The Janson Option by Paul Garrison

Author:Paul Garrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers / General
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

ALLEGRA HELMS thought she heard the drones again.

Tarantula was cruising slowly in the dark, endlessly back and forth, a mile off the beach. The pirates heard them too and freaked out. They herded her, Hank and Susan, and the grieving diplomat into the middle of the darkened bridge, away from the windows. The pirate steering the ship crouched behind the helm.

The EU Combined Force was patrolling the night sky, and the Somali pirates were taking no chances on radar, infrared, and night-vision sniper scopes. They were so scared they spoke in whispers. Who knew? If unmanned surveillance planes could see a man in the dark and shoot him in the dark, why couldn’t they hear him in the dark?

And there they huddled, seated on the deck, hostages and pirates watching one another’s frightened faces by the dim red glow of the instrument panels the pirates left on so they could see to guard them. They had decided that red light, which protected night vision, could not be seen by the drones. Allegra had no idea if that was true, but the belief comforted them, comforted her, too.

The previous night the drones had buzzed overhead. But this time they sounded different. Closer? She wondered. Lower? Or more of them? The noise was a different pitch, and it occurred to her in dueling flashes of hope and dread that there were more aircraft overhead tonight, not only drones, but airplanes and helicopters.

Hope that soldiers had come to rescue her.

Dread of the shooting. The skiffs that motored out from the beach with the daily bundles of green khat had brought more weapons on every run—more and more until the yacht resembled a war zone. Now the pirates guarding them and looting the cabins carried multiple pistols, automatic rifles and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, and grenades dangling from their belts. The guns in some way were less frightening than the knives most had carried when they first boarded. Until she imagined them running around in a panic when the shooting started. With all those weapons going off at once, how long before a stray shot cut her down? How long before bullets knocked her on the deck like Allen Adler, gushing blood?

She felt the dread overwhelm her. Was she lost? She remembered a phrase from a poem she had spoken in a play at the Nightingale-Bamford School when she first learned English, and now it made her tremble.

My folk have wedded me.

Across heaven’s span,

Into a far country.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.