Ward laughed. “Sounds like everything’s OK. Thanks for the update.”
“No sweat, pal,” Hill said and hung up.
For all his relief that his backdoor warning had paid off, Ward couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. He was in the supermarket two hours later, shopping for his Fourth of July cookout, when it hit him. He rushed through the checkout to his car and began punching numbers into his sat phone, praying his gut feeling was wrong.
Sheibani moved through the chart-room curtains onto the darkened bridge.
“We’re close,” he whispered. “Best deal with the excess crew as they sleep.”
“It’ll make the others more difficult,” Richards protested.
“They will hear nothing in the engine room,” Sheibani said, “and we tell these their shipmates tried to escape, and a few were injured by booby traps, and the rest gave up after warning shots. It will calm them long enough. Soon we’ll be in Indonesian waters and no longer need them. Any fool can ground a ship.”
“OK. Will you do it?”
“Yes. I will take Yousif.”
“No,” Richards said. “That leaves me too thin here.”
“You do well to remember who is really in charge, Richards.”
The comment hung in the air until Richards broke the silence.
“All right,” he whispered, “but go quietly and hurry back.”
Sheibani smiled in the dark as he moved away. He’d included Yousif as an afterthought to salve his pangs of conscience. He would not let the young man die without dipping his sword in the blood of the infidel.
Sheibani peeked in a window. Men slept sprawled on sofas and armchairs or the deck. Three insomniacs played cards in the light of a lamp. He moved back and targeted the window, nodding for Yousif to take another. They opened fire, stitching holes around the edge of the thick glass before directing fire into the center, sending a maelstrom of shards inward, followed by grenades as they ducked low. Sheibani rushed to the window after the explosions, unmoved by the carnage, firing at anything that twitched. He looked over at Yousif bent over a puddle of vomit.
“Control yourself and rejoice in the blood of infidels. Come, a few still squirm. We will toss in two grenades each and finish it.”
Yousif shook his head, mute.
“Beard of the Prophet, you are a woman. I will finish alone. Go.”
Yousif stumbled up the stairs to the bridge as explosions sounded behind him. Sheibani arrived on the bridge moments later to find Yousif trembling in the dark, wiping vomit from his chin. Sheibani’s foul mood was tempered by the ease with which his captives accepted his tale of attempted escape. If they noticed the patterns of shots and explosions didn’t match the story, it hadn’t registered. A comforting lie was more palatable than a terrifying truth.
Sheibani erred in thinking his act went unnoticed below. Engineers are attuned to sound and vibration, for unexpected noises invariably herald problems. In the control room, Anderson and Santos felt the shocks through their feet, though their guards were oblivious.
Anderson paced in front of the control console. Unlike Holt, preoccupied with conning the ship, his automated engine room allowed him time to think. With Americans among them, he figured the hijackers nonsuicidal. He was partially right; Yousif and the men in the boats were eager martyrs, while Richards and Sheibani planned escape. The three guards in the engine room were also unenthusiastic martyrs, Burmese mercenaries hired by Richards.
No one seemed intent on destruction; they had neither stopped the inert-gas system nor ventilated the cargo tanks into the explosive range. They were either intentionally leaving the ship in a safe condition or were inept. They didn’t seem inept.
Anderson didn’t figure he and Santos were there by accident. Their captors anticipated a possible need for a senior engineer, and while they might kill one to coerce the other, if either escaped, the other likely wouldn’t be killed. But he sensed they were nearing some climax, perhaps connected to the shocks he’d felt. Time was getting short.
He watched the guards out of the corner of his eye. The engineers were accustomed to long periods in the windowless control room and at least had the distraction of monitoring the main engine and engineering plant. Their guards had no mental stimulation whatsoever, and being confined in a box had taken its toll. They were noticeably less alert than they had been when the ordeal started over twenty-four hours before. Anderson took a chance.
Santos watched as Anderson turned toward him and repeatedly arched his eyebrows to get his attention. He stared silently as Anderson looked at the CO2 alarm on the bulkhead then pointed at him with a finger shielded by his body. Santos grew more puzzled as Anderson then looked pointedly toward a rack of emergency-escape masks used for tank entry and discreetly pointed to himself. The chief obviously had a plan, but what? He was still trying to piece it together when Anderson turned to the senior of the three guards.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “We’re not going to escape aft, so how about bringing down more sandwiches before I find another way out of here?”
The hijacker looked confused. “You no talk.”
“Santos can go with one of your guys,” Anderson pressed. “They can leave and shut that door tight.” He pointed to the door leading to the deckhouse stairs.
“No. No eat. Shut up now.”
Suddenly, Santos understood, but the hijacker wasn’t cooperating. Anderson turned back to the console, disappointment on his face, but Santos was elated. He caught Anderson’s eye and nodded. He’d plotted his own escape for hours. The only thing stopping him had been his fear of retaliation against Anderson. Now it seemed the chief had a plan of his own.
“Toilet.” Santos hugged his stomach and moved toward the door.
The nearest hijacker leveled his weapon. “You stop.”
Santos moaned. “Must go toilet.”
The man spoke and the others laughed, obviously at Santos’s expense. The head man nodded, and the underling escorted Santos out the door to the engine-room toilet and the deckhouse stairs beyond. As the control-room door shut behind them, Santos hurried across the narrow vestibule to the toilet. He tried to close the toilet door, but as expected, his captor shook his head, so Santos shrugged down his coveralls and sat, glaring out at the man. Minutes later, he pulled up his coveralls and moved to the small sink, his back to the hijacker. He turned on the water and extracted a fistful of powdered hand soap from a container on the sink, his actions hidden by his body. He murmured a prayer and turned off the water.
Surprise was complete as soap flew into the guard’s face. His weapon hung slack as he jammed fists to burning eyes. In one fluid motion, Santos plucked a pen from his pocket and drove it into the man’s throat. Blood covered Santos as he grabbed the man’s wrists and pinned him against the bulkhead, praying no sounds of the struggle reached the control room. The man gasped and bled out, powerful spurts soaking Santos’s face and front. It took an eternity before the flow dwindled, and a stench filled the space, signaling loss of sphincter control. He let the body slide down the bulkhead and stood trembling, willing the face from his memory.
Santos cleaned himself as best he could with paper towels from the toilet. A mop from the cleaning-gear locker became his improvised lock, jammed across the narrow passageway between the outward-opening control-room door and the opposite bulkhead, its tangled head compressed tight against the door just above the knob. He grabbed the hijacker’s gun and hurried up the stairs.