Dreamcast 3, page 12
Miles asked for something to drink and I suddenly realized how thirsty I was.
“Good idea,” Suzy said, “Let’s make tea to calm down.” She was still trembling as she moved to get it ready. Maybe performing a familiar routine would calm her shattered nerves. We crowded into the galley for a minute, busy with something normal.
Doug quickly walked around the boat, peering over the sides. He went upstairs and I joined him on the fly bridge. He was looking sadly at half a console shot away.
“Shit, I just got that before this trip.”
“You know, there still might be one guy left out there,” I said, pointing in our wake. “The one in the boat who tried to get away. I don’t want him escaping, if we can help it.” Our eyes locked in conflict as he worked his way through it.
“You’re right. This has to be a clean sweep.” He started the engine and gunned it, turning the boat around, and we eased into the swell. I peered ahead into the dawn light. We found the RIB, barely afloat, and a little ways off a body face down in the water held up by a life jacket.
“I guess he’s dead,” I concluded. “But we’d better get him and weigh him down.” Doug simply nodded and shut the engine off. Grabbing a long pole from the cabin deck, he hooked the corpse and drew him to the rear swim platform. I jumped down and hauled him up onto the boat. Doug then snared the damaged RIB, and drew it within reach. I tied it to the transom.
Danger was still revving through my system... but there was no more danger left. Six pirates were dead but miraculously we had all survived. Still, my heart was pounding and a huge unease stirred up my stomach.
My God, what had we done? The question hit me hard, now that I had time to let it catch up to me. These were once human beings with families waiting for them... Fuck that! It was them or us. Very simple mathematics. Throughout the action I’d been hot, but now I was chilled and shivering.
“Come on, let’s get it done.” Doug’s words ripped me out of my self-absorption.
We got busy. Doug brought up large canvas bags; we stripped the bodies, tied some weight around the waists, and stuffed a body inside each bag. It took about an hour to dump all the pirates overboard. It was butcher’s work, and we were both sweating by the time the last bag splashed into the water to sink immediately. Doug holed the damaged RIB and we watched it sink. He moved to the fly bridge, started the engines and we moved off. After a couple of miles, we stopped and sank the other RIB. Resuming our course north, we ditched a weapon into the deep water every couple of miles. This all took two more hours.
We had more tea. I was calm. Hard calm. My thoughts were on what we still had to do.
“We have to go over the boat with a fine tooth comb to make sure nothing’s left that’s theirs.” Doug nodded, nothing must be left. We were sitting around the main table in strangled quiet. Now that it was all over, the reaction was quickly setting in.
Suzy was crying quietly, her bony shoulders shaking. “It’s alright, Honeybunch. Everything will be fine,” Doug tried to console her. Cindy started crying too. Amanda, her face pale and drawn, put an arm around her.
“It’s not alright. People’ve been killed. You said they only wanted money. And now...” Her husband didn’t answer her, but I did.
“Yeah, they wanted money and the boat. And they would’ve wrung everything out of us, and when we had nothing more to give, they would’ve killed us. These men don’t care about human life.”
“How do you know?” Suzy persisted. Her safe little world lay shattered around her, and she didn’t know what to do with the shards.
“I’ve met their kind before,” I said darkly.
“He has...” Amanda chimed in, coming to my defense. “He knows. He’s had to deal with them before.” Her lips trembled as she spoke, but her hands were stroking our daughter’s hair as Cindy burrowed in her embrace. Of all of us, Miles seemed the least concerned.
“They shouldn’t have attacked us. They had no right and were punished for it.” For Miles everything was black or white: he didn’t worry about the moral quandary of the various shades of gray. We settled in the salon, passively enduring the backwash of the trauma. All around us we were confronted by the signs of battle, and the reminders of how close we’d come to being killed.
Chapter 12
The sun was well above the horizon, blood orange-red. Time was passing. “We’d better get to work,” I interjected into the heavy mood. Reluctantly Doug rose and I after him.
