She chuckled at his ignorance of all things nautical. He snuck back with a bottle of red, used a cork screw on it and poured two glasses, “Cheers!” he clinked his glass against hers, “Here’s to freedom.”
“Shouldn’t we let it breath first?” she warned, but too late for Luke who glugged it down in one mouthful, then choked, making her smile.
He gasped as if his vocal cords were burned, then poured himself another glass. “It’ll take some getting used to. I wonder what else they’ve got?”
“They’re hauling coal by the look of the hold, — that’s where the cargo—”
“I know what a hold is. Coal? Is there any call for it these days, Where is the hold?”
She directed him to it and he climbed down into the hold and kicked the coal around then saw the plastic wrapped bricks of marijuana, and smirked. He took one back to Sophie, “I think the coal was to mask the smell of this,” he said opening the package of dope. “Fancy trying it?” he asked already rolling a joint.
“First time for everything.”
“Oh yeah, me too,” he said not convincing her in the slightest.
She looked from the porthole as the canal embankment rolled past at a slow pace. “I love this, it is so tranquil.”
20:30 PM
“Are things that bad?” said the chief warrant officer.
“What do you think?” the Commander said. “Take a look out there. You tell me.”
The chief warrant officer stared from the window high up on the conning tower and saw row after row of white shroud covered bodies covering the main deck, ten columns wide and forty deep. He watched them systematically tossed over the side of the ship, and as distasteful as he thought it, he knew it was unavoidable. However, what he saw on the other side of the ship made his mouth drop open. He pointed with a shaky finger to the main deck, where a group of sailors sat on the outer guardrail. “What are they doing?” he asked, his voice quivering in fear.
“We’ve run out of the medicine needed for the assisted suicides. This is my solution.”
“You’re as mad as the captain,” he said in undiluted outrage.
“I assure you, each and every one of them volunteered for this.”
Out on main deck the first wave of volunteers, sat on the outer guardrail. Ensign Vandyke walked behind them, and said; “God bless you, son;” and shot each of them in the back of head. He felt no emotion as the front of the sailor’s head exploded in a cloud of blood, brain and bone and the sailor toppled forward into his watery grave. Ensign Vandyke had convinced himself that he was doing a great service to the ships contingent as a whole, ridding them of plague victims; and to the poor unfortunate victim, ending his life as swiftly and painlessly as possible. He had always thought that before the sailor could register the pain of the bullet, the brain would already be dead and not functioning. Vandyke blessed another sailor and dispatched him to the next world, a better world, or so he hoped.
The next sailor sniffed back tears, only eighteen and looking even younger, Vandyke placed his hand on the boys shoulder comforting him. “Be brave, sailor, it’ll soon be over. God bless you,” he said, put the pistol to the boys head and fired, a sudden change in the wind caused the pink-tinged plume of blood to splatter across Vandyke’s face. “Goddamnit!” he said in annoyance, and wiped blood and brain matter from his face onto his sleeve.
From high up in the conning tower the chief warrant officer said, “That’s barbaric — how can you condone the shooting of your own men?”
“The alternative is to have the ship over-run by dying plague victims. Those men would be dead by nightfall. They volunteered instead, for a quick painless death. It makes sense, do you follow?”
“No I don’t.”
“Well, as I said they are all volunteers.” The commander said, watching as the next wave of men took the recently vacated spots on the guardrail, and waited while Vandyke reloaded.
20:35 PM
Second Lieutenant Clinton slinked into his Blackhawk helicopter undetected. Trying to be as unobtrusive as possible he went through his pre-flight checks, then it was the now-or-never moment and he fired up the engine with a mighty thunder, which alerted the personnel around the chopper to his intentions. The surprised crewmen on the flight deck freaked out as the rotor blades started to revolve.
“Holy shit!” yelped a nearly decapitated member of the ground crew. He and the others ran from the dangerous whirling blades. The flight controller radioed the pilot, “Desist now,” he roared into the radio. The second lieutenant flipped him the bird, as the blades rotated faster.
“Stop him.” the elderly flight controller said to a young recruit.
“How?” asked Seaman Styles.
“Do it, sailor, that’s an order.”
Seaman Styles ducked down low and approached the helicopter unsure on how he would stop the huge metal craft. With trepidation and holding onto his cap for dear life, he carefully approached the chopper, thinking that decapitation might be better than dying of the plague, or the equally grisly prospect of a bullet to the back of the head followed by the indignity of slumping into the sea.
The flight control picked up the internal telephone linked to the bridge and the call answered immediately. “Commander, we have a problem.”
The commander gazed from the bridge window stupefied to see one of the two Blackhawk helicopters allocated to the ship preparing for take-off. Momentarily stunned into silence, he then turned to the chief warrant officer and said. “Shoot it down. Let it be a lesson to anyone else thinking of escaping.”
The chief warrant officer’s face blanched. He knew better than to disobey an order, but at the same time, he considered Dick Clinton, the Blackhawk pilot, to be a close, personal friend. He felt the Commander glowering at him, he picked up the internal phone to the gun-battery and gave the instructions to fire, then uttered a silent prayer. “May God forgive me.”
As Seaman Styles got close to the helicopter the down wash from the blades flapped his clothing and he lost his cap, which on a normal day could have him put on a charge, however, today, it was the least of his worries. The noise of the helicopter blades deafened him and the pressure from them pushed him downwards, he made it up close to the helicopter wheel and froze.
The elderly flight controller cursed the new recruit and yelled, “Stop the bastard, that’s an order!”
The Blackhawk chopper had reached its optimum power, second lieutenant Clinton allowed himself a brief smile, and he eased the unsteady beast up into the air.
Seaman Styles looked back at the elderly flight controller through the swirling dust created by the chopper’s blades and saw him gesturing frantically. The chopper hovered three feet off the deck, when the new recruit suddenly thought it was his way off the stinking disease-ridden vessel and leaped up into the air and wrapped himself around one of the chopper’s wheels.
The elderly flight controller had thought he had seen everything there was to see in life, but this was too much. A decorated war hero helio-pilot deserting the ship, and the sailor he sent to stop him.
He could see their point of view; stay on the aircraft carrier infested with the Bubonic Plague and certain death. A death from what he had seen with his own two eyes appeared excruciating, or — and he could not believe he even contemplated such a notion — or…to hell with this, he thought and as the chopper cleared six feet from the deck he ran, jumped and clung onto another wheel.
Second lieutenant Clinton felt the chopper judder, twice in quick succession. He put it down to the crosswind, and as he pulled up, he passed the upper deck where two sailors watched his escape bid with pure hatred in their eyes. He knew one of the men and could not meet his gaze, knowing that he was deserting them to meet certain doom, when to his surprise he saw one of them leap out at the helicopter, and felt the weight difference as the sailor had latched onto the chopper. Startled by this action, he spun the helicopter a full circle, and tilted from side-to-side to dislodge the weight, when the second crewman dived towards the chopper.