Ted Bell - Warlord

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 for a minute or so.

"Okay, bring him up."

He popped to the surface, sputtering.

"Second question," Stoke said, bending over the rail. "Ready? Good. Another name that seemed to keep coming up in your electronic correspondence. A Sword of Allah bigwig code-named Scimitar. Tell me who he is and you can come back up."

"There is no God but God."

"Wrong answer. This time it's going to be a little tougher, okay, Ozzie?"

"What now?" Harry said. Stoke crossed back to the opposite port rail and untied his end of the line.

"We keelhaul him, that's what. There are two ways to do this. The bad way, and the really bad way."

"Talk to me."

"I'm going to pull him all the way under the boat's keel with my end of the line. Slowly. You feed me enough slack so that he just clears the bottom of the boat."

"And the really bad way?"

"You don't cut him any slack. That way, when I pull, he gets his ass bounced and scraped along about ten or twelve feet of really nasty, razor-sharp barnacles."

"Sounds unpleasant."

"Yeah. Do not try this one at home. Do it enough times and Ozzie won't have much skin left. First time, give him slack. We'll see what happens."

Stoke pulled on his end. The imam went down and disappeared under the boat on Harry's side, Brock feeding Stoke line. Stoke took his time reeling him in, looking at the sweep second hand on his watch, waiting to see the little bastard reappear in the water just below him.

He brought him up, sputtering and cursing.

"I'm going to wait until you finish throwing up all that seawater and ask you again. I don't want to alarm you, but all that splashing you're doing attracts sharks. Ready? Two names. Smith. And Scimitar."

"There is no God but-" He disappeared beneath the waves before he got it all out.

"Haul him back under, Harry. No slack this time."

"Fast or slow?"

"What do you think?"

Brock started slowly hauling away, singing a few bars of "Barnacle Bill, the Sailor."

THEY HAULED HIM ABOARD AND STRETCHED him out on the teak foredeck. He was pretty bloody and chopped up from the barnacles. And, by the time Stoke reeled him in, the imam had experienced the thrill of ravenous sharks nipping at his heels because of all the blood in the water. Even now the sharks were circling the boat, looking for fresh meat. "Called keelhauling, Ozzie," Stoke said, "predates the Geneva Conventions by four hundred years. It's a bitch, ain't it?"

Stoke now took the freshwater wash-down hose and cleaned him up a little. Then they took him aft and sat him in the big chrome fishing chair. The imam sat there like a dazed and bloodied Neptune on his nautical throne, staring into space, his protruding eyes wide with real terror.

He now realized these two animals were capable of anything. This was not quite true, Stoke thought, but it was definitely the right impression to convey under the circumstances.

Stoke popped a cold Diet Coke snatched from the big cooler full of ice and underhanded Harry a frosty Bud. Both men sat on the gunwales and sipped their drinks, content to watch the dolphins play and let the imam think things over before they went back to work on him. About ten minutes later, having duly considered his situation, Ozzie started singing like a canary on crack.

"Smith," he croaked, his chin resting on his chest.

"Yeah, what about him?" Stoke said, looking up.

"Englishman. In Afghanistan."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's this Englishman doing in Afghanistan?"

"Assassination."

Stoke stood up and pulled a black leather notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket, then walked over and lifted the guy's chin up with his beard.