The Devil's Waters (10 page)

Drozdov escorted the two PJs to her. LB and Jamie pulled down their helmets, and the woman extended a lanky arm, striding to meet them. Her long fingers enveloped LB’s. She stood at least three inches taller.

Drozdov said, “This beautiful woman is counter to Mr. Bojan. She is our passenger. Iris, these are air force Sergeants DiNardo and Dempsey. They are pararescuemen.”

She withdrew her hand from LB’s, offering it to Jamie.

“
Dobriy den’
, gentlemen.”

Both PJs said, “Ma’am.”

“I very much liked your
entrez
. Like gods.”

LB and Jamie exchanged looks. Jamie muttered a shy “Thank you,” and let go of her hand.

LB said, “You’re Russian?”

“Yes. You have spent much time there?”

“Obviously not enough.”

“Wonderful.” She almost loomed over him. “I know you must go attend to the men. I understand they are very hurt.”

LB liked her version of English better than Drozdov’s. All the hard edges of the language were smoothed on her lips.

Jamie poked him in the back to reply.

“Yes. Yes, ma’am.”

The captain removed his billed cap. He mussed his own hair, short and black as Iris’s. He motioned both PJs to follow Grisha, then took one of the leather chairs. Iris slid into the other.

The first mate led them past the map table, into a down stairwell. One floor below the bridge, he punched the button for an elevator. The rotund officer’s eyes widened with mischief.

“She is pleasant, no?”

LB nodded. “Pleasant, yes. What do you know about her?”

“Iris Cherlina? Very little. She is passenger.”

“That’s it?”

Grisha tapped
a finger to his lips. “I know what I am told. And that is nothing.”

Over his shoulder, LB raised eyebrows at Jamie.

The elevator arrived, and the door hissed aside. Inside, Grisha patted Jamie on the shoulder affably.

“Thank you, both of you, for giving your weapons to Bojan. I know this was uncomfortable. But on cargo vessels, there is a long tradition against guns. They are not wanted.”

The elevator descended slowly from F deck five floors to A. LB shrugged.

“You got pirates all over the place. Why not arm yourself?”

“We are at sea for months. Ten, twenty thousand ocean miles. We are family on this ship. We argue, make errors, like family. What does captain do with crewman who drinks too much or misses shift, who is unhappy he must be disciplined, if there are guns on board? What does captain do with crew who decides they want to take cargo for themselves and mutiny? What if man cannot stand argument with shipmate and wants to fight with gun? These are not first-time questions here in twenty-first century, you understand? These are asked by captains for many centuries.”

The elevator arrived at A deck. Grisha led them into a long wood-paneled hall without windows. The floors had been mopped spotless; every shiny surface gleamed under fluorescent lights. Captain Drozdov ran a spick-and-span ship.

Leading them to the infirmary, the mate continued, “As for pirates, listen. If we shoot at them with rifles, they will come with cannons. If we use cannons, they will use missiles. If we kill one, they will kill two. Who would want to get into bidding war with such people? We are merchant sailors. We train for seas, not guns.”

LB asked, “What about the warships?”

“Yes, if there
is time to call. But understand, countries with warships in the Gulf of Aden are not coordinated. They meet once a month in hotel in Bahrain, they cooperate through online chat room. This is not proper approach to pirates.”

Jamie spoke up. “So hire guards instead. Like Bojan.”

Grisha stopped in the hall to shake a pudgy finger.

“And what will you do with Bojan when your ship wants to enter waters of a nation that does not allow guns into their harbor? This is commercial vessel. That port is closed to us. I tell you, around the world every maritime nation has different rulebook. For guns, you would pass these nations by? You make no money this way, young man.”

Grisha moved down the hall. He spoke over his shoulder, wanting to finish his thought on the matter. “I will be glad to put them off my ship when we arrive.”

The first mate halted at a door marked by a red cross against a white field, the infirmary. With a hand on the knob, he paused.

“But today I am going twelve knots on a broken ship. In these devil’s waters I must be glad to have the guns of Bojan. The pirates, they make people crazy. They have made Anatoly Drozdov crazy.” The first mate stopped himself from saying more about his captain. He cracked the infirmary door. “And I am glad to have you here for these two hurt boys.
Spasibo
. Now, before we enter.”

“Yeah.”

“I am not doctor. I am sailor. You understand?”

