by otis duane
Not heeding the black cat’s warning, the young man reached again for him but he swiftly countered with his fangs.
Sinking his teeth into the young man’s flesh, the pirate squealed out in pain.
“Ouch!”
Flinching his bloodied hand back, Muenster ran up the front of him and launched off his face.
“Run Muenster! Run!” Tinnie cried out.
“Curse-ed cat!” the pirate shouted, cradling his injured hand. “You’ll get yours!”
“Now that’s how you fight,” Darcy said with an amused grin. “That puss is all pirate.”
The wounded crewman licked the blood from his hand and continued to swear, but Darcy was having none of it.
“Let him be. He’s more pirate then half you ladies.”
With that, Captain Darcy walked across the deck, where he vanished into the fog.
Chapter 1 - The Secret Contact
Present Day ~ Mid July ~ Parking Garage Structure ~ Washington, D.C.
Paul Bismarck checked his watch again. Its digital display read 11:20 p.m. He’d been parked in the desolate parking garage for 30 minutes but there was still no sign of his secret contact, Deep Throat.
Paul’s nickname for him was a throwback to the infamous informant in the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon White House in the 1970s.
Sitting in his prized ’76 Vega, the forty-something-year-old reached over, flipping down the passenger-side sun visor. Dropping down from it was a bulging envelope that he caught in his other hand. Opening it up, he removed a thick stack of one hundred dollar bills and began counting them.
“One hundred, two hundred–,” until he reached five thousand. Satisfied, he slid the stack of bills back into the envelope and replaced it above the visor.
Minutes later, checking his watch again, a single bead of sweat ran down the side of his face.
Eleven thirty, where the hell is he?
Trying not to worry about it, Paul reclined his head back, closed his eyes, and dialed up one of his favorite daydreams.
He was at the opera house in Prague, attending an award show for the world’s most elite historians. As usual, he was a finalist for the Edgar Glas Chalice, the most prestigious accolade a historical researcher like him could ever hope to receive. In his business, it’s the equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize combined with an Oscar.
Tearing open the envelope, the host leans into the microphone, “And the winner is… Paul Bismarck!”
With the audience cheering him on, Paul files through the crowd to the stage, where he gives an impassioned speech that ends in a standing ovation. Triumphantly raising his prized golden chalice over his head, he waves to his adoring crowd.
Soon agents are lining up to sign him to lucrative book deals, lecture tours, and even recurring guest spots on NPR.
The future, his future, seems limitless.
As the minutes passed, Paul continued to daydream while the wrinkles on his forehead relaxed and a smile came to his lips. He was beginning to imagine he was the host of his own TV history series when a siren blared, jolting him back to his senses.
Wide awake now, he jerked his head from left to right, scanning the parking garage several times over, but saw nothing. As the siren’s shrill continued to reverberate throughout the parking structure, an unsettling thought entered Paul’s mind. What if Deep Throat ratted me out?
“It’s the Feds,” he suspiciously whispered as his eyes grew wide.
They must be coming up the garage ramp right now!
“I was so close!” he shouted, pounding his fist on the dashboard. His mind was racing.
Pressing his head into the steering wheel, closing his eyes, Paul resigned himself to his fate.
Surely within seconds a convoy of black Suburbans would come screeching around the corner, surround his car and end his life as he knew it.
But that never happened.
Instead, a short, fat man appeared and rapped his chubby knuckles on the Vega’s driver-side window.
When Paul didn’t immediately respond, the man knocked more vigorously until Paul regained his senses and looked over at him.
“Roll down your window,” the man said in a muffled voice, getting annoyed.
But Paul couldn’t understand him through the closed window.
“What?”
The one-sided conversation continued until the impatient man made a circular motion with his hand, directing Paul to roll down his window, which he did.
“You Paulie?” the fat man asked gruffly. He was younger than Paul and spoke in a thick Jersey accent.
“Um, yes. Yeah, that’s me. And you?”
