War Tactic

by Don Pendleton

  “An insurance policy,” Fitzpatrick said.

  “An insurance policy,” Rhemsen echoed. “Should I sense that they mean me ill, I will make sure they know the information exists and that it will be released if something happens to me. You are the last person they would expect me to trust. In their minds, you are hired help. They do not understand that when a man works with another man for as long as we have, loyalty is inevitable.”

  Fitzpatrick would have argued that under any normal circumstances. He’d never had any particular loyalty for Rhemsen. But with a briefcase full of cash and a bona fide political hot potato staring him in the face, he wasn’t going to do anything to queer the deal.

  “You got it,” he said. “I can do that.”

  “I knew I could count on you, Jason.”

  “So now what? It’s going to take time for us to make arrangements to pull up stakes. Just arranging for transportation out of the country is going to be difficult. We are well and truly screwed right now, Harold.”

  “We will give them something else on which to focus,” Rhemsen said. “Do you remember the manufacturing facility on Hilton Head Island?”

  “Yeah,” Fitzpatrick said. “We shut it down because the overhead costs of maintenance on the building were too high.”

  “I have already arranged for a chain of events to take place in the South China Sea,” Rhemsen told him. “Those events will keep these federal forces, whoever they may be, occupied there while we complete our plans. In the meantime, I want you take the helicopter and arrange for an assault force of your men to go with you. As many men as you can afford to take. The Special Interests division here will have the equipment you need. The advanced interrogation unit and other man-trapping devices we’ve been working on? You should take these, as well. Use them to arrange an elaborate trap in Hilton Head. Then return here. I want you at this facility, by my side, for as long as possible until we both leave the country and go our separate ways. And if your men can successfully kill those government agents, whoever they are, so much the better.”

  “How do you know they’ll go to Hilton Head?” asked Fitzpatrick.

  Rhemsen indicated the laptop computer on his desk. “When we shut down Hilton Head, I made sure there was a data trail leading from our holding companies to that site. All I must do, to reveal the location to the authorities—without making it too obvious, of course—is remove the blocks on those connections, the firewalls holding the data secure. Once I have done that, American intelligence will easily ferret it out. The best part is that they will believe they have found it on their own, which is why our trap will work. All it requires is for you to apply your considerable imagination to the problem and commit enough men to secure it. Make sure, however, to leave a substantial security force for us here.”

  “You think they’ll be able to find this place?”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Rhemsen said. “But it should take them long enough that we will be gone. If we aren’t, I want our forces here at full strength. If nothing else, your men can battle the meddlers long enough to allow us to escape. My private jet will be fueled and ready at the airport. I’ve bribed the appropriate personnel. No one will interfere with us when we finally leave the United States.”

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Harold,” Fitzpatrick said. “You’ve got it all figured out.”

  “So you feel a little better about our endeavor?”

  “Let’s just say,” Fitzpatrick said, closing the briefcase and picking it up, “that a million dollars in cash helps take the sting out of whatever else I might be feeling.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Off the Coast of Puerto Galera, South China Sea

  “It’s bad, David,” Barbara Price explained through the secured connection from the Farm. “The attackers have never been this brazen before, but the Filipino government has gone apoplectic.”

  “I can’t say as I blame them, given the mess they think we brought to their shores,” McCarter said into his phone. “Any chance we’re going to be able to square that?”

  “Hal is already running interference,” Price said. “He’s said it’s not as bad as they made it sound.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” McCarter replied, “because they made it sound like they were willing to leave their streets to a pair of foreign paramilitary forces in the distant hopes that these two groups would kill off enough of each other to make it easier to mop up whatever was left.”

  “Yes,” Price said. “Hal explains that was a very extreme overreaction. Elements within the Filipino government are going to see what he calls ‘political and social ramifications’ as a result.”

  “In other words, somebody’s going to pay with their career.”

  “That’s about it,” Price admitted. “We’re still a little ways away from having cooperation from the Filipino government again, but it’s coming.”

  “I hope Lieutenant Ocampo isn’t going to suffer for helping us.”

  “Not that I can tell,” Price said. “Hal was very specific about that. He assures me that things will be smoothed over soon. He just needs to finish separating the good from the bad while making judicious use of the hammer at his disposal.”

  “Nobody likes to get knocked with the influence hammer.” McCarter chuckled. “All right. Please extend to him my regards. I know it isn’t easy.”

  “How are you holding up?” Price asked. “I know a lot falls on your shoulders, David.”

  “I’m fine, Ms. Price,” said McCarter, “but I do thank you immensely for your consideration.”

  That brought one of the throaty laughs that made Price so damned sexy. McCarter noticed it, of course; he always did when she was in the room. You couldn’t be human and not understand that the honey-blond mission controller could have been a fashion model if she’d chosen. But he admitted to feeling more paternal toward her than anything else. He suspected most of them felt that way. Price was, after all, already spoken for: she was married to her job at Stony Man Farm, although she did occasionally entertain a certain gentleman caller who had been part of the Farm from the start. McCarter allowed himself to wonder, for a moment, how that particular gentleman was faring in his endless war for justice.

