Pita and Tretter whispered a moment. Then she stood up from the shadows and limped badly as she moved into the soft glow of the ship's lights, working toward the vessel just in front of the squared-off helicopter hangar. She had almost gotten to the side of the Turner when the soldier they had seen with a rifle came running up with his weapon at the ready.
"What the hell you doing, woman?" the sentry called from the ship.
"Oh, I didn't see you. I fell over there, broke my ankle, I think. Can you help me?"
"How? Can't leave my post."
"Maybe somebody else?"
"Only one damn guard awake. The sarge is sleeping. What the hell?"
Pita opened her blouse. "You want me, I'll be glad to fuck you if you help me first. I need my ankle splinted or bandaged."
"Damn! I can't come down there."
"We can fuck right here in the shadows after you help me."
"Oh, damn." The sentry looked around. "Maybe just…" He looked along the deck, then jumped down the two feet to the dock and knelt beside her. She was close to the edge of the pier, and he had to put his back to the far side of the dock where the sailors waited.
Tretter began to move as soon as the soldier laid down his rifle and began to examine her ankle. Tretter ran forward like a shadow without a sound. The first thing the Kenyan ranger knew of any danger was when the side of a brick slammed down on his head. He slumped to the dock before he could cry out.
Pita pulled a knife from her skirt and stabbed the soldier, then sliced his throat.
"Into the bay," she whispered. Tretter searched the man's pockets and brought out three magazines for the rifle. Then Pita and Tretter rolled the body over the small berm and into the water between the ship and the pier.
When the soldier crumpled on the dock, the other two sailors ran for the ship. They both jumped on board, and pressed against the bulkhead near the quarterdeck door. Tretter kissed Pita and pushed her toward the shadows where they had hidden. She was supposed to go directly to her apartment.
Tretter jumped on board the ship with the dead ranger's AK-47 and three magazines of ammo. He pasted himself against the bulkhead just forward of the quarterdeck.
They had agreed to take a look at the in-port operational center and see if anyone was on duty, then do a quick look for another guard. If they found none, they would move to their hiding spot.
Perez took three steps to the quarterdeck door on the starboard side. They watched both ways. Nothing moved on the weather deck. They heard nothing. Perez edged his head around the opening until he could see into the passageway. Somebody had turned on the red lights, and he could make out the area. He saw no one. Then a moment later he spotted a figure leaning back in a swivel chair that Perez figured had been in the Captain's quarters.
The man in the chair gave off a soft wheeze of snoring.
Perez had never killed a man. He set his jaw and waved the other two sailors forward, then slipped inside the quarter deck and with soft, cautious footsteps approached the sleeping man. He had the revolver in his left hand, and in his right he held one of Pita's eight-inch-long butcher knives.
He took a deep breath, and surged forward the last six feet. He held the butcher knife like a saber, so it extended straight out from his hand. It gave him a three-foot-long lance. He drove forward and the knife hit the green shirt of the Kenyan ranger, glanced a quarter of an inch off a rib, and plunged into the sergeant's heart. The Kenyan almost woke up, his eyes blinked, and then he gave a long sigh as the last breath he would ever take came gushing out of his lungs.
At the same time his bowels emptied and his bladder gushed as all muscle control over them relaxed.
They had agreed to leave anyone they killed on the deck in place. Too much trouble and too much noise to try to get a body overboard.
Vuylsteke nodded at Perez as he ran up. He took an automatic shotgun from the big sergeant along with two U.S. Navy sacks of shotgun shells with the bandoleer-type loop that went over his head. Each sack should have fifteen rounds. They saw nothing else of value, and hurried down the passageway.
Midships of the quarterdeck companionway, they stopped at a ladder that descended one deck to where they could move on down to the auxiliary machine engine storage space just above the bilges.
The three crept down the ladder silently, made a turn, and a few moments later had continued into the bowels of the ship. They slipped under the steel grate just over the bilges. The grate held all sorts of spare compressors, pumps, valves, and other types of auxiliary engineering equipment.
The space between the steel overhead and their luxury quarters in the bilges was less than eighteen inches. They squirmed in and lay down, trying to avoid the small puddles of oil and water that had drained from above them. "Damn tight," Vuylsteke said.
"Yeah, but safe," Tretter said. "No fucking Kenyan is ever gonna come down here. Even if they did, they could be standing right on top of us there and never know we were down here."
Above them, and all around the engine room, equipment hummed along doing its designed duty, which wasn't much now. Mostly there were generators maintaining the batteries, and a few bilge pumps.
Perez lay a short way from the other two. He was at the spot where there was one true access into the bilges under the platform. But only an experienced Turner crewman who was supposed to check that area every few hours would know how to find it.
"So we're on," Vuylsteke said. He was still senior noncom in the trio and felt some responsibility. "We get some sleep now and wait until tomorrow and see what kind of hell we've raised. Be damn nice to be a fly on the wall somewhere when they wake up and find both their watch guys dead as road-kill skunks in July."
Perez laughed softly. "Oh, yeah. Did you see how Pita did in that Kenyan ranger? Damn, if there's a fight, I want her to be on my side."
Tretter tried to find a comfortable spot. "Fucking hard steel is giving me fits. Perez, can you find any blankets or padding or anything soft up there in that engineering area that we can lay on? Hell, we got us fourteen, sixteen hours to stay in this place."
Vuylsteke waved at Perez. "Yeah, see what you can find. Nobody gonna be down here for hours, maybe not at all."
Perez groaned, but moved up to the grating. They could hear him walking around. Five minutes later, he came down with three blankets, two pillows, and a pair of flashlights.
"Damned engineers getting soft," he said. "I found them so I get a pillow. You guys can fight over the other one."
"Let's figure out what to do next," Vuylsteke said. "Is tonight a done deal, or do we go topside and make some more trouble?"
"How?" Perez asked. "We don't even know where the fuck these guys are bunked down."
"We could check the coops," Tretter said.
"Hell, they'll be in the Captain's cabin and officer country," Vuylsteke said. "How many you suppose are here?"
"My guess, two dozen," Perez said. "Not enough to defend the ship, but they won't expect an attack on her from the Navy since they got all of them hostages."
"Hey, just thought that we didn't see any dead bodies up there," Tretter said. "We figured there must have been a hundred and fifty of our guys got on the buses. Where the hell are the others?"
"Overboard," Vuylsteke said. "They probably tossed the dead and bad wounded into the bay." He paused, and they thought about that. "So, what the hell are we going to do next?"
"Still got a lot of night left — two, three hours," Perez said. "Let's go find some of these murdering shitheads and kick ass."