by Jim Craig
The shock of cold water made it impossible to hear. After I was thoroughly soaked the police sergeant waved the hose guys back and raised his voice to give me the bad news.
“We still have a situation. The woman, Greta, still has the captain and the bridge at gunpoint.” He bit off his words through a clenched jaw and a grim stare.
My temples were throbbing. “Crap,” was the only thing I could think to say.
I tried to picture Greta on the bridge with a gun in her hand. And the captain sitting there helpless in front of her. I realized that we were still floating in the open ocean powerless. Instead of relief, the fear and dread returned. We still had a “situation.”
I looked at the sergeant. “You said ‘We’re not done?’”
He returned my stare. “That’s right.”
“What do you mean, we?”
He nodded. “She’s demanding we bring you up there.” He turned me around and unlocked the handcuffs.
I wanted to ask why me, but when I turned around the hoses hit me full force again. There was gasoline on every part of me, and the sadistic bastards knew it. Two crewmen in yellow rubber suits and brown kneehigh boots swarmed around me. They seemed to enjoy their work. With smug expressions and efficient movements they aimed water down my neck, down my pants and even up my sleeves.
When the initial shock from the cold water started to pass, it felt good to flush away the itchy irritant of gasoline on my skin. The air tasted pure again and the heavy stench that ate at my eyeballs was gone. I let water run over my face and blinked my eyes to clean them out. But it was salt water, ocean water, and the relief was short lived.
Then the cold took over, and I started shivering violently. I waved off the hose guys and looked up to see Rainey rushing toward me. She was unfolding a large orange blanket and before I could say hello she wrapped it around me and started walking me to the door. I couldn’t have spoken anyhow. My lips felt like those big rubber erasers from grade school and they were vibrating in time to the chattering of my teeth. My whole face felt like a drunken production of Smurfs On Ice.
I stumbled up the stairs at Rainey’s urging. Past the round windowed door we entered the hallway and things started going fuzzy. Maybe it was the cold water or maybe the long dance with death. I don’t know. Maybe both, but my knees must have decided they’d had enough, because I noticed we had stopped and Rainey was mumbling in my ear. My feet had quit listening to my brain.
“C’mon, Johnny, c’mon. We’ll get you in a hot shower. Just a few more steps.”
She held me tighter and tried to hold me up. I was shaking too hard to enjoy the contact. Someone else came up behind us and took hold of my other arm. She leaned over and looked into my sodden face. It was Brandy.
As we stumbled together down the hallway and up the stairs, she stared at my face wrapped in swaddling orange, my hat long gone, my hair matted and plastered against my forehead.
“Is that really you, Johnny? I heard a drowned rat was loose on board, but I didn’t know it was so big.”
“Berry fundy,” I gurgled. I couldn’t say anything else. Many clever lines were available, but my brain had turned into a thirty two ounce Slurpee from the 7-Eleven. It was all I could do to keep one foot following the other. They were carrying more of my weight than I was.
We pushed our way through a door marked Crew Only. Warm air hit me in the face with a blurry mist. Rainey and Brandy escorted me into a locker room and sat me on a wooden bench. Rainey pulled away the blanket and Brandy dropped to her knees and started pulling off my shoes. I was even too woozy to enjoy that. My mind thought of a great wise crack, but it wouldn’t come out of my mouth.
She glanced up at me as she worked on my socks. “I know, I know,” she said. “You’ve been wanting me on my knees in front of you since the moment you met me. Hold that thought, hot shot.”
She winked up at Rainey who laughed while she toweled my head. I tried but I was too cold and tired to smile or even reply.
I sat there feeling uncomfortably numb. The wall in front of me had a long counter with four sinks and a long mirror. Urinals lined the wall to our left. I was going groggy fast but not so attached that I couldn't see in the mirror what looked like a half drowned mongrel that firemen had just pulled out of a frozen pond.
I stared at the reflection’s eyes. Is there anybody in there?
Rainey unzipped and pulled off my fleece, but I managed to stop her before she started on my shirt. She turned to grab a dry towel, her blond pony tail flipping as she went, and I heard the shower behind us come on. Brandy had my shoes and socks off. She stood up and helped me struggle out of the shirt. Rainey set down a stack of towels on the bench beside me.
“Okay, mister. You gonna make it now? Or do we need to take you into the shower too?”
“Wh-wuzza hurry? I could use a nap.”
They grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me to my feet.
“Okay, okay,” I protested. “I can do this. Lemme lone.”
I stood up and undid the belt on my jeans and they turned for the door.
“We’ll leave you now, Mister Hypothermia, before you totally embarrass yourself,” said Rainey. “You got five minutes.” They turned their backs and headed for the door. My mouth and jaw were beginning to thaw.
