Keyes looked to the side and ignored his words.
He reached over and cupped her breast. I shoved him so hard, he slammed against the table. A guard jumped at me and I picked him up and threw him across the table. I heard the click of guns as bullets were chambered. I stepped back and raised my hands.
Farok dusted off his garment and held up his hands to stop his men from shooting us. “Enough, enough. My orders remain. Don’t harm these three. They will be my dinner guests. Soon.”
I spoke up. “He means his dinner. Period. Don’t bloody up his food.”
The men lowered their guns and stepped back.
Farok walked to Keyes and placed a large opal ring on her index finger. I recalled her telling me about the bad luck opals bring as well as his other many superstitions.
Farok returned to his chair. Scowling, he said, “You people don’t give me the respect I deserve. I’ll soon change that. After all, I am the leader of the worldwide ISIS network, a group that you all have come to fear.”
I smiled and said, “Glad you put more glue on your Hollywood mustache. It didn’t fall down this time.”
His face turned red, just as it had before. He balled up his fists and screamed, “Now I hope you’re ready for that boat ride! And the fireworks display!” His voice softened as the bulging veins in his neck flattened. “My mechanics will soon finish putting warheads on the rockets on this ship, which will throw a mushroom-shaped cloud so high in the sky that it will be seen halfway around the world.
“I heard you’re inviting the Pope to view your fireworks,” I commented.
Farok looked puzzled for a second but then quickly regrouped. “Yes, yes. Your Pope will be in Miami. I made my plans around him, and I’ve arranged for him to extend his stay there. He will be there to see the spectacle at close range. I hope you enjoy it as much as he will.”
Keyes and I exchanged glances.
Farok stood up and nodded to his soldiers.
Before they led us away, I turned to Lars and whispered, “I’ll get us free. I have a plan.”
Lars attempted to speak, but his face was so badly twisted, he had trouble breathing, let alone conversing.
“Stay strong, Lars,” I said as one of the men motioned for me to move. Then I had a thought, and said loudly to Lars. “Is your heart doing well since your last attack?”
“I’m okay, for now.”
Again, I spoke loudly. “Call me if you have another heart attack, and I’ll fix you up like I did last week. Wouldn’t want you to croak with all the phone calls you have to make.”
As I turned to pick up Keyes and leave, I saw a look pass between Mobuto and Farok and knew they’d soaked up my verbal exchange with Lars.
While I carried Keyes down the hall, she laid her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “If you’re able to talk with Lars, ask him how many suicide bombers are aboard.”
Pretending to nuzzle her ear, I whispered, “Why do you think there are suicide bombers here?”
“I saw three men with tattoos. Look at the hand of the man walking beside you.”
I lagged a little behind the guard to my right. There was a faint tattoo on the back of his hand consisting of three, faded blue dots, forming a triangle. I raised my eyebrows at Keyes.
I read her lips as she mouthed, “Suicide jihadist.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Aboard the Ana Brigette
5:41 p.m.
AS THE TWO HELICOPTERS carrying Farok and his men lifted from the ship, I turned to Keyes. “I lied.”
“You aren’t officially divorced now?”
I smiled. “Yes, I am. I lied to Lars about having a plan. Let’s put our heads together and come up with one.”
Jakjak tilted his face to the side. “Doktè, aren’t you going to let me help?”
He was frowning, like I’d hurt his feelings. I’d seen him only as a man who followed Minister Duran’s orders. Maybe I’d overlooked his leadership abilities.
“I’d love to have your input,” I said.
“I had three years of college at the University d’Etat d’Haiti. I received a bachelor’s degree in oceanography with a minor in government. I took English. That’s how a Haitian Creole likes me talk so good in English.”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded.
“Minis Duran have me sit in on many of his meetings. He tells others that I go as his bodyguard, but I listen and we discuss the meeting after. Many time he uses my ideas.”
That hit me by surprise, but in our predicament, I could use all the help I could get. “Do you know anything about running a ship?”
“Our class of twelve students spent an entire summer learning to operate ships, and I took navigation courses every semester at the university.”
“Can you drive a converted fishing boat like this?”
“Wi. Sure can.”
“If I can figure out how to overwhelm the thirty or so soldiers aboard, I might have a job for you.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, Doktè. The American CIA experts gave our university class two weeks of anti-terrorist training. They showed us how to manipulate the GPS navigation system to change the course of the ship to place it out of harm’s way. If you puts the ship in the middle of the ocean, it be too far from the target, and the bomb fall in the sea.”
Keyes eyes lit up. “I never thought of that before. I’ll bet I could figure out how to do that if you put me in front of a computer. But with all these soldiers, how are we going to get in the pilothouse long enough to do it?”
Jakjak shook his head. “Non, non! Mademoiselle, this CIA guy had it all worked out. He showed us two ways that don’t require computers. The first way is to tie at least two layers of aluminum foil around the GPS antenna. It blocks the signal and creates chaos in the receiver. It messes up the entire navigation system.”
Keyes nodded. “That’ll work. What’s the second way?”
