Noble Sanction

by William Miller

  Over the headset, Vuković shouted, “Happy hunting, Mr. Just Jake!”

  The OH-58A Kiowa hovered a scant five feet above the bed of shipping containers. The updraft from the rotors threw dirt and dust into Noble’s face. He narrowed his eyes, snatched the headset off, and grasped at the buckle on his safety harness. For a moment, his fingers fumbled at the catch. Adrenaline was turning his hands into flippers. He finally managed it, and the belt dropped away. Noble planted one foot on the skid and stepped out into space.

  A puke-green container leapt up to greet him. Noble took the impact on his arches. His knees buckled and a shot of electricity went straight to his brain. He landed with a solid bang on the corrugated metal. His face pinched. He managed to hold back the grunt that tried to work its way up from his chest. A few years ago, a jump like that wouldn’t have even phased him. Thirty-four was too young to be getting bad knees, but the Army had put a lot of hard miles on his body.

  Eliška landed next to him with a hollow clang. She did it with more style and grace. She just buckled her knees to absorb the hit and then she stuck out a hand to help Noble up. She said, “You okay?”

  It was the same thing he had asked Sam when they had fast-roped onto the river barge. Noble was struck with the awful certainty that one, or both of them, were going to die. He climbed to his feet, ignoring the creaking in his knees, and inclined his head. “I’m fine.” Noble had to shout over the roar of the chopper. “Whatever happens, we stick together!”

  Eliška nodded. She was already headed for the scaffolding between containers. The Kiowa’s engines climbed to a feverish pitch. The chopper blasted them with air as it lifted into the darkening twilight, then it was banking away from the Minerva. Noble threw one look at the pilothouse, spotted the silhouette of a man in the large picture windows, and turned to follow Eliška.

  Lucas Randall wheeled around at the loud crack of the automatic. He recognized the sound of the weapon. He would know the telltale kak-kak-kak of an AK47 in his sleep. He had outfitted the crew with the collapsible AKs because they were easy to operate, didn’t take up much space, and were almost impossible to jam. The Russian weapon could take a lot of abuse and didn’t need much in the way of maintenance. It was a perfect weapon for poorly trained troops who couldn’t be bothered to clean and function-check their rifles.

  Lucas heard the hard rattle of the automatic and peered out the rear windows across a deck piled high with shipping containers. An ancient Kiowa was coming in low and fast. Lucas saw sparks flash off the nose cone of the chopper. The last of the fading sun glinted on the fuselage and highlighted the Croatian law enforcement emblem emblazoned on the open side doors. The craft angled and a sniper took aim. Lucas heard the crack of the sharpshooter’s weapon. There was a pause. Then a second crack.

  Lucas cursed.

  Erik was out of his chair. “What should we do?”

  The Kiowa swooped low over the stern, hovering above the platform created by the containers. Two figures dropped from the chopper. One of them, a man with long hair and a lean frame, stumbled and fell. Noble. Lucas shook his head and bared his teeth in frustration. The other would be the Cermákova woman. She helped Noble to his feet and they disappeared between containers.

  Lucas shouted another curse.

  “What do we do?” Erik wanted to know.

  Lucas grabbed him by the arm and shoved him back to the control panel. “Steer the boat. How far is the feeder vessel?”

  Erik checked the navigation system. “About twenty minutes. We should be able to see her soon.”

  They both looked out the windscreen at the horizon for any sign of the smaller vessel, but the sun was sinking fast now and the waters of the Adriatic were dark fathoms of inky blackness. A few blood-tinged clouds still scurried across a bruised purple sky but did nothing to illuminate the waves. That was the plan all along, Lucas reminded himself. Offload the containers full of cash under the cover of darkness and watch the OS-CinCom feeder sail away.

  Twenty minutes, Lucas told himself. Not long now.

  All he had to do was take care of Noble and Cermákova. That was easier said than done, of course. The Baader-Meinhof idiots crewing the Minerva were no match for Noble—most of them were full-time sailors and part-time crooks—but enough of them together could box Noble into a corner and riddle him full of holes. They just needed to work together. By now, they had all heard the shots. They knew the ship was under attack and they’d be scrambling in different directions, most of them wondering where in the hell they had left their guns.

