by Dale Mayer
The men looked completely relieved at the idea.
“I’m counting on you people being here when I come back.”
“Not a problem,” the first man said. “This is where we belong, no doubt about it. We’ll lock ourselves in.”
Jax smacked him on the shoulder and said, “Good man. And don’t tell anybody else. No communication at all—got it?”
They nodded.
“Even the captain?” one asked.
Jax shook his head. “This is the first level of the ship that I’ve searched so far. I don’t know what pressure the captain is under already. We can’t let him have this info.”
The men look confused, and Jax said, “What if the captain’s wife is on board, and the pirates are holding a gun to her head? If the captain tells the pirates that I’ve just released you guys, they’ll come after you and me, and they’ll take her out at the same time. Probably taking out the captain too, after he sees his wife die.”
The men all nodded. “So communication silence until we’re out of this.”
“At least you’re ahead of the game. You’re free and clear right now. Please stay locked up.”
And, with that, Jax quickly disappeared. The door closed and locked behind him. Good. But his priority was finding this Abigail person. Even the name stuck in his throat. Mentally he shortened it to Abby. Now, if only she was healthy and capable of doing some of the things he needed her to do. He had no clue about her age, but he suspected she would likely be sixty years old plus gray-haired, yet hopefully fit since she was a doctor. Otherwise he would have a heck of a time getting her off this ship. And he had no doubt he needed to do that and fast.
With the bottom level cleared, he moved upward. He went room by room by room. He took out two more pirate gunmen, confiscating their weapons and leaving everybody else in place. By the time he came up to the stateroom levels, he knew his search would take longer. He had texted Beau to come meet him here, down on the far side, checking the same level as Jax was but from the opposite end of the ship. They checked for anybody in hiding. He met many people who were still hiding away in their rooms, thinking that they could stay there. And he agreed with that, but nobody seemed to know anything about Abigail Eleanor.
Then he and Beau repeated their search on the other stateroom levels, working their way upward.
By the time Jax was done with this stateroom level, he was frustrated and aggravated. He came up another level to the kitchens. At least one set of kitchens. And found two more pirate guards. He swore as he saw them because these guards weren’t joking, talking, or doing anything except holding their rifles on a bunch of people while the pirates sampled the food set off to the side. And the look on their faces said they’d just as soon kill every one of them. He had no way to know if Abigail was in there. He quickly tapped out a message to Beau, letting him know the status on the kitchen.
His response came back. Coming up on your six.
Jax waited until he heard the tap on his comm unit, indicating Beau was in reach. With him on the far side, the two of them opened the double doors to the kitchen. Jax dove to the floor, reached up, and fired a single shot as one pirate gunman leveled his rifle in Jax’s direction. Jax put a bullet in his forehead and dropped him. Screams came from all around him, and he quickly swung his weapon to check that Beau’s man was down.
“Stop,” he said, holding up one finger. “We need silence. We can’t let the rest of the pirates know that you guys are free.”
In an instant, the screams muted to sobs as they hugged and held each other carefully.
“You’ve got enough knives in here, so untie yourselves and confirm that each of you are unharmed,” he said. “But not one of you is allowed to leave this room until we tell you to. Do you hear me? You’re putting everybody else in danger if you so much as step foot from this room.”
Until he extracted a promise from every one of them, and he wasn’t even sure then, he stepped back slightly, looked at the two chefs, and said, “You’re both in charge. I hate to say it, but, if anyone of them moves out of here, you’re to stop them. If that means kill them, that means kill them.”
More gasps were heard, but he shook his head and said, “No, we’re not playing here. You’ll end up getting more people killed if you leave here. And I don’t care if you’ve got brothers, siblings, lovers, or children outside. You stay in here, or it’ll be open gunfire soon. And we can’t have more people letting the pirates know that we’re already on board.”
The two chefs immediately stationed themselves at the doors, weapons in hand.
On that note, Jax and Beau left.
How the hell did she get into these situations? Abigail had no idea what she was supposed to do right now. When word came that the place was overrun with pirates, she immediately went looking for a good hiding place. The ductwork. Staying up here was temporary though. She couldn’t stay here forever. How long before somebody decided that it was better to sink the cruise ship? Or to blast gunfire all through the place, and she’d die that way by taking a bullet? She wasn’t even sure what strange reason made her hop up into the ductwork and hide when everybody else was rushing through the hallways.
She’d been here for at least an hour, still thinking of what to do. She’d heard some noises outside. Apparently the pirates were looking for her. And that just blew her away, not to mention terrified her. Now she couldn’t trust anyone because she didn’t know who would turn her over to the pirates. She didn’t even know how many pirates were here and what weaponry they had. All she knew is that they wanted her for some reason. She groaned when she thought about it. It had to be connected to her work. That’s all the world knew her for. Why else would anyone come for her? Her techniques were already controversial in the traditional medical world but gaining traction with each success.
