The solitary shape of a motor yacht flashed across the azure waters of the Caribbean, white foam welling up at its sleek bow and trailing behind the stern in a wide wake. It was on the smaller side for a seagoing yacht, 60 feet from bow to stern and, beneath the fresh coat of white paint, the craft was showing its age a little, but it was comfortable enough for a day trip out, with the tunes playing, drinks chilling in the big, ice-filled coolers beneath a bright blue sky free of any cloud. 

Standing at the helm was a tan, gray-haired man in his mid-forties, dressed in an open Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip flops and, in deference to the role he was playing that day, a white skipper’s hat. He was one Harry Standford, the owner of the yacht and the organizer of the day’s little jaunt. He glanced at the ship’s GPS, making sure they were still on course, before turning his attention back to the rather more interesting sight of the boat’s other passengers. 

A dozen girls in bright, multicolored bikinis lounged on the boat’s front deck, sunbathing, dancing or just watching the ocean slide by. They were a varied bunch, but all of them were quite fit, as the skimpy swimwear showed off to good effect, very pretty and young, with none of them older than 22 or 23 years of age and a few rather younger than that. 

 The girls were models, or at least wanna-bes, and had answered Harry’s ad online for this little outing. This was, on paper anyway, a photoshoot for an upcoming ad-campaign for his chain of auto parts stores. Not that the girls believed that, of course, but he was promising good money for a one day photoshoot, so if the hold man wanted to have his midlife crisis by cruising the waves with a boatload of pretty girls in bikinis and try and claim it as a business expense, they were more than willing to let the old man have his fun. 

“Not much further to the island, girls!” Harry called down from the helm. “We’ll have lunch on the beach, then start on those pictures!” He tore his gaze from the lovely vision in front of him back to the GPS, with a glance at his watch. He’d timed the trip out perfectly. Now, he just needed to wait for…

Crunch! The whole boat shuddered and lurched as it came to an abrupt halt. Harry cut the engine, once it was apparent the yacht’s propellers were doing nothing more than spraying water behind them. A few of the girls were thrown off their feet or out of the deck chairs by the violent shake, though no one was hurt and soon all were on their feet, carefully balancing on the deck which was now angled between 5 and 10 degrees off center. 

“Oh my god!” A pretty blond girl named Stacia screamed. “We’re gonna sink!” 

“Keep calm girls! We’re not sinking!” Harry called down. “We must have run aground. This whole area is full of reefs and shoals and not all of them have been marked. It’s low tide now, which must be why we hit it. “I’m gonna go below deck and see what the damage is. In the meantime nobody panic!” 

As their host disappeared down the hatch, the girls looked around at each other nervously. What they’d expected to be an easy day of drinks in the sun, with the only danger fending off their host if he got a little too handsy with the goods, had suddenly become rather more serious. Things did not improve when Harry appeared back on deck, looking grim. 

“We’re stuck fast on a rock.” He told the girls. “It’s punched through the hull. Right now, the rock is plugging it, so we’re only getting a slow leak, enough the ship’s pumps can handle it, but we’ll be in big trouble when the tide changes. It’ll lift this boat up off the rock, at which point, water will flood in and it’ll sink.” 

At this Stacia and two other girls, Heather and Amanda, picked up their cries of panic.  Harry raised his hands to calm them. “The tide’s not due to shift for another hour at the least. “We’ve got the radio and can call for help. Someone will be by to rescue us before the boat sinks. In the meantime, though, everyone stay on deck, in case the boat shifts unexpectedly.” 

That seemed to calm the girls down, for the time being at least. As they milled on deck, wincing at each shift the boat made with the waves lapping against its hull, Harry climbed back up to the helm. Grabbing the handset from the radio, he made sure it was set to the right frequency before thumbing the button to broadcast. 

“Mayday! Mayday!” He spoke in a calm, clear voice. “We’ve run aground on a shoal and are beginning to sink. We’re at coordinates…” He rattled off the digits from the GPS. A moment later, the receiver picked up a response. 

“We are in your vicinity and are proceeding to your location at top speed. We ought to reach you in the next few minutes. Over and out.” 

Harry leaned out the window to tell the girls the good news. For the next few minutes, all of them waited, anxiously. Then, a brunette named Missy, pointed off to starboard. “There! I see the ship!” The rest of the girls rushed to the railing, the sudden change in weight causing the boat to lurch and grind against the rock below it, distressingly. 

Sure enough, coming over the horizon was another ship. It was considerably larger than the stricken yacht, at least twice its length and considerably taller. Its hull was painted in dark, mottled greys and blues and its windows and portholes were tinted dark. Despite its size, it moved quickly enough, crossing the distance to the smaller boat in a short while. Just before reaching them however, it veered off when still about a hundred yards away. 

“They don’t want to risk running aground on the shoals as well.” Harry told the girls, a few of whom seemed confused and dismayed. “They’ll send a small boat to come and pick us up. Oh, there it is now!” 

The larger ship had only just come to a stop when a small motor boat circled around the bow and sped across the water towards the yacht. In it, the girls could see half a dozen figures, dressed in dark clothes.

“Why are there so many people in it?” A short, dark haired girl named Kim spoke up as the small boat got closer. “We won’t all fit in it with them as well…” Sure enough, the six men took up over half the available space in the boat. What was left wasn’t nearly enough for a dozen girls, plus their host. 

As the boat came alongside the yacht, the girls got their answer. From down in the boat, the six men suddenly produced guns: short, intimidating machine pistols which they pointed at the girls lined up along the yacht’s railing. One of the men raised his gun, firing off a quick volley of shots which echoed over the water, making the girls scream in terror. 

