Pirate

by Duncan Falconer

  It gave the chase clear parameters. Escape or die trying.

  He continued to study the distant light and decided it had definitely become more visible. It had gained on them. The mother craft hadn’t been a particularly quick ship but it probably had about a couple of knots on them at least. He could get little more out of the fishing boat. The mother craft cut through the water on the line of the horizon, which put it at three to four miles away. If the light he could see was on top of the boat that would make it a bit further away. He calculated the variables. He reckoned they had anywhere from two to four hours before the boat caught them.

  He checked the fuel cans connected to the engines. Both nearly empty. He untied the knot in the short rubber pipe attached to the bottom of the fuel barrel. Fuel leaked out. He opened the cans, poked the end inside the first and let the fuel gush in. He repeated the process with the other can and when it was full, he checked the barrel. It looked like he could get four more working containers out of it.

  He guessed they had covered around thirty miles by now. Not very much more. So his initial estimate of a hundred miles of fuel looked about correct. The bad news was that the pirate craft had enough fuel to cross the Gulf and back. Stratton would run out of the stuff long before the pirates did.

  That left the single option of making it to the corridor and hoping to find a ship before they got caught. Considering the attitude the pirates had towards other ocean-going vessels, it would have to be a navy ship to help him and the girl. Or things wouldn’t work out too well for them.

  He looked in a wide arc across their front but he could see nothing, no sign of another ship. He felt certain they would come across another ship before long. But how long?

  He looked back at the light. It had come over the horizon and no longer shimmered.

  His mind started to work on alternative plans. Perhaps he could do something to confuse the pirate’s radar or shrink the fishing boat’s image. They could tear off the small bridge house and toss it over the side. But in the calm sea, it would probably make hardly any difference to their signature. Could he give the pirates another target to chase? That would require something tall and metallic. But it would need to move off under its own power in another direction. Impossible. Could he make the fishing boat go faster? He could if he made it lighter.

  He went to the front and the heavy sea weights. He picked one up with an effort and swung it over the side. The others soon followed and he stood there panting while he searched for anything else he could dump.

  He looked to the forward horizon again. He could see a faint light on the port side front quarter. If it was on the top of a large ship, it could be ten or twelve miles away.

  He went back to the tiller and pushed it over to turn the boat towards the light. If they were lucky, it would be a navy ship.

  If they were even luckier, it would be sailing towards them.

  The turn caused the boat to rock a little and the girl rolled over and nudged the edge of the cabin’s door frame with her head, which woke her up. She sat up and looked at Stratton, watched him pick up a coil of chains and throw them overboard. She watched him pick up just about anything that wasn’t attached to the vessel and throw it overboard.

  She got to her feet and stepped into the breeze. ‘Are you OK?’ she called out above the wind and the tinny sound of the engines.

  ‘I was about to wake you up,’ he said. ‘We need to throw the bridge house overboard.’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she said, concerned about the way he was attacking everything.

  ‘Well, we have some bad news and we have some good news,’ he said as he opened a box and rummaged through it, pulling out several old life jackets. ‘Which would you like first?’

  ‘I’ll have the good news first.’

  Stratton lifted up a tarp to find a collection of angling rods and weights and several heavy-duty fishing reels and harnesses. ‘You see that light directly ahead?’

  She found it and looked instantly uplifted and just as quickly her elation was tempered by the threat of the looming bad news. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a ship we’re chasing. Look behind us and you’ll see one that’s chasing us.’

  She turned to see the distant light, her heart sinking. ‘You sure it’s them?’

  ‘Well, I’m generally the optimistic type but I can’t see how it could possibly be anyone else,’ he said, inspecting a knife he had found.

  Fear crept over the girl as she stared at the light. She looked towards the light in front and back at the one in pursuit trying to compare their distance. It was a pointless comparison. One could be larger or brighter than the other, which would completely distort any estimation.

  ‘Who do you think’s going to win the race?’ she asked. ‘Us or them?’

  Stratton came back to the stern and looked at the light behind them. ‘That depends on the direction of the ship we’re chasing, how far away it is and how fast it’s going. And even then, what kind of boat it is. If it’s a regular cargo carrier, Lotto will probably want to hijack it anyway.’

  ‘And that’s our only option? Get to that boat or get caught by Lotto while trying?’

  ‘There are always other options. The trick is trying to find them in time.’

  She looked at him. He had that same cold expression he usually seemed to have when there was little hope. He had no fear in his eyes, no panic. Just calculation. She could not even begin to imagine what other options they had. All she could think was how she was going to kill herself to prevent Lotto from getting his hands on her. Maybe that was the option Stratton meant.

  Stratton walked back around the boat, looking at various pieces of equipment, inside boxes and on the deck. If he couldn’t possibly imagine a potential use for it, it went over the side.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.

