Thomas Prescott Superpack (79 page)

Baxter’s seven pound tumble hadn’t made as much as a peep on the thick carpet, but he was now in the middle of the lobby—on his back, drooling into his eyes, the pink thing in his mouth, now wrapped around his curly-cue tail—in plain sight of the pirate.

I slowly peeked over the couch. The pirate was searching through the bottles. I watched as he finally picked two. One clear, one brown, then walked out from behind the bar. He snapped his head in my direction and I sunk down, gripping onto Rikki’s leg. If he was still looking in our
direction, Baxter would be hard to miss.

But we soon heard the open and close of the elevator.

I crawled forward and looked at Baxter. He was in dreamland. I pulled the pink thing off his tail and started laughing. The little guy had been on a panty raid.

“Let me guess. This is Baxter,” said Rikki.

I nodded, picked him up, and started towards District 9.

≈

“Bheka,” I whispered.

Bheka came out from behind the door that led to the stairs.

Rikki gave me a sideways glance.

I said, “Friend of mine.”

I introduced Bheka to Rikki and laid the machine gun, the 9mm, the fanny pack, and my backpack on a table. Rikki was holding Baxter, who was now wide awake, and licking her neck. This was the first time I had a really good look at Rikki, even counting the night we’d shared. It’s amazing how little you remember when you’re thinking with your dick. There was no question she was beautiful, but she was young. Far younger than I’d previously thought. I’d put her in her early twenties. Very early twenties. Not that I was complaining. But I’d been down this road before and it never ended well. I was 34 going on curmudgeon. I couldn’t keep up with a girl like Rikki. I didn’t want to.

I’d been meaning to ask her why I hadn’t seen her again, why she didn’t answer when I knocked on her door, and what that thing was that she did to my prostate. That conversation was penciled in on my
Remax
pad. Just not at the top.

I focused back on the items on the table, staring at them for a couple long minutes, visualizing my plan of attack. I opened up Susie’s diabetes kit and extracted three syringes. I’d watched her administer her medicine on two separate occasions and I recalled that she’d filled the syringe up a third of the way. I inserted a syringe into the small vial of insulin and pulled back on the plunger until it was over a third full. I filled the other two syringes, then capped all three. I put them back in the kit and placed it in the fanny pack, to which I also added my sister’s meds, some snacks, and the 9mm.

“I’m gonna leave you guys the machine gun,” I said.

“I’m going with you,” spat Rikki.

“No you’re not. You’re going to stay hidden.” My tone didn’t leave any room for debate.

After showing Rikki how to use the gun, I said, “Don’t fire it unless you absolutely have to.
But if your life is in danger, kill every last one of them, then the two of you jump off the side of the ship and steal one of the fishing boats.”

Bheka looked at me wide-eyed. “Jump off the side of the ship. Are you crazy?’

I don’t think he was a big fan of heights. Or maybe water. Or maybe it was a combination of the two. I looked at him and said, “Promise me you will jump into the water if you have to.”

He thought about it, then said, “Okay, but only if I
have to
.”

“Can you swim?”

“Like a dolphin.”

So it was the heights.

“Stay on your toes you two,” I said, moving towards the door. “If you hear me coming down those steps, be ready to run.”

They both said they would.

I swiped Bheka’s mother’s maid card and opened the emergency exit door.

“Thank you.”

I turned.

“Thank you,” Rikki repeated.

I nodded, then started up the stairs.

LITTLE CREEK, VIRGINIA

1131 HOURS

Torrey Royal—
Royal
to anyone that mattered—circled around the large stone statue of an eagle standing stoically on an anchor, checking the sleek Luminox snug on his left wrist. It usually took him thirty minutes to traverse the nine kilometers that comprised the Naval Amphibious Base in Little Creek, Virginia, but the running numerals of the dive watch showed he was slacking by two minutes. He slapped Eddie, the name everyone called the noble eagle, turned around, and quickened his pace.

At 30 years old, Royal was still in his prime, but he was on the outside looking in. Growing up in inner city Philadelphia, he never would have thought, nor even dreamed, that his life would turn out as it had. But Royal had always been a tad different. While his brothers were at the park playing basketball, he was flipping through college calculus books on the dusty floor of their third story apartment in the Philly projects. And while all the other kids in the neighborhood were either selling crack, or smoking it, he was hunkered in the corner of the bedroom he shared with his three brothers, playing the saxophone.

Oddly enough, the sax had saved his life. At the age of eleven, on a cold November evening, Royal was waiting for the bus outside the public library where he went nearly every Saturday and Sunday. Royal had pulled out his saxophone—which due to the alarming rate of burglary and the fact that one of his brothers would most likely pawn it in his absence, was never out of his reach—more to keep warm than anything else. By the end of his first song he was surrounded by several curious onlookers. By the end of his third song, a throng of people were leaning over one another to glimpse the small black prodigy. One of the onlookers asked if he could contact Royal’s mother. Royal told her that they didn’t have a phone. Nor did he want this strange white woman talking to his rarely coherent mother.

A month later, at the same bus stop, the same woman approached him, and asked if she could take him home. Royal wasn’t one for charity, but it was one of the coldest days in memory and he didn’t hesitate to climb into her white Lexus. As she drove him home, she told him about a school she wanted to pay for him to attend. Royal asked why and she said that it was a special school for young gifted musicians like himself.

