Zack Chasteen 04 A Deadly Silver Sea, page 4
part #4 of Zack Chasteen Series
Other waiters moved through the crowd, rifles at the ready, yelling: “Down! Down! Everybody down!”
Most of the passengers were already huddled under tables and alongside toppled chairs. Those few who were still standing, frozen by the spectacle they had witnessed, were shoved down by the waiters as they commandeered the deck.
I looked at Barbara.
“You sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just . . .”
Her purse still hung from the back of the chair. She grabbed it and rummaged inside. She pulled out her cell phone. She flipped it open, punched numbers.
And immediately one of the waiters was upon her. He reached for the phone.
“Give here!” he shouted.
Barbara jerked away. The waiter grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head. She let out a cry, and I leaped at the waiter, driving a shoulder hard into his midsection, knocking him down.
No sooner had we hit the deck than a blow hammered the back of my head. Then another.
Pain, awful pain. Things went black. I fought it off, felt sharp kicks to my shoulders, my sides. Tried to block them . . .
And then I was on my back, gasping for air. I grabbed at my throat, felt a shoe. I opened my eyes. Points of light scattered, images fractured, only slowly came together.
I was looking up at another waiter, the one with the gold tooth, the one who had been serving stone crabs. He had a foot planted firmly against my neck, his rifle pointed down at me.
I twisted my head, found Barbara. The waiter I knocked down had succeeded in wresting the phone away from her. He held it up, studied it, a grin creeping onto his face.
“Ha!” he said. “No good.”
Then he held up the phone for all the passengers to see, shouting: “See? No good. We fix. No cell phone work. Cell phone no good.”
He slung the cell phone aside, then reached down to grab Barbara.
I tried to flip out from under Gold Tooth’s foot, but that only made him press down harder. He jabbed his rifle in my face.
“You want to die, Mr. Big Man? You want to be hero?”
“Tell him to get his hands off my wife.”
Gold Tooth looked at Barbara.
“She your wife?”
I nodded.
Gold Tooth pointed his rifle at Barbara.
“You,” he said. “Stand up.”
Barbara didn’t move.
“Stand up, now!”
Again, I tried to break free, but Gold Tooth pressed down harder with his foot. It blocked my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe.
Gold Tooth put his rifle to my forehead.
“No!” Barbara shouted.
She pulled herself to her feet. The waiter eased off on my throat. I sucked in air.
Now Gold Tooth pointed his rifle at Barbara.
A hush fell across the deck. A hush of sorts, anyway. No more moans or cries from passengers, just the sound of a ship moving through the night—the whistle of the wind, the dull drone of the engine, the slap of the hull against the sea.
Gold Tooth waved his rifle toward the starboard rail.
“Over there!” he told Barbara. “You go. Now!”
Barbara gave me a long last look and then started making her way toward the rail. She kept a hand low on her stomach, easing her load.
Gold Tooth barked out something in a language I didn’t recognize. And the other waiters began dragging women passengers to their feet and herding them to the starboard rail.
“All women! Now! Go, go . . .” Gold Tooth shouted.
Some of the women had to be pried away from their husbands and companions. Others clung to one another, crying as they stepped in line.
Gold Tooth yelled out something else and the waiter with the duct tape headed our way. The two of them flipped me over and as Gold Tooth kept the barrel of his rifle pressed into the back of my head, the other waiter taped my hands together. Then he started in on my mouth and eyes.
The last thing I saw was the long line of women being led away by two of the waiters, Barbara at the head of the line, craning her head to see me. Then the tape turned everything black.
Gold Tooth leaned close, his breath sour and bitter as he spoke.
“Your wife gone now, Mr. Big Man. Say good-bye.”
7
THURSDAY, 8:21 P.M.
They heard the gunfire coming from the main deck.
“Get down there,” Glenroy told Pango. “Now!”
Pango hesitated. And Glenroy could tell it rankled him, Glenroy giving him orders, this black man from the engine room telling the high-and-mighty maître d’ what to do. But this was the way it had to be. Glenroy’s plan, he called the shots. Now was the time to make that clear. If Pango didn’t like it . . .
A flash of venom in Pango’s eyes, but he didn’t argue. He turned to go, stopped short at the steel door. It had shut automatically after Todora stepped inside.
The bridge was dark, as it always was at night, to aid with navigation. The only illumination came from the control panels and a soft fluorescent glow from under the console that cast an eerie amber light across the floor. Just enough so they could see to walk.
“The door,” Pango said. “How do . . . ?”
Todora stepped from the shadows. Three buttons—green, red, and yellow—glowed on the wall next to the door. She tapped her pistol on the green button. The door slid open.
“Just like elevator,” she said.
As if she were talking to an idiot.
Pango disappeared through the door. And Todora punched the yellow button, which held the door open. Light streamed into the bridge from the hallway, across the bodies of the watch crew.
Killing people, that didn’t bother Glenroy. But once they were dead . . . that was another matter. He could not bear the sight of them. He had long since denounced the misguided beliefs of his forebears, they who worshipped the white man’s god along with the dark deities of their tribal heritage. Ignorant people, blind to the real ways of the world. Still, he could not quite rid himself of their notion that the dead never truly departed. And the recent dead, they walked among the living, mourning their loss and fully capable of revenge.
