Hijack, page 12
“Ooh, that sounds good,” said Emily. “Can I have one too?”
“Of course,” said Ling, getting to her feet. “I’ll bring the whole pitcher.” She strode over to where Sophie was talking with Brad and Dan near the moored tender.
While Ling was busy collecting the drinks, Emily turned to Connor. “Would you mind blowing up my floating mattress for me, please? I’d like to go lounge in the water.”
“Sure,” said Connor, delving into his go-bag and retrieving the inflatable silver mattress he’d been given earlier. Putting the valve to his lips, he began the slow process of blowing it up.
Ling returned with a tray of four iced lemonades and the pitcher. Chloe downed hers in one gulp, asked for another, then plugged in her earphones and lay facedown on her towel. Once Emily got her drink, Ling offered a glass to Connor, who was still puffing away.
“Thanks,” he gasped, taking a large gulp of lemonade, its ice-cold zest refreshing him. After a dozen more lungfuls of air, the mattress was fully inflated.
“Here you go,” said Connor.
“Great,” said Emily, taking the inflatable mattress and trotting down to the shoreline.
While Emily paddled in the shallows and her sister lay sprawled in the sun, Connor and Ling were left to their own devices. With nothing to do, Ling stretched out on her towel and sunbathed too. Seeing Emily happily floating on the water, Connor picked up his book and began to read.
After a while, Brad strolled over. “I’m just taking Mr. Sterling and Ms. Ryder back to the boat. I’ll return to collect the girls for lunch. All good here?”
Connor nodded. Chloe was laid out, eyes closed and humming to a song on her headphones, while Emily still lay on her mattress, bobbing gently on the waves.
“Well, don’t work too hard!” warned Brad with a playful wink.
Connor heard the tender depart, then settled back into his book.
He’d read only a couple of chapters when Ling sat up and nudged him.
“Do you think Emily’s all right?”
Connor looked up. Emily was flat out on her mattress, almost a hundred feet from the shore. Last time he’d looked, she had been only some thirty feet away.
Putting aside his book, Connor jogged down to the waterline. “Emily,” he called.
But she didn’t respond. By the looks of it, she’d fallen asleep. With a growing sense of panic, Connor realized her inflatable mattress was caught in a current and she was drifting fast out to sea.
32
“EMILY!” Connor shouted again. But she still didn’t wake up. Either she was too far out to hear him or she couldn’t wake up. With the six-hour time difference between the Seychelles and Sydney and the drowsy side effects of her medication, her body clock was probably out of sync.
He looked to the Orchid at the opposite end of the bay. The tender was tethered to its stern, and he couldn’t see anyone on deck. And there were, of course, no lifeguards on this deserted beach. In the few seconds Connor had taken to search for help, Emily had drifted even farther out. If he didn’t take immediate action, she’d soon be lost in open water.
“I’m going to bring her back,” Connor told Ling, ripping off his T-shirt and running into the sea. “Contact Brad.”
As soon as he was deep enough, he dived beneath the waves and swam hard. Surfacing, he powered through the water, glad now for all of Charley’s training.
But swimming in the sea was totally different from being in an indoor pool. Although the bay was relatively calm, the gentle swell still blocked his line of sight. Emily and her silver inflatable mattress continually bobbed in and out of view, and he had to keep stopping to ensure he was still heading in the right direction.
Emily was now more than 250 feet out, almost beyond the tip of the headland. Connor dug deep with every ounce of strength he possessed. His legs kicking, his arms pumping, he swam not for his life, but for hers.
Then all of a sudden he was alongside her.
“Emily!” he gasped, clutching the mattress’s handle.
But she was still dead to the world, a blissful smile on her face.
Deciding that waking her suddenly at this point could risk her drowning, Connor turned the mattress around and kicked for the shore. After a minute or so, he looked up. The beach seemed no closer.
He put his head down and kicked furiously, driving the inflatable mattress ahead of him.
