Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 02 - Peeking Duck

by Daniel Ganninger

  Balboa didn‘t challenge the man. All the mercenaries aboard knew the risks if something went awry. Balboa was in it mostly for the payday, and the trivial geopolitical reasons for their initial invasion of the Trusian were of no concern to him.

  “Ready your positions for the extraction,” Marquette yelled at the remaining men. “I will take personal charge of our possession.” Marquette turned to Balboa. “Get him,” he ordered.

  Balboa went to the deck, disappeared between the containers, and reappeared with a handcuffed and blindfolded man.

  -Chapter 44-

  “Let’s get that Dimitri guy to a safe spot. I’m a little worried because I haven’t heard any more radio chatter.”

  Galveston closed the cabin door behind him where we had stuck the two pirates and ran down the hall. I followed him down to the lower deck and back to Dimitri. He looked horrified at being left behind but had managed to get himself to his feet.

  “Is there another way to the bridge?” Galveston asked the chief mate.

  “This way,” Dimitri motioned and led us to another set of stairs that led past the deck where we had apprehended the pirates.

  Dimitri struggled to get up the two set of stairs but was able to reach the top deck of the superstructure where the bridge was located. We stopped outside the entrance and readied our weapons while Dimitri hid himself behind one of the steel walls, out of sight in the stairwell. He would be safe there until we could secure the bridge.

  Galveston placed himself next to the entrance of the bridge, and I took up position across from him with my gun raised. We had no idea what resistance we would encounter, so we carefully peered around the corner to get a better view. Galveston inched his way beyond the doorway, crouched in a position by the walls of the long bridge. I followed closely behind. We would try to take them alive, but if needed, would fire our way out.

  Galveston continued forward and then motioned for me to stop. He saw no movement, but that didn’t mean no one was inside. Galveston slowly raised his head, keeping his eye through the sight of the gun. I crept up behind him and did the same, my heart pounding out of my chest. My palms began to sweat as Galveston gave the signal to find the targets in the room.

  I peered over a console and noticed an eerie calm on the bridge. There was no movement, but I kept my finger poised over the trigger of the assault rifle, just in case. I scanned the room again and realized the place was deserted.

  “What the hell?” Galveston questioned, unsure of why no one would be on the most important part of the ship. “Check the sides,” he whispered.

  I moved to one end of the room with my gun drawn. There was nowhere to hide on the bridge and no one was about. Thankfully there was also no ambush from someone hiding outside.

  Galveston and I looked at each other with confusion, and then I heard the faint hum of an aircraft engine. I realized it was the slap of helicopter blades in the air.

  “Maybe we finally have reinforcements,” I said with a note of glee that help was on the way.

  Galveston didn’t share my enthusiasm and ran to the windows overlooking the bow of the ship to investigate. I moved behind him until I could see the bow of the ship and the multitude of containers.

  There, perched atop a large stack of containers, was a hastily erected, wooden helipad. Just large enough to accommodate the skids of a helicopter and positioned to allow it to land on top of the containers safely.

  “Look!” I yelled, pointing to the sky. It was a large helicopter flying low over the ocean’s surface in the distance. The sound grew louder as it approached.

  I turned my gaze down to the helipad and counted seven men climbing a ladder to the top of the container stack. One man struggled to get to the top, his hands bound with something.

  Galveston had been observing the same thing, and before I could talk, he was already gone. I tried to catch up with him, but his adrenaline was no match for me.

  “Dimitri, don’t move, we’ll be back.” I stammered. “I have to go after a crazy person,” I muttered under my breath.

  The helicopter was already landing by the time I got to the deck. Galveston was nowhere in sight. Some of the crew of the Trusian appeared behind me as I moved to the bow of the ship. They had also been wondering what the sound was and why none of the pirates had retreated to the stern of the ship like we had planned.

  I ran hard toward the helicopter, which now sat on top of the container stack. As I closed in, I could see Galveston climbing up the ladder the pirates had made to get to the landing pad.

