=== Fireland ===
Gerrit and I reached our yacht more than half an hour later, one of the worst distances I ever had to cross! I could not climb up from our boat as fast as I wanted, because of my leg; I really hated this, for the first time since I got this damned injury 15 years ago! Finally on the deck, I nearly stumbled over the corpse of one of my crewmen. Shot. So the option this could've been an accident, was out of question. This had been an attack! Pirates, I mused… I called after Rosa and my other children, however got no answer. I turned around and shouted in Gerrit's direction: "Hide over there and stay put!" I didn't bother to wait for his answer, hoping he would have grasped the sincerity of this situation by his own. I hurried to the bridge. Smoke vented out and let me cough. It smelled after burned plastic and hot metal. In the door lay the skipper and next to him one of the fucking attackers, shot too. Obviously Sergei, ex-Russian military whom I had hired as navigator, had put up a good fight. I stepped over the bodies, reaching out for the extinguisher. They had fired on the panels and destroyed all electronic equipment, in consequence some of the wall panels, the wooden floor and the adjacent storage room had caught fire. The flames on the bridge were under control soon, but the storage area was another subject. There were a lot of flammable substances. I threw my jacket away, grabbed the second extinguisher and kicked the door. The heat was immense. For a moment, I could only wince back. Then I raised my left arm to protect my face a bit and operated the extinguisher single-handed, until I had won some ground.
…
The bridge area cleared, I ran in the direction of our living quarters. On the way I encountered the rest of my crew dead as well. Still there was no sign of my wife and children, though. This let me hope, even if another bad feeling grew inside me. My gun at the ready, I entered the kitchen. Traces of blood were on the floor and on the table; Maartie's blue blanket crumpled in a corner. Smashed dishes with rests of food, in between a toy car. Looking around I discovered a machine-written paper, nailed on the wall with a knife.
I HAVE YOUR FAMILY – THEY WILL SUFFER IF YOU DON'T COMPLY – CONTACT ME IN PUERTO SORO, CALLE CATERINA 15 IN 2 DAYS.
I stared at the paper.
Something clicked as if a switch had been flipped inside me. … And everything was back, everything I once was. The past years extinguished like the flames above in the bridge. My family had been kidnapped. The heart I really had believed to be in my chest the past years, was ripped apart and shattered.
I stared at the paper.
"Whoever you are – you are a dead man", I promised towards the ultimatum at the wall. No one would harm my family and get away alive!
…
A low scratching sound made me advance through the hatch down in the apartment below. In front of the barrel of my gun, I discovered a frightened, injured man. He was bleeding from a wound in his right shoulder. Perhaps Rosa had incapacitated him in trying to defend the family, and his comrades had left thinking him dead. Excellent!
Judging from his reaction, the bastard knew who I was. "Please… I didn't want… I was just-" The words ended in a gurgling, coughing sound, when I hit him. "Ah… kill me… just kill me…" he whimpered.
"Not yet." I dragged him upwards and pushed him against the glass front of the sideboard. The glass shattered and more blood decorated his cloths. "Whereto did they bring my wife and children? Answer me!" I shoved him back into the shards. "Answer and you'll have a quick death!"
"I.. I… ah… please… don't know… please…stop…"
"You know what I hate?" I pressed him firmer into the glass. "Whining scum like you! – Where is my family? And who is behind this?" He blacked out. But I wouldn't allow him to sneak away that easily! A moment later, I had emptied a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen over him, and then kicked him awake.
"Hello, old friend. Nice to meet again, right? You know what this smell is? And you recognize this one too?" I tossed my lighter in the air and caught it again. "I can let you suffer until you go to fucking hell! Believe me; your last moments will be more painful than you ever have thought possible!"
"You… can't do this, man!" He tried to crawl away panicking.
I held him back with a fast kick and switched the lighter. "What should me hinder? Compassion perhaps?"
"Please…nonono…"
"Stop whining. I might become a little nervous… It was a rough day, you know. I might let it fall just by accident. Of course I might feel better, if you tell me what I want to know…" I lowered my hand with the lighter until it was dangerously close.
"Thomas Harrington…" the man gasped now. "The name of the guy… who sent us… Thomas Harrington!"
I had never heard of this name, but this didn't matter. Perhaps a bounty hunter … "Where is my family?"
"In…Puerto Soro… more I do not know, please… Heard…Harrington speak of… of some railway depot…"
I finished his misery with a shot through his forehead.
