Feeding the Fish

The Kozanostra is slowly drifting out to sea, lazily turning sideways with the retreating tide. I can't slow my heartbeat... it is pounding after the exhilaration of our liberating the yacht. It all happened so quickly. Nine men dispatched, and one made prisoner, all in a matter of ten minutes time. Two of our friends lay dying and I fear there isn't much we can do for them. Chris can be saved, if he wants to be. But I think Bear is on his way out.

"Hey..."
I turn away from my thoughts and Lou waves me up toward him.
"We need to search the rest of the boat. There was a whole crew when we were here last, I want to make sure they aren't tied up in some storage locker somewhere."

This time we go together, starting with the lower deck where I had killed four men. We make our way down the steps.
"Chris? It's Lou and Jake. Safety your weapon... okay?"
Silence.
Lou looks down at the two bodies in the hallway, "Your handywork?"
I nod.
"Chris?" I wave an empty hand around the corner and pull it back quickly. Then chance a look. He is laying there, eyes still open, Uzi still in hand but lowered to the mattress. Lou steps in behind me and steps over the two pirates that Chris iced and then walks over to him, removing the Uzi from his lazy grip.
"Oh shit... " He looks at the bloody stump where his foot had been, and the puddle of blood in the sheets. "We need to get him some help, like now." He takes his pulse, then lifts his eyelids one at a time. "You in there?"
Nothing.
"We better make a quick sweep of the boat and then fire it up and get back to Puerte Barrios. They will have a doctor there."

After kicking open a lot of doors and storage lockers, opening hatches and even checking bilges, we find no one. It is only the four of us and our new hostage.
We find the armory that I had seen on our last visit when Jorge gave me the walking tour. Not a priority at present, but we know where extra fire power is if we need it.

We step up onto the flying bridge and eye the controls.
"Can you manage this?" Lou wiggles the throttles and then flips a couple of switches and the panel lights up.
"Yeah, no problem." I throw the switches marked blower and vent the engine spaces. "What are you going to do?"
"I am going to find the medical kit and see if there is any morphine... anything to get Chris right before we head out. Then I'm gonna have a little talk with our prisoner... ten questions I think, then I will start to get to the really important subjects."
That freaks me out a little.
"Hey, what about Blanco?"
Lou looks out into the darkness, then reaches over onto the panel and turns on the ship to shore radio. "Try him on this. If he doesn't respond, then try the horn." He taps on the button and the air-horns scare the shit out of us.

Before I get ready to fire up my engines I hear a couple of seconds of automatic gunfire, then another few seconds of gunfire followed by the sight of the two runabouts that were tied to the fantail taking on water alongside us.

With that I am left to maneuver us out of the bay and out into the open ocean. I start both engines and allow them to idle for moment or two before putting the huge boat in gear and heading out over the small breakers into the deep blue of the Caribbean. As I power up to quarter speed, I see a light signaling me from about a thousand yards off my port side. Blanco must be watching from the Morgan with the field glasses. I rap on the air horn a couple of times to acknowlege his signal, then power up even more to close the gap. I take it from the horn play that Lou will know what is going on.

Within a minute I am approaching the Morgan, my engines in neutral and then reverse to stop us in the water alongside Blanco. As I get closer, I hear two big splashes.
"LOU?"
I watch as Blanco throws a line to Lou on deck somewhere near the fantail and out of sight beneath this deck of the ship.
As if on cue to my still unanswered question about the splashes, the ship is engulfed in a halo of light beneath the water line. On my control panel, a switch that reads "Swimming Lights" glows. Lou has lit the macabre feeding frenzy of a couple of dozen tigersharks, six to ten feet long if they are an inch, tearing away at the flesh and bone of the pirates we killed upon boarding. I turn my head at the sight of it, but then am drawn back out of morbid curiousity.
There is another huge splash and the fury of the feeding sharks grow. The churning water is crimson as the last body is tossed on top a writhing tangle of shark leather.

"LET'S ROLL, JAKE." Lou calls from the fantail and I push both throttles forward. The last I see of the pirate meal is the dashing of several large tigers with whole limbs in their grasp, dodging the other predators while they try to ingest their take.
I turn to the darkened skys to our west and power up for Puerto Barrios. Before long, I hear someone coming up the steps to the bridge. Blanco steps beside me and stands for a moment in admiration of the craft we are on.
"Louis... he want you." That deep calm voice doesn't seem to be rattled by anything; death, torture, a six pirate happy meal for local sealife.
"You'll like her... " I give a nod to KOZANOSTRA, "It's like steering a condo complex."

I find Lou on the fantail, his pirate captive whimpering over the loss of what looks like a pinky finger on the deck next to him.
"Get any answers?"
"I haven't asked any questions yet."
"What happened to his finger?"
"Bear is dead."
I am not much for torture, but in this instance I feel it is justified, especially after what these guys have done to Bear, and Chris, and our buddy Agaki.
"What about the crew? Jorge? That Captain? Shit, man there had to be a dozen people on this boat."
"I asked him about the others. He said that he got here after they took the boat, that those people had gone over the side... that he didn't have anything to do with their deaths."

