“You really need to stop talking now,” Lyons said.
“I’m calling you out, boys,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s the end of the line for you. It’s time for Jay Fitzpatrick to teach you all a very valuable lesson.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lyons taunted. “You and what army?”
“This one,” Fitzpatrick said. From alcoves in the wall, concealed from view, emerged a large force of Blackstar men. They all held collapsible batons.
“I don’t like where this is going,” Schwarz muttered.
“I figured,” Fitzpatrick said, “that my friends here and I would just beat you to death.”
“Then come on if you’re coming,” Carl Lyons said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A maze of corridors separated Phoenix Force from the control deck level. Any of the compartments could house pirates, Blackstar forces or both. Just thinking about the unholy alliance made McCarter’s skin crawl. And that’s when he had an idea.
“Rafe,” he said as the Phoenix Force commandos waited in a relatively safe corner of the deck they currently occupied. Manning was scouting ahead, trying to find the route most clear of enemies, but they were going to have to check compartment by compartment as they went unless they wanted to risk getting caught in a crossfire and cut apart.
But there might be a better way. There might be a way to do this that protected their own lives while also thinning the ranks of the enemy.
“The Sikorsky,” McCarter said. “It’s got an advanced communications package, doesn’t it? To let us talk to the Farm?”
“Yes,” Encizo said. “Of course. Why?”
“The same equipment that we use for transmitting can be used for jamming, yes?” the Briton continued. “The RF that we used to speak to Wijeya on his frequency. The scanning equipment we used to locate it is the same equipment we used to contact him. I’m correct, aren’t I?”
“Where in the heck are you going with this, David?” Hawkins asked.
“Jack,” McCarter said as he touched his transceiver. “G-Force, do you read? What is your status?”
“Overwatch,” Grimaldi said. “I’m keeping a close eye on things up here, but staying far enough out that they can’t light me up with rockets. How are things going with you?”
“We’ve got a lot of bad guys between us and Wijeya,” McCarter explained. “Think you can help us out?”
“Can’t fit the Sikorsky down there or I would,” Grimaldi said. “You need an extra gun? I’ve got a trusty MAC-10 I never go anywhere without. Be happy to join you down there.”
“No,” McCarter said. “Not what I had in mind, mate. But I wonder. Think you can fire up the commo gear and step on Wijeya’s frequency for me?”
“What’s the matter, you can’t get that pirate bastard on the horn?”
“No,” McCarter said. “I want to talk over him, not talk to him. I want override on his frequency. I figure he must have walkie-talkies sprinkled among the ranks of the gunners here. It’s the only way they would be able to communicate effectively. That means his line is a party line, and I want to be able to talk to everyone on the other end.”
“I can do that,” Grimaldi said. “But the kind of power drain it’s going to take…I can’t sustain that sort of thing for long or I’ll drain the bird’s batteries and then it’s only a matter of time before I’m swimming.”
“That’s a problem?” McCarter asked.
“Only if you want to try to stop Captain Blackbeard down there from hearing what you say. I don’t have that kind of juice.”
“No,” McCarter said. “It doesn’t matter if Wijeya overhears. By the time I’m through talking, the damage will be done.”
“You got it,” Grimaldi said. “Give me a minute.”
“Hurry, Jack,” McCarter urged. “I have a feeling the hammer is about to come down on us.”
No sooner had McCarter said that than the sound of gunfire began to sound farther down the corridor. A figure, moving at a full run, was approaching. The silhouette it made was far too large to be anyone but Gary Manning. The members of Phoenix Force took up a supporting fire position and waited as Manning cleared their location. Once he was safely back behind their lines, from their vantage in the hatchways at their end of the corridor, they braced their weapons and prepared to fire.
“Were you followed?” McCarter said.
“Wait for it,” Gary Manning warned. He held up three fingers. Then he held up two. Then he held up just one.
Gunfire from the other end of the corridor began to ricochet through the space. The pursuing shooters were uniformed, firing high-tech AR weapons. That would be the Blackstar goons again. McCarter drew a bead on one of them in the red-dot scope of his Tavor, dragged in a breath and let out half of it. Holding what was left, he let his finger squeeze the trigger until the shot broke by surprise.
The man in McCarter’s sights fell dead.
There were more. They fired, and they continued firing, until the sheer metal din of rounds striking the bulkheads around Phoenix Force was deafening and painful. The Stony Man Farm commandos returned fire, but they were now very much outgunned. The team at the end of the hall was made up of only Blackstar, with no pirate crew members in sight. That was bad, because while the Blackstar men weren’t the most experienced soldiers in the world, they certainly had more discipline than pirate hirelings.
Of course, that was the root of the idea McCarter had, and that idea might just save them.
“Come on, Jack,” he said quietly. “Don’t let us down. Patch me through to Wijeya’s men.”
The intense gunfire continued. If they had to keep up this pace for too much longer, he had serious doubts about their ability to break through. There was a lot more rig between them and Wijeya. The goal was to neutralize the enemy force holding the oil rig. Their secondary purpose—to determine if China was behind the attacks—seemed pretty much moot at this point. These men were no more in league with China than Phoenix Force was, unless the Chinese had begun hiring American security contractors and castoff pirate crews to achieve their ill-conceived military goals.
