4. PAPI
A sliver of light from the half-cracked door was all that illuminated Hold 3. The men called it the “Dead Hold” and shunned it. The captain had always been more cagey than not about their real cargo, but he had told them (for whatever his lies were worth) that the hold was full of dead bodies being repatriated to Indonesia. The men had spent days debating what their real cargo might be, and everyone avoided the Dead Hold if they could. Over the last few nights, occasional intermittent thumping from the Dead Hold had given legs to all the crazy rumors of illegal lab animals, or even human trafficking that had been swirling through the crew.
At the door, the second mate, who the men and sometimes the captain called Pepper, was whispering to Kurtz. Papillon, the suave, hardene