LB rolled his med ruck off his shoulders. “No worries. Let’s see what we got.”

With Jamie at his back, LB entered the small sickbay. He did not recoil at the smell of urine because he expected it.

Grisha raised his hands. “I am sorry.” He flustered quickly with the apology. “They cannot control. I cannot—”

“Hey, Grisha. It’s all right. We got this. Listen to me. Either of these guys got allergies to drugs?”

“I have checked
records. They do not.”

“Good. Now, can you find some disinfectant?”

“Of course.”

“We’ll take a look at your boys. You start mopping. Okay?”

The first mate hurried out to fetch a bucket and mop, uttering again that he was sorry.

The infirmary held two beds. On the closest lay a smallish man in a T-shirt. Straps held him down to a stiff board, tightened across his forehead, chest, waist, and legs. A foam brace circled his neck. A sour-smelling sheet covered him below the waist. LB moved to his bedside, standing without care in urine that had dribbled there. The seaman grimaced, raising one arm off his chest to take LB’s hand. LB squeezed to say he had arrived and there was to be no shame in this room.

Jamie stepped to the second bed, where a young man, the cadet, moaned. The boy had been stripped; his torso and right leg were swaddled in white gauze bandages. The skin left bare had flushed a fevered pink. The boy’s rib cage rose and fell in a fast pant. Around his scalded mouth and brow, bubbled flesh wept. Jamie waved a hand over the boy’s bandages, as foul with urine as the engineer’s sheet and the infirmary floor. The young PJ dug into his med ruck for rubber gloves to start peeling away the cadet’s gauze.

Jamie checked the IV in the cadet’s arm. He’d been plugged into a bag of saline. The bag was empty, the burns were thirsty.

LB let go the engineer’s hand with a pat on his chest. “You’ll be okay, pal. Hang on, I gotta do something for you here.”

He opened his ruck to withdraw the catheters he’d stashed. As soon as he’d heard the victims had suffered paralysis and burns, LB knew that neither man would be able to hold his water. The engineer couldn’t sense anything below the waist, and the cadet was in so much pain he couldn’t stay conscious.

Jamie unwrapped all the cadet’s bandages. He stuffed them, the cadet’s sheet, and their stench into a trash bag. The boy’s skin glistened
with fluids weeping out of his tissues, as the cells of his body tried to cool themselves.

LB handed Jamie one of the catheters, then set to work on the engineer. The insertion went quickly; The man couldn’t feel a thing he was doing. LB slid the small sterile tube into the engineer’s penis, threading the tube deeper into the urethra until urine flowed. This meant he’d reached the bladder. A quick injection of fluid swelled the inserted end to hold it in place. LB hooked the plastic collection bag to the bed, and it was done.

Right behind him, Jamie finished with the cadet.

The first mate returned with a mop and a bucket slopping with sudsy water. The pungency of the bleach added to the urine stench.

“Prop the door open,” LB told him.

Grisha did so, then began to mop.

“That is Nikita. He is dear friend. When piston blew he was thrown against railing. Broken back. Broken rib. The rib causes him pain.”

Nikita whispered something in Russian. LB bent closer. The sailor cleared his throat, then repeated himself. He could not turn his immobilized head.

“
Chyort
.” Damn.

LB asked Grisha, “What’ve you given him?”

“What I have. Fluids. Morphine.”

“How often with the morphine?”

“Every hour when I check on him.”

“He needs to be checked every ten to fifteen.”

LB moved next to the bed. He leaned over so Nikita could see his face.

“Nikita. Buddy, how you feeling?”

“Like
blyadischa
. Tired whore. Nothing in the legs.”

LB patted the engineer’s shoulder. “That’s funny. Good. Now listen to me. You might have a broken spine. You might not. Maybe what you have is some bad swelling in your back, a couple of bruised
vertebrae pressing on your nerves. That could be where the paralysis is coming from. We’re gonna hook you up to a high-dose anti-inflammatory, see if we can get the swelling down. That might help. You’ll be at the hospital in Djibouti in two more days. Can you stay calm?”

“Could you?”

LB moved his eyes directly above the sailor’s. “If I had someone as good as me looking me over? Yeah.”

Frightened Nikita tried not to be amused. “Americans.”

Together with Grisha and Jamie, LB pulled the damp sheet from beneath the engineer, then stuffed it into the garbage bag. Grisha found clean linens to lay over Nikita, then returned to his mop.