“Hey, I could use some company. How about the cute one stays behind?”
Their heads turned back to me. In perfect unison they waved together with wide grins and middle finger salutes. The door slammed and left me alone.
“But what if I drop the soap?” I hollered to no one in particular.
Steam was pouring out of the shower stall. I kicked off the jeans and soggy boxers and glanced in the mirror again. I was instantly glad the ladies had left.
I limped under the hot water. Needles of heat burned me at first, but after a few dance moves and some frantic knob twirling I was in heaven. My stiff muscles began to thaw, and I could feel blood moving back into my extremities like refugees coming home from the war.
I stood there gathering strength in the rushing hot flow until I heard a pounding on the door outside. Rainey’s voice rang out over the roar of the water.
“Hurry up, Johnny. We need you now! There’s dry clothes for you on the bench.”
I thought about complaining, or whining, or flat out refusing. I even considered passing out, but the urgency in her voice was too tense to ignore.
“Okay, okay,” I called. My voice felt stronger. I turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. I avoided looking in the mirror this time and after rubbing myself down, I pulled on the underwear, dark slacks and the white shirt laying there in a neat pile. There were shoes and socks too. Only about three sizes too big. Whatever.
I tried to focus on dressing, but questions were eating at me like mosquitoes on a summer’s night. What was waiting for me on the bridge? Greta with a gun? She'd sold out Charlie, and now she was making her own deal? So what did she want with me? I couldn’t do anything. I had nothing. I was nothing. No clout, no pull, nothing.
And the cops. What were they going to do? She was just a little blond. Tiny standing next to them. A party girl, a socialite, a snowflake in the breeze. But she had hostages. The captain and the kid. And a gun. And a history. Charlie'd said she was a stone killer.
Then I made a mistake. I looked in the mirror. Thin brown hair hung in my face like wet seaweed. With water dripping in front of my eyes the soaked hair made me look small and almost bald. There were dark circles under my eyes, and my scraggly beard clung to my tired face like a dirty bathtub ring. I’d seen better looking men in Salvation Army homeless ads. Or on a street corner in Anchorage holding a handwritten cardboard sign. Will work for beer.
I buried my face in a towel and closed my eyes. Enough. Spare me the self pity. Then I rubbed at my head and beard with the towel and took a deep breath.
I heard the door open. Pulling the towel off my face, I looked over to see Brandy step in wearing a white baseball cap. Her
eyes bulged and her mouth fell open at the sight of me.
“Whoa, I didn’t know the bride of Frankenstein was in here,” she said staring at my head.
I looked in the mirror again. Sure enough, My hair was standing out straight in all directions. I buried my face again.
“Very funny,” I grumbled from behind the towel. I combed my hair with my fingers and glanced at Brandy in the mirror. Her green eyes held a half smile, but I could see tension tugging at the corners of her mouth.
I didn't want to look at her. It brought back the image of the blood and the crumpled blue horror of Miller’s dead face in the vehicle bay down below. I needed the wisecracks and the false bravado to get me through. I imagined a whiff of gasoline fumes then and realized how close we'd all been to a fiery hell. Brandy's face was filled with way too much reality for me.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, I’m great,” I mumbled without looking at her. I reached over and pulled the white cap off her head and put it on mine.
“Hey,” she protested but stopped when I raised my hand to block her.
“I need it more than you do,” I explained. “I'm having a really bad hair day. Terrible split ends. You understand.”
She backed off and looked at me in the mirror. "You ready for this?"
I took a deep breath. "That's an excellent question."
I'd had this feeling before. It was like walking across the tarmac toward the airplane on a cold morning. With wind whipping at my clothes trying to tear off my cap. Glancing at the mountains nearby and cringing inside, knowing that the turbulence after takeoff was going to kick my ass.
I stared at my face in the mirror again and tried to remember the pep talk I relied on when things got tense in the airplane. Slowly it came back to me.
I’m Johnny Wainwright, Alaskan bush pilot repo man. I'm a tough guy. I can do this.
Corny, I know, I know. But it was better than whimpering in fear.
I took another deep breath and pulled my shoulders back. Brandy saw the change in my eyes. She stepped over, took my head in her hands and planted her lips against the side of my face. The surprise stopped me for a moment but an electric charge ran through me all the way to my toes. Then without a word she broke it off, stepped back and led the way to the door.
I followed her into the hallway. Larry was waiting for me there looking twenty years older than when I first saw him.
“You ready for this?” he asked looking at me doubtfully.
"That's such a good question," I shrugged. “I guess. What do I need to do?”
