Would-be attorneys used to sit in court, hour after hour, day after day, and so learned the law. We could use an infusion of that, I think. A big one. Let each student of the law attend court for two years before taking the bar exam. Those who failed it then would fail because they knew more than their examiners.
Boris knows more law than I do. He could pass the bar easily—if only they would let him take it. He knows more law, but he does not know courts, does not know the tricks of prosecutors, does not know the sympathies of juries, does not know the judges. He would have to learn those things. But he could.
Would Boris try to get me out if he were here? Yes. I doubt that he would succeed, but I know him and he would try. What about Luis? Perhaps.
What about Chelle? Chelle is here. Chelle counts. We are contracted, and I am rich. Chelle will be single, beautiful, and rich.
She will not come. Why don’t I die?
9. ACHILLE’S MIRACLE
Skip was never sure afterward how long he lay in darkness. Perhaps he slept. Certainly he worried, and toward the end he prayed for death.
Perhaps there had been furtive steps; if so, he had not heard them. Something was moving his arms, ever so slightly. Rats? Rats might be gnawing at his fingers; he would, most probably, feel nothing.
There was a new odor, too—the stink of sour sweat? A new sound, soft grunts widely separated. And then the unmistakable sound of someone spitting.
He turned his head, not far but as far as he could. The darkness was unbroken, and at last he said, “Who is it? Who is that, and what are you doing?”
“My—” The speaker had been interrupted by the sound of gunfire, distant but unmistakable, echoing through the hold.
Skip said, “Who’s shooting? Do you know?”
(One more shot, alone, followed at once by a faint scream.)
“I chew rope, mon. My name Achille.”
“Thank God. There’s a penknife, fairly sharp, in my left-hand trouser pocket.”
“I can no reach in, mon. For this they cut my hands.”
Skip sighed. “And you couldn’t open it if you had it. I understand.”
“I talk, no more chew.”
Seeing the wisdom in that, Skip ventured no further questions. When the rope parted at last, he pulled his hands apart, rolled onto his back, and managed to sit up. His feet were still tied.
“I rest mouth,” Achille said. “No more chew.”
Skip nodded absently—a nod Achille could not have seen—and beat his hands against each other, hoping to restore them to life.
Two shots, then a third.
“You lady, mon. This I think.”
“Chelle?”
“Is so, mon. One mon give slip? He tell lady.”
Somewhere nearby, an automatic weapon fired three short bursts.
Skip was fumbling in his pocket with a hand whose pain was just short of excruciating. He found his knife, and managed to open it with his teeth. Some minutes afterward, he and Achille crept away, hiding in shadows from men who were too busy fighting to notice them.
* * *
Skip scarcely heard the captain; his mind was occupied with the captain’s audience, which he had counted. It was a motley group, a hundred and sixty-two crew members and seventy-four passengers—two hundred and thirty-six in all. The crew members were young and muscular for the most part, mostly male, brown, black, and white. Four fat men in snowy tunics were chefs; they looked resolute, but Skip wondered whether they would fight.
“We were determined,” the captain said, “to avoid any showdown before we reached Grenada and had a chance to send the children and old people ashore. Then too, we hoped the Grenadan police…”
The big woman in the middle of the room was a masseur; the captain had whispered it earlier. Skip tried to recall her name. Trinidad? Something like that.
“This changes everything. Mr. Grison broke free with the help of this man, whom Mr. Grison had hired earlier as an interpreter.”
The captain’s gesture indicated Achille, who raised an arm ending in a hooked and pointed device that might almost have been the head of a medieval weapon.
“They had taken his prosthetics, by the way, but we’ve had a machinist fit him with substitutes that should enable him to fight.”
Vanessa was fidgeting in the front row. The sleek little pistol Chelle had insisted on buying for her suited her perfectly, Skip decided: small and bright, with shiny pearl grips. She turned it over and over in her hands.
“As many of you have heard, Mr. Grison succeeded in finding and freeing three of the men who had gone into the hold without authorization.”
As he watched, Vanessa pushed back one of her long sleeves, revealing the spring holster he had nearly forgotten strapped over what seemed to be livid welts.
“Two were too badly hurt to escape. The other three are with us here. Would you like to hear from them?”
There was a chorus of nods and assents.
“Then you shall. Sergeant Kent-Jermyn. Why don’t you go first?”
The sergeant stood, a rangy man of thirty or so with high cheekbones and cropped brown hair. He clasped his hands behind him. “The captain’s putting me on the spot. That’s okay, I’ve got it coming. It was my show. I lined up the others, good soldiers who wanted to fight. Some are dead, or we think they are. Dave and Greg are going to die unless they get to a medic soon. We all had guns, and the enemy got them. That hurts worse than anything they did to me. I can’t speak for Joe and Don, but if you’re willing to go down there, I’ll go with you. With a gun if I can get one, with whatever I can find if I can’t.”
Skip applauded as he sat down; within a second or two, everyone in the room was clapping and cheering.
The captain raised his hands as soon as one or two people had stopped. “Private Bonham?”
A stocky young man with a wide, cheerful face stood. “I’m no hero. I wanna say that first. Sure, I went down there and shot, and I think I got three. One for sure and two probables. Only when the sarge said we had to give up, I just thought my God I might get out of this alive yet.”
He sat—and stood up at once. “What he said about fighting again, that goes for me, too. You’re going to need us. We know how to skirmish and you don’t, and now they’ve got Mastergunner Blue and how many more?”
Skip said, “Seven ex-soldiers, men and women, went down with her. The hijackers say she’s still alive, and that four others are. We don’t have the other names.”
“I got it, sir.” Bonham’s cheerful face was anything but cheerful. “They’ll rape her. Shit, they’ve raped her already, only there’s guys that don’t just wanna fuck. They wanna beat up on the girl. Biting—all that shit.” He paused to swallow. “I came on this boat hopin’ to get laid, sir, and I got it, too. Three times so far. Only I—well, I try to leave the girl happy, you know?”
Skip nodded. “I understand perfectly.”
Bonham sat again, and the captain said, “Have you anything to add, Corporal Miles?”
He rose, taller than Bonham and serious-looking. His short, dark hair was beginning to thin at the temples. “Yes, sir. Quite a bit, I’m afraid. I’ll make it as quick as I can.”
“Go ahead.”
“When I heard that Mastergunner Blue had come down trying to get us out … Sir, I wanted to go down right then. Just me, and I didn’t even have a gun. Sarge grabbed me and Joe helped hold me, or I would’ve done it. It was crazy, and they made me see that. But Mr. Grison here went down alone—”
“Under a flag of truce,” Skip told him. “I went down hoping to negotiate their surrender.”
“So maybe I could’ve done something. I don’t know. Most likely I’d just have gotten killed.”