The Catch: A Novel (38 page)

“Well, you got what you wanted,” she said.

“Much more.”

“How did they find you?”

He shrugged and his eyes cast downward, and for the first time in the conversation she picked up the shame of failure. In a double act of indignity, he’d been outsmarted by a man responsible for his own twenty-year run, and every day in her captivity had been a reminder of that failure.

She offered him an out. “Perhaps they used the AIS,” she said. “Once the weapons were on their way to you, they would eventually have figured out that you captained the
Favorita
, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to track you through the ship.”

“I make the AIS disabled after we come around the Horn,” he said. “That is the easy way to track, and is never good to make easy, so I disconnect it.”

And that explained why the ship never turned up in any searches.

“Did you check the weapons, the crates, the pallets, for GPS tracking?”

“Certainly I check,” he said, and huffed as if offended by the implication that he’d been a fool to make such a simple oversight. “In any case, the hold, she provide too much cover to transmittal. She is a dark zone with no signal.”

“Then maybe one of your officers.”

His expression tightened as if he hurt. “I know these men couple years,” he said. “We work together on team, on same ship for two years. They know what we do, they help plan, they get paid good. But maybe, I don’t know.”

Munroe closed her eyes and rested her head against the boxes again. He had a good narrative, a good act. The plausibility filled in a lot of holes, but this was still just a story, one for which she might never know the actual truth—and she didn’t really care. Whatever
he’d left out—rivalry, hatred, a catalytic event that drove a decades-long thirst for retribution—someone had sent a delegation of Russian military men after the captain, had used Somali financing and Somali pirates to cover their tracks, had used Kenyans to intimidate and kill people they thought were hiding him. These were facts she knew to be true. Her interest in the finer points was to understand the strength of her enemy.

She said, “When we go after the ship, the tracker, wherever it is or whoever has it, is still there, and once we start moving, the people who did this are going to be watching for it, they’ll be waiting.”

“Is a problem,” he said. “Is your problem.”

It
was
her problem, but it was going to become his problem too if they got hijacked again.

Raised voices broke the conversation, and Munroe leaned around the boxes, caught sight of Khalid and Natan facing off, hands gesticulating, each arguing in his own language while the other men crowded in from their places on the dhow, ants moving toward the ant mound, lines drawn and sides taken. Amber, ignored by the others because she was a woman, stood outside the circle. Braced against the bulwark for recoil, her rifle inching higher.

Munroe flipped to her side and scrambled over the supplies that blocked her way, caught her breath and choked through the wave of darkness that washed in with the pain: a stabbing reminder that she’d not yet healed. Slid a knife from its hidden sheath and, knowing she wouldn’t reach the antagonists before someone did something stupid, yelled at them.

Her voice was weak beneath the drone of the engine, carried away by the hiss of the wind, but strong enough that the Somali men on the edge of the circle heard her and glanced in her direction. She continued forward, slowed by the boat’s movement, yelled again, and finally Khalid and Natan both turned.

“Are you insane?!” she screamed. Waved a hand toward Khalid. “Get back,” she said, and the same toward Natan in English, “Back!”

Neither man moved but she had their attention, and those who’d crowded around parted enough to allow her through. She got between Khalid and Natan, and in Somali, loud enough that all of the
hawaladar
’s men would hear, said, “Save the anger. You’ll need it to survive when we get to the end of our journey.”

Khalid didn’t answer, nor did he concede territory, but his grip on the rifle relaxed slightly and his jaw unclenched. Munroe resheathed the blade burning hot against her skin; breathed past rage at the alpha chest-thumping that wouldn’t permit either man to stand down—one-upmanship that could so easily become the death of them all. She turned to Natan and, as a way to allow him to step aside without surrendering, said, “We need to talk,” then nudged him, using her body to crowd him away from the circle so that he was forced to move.

Out of earshot of the others, voice lowered and tone as neutral as anger would allow, she said, “Dick measuring is going to get you killed. Not me. You. And probably Amber, too. Tell me there’s a good reason for whatever the hell that just was.”

He shook his head. “Stupidity,” he said.

“Did it start with Khalid?”

“With that one,” he said, and nodded toward Ali.