  ‘Inspiration’ was his business-like answer.

  Stratton paused once more to gauge the sizes of both distant lights and compare the relative gains and losses being made. The front light continued to move to the port side of their track, which meant it was heading west. Which wasn’t of any help to them.

  Half an hour later another tight collection of lights appeared on their starboard side and Stratton took a moment to study them. The first light had grown very little since they first saw it but the pirate light had more than doubled in size. The new group of lights seemed to represent a much bigger vessel, that or it was much closer.

  He elected to change direction and go for the new ship. After adjusting to the new track, he topped up the working fuel tanks and began to put the things he had selected into two piles.

  The girl could hardly take her eyes off the following vessel, partly in the hope that it wasn’t the pirates, but mostly in fear that it was. Her nerves had begun to fray but she dealt with it. Coming to terms with everything helped her.

  ‘I’ve decided how I want to die,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ he answered matter-of-factly as he inspected a fishing reel harness.

  ‘The best way is to drown.’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine drowned once. He said it was the strangest experience. He was on a decompression stop after a deep dive off a barge somewhere in Africa. You know, hang around for ten or fifteen minutes at thirty feet to prevent the bends. One of the boat workers accidentally knocked a shackle off the edge of the barge. He was wearing a full-face mask and looking up at the time although he couldn’t really see anything. The shackle smashed his face mask. He started to climb as quickly as he could but he just couldn’t make it in time. He held his breath for as long as he could but the urge to take a breath, even when you know it’s going to be water, is too strong. And so he did. He breathed in the sea. He said he felt the panic grip him and he fought like hell. But it didn’t last very long at all. The stress and the gasping soon went away to be replaced by euphoria. He said it was ever so peaceful. There was even something pleasant about it. That laste
d a few seconds and the lights went out. The next thing he remembered was lying on the deck of the barge coughing his guts up while someone heaved down on his ribcage. So, absolutely. Go for it. Has to be better than shoving one of these into your throat,’ he added, raising the knife in his hand.

  ‘Is that how you will go?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t gotten that far yet,’ he said, picking up a marlin fishing reel and inspecting the thick line. ‘Do you know what the breaking strain of this is?’

  She looked at the line in his hand, thinking it to be a strange question to ask when she was talking about their suicides. ‘Around two thousand pounds,’ she decided.

  ‘That’s right. You do a bit of sea fishing then?’

  ‘My father. I was brought up in a small fishing village in northern China. Deep sea fishing was his favourite thing to do.’

  ‘That the Yellow Sea?’

  ‘Yes. Have you been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He used to take me with him. When I was about twelve I caught a shark more than twice my size.’ She smiled at the memory.

  ‘So why are you thinking of killing yourself?’

  The question snapped her out of her reverie. Her smile vanished.

  ‘Don’t you want to see him again?’ he asked.

  She avoided his eyes. ‘I cannot see him again. He did not approve of my job.’

  ‘You can’t see him because you joined the Secret Service?’

  ‘It’s a little more complicated than that. He has very strong reasons for disliking what I do. I don’t blame him.’

  She seemed to want to tell Stratton something but she was unable to get it out. Stratton chose not to dig. It sounded personal and he had a lot on his own mind anyway.

  She watched him pick up another fishing reel harness and check the buckles to ensure they worked. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I have a plan. Not a brilliant one. Very cheeky. With little chance of success. But it’s keeping me occupied.’

  She wondered if he was losing it. She could see nothing they could do to prevent the pirates from catching them. Other than suicide.

  She looked to their rear again. The dark mass below the light had taken on the form of a boat. She could make out the silhouette of the superstructure on top of a bulky, broad hull.

  ‘It won’t be long before they’ll be in firing range,’ she said.

  Stratton took a moment to check for himself. ‘Yep … You haven’t looked ahead for a while, have you?’

  She turned her back to the pirate vessel to see dozens of lights to their front and sides in all shapes and configurations. Each cluster represented a ship of some kind but they were all still so very far away.

  ‘We won’t reach any of them before the pirates catch us,’ she said.

  ‘I know. But we must be close to the corridor.’

  She felt the optimism in his voice but still couldn’t see why.

  He put down the reel and studied the array of equipment he had laid out on the deck. ‘They’ll catch this boat soon enough, but there’s no reason for us to be on it.’

  Wherever his mind was, she was nowhere near it. She looked at the collection of life jackets, their use obvious enough. But the rest of the junk made no sense to her. ‘We jump into the sea and let the pirates chase after the empty boat,’ she said. It was all she could think of.

  ‘That would give us a lot longer to live.’

  ‘Then we hope one of those boats finds us.’

  ‘Dawn will be up soon. Now we’re talking hours of survival time.’

  ‘How many days did you say we could live without water? Three?’

  ‘Go on. Admit it. You think I’m brilliant.’