We collected everything we could find of the attackers, clothes we had stripped off the bodies, a couple of jackets, two duffel bags. We searched the clothes for papers and those we burned on the barbecue perched on the outside rail. We piled any combustibles into a fair-sized metal pail, clothes included, poured diesel oil over the heap, lowered the tub into the water, then set the whole on fire. It burned fiercely, smoking as it drifted away. A half mile later the soldering of the tub must have sprung open from the heat because it sank. We threw solid items that didn’t float overboard, in what Doug said was half mile deep water. I carefully wiped off the remaining weapons and one by one, threw them overboard. I kept two automatics and extra magazines. Doug raised his eyebrows.
“Keep them until we get closer to home. In case we need them. Just to be safe.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again.” His face was troubled. I guess he’d never killed a man before. I had and though I was upset, I accepted it with resentful resignation. Just another thing falling on me, without me provoking it. We went up top, started the engines and resumed our course toward Santoro Island. I could see Doug was still struggling with himself.
“Travis, take the wheel, keep us on course. I have to check on my wife.”
“Why not just set the autopilot?” I asked naively.
“The autopilot is shot up, so is the navigation computer. We’ll be lucky if we can find your island again.” I took the wheel and checked the compass to hold us on course. “If anything shows up, push this button and I’ll come running. If you need to stop, just pull back on these two levers. Understand?” I nodded. In spite of all that had gone down, I was proud to be a helmsman of this ship, directing the power where I wanted to. Experimentally I swung the wheel a bit to the right and saw the compass turn three degrees. I brought us back on course.
In half an hour Doug was back; he checked our heading, then scanned the horizon.
“Suzy’s still upset. She doesn’t believe hiding our actions is the right thing to do. She says it’s not right to just bury it as if it never happened. We’re the victims here.” His voice was undecided.
“I don’t think it’s wise to trust the legal system in a country that’s basically lawless. Would you like to argue your case before their judge, bribed by anybody who has a stake in it? I know I wouldn’t. You and your wife would rot in jail for half a year before they’d even consider your case. And me and my family alongside you. No thank you,” I said as forcefully as I could, trying to bolster him. “Just imagine how it’d play out. The gringo, the ugly American, on his rich, fat boat, butchering six of their countrymen. Do you really think you or we would get a fair trial? No, it’d be a legal lynching.”
“Maybe so. I like you Travis, maybe I even owe my life to you, but I can’t look at you without seeing those dead, bleeding bodies.” He took his eyes off the horizon and bore into mine. The son of the gun. I knew I killed three, maybe four, he killed the rest. I was no more guilty of the killing than he was, and now he was wimping out on me.
“I did what I did to save my family; the rest is bullshit. You know I didn’t ask for any of this. They came on board, assaulted us, threatened us, put us at risk. I make no apologies. I regret having to kill... but on my account, not on theirs.”
A long silence followed as I concentrated on the compass.
“Travis, I know I owe you, but at the moment we’d better go our separate ways.”
“Fine!”
“Maybe in ten years we can get together and be human again.” He ruminated on that for a while. “We’ll say nothing, I promise. Not just for your sake but for ours. We don’t want some death squad hunting for us. I know justice is supposedly blind, but it’s not always on the side of victims.” How many times had I seen that already?
He took the wheel and caressed the leather-covered metal. He seemed to draw comfort from it. Perhaps he felt in control again, steering among the rocks of his fortune as easily as he did his ship. “You know Travis, rightly said, I ought to admire your courage and be more thankful. Now that we’ve survived the ordeal... I don’t know what I want or ought to say.”
“Well, I know. I want to thank you. When I needed you, you were there. Thank you for the lives of my wife, and my son and daughter.” My voice choked up at what a close thing this had been. He, too, was swallowing mute tears.
“I guess it’s better to be thankful than regretful.”
