Pirate Alley: A Novel (35 page)

He contented himself with the comment, “If anything happens to those
Sultan
people, there will be bloody hell to pay.”

On the far side of the Atlantic, the president was also examining his hole card. Giving Grafton command of this operation looked smart last week, but if this thing turned into a civilian bloodbath … A congressional investigation was the least that would happen. His handling of the military would be questioned. Foreign affairs … His enemies, of whom he had many, would wave the bloody shirts as proof of his and his administration’s incompetence, which would have incalculable political effects.

He felt like a man on a runaway horse, with no control whatever, just trying to keep from being thrown.

The president glared at Sal Molina, who had lobbied hard for Grafton.

As machine guns chattered and muzzle flashes strobed on the television screen and that nincompoop Ricardo had oral sex with his microphone, the president dug a packet of cigarettes from a drawer and lit one. Blew smoke at the
NO SMOKING
sign. Mouthed a dirty word but didn’t say it.

*   *   *

The SEALs were certainly thorough clearing Ragnar’s lair. I counted five bodies as I climbed the stairs. Passed a troop of women and kids going down the stairs. I knew from the net that the SEALs had found them upstairs in the living quarters below the penthouse and were sending them down. Eight women, eleven kids, three being carried. I saw no blood. Just scared helpless people.

The penthouse was a helluva mess. The four SEALs were standing around looking for someone to shoot while Nora Neidlinger sat on the floor, working in near darkness cutting rope. Fifty dollar bills and C-notes were scattered everywhere.

“One alive, these other two are dead,” the SEAL team leader reported.

“Got a flashlight?” I asked.

He gave me his.

“Have you searched them?”

He handed me a small RC control unit with three little arms and a red button. “Ragnar had it on him. No battery. The battery was in the other pocket.” He gave me the battery and I pocketed it. Stuck the controller in my other pocket. It just fit.

I took a look at the pirate still alive. Ragnar! He was trying to talk. Had stuff covering his feet and hands, and one eye didn’t focus. Concussion. No weapons in sight. The SEALs had confiscated them.

“Thanks,” I told the SEAL guy. “I’ll take it from here.”

They turned and trooped off.

I squatted by Nora. She hadn’t said a word. Just sawed that dull knife on the rope.

“Wanna go get a beer?” I asked.

“No.”

“What are you going to do with the rope?”

“Tie him up.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

I took out my Marine Corps fighting knife with the seven-inch blade and handed it to her butt first. “This is sharper.”

She quickly finished cutting the rope into the lengths she wanted. She pulled all the trash and debris off him, then tied a rope around each of Ragnar’s wrists and ankles. Then she tied the other end to any heavy thing in reach. Worked on those knots. Got them good and tight.

I went into the bathroom. The water wasn’t working, naturally, since the electricity was no longer powering the water pump, but there was water in the toilet. I used a gourd I found in the kitchen to scoop out some.

Went back and poured it on Ragnar’s face. He started coming around.

“Why don’t you just kill him?” I asked. “I won’t tattle.”

“You can leave now,” she said. She was watching Ragnar. She didn’t even glance at me. She was holding that Ka-Bar with both hands.

“If you want, I’ll do it for you.”

No response. I put the flashlight on the floor and went.

*   *   *

Nora Neidlinger made sure Ragnar was trussed up good. The ropes holding his arms were tight, the knots snugged down. In fact, his hands were beginning to turn white from lack of blood.

She had tied one ankle to a fallen ceiling beam and one to a heavy chair. She used hundred dollar bills to gag him. Wadded them up and stuffed them in his mouth, and tied them in place with a piece of his shirt. Made sure he could still breathe. He was good to go.

Unfortunately he was still groggy from the concussion. She went into the bathroom and got more water from the toilet. She dribbled it on his face until his eyes flipped open.

“Hey there, asshole.”

He seemed to become fully conscious. Looked around, tried to talk, struggled against the ropes.

“Try harder,” she said and showed him the knife. Then she cut off his trousers. Rubbed his cock with her hand, waited for a response. Oh yes. She got a death grip and pulled it straight.

