The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 52





The blast rocked the ship so hard the Americans adjusted their stances. Three of them searched the night sky while the captain leveled his pistol at Yusuf.

“How’d you know that was going to happen? Did you do this?”

Only for a moment Yusuf considered telling the Americans what he knew, what he’d drawn from Iris Cherlina on the tip of his knife. She set the explosives. She would sink the ship.

He could ruin the woman, cut her throat, and die after her. Pressed against her from behind, he felt her lungs working, her heart race.

“I want to know right now. Did you blow this ship?”

He could tell the truth. But that tale would mark Yusuf Raage as a fool. A woman’s puppet, if he named Iris Cherlina.

He chose instead his own name.

“Yes.” He spoke left and right at all four soldiers. “I have sunk your ship. I put all the machines you send to Iran on the bottom of the gulf. I send the bodies of my clansmen there too. Stay on this ship with me, Americans. Come to the bottom with us. Or go.”

He pressed the blade again under Iris Cherlina’s neck. She lifted to her toes.

“Throw away the pistol, Captain. And Sergeant, you remove your radio and headset.”

As they were told, the American officer flung his gun overboard, the sergeant stripped himself of his communications gear.

“Take your men, the crew, your dead, and leave. When I’m convinced you are gone, I will release the woman. Then the sergeant and I can conclude our affairs.”

No one moved. Out of the breezeless half-lit dark, a great groaning creak from the stern made the Americans shuffle their feet. Inside his arm, Iris Cherlina shivered. The deck rose under Yusuf’s sandals. Even the Valnea was going to die.

“Go, Captain. The faster you get off this ship, the better this woman’s chances are to survive.”

The three Americans backpedaled. The sergeant gave them encouraging nods as they abandoned him. Departing, the captain issued orders into his radio to begin evacuating the freighter, for the warship to come closer.

The sergeant, a short and burly man, squatted onto his haunches like a toad. He spoke to the woman.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

Yusuf lowered the knife a bit from her throat. Iris Cherlina came down off her toes. Inside Yusuf’s arm, her head leveled.

“It will not be okay,” Yusuf said to the sergeant, “for you.” The soldier knit thick fingers between his spread knees. “Don’t talk shit. I have to be nice to you right now. Soon as you let her go, that stops.”

“Do you have a knife?”

The man hiked up his pants leg to slide a blade from a hidden sheath. He twisted the knife in the little light, in the fashion of a man who knew how to use one.

“Excellent,” said Yusuf.