“And I’d better go and see how my family is doing.” I went downstairs. No one was in the salon. In our stateroom I found Amanda in bed with Cindy and Miles on either side. She put her finger to her lips: the kids were sleeping. I stood at the foot of the bed, gazing at my family and broke into tears. Soundlessly I cried. Wobbly-kneed I had to grab the foot board to steady myself. Amanda watched me sympathetically, tears flooding her eyes. The trauma had finally caught up with us, and what could have happened played out in our imaginations. I don’t know how long I stood there, or even when I stumbled out. I passed through the empty salon and climbed up to the fly bridge. We were anchored about a quarter mile offshore. Doug was consulting a map, checking it against a hand-held GPS.
He looked up tiredly. “I think this is Rice Island. The GPS confirms it. But it’s a cheap knockoff and I don’t know if I can trust it. Without knowing for sure I won’t try crossing the reef.”
“Why not go back to Santoro?”
“I want to arrive there in the dark, so nobody sees the broken glass and bullet holes. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to explain that to a repair yard. I can fix them but it will look like shit and remind me every time I see it. Maybe I should buy a new boat.” He chewed on a breath freshener. “My wife doesn’t know this but Christine was an ex-girlfriend. Maybe that’s why I bonded with this boat so quickly. Oh well. I’ll scrub the rugs again, try erasing all the blood stains. I have to replace the sofa and the glass and most of the furnishings.” I took it as a good sign that he had gotten past the guilt and was picking up his life again. Now if Suzy could also, then we were home free.
With us firmly anchored outside the reef, we could finally go downstairs. Doug went to the liquor cabinet and swore at seeing the destruction there. “Damn. They got my 40 year old brandy.” He found two unbroken glasses, filled them with Chivas Regal, and handed one to me. He gulped it straight down. I sampled mine more carefully: the smooth liquor tracked a warm trail down to my stomach. He poured himself another and sipped at it.
“You know I can’t figure where you got the balls to take on those two gorillas with your hands tied behind your back. I really thought you’d gone crazy. But I guess... you knew what you were doing. I salute you.” He tossed his drink back. “I just don’t know how you did it. It’ll probably haunt me the rest of my life.”
“I did what I had to,” I said quietly. Then the tears came again and I couldn’t stop them. Damn ESP, sometimes it made me as emotional as a little girl. He regarded me levelly, his looks softening.
“I guess neither of us will ever forget this trip.” He put his glass in the sink then said, “I’ll take the first watch. I’ll wake you for your turn.” He picked up one of the Mac-10’s, checked the action and went back on deck. I stretched out on the sofa, ignoring the gunpowder smell of the bullet holes. Almost instantly I fell asleep.
It was still light when Doug shook me awake. “Your turn. It’s four in the afternoon, wake me at six. Then by nine we can be back in your resort and we can part ways.” He pressed a warm cup of coffee in my hand, passed me the machine pistol and the extra clip and headed toward the master stateroom. I went up, and dropped into the captain’s chair. The air was fresh, smelling of salt and seaweed. A quick scan of the horizon and the near shore found nothing out of place. I settled deeper into the chair, swiveling to monitor the surroundings.
I still didn’t feel entirely safe; the attack kept replaying in my head. Six of them, six of us. They were armed and had a purpose; all we wanted was to enjoy the cruise. But no. And now six were dead and we were without a scratch. A miracle from God. Good luck. Timely counter measure. Help from the paranormal. Protecting our families. After a while I started thinking that really, with all the ESP power at hand, it couldn’t have gone any other way. We “froze” them at that crucial split second when life or death was decided. They never had a chance. It didn’t seem so at the time, but in hindsight it was obvious. With me quarterbacking, with Cindy channeling and Miles powering us, we could hardly lose. I stopped myself, obviously I was falling off the other side into euphoria.
At six I knocked on the master stateroom door. “Just a moment,” Suzy called out faintly. In two minutes Doug was out, rubbing his eyes.
