The Catch: A Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  One careful footfall in front of the other, Munroe circled the bridge and, finding the area deserted, returned to the bridge door. The handle gave easily and she slid the door open. A wave of humid rot washed over her, and even from the threshold she could see that the control room floor had been used as a campsite and one of the walls as a urinal. The glass of two windows was shattered and hung precariously in place. Munroe paused, confirmed the captain’s and Khalid’s locations, then continued in.

  With the generator running to power the lights, the pilothouse should also have had power, yet it was unnaturally dark. She paused again; inched into the room and away from the glass to avoid making an easy target against the ambient light. Followed the wall. Heard the noise then, not so much a noise but a whisper ducking from one shadowed crevice to the next, of bare feet slipping along the floor, a brush of air moving fast and in her direction, and she dropped before the machete came crashing at where her head had once been.

  She swiped her legs out. Connected with shins. Kicked balance out from under the attacker. He fell hard with a clatter, and she struggled against lack of mobility to get to her feet faster than he did. Wasn’t fast enough. The machete swung wildly. Again. And again. She dodged. Crab-crawled backward. Instinct overrode thought, overrode reason, found opportunity, anticipated the strike, and she rolled.

  He neared again, she lunged. Connected knife to skin, metal to bone, and with the taste of fear and the scent of blood, euphoria rushed through her veins, feeding the addiction into a peace so sweet that if he should rise from the dead and kill her now she would drift away happy: another death on her hands that she hadn’t asked for, another ghost to haunt her sleep and stain her soul. She scanned the room for other attackers. Found his weapon on the floor in the far corner. Released the magazine and brought it out empty. Ran the bolt. Tossed the rifle aside. Like the man on the water who’d brought her to the fuel boat those several weeks ago, the watchman in the tower, away from the action, hadn’t been armed the way the main contingent was armed.

  Lack of funding? Lack of foresight?

  With her feet she shoved his body into the corner streaked with urine. Then she stepped out and urged the captain and Khalid onto the bridge, into the critical time window before the alarm was raised, when they still had a chance to get off the ship. If they weren’t going to be able to get the Favorita moving, they needed to get the crew off. Now.

  The captain, reacting to the stench and the heat, paused at the threshold, and Khalid prodded him forward to the instrument panel, where he stood neither moving nor speaking, and Munroe’s impatience bubbled up into words. “What kind of shape are we in?” she said, though she knew the answer to half the equation without a response.

  “I need oil pressure,” he said.

  Even with the captain on the bridge, even with power to the ship, the engine couldn’t run until the oil was up, and that would take twenty to thirty minutes beyond however long it took to get the oil pumps working—provided an engineer was even alive to make that happen.

  “I’m going after Janek,” she said. “Khalid stays with you to keep you from leaving the bridge. I just watched him kill two men, so don’t be an idiot. Do what he wants and he won’t shoot you in the legs.”

  The captain glared and she held eye contact. Then she turned to face Khalid and in Somali said, “Until we’re under way, nobody comes through this door. If they insist, shoot them. Even if it’s me.”

  Khalid gave her a mock salute. The captain moved forward and fiddled with a switch, and the panel came alive, casting a macabre glow over his face and much of the room. He nodded approvingly. Stretched for another switch but Munroe said, “Don’t turn on the lights.”

  His hand stopped. “I’ll get you your oil,” she said. “Just get the ship to Mombasa and you can disappear.”

  MUNROE WAS ON the third switchback down when, from somewhere deep inside the tower, the first rifle reports rang out, thunderclaps suppressed by their containment: enough to know that the element of surprise had been lost. She raced down the last two levels, crept through the hatchway that Natan and his men had breached.

  The interior of the ship was dark, and although the air was not as rank as the bridge’s, it was stale and mixed with old smoke and body odor. She closed the hatch behind her and sealed it shut. Listened for sound, hoped for noise, some indication that the interior had been secured and the hostages rescued, but got only silence and darkness.