  “He’s going to get himself killed,” I thought.

  I finally reached the makeshift ladder and began to climb, not so much to get to the pirates, but to make sure Galveston didn’t get shot. Before I could reach him, Galveston leapt from his position like an attacking cat and ran toward the helicopter. I peered over the top of the ladder as the helicopter’s downwash began to pound my head. One of the pirates was trying to push the bound man into the helicopter and didn’t notice Galveston running at him. The men in the helicopter tried to fire their guns, but they were too late. Galveston rammed the man from behind, causing him, and the bound man, to fly into the air and slide under the helicopter.

  I saw the other men attempting to get out of the helicopter, and I pulled myself higher on the ladder so I could raise my gun. As I did, the men in the helicopter noticed my position and began to fire. The bullets shattered beside me in the metal. I moved back down the ladder out of range and heard the pelt of bullets hitting above me. I didn’t realize it, but I had just saved Galveston’s life.

  The noise from the helicopter increased as the engines went to full power. It quickly rose off the deck, and the flow of air almost caused me to fall off the ladder. I could see it pull away, and as the downwash lessened, I stuck my head up from the top of the ladder again.

  Galveston was still struggling with the man on the helipad, and I ran to assist him. The tied up man lay yards away with a look of horror on his face. Luckily the helicopter had to pull off the pad forward, and the pirates didn’t have a view to try and shoot. But I knew they could easily turn and gun us down. I ran toward Galveston and helped him subdue the man as the helicopter began to turn gently, putting us into range of the pirate’s gunfire. I pulled up my gun and began to fire wildly into the air at the helicopter, making it stop its turn. The pilot must have decided not to tempt fate, and the aircraft flew higher in the sky and farther away, as the sound of its blades decreased.

  Galveston continued to grapple with the man until I had enough. In an uncharacteristic move, I took the butt of the gun and hit the man over the head, knocking him unconscious. Galveston fell back gasping for air and tried to speak, his face pouring with sweat.

  “You okay?” I yelled at him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered as he got to his knees with his hands over his head.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Galveston could only give me a wide eyed gaze. I think he realized that hadn’t been his brightest move.

  “Let’s get these guys off here,” I told Galveston, helping him to his feet.

  I reached down and turned the passed out man onto his back, where we could see his face. We didn‘t know the man, but it was Balboa, and he had something of vital importance in his hand.

  We weren‘t currently concerned about the tied up man. At the moment, it wasn’t of any importance to find out who he was, and why he was tied up. We had other pressing concerns and needed to focus on the more immediate threats first. It never occurred to us that this bound man was the most important piece of all.

  -Chapter 45-

  “Good Lord, man, what did we just do?” I gasped, staring at the now disappearing helicopter.

  “We kicked some ass and took some names, that’s what,” Galveston said with a bit of machismo as he rubbed his knees and back.

  “Crazy. I think we’ve gone crazy.”

  “Crazy like a fox.”

  “Shut up with t
he colloquialisms already. Let’s get this moron off here before he fully comes to.”

  Galveston and I pulled the man to the edge of the makeshift helipad as he began to regain consciousness after the whack to his head. Balboa was groggy but able to climb down the stairs and into the subduing arms of the crew. I walked back and picked up what had been in Balboa’s hand, a black box about the size of a cell phone, and put it in my pocket.

  The bound man was still lying on the helipad, and we pulled him to his feet. He had a look of shock in his eyes and was mumbling incoherent words. We pushed him toward the ladder and began to help him down.

  “Take him to the bridge and tie him up tight. Take this other one, too. I don’t know his story,” Galveston yelled down.

  “We did it, man!” I announced proudly. “Now we can get off this ship and back home.”

  “I’m with you there. I need a hot shower and a shot of whiskey,” Galveston replied.