“Man, I needed that. Once we get things settled I want to sleep for a week.” He headed topside and I padded over to the guest cabin, peeking inside to see the three still stretched out on the bed. I regarded Amanda’s face, trying to read in her slack expression how she felt about me now. In the past we’d gone through several crises when she had to put me together again after I had killed. But this time she saw me in action and was a close part of it. Could she still see me as human and not a monster? Sometimes I felt like a raging beast. Now just a burnt out hulk, barely able to hold myself together.
I heard the engine start up and we were again underway. I went upstairs to keep Doug company and maintain a lookout. We were both silent for the most part, still tired, still trying to process the event. In my preoccupation I hardly noticed a perfect day, sunny but not too hot, a gentle breeze from aft, a smooth surface that didn’t hinder the progress of our vessel.
“We should make landfall around 9:00. I’ll drop you at the South Bay. I don’t want to stop at the main anchorage and perhaps have customs come on board.” He looked dispirited at the mess of his console. “I had the lower steering stations removed to make more room for the kitchen. Maybe I do need it after all. A second nav station at least.” His eyes roved over the horizon. “I counted 87 holes in the roof, another 47 in the walls. Picked out 41 bullets myself. Hell of a fire fight. It’s a miracle we survived without a scratch.” Miracle, yes, but he only knew the half of it. Nothing about ESP, nothing about Cindy and Miles helping me.
A dark point appeared on the horizon and grew steadily, stretching into a line. “That ought to be Coral Island, just south of Santoro. Without radar and GPS I can’t be sure. It’s been some time since I navigated without modern aids.”
Amanda appeared with a cup of coffee for each of us. She was quiet and subdued. I searched her face and read her mood. She had a frozen feel to her, played out and exhausted.
“How are the kids?” I asked.
“Cindy is traumatized, Miles... not so. He seems unaffected by the whole thing.” Her voice was matter-of-fact but without any color. We were all silent, digesting this.
“Suzy took it hard,” she said, the psychologist waking up in her. “She might need therapy to help her get over this.”
“And how’re we supposed to do that without letting the story out of the bag?” Doug’s voice resonated with frustration. “I don’t want to invite an investigation.”
“Then deal with the symptoms and fudge the cause.” I couldn’t believe she said that, it went against her creed. “We all have to start somewhere, to rebalance our lives.” Doug nodded but didn’t reply. Amanda went down and returned in five minutes with sandwiches. My stomach was still queasy, but settled down as I got something into it.
“Santoro,” Doug broke the silence. “We’re coming up on South Bay in 20 minutes.” He gave me a significant look. I collected the remaining weapons, wiped them clean, and one by one tossed them overboard in the deeper water outside the reef. Amanda was already below, packing with the kids.
I joined Doug upstairs. “I want to thank you,” I said to him. “This has been a hell of an experience.” He threw me a quick glance to see if I was being sarcastic. “It was tough but we’ll all get over it.” I hoped.
“I can’t wait to forget it.” He spun the wheel to bring us through the gap in the reef. We slowly edged toward the wooden dock that extended a hundred feet into the waters of the cove. Amanda came, shepherding Cindy and Miles with all our gear. Suzy also appeared, looking pale, her face still drawn by anxiety. We tied up to the dock and gathered on the afterdeck. Suzy clung to Amanda for a couple of minutes, and then to the kids. She wouldn’t come near me. That hurt. I really wasn’t such a monster. I only killed three of our attackers for sure; her husband took care of the rest. Why did she stick me with the entire burden of it? We disembarked and stood on the dock, watching Christine pull away. Aside from the broken salon glass the boat didn’t look too bad from a distance.
We walked about two miles back to the Oasis, arriving just as the night lights flickered on. The receptionist wasn’t overly surprised to see us; she was used to having people come and go. We settled into our cabana and sat around listlessly. Cindy was quiet and for once, so was Miles. Soon after both went to bed.
Amanda got a bottle of scotch from her bag and poured us both a drink. We sat on the outside deck listening into the night.
“How’re you doing?” she asked quietly.
“How? I don’t know. I keep thinking I should feel something more than what I’m feeling. But no, I feel nothing.”
“You must feel relief that we survived.”
