Scrapyard Ship (3 page)

“Would that be so bad? Being friends?”

“What would be the point?” Nan spat back. Then, seeming to regret her outburst, she continued in a more controlled voice. “Why now? It’s been years; don’t you think it’s best to just let things be?”

Nan sat back and smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. This must be a difficult time for you.” She furrowed her brow and went on: “But Christ, Jason, you’re so damn impulsive! What the hell were you thinking, shooting those unarmed guys?”

Jason looked at Nan and saw her frustration with him. There was nothing she could say he hadn’t already said to himself a thousand times.

It was over a year ago. Jason, a lieutenant commander on the U.S. gunship Tripoli, was on patrol off the coast of Somalia. He had just been informed that the Canadian super tanker,
Christina
, had been boarded by pirates. Recently, and all too frequently, Somalian pirates were brazenly attacking these big ships, demanding large ransom amounts from governments and corporations alike. In return, they promised a safe return of ship and crew. Fortunately, this time, Jason’s gunship was close by—less than a mile from the seized tanker.

It was a moonless, stormy night when four navy SEAL Zodiac rubberized crafts swept up to the besieged ship. The noise of their small but powerful outboard motors was barely audible above the sea’s surging waves. Jason and fifteen others on his team had trained this same type of maneuver hundreds of times.

Their Zodiacs were soon positioned mid-ship and aft on both sides of the tanker. At Jason’s comms signal, the team silently climbed up long collapsible ladders and was on board in less than two minutes. The Christina was completely dark. Dressed in black assault gear, each SEAL carried a standard issue Sig Sauer P226 side arm, as well as an HK MP5N submachine gun, and was equipped with night-vision goggles. For assaults such as this, they would have access to a duffle bag filled with explosive breaching charges, bolt cutters, and a sledgehammer.
The four SEAL teams moved forward with their weapons raised and ready. It became immediately apparent that this was not a typical pirate ransom situation. This had been a raid. A dead body lay sprawled on the deck before Jason. Eerily seen through green-hued optics, the crewmember’s throat had been sliced from ear to ear. Blood pooled in a symmetrical circle around his head. Jason went on-comms to his team. “Stay dark and quiet everybody; team Zebra, I want you clearing the bridge—let’s see if anyone is still in charge here.”

Three more bodies, similarly killed, were found in the same proximity by his team. Right inside the forward bulkhead hatch, a woman crewmember had been bound. Trousers pulled down, she had obviously been raped prior to having her throat cut as well. Outside the hatch, Jason watched Billy, a mountain of a man and one of the toughest SEALs in the unit, walk over to the railing, throw up over the side, and then continue on to secure the ship. Jason heard noises and yelling coming from below deck. Laughing. Not English.

Jason, using hand signals, gestured for two of the assault team members to follow him down the stairs, and the other two teams to clear the top deck. The laughing became more pronounced as Jason and his team descended the stairs. A metallic clanging sound echoed off a bulkhead in the distance, followed by more laughter. More clanging, more laughter. Light poured out from an open hatchway just ahead, partially illuminating the dark hallway.

Jason signaled for his team to halt—he slung his assault rifle around to his back and used a small telescopic mirror to carefully peer inside and around the corner. He moved the mirror around, ensuring that he hadn’t missed anything. He took in the scene in mere seconds. It looked to be the ship's mess. The tanker’s captain was bound and secured to the far bulkhead; his legs and arms spread wide apart. Five Somalian pirates sat together at a large table on the far side of the room. Most of them were shirtless, their dark skins contrasted with the white florescent lights above. Machetes caked with dried blood lay strewn about the tabletop.

The obvious leader, a tall and emaciated-looking man, stood forward, closer to the bound captain, and held a woman crewmember around her neck. He held a knife up to her eye. Three of the captain’s crew had been blindfolded. They each held a three-foot long piece of pipe. Watching the events as they progressed, Jason felt bile rise in the back of his throat. In a sick and twisted form of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ the blindfolded crewmembers could only save the woman’s life by taking shots at the captain.