“Hands up! Nobody move!” The man shouted. Terrified, the girls obeyed, raising their hands with looks to stupefaction on their faces. In a scene like something that might have been seen in these waters a few centuries before, these modern day buccaneers swarmed aboard the disabled yacht. Their helpless victims were ordered to line up along the deck rail and turn to face out to see with their hands behind their backs. As soon as the girls complied, three of their captors produced steel handcuffs and started going down the line, snapping a set onto each girl’s wrists. Two more gunmen stood back, weapons ready, keeping the prisoners covered. The third climbed up to the helm and spoke to Harry.

“Any trouble getting out here?” The man asked. 

Harry shook his head. “We got an early start out. There were only a couple other boats out. Haven’t seen any others in the last half hour.” Down on the deck below, the men had finished shackling the girls wrists and were going back the other way, fitting them with ankle fetters next. A few girls, glancing up to see Harry chatting with one of the hijackers, put two and two together and howled in dismay, realizing they had been set up. They might have had more, ruder things to say to him, but at that point, the men restraining them made a third pass down the line, jamming a large ballgag between each girl’s lips and strapping them on tightly.

With all of the girls shackled and gagged, it was time to offload them. Two of the hijackers climbed back down in their motor boat, while above the other men selected the first girl to go over. The girl, a tall, freckled redhead named Sarah, shook her head, begging through the rubber ball plugging her mouth, but two of the men grabbed her roughly and dragged her to the side of the boat.

“Don’t struggle.” One of them warned the girl. “We might drop you and with those heavy chains on, you’ll sink like a stone.” She went pale, looking down at the gap of dark, churning water between the yacht and the boat as she was picked up and held out over the gap. The men in the boat took her from their comrades, turning to set her down in the bottom of the hull. After ordering her to kneel down and keep still, they turned to grab the next girl in line, the blonde Stacia. 

When half of the girls were kneeling in the bottom of the boat, looking stunned and terrified, one of the remaining hijackers climbed down after them, then the boat pulled away, crossing back over to the dark shape. Those left on the yacht waited anxiously, as the process of loading the captives played out in reverse, the six shackled girls being lifted out of the motorboat into the waiting arms of men on deck of the larger ship. Once all were aboard, two of the men got out and, with guns drawn, herded the figures through a hatch, disappearing into the ship’s interior. 

Back on the yacht, the remaining girls whimpered and sobbed through their gags, feeling  the boat lurch again, the hull grinding ominously against the rocks it was stuck on.The captives looked across the water to where the motor boat, with one man left in it, was coming back towards them, silently urging it to hurry. As terrifying as what awaited them on the other ship would certainly be, it had to be better than being stuck here when the yacht finally started to sink. 

“Tide’s beginning to shift.” Harry commented, noting that the water was lapping against the hull with more force now.

“Need any ‘assistance’ making the yacht go down?” The hijacker at the helm with him asked. “Brought a small charge if you need to blow a hole in her.”     

Henry shook his head. “Nah, rock already put a pretty good hole in her already. Just depends how long she stays stuck to it. If it takes a while, the yacht will float up off the shoal and sink in one piece. More likely though, it’ll get smashed up against it by the tide as it comes in and all anyone will find will be scattered debris. Oh, that reminds me…” He turned the radio back on, turning it to the actual emergency frequency this time. He repeated his emergency distress call, with a little more urgency in his voice.

He set the handle back down, flipping the radio off before any reply came in. “By the time anyone can get out here, all they’ll find will be bits and pieces floating in the water. They’ll head home and report it as another tragic boating accident.” The perfect way to cover up the abduction of a dozen young ladies and fake the death of one businessman on the verge of bankruptcy. “Wife’s waiting back in Ft. Lauderdale to collect my life insurance payout…plus what this old tub’s insured for, then meet me with my share from selling these lovely ladies too.”

Down below, the motor boat had come alongside once again and the rest of the girls were being passed across. Harry and the remaining hijacker climbed down the increasingly unstable yacht into the boat. Harry settled down between two of the girls, grinning as they glared angrily at him. As the boat pulled away from the yacht and sped back to the ship, they squealed in outrage as his hands roamed over their helpless bodies. 

Soon, they pulled alongside the dark ship. The shackled girls were lifted up into the waiting arms of more men who stood them on deck. When the final, sobbing girl was aboard, one of the men pointed with his gun. “Get moving ladies!” He ordered, gruffly. With muffled whimpers of fright, the girls glumly turned and shuffled towards the hatch he pointed to. 

On the other side of it was a stairway leading down into the bowels of the ship. Through another hatch at the bottom, the captives found themselves in a cargo space and it was clear they were to be the cargo. The cramped, dimly lit space was packed with a dozen small, steel cages. Half the cells were already occupied by the six girls that had been taken across first. Their sad, scared faces peered out through the bars as their fellow prisoners were marched past to the remaining empty ones. Soon, all of the girls were curled up inside, yelping with fight as the cage doors were slammed shut and locked tight. 

“Make yourselves comfortable, ladies!” One of their captors taunted. “Got a few days sailing ahead of us!” After which, of course, the hapless cargo would be offloaded and sold off to the highest bidder as slaves. Just then, a low rumbling sound filled the area as the ship’s engines came to life once more. The modern day slave ship slowly picked up speed, quickly leaving the area. Behind it, the yacht finally came loose from the rocks. With a terrible crash, the empty vessel was thrown up against the shoals once more. As it rebounded off, it heaved over and started to sink, vanishing from sight…