The Pirate (11 page)

“That sounds…”

“Scary, Daphne. It was scary and I've seen some things that a man shouldn't have to and it scared me.”

She reached over and patted Rudy's arm. He was a tough guy and to hear him say he was scared…“Do you ever wish you'd stayed in South America?”

“Not at all. I was dying there.”

She nodded. “I…it doesn't really compare but when my husband and I divorced I felt the same way.”

“It does compare. The death of a relationship is hard whether your lover dies or just decides to leave.”

She nodded. For all his tough and gruff ways Rudy had comforted her with his words more than her friends who'd just said that Paul was an ass.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“We're going to have to preserve the body until we can get it out of here. Are any of the freezers big enough?”

“I'll check.”

Daphne walked over to where Laz and Jamac were standing. “I'm afraid Fridtjof didn't make it. The wound to his inferior vena cava was fatal.”

Jamac nodded and then looked over her shoulder, to where Jerry was still working over Bob.

“What of your comrade?”

“I don't know. His injury was severe. I'm not sure if Jerry can repair it. Why?”

“Why can your friend be saved but not mine?” Jamac asked.

“If we had a better operating table I would have saved him. The wound hit a major vein. There was no way to stop the bleeding and repair it.”

“Maybe Dr. Jerry is just better than you are.”

Daphne looked at Jamac and fought the urge to punch the man. She was shocked at how violent her thoughts were but she was on the knife's edge. She was tired and scared and had just lost a patient. A man that she had known though she didn't like him. It was hard.

“I can't talk to a man who is this ignorant. We need to figure out where to store the body until we get to port.”

“Leave him. My men will take care of it.”

“Fine,” Daphne said and walked away. Rudy waited near Fridjtof's body.

“What do they want us to do?”

“Nothing. They will see to it. Jamac thinks that Fridjtof may have died because I'm a woman.”

Rudy shook his head. “That's ridiculous. Jerry couldn't have saved him.”

Daphne nodded and walked away. The mess hall was smaller than the hold and there were too many people in here now that she wasn't operating. She needed some privacy and everywhere she looked there were men with guns and flashlights. The smell of blood was overwhelming and she thought she could sense death in the air.

 

Laz felt the tension in Jamac as Daphne walked away, and though a part of him wanted to comfort her, he knew that this situation was about to go from sugar to shit. Damn. He didn't need this now.

He turned away from Jamac as the other man spoke in Portuguese to one of his men.

“Savage?” Laz said under his breath.

“Ten minutes. I heard that one of the pirates died. Keep the woman close to you. I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to punish her for the death.”

“Will do.”

Laz glanced over at Hamm to see if he'd heard the exchange and he noticed the other man was moving toward Daphne. In fifteen minutes a lot could change. Having Savage and the team en route was a nice fallback but it didn't help the situation now. And Daphne was in danger.

He stepped away from the door and was walking toward Daphne when Jamac stopped him. “You stay here, Captain.”

“Bring the woman to me,” Jamac said. Hamm was close to her but not close enough. One of the pirates who'd held the flashlight for Daphne now grabbed her. She struggled, trying to pull away, but couldn't escape his strong grip.

Laz walked over to them intent on stopping Daphne from being taken but felt the barrel of a gun in the small of his back.

“Don't interfere.”

He glanced over at Jamac but before he could act Jerry spoke up.

“I need her help. Send her over here.”

“Too late for that. The doctor needs to come with me. Take her up on deck, Michel.”

Michel forced Daphne across the galley. Laz couldn't move. He had no doubt that Jamac would shoot him if he moved. He needed to wait until the other man was distracted. There had been enough bloodshed today. And he wasn't going to let Daphne be part of it.

Hamm stood a little more alertly than before. It was a bit frustrating that the other man hadn't moved to protect Daphne before Michel had gotten to her. But Laz didn't waste time on regrets.

“He will die,” Jerry said, referring to Bob.

“I don't care,” Jamac said. “If you continue to argue you can stop what you are doing and join us on deck as well.”

Daphne looked over at him. “No, you take care of Bob. I'll be fine.”

Laz wondered if it was simply wishful thinking that had motivated her comments. She had to know that Jamac was probably going to try to kill her.

