The Tears of Dark Water (28 page)

“Congratulations,” Steyn said. “Now let’s get our asses back to Kenya.”

Vanessa let out the breath she was holding and the tension inside her eased. But her work was not yet done. She took a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans. “I need the phone again,” she said. “I have one more call to make.”

Flint made no attempt to hide his annoyance. “You can’t call them again until they finish counting the cash. It’s bad form.”

She shook her head. “Not them. Someone else.”

He threw up his hands and handed her the phone. “Whatever you say.”

Vanessa returned to her seat and punched in the number. After two rings, a man came on the line. “Brent Frazier here.”

“Special Agent Frazier, Mary said you’d be expecting me.”

“Ms. Parker.” Frazier sounded piqued. “As you’re aware, this is highly unusual.”

“I know. But you did it once before.”

Frazier took a breath. “I’ll patch you through.”

She heard a series of clicks and then another man answered. She recognized his voice.

“Hi, Vanessa, it’s Paul,” Derrick said. “I hear you’re on the plane. How are you?”

She looked out the window at the golden sun, trying to imagine the negotiator on the bridge of the
Gettysburg
. “I’m fine, Paul, it’s kind of you to ask.”

“What can I do for you?” he inquired.

“I’m calling to thank you. I suspect there were people who didn’t want to let us into the negotiations. I don’t know what you said or did, but I’m grateful. I’ll never forget it.”

He took a moment to respond. “You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked out.”

“You know I spoke to them—to Daniel and Quentin—before we sent the package.”

“We saw them in the cockpit,” he said. “They looked good.”

“They sounded that way, too,” she confirmed. “I want them to stay that way.”

“We all do,” he replied in a reassuring tone. “It won’t be much longer now.”

She pictured her son’s face, his long mess of hair, the trim form of a man-becoming, and then flashed to her husband, saw the graying stubble of his beard, the light in his eyes, the sturdy legs of a man of the sea. She articulated her request simply.

“I have a message for the Navy and your superiors. Will you deliver it for me?”

Derrick hesitated, then said: “Yes, of course.”

“Tell them we’ve done our part. We’ve done everything the pirates asked of us. Daniel and Quentin are in your hands now.” She spoke her final plea with all the passion in her heart. “Bring them home to me, Paul. Bring my husband and son home.”

Daniel

The Indian Ocean

02°09´59˝N, 45°42´05˝E

November 14, 2011

When he left the cockpit of the
Renaissance
, Daniel’s mind was on fire. With a single act of bravery and a few kind words, Vanessa had revived the wellspring of his hope. Even in his wildest fancies, he could never have imagined that she would fly halfway around the world to make a ransom drop in Somali waters. It made no sense. She was terrified of anything with wings. But she held a special loathing for propeller planes—“mosquito death traps” she called them. There were only a handful of explanations. Either she was high on a drug that eliminated her perception of risk, or she had been lobotomized, or her love for them was more powerful than her fear.

He walked through the saloon and slid into the booth with Quentin, oblivious to the stares of the pirates all around. He couldn’t care less about them now. They were like a sickness that had run its course. He gave his son a look of amazement.

“She said she’d come with us to St. Thomas. She said you could bring Ariadne.”

Quentin shook his head. “She must be smoking something.”

Daniel laughed out loud. “I know.”

Liban stepped toward them. “No talk.”

Daniel felt liberated. “Your money is coming. What difference does it make?”

“No talk,” the pirate repeated menacingly.

“Fine,” Daniel said with a shrug.

He heard a high-pitched buzzing noise and looked toward the cockpit, where Afyareh and Guray and Osman were standing, watching the sky. The noise grew more distinct. It was clearly a propulsion system of some kind. When the sound reached a fever pitch, he watched, rapt, as the pirates extended their arms and began to shout excitedly. Then, in an instant, they took hold of a container with black straps and an apparatus with strings attached. The strings bowed, and Guray and Osman grabbed the parachute, bundling it into a ball.

As one, the pirates in the cabin descended on the cockpit, blocking Daniel’s view. With their attention diverted, Daniel resumed his conversation with Quentin.

“Did Ariadne respond to your email?” he whispered.

Quentin nodded. “It was the longest thing she’s ever written me.”

Daniel looked into his son’s eyes. “What did she say?”

Quentin blushed in embarrassment. “It’s personal, Dad.”

“I know,” Daniel said with a smile. “I’ve been there.”

Quentin pondered this, then said eagerly: “She wants to come for a visit after we get home. She graduates at the end of this month, and she’s looking at colleges in the U.S. What do you think?”

The question, and its underlying assumption, took Daniel by surprise. He had spent the past five days in the hostage bubble, hoping that rescue would come. He hadn’t given serious thought to what that salvation would entail—the end of the circumnavigation; the uncertain fate of the
Renaissance
; the return to the daily grind with its hour-long commute, war-room meetings, and late night deal-making; the pressure he was under to take over the firm when Curtis retired. Even after all they had suffered, he didn’t want to abandon the sea just yet. He wanted to be with Vanessa again, but the rest he would just as soon leave until May. Quentin, however, seemed to have made peace with an early homecoming. It was Ariadne’s influence, no doubt. Now she was all he could see.

Daniel shelved his misgivings and gave his son the answer he wanted to hear. “That sounds like a good plan. I think your mother is going to like her a lot.”

“They’re talking already,” Quentin replied. “Mom’s keeping her updated.”

Daniel was about to reply when the pirates returned to the cabin with the container.

“Move, move,” Liban said, forcing them into the back of the booth.

