The tears of dark water, p.24
The Tears of Dark Water, page 24
VANESSA
SOMEWHERE OVER KENYA
November 14, 2011
Vanessa stared at the phone in her hands like it was a living thing. She pressed the “redial” button again and listened to the maddening ring. Pick up, Ibrahim! she thought, trying with all her might to hold herself together. What are you doing? It was just after seven o’clock, nearly two hours after the drop. The cabin of the plane was as quiet as a graveyard. Flint was looking at her, his expression unreadable. She’d had the same exchange with him after each call.
Vanessa: “Why aren’t they answering?”
Flint: “They’re probably still counting the money.”
Vanessa: “How long can it possibly take?”
Flint: “You need to be patient.”
But patience was the furthest thing from her mind. Her thoughts were a whirlpool dragging her into the darkness. Something wasn’t right; she could feel it. Daniel and Quentin should have been released by now. The nightmare should have been over.
She dropped the phone in her lap and looked out the window at the moonlit African plain, struggling against the gnawing pains in her chest. There was nothing she could do to stop the panic when it reached this stage. It was like a runaway train barreling down a mountainside.
She reclined her seat and closed her eyes, focusing all of her attention on breathing. She felt her diaphragm contracting and relaxing, heard the air passing through her nose. When she locked in the rhythm, she allowed her mind to drift. She imagined herself picking up the Bissolotti, placing the bow on the strings, and launching into Schumann’s “Träumerei.” She visualized the music filling her heart like a concert hall and chasing away the demons. In time, the pressure in her chest subsided.
“How much longer until we land?” she asked Ruan Steyn as calmly as she could.
“Forty-five minutes,” Steyn called from the cockpit.
Vanessa lifted the sat phone again and tried the Renaissance without success. She punched in Brent Frazier’s mobile number next, hoping he would have an update, but he didn’t answer either. She blinked in confusion. She had spoken to him just before the drop. Why wasn’t he available? She called Mary’s BlackBerry. The FBI agent had promised her it would never be out of reach. She waited and waited, but all she heard was a chorus of endless rings.
She felt the chill begin like a wintry trickle beneath her collar. There had to be a benign reason for the silence. It’s going to be all right, she reassured herself. We did everything they asked.
At last, Steyn announced their descent into Nairobi. Vanessa fastened her seatbelt and watched the lights of the city grow closer. The plane flared over the runway and landed smoothly, taxiing to the same hangar from which they had left. When Steyn shut down the engines, Flint opened the door.
“We’ll call them from the office,” he said with an unconvincing smile.
Vanessa collected her purse and stepped out of the plane. She saw Mary standing beside the Land Rover. The FBI agent walked toward her, then pulled up short, as if unsure how to make the approach. Vanessa saw the trail of mascara beneath Mary’s eyes and stopped dead.
“What’s wrong?” she exclaimed, her resistance crumbling. “What happened?”
Mary gave her an ashen look. “There was a shooting,” she said in an unsteady voice. “Daniel is dead. Quentin is in critical condition. He’s in surgery now.”
For a moment, Vanessa just stood there, too stunned to speak. Then the shock gave way to horror, and her body began to shake. “No! Oh God, no!”
Mary wrapped her in a fierce embrace. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
In an instant, Vanessa’s suffering turned into anger. “Why?” she screamed, pushing Mary away. “Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” Mary said softly. “No one knows.”
Vanessa’s eyes flashed. “Get me on that ship! I don’t care what it takes. I want to see my son!”
Mary’s bottom lip quivered. “The Navy has some of the best surgeons in the world. They’re doing all they can for him.”
“That’s not good enough!” Vanessa shrieked, feeling helpless and cornered. “Get me on that ship!”
Mary looked at her compassionately. “I wish I could.”
Just as quickly, Vanessa’s anger transmuted to despair. She sank to her knees and began to weep. She heard voices shouting inside her head, like a great assembly of her detractors. Trish, in Quentin’s first year: You’re too serious to have a child. You need to lighten up. Ted, when Quentin started to see a therapist: I always thought the kid was strange. The detective at Annapolis PD: Did you have any idea your son was into drugs? Then her own voice rose above the rest: If you don’t get your act together, Vanessa, he’s going to be as messed up as you are. The prophecy spoken a thousand times by her shame had finally come true. She was married to a dead man she had just started to love again, and her son was hovering on the brink, his body riddled with bullets.
Mary put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. She didn’t know how long she stayed on the hangar floor. It could have been minutes or hours, she didn’t care. She saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing except the vertigo of falling and the humiliation of failure. She was a disgrace. Everything in her world was meaningless apart from Quentin’s life.
At last, the raging storm of her emotions began to relent, leaving her exhausted and empty. Through her tears she saw Mary’s outstretched hand. She took it and climbed to her feet, allowing the FBI agent to lead her to the Land Rover.
Tony Flint opened the door for her, looking mortified. “I’m sorry, Vanessa. I never thought . . .” His voice trailed off as he closed the door behind her.
