The Drift (A Hans Larsson Novel Book 1) (9 page)

“
T
he
kif in the Rif is the Rif in the kif!” shrieked Ahmed, whacking the garbage bag
of dried marijuana with two sticks like a drummer in a rock band.

“The Rif and the kif are one and the same!” Mohamed replied,
completing their youthful mantra.

High up in Morocco’s Rif Mountains, the view stretched to
the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean Sea, yet in the murk of the hut the
boys concentrated on beating the kif plants, stripping them of their valuable
buds for processing into the finest hashish.

“This is boring. I wish we were picking.” Mohamed sighed,
his thoughts flicking to harvesting the pungent-smelling blooms out on the
miles of man-made terraces.

The Berbers had inhabited this region of North Africa since
prehistoric times and, over the last century, cleared vast tracts of pine
forest, wild flowers and rocky outcrops for cultivation.

“You blinkered baboon!” Ahmed pretend-whipped his friend. “Remember
the plan!”

“Am-ster-
daaaam
!” Mohamed’s face lit up

“Girls, girls, girls!” Ahmed grinned, exposing a row of
blackened teeth that “girls” would surely die for.

A year had passed since Al Mohzerer first brought them to the
hut, situated on a mountain farm his family had owned for generations. Compared
to sleeping in a sewer wondering where their next meal came from, it was a
great improvement and far better than the depravity of the orphanage and the
unhealthy grind in the carpet factory.

They awoke every day at dawn upon hearing the
adhan
piped from the village mosque’s ancient minaret. However, the boys never paid
homage to Allah. Even if they had wanted to pray five times a day – which they
did not – Al Mohzerer
forbade such a practice, for time was money, the
competition fierce in this industry. After a breakfast of bread and sweet black
coffee, the boys went to work, relentlessly thrashing the cannabis stems or
harvesting the plants out on the slopes.

Every so often a Dutch buyer or a group of backpackers arrived
at the farm to witness production, a highpoint for Ahmed and Mohamed, the
visitors showering them with gifts and dirhams and teaching them phrases in
English. Some of the girls wore shorts and skimpy tops, a source of amusement
and intrigue for the cheeky pair, who worked their puckish charm for all it was
worth to receive hugs and pecks on the cheek.

“Mon-ni-ca!” Mohamed often teased, reminding Ahmed of the
French girl he’d taken a shine to last year. “Kissy, kissy, kissy!”

He would clasp his hands to his chest and jiggle them up and
down.

“Idiot!” Ahmed always flushed.

Naturally, many of the guests jumped at the chance to
purchase hashish. The boys would slip them quarter ounces of the “squidgy black”
they made by spitting on palmfuls of hash powder and kneading the mix into
malleable lumps with their fingers, giving strict instructions not to disclose
the transaction to the other workers, especially Al Mohzerer,
who’d
chopped people’s hands off for less.

Every dirham earned went into a can hidden beneath the hut’s
floorboards, ready for the day they would leave this place and head for the
bright lights of Amsterdam, where people bought cannabis on the street, smoked
it in cafés, and girls sat half-naked in the glow of red bulbs wantonly
awaiting young bucks such as them. When the time came, the two of them would
steal as many blocks of Al Mohzerer’s hashish as they could carry and a boat
from the harbor in Tangier, then sail across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain
and hitchhike to the land of milk and honey.

One Sunday a month Al Mohzerer allowed the boys to travel to
the city with him. While he attended to the business of delivering Golden
Monkey, they would watch a movie, sneaking below the ticket booth window to
save their hard-earned cash for the Big Out. As for entertainments snacks,
Ahmed distracted the storekeepers while Mohamed shoved them into his pockets.
The rest of the sojourn they spent at the ferry port or backpacker hostels,
touting their squidgy black lumps to dope-loving tourists.

“Jiggy, jiggy, jiggy!” Mohamed pouted his lips, jiving with
his hands as if flying a kite. “Am-ster-
daaaam
!”

“Vroom, vroom!” Ahmed beamed, steering an imaginary sports
car around an imaginary bend. “BMW!”

“Ferrari!”

“Rolls . . .
Royce
!”

Whipping the dried plants, the boys fell silent under the
allure of their long-planned adventure, minutes passing as the highly prized
follicles of marihuana accumulated in the bottom of the garbage sack.

“Footyball!” Mohamed piped up, his thoughts flicking to the
homemade soccer ball they had made by wrapping hundreds of carrier bags around
each other. Amongst the endless rows of weed, it was easy to have a discreet kickabout.

“Beckham!”

“Ronaldo!”

Their boyish banter continued – anything to relieve the
monotony of a twelve-hour shift in the hut.

Without warning the door flew open, kicking up a cloud of
yellow dust as sunlight poured into the room. The teenagers fell silent,
neither daring to look up.

In walked Al Mohzerer.

As a glittering golden haze swirled about them, Ahmed and Mohamed
went at the task with renewed vigor. Al Mohzerer stared at them for a few
seconds, then picked up a plastic barrel brimming with potent plant matter,
loaded it onto his battered truck and drove off.

“Ketama!” Ahmed chirped with a grin, mimicking the visiting
Dutch dealers.

“Sputnik!” Mohamed replied – another brand name the region’s
hashish went by in the coffee shops of Amsterdam.

“Zero Zero!”

“King Hassan!”

“Rifman!”

And so it went on.

