“Why would they wait at all?” Peary asked. “Why not just torture us as soon as they can?”
The Poet smiled gently. “Because information gathered by consent, even if it is through passive coercion, barter, or some other method is generally more accurate and trustworthy than information gained strictly by torture. People being tortured will say anything to make it stop.”
“Right then,” Peary said. “We should know when the critical time has arrived, and we’ll just have to hope they save the worst of it for the morning so we can move on them at night.”
The Poet nodded.
Peary inhaled deeply and then exhaled. “So during the night—the night before we think things are going to go bad—sometime after the supplies have arrived, we get to the dive suits, and dive. We come up inside the supply tent. We find or fashion a bomb, and then we walk into the command tent and make our demands.”
“Agreed,” the Poet said. “So… what demands will we make? Let’s make them good!” He smiled, but it seemed the others were not in a joking mood.
“I don’t understand,” Marisa said. “If we can get out and get our dive suits, why don’t we just escape?”
“Because we’d be right back where we are now,” Peary said. “They’ll just catch us again.”
“But if we can get bombs, we can blow up their sarfers so they can’t follow us,” she said.
“We’d never get all of them,” the old man said. “No way. And whoever we left alive would catch us again and things would be worse for us.”
“So we’re all going to just blow ourselves up?”
“If we have to. But it doesn’t have to be all of us, Marisa,” Peary said. “You can go now.”
“I won’t.”
“What if I promised to take them to Danvar?” Peary said. “And try to escape along the way to get back to you?”
Marisa smirked. “You just said yourself that wouldn’t work.”
The Poet interrupted the conversation. “We’ll demand to be released, and we’ll take the bomb with us. We’ll tell them if they follow us and get too close, we’ll blow them—and ourselves—to pieces.”
The three plotters stared at one another, eyes darting back and forth. One way or another, the tension of the journey was soon to be relieved.
“All right then,” the Poet said finally. “It seems we have a plan.”
“Yep,” Peary said. “If we can’t have the spoils of Danvar—we, who earned them righteously—then we’ll at least make sure these pirates never touch them.”
Cornered
Chapter Twenty
The three friends were seated at the base of the dunes on the edge of the valley, the bags of coin at their feet, when the pirates arrived. Cord was at the head of the brigands and seemed to be in charge, and when he saw Peary and the bags of coin he just smiled.
“Appreciate you watching our coin for us, diver,” Cord said with a grin. “Where’s your wounded friend?”
“Died a few days ago,” Peary answered.
“Too bad,” Cord said. “Really surprised to catch you three together. We expected the old man might have sacrificed himself so you and the missus could gain speed.” He nodded at the Poet. “Guess he didn’t have it in him.”
“You’d have caught them and killed them anyway,” the Poet said flatly.
Cord nodded. “We can’t all be heroic, old man, and, well… you’re right about that.”
“Just take the coin and go!” Peary shouted. Anger flushed his cheeks as his eyes darted across the faces of the pirates. He noted the sly grins his words put on their faces. The old man was right. They had no intention of ever letting their captives go.
“Oh yes,” Cord said, and then lied, “we’ll be letting you go. But there are things we need to talk about first. Business. Give us a few days, will you? Then we’ll let you go.”
The period at the end of his sentence was emphasized by the cry of the sand hawk in the distance.
The captives were kept in a low tent with no carpet or tarp for a floor. The screened windows had their flaps tied up to let the breeze through. Sand flies buzzed here and there, never quite giving up or going away.
Every few hours one of the three would be retrieved by a pirate and taken to the leader’s tent to be questioned. For the most part, at least in the beginning, the interrogations were carried out without violence. Threats… plenty of those. But no violence.
Each of the captives stuck to their story.
Yes, the map that Peary had given to Joel accurately showed the location of the part of Danvar that the divers had discovered. No, they didn’t think anyone else had yet located the find. Yes, they were certain they hadn’t told anyone else. No, they were not interested in guiding the pirates to the treasure.
After the first long night, Peary was sure that the torture—and worse—would begin soon enough. Maybe tomorrow, he thought. Maybe tomorrow they stop beating around the bush and start beating the captives.
According to the Poet, the brigands would plan on resting for two or three full days, so if they were planning on getting answers from their captives, the brutality had to begin soon.
But the pirates weren’t in a hurry. On the second day, the tri-hulls and sand-skidders arrived with supplies, which were unloaded and deposited into the supply tent. Around noon, the questioning proceeded as before, though the threats became more specific, and both Peary and the old man were slapped a few times when their answers didn’t satisfy Cord’s curiosity.
When Marisa was returned to the tent after her interrogation, Peary noted the red splotch on her left cheek, and her downcast eyes told him that things had gotten much more serious this time. When she saw him looking, she smiled and shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t that bad. That smile made him feel better, and the rage that was boiling up in him abated just a bit. But not completely. Just enough to keep him from doing anything stupid.
As the blue-gray and then black shadow of night fell on the end of the second day, the three friends knew it was time to activate their plan. They wouldn’t make it through another day of interrogation, especially if the pirates planned on heading north the next day.
Something has to give, Peary thought. So tonight has to be the night.
A look from the Poet told him that he was right.
The place where they’d buried the dive suits was partially under their tent. The Poet had been dead accurate in his estimation of how the brigands would arrange their camp.
Peary and the Poet suited up in silence as Marisa watched. The party in the command tent had sputtered out, and the camp was now mostly quiet, save for the occasional stirring of men going out to piss on a dune, or the grunt of a drunk being shoved aside to make room for someone to lie down.
The plan was to make their way under the sand to the supply tent, where they’d try to steal some explosives and make a bomb big enough to kill everyone in the camp. Their own selves included, if that became necessary. That was the plan. Get away, or die trying.
The Poet activated his suit first, and without a wink or a nod he disappeared beneath the sand. Peary looked at Marisa and smiled, and when she returned his smile, he slapped the button on his chest and started to move the sand. Before he could dive down though, Marisa moved stealthily to his side and embraced him. He squeezed her in reply and then gently pushed her away. The sand softened beneath him, and he nodded at her as he sank down. Their hands remained touching until Peary was completely immersed beneath the sand.