Ragnar bucked like a man possessed. “Have you ever been raped?” she asked conversationally, as if getting raped were equivalent to getting a parking ticket.

“Have you any idea what it’s like? You ignorant raghead devil worshippers rape women, kinda like breeding a dog. You pour acid on their faces, beat them, sometimes to death, and it’s just a ho-hum thing. Can’t wait to get to Paradise so you can butt-fuck little boys. Isn’t that what that pedophile Mohammed promised?”

She sighed. The bastard didn’t understand a word. Even if she could have spoken Somali, he wouldn’t understand. It was like talking to some slimy thing that lived in a sewer and came out when it was hungry to rape women and eat kids.

“Going to cut this off,” Nora told him. She made the first incision. Blood spurted.

“You won’t need this anymore,” she said. “You are all done screwing. Finished.”

Every muscle in Ragnar was taut, and his stomach was arched toward the ceiling. He was moaning through the gag.

“You should have known us back in the day,” she said, just talking. “Back in Cherry Hills. My husband wanted me to be the perfect little piece of arm candy.” Nora showed him his member, then tossed it through the door onto the balcony.

“He told me my boobs were too small so I had to get fake tits. Stay trim, look good for him. He was a car guy, seven dealerships, all kinds of brands, and gave money to every civic organization in town, all the charities. We went to every dinner, every function, got photographed for the society pages a hundred times. There I was, the perfect little wife, all dolled up in designer duds to show off my fake tits, smiling at everyone. And every evening the son of a bitch was fucking the babysitter when he took her home.”

She worked as she talked. “Her parents finally caught on, of course. She was sixteen and in love, love, love, going to marry him and be on his arm instead of me. She wrote all this in her diary, and her mother snooped and found it. Mothers do that, you know. Snoop.”

Jesus, the bastard could bleed, even though the ropes were tight.

“Statutory rape, of course, due to the age difference, and the fact it started when she was fourteen. It was pay big money or go to prison, so the bastard bought his way out of it. The parents wanted money. They really didn’t give a damn about the daughter, as long as he paid them four million dollars. They sold her. You see that, don’t you? Isn’t that what you ragheads do—buy children to fuck?

“My husband could have probably made a better deal if he had gone to them up front,” Nora mused aloud, “and said, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars if you’ll let me fuck your daughter on the sly for the next three years.’ A bang a month. Sometimes two. Call it fifty fucks in three years. A million bucks for fifty fucks.” She giggled. “They would have gone for that.”

Sweat was pouring off Ragnar’s face. Blood was seeping out his mouth around the gag. The shit had bitten his tongue. Idly, she wondered if he had bitten it off.

“One day the bank called the house to verify a check while he was making the rounds of the dealerships. I went to the bank and took a look. Can you believe it? The idiot wrote it on a joint account. Four million bucks. That was a damn big pop for us. I had the locks changed on the house that afternoon and filed for a divorce two days later.

“He tried to keep it all hushed up, but I fought to get the money back, so it became a huge stink.”

She stared down into Ragnar’s eyes, which still tracked.

“You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? It’s too bad, really. But even if you spoke English, you wouldn’t have understood. Men seldom do. And you don’t strike me as the empathetic type.

“I’ll bet you were a pretty good pirate. My husband was, Honest John, but the divorce and publicity cost him the dealerships. They even threw him out of the country club. He became an alcoholic. Pickled himself, and his liver gave out last year. That’s the way it goes, I guess. You wear out your turn, then it’s someone else’s.”

Nora wandered around the room, touching this and that, paused to wipe the blood off her hands and arms on a blanket in the bedroom, then went into the living room and sat in a chair with her back to Ragnar. Amazingly, she spotted her purse in the rubble of the main room, right where Ragnar had tossed it several days ago.

She got it, rooted in it, found some cigarettes and lit one. It tasted delicious. She sat looking into the night as she smoked it. Above her, through the holes in the ceiling, she could see stars. Heard the desert wind whisper through the holes.

*   *   *

I stood in the doorway of Ragnar’s lair listening to what remained of the battle between the Shabab and the pirates. An occasional distant automatic weapons burst, then long moments of silence. An occasional explosion, no doubt from an RPG. Someone was cleaning up, executing the last of their enemies. Burbles of conversation on the tactical net in my ear. The SEALs were still on the beach, drones were overhead, the controllers were reporting on the battle. It was a bit like listening to a baseball game without the crowd-noise background or commercials.