She cut a glance over and watched the dispersing circle. “Khat withdrawal,” she said. “It’s going to get worse, okay? Working with it won’t make you less of a man.”

“Fucking barbarians,” he said, and Munroe had no response that wouldn’t reignite the tinder she’d just put out, so she turned her back and climbed in the direction she’d come. She squeezed by Amber, caught her eye, and in the steel of Amber’s expression knew that there’d been no bluff in her actions: she would have put a bullet in every one of those men, perhaps even Natan, if a fight had threatened to derail the mission and get between her and Leo.

Munroe sat outside the canopy where she could observe the length of the boat and ensure that the squabble didn’t pick back up again, played the knife against her fingers, stayed through the lengthening shadows, running scenarios, measuring threats, until the sun began
to set, its light replaced by orange pinpricks and cigarette smoke. She scooted beneath the canopy. Joe nodded an acknowledgment and, although he’d certainly seen the ruckus, said nothing, asked nothing. Munroe sat beside the captain and closed her eyes. She’d wait until the evening deepened, would apologize to Khalid on Natan’s behalf and do the same for Natan in the morning, damage control by reinventing the conversation—the benefit of being the only one able to speak everyone else’s language.

T
HE DHOW NEARED
Garacad late in the morning. Yusuf cut the engine and they drifted far enough out that despite the easy way sound carried over the water, the growls of the generator and air compressor wouldn’t invite other players to the private party. Floating, rising and falling with the swells, tempers and the irritation of the past days transformed into impatient tension until the inflatables were filled and readied, weapons checked, ammunition prepared, and attack plan coordinated; then there was nothing more to do but wait.

The dhow grew quiet, and under the canopy and other improvised shade, they ate and napped through the high afternoon heat, waiting for the dark to come. When the first of the cooling arrived and the men began to stir again, Munroe ducked behind the curtain of the makeshift head and there wrapped her torso, loop after loop of medical tape, uncomfortable and constricting, forming it into a cast of sorts. She’d avoided ibuprofen for the duration of the trip, a way to ensure the meds were completely out of her system and reduce the chance of overdosing, but even with the maximum amount she could safely take tonight, she’d still run a fine line between agony and immobility until the adrenaline kicked in and drowned out her body’s limitations.

Torso set, Munroe left the head for the nearest drinking water. Funneled it from the container into an empty bottle and brought the bottle to Amber, who was resting under the shade of a towel stretched between fuel barrels. Munroe offered the water and when Amber took it, Munroe sat wordlessly beside her. Amber unscrewed the cap, drew a long swallow, and, recapping it, tipped her head onto
Munroe’s shoulder. After several long minutes Amber said, “The anticipation is the worst, you know? Misery in the waiting.”

Munroe patted Amber’s thigh and drew in her quiet sigh; she wouldn’t offer words of comfort or reassurance though it would cost nothing to speak such small lies in a life of lies; Amber deserved better than that. “It’ll be better when we get moving again,” Amber said. “Once the fighting finally starts.”

“I need to ask you a favor,” Munroe said.

Head still tipped to Munroe’s shoulder, Amber said, “I’m not staying behind with the dhow no matter how nice you ask or how much you beg.”

Munroe smiled and leaned her cheek against Amber’s hair. “Not as bad as that. I just need you to stay on the water until we secure the deck.”

“Why?”

“I need someone to keep control over the captain.”

“I thought he was part of this now.”

“Supposedly,” Munroe said. “But even if we take the freighter, his problems are only just beginning, and he knows it. Given access to one of the inflatables, he’s more likely to use the distraction to run, to commandeer the dhow, make a return to Kenya on his own and try to disappear. It’s what I would do if I were in his shoes. I can’t risk leaving him alone, but I can’t bring him onto the ship until we have a secure zone.”

“One of the men can handle him.”

“You’re the only one I trust to do it right.”

“My priority is getting on that ship, Michael.”

“I know it is,” Munroe whispered.

“Yeah,” Amber said, and they were silent for several more minutes until she spoke again. “We don’t need him,” Amber said. “One of the ship’s officers could pilot, could get the freighter out.”