  “So what is our new target?” McCarter asked. Grimaldi had the coordinates and was flying them, in the Sikorsky, to their destination. The chopper was fully repaired from its previous battles and also fully restocked with ammunition and grenades. Apparently, as Jack had described it, there had been a few near moments at the heliport near the docks, when it looked as though his Filipino military escorts were going to try to take him into custody.

  Ocampo had showed up not long after, looking surprisingly well for a man who had been shot earlier. The lieutenant had explained that, while his wound was not terribly serious, the attitudes expressed by his government were much more turbulent. That was why the plucky lieutenant had taken the initiative to make sure Phoenix Force was taken care of. Apparently he was confident that his superiors would sort things out, but worried that this process might take longer than Phoenix Force had. So he had endangered his own career to see to it.

  “The target,” Price explained, “is a Filipino freighter, the Bapor na Pangkargada, which left Puerto Galera this morning. It didn’t get very far. It was set upon by pirate vessels, fast-attack launches like the ones you faced earlier…only these weren’t pirates at all. They’re flying the Chinese flag.”

  “Bloody hell,” McCarter said. “Do the Chinese have anything to say about that?”

  “The Man has been in touch with Beijing,” Price said. “They vehemently deny any involvement in the attacks. They say they have no assets in the area that are not tied up with their drilling platforms or otherwise recognizable as regular Chinese navy.”

  “So why aren’t they here?” McCarter asked. “Any other time, if their interests were threatened, the Chinese would be all over this location.”

  “You’re right about that,” Price conceded. �
��Under normal conditions, a hostile force falsely flying the Chinese flag would be reason enough for the PLAN to steam the Liaoning in there. Or one of the new 60,000-ton Type 089 carriers they built based on the Varyag, the retired Soviet carrier they acquired for ‘study.’”

  McCarter nodded, although he knew she couldn’t see him. The Liaoning, the first aircraft carrier produced by China for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, a name that always made him half chuckle. Ostensibly, the Liaoning was a “training ship,” meaning it was meant to give the Chinese experience with running carriers. The reality was nothing so mundane, as the Chinese had been growing increasingly belligerent on the world stage.

  The Liaoning and the Type 089 carriers were intended for Beijing’s new Shenyang J-15, the Chinese “Flying Shark.” The J-15 was a carrier-based fighter aircraft highly derivative of the Soviet Sukhoi Su-33, bearing Chinese-produced technology and weapons systems. This was, in turn, derived from the fourth-generation Shenyang J-11, a copy of the Soviet Flanker air-superiority fighter intended to compete with F-15s and similar tech.

  McCarter took the phone from his ear for a moment. “Jack, ETA to target?”

  “We’re five minutes out,” Grimaldi said. “I’ve been trying to raise the Bapor na Pangkargada, but I’m getting no response.”

  “No response from the target,” McCarter told Price. “Do you really think the Chinese would be so bold? If they did it, denying they did it is a delaying tactic only.”

  “I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Price said. “The Filipinos are ready to go to war over it.”

  “No offense to them,” said McCarter, “but there’s no scenario where that works out in their favor.”

  “Nor ours,” said Price. “If they write a check we have to end up cashing, it’s going to set that whole part of the world on fire.”

  “Right,” said McCarter. “We’ll do what we can to stop the world from catching aflame, Barb.”

  “Good hunting, David.”

  “I’ll be in touch. Phoenix, out.”

  As the Sikorsky came within range of the freighter, McCarter took out his monocular and surveyed the deck. He saw men in what definitely appeared to be Chinese military uniforms moving around. They carried what looked like AK-pattern rifles, too, which was consistent with Chinese military forces. That, in itself, though, meant nothing. Neither did the fact that the ship was now running the Chinese flag. Anybody could run a flag up a flagpole.

  Anybody could get a Chinese flag, too, although he wasn’t sure where a man bought such a thing on short notice. For that matter, he had never understood where foreign protestors obtained the American flags they burned at protests. He suspected there was a thriving mail-order business, or whatever people did these days. Maybe you could buy flags on the internet. Bloody hell, but he was starting to show his age. He didn’t do a lot of online shopping. He didn’t do a lot of shopping, period.

  Enough wool-gathering. It was time to get to work. “T.J., Rafe, on the guns,” McCarter directed. “Gary, take the launcher.”

  “I miss out on all the fun, man,” James complained.

  “Don’t worry, Calvin,” McCarter said. “I think there’ll be enough action to go around.” He stowed his monocular and grabbed one of the hand straps overhead. “Ready, lads. Jack? Take us in. Let’s hose those decks down!”

  The nose of the Sikorsky dipped as the chopper picked up speed. Grimaldi guided the helicopter past the freighter, stern to bow, moving just fast enough to make it difficult for the gunmen on the deck to hit them.

  “Fire!” shouted McCarter.

  Encizo, whose side of the chopper faced the boat, leaned into his machine gun and started firing. His rounds scattered men to either side of the deck, blowing out chunks of the railing and digging furrows into the decking. Several of the uniformed men fell, screaming, overboard, to disappear under the waves. Still more fired back with their Kalashnikovs, filling the air with the hollow metal clatter of the Russian-pattern assault rifles.

