The one at the lead went down to hit the deck hard, tripping the other two who were simultaneously assaulted by the tiny storm of lead to their right. They both went over the unprotected edge and into the water, weighted down by weapons and a bandolier of large bullets criss-crossing the chest of one. Adam rose and went back to try and help Mitch but as he did he saw Dan emerge from below and turn to spray their positions with gunfire and lift the stalemate. One stood and turned to fire on him as the other was hit in the back.
There was a lull in the battle, filled only with the small scraping and clicking sounds of weapons being reloaded, then an almighty torrent of noise erupted from the bow as bigger guns entered the fight. The sounds of ricochets and dull cracks of impacts filled the air all around as Dan dived behind the cover of something large and metal. Adam dropped flat, minimising any target he might offer to the men, who didn’t appear to have seen him yet, and began firing on them.
They adopted the same tactics as their friends: hiding behind cover and firing heavy-calibre bullets wildly over the top in an ill-disciplined attempt to break this new stalemate, as though their bullets would find the enemies by pure luck.
It was wasteful, it was unprofessional, and it angered Dan.
“If you’re going to do something,” he snarled to himself as he tucked into a small ball and tried desperately to keep his legs and feet inside the woefully small piece of hard cover he had found, “at least do it properly!”
He glanced up, seeing where Mitch was pinned down behind an annoyingly bigger piece of cover than he had found, and the single shake of his head made it clear that there was nothing he could do from where he was. Dan couldn’t see Adam from where he was, but the fact that the fire was directed at them made it seem likely that he wasn’t in the fight yet.
Then he heard it. The distinctive crack of the five-five-six ammunition punctuating the automatic heavier gunfire. Then he heard something else. He heard gunfire coming from a new direction, and behind that was the worrying sound of an outboard motor.
~
Mukami Adumbe was not a pirate, not in his eyes anyway. What he had been was a dock worker in Mombasa until he found himself totally alone save for just one woman who ran away from him when he called out to her. He had no family in the city; he’d moved there for employment and had been staying in a huge dormitory with other workers, none of whom had survived the virus.
He had survived that way for months, living off what he found and not having the first idea when something would change. He wandered freely around the docks and the surrounding areas, not finding anyone else alive for days on end and when he did they would usually run away from each other. Twice he had been robbed for everything that he carried, but he gave up those possessions freely as there was always more to be found which didn’t hold any risk of being killed over.
When the wet season hit he was fine for drinking water but was beginning to run low on food. He didn’t think he was capable, or at least he had never faced the concept of his own behaviour in such a situation, but human nature took over and dictated his course when he had been without food for two days and he chanced upon two people carrying heavy bundles.
He considered just asking them for help, but he knew what he would do in that scenario and knew that he would starve if he begged for charity. He followed them through the outskirts of the industrial area until the opportunity arose to strike. He hit one of them over the back with a metal pipe and ran off with his plunder before the other had time to realise what was happening. He ate that night, hating himself for becoming the bandit, and tried to consolidate those feelings of guilt with the natural urge to survive at whatever cost.
He had become feral, prowling around the docks and forcing his way into the many shipping containers in search of anything edible. One of those shipments was labelled as aid parcels destined for one of the many refugee camps in the north of the country, but when he broke open the wooden crates he found stacks of straw-packaged weapons under the topmost layers. He dropped the gun he had lifted in his hand, terrified and in awe of it at the same time. He had never fired a weapon, never even held one until that moment, and shut the door on the container until such time as he figured out what to do with it.
The answer came three days later when he saw two small boats coming in from the sea directly towards his port. They weaved between the massive container ships, going in and out of sight as they approached, and Mukami felt fear like he had not experienced since he thought he was the last man alive on Earth. He hid from them, foolishly seeking cover at the only open dock, which is where the two boats headed, and peered out. He willed the men who had their faces covered by scarves in the Arabic fashion, all carrying guns and looking like people he needed to avoid, to leave.
He was discovered quickly, having picked poorly when it came to his chosen hiding place and had knocked down a stack of plastic barrels. He found those barrels replaced with machine guns and his natural urge to survive surfaced through his mouth before his brain knew what he was saying.
He told them that he knew where there were more weapons. That he could lead them directly to them, but not if they killed him. He cowered in silence, hands raised and trembling as the men waited around for someone to tell them what to do.
That was the first time he laid eyes on Ahmad Gareer. He later learned that he had been one of the leaders of the Somali Al-Shabaab group, and was a pirate of international renown. Or infamy, but that depended on which side of the law a person lived on. He was not one of the men who had been driven from their fishing grounds by the armed boats from other countries, not one of those misguided men turned pirate at all, but something far worse. He was one of the men who used international financiers to bankroll their missions to capture multi-million-dollar prizes and ransom the white-skinned crewmembers back to their companies after their insurance policies paid out. The white people were always worth more money to the pirates. It made for good videos on the news and made the rest of the world sit up and take notice.
