by Evan Graver
Once they knew which ship to use, things had snowballed quickly from there. Sadiq and his men had a final meeting with General Golnar, where Golnar introduced the last man in the team. That man had one job.
To launch the missiles.
Chapter Twenty
Galina Jovovich
Off the coast of Nicaragua
Ryan ran quietly along the bridge deck to the open bridge door. He crouched and peered around the corner, watching four skinny black men examining the gear they’d dumped from his kitbags.
One had put on Ryan’s load-bearing vest and was pulling everything from its pockets. Another had traded his rusty AK for the KRISS Vector, while the third ate cold soup from the can Ryan had been saving for his breakfast and the fourth examined Gary’s Remington shotgun.
Sliding back out of view, Ryan made his way to the main deck. He crept to the rail, looking for the panga that had brought the men. It was holding station off the stern, the driver barely making headway as he kept pace with the Galina. A second boat carried five more men through the two-foot swells, and it was now close enough for Ryan to see that they all held some type of firearm.
He drew back from the rail and moved into the ship’s interior. Ryan patted his pockets, taking stock of his remaining equipment. He had the sat phone, a tactical folding knife, LED flashlight, his Glock 19 pistol with two spare fifteen-round magazines, a lighter, five cigarettes, a set of keys with a bottle opener, and, most importantly, the highly trained brain between his ears. He had more than enough ammo to take out all the bad guys, but he didn’t know their intentions yet. They could be scavengers like Eddy, but he thought it was more likely that two boats of heavily armed men boarding a vessel at sea meant pirates.
Either way, he needed to wait and see what they had planned for the Galina. They couldn’t tow her with their little pangas, despite the 225-horsepower Yamaha outboards hanging on their sterns. He dove for the deck when he heard gunfire, recognizing the sound of the KRISS.
He strode to the window and saw the second boat had veered away. Maybe the two boats were rivals? If that was the case, they might take each other out. If they weren’t, then he needed a plan to get rid of the boats so he could isolate the pirates and take them out one by one.
Taking the inside stairs to the library, Ryan collected the four empty beer bottles he’d stuffed under the couch cushions, and jogged to the engine room. The water in the hold had risen almost an inch, and his shoes became coated with the watery oil mixture as he moved along the lower catwalk to the bank of diesel fuel filters. A small spigot projected from the base of each filter housing so the engineers could take samples of the diesel to determine if water had mixed with the fuel. Since water’s density was greater than the diesel, the water would settle to the bottom of the filters, and a crewman could siphon off the water until only pure diesel remained.
He twisted the tap, letting out a trickle of fuel that sparkled in the beam of his flashlight, pinched between his neck and shoulder so he could work with both hands.
A glass jar sat beside the testing station, and he partially filled it with fuel. After shutting off the tap, he swirled the jar and held the light up to it. When the fuel stopped spinning, he saw a layer of water at the bottom. He let the filter drain more and tested the diesel again until there was no water in the jar, then he filled the beer bottles.
Once he had all four filled, and his hands were completely soaked from overfilling them, he went to a workbench.
Ryan dumped some of the liquid from each and topped the bottles with oil from a nearby jug before cutting strips of old rags and stuffing them down the long necks. Now he had Molotov cocktail party favors.
The engine room sat amidships, and he used the aft door to make his egress. Before he opened the door, he set his Molotov cocktails against the bulkhead, shut off his flashlight, tucked it into a cargo pocket, then undogged the hatch by feel in the cave-like darkness. Slowly, he cracked the door open and checked the passageway. It was empty, so he stepped out, moved his precious cargo, and spun the door’s wheel to lock the dogs in place. He picked up his bottles and went up the steps that led to the small open stern area where he, Travis, and Gary had first climbed aboard.
He eased the heavy oak double doors open and crawled out, two beer bottles clutched in each fist.
