Kenneth and Judy were excellent hosts and take-your-time sailors, loving the journey even more than the destination. Green pinnacles rose in a thousand tiny islands from an emerald sea. People smiled broad smiles and fed them dishes Karla had never conceived, much less tasted, from rich curries to the gluelike papeda, made from the starch of a sago palm and meant to be slurped from the bowl. The crew of the little sailboat had eaten their weight in delicious grilled fish, all of it either offered at feasts onshore or purchased from passing skiffs from which people called out “Hey, mister!” even when one of the women happened to be at the wheel.
Karla closed her eyes and took in a breath of the moist air. No, “lucky” didn’t even begin to describe her condition. She could not imagine returning to her old life in Houston.
Judy poked her head out of the hatch from below, where she’d been working on dinner. Karla had volunteered to help, but the Valiant had a one-butt galley, meant for bracing in the open ocean, and was not suited for two women cooking together.
“Spaghetti’s on,” Judy said. She was pixie of a thing, with dark hair that, as far as Karla knew, had never seen a drop of dye. She wore a yellow wraparound sundress and a smile just as bright. The wind-vane autopilot kept the boat on the correct heading, so Karla was alone in the cockpit. “Mind yelling at the boys?” Judy asked before ducking back below.
Karla sat up on her elbows and craned her neck without moving the rest of her body. The pace of the past week had endowed all her movements with a delicious laziness.
Both Kenneth and Tony stood up front, staring over the right side of the boat. Kenneth would have called it starboard, but Karla had an awful time keeping all the sailing terms straight in her head. At first she thought Kenneth was shooting another sight with his sextant, but a closer look revealed both men were looking through binoculars. Tony had a way of rolling his foot sideways when he was focused on anything important. The way he held it now caused Karla to sit up a little straighter.
The whine of an approaching boat motor pulled Karla to her feet. She’d just started forward when both men turned. Tony motioned for her to stay where she was as he made his way around the mast. They were coming to her.
The look of worry on her husband’s face was unmistakable. She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
Kenneth stuck his head below and barked at his wife.
“Get the shotgun,” he said. “Keep it down below, but be ready to hand it to me.”
Judy appeared at the hatch. She started to say something, but he hushed her with a look that she must have seen before, because she rolled her lips until they turned white.
“What is it?” Karla asked again.
Kenneth ignored her, bending instead to open the locker under the starboard cockpit bench. He took out an orange plastic case that Karla knew contained the flare gun. From another case, this one stored deeper in the locker, he retrieved a black metal cylinder, which he dropped into the open chamber of the flare gun. Into this he loaded a single round of .38-caliber ammunition. To Karla’s horror, he put the makeshift pistol into Tony’s hands.
“Keep this out of sight,” Kenneth said. “But if you have to use it, just thumb the hammer back, aim for center mass, and pull the trigger.”
Tony licked his lips and nodded. He stuffed the flare gun down the back of his shorts and pulled his T-shirt over it.
Karla gave an emphatic shake of her head. She could see the fishing boat bearing down on them now, less than a hundred yards away.
“What the hell?” She cast her eyes around the cockpit for the colorful sarong she used as a wrap when they were near any of the locals. She’d been warned that some of the more devout might find her swimsuit off-putting, or even downright evil. She pulled the strip of cotton around her and tied it behind her neck as she continued to plead for an explanation.
“What do you think they want?”
Tony stepped between her and the approaching boat. “Probably just to trade us some fish,” he said.
“Then why the guns?”
Kenneth shot a glance down the companionway. Judy gave him a curt nod to let him know the shotgun was where he wanted it. They’d obviously been over this drill before.
“Because they have guns,” Kenneth said. “Lots of guns.”
Karla’s mouth fell open. “I thought we were staying south of pirate waters!” She gasped, her chest so tight she could hardly breathe. “You promised we’d be fine if we stayed away from the Philippines!”
The men in the approaching boat were yelling now, ordering them in broken English to lower their sails and come to a stop.
Tony grabbed her hand and clutched it tight.
“It’s not Kenny’s fault,” he whispered.
“I count seven of them,” Kenneth said out of the corner of his mouth. He waved, giving a forced smile as the fishing boat motored up alongside the sailboat, matching her speed of around six knots. Outrunning the skiff was unthinkable, even as loaded down as it was.
The men on the fishing boat screamed all at once, waving their guns in the air. There were no pleasant shouts of “Hey, mister!”
One of the pirates, a boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, raised a rifle and pointed it at Karla. Tony’s hand dropped for the flare gun at his waist, but he didn’t know guns. He was a parts salesman. As far as Karla knew, her husband hadn’t fired a gun in years. He fumbled with his T-shirt, causing the boy to swing the rifle his way — and loose a rattling barrage of shots that stitched up the side of the boat and into Tony Downs’s chest.
Karla screamed as her husband pitched forward, toppling over the side to splash into the sea. Lucky Strike quickly left Tony’s body behind, bobbing in the blue-green water that only moments before had been so incredibly beautiful.
Kenneth roared, reaching for the shotgun, and earned two bullets in the spine for his effort. He fell as he turned. The shotgun slipped from his hands, sliding along the deck to drop over the side with a sickening plop. It disappeared instantly beneath the surface. Judy, now armed with a large kitchen knife in the shadows, motioned Karla belowdecks — as if there could be any refuge from these men on the tiny boat.
Karla stood frozen as a man in a blue T-shirt and oil-stained khaki pants grabbed an upright metal stanchion and hauled himself over the lifelines, jumping deftly from the fishing boat to the Lucky Strike. The man released the sheets to let the sails pop and flap in the wind. The boat slowed immediately.
Others from the skiff began to pour onto the boat. All of them were young, with the wispy facial hair of boys trying in vain to be men. But they all carried guns and wore hateful looks, both of which they aimed at Karla Downs. She rushed past the man in the blue T-shirt in an effort to get down below with Judy. If she was going to die — or worse — she didn’t want to do it alone. A sweating young man reached to grab her, but the man in the blue T-shirt pushed his hand away, shaking his head, and the boy let her go unmolested.
She had to leap over Kenneth’s body to get down the companionway. She would have fallen, had Judy not been there to catch her. The poor woman had to look at her husband’s lifeless eyes staring down at her from above — and still, she somehow kept her composure.
Karla gulped, trying to catch her breath.
“What…? I mean why…?” Her eyes were transfixed on the stern, where her husband of nearly thirty years had fallen dead into the sea.
Judy blinked at her friend, fighting back tears. “I am so, so sorry.”