Chapter 1 #2
Keeping the radio tucked into a large pocket of her cargo pants, Elodie worked as fast as possible.
She moved three bundles of bottled water into the main kitchen area, where they’d easily be seen.
Then she took out several boxes of crackers, a few loaves of bread, and bags of potato chips, and strategically placed them around the galley and both crew pantries.
Generally, the food was stored in cupboards, secured so the boxes and cans wouldn’t go flying in rough seas.
She wanted the food to be readily accessible for the pirates but at the same time, she didn’t want it to look like anything had been left out intentionally.
She wanted the pirates to think they’d hit the mother lode with the food in plain sight, and not bother to dig much deeper.
Elodie ran her arm across her brow. She was sweating and hated not knowing what was happening high above her head in the bridge. Were the pirates onboard? Had they gotten into the bridge? Were they hurting the captain and the other officers?
And most importantly, what did they want?
The radio she’d stuffed in her pants squawked, scaring the shit out of Elodie.
“Holy crap!” she exclaimed, putting one hand over her racing heart and using the other to pull out the radio. The voices were muffled, but she could hear heavily accented males yelling, and Walter trying to placate them.
Confused about what she was hearing, Elodie stood in the middle of the galley trying to decipher what was going on. It took a minute, but she finally realized that someone had activated a radio up in the bridge, and it was broadcasting everything that was happening to the others onboard.
Chills raced up her spine as she listened to Walter doing his best to calm the pirates.
It was hard to figure out how many there were, but it seemed as if it was more than a handful.
Her stomach clenched in fear. The more pirates there were, the easier it would be to control the ship, to leave some up with the captain and the officers on the bridge and send others to prowl the decks, looking for crew and anything of value they could steal.
The last thing Elodie needed was to be held for ransom.
Her face would be plastered all over the news…
which meant Paul Columbus could use his extensive mob network of soldiers and associates to find her.
“Where is the safe?” one of the pirates asked loudly.
“Not here. It’s downstairs in one of the chart rooms,” Walter told him.
“You go, get money.”
“You can have all the cash we have, then you’ll go,” Walter said.
“No go,” another man said sternly. “You take ship where we say. Our men come on. You open containers.”
“That’s…it’s not safe,” Walter stammered.
“No care. We open. You drive!” the man shouted.
Then Elodie heard scuffling and more shouting. A gunshot went off—and she held her breath, waiting to hear who, if anyone, had been hurt.
“Stop! Okay, okay! We’ll open whatever containers you want, but don’t shoot that thing again!” Walter yelled desperately.
The pirates merely laughed.
“We shoot when and where we want. We shoot you if you do not give us what we want. No hostages, too hard to get money. But if you don’t do what we say, we kill,” one of the pirates said.
“You can’t shoot Walter,” Elodie whispered. “We need him to drive this damn thing.”
As if the captain could hear her, he said, “If you kill me and my officers, this ship will run aground. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is tricky as hell to navigate.”
“I am fisherman. I can drive boat,” one of the pirates said, unconcerned.
Elodie snorted. Driving a super ship like this one was way different than the skiffs the pirates were probably used to.
“We know there are others onboard,” someone else said. “We will find and start killing them if you don’t do what we ask.”
“Nobody needs to get hurt,” Walter said quickly. “We’ll do what you want. Just don’t hurt my crew.”
There were more scuffling noises and the pirates began to talk amongst themselves in a language Elodie couldn’t understand.
Things were getting out of hand, and she was terrified. But Walter had said he’d called the authorities. Someone would come to help them, wouldn’t they? Didn’t the US Navy have ships in this part of the world? It was unfathomable that these pirates could just steal a huge cargo ship like this one.
Deciding her best bet for now was to lie low, Elodie exited the galley and went into a dry goods pantry.
There was a cabinet at the back of the room she knew she could fit into.
She squeezed herself into the cramped space, moving large bags of potatoes and other goods back in front of her.
It wouldn’t fool someone if they were really looking for people hiding, but she thought it should be good enough if someone merely opened the door to glance inside.
She held the radio in her lap and stared down at it.
She couldn’t really see in the dark, but the lights on the device calmed her.