LB joined Jamie beside the cadet. Together they wrapped fresh bandages over his burns, tenderly lifting the boy’s limbs. The cadet’s face twisted with every movement, eyes sputtered open, lapsing in and out of awareness. His breathing came in fits between groans from his blistered mouth. Fingers clenched at nothing and released.

LB curled a finger for Grisha to stop mopping and come beside the bandaged cadet. Jamie stacked bags of Solu-Medrol and set out vials of morphine.

LB laid a hand across the cadet’s unwrapped forearm. The boy’s temperature felt dangerously high. At the end of the tube in his arm, the liter bag of saline hung empty.

Barely audible, Grisha said, “His name is Alek.”

“You check on him every hour, too?”

Grisha recoiled at LB’s tone. “Yes.”

LB took down the drained IV bag. “Well,” he said, not looking at Grisha, “Alek is dying. His kidneys are shutting down from lack of fluids. You see these bubbles?” He circled a quick finger around the cadet’s mouth, cheek, and brow. “He’s got these over half his body. He’s using up all his water. We’ve got to stay ahead of what he’s doing. If he runs dry, his kidneys shut down and he’s dead.”

LB guessed the
cadet’s weight at about 170 pounds.

“He gets a liter of saline every twenty minutes until he stabilizes. Then eight liters over the next ten hours. You got this kid on the same morphine schedule? Every hour?”

“Yes.”

LB pulled from his ruck one of the vials of fentanyl, stronger than morphine. This needed to be injected every thirty to sixty minutes instead of the morphine’s five to ten. LB drew a few cc’s of fentanyl into a syringe and pushed the needle into the port of the IV line, slowly injecting the painkiller. In moments, the kid’s unconscious clenching relaxed, his muttering quieted.

LB drew the four-inch knife from his leg sheath. He slit one of the saline bags and handed it to Grisha.

“Every hour, you check his bandages. Make sure they stay wet. Pour nothing but sterile solution on them.”

Grisha grew red-faced, and glistens rimmed his eyes. Carefully, he sprinkled fluid over the fresh gauze wraps. He was ashamed to have done such a poor job as medical officer for his shipmates.

LB eased off. Grisha had done the best he could with his first-aid training. He’d called for help. That call had probably saved the kid’s life. Maybe they’d get lucky and the steroids would take some pressure off the engineer’s spine, put some feeling back in his legs.

Just like Grisha had said, these were sailors, not medical men, not soldiers. No reason to get mad at the guy. Grisha was already kicking himself pretty good. LB drew his first deep breath since entering the infirmary. His hope for these two patients, his patience for Grisha, sweetened on the odor of disinfectant.

“Hey. You did great. They’re gonna be fine.”

The stricken mate nodded without looking up from the chore. “I will stay.”

“All right. You know what to do.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Please inform the captain what you have told me.”

LB and Jamie emptied their rucks of
saline, painkiller, and Solu-Medrol. Heading for the door, LB passed the strapped-down engineer. He rapped an easy fist on the sailor’s chest.

“I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

Nikita raised a backhand as if to slap at LB. He muttered, “
Idi na khui
.”

LB replied, “
Idi nyuhai plavki
.”

In the hall, Jamie asked, “What was that?”

“He told me to go to the penis. I told him to go smell underwear. I’ve rescued a few Russians. Love how they curse.”

“I mean, why’d you say you’d be back?”

“C’mon.”

The two rode the elevator up to F deck. They climbed the stairwell into the cold bridge. Captain Drozdov and Iris sat where LB had left them, in the chairs facing the windshield and controls. Drozdov was in deep conversation with a graying, lanky man. Iris listened intently. Outside the starboard windows, keeping a steady distance,
Detroit 1
and
2
waited for word from LB.

The man between Drozdov and Iris spoke with his hands, drawing circles and little explosions in the air. Noticing the PJs near, he lowered his arms, snapped into a shallow, military bow. Before he opened his mouth, LB had recognized the training and discipline of an old-school Soviet.

“Gentlemen. I am Chief Engineer Razvan Utva. How much damage has my engine done to those two?”

LB let Jamie make the report. Both patients were stable for now. Nikita was on a strong anti-inflammatory; the cadet was getting a heavy regimen of fluids. The first mate would stay with them in the infirmary for now.