=== Later on the yacht ===
My son looked incredulous at the green gold-printed passport in his hands, and eventually opened it. "George Jacobsen? What's that?"
"Your name. Don't look that surprised, Gerrit. You knew of the business I was involved in, you said. I had to make some arrangements for you and the others in case someday something happens to me." I never thought it possible they would get my family first… I closed the little safe with the different passports and other ID-cards and put it back in the hidden compartment. "…And this is the address you will contact after your arrival," I continued, handing him a paper.
"But that's South Africa! It's out in the sticks! I don't know anyone there!
"It's the only contact I have and I can trust."
"I don't even speak well enough this language, Dad!"
"It's not my fault you were lazy in your lessons. You will have time to catch up a bit the following weeks, until you show up officially."
Gerrit obviously didn't know how to react and vented his anger in throwing the passport down on the ground. "I'm fourteen! I'm not a stupid child!"
"Then stop acting like one." I turned my attention to the interior of the other compartment in the floor I had just opened. It held an assortment of different firearms, my special collection.
Gerrit stared wide-eyed. "Dad! Let's go and free them! With this stuff we'll ice the kidnappers, no problem! Just as-"
I looked at him again and finished: "You'll do JUST AS I said, Gerrit."
"But I can help you! I shoot pretty well, you taught me!"
"Yes, but not well enough!" I checked the first rifle. It was in perfect condition, as expected.
"This is not a little 'cops-and-robbers'-play. I will not discuss this with you. I bring you to Ushuaia, and you'll take the plane to Kapstadt tomorrow. I want you out of harm's way."
Some minutes passed in silence, only the faint metallic sound from the weapons-check could be heard. My son stood opposite to me at the wall and seemed to ponder if he should go in open confrontation with me. Behind his 'cool-guy'-façade, he was very uncertain and frightened, exactly a fourteen-year-old child and not a man like he thought to be. I hoped it could stay that way … but I was not sure. If things went wrong, Gerrit's childhood days were over much sooner than planned.
…
Later the night we drove over the rocky and pitch black road leading alongside the coast. Gerrit sat next to me and was still very silent, tired and terrified. Again and again he took the passport and the other papers I gave him out of his little backpack and browsed in them as if to memorize everything. "Do you think they'll kill Ma and the others?" he asked suddenly.
"They won't go that far," I answered.
"You lie."
The words came plain and despising; I hadn't anything to put on the scale against. "Of course I lied," I answered, burying every attempt to make it easier for him. "What you would've said to your son?"
"Don't know! The fucking truth!" He shouted again. His anger had only gathered for the eruption, it seemed.
Hell, what had I expected?! He was my son – and I had hated it just as much being pampered with lies when I was at his age!
"You dump me off in a plane to people I never have seen before! And what if you don't cope with these kidnappers? What if they kill Ma and Teresa and Maria and Samuel and Maartie and EVEN YOU?! I don't wanna be all alone and not even know what happens to all of you! Without DOING ANYTHING! Perhaps sitting in a school?!"
"Gerrit!"
"Why did you get kids anyway?! You think SHIT of us! Only think after yourself!"
"Gerrit, it's enough!" With a harsh turn, I parked our Landrover at the side of the road.
"You will listen now, listen to the truth, because I have no time to repeat myself! Clear? – Perhaps I should've stayed away from socializing and family-business. But the term to muse about this subject is gone. I HAVE a family and you are a part of it! I do not know what happens the next hours or days. I do not know who my opponents are, how well they are equipped and what they want. They could want a lot of things, among them plain and simply to hurt people. They could kill one of your sisters or brothers just to have a little fun in their boring existence. Believe me; I KNOW men are capable of doing this! Perhaps they are already dead. But until I know for sure, I'll try everything to get them free alive! I'm well armed, and I kept up my training during the last years. I'm still a very good sharpshooter. However… they'll perhaps easily outmatch me in hand to hand combat, because of this damned leg. So, my chances to survive are perhaps 70 to 40. It does look bad, but I had worst scenarios! And they WILL have to put something in motion to stop me, they will... "
I sensed the cold determination filling me. I looked into my son's eyes. "I can't promise you anything, Gerrit. But I need you to trust me. And I need to be able to trust you, that you won't do anything stupid!"
He nodded very reluctant and slowly, but said nothing. I embraced him for a moment, and surprisingly, my rebellious son let it happen without complaining about "lil' kid's stuff".