The whole thing was just crazy. He was tired of thinking about it. He was tired of debating it. He wanted something simple. Just give him an enemy to shoot at. Just give him something direct.
“You’re good,” Grimaldi’s voice said over the radio. “I repeat, David, you’re good. Give me the word and I will step on them like a giant ant at a picnic.”
“I’m not sure what the hell that means,” McCarter said, “but I do thank you, G-Force. Transmit now.”
Something in the tonal quality of the transmission changed. McCarter realized what that was. It was power.
“Attention,” McCarter said. He imagined he could hear his voice echoing throughout the oil rig, but that was not likely. It was only in his head, what he expected to be happening. “Attention, all crewmen of Yanuar Wijeya. You don’t know me. I represent the authorities. And I am here to tell you that if you continue fighting alongside the Blackstar men, you will be killed. Blackstar is a criminal organization. They are wanted men, desperate men. In every operation that Blackstar has conducted on foreign soil, they always murder their foreign allies.”
Manning looked at his teammates, then to McCarter. The Briton shrugged. He was making all this up as he went along.
“I want you to know,” he said, continuing, hoping Grimaldi’s power levels would hold out long enough for him do what he had to do, “that we don’t want you. We aren’t interested in pirates. We are here to arrest Blackstar. And even better, there is a reward. For every Blackstar man who is captured or killed, there is a reward of…five hundred American dollars.”
“You don’t think that’s overplaying it?” James whispered.
“A man with a gun who knows how to take care of himself…” McCarter paused. “Well, that chap could make himself a small fortune, hunting enemies like the Blackstar men. All you have to do is kill them and bring proof that you’ve killed them. Yo
u’ll be handsomely paid. And then you will be allowed to board your boat and leave. This I promise you, lads. You’ll know where to find me when the Navy arrives here in force. We’ve, uh, we’ve invited the Chinese to come here and board the rig. They’re eager to prove they weren’t involved in the attack. I can imagine that once they do get here with one of…with one of their aircraft carriers, anyone aboard who hasn’t proved he’s on the right side by taking down some Blackstar mercenary bounties will probably be horribly killed, instead of allowed to get on his launch and return to his life on the seas. Well, that’s all, chaps. Good day…and good luck.”
“Transmission cut,” Grimaldi reported.
“Well, then,” McCarter said. “Let’s see what sort of mischief that’s caused for us, shall we?”
“David…” James said. “What have you done?”
“If we’re lucky,” said McCarter, “I’ve just put the two groups we’re trying to clear off this rig at each other’s throats.”
“Wait for it,” Encizo said.
“Anybody notice something?” James said. They all looked at each other and the realization was simultaneous: the gunfire from the enemy had stopped. The Blackstar men had withdrawn.
“All right,” McCarter said. “On me. We do this by the book, in twos, with me at the point. Gary, you bring up the rear with another of those shotgun busters loaded. We’re going to check, compartment by compartment, until we reach the control deck level. And when we find Wijeya, we’re going to put him out of his misery once and for all so we can all go home. Sound good?”
There was yet another chorus of assent from Phoenix Force. McCarter shouldered his Tavor, checked it out of ritual habit to make sure a round was chambered, and led the way, ready for whatever threat might present itself.
They had not gotten very far when they started to find dead Blackstar men. In the distance, they could hear explosions and gunfire. There were screams, too. The Blackstar mercenaries and the pirates were fighting each other. Every gunman on either side who was taken out was one less that Phoenix Force would have to deal with.
“Look at these poor buggers,” McCarter said. “They’re all missing ears.”
“The pirates are taking proof,” said James. “They think they’re going to use it to rack up those imaginary bounties.”
“Pity for the Blackstar goons, then,” said the Briton. “That’s life in the big city, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Manning said. “I guess it is.” His tone was dark, but he did not sound critical. Every member of the team was tired of Blackstar and the harm the agency had caused. It was time to take them down, and if McCarter’s ruse did some of the heavy lifting for them, that was all right. Only pragmatic dedication to the efficient completion of the mission had utility value here. None of the men of Phoenix Force would ever compromise their moral values, nor step one inch out of frame where justice was concerned…but when it came to taking down a vicious, murdering enemy, they would quickly embrace whatever method proved out their goals.
Which was a very long-winded way of saying, “Whatever got the job done,” McCarter reflected.
“David,” Grimaldi said in his ear. “I’ve got everybody’s favorite pirate captain trying to perform spin control over the RF.”
“Patch him in so we can listen, G-Force.”
“You got it,” the Stony Man pilot said.
“No bounties. Repeat, no bounties,” Wijeya was saying. He sounded hysterical. “The only way we get paid is if you follow the plan I laid out! Our benefactor…the man funding our operation—the mercenaries in the black uniforms are his men! You fools, you fools, you must listen to me! There is a helicopter flying above us. The helicopter is obviously an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. I will make contact with it. I will convince the CIA killers to give us safe passage off this oil rig…”
“Switch him off, Jack,” McCarter said. The pilot did so. The Briton shook his head.
