Hostage Three

by Nick Lake

  But somehow, already, I know that it will mean something to me. It will mean something to me for ever, whenever I’m on a flight with 71 in the name, whenever I dial 7 then 1 on my cell phone, just because it happens to be part of someone’s number, whenever I grab a ticket at the baker’s or the supermarket or whatever stupid irrelevant place back in the world called home, and the number comes up: 71.

  Because the captain’s voice is saying again:

  — Airborne One, go, go, go.

  And then the helicopter, which had been heading back to the destroyer, turns, hangs sideways in the air for a moment – the noise like a colossal heartbeat, the downrush of air forcing us into a crouch – and then it is moving towards the shore. The way the helicopter flies is fast, but it’s slow, too, because I can feel what’s happening; I heard it in that word, go, repeated three times, and I want it to stop.

  It doesn’t stop.

  The helicopter is over the sand now, the pickup trucks rolling towards the dunes, as if they can see, as if they’re animals with the shadow of a hawk over them. For an idiotic moment I think they might get away.

  I see the muzzle-glare before I hear the helicopter’s big gun firing. Again the word lightning flashes in my head, because it’s the same, isn’t it? The thunder doesn’t reach you till after the release, till after the heavens strike down on the earth, which means that you always see the destruction before you hear it.

  The bullets come out of the helicopter like streaks of yellow fire in the air, like those trails you see when you swish a sparkler in front of your eyes, smashing into one of the pickup trucks, which is driving away but, oh, so, so not quick enough. It is the truck Farouz got into, I know it – I saw his shape, his shoulders, before he slid into the back seat.

  — The money, you fucking idiots! says Jerry, the negotiator. The money!

  But no one is listening to him.

  Flame billows out of the truck and it spins up into the air, black struts and side panels in a fireball, an X-ray, before crashing back down on the sand and stopping.

  Then, and only then, I hear it. An explosion that seems to rock the destroyer on the sea, even though there is no swell, even at this distance.

  Then the other truck is hit: it careers, tyres blown, then somersaults, rolls.

  I feel Dad’s arm fall away from my shoulder. I wonder if it is the last thing I will ever feel. There, on the shore, maybe, like, half a mile away, the pickup truck is going up in smoke, and I know that expression is a cliché – my English teacher, Mrs Arkwright, would mark me down for using it – but that is what’s happening. The truck, Farouz, the money, it’s all just pouring itself into the air, dissolving into this thick black smoke that is writhing and curling in the cruel hot empty white air over Somalia.

  I remember Farouz, sucking in smoke, seeming to draw the stars from the sky and into his lungs, and think, now he’s smoke himself, he’s rising back up into the air.

  It was a pickup truck, it was Farouz, it was money. Now it is just smoke and now –

  Oh god, now I can smell it, lifted on the wind as a dark bird: a petrol smell, explosive, like when Mohammed was shot right over me. I guess you see the end, then you hear it, then the reek of it hits you.

  Dad is saying something.

  I don’t listen. I can hardly see anything. I thought the world had changed its contours and its colours when Farouz came into it, but now that he has left it behind, the world is just greyness all around.

  I close my eyes, and then a big black sea takes me, and I drown.

  I looked up through shimmering water at the disc of the sun above, watching it tremble and glow.

  I was holding my breath, and I could hear the echoing hiss of the pool in my ears. The voices of my parents came to me from far away, from the other side of a barrier.

  We were staying at our beach house on North Fork. Dad was up for the weekend, which I remember as being rare. I was maybe six or seven. I had chickenpox, and so I spent most of my time in the pool behind our house, swimming. It was when I was swimming that the itching went away, at least for a little while. Dad, that weekend, spent most of his time at the barbecue – that’s how I picture him, anyway, hunched over the grill, the meat flaming and spitting. Fish, too, that he bought direct from the fishermen’s market at Southold.

