Butler Did It! (5 page)

Moving carefully, Kobi followed them to
a sinister looking black yacht, being loaded with supplies even at
this late hour. He had to get on that ship unnoticed. A dock gang
loading the ship worked shirtless and in shorts through the hot
Kenya night. He quickly stripped off his business suit and, giving
mental thanks for his morning choice of sturdy British boxer
shorts, he slipped barefooted into the line of men carrying boxes
onto the dark yacht.

<<>>

On board the strange black yacht, Kobi
looked for a place to hide, hoping he hadn’t made a bad decision.
The deck of the ship was devoid of any kind of hiding place, having
been designed with a sleek, Spartan elegance that left no cover.
Kobi hoped to sneak below but the hatches were busy with ship’s
crew stowing supplies below decks. Just when he could no longer
loiter safely on the yacht, a large hatch in the foredeck began to
open, exposing a shallow hold. As the automatic cover moved
silently away, a crane emerged and the operator guided the boom out
over the bow of the ship. Seeing his opportunity when all attention
was focused on the activity on the end of the boom, Kobi made a
quick leap into the hold.

He landed on his feet prepared for a
fight. The hold was empty except for a few large containers for
petrol. Squeezing himself quickly behind these, he waited to see
what would happen. The crane boom returned loaded with a deluxe
looking Tender craft, a version of the Zodiac, a partly rigid,
inflatable boat that fit snugly into the bay below the main deck.
No one came down into the bay once the craft was released from the
crane and Kobi breathed again as the hatch doors swung silently
closed.

Taking stock of his situation, he found
himself in a small, hot, unventilated hold with the Tender boat and
almost nothing else. At the back of the bay was a small hatch,
which Kobi hoped would lead to the interior of the yacht, but he
did not dare to try it until all was quiet outside.

With the realization that he was
relatively safe, for now, Kobi relaxed a little. His mind began to
play over the events that had brought him to this hiding place.
Everything had happened so quickly that it was hard to believe that
several hours ago all he had been expecting was a long ride home.
Along with time to think came time to feel the demands his body was
making. The standardized meals provided by Emirates Air on the
flight from London had been a long time ago and Kobi knew that he
would remain hungry until he was able to sneak out of the hold into
the interior of the ship. Even then, he couldn’t be sure of being
able to find food undetected. More than food, he would need water
in this hot hideaway. On board the Tender craft, he found a
half-finished soda and a couple of partial bottles of water. He
would try to make them last as long as possible. As to the other
demand his bladder was making, well, it was really best not to
dwell on it.

Kobi felt motion as the big yacht
pulled away from the docks and got under way. He quietly rearranged
the petrol cans so that he could stretch out behind them, and,
cradling his head on a life jacket out of the Tender, listened to
the noises of the ship far into the night. After that, he dreamed
of being caught and spent the whole dream in endless attempts to
find his trousers.

The streamlined luxury super yacht made
its way east from Kilindini Harbor into the open ocean. There were
many jobs to be done and the ship’s crew worked through the night
stowing supplies and beginning the everyday tasks that would take
them through the nearly thousand-mile journey to the
Seychelles.

<<>>

ABOARD THE PELICAN IN THE INDIAN
OCEAN

Early morning light cast long shadows
on the deck of the Pelican where a small group of people gathered
around Yan Yu Chan, the ship’s martial arts instructor. The
70-year-old man was also the husband of Mrs. Yan, the ship’s cook.
His loose clothing flapped gently in the light sea
breeze.

“Strangely enough it is a quirk of
human nature that if you’re attacked with a knife, without
training, you will always grab the knife.” He handed out some
wooden shims carved into crude knife shapes and ordered the group
to pair up.

“First we’re going to use a roll-back,
like this…”

He signaled Matthew Butler to attack
him with his wooden knife. As Butler realistically charged him Chan
stepped forward into the attack, gently touching Butler’s wrist
with the left hand and his upper arm with the right hand, he simply
directed his attacker past him and to the side so that the
surprised Butler stumbled, abruptly planting his face on the
deck.

“Remember, meet force with no
resistance. When your attacker comes toward you, do not try to
repel him. Welcome him and help him on his way. A small amount of
added energy will cause him to be unbalanced, and then you will be
able to redirect him easily.”

“What do you do when he gets up and
comes at you again?” Tommy asked innocently, watching Matthew
slowly pick himself up off the deck.

“First, don’t be there! The best
defense is always to run away, but if you think he’s the kind of
attacker who will come back for more, then you can always break his
elbow as he goes by,” said Chan. This time Chan took Tommy’s wrist
in his left hand and placed his right on Tommy’s upper arm just
above the elbow. Gently he demonstrated how he had leverage, which
would cause Tommy’s elbow to break as he was thrown to the ground
in passing. “You will see that it takes little pressure to break a
joint in this way.” Tommy nervously pulled back, even though he
trusted Chan, the power the defense master exuded was so great he
could not help himself.

“Now, everyone will do this with a
partner,” said Chan, “Slowly!” He commanded as he watched EB
advance on Tommy with her wooden knife.

Very soon, the deck rang with laughter
and groans of frustration as each pair of fighters discovered how
very strong their instinct was to grab the knife instead of their
attacker’s arm.

“Keep your focus away from the knife!”
directed Chan. “Watch the body, if you watch the knife you have no
knowledge of anything but the knife. If you watch the body, you
will know exactly what they are going to do.”

Slowly, with practice, the crew began
to do what Chan directed, keeping their eyes on their opponent’s
body, redirecting their attackers with various moves taken from the
Tai Chi form they practiced daily.

“You know your little dog is over there
watching don’t you?” taunted Tommy.

Matthew stopped defending himself from
slow wooden knife attacks by Mike, one of the crewmembers, and
wiped his face with his hand. “Not my dog” he replied, squaring up
for another go.