“Lonely at the top,” he said quietly. “Let’s keep on, lads. I think we’ve made sufficient trouble for that bastard that we can focus on moving to find him.”
James moved into position to take point as McCarter examined bodies. The group of commandos continued down the corridor. Encizo checked the deck plan on his smartphone every few corridor junctions.
“This place is a lot larger on the inside than it seemed on the outside,” Hawkins said.
“That’s because the rig extends underground below the water,” James said. “It’s a drill rig, man. That’s how these things work.”
“Right,” Hawkins drawled. “I’ll try to wrap my head around that.” Hawkins threw up his hand and James slapped it with a high-five.
“My man,” James said, “that’s all any of us can hope to do in this crazy world.”
“Live man!” James shouted suddenly. “Guys, I’ve got a live one over here.” He bent to inspect the Blackstar thug who was lying on the deck in front of him. Someone had tried to separate the man’s ear and done a poor job of it. He had been gut shot and left to bleed out.
“Pick him up,” McCarter directed. “Rafe, check that compartment. Gary, back him up.”
Encizo spun the wheel on the compartment indicated and opened the hatch, being careful in case there were armed enemies inside. There was no one, only a bunk that had seen better days and a few sailors’ trunks stacked haphazardly next to it. The Phoenix Force men dropped their recovered enemy onto the bunk. McCarter knelt beside the man.
“Medical kit,” Manning said, handing the one he carried to McCarter. The Briton nodded and took it. He took out a bandage and pressed it against the ruin of the Blackstar man’s ear.
“You son of a…” the man tried to say. “It was you. Your voice. On the radios.”
“I’m afraid so,” McCarter said. “And unless you’d like us to throw you back out into the corridor where we found you, so some other pirate can come along and scalp you, I suggest you tell me what I want to know.”
“Ask your questions,” the mercenary said sullenly.
“Your name, and who you work for,” McCarter said.
“Burke,” the man said. “Steven Burke. I’m an employee of Blackstar corporation.”
“And Blackstar is more or less comfortable with breaking the law, yes?” McCarter said. “Black operations around the world. Murder for fun and profit. A few international incidents, a few laws broken. What’s a bit of anarchy among friends, eh?”
“I don’t run the company,” Burke said. “I just follow orders. I just do what I’m told.”
“And that includes conducting false flag operations that implicate China in this region?”
“We had nothing to do with that,” Burke said. “Management sent us out here to back up the pirates. Said we had no choice but to cooperate with that scum. Said they were running some kind of covert op and we should just turn a blind eye to anything they did that seemed odd. Nobody mentioned that they’d turn on us the first chance they got. The first chance you gave them. Is there even any bounty?”
“I think that’s the last of your concerns right now,” McCarter said. He began examining the man’s torso, probing with his hands. “Are you aware that your breathing is labored?”
“What? Yeah… Got a…got a weight in my chest. It’ll pass. Just the stress of the op.”
Manning came to kneel beside McCarter. “David,” he said, “he sweating badly.” To Burke, the Canadian said, “Are you feeling any shooting pains in your arm?”
“Yeah,” Burke said. “Think I pulled something. I’ll be okay. I just need to rest. Leave me alone, you bastards. I told you everything…everything…” His voice trailed off. Suddenly he clutched his chest and his eyes squeezed shut.
“He’s having a heart attack,” Manning said. “Here, help me with…” Now it was Manning’s turn to trail off. Burke was staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing. A death rattle escaped his lungs.
“Poor blighter,” McCarter said. “Nobody deserves to go out that way. E
ven murderous mercenary trash. Better a quick end than that.”
“Well,” Encizo said, “not our problem now.” He shook his head. McCarter was inclined to agree with the sentiment. It sure was a bloody business, this war in which they were engaged.
“Onward,” McCarter said.
Encizo checked his deck plan once more. He showed it to McCarter. “We just need to continue to the end, here.” He pointed at the diagram. “Then down the manway. The control level is there. And it’s a good bet Wijeya is there, too.”
“Let’s go find the bastard,” McCarter said. “I’m ready to put a stop to all this.”
The commandos of Phoenix Force walked on. They encountered little resistance. As they traveled, the screaming and gunfire faded. Either the fighting was diminishing or the enemy was withdrawing to the upper decks, leaving the interior of the rig.
“G-Force,” Calvin James said. “What’s happening up there?”
“Funny you should ask,” Grimaldi answered. “Because I’ve got what looks like a party forming on the deck…and I like my chances of cleaning house.”
“Go to work, Jack,” McCarter said. “Go to work.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Roger that,” the ace Stony Man pilot acknowledged.
Grimaldi flipped the switches that would allow him to control the Sikorsky’s weapons systems automatically. It wasn’t nearly as accurate as having gunners on board. Without a crew, he could only angle the guns on either side in the general direction of the enemy by using the chopper itself. The same was true of the grenade launcher. This meant that, without people to man the guns and launcher, precision strikes were out of the question. But flying high above the oil rig platform, passing over the relatively untouched power-generation station and scoping the gathering beneath him, Grimaldi figured that precision was not going to be what was called for. Not for the next few minutes, anyway.
War Tactic Page 24