  We climbed down the ladder and walked back to the superstructure. I was emotionally exhausted. Everything seemed wrapped up in a nice little package. Maddie would get her containers back, and we would get our much needed pay. There were looming questions on what to do with the antiquities we thought were on board, and why the CIA had formulated such a crazy plan in the first place. It was of no concern to Galveston and me now.

  The crew could manage to sail the ship back to a suitable port, and the proper authorities would take care of the captured pirates. I was uneasy with the fact that some pirates escaped, but I was sure our government could track them down easily. It occurred to me that the reason we had found the ship before the CIA was because they didn‘t want to answer questions on their role in the Trusian’s disappearance. At this point, I just didn’t care. I just wanted to get off this ship, see Jane, and go home. Galveston, on the other hand, had a slightly different idea of what we should do next.

  I followed Galveston through the watertight door on the deck of the ship and began the climb up to the bridge where we had left Dimitri. I passed the second deck and heard something faint; it almost sounded like voices yelling. I recounted in my mind the many places we had left the pirates and knew we couldn’t let our guard down yet. I called to Galveston to come back, and we traced the sounds to a storage unit on that deck.

  “Is someone yelling?” I asked. “It sounds like they’re saying ‘help’.”

  “Did the crew capture some pirates, too?” Galveston asked.

  “I don’t think so.” I listened closely at the door and then heard a woman’s voice. “I don’t remember there being any women pirates.”

  “Let’s pop it open and find out.” Galveston raised his gun and popped the lock of the door as I pulled up my rifle.

  “Go for it,” I announced.

  Galveston reached for the door and swung it open, revealing another dimly lit room. The voices stopped as I peered in and saw six frightened South African meteorological workers sitting on the floor.

  “We forgot about you guys,” Galveston said, which only garnered looks of pure terror in return.

  “We’ll do anything you want, please don’t hurt us,” one of the men said.

  “Don’t worry we’re not going to hurt you, we’re here to rescue you,” I told them in a gallant way.

  “We did forget about them, though,” Galveston whispered.

  “Shut it,” I whispered back. “You are all safe,” I announced again to the group. “We’ll get you back to your station.”

  “Follow us,” Galveston said with a wave of his hand.

  The members of the team left the room and hugged us as they went by. It made me feel like the whole operation was well worth it. We trudged up the stairs and onto the bridge where Dimitri had found a place in a comfortable chair. Most of the crew began to gather around Balboa.

  I found Pi and asked him if he could coordinate finding the members of the meteorological team something to eat and drink. Pi happily obliged and led them to the galley.

  We decided to help the crew round up the pirates we had hidden away as we waited on the Southern Sea. We spent the next hour making sure there was no one left on board that wasn’t authorized to be there. It was a daunting task, but the crew handled it flawlessly, appreciative of their freedom. The crew formed a party to go to the station on the island and bring back the pirates there, while ferrying the scientists back to their home away from home. The scientists would have a lot of repair work to do to get back online, and many of their nerves had been frayed away. We knew when they got connected to the real world a flood of ships would be heading our way, so time was of the essence.

  The sky grew dark as we continued our tasks around the ship. Galveston had already contacted the Southern Sea, who offered assistance to the crew of the Trusian, and the team trying to rebuild their meteorological station. I made a call to Jane and Maddie who were eagerly awaiting our finds. Jane was noticeably relieved when she heard my voice. I intentionally left out that we had been shot at, or that I had shot a man in the leg. She didn’t need to hear about that right now.

  Jane and Maddie told us they had arranged a helicopter flight from South Africa to the Southern Sea when the ship got into range. Maddie carefully gave Galveston the coordinates of our meeting point in the Atlantic Ocean.

  I figured that was that. We had found the ship, the cargo was secured as best we knew, and our contract requirements had been fulfilled. I was looking forward to spending some time with Jane, and spending some of the hard earned money we would get from our sizable contract with OceanLogic. My adrenaline finally emptied from my body, and the reality of how badly things could have gone crept in. We could easily have ended up shot or captured. It was an unsettling thought, and I couldn’t imagine what men felt who lived through war.