Connor looked up again. They were still beyond the headland. He realized he wasn’t getting anywhere. He was fighting against the current.
Despair crept into his mind. There was no way he could beat the pull of the ocean. His heart was already pounding like a drum, and he could feel his muscles burning from the effort made just to reach Emily.
Where is Brad and the tender?
He would never rescue Emily at this rate. Then he remembered Charley reminiscing about one of her surfing trips where she’d been caught in a riptide. These currents, she’d explained, were rarely more than a hundred feet wide, and surfers often used them as an expressway into the ocean to catch waves. The way to escape a riptide was to simply swim parallel to the shore and, once clear, diagonally back to the beach.
Redirecting their path, Connor swam toward the headland. Then, as soon as he judged he was clear of the rip, he took a diagonal course to where Ling stood waving to him.
With a glance over at the headland, Connor saw he was at last making progress. But the going was still tough. His lungs burned for air, and to make matters worse, in his growing exhaustion he started to lose his rhythm. His limbs grew heavy as lead, and he imagined himself sinking to the seabed like a stone.
In the distance he could hear the roar of the motorboat’s engines.
Then, all of a sudden, his foot struck sand, and he glanced up in surprise.
“Are you okay?” asked Ling, pulling the inflatable mattress and Emily onto the foreshore. Farther up the beach, Chloe was still stretched out on her towel, headphones on, oblivious to the near tragedy. Brad was just arriving in the tender.
Connor dragged himself out of the shallows and collapsed on the warm sand. “Barely,” he wheezed as a wave of white water rushed up the beach, engulfing the mattress and waking Emily with a start.
“Oh . . . I must have dozed off,” she said, sitting up and brushing her wet hair from her face. Seeing Connor sprawled in the sand like a beached fish, gasping for breath, she remarked, “Did you go for a swim?”
Connor opened his mouth to reply but was too exhausted for words and just let his head flop back down.
“You need to relax more,” Emily said, laughing. “This is a vacation, you know.”
33
Oracle regarded his loose band of pirates through the tinted passenger window of his Land Cruiser. The men lolled in the meager shade of a ramshackle fisherman’s hut, bored and listless in the unrelenting heat. Only the young pirate Bucktooth crouched in the full glare of the sun, forced to remain on guard by the skiffs. An unnecessary duty, imposed by the other pirates as a cruel prank, since no villager or fisherman would dare approach Oracle’s gang or their boats. But the boy appeared happy enough with his revolver to carry out the duty.
Picking up the slim cell phone from the seat beside him, Oracle pressed the speed-dial number. After several distant rings, he heard a click and his investor answered. “Yes?”
“My men are ready,” informed Oracle.
There was a crackle on the line, the signal poor at the base of the cliff, but he could just make out his investor’s response. “Have . . . supplies . . . arrived?”
“Yes,” replied Oracle. “And Mr. Wi-Fi has tracked down the target to its current location in Victoria Harbor. We’ll be there by—”
“Your information is out of date . . . The yacht is now at Anse Takamaka . . . Tomorrow . . . sail to Bel Ombre . . . after that to Praslin Island.”
Oracle’s brow furrowed slightly. “How do you know the yacht’s itinerary?”
As Oracle listened to the reply, his upper lip curled into an astonished smirk. “That is quite something . . . Yes, I’ll keep you fully informed of our progress.”
Snapping shut the phone, Oracle lowered his passenger window. A rush of hot dry air invaded the vehicle’s cool interior as Spearhead’s sweating face appeared.
“Get the men boarded,” instructed Oracle.
“Yes, boss. Are we still headed for the Seychelles?”
Oracle nodded. “At this moment, yes, but Mr. Wi-Fi will send you updates via the satellite link.”
Spearhead gave a dismissive snort and waved his hand at a buzzing fly. “That’s all well and good, but his hacked coordinates are always out by a few hours because of the security delay. Sometimes the ship is over the horizon by the time we get there.”