“Savage?”

“We copied everything. Mann has the situation under control.”

“I'm going up to the deck.”

“Don't do anything stupid.”

“Hey, it's me.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Savage said.

As soon as Michel and Jamac left the galley, Hamm made his move to overpower one of the pirates. Laz joined in the fray, not wanting to leave this situation until he was sure that Hamm had the upper hand.

He was afraid for Daphne and fear was something new to him. He'd spent a lifetime pretending that nothing and no one mattered to him and now he was going to have to admit to himself that she did.

A woman was the thing that would make him experience fear. It fit with what he'd always believed he'd find when he found that one woman. The woman who would make the sacrifices he'd made worthwhile, he thought.

He had someone he wanted to go home to.

D
aphne had never been as scared as she was at this moment. She had no idea what would happen once she was on deck. Jerry had tried to help her and she'd seen Laz give Hamm a signal of some kind but she wasn't sure that meant he'd try to rescue her. And as out of control as things were on the tanker right now, she wasn't even sure she was even a priority to him.

She shook her head as Jamac's hands tightened on her arm and he shoved her up the gangway in front of him. She knew that she was important to Laz. She didn't kid herself that he was going to let her die up here without at least trying to rescue her.

She had to be ready. She had to help him in whatever way she could. But honestly she was drained, and as a wave of humid air hit her face she felt like fighting was the last thing she wanted to do. She knew that her boys were safe with their father in his home in the States.

Laz would survive without her and she was ready to just give up until they dragged her across the deck of the tanker and she heard the sound of the approaching chopper.

She lifted her head toward the sound of the twin jet engines. It made very distinctive sounds as it approached the tanker. A large waft of air circulated on the deck as it touched down. She stepped backward as the door opened and a man stepped out of a Eurocopter. This had to be the pirate king. The man that Laz and his team were trying to trap.

“Is that your boss?” Daphne asked.

“Yes, missy, and he is the one who wanted to see the murderer who killed Fridjtof.”

She shuddered as Jamac started to laugh. She wasn't a murderer and she knew she was dealing with men who might see it differently. Fear choked her and made her knees weak but she knew she couldn't show that fear to Jamac.

“I didn't kill your comrade. I tried to save him.”

“Save your breath.”

She did. Jamac's body language changed as the chopper landed. He was no longer the man in charge but someone waiting for his boss. Daphne had seen this many times in D.C. There was always a bigger dog, she thought. There was no arguing with a madman and perhaps Jamac's boss would be more open to listening.

He stepped out of the chopper and stood on the deck for a moment. He had midnight dark skin and his head was completely bare of hair. He was tall—at least her height—and he had a long scar that ran along the right side of his face. Wire-rimmed aviator sunglasses concealed his eyes.

He held himself with authority and wore the success he had carved out for himself like a cloak. As he moved she saw the way the pirates on the deck bowed and were ready to do whatever he asked.

This was no mismatched group of untrained desperate men who were hoping to eke out some money. These were men who were highly trained. The fact that Laz had set a trap for them worried her.

Did he know how well trained these pirates were?

Would he still attempt to rescue her from a man such as this one?

“Bonjour, Madame,” he said to her.

“Bonjour,” she replied.

He turned to Jamac and spoke to the man in a dialect she now recognized as Portuguese, but the words were gibberish to her. Her own fear was growing by the minute.

Would they let her explain that the severity of the injury made it nearly impossible for anyone to have saved Fridjtof.

“I tried to save Fridjtof,” she said. Waiting wasn't her style and standing while they discussed her fate wasn't an option for her.

“Madame?”

“I just wanted to let you know I did everything I could to save him. I'm a pediatrician, not a surgeon, and the wound was…well, it was fatal. I can't think of a surgeon who could have saved him even in the best rated trauma facilities.”

“Are you under the impression that you will be punished for letting one of my men die?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “No one will die because of that man's stupidity. Guns shouldn't be in the hands of our hostages, which Fridjtof learned the hard way. Jamac, have you made sure that everyone is unarmed?”

Jamac said something she couldn't understand and a terse conversation between the two men left her alone a minute later with the pirate king.