“If they’re alive, then yes, but it’s more than that. I need him.”

“As a trophy?”

“As a trump card.”

Amber was quiet again, her breathing slow and deep, and with each inhale her torso expanded to touch Munroe’s skin, a connection that warmed and withdrew several times until at last Amber said, “If there’s no other way.”

“Would have asked anyone else if it didn’t matter as much.”

Amber nodded, lifted her head off Munroe’s shoulder. “I’ll wait ten, fifteen minutes. After that, I’m coming up. I’ll send him ahead.”

Munroe patted Amber’s thigh again: camaraderie, the only person she trusted in this whole damn mess. Then she stood and left for the captain, the pawn upon which the game still turned.

T
HE INFLATABLES SLIPPED
away from the dhow under the cover of late night, four people to a boat, moving slowly over the water to keep the sound of approach as low as possible and retain the element of surprise, assuming they’d ever actually had it. Munroe sat in the middle of her craft, opposite the captain, while Khalid guided the tiller and Amber, face blackened with camouflage paint, faced the wind. Lights from the shore winked like stars in the far distance blending sky and sea, and somewhere far ahead, still out of sight, the
Favorita
anchored as a ghostly fortress on the water: a vessel of death no matter what happened tonight.

Munroe clenched her fists against the invisible bloodstains and turned again toward the distance, drew in the impending fight while the voices from the past rose in a low whisper and her lips moved with the chant of violence:
I whet my glittering sword. My hand takes hold on judgment. I will render vengeance to my enemies and will reward them that hate me
.

A prickle of warning traced up the back of her neck and Munroe turned to find the captain studying her, and she shut him out. The invitation from Miles Bradford beckoned, countered the violence, wrapped tendrils of want throughout her chest, and she hated that it did. The path to survival, to fight without fear or hesitation, was to hunger for nothing, to enter battle already dead. To have a reason to live only welcomed the hand of fate to make a mockery of desire.
She shoved Bradford away. Breathed out the last of him and drew the empty night in to take his place. Tonight she would free her conscience so that she could pursue Sami’s killers and then leave Africa forever.

The bulk of the dhow faded and then blended completely into the water. Ahead in the second inflatable, Natan was at the tiller, with three of the Somali men, their bodies hugging the gunwales to avoid casting human-shaped shadows. Natan’s inflatable veered off—no point making a single target out of both boats—and eventually it, too, vanished into the night.

Joe and his one boatman had been left behind as the
hawaladar
’s guarantee that he’d get his investment back—and a fallback of sorts should tonight go horribly awry—though Joe and the dhow were a difficult safety net to trust. The man had kept to himself for the entire voyage, his body language fluctuating between guarded and friendly, making him hard to read, and Munroe had yet to hear him speak.

She ran her fingers over the satellite phone and confirmed it was secure, then checked the two-way radio; made sure neither could be knocked off her belt through sudden movements. The two-way was the emergency backup for communication between the boats, the tether that would keep them connected within a thirty-mile range if the world went to shit. In place of accurate intel they had history, news reports, and combined experience, and through this they anticipated a contingent of at least twenty pirates, probably more, possibly an interruption by a supply skiff from shore, and hopefully khat, ample supplies of khat.

The advantage would go to the men on the high ground: better armed, protected by the bulk of the ship, with hostages to use as human shields, and backup from the shoreline to flank and attack the invaders from the rear. Without the gift of a stationary vessel even an attempt to take back the ship tonight would have been unthinkable. Stealth and surprise were their friends, but beyond those, the entire crapshoot would depend on tenacity and the favor of the gods.

Ahead lights on the floating fortress winked a welcome, the ship
not lit fully, but enough to provide a beacon and guide Munroe’s inflatable in for approach. Khalid cut their speed again and they crawled forward with a nearly inaudible whine. Munroe used a spotting scope to scan the bridge wings for shadows against the light and found nothing. The bridge itself was dark, as were all of the windows in the tower, and with the darkness came doubt: Everything the
hawaladar
had said, everything the news sources had delivered, indicated the hostages were being held onboard, but the only sign of life came from the splotches of shadow and movement on the deck that pointed to a moving patrol.