  I was in the shallow end of the pool. I wasn’t swimming, but I didn’t want to get out, either, so I was messing around in the water. Then I discovered something amazing. I discovered that if I went under, held my breath, opened my eyes and turned to the sky, I could see the blueness and the fluffy clouds above through the lens of the water, making everything shimmer and dance. It was incredible – the glare of the sun on the water, the sparkle, the way the whole sky trembled and pulsed.

  So I rolled on to my back, held my breath and deadened my limbs, so that I could float with my face just under the water, looking up. I could hold my breath quite a long time. It meant I could lie there for ages before I had to break the spell, and the surface.

  The next thing I knew, there was something like iron wrapping itself around my arm, and I was jerked out of the water, thrown to the hard tiles, flopping like a fish. I screamed as my mom bent her head down, her fingers reaching for my mouth.

  — Mom! I shouted.

  — Oh, Amy, you –

  And then she slapped me. It was the first and the only time that she ever hit me. I couldn’t believe it. I lay there, on the damp hot tiles that surrounded the pool, staring up at her. She was wearing a sundress, blue with yellow flowers, and the dress was soaked, I saw now. Her eyes were big and terrified and terrifying, her face streaked with tears.

  — What did I – I started.

  — I thought you were dead, she shrieked. I had never heard anyone sound like this before; her voice was like an animal’s, nothing human in it at all. Behind her, I saw Dad running up, late, as always. I thought you drowned, she shrieked.

  — Oh, I said.

  It was all I could think to say. And even then, even so young, I could see how stupid I’d been, how she had thought what she thought. A terrible shame opened its petals inside me, a dark, night flower, that has never really gone away since.

  I did that, I thought. I made her cry. I did that.

  Then she picked me up and hugged me. It hurt my chickenpox, but I didn’t say anything. I just let her hold me as she sobbed.

  — Oh my Amy, she said, oh my Amy, over and over again, like it was a prayer, like it was the thing that was keeping me alive.

  I was just looking at the sky. I wanted to say to her, I didn’t think. I didn’t mean to scare you.

  Later, as I was growing up, I always remembered that time, because of the searing horror I felt whenever I thought of it, that look on my mom’s face that I never wanted to see again. This feeling of mine, it’s called shame. There was embarrassment, too – something about the whole memory that made me shrivel up to think about it, the same way you might if you caught your parents having sex. I guess because I caught a glimpse of something private. I saw something I wasn’t meant to see. I saw just how much my mother loved me, and it scared me senseless.

  Is that what it would be like for me? I asked myself a thousand times. Is that how much I’ll love my kids, how much it would hurt me if anything happened to one of them? It doesn’t seem worth it, that kind of fear.

  Mostly, though, it was after she killed herself that I thought about that summer and the time Mom pulled me out of the pool, wet and spluttering.

  I thought:

  If it hurt you so much, the idea that I had drowned, then why did you leave me? Why did you leave me on my own?

  When I come to, there is commotion all around me on the deck of HMS Endeavour. Someone pulls me up into a sitting position, my back against the wall. I can see the sea and the sky, merging into one another. In my mind’s eye I am still seeing Farouz, dying, the smoke of the pickup truck.

  My father is saying something to me, and then he turns because there
is some kind of activity over to his left. I crane my head. It is the stepmother, being helped up from the ladder. She smiles at me, one of those smiles that is sad and concerned at the same time. Her clothes are wet at the hems with seawater, from going on to the beach and back.

  I’m still impressed at how brave she was, but she doesn’t know that everything is over anyway, because Farouz is dead.

  — What’s wrong? she asks. What happened to Amy?

  — We don’t know, says Dad.

  — Heatstroke, says Captain Campbell. Trauma. We have counsellors on board, and medicine, too. She’ll be OK. We should just get her inside, get some Coke and some food into her. Then the doctors can –

  — No, I say. No, I want to stay here.

  — Amy, listen to the captain, says Dad. Go and –

  — Let her be, says the stepmother.

  Dad closes his mouth, surprised.

  I ignore them both. I can see the beach from where I am. I can see the pickup, still burning.

  But wait.

