“The four of us were about as close as friends could be. Molly was so jealous when Colin proposed to me the day we departed. He got down on one knee on the fantail of the Horizon in Bordeaux as the sun set behind us, gave me a ring he’d forged himself in the metallics laboratory.”
Jonah found himself gulping, trying to square his unconscious attraction to Klea with the specter of her martyred fiancé. He tried to look away but his eyes stayed locked with hers. Then, glancing away in discomfort, he found himself looking for a ring on Klea’s left hand. Klea caught him and waved the ringless hand in his face.
“It was stolen,” said Klea. “Ripped it right off my finger while others ran their hands through my pockets. Probably on the hand of some… pirate wench.”
Both Klea and Jonah simultaneously broke out in stifled laughter.
“A very lucky pirate wench.”
“The bitch had better appreciate it,” said Klea, still smiling. “So there we are, we’re making good time — not as good as Colin had hoped, but we were still on track to make the record, especially if we gained time during a spate of good weather we had anticipated over the following weeks. We’d already passed the point where we were closest to the Somali coast; we figured we were more or less in the clear. Still pretty stressful, but the worst should have been over. Colin was piloting, Kyle was in his bunk with Molly. I was on the fantail doing the fuel consumption calculations.
“That’s when I saw this glint in the distance, a single speedboat approaching us. We were out in the middle of nowhere, there should have been nobody and nothing around. I got curious and grabbed my binoculars. When I got a good look, it dawned on me that we were being stalked by a pirate ship. We heard this foreign language over the radio; I realize they’d called in other skiffs. They had a mothership on a scouting expedition in the area and were trying to box us in. We changed course, increased speed to maximum but they gained on us. Soon, there were two other boats chasing us.
“Everybody was up at this point. Molly was freaking out, Colin was more scared than I’d ever seen him, he and Kyle were yelling at each other while trying to squeeze just a few extra knots out of the engines. I was on the fantail, watching. The pirates started falling back, losing ground. Kyle and Colin got excited, they started whooping and hollering. They were already rehearsing the war stories they’d tell at the Miracle.”
“The what?”
“The Miracle of Science,” said Klea. “It’s an MIT bar. Our hangout spot. They’ve got a drink menu that looks like the periodic table of elements.”
“Ah,” said Jonah.
“Suddenly, I realized that we were not outrunning the speedboats. They were hanging back, getting into position. Getting ready to take a run at us. Molly stormed out of the cockpit, started yelling at me to come inside. The speedboats came towards us at full speed, firing guns at the Horizon. Molly just stood there, mouth hanging open and got hit twice in the chest. I’d never seen someone get shot before, not even in Kosovo. I was on my stomach, trying to find somewhere to hide. Kyle came running out, trying to drag Molly inside. He got her inside the cockpit but was shot in the back. He made this long, awful sound and dropped to all fours. I saw him crawling away and I never saw him again.
“I realized the pirates weren’t aiming at me because they thought I was already dead, I was just lying there on the deck doing nothing. They pulled back. What was really frustrating was how arbitrary it all was. They decided everything, when to attack, when to stop. We couldn’t fight back; we were just a bunch of college students. I couldn’t even tell what the pirates were trying to do. Were they trying to disable the ship? If so, why fire at us? Were they just trying to kill us? Then why were they shooting at the ship, too?
“At this point, I was too scared to move. Colin stepped over Molly to get to me, almost tripped over her body. He was trying to get me to move, to come inside. I wouldn’t do it. And then I saw his shirt, he’d been shot twice through the abdomen. He was white as a sheet, losing blood. He got woozy, went down to his knees. Then he was out, eyes rolling back into his head, breathing fast and shallow. I tried to remember what Molly told me to do, find the entrance and exit wounds, stop the bleeding. I stripped off part of his shirt but couldn’t make sense of anything. The Horizon was bouncing off waves, going way too fast, the engines were howling, there was blood everywhere, and I couldn’t even find out where it was coming from.”
“Jesus.”
“Then I took out my cell phone,” said Klea. “I still have no idea why I did this. Maybe the idea of leaving no record was unbearable. I was certain Colin was dead. Molly definitely was and Kyle had crawled off somewhere to die.”
“But you were alive.”
Klea pulled her shirt up to reveal one long, ugly scar against the left side of her toned abdomen.
“I didn’t even notice it,” she said. “Worst scar I have, and I don’t even know how it happened. So I had my cell phone. I recorded this ridiculous message on video. No memory whatsoever of what I actually said. I ran below decks. I didn’t see Kyle, but I saw a long blood trail where he’d dragged himself away. I found an empty mayo jar. I popped the cell phone in the jar and chucked it overboard. By the time I made it back up on the fantail, the pirates had boarded.”
“What did they do?”
“They did what pirates have done for centuries. Went through my pockets, beat me, stripped away my clothes. I started screaming out every prayer I knew from childhood, screaming in Arabic as loud as I could. They stopped beating me, stopped ripping my clothes. After that, they really didn’t know what to do with me. There wasn’t much of a plan. They gave me a veil and stuck me in a shipping container for a few weeks, then moved me back on the Horizon in the middle of their harbor.”
“You’ve been out here a long time,” said Jonah.
“But it didn’t end there,” she said. “I spent years living in Colin’s mausoleum. It was like being buried in his grave, him dead next to me and me clawing at the lid of the coffin. Every morning I would wake up in the bed we once shared. Every day, I would walk past the chair where he’d piloted the Horizon. I would sit for hours in the same spot he took his last breath. I saw Colin everywhere. You ever love someone like that?”
“No,” he lied.
Klea turned away, refusing to allow Jonah to see her cry. And for just a moment, the briefest of moments, Jonah wished he’d told her the truth.
“What happens next?” she asked. “How long can we hold out?”
“I’ll spare you the list of potential sufferings,” said Jonah. “At least we have water for a few days, maybe longer if we ration it wisely.”
“Food?”
“Don’t worry about food,” said Jonah. “Given our shared histories, I think we’re well-suited for some temporary starvation.”
“Not much to eat in a pirate compound. I suppose the same rings true for a Moroccan prison.”
“Yeah. There’s going to come a time — maybe soon — when we don’t want to carry on the struggle. When that time comes…”
Jonah trailed off. He drew the pistol from his belt with one hand, the two remaining bullets with the other. The implication was clear. There was no need to unnecessarily prolong their ordeal.
Angry, Klea tried to snatch the weapon away from him.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m throwing it overboard,” she said. “I’m not finished yet.”