“And you what?” the man mocked.
Down below on the street, the police cruiser’s siren that had sent Paul into such a panic fell silent. The DC police were pulling someone over for running a red light. Even so, Paul was still not totally trusting of who he was talking to.
“You with the Feds?” he suspiciously asked.
“No, you idiot,” the man answer with a bemused smirk. “We gonna do this or not?”
Paul cleared his throat.
“You Deep Throat?”
“Well what do you think, Ace? See anybody else beatin’ on your window?” he asked, looking around the parking garage. “We’re the only two losers out here.”
Paul’s mind went blank. He was having trouble processing the moment.
“You want the goods or not?”
“Yes of course … how silly of me… of course you’re him. One sec,” Paul said, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt but it wouldn’t release. Clicking down on its button a few more times, nothing happened.
“Um, one sec,” he stammered, wrestling with the stubborn buckle.
The man lit a cigarette and watched with amusement as Paul struggled, fighting a losing battle.
Soon though, Deep Throat grew bored, and with time wasting, decided to take mercy on his hapless client. In one fast motion, he jerked open the car door and flipped up the seat’s release lever, propelling Paul backwards.
“Thank you,” Paul blurted out, lying flat on his back now.
With the extra wiggle room, he managed to squirm out from under the seatbelt and oozed out onto the parking garage floor, where he laid panting.
“Bravo. Nice job, Ace,” Deep Throat said, hovering over him, slow-clapping.
“Now can we get down to business?” he added.
~*~
Historically provocative nicknames aside, Deep Throat was actually a twenty-something filing clerk at the Library of Congress. There, he was basically a glorified gofer for the many snooty executive librarians who were his higher-ups. His thankless job was to be at their beck and call, to hunt down lost documents in the library’s many cavernous basement levels.
Most of these darkened storage vaults were stacked from floor to ceiling with documents long forgotten. Hence, he and his fellow clerks were collectively referred to as the rat pack, or simply as rats, since they spent their days foraging through these filthy paper-filled catacombs.
Paul had found the clerk on an online chatroom, where Deep Throat had offered to help him for a hefty fee. Occasionally the clerk would supplement his meager income this way. The majority of his clandestine dealings were usually with archeologists or the occasional treasure hunter. His one rule though was no documents or books under 50 years old. Older documents were exceedingly less risky to deal in than the more recent ones.
~*~
Standing up, Paul extended his hand to Deep Throat, who shook it as he blew out a puff of smoke and asked, “You got my dough?”
“I do,” Paul replied. “But first I need to see the package.”
The clerk took another drag off his cigarette and slapped the file folder into Paul’s chest.
“Knock yourself out, Ace.”
Doing a quick 360, Paul looked around to make sure no one was watching them. The clerk could only stand back, smirking and shaking his head at him.
After
Paul felt the coast was clear, he opened the dossier and began thumbing through it.
“Amazing, simply amazing,” he mumbled as he went from page to page.
Then one document in particular caught his attention. Scanning it with his eyes, he flicked the corner of it with his fingertip.
“I knew it. I was right all along,” he said with some vindication.
“We good then?” Deep Throat asked.
“Sure these are authentic?” Paul countered.
“They’re legit,” the clerk said, obviously getting annoyed.
He then pointed out the faded Library of Congress seal stamped on each document.
“Every page has this official seal.”
Even so, Paul was still apprehensive.
“Sure you weren’t followed here?” he asked narrowing his eyes on him. “I can’t have the Feds raiding my house. I don’t want any trouble.”
Deep Throat exhaled and sighed.
“Look, nobody’s gonna miss a few 300-year-old pieces of paper. It took me weeks to find all this shit... Trust me. I know what I’m doing. Nobody even knows these documents exist.”
“Well, I’m going to return them when I’m done,” Paul said sanctimoniously. “I’m not a thief.”
Smirking the clerk replied, “Whatever. We got a deal or what?”
