Ahead I spotted a high barbed-wire fence with a gate leading out.
Padlocked.
To my right, a metal door opened from the side of the building and a man emerged. Probably an employee working on the Pirates ride. I found my wallet and held it up like a cop would, displaying credentials.
“Malone, from Human Resources,” I said, as I brushed past. Then I stopped, reached back, and grabbed the inside handle.
“Where are you going?” he asked me.
“To fire someone.”
I closed the door.
Outside I’d noticed that there was no way to get inside without a key card passing through an electronic reader. I could only hope that the guy I’d just bamboozled wouldn’t open it for Oliver and Jansen.
I stood inside a lighted, air-conditioned room that held a long metal table with chairs around it. On the wall hung a schematic of the building showing the waterways that wound through the interior carrying visitors on their way through Disney’s version of the 18th-century Caribbean. A whiteboard seemed to be for work assignments. I made a quick survey, spotted where I was currently standing, and plotted a route through the building to the nearest exit—which, to my delight, seemed outside the park’s fence.
Perfect.
I heard the door lever behind me being turned.
I rushed to the other exit and left.
The corridor beyond was dimly lined with a series of closed metal doors. From behind them I heard the murmur of a familiar song. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. I was apparently behind the scenes, in the attraction’s maintenance corridors, a quick way to get from one place to another without anyone knowing the better.
I hustled forward.
Rumblings came from the other side of the doors, which sounded like cannon fire, and kept repeating. The door I’d entered from behind me opened. Jansen appeared. He held a gun. I darted for the next door, yanked it open, and lunged through.
More cannon fire thundered.
A shot rang out.
The bullet pinged off the door as it slammed shut on its spring-loaded hinges. A short walkway led onto a galleon, complete with sails, masts, and rigging. The music rang louder. The source of the explosions became clear: cannons on the ship “firing” on the visitors’ boats passing by on the water below. More cannons returned fire, in a mock battle, from a fortress on the other side of the dark, cavernous space, each blast accompanied by a burst of flame. Explosions from beneath the water tossed geysers upward, creating cannonball breaches. Cool air simulated a brisk ocean breeze. A robotic captain on the ship led the assault, shouting threats while brandishing a sword. More animatronic figures created the illusion of an anxious crew. I looked around and could see there was no escape off the galleon. I moved to the railing and glanced over the side.
Only water below.
The door behind me opened.
I darted right and hid behind a cabin that rose from the deck. I peeked around the side and saw Jansen creeping across the walkway and onto the ship, gun in hand. I waited until he was on the deck then pounced, kicking the gun from his grasp. He whirled and cocked his right arm back, but before he could land a fist I planted my head into his chest. We hit the deck hard and rolled toward a row of animatronic crewmen who faced toward the water. Electrical cables snaked a path across the deck, out of sight to anyone not on the galleon, and I wondered about the voltage.
We rolled, tight in each other’s grasp.
I shoved Jansen off me.
He sprang to his feet.
More cannons fired.
I stood.
He egged me on, motioning toward himself with his upstretched fingers. “That all you got, Malone?”
He stood near the rail, beside the ship’s captain who was ordering the cannons to be fired at will toward the boats below. I decided to oblige Jansen and rushed toward him, burying my shoulder into his chest and wrapping my arms around him like a linebacker leveling a quarterback.
Momentum drove us forward and over the rail.
We fell.
The cannons extended out from the hull, readying themselves for another round. We plunged downward. Jansen led the way and his right rib cage slammed into one of the protruding barrels.
Then it “fired.”
Which was not all sound effects. Real flames erupted from the barrel’s end, probably thanks to propane.
Jansen screamed.
His body shielded me from the few seconds of heat, but I caught a little singe to my arms. We rebounded off and splashed into the water. My grip on Jansen released. The water was cold and only chest-deep. Jansen came to his feet and lunged for me, slipping his arm around my neck from behind in a lock vise. A boat passed by a few feet away, loaded with visitors.
The pressure increased.
He was strangling the breath out of me.
I jabbed my right elbow into his side, the one that had struck the cannon, hoping some damage had been done.
And it had.
He winced in pain.
His grip released enough for me to break his hold and shove him away. But Jansen knew how to handle himself. He pushed off the concrete bottom of the waterway and launched himself at me. I had twenty-plus years on him in age, but the guy could fight. The people in the boat were mesmerized by what was happening.
Cameras flashed.
To them we were an exciting live-action part of the show.
Jansen tried to swing a fist my way but I stopped the jab and planted one of my own, which only seemed to enrage him. I had already felt metal rails beneath the water, surely a track that guided the boats on a designated path through the attraction. Here it veered close to the galleon for the cannon attack, then swerved to the far side toward the fake fort.
Jansen was not backing off.
He kept coming.
Another boat emerged into the hall.
Looking back I’m not sure what happened, but something snapped inside me. Up to that moment in my life I had never intentionally harmed anyone with, as the law says, malice aforethought. But up to that point I had only been a lieutenant in the United States Navy and a lawyer for the Judge Advocate General’s corps. For less than two days I had been a special operative to the Justice Department. People had been continuously trying to hurt me, for one reason or another.
Enough was enough.
I pounced on Jansen and grabbed him by the throat. His arms came up in an attempt to shove me away. I brought my knee into his gut, the water cushioning the blow, but enough force remained to get his attention. He resisted, which sent us careening through the water.
I faced toward where the next boat was coming and could see it approaching, the people inside fixated on our brawl. The robotic captain in the galleon continued to yell orders for the cannons to fire at will.
And they did.
More thunder and fire erupted from the hull. Explosions from beneath the water shot up a few feet away, most likely pneumatic from compressed air. Jansen was not letting up. I could feel the metal track with my right foot. The boat kept comin
g toward us at a steady pace. I decided to use it to my advantage.
Ten feet away and closing.
Jansen’s eyes were filled with rage.
He’d come to kill me. No question.
Five feet.
I still had his throat in tight lock, which allowed me to swing him to the left just as the boat arrived, the mass and speed of the hull pounding into the back of Jansen’s head with a sickening thud.
The people glancing down were shocked.
One woman screamed.
I yanked Jansen back and let go.
He floated still in the water.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The boat passed.
People sitting at its stern stared back in astonishment. I left Jansen in the water. He was not my problem anymore. More boats appeared as I sloshed my way toward the far side. I hopped up to dry ground and found myself in a town square where a hapless soul had been captured and was being repeatedly dunked in a well as animatronic pirates kept asking him the location of the town’s treasure. I sought refuge behind the well and noticed that though it appeared solid, it was only foam board painted to seem like stone. At least I was out of sight from the boats.
My breathing was quick, short, and hard.
I willed myself to calm down.
The first wave of people who saw me and Jansen fall from the galleon would surely report a problem when they came to the end of the ride. Security would then come to investigate. But that wouldn’t be for a few more minutes and I really didn’t need the hassle of being arrested. I decided not to hang around and darted to my right into the buildings that backdropped the scene, hoping to find an exit door behind the fake town. The music continued to play and the lyrics were beginning to get on my nerves.
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
I hustled through an open archway and found a metal door leading out, similar to on the galleon. My breathing had calmed. My clothes dripped with water. I left the Caribbean and reentered another of the bland hallways, this one stretching left and right in a straight line. A stairway began its ascent a few feet to my right. I was deciding on which way to go when I heard movement from the left.