She settled into the seat and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She saw Mary slide in beside her and felt the Land Rover accelerate out of the hangar. She had so many questions. But only one of them mattered right now. “How long has Quentin been in the OR?” she asked quietly.
Mary turned toward her, her eyes limpid in the shadows. “I spoke to Paul half an hour ago. All he could tell me was that Quentin had been airlifted to the
Truman and that he was in surgery. Paul was about to take a helicopter to the carrier. He said he’d call as soon as he could.”
Vanessa felt the ache of grief in every inch of her body. Paul Derrick. The best negotiator in the FBI. How could he have failed? How could all of them have failed? The Navy, the SEALs, the entire apparatus of the government? How could the whole thing have gone so horribly wrong?
“Are the pirates dead?” she asked in time.
“Two of them were killed,” Mary said. “The rest were captured. They’ll be tried in federal court. I expect the government will ask for the death penalty.”
Vanessa shook her head. They don’t deserve a trial. They deserve a hanging. “And Ibrahim?”
Mary met her gaze. “He survived.”
Vanessa remembered the pirate’s final words to her: We have done nothing to harm them. Deliver what you promised, and I will do the same. She wanted to lash out at him then, to claw his face with her fingernails and pluck out his eyes. You’re a liar! she thought. You’re a liar and a murderer. Death is too decent for you. Whatever it takes, I will watch you burn.
PAUL
THE INDIAN OCEAN
02°10′42″N, 45°52′49″E
November 14, 2011
The Seahawk carrying Paul and Rodriguez landed on the Truman at 19:51, an hour and twenty-two minutes after the shooting. The aircraft carrier, darkened for nighttime operations, was a hive of activity and noise. Men in helmets and goggles were moving about the flight deck, tending to helicopters and jets gearing up for flight. The aircrewman collected the negotiators’ duffel bags and led them across the amber-lit deck, around the tower, and down two flights of stairs to a hatch that opened into the ship.
The Truman was under way again and heading out to sea, its massive propellers driving it across the water at over thirty knots. Paul suspected that as soon as the ship emerged from Somali waters, the Navy would launch a squadron of planes to offer air support to the battle group during the long trip around the Horn of Africa. No one knew exactly how the Somali government and the world community would react as news of the incident spread, but Paul was certain it would generate controversy and dominate headlines for weeks.
He and Rodriguez followed the aircrewman into a cramped waiting room, where they were greeted by a thirtysomething African-American officer dressed in gray and blue coveralls.
“I’m Commander Adrian Johnson, the JAG attorney on the admiral’s staff,” he said. “I’ll be your liaison for as long as you’re aboard.” Johnson gestured at a female sailor beside him. “This is Ensign Miller. She’ll take your bags to DV Row, where you’ll be staying. We have a post-incident briefing at 22:00. Until then, we’re free. Where would you like to go?”
“Take us to the hospital,” Paul said. “I want to see Quentin.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, his mind had become a haunted place, stained with memories he couldn’t shake. Daniel Parker: Paul, they’re all pointing their guns at us. You have to do something now. Ibrahim: I am not the one breaking our agreement. If you do not act quickly, the Captain will die. And Vanessa Parker from the skies: Bring them home to me, Paul. Bring my husband and son home. Paul had lost hostages before, but never had the failure felt so personal. None of them had taken him back to the house in Annandale. None of them had reminded him of Kyle.
He followed Johnson out of the waiting room and into the warren of the ship. Below the flight deck, the carrier was a world unto itself. As on the Gettysburg, the levels, decks, and compartments on the Truman were organized in a triple-coordinate system intended to demystify the ship’s layout. The carrier, however, was so colossal and its innards so labyrinthine that the bull’s-eye plaques offered little more than ornamentation. Soon Paul lost all sense of space and distance and trailed the JAG officer like a pack mule.
“Where are the pirates?” he asked.
“The SPs are being sanitized in the medical bay,” Johnson replied, using the official shorthand for “suspected pirate.” “We’ll admit them to the brig as soon as they’re scrubbed. We set aside classrooms for the interrogations. Your friends from the Bureau are chomping at the bit.”
Of course they are, Paul thought. Ibrahim and his crew just shit on the entire United States government. They’re going to hit them with a sledgehammer. Besides, they’ve been cooped up in this floating anthill for the past five days. This is their chance to do something.
He glanced at Rodriguez. “I think you should go make friends with the boys from New York. I want an inside track on the interview process.”
Rodriguez nodded. “I’m happy to babysit.”
“How long before the pirates are extradited?” Paul asked Johnson as they walked down a long corridor studded with oval hatches.
“The wheels are already in motion for Justice to take the ball,” the JAG officer replied. “As soon as we get to Djibouti, we’ll put them on a plane and send them Stateside.”
“What about the SEALs? They’re going to need to deliver statements.”
Johnson looked Paul in the eye. “Captain Redman and his team will participate in the investigation as the needs of justice require. But their involvement in this incident is highly classified. For the sake of national security, their names will never be divulged nor the precise nature of their duties revealed to the public.”