C
onditions worsened, the wind growing stronger and increasingly unpredictable,
the mainsail flogging around like a bucking stallion. Hans focussed on keeping
Future
’s
nose pointed into the oncoming swell, a formidable task as waves smashed into
the yacht from all angles. The rain turned from lazy slugs into a barrage of
biting pellets, torrents of spray drenching him further, and as the once-distant
cloud bank blocked out the remaining daylight, a bolt of lightning zigzagged
down to stab the sea in the distance. It arced brighter twice, as if Mother
Nature had fired a Taser and then double-zapped her victim, leaving an image of
a snaking white bungee burned into Hans’ retinas. Thunder rumbled seconds
after, a sign the worst was yet to come.

Future
rode
up endless rollers that built still higher, but just as the yacht looked to founder,
she crashed down their steep faces into the black troughs below, a deluge of white
water cascading over the bow and threatening to pitch her end over end. Like a
whale coming up for air, she shrugged off the liquid avalanche and charged into
the next berg with her indomitable spirit.

Used to such conditions, Penny prepared for the worst,
stowing all the gear in the cabin and strapping Jessica and Bear down in their
bunk, no easy task as
Future
careened into the maelstrom.

“Don’t worry, darling. Neptune’s just playing with us.”

“Who’s Neptune, Penny?”

“Well, once upon a time . . .”

The constantly changing wind threatened to knock
Future
down, so high-pitched it reminded Hans of Indy 500 cars changing gear. He
checked the wind indicator to see it pegging seventy knots, confirming that
these were by far the worst conditions in which he had skippered. Furling
in the remaining canvas, he unclipped his safety line ready to go forward
and set the storm jib, but an almighty gust slammed the mainsail down into the
seething ocean, plunging the
starboard beam deep underwater.

As Jessica screamed, Penny flew across the cabin, smashing her
head against the opposite bunk, her body collapsing onto the sole as the yacht
rolled upright.

“Papa!”

Hans had problems of his own. Tons of seawater poured out of
the cockpit, sucking him overboard into the path of a breaking giant. He drew a
sharp breath and attempted a duck-dive, but it was too late. The wave crashed
down, knocking air from his lungs and tumbling him around until there was
nothing but cold, black silence.

Desperate to breathe, Hans kicked for the surface, but foul-weather
gear and sea boots retarded his progress, the deep layer of froth offering little
resistance for his determined strokes.

Stay calm!
His military training came into play, but,
breaking through the surf, he saw
Future
had sailed on. She was thirty
yards away and moving further every second.

“Penny!” Hans screamed to no avail, realizing his only chance
of survival was the man-overboard line. He ducked under, pulled off his
footwear and, leaving his life jacket deflated so as not to impede his movement,
struck out in a direction perpendicular to the
Future
’s wake.

By now she was sixty yards distant. Hans put this out of his
mind and plowed on through the breakers, desperate to feel an arm chop down on
the rope but knowing the massive swell would considerably shorten its hundred-yard
length.

Crossing
Future
’s
wake by a good ten yards, Hans
still couldn’t find the line and, treading water, wondered if he had swum over
the top of it. He was about to resign himself to fate when a fluorescent float
came skimming across the foam toward him.

“
Arrrhh
!”

He lunged, grabbing the last foot of nylon as the yacht began
dragging him through the wave crests like an oversized fishing lure.

Using his palm as a hydrofoil, Hans popped his life jacket,
and although creating drag, it kept his head above water, its pull-down hood
fending off spray and enabling him to breathe.

Why doesn’t the tension on the rope trip the
self-steering?
he wondered as
Future
forged ahead, making their reunion
a formidable task.

His strength waning, Hans inched along the rope, relieved to
grasp the half hitches tied every three feet.

Ninety yards . . . sixty . . . thirty . . . So close but so
far.

“
Noooooo
!”

Forced to give up, Hans did not have the energy to heave
anymore or to tie the line around him.

Good-bye, my beautiful baby.

He prepared himself for the inevitable, ready to let go and surrender
to nature’s wet embrace.

I’m sorry, my sweet pea. I’m so sorry.

Light flooded the cockpit.

“Papa!”

“Jessie!”

Above the noise of the howling wind and crashing ocean, Hans
screamed, “Honey, swing the wheel around!
All
the way, like Daddy showed
you!”

He could see his daughter struggling to carry out his
instructions, the storm tumbling her insignificant figure around the cockpit.

Finally the line went slack.

Oh, my girl!

With a second wind, Hans swam the last few yards, spitting
violently to expel the water invading his mouth and attempting to drown him. He
clung to the stern ladder, regaining the strength to climb back aboard.

“Penny, Papa!
Penny’s
not
moving!”

Hans swept her up and, seeing she had put her life jacket
and harness on correctly and secured a safety line, burst into tears. Penny lay
still in the cabin, Jessica having placed her in the recovery position. Hans
checked her airway and breathing and her body for injuries. He found a nasty
lump on the back of her head. His fingers came away wet with blood.

“Jessie, I’m gonna strap Penny in her bunk. I need you to
get in yours too while I go and set the storm sail.”

He pulled the cover over Penny and saw her eyes flicker.

“Hans . . . is that you?”

“I’m here, honey.”

“Hmm.” She smiled, clasping his hand before drifting into sleep.

Leaving to go on deck, Hans heard “Papa!” He turned to see
Jessica holding Bear out.

“Huh?”

“For Penny,” she whispered.