He motioned for me to follow and led us up the stairs to the main deck. Rainey joined us there. I could see the sadness and worry in her eyes too as she pulled at a strand of hair and tried to smile. She handed me a candy bar, and I gobbled it hungrily. Looking around I noticed there weren't any passengers or crew nearby.
It was dark outside. Thick fog still surrounded the ship. I looked at my watch. Ten o’clock. I tried to remember all those hours going by, but it was a blur and took too much effort.
Another passageway and another stair case right in the center of the ship and we were approaching the bridge. The sergeant stopped before we entered the corridor just ahead.
“Okay, listen. The bridge is one long narrow room all the way across the front of the ferry. There’s two doors, one on each end. She’s down there with the captain and the kid.”
He pointed down the corridor to the left. “We’ve been talking to her through that port side door. She has the other one barricaded, and there’s no other way in.”
“What am I supposed to do? What does she want?”
“I’m not really sure. She won’t talk to us anymore. We told her Charlie gave up, and that he blamed everything on her.”
“He did?” I blurted.
“No, he didn’t, but that’s what we told her. It really pissed her off, but we didn’t want them getting together again. She says she’ll only talk to you now.”
“Why me?” I was struggling to understand.
“I don’t know. It’s like she’s written him off or something. She wants you. Look, just play along. Try to talk her down. Convince her to give herself up. If that doesn’t work, try to get her to move the ferry out of the fog so a chopper can come in and land.
“Well, sure, that’d be swell, but we’re tired of screwing around with this. She’s got two hundred people out here playing this stupid game. We need to save that captain and she’s got a kid in there too. Either she ends it fast, or we will.”
“That’s not even her kid,” I said. “Can’t you just rush her?”
“Not while she’s holding a gun on the captain, we can’t risk it. With her history I'm sure she’ll use it if we try anything.”
“Jesus,” I looked at my feet and shook my head.
“Oh, and the way you distracted Charlie to get us in the vehicle bay? That was clever,” he said. “But don’t try anything like that on her. We have no position on her and she’d probably kill the captain just for the hell of it.”
I shook my head. “Greta? I can’t believe that.”
“Trust me. I’ve seen it many times before. She’s a serious psycho. Have you ever heard of suicide by cop?”
I nodded, staring at my shoes.
“I think she’s there or very close to it. You don’t know what you’re dealing with there.”
I thought about it. He was probably right. What did I know about her? Apparently I didn’t know jack.
“How do I know she’s not going to just shoot me?”
He shrugged. “You don’t know. You want out?”
I stared at him, thinking. I glanced at Brandy and Rainey.
“We can’t force you to do this. You’re strictly volunteer,” he added.
“Swell. How about a plastic junior G-man badge?”
He looked at me dead pan. “Okay, but you’re not sitting on my knee at the awards dinner.”
We stared at each other, half smiles flickering in our tired eyes.
“Okay, I’ll just see what she wants and I’ll let you know.”
He nodded. “That’s right. No freelancing. Leave all the moves to us. Double check everything you do with me. In the meantime we’re going to see if there’s a way we can gain access through the other door. Try to keep her from looking down this way.”
I closed my eyes and took a breath. Could I do this? What choice did I have? No freelancing, he’d said. Great. Just what I didn’t like. Close supervision fit me about as well as a tuxedo on a wooly mammoth.
I started down the hallway and noticed that no one followed me. I stopped halfway there and turned around to see Brandy, Rainey and Larry watching me. He motioned for me to continue, moving his hand impatiently like he was brushing lint off his coat sleeve. Behind them another figure had moved in to sit by the other door to the bridge. The one Larry said was blocked. It was that overblown security guy, The Michelin Man. What was his name? Oh, yeah, Darrell.
The end of the corridor had three doors. The door to the left was probably a crew cabin, maybe the captain’s. The one straight ahead went outside to a small landing that extended out over the side of the ship. Like a little balcony.
The door to the right had a round window that looked in on the bridge. It was the same door where good old Darrell had brought me up to meet the captain. As I got closer I noticed the door to the left was partially open and a man in dark clothes and a ski mask was lying on its floor on his stomach. He held a handgun pointed across the hall at the door to the bridge. He never looked at me as I approached and kept his position aimed straight and true.
I stepped up to the round window and looked in. The bridge looked deserted. The darkening fog bank loomed just outside the large front windows. Over the counter with its scopes and engine controls I could barely see the surface of the ocean way below undulating with gentle rhythmic swells. The water was dark but I could see there were no white caps disturbing the surface.
T
he door opened slightly and a hand reached out and grabbed the front of my shirt. It pulled me in and shoved the door shut behind me. I found myself belly to belly with Greta. She was smiling up at me.
“Hello, Johnny,” she said, her blue eyes twinkling.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