Tapping the edge of the file on his hand a few times, Paul then pointed it directly at him.
“Sir, we have a deal.”
“Money?”
“Oh yeah. Sun visor on the passenger side,” Paul said, pointing over to it.
Walking around to the far side of the Vega, Deep Throat opened the door and flipped down the visor, catching the envelope in his other hand.
“You wanna count it?”
“Nope,” Deep Throat simply replied, stuffing it into his pocket and then made his way over to the nearby stairwell.
“Nice doing business with you,” Paul called out to him.
Never looking around, the clerk flipped his hand up over his shoulder and then disappeared into the darkened doorway.
~*~
Moving around to the front of his car, Paul laid the folder on the hood and opened it up. Licking his thumb, he flipped through the stack of delicate, antiquated pages and stopped when he came across one in particular. It was a ship’s manifest for the San Esteban, a 17th century Spanish treasure ship. Drawing his finger down the page, he stopped it on an entry for 500 gold doubloons.
Laying the document aside, he continued to thumb through the other documents until he paused at the sight of a folded note with a broken wax seal. Opening it up, he read it to himself.
~*~
January 19th, 1688
Lord Stumpp,
Once again, another scheduled shipment has failed to arrive. This makes four hijacked deposits, and I am outraged at these blatant violations of our agreement.
I demand you immediately summon the English Crown to hunt down these Raven pirates and their scoundrel captain, William Darcy.
Adalbert Jonckers,
Bank of Amsterdam
~*~
Paul nodded his head and smiled as he put the file back together and closed up the dossier. Standing silently for a moment, he clenched his fist and thought to himself.
Finally. This is it.
Chapter 2 - Pirate Gliv
Winter, 1689 ~ Royal Navy Constable Warship ~ Mediterranean Sea ~ Strait of Gibraltar
Captain Mcbain slowly looked over to his left as yet another Barbary pirate ship sailed into position, immediately off the Constable’s port side. A bead of cold sweat trickled down the side of his flushed face.
“S-s-sir, open fire?” the coxswain asked him in a shuddering voice.
When the captain didn’t reply, he tapped Mcbain on his elbow.
“Open fire?”
“No… All stop.”
“But sir–”
“All stop. That’s an order.”
Turning to the sailor, the captain locked eyes with him.
“We open fire, we’re dead,” he said coldly.
“Aye captain, but I think we’re goners anyway.”
In a matter of minutes, a dozen corsair swift boats had surrounded the Constable and the three merchant ships it was escorting through the Mediterranean Sea.
Nearby on the command pirate ship, her towering captain, Hussein Gliv, pulled his long dreadlocked hair back behind his head, and bound it together using a length of cat gut. Around his neck, Mcbain saw Gliv was wearing a gruesome necklace adorned with human ears. No doubt they were trophies from his many previous conquests. The nearly seven-foot tall giant dwarfed his two fellow pirates, who were busy lighting the many weaves of hemp in his long scraggly beard. He and the rest of his North African cutthroats believed the herb, as they called it, would appease the gods of war and bring them good fortune in battle.
As his last hemp strand was lit, Gliv closed his eyes and inhaled the streaming smoke trails up into his flared nostrils.
“Ahhhh,” he said each time he did so, with ever increasing volume. His broad chest would outwardly expand and then relax again with each breath.
A few feet away, three young boys began pounding their mallets on a large war drum to the beat of a hauntingly tribal rhythm.
Over on the Constable, Mcbain’s eyes grew ever wider as he kept them trained on Gliv and white-knuckled his sword’s handle.
As the measures of beats droned on, Captain Gliv popped his eyes open, tilted his head back, and screamed out loud.
“Ahhhh!”
And the drum beat stopped.
Looking up to their captain, the rest of his pirate hoard stood frozen, awaiting his order, when Gliv thrust his long finger over at the Constable and screamed out.
“Fire!”
