He coughed. “Nobody’s talked about tactics, so I’m going to. There’s three freight elevators go down there. There’s a couple ladders, too. I saw one when I was down there, and I talked to this lieutenant about an hour ago, Mr. Reuben. He said there are two, one forward and one aft so anybody down there can get out if the elevators lose power. There’s elevators forward, aft, and in the middle—amidships is how they say it. You can get maybe ten guys onto each elevator. Not much more than that.”
He glanced at Kent-Jermyn. “Am I running on too long, Sarge?”
Skip (who had been staring at Achille) said loudly, “Keep talking, Corporal.”
“Thank you, sir. Okay, they’ve got barricades set up in front of the elevators. Only one or two guys at each barricade, but you’ve got to get over the barricades first, and that was where we lost men. The ones who were watching our barricade started shooting, and the rest came on the run. They don’t watch the ladders much, but anybody who tried to go down those would be a sitting duck. So what I say is that if we’re going to rush them, we’ve got to have at least thirty men with guns. Put ten on each elevator and send all three down at the same time. Give me a gun, and I’ll take one elevator.” He sat down.
The captain said, “Thank you. Anyone else?”
A sailor raised his hand. “Most people would take a hour getting down those ladders, sir. Not me and my mates. You’ve seen us on the ratlifts, and I’ve been down there working a hell of a lot. We’d have fifty topmen at the bottom of one of them ladders faster ’n you’d believe.”
Half a dozen others assented.
“Thank you.” The captain’s gaze roved the room. “Does anyone else want to propose a plan?”
No one spoke.
“All right, then. I’m going to meet with Mr. Grison to discuss one. I want you to stay here. Mr. Valentine has been working on the weapons problem. He’ll share out what he has and talk to the rest of you about arming yourselves now, and after the fighting starts.”
It was the tearoom, the room in which Skip and Chelle had conferred with the captain and Vanessa earlier. “I can get us coffee if you like,” the captain said.
Achille nodded with enthusiasm.
Seeing it, Skip said, “Please. And something to eat, if you can manage that.”
The captain made a call. When he had hung up, he eyed Achille frostily. “You don’t need an interpreter when you talk to me. Why did you bring him?”
“Because I realized during the meeting that he had done something that seemed close to impossible. When you sent me down to negotiate with the hijackers, he came with me. He was the one they had sent to tell us about their prisoners, and I thought he might be useful. As he proved to be much later.”
“He freed your hands? I know you said that.”
“Correct. Chelle was attacking while I was trying to get loose, and he told me that one of Kent-Jermyn’s men—Angel Mendoza—had escaped and told Chelle about the rest. Just now it struck me that he must have gone back up here while I was lying in the hold in the dark. He hadn’t known that Mendoza had talked to Chelle when he showed me his list of names—he would surely have mentioned it. But he knew it when he freed me. Obviously, he hadn’t been hiding in the hold all that time, which was what I had assumed.”
Skip turned to Achille. “You were in the freight elevator with me. I went out with my hands up, and that was the last I saw of you. Where did you go?”
“Up here, mon. Is big drum in elevator.”
“A big stainless beverage drum. Yes, I remember.”
“I hide back of him. When they take you away, I go back up. Talk lady.”
The captain said, “How did you get back down there?”
“I slide in air pipe, mon.”
Skip said, “You would have had one hell of a fall if the hold had been empty.”
Achille shrugged, and the captain said, “It isn’t. We’ve supplies enough to get us to Melbourne even if we run into a good deal of bad weather.”
“I was hoping,” Skip said slowly, “to get something we could use. As it is…”
The captain said, “We send ten fighters down in each elevator, and send the topmen down the ladders at the same time. Or we wait until we reach Grenada—and pray to God we don’t run into storms. You want to do the first, and I want the second. That’s what we have to thrash out.”
Gloomily, Skip nodded. “Thirty armed men and women in the elevators, plus the topmen on the ladders. Say thirty down each ladder. How many guns have we got?”
“Twenty-one, plus your pistol and your machine gun. So twenty-three altogether.” The captain’s face looked longer than ever. “You’ll be on one of the elevators?”
“Certainly. You’re counting Chelle’s mother’s little pistol?”
“I’m counting everything, including my own gun. We gained thirty-one in the initial fighting—I’m including your machine gun. I had six in the arms chest in my cabin, making thirty-seven. Your Chelle and Virginia had two more, making thirty-nine. We lost eight when that sergeant and his men went into the hold without authorization, leaving thirty-one. We lost eight more when your Chelle went down as well, leaving twenty-three.”
“Chelle had her own gun,” Skip said wearily.
“I’m counting that. She took seven other soldiers and former soldiers with her, giving the hijackers another eight guns.”
When Skip said nothing, the captain added, “So twenty-three people who can shoot will have guns, if we follow your plan. That’s what Valentine is telling the group right now. The rest will have knives and clubs, and they will be told to try to pick up guns as the fighting progresses. You may like that picture—”
“I don’t.”
“Nor do I. We could turn out their lights down there. That might help. I don’t know.”
“It might hurt more than it helped,” Skip said. “I think it would.”
“We could block their ventilators, too. That would at least make them uncomfortable.”
“After which they would threaten to kill Chelle if we didn’t—”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’ll be our coffee,” the captain said, and added loudly, “Come in!”
The young officer who opened the door had no coffee. “There’s a boatload of Mexicans alongside, sir,” he said. “They say they’ve come to rescue us.”
REFLECTION 9: A New Plan
That was the wrong meeting. Nothing of importance was decided. Nothing happened. The one that mattered was the meeting we held after Mick and Soriano came aboard with their men—with their men and one woman. That was the meeting that mattered, but I was so exhausted by that time that I can’t remember who said what or even just what part I played in the discussions.
I know we shaped our plan in that meeting—my plan. I suggested it first and Soriano seized it, adding details. We’d need the best fighters, and a few good-looking women who would fight. We would not have to have me, Soriano said. I could remain on the deck above, I could wait for them on M Deck in safety.
I knew I had to go. My guts melted to slush while I argued with them, and it was all I could do to keep my voice steady and meet their eyes. I spoke just the same, knowing how bad I looked and how bad I sounded. “I’ve got to go.” I repeated that over and over. “I’ve been down there and I escaped from them. You’re going to need me. You’ve got to bring me along, dammit. Got to!”
It brought out the angels. Angel Mendoza was first. When I admitted I knew no Spanish, he said he’d go with me, tied up just like I would be, and interpret for me. Mick was standing beside me before Angel had finished. He was going to go, too, he said, leading the anglos he’d enlisted in the scant hours before his plane left Boswash.
I said we’d take only those who volunteered. A dozen of Soriano’s men volunteered at once; he said he’d make thirteen, an unlucky number, and in the end we took only ten. We’d need more, I said, more prisoners, and Soriano agreed. Don and Joe volunteered at once, with Sergeant Kent-Jermyn. After that, it was like pulling teeth. It was after we had gotten a few more men, all of them crew, that Soriano said we ought to have women, a few good-looking women that the hijackers would ache for. Vanessa’s hand shot up. There were tears in her eyes; one caught the light, and I’ll never forget it. The poor woman! The poor, poor woman!