Afyareh set the container on the floor and placed two metal briefcases and a cash-counting machine on the table. He opened the briefcases, unveiling stacks of $100 bills bound by rubber bands and arranged lengthwise in rows. He picked up a bundle of bills. “I didn’t trust Curtis at first,” he told Daniel, “but he came through. He is a man of his word.”

It’s not your money, you bastard
, Daniel thought.
My father worked hard for it.
Somewhere deep inside him, though, Daniel knew that wasn’t quite right. Curtis had been born into privilege; he had inherited the law firm from his father in the mid-1980s when military contracts—their stock in trade—had been exploding; he had invested his earnings in real estate and profited handsomely from the boom before heeding the early warnings about a crash and liquidating his riskiest holdings. His success was as much a product of genetics and environment as effort and enterprise. If he had been born in Somalia, he could have ended up just like Afyareh, stealing other people’s money.

The pirate removed the rubber band and fed the bills into the counting machine, which shuffled them and spit them out with startling speed. “Ten thousand,” he said. He began to count the stacks, keeping a running tab in English and Somali. The first briefcase held one hundred stacks, each of which he handled, fanned to make sure all of the bills were genuine, and then put back in its place. Every so often, he fed a stack through the machine.

After examining the last stack, he smiled. “One million dollars,” he said, closing the briefcase and setting it aside. His crew rehearsed his words in Somali: “
Milyan oo doolar
 . . .
milyan oo doolar
.”

Afyareh repeated his routine with the second briefcase—numbering the bundles and running random stacks through the machine. Halfway through, he picked up the pace, as if the counting had become a formality. “Forty-one,” he said, fanning the bills. “Forty-two . . . forty-three . . .”

As he was nearing the end, Daniel heard the warble of the sat phone. The pirate took it out of his pocket and shook his head dismissively. “They can wait,” he said, turning off the phone and picking up the next set of bills. “I don’t like to be rushed.”

A minute later, something happened that took everyone by complete surprise. A mechanical noise came from across the water. Its pitch was low at first, but it rapidly escalated to a piercing whine. Then the whine took on a percussive beat, a
whump-whump-whumping
that swept over the sailboat like the waves of a gale. The sound meant only one thing: a helicopter was taking off.

The pirates reacted as if they were under attack, screaming at each other in confusion. Only Afyareh had the presence of mind to look out the window. He bellowed something in Somali, a rictus of hatred twisting his face. Like wasps stirred from their slumber, the pirates moved to the windows, their voices blending together into an angry chorus of unintelligible words.

Daniel pulled Quentin close and felt him trembling. He called out to Afyareh, demanding an explanation, but the pirate ignored him and picked up the VHF radio.

“What are you
doing
, Paul?” he shouted into the handset. “This was not our deal!”

Daniel watched him, terror-stricken.
Goddammit!!
he thought, unable to comprehend how their fortunes could have turned so quickly.
What is the Navy doing?!

After a moment, he heard the negotiator’s voice: “Ibrahim, I tried to call you on the sat phone, but you didn’t answer. You don’t need to worry. Our radar picked up a couple of boats launching from the beach. We’re sending the helicopter to keep them away. Over.”

Afyareh translated Paul’s words into Somali, but his men weren’t pacified. They pointed their guns at the windows and hurled epithets at the departing chopper.

“That’s not acceptable, Paul,” Afyareh replied in a threatening tone. “If you want the hostages to be released, you need to put the helicopter back on the ship now.”

“Ibrahim,” the negotiator replied in a soothing voice, “our agreement hasn’t changed. The helo is a precaution for the safety of the hostages. We don’t know why the boats just launched. We don’t know who’s driving them or what they’re carrying. The helo isn’t going to stop you from reaching the beach. I made a promise I intend to keep.”

When Afyareh passed along the translation, his men separated into three camps. Sondare and Dhuuban fidgeted with their hands, looking agitated and afraid. Guray, Osman and Liban flexed their muscles and held their weapons belligerently. Mas, however, fixed Afyareh with a wilting stare. He said something in Somali that made the others look at him in bewilderment. Then everyone started talking at once. There were shouts and fists pumped and guns knocked around as Afyareh and Mas faced off in a vociferous war of words.

“What’s happening, Dad?” Quentin whispered, his voice riddled with fear.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “If they start shooting, use the table for cover.”

After what seemed like an eternity, Afyareh seemed to regain control of the situation. The pirates started nodding and gesturing like troops at a rally, all except Mas who stared out the window sullenly, muttering to himself and cradling his gun.

Daniel gave Quentin a squeeze. “I think we’re okay.”

It was then that Afyareh did something that shocked him to the core. He lifted his gun off the bench and swung it toward them, shoving the weapon in Daniel’s face. Quentin cried out in fright, but the sound barely registered in Daniel’s ears. His mind ceased to think, his body went rigid, and his world shrank to the size of the gun barrel and the wooden stock and the finger on the trigger.

“What do you want?” he managed to say.

“They are not listening to me,” the pirate replied, his eyes burning. “You will make them listen. Or you will die.”

Paul

The Indian Ocean

02°09´59˝N, 45°42´05˝E

November 14, 2011

Derrick watched the Seahawk sail away toward the thin slip of land dividing the setting sun from the glowing sea. As the rotor noise faded, he turned his gaze once again to the
Renaissance
, floating only 250 yards away. On Redman’s orders, Masters had used the
Gettysburg
’s bow and stern thrusters to creep closer to the sailboat while the pirates counted the ransom money. With binoculars, Derrick could now see every inch of the sloop, except for the cabin, which remained obscured by curtains. He had strong reservations about the SEAL commander’s aggressive stance, but Redman had overruled him when he had aired his disquiet in a private conference in Masters’s cabin.