Buzz Cut (23 page)

A mile or so to the south another sleek white cruise ship raced along in vaguely the same direction. Probably another reggae band playing over there, kettle drums banging, the plink and plonk of xylophone and steel guitar. More fritters and umbrella drinks. More rented gaiety.

He was considering one of those pink drinks after all when behind him the PA system sputtered, squawked, and the reggae group abruptly died. Thorn could hear the real band continuing to play in the distance. Some of the passengers near him swung around and stared up at the speaker as a man cleared his throat, tamped on his microphone.

When the man began to speak, Thorn recognized the voice instantly, and in that moment he knew that this neatly organized planet they were sharing had just come badly unhinged from its axis.

"Hello, hello. Welcome aboard the
Eclipse
where the party never stops. Now, before we get any farther along, we need to spend a few moments on an important vocabulary lesson. To paraphrase the Good Book, in the beginning was the word and the word was
Jack.
"

The sound system screeched and buzzed and the reggae band momentarily returned. While the man struggled to get control of his equipment, a couple of white-haired ladies in pant suits, one pink, one green, nudged in next to Thorn.

"What's going on?" one of them said.

"This isn't normal," said the other. "Vocabulary lessons? We've never heard anything like that and this is our seventeenth cruise. Isn't that right, Del? Seventeen."

Del nodded. Seventeen, yes.

The speakers blared again. There was a harsh flutter.

"Jack," the man said, the static dying out. "Jack is from Middle English
Jakke
and possibly from the Old French
Jacques.
Before that it appeared as the Latin
Jacobus
and the Greek
Jakob.
As a name it indicates a common man. One who does odd or heavy jobs. Lumberjack. Steeplejack. Jack of all trades. It's also a playing card, of course, its value just below the queen. Otherwise known as knave. As a verb,
to jack
can mean to lift, also to hunt or fish with a jacklight, which is illegal. Hence, it we follow the back-formation process, a jacker is a knave who lifts something, which means he steals it, and therefore, a hijacker is one who steals goods from a vehicle on the king's highway, that is, in transit. Or by association, it has come to mean seizing control of any moving vehicle, especially in order to reach an alternate destination. Hijack. Interesting, isn't it? All those other words living inside that one word. Hijack. Common man seizing control."

A woman on the deck below laughed like a giddy toucan. Thorn saw a man nearby guzzle the remains of his drink as if it might be his last. And then the PA whooped and blared and went into electronic meltdown, a series of painful blaps and crackles until finally it fell silent.

A moment later, a big-band orchestra played a few mushy bars and a woman began to sing. It was a moment or two before Thorn could tell, but apparently this was a recording of the cruise line's theme song. "Wish you were here to join our fiesta. Fiesta Cruise Lines where every minute is a party." The woman's earnest contralto belting out the jingle.

As Thorn was assuring Del and her fellow cruiser that he had no idea what was going on, his gaze ticked across a woman at the railing twenty feet away. She was staring out to sea, not joining the nervous fuss going on around her. A still point in the agitated throng. He took a step her way, then excused himself to Del and her companion.

As he drew closer to the young woman, he saw she was in her mid-twenties, her yellow hair shorn to a half-inch burr, a cut even shorter than Rochelle's. She was wearing a T-shirt a size too large, the jersey was a tangerine color with white tie-dyed stripes. White jean shorts with a fringe at the cuff and a pair of sandy espadrilles. The tangerine T-shirt was baggy but it failed to completely conceal her body, a physique so lush it might have been conjured up by some moonstruck boy in the throes of adolescence.

Thorn moved through the jittery crowd, some of the younger men growing boisterous, groups clustering, talking anxiously. Thorn settled in beside her, mirroring her posture, forearms braced against the rail, his face jutting into the breeze. He turned his head and peered at her profile and realized what it was that had tugged at him from twenty feet away.

" 'Ah, the snotgreen sea,' " he said. " 'The scrotumtightening sea.' "

She didn't turn to look, but he felt her stiffen.

"It's James Joyce, the Irish writer. From
Ulysses.
A book I never actually finished."

He could see her trying for a peripheral glimpse of him.

