“He’s just buying a lottery ticket,” Tomazic countered.
“Ali’s not the most sophisticated man I’ve met lately.”
Tomazic mulled it over for several blocks. “The White House meddled in Task Force 151’s efforts,” he said. “Arguably Admiral Tarkington could have forced the pirates to surrender and we’d have all the hostages back if the White House savants had kept their mouths shut and let Tarkington do his job. When the dust settles, Congress is going to have a field day investigating.”
“There’s that,” Grafton said dryly. “So far, the White House staffers haven’t covered themselves with glory.”
Tomazic grunted.
“Ali’s tale will force their hand,” Grafton continued. “They can’t pay the ransom and hope for the best. Shooting Ragnar isn’t going to solve their problem. They are going to have to send in the marines.”
“So what should I tell them?”
“Tell them they have run out of choices. No more hand-wringing and fretting about what the Europeans will think. No more sitting around worrying about all the things that could go wrong. It’s time to suck it up and fight.”
Captain Arch Penney watched from the bridge as a small armada of fishing boats and skiffs was overloaded with people and sent scurrying across the brown water toward the crumbling piers under the old fortress. Several times the boats were so overloaded that they shipped water over the gunwales, but he didn’t see any sink or overturn. A minor miracle, he thought.
Julie went below, presumably to pack a few things. Mustafa stood beside Penney watching and issuing orders on a small handheld radio. Actually, he seemed to have this evolution organized fairly well, because it came off without a lot of aimless milling around.
The key part of the operation was getting enough food ashore to sustain nine hundred people. The food and cooking utensils were being off-loaded onto skiffs through the port pilot’s landing. The chief steward was in charge of that operation and would undoubtedly do his best.
Penney knew damn well it took a lot of food to keep everyone eating for any length of time. Once food was removed from refrigeration, it wouldn’t last. Mustafa’s remark that Ragnar would sell them food had left him a little queasy. Nine hundred Western stomachs couldn’t make it on roasted goat.
Well, he thought, a little belt-tightening wouldn’t do anyone any harm. As long as they had adequate clean water.
There was little he could do about any of it except argue with Mustafa, and he suspected that would not get him far. Still, even Ragnar and Mustafa al-Said must be smart enough to realize that ransoming dead people was not a viable business.
Finally Mustafa herded Arch below to the captain’s cabin. He and Julie didn’t have any time alone. He was ordered to carry their stuff and prodded off for the pilot’s port where everyone was embarking.
It was only after everyone was off the ship that Ragnar and Mustafa sat down with the passports and began trying to evaluate who they had and how much their lives might be worth. Normally Omar Ali would use his computer wired to the Internet to get this information.
Since Ali was now firmly grasped in the bosom of the Americans, they made do with what they had, which was Mike Rosen.
Ensconced in the e-communications lounge, which Rosen swept clean of broken glass and spent brass while the brain trust noodled over the passports, they looked a little befuddled. Mustafa spoke some English but read little of it. Ragnar, Rosen soon decided, was essentially illiterate. He liked looking at the photos in the passports and studying the stamps to see where the owner had been. He quickly tired of it, though, and let Mustafa do the heavy lifting.
Mustafa soon turned to Rosen.
“We use computer,” he said and gestured to the desk unit in the little office.
Rosen logged on. Went to his e-mail account and found he had over a hundred new messages. He opened the first one, but Mustafa had other ideas.
“No, no, no. We search.” He shoved a passport at Mike. “This man. Type in his name. Find out who he is.”
Rosen didn’t hit the Google search key quickly enough, and Mustafa rapped his knuckles with his pistol barrel.
“You do as I say, and when I say, or I don’t need you anymore.”
Mustafa put the barrel of the weapon flush against Rosen’s left temple and pressed lightly.
“You think you only man use computer?”
Well, he had Rosen there. Probably 90 percent of the passengers and crew were computer literate. Mike made an instant decision to do precisely as Mustafa asked. He had no choice and he knew it.
As he typed names into the Google search engine and printed out search results for Mustafa to study, Mike realized that there was a book in his future. He was going to make a real bundle writing a book. Probably as much as Mustafa al-Said would earn in a lifetime of pirating. Maybe more.
Life isn’t fair.
The old fortress was a ruin, Captain Penney found, but the walls and ceilings were remarkably intact. Crumbling in places, but still habitable. If the roof didn’t fall in.
The old cannons that had once stood in the casements were long gone, if they had ever been installed. The people were herded into these rooms, each of which held thirty or so people.
Unfortunately the place was filthy with the trash of prior tenants—apparently the pirates had used the place as a jail for years—and human waste. There were no restrooms, merely rooms with holes in the floor. From the smell, the cisterns under the holes were not empty.
Penney’s officers had taken charge and were getting the place cleaned, using every able-bodied person. A gunpowder storage room near the center of the structure had had a hole hacked in the overhead at some time in the historic past, so they built a fire under the hole and set up a makeshift kitchen.
The chief steward had even remembered to bring battery-operated emergency lanterns, so they would have a little light at night, as long as the batteries lasted. Just now he handed Julie Penney a cup of tea, then gave one to the captain.
A grateful Arch Penney greedily sipped the sweet hot liquid.
“Don’t stint on the food,” Penney told the steward. “Use it before it spoils. Where are you going to get water?”
“There’s a well behind this place. You lower a bucket.”
“How are you going to purify it?”
“Only way we can. Boil it.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll do our best, sir,” the man said. That simple statement and the trust it implied brought a wave of emotion over Penney. Fortunately the light was so bad no one could see his face. His wife, who was holding his hand, sensed how he felt and squeezed his hand.
Most of the passengers acknowledged his presence with a nod or word and let him move on. A few wanted a lot more.
One old lady, whose name Penney didn’t know, gave him a blast. “I want to tell you right now, young man, that this outrage is your fault. Do you know that there are rats here? Right where we are going to sleep! Rats! It’s your fault, and your company’s fault. You people said this cruise was safe. When I get home, I intend to sue your company, and you, for every penny you people have or ever hope to get.”
“Yes, ma’am. That is certainly your right.”
“I know my rights, Captain, and I don’t need you telling me what they are. A damned outrage, that’s what this is. People are going to get sick and catch their death in this squalid building. And it’s all your people’s fault.”
Penney’s wife was tugging at his hand, trying to get him to move. “Don’t forget the pirates, ma’am. You might want to include them in your suit. Except for the rats, lovely accommodations, don’t you think?”