He turned from the bodies, looked out to the hallway, Todora watching him. She had made a mess of shooting Swenson, left little of his skull. Nasty bits everywhere, on the floor, the walls, the keypad by the door.
Todora dropped the pistol into the front pocket of her blood-dabbled smock. She brushed past Glenroy toward the console. A pack of Camel Lights sat near the handset for the ship’s PA system, a slim silver lighter beside it. Todora picked up the cigarettes, shook one loose.
Officially, the Royal Star was a “smoke-free” ship, meaning no smoking in the guest suites, the crew quarters, or any common area, except for a cramped, sequestered zone on a fourth-level aft deck. But those rules didn’t apply to the bridge where cigarettes helped break the tedium of long watches. New as the Royal Star was, its bridge already reeked of nicotine.
Todora lit up, drew deep. She started to put the Camels and the lighter back on the console, then reconsidered. She examined the lighter.
“An S. T. Dupont. Very nice.” She dropped the lighter and the Camels into the pocket of her smock, blew smoke toward the bodies at her feet. “You guys got problem with that?”
She laughed.
She nudged one of the bodies with a foot, then knelt beside it, going through pockets. She pulled out a wallet, took the cash, snorting at how little of it there was. She moved quickly to the others, ransacking them, too. Taking a gold watch from the wrist of one of the officers. Removing a gold chain from the neck of the helmsman, a young Filipino.
Glenroy fingered the SAR. Shoot her now, he thought. Save doing it later. This woman, she was trouble. He didn’t need her anymore.
When Todora was done, she leaned against the console, smoking, studying Glenroy.
“So,” she said. “What about the real money?”
“Not yet,” Glenroy said. “The bodies, we must get them off the bridge.”
He could feel their eyes upon him, knew their spirits were afoot.
He rested the SAR against the console. Todora helped him drag the bodies of the three officers out the door. They were coming back into the bridge for the helmsman when Todora said, “This boat you have arranged, when does it meet us?”
“You don’t worry about the boat, OK? I take care of the boat. I take care of everything. You just do as I say and . . .”
Behind them, a voice from the hallway: “Oh, Jesus . . . no.”
Sonny . . .
And then the young Korean was at the door, reeling from the sight of the bodies, horror gripping his fat face as he surveyed the scene on the bridge. He dropped to his knees, knocking off his black glasses, gagging, then spewing onto the floor.
Glenroy walked over to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“Easy, mon, easy. You did good.”
Sonny looked up.
“You killed them,” Sonny said.
“There was no other way.”
“But you said . . .” Sonny covered his face. He was crying now. He stood, heading out the door, but Glenroy pulled him back. And Sonny collapsed against Glenroy, clutching his arms around him, burying his head in Glenroy’s chest, sobbing.
Todora stubbed out her cigarette on the seat of the helmsman’s pants.
“Cute couple,” she said. “I wondered how you got the little chink faggot to help you out.”
Glenroy ignored her. He put both hands on Sonny’s shoulders, gently broke his embrace.
“Look at me,” he said.
Sonny blinked back tears, wiped a chunky hand across his nose. Everything about him disgusted Glenroy. The way he acted. The way he looked. Especially the way he smelled. That kimchi shit he ate, sour cabbage and garlic seeping from his pores. But Glenroy had to put all that out of mind. He had worked hard, coaxing Sonny along, convincing him to be a part of their plan. Glenroy couldn’t afford for Sonny to wig out on him now.
“It’s going to be OK, you hear me?”
Sonny nodded.
Glenroy picked up Sonny’s glasses from the floor, wiped them clean, put them back on him.
“Now, you listen to me, Sonny. I need you to do one more thing. Can you help me out?”
Sonny nodded.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“That’s good. That’s real good. Because I need you to turn the monitors back on. Can you do that for me, Sonny?”
Sonny looked around the bridge. A computer station sat at one end of the console. The sight of it seemed to comfort him.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
Sonny walked to the computer, hunched over it, began punching at its keyboard.
“Piece of cake,” he said, turning to grin at Glenroy.
A bank of monitors hung from the ceiling. They lit up. Five screens flashing a feed from dozens of cameras placed throughout the ship, quadrants of four images appearing on each screen and changing in ten-second intervals. Shots of the main deck—two waiters leading a long line of women away, Pango directing two more waiters as they began rounding up the crew, another waiter with his rifle trained on a tall man who had been bound and gagged with duct tape, the man struggling to get loose but not having any luck at it. Elsewhere—shots of empty hallways, empty decks, an empty engine room. Everything under control.
Glenroy turned from the monitors.
“You,” he said.
Meaning Todora . . .
“Get those bodies out of the hallway,” he said, wanting them as far away from him as possible. “Down to the main deck.”
Glenroy told her about the five who were dead in the engine room, the two in the security office. One of the monitors now showing the three officers who had been shot on the main deck. Fourteen dead in all. Glenroy knew there would be more.
“Where to put?” Todora asked him.