Just as he made it to the railing, he heard shouting in Creole, immediately followed by the rattle of automatic gunfire.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ryan pressed himself flat to the deck of the Galina Jovovich. He scrambled forward to the perceived safety of the solid steel railing that surrounded the open deck as bullets ricocheted above his head and shattered the glass of the door. The shooters in the bobbing boats must have spotted him as he crawled past the open transom door. Even though it was notoriously tough to be accurate while shooting from a moving object, these asshats had managed to do a fair job of pinning him down.
Slowly, he edged to the railing, trying to see through the hawsehole, a hole cut in the transom through which crewmen passed the dock lines, or hawsers. The panga loaded with men was now on an intercept course with the Galina, heading for the line dangling from the upper deck.
Ryan snaked his way past the cruciform bollards welded to the deck behind the hawseholes, stuck his hand through the hole, and pulled the rope out of the pirate’s reach. This earned him a withering blast of gunfire which pinged harmlessly off the metal sides of the ship.
He rolled to look down the promenade deck. Surely the pirates on the bridge would investigate why their compatriots were shooting? Damn, he wished he had his KRISS, or at least the suppressor for his Glock, but the suppressor had been in his load-bearing vest, and it and the KRISS were now in the hands of the pirates.
Turning back to the transom door, Ryan saw the panga come alongside the Galina. A man in the panga’s bow swung a grappling hook in a slow circle. Ryan waited a moment longer for the panga to come alongside the ship, crouching behind the solid steel railing around the transom door. He glanced at the panga again. It was almost there. Another moment more, and the boat would be abreast of the door.
He took that moment to light the first Molotov cocktail. He heard the grappling hook clatter against the railing one deck above, rose to his feet, and hurled the bottle into the twenty-eight-foot wooden fishing boat. The bottle bounced off the seat and plunged into the ocean.
“Shit,” Ryan muttered, ducking down, and lighting the second bottle.
As soon as the gunfire died, he stood, targeted the open bilge in front of the driver’s feet, and threw the Molotov cocktail with all his might. This time, the bottle shattered on impact, spraying diesel and engine oil across the wooden boat and the men in it. The flaming rag ignited the fumes with a whoosh, and screams erupted from the burning men. Ryan ducked below the railing, not wanting to watch the men dive into the sea or burn to death, but he couldn’t blot out their shrieking voices. Moments later, a secondary explosion ripped through the air.
Ryan looked over the railing to see that the panga had a hole in her stern where the gas tank had been, and the boat blazed brightly as it sank. He aimed his pistol at a man alight with flames and clinging to the bow. Ryan shot him in the head to end his horrible screaming, then he swung his sights to the driver of the second boat, steadied the gun on the rail, and put two rounds into the man’s chest. The driver toppled out of his boat. The engine lanyard attached to his wrist jerked the tiller hard to port and popped free of the outboard, killing the motor.
Ryan’s antics had drawn the attention of the four men who’d been on the bridge, and one fired his AK as he ran toward him on the promenade deck. Ryan kicked the remaining cocktails overboard and rolled behind the bulkhead. Shards of glass from the broken door dug into his back, forearms, and palms. He kept moving despite the pain and pushed through the double doors into the interior.
He held his Glock in the low ready position as he moved forward. Now it was time to hunt.
Chapter Tw
enty-Two
Through the windows, Ryan saw two pirates race along the Galina Jovovich’s promenade decks, one on either side of the ship. He ran forward to the spiral staircase at the front of the ship and continued up to the bridge. He pointed his Glock upward as he ascended.
The bridge was empty, but the pirates had left behind several items he could use: the suppressor for his pistol, which he quickly screwed into place, and the GPS unit, which still lay on the console. Ryan pocketed the GPS. He’d need it to coordinate the meeting with the Star of Galveston.
Cans of food and various other items rolled about the deck with each passing wave. As Ryan scanned the bridge, he noticed that the bastards had drunk the last of his Mountain Dew. There was half a case of water left, and he pocketed two plastic bottles before mounting the steps to the roof of the bridge deck.
