“Wait. Let’s do the medical group first, give us some time to get that organized before any of the others come down. Medical professionals first.”

The man on the bar was average height, slightly overweight and broad shouldered. He had close-cropped brown hair and a square jawline. Although he looked only about forty, his skin was creased and lined, slightly pockmarked around the neck. That square jaw, thick neck and sure eyes made him appear remarkably strong. The leonine power of his face alone made it handsome.

The bar the man stood on was dark polished wood, with green-bronze marble on the countertop matching the floor. The liquor rack behind the man had been emptied before the refugees had come on board, so the servers’ enclosed space behind the bar looked like a penalty box.

While most of the crowd was turning to face the man, several were already approaching him, pushing their way through, coming down from the upper levels. Travis looked back at his family, and said to Corrina, “I’d better go help. Holler if you need me.”

“Go ahead,” Corrina said.

He looked at Claude and nodded and waded through the crowd towards the bar.

“Are there any senior officers around? Has anyone seen where they are?” the man on the bar called.

“I saw them on the bridge,” a young man in the crowd shouted. He was dressed in uniform, the uniform of a deckhand. The uniform was coated in blood all along one side. The murmur in the crowd died down greatly and this young man with a strained voice held the attention of everyone who was not tending a wounded companion.

“A lot of the senior officers were with the captain on the bridge when it got hit. Birnbaum, the Staff Captain, Harrington, the Chief Radio Officer, the Navigation Officer, the First Officer, the Quartermaster” he said. “They’re all dead. But they went after the rest, too. Of the officers, I mean. I saw it.”

The deckhand paused.

“I heard them, and I hid,” he started again haltingly, as if any two pieces of the story together would be too much to take in. “I was on the Sky Deck, and I saw them coming. I hid in an equipment closet. I could see them come in to this lounge area, right near where the ships came together. There was a leader named Haggard. He had this yellow bandana and a big beard and this loud choppy voice, yelling at everybody. Crazy. He was telling them to bring all of us, the officers, the crew. I saw two of our First Officers come by themselves, they tried to approach him and talk to him. He shot them down.

“He’d get them coming in in groups, and they’d line them up at the railing and give them all names of their prison guards. Then they’d shoot them, and toss the bodies over so the next ones to arrive wouldn’t see. I saw it all, I heard all their talk, I was right in the middle of them. They killed dozens of us. The blood poured across the deck, they made footprints in it. They’d push the officers and laugh at them slipping and falling in it. It came right into my closet and pooled around my feet.”

The man stopped and tried not to cry.

“They sent most of their men room to room. Rape and pillage, he said. Each group had at least one gun, they knew there were no guns on cruise ships to fight back. He gave two hours for everyone to get back to their ship. The leader had this friend. He was quiet, but everyone was talking to him, and I heard that it was his idea, taking the ship, becoming pirates. He’d been in the Navy, they called him Commander. He knew how to run the ship. They had another guy who was a gunner. They were giving him high-fives too. For hitting the bridge. Killing everyone. They didn’t even mean to collide! They were trying to come alongside and screwed it up, and they were all laughing about it.

“They kept joking about being pirates. They made our crew walk right off the deck, some of them, and if they wouldn’t walk off, they shot them and threw them off anyway. They sent some of their men to find the power generator and knock it out. They wanted to destroy any communications equipment. It sounded like they’d destroyed anything on the Navy ship that could give away their own location, but the leader, he didn’t seem so sure about it. I was there for an hour, two hours, who knows. They never stopped killing the whole time I was there. It got dark and I couldn’t see but I could hear them scream and I was crouched down with my hands on my feet and could feel the blood coming up against my shoes.

“When it was over, and the ship pulled out, I came out. It was dark, and I slipped in the blood. I went to the staff dining room, I thought some others might go there. There were a few dozen of us there, staff and crew. There were some flashlights to see. I just sat there, I couldn’t even talk. Many of them are gone now. The other staff. They took the lifeboats and left while it was dark. I didn’t. I couldn’t even talk.”

The man on the bar was staring at the deckhand, far across the room, waiting for more that wasn’t to come.

“Okay,” the man on the bar said finally. “Now the danger is gone. We have to take care of ourselves.”

He looked at the couple of dozen men and women who had gathered close to the bar or were still approaching it.

“You all are the doctors and nurses? Okay.”

He looked back up, taking in the whole room.

“If you have someone who needs medical attention, please put your hand up.”

17

 

There were just five doctors, twenty-two nurses, three paramedics and one combat medic. Travis recognized one of the doctors, the middle-aged man he’d seen on the deck crying in the woman’s arms just before the attack. On this doctor’s face, Travis saw an anguish so ugly he forced himself to keep looking at it, as if he needed to understand.

One of the men in the group was the ship surgeon. There were two ship nurses as well. They did not know if the other nurses or doctor on staff had been killed or abandoned ship in the lifeboats.

“Do you have anyone else here you know from the ship?” the ship surgeon asked the ship nurses.

They nodded.

“Take them with you and go to the clinic. We’ll need surgical tools, all the basics, okay? Every scalpel, scissor, and forceps we have. Plenty of gloves and antiseptic. We’ll need spinal collars and backboards, bandages, splints, the whole shebang. Suction, oxygen, zappers, all the toys with battery packs. Let’s see. Thrombolytics and morphine.”

He spoke with the casual precision of expertise. The two nurses went back to the clinic, taking with them three other crew: a bartender, a DJ, a waiter.

“Go on, doctor,” the man from the bar-top prodded. “How do we manage this?”

“Okay,” the doctor looked around his makeshift team. “Guys, the first thing you need to know about multiple casualty triage is that the rule changes from Do the best for each patient, to Do the best for the greatest number of patients. Who are the nurses? You five will fan out. We need to triage, like this. Minimal intervention now, just opening airways or controlling external hemorrhages. Nothing else but assessment. All these guys with their hands up, get them to show a number with their fingers. Check the patients out. Salvageable and can’t wait is number one – any massive trauma or loss of blood. Salvageable and can wait is number two, broken arms, non-critical wounds, 1st and 2nd degree burns. Number three is unsalvageable. Who are the paramedics?”

Travis raised his hand, along with two other men.

“Get the number threes morphine, then come help with the ones. When we deal with the ones and twos we’ll see if any threes can be saved. Anyone with serious blood loss… we just don’t have the blood.”

“We can do a donor clinic,” Travis said. “Right here. I did it in Africa. They just use the whole blood.”

“We can’t do blood tests,” the ship surgeon said.