  The Favorita had no true citadel, no safe room built to withstand explosives, to protect the crew with food and water and communications equipment as they holed up and hoped for rescue. That would have been expensive to build, cost prohibitive for this wreck of a ship. The so-called citadel for the Favorita was instead an oversize berth on the engineer’s level, fine for the crew to put themselves out of harm’s way while the armed guards fought it out with invading pirates, but once the ship was taken it would have turned into a prison of its own making and eventually a tomb.

  If there were hostages in the safe room now, they would be dead.

  Munroe paced in the opposite direction, down a long passageway, peering into spaces where anything not welded, riveted, or bolted down had been dismantled, presumably offloaded, meaning that hostages had probably never been kept here; was interrupted by another short burst of gunfire and then pounding against a bulkhead. She crept upward, found Ali on the crew’s landing and Natan at the end of the passageway slamming the butt of his rifle into a door that wouldn’t open. Instant assessment told her they’d taken the deck and whatever pirates had been here had locked themselves inside a berth. Amber and Omar were missing, so Munroe took another level up, the time crunch bearing down on her. The pirates locked in the berth would have phones, would have notified their commander on shore and called for rescue.

  Thirty minutes to get oil up; less than that for boats on shore to launch and reach the ship. Had to find Janek.

  Another burst of controlled rifle reports echoed in ricochet along the walls. Escalating fire was returned, not nearly as controlled. Munroe turned down another passageway, slid along the base of the wall in the direction of the staccato, adrenaline floating her into the precious calm and focus of battle, the ethereal peace she strove for and never found in her months of quiet running. Behind her the wall reverberated with pounding and carried muted cries for help.

  She spotted Omar in a nook, hissed for his attention. Spoke with her hands; hoped to hell he didn’t later mistake her for an enemy; then felt her way along the wall, fingers guiding her as the vibration intensified.

  Omar crawled from his hiding place and Munroe lost sight of him. A muzzle flashed from outside a berth, a rapid waste of ammunition that made a joke out of the dead guy on the bridge with his empty rifle.

  Munroe reached a door where the pounding was strongest. Groped for the lock, a hastily engineered contraption that kept the bolt from moving; hit the hilt of the knife against it until it gave way. Slid flat against the wall and reached out to the side to push the door open. Waited for movement from within the berth, for anything that would tell her she’d picked the wrong one. Another burst of gunfire broke from down the passageway, and Amber yelled for Omar.

  Slowly the door swung inward. Near the floor, so close she could have touched it, a head poked out. The face of the cook squinted up. His eyes met hers, and he let out a yelp and darted back inside. She followed after him. Tried to make sense of the bodies inside the darker room. Couldn’t count them, but from the air and the smell she knew that there were far too many for the space in which they’d been contained.

  “Janek,” she said. “Where’s Janek?”

  “Not here,” a voice said, and she recognized it as Victor’s.

  Munroe knelt and crawled over bodies in his direction, close enough to see his face. Victor met her eyes and though his mouth opened, no words came out. His face was haggard, he’d lost considerable weight, and his thigh was wrapped with rotting cloth and crusted with dried blo
od.

  Leo was on the floor, his neck in an improvised brace, stabilization that kept him immobile. Victor said, “He cannot move his legs.”

  “Where are the engineers?”

  He shook his head. She stumbled over arms and legs to get out, fleeing the stench, but more, desperate to find the men who could keep this night from growing far worse than it already had.

  CHAPTER 41

  Two more doors, two more busted locks, two more timid entries and crawling between rifle bursts and screams, of not knowing who was still alive, of a single-minded focus pulling her through the tightly wound urban warfare that went on around her until Munroe found the door to the berth that housed the engineer.

  She grabbed Janek, shook him. “We need oil pressure,” she said. As if grasping the situation, understanding her intent if not the words, he stumbled over the others in the berth and crawled after her. Threw himself to the floor when the fighting got so close it was deafening. And on they went; a mile it seemed, and then they were free of the war and ran down the dimly lit passageway to the engine room.

