“Hoe weet ek dat jy nie een van hulle?” said the man back. I finally recognized the accent.
“It’s Marius!” I said and clapped my hands.
Asher broke into a grin. “I believe we met once, outside the medical bay. ”
There was a staticky pause. “So your girlfriend found you at last?”
“Yes. What’s going on out there? Stay in Afrikaans so they won’t translate you. ”
There was another, longer burst of Afrikaans, as Asher nodded.
I didn’t know what Marius was saying, but I recognized some names. Jorge—I was so glad he was all right—and Kate.
Asher let go of the button to address us again. “He says they’re trying to get to the lifeboat deck, but they’re scared of the gunmen. They’re getting ready to make a run for it. ”
I nodded. “Then so should we. ”
“Hello?” came in another voice, with another accent, shouted over mechanical background noise. I tensed.
“Hello?” Asher answered back, with the same accented English.
“Naririnig mo ba ako! May mga lalake dito na may hawak na baril! Tulungan niyo kami!”
I didn’t know what they were saying, but Asher’s expression turned dark, and he asked a series of fast questions.
“Mga trabahador kami sa ibaba ng barko, dito kami sa baba, malapit sa lugar ng makina. Bilis!”
“What language is that?” Rory asked.
Asher let go of the TALK button. “Tagalog. He’s one of the fish in the engine room—the workers who live belowdecks. ”
“Tell them about the guns—”
“They already know,” Asher cut in. He pressed the button back down and asked what sounded like questions. His eyes narrowed at their fast response and asked them another question in turn. “Ano ang itsura ng nilalagay nila? Nakikita mo ba?”
“Mukhang gam! Isang malaking gam!” came the response, followed by a gun report.
“What’s he saying?” Claire demanded.
“He sees gum. ” Asher rocked back, lowering the radio. “They’re putting plastic explosives on the walls. ”
Hal groaned. “They want to breach the hull. ”
“But if they
do that—” I said in a whisper.
“We’ll all die,” Rory finished for me.
Asher held the radio up again and asked another question. “May naiisip ka bang paraan para mapatigil siya?”
“Bahagi siya ng isang pares. Tinututukan siya ng baril ng isang lalake. Natakasan lang namin yung isa dahil naubusan siya ng bala. ”
“Lost at sea’s no way to die—tell him to escape,” Hal suggested as Asher’s conversation went on.
“Subukin mo makarating sa ikatlong palapag. Subukin mong makatakas. ”
There was a bitter laugh on the other end of the line before another response.
“What’s he saying?” Emily asked me.
“I don’t know, honey,” I said, as Asher gave me a look that was both hapless and dismayed, clicking off the line definitively.
“He’s injured, a bullet shattered his leg. They took down one gunman, but one remains,” he said.
“We have to stop them,” I said, and Hal nodded agreement.
Asher took a measured breath and shook his head. “No, we don’t. What we need to do is get off this boat. We get to the third deck, and then we get the hell out of here—”
“But there’s still people alive on board. Not just the ones we talked to on the radio—we have to try to warn them. If this ship is going down, we have to,” I protested.
He paused, and I could tell he was choosing his next words carefully for my sake. “I can’t see any possible way this will work. ” I didn’t know whether him being willing to leave everyone else to die was instinct, fear, or love—or maybe all three. Even worse, I knew he was right. But—
“Mercenaries don’t sign on for suicide missions. ” Hal interrupted my thoughts. “Unless somehow those are government guns, those men think they’re getting off this boat alive. And if they’ve got time to get off, we’ve got time to stop them. ”