Mentally, she began making notes on what she was hearing.
She didn’t know if they would be of any use, but maybe after they were rescued, she could help recount what had happened.
Elodie didn’t do drama. She was a chef, for goodness sake. How could one person get into so much trouble in one lifetime? Paul Columbus had already vowed to kill her for refusing to do his bidding, and now she was hiding from pirates on the high seas.
All she’d ever wanted was to live a quiet life. Maybe find a man and get married, have a kid or two, and cook food for a living. Now she was thirty-five years old, and somewhere along the way, her simple life plan had been seriously derailed.
This cargo ship job had seemed like such a blessing. She could get out of the country and away from Columbus and his network, who were trying to eliminate her. What could be better than being isolated on a ship in the middle of the ocean? She’d be perfectly safe.
“Yeah, perfectly safe,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and resting her temple on the back wall of the cabinet.
She had to believe this would be over soon.
Walter would do what the men wanted and they’d get whatever valuables they could find in the containers they could reach and open, then they’d go.
Back to wherever they came from, letting her and the rest of the crew get on with their lives.
Right. That was how it would happen in a Hollywood movie, but this was real life. And with how things were going, she’d probably end up being taken hostage and forced to marry some African tribal chief.
Scott “Mustang” Webber glanced over at his SEAL team.
Midas, Aleck, Pid, Jag, and Slate were completely focused on the paperwork in front of them.
They’d been on a mission in Pakistan when they’d been notified of a change in plans.
They were pulled from the desert and flown by helicopter to the USS Paul Hamilton, a guided-missile destroyer currently undergoing joint Naval operations in the Arabian Sea.
There were several other vessels—the USS Lewis B.
Puller, USS Firebolt, USCGC Wrangell, and the USCGC Maui—in the area as well.
His team had arrived onboard and immediately been taken to a conference room, where the admiral onboard had brought them up to speed on their current mission.
Apparently, a medium-sized cargo ship had been boarded by pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
The captain had put out a distress call saying he was currently being boarded by an unknown number of pirates and that he needed assistance ASAP.
Since then, there had been no communication with the captain or the pirates.
The USS Paul Hamilton, along with the other ships, were headed that way, but as of right now, they had no information to work with.
Mustang remembered hearing about the Maersk Alabama incident, and how Navy SEAL snipers had taken out the pirates who’d hijacked the captain and forced him into one of the cargo ship’s lifeboats.
Mustang and his team weren’t snipers, and frankly, he hated close-quarter rescues, such as on a lifeboat.
He’d much prefer to have the run of the cargo ship itself.
There were plenty of places to hide and take out the pirates one by one.
“What’s their heading?” Midas asked.
“Right now, they look like they’re on their scheduled course,” the admiral said. “Due west toward Djibouti. They’re supposed to turn northward and go through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and dock in Port Sudan.”
“That’s a pretty tricky strait to navigate,” Aleck observed.
“It is,” the admiral agreed.
“Do we have any idea what nationality the pirates are? Or what their plan is?” Pid asked.
“Unfortunately, not as of yet. We’ve been trying to reach them, to get someone to talk to us, but either their comms are down or we’re deliberately being ignored.”
“Shit,” Jag swore under his breath.
Mustang agreed. Without information, it was almost impossible to come up with a plan.
Almost.
“So, we’re going in blind?” Slate asked.
Mustang couldn’t help but smile. Slate was usually the first to volunteer for a dangerous mission. He always wanted to get the show on the road, so to speak.
“Unless we can get someone to talk to us…yes,” Mustang answered before the admiral could.
It was just lucky they were already in the area and could be taken off their previous mission.
The team had been on a few cargo ships in the past and knew they were full of corridors and nooks and crannies.
As much as he hated that the crew members onboard the Asaka Express were probably scared out of their minds, he was looking forward to the challenge of finding, and taking out, each and every pirate.
“Sorry to interrupt, Sir,” a lieutenant said as he stuck his head inside the door.
“What is it?” the admiral asked.
“We have communication from the Asaka Express.”
“Thank fuck,” Midas said.
“Can it be patched through?” the admiral asked.