The woman’s name was Margaret O’Leary. Over the course of the summer she would often visit Royal at the library. She was smart and had traveled the world and would tell him all about her adventures. Her husband had died earlier that year of a heart attack. She often spoke of her son, telling Royal that he reminded her of her Nathan. Nathan had also played the sax. He was in the Navy. Had been at any rate. He’d died three years earlier.

Over the summer, Royal and Margaret spent many days together and Royal found himself staying the night at her large Victorian home on weekends, then five times a week, and soon he was living with her full time. His mother and siblings didn’t seem to notice, or care in the slightest.

The following autumn, Royal was enrolled at Perkimen School of Music in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. One of only five black students, and one of only two students on third-party scholarships, Royal wasn’t sure what to expect. But he found the kids in the school shared his same interests; music, reading, learning, and he soon found his niche.

His fourth year at the school, he was pushed into the swimming pool by one of his friends and nearly drowned. When this information found its way to the swim coach, he took Royal under his wing, and slowly forced him to learn to swim. To both of their surprise, Royal had a natural gift for the water, and soon found himself the star of the swim team. Margaret was there at every meet to cheer him on. Over the course of the next two years, he broke every school record, won the state championship in three events, and still held the Pennsylvania state record for the 200 fly.

Royal was offered countless scholarships, as he was a straight A student, a talented jazz musician, and one of the best swimmers in the country. Music had always been his one true love, and after a tearful goodbye to Margaret, he enrolled at Berkeley College of Music in the fall.

He could still remember that September morning in 2001. He sat transfixed in front of the TV. How could this have happened? Two planes sent hurling into the Twin Towers? Who? And why? Then just three weeks later, during their weekly phone call, Margaret confided to Royal that she had pancreatic cancer.

Royal took a leave of absence from school to care for Margaret. She died eight weeks later.

He returned to school. But he wasn’t the same. The 9/11 attack combined with the passing of his dear friend Margaret had changed him. He withdrew from school and enlisted in the Navy.

It didn’t take long for his commanders to take notice. He was bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than those around him. He was quickly plucked from the masses and entered into SEAL training. Two years earlier, Royal had been picked to be part of an elite platoon, the best of the best, SEAL Team Six, commonly known as DevGru. Short for Naval Special Warfare Development Group,
DevGru
, was the top secret
United States
Naval Special Warfare Command
's tier-one special missions and
counterterrorism
unit. Its size, structure, operations, weapons, equipment, training, missions, and personnel remain top secret. DevGru was one of the two U.S. primary counterterrorist units, the other being Army
Delta Force
. Six
had done any number of missions, from boarding hijacked freighters to placing explosives on the hulls of submarines to a special op aboard a Japanese oil tanker.

As Royal’s feet pounded into the gravel, he felt a vibration on his hip. He stopped, slipped the matchbook sized pager from the waistband of his pants, and looked at it. He puffed his cheeks, slipped the pager back onto his shorts, and took off back towards the base. He covered the distance in record time.

STAIRWELL

5:38
p.m.

I pushed the door open to the garbled noise of J.J.’s voice.

Good, he was still going.

As I tip-toed across the back of the stage, I patted the fanny pack in front of me, feeling the weight of the gun. There was a full magazine and one in the chamber. Fifteen rounds. Two that at some point in the near future were going to put an end to a couple of rap careers. After two deep breaths, I made my way to the edge of the curtain. When I was halfway there, the lights flipped on. Someone had just decided J.J.’s set was over.

Son of a biscuit.

I had a decision to make. Did I attempt to sneak back to my seat or did I head back down the stairs and take my chances with Rikki and Bheka. But the whole reason I’d left was to get Susie’s medicine, so if I aborted now the whole seek and recover mission would have been in vain. But my getting caught would help no one. The pirates would confiscate everything and I might get myself killed in the process.

I decided to take a quick peek, take stock of the situation, then make up my mind. I pulled the curtain back a half-inch and peeked out. My eyes immediately found Lacy’s—who must have been staring at my exact location—and she shook her head with tight lips. I heard a door open and pulled my head back, flattening myself against the curtain. From my peripheral I watched as Little Wayne walked from the bathroom.

I waited a minute, then snuck another glance. Gilroy and Trinity were arguing in the front row. J.J. Watkins had found his seat next to my sister and was staring in my direction as well. Frank was staring down at where Susie lay on the ground. Walter and Marge were asleep against one another.

J.J. poked Lacy in the ribs. Lacy glared at him.

I looked over the top of them to where Little Wayne had joined Tupac. There were only two of them now. Although, to be fair, I
had
smashed an iron into the side of their buddy’s head, then jabbed a seven-inch blade into his heart. The two were engaged in a heated discussion, no doubt wondering where their fellow mercenary had absconded. They were distracted, but if I darted from the curtains to my seat, they would see me.

I turned my gaze back to Lacy. She flashed her hand at me.

She flashed it again and I understood. Five. Five seconds. I nodded. I pulled my head back, leaned up against the wall and counted.
One Mississippi . . . two Mississippi . . . three Mississippi . . . four Mississippi . . . five Mississip—

There was a loud
CRUNCH
on the far side of the curtain and I knew that Lacy had chucked her water bottle across the room. That was my cue. I shot from the curtains, army crawling to the edge of the seats and to the second row. I slinked past J.J., past Lacy, then slid upright into my seat, and tried to play it cool.

After a couple seconds, I asked Lacy, “How is she?”

“She hasn’t moved since you left.”

I glanced to my right, where Tupac was holding up a dented water bottle and gazing in our direction. The water bottle in his left hand, his AK-47 in his right, he started towards us. As he past the other hundred hostages, not a single sound was made.