Ryan crept along, pistol up in outstretched arms. He knew the Galina fairly well by now, and that was an advantage he had over the attackers, who would need to go door-to-door to find him. After taking out one of their boats and two of their fellow pirates, Ryan was confident they were scouring the ship for him.
A freshening easterly breeze cooled Ryan. He instinctively considered the subtle shift in the wind, which had been pushing the ship northward with the current. If the wind continued from the east, it would take him toward the coast, but he didn’t have time to worry about it now.
He ran to the massive smoke funnel in the center of the deck and looked up the steel ladder rungs welded to the funnel, leading to its top. If nothing else, he could climb into the funnel and hide, but that wasn’t Ryan’s nature. This was his ship, and he wanted the men off it with as little fuss as possible. He skirted the funnel on the starboard side and approached the wide stairs leading down two decks to the aft observatory and the empty swimming pool.
The head of a pirate appeared as the man jogged up the steps. Ryan froze, bringing his pistol to bear on the lean brown man, slick with sweat beneath an open white guayabera shirt and dirty red shorts. His black hair was short, his ears large and wide, and he wore a pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip.
Behind him was a taller man, his thick afro bobbing with each step. His collarbones and sternum stood out prominently under his taut skin and sinewy muscles as he gripped an ancient bolt-action rifle. He was also shoeless like his companion and wore only blue jeans.
Ryan raised his Glock and shouted, “Stop.”
Blue Jeans paused as if unsure what to do. Guayabera’s rusty, wire-stocked AK sprang to his shoulder, but before he could depress the trigger, Ryan put a round through his forehead. Guayabera toppled backward, his body ragdolling down the steps.
Ryan swiveled to center his sights on Blue Jeans’s chest and said, “Throw down your gun and jump off the ship.”
They stared at one another—Blue Jeans still frozen in his tracks. The heat radiating from the deck made Ryan’s feet hot, and sweat rolled down his forehead. He had a sudden flashback to being forced to stand on a roof for punishment while in a Venezuelan prison after breaking one man’s wrist and killing another in self-defense. Those two long days had almost broken him.
“Jorge!” a man shouted from somewhere below them.
Blue Jeans opened his mouth to yell, but Ryan fired a bullet into the butt of his rifle stock. Blue Jeans dropped the antique and ran down the steps. At the railing behind the empty pool, he turned to look back at Ryan before jumping feet-first into the sea.
“Two down, two to go,” Ryan muttered to himself.
Despite what Ryan liked to tell himself about enjoying his work as a commercial diver, he missed the action and a gun in his hand. Combat had always produced a certain high that nothing else could compare to, not even disarming underwater mines in pitch-black water. The Galina was a playground of passageways, compartments, and stairs, and the Navy had trained him to be a proficient killing machine in just such an environment.
Ryan entered the dining room and glanced around, tuning his hearing and other senses to the noises, sights, and smells that would lead him to the remaining pirates. He heard the outboard start and assumed that Blue Jeans had made it to the panga. Would he wait for his friends or leave them to fend for themselves? It didn’t matter to Ryan, although a part of him hoped Blue Jeans had abandoned them. He wanted to stalk and kill as he made his way deeper into the ship’s interior, swinging the elongated barrel of the suppressed pistol as he moved.
Entering the library, he saw the back of one of the pirates as he stepped out onto the promenade deck. As the door swung closed, Ryan ran across the room and stopped to peer out the window to determine which direction his quarry had gone. This man was shorter than his companions, with nappy hair, a dirty white T-shirt, and tan shorts. Like the others, his feet were bare, but he carried a brutal-looking sawed-off shotgun.
Ryan felt the tops of his feet itch. He removed his shoe and sock. The skin was red and irritated. He guessed it was from wading through the diesel and water mixture in the engine room. He pushed off his other shoe and sock and saw that foot was also red. Before pursuing his foe, he dumped half a bottle of water onto each foot to wash away the irritants, but they still itched. He forced himself to refocus on the mission and pushed through the door.