My watch said it was a little after 4:00
A.M.
I was almost tired enough to sleep standing up, even with the nicked leg. The bleeding had stopped. Slowed, anyway. Smarted a good bit. I needed to get a bandage on it.

The shards of war were scattered all over. Burned-out pickups, bodies, pieces of bodies, crap from the face of the building, glass all over, spent cartridges … Even with the breeze, I could smell cooked meat. A couple of women were examining the bodies. Maybe looking for their men. Or sons. Nora Neidlinger was upstairs carving on Sheikh Ragnar, the terror of the Somali coast.

Here came the television people with flashlights, picking their way through the trash, absolutely certain no one would ever want to shoot them. Poor deluded fools. Cameramen, reporters, engineers toting gear … Donatelli looked tired and a little the worse for wear. One-star accommodations can wear you down. Still cute, though.

The group came toward me and obviously intended to enter the building. I stopped them. “Don’t go in there. Off-limits to the press.”

“That’s the best vantage point for filming,” Ricardo explained, pointing upward toward the penthouse. “Great background. Anyway, we want to interview Ragnar. He’s still in there, isn’t he?”

“I am not his press secretary. He has other people for that. But I doubt if he wants to talk to you. Beat it.”

That got them.

“Who are you, anyway?” the BBC man demanded.

“Nancy Pelosi. How do you like my disguise? No one is supposed to know I’m here.”

“Don’t you understand? We’re the press! The whole world wants to know what is happening.”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re the pope’s eldest son. Take your act and git. Go interview a corpse.” I waved the Kimber around.

They went, carrying their gear, threading their way through the remnants of the pickups and bodies and pieces of everything, some of it bloody. They hiked off toward the fortress. If they knew about the trench bomb, they were the pride of their networks. I doubted if they did. Ricardo hadn’t impressed me as that kind of guy.

*   *   *

I was sitting in the doorway with my back to the pillar watching the sky brighten to the east when the drone controller announced that apparently the Shabab had won and were boarding pickups. They would be here in short order, he said. I looked at my watch. Almost 5:30
A.M.

I hiked back up the stairs to collect Nora Neidlinger. Met the two Mossad guys coming down. Each of them was carrying a couple of those Communist claymores. Souvenirs.

I found Nora sitting in a chair in the main room calmly smoking a cigarette. She had bloodstains to her elbows and on the front of her blouse. Lots of blood. The remains of Sheikh Ragnar were there on the floor, still trussed up. I tried not to look.

“Come on. Some bad guys are coming and we gotta get you outta here.”

She was in no hurry.

“I mean now. Unless you want to let the holy warriors rape you to death.”

She picked up her purse, stood and headed for the stairway. She didn’t even glance at Ragnar.

“I’ll need my knife.”

She jerked her head back toward the chair and kept going. I found the knife on the floor. Used a wad of currency to wipe as much of the blood and gore off the knife as possible—taking care not to look at Ragnar—put it in its sheath, threw the bloody money on the floor and followed her down the stairs.

Jake Grafton was waiting when I came out of the building. He had one of the pickups. Ben and his buddy were sitting in the bed, one on either side of Mohammed Atom, whose wrists were held together with a plastic tie. Grafton took a look at Nora and then at me. Didn’t ask any questions.

“Get her in the surf,” he said. “Wash her off.”

I took her elbow and walked her toward the ocean. We passed a couple of SEALs lying on the beach. They were wearing those black wet suits and were difficult to see until I almost stepped on them. If Nora saw the SEALs, she paid no attention. We passed them by, walked into the water to our knees. It was warm, wet and black, with rollers flopping on the beach and running back into the sea.

She handed me her purse, then took off her blouse and began handwashing it in saltwater. Dark as it was, I couldn’t see any blood. She scrubbed her hands and arms and shoulders slowly, as if she were washing up after a tennis workout. She was calm. Dead calm. I was worried about her. Wondered if she’d crack.