  I can see something else, too. I can see that the helicopter has landed, and there are soldiers there. Some of them have formed a kind of cordon, their guns pointed outwards, while others are dragging . . .

  — Binoculars, I say.

  — Amy, we –

  — Binoculars!

  Someone hands a pair to me. I hold them up to my face, twiddle the dial until the scene jumps into focus. The less burned pickup truck is there in front of my eyes – there is a man face down on its hood, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  And the reason I called for the binoculars: there are other men being secured, too, being pushed towards the helicopter – and it looks from the direction of the movement like they’re being dragged from where the pickup was burning. Again, though, the men are only silhouettes, all shimmering, indistinguishable from each other.

  What if . . .

  Hands tug at my arm, but I ignore them. I keep my eyes locked on the helicopter, as the captured Somali men are bundled into it. Then, as the armed men holding the cordon back up, the rotor starts up. The last men jump in, and it lifts into the air. There is a pop sound – pop, pop, pop – and I realise that someone is shooting at it, but the helicopter doesn’t respond, it just flies back towards the ship.

  What if . . .

  I know where the helipad is, I saw it from the Daisy May. I jump up, dropping the binoculars, and start running. There is shouting from behind me. A sailor opens a door in front of me, and I veer around it, catching a glimpse of his startled face, my feet ringing on the metal of the deck. I pass doors and corridors, even an enormous gun, pointing out to sea.

  The blue-black of metal walls reels past, giddily. That everywhere-sun is still out, printing my shadow on to the wall, on to the floor, as I run. Above me the antennae and dishes poke up into the sky.

  — Amy, stop! my dad shouts from behind me.

  I do not stop. I keep going until I get to the rear deck. There is a yellow cross on a hexagonal pad. The helicopter is descending on to it, vertical, like a giant bird. A guy is standing on the deck, with goggles and earphones on, waving two yellow sticks. I move forward, the air from its blades throwing my hair behind me like a stream of dark water, my eyes half-closed against the blast. It is warm on my skin, that air, like standing in front of an enormous hairdryer.

  The helicopter door opens and the first of the soldiers – do you call them soldiers when they’re on a ship? – jumps out. He ducks as he walks, hunched over, towards us. More follow him.

  And then the pirates.

  I see beards, I see headscarves. I see crazy clothing, Armani mixed with rags. The rotor begins to power down, but its down-blast is still powerful, stretching the faces of the men who get off, making them strange yet familiar, like sea creatures brought up from the ocean floor to lower pressure.

  The first I recognise is Asiz, looking very small as he cowers under the force of the blasted air, even as the motor whines in diminuendo. He is only moving forward because there is a man poking a gun in his back. Another pirate I recognise – but whose name I don’t know – follows, his hands restrained, all the pride and fight gone out of him. I notice that Asiz’s clothes are burned, his hair singed.

  Did he jump out of the pickup? I think. Did he get out before it blew up?

  I don’t see Ahmed. And I don’t see . . .

  No.

  Suddenly, it seems there’s a boulder on my chest, crushing it, stopping me from breathing.

  I see Ahmed.

  Hands close around my arms, and I am dragged backward, as he jumps from the helicopter.

  He lands gracefully on the deck – as gracefully as is possible, with his hands tied behind his back. A uniformed guy is behind him, assault rifle in his hand, but Ahmed doesn’t bend over like Asiz; he walks tall, his hair whipping in the downdraught, which disappears anyway as he steps off the big yellow X of the helipad and on to the main deck, the engine of the helicopter finally falling silent.

  Dad turns me towards him, cupping his hand under my chin, worry in his eyes. I wrench my head away.

  Ahmed. And that means, if Ahmed is alive . . .

  If Ahmed is alive, then . . .

  There is blood running from Ahmed’s nose. And one side of his face is . . . what? Bubbling, and melting. Oh god, he’s been burned, I realise. He was in the truck and he must have got out just in time, but not quick enough to stop the flames. His T-shirt is charred, the shoulder of the fabric gone on one side, the flesh below black and awful.

