The Mentor (30 page)

Another
step and the pirate just ahead of me came fully into view.  He stood,
bracing himself against what looked like a fifty-caliber gun that had been
mounted to the bow of the ship.  Even more curious, I could now see the
big, gorgeous boat ahead of us.

It was
white, massive, three stories and glittering like a Christmas tree.  As if
on cue, the ship’s horn blasted across the water, briefly drowning out the
pirate captain.  Finally seeing its source, the faded memory that the
ship’s horn had stirred revealed itself to me, crystal clear.  

Back when
I’d been recovering from the accident, I spent a lot of time watching TV Land,
old cheaply syndicated television. 
Six Million Dollar Man
,
Fantasy
Island
… and the one about the floating love-nest of the sea:

“Hello,
Captain Stubbing,” I said under my breath, climbing up the remaining steps.
 “Have Isaac pour us up a couple stiff ones.”

Tiny, red
lifeboats lined the deck of the cruise ship like droplets of blood, as if it
had been abraded by an enormous garrote, and there was a large, now less
festive, certainly, formal party taking place near the ship’s bow.  Small
clusters of elegantly dressed men and women had sought refuge on the opposite
railing, while smaller groups of men dressed in either white or black looked
very busy at the nearer rail.   

Waiting for
the right moment, I was given it when a voice came from the cruise ship this
time, another loudspeaker.  Must be standard issue on boats out this way.
 In seconds, I’d scrambled up on deck and crawled toward the rear of the trawler.

Behind me,
the new voice was
not
French.  It sounded a little Spanish or even
something that resembled what Arnold Schwarzenegger might bark out after
sucking down half a case of stout.

As this new
player prattled back to the pirates his pleas of mercy, threats of
counterattack, or details of the dessert cart menu, I crawled father along the
deck, finally making it to the back of the pirate gunboat.

Up on the
bridge, the captain was back on the microphone, shouting down the other man’s
echoing words, trying to regain control of the conversation.

I crawled
behind one of the fishing chairs I’d seen from the water and, of course, they
were not chairs at all but, instead, more big, bolted down guns.  One in
the front, two in the back: these were the sort of guy’s used to being chased.

From his
perch up on the Good Ship Lollypop, it didn’t seem likely that Capt. Stubing-on-the-Loudspeaker
had any idea of the firepower that weighted down the tiny boat.

The verbal
volley went back and forth for a few moments more, each man’s voice getting
louder and more strident in their respective tongues.

Clomp-clomp-clomp

Someone was
running my way, and I scrunched my body into the darkened corner.

Clomp-clomp-clomp

Hidden in
the shadows, my heart began to thump in rhythm with the man’s footfalls.

For a
moment, I tensed, thinking he was coming for me because it sounded as though he
were making a beeline to my corner, but instead, the pirate crossed in front of
me and, fumbling for a nearby crowbar, quickly pried open a crate and dug
inside.

I was happy
to not be his intended target.  Not happy, though, that this man came out
with two long, gray tubes.  Rocket launchers.  

What did
they want?  Money, hostages, an open bar...?

That wasn’t
my problem.

My problem
was that my ticket home—or at least out of this situation—was right in front of
me.  And there was no damn way I could get to it.

Easing out
of my corner, I crouched, and peaked over the edge.  Swim?  No way.
 Ahead of me, there was a burst of French voices, and then a
whoosh
as a flame lit up the deck, like the tip of a huge blowtorch sparked to life
and doused moments later.  Standing, I watched a rocket arc toward the
cruise ship, as the formal party flattened to the deck, their cries scraped
across the short span of water.  The missile then looked as if it would
sail harmlessly, arching over the top of the boat, but instead took out a
spinning microwave antenna, effectively making it mute in further calls for
help.    

“
No, no,
no!”
A second voice came from the big ship.  “
Você pôde matar-nos
!”
 

The voice
on the loudspeaker from my boat was now shrill and the three at the front of
the ship pumped their arms, energized by his furious heightened tones.
 Once again, came the clomping of footsteps.  This time, I moved
forward into the shadows of a seating area.  In the light above me, again,
I saw another tube produced, and then disappear to the front of the boat.

That crate
was like a Denny’s wishing well but instead of having crappy little plastic
toys it had an armory tucked inside.  What other treasures did it hold?

After the
guy ran back to the front of the boat, to the soundtrack of another fresh
verbal assault from this boat, I slinked up to the open crate, cast a glance to
the front, and then looked down at the contents.

“Holy
cats,” I said.  Rifles, pistols, boxes full of ammunition bigger than
Sharpie markers, and big ass military-issue, scary tubes of doom in various
sizes.  Surface-to-air missiles, maybe, grenade launchers, water balloons…
I didn’t know much about stuff that went
boom
but these guys were ready
for a fight.  A short,
very explosive
, high-caliber fight.