  The pirates had been strategically scattered in various rooms of the ship to keep them from talking to each other. We didn‘t need them coming up with a plan of escape. I met Galveston on the bridge where he was talking to Dimitri. The investigator in him had not stopped working, and I was surprised when he began asking some probing questions. “We’re done,” I thought. Why was he continuing to delve into something that was beyond our scope of work?

  It became obvious he wasn‘t satisfied with what we had found out in our investigation so far. There were still the strings with the company in Singapore, the captain’s demise in Sweden, and the strange correspondence with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The other nagging question was why Dimitri was on this ship when he was never supposed to be. Also, what was the story with the one man the pirates were so hell bent on getting off the ship? I could tell this was the direction Galveston was heading.

  Dimitri had been pressuring us to speak to the pirates since we had detained them and there was no clear reason why he needed to do so. To Galveston, this was a red flag.

  “I need to speak to the pirates individually,” Dimitri said forcefully.

  “I don’t think anyone should speak to them until we have the proper authorities here,” Galveston said flatly.

  “I insist. They harmed my crew and killed the captain. I want to know why.” Dimitri clutched his leg. “Are the radios working yet?”

  “No, not yet. The pirates destroyed everything. We don’t have any way to communicate.”

  I began to contradict him, reminding him that we had a satellite phone, but Galveston raised his hand toward me, indicating I should keep quiet. Dimitri shook his head and was growing frustrated. I noticed him inching from his seat, and he put his head down.

  Without warning he lunged toward the desk in front of him and at the handgun Galveston had placed there. As he reached the desk, he grabbed the gun and fell to the floor in pain.

  Dimitri looked up and quickly cocked the gun and pointed it at us with fire in his eyes.

  “You will let me talk to those men, now!” he growled.

  “That ain’t going to happen,” Galveston calmly replied.

  “Maybe we should let him talk to one of them,
” I said, slowly raising my hands and feeling my stomach go into my throat.

  “No, no one is talking to anybody, yet,” Galveston said again without a twinge of fear.

  He walked toward Dimitri, who held the gun pointed at Galveston’s chest. Dimitri didn’t move and kept the weapon poised in position, but Galveston continued to walk toward him.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” Dimitri warned.

  Galveston didn’t stop. Dimitri hesitated for a second and then pointed the gun at Galveston’s feet. I heard a click as he pulled the trigger, attempting to give a warning shot. Horror washed over Dimitri’s face as he realized the gun wasn’t even loaded. Galveston reached out and twisted it from his grip.

  I gasped in relief as Galveston towered over the chief mate, holding the gun by the barrel. Dimitri simply stared up in disbelief. At least we knew we were dealing with a man that couldn’t shoot to kill.

  “You have some explaining to do, sir,” Galveston said coldly.

  The man shook his head and regained his composure. “What do you want to know?” he asked reluctantly.

  “Why are you here, and who do you work for?” Galveston asked seriously.

  What was this man hiding? Galveston didn’t allow him to speak. He could tell the man was not just a sailor and was trained not to talk.

  “Let me lay out what we know, and you can fill in the gaps,” Galveston started. “This ship is carrying Asian antiquities being smuggled out of the country, that part we know. We also know the company that contracted the cargo to be on board was in Singapore and has been sending curious messages to CIA headquarters. That’s why we were hired, to get this ship back. Now, we know you weren’t supposed to be on this ship. How did you get here, and why?”

  Dimitri‘s expression remained the same, but he seemed to realize the jig was up. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself involved in.”

  “We’ve just been shot at and almost killed, I think we have an idea,” Galveston fired back.

  “This ship isn’t carrying Asian antiquities; it’s carrying something much more valuable.” Dimitri paused to catch his breath as he changed positions on the floor.