Without a glance, he walked to the other side of the bridge, ignoring the dead and the captain, who continued to stand completely still. His boat had been emptied and tied off to the rear of the ship.
“You are Captain Garland, correct?” he asked politely, addressing the sole survivor on the bridge for the first time.
“Yes.”
“You are going to talk to your crew and passengers on the ship’s communications system. You will say what is written on this paper and nothing else. Understood?”
“Yes,” said Garland as he took the folded sheet of copy paper from Abduwali. He read the typewritten instructions and nodded.
Below deck, the passengers scrambled for their staterooms and locked the doors. Donna Ruiz, her daughter, Sofia, and her niece, Jenna, hid in their room and barricaded the door with furniture. It was Jenna who had the presence of mind to access the ship’s internet with her iPad.
They could hear shouting and the cries for help of passengers in the hallway. Occasionally, gunshots rang out as passengers were forced to submit to the orders of the pirates. Because their porthole window had been shot out, they could hear a loud splash just outside their stateroom. The women chose to believe someone had jumped overboard in a desperate attempt to escape.
She accessed her Gmail account and sent all the details she’d observed to her father’s personal and official congressional email addresses. Then she copied and pasted the email and forwarded it to her uncle, her mother, her boyfriend, and her best friend. She relayed to them she’d email as often as possible, and if the ship’s bandwidth allowed, she’d broadcast live on Facebook.
She paused as the sound of footsteps outside their room could be heard. The door handle twisted slightly, but the lock prevented it from opening. Seconds later, another gunshot rang out, and the person outside their door rushed off.
Jenna sent the last email, and the three women huddled in the corner of the room as far away from the door as possible. Then the captain made an announcement.
On the bridge, Garland’s hand shook as he held the note. Abduwali used his flashlight to illuminate the words the captain was to announce to the ship. He was growing impatient with Garland’s hesitation, so he shouted in his ear, “Now!”
“This is Captain Garland. The Victory has been captured by pirates. You will obey every order given to you by them or they will kill you. This you must understand …” His voice trailed off for a moment. He subconsciously contemplated correcting the poor English syntax but chose to continue when one of the pirates stuck the barrel of an AK-47 in his ribs.
“Obey orders and everyone will live. Disobey them and all of us will die.”
He paused again, drawing his captors’ ire. The rifle barrel twisted into his rib cage.
“Continue!” shouted Abduwali.
“All crew members will remain at their workstations and continue their duties. Engineers shall remain in their spaces but are cautioned not to tamper with the ship’s controls. Off-duty crew members will be confined to quarters. All passengers are ordered to remain in their staterooms until further notice. No exceptions or the pirates will kill you. That is all.”
“Good, Captain Garland,” said Abduwali with a snarl. “Now you will sit in the corner. The bridge, and your ship, belongs to me.”
Chapter Nine
Tangier Island, Virginia
“Come on, Bear! Get the lead out!” Cameron Mills didn’t cut her fellow operative any slack. The sun was setting over Chesapeake Bay, and the haze of a hot summer day obscured the Virginia shoreline a dozen miles away. The Steven Thomas dinner cruise boat was sailing slowly toward the south, and the festive sounds of Caribbean steel drums carried across the serene waters. Cam added sarcastically, “I’d like to open a beer in this lifetime, if you don’t mind.”
The burly Barrett King dropped a heavy box of books and turned around on the dock to face Cam. “If you’re so dang thirsty, why don’t you swim out to the party boat and have a beer?”
“Don’t start with me!” she shouted back.
“You started with me, Cam!”
Inside his new home, Gunner Fox shook his head at the grown-up children’s sniping and smiled. He stood in his bedroom and set a box on the mattress of his bed. He gently unwrapped a picture frame containing a picture of his deceased wife, Heather, taken during their honeymoon.
“Well, we had to move,” he whispered as he set the frame on his nightstand. He turned the switch on the lamp and sat on the bed to study the photo. “I really didn’t want to leave Dog Island, but the logistics simply didn’t work out. They needed me closer to Fort Belvoir. Anyway, I got us the next best thing. I mean, hey, it’s an island.” Gunner kissed two fingers on his right hand and planted it on Heather’s photo.
For several years after the Gray Fox team had been reconstituted under the umbrella of the Activity at Fort Belvoir, Gunner, Cam and Bear had lived at Dog Island off the Gulf Coast of Florida. However, the frequent meetings and operations required their presence in Virginia more often than initially contemplated. The helicopter travel became untenable, and eventually it was decided the trio should make the move closer to the base.
Cam and Bear, who were more socially active than Gunner, opted for homes on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Gunner, whose psyche was meant for secluded island living, found a place on Tangier Island located just southeast of the mouth of the Potomac within the heart of Chesapeake Bay.
The island was first discovered by Captain John Smith in the early 1600s, but