Oracle offered a smug grin. “Not this time. The investor is able to supply the real-time location of the Orchid.”
Spearhead’s eyes widened in his head, and he grunted an incredulous laugh. “Then this is gonna be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Let the game begin,” Oracle commanded, winding up his window and barring the all-pervading heat.
As the Land Cruiser sped away across the baking sand, Spearhead barked orders at his men. Idle from chewing khat all morning, the pirates rose to their feet and trudged down the beach to their boats. They threw nets over their weapons and supplies to make it look as though they were legitimate fishermen. Pushing the boats from the shoreline, the pirates clambered aboard and started their engines. The powerful outboard motors roared, churning up a flurry of white water as the small armada of pirate skiffs surged out of the bay.
34
“Pirates!” shouted Chloe. “Pirates ahoy!”
“Where?” said Connor, looking to the horizon, his pulse immediately racing. The glassy sea was a mirror to the blue sky, the line between heaven and earth lost in the distant haze. Aside from the Orchid, there were five other yachts anchored around the picturesque bay in Bel Ombre on the island’s northwest coast. Beyond those, a few fishing boats bobbed out at sea. But Connor couldn’t see any skiffs armed with RPGs powering toward them.
“Shiver me timbers, Connor, I was only joking!” said Chloe, giggling at his overreaction. “But you never know, we might find some pirate treasure in here.”
She ducked inside a large dark hole in the cliff face. Taking a break from yesterday’s sunbathing, the four of them were exploring the headland of the bay. Clambering over granite boulders and through warm barnacled rock pools, they’d managed to reach the outermost tip.
“Hold up,” cried Ling, who’d also been fooled by Chloe’s pirate prank. “It could be dangerous in there.”
“You two really need to lighten up,” said Chloe, her reply echoing out of the cave mouth.
Ling disappeared after her Principal, but Emily hesitated at the entrance, eyeing the dark opening with mistrust.
“Are you all right with this?” asked Connor.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she replied, but a nervous swallow betrayed her true feelings.
Connor tried to make eye contact. “You don’t have to go in—”
“Come on, Emily!” Chloe called, her voice now eerily distant. “You have to see this.”
Taking a deep breath, Emily plunged into the darkness.
Connor kept close on her heels. After the inflatable mattress incident the previous day, he wasn’t allowing himself to become complacent on the assignment again. He had to be ready for anything, danger lying in the most innocent of activities.
The hole narrowed to a passageway that burrowed deep into the headland. At first there was just blackness, but as Connor’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he could make out the multitude of mollusks clinging to the hard, moist rock. After a dozen or so paces, the passageway opened out into a large cavern, a crack in the overhead rock letting in a feeble shaft of sunlight. The air within was as cool and damp as a tomb, and he felt his skin goose bump at the sudden drop in temperature.
“Over here,” said Chloe, beckoning them to the far wall. Ling stood beside her, both their faces in shadow, as they inspected the faintly gleaming surface.
Connor followed Emily across the cavern, their feet crunching through the coarse sand and broken shells on the uneven floor.
“Check these out,” said Chloe excitedly, pointing to some symbols on the wall. Into the rock had been carved a dog, a snake, two joined hearts, a keyhole, a staring eye, a figure of a woman’s body and the head of a man.
“Creepy,” said Ling.
The boom of a crashing wave rebounded and amplified inside the cavern space. Connor glanced across at Emily, who’d become strangely quiet and withdrawn. In the feeble light, he could see that she was trembling and that a sheen of sweat had broken out on her forehead.
“Emily?” asked Connor. But she didn’t reply.
Chloe ran her finger over the staring eye. “I read in a guidebook that some pirate supposedly buried his treasure on this island. On his death at the gallows, he left a cryptic map to its location,” she explained. “This must be one of the clues . . .”
Emily now appeared to be struggling for breath.
“I think it’s time to make a move,” Connor suggested, taking Emily by the arm and guiding her back toward the tunnel.