“He say that if you cuts the red wire, the positive battery wire, it cuts off the power. But he say the boat pilot picks that up right away and splices ’em back. He say other things ’bout punchin’ buttons and all, but I can’t ’member all that stuff.”
Keyes chimed in. “The best way is to press menu and hold the override icon. Once override is activated, you can punch in your own numbers.”
Jakjak nodded. “Yeah. My guy said something like that.
I’d never thought of that. “So that’s an option—if we can sneak Keyes into the pilothouse. We can ‘lose’ the Ana Brigette on the open sea, maybe out of range of Atlanta and Miami.
Jakjak smiled. He’d made his usefulness to the team known.
“That’s one plan,” I said. “We need other options for two strong guys and a cripple.”
A look of fury came on Keyes face as she said sarcastically, “Sorry I’m such a bother.”
I took her hand in mine. “I’m so sorry.”
“Very funny,” she said sarcastically.
“The zombie drug will wear off soon, and you’ll be walking as good as ever,” I added.
“Really?” she said, looking intently into my eyes.
She was relying on my medical expertise to predict the outcome of the drugs on her body. In reality, these zombie poisons were new to me, and I didn’t know whether the effects would be temporary or permanent. But I wanted to give her hope, one of the strongest healers I know of, just as I’d done with my patients who had severe medical problems.
“With the full return of sensation to your lower body, the motor function will come back soon,” I assured her.
Keyes tried to push me into further promises of her recovery, promises I couldn’t deliver, so I changed the subject.
“We have to get out of this room. Do either of you have any ideas?”
Jakjak looked at the walls and ceilin
g. “The ceiling panels are metal. Maybe if we peel them down we can find an access to the floor above.”
I’d been on the vessel for a month and knew the floor above us was welded aluminum; so were the walls lining the passageways.
“If we can fashion a saw blade or some sort of chisel, maybe we can get out,” I said.
Jakjak and I started going over every inch of the cabin. The first surprise came as Jakjak held up a roll of Scotch tape inside a drawer. “Doktè. Looky what I found.”
I laughed. “No way that tape will help us.” I started to pitch it in the trash but then thought about how I’d used the duct tape I’d taken off my legs and arms to help me a few days earlier. I put it in my pocket.
Jakjak and I turned the cabin inside out. It was just like the room where I’d been held captive after the hijacking. Everything was welded to the ship: the beds, chairs, desk, mirrors, and small chest of drawers.
The chest of drawers had possibilities, though, if I could just find a knife-like tool to cut it. Neither Jakjak nor I had unearthed anything sharp that could be used. Even the metal coat hangers had been removed. But the drawers had metal handles. I just had to find something to use as a screwdriver to take off the handle.
My belt buckle. Its metal tongue fit perfectly in the screw. As I turned the screws, the soft metal bent a couple of times, but I finally got both screws out. While I removed the handle from another drawer, Jakjak used his belt buckle to remove the handles from the other two. That gave us four pieces of heavy-grade steel, plus the eight screws that held them in place. The steel drawer handles would cut even heavy aluminum like that on the ship, if we could make either a sharp or jagged edge on one of them.
I tried to twist the steel handles back and forth to break them.
Suddenly, someone shouted from down the hall. “Help! I’m dying!”
It was Lars, but his voice sounded strained and shaky. It must have taken all his energy to call out that loudly.
We heard commotion in the hallway, followed by the rattle of keys in the door of our room. Mobuto opened the door and said, “Captain Paulissen is having a heart attack. Doctor, come help him.”
So Farok is trying to keep Lars alive, probably to answer the phone and to give the impression that the captain is still in command. No one will suspect the ship has been hijacked.
I ran down the hall to Lars’ open door. He was lying on the bed clutching his chest with his good hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
With his floppy jaw, it was hard to understand him. “My heart. Pain. Pressure.”
As I knelt at his side and put my head on his chest to listen, he looked deeply into my eyes and blinked once.
He spoke loud enough for the guards to hear. “The medicine you gave me for my heart.”
“Where’s the bottle of Scotch I gave you last week? That’ll help your pain.”
He thought for a second before saying loudly, “Oh, I drank all that.”
“Too bad. That would have helped you.” I turned to the guard. “Is there any more medical alcohol aboard the ship?”
Mobuto heard the question and answered, “I have it in my room.”
“Get it STAT. That will dilate his heart vessels.” I turned to Lars. “Take a half-cup of Mobuto’s booze anytime it hurts.” I knew he’d be glad for the “medicine” to treat the pain caused by the beatings.
Lars smiled as well as he could with his busted-up face. I could tell the talking had exhausted him.
While I leaned over to inspect his jaw, I whispered, “How many soldiers and how many suicide bombers aboard?”
He spoke loudly enough for all to hear his mumbled words. “Pulse is twenty-five, drops to five with chest pain.”
While he was talking, I watched his awkward facial movements and put my hands on a bulge beside his left eye that moved when he talked. It was the left jaw joint. It was dislocated. I put my left thumb inside his lower incisors and my left index finger under his chin. As I pulled outward as hard as I could and snapped his left joint in place with my right hand, he screamed in pain.