“Oh no…” Mcbain said in a sinking voice as the first Barbary cannonball swooshed over his deck.
“Incoming!” he screamed out.
In a split second a hail of fiery cannonballs mercilessly blasted into the Constable at point blank range. Her decks and masts spontaneously burst apart, sending exploding timber shreds and splinters everywhere. Some of the more fortunate sailors were killed instantly by flying debris, while others were torn apart by shrapnel.
One royal sailor, climbing down from his lookout post, was practically cut in half by a length of chain fired into their sails. He was dead before his lacerated body slammed down onto the main deck.
Once the other Barbary Coast pirate ships opened fire, the few who weren’t killed in the first barrage didn’t last much longer.
From seemingly every direction, cannonballs tore into the Constable’s hull, turning it into what looked like a sinking block of Swiss cheese.
Staggering to his feet, a bloodied Captain Mcbain tried to yell out.
“Abandon–” but was cut short when a musket ball slammed into his forehead and blew out the back of his skull.
Lowering his Blunderbuss rifle, Gliv grinned wide and then yelled out to his men.
“No prisoners!”
~*~
Minutes later the Constable’s bow ebbed high into the air and then plunged beneath the waves.
Over on one of the merchant ships, the captain swallowed hard and turned to his yeoman.
“Tell the crew to prepare to be boarded.”
The crewman nodded and quickly ran below deck.
“God help us…” the captain mumbled.
Chapter 3 - Captain William Darcy
Summer, 1689 ~ Mediterranean Sea ~ 15 Miles North of Algeria
Six months after the Constable’s sinking, the Barbary Coast sun bore down on the Lexington as a robust tailwind filled her bulging sails. The royal flagship’s massive hull easily broke through the oncoming rolls of white-capping waves, as her captain, William Darcy, took a long draw from his cigar.
Sailing behind the Lexington was a convoy of English battleships under his command. They were patrolling inside the dangerous, pirate-infested waters off of the North African c
oast, near the port of Algiers. Darcy knew it was only a matter of time before he and his men would make contact with some of these cutthroats.
The captain had every bit of confidence in his sailors, as they had proven themselves in combat time and again. But it was the rest of the convoy that concerned him. The other commanders and their crews had never experienced the kind of combat they were likely to engage in. Mostly they were accustomed to lighter duties, such as transporting dignitaries or blockading foreign harbors. They were untested, and the buccaneers who roamed these waters were formidable foes.
~*~
Given the recent upsurge in attacks on English merchant ships, King William III had no choice but to send in the naval convoy.
These brazen acts were clearly in violation of England’s peace treaty with the Sultan of Algeria and something had to be done about it.
Since its inception in 1671, there had been a few infractions, but nothing troubling enough to spend the War Department’s precious budget on. That is, until now.
These attacks were not only a major drain on royal import tariffs but they were an embarrassment to his crown as well. The constant ridicule from parliament alone was enough to force His Majesty’s hand into action.
The king, wishing to send a strong message to the pirates, had a delicate situation to deal with. He didn’t want to strain relations with the Sultan. After all, His Excellency controlled the highly sought-after African ivory imports that were all the rage among the British aristocracy. As such, King William ordered the Sultan’s capital city of Algiers to be strictly off limits, but any pirates caught out on the open sea would fall under English jurisdiction.
Adding to His Majesty’s headaches were the meddlesome bureaucrats in parliament. Gone were the days when the king had unfettered power to rid the empire of such scourges as these Barbary pirates. Modern-day English kings now had to deal with the parliamentary machine and its many cogs. It was a large and corrupt institution that often got in the way of his decisive action.
The legislative mechanism muddling his authority the most were parliament’s military appointees. Although he commanded the armed forces, parliament was entitled to commission half of their officers, mainly within the upper ranks. This shared power structure was only agreed upon because it helped to bring an expedient end to the Commonwealth Civil War years earlier. It was a poor decision at the time, and it remained one today.