“In a minute,” said Chloe, too engrossed in studying the symbols to notice her sister’s distress. “Maybe we can figure out what this says . . .”
Emily let out a doglike whimper.
Chloe turned to her sister. “Are you all right, Em?”
Her eyes had gone white with fear, and she stared in blind panic at the cave entrance. A huge shadow slipped along the mollusk-encrusted wall, threatening in both its size and silence.
“I’ll do what you say . . .” she whispered in a breath almost too quiet to hear. “I’ll do what you say . . . I’ll do what you say . . .”
Connor drew Emily closer as she repeated the words like a mantra. A muscle-bound man now blocked their only exit.
“Hope I didn’t scare you,” said Brad. “But the tide’s coming in, and these caves are prone to flooding.”
35
“Don’t forget to put the kill cord around your wrist,” reminded Ling as she zipped up her life jacket.
“I know,” snapped Chloe, straddling the Jet Ski. “I have ridden these things before.”
“Sorry—just going through the safety checks,” replied Ling in a defensive tone as she clambered aboard the other one. “Don’t want it running away from you.”
Chloe, her hair tied back in a ponytail, looked over her shoulder at her sister. “Sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“Maybe later,” replied Emily with a strained smile.
“How about you, Connor?” asked Chloe. “You can ride with me if you want.”
Connor eyed the sleek Jet Ski. He was itching to try it, but he couldn’t leave his Principal. “I’d love to, but I’ll stick with Emily on the beach.”
“Your loss,” she sighed, and she pressed the Jet Ski’s ignition.
Over the thrum of the engine, they heard Amanda shout out, “Have fun!”
She waved cheerily to them, looking glamorous as ever in a straw sunhat, white midriff blouse and sarong. Mr. Sterling, his arm around her waist, raised a hand as the two of them headed to a local beach bar, where Dan had reserved a private table.
“Off go the lovebirds again,” Chloe muttered without bothering to wave back. Twisting the throttle, she sped off across the water. As Ling depressed her Jet Ski’s starter, there was a slight splutter from the exhaust, and then she raced off after her Principal.
After watching Chloe and Ling zip back and forth a couple of times, Connor suggested a stroll along the beach.
“Are you feeling any better now?” he asked Emily.
She glanced sideways at him. “You noticed, then.”
Connor nodded. “We’re briefed on things like that,” he said, not wishing to worry her about how obvious the panic attack had been.
Emily let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I suppose you are. Well, after what happened last year, I get very anxious in such places. My mind becomes foggy and I sort of . . . blank out.”
“Then why did you go in?”
Emily dug a toe into the sand. “To try to beat my fear.”
Connor smiled, his respect for her growing at such strength of character. “I can relate to that. I’ve been in a similar situation.”
Emily looked up in shock. “Really? When?”
“Just this year,” Connor admitted. “I can’t tell you any details, but I was held captive for a number of days.”
Emily studied his face, concern now etching her brow. “I had no idea. How are you coping?”
Connor shrugged. “Okay, I suppose. I didn’t really think about it much at the time. I was concentrating on protecting my Principal.”
Emily nodded. “I suppose that must have helped. To have someone else to focus on, I mean.” She looked off toward the horizon, a haunted look in her eyes. “I was completely alone.”
In the background, the Jet Skis buzzed like hornets above the gentle wash of the waves.
“That must have been hard for you,” said Connor.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion. “The isolation was torture. I’ve been beside my sister all my life. I was desperate for her company, for a friend, anyone . . .” She turned to look at him as if to say more, but the noise from the Jet Ski engines suddenly reached a whirring pitch. Then there was a huge BANG.
Connor spun around to see Ling tumbling head over heels through the air, her Jet Ski in flames. He was already running down the beach and through the waves by the time she splashed into the sea. Chloe zoomed over, picking up Connor halfway as he swam to Ling’s rescue.
