"Yeah?" Wallace walked to the storage locker and began pulling out brush and disinfectant.
"Yup. In the old diesel boats, you had to every so often air-load the sanitary tank — pump it up to 700 psi— to vent the waste overboard. They vented the air back into the boat — had to, so they didn't show any bubbles — and that meant one hell of a stink! The charcoal filters were supposed to take care of that, but they never really did the job.
"And heaven help you if you opened the main ball valve on a crapper when they were blowing sanitary! You could get a face-full at 700 pounds per square inch!"
Wallace was on his knees, scrubbing at the first toilet. "I guess it made a mess, huh?"
"A mess? Yeah, you could say that. Thing was, there was a way you could get even with someone you didn't like. There was this one engineering chief — a real asshole. Everybody hated him. He had this habit of yanking the ball valve open while he was still sitting on the throne, y'know? So some parties unnamed one day took the 'secured' sign off the door to the head when a sanitary blow was in progress. This chief walks in, does his thing, opens the ball valve while he's still sitting down, and whoosh! They say it was like a ping-pong ball shot up out of the throat of fuckin' Old Faithful.
"Of course then, certain parties unnamed had to scrub out the head, and that was not pretty. But man, oh, man, was it worth it!" He chuckled. "Too bad you can't do that to old Jerkpatrick, huh?" Kurzweil turned and walked out of the head then, whistling, leaving a thoughtful Wallace to his task.
After an unknown time, they'd come and dragged Kingsfield's body out of the compartment. DuPont had expected some further repercussion, but none occurred… not unless you counted the fact that no one brought them food or water for a long time after that. DuPont had the uneasy feeling that someone on this submarine was thinking hard about his captives… thinking about whether or not it was worth it to keep them alive.
DuPont, once his head had cleared, pounded on the locked door to the room, shouting as loud as he could that he wanted, that he demanded to see the captain, and someone, anyone, who spoke English. He was ignored, and at last he gave in to the pleas of his fellow prisoners. "Look, Mr. DuPont," Schiffer told him. "Up until now, they haven't hurt us. They've just kept us locked in here, and they have to, y'know? They can't let us wander around loose on a submarine! I say we go with the program, keep a low profile, know what I mean? Jesus… now that they've killed one of us, they might decide to do the rest of us, too!"
At long last, a pair of guards showed up, pointed their rifles at DuPont, and ushered him out into the passageway. This time, they turned him right, not left, marching him in the opposite direction from the head. A moment later, he found himself in a crowded, narrow hole of an office, standing in front of a cold-eyed man who, he guessed, must be the captain of this submarine.
"You are DuPont?" the man demanded.
"Yes, sir." There was no need to antagonize the guy, especially if he spoke English.
"I am Commander ul Haq, the captain of this vessel. I am told you wished to speak with me."
DuPont drew a deep breath. "Yes, sir."
"I cannot tell you how long you will be held, or anything of that nature, Mr. DuPont. Essentially, this vessel is at war, and war is filled with uncertainties. I regret that you have been inconvenienced, but that is the way things are."
"I understand that. But I do wish to point out that you won't have many hostages left if you keep all of us inside that closet where you have us now. We can hardly breathe, and the heat is making us sick. Three of the men are down with diarrhea, and could be on the verge of major dehydration. And I don't know how long you'll be able to keep the lid on, either."
" 'Keep the lid on?' What do you mean?"
"It means that the people in that room can't be held responsible for their actions." DuPont was warming to the cadence of his argument now. He'd faced some tough customers over boardroom tables more than once in his career. Now his life, and the lives of those with him, depended on his ability to negotiate from a position of weakness. "If you put too many rats in too small a box, Captain, after a while they start eating one another… and attacking anyone who comes close. They go crazy. That's what's happening in that box right now. That's why one of my people is dead."
"Ah. Yes. What was the man's name?"
"Michael Kingsfield. He was one of my employees."
"He should not have attacked the guard."
"The guy — not the guard, the other guy — shot him in cold blood, Captain! Kingsfield stopped the guard from grabbing one of the women. Then the other guy started shouting, and then the other guy shot him."
"Ah. I had not heard that version of events," ul Haq said. "Normally, I would have no reason to believe you, of course… but I do know Noor Khalili. I gather, from Mr. Khalili's account, that your Kings-field admitted that he was in Afghanistan."
"I don't know. They were both speaking Arabic."
"Kingsfield, I was told, said something about… I believe the expression was 'killing Arabs in Afghanistan.' Noor Khalili is Afghani, Mr. DuPont. He lost family when your nation invaded his. He has… how do you say it? A sword to grind?"
"An 'ax.' An ax to grind. Okay. He doesn't like Americans. The point is, Captain, that Kingsfield was trying to protect one of the women. He got into an argument with this Khalili guy, and Khalili murdered him."
"And… what do you expect me to do about this?"
"Captain ul Haq, we are your prisoners, and that makes us your responsibility. You can decide to just kill us all and be done with it… but if you want to keep us alive for whatever reason, you're going to have to attend to certain conditions."
"What conditions?"
"That closet you have us in is too crowded. You need to put us into at least three rooms that same size."
"That closet, as it happens, is the largest private living compartment on this vessel. It was shared by four of the senior petty officers on board. They must now sleep with the regular enlisted men, to make room for you."
"I appreciate that. There's no room on a submarine, I know that. But the fact remains, you have ten… no, nine, now. Nine people crowded into a room barely big enough for four. We do not have adequate ventilation, and the temperature in there must be over a hundred degrees."
Ul Haq smiled. "You exaggerate. It can scarcely be the temperature of boiling water."
"Oh. I was using Fahrenheit. Celsius would be… I don't know. Thirty? Anyway, it's so hot we're all close to collapse in there. And three of us need medical attention. I don't know, drugs… salt. I don't know what would help. But they're sick and need a doctor."
"We have no doctor on board." He looked thoughtful. "I cannot promise anything, but I will see what can be done. Anything else?"
"Yes. Privacy."
"Privacy?" Ul Haq's eyebrows crept high up his forehead. "On a submarine?"
"We have two women in there. They have no clothing and they can't even go to the bathroom without guards watching everything they do. I thought your Holy Quran taught you better than that! Is this how the Quran teaches you to treat helpless women? Is this what the Quran expects of an honorable warrior?"