  Munroe shut the hatchway, sealing them into silence, and Janek, indifferent to her presence, turned on an emergency lamp and methodically surveyed the room, assessing, inventorying what hadn’t been pilfered, muttering words that got louder and more vitriolic as time wore on.

  She watched him, anxiety welling up and threatening to suffocate her. Down in the windowless room, shut off from the action, she was helpless, could only watch as he made increasingly frantic gestures. She wanted to run. Wanted air. Wanted to know the status of the fight, to see for herself as the enemy boats approached, to strategize the defense against the oncoming assault, but she had become Janek’s personal bodyguard. Couldn’t risk leaving him yet because no matter what else, as long as she had the captain on the bridge and the engineer at the oil pumps, they could get the ship moving. Maybe.

  Time clicked on, hours to the minute, a full day perhaps, while Janek swapped wrench for screwdriver, thumbed through empty supply drawers, cannibalized parts from smaller machines, then sighed and shoved. How long had they been down in real time? Ten minutes? Fifteen? The oil pumps rumbled to life and he smiled. Gave her a thumbs-up, and the weight of anxiety shed from her like unwanted skin.

  “How long?” she said, and when he didn’t answer, she tried Russian.

  “Maybe we have enough pressure in twenty minutes,” he said. “But it’s no guarantee.”

  Her body remained still, her mind frantic. She couldn’t stay here; had to stay here. Fought the urge to pace the room. A crackle from the two-way on her belt broke through the mania: Amber’s voice and the all-clear, and Natan, a hurried exchange and then radio silence. They had the ship. She could leave Janek long enough to do what he did best. She would send Rodel to help, would get a bearing on what was coming at them next.

  Munroe unlocked the hatchway, stepped over the threshold, and stopped at the ringing buzz of a busted speaker. Janek reached left, yanked a receiver off the wall. She stayed to catch a whiff of the conversation, something about bunkers, the tons of fuel the ship still carried, heard enough to confirm that the captain was still on the bridge, doing his job, and when the conversation turned back to the urgency of oil pressure, she left.

  The deck was windblown and quiet, and in the lapping silence of wind and waves, Munroe scanned the shoreline with the spotting scope. Lights blinked in and out, clustered and patterned in a way that denoted heavy activity. She didn’t find boats on the water but wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they’d already launched, were on their way, but in the vastness and the crests and swells of the water she’d not seen them. She strode back inside to where the passageways were still dim and, without the rush and panic of trying to find Janek, had the presence of mind to realize that most of the bulbs had been stolen.

  She passed Natan in the hall. “Where’s Amber?” she said.

  “Up,” he said, and brushed past.

  “They’re coming,” she said, and Natan paused, turned back.

  “The munitions are in the number one hold,” she said. “Dead center, about three bags down. How many men are aloft?”

  “Two of mine, some crew.”

  “Get the hatches open. I’ll send them to you.”

  “What about the engine?”

  “Twenty minutes to find out if everything runs,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

  His lips drew taut and he stalked toward the deck.

  Munroe returned to the berth where Victor had been. Found the room empty but for Leo and Amber, who was on the floor with one of Leo’s hands in hers. His other hand was on her face, thumb wiping away tears while Amber laughed, and they whispered in a conversation Munroe couldn’t hear, didn’t need to hear to feel, and for that small moment she didn’t despise him. She paused in the entry. Leo met her gaze and then turned away. Amber looked up.

  “We need all fighting hands,” Munroe said. “Boats are coming from shore.”

  Amber leaned over, kissed Leo’s forehead, and without a word stood and left him. Outside the berth Munroe said, “Natan’s already working to get the hatches open. Where are Omar and Ali?”

  “Interrogating the pirates, collecting weapons and phones.”

  “And the others?”

  “Emmanuel is dead. David is missing—we don’t know.”

  “Victor? Marcus?”

