Thomas Prescott Superpack (92 page)

Thapa fell backward. As he fell to the ground, he felt a shooting pain in his side. Immediately, Thapa knew what happened. The knife on his waist had turned during the fall and punctured his side. He moved his hand across his lower abdomen, coloring it a deep crimson.

Thapa watched out of the corner of his eye as the pirate walked over and picked Thapa’s gun from the floor. The pirate walked over to his comrade, who was still in the walkway, but had fallen to his knees, and put a bullet through the man’s heart.

Thapa was struggling to his knees, when he felt the icy cold barrel of a gun pressed to the side of his head. Thapa was sure the man was about to pull the trigger when the radio on his side had erupted in frantic African. The pirate walked in front of Thapa, pulled the radio up, and held it to his ear. Then there had been a silence, followed by the single word, “Gotcha.”

The pirate smiled and Thapa knew Thomas’ mission had also failed. The pirate had alerted his superiors of the uprising, and Baruti and The Mosquito had taken action. They had played some sort of trick, enticing Thomas to act, and it had apparently worked.

“You kild my brodders!” the pirate screamed at Thapa. “Now it is yo turn.”

Thapa wanted to picture himself holding his wife and his son in his arms when the bullet came. But as he was set to close his eyes, a bright light moved over his left pupil. He blinked, then opened his eyes. Directly in front of him on the pirate’s leg, there was a glowing red dot. Thapa recognized it immediately and said, “Look.”

The pirate looked down at his leg and saw the red dot. His eyebrows rose. Thapa watched as the red dot moved up the pirate’s leg, up his stomach, crawled up his neck, and settled between his eyes. Then the red dot turned into a small black hole.

DECK 2

2209 HOURS

Royal lowered his gun, stood from his kneeling position, and gingerly stepped over the cake-covered limbs.

The half-mile swim had taken approximately seven minutes. They had reached the hull at exactly 2203 hours. Each SEAL had silently removed the suction plungers that were affixed to their fins and began the methodical climb up the forty feet to the lowest deck.

Four of the SEALs—Royal, Pollock, Deeter, and Sanchez—pulled themselves over the edge of Deck 2. The other four would continue up to Deck 6, where hostages could be seen lowering a lifeboat into the water.

Royal and the other three silently pulled their masks up and slipped their laser scoped SIGs from their holsters. Royal pushed his finger to his ear and said, “Landed. Beginning Sweep.”

According to the layout of the ship, the largest single room was a restaurant on Deck 2, Pretoria, and would be the most logical place to hold a large majority, if not all, of the hostages. Royal held up two fingers behind him and Deeter and Sanchez silently disappeared. They would go around and approach from the opposite side.

Pollock pulled open the heavy metal door leading to the interior of the ship and Royal darted through, scanned for enemy targets, then waved Pollock in. They moved through a series of walkways, which led to the officer’s quarters. They peeked into a couple rooms, but saw no one.

They passed a room marked Medical, then moved into a foyer that would lead to the restaurant. Royal peered around a corner and his eyes took in the site. Body parts were scattered everywhere. A mess of blood and limbs. Two doors where partially open. Between the two doors, two men were visible. One man was on his knees. The other man was standing over him, pressing a gun to the man’s forehead.

Royal didn’t even think. In the time it takes to swallow, he planted his left knee, stabilized his right leg, pulled the gun up with two hands, tilted his head to the left, and closed his right eye. He didn’t need the laser scope, but it didn’t hurt. He moved the red dot up the black man’s body, settled it right between his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

OBSERVATION DECK

10:11 p.m.

Each time I would slow down, the tip of the blade would push into the small of my back. I took a couple steps forward, then stopped. I reached my right hand over my left shoulder and tried to find the alien presence that was causing me so much agony. The blade pressed into my back, but the pain barely registered compared to the throbbing emanating from my left shoulder blade. My fingers combed the area, then stopped when they hit the jagged piece of glass. I pinched the glass with my thumb and forefinger. It didn’t budge. My eyes began to water as I wiggled the glass back and forth, loosening it in the skin, then slowly pulled it out.

“Wak.”

I took a couple more steps and inspected the quarter-inch thick, half-inch long shared of glass that was one of many embedded in my flesh. I shook my head and tossed the glass over the side of the ship.

The Warlord marched me forward until I had eclipsed the Bridge’s shattered dome. I could see three people standing on the nose of the ship where there was a small observation deck. Illuminated by the Bridge’s lights were the Professor, Bheka, and Rikki.

Rikki looked like she’d been through war. Her shorts were torn and covered in droplets of blood. Her shirt was gone and she had her arms crossed, covering her breasts. Tears dripped down her cheeks as she watched me hobble towards her. And Bheka. His body was rigid, his face tensed, as he white-knuckled the railing in front of him. I think he was more frightened of being on the edge of a seventy-foot plummet, than of the man holding the gun next to him.

The Warlord joined the Professor. He slipped the machete back into its sheath, then pulled a pistol from the small of his back and pointed it at my chest. He motioned me to put my hands on my head.

I did.

The Professor appraised me, then asked, “Are you the one I need to thank for this rebellion?”

“Rebellion?” I scoffed. “This isn’t apartheid. We are merely trying to survive. Wouldn’t you be doing the same if the tables were turned?”

He appeared to be deep in thought. Then he said, “What makes you think I ever had the intention of hurting anyone.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you killed the captain and all his officers in cold blood.”

He smiled.

I added, “And maybe because you plan on blowing up the ship. None of us were meant to survive.”

“That may be.”

I looked down at my watch. I had a minute and a half I needed to stall. I asked, “Did you get the money?”