  “Coming around for another pass,” Grimaldi said.

  “Do you see any crew members?” James asked McCarter. “Anybody at all that isn’t in one of these Chinese uniforms?”

  “No,” said McCarter. “And that has me bloody worried. This hostile force controls the ship. They could have massacred the crew to do it.”

  “And if they didn’t,” James said, “they could be holding them hostage.”

  “I’m hoping it won’t get to that,” McCarter said. “Let’s go, lads. Once more unto the breach and all that. Get us closer, Jack. Put the other side to them so Gary can bring the launcher into play if he has to. I want a good look at these bastards.”

  “You got it,” Grimaldi said.

  They started slow, gathering speed as the Sikorsky built up momentum after the Stony Man ace pilot swung it around. As wind began to whistle through the open doors, Manning prepared to lay down a devastating rain of grenades. McCarter hoped to avoid that if he could. It was entirely possible for the Phoenix Force men to lay down enough firepower to sink the freighter, but that was not their goal. Their aim was to surgically remove the enemy while freeing the crew of the ship. Keeping that freighter intact was part of keeping the crew alive…if they weren’t already dead.

  Bullets ricocheted from the chopper’s fuselage as they closed on the ship. Now it was Hawkins’s turn to fire on the deck. He did so with precision, riding through medium-length bursts, careful not to simply wash the deck in death in a spray-and-pray overreaction to the fire they were taking. A lot of less-experienced soldiers might be tempted to give in to that urge. It was one of the reasons that combat engineers were forever designing burst modes into automatic weapons, rather than simply trusting the operator’s trigger control to get the job done. Under stress, a man who panicked tended to simply hold down the trigger and empty the weapon. It was the reason that later versions of the M-16 rifle employed a 3-round burst setting compared to the earlier versions’ simpler full-automatic.

  A sharp, metallic snap sounded somewhere near the rear of the chopper. Smoke started to flow from the back.

  “Jack!” McCarter shouted. “We’ve got smoke!”

  “White or black?” Grimaldi yelled back.

  “White!” McCarter said.

  “We’re okay,” Grimaldi said. He risked a glance back while guiding the chopper up and over the freighter, out of the direct line of sight of the gunmen on the deck.

  “You sure?” said McCarter. “You don’t want to check?”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re mostly okay,” Grimaldi answered.

  “Mostly?” James said.

  “Pretty sure?” Encizo said.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Hawkins drawled.

  “Are you quoting…?” Manning started to ask. Hawkins shook his head. Manning shrugged.

  “Hang on, hang on,” Grimaldi said. “I’m getting something on the radio.”

  “From the Farm?” McCarter asked.

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “This is a local RF transmission. It’s garbled. Let me work on it for a minute.” He adjusted the dials. “Almost got it… There!” He flipped a switch on the control panel. The sound of the transmission played over all their transceivers, audible despite the noise of the chopper itself.

  “This is Bapor na Pangkargada,” said a voice in accented English. “I repeat. This is Bapor na Pangkargada. We are speaking to you from this vessel. You will immediately withdraw your helicopter.”

  “Fat chance of that,” McCarter said under his breath. He knew, though, that this was not the end of the transmission. There was going to be more, and it was going to be worse.

  “We have wired the boat with explosives,” warned the voice on the radio. “We are holding the crew of this ship hostage. There are twenty-two men here—twenty-two members of the crew. We will kill them one at a time if you do not remove yourself from this airspace. You have sixty seconds to withdraw.”

  The transmission went dead.
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  “Jack,” McCarter said. “Mark that!”

  “Got it.”

  The Stony Man pilot pulled up, moving the chopper back, putting it out of range of small-arms fire from the deck of the freighter. He began to work the chopper in a slow oval around the ship. They could see the motor launches moored to either side of the freighter, and these were similar to the pirate craft they had seen before.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Manning said. “They’re wearing Chinese uniforms and running the Chinese flag…but their boats are the same craft you’d expect pirates to use. Why not use Chinese attack craft if they want the world to know China is responsible?”

  “I hate feeling like I’ve been played,” McCarter said.

  “Thirty seconds,” called Grimaldi.

  “I don’t like it,” the Briton said. “I don’t like it all, mates. We’re deep in the weeds here.”

  “Could it be Blackstar?” Encizo suggested. “Masquerading as the Chinese?”

  “To what end?” McCarter said.

  “They’re mercenaries,” James answered. “War is good for business.”

  “But picking a fight with China is a good way to end a war before you begin,” Encizo said. “Blackstar is a big company, but they can’t match China’s conventional army. Like it or not, the Dragon is a superpower, or an emerging one, and the folks in Beijing have a lot to prove. They’re not going to back down if they think they’ll lose face…and people masquerading as Chinese troops to hijack a ship are the kind of thing that ought to bring down the red hammer.”

  “Fifty-five seconds,” Grimaldi said. “I’m pulling us out.”

  “Right,” McCarter said. “Take us back to port, Jack. We need a new plan, and we need it quickly.”

  The radio crackled to life once more. “Do not return here,” the voice said. “This ship belongs to the People’s Republic of China. This territory for many kilometers belongs to the People’s Republic of China.”