Gareer squatted down in front of him and used the barrel of his machine gun to raise Mukami’s chin to look directly at him. He removed the scarf from his face, exposing a mostly toothless maw which smiled cruelly.
“Tell me where these guns are,” he said, “and you will live.”
That was how he had been recruited; out of desperation and a fear of starvation and death at the hands of this man. He remained at the docks for months after their bigger ships were brought in. They stripped everything they could over the rest of the year, using the dock as a base where other boats came and went. They brought in a white man, a captive, and he restarted the engines of the massive fuel tanker before it was piloted back out to sea. Mukami went with them, never having the option to choose another path.
~
Despite the terrible things he had done in order to survive, Mukami saw his opportunity when the three men were shot in front of him and he stared in horror as two of them tumbled off the deck and into the sea below. The third man, the one shot first and who had tripped the others over the side, lay flat on top of his weapon as the man who had shot them disappeared once more. He heard a heavy gunfight raging at the prow of the big boat, and acted in self-preservation as he always did. He rolled the man over, fighting with his corpse to free the rifle, and untied the skiff from the mooring to rev the engine and steer the boat around the side of the larger vessel. He let go of the controls for the outboard motor and stood. He wobbled slightly as he did but having grown accustomed to life on the sea, he steadied himself quickly and aimed his rifle.
The barrage of shots pinged off the deck, but two of them found their mark and crumpled one of his former shipmates into a heap. The man kept his dead finger depressed on the trigger of the big machine gun he had been firing and the remainder of the box magazine rattled off skywards until it ran dry with an inaudible click. The other man turned and aimed his weapon at Mukami, who switched his aim but was unbalanced by his rapid movement. As
he sensed his own impending death, more shots rang out and the man aiming the gun at him fell, spinning, just as he pulled his trigger and sent three bullets spraying outwards in an arc.
The last of those bullets found Mukami’s throat, punching a small hole through his windpipe and blowing a large one out of the back of his neck in a sickening fountain of gore and red mist. He dropped back into the bilge as the boat floated away, and as he looked up at the blue sky for one last time he hoped that he had redeemed himself in some small way to repent for the life that he had led these last years.
Pure Relief
I crept silently down, ignoring the sounds of gunfire above until I reached the lower deck where the noise was so loud that I couldn’t hear what was going on up top even if I tried. I crept along, the heavy machinery of the engine pounding my ears and affecting my concentration to the extent that I had to squint to try and block out some of the noise.
I breathed hard through my nose, unable to stand the cloying, stifling air going through my mouth into my lungs, until I reached the loudest section of the dark, windowless sub-deck. One of them was there, wearing filthy rags and so intent on using a wrench on some stubborn part of the engine that he had no idea what was going on above him.
Finally, something cut through his intense concentration and made him stop. The sudden addition of brighter light on his task froze him, and as he turned I raised my weapon and prepared to put him down.
But something made me hesitate. Something about the filthy, ragged man in front of me stayed my hand and stopped the final few ounces of pressure going into the trigger. He dropped the wrench, the heavy metal making no sound which reached my ears, giving testimony to the massive noise down there. He looked into my eyes, his own wet with tears, and he raised his hands. I stepped back, twitching the barrel while keeping the torch beam on his chest so as not to blind him. He squinted and cowered his face away from the harsh light but kept his hand high and complied, walking slowly towards the ladder and climbing upwards as I followed.
Going up into the lighter deck bathed in sunlight through the grime-covered windows I saw him step back with two exaggerated slow steps to demonstrate that he had no intention of making a move on me as I emerged.
I kept the gun on him, feeling less certain by the second that this man was an enemy. The sounds of firing had all ceased, so I told him to go out on deck.
“Are they…” he croaked in American-accented English which threw me. “Are they dead?”
“Probably,” I answered in my English accent, and the man seemed to be more confused than I was. “You’re American?”
“Tennessee born and raised, ma’am,” he said, smiling weakly. “Joshua Bucknor, US Navy, at your service.”
“Leah,” I said, lowering my weapon from his chest and clicking off the flashlight with my thumb before considering how best to explain who I was as he had done so easily. “What are you doing with the pirates?” I asked, hearing the annoying nag of the word ‘Aargh’ in my head as I spoke.
“I’m their hostage,” he said with an exhausted numbness, “have been since as long as I can recollect.”
With that, his face contorted, his eyes ran freely with fresh tears and he crumbled. He fell to the deck, sobbing loudly with what sounded more like hysterical laughter interspersed with tears of pain and relief. The door burst in and Dan appeared beside me to point his carbine at the sobbing man. I gently reached out and placed my right palm on the barrel to make him lower it.
“What’s going on?” he asked me as he stared at the man on the floor.
“We’ve just done our first hostage rescue,” I told him, “that’s what.”
