Brandy and the Hijack

Chapter 3: the plot

Vern sat down with Kurt and they tried to work out some sort of modified scheme.

"I can see what we can do, Vern, provided you've got the stomach for it." Kurt was a big, tough-looking individual. He generally kept a low profile in order to reduce the risk of illegal activities from his past coming to light.

"What do you mean, Kurt?"

"This is the perfect opportunity. Look, old Watchman is not going to want to be contacting his kids too much while he's on his honeymoon with a sexy young wife. So, sometime during the cruise when it suits us, we take over the yacht and sail it to our buyer. We send a couple of phoney messages to keep things quiet back at home and that will give us heaps of time to do the deal and disappear - free as the breeze."

"Okay, but what do we do with Watchman?"

The Engineer gave the younger man a hard look, "Drop him over the side."

"Shit!"

"Are you up for it?"

This was certainly upping the ante. Vern paused, thinking furiously. Kurt was right, this would be much better, much cleaner. They could arrange things so that it would appear that the yacht had vanished in mid-ocean, most likely sunk with all hands from some mishap, an explosion or something.

They wouldn't be deemed criminals, there would be no pursuit. They could create new identities for themselves and enjoy the 'profits' from their deal.

Vern had already been dreaming big about what he could do with the money . . . "to hell with it, let's go for it."

"What about Ruby?" Kurt's expression was still hard.

"I'll talk her around and you know, Kurt, I reckon that there may be some more potential in this. We could take the old man captive and then force him to transfer money into accounts that we control, you know, make it look like he is spending up big on his new wife. We could milk the old fool for the whole damn year and have a good time doing it."

"Cruising the world in a nice yacht, dropping into hot spots as we choose, plenty of money to spend, yeah, I like it. And I reckon our other three crew will like it as well."

Vern was becoming eager, "We could use Ruby to force compliance from Watchman. We make out that she is also a captive and threaten to hurt her if he doesn't comply. He's pretty starry-eyed at the moment and I'm sure he'll knuckle under."

For the first time, Kurt smiled, "I've picked a good partner."