Hostage Three (32 page)

Captain Campbell is wearing his hat, his epaulettes, everything. He shakes Dad's hand, too.

— I apologise for the situation with the dinghy, he said. It's protocol to rattle the sabre a bit, see how the enemy reacts. But, still, I'm sorry.

Dad holds his eyes for a bit, but then he nods.

— That's OK, he says.

No, it's not, I think, but no one is listening to my thoughts.

— You've all been so brave, the captain says in a soft Scottish accent. So brave. He turns to Tony. And you're the one who was shot? Incredible.

— Just a flesh wound, says Tony.

— Well, says the captain. It's not entirely over yet, of course. But we have prepared cabins for you all. Showers. And a phone line to whoever you want to call.

Who do I want to call? I think. Esme? The idea is like calling an alien or a dolphin, some creature that could never understand. There's a pain in my chest, and I wonder if it's actually my heart breaking, if that's actually a thing that happens. It's an hour or so from sunset now, and already the stars are out, pale in the deepening sky.

I don't see the Plough.

I see the Camel.

And I see its missing tail.

Captain Campbell jerks his head at one of the crew, and then people move forward to hand us binoculars.

— We thought you would want to keep an eye on Mrs Fields, he says. Of course, we've got our eye on her, too. And our helicopter. We never would have agreed to this if we couldn't guarantee her safety.

— You had to agree to it, I'm a bit surprised to hear myself say.

— I'm sorry?

— You didn't exactly have a choice, did you? I say.

I don't know why I challenge him. I guess it makes me angry, this guy with his curly red hair poking out from under his hat – not that the colour of his hair is the problem – acting like he's all in control of this situation when he's not. It's the pirates who are in control, and they always have been.

— It's been a tense three weeks, says Dad. Please excuse her.

— Of course, says Captain Campbell. Of course. There's nothing to excuse.

I lift the binoculars to my eyes and watch as the helicopter drops the second batch of money. Again, the pirates hook it into the boat, count it. We hear Somali over the VHF that Tony is holding, and over Jerry's, too. Then, long moments later, we see the little boat leave the
Daisy May
, with Ahmed and the other pirates and the stepmother . . .

and Farouz . . .

and Farouz . . .

and Farouz aboard it. I look at those washed-out stars in the sky and I see his eyes. I smell the sea and I smell his skin.

Through the binoculars, I can see the boat quite well. I can see my stepmother hunched between Ahmed and Farouz, as the waves jog the hull. I can see as she gets smaller, heading for the coast. By the time they get there, the people I see get off on to the sand are just silhouettes, stick figures, but I think I can tell which one is the stepmother because she's taller. It's the Western food, Western standards of hygiene.

Oh god, I think. Oh god, Farouz. He's going back to that place, where his parents were killed, where his brother was . . . where bad things happened to his brother. Where Ahmed is grateful to take even some codeine and paracetamol to give to his kids.

But at least he'll free his brother, I think. Then maybe they can get out of there, get to Egypt. Maybe even . . . No, I can't let myself think it . . . Maybe even make it to England one day. To London.

Maybe even.

Some kind of discussion seems to be taking place on the beach between the stick figures.

— What's happening? asks Dad. What's going on? Why isn't she coming back?

— Airborne One, sitrep, says Captain Campbell, taking a VHF from his waist.

— This is Airborne One. Situation is, one of the pirates appears to be struggling with the hostage, sir –

Noise erupts around us.

— Er, no, scratch that, sir. Pirate is hugging her. Repeat: pirate is hugging her. Over.

Farouz, I think. I smile.

— Repeat that, Airborne One, says the captain. He sounds confused.

— Pirate was hugging the hostage, says the helicopter pilot. She is walking to the boat now . . . getting in . . . She's OK, sir. She's on her way. Wait.

A collective intake of breath.

— One of the pirates is . . . He's waving, sir. He's waving at her. Over.

— OK, Airborne One, says the captain, raising his eyebrows. Over and out.

I hug myself. I hug myself tight. Dad puts his arm around me, probably thinking that I am worried about the stepmother, which makes me feel a bit guilty – not a lot, but a bit.

Then we watch as the dot that is the stepmother's boat becomes a smudge, and then the smudge becomes a boat, miniature, and gradually gets bigger. I say
we
watch. I'm not watching, actually. Instead I'm watching Farouz, or the stick figure that I think is him.

The four-by-four that was already on the beach drives up to the pirates. Then, from the other end of the beach, two pick-up trucks arrive. They pull right up to the men who are standing just by the sea. I can make out the shapes of the money bags at their feet. The pirates hand one of the bags to someone in the four-by-four, through the window. The four-by-four reverses, spraying sand, and guns away. The sponsor, I think, Amir, getting his share.

After that, the pirates start to load the rest of the money into a truck. Farouz is with them, I think over and over, like an incantation in my head. Farouz is one of them. I strain to see if I can distinguish his shape, his profile, but I can't. It's too far and there's a heat haze, making all of them shimmer.

All of them shimmering now, not just him.

As they climb into the pickup trucks, I hear Captain Campbell beside me say four words in a calm voice, and instantly I know, instantly icicles are in my spine, pressing.

— Switch to channel 71, he says.

I turn to him. I'm moving slowly, like the air is not air any more, but glue. I have a cold, foreboding feeling, standing there on the hot deck. It's like when you're swimming in the sea and you cross some current, or the mouth of some invisible freshwater stream, and suddenly the warm seawater mingles with something that chills your skin.