All dead. This is a fucked up deal to say the least. I just want to get the hell out of here and back to El Corazon. I am done with this shit.
"What now?"
Lou stands and stretches, "Well, I gave Chris a double dose of morphine. We need to drop him off in Puerto Barrios and then we are going to go find this little fucker's boss." He puts the boots to the pirate, who screams like a little girl as he tries to fend off the attack.

It takes a fraction of the time to make the marina in this behemoth. We actually shut her down a ways out and transfer Chris to the Morgan to let Blanco take him in. The less anyone sees of the KOZANOSTRA, the fewer questions will be asked.

"Now Whitey, you tell the doctor that this man was attacked by a shark and you rendered assistance. Don't mention the pirates, the yacht, us, or anything else and we all might get out of this without a hassle." Lou looks to him for understanding and gets it with a shallow nod. Lou reaches out and grabs his forearm in a friendly and respectful shake. "You're a good man, Whitey. We'll all do some drinking, eating, and fucking when we are done with this, okay man?"
Blanco smiles widely and gives us a wave as he climbs onto the Morgan and casts off.

We watch him as he motors toward the lights of the town and then we turn to our captive. Lou squats down next to our pirate.
"You, little shit, are going to tell us where we need to go. Got it?"
He nods.
I look at Bear's body, "What about old Bear, we can't take him into to town... too many questions."
"I think we will bury him at sea. He would have liked that."

After we are underway, I set the GPS/NAV system to hold a course while we take care of Bear. Lou already has a bottle of very expensive Scotch and three cigars he found in the bar. We light ours and put Bear's in his shirt pocket. We both take a long swig off the bottle... I don't care much for Scotch even if it is the best money can buy, but in this case it goes down with reverence. Lou has already cut the bindings that held him as he was tourtured. We cap the bottle and put it under his shirt, then send him and the chair over the side.

This whole ceremony hasn't done much to improve our moods. Out comes the knife and Lou steps toward the pirate. I would have just as soon see the bastard dead and this whole thing done with, but it is never that simple. We came down here to get rid of these stones, and these guys won't stop coming until we do.
Lou cuts the rope, leaving the one around his hands, and pulls him to his feet. He is dragged to the bridge where we have him tell us everything about who he works for, where they are, and what they want. He seems most co-operative. A course is layed in and we turn slightly as the computer adjusts our heading.

We are going to rendezvous with an old Costa Rican Navy ship turned private yacht ten miles out to sea from where the KOZANOSTRA was at anchor in the cove. This is where we will find her. Yes... her. These pirates, the men in the planes, the men that sank the boat and killed Arnold Menton/Arturo Montoya, all work for one woman. Why she wants the diamonds, and what it will take to get her off our backs isn't part of this guys common knowledge. He is a just a worker, and even with the prompting of several cigar burns, he doesn't seem to know anything else.

There are handcuffs in the armory that we use to confine our pirate once again. While we are down there, we take stock of what ole Bear has in inventory. Lou pulls an FN/FAL .308 automatic rifle and a couple of clips of what he says are armor piercing rounds.
"If we are going to get into a fire fight with another ship, you might as well have something that can penetrate... and this is it." He pulls the clip from the rifle and then works the action. "Someone has taken good care of this stuff."
I look at the fifteen or so rifles and submachine guns... all Greek to me. "I'll take one of those."
"What the fuck... your not shopping for Polo shirts. One of what?"
"What you have?"
"Sorry, only one. And if you don't mind me saying so you couldn't handle this gun. It will walk right out of your hands and you would blow your own head off."
"Oh... yeah? Well what do you suggest then?"
"Go and get that Uzi from Chris' room and the one you had earlier and double up some clips, all you can find." He pulls four clips from the top drawer of the armory that are meant for the Uzis. "If it comes down to a gunfight, you'll do your best work just spraying the living shit out of them."

When I return to the armory with my weapons, Lou has my clips taped and then sets a box of cartidges up on the counter. "There is only six clips, so reload what you used earlier and start with those. Then you can use the doubles."
He gives me a nudge... "Look what I found."
With that he pulls open the bottom drawer of the armory and reveals what looks like a couple of rocket launchers.
"Holy shit."
"Damn right."
"What is it?"
"That is an RPG-18 Soviet type rocket propelled grenade launcher. Not much on the battle field. Kind of old, short range. But out here at sea, in close, we could probably sink just about any pleasure craft. It will sure as hell blow a hole below the water line in a steel hull."
"Great."
"Hey..." Lou seems pissed that I don't realize the beauty of this. "This is a hell of an advantage, man. This fucking thing will penetrate twelve inches of conventional armor. If this bitch turns out to be someone that can't accept the fact that we are through with this shit, then we will give her something else entirely to worry about."