The second of the two Cast Members kicked Sparrow’s sword away. It clattered down to the deck. Still partially screened by the Cast Members, Finn was pulled off balance by the pirate holding him. He fell back, catching the glint of a knife too late. There was nothing he could do to stop himself: he was going to fall upon that upraised knife. He was going to be stabbed.
He waved his arms like a bird flapping its wings. But there was no lift; he continued falling backward.
Then he stopped, something clutching his arms. It was…impossible.
“Dill?”
Dillard Cole, Finn’s neighbor and best friend outside the Keepers. How had he gotten on board the ship?
He and Finn were locked by forearm grips—like the Roman soldiers used as handshakes in movies.
“Hang tight,” Dillard said.
He stretched a leg and stepped onto Jack Sparrow’s chest as the man tried to sit up. Cheers and applause erupted from the approving audience.
“What are you—?”
“Later,” Dillard answered. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here.”
At that moment a woman’s voice called out from the speakers. A voice that ran chills down the spine. A voice that could stop time.
* * *
Maleficent’s head was the size of a Volkswagen up on the Funnel Vision screen. Her face a hideous green, her chin pointed sharp like a wedge of cheese, her thin eyebrows above her bloodshot eyes. As she smiled, the white of her teeth made the vivid red of her lipstick and the bilious green skin all the more dramatic. A crow fluttered its wings by her ear. She ignored it.
“Good day to you all!” she said in her gravelly voice. “Or up to now it may have been good. Welcome aboard! Your so-called hero—I like to think of the boy as little more than an annoying pest—has been taken care of, I trust? And you there,”—she pointed—“in the booth. Don’t bother trying to interrupt me. I’ll stop when I feel like stopping.”
She rocked her head left to right, port to star-board.
“Are you listening, people? Looking forward to the cruise? I wouldn’t if I were you. Not with fairies like me around. Witches. Villains. Pick your poison.” She cackled. “Poison? That’s a thought.” She shut her eyes—her lids were also the same vile green—and reopened them. “You might ask, what do you want? But you’d be missing the point. You’d be missing all the fun.”
The huge screen went black, flickered, then returned to the background pirate scenery it had been displaying only a minute before.
The crowd remained silent until someone whooped playfully from the back. But it was a lonely sound, and no one joined in with him. Instead, curious and anxious faces stared at the screen while characters and Cast Members onstage remained frozen, eyes looking up.
Uncle Bob replayed the security video several more times, the high-def image greatly magnified. How many times had he recommended more cameras for the new ships? More state-of-the-art technology? His bosses weren’t cheap, neither were they nearsighted; they had given him the GPS ID tags, keyless entry locks, and a variety of other technologies he had yet to fully put into place. But the cameras? You could never have too many cameras.
What he saw was a prime example of his limitations. The Deck 4 jogging track consisted of uninterrupted, eco-friendly teak decking encircling the entire thousand-foot-long ship, meaning walking or running three laps equaled a mile. For nearly the entire length of Deck 4, port and starboard, fully enclosed, fiberglass, unsinkable lifeboats hung suspended overhead ready for deployment at a moment’s notice. Each motorized boat could safely house and feed 120 guests for over a week at sea. Each had an emergency transmission beacon that activated upon contact with salt water; each carried radios, first aid, blankets, water purification, fishing line, and spare life jackets. A dozen cameras were positioned on Deck 4 to provide quality views of all the lifeboats, allowing security to monitor, manage, and record any emergency evacuation.
Those dozen cameras were six more than any other exterior deck had, and the forward or aft sections of Deck 4 had only two such cameras in place. One was near the bow and was maneuverable 330 degrees, showing both the jogging track and the crew’s anchor storage; to the aft, a fixed-mount camera showed a fish-eye view of the track and the stern of the ship.
Bob had caught activity on a recording from the bow camera. He’d missed it the first two times, looking for a person. But during a third look he saw an iconic shadow on the slatted wood deck as it turned to cross the bow. A round dark circle with two equidistant circles atop it. Ears. A head. Mickey Mouse.
Filled with the rare pulse of excitement—Bob loved detective work—he sought the recording from camera 4-9. He matched up the time code. Sure enough, there appeared Captain Mickey, his back to the camera. He walked the jogging path, entering the steel tunnel that housed the jogging track as it crossed around the bow. But he never made it to the bow camera. Never arrived.