  Lucas snatched the microphone off the control panel and cramped down on the transmit button. “Stanz, Grinkov, and Ludwick to the pilothouse on the double!” His voice boomed out across the Maersk Minerva. It would tell Noble right where he was, but that couldn’t be helped. All that mattered now was holding Noble at bay long enough to load the money onto the feeder vessel. Lucas repeated the instructions in German, racked the microphone, and then reached for a Bravo Company AR15 rifle standing in the corner. He hauled back on the charging handle and activated the EOTech optic attached to the top rail. Ready to rock and roll.

  Noble and Eliška clambered down through the reinforced scaffolding. There wasn’t much space—just enough for a man to shimmy up. Eliška, slimmer and younger, reached the bottom first and put her back to a metal wall, covering Noble while he climbed. He reached the deck a little winded. He had spent the last two months drinking booze, and it was catching up with him.

  I’ll start running again if I live through this, Noble promised himself.

  Eliška said, “You know anything about tankers?”

  “It’s not a tanker,” Noble told her. “It’s a freighter.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Which way?”

  Noble motioned her starboard. Either way from here—it didn’t really matter. They needed to work their way to the gunwale and then forward to the pilothouse. She had started in that direction when they heard Lucas’s voice over the loudspeakers calling a trio of sailors to the bridge.

  Noble said. “Three men is more than enough to hold the pilothouse against us.”

  “What about harbor patrol?” Eliška asked. “How long until they reach us?”

  Noble shook his head. “Not fast enough. I’d estimate we’re moving at a good twenty-seven knots, with an hour head start. We need to stop this boat.”

  “Okay,” Eliška said. “How do we do that?”

  “Engine room,” Noble told her. “We’ll find a hatch and work our way into the bowels of the ship. If we can stop the engines, she’ll be dead in the water until harbor patrol arrives.”

  A change came over Eliška. She chose that moment to turn on him. It was like she had been waiting for her chance. Her eyes screwed down to angry slits and she lunged at him.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Panic turned Noble’s arms and legs to jelly as Eliška hammered him against the metal wall of a shipping container. She thrust the MP5 out to the end of its sling and mashed the trigger. Noble’s heart crowded up into his throat. It took his brain a second to make sense of what was happening. He just had time to register the outline of a man, half hidden in shadows, when Eliška’s stubby automatic peeled thunder. Noble turned his face away from the fiery breath and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt the heat from the barrel and the snap of displaced air against his cheek.

  The MP5 spit empty shell casings against the opposite wall in a steady jingle of brass. The spray of bullets caught the deckhand full in the chest. His face twisted in a mask of pain and surprise. The automatic burst slammed him against a container and he collapsed in a jumble. A Kalashnikov clattered to the ground at his feet.

  Smoke trailed from the barrel of Eliška’s weapon. She said, “You’re welcome.”

  Noble put one hand to his ear and made an unintelligible note at the back of his throat that came out sounding like, “Gah-aaah!” His hearing was gone, replaced by a high-pitched buzz in his skull that sounded l
ike a dial tone from hell. Still holding his ear, he turned to Eliška and barked, “Really?! I’m probably going to have permanent hearing loss.”

  “But you are still alive,” she pointed out. Her words sounded like they were coming up from the bottom of a well.

  “What?” Noble shouted.

  She put a finger to her lips. “You’ll have the whole crew down on us.”

  It was hard to know how loud he was speaking. His adrenaline was racing and his hearing was knocked out. As a soldier he had experienced this before, but it had been a lot less worrying when he was in the mountains of Afghanistan surrounded by other tier one operators. Being aboard a boat full of German extremists, his only backup a cutthroat assassin, rebalanced the equation—and not in Noble’s favor.