"You can go ahead and look at me," he said. "I've been glowered at before."

"You ever been pitched off a moving ship?"

Thorn eased closer, whispered near her ear. "You're the daughter, aren't you? The one who disappeared."

Slowly her face came around and she squinted at him. Her lashes were long and blond, eyes a powder blue. Though she had the eyebrows of a brunette, dark and thick with a slight arch above her right eye that gave her a skeptical look. She wore no makeup and he could tell her milky skin was the kind that can never hold a tan. He couldn't put words to what it was about the blend of mouth and nose that gave her such an earthy cast. By normal standards, the sharp cheekbones, the straight nose, the sulky lips all suggested a regal pedigree. A spoiled heiress who could summon and dismiss the likes of Thorn in a snap of the fingers. But he detected something else lying just below the surface, some firm muscularity that gave her features a fierce and slightly reckless edge, the look of a woman who has learned the lessons of hardship.

"You have me confused," she said precisely, "with someone else."

"I don't think so."

She pushed off from the rail and headed into the crowd. Thorn held his place and called out to her. "I used to set fire to you every night."

She halted. Kept her back to him for a time, then took a deep breath and turned to face him. From two yards away she regarded him, her mouth clamped tight as though she were stifling a curse. Then she rejoined him at the railing.

"The wanted posters," Thorn said, "the ones with your photograph on them. I used them for months to start my evening cooking fire. I hated to do it, such a face. But apparently someone got lazy and dumped a stack of them in a ditch outside my house. The posters turned out to be good kindling, so I spent a lot of time looking at that photograph. More than I needed to, I suppose."

Behind her a handful of middle-aged couples had gathered in earnest debate about the hijack announcement. One man calling it a tasteless prank, another convinced it was the beginning of some shipboard fun, one of those special planned activities Fiesta was famous for.

The blond woman lowered her eyes and consulted the back of her hand for several moments, then lifted her gaze again and noted unhappily that Thorn had not moved.

"Where have you been all these years?" he said.

Her lips parted, searching for the words.

"It's you, isn't it? Monica Sampson."

She winced at the name, then glanced around to see if they'd been overheard. "Who are you?"

"My name is Thorn."

She ran her eyes over him. Didn't seem to think much of his outfit. He watched her consider him, watched an idea take form slowly in her eyes. A careful smile materialize.

"And what cabin are you in, Thorn?"

He smiled back and gave her his cabin number.

"What would you say if I stopped by later, we could look out your porthole, watch the water slosh. The snotgreen sea. I understand it's very restful."

The words were right, but the tone was a half step off. Thorn had met his share of assertive women. He'd had his fanny patted more than once. He was used to it by now, though it struck him as oddly disappointing that women gloated over this new freedom when it seemed they'd done nothing more than appropriate the worst hunting habits of men.

As Thorn was fetching for something bright to say, Monica manufactured an alluring smile, and languidly, she raised a hand to his face and gave his cheek a backhand stroke as if to check for stubble.

A moment passed between them, she continuing to eye him in her parody of a sultry babe, Thorn smiling, mildly charmed, but letting her know with his eyes that he wasn't buying her silliness for a second. Finally she gave him a small private smile and helpless shrug, as if to say at least she'd tried.

A half second later her eyes strayed from his to something in the distance behind him, and the last shreds of her contrived erotic charm evaporated in an instant.

Thorn swung around and saw a group of people working through the crowd. Sugarman led the way, looking haggard, his face sheened with sweat. Behind him was a pretty blond woman with her mouth hardened into a grimace. Trailing her by a step or two was a tall bald man with shocks of white hair on his temples. He wore a white silk shirt and even whiter slacks and he seemed to be fighting a losing battle to keep his smile in place.

Thorn stepped into view and without breaking stride Sugarman waved him along.

"Wait," Thorn said, and turned back to Monica. But she was no longer there.

He hesitated a moment, searched the crowd, but when he didn't see her, he tucked in close behind the white-haired man and followed. The sea of passengers parting, several of them calling out as the group passed. Hailing them by name, Lola and Morton Sampson, asking if this was a prank, what were they supposed to do, what the hell was going on?