Yet her techniques worked, more often than not. But then she knew what she was doing. A lot of doctors had joined the bandwagon and claimed that their methodologies and their protocols had enabled her to jump to the front of the research game.
She understood that because research was all about being the first person who could show results. And unfortunately too often, the results that the researchers showed weren’t any good. So the main goal was always to keep people funding your research. Universities would let doctors go if they weren’t bringing in enough grant money. Her claim to fame was a stem-cell collection system, and so much research was going on everywhere with many new systems arriving almost daily. Stem cells were big money. Her system was fast, simple, and reliable. So she didn’t understand why anybody would have any problem with it, but apparently people did. Or, at least, they weren’t seeing the same results.
She didn’t understand that either, and she really didn’t understand why these pirates would give a damn. They wouldn’t. So why the hell were they after her?
Just then she heard sounds in the room beneath her.
She closed her eyes and prayed.
Chapter 3
When whoever it was walked out of the room, Abigail took a slow breath and gently released it. She could only hope that having checked this room to find it empty, nobody would come back in again. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief this time, grateful that the only reason the ductwork sustained her up here was because of her petite size. She scooted along, thinking about exactly where in the ship she was. The ductwork seemed to run all along the place, but the last thing she wanted to do was get caught up in some heavy-duty equipment that would kill her faster than anything.
She moved as quietly as she could. She’d long given up on her shoes, leaving them back in her room under the bed. And now, with her bare toes pushing her forward on her belly, she scooched another twenty feet forward. She came up against a branching of the ductwork. A noise distracted her, only she didn’t recognize what she heard. Some engine or motor purred to her left. The last thing she wanted to do was go toward that.
She shifted to the right and headed down what she hoped
would be the center of the ship. She didn’t even want to come on this damn cruise in the first place, but her mother and her sister had insisted that Abigail needed a break and that she should take one of these cruises to get her completely away from her job. She’d finally given in and booked it on her own, secretly looking forward to some time alone.
They didn’t understand that she had brought her work with her and that her job was exactly what she lived for. She’d met lots of friends over the years, and several had tried to stay but somehow her work had dominated and they’d drifted away. She’d had relationships but nothing that went the distance. None appealed. At least not in the way they wanted to appeal. Not in any way.
She didn’t know how she was supposed to overcome this distrust of relationships. It’s not that hers had been bad. They’d been good. They’d been loving. But they’d all ended up with this boredness to them. She figured they just had to address it before they got too far down that pathway. In several cases though, the men had found other women to add excitement to their lives.
She kept moving ahead until she heard another odd sound. Was that gunfire? Her blood froze, and her body stiffened in shock.
Up until now, she hadn’t considered people were dying. She’d heard the screams and the shouts but nothing else. But gunfire now definitely changed that. She shifted off to the side and looked through an access panel but found an empty room below. So where the hell was she? Between the eighth and ninth decks? Or did she get as high as the seventh? It didn’t really matter though, except that it determined how hard it would be to get topside if the pirates sank the ship.
She definitely wanted to go up if she could, as in higher up. Above the pilot’s station would be nice. At least then she’d have some hope of surviving a sinking ship. She crept forward, looking for signs of life at each grate she came across, but she found nothing. At the next grate, she saw a hallway and elevators. One was open and sitting, waiting. A stairwell should be nearby, for those who didn’t want to take the elevator, but she couldn’t see if from this grate.
What would happen if she went that way in this ductwork?
She headed in that direction, but it didn’t lead her to the elevator shaft. And she wasn’t sure how to go from the ductwork she was in up to the next level. However, her ductwork branched off again now, connected to at least ten to twenty feet of pipes, but they were all smooth sided. Up, down, left, right, crisscrossed. She wasn’t sure how to get out of this maze or where she was or how to move upward.
She wondered at the options facing her, then headed back to where the stairs and the elevators were, and slipped out of an access panel in the ductwork into one of the closest rooms. Then she stepped into the stairwell and quietly raced upward again. As she opened the stairwell door at the top, she heard a voice beside her. She turned to see a man dressed completely in black, his face covered with black markings. … He was armed. She stared at him, completely frozen.
He nudged her gently with his hand. “What’s your name?”
The last thing she would give would be her name. In spite of her best efforts, her nickname slipped out.
“Abby,” she said. “I’m Abby.”
Jax stared at Abby. “As in Abigail Eleanor?”
She nodded slowly, but the look on her face was one of terror.
He grabbed her before she had a chance to run, his fingers wrapping snugly around her upper arm. He pulled her close against him. “Well, I’m Jax, from the US government,” he said. “Apparently the pirates are looking for you. Do you know why?”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“Answer me,” he said. “Do you know why?”
Finally she shook her head.
“Social media says your methods don’t work. They need you to help somebody in their family.”
“So it is connected to my work,” she said in a daze.