He removed his sunglasses and she found herself staring into midnight black eyes. She thought he didn't look like a madman.

But then she'd heard that Ted Bundy had nice eyes and he'd been a serial killer.

“I am Abdu Samatan and I would never harm a woman for another man's mistake,” he said to her. Taking her hand in his, he kissed the back of it.

“Daphne Bennett,” she said. “Doctor Daphne Bennett. I'm with Doctors Across Waters. We really have no political affiliation at all. We are a humanitarian group who provides much-needed medical care to people in countries without the means to provide it to their people. Somalia is one such country.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Daphne. I think you will find that you and I aren't that different.”

She shook her head. “I would never use someone else to achieve my goals.”

“Yet I have no choice. The reason why you are needed in Somalia is the same reason my men have taken this ship. There is no government looking out for the people of my homeland. No one to provide for them except me and men like me. We are the only source of income for our villages.”

She took a deep breath as she did not feel safe as Abdu spoke to her. He saw himself as a modern-day Robin Hood; she looked at him and just saw a dangerous man who would do whatever he had to in order to survive.

Where was Laz? Had he been recaptured by Jamac as the other man went back belowdecks? She had depended on him to save her and now she was on her own. She had been in tense situations before. Hell, she lived inside the beltway in D.C. She knew tension but this was entirely different and she had no idea what to do.

“Come with me, Dr. Bennett. I want to show you something,” Abdu said. He had a gun in one hand and her elbow in the other. She tugged on her arm but he tightened his grip until she felt he might break her arm. He was that strong.

“Don't make me have to hurt you,” he said. “I don't like hurting women.”

Tears stung her eyes, though whether from pain or fear she had no idea. She'd ceased to think and instead had become a creature who simply reacted to what was going on around her.

Daphne had no choice but to follow Abdu. There were four other men on deck clad in head wraps and long flowing robes which she recognized as common garb for Muslim men. They all were armed with semiautomatic rifles and had on sunglasses to combat the hot late afternoon sun in the Gulf of Aden.

The smell of the sea and a breeze comforted her for a second. The smell of sea air and the rocking of the boat was familiar, but Abdu's grip on her arm was foreign and reminded her of how fragile she really was.

Two of the men she recognized from when the tanker had been taken; the other two men were new faces and these new men were harder and leaner. She didn't know if the men who'd originally taken the ship were a B-team or what. But these new men weren't going to be easy to overthrow. To be honest the other team hadn't been either.

It was funny because the sun was shining down on her head warming her skin. She'd always loved the daytime and been absurdly afraid of the dark. Even as an adult she'd slept with a night-light on. And now she realized that being afraid of something she couldn't see had been silly.

Real fear was seeing the devil in a charming man's clothes and realizing that you had no way to fight him. That no matter what you did or said that devil was still going to be looking you in the eyes when he stole the soul from your body.

 

While Daphne was up on the deck, Laz was on the heels of Jamac as they headed down the gangway. One of the pirates who'd held a flashlight while Daphne had been operating tried to stop him, but Laz was done laying low. He decked the other man and quickly relieved him of his weapon. He pulled the man toward the large storage cabinet in the galley.

“Savage?”

“Here. We are in position. Wait a minute. Damn it, Laz, get on deck. There's a Eurocopter heading toward the tanker.”

“Not friendly?”

“Not that I know of. Mann is lined up to take the shot, but there are five men on deck with the lady doctor. We want Samatan alive. I think he's the one who has the lady,” Savage said.

“Is she in danger?”

“Probably,” Savage said.

Savage had never pulled his punches and didn't now. “I'll go get her,” Laz said.

“Confirm that. Hamm? I need you to secure the galley. Once Samatan receives word that we aren't going to pay the ransom he might start harming the hostages.”

Hamm left the operating table where he'd been helping out. “I'll secure the galley. These men will be our hostages now.”

“How will you do that?” Laz asked.

“Rudy is a good fighter,” Hamm said. He signaled to the man who had helped Daphne work on Fridjtof. Rudy walked over to join them and Laz saw the pirates who'd helped Daphne stand a little straighter.

“What do you need?” Rudy asked.

