of the hostages. Once she was settled, she gave her publicist a curt nod and the photographers started snapping away. A warm smile came across her features, as she looked left and right, up and down. The dozens of strobes flashing on fast advance made for an interesting special effect.
Then, just like that, it was over. The cameras stopped, the strobes died away. Emma stood up and, without a word, disappeared below, a small contingent of handlers following in her wake.
The other hostages were led over to the starboard-side gangway. A small ferry leased out of Aden was waiting below. With no ceremony, the hostages were put aboard and dismissed. The last one to go was the woman who’d been horribly scarred by the Shaka. Once loaded, the ferry pulled away and disappeared into the night.
Nolan couldn’t believe it.
“That might have been the coldest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told the reporter. “Miss Perfect was there for about two hours. Some of those people had been held prisoner for years.”
“Welcome to ‘Emma’s World,’” the reporter said. “And we’re all just visiting.”
She pulled out her small tape recorder and sighed. “Time to go to work. Can’t keep the Princess waiting.”
With that, she, too, disappeared belowdecks.
* * *
NOLAN WENT LOOKING for the rest of Whiskey. He wanted to get off the yacht in the worst way now. But as he was climbing up to the top deck, he ran into Gunner and Twitch on their way down.
Both looked rattled.
“You gotta come with us,” Gunner said. “And I mean, right now.”
Nolan followed them to the forward top deck, probably the only spot on the mega-yacht devoid of guests. They stopped at the starboard lifeboat station and pointed beneath it.
“Take a look under there,” Twitch told him.
“Is this a joke?” Nolan barked back.
“Just look,” Gunner urged him.
Nolan looked under the lifeboat—and saw Batman squeezed into an incredibly small space underneath, curled up in a fetal position and shaking violently.
“What the fuck…” Nolan gasped.
“We can’t get him to come out,” Gunner said. “Something is wrong with him, big time.”
Nolan reached in, grabbed his colleague by the collar and, with much effort, eventually slid him out. But Batman was still trembling mightily.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Nolan demanded to know.
“I’m not sure,” Batman answered, barely able to speak. “Something very fucked up just happened.…”
Nolan looked into his eyes. “What did you take tonight?” he asked him. “What kind of drugs?”
“Nothing.…” Batman just managed to whisper. “I swear, no drugs.…”
“How much booze then?”
But Batman was shaking his head no.
“Not a drop,” he insisted. “I’ve been drinking nothing but water since you guys picked me up this morning.”
Nolan detected no stink of alcohol around him. Nor were his pupils dilated or his eyes overly red.
Nolan told Gunner and Twitch to stand fast, and make sure no one, especially the magazine reporter, got past them.
Then Nolan led Batman up to an isolated point of the bow, out of earshot of the others.
“OK, what the hell is going on?” he asked him.
Batman’s face was ashen. His eyes were watery and sunken.
Nolan asked him again: “What is it? Tell me.…”
Batman wiped his brow, cleared his throat, then looked Nolan straight in the eye.
“I just saw Crash,” was all he said.
* * *
CRASH …
The name went through Nolan like a knife.
These days Team Whiskey consisted of four members. But they were once five.
Jack Stacks, aka “Crash,” had been their team’s sniper back when Whiskey was part of Delta Force. A surfer dude from southern California, he’d been a SEAL transfer when he first joined Delta, and eventually wound up fighting with them through the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the team was hung out to dry after their bin Laden debacle, Crash was the only one who stayed in the business, working as a mercenary. It was he who put the team back together; it was he who kept it going. No argument, Crash was the heart and soul of Whiskey.
He was also the first to die, drowned by a renegade SEAL team who’d hijacked a U.S. Navy nuclear sub in the Caribbean. Nolan and Twitch were the ones who’d found him, floating face down near some isolated Bahamian islands, beyond resuscitation. After recovering the hijacked sub, the first thing Whiskey did was bury Crash at a veterans cemetery in Florida, a temporary interment until relatives could claim his body. All that had happened not a month ago. The team hadn’t been the same since.