“Only because their doctor botched it,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “That makes no sense. I have pioneered a way of collecting stem cells. Lots of doctors are doing it around the world now. It’s not something you can really botch.”
“Well, maybe it’s more a case of,” he said, “it didn’t work.”
“Meaning, it didn’t make the person well?” she said with a shrug. “Of course not. It’s only one technique in a long line of medical arsenals.”
“Right,” he said. “Well, apparently the pirates want to kidnap you and take you back to wherever this family member is, so you can fix him.”
She stared at him. “But I don’t even know what the problem is.”
“Well, I don’t think they’re too interested in waiting around and asking questions,” he said gently.
She nodded slowly. “So you’ll turn me in then?”
“No,” he said, frowning. “Why would I do that? I’ll take you back to one of our ships and then come in and take out the rest of the pirates.”
He saw the relief on her face, but then she frowned. “What about all the other people here?”
“What about them?” he asked.
“I can’t have them hurt because of me.”
“Understood,” he said. And then he smiled. “But what will you do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been hiding in the ductwork, figuring out exactly what to do. I was thinking that, if the pirates sink the ship, I should at least make my way up a few more decks, but I was trying to avoid contact with anybody.”
“Well, guess what?” he asked. “You screwed that up.” But he let humor rest in his voice. He studied her; she couldn’t be more than five foot tall. She looked like she was eighteen. He hardly believed that she was even a doctor. Suspicious all of a sudden, he asked, “Do you have any ID on you?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “No, I wasn’t trying to save anything but me when I heard that pirates were taking over the ship.”
“Surprisingly,”—he stepped back—“it’s the first thing every woman normally does. They grab their purses.”
“Maybe, but I’m not every woman,” she said coolly.
Just then a noise came from the left. He pulled her beside him, up against the door, and held his fingers to his lips.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Like I don’t know to stay quiet.”
He tilted his head at her but didn’t say anything. Jax waited and waited and waited, but no more of the same noise came. He frowned at that. He wanted to poke his head through to the other side but knew it was almost a guarantee of getting his head shot off. He studied his options and then said, “We need to change levels.”
“Better to go down a level,” she whispered. “It was deserted.”
“Well, that works in some cases,” he said, “but it won’t get the rest of the people off this ship.”
“I thought you only wanted me off,” she said.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Good point. Let’s go.”
And he led her back into the stairway, forcing her down the stairs again and again.
She protested the whole way. “Don’t take me off the ship. We must do something to save everybody else.”
“I hear you, but I can’t take the chance.”
“It’s me the pirates want. You’re not making any sense. If they kill the others to get to me, that’s just a numbers game, and obviously we’ll all lose that one.”
A loud voice snapped orders close by.
Chapter 4
Abby darted from Jax’s arms, racing down the stairs to get away from the voices.
He spouted an expletive as he jumped down the stairs three at a time behind her. Just as they disappeared into the next level below, he heard sounds of the doors above opening. He grabbed her arm, pulled her against an outside wall, and asked, “What are you doing?”
Gasping in panic, she spun, looked at him, and said, “Trying to get away. What does it look like?”
He could feel the tremors in her body and could see her terror in her expression. He held her clo
se and whispered, “Somebody’s coming. Be quiet. If it’s a pirate, I want to take him out.”
She stared up at him, suddenly in shock. Then she nodded. “Do we know how many there are?”
He shrugged. “Six less than when I first came on the ship.” Her jaw dropped. She went to speak, but he held a finger against her lips and said, “No more nonsense. Stop. Stay here. Wait.” And he placed her behind him around the corner, and then he crept up to the doorway.
The double doors opened wide, and two men walked through. Both held weapons, semiautomatic machine guns.
Jax didn’t understand their language but heard something about the engine room and realized that some of the men had tried to call up the pirates who Jax had taken down. There was no time to lose. These pirates couldn’t be allowed to reach the engine room and to find out the damage to their numbers already.
Without even thinking, Jax pulled out a handgun and shot the first one dead. As the second one spun, swearing and lifting his rifle, Jax knocked it out of range and plowed his fist hard into the pirate’s jaw. But the man didn’t go down easy. Instead, he snapped back with his own fists, trying to pull a handgun from his belt holster. Jax was on him, pounding him hard, until the pirate went down. And, with one final kick, Jax shoved the toe of his boot hard into the pirate’s jaw. There was a mighty crack; something snapped, and the man dropped.
Standing on his feet, gasping hard and his chest heaving, Jax wiped the sweat off his face to see Abby staring at him in absolute horror.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said when she could. She didn’t want to replay the actions that she’d just seen, but it was hard not to. She raced to him, her hands out. “Are you hurt?”
He still looked at her, frowned, and then shook his head. “I’ll be okay.”
“But you killed both of them,” she said, “with your bare hands.”
“I shot the first one,” he said bluntly. “And you were horrified when you saw what I did to the second one, but I had to do it.”