Hamm smiled at the other man. “More fighting. The galley is ours.”

Rudy nodded.

Hamm led the way to the two pirates and Laz heard the sound of fighting behind him. Then he heard the clatter of flashlights as the other two pirates helping at the operating table dropped them to come to their compatriots' aid.

Laz intercepted the men. He used the lethal combination of street fighting and martial arts he'd learned from years of doing this job. Fighting two men at once wasn't what he preferred but he knew time was of the essence. He had to act quickly so he could go and take back Daphne.

He landed a solid punch in one man's gut and then used a sweeping sidekick to take down another. He used a blunt-force punch to the throat to incapacitate the man he'd just dropped. He turned to the other man and ended his fight with a one-two jab to the solar plexus and then the jaw. These men were trained to fight with guns but they weren't as skilled in hand-to-hand combat.

“When you're done we need someone to hold the flashlights,” Jerry said.

“In a minute,” Laz responded.

Savage asked, “What's going on there?”

“The galley is ours.” Hamm got a spool of duct tape from one of the cabinets and they bound the hands of all the men they'd just taken down. Then they tied them separately to the legs of the bolted-down tables in the galley.

“We've got this,” Hamm said. “You go help Dr. Bennett.”

“On my way. I am going to free Daphne—”

“Negative, Laz. We've got the girl covered. You go to the bridge. They sent a man up there. Go to the bridge and make sure the tanker is under your control. Mann will take the shot needed to protect the Doctor.”

Laz had never really argued with Savage on a mission. He'd been trained to take orders and he automatically started to do it now. But this was Daphne. He wanted to say she was just another civilian that he was sworn to protect. But he knew she was so much more than that. And if goddamned Kirk Mann let her die, he'd kill the man who'd been his best friend for longer than Laz wanted to remember.

“Laz?”

“I'm going. But, Savage, you tell Mann to make sure that he gets his man. I…”

“He will. That doctor isn't going to die on the deck of the
Maersk Angus
.”

Laz sprinted down the long dank hallway toward the gangway and heard the clatter of footsteps.

“Pirate on his way to your position,” Savage said.

“Just one?” Laz asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Do you need backup?” Hamm asked.

“Negative. Going silent,” Laz said.

He stood in the shadows cast by the sun coming down the gangway. He saw the battered shoes first, then the tip of the semiautomatic gun. Laz attacked with a single-mindedness that he'd always been able to summon on a mission.

Everything else faded away as he took down his enemy. He disarmed Jamac and had him in a chokehold in a matter of seconds. In another time he and Jamac might have been warriors together; in this life they were enemies. Jamac was now his prisoner.

“Hamm, I'm bringing another prisoner to you.”

“Affirmative.”

“You're needed on the bridge, Captain,” Savage said.

“I'm going there as soon as I deliver my prisoner.”

“Move quick.”

“Will do,” Laz said. He delivered Jamac to Hamm and ran for the stairs, then slowed his pace. He couldn't just step out onto deck without risking giving his position away.

“Where is Daphne?” he asked.

“She is with Abdu Samatan,” Savage said.

Laz felt a surge of satisfaction that they'd lured their man into this trap, but it was laced with concern for Daphne. He knew that Samatan wouldn't kill her outright unless she got obstinate. And knowing Daphne like he did, she would. He wondered how she could have ever survived being a Senator's wife. She didn't have a PC filter between her brain and her mouth and just said whatever was on her mind.

He admired that, really, he did. He only hoped it didn't get her hurt or killed.

“Easy, Laz. They are headed to the bridge.”

“So am I. Why hasn't Mann taken the shot?” Laz asked.

“The girl is in the way. And our client wants Samatan alive.”

“Makes our job that much—”

“Harder?” Savage asked.

“I was going to say more fun,” Laz said.

Savage laughed and Laz switched his mind from talking to his boss to the mission. He flattened himself against the wall at the base of the bridge. He scanned the deck for pirates and saw one man stationed by the chopper.

“Should I take out the chopper?”

“Negative. Just get the bridge back.”

“Will do.”

Laz tuned out everything else and concentrated on getting to the bridge. He climbed the stairs.