Chapter 2
Elodie felt better after talking to Scott. She’d never met a real live Navy SEAL before. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but he was so…normal sounding.
Listening hard, she didn’t hear anything from outside her hiding place. Her legs were hurting from being scrunched up in the cabinet for so long. She wasn’t super tall at five-six, but she also wasn’t quite small enough to be able to fit in her hiding place for long without discomfort.
Her heart beat fast as she made the decision to venture out. Moving slowly, just in case one of the pirates had been left behind as a sentry, she peered out of the cabinet.
The lights in the pantry were still on, and she didn’t see anyone in the storage room. She awkwardly climbed out and stood, stretching her muscles so they would hopefully work correctly if she needed to make a fast getaway.
Putting the radio in her cargo pants pocket once more, Elodie crept to the door. She listened and, after hearing nothing but her own heartbeat, slowly cracked the door open.
The hallway was empty. She couldn’t hear anything but the hum of the freezers nearby and the rattling of dishes caused by the vibration of the ship. It had taken a bit of getting used to when she’d first come aboard, but now she barely even noticed it.
She wasn’t sure where she was going or what she was doing, but just knowing that someone was going to be coming to help them made her feel a little braver.
She crept into the galley and saw one of the packages of water bottles she’d put on the counter was now gone, as was some of the food. Good. Her plan had worked…for now.
For a second, Elodie thought about doing what Steven Seagal had done in the movie Under Siege, making a microwave bomb, but she immediately dismissed the idea.
First of all, there was no way to time it correctly to go off just when one of the pirates was in the vicinity.
She never understood how that had worked in the movie.
But second of all, and more importantly…
she had no idea how to make a microwave bomb.
She wondered if Scott would know.
“He might, but he’s not here,” Elodie said softly.
She was walking through the galley when something caught her eye. The block of knives she used while cooking.
No one onboard was allowed to have a gun.
She’d been relieved when she’d read that in the rules and regulations she’d received from the shipping company.
Now she realized that it put them at a decided disadvantage against the pirates.
But just because they didn’t have guns didn’t mean they couldn’t still arm themselves.
Her knives were sharp. Very sharp. She made sure to keep them in top condition. The thought of actually using one against someone made her physically ill. But if it was stab someone or be raped and tortured, she’d choose to protect herself every time.
Briefly, Paul Columbus flashed through her mind.
The man was seriously unbalanced. It made no sense whatsoever that he’d decided she had to die simply because she’d refused to do as he asked.
Who does that? But if it came down to staying alive, or being at the mercy of Paul, any of his henchmen, or the pirates, she’d choose life.
And if that meant using one of her cooking knives to buy her some time, so be it.
Elodie didn’t have a good way of transporting the knife, no holster of any kind, but she quickly realized if she chose one of the more slender blades, it would fit through the belt loop of her pants and the hilt would keep it from falling to the ground.
It wasn’t ideal; if she fell, she could seriously hurt herself.
But she definitely didn’t want to be unarmed.
Walking slowly, Elodie went to the crew pantry and saw that it had been ransacked.
Food had been pulled out of the cabinets and was spilled all over the floor and counter.
She had no idea if the pirates had been looking for valuables or for something to eat.
It was ridiculous, the idea that there’d be anything worth a substantial amount of money in the pantries.
This was a kitchen, not a secret hiding place for a safe or something.
Feeling disgusted at their stupidity, Elodie went through the crew mess to the door at the end of the room and opened it an inch.
After hearing nothing out of the ordinary, she peered out into the hallway.
She had no idea what she was looking for.
Pirates? Some of the other guys who worked on the ship? The captain?
Suddenly, she felt completely alone. It was silly, as she knew there were many other people onboard.
She’d never really liked the game hide-and-go-seek, always afraid the “seeker” would get bored with the game and quit.
Leaving her in her hiding spot, waiting in vain to be found.
For a moment, she thought about going down to the engine room and finding some of the other guys.