Joshua Bucknor, not Josh but Joshua, stayed like that for about ten minutes. When his tears ran dry he stood and tried to wipe the snot away from his puffy face before looking up with a renewed smile.
“Any chance I can clean myself up a little?” he asked, as though he needed permission to do anything. I gestured with my hand, meaning to try and convey that we were in his house and not ours, so he stood and tried to make himself more presentable. He must have seen my nose wrinkle because he stepped back and mumbled an apology from behind his long, matted beard. I reached behind myself and pulled the bottle of water from my back pocket before offering it to him, which he took with a big show of respect and thanks, almost bowing to me as he reached a tentative hand out to take it as though it was a venomous snake and could strike him if he moved too fast.
“Come outside?” I offered him. “You could do with some fresh air after being down there I should think.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied in between gulps of the tepid water. “I’ve been working on that manifold for days now and it still ain’t right.” He smiled almost manically, as though he was drunk or giddy but I suspected it was the stress coming out of him like sweat.
On deck I found Dan and Mitch leaning on boxes as Dan smoked and Mitch drank from a bright red soda can bearing the logo that was at once so familiar and yet so alien. I always preferred the silver version on taste alone, but the promise of sugary goodness struck something deep in my memory and I longed for one. My eyes must have given it away, because Mitch reached behind him into a battered old cooler and pulled out another which he held out to me as he eyed the thin and filthy man following me. I took the can, handing it to Joshua who repeated his strange subservient routine as though my offer was a trick that he could be punished for accepting. His hands shook and he fumbled with the ring pull, getting frustrated as the four of us watched until he broke before our eyes.
His fumbling fingers dropped the can to the deck where it hissed and shot a frothy stream out of a tiny hole, and the man followed it, sinking down and collapsing in an exhausted heap. He sat there and dry sobbed like a toddler at the end of their tantrum when they had no more energy to cry. His eyes were screwed tightly shut and his face contorted into the rictus of tears but none came.
“It’s okay, Joshua,” I said gently, opening another can and crouching to hand it to him. I forced myself to ignore the smell of him, trying not to let it show in my eyes as he had clearly been through enough. I took his hand and placed it around the can, seeing such vulnerability in his eyes as they met my own. “Want to just sit there a while?” I asked gently.
He nodded, cuffing at his swollen eyes with an oil-stained hand. I stood, looking past the others towards the sound of an engine. I walked to the prow and saw the skiff, which should have been attached to the rear of our captured boat, spinning in a lazy circle. Our driver was crumpled on his back, legs and arms lying at angles which clearly announced his dead status, and his body had forced the steering arm of the outboard motor so that it chugged in a ponderous loop destined to do so until the fuel ran dry.
“Anyone going to deal with that?” I asked, turning to see the three men exchanging looks and offering shrugs. I huffed, making my annoyance clear to them, and began to strip off my vest ready to swim and retrieve the craft.
“You sure you want to do that?” Mitch asked.
“Well, how else is it going to get back here? Or would you rather stay on this piece of crap?”
“No, I agree,” he said with a mischievous smile. “I was just wondering about the sharks is all…”
Bastard, I thought, knowing that there was almost no chance of finding a shark out here capable of attacking me but still unable to bring myself to swim out there now that he had mentioned the word. I stopped what I was doing, letting my heavy vest fall back onto my sweaty shirt and glared at them.
“What do you suggest then?” I shot at him.
Wordlessly, Dan chuckled and groaned as he forced himself upright from his leaning position, picking up a coil of rope with a rusty grappling hook attached to the end. He walked past me nonchalantly, dropping the coil to his feet and swinging the hook around in a circle to build up momentum before letting it soar out through the air as the rope ran through his hands.
It missed, just as it did on his next two attempts until
on the fourth go it landed inside the boat with a plastic thump. At once I saw Dan’s body tense as his muscles fought against the force of the boat which still tried to turn, and threatened to drag him overboard.
“A little help?” he grunted in an annoyed tone, knowing that we would all happily watch him struggle just for the comedy factor. Mitch and Adam took up the end of the rope and with their combined strength tried to haul the boat in like some kind of tug-of-war. I sighed, watching three grown men grunting like animals and thinking like babies.
“Maybe try to steer it,” I said in a tone of voice that made it clear I thought they were all being dumb, “instead of dragging it like cavemen?”
They made out like they hadn’t heard me, but still communicated in low grunts as they held the boat where it was and sidestepped as one to let it swing around and crab along the left side of the other boat until reached the stern. They tied the rope to the railings and Dan leaned out to try and grab the edge of the small hull.
“Jump in!” Dan said through his exertion but undirected to any one person in particular. Adam and Mitch jostled, both deciding at the last minute to allow the other to jump the small gap, so I stepped past them and hopped lightly into the bouncing, bucking hull where I shoved the dead body off the controls and looked at them.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 8