From the looks of things, the captain had been hit numerous times. Blood seeped from an open gash on his forehead. His right ear was completely gone—an oozing dark red circle in its place. Terrified, the woman screamed—which produced another wave of laughter from the pirates. In Jason’s ear-comm the other two SEAL teams were reporting in. A total of seventeen more casualties had been found, four of whom were rape victims. More laughter erupted from within the mess hall.

Jason instinctually took action. In fact, not reaching for his sidearm was never a question. With no thought, no hesitation, he pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from his holster, leveled it, and squeezed the trigger. The pirate leader, the one holding the woman, was dead before he hit the ground—a small bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The woman jumped back and screamed again. But Jason didn’t stop there. He quickly followed up by squeezing the trigger five more times—also dead center shots to the forehead for each of the remaining pirates. They fell in near unison to the mess deck. Later, there would be conflicting reports from his SEAL team. Something about the other pirates reaching for their weapons, but Jason doubted that that was true.

As events happened, the story was leaked to the press and immediately sensationalized to mega-proportions. International media and other news organizations had a field day. Before Jason knew it, he had been elevated to quasi-hero status: Lieutenant Commander Jason Reynolds inflicts sweet revenge on merciless pirates. But then it was up to a special U.S. Navy Tribunal to decide his fate. Would Jason face charges for second-degree murder and spend years of his life locked up somewhere in a brig, or would he be found innocent due to mitigating circumstances? Still at the tribunal stage, set up by the Judge Advocate General's Corps, a non-judicial preceding which comes before any kind of court martial. He’d been fortunate…not being required to wait out the decision process in a cell. He wasn’t sure if this was due to his favorable past service record or, more likely, his father being the famed Admiral Perry Reynolds.

Now, looking over at Nan’s delicate profile, Jason wondered if she too thought of him as a cold-blooded murderer. Mollie laughed at something in the house. When she burst outside, she wore her deceased uncle’s catcher’s outfit from high school. Brian, shorter, stockier than Jason, was perfect behind home base. The hat was a little big for her and the catcher’s mask flopped around on her face. She tossed a baseball up in the air a few times—then back and forth into an oversized mitt. Giggling, she crouched down and outstretched the mitt in front of her chest, “You ready to play, Dad?  Come on… let’s play ball, sports fans!”

Nan just shook her head. “Was that yours?” she asked, now smiling at Mollie’s antics.

“No, Brian was the baseball player in the family—I was the football jock,” he replied, picking Mollie up and twirling her around, her laugh contagious. Jason set her down, and she dizzily scampered back into the house, the sounds of laughter following her.

“Actually, I’m surprised that stuffs still around,” Jason said, sitting back down across from Nan.

“For goodness sakes, haven’t you explored the house since you’ve been back?”

“Not really, too many ghosts around here. What with Dad taking off, Brian never coming home and now Gus gone… I’m fine just hanging around the kitchen and family room.”

“Oh, don’t be such a pussy,” she said, with a rye smile. “Anyway, how do you know old Admiral Perry hasn’t returned? Maybe he’s sprawled out in a bathtub back in there somewhere?”

“Well, I’ve wandered around enough to know he’s not here. To be honest, it’s kinda creepy here; everything looks the same as it did fifteen years ago, when I went off to Annapolis. Brian’s room hasn’t been changed since he went into the service.”

Nan’s attention was interrupted by something out in the scrapyard. With a furrowed brow she pointed. “You have someone working here, in the yard?” she inquired.

“No, why?” Following Nan’s gaze, Jason saw who she was referring to. The short man was back. He was halfway down the same path Jason had chased him on last night—now pulling a flatbed cart that carried the same three metallic objects Jason had locked up in the shed.

Jason stood up and went to the edge of the porch. “Hey! Get the hell off my property, you little shit. And don’t come back here again!” The little man paid no attention to Jason’s verbal onslaught and continued on his way. Tempted to give chase again, Jason remembered his tender feet.

Nan looked at him for a second before commenting, “That's a bit hostile, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not… I chased that same guy out of here last night. He’s been sneaking into the yard, going into the shed… doing experiments.” Even before he had finished saying it, he realized how stupid that sounded.

“Experiments? Huh! What kind of experiments?” Nan asked teasingly, without trying to hide her smile. “You mean he’s like some kind of reclusive scrapyard scientist?”