The bald man gave a hearty laugh and waggled his hand at the crowd like a candidate driving past in a parade. Thorn tagged behind the troop down a narrow outside stairway. Around a tight corner and halted before a hatch door where the red-faced security man from last night was standing guard. When McDaniels caught sight of Morton Sampson, he tore the red drinking straw from his mouth and gave two quick raps on the hatch door, their clever secret code. The hatch promptly swung open.

Thorn hustled along behind the group, past the guard into the cool half-light of the bridge.

Blaine Murphy was assistant chief engineer for the M.S.
Eclipse.
Short, curly reddish blond hair, held the all-time sit-up record of eight hundred and fifty-three at the Coast Guard Academy. After finishing up there, he'd served two years hauling Cuban rafters from the Florida Straits, then he jumped to the private sector and now was zinging his way up the pay scale with Fiesta. Normal time frame for making chief engineer, getting the hell out of the control room and up to the bridge, thirty months. Blaine's goal was to beat that by six.

Every second of the day, focused on that. Nine decks away, up in the sun, the wheelhouse, chart room. Chuck his gray jumpsuit. Don those starched white uniforms, gold buttons, rub the captain's shoulder. Best of all, step up, take command, grip the controls in his own two hands.

Moving swiftly, ahead of schedule, Murphy had outlasted, outengineered, out-ass-kissed every new Coast Guard jock they'd thrown at him so far. For the time being he manned the control room, where it was his job to monitor the computer screens, keep the ledger up to date, make careful notations in the log book, the history of every alarm and the corrective procedures taken. One eye constantly flicking up to the video screens that surveyed the engine room and boiler room from several different angles.

Blaine Murphy's domain, the control room, was jammed with long sleek console panels and tall switchboard stations, a wall of dials and meters and gauges, all of them numbered. A cross between a high-tech recording studio and the NASA command center. The room hummed constantly with current, and the regular throb of the engines one deck below vibrated day and night through the gray tiles. The walls and tabletops and panel covers were done in a boring beige Formica. If Blaine could've chosen the motif, he would've used scarlet Scotch plaid. His favorite pattern for shirts, pants, slip covers, hell, for anything. Red Scotch plaid. Jazzed things up nicely, kept the pulse cranking.

In his two years in the drab confinement of the control room, Blaine had overseen the repair of dozens of pieces of malfunctioning equipment on all sectors of the
Eclipse,
from its propulsion systems to its water treatment plant, alternators, navigation devices, voltmeters, bow thrusters, refrigeration, the incinerator. Every crucial operation on board was wired through that room. The heart of the ship, center of power. If something failed or was about to fail aboard ship, Blaine Murphy was the first to know.

Still, with so many repair functions automated, there wasn't that much knuckle-busting work. Change a circuit board now and then, a chip, minor dial adjustments, flip a breaker switch. Two men was all it required to oversee every fuse, every junction box in that small floating city. The heavy, complex labor was almost always performed in dry dock, or back at port. But once or twice a month Blaine was called on to troubleshoot, patch together some crucial circuit or piece of machinery, bypass a broken valve, rig a gasket out of cardboard, do whatever jury-rigging it took to keep the systems up and running while the
Eclipse
was out at sea. Those were the occasions when he scored his points, made the small ratchets ahead in his career. In two years his repair record was spotless, batting a thousand. Ingenious, resourceful, and well trained, Blaine Murphy had never had a single breakdown he couldn't get up and running in half a day.

So when the man's voice came out over the PA system, a voice that wasn't Captain Gavini's or the cruise director's or anyone's on the crew, Blaine began to prickle with excitement. He'd heard the rumors about some ongoing problem with security. Casino thefts, a recent suspicious death. Someone apparently preying on the
Eclipse.
But to his great frustration, Blaine had not been consulted in the countermeasures. So when the voice finished his weird pronouncement and immediately thereafter the white phone on the central control panel rang, a call from the bridge, Blaine knew his expertise was finally being solicited. He was about to be brought into the loop on the most important voyage the
Eclipse
had ever taken.