“I think you should name it Bouncer”
threw in EB, neatly sending Tommy sliding on the deck. “It bounces
all over the place.”

“No name,” said Butler, shaking his
hand after receiving a stinging blow on his palm from Mike’s wooden
knife.

“Relax your shoulders,” Chan told him,
“tense muscles will make you slow. If you’re slow, you’re
dead.”

“Somebody’s going to be dead if they
don’t stop trying to pawn that dog off on me,” muttered
Matthew.

He settled his shoulders and his mind
and signaled Mike to attack again, and again, and again.

<<>>

DARK YACHT

For six long days, Kobi lay in the hot
cargo hold listening every moment for sounds of someone opening the
big door above or the little door leading into the ship’s galley.
There was very little cover in the hold and he was sure he would be
discovered if anyone took any real interest in the Tender craft or
its surroundings. Each night when the sounds of activity ceased
outside, he had sneaked out into the galley of the ship to provide
himself with a small amount of food and water. He could not take
any real quantity of food for fear that it would be missed. He had
found the solution to his other bodily needs in the partially
filled petrol cans in the Zodiac bay. He supposed his erstwhile
hosts would be quite pissed when they found out what he had done in
their fuel supply. Some things cannot be helped.

He could tell from the depletion of
shipboard supplies that they were nearing the end of their journey,
or at least were nearing a place to load more provisions. Knowing
he could not sit and wait to be captured, Kobi evolved a desperate
plan. He planned to sneak out of his refuge that night and try to
steal a steward’s uniform or some other clothing that might help
him avoid detection. Then he planned to find another spot on the
ship where he could hide undetected until they arrived at their
destination. His idea was to find a life jacket locker, most
vessels had them, and because of the bulk of the life vests, the
lockers were usually large enough for a man. There was also very
little chance that the locker would be opened as life vests are
rarely used unless there is an emergency. He would hide there until
he could emerge during the chaos of landing and hope to be in the
right place to reacquire his quarry.

A change in the sound of the engines,
for the first time in six days, led him to make his first mistake.
He knew he had to get out of his current hiding place before the
Tender boat was needed, and the change in the engine noise possibly
meant they were nearing shore. He decided he had to try to get into
the life vest locker immediately, or risk discovery.

Kobi was not prepared for what happened
when he crawled out of his hiding place, just after dawn on the
sixth day. There, in the middle of the Galley, stood a large,
blonde man holding a heavy meat cleaver. “So you are the stinking
little rat who has been pilfering the food,” he growled. “I think
I’m going to have to teach you not to get into other people’s
supplies.”

Trying not to get trapped, Kobi feinted
left and quickly spun to the right, narrowly avoiding a killing
blow by a high-speed cleaver.

The next several minutes turned out to
be a nightmare inside a nightmare inside a game of Clue. In his
head, he could still hear the voice of an old American friend from
his days at Oxford.
I believe that the murderer is the cook, in
the galley, with the cleaver
.

The cook, a man who obviously had never
played Clue, took another murderous swipe that would have
decapitated Kobi if he hadn’t ducked. Kobi slapped the killer cook
about the ear-hole, causing a screech of pain. Pushing past, he
spun the wailing man around like a revolving door. Accelerating
hard, he ran down the yacht’s central corridor, expecting to feel
the bite of the cleaver in his back at any second. At the end of
the corridor, a stairwell led up toward the main deck. Kobi,
running as fast as humanly possible, never saw the extended arm
that clotheslined him. The impact knocked him off his feet and he
fell awkwardly onto the decking just 10’ from the aft hatch and
daylight. Retching and gasping for breath, he attempted to regain
his feet, only to have a heavy boot press his head hard to the
deck.

“Looky what just crawled out of the
scuppers,” a gravel voice ominously declared.

A sudden grunt of effort lifted him
high in the air, quickly followed by a rabbit punch to the back of
the neck that pitched Kobi across the lounge. Loose limbed, he
stumbled from port to starboard, through a hazy netherworld of
marionettes with broken strings. After several more steps that
mimicked a drunk on roller skates, he collapsed to his knees on the
afterdeck of the dark yacht, only to be viciously kneed in the face
by another thug. The blow broke Kobi’s nose causing him to blow a
cloud of bright blood over his assailant’s pants.

“Ah, yer little shite, them’s me very
best trousers.” A guttural voice complained, as he pulled Kobi to
his feet, and launched a hard kidney punch that drove electric arcs
of pain through the black man. The blow pushed Kobi into another
thug’s grasp, and he flailed at the leering face before him, trying
to return as much damage as he could. This effort only got him
beaten harder and his wrists lashed behind his back with a
heavy-duty zip tie.

“Send him over this way, Gunner,” a
weasely voice piped. Gunner, a beefy ape with garlic breath and
large hairy knuckles, grabbed Kobi by the throat in one massive
hand and pulled him upright. “All right, my little punching bag,
time for round two.” A powerful shot to the gut drove all the air
from Kobi’s lungs, leaving him bent over and gasping. His stomach
convulsed in dry heaves, as he tried to curl into a fetal
position.

What began as a few simple blows
rapidly progressed into a systematic beating as more thugs joined
the festivities. At the zenith, six thugs took polite turns, each
assailant patiently waiting for Kobi to recover before inflicting
their own personal vision of the maximum amount of pain with
minimal effort.

“It’s not so bad,” the voice of the
thug named Gunner crooned in Kobi’s ear, “this is just light
punishment for stowaways. You should be grateful Captain Larsen
didn’t find you. He likes to use a cricket bat and break bones. The
last poor bastard that caught the Captain’s ire is a vegetable in a
Pretoria hospital, drinking his kippers through a
straw.”

“What the hell is this?” a loud voice
suddenly demanded.