Maybe Ari or Troy. They’d help keep her hidden. The thought was tempting.
Curiosity got the better of her, and Elodie pulled the radio out of her pocket.
She hadn’t heard from Scott or anyone else from the US ship since they’d answered her desperate distress call.
Making sure the volume was turned down extremely low, she changed the channel to ten and put the radio up to her ear.
She needed to know what was happening on the bridge. Maybe Walter and the other officers had managed to subdue the pirates and she was slinking around for no reason.
But instead, what she heard made her blood run cold.
“You’re going to run us aground,” Walter said, the agitation easy to hear in his tone, even through the radio. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
“I a fisherman. I know boats,” one of the pirates claimed.
“Yeah, but a ship this size is very different from the skiffs you’ve operated.”
“I in charge!” the man yelled, scaring the shit out of Elodie.
There was the sound of scuffling—and then the unmistakable sound of a semi-automatic rifle being fired.
Men shouted, someone screamed, more gunfire.
Elodie stood stock still and prayed for the officers on the bridge.
Then the pirates began yelling in their own language. It sounded as if they were arguing with each other.
Suddenly, the lights blinked out without warning.
Elodie was plunged into pitch darkness. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The only light in the room was coming from the blinking red dot on the radio in her hand.
There was more swearing from the men on the bridge.
“What happen to lights?” one of the pirates asked.
“I’m not sure.” Elodie heard Bo, one of the officers, say in a shaky voice.
“You fix!” he ordered.
“I can’t!” Bo exclaimed. “First, you just killed Danny, he was the expert on the gauges and shit up here. He knew what every single one meant and when something was wrong with them. Second, everything is controlled from the engine room!”
Elodie inhaled sharply. Danny was dead? “No,” she whispered. Danny had a wife and two kids back home in Wyoming. He couldn’t be dead. Her entire body began to shake.
“You go down and make lights go back on!” one of the pirates ordered Bo.
“If we’re going to make it through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait without ramming this thing into Perim Island or Djibouti on the other side, you need me up here.
Without the captain’s expertise, I’m still not sure I can do it, but I know this ship a hell of a lot better than you do,” Bo said in a shaky voice.
A tear fell from Elodie’s eye. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. Had they also killed Walter? How many of the other officers had they killed?
The next thing she heard was another loud gunshot and a thud.
She gasped and pressed a hand over her mouth.
The pirates began speaking to each other in their own language once more.
How long Elodie stood in the darkness not moving, she wasn’t sure.
But eventually her sadness and shock turned to anger.
How dare these men come aboard their ship and start killing her friends?
And if Bo didn’t think he could get the ship through the small passageway of water that led to the Red Sea, and their destination port in Sudan, how in the world did these pirates think they could?
Which led to another thought—the pirates obviously didn’t care about the lives of the people on the ship. So if they steered into that island Bo was talking about, they wouldn’t care one whit. All they wanted was money or things they could sell.
Suddenly, the ship intercom squawked and one of the pirates began speaking, his voice echoing throughout the galley and mess rooms around her.
“This is Hamza. I in charge of boat. You do as I say or you die. Your captain no listen, he is dead. The others, they no listen. They dead! You be dead too if lights no come on. You have ten minutes to put lights on, or we come down and find you. All we want is money. We no care about you. Save yourselves.”
Elodie narrowed her eyes. Bastards. She really wished she knew how to make that microwave bomb right about now. These guys thought they could kill all the officers and engineers and somehow still get this massive ship where they wanted it to go? They were delusional.
Turning, Elodie was glad for all the time she’d spent in the galley.
She knew this place like the back of her hand.
With her arms out in front of her, just in case a chair had been moved, she made her way back through the crew mess, gingerly shuffled through the crew pantry room, and headed straight for the back wall in the galley.
It took her several seconds to find what she was looking for, but when her hand brushed against the flashlight on the wall, she grabbed it triumphantly.