=== Meanwhile / Puerto Soro ===
Chance Boudreaux gazed over the pier and threw his empty beer can away. There was trash everywhere, anyway. Harrington and the others weren't back yet with their bounty. He didn't trust this man. He was a slimy, greedy asshole, expelled from his job in the police because of some fraud committed with internal funds. Well, Chances opinion of the police was not very high! What said the judge during his trial? Why you haven't let the police handle the situation, Mr. Boudreaux, he remembered, and: We are not in the Wild-West anymore, in case you haven't noticed. The time for self-justice is over. Here we have law and order.
He spit on the ground. Law and order?! Fucking bullshit! Where the police had been while these hunters shot on homeless people like rabbits?! And the judge had turned out to be one of Emile Fouchon's friends, who couldn't believe this aristocratic man was a cold-blooded killer… Ha, law and order! Greatest bullshit ever!
But now he was here… to put things right… a little at least…
It had been on an amateur holiday video filmed in Hongkong, where Harrington had discovered Van Cleaf's face first, 8 years ago. From then on he had glued at him like some mad stalker, spending hours searching and watching youtube stuff and made phone calls to local people all around the world. Until he thought to have sufficient proof to send someone after him for closer surveillance. This went wrong. The man had disappeared, either silenced by a bullet from Van Cleaf, or because he simply had decided to have a good life with Harringtons money instead of chasing a high-prized killer on the run! Whatever the case might have been – Harrington stole money, lost his job and landed on the street. But his determination only grew stronger; it was getting close to an obsession…
Why did Harrington chose him into his team, Boudreaux pondered again. The question bothered him. The other man was certainly not of the "lets-give-the-poor-ex-con-a-new-chance"- Charity-folks! Ok, he might still be a good fighter; he had won some unofficial kickboxing-contests in the jail… But there were a lot of eager younger fighters on the streets these days! Boudreaux suppressed the thought like before. It shouldn't matter.
As long as he got an opportunity to finally floor this bastard Van Cleaf! A cruel killer was one thing – Chance had met some of them in jail, and the judge at his trial thought HIM to be one. But a man who had murdered with such a happy smile… NO, this was mad, freaky, disgusting! He missed the right word.
How the fuck Van Cleaf COULD survive?! I fired at least seven shots on him from close distance!!! No one can survive that!
Noise from the pier let Boudreaux wake up from these musings. It looked as if Harrington and the others were back! Fine! He stood up, took the flashlight and walked towards them. It were a lot more persons, he discerned by now, and the voices – children?! Shortly after, the light of his lamp flooded into the ones of Harringtons men. And in between them, it showed the figure of a woman with a baby in her arms, two obviously frightened girls and another child, perhaps six or seven years old.
"What's this?" Chance asked, and couldn't hide his anger very well. "Thought you'll get Van Cleaf and not a kindergarten!"
"Slight change of plan. – SHUT UP!" Harrington grabbed the older of the girls at her hair. "Or I give you a real reason to cry!"
"Leave her alone!" the woman hissed and got hit herself, before Harrington turned his attention to Boudreaux again. "Van Cleaf wasn't there. So we took his whore instead. Do you have a problem or what?"
"Thought you had his detailed schedule?!"
"Am I on trial here?! Just move your ass and help me with these!"
=== Next Day / Ushuaia Airport ===
I had accompanied Gerrit to the check-in counter, waited if everything went along smoothly with his faked passport. Then I walked away without another word – what could have been said anyway? 'Have a nice trip'?! I thought to sense his glance in my back and piercing me. Of course this was an imagination. I did not turn around. I did not dare to do it, because my eyes burned. I realized how tired I was; we had been on the road the whole night. How tired and how close to loose my composure and give a pitiful display of weakness. This must not happen! I walked faster, out of the crowd, out of the hall. Outside I began feeling a little better. I leaned against one of the concrete pillars of the entrance hall and inhaled the cold air.
… "Mister? Do you feel alright?"
I startled and my hand was up in an instant, there where I had my gun under the coat. Only then I recognized a man from the Airport service personnel. "I'm fine," I answered. Yes, no doubt, I had to give an opposite impression right now! Contempt against myself swept up in me. What have you become? A soft, whiny, weak old man! Feeling lonely without your wife and kiddies! You thought to have forgotten nothing?! Oh you HAVE! And if you do not remember quickly, your family will pay the price...
I straightened and peeled away from the pillar. Emotion was something a man like me should not have, not too much, and certainly not under these circumstances. I repeated this the way back to the car and into the town. I waited for the words to form an armor around my mind.