I tried to make a joke out of it. “There aren’t any real pirates of the Caribbean nowadays, right?”
“No. I’m sure it’s no big deal.” But he did not sound at all sure. “Let’s get the girls out of the water. Whoever they are, I’m guessing they -“
He didn’t finish the sentence; instead he froze with the telescope against his eye.
“What?”
After a long moment Jesse lowered the telescope. “Whoever they are,” he said grimly, “they’ve got guns.”
Chapter 27
Jesse and Anya waited on the deck while Sophie and I lurked in the common area, watching through the open doors. Sophie held the satellite phone in her hand, finger poised over the DIAL button. In case there was some kind of problem. We hadn’t articulated the bad-case scenarios in any more detail than that.
“Ahoy there! What’s going on?” Jesse cried out as their boat approached.
Instead of answering they zoomed right up beside us. They had guns slung over their shoulders, big scary assault rifles that looked like M-16s from Vietnam movies. Three of them leaped onto our deck while their boat was still moving.
Jesse shouted, “Hey!” angrily, and took an aggressive step towards them, as if trying to drive off unwanted dogs.
The nearest one kicked him in the crotch with a lethally quick motion. Jesse doubled over. The other two attackers raced into the common room. Clumsy with fear and shock, I tried to interpose myself between them and Sophie as she pushed the green button, but it was already too late. We should have waited on the bridge, behind the only door on board with a lock, instead of in the common room. We should have called the moment we saw the guns. I guess we didn’t because being attacked by armed men on the high seas just didn’t seem like something that actually happened to people like us.
The lead invader smashed the butt of his gun into my face. When you imagine those kinds of things happening, you imagine being able to see what’s going on and react, but the first I knew of his action was when the gunbutt collided with my cheekbone. The impact reverberated through my whole body. I staggered back two steps, fell down hard, and lost some time. The next thing I knew Sophie was on her stomach on the ground beside me, squealing in pain as the man who had thrown her to the floor folded her arms behind her back and knelt on them. The other man, the one with a moustache who had hit me, used the butt of his gun to smash our satellite phone to smithereens.
I reached out without thinking and grabbed the guy holding down Sophie, tried to pull him off, but I had no leverage, my senses were reeling, and my muscles seemed unable to exert any significant force.
Then a strong hand grabbed me by the hair and Sophie and I were dragged outside. I didn’t resist. It was all I could do not to fall over. Time seemed to be fragmenting, splintering. We were shoved to the very aft of the boat, just above the engine. Jesse and Anya were already there. Anya seemed unhurt, but Jesse stood hunched with both hands cupped over his wounded crotch, sporting an incipient black eye.
I turned around, still dazed. One of them stood about ten feet away, at the edge of the dive pool, aiming his rifle at us. Behind him two more were searching the Ark Royale. I couldn’t believe the world had turned upside down so quickly.
Their pilot finished roping their boat to ours, and climbed on with an odd, straight-legged gait, like he had some kind of hip injury. He and the gunman exchanged a few phrases in Spanish, while both ogled Anya in her bikini. She was shivering despite the heat. I too felt cold, like my spine had turned to ice, and weak. The prospect of more violence, and probably rape and mass murder, seemed inescapable.
Unless – the two men facing us had the dive pool behind them. If their guns were safetied, maybe we could rush them, knock them into that water, steal their boat. It was a desperate chance: but after what had just happened, that kind of all-out attack before the situation settled in, before it was too late to do anything at all, seemed like our only hope.
It was one thing to know that intellectually and quite another to actually charge a man with a gun, but I felt ready to do it. It helped that I was still dazed and unable to think clearly. I glanced over at Jesse. He looked back. I prayed we were thinking the same thing, and crouched, ready to charge.
I counted down in my head: Three. Two.
They must have noticed something. The gunman raised his weapon slightly and pulled the trigger, aiming close above our heads. I felt the bullets tear through the air. The flashes of automatic gunfire seemed crazy-bright, like lightning strikes, and the earsplitting fusillade nearly deafened me.
He lowered the gun and grinned at us over it. His teeth were rotten and uneven. I stared down the black hole of the gunbarrel as the air around it warped from its heat. This man who had never seen the inside of a dentist’s office was just a finger-twitch away from killing us all, and I didn’t doubt he would do it if we charged. I felt paralyzed, didn’t know what to do. There was nothing we could do. We were helpless. There was no escape, and no hope but that of mercy.
Chapter 28
They didn’t kill us. They didn’t even harm us further. They just half-pulled and half-shoved us down into the cabin Sophie and I shared. One kept us against a wall while another searched our bags and took our ID and money. Then they closed the door on us. It had no lock and opened inward, but they had brought a loop of thick wire along, and I suspected the the scratching noises that followed were them wiring it shut.
I inspected my new wound in the mirror. A huge, already-purpling bruise on my cheek surrounded a fingernail-sized flap of skin torn open by the gunbutt. I began to gingerly clean off the blood.
Anya broke the silence: “They are going to wish on their mothers’ souls they never did this.”
I looked at her with surprise. Anger and vengeance had not even crossed my mind as a possible response to what had just happened. “Do you know who they are?”
“No. But I promise you, I will find out.”
Unless they kill us all first, I didn’t say.
“This isn’t a random attack,” Sophie said. “They came for us specifically.”
“How do you know?” Jesse asked.
“I can get by in Spanish. They were talking about her.” She nodded at Anya. “Something like she was every bit the honey they’d been told.”
Anya’s mouth twisted. “Next time you see them, tell them this honey is poison.”
“Us specifically.” Jesse sounded genuinely bewildered. “Who would do that?”
I snorted with disbelief. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe the Colombian drug gangs you’ve been working for? Just a wild guess here. Going way out on a limb.”
Anya and Jesse gaped at me.
“What are you talking about?” Jesse demanded.
I was furious. “The whole reason we’re here is because the DEA asked us to come spy on you, because they think you’re funded by, here’s a nice phrase for you, ‘narco-terrorists.’ Who just happen to be using Sophie’s software to fly drone bombs into DEA agents and Colombian police chiefs.”
Anya stared at me like I was speaking a language she did not understand.
Jesse turned to Sophie. “You can’t believe this.”
I half-expected her to reveal everything. Surely we were beyond secrets now.
“I was skeptical,” she said, “but first we discover weaponized drones nearly identical to yours, and then we come visit you, and a bunch of Hispanic thugs attack us offshore of Haiti. Kind of an extreme coincidence, don’t you think?”
Anya shook her head. “This is madness. We don’t work for any drug gang.”
“Then where do you get your money from?” I demanded.
“My uncle.”
I gave her the most disbelieving look I could muster.
“Enough,” Sophie said sharply. “We’re here now. No sense fighting about why. We have to start doing something about it.”