The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 25





Past midnight, young Guleed paced the length of the pilothouse, Kalashnikov at his hip. A pair of gunmen stood at either end of the posts he padded between. A third made coffee, while a fourth stood idly beside the long dashboard.

Yusuf in the captain’s chair leaned to Suleiman in the other seat.

“Will you ask Guleed to stop that?”

“No. He’s nervous. Let him walk.”

“He’s making me nervous.”

“Sitting still makes you nervous, cousin.”

Herded beneath the windshield, the sailors eyed Guleed, who menaced them with his gun at each pass. Or they slumped and slept. Sad Drozdov hunkered in the center of his crew. Yusuf had not installed him again in the captain’s chair. He let the Russian pout, dealing in his own way, like Guleed, with the dragging minutes. Grisha the traitor curled alone at the end of the group. Yusuf would not bother to make this man’s captivity any more miserable than the others. His shipmates would see to that.

Yusuf imagined arriving in Qandala at first light. As quickly as he could, he’d ferry a hundred armed Darood on board, pay them well, put Suleiman in charge. If this freighter ever saw Somali waters, money would be Yusuf’s last concern.

He mused for a moment about how to negotiate for a ship like this, wrapped in secrets no government could openly acknowledge. Who would speak for it, who would pay? But there was going to be no ransom for the ship. Without question, Robow and his jihadi guns would be waiting on the beach to take control of it. Yusuf and his Darood would be handed Drozdov and his crew to hold and ransom, but the freighter and its secrets would go with Robow. Ah, well. Even the scraps from this hijacking would be sufficient, if Yusuf survived until morning to receive them.

These worries gave rise to more, like thorns under Yusuf’s seat. He stood to tug on Suleiman’s khameez.

“Walk with me.”

Suleiman lowered his sandals to the deck. He shouldered his weapon.

Yusuf took Guleed aside. “We’re doing no good sitting behind you. Watch them. Stay calm.”

“Stop protecting me. What did you see in the cargo hold?”

“Quruxsami,” Yusuf said. It is beautiful.

Lifting his gun and a flashlight off the control panel, Yusuf surveyed the dials and radar sweep. The Valnea held at twelve knots, autopilot bearing for Qandala. The seas lay open on all sides save for the American warship steady to the west. The coast waited sixty more miles south.

Yusuf stepped around the dash to stand in front of the crew and Drozdov. The captain showed him only the black top of his mussed hair. Drozdov would not lift his eyes from his crossed legs.

“I have grabbed the ears of the tiger, Captain. I cannot hold on. I cannot let go.”

Drozdov lowered his chin farther—no sympathy for Yusuf’s dilemma. Suleiman guided Yusuf away.

They left the bridge for the starboard wing. Suleiman’s guard shifted elbows off the rail, displaying his alertness. An arid southerly breeze greeted the cousins. Yusuf tasted the red dust of Somalia. Five more hours until he set his feet on it. The first place he would walk in that dust with the sun climbing over his shoulder would be to the door of Hoodo’s grandfather.

Suleiman led the way down the outside steps. Yusuf followed his cousin’s Kalashnikov, poked ahead as they rounded each dark corner. At each turn, they did not know if they might see some commando or flash of gunfire.

Reaching the deck, the two stood shoulder to shoulder at the starboard rail. Across the dark water glowed the running lights of the warship. Would the raid come by sea or helicopter?

Suleiman wondered the same, because he asked, “Will we kill the hostages?”

“You’re the one who reads signs. You tell me.”

To choose his words, Suleiman pulled back his lips, gold teeth without sparkle. “This ship, the moment you told me, I hated it.” He wrapped a hand over the steel rail, reading the pulse in it. “We are part of it. We will not choose. We will do what this ship demands.”

Yusuf bent over the rail. They stood at the spot where the big guard had been shot by Guleed and tossed overboard. Yusuf pondered a bullet in the brain and the plummet. What awaited afterward? In his youth, Islam had taught Yusuf one afterlife, the Christians in England another. War in his native land had left him believing that nothing lay beyond the bullet. Wealth and piracy had caused him to stop thinking of heaven altogether. The machinations of Sheikh Robow and Iris Cherlina had brought him back around. What followed death?

Over the moonless water, Yusuf cast his thoughts to his time in England. He recalled the strong British faith, not just in themselves as a people and in their rights to justice for their living bodies but also for their souls. They built churches on every corner to give each man his chance at redemption, to repent his faults and transgressions and so enter heaven. Yusuf wished to believe in that way, that after this ship he might live correctly and be forgiven, awarded paradise. This was better than Suleiman’s reading of telltales, his Somali belief in the unchangeable.

Suleiman led the way to the stern. He let his weapon dangle across his chest, did not scan the sea. For the first time since stepping on board the Valnea, he appeared calm, resolved.

On the stern they spent time with the guards there, three of Suleiman’s best, all alert men. Below, Suleiman’s skiff trailed the freighter, bounding on the white wake, still strung by rope ladders. The other two skiffs bounced alongside. Yusuf tugged on one ladder’s grappling hook. He ought to snip the lines, cut all temptation to sneak away. He told the men on the stern they would get extra shares of the ransom. They bowed to him as their chief.

Suleiman raised an eyebrow and asked, “Waad walantahay?” Are you crazy? Suleiman asked if Deg Deg and the rest would get the same.

Yusuf answered, “Yes.” He bit his tongue to stop from saying, Take it all.