Pirate - Duncan Falconer [25]
The local people stared at the two white men as they marched up the incline of the road. They had seen such people before but any newcomer was still a curiosity in their lives. A Suburban rumbled past, the fat black man behind the wheel wearing a tailored jacket and sunglasses. He glanced at the prisoners and gave a nod to Lotto as he drove past.
A quarter of the way into the town the pirate captain brought the cortège to a halt and had a word with a couple of lethargic armed men standing at the entrance to a street. When Lotto continued away up the main thoroughfare, Stratton and the others were pulled down the side street.
Up ahead, a group of scruffily clothed armed men loitered, mostly sitting and smoking between the houses, a couple of them dozing. As Stratton and the others reached them, the guards that had been dozing came to life to inspect the new arrivals. The escort guards spoke to them while Stratton, Hopper and Sabarak stood in the street under the hot sun and waited.
Lotto suddenly arrived from a side street and went to the door to one of the nearby huts and opened it. It was dark inside but Stratton could make out several grimy faces looking up towards the door. Lotto looked in on the hut, stood for a few seconds. Then he pulled the door closed, crossed to the hut opposite, opened the door to that one and looked inside. Then he said something over his shoulder and the Somali guards shoved the three prisoners over to the hut. Lotto indicated for them to go inside.
The room was about six metres square, its floor of dirt. It stank of sweat. There were no furnishings of any kind. About a dozen men were sat on the ground with their backs to the walls. They took up a third of the wall space. There were a couple of buckets in the centre of the floor full of water, a cup beside each.
The men looked up at them. They were grimy and miserable wretches, their boots also without laces, their hands tied with either string or heavy fishing line. ‘Sit,’ the pirate captain ordered. It was the first word of English he had spoken and it sounded odd coming from his lips.
Stratton and Hopper claimed an empty section of wall together. Sabarak selected an isolated corner on the opposite side of the room.
‘You try escape, we break your legs,’ Lotto said in a slow, deliberate tone. His English had a heavy accent but otherwise it was clear. ‘We get same money for you if you are broken or not.’ He grinned. ‘No escape. Nowhere to go. But very tiring to look for you.’
The pirate captain looked along the line of prisoners and stopped at one. He walked over to the prisoner, whose head was lowered, the face hidden by long, dirty black hair. Lotto kicked the prisoner’s outstretched foot with his own but the prisoner didn’t move, as if aware but refusing to look up. Lotto grinned and leaned down to say something that Stratton was unable to hear. He chuckled at the lack of response, straightened up and went to the door.
‘Be good,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘Everyone goes home if you are good. But we break legs and arms if you are not good,’ he added.
He left, his guards closing the door behind him.
Stratton studied the sullen faces that surrounded him. Four were white and European-looking. The rest appeared to be Asiatic, Filipinos and Koreans perhaps. The long-haired prisoner sat back against the wall. To Stratton’s complete surprise it was a girl. When she rested her head back, her hair parted to reveal her face. She was young, Asian and quite beautiful. Her expression was like stone as she glanced at him in response to his stare.
Stratton looked away at the walls and ceiling. Roughly hewn wooden rafters supported a corrugated metal roof. A metal pole in the centre of the room supported the apex. There was a single, narrow opening high on a wall that provided light and ventilation. He knew he could climb through it without much difficulty. He wondered if there was a guard outside and, if so, how attentive to his duties he was at night.
Hopper leaned close to Stratton. ‘Wonder how she