'Got a better idea?' Harry said, lighting up a fresh unfiltered Camel. He'd stubbed the last one out in the little guy's left ear. Harry being Harry as usual, he only smoked on certain very special social occasions. Like rendition.
'Yeah, I got one, Harry. Bad cop, bad cop.'
'I like it.'
'Ozzie won't like it.'
'Screw Ozzie. He murders schoolchildren on school buses, remember that little tidbit? Three buses in three states in the last three weeks. How many of our kids does he get to kill before we can, you know, really torture the dickhead?'
'Really pisses me off waterboarding is no longer politically correct,' Stoke said. 'I miss it already.'
'Hopeless nostalgia, man, wasted energy. Listen. I saw a pair of really rusty pliers at the bait station back there in the stern. We could pull his goddamn tongue out, right? Put a big fish hook in it first and then yank-'
'Then he couldn't talk at all, Harry.'
'Good point.'
'You need your tongue to talk.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.'
Stoke saw a baby dolphin suddenly surface about six feet away and then dive under the bow of boat, playing with them, surfacing on the other side before coming around again.
'I think I just got an idea,' he said, smiling at Harry for the first time all afternoon.
'Spit it out. Look on your face, it's a really good one.'
'Old navy tradition. Really old. Been around since the year 1560. But off the books for centuries so I doubt any of our more ladylike congressmen have passed any goddamn laws against it.'
'Yeah? What is it?'
'Follow me,' Stoke said heading aft for the stern cockpit where the big chrome fishing chair was and all the fishing gear was stowed. He did some quick mental calculations: the boat's beam; the draft. 'C'mon, I'll show you how it works.'
Harry flicked his smoke overboard, followed Stoke aft, and watched him opening hatch covers in the wide transom until he found the right one, a rope locker. He pulled out two big coils of thick white nylon line, each about thirty feet long, Harry guessed. Stoke quickly tied them together in a manner that suggested prior nautical experience.
Harry said, 'Tie him up? With that? Whoa. But, yeah, very cool idea.'
'Not tie him up, Harry.'
'What then?'
'Go get his sorry ass. I'll show you right now.'
Harry was back at the stern with Yoda in about five minutes. Boat was rocking pretty good in these big swells, and the Wizard was looking green about the gills. Shaky. Too bad they'd run out of Dramamine.
'Want to talk now, Ozzie?' Stoke asked him, leaning down until their noses were almost touching.
'How does one say 'go fuck yourself' in English?' he replied with his elfin smile. 'Oh. I remember now. Go fuck yourself.'
'Easy. Say it again, just one more time, and then try to say it without any teeth.'
'There is no God but God,' the imam smirked, and repeated his mantra for the hundredth time that day. His idea of name, rank, and serial number. This little dick was really getting on Stoke's nerves. He'd murdered, or caused to be murdered, nearly two hundred innocent American schoolchildren. And no one could legally lay a hand on him.
Stoke said, 'Not what I had in mind, sportin' life.' He backhanded the guy across the chops, rattling his teeth.
'One-track mind,' Harry said, shaking his head in mock disgust.
'Cut his hands loose,' Stoke said, fed up.
'Loose? Really? Why?'
'Just do it. He's going to need his hands.'
'Just do it, Harry,' Ozzie said, mimicking Stoke's accent and holding his hands up to be freed.
Harry did it. As he turned away, the crazy little killer took a swing at him. Harry laughed and swatted his fist away as if disposing of an annoying fly. 'Listen up, pal,' Brock said to him. 'You fuck with a truck, you get run over.'
'You mean…like the World Trade towers?'
Harry quickly turned his back to the imam, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing the blazing anger in his eyes. As calmly as he could, he said to Stoke, 'How about we just cut him into bite-sized pieces and feed him to the sharks?'
Stoke just stared back at Brock, so angry with the radical Muslim he didn't trust himself to speak.
As a result, neither man saw the terrorist snatch the fish knife from the bait station, lift up his prison garb orange shirt, and stick the blade inside his elastic waistband.
'Now what?' Brock said after a few long moments.
'We tie this line around his waist. Loop it around a couple of times. Okay, good. Now, nice and tight. He goes right in the middle. Need about twenty feet of line on either side of him.'
'What the-'
'Trust me. Do it. Good. Oh, hold up, one more thing.'
Stoke opened a locker full of scuba gear, dug through it, and pulled out a lead-weighted diver's belt. He cinched it good and tight around the guy's waist and tied the two ends of the nylon belt in a square knot.
'Perfect. Now we walk him forward to the bow. Ozzie? You cool with this? Good man.'
Harry grabbed one end of the line and marched toward the bow. Stoke had the other end, bringing up the rear, Yoda in the middle, going along to get along.
'Now what?' Harry said, as they stood at the bow pulpit where the anchor was. Stoke grabbed the little guy by his scrawny neck and lifted him high above his head. Then he stepped out onto the pulpit projecting out from the bow.
'Okay, this is the good part. I'm just going to swing him around a little, like this, called the 'helicopter,' and then throw him in the ocean. Right off the front of the bow…Like that!'
'Cool!' Harry exclaimed, watching the guy splash down, disappear, and come up floundering, slapping the water to try and stay afloat; Harry was beginning to like this idea more and more.
'Pull him around to your side. Walk aft with the line. I'll ease my line to give you enough slack to do it. Don't let him sink.'
'Why not?'
Stoke eased his line and went over to the opposite side of the boat, slowly feeding Harry some slack, the line disappearing under the boat, pulling his own end beneath the keel of the big Vike.
'Because that's not how you do this, Harry. Keep him afloat with your end of the line until I get over here in position. Okay, this is good right here.' Stoke had stopped just forward of the wheelhouse, just about amidships.
'What the hell do we do now?'
'Keelhaul his ass. Just like the good old days. I bet nobody's done this in two hundred years. Maybe more.'
'How does it work?'
'Hold on, let me tie my end to the railing over here.'
Stoke did and then crossed over to Harry's side. He leaned way out over the starboard rail and saw Ozzie bobbing there, kept afloat by Harry's line.
'Here's a question, Ozzie,' Stoke said. 'Answer it and I'll think about not drowning you. Ready?'
'Ready,' the terrorist said, nodding his head violently. Good sign. Some people just weren't comfortable out in the open seas with a life jacket made out of lead.
'Found a name in your computer, homes. Popped up a lot in fact. Somebody named Smith. Who the hell is Smith? You have ten seconds.'
The guy shook his head no.
'Sink him,' Stoke said. Harry eased his line and the little guy dropped like a rock. They both watched his bubbles