He started to tell Todora to toss the bodies overboard, then reconsidered. The bodies would float. Another ship might come along and find them. They could weight them down, but even then . . .
Glenroy wasn’t worried about the smell. Less than two days and this would all be over.
“Just put them away somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere we don’t have to look at them.”
It would keep her busy, out of his way.
Todora retrieved another Camel, stuck it between her lips.
“Maybe you ask your boyfriend to help me,” she said.
And this time Glenroy hit her, a backhand across the face. He seized her by the throat, rammed her into a wall, blood dribbling from her mouth as she tried to kick him away. He’d kill her with his bare hands. Why waste good bullets?
He didn’t see her reaching for her smock, but felt the pistol when she jabbed it in his stomach. He tensed. Nothing happened. He let her go, backed off.
Sonny, his back to them, still hunched over the computer, oblivious. Not that he would do anything anyway.
Glenroy said, “You shoot me, what does it get you?”
“Pleasure,” Todora said.
“But no money.”
Todora snorted.
“This money, I have yet to see it. Maybe it is just talk.”
“There’s money.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Todora backed toward Sonny now, keeping her eyes on Glenroy as she aimed the pistol at the back of Sonny’s head.
Sonny tapped away, not noticing a thing.
“Bang, bang,” Todora said.
She dropped the pistol into her smock, gave Sonny’s shoulder a shove.
“Come on, fat boy,” she said.
Sonny turned, looked at her, then at Glenroy.
“Do what she says,” Glenroy told him.
Sonny got up, followed Todora into the hallway.
Glenroy pushed the red button on the wall. And the steel door slid shut.
8
THURSDAY, 8:41 P.M.
The Galaxy Lounge was at the aft end of Deck Five and that was where the two waiters took the forty-eight female passengers.
A nightclub setup, like something out of Vegas, way-way overdone. Silk brocaded walls in gold and burgundy. Black lacquered walnut floor. Plush divans, settees and armchairs fanning out stadium-style to face the stage.
It was a place that looked best when the lights were dim, but the chandeliers—authentic Baccarat, no less—were still turned up bright from when all the passengers had gathered there a few hours earlier for a briefing that preceded the lifeboat drill. Exclusive as the Royal Star was, it still had to abide by certain annoying maritime regulations, and the lifeboat drill was one of them.
Barbara thought about Zack, about how the two of them had struggled to fasten the life preserver around her belly. They’d given up, laughing, Zack kidding her that even if the ship sank she would survive.
“And how’s that?” she’d asked.
“Whales can swim.”
Well, it had seemed funny at the time.
Barbara was at the head of the procession, and now the waiter walking beside her pointed his rifle toward the steps that led to the stage.
“Up,” he said. “Up there.”
Barbara took the first step. And immediately she felt it—a twinge from deep within.
The second step. And now she really felt it. Yes, that was pain, real pain, shooting up inside her, the pressure against her lower back. She doubled over, grabbed the handrail. A collision of women behind her.
The waiter, shouting: “No stop! You go! Up, up . . .”
“Leave her alone!” The woman behind Barbara, yelling at the waiter. “Can’t you see, she’s . . . just leave her alone.”
And now the woman had Barbara by the arm, helping her up the steps, onto the stage.
“Are you alright, dear?”
The older woman who’d been sitting at the table next to Barbara and Zack, the one with the boob job. Her hair looked as if it had been spun out of a cotton-candy machine, colored a sort of orangey-pink not otherwise found in nature. Her eyes were bright, maybe too bright, a shade of blue that perfectly matched the Pashmina shawl draped over her shoulders. And her skin, it was perfect. Which made it all the more eerie. Still, she had a nice smile.
“I’m OK, just need to get my breath,” said Barbara. “It surprised me. A contraction, I think.”
“Believe me, when it’s a contraction you don’t think. You know.”
“Well, that’s what it was then. A contraction. Lovely. Just lovely.”
The woman patted Barbara’s hand, walking with her to the middle of the stage, the other women filling in around them, huddling close.
The two waiters who had led them into the lounge spoke low among themselves. They still wore their tuxedos, brass nameplates on their jackets. Tony and Felix.
Now Felix, a little taller and a little older, stepped away, hurrying out of the lounge. Tony approached the edge of the stage. He was a moon-faced young man, nervous, jittery with his rifle.
“Sit,” he told the women. “All down.”
Most of the women did as told, but Barbara hesitated. She just wanted to stand there. She didn’t want to move. She felt that if she moved it would stir things up, bring on another contraction. And she didn’t want that.
She breathed in, breathed out, slowly, trying to calm herself. The woman still patting her hand.
“Can you make it, dear?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Just give me a moment.”
Tony was impatient. He pointed his rifle at Barbara.
“Down! You down!”
And the woman turned on him.
“Back off, you little prick!” The force of her words stopped the waiter cold. “This woman cannot possibly sit on the hard floor. She’s getting ready to have a baby. Those chairs out there. Let her sit in one of those.”
Tony looked at the chairs, then back at Barbara and the woman. He reached up, pulled off his black bow tie, unfastened the top buttons on his shirt. He took off his coat, dropped it on the floor.