One of the
tapes that Pavan had pulled from the library for me dealt with naval combat in
World War II.  Not really nitty-gritty stuff but some basic tactical
stuff, how there were two types of wars being fought.  There was the
ground assault, supported by aircraft.  And there had been an element of
air combat separate from support, sure, but really the “second” war was that on
the water, and it was fought in an entirely different way.

Movements
were slower but, timed correctly, often it was formation, not firepower, that
marked the difference between success and annihilation.  And, if a tank
crawling the beach got hit, you take out a handful of men.  A ship gets a
direct hit, well; you could sink an entire regiment.

So those
old ships were fortified with hulls made of iron, capable of taking a couple
blasts before sliding downward.

This big,
gorgeous creampuff in front of me?  Down in one shot from the rocket
launcher, I guessed.  It didn’t seem likely anything called the
Princess
of the Sea
would be armored for high seas combat.

And the
pirate captain was getting more agitated.  

Up ahead, a
splash caught my attention, and I saw that one of the lifeboats had been cut
away and had fallen to the water below.  Then another.  Someone on
the cruise ship was dropping whatever treasure they had in lifeboats to the sea
below.

One of the
pirates raised a fist in the air, turned back, and smiled wide at the captain.
 Gesturing toward the little boats, I guessed he was shouting something
about moving forward to grab what had been dropped.  

The captain
didn’t appear as eager.  Still, he edged the boat forward very slowly.

A third
lifeboat fell and, inching a little into the light, I could see several crew
members loading a fourth.  Maybe we’d avoided the ultimate confrontation.
 It looked as though the cruise ship was complying with demands.
 Maybe there’d be time to cross over to the other ship.  

Another burst
of words from the creampuff, which was cut off by the pirate captain.  My
French was coming back to me, slowly, and I could hear the Guinean captain say
something about time.  
Vite, allons!
“Move faster,” or something
like that.

One of the
pirates complained, pointing to the lifeboats slowly drifting away and, again,
the captain growled off mic.  This time I heard the word
morte
among others.  

Admittedly,
my French was rusty—nearly rusted shut—and only recently putting my audio recall
to the test, it was coming back, but slowly.  Despite that, I instantly
remembered the word “morte”:
dead
.  And, even though confidence in
my elementary language studies was low, I was pretty sure, as the hairs on the
back of my neck stood erect, that in the collection of words I’d heard meant
“dead” was soon going to apply to the big creampuff of steel and cocktail
glasses in front of me.

They’d get
the crew to drop the all the lifeboats, full of whatever valuables they could
find and, I guessed (but felt I was right) that they were going to “kill the
ship” after that.

Without
lifeboats to save them after rockets had punched holes in their hull, the end
result was clear: No witnesses.  No one to describe the attackers or their
gunboat.

At the bow
of the ship, three stories up, a number of tuxedoed men had walked toward the
railing, shouting down at those on my boat.  Porters dressed in white
tried to call them but, the pirate captain ignored it.  To him, they were
already dead.

How many
people on a ship like that?  Five hundred?  A thousand?  

And with
the lifeboats now floating treasure chests, these people were going to perish
in the waters off the African coast.

Turning my
head, I was a little surprised to be standing next to the crate, having
apparently taken some steps back toward the darkness.

I’d moved,
but don’t remember doing it.

Then… a
growing
hollow
, like a cold burn, began to fester in the top of my stomach.
  

It felt
similar to what one might feel the moment before jumping from a bridge with a
bungee cord wrapped to their ankles.  Or the second before stepping out
the plane door, with only a parachute (and tandem rainbow-diver) strapped to
your back.

Now, let’s
be clear.

If I had to
take the stand in some surprising, spiritual courtroom—with little concern
about
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
because they’d already
know—I couldn’t honestly describe myself as a good, altruistic person.

But there
were no apparent connecting dots that could possibly explain why I was about to
do what I was about to do.

In truth, I
can say—and this is the guy in me, admittedly—I hadn’t really thought about it
very much.

I guess
it’s a bit like the story you read about the dude in Brooklyn who’s in traction
because a group of assholes in the subway were messing with some woman and he
found himself—inexplicably—standing up, banging the biggest guy on the
shoulder… surprised as much as anyone when these words came out of his mouth,
“Back off.”

I’m not a
psychologist.

Nor am I
some anthropologist.

Or
whatever.

But we,
humankind, are a destructive species (did you see
The Fifth Element
? 
That designation almost ended us!).

So how have
we—us, all of us—with bombs that would vaporize us
a thousand times over
made it this far? 

How did
that happen?

My best
guess—and I can only guess— it’s because one guy was there… and you can
credit/blame God or Buddha or evolution or collective viewings of 
School
House Rock
— but in history’s
secret
ultimate moments, one guy… the
last guy you’d ever expect… stepped up into whatever vortex of hell had twisted
in front of him and
despite all odds
, he said:

“Back off.”

Whatever
process that is… it probably had
something to do with why my right hand was gripping a grenade, the thumb of my
left hand wrapped through the pin.

