“So you think this is some kind of local industry?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, look at it. Here we are on the southern coast of Sumatra, about the most out-of-the-way corner of the earth it’s possible to imagine. In among these islands we’re well off the shipping lanes, which go through the Sunda Strait or the Strait of Malacca. So these dudes from a local village sail out into the shipping lanes, board a ship — probably at night when only one or two people are on watch on the bridge — then bring it here and loot it. They probably kill everyone aboard and scuttle the ship. The high-value items from the cargo that can’t be traced eventually end up in the bazaars in Singapore or Rangoon or even Mombasa. The ship never shows up at its destination and no one knows what happened to it. Say they knock off one ship a year, or one every two years. Be a nice little racket if they don’t pull it too often and get the insurance companies in a tizzy.”
“But someone got off fifteen seconds of an SOS and we came to look.”
“To look and take pictures. They probably thought they had killed everyone on that ship, then the SOS burned their eardrums. They should have disabled the radio but they didn’t. One mistake led to another. So instead of waiting to loot the ship after dark, they decided to try it in daylight. Then we showed up. You know as well as I do that a good photo interpreter could identify this ship sooner or later. The captain knows that too. So he fired when we gave him a golden opportunity. I’ll bet he was the bastard at the trigger.”
“He’s going to get photographed again today.”
“But the victim isn’t tied up alongside. Now this is just a little ship going about its business in a great big ocean.”
Jake merely grunted. After a bit he said, “It doesn’t figure.”
“What doesn’t?”
“That ship they stopped is an old freighter. Looked to me like a Liberty ship. Eight to ten thousand tons, no more than that. Why didn’t these guys stop a big container ship? All the valuable electronic stuff gets shipped in sealed containers these days.”
“Beats me.” Flap sat and removed his boots and socks. After a while he said, “The bastards could at least have given us water. I’m really thirsty.”
He had his boots back on when he said, “Did you notice the captain’s hands? The calluses on the edges of his palms? He’s a karate expert. If you had even flinched when he slapped you he might have broken your neck.”
“Now you tell me.”
“You did fine. Handled it well. Be submissive and don’t give them the slightest reason to think you might fight back.”
“I’m certainly not going to strap on a karate expert.”
Flap snorted. “They’re the easiest to beat. They’re too self-confident.”
Jake didn’t think that comment worth a reply. He retrieved his cigarettes from his flight suit shoulder pocket and carefully removed each one from the pack, trying not to tear the wet paper. He laid them out to dry. Then he rolled onto his side and tried to stretch out. The compartment was too small. At least his ass wasn’t submerged.
A bullet in the head or chest wasn’t a cheery prospect. All these months of planning for the future and now it looked as if there would be no future. Strange how life works, how precarious it is. Right now he wanted water, food and a cigarette. If he got those, then he would want a hot bath and dry clothes. Then a bunk. The wants would keep multiplying, and sooner or later he would be staring at a bulkhead and fretting about insubstantial things, like what the next ready room movie was going to be, his brush with death shoved back into some dark corner in the attic of his mind.
He had faced death before in the air and on the ground, so he knew how it worked. If you survived you had to keep on living — that was a law, like gravity. If you died — well, that was that. Those left behind had to keep on living.
Maybe in the great scheme of things it really didn’t matter very much whether these two blobs of living tissue called Jake Grafton and Flap Le Beau died here or someplace else, died today or next week or in thirty or fifty years. The world would keep on turning, life for everyone else would go on, human history would run exactly the same course either way.
It mattered to Jake, of course. He didn’t want to die. Now or any other time. Presumably Flap felt the same way.
Fuck these pirates! Fuck these assholes! Murdering and stealing without a thought or care for anyone else. If they get theirs, life is good.
As he thought about the pirates Jake Grafton was swept by a cold fury that drove the lethargy from him.
He sat up and looked at Flap, who had also curled up on the deck. He wasn’t asleep either. “We gotta figure out a way to screw these guys good.”
Flap didn’t smile. “Any suggestions?”
“Well, if they shoot us, we sure as hell ought to take a couple of them with us. I don’t think they’ll shoot us in here. Blood and bullet holes would be hard to explain if this ship were ever searched. I figure they’ll take us topside, tie a chain around us and put us over the side. Maybe shoot us first.”
“And…?”
“If we could kill a couple of the bastards we ought to give it a try.”
“Why?”
“Don’t give me that shit!”
“What’s a couple more or less?”
“You’d let them shoot you without a struggle?”
“Not if I have a choice. I’m going to take a lot of killing. But if they want us dead we’re going to end up dead, sooner or later.”
“That’s my point. When I go to meet the devil I want to go in a crowd.”
Flap chuckled. It was a chuckle without mirth. “What I can’t figure out, Grafton, is why the hell you joined the Navy instead of the Marines.”
“The Navy is more high-toned.”
They sat talking for most of an hour, trying to plan a course of action that would kill at least one and hopefully two pirates.
Flap could kill two men in two seconds with his bare hands, Jake assumed, so it seemed that the only real chance they had was for him to cause enough commotion to give Flap those two seconds. He didn’t state this premise, however Flap let it go unchallenged. They hadn’t a chance of surviving, not against assault weapons. But if their captors relaxed, if only for an instant…
When they finally ceased talking, both men were so tired they were almost instantly asleep, curled around each other on the deck because there was no room to stretch out and rocked by the motion of the ship.
About an hour later a jet going over woke them. The thunder of the engines faded, then increased in volume. Then it faded completely and they were left with just the sounds of the ship. The plane did not come back.
The pirates came for Flap and Jake after the sun set. Both men stood when they heard the padlock rattle and assumed positions on opposite sides of the door. When the door opened two men were there with their weapons leveled, ready to fire.
One man motioned with the barrel of his rifle.
Jake went first, with Flap behind. They had discussed it and concluded a fight in the confined interior passageways was too risky. They shuffled along with their heads down, going willingly in the direction indicated.
When they came out on deck they saw land close aboard, just visible in the twilight. The shore was rocky, but the dark jungle began just inland from the rocks. Maybe three hundred yards. The water was flat, without swells. The ship was inside the mouth of a river headed upstream.
The two pirates wanted them to go aft. The deck here was probably only six feet wide. Flap was looking scared and had his hands up about head high. Two men stood on the dark fantail watching them come, their rifles cradled in their arms.