  “Somewhere,” Amber said. “I lost track after we secured the ship.”

  “We’re going to have to arm the crew,” Munroe said. “They can fight or die. There won’t be second chances.”

  Amber said, “I’ll take the upper decks,” and with rifle in hand she headed for the ladder at a run. Munroe started down, strode berth to berth, opening hatchways, seeking out the crew, who had already scattered throughout the ship, and with the urgency of another fight bearing down on them sent them to the deck, where Natan was at work.

  Victor, weapon in hand, found her in the helmsman’s quarters, and although his eyes expressed delight at seeing her, gratitude that she’d come for them, they had no time for sentiment. Through him, Munroe learned the damage: The first mate was dead; the second mate had been tortured for information on where the captain was hiding. Rodel, the second engineer, and one of the crew were also dead, and of Leo’s original team, only Marcus had made it through unwounded.

  Several of the cell phones that Omar had left piled up in the passageway rang and vibrated, their screens lit up like flashlight beams in the dim corridor, omens warning of what was to come from the shoreline. Uncertain of the alliances among the hawaladar’s men, unwilling to allow the opportunity for one of them to let loose the pirates they’d just captured, Munroe sent Omar to the deck and left Victor in his place, guarding the berth where they were now stashed.

  ON THE DECK outside, splotches of shadow milled around the number one hatch, and from the tower, the last of the crewmen well enough to walk spilled out the hatchway, unwillingly mustered into service by Amber’s rifle.

  Natan had already brought up Yusuf from his inflatable, and together with Marcus, they’d utilized the deck crane to improvise a davit to haul all three hundred pounds of wet rubber and engine onto the ship. If Munroe could have spared the manpower, she would have sent Yusuf and Ali to retrieve the other craft, but in the moment, collecting the boat wasn’t worth the risk.

  On the two-way radio she attempted to raise Joe on the dhow. Reached his boatman. “The counterattack is on the way,” she said.

  The reply came delayed, the message having been passed one man to the next.

  “We confirm to follow the plan,” the boatman said.

  The dhow would move in closer, prepare to rescue whoever managed to escape the ship if jumping overboard was what it came to.

  From the dark, in the direction of the shoreline, the first muzzle flashes sparked against the black, light followed by the distant clap of gunfire that carried easily over the water.

  Another five minutes and the boats would b
e within lethal distance.

  The crew, spurred into action by the noise, worked to raise the anchor, scrambled down into the hold, where, under Natan’s direction and aiding the deck crane, which couldn’t do the job fast enough or with enough precision, they created a chain to remove the bags of rice and uncover the munitions.

  Munroe stood still for a moment, watching, processing, strategizing, and in that moment of quietness, pain that had dulled in the adrenaline of the fight returned, ramping higher, and then higher still, leaving her hands shaking. She turned from the action and slipped toward the stern, into shadow. She had put the captain in position. Gotten Janek to where he needed to be, and the oil pumps now built pressure somewhere beneath her feet.

  The staccato on the ocean was closer now. Three minutes, maybe.

  She drew a long inhale to settle the trembling. She was empty, fading; stumbled for the ladder to take her down to the engine room for one last strategy reassessment.

  Janek’s face jerked up when she opened the hatchway. His face and arms were covered in grease, and parts surrounded him on the floor.

  “What?” she said.

  “The engine,” he said. “Repairs.” The stress in his voice told her what she needed. Munroe closed her eyes and slid down the wall and into the calm of finality. Not defeat, not surrender, simply the acknowledgment that for now, her job was finished. In the state she was in, she’d be useless up on deck—a casualty waiting to happen—and no matter how hard the men above her fought, if Janek couldn’t get the pieces reassembled and the engine operational, all was for naught anyway.

  The broken speaker buzzed again. Janek reached for the phone. Grunted monosyllabic answers and then in response to what could only have been the captain’s alert that the attack was closing in said, “I’m moving as fast as I can. I will have her for you by the time the oil is ready.”