Chapter 11

Surround yourself with people who have issues. People who have issues always have alcohol.

-Fact of life

Tobias

To say I wasn’t happy about driving back in that big heaping pile of shit they called a bus was an understatement. Why they switched buses on us was a mystery.

This one, at least, had a better front seat and working air.

The driver, though, was worse. That was revealed in the first few minutes of our return trip.

This one did the majority of his driving doing his own thing. He was driving on the left, then the right and sometimes choosing to be in the middle. This trip the translator/ tour guide was in the back of the bus. I couldn’t even ask why the fuck this guy couldn’t follow even the most basic of traffic laws.

He drove fast— I thought too fast, though I hadn’t seen a posted speed limit sign anywhere.

He was on the wrong side of the road more than he was on the right side, and I’d yet to figure out why the drivers here did that in the first place.

There were potholes, sure, but they weren’t any worse than what we had at home.

I’d avoid them if I had the room to maneuver around them— but I’d be avoiding them while staying on my side of the road.

But since there wasn’t any room on their side of the road, it was like they just decided that the other side was just as good a place as any, even if it was on a blind curve.

We’d just dropped off the tour guide—who’d told us she was being dropped off at her home since she now had to take care of her seven nieces and nephews. We were in unfamiliar territory now after that detour when I saw a white taxi on the wrong side of the road in front of us.

The problem with this was that, for once, another taxi was headed straight toward them, but on the right side of the road.

I saw it play out in my mind, clearly not liking where this was going.

Seconds later, I realized that neither car was going to move out of the other’s way.

The resulting impact sent the taxis flying. One spun sideways into the middle of the road, crumpled and smoking when it finally came to a stop. The second taxi, who’d been on the right side of the road, wound up on its side in a ditch less than five feet away from us.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I was up and out of my seat, heading for the door, as the bus came to a sudden, rocking halt.

I’d just pried the doors open when Audrey stopped me with a death grip on my arm. Her fingernails were digging into my skin, and they were actually on the verge of drawing blood.

“Audrey…” I said, worried that she was scared.

She wasn’t.

“Look.”

I did, and my stomach clenched at what I saw.

“What the fuck?”

There were men dressed in desert-print camo fatigues standing next to the two wrecked cars—all of which had AK-47s in their hands.

They were obviously there in some sort of official capacity, but with no identifying insignia on their uniforms, I could only guess as to who they were.

And not knowing for certain who they were or why they were there, I didn’t think it was prudent to get out and offer my assistance.

“Don’t you dare go out there,” Audrey hissed, reading the indecision on my face. “You will die.”

“By your hand, or theirs?” I teased, heading back to my seat.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just know that you shouldn’t go out there. They look like they have it well in hand.”

And it looked like, for the most part, they did.

We watched for the next twenty minutes as a three-year-old and two infants, who both appeared to be no more than six months old, were pulled out of the car.

Then came the three adults.

All of whom seemed to be okay, except for the man who I guessed was the driver who had a red, swollen lump on his forehead.

“Do you think they’ll let us through?” Audrey whispered as we watched the first of a line of cars start to move around the wreck.

The only problem was that to do that, they had to drive off the road.

The road itself looked to be like it was carved in between two rocked covered mountains. The road had about four feet of ditch before the rocky mountain jutted upwards in a steep incline.

Meaning when the cars drove off the road, they sank down into the ditch, and their windows came inches away from touching the rocks of the mountain. In between the mountain and the wrecked car, it made for a tight fit.

There were only about nine feet for the cars to squeeze into, and each car that passed was tilted so precariously to the side that one wrong move would cause them to tip over into the mountain.

“This is a fuckin’ nightmare,” I groaned, looking behind me. “Can’t even fucking back up due to the goddamn road carved into the side of this goddamned canyon. Not to mention there are so many cars that it’d take us the next hour to do it.”

“Only one road in, and one road out,” the driver muttered in heavily accented English.

Well, that answered that.

“Can you fit through that gap?”

Audrey asked that, and before I could immediately reply with ‘are you fucking crazy’ a passenger bus the same size as ours started to go through the small gap.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

That’s when I saw Amos sitting in the front seat with his hands covering his face.

