by Dalton Fury
He’d been an Army Ranger, an officer, and then a member of Delta, the most elite fighting unit in the world.
But all that had ended three years ago.
Kolt shrugged, shook away the memories that haunted him, shook away just enough of the self-loathing to stand, and stepped into his sandals. He headed out the door and down to the galley to make himself a sandwich.
* * *
Five minutes later Kolt Raynor sat alone in the galley. He ate bread with cheese spread, wondered if he would vomit again. He felt queasy, like the room was moving, and he put his hands flat on the metal table to steady himself. His plate slid to the right, as did several other items in the room. He felt it now, unmistakable—it was not his nausea, and it was not his imagination. The ship was turning hard to port, still at full power. He knew they were far from land, it was broad daylight, and he therefore could not imagine why the captain was executing such a dramatic maneuver. There was no one around to explain why—all hands were working in other parts of the freighter. He grabbed a hunk of white bread and left the galley, climbed the stairs to the outside. He was one floor above the main deck, and he started for the stairs to go up to the control room. A middle-aged Filipino crewman in a tan jumpsuit and a red hard hat climbed a steep ladder to his level and ran past him, his thick rubber boots banging the cleated metal surface of the deck.
“What is it?” This man, Kolt knew, spoke only Tagalog, but he was able to convey a simple message.
“Pirates!”
Kolt stood there, said, “No shit?” through a lump of bread in his mouth.
TWO
Raynor didn’t believe him. He kept chewing his bread as he climbed another steep flight of stairs to B Deck, two levels above the main container deck. He looked off the starboard side, out at the ocean.
Nothing.
He moved around to the port side of the superstructure, more curious than anxious. The ship had stopped its dramatic turn, and again it shot straight and true through the water. Just behind the ship, off the port side and well within its wake, he saw three small boats. Twelve-footers, fast movers, each full of men. He estimated fifteen in total, some black, some Arab. Most had AK-47 or AK-74 rifles, though he saw at least one RPG launcher. The small craft bobbed up and down, closed confidently on the massive ship.
“I’ll be damned.” They were too close for the LRAD, and Raynor had no time to get to the fire hoses.
These men would board the ship.
Raynor had already failed.
Though the pirates looked ominous enough in their turbans and with their chests full of rifle magazines, Kolt had studied the modus operandi of Somali coast hijackings, and he knew there was little chance anyone would get hurt in the transaction to come. Jorgensen Shipping would pay—these guys would know that already. Despite a few highly publicized violent clashes between pirates and naval forces in the Gulf of Aden, the vast majority of incidents turned out to be little more than a “taxing,” where the gang would board the ship and require payment to be wired for the ship to pass through the waters.
Hardly the high drama of movies and TV shows.
Raynor thought about going back to the cabin to change into his uniform, clothing more representative of an agent of the shipping company. But he decided against it. Getting dressed up for a meeting with half-naked African pirates would just add to the absurdity of the moment.
The gunmen began boarding the ship with rope ladders hanging from long poles while Kolt made his way down the stairs and across the long deck. He’d tossed his bread in a garbage can, and he walked calmly with his arms to his sides. From a hundred yards away he saw several of the deckhands standing around near the pirates, even helping them aboard. Surely some of these guys had been in hijackings before: they knew the protocol. There was no time to get down to the citadel, the safe room several decks down in the bowels of the ship, so the deckhands just did their best to make friends with the men now in control. The Norwegian officers were nowhere in sight, maybe racing down to the citadel, though the gunmen at the bow would probably beat them there.
Wherever the Norwegians were, one thing was certain: they were leaving the negotiating to Raynor.
This was good news, actually, as Kolt knew his breath was ripe with liquor, and though he’d certainly been drunker at other times on this cruise, he was nowhere near sober at the moment. He decided he’d work with the pirates directly and stay as far away from the captain as possible. Captain Thomasson was not exactly Kolt’s biggest fan, as evidenced by his tattletale phone call to Pete Grauer.
As more and more of the shirtless pirates began filling the deck in front of him, Kolt was surprised to see some of the bandits angrily pushing and shoving the Filipinos. They lined them up near the bow, yanked off their hard hats, and put them on one another’s heads. Raynor continued to advance, but something inside him registered danