Alex Archer - Serpent's Kiss

Without a word, Goraksh nodded. He kicked off his shoes and clambered over the ship’s side with the rest of the boarding crew.

U NDER THE HOT SUN , Goraksh held the battery-operated saw and worked quickly. He’d paired up with Karam, one of his father’s oldest crew. The man was emaciated by age and alcoholism. His gray beard showed stark against his dark skin. Old scars inscribed leathery worms against his features.

The saw jumped and jerked in Goraksh’s hands as he held it to the task. The blade chewed through the wooden hull and threw out a constant spray of splinters. He remained aware throughout of the ship’s erratic movement in the water.

Finally, when he had a square cut that measured a yard to a side, Goraksh pulled the saw back and stomped his foot on the square. The section dropped down into the hold. Goraksh heard it hit water only a short distance down.

“There’s water in the hold,” Karam called across to the other ship.

Rajiv leaned on the railing. “Find out what else is down there.”

Karam nodded.

“Goraksh,” Rajiv called. “You’ll go inside.”

For a moment Goraksh thought of disobeying his father’s order. His father knew he had a fear of enclosed, dark places.

“She’s the Bombay Goose, ” Rajiv said. “I checked her manifest.”

Goraksh knew his father paid someone off in the customs house for ships’ manifests.

“She’s carrying electronics,” his father continued. “Computers, DVD players. Those will sell nicely on the black market.”

They’re probably all destroyed, Goraksh thought. But he knew better than to point that out to his father. Rajiv Shivaji always believed good things would happen to him.

Rajiv looked over his shoulder and shouted for the scuba gear to be brought up from the hold.

Karam caught Goraksh’s eye and spoke in a low voice. “Go slowly, boy. Everything will be all right if you just go slowly.”

Goraksh nodded but he didn’t believe it. He didn’t think for a moment that the crew had gotten off the ship in time. He only hoped that they’d all been lost to the sea.

W ITH THE AQUALUNG STRAPPED to his back and an underwater floodlight in one hand, Goraksh dropped into the ship’s hold through the hole he’d cut. He was in total blackness except for what little light entered the hold through the cut-away hole.

He stayed submerged for a moment and blew into his face mask to equalize the pressure. Then he shone the floodlight around the hold. Boxes lay on what had been the hold’s ceiling or floated in the water. The air pocket between the hull and the waterline was less than three feet deep.

Goraksh didn’t know what was keeping the cargo ship afloat. Thinking like that made him nervous, though. If the ship suddenly went down, the sea bottom was nearly a half mile down. If he didn’t get out quickly enough, it would take him with it.

Don’t think about that, he instructed himself. Get the job done.

He surfaced and shone the floodlight up at Karam. “Send down the net.”

Karam nodded and dropped the cargo net down. Other members of the crew used battery-operated saws to widen the hole in the hull.

Goraksh grabbed a fistful of the rough hemp strands and pulled the net under with him. He selected a crate at random and wrapped the net over it. Then he yanked on the rope to signal Karam and the others to haul it out of the hold.

An arm settled around Goraksh’s neck and shoulder. Fear ripped through him as he flailed in the water with his free hand to turn around. He aimed the floodlight behind him and instinctively centered it on the figure.

The dead man’s mouth and eyes were open. Yellowed eyes and yellow, crooked teeth showed.

That was all Goraksh noticed before he screamed in terror and tried to swim backward. The respirator dropped from his lips and his face slammed into a suspended crate hard enough to almost knock him out. He swallowed seawater as he tried to breathe, then remembered he was underwater.

Fighting the panic that filled him, unable to get the dead man’s face out of his mind, Goraksh dropped the floodlight and used both hands to shove crates away from him so he could reach the surface. He pushed off on a floating crate and got enough lift to reach the edge of the hole that had been cut in the hold.

Sick, barely able to breathe because of his fear of dead things and the seawater he’d swallowed, Goraksh hauled himself out of the hold. He couldn’t stand and ended up on all fours as he retched out the seawater.

When his stomach finally settled, Goraksh felt drained and embarrassed. He forced himself to his feet and stood on shaky legs amid the mess he’d made.

“Are you through shaming me?” his father roared from the other ship.

Goraksh faced his father and intended to speak roughly, as a man would do. But his words were soft and without direction.

“The crew went down with the ship,” he said.

“Good. Then maybe they didn’t have time to call in this location,” his father said. “Maybe we’ll have more time to work.”

Even after all the years he’d lived with the man, Goraksh couldn’t believe how callous he was. Rajiv had brought Goraksh along on the pirating expeditions after storms for eight of his twenty years. During the past four, Goraksh had been expected to take part in stealing whatever cargo they could salvage.

Finding the illegal salvage was one thing, but getting away with it was quite another. The Indian navy and merchant marine, the British navy and the International Maritime Bureau, were all problems. Rajiv Shivaji considered those risks a part of doing business.

Goraksh recognized them as an end to the life he wanted. His father was a pirate. Rajiv Shivaji carried on an old family enterprise. Goraksh never romanticized the nature of what his father did.

But if Goraksh was ever caught doing his father’s business, he knew his dream future was forfeit. Still, he loved his father. After his mother had died, his father had raised him and had never taken another wife. It had only been the two of them.

If Goraksh was ever to be asked if he feared or loved his father more, though, Goraksh didn’t know what his answer would be.

K ARAM USED a crowbar to open the crate Goraksh had selected from those in the flooded hold. Water, foam peanuts and boxes of iPods spilled out across the ship’s hull.

“They’re ruined,” Rajiv snarled. “Go below and find something salvageable.”

Goraksh put the respirator back in his mouth and dived back into the hold. He recovered his floodlight and tried not to look at the dead man floating amid the boxes. Then he found two more.

He bagged more crates and sent them up. During the time he waited for the net to be sent back down, he scouted the hold. Two hatches, one at either end, normally allowed access to the upper decks. Both of them had jammed.

If there was anything in the crew’s quarters, they wouldn’t be able to get to it without cutting through the floor or forcing the hatches. Goraksh hoped his father wouldn’t demand that. Doing either of those things might upset the equilibrium of the ship.

Even now he truly believed the ship had sunk lower in the water. He reached the opening they’d created more easily.

Pounding echoed throughout the hold. Goraksh felt as though he were trapped in a gigantic drum. He netted a final crate, thinking his efforts were going to be as wasted as the other times. He surfaced.

Karam leaned down into the hold. He cupped one hand around his mouth to be heard over the sound of the sea against the hull. “Your father wants to leave.”

“All right,” Goraksh responded. He swam through the maze of boxes to the opening and wondered what had made his father change his mind. Not even the fact that they’d only pulled up ruined electronics in over a dozen attempts would have made Rajiv Shivaji give up on the hope of turning a profit.