Then, I asked Lars to open and close his jaw. He did this with ease. The floppy jaw from the dislocation had been corrected. He was drinking Mobuto’s alcohol when I left. And smiling.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Aboard the Ana Brigette
5:55 p.m.
I WAS RETURNED TO the stateroom.
As soon as the door locked behind me, I said, “Five guys with that tattoo.”
Jakjak asked, “Lots of people have tattoos. Why are these five so important?”
Keyes was quick to answer. “Islam doesn’t permit tattoos. Only those destined to die as martyrs can get one.”
“So we must watch those five. If they stay on this ship, it means the Ana Brigette will be destroyed, whether by the terrorists’ bombs or by incoming rounds from the good guys. We need some aluminum foil and a way to reach the lifeboats and the antenna. If we cover the antenna soon, the ship will go off-course. With luck, it’ll keep the Ana Brigette far enough offshore that the missiles can’t reach the US. Then, we can get in the lifeboat and escape before dawn.”
Jakjak produced the makeshift saw he’d made with one of the drawer handles. I held up the implement I’d made out of another drawer handle. One end was broken off at an angle and had an inch-wide tip. “We have a saw and a drill bit that will double as a chisel to begin our work.”
Keyes said, “Not very impressive.”
I showed her a couple of sorry-looking two-inch nails I’d been able to pry off.
“Nice.”
I had bent the nails a little taking them out. “Sorta looks like a key,” I said. “Jakjak, I need you to saw a couple of the drawer fronts into inch-wide pieces and then sharpen them into knives and spears.”
While Jakjak got to work on the knives, I did some math, aloud. “Lars told me that this vessel can make eighteen knots, cruising speed, and twenty knots, max. That’s twenty miles an hour—better when they’re going all-out. Assuming the Pope is the target, then how long will it take for us to get close enough to Miami to shoot the missiles?”
“Those Chinese Red Bird missiles on board shoot 410 miles. So this ship will have to get a lot closer before they can hit Miami,” Keyes said. “From Saint-Marc, the Ana Brigette would have to travel 256 miles to be 410 miles from Miami. At twenty miles per hour, the ship would get within firing range in roughly thirteen hours.”
I looked at my watch: 5:50 p.m. It was the same time in Miami as in Haiti.
“We’ll be in firing range at 6:30 a.m.,” I said. “Are the missiles accurate at that distance, or do they have to get closer?”
“Accurate. We have to deactivate the GPS antenna as quickly as we can. If we prevent the Ana Brigette from getting within 410 miles of Miami, we won’t have to deactivate the missiles or the bomb,” Keyes said. “But where can we get a lot of tin foil?”
It didn’t take much thought to answer that question.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Aboard the Ana Brigette
6:10 p.m.
THE GUARDS OPENED THE door and stood there with their automatic weapons. They looked like they weren’t messing around. One had a large cooking pot with rice in it that he put on the floor and slid in. “Eat,” he said, and then they slammed the door closed.
I went to the porthole. It was locked, just as it had been in the room where I’d been held after the Ana Brigette was hijacked. We had to open that porthole. “Can you pick this lock?” I asked Keyes.
“What for?”
“I’m going to put our dinner pot over the GPS antenna. It might just be big enough.”
“Help me up.”
I held her up as she looked in the keyhole.
“Just an old-fashioned skeleton key. It’s easy,” she said. “Jakjak, get
me a piece of wire.”
“How about those nails?”
Keyes looked at them. “I don’t know. Bend one at the end so it has a half-inch prong.”
Jakjak bent the nail between the door and door frame.
Keyes tried the “key.” No success. “Make the bend just a little longer.”
Jakjak bent the other nail.
She tried it. “Fits perfectly, but it’s so short I can’t twist it.”
I made a quarter-inch bend in the other end of the nail.
She inserted it and twisted. The porthole opened.
CHAPTER FORTY
Aboard the Ana Brigette
6:10 p.m.
“THERE’S ONLY ONE PROBLEM,” Keyes said, “I’m the only one who can fit through the hole.”
“I know. Can you stand?”
“I can do it.”
“The antenna is on the upper deck, behind the pilothouse. It looks like a white mushroom.”
“Scott, I know what a GPS antenna looks like.”
“Forgive me.”
She stood for a moment, wobbling badly. “I’m it.”
“I’m afraid you are.”
We picked her up and started the clumsy process of helping her squirm through the hole. Once outside, we handed her the pot.
I stuck my head out the window and watched.
On one knee, Keyes flattened her still-weakened body against the outer wall of the boat, and began working her way forward. She was crawling as much as walking. She put the handle of the pot in her mouth so she could use both hands, and began to climb, with enormous effort, up an inclined ladder. She stopped after just a few rungs and just held on, then continued pulling herself, one rung at a time, until she disappeared from my sight.
In a few moments, she came sliding back down, awkwardly, and we pulled her through the porthole as gently as we could.
She was exhausted and pale. She lay on the bed, panting from the effort. “We’re in business. And I think my legs are starting to come back.”
The Zombie Game Page 18