I took one
quick glance to the ship, then back at the pirates crawling anxiously around
the front of the ship, guns pressed to their shoulders.  From here, I
could see the sweaty sheen on the back of the asshole captain’s bald head.
 

He turned
slightly. 

Back off…

And I
pulled away the metal ring and dropped the potato-sized time bomb in the crate
full of weapons.

… asshole.

I’m not
much of a swimmer.  And I really didn’t know how long it takes for a
grenade to explode.  But I leapt off the side of that boat, into the
midnight black of the ocean, with everything that my battered thighs and
swollen testicles could give me.

But seconds
away from splashdown, the silent roar of heat snuck up behind me before I even
registered the blast, the shock wave launched me horizontal across the water,
sending me flipping end over end until I finally dropped, cracking then
breaking the cold, dark window of the sea, while the sky above me became a
sheet of flame against the gorgeous, gorgeous night sky.

Chapter
Seventeen

Titan’s
Empress: Ship Captain’s Log for 28 April:

The sum
of today’s events will be detailed at an inquiry when we once again reach
Lisbon.  However, we’ll stop in Casablanca so that those who are done with
sailing for the moment—and I can’t say I would blame them—can get off and find
alternate manners of travel.

We’d
been warned of the possibility of pirates in the waters off the west coast of
the African continent, but there were also reports that the coastal areas were
being protected by not only the Americans but a number of AU vessels, as well.

So, it
came as a surprise when at 10:42 pm local time we had been sided up by what
turned out to be a pirate gunship with approximately five crew members aboard.

Previously,
there had been some success using the audio repellent device, a painful burst
of sound directed toward assailants, but as these were armed with missiles, it
seemed a maneuver like that may simply provoke them.  

Within
the first sixty seconds of the evening’s encounter, we’d suffered a hail of
gunfire and the radio tower had been destroyed.  

Our
attackers were Guinean, French-speaking, but that is not a language neither me
nor any of my crew are entirely fluent in.

A
passenger offered assistance and helped with translation.  

We were
complying to their demands, loading up the lifeboats with valuables, whatever
we could get our hands on, tearing anything shiny from the walls of the
staterooms and sending the boats adrift in the sea.

But
then, something extraordinary happened.  I, myself, am not a very
religious man, but I admit here—and possibly only here—that I had begun praying
for the safety of not only those in my charge but those who’d joined my crew as
passengers on my ship.  I couldn’t help but feel some turn or choice I’d
made led us to this encounter.  

Just as
we were giving our attackers what they needed, in hopes they’d leave us now
that they had a large share of valuables—the ship, our attackers, exploded in a
brilliant fireball, like a star in the sky had suddenly slipped from its tether
and dropped to the water’s surface.

In an
instant, a crew of pirates that I felt could conceivably end the lives of
myself and the other 823 aboard were gone.  Vaporized.

I can’t
explain how this fortune came to pass.  And I certainly don’t plan on
telling the Council that God stepped in and protected those aboard my vessel
because of my whimpers for help.

But one
moment the pirates were there, arrogantly waving their weapons, and ten seconds
later they were not.

The
wreckage burned brilliantly for about a quarter of an hour, and I moved the
ship about a mile out to avoid it.  It took about two hours to collect the
lifeboats we’d dropped, returning the bounty to its rightful places.  

We are
now heading toward a dock in the Moroccan city and, once there, a crew of
engineers will inspect the vessel for hull breach from the artillery fire we
sustained early in the confrontation with the now-dead pirates.

I’m very
happy to report that there were zero casualties aside from a number of
passengers who’d suffered the mildest of anxiety symptoms, one Belgian
gentleman complaining of chest pains.

It is
worth noting, however, in the fracas, a passenger who appears to be American,
fell overboard and had to be rescued by my crew.  For sure, a fall off any
of our decks would be traumatic, from that height… but his injures, I would
say, were rather… comprehensive.  

His
hands, while cleaned by the ocean waters, they were cut along the palm.
 And the back of his wrists were burnt rather bad.  This latter, I
suppose, could have been a result of the exploding pirate ship, some fuel on
the water, but I can’t be sure.

The
oddest part—however, it may be no odder than the entire evening— is that this
passenger could not tell us who he was, explaining to my crew that he’d had
some sort of head trauma and couldn’t remember his own name.

The
registered American passengers aboard—all 27 of them—are being interviewed to
see if they are familiar with this guest, so we could find a name and return
him to friend or family.  But, so far, those efforts have proven
fruitless.

On a lighter
note, in the past several hours the American has proven to be a favorite of the
crew, finding him most amusing.  He can’t remember his name but seems to
have no trouble remembering a variety of rather off-color anecdotes and jokes.

We would
like to determine who this man is so that we might return him to his home or
friends, so that we know he is safe.  

Also, a
name would be helpful because he’s begun to run a tab up at the bar that is,
frankly, one that I don’t want to see go unpaid.