His prey stood at the aft railing, shouting to Blue Jeans. While Ryan couldn’t understand the Miskito Creole, he could tell from the tone that Blue Jeans wanted his friend to jump. Ryan approached with stealth, but the man must have heard him, swinging the gaping mouth of the shotgun his way. Ryan dropped to one knee, shot the man in the chest, and continued to fall onto his right side to get below the muzzle of the scattergun.
As the Miskito jerked backward from the impact of the nine-millimeter hollow point to his chest, he pulled the shotgun’s trigger. The boom was deafening in the enclosed promenade deck, and the buckshot pinged off the overhead deck and shattered the brittle vinyl windows.
Ryan was just about to put a second shot into the man when someone landed on him, pinning him to the deck and knocking the pistol from his hand. He turned his head in time to see a dark fist coming for his jaw and jerked his head back and down. The blow still stung, even though the man’s fist bounced off his chin and slammed into the unyielding green deck, eliciting a cry of anguish from the attacker.
Shaking off the cobwebs from the punch, Ryan slammed his left elbow backward, connecting solidly with the man’s head. The attacker roared, and Ryan hammered him again and again until he drew back enough for Ryan to roll onto his back. He wrapped his legs around the smaller man’s waist, noticing a scar running across the Miskito’s right cheek and that his coal-black eyes were full of anger.
Scar Face swung with both fists, trying to pummel Ryan’s face, but the American held his arms up, deflecting most of the blows with his forearms. Ryan locked his ankles together and squeezed tighter. Enraged, Scar Face grabbed Ryan by his upper arms and lifted him into the air. If he clung to Scar Face, he would powerbomb Ryan into the deck. Ryan released his legs and swung them down. This threw Scar Face off-balance, and he released Ryan’s arms.
Ryan stumbled backward and crashed into the railing, feeling the sharp edges of the vinyl windowpane stab him in the spine. Scar Face charged, intent on driving Ryan through the window and into the ocean below, but the nimbler, better-trained fighter squatted as Scar Face was about to slam into him and used his powerful legs to spring up, catching Scar Face in the stomach and catapulting him over the railing.
Breathless, his chest heaving, Ryan leaned out to see Scar Face swimming toward the panga. Blue Jeans gave Ryan the finger before helping Scar Face into the boat. Ryan scooped up the sawed-off shotgun from beside its dead owner, pumped a new shell into the chamber, and fired a burst of buckshot at the boat.
Blue Jeans threw the tiller over and raced toward shore as Ryan fired the shotgun until it was empty. When he’d ejected the last spent shell from the chamber, he threw the gun into the water and retrieved his pistol. Unfortunately, Scar Face had been wearing his l
oad-bearing vest when he’d gone overboard, taking the majority of Ryan’s spare magazines with him. Low on ammunition, Ryan needed to fortify his defenses, because he was certain the pirates would return with reinforcements.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The first thing Ryan did to prepare for a second pirate attack was to fill several alcohol bottles from the bar with the diesel and oil mixture and stuff the tops with rags. Next, he gathered the firearms he found on board. Along the wire stock AK and Blue Jeans’s bolt-action rifle, Ryan had found his KRISS Vector on the promenade deck near where he and Scar Face had fought. The magazine was half full, and he located a spare on the bridge deck. He used ammunition from the partially full KRISS mag to replenish his Glock.
His next chore was one he’d rather not do, but he wanted to get rid of the bodies. He found some line in a storage locker and wrapped it around the dead men, pinning their hands to sides and working his way to their feet before tying on heavy sections of spare pipe. Then he dumped them overboard.
Finished with the gruesome task, Ryan lit a cigarette while speed dialing Greg’s number.
The owner of DWR answered on the second ring. “How’s life on the ghost ship?”
“I just had an encounter with real-life pirates of the Caribbean.”
“What happened?”
Ryan explained how he had fended off the pirates and finished with, “What’s the ETA on Star of Galveston?”