  He flexed his jaw wide and rubbed at his ear. He’d have time to worry about hearing loss later. And he would worry about it. Right now, he waved for Eliška to follow and hurried along the lane to the fallen deckhand. The man lay with his head cocked against the side of a container at a cramped angle. Blue eyes stared up at them and pink bubbles formed at the corner of his lips. Blood was pooling around his bottom. He was still alive, but he didn’t have long. Eliška had punched all five rounds right through the ten ring—dead center—puncturing both lungs.

  Noble stooped to retrieve the fallen AK47. It was a short-barreled model with a folding stock and was in bad need of maintenance. Russia had probably still been fighting Afghanistan the last time the weapon had been cleaned. Noble locked out the shoulder brace and checked the action. Great thing about Kalashnikovs: you can pour sand down the barrel and they’ll keep functioning.

  He shouldered the weapon, checked the corners, and stepped out onto the gangway running around the outside edge of the freighter. He needed to find a hatch and make his way down to the engine room. He got Eliška’s attention, pointed first to his own eyes and then motioned to the front of the ship. Watch my back. She nodded understanding. Noble moved around the corner, headed for the stern. Eliška followed, doing an ungainly sideways trot so she could watch their six. She gripped Noble’s shoulder with her left hand, using it to steady her own movements.

  With the Kalashnikov leading the way, Noble moved along the gangway, checking the cramped passages between containers as he went. Fifty meters of open deck separated him from the stern. His heart was trying to knock a hole through the wall of his chest. Sweat pasted the shirt to his back. He strained to see everything at once because all he could hear was the terrible ringing in his ears.

  The ringing is good, Noble told himself. It means your ear drums still work.

  With his hearing on the fritz, his other senses were dialed up to ten. He could make out the tiniest details in the dented metal containers and smell ocean brine. They reached the last of the stacks and rounded the corner. A short stair led to the castle deck. Noble started up the risers, going slow, his front sight sweeping the top step for any sign of a threat.

  They were halfway up when he felt Eliška’s fingers cramp down on his shoulder. It was a signal every operator recognized. Contact rear! An electric shock propelled him up the steps two at a time. His thigh muscles bunched and released. Giddy panic informed his movements as the first bullets hissed past his ear. He heard Eliška’s MP5 cough three short bursts. Noble reached the castle deck and spotted a hatch right where he guessed it would be. He was already moving in that direction when the latch turned and the trap door swung open. A deck hand stuck his head up and spotted Noble. Both men opened fire at the same time.

  Chapter Seventy

  Noble never stopped moving. His finger jerked back on the trigger and a loud ripping noise split the air. It sounded muffled to Noble’s buzzing ears. The AK47 bucked and rattled in his hands, chewing out spent shells and smoke. Bullets pinged off the metal hatch and skipped off the deck in a spectacular shower of sparks.

  The deckhand thrust his pistol over the lip of the hatch. He wanted no part in a close-quarters gunfight. He triggered a blind volley, completely missing Noble, and tried to haul the trap door closed at the same time. The hatch banged shut and the latch twisted into place with a screech of rusting steel.

  Noble threw himself behind a low wall that separated the castle deck from midships. The waist-high gunwale protected his flank, but gave no cover from the hatch. Noble trained his front site on the opening in case the deckhand worked up the courage to take another shot.

  Eliška landed next to him a second later. She slammed her back against the wall, breathing heavy. Red blotches colored her pale cheeks and smoke drifted from the barrel of her weapon. She saw the hatch and thrust her chin at it.

  Noble shook his head. “Blocked.”

  She cursed.

  “You okay?” he yelled. There was no sense trying to hide. The whole boat knew they were on the castle deck.

  “Think so,” Eliška said and looked down at her body. Soldiers sometimes get hit in combat without knowing it until minutes—sometimes even hours—later. Adrenaline dulls the pain and they don’t realize they’re leaking blood until after the fight. She leaned forward and Noble patted her back. She didn’t have any new holes, which seemed a minor miracle given the amount of lead in the air.

  She returned the favor. Her hands roamed over his back and shoulders. He didn’t feel any pain. Then she indicated a dime-size hole in the sleeve of his windbreaker. Noble’s eyebrows went up. He inspected the rip. The bullet had missed his arm by a fraction. A little to the left, and it would have blown through his elbow.