“Ha ha, I don’t know what he is,” Jason replied, acting overly indignant, “but I’m thinking I should call the local cops; have an APB put out on the guy.”

“Sure, if you think you need the help,” she said, now seeming to lose interest in the subject altogether. “Anyway, I should go. You guys have fun. Maybe between the two of you you’ll catch your man. Just be careful, try not to put Mollie in harm’s way, okay?”

“Yeah, well I’m sure he’s harmless. By the looks of him, even Mollie could beat the stuffing out of him.”

Nan’s cell phone started ringing to the song lyrics
Boom Boom Pow
. She fumbled with the phone, sending the caller to voice mail. “Mollie thinks it’s funny to sneak different ringtones onto my phone. But, hey— you got to love The Black Eyed Peas.” Nan got up and walked back into the house. Once in the kitchen she made a detour over to the fridge and took a peek inside. “Good God, Jason—what were you planning on feeding Mollie while she’s here?”

Crap! Jason had forgotten to order groceries. It was on his list of things to do. Not being able to leave the property was inconvenient—not something he’d gotten used to yet. “I’m already on it,” he fibbed. “I’ll have groceries delivered later today. Um… what does Mollie like to eat these days?”

Rolling her eyes, Nan shook her head in disbelief. “If you can wait a few hours I’ll try to drop some food by later on today. But you’re going to have to work out your food and supply needs—long-term.”

Jason walked Nan out to her car. She yelled goodbye to Mollie and climbed in behind the wheel, giving him a quick smile as she backed down the driveway. Closing the gate, Jason felt more optimistic than he had any right to. At least Nan was talking to him again and that was a start. Back in the house, Mollie was sprawled out on the couch waiting for him.

“Mom’s gone?”

“Yep, it’s just you and me, amigo.”

“What are we going to do now, Dad?” she said, scanning the family room. “You don’t have a TV or even a stereo?”

“We’re going on a safari,” he said, in as serious a voice as he could muster.

“Safari? Like a wild African safari? What are we hunting for?”

“A hoodlum,” he said. “A wild scrapyard hoodlum.”

* * *

Jason brought along a small backpack, outfitted with a few necessities, including two water bottles, binoculars, a small tool kit, a knife, and his cellphone. They also brought along some makeshift walking sticks…ready to set off for the great unknown. Mollie was, as usual, a good sport and willing to make it a fun adventure. The scrapyard itself was massive, spreading hundreds of yards in every direction. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes had been dumped here since the early 1930’s—long before Jason was born. Even before old Gus was born. How Gus originally acquired the property, Jason had no idea. Mollie hadn’t visited the scrapyard since she was a small child, but just like him as a kid, she became captivated by this great accumulation of junk.

“It’s kind of sad,” Mollie said, poking her walking stick at a ‘63 Rambler’s broken taillight. “I mean, all these cars… they each have a story. You know what I mean?  Like, look over there, that white car…” Jason followed her glance.

“Yeah, that ‘68 Buick…it was in an accident. You can see the whole front end is all bashed in. Someone might have died in that car, Dad. A whole family might have died in that car. It seems all the cars here have a sad story. Their car lives ended in this yard—their final resting place.”

“I guess that’s true… but there’s another way to look at it, Mollie,” Jason replied. “Many of these old cars and vans once brought people real happiness—some for a very long time. And then they just conked out—no accidents, no drama, too old to be driven, so they gave up the ghost.” Jason picked up a rusted drum brake assembly and threw it back onto a pile of scrap. A frightened cottontail jumped out of the heap and ran into Mollie’s foot before skittering off.

“Woo-oh little rabbit!  You scared the crap out of me!” Mollie screamed, watching its fluffy tail disappear beneath a pile of chrome bumpers. “Hey, are we following these?” She gestured toward a trail of dark brown footprints on the path.

“Kinda—we’re at least going in that general direction.” Jason pulled out his binoculars and scanned the seemingly endless field of derelict vehicles. Memories flooded back to his childhood when he’d played here. He once knew every inch of the place.

“What are you looking at?” Mollie asked, while climbing up onto several tire rims to get a better view.

“I’m looking at a red 1960 Cadillac.”

“Yeah, so what’s so interesting about an old red 1960 Cadillac?” Mollie questioned back.