Coincidence - Alan May [57]
Phillip could see it would be best to keep the kids occupied. The babe was smart, too. And she was plucky. He liked that.
“Okay. I have no problem with that,” he said. “Just make sure they understand we are in control of the ship. Orders will come from me, not from your captain. And I don’t want anyone on the bridge except my men.”
His men. Yes. Screw Juan.
“What’d you say your name was?” he asked as she turned to go.
I didn’t say, she thought. Didn’t want to, either. “Anika,” she mumbled.
Then she lifted her head defiantly, looked him in the eye, and said in a clear voice, “Anika Johnson.”
“Mine’s Phillip. A pleasure to meet you.”
21
Mac sat in his locker, drumming his fingers against the metal of the workbench. He’d seen a great deal in his long and varied life—well, lives, really, would be more a more accurate way to put it. For his years on this earth had been sharply divided into three quite distinct phases: his childhood in Glasgow, his few years of relative contentment as a young man in Africa, and now his life at sea.
“At sea.” Now that was accurate. He had been at sea, adrift, cut loose from his moorings, whatever you cared to call it, since Caroline had left him. It had been his own damn fault, too; he’d not deny it. But that would nae bring her back again, now, would it?
Och! Would he never stop plowing these useless furrows of grief? What he had started to think was, he’d seen a great deal in his life, but this—this was of a different order entirely. Far beyond any one man’s personal heartbreak.
The kids were foremost on his mind. They must be kept safe at all costs. And it was up to him to see that they were.
He opened up the tin of peanuts he kept on the bench and gobbled a handful, wishing he had a cold McEwan’s to wash it down. Dave had promised to try to sneak some food down to him, but it wouldn’t be easy with the hijackers patrolling the deck. But he could do with a bit of sustenance before it was time to put their plan into operation.
Their plan—well, he reckoned, it was stretching it a bit thin to call their highly tentative ideas a plan.
Whatever the hijackers were involved in—and the captain’s assumption of drug running did seem the likeliest possibility—they had too much to lose now to leave any survivors on the Inspiration. Everyone aboard, adults and kids alike, had seen the hijackers clearly. Had seen their boat. Covered with some sort of blue plastic, Dave had said, so presumably stolen. If they left it covered, it was easily identifiable by anyone aboard; if they removed the covering, there was the stolen boat.
Suppose, Mac had said to Dave, suppose they were to help the hijackers concoct a new disguise for the stolen boat? The Inspiration had plenty of paint onboard, probably enough to repaint the cabin, and surely enough to paint over the name with a new one. But even as he was putting the idea forth, Mac realized it wasn’t a workable solution. No matter how helpful the crew was in camouflaging the Coincidence, it wouldn’t be enough. The hijackers would never trust them to keep their mouths shut after they sailed away.
Dave had gone off to report to the captain that Mac had been found, and to remove all traces of Mac’s belongings from the cabin he shared with Charlie. Mac, they had agreed, was their wild card, the one hope they might have of coming out of this mess alive.
What would they do in the hijackers’ shoes? That was where they needed to start, Mac thought, as he waited for Dave to return. The men had weapons and wouldn’t hesitate to use them if necessary. They had, seemingly, been using them when the one fellow got himself shot in the leg. But would it make sense for them to take their weapons and just mow down the entire population of the Inspiration, then set it adrift, to be discovered God only knows how much later?
It would not, Mac decided. Too dicey. After all, there