  “Lucky,” Eliška muttered.

  Noble only nodded agreement. A long burst of automatic gunfire erupted behind them. Bullets splatted against the metal gunwale at their backs. It wasn’t directed fire. The Baader-Meinhof goon was just trying to keep them pinned. It worked. Noble shrank at the loud ding of bullets against metal. He cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “How far?”

  “About a hundred meters,” Eliška said.

  “Think you can hit him if I provide suppressing fire?”

  She indicated the stubby automatic in her hands. “Not with this.”

  The MP5 is a good weapon for close-up work, but it’s not made for long distances. Neither was the short-barreled AK clutched in Noble’s hands. He bared his teeth in a frustrated grimace. “Well, we can’t sit here,” he said. “They’ll gang up on us and make a push. We’ll be overwhelmed. We need to move.”

  “Where?” Eliška said. “We’re out of boat.”

  It was true. There was nowhere to go. To Noble’s left lay the dead man who had taken a shot at the helicopter. He was sprawled on his back. A folding AK lay near his outstretched hand. Beyond him was another stair leading back down to midship.

  “Keep an eye on that shooter,” Noble said and hurried across the castle deck in a crouch. He was halfway to the body when a Baader-Meinhof goon stuck his head around the head of the stair and squeezed off a burst of automatic fire. Bullets skipped along the deck and hissed overhead. Noble threw himself down behind the dead body. A half dozen slugs impacted the dead man’s side. Noble levered his rifle over the chest of the corpse and cramped down on the trigger. The automatic breathed fire, forcing the Baader-Meinhof thug behind cover. Noble reached for the fallen weapon.

  The dead man had fired off half his mag before catching the sniper’s bullet, but it was a half mag more than Noble had had a moment ago. He rocked the magazine loose from the weapon and grasped it in his left hand as he steadied his weapon site on the far stair, waiting for the German to try again. He was using the dead body as a shield. It wasn’t perfect cover, not by a long shot, but any port in a storm.

  Behind him, Eliška was trading shots with the shooter midship. She had switched to selective fire. She was trying to conserve ammo. She leaned out around the short wall, squeezed off a single round and ducked back. A long, rattling buzzsaw of thunder answered her. Bullets went ricocheting off the gunwales of the castle deck. Sooner or later, one of those rounds would take a bad skip and end up planted in Nob
le’s skull. His testicles tried to crawl up inside his pelvis as he waited for the ricochet with his name on it.

  The goon at the head of the steps leaned out and sprayed angry lead bees in Noble’s direction. The swarm stung the side of the corpse with hard, wet ripping noises. Noble answered with a short burst.

  “I’m running out of ammo!” Eliška hollered over to him. “We have to do something.”

  “Any ideas?” he shouted back.

  “You stand up and draw their fire,” Eliška said. “When they run out of ammo, I’ll kill them.”

  “Any other ideas?”

  She shook her head, leaned out, and fired. The MP5 spit a single round before the bolt fell with a hollow clack on an empty chamber. Eliška cursed and dropped the weapon on the deck. It landed with a clatter.

  Noble grabbed the dead man’s AK47, jammed the half mag back in, and slid the weapon over the deck to Eliška. “You got half a mag,” he shouted. “Make it count.”

  She scooped it up and jerked back on the charging handle.

  Schafer used the scaffolding to reach the top of the containers. A veteran Baader-Meinhof soldier, he was a big man with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard. He had served the cause since the early ’80s and spent time in Stadelheim Prison. He had the tattoos to prove it, including a swastika over his heart. He knew how to deal with a bothersome American spook and a Czechish whore.

  Randall, leader of the new Baader-Meinhof wing called the United Front, had filled the boat with sailors. They were good Germans, one and all. They believed in the cause, but they weren’t soldiers. Most had never shot anything but paper. They were seafaring men recruited for their knowledge of the ocean and ships. Schafer was a killer. He had murdered his first man at the age of seventeen in a drunken brawl. He still remembered the feel of the man’s windpipe crushing beneath his meaty fists.