The pirates aren’t the only ones being sanitized, Paul mused. Redman may never face scrutiny. Unless . . . The thought struck him like an epiphany. Unless the truth comes out in the legal proceedings.
He filed the idea away and trailed Johnson into the hospital. The lobby was at once sterile and surreal. Doctors, nurses, and corpsmen scurried about, looking at charts and attending to the sick. Patients waited for treatment in chairs along the wall. A receptionist directed traffic from behind a counter with a sliding-glass window. It felt like the emergency room intake in an urban hospital. Paul found it hard to believe he was on a ship in the Indian Ocean.
Johnson greeted the receptionist. “Andrea, I need an update on the status of Quentin Parker. Can you find me someone who assisted with the cas-evac?”
“Dr. Hancock!” the woman called out, hailing a middle-aged man in a lab coat talking to a young nurse. “Weren’t you on the flight deck when the casualties were brought in?”
The doctor nodded gravely, as if he’d just seen a ghost. “I brought the boy down myself. I was in the Trauma Bay when they brought his father in.”
Johnson turned to Paul. “Dr. Hancock is our senior medical officer. He can answer your questions.” He waved to Rodriguez. “I’ll take you to the classrooms.”
When they left, Hancock gave Paul a poignant look. “I don’t understand. The last we heard they were about to be released. Now this.” His eyes moistened and he looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s just that my son is the boy’s age.”
Paul felt a stabbing pain in his stomach. Kyle was eighteen, too. He shook his head, struggling to remain impassive. “I wish I could give you a reason.”
“Bastards,” the doctor said under his breath. “I hope they rot in hell.” He shook his head and collected himself. “So what can I do for you?”
Paul thought of Mary meeting Vanessa in Nairobi. The knife twisted in his gut. “I need something to tell the family. They’ll want details.”
Hancock angled his head. “Let’s find a place to talk.”
Paul followed the senior medical officer down a series of hallways to a room with two gurneys, an array of medical equipment and filing cabinets, and track lights on the ceiling. Both gurneys looked like they had been recently used.
“This is the trauma bay,” Hancock explained. “It’s where we do stabilization care. When the helicopter landed with the boy, I had a team on the flight deck. The corpsman on the chopper had already intubated him to get him breathing again. He had an entry wound here—” He put his hand on his chest slightly to the right of his sternum and about two inches below the clavicle. “He also had a flesh wound with tissue damage below his right shoulder. He was losing consciousness and bleeding internally. We brought him down on the elevator. By the time we got him here, he was unresponsive.”
Hancock walked to the first gurney. “Our surgeon—Dr. Alvarez—made a scan with the ultrasound and saw that he was in cardiac arrest. The bullet had punctured his heart, and the blood had leaked into the pericardium, causing a tamponade. Dr. Alvarez made an incision in his chest and stopped the bleeding. He massaged the heart, bringing it back to rhythm, and put chest tubes in to manage the lung injury. Then he prepped him for the OR.”
The doctor pointed toward the wall. “They’re in there now. It’ll be another hour or two before we know the outcome. About the time we sent the boy into surgery, they brought his father in.” Hancock took a belabored breath. “The damage was severe. He’d been shot half a dozen times in the chest and head. Part of his skull was missing. There was nothing we could do. The wounds were not survivable.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I was the one who pronounced him dead.”
Paul steeled himself against the sorrow and recalled the gunshots. In the first round, he had heard six or seven shots in a rapid burst. They must have been aimed at Daniel. There were four shots in the second round and three shots in the last round. If Quentin had only two wounds, as Hancock indicated, that meant that whoever shot him missed at least once and possibly twice. In such close quarters, it made little sense, unless the gun malfunctioned or the shots were fired in extreme haste. He made a mental note to mention the enigma to the investigators.
“What did you do with the Captain’s body?” Paul asked.
“We treated him like a soldier,” the doctor replied. “We put his remains in a Conex box for the trip home. They’ll take him to Dover. His family can collect him there.”
Paul met Hancock’s eyes. “Can I see him?”
The doctor nodded, gesturing toward the hallway. He led Paul to a utility elevator and stepped inside. “We put him in the hangar bay for ventilation.”
Seconds later, the doors opened on a cavernous space bustling with sailors performing maintenance on a trio of fighter jets. Hancock walked toward one of the massive flight elevators that stood open to the air. Off to the side Paul saw a polished aluminum container with an American flag draped over it. A sailor stood beside it. He came to attention when Hancock approached.
“At ease,” the doctor said. “Give us a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” the sailor replied, walking away.
“Take your time,” Hancock said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Paul knelt beside the container and put his hand on the stripes of the flag—red for courage, white for innocence. He choked up at the thought of the broken body inside.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” he said softly, daring to hope that wherever Daniel was he could hear him. “This never should have happened.” He blinked away the tears. “Your son is in good hands. I’m going to do what I can to make it up to him. I promise you that.”
He stood up again and felt a surge of anger. He clenched his hands into fists and looked out at the sea, glistening beneath the moon. Dammit, Ibrahim! What the hell were you thinking?
