to duck and started making my way through the labyrinth of side streets. Because of the media, there was increased security—officers everywhere, but they seemed overly concerned with who was coming in and not at all concerned about who was going out. We were stopped at the exit to the base and the guard asked, “Where are you going?”

“Gotta get this boy cleaned up and ready to transport some of the hostages. Matthews will have my ass if I don’t get back in a snap.” I may have done an Australian accent.

He looked at me like the idiot I was, then raised the gate to let me pass.

Three minutes later, the media vans were a mile back and I was taking a left turn at a stoplight.

“Alright, all clear. First one to find a map wins a South African Navy hat.”

No one found a map so I kept the hat on.

We had to stop at a gas station and since we didn’t have any money, I told Bheka to steal a map. He did. He handed it to Lacy and back on the road, I said, “Patootsi.”

“How do you spell it?”

“I don’t know. P-A-T-U-T-Z-E.” I added, “Triple word score on the z. And I used all my letters. That’s gotta be worth like ninety points.”

“I challenge.”

“You always challenge.”

“Cause you always make up words.”

“You’re being qzivkpl again.”

She ignored me. “God there are like a million small villages . . . Oh wait, here it is. Ptutsi.”

“How far?”

“Give me a second.”

I could see her measuring the scale with her fingers, then plotting them along the path from Durban to the village. “About three hundred and fifty kilometers.”

I looked at the dash, I was going 55 kilometers an hour. That would put us there in seven hours. The clock on the dash of the bus read 5:54 a.m. We’d be too late.

“Take this right,” Lacy directed. “Then stay on this road for two hundred kilometers.”

I took a right onto the two-lane road and punched down the gas.

We had six hours to save 250,000 lives.

ZULU PRISON

9:19 a.m.

Where was she?

Gina lifted her head and wiped the sleep from her eyes. The stench hit her and it all came flooding back.

I am being held prisoner in a small hut, in a remote village in South Africa that is home to the most prolific AIDS death rate in the history of the world and is currently surrounded by a couple hundred thousand Africans who have made the pilgrimage to the village in the hope of receiving life-saving medication.

She shook her head. If she survived this mess, she had better get a book deal.

The stench crawled down Gina’s throat as she squirmed to get the tube of menthol out of her front pocket. She pulled it out, put two large dabs under each nostril, then coated her chest. She took a deep breath. She could still taste the smell of the hut, but the menthol made breathing possible.

She peered around the small room. The men looked the same. Both in the exact same positions they’d been when the candle had fizzled. Their wounds were ghastly. Long, deep slashes of red. Bubbled up, green in some cases, purple in others. The men, if not dead already, and she was positive one of the men was in fact dead, would die from the infections within the week.

Gina moved her gaze to the tray at center. There was one bowl left on the tray. Gina stared at the two bowls next to her. She picked them up and silently crawled to the tray and set them down. Her eyes moved over the third bowl. It was empty. She looked at the man stretched out on his stomach. At one point, the man had gotten up, quickly eaten his food, then retired back to his cot.

The thought of the man moving around while Gina had slept sent shivers up her spine. What if he had touched her? What if she had awaken to the man on top of her?

Her stomach flipped just thinking about it.

She shook off the image and stood. The lighting was the best it’d been since she’d been thrown into the small prison and she started to look for weak spots in the thatching. Obviously, if light was getting in, then there were places where the thatching wasn’t flush. And how strong could it be? There had to be a way out.

She began prying the thatching apart. But underneath the six inches of sticks, there was a thick layer of something else. Hardened mud or clay. Gina tried to punch through it several times. It didn’t give. It might as well have been brick.

She moved to the entrance and stroked the large boulder filling the small entrance. The boulder was smooth. From the curvature of the three feet that she could see, she knew the boulder was enormous. Probably five or six feet in diameter. She put her hands against the warm rock, dug her feet into the dirt, and tried to move it. It didn’t budge.

Gina let out a deep sigh.

She made her way to one of the cots and stared down at the wooded legs. They were stakes an inch thick. She rolled one of the cots on its side, careful not to make too much noise, and began prying one of the legs off. She wasn’t sure if the guard would bring food again, so she turned the cot back over, and got it to balance on three legs.

She looked down at the wooden stake in her hands. Gina was quite certain she could do some damage with it. Maybe even knock the guard unconscious. But that was her back up plan.

She walked to the side of the hut. She looked over her shoulder at the entrance, making doubly sure the rock wasn’t about to be moved, then thrust the stake into the side of the hut. There was a soft thud. Gina stopped. It had been a bit louder than she’d expected. She watched the entrance for a long minute, waiting for the rock to move.

It didn’t.

She went to work. After ten minutes, tiny pieces of the clay-like material began to crumble off. After twenty minutes, a nickel sized piece chipped off and the sun shone through. Gina smiled. She covered the hole with the thatch. It disappeared. It would take her the better part of the afternoon, but she was certain she could make a big enough hole to crawl through. And the hole was on the back of the hut, so hopefully it would go unnoticed.

And then tonight, when the drums started back up, she would go.

She pulled back another section of thatching. Something caught her eye. It was black, about the size of a roll of nickels, with a flashing red light at the center. Gina plucked it from the thatching and surveyed it.

It was some sort of electronic device. But why here? And how?

The scraping of the rock filled the room.

Gina shoved the device back, then quickly began to move the thatching so it looked untouched. Gina stared at the entrance. The rock was only halfway moved. It was going much slower. Almost as if only one of the men were moving it. If it was only one of them, then she could smack him on the head and run. Or should she just wait for the night? Her heart was pounding. She thought about where the hut sat. If she hit the guy and ran, all she had to do was climb over the fence, then she could run up the hill and join the thousands camped out.

She made up her mind.

She darted near the entrance, gripped the stake in her right hand, and pressed her back against the wall. The rock moved out of the entrance.

Gina took a deep breath and raised the stake. The second the man popped his head in, she would bring the stake crashing down on the top of his head. Then she would duck out and not look back until she was at the Jeep.

A head poked in.

Gina started the stake down.

The man looked up. He brought up his hand and caught her arms as it was crashing down. He said, “Careful.”

It was Timon.

Gina’s breath caught.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said.

He grabbed her hand, ducked out, and pulled her with him.

“Where are the guards?” she asked.

“I gave them twenty dollars to go away.”

Gina shrugged.

“How did you find me?”

“You didn’t come back. I think maybe they put you in prison.”

Gina waited for him to expound on his detective ability, but he was done.

“Well, thanks,” she muttered.

He smiled, then glancing at his shoulder, he said, “I should be thanking you.”

They both clamored through the wide opening. The Africans camped fifty yards from the fence stared at them. Timon grabbed her hand and they slowly began their climb up the hill.

“Wait,” she said, turning. “They have my backpack. And the phone. And the two boys?”

Timon shook his head.

Timon pulled the phone from his pocket and handed it to her.