Santos stood on the main deck looking at the hatch. Was he really meant to close it? What else could the chief have meant by the “not going to escape aft” clue? But what if he misunderstood and cut off the chief’s escape? But no, the clue could mean nothing else. Santos grabbed the cantilevered counterweight that held the heavy cover open just as the horns stopped wailing below. He hesitated. One quick look, then he’d close it for sure.
He peeked over the hatch coaming to see Anderson climbing fast with the hijackers right behind, all eyes on the ladder and none looking up. Santos braced himself and waited until Anderson began to emerge.
“Jump, boss,” he yelled as he hooked his arm under Anderson’s and heaved, their combined strength sending Anderson over the hatch coaming to land in a heap. Santos pulled up on the counterweight with all his strength, and the heavy cover crashed shut. He slapped one of the threaded dogs in place and spun the wing nut to screw it down tight. No one else was coming out.
Below, the junior hijacker was in the lead, and he balanced himself on the ladder and loosed a burst up at the hatch cover in spite of his boss’s screams of protests. The protests died quickly, as did the men, as ricochets caromed through the close confines of the steel escape trunk.
The shots were faint outside, swallowed by the myriad sounds of a ship underway.
“What now, Chief?” Santos asked, helping Anderson to his feet.
“Damned if I know, Ben,” Anderson gasped.
Chapter Eighteen
“China Star, China Star. You are out of the main channel. Repor—”
“Change,” Sheibani said into the mike, twisting the knob to a new channel. He keyed the mike rapidly and nodded at responding clicks from the boats, confirming compliance via a prearranged code.
“Too late to stop us, and their babbling might disrupt contact with the boats,” he said as Richards nodded. An unfamiliar alarm shrieked and they looked across the bridge to where Holt stood at a flashing panel.
“What are you doing?” Richards said as he rushed over, gun raised.
Holt seemed beyond caring, as if being forced to dump Ortega’s body overboard had erased any illusions of survival.
“I’m trying to silence this friggin’ alarm if you’ll get the fuck out of the way.”
Surprised, Richards complied. “What is it?” he asked, lowering his gun.
“CO2 release. Probably a false alarm.”
Sheibani frowned. He was reaching for the phone when the ship blacked out. He heard the distant muted roar of the emergency generator.
“Main-engine trip!” Bonifacio cried.
In the engine room, the generator engines had coughed to a halt as the CO2 rose to the level of the generator flat and the engines sucked in CO2. With no power, safety devices shut down the main engine and everything else, and the remotely located emergency generator sprang to life automatically to power limited emergency services.
Richards leveled his gun. “False alarm, my ass. Fix this. Now. Or you’re dead.”
“There’s no fast fix, you ignorant asshole,” Holt said. “The CO2 has to be purged. That means resetting dampers and starting fans. Takes time.”
“So how do you do that?” Richards asked.
Holt smirked. “I call the chief engineer.”
Richards knocked him to the deck.
“Enough!” Sheibani yelled as Bonifacio helped Holt.
Sheibani started to call the engine control room, then realized the futility of that action. Anyone still there would be dead.
“Yousif,” he said, “go down and check. Cautiously. If you have difficulty breathing, return at once.”
Yousif nodded and left as Sheibani moved to the chart and stepped off the distance with dividers. By the time Yousif returned, Sheibani was reassured. They were near Indonesian waters, and momentum would take them there.
“Gas,” Yousif said, breathless from his climb. “I got halfway down but saw the body of one our men. The control-room door is jammed close with a mop.”
“The man’s gun?”
Yousif shook his head. “Gone.”
Sheibani nodded. “Yousif, watch these three. Richards, join me on the wing.”
“This is bad,” Richards said when they were alone.
The Iranian shrugged. “She will ground with or without us. The VHF is on the emergency circuit, so we can communicate with the boats. If the Burmese died, it saves us killing them, and if any survived, they will report being led by an American. If the engineers are alive and armed, they will hide in a defensive position and wait for help.”
“But they know what went on.”
“They were in a windowless box and know nothing,” Sheibani said. “There are many hiding places, and time is short. And they are armed. Why risk being shot? We leave them.”
“OK. Let’s finish these guys, blow the boats, and get the hell out of here.”
“A half hour more,” Sheibani said, smiling at the lightening sky. “The farther we drift, the shorter our swim.”
Anderson studied his blood-covered subordinate in the growing light.
“Christ, Ben, are you hurt?”
“Not… not mine,” Santos said, suddenly drained. He looked down, as if seeing the gore for the first time, then bent and retched, as Anderson stood near, unsure what to do.
Santos straightened, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
“We got a gun,” he said, retrieving it from the deck and thrusting it at Anderson.
Anderson accepted the unfamiliar weapon.
“What now, boss?” Santos asked again.
“A drifting VLCC will bring help,” Anderson said. “There’s three hijackers left aboard for sure, and even with a few more from the boats, they lack manpower to rig a tanker this size with enough charges to sink it, and they can’t use the cargo because we’re still inert. With a dead ship, the pumps are down, so they can’t even jettison cargo. And they seem like pirates, not terrorists, so why don’t they just clean out the safe and haul ass?”
Santos nodded as if equally baffled.
“Let’s assume the worst,” Anderson said. “If the murdering assholes aren’t gone before help arrives, the hostages become bargaining chips. If we can free at least some of them, they can scatter and hide.” He looked at the sky. “Let’s move before full light.”
Santos nodded and trailed Anderson around the machinery casing, into the deckhouse and the glow of emergency lighting. Anderson eased the stairwell fire door open and peeked up the first flight to the A Deck landing and started up. A putrid smell washed over them as they left the stairwell on A Deck.
“Christ,” Anderson whispered, “smells like somebody shit in a meat market.”
Santos’s face contorted, and he rushed forward, stopping short at the rope lashing the lounge door and the sight of grenades hung from the door frame. The metal door was peppered with dents, as if attacked inside by hundreds of screwdrivers. Scattered fragments had penetrated to smash into the steel bulkhead across the hall and fall mangled to the deck. Stench wafted from the holes.
“We have to go in, Ben,” Anderson said softly. “Some might live.”
Santos untied the rope as his boss studied the grenades. Pins in place. Window dressing. Anderson was careful nonetheless as he pulled the grenades from their magnetic clips and set them aside.
The battered door refused to budge, and Anderson leaned into it. It yielded suddenly, with a wet sucking sound, as the partial torso blocking it slid away, and Anderson pitched forward on his hands and knees. Gore squished between his fingers and soaked the legs of his coveralls as he stared at body parts in a horrifying jumble. The reek of open bowels was overpowering. He tried to rise and slipped, then scrambled backward on his hands and knees through the gore to draw himself up against the far bulkhead of the passageway, fighting down vomit and wiping his hands furiously on his coveralls.