He looked at Rikki, then turned to me and said, “Unfortunately, we were only able to get some of the money. I had plans to get the rest, but it appears that is no longer an option. Anyhow, a billion dollars can do a lot of good.”

“Did you just say ‘a billion dollars?’”

“Yes.”

“And that was only
some
of the money?”

“Yes. A down payment. Tomorrow morning, I was to put this young lady on a raft with a radio and her father was going to transfer the remaining funds.” He added, “But now…”

This of course meant he had intended on letting her live,
but now
, he didn’t.

I peered at both Rikki and Bheka. I willed them to jump overboard. Take two steps backwards and simply fall over the railing and into the ocean. At least one of the lifeboats had to be in the water by now. They might survive.

“How do you know my mother?”

The Professor gazed at Rikki, and asked, “Why do you ask?”

“I’m not buying that you found me by accident. Either Track is behind this or my mother. And I doubt it was Track.”

“I met your mother while living in exile,” he said. “One night, after too much vodka, she began to open up. About you and about your father. From there, the plan started to take shape.”

“She could no longer milk the well that was my father, so she had to find another way to hit it big. I guess I was the answer.”

“Yes. You were.”

“How much are you giving her?”

“A million dollars.”

Rikki wrinkled her nose, deep in thought, but remained quiet.

“How do you plan on getting away?” I asked.

The Professor and the Warlord looked at each other. Determining that my knowing of his getaway when I had little time left on this Earth was of little consequence, the Professor said, “Over the last couple months, my good friend Keli and I have been doing a lot of scuba diving. When the ship explodes tomorrow, we will be miles away. I have another friend in the South African Navy, who for the small price of one million dollars, has agreed to pick the two of us up. It will be easy.”

It sounded easy. And I probably would have done it just the same. I was curious about something the Professor had said earlier and asked, “What did you mean by one billion dollars can do a whole lot of good?”

“Well not a billion. Keli here gets a big share, and a couple other people, but what’s left will still be a small fortune. And by good, I mean, I will be able to help many of my countrymen.”

“You mean this whole AIDS things was legit?”

He looked at Keli. I thought I saw him smile. “I have devoted the last twenty years of my life to the AIDS epidemic that is destroying South Africa. You have no idea how many of my Zulu brothers and sisters who have been stolen by this disease. And the children. The orphans. Millions of them. And half of these orphans are infected with the disease. It is a never ending cycle. We need to start over.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at. “What do you mean start over?”

“There are too many sick. Even with the best treatment my countrymen will continue to spread this disease. And the numbers will not decrease as people think. They will continue to get worse. Think of the plague. It killed millions of people, so many in fact, that it wiped itself out. There was no longer anyone alive who could pass the disease along. But with AIDS, it takes so long to kill, we will never get rid of it.”

I was starting to see where this was going. I stuck my hands in my pockets. It seemed like a good time to do it. Before either of them could yell at me to put my hands back up, I said, “So you plan to do God’s work for him.”

He nodded. “Nearly a quarter million of my countrymen; men, women, and children, infected with AIDS have converged in one spot.”

“And let me guess. You are going to kill every last one of them.”

“Think of all the lives I will be saving. Each of these people would have passed the disease to countless others. By killing these quarter million, I will be saving possibly tens of millions.”

I imagined a square mile of sick Africans, who had been promised medicine and would be vaporized instead. “You’re sick.”

“Misunderstood.”

“Who did you get the missile from? China? Russia?”

“No matter, it cost a quarter of a billion dollars. And as we speak, there is a beacon broadcasting a silent signal from the small village.”

“Beacon?”

“Yes. An electronic device that pinpoints exactly where the missile will detonate.”

“Let me guess, this is happening at noon tomorrow.”

He looked impressed. “Four hundred hostages killed aboard a cruise ship, another quarter million vaporized in a small village, who is going to be searching ships looking for stowaways?”

I couldn’t help myself and said, “For everyone who you plan on killing, I just want to say, fuck you.”

I looked down at my watch. Five seconds.

I slowly pulled my hands from my pockets and put them back on my head. I positioned the foam in my fingers. I could see the Warlord staring at my hands, trying to figure out what I was doing. I moved my fingers down to my ears and shoved in the specialty-designed earplugs Ganju had handed out to everyone before we’d left the show lounge.

The Warlord began screaming at me, but I couldn’t hear him. Then he buckled over, his hands clapping to his ears. The Professor, Rikki, and Bheka did the same.

Frank had come through. Positioned at the bow of Deck 8, was an anti-attack device called an
LRAD. Long Range Acoustic Device. It had been Ganju’s idea. He knew the chances of my taking out the pirates by myself were slim. So he’d brought everyone earplugs and given Frank a half-minute instruction on how to use the device. It sounded simple enough. Point the LRAD where you want the sound waves to go and everyone within the line of sight will be crippled. And everyone within a hundred feet of the sound waves wouldn’t be able to hear for a week. Maybe two.

Even with the earplugs, my head ached. It felt as though I was standing with my ear to the speaker at a Rage
Against the Machine concert. As for the Professor, the Warlord, Rikki, and Bheka, all four were now on the ground, hands clapped over their ears, writhing on their backs.

I ran forward and picked up both Bheka and Rikki in my arms. They should have been heavy, but they weren’t. Heavy wasn’t in my vocabulary at that moment in time. I jumped off the nose of the ship and lugged both their squirming bodies to the walkway on Deck 7. I pulled four of the earplugs from my pocket. I pried Rikki’s left hand from her ear and crammed in one of the earplugs, then another. Then I did the same with Bheka. Both looked dazed, like they had been struck with lightning, but both were able to walk. I yelled as loud as I could, “Take Bheka and go by the hot tubs. Wait there.”