Episode 7: Here Ye Be Pirates
Part 7
Nick groaned when he recognized the four letters painted on the side of the helicopters. They were the same letters that had been stamped on the top-secret file he’d stolen in Antarctica.
“Shitballs,” he muttered to himself, casting a wary eye at Drums, who slumped against the mast, looking ready to slide off his perch at any moment. He had managed to wrap his gushing stump in his shirt, one-handed, and was cradling it to his chest. Blood had soaked through the makeshift tourniquet. Drums’s whole body trembled violently as he wept and moaned in agony. His complexion was the color of fireplace ashes.
Nick knew he could finish Drums off once and for all, right here, right now, before any more of his FANS cronies arrived in the helicopters to rescue him. A mere tap would be enough to topple him off the yard. The fall would kill him instantly, and retribution for Shazam’s death (ironically, also from a fall) would be served.
But he couldn’t do it. Staring at his former ally with a mix of pity, guilt, and revulsion, Nick knew that he could not kill Drums. Not today, at least. He’d done enough already. The way the stump was bleeding, he might have killed him already and just didn’t know it yet.
He looked up and saw the helicopters looming closer, beginning to lose altitude and circle the ship. While he would not kill Drums, he would also not stay to be captured himself. Nick watched as the first helicopter dropped a ladder into the ocean and rose moments later with Dr. Rough clinging to the bottom, and he had an idea.
With his sword, he slashed one of the thick ropes tying the sails to the mast. He sheathed his blade, looked once more at Drums, then grabbed the rope and jumped. Down he swung, out and over the deck, while the helicopters descended upon Drums.
It was a hard landing, the swinging momentum carrying him forward even once his feet touched the deck. He would have fallen flat on his face, had someone else not been in his way. As it was, he crashed face-first into another man, their foreheads knocked together, and Nick ricocheted back to land on his ass.
“Ow!” moaned Nick, his ass throbbing.
“Ow!” complained the other, rubbing his forehead.
They looked at each other, and Nick found his eyes locked with a pair of bright, blue eyes that seemed out of place in a dark-complexioned face framed by shaggy, black hair. “You!” he cried with surprise, intuiting the identity of the man he knew only by their shared surname, Mendez. “You’re Aly’s brother.”
The dark features were instantly guarded. “How do you know Aly?” he asked suspiciously.
“Doesn’t matter. What does is that-”
Before Nick could finish, the sound of his name interrupted him. “Carter! Hey! 00Carter!” He turned and saw Emerald running right through pirate pandemonium to get to him. By the time she reached him, she was out of breath. “We gotta go. Now,” she panted, grabbing him roughly by the arm. “Jay’s waiting.”
“What? Well, wait, what about… I mean, don’t we wanna… you know… take some for questioning?”
“Questioning?” Mendez asked cagily. “Whoa, who are you, the cops?”
“Heh, you wish,” snickered Emerald. “The cops couldn’t get away with what we’re about to do.”
Nick stared at her. “What are we about to do?”
“We’re about to blow this joint. Literally.” Emerald giggled. “Let’s go, Carter.”
Nick looked at Mendez, who seemed poised to run, but not quite ready to commit to it yet. “You’re comin’ with us, you got that?” he said roughly. He reached towards his waist, where his pistol was stowed next to his pirate sword, not above threatening to get the man to comply.
Mendez nodded, and he followed Emerald as she led them to the ship’s port side, Nick covering them from behind. Nick looked over the rail, and there, bobbing in the water, was Jay in their inflatable raft. Emerald swiftly climbed over the rail.
“Hey, what happened to your dress, Avril?” Nick asked, finally noticing that her boy shorts peeked from beneath her tattered green dress. “Trying to go for a more ‘punk’ pirate look?”
“Oh, just wait. You’ll see,” Emerald replied with a serene smile. The smile was a mask, disguising some sort of hidden lunacy that left him mystified. She hoisted herself over the side of the ship and disappeared, dropping gracefully into the raft beside Jay.
Nick turned to Mendez. “You’re gonna get into the raft with us,” he said, slowly but firmly, making sure the other man understood. “They’re going to think we’re detaining you. When they’re not looking, I’ll slip you another raft, deflated. You can inflate it instantly when the time is right. I dunno what Emerald’s planning, but it sounds like something big, and when it happens, I want you to treat it like a diversion and bail. You got that? Bail. Jump out of the raft and disappear. Wait ‘til you’re alone, ‘til you’re out of sight, and then blow up the raft and get the hell out of here.”