If this situation wasn’t so fucked up, I would’ve laughed.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought this was a crazy idea.

One of the guys with the guns walked over to where the bus was trying to get through, and he started to point in the opposite direction of where the van's wheels were pointed.

The bus driver fixed his wheels, and then we all watched with bated breath as the top of the passenger bus started to tip.

“If it falls completely over,” Audrey mused, “it should be okay. The mountain will catch it.”

I snorted, and continued to watch as the roof of the van scraped along the tree roots that were growing out of the hill.

“He’s going to make it,” someone said from behind us.

It sure looked like it would.

“He made it,” I breathed.

Amos stuck his thumb out the window at the man in the fatigues, and I grinned.

“Our turn!” the driver exclaimed.

I held my breath as the same gun-toting man guided us through as well.

“Oh, fuck,” I heard Audrey groan, and then she buried her face into my shoulder between the seat and the window.

I didn’t pat her head like I wanted to. I couldn’t.

Not with my hands clenching so tightly on the ‘oh shit’ handle above my head.

And, with little fanfare, our bus rolled through the small gap, and I watched in amazement as the driver got us through without a single scratch.

“Thank Christ.”

My eyes connected with the man in the fatigues, and I realized rather quickly that whomever that man was, he sure as fuck wasn’t military.

I just hoped I never figured out what, exactly, he was.

***

Four hours after we disembarked from the boat for this adventure, we were in line to get back on the boat, sunburned and cranky.

“You got your card?” I asked.

She nodded, pulling it up to show me, and nearly dropped it into the water.

I caught it, and then looped the sparkly red lanyard that she’d bought the first day we were on the cruise around my neck.

It seemed more convenient to carry the little white card around your neck rather than carrying it in your pocket.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She smiled up at me tiredly.

“Yes,” she murmured softly. “Tired and ready to take a nap. Though, I’m kind of hungry, too. I don’t know what I want more, sleep or food.”

“Food,” I answered. “That way we can sleep as long as we want to without being woken up by hunger.”

I knew from experience that hunger always woke you up, even when you were tired as hell.

I’d been in the Navy. I’d been a Navy SEAL. I knew the hardships one faced when you had no other option but to go to sleep hungry.

When it came to being stealthy or going hungry, when your life was on the line, you learned to live with being hungry.

“I agree,” she sighed. “Jesus, they need to move those freakin’ pirates. They’re holding shit up.”

The pirates, the people who took the souvenir photos with you that the cruise line then tried to sell to you later on, glared at her.

“A little quieter next time,” I teased her. “I think that they’re at every port. You don’t want them accidentally stabbing you with one of their plastic swords, do you?”

She snorted and followed me all the way into the belly of the ship and didn’t say another word until we were back on the fifteenth floor and in line to get food from the buffet.

“You never told me why all these law enforcement officers are on this cruise,” she murmured as she placed a sandwich onto her plate. She followed the sandwich up with something that seemed to resemble egg salad.

“Several officers, state, county and local, from certain areas in a portion of the South were given a free vacation as thanks for ‘serving and protecting’ the citizens that we are sworn to protect. We believe it was some big Southern businessman, but nobody has been able to neither confirm nor deny it. A total of two hundred and sixty-seven officers, and their spouses or significant others were given the opportunity.”

“How did each officer get chosen?” she asked.

I piled five pieces of fried chicken onto my plate and then mounded the rest of it up with macaroni.

“At our place, it was chosen by our chief. He chose me because, apparently, I was the first one to pop into his mind.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d been about to turn him down, when you expressed interest in going.”

Her smile was satisfied.

“That makes me happy.”

I followed her out onto the ship’s deck where the tables were less crowded together. We grabbed a spot that allowed me to see the TV, taking the seat that allowed me to keep my back to the wall.

She took the seat beside me and leaned her head against my shoulder as she nibbled on her food.

We ate just like that, in companionable silence.

And forty-two minutes later, both freshly showered and lying in bed, we fell asleep to the sound of our cabin TV blaring on and on with what we could expect from the next port.