  She figured it was an option, although nothing more than a delay of the inevitable, another desperate attempt to cling on to life.

  ‘We might as well get on with it,’ he said. ‘If we leave it too late, they’ll see us in the water. Put on as many life jackets as you can.’

  ‘They’ll see the bright orange.’

  ‘Not if we put the sweaters over us,’ he said, pointing to some clothing he had sorted out. ‘They’ll also keep us warm for longer. Truth is we’ll die of hypothermia long before we die of thirst.’

  He picked up one of the life jackets, pulled it over his head and tied the lines around his waist and between his legs. She sighed as she watched him. She had come to terms with ending her life there and then and been only minutes away from grabbing a hold of something heavy that Stratton hadn’t already thrown overboard and diving into the water with it. She figured all she needed to do was hang on to it for as long as she could while she sank. Then even when she released it as she began to panic, as the man in Stratton’s story had, she would never be able to reach the surface before succumbing.

  ‘Don’t hang about,’ he said, pulling another life jacket over the one he already wore.

  She picked up a jacket and put it on. He handed her another and helped her fasten it.

  ‘Put this over the top,’ he said, handing her a large sweater.

  ‘Is hypothermia as painless as drowning, do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s even more pleasant. I’ve had it on several occasions. Once you get past the freezing cold stage, it’s fine. Like drowning but without the freaking-out panic phase. Put this on,’ he said, handing her a fishing reel harness.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To hold it all together. If we get through this phase, I have another idea that’ll keep us occupied for a while longer. Keeping oneself busy is the key to longevity they say.’

  She thought he was acting a bit weirdly but nothing about him surprised her any more. She pulled the harness on while he donned one himself and after fastening up his buckles he helped her with hers.

  When they were finished, the pair of them looked more than twice their normal sizes. She broke into a smile.

  ‘I’m glad you see the funny side,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d lost your sense of humour.’

  When he looked back at the pirate vessel he could make out the front mast and wisps of smoke from the exhaust stack.

  ‘We’d better get into the water. I’m going to change the boat’s direction to take them away from where we jump in. Soon as I set the tiller, we go overboard.’

  She nodded.

  It was an effort for him to bend down to untie the tiller with all the clothing he was wearing.

  ‘Wait!’ she called out.

  He stopped, one hand on the tiller.

  She quickly unfastened the drinking water container that was still half full and held it in her arms. ‘OK!’

  ‘Good thinking,’ he said and yanked the tiller over. The boat turned sharply.

  ‘Go!’ Stratton shouted as he tied the tiller off with fishing line.

  She leaped into the water. He rolled over the side. When he surfaced he watched the boat cruise away from them.

  They then turned their attentions to the following vessel to see what it would do.

  The mother craft continued straight at them. Stratton couldn’t believe that no one on board was watching the fishing boat. Maybe the lookouts had seen them jump into the water.

  Then the vessel turned in pursuit of the little fishing boat.

  They bobbed in the water and watched the raiders come on. The ship passed them some distance away. But it was the first time they could really confirm that it had been the pirate mother ship.

  ‘Won’t they just backtrack when they find it’s empty?’ she said.

  ‘They won’t know when we jumped off. Hopefully they’ll come to the same conclusion you did about us getting captured and think we’ve killed ourselves.’

  They watched the back of the vessel cruise into the distance. Without its lights, it would soon have become invisible in the darkness.

  ‘I can see your life jacket on your right side,’ Stratton said, inspecting her. She adjusted her sweater to cover it up.

  ‘How do I look?�
� he asked.

  She studied him. ‘You’ll do.’

  Stratton turned to look in every direction. ‘Quite a few boats about,’ he noted.

  ‘None within a mile of us, though,’ she said, acting as the voice of doom.

  ‘Dawn will crack in no time,’ he said, looking to the east where there was a faint glow on the horizon.

  She unscrewed the water bottle and took a little sip. ‘Want some?’ she asked.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. She passed it to him. He took a couple of mouthfuls and handed it back to her.

  ‘So,’ she began, leaning back and looking up at the stars. ‘We just wait here for a boat to happen by? Could be a while. But I guess we have all the time in the world.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘My plan is not just to wait here for a boat to happen by. The odds on that would be very small indeed.’

  He exposed the large fishing reel attached to the front of his harness. ‘Turn around,’ he said.

  She didn’t bother to ask why.

  He pulled out a length of the line, looped it through the back of her harness and tied it off several times.

  She turned to face him again, finding the line that went from her back to the reel on his chest. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘We won’t lose each other.’

  ‘That’s part of the idea. It’s to keep us together, but from a long way apart.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m going to go for a swim. Due north. You’re going to stay here. There’s about two kilometres of fishing line here. When I get to the end of the line, we’re going to keep it nice and tight.’