“What? Are you serious, man?” Mendez stared at him as if he’d just grown a second head.
“I am, but no one is to ever know, you got that? I promised your sister I’d keep you out of harm’s way, and that’s a promise I’d like to keep. So do what I say, and don’t ask questions. When you get out of here, go back to the States and get a job. A real, honest job. Don’t keep dragging Aly into this shit. Don’t make her worry about you. You understand?”
Mendez nodded, then shook his head. “No, but… yeah. I… I dunno who you are or why you’re doing this, but yeah, man, I’ll go with it, alright?”
“You do that. Now go.”
Nick gave him a push, and Aly’s brother followed Emerald off the ship. A few seconds later, Nick splashed into the raft with them, and Jay started paddling.
“Hurry,” said Emerald, helping him. “We don’t have much time.”
They rowed away from the ship as, on the starboard side, something green and sinister slithered toward it.
***
From his perch in the doorway of the chopper, Dr. Rough oversaw the other helicopters as they dropped lines down to The Jolly Twitches. While Joey tended to Drums, he watched his minions fight off pirates as they climbed the ladders, abandoning the great ship. He hated to surrender, but they had not been able to overtake the pirates or their mechanical sea monster, and the fight was not worth losing all the minions in the organization he had built from the ground up.
Suddenly, something in the water caught his eye. From his vantage point high above the ocean, it looked like an animal bobbing among the waves. He narrowed his eyes. It was green, with a long tail that floated in the water. He could see the whites of its large eyes, perched cunningly atop its head.
Watching it make its way toward The Jolly Twitches, he had a sudden flash of a similar creature, gliding sinisterly through the water toward another pirate ship, forewarning those on board of its presence with its tick, tock, tick tock…
Dr. Rough began to hum then, a melody he hadn’t heard since childhood. “Da-da-dum, dum, dum… da-da-dum, dum, dum… da-da-dum, dum, da-da-da-da-dum, dum, dum…”
He bolted upright as the melody solidified in his mind, nearly launching himself out of the helicopter. “Minions!” he cried. “Miiiiinions! Climb from the ship! Climb from the ship!”
Abs, halfway up the nearest ladder, cocked his head in confusion, and Dr. Rough pointed frantically. “The croc! The croc!”
The crocodile had nearly reached The Jolly Twitches, and Dr. Rough knew what was about to happen a split second before it did. He clapped his hand over his face, and as he did, he both heard and felt the colossal explosion. Peeking down through his fingers, he shuddered as he watched his beautiful pirate ship ignite and heard the screams of the men still on board.
***
Nick and Jay stared at Emerald in astonishment as they watched the FANS ship go up in flames that quickly engulfed the nearby kraken, resulting in a second blast. The two men ducked instinctively, but Emerald had made sure they were safely out of range of the flying shrapnel coming from the kraken. She sat primly in the raft in her ragged dress, with that half-crazed, pleased smile on her face again.
“A bomb?” Nick finally managed to ask.
Emerald nodded proudly. “I got the idea from our Disney mission… from Peter Pan. You know the crocodile, with the clock inside? Yeah, well… this ticking clock was a bit more deadly.” She snickered.
Nick blinked. “And your dress?”
“Well, I had to make it look like a crocodile somehow!” She held up a scrap of her dress, running the green material through her fingers. “Purely for effect, you know.”
Nick and Jay merely stared at her. Emerald continued to smile as the two pirate vessels went down in flames in the distance.
“Hey,” she said after a moment, looking around. “Where’d our felon go?”
***
Dr. Rough wept as his ship went down. It was worse than the end of Titanic. His only consolation was that he had greater plans ahead. This was the end of his brief foray into piracy, but not the end of FANS’ reign of terror upon the world. Oh, no. Not even close to it.
“Are you ready to head back to the mainland, Dr. Rough?” Joey’s voice asked in his ears.
“I suppose,” Dr. Rough replied glumly, watching the surviving minions climb into the last of the helicopters. “How’s Drums?”