  Still, he smiles at me, as I stand there with my father holding me back.

  I watch the helicopter, but no more men are coming out. Is that it? I think. What about Farouz?

  Hope and fear fight, like snarling animals, in my chest. What if he got away?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see the captain step forward to take something from one of the soldiers. He brings it back and sets it on the ground, near where Dad is holding me. The negotiator, Jerry, is here, too, I realise. The captain pokes the black thing with his foot. For one terrible moment, I think it’s the roasted corpse of a pirate, but then I see that it’s a bag, a sports bag.

  — Kevlar lining, he says to Jerry. We lost one, but there’s two mil in there. Should keep the insurance company happy, huh?

  Jerry shakes his head in wonder.

  — Bastards, he says.

  The captain raises an eyebrow.

  — Well done, says Jerry in a slightly different tone. Well done.

  All of this is happening, and I’m taking it in, but mainly I’m watching Ahmed. When I sense that my dad’s attention is on the bag of money, I twist and pull away. I run towards Ahmed, as they march him to a grey metal door, a door Asiz has already gone through.

  When I’m about a metre away, the soldier escorting Ahmed pushes around him and holds up a hand to stop me.

  — I know you’re angry, he says. But we have to follow the law. We can’t hurt these –

  — I don’t want to hurt him, I say.

  Behind the soldier, Ahmed is smiling – at least, half his mouth is. The other half is melting, and I feel like my heart will break if I keep having to look at his wounds.

  — I don’t understand, says the soldier. Please, miss, if you could back away –

  — Amy, says Dad, coming up behind me. Amy, let them do their job.

  I wrap my arms around myself to stop anyone touching me.

  — What will happen to them? I ask. What will happen to the pirates?

  The captain and Jerry have caught up with us, too, because it’s Jerry who answers.

  — They’ll be tried according to international law, he says. They’ll go to prison.

  All this time, Ahmed isn’t saying anything. He is just looking at me, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  — How long for? I say.

  — Life, probably, says Jerry, sounding satisfied with this, like it’s a good outcome for the day.

  Like beating a bunch of pirates with ol
d guns, from a country where people have nothing, and then putting them in prison for ever is some kind of triumph for justice.

  Even as Jerry is talking, the soldier is pushing Ahmed away, towards that door. I feel like if he goes through it into the shadows behind that cool blue metal, I will never see him again, and it will be too late, too late to find out about Farouz. His head is turned the whole time, though, and he is looking at me.

  I take a deep breath.

  — Farouz? I ask.

  Ahmed keeps looking at me as he is dragged away. Then there is an expression of total sadness on his face, and I think, he loved him, and I know in my heart of hearts that I am already using the past tense and there is a reason for that.

  Then Ahmed shakes his head, every movement like a physical blow to me, and he is gone into the ship.

  In my head I see Farouz, standing on the deck of the Daisy May, waving at me, waving and waving. It seemed like the helicopter coming back with the captured men on board was like a ball springing back to the hand, but it wasn’t; it was a ball bouncing once, dully, on carpet, before coming to a total and utter stop.

  No, I think. Please don’t leave me. Don’t you leave me, too.

  But it’s too late.

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  Listen.

  My name is Amy Fields, but the men called me Hostage Three.

  You’ve probably read about me or seen that special on Channel 5 or something.

  Maybe you thought I was some kind of heroine. Or maybe you thought I was a slut, a fuck-up – the girl with the piercings, the girl who lit a cigarette in her last exam. I get that, too.

  You’d think it would be the slut thing that would upset me, but of the two options, people thinking I’m a heroine makes me the most sick. Because I am the furthest thing from that. I could have gone instead of the stepmother. I could have taken her place, then none of those men would have had to die. The helicopter never would have fired if I had been there on the beach.

  So, yes. You’ve probably read about me or seen pictures of me or listened to people talking about me on the radio – maybe even Carrie or Esme, who seem to be the go-to girls for stories about me – but I haven’t told anyone what really happened on the Daisy May.