He lifts his VHF to his mouth and says:

— This is Captain Campbell on channel 71. This is Captain Campbell. Go, go, go.

No, I think. No, please. Not channel 71.

I mean, it's not significant that it's channel 71. It could have been any channel. But I still know what it means. I know because it's a channel that is not 16, and 16 is the channel the pirates are using, the channel the pirates are monitoring. It could have been any channel, literally any channel between 1 and 100, and as long as it wasn't channel 16, that same ice would have put its fingers in my back and clawed me.

But somehow, already, I know that it will mean something to me. It will mean something to me for ever, whenever I'm on a flight with 71 in the name, whenever I dial 7 then 1 on my cell phone, just because it happens to be part of someone's number, whenever I grab a ticket at the baker's or the supermarket or whatever stupid irrelevant place back in the world called home, and the number comes up: 71.

Because the captain's voice is saying again:

— Airborne One, go, go, go.

And then the helicopter, which had been heading back to the destroyer, turns, hangs sideways in the air for a moment – the noise like a colossal heartbeat, the downrush of air forcing us into a crouch – and then it is moving towards the shore. The way the helicopter flies is fast, but it's slow, too, because I can feel what's happening; I heard it in that word,
go
, repeated three times, and I want it to stop.

It doesn't stop.

The helicopter is over the sand now, the pickup trucks rolling towards the dunes, as if they can see, as if they're animals with the shadow of a hawk over them. For an idiotic moment I think they might get away.

I see the muzzle-glare before I hear the helicopter's big gun firing. Again the word
lightning
flashes in my head, because it's the same, isn't it? The thunder doesn't reach you till after the release, till after the heavens strike down on the earth, which means that you always see the destruction before you hear it.

The bullets come out of the helicopter like streaks of yellow fire in the air, like those trails you see when you swish a sparkler in front of your eyes, smashing into one of the pickup trucks, which is driving away but, oh, so, so not quick enough. It is the truck Farouz got into, I know it – I saw his shape, his shoulders, before he slid into the back seat.

— The money, you fucking idiots! says Jerry, the negotiator. The money!

But no one is listening to him.

Flame billows out of the truck and it spins up into the air, black struts and side panels in a fireball, an X-ray, before crashing back down on the sand and stopping.

Then, and only then, I hear it. An explosion that seems to rock the destroyer on the sea, even though there is no swell, even at this distance.

Then the other truck is hit: it careers, tyres blown, then somersaults, rolls.

I feel Dad's arm fall away from my shoulder. I wonder if it is the last thing I will ever feel. There, on the shore, maybe, like, half a mile away, the pickup truck is going up in smoke, and I know that expression is a cliché – my English teacher, Mrs Arkwright, would mark me down for using it – but that is what's happening. The truck, Farouz, the money, it's all just pouring itself into the air, dissolving into this thick black smoke that is writhing and curling in the cruel hot empty white air over Somalia.

I remember Farouz, sucking in smoke, seeming to draw the stars from the sky and into his lungs, and think, now he's smoke himself, he's rising back up into the air.

It was a pickup truck, it was Farouz, it was money. Now it is just smoke and now –

Oh god, now I can smell it, lifted on the wind as a dark bird: a petrol smell, explosive, like when Mohammed was shot right over me. I guess you see the end, then you hear it, then the reek of it hits you.

Dad is saying something.

I don't listen. I can hardly see anything. I thought the world had changed its contours and its colours when Farouz came into it, but now that he has left it behind, the world is just greyness all around.

I close my eyes, and then a big black sea takes me, and I drown.

I looked up through shimmering water
at the disc of the sun above, watching it tremble and glow.

I was holding my breath, and I could hear the echoing hiss of the pool in my ears. The voices of my parents came to me from far away, from the other side of a barrier.

We were staying at our beach house on North Fork. Dad was up for the weekend, which I remember as being rare. I was maybe six or seven. I had chickenpox, and so I spent most of my time in the pool behind our house, swimming. It was when I was swimming that the itching went away, at least for a little while. Dad, that weekend, spent most of his time at the barbecue – that's how I picture him, anyway, hunched over the grill, the meat flaming and spitting. Fish, too, that he bought direct from the fishermen's market at Southold.

I was in the shallow end of the pool. I wasn't swimming, but I didn't want to get out, either, so I was messing around in the water. Then I discovered something amazing. I discovered that if I went under, held my breath, opened my eyes and turned to the sky, I could see the blueness and the fluffy clouds above through the lens of the water, making everything shimmer and dance. It was incredible – the glare of the sun on the water, the sparkle, the way the whole sky trembled and pulsed.

So I rolled on to my back, held my breath and deadened my limbs, so that I could float with my face just under the water, looking up. I could hold my breath quite a long time. It meant I could lie there for ages before I had to break the spell, and the surface.

The next thing I knew, there was something like iron wrapping itself around my arm, and I was jerked out of the water, thrown to the hard tiles, flopping like a fish. I screamed as my mom bent her head down, her fingers reaching for my mouth.

— Mom! I shouted.

— Oh, Amy, you –

And then she slapped me. It was the first and the only time that she ever hit me. I couldn't believe it. I lay there, on the damp hot tiles that surrounded the pool, staring up at her. She was wearing a sundress, blue with yellow flowers, and the dress was soaked, I saw now. Her eyes were big and terrified and terrifying, her face streaked with tears.

— What did I – I started.

— I thought you were
dead
, she shrieked. I had never heard anyone sound like this before; her voice was like an animal's, nothing human in it at all. Behind her, I saw Dad running up, late, as always. I thought you
drowned
, she shrieked.