“Not good, but I think he’ll make it if we get him back soon. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Thanks to that wretched 00Carter,” grumbled Dr. Rough. “He shall pay for what he’s done to Drums. For what he’s done to us all. He’s foiled our plans for the last time!”
“We’ll get ‘im, boss,” Joey agreed.
Dr. Rough nodded, scooting back into the confines of the helicopter. But as he moved, something in the water caught his eye. It was not the crocodile, who was long gone; it had been a bomb, just as he’d suspected, and he had a feeling the HimTak agents were behind it.
Sure enough, there they were. They had gotten away, and as the helicopter started to move, he looked down on the three of them, bobbing along in a small life raft. His eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared. His eye twitched.
Leaning out of the chopper door, with tears of fury stinging his eyes, Dr. Rough bellowed, “I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, CARTER! NEXT TIME!”
***
“I’ll miss you too, Dr. Rough!” Nick shouted back towards the chopper as it faded into the skyline. Dr. Rough leaned out of it, clearly yelling, though none of his words could be heard by the HimTak agents as they sailed across the waves.
“Isn’t this a tranquil vision?” Emerald sighed. Nick’s eyes drifted towards the chaotic view.
“Exploding ships accompanied by shrieks of wannabe pirates and some freaky minions?” Nick questioned sarcastically. “Very soothing indeed. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon.”
“Speaking of wannabe pirates, where’s our felon?” Emerald darted her eyes from her masterpiece and scanned the choppy waters. “Couldn’t keep an eye on only one hostage, 008?”
Nick cringed at the snide comment. It was hard to keep his mouth shut while Emerald mocked him.
“I guess I couldn’t,” he said through clenched teeth. Though millions of answers that he could have possibly used as a comeback ran through his mind, he tried to keep his calm and remind himself that he did it for a friend, for a good cause.
He clenched his fists tightly and darted his eyes towards the remaining pieces of the pirate ship, avoiding making contact with Emerald’s baffled stare. Was it for a good cause, really?
“I can’t locate the boat.” Jay’s distressed voice drew Nick’s attention away from his conscience for a moment. He watched him typing vigorously on his PDA. Every button Jay pressed resulted in an annoying beep sound.
“What’s up with that?” Emerald piped up anxiously. “The boat’s gotta be around here somewhere, doesn’t it?”
“It should already be in our sight since I’ve sent out our coordinates to its tracking system–” Jay started.
“MAGIC TURTLES!” Nick poked Emerald in the ribs roughly, pointing out three rock-like shapes approaching them in the water. He got up on his feet in the raft, a little quicker than he’d intended to, which caused it to wobble dangerously. “I love Pearl, seriously.”
“Whoa, easy there!” Emerald held on to the sides of the raft tightly. “This ain’t a fucking trampoline! And what the heck is a magic turtle, anyway?!”
“A magic turtle is…” Jay stood and examined the three sea turtle-shaped devices that sailed on the calm ocean right next to the raft. “…a type of vehicle that is controlled via satellite. It — or in this case, they — follow us on our missions on the sea. When the ship is out of order, usually meaning it either goes down or blows up, the system sends out a message to their software that activates them and directly connects them to the device that’s been delineated prior to the mission. In this case, to my PDA. I was hoping we wouldn’t need to use these, but it looks like someone saw the boat and decided to abrogate it so we’d be stranded out in this mess.”
“Someone who knew we were here.” Nick eyed the direction that Dr. Rough’s helicopter had gone furiously. “FANS.”
“You sound like a huge dork, alright?” Emerald looked at Jay incredulously. Just when she thought she knew him inside out, he’d emerged with a totally different side. She chuckled. “Let’s cut to the chase and just go home. And more importantly, how are these funny sea turtles supposed to be any kind of a ride anyway?”
Folding his arms across his chest, Nick smiled proudly. “Show your magic, Jay.”
“With pleasure.” Jay engrossed his attention back to his PDA and typed some more.
In less than a couple of minutes, Emerald watched three sea turtles morph into three jet skis in front of her eyes, all fully set and ready to be ridden.
“Pearl is one hell of a genius bitch,” she spoke, bewildered.
“Indeed.” Jay nodded and moved forward to get on to the first one. “Let’s get the hell outta here, people.”
***