Pirate - Duncan Falconer [30]
The old man had achieved a pause. He had controlled his men, for the moment at least, and so it was time to direct his malice at the hostages. He looked at Stratton and Hopper. Directed his rhetoric at them because they were the most aggressive. He shouted and waved for them to step back.
‘Move back,’ Stratton said to the others. Beside him, the girl was still seething and stood her ground. He took hold of her arm. ‘Easy. Just let it go,’ he said as he guided her back.
Hopper moved to help the prone Chinese man to his feet but the old Somali walked swiftly over like he was going to strike him. Hopper stepped back to avoid any blow.
The Somali inspected the Chinese man without kneeling down or touching him. He shouted a command at a couple of the guards. They hauled the man up by his arms, pulled him to his feet and tried to get him to stand up on his own. But the man could not, he had something seriously wrong with his side, perhaps more than just a few broken ribs, Stratton guessed. The Somalis showed no interest in the man’s condition and manhandled him away.
The remaining guards looked like they could care less about what had happened. All but two of them stepped off back to their spot in the shade. The one that Stratton had struck got to his feet in easy stages, feeling his bruised jaw. He sought out and found Stratton, looked at him like he was fixing the image in his head. The other downed Somali stepped beside him, looking at Hopper. He removed a long, crudely made blade from his belt and held it in a tight fist. He spat out some words to the other pirate.
The old Somali was still vigilant for trouble and did not miss it. He barked a command. The two guards showed no servility but decided to walk back to the shade. Stratton and Hopper glanced at each other, aware they had not made life any easier for themselves. Stratton wondered how much control the leadership had over its men.
The girl had watched her friend be taken away and stepped back into the shade provided by the stack of crates. She sat down, leaned back tired against them and stared into the sky like it could give her the answer to her problems.
Hopper and Stratton sat down in the sand near her.
After a glance at them and after some hesitation, she said, ‘Thanks.’ Then she looked away.
Stratton felt bad for her. This wasn’t a good place for her. He knew how common rape was in hostage circumstances. In a place like Somalia it would be practically inevitable. And the most apparently devout jailers would be among the worst offenders. In Iraq and Afghanistan he had seen the results of the rape of prisoners, male and female. On top of everything else a hostage had to contend with – the psychological stress of pitiful confinement, the fear of torture every day, the pain of the beatings, the threat of death at any time – a girl had to live with the great possibility that her jailers would come for her like animals. And once they began, they usually did it again and again. Until death or release. If a girl survived, she had to cope with everything that came after, the physical and emotional scars, the possibility of disease, even death. And then there was the potential pregnancy and all that entailed.
‘Where’re you from?’ Stratton asked. He didn’t know why he was attempting to ease her anguish because there was nothing he could do for her. But she was sitting there beside him and he felt a kind of obligation to try and ease her suffering.
She took her time replying, like she was deciding whether or not she wanted to talk to him. ‘China,’ she said eventually.
Stratton couldn’t help thinking how he had not talked to a single Chinese person in years and he’d met two in the same number of days. ‘What ship you off?’
Once again she took a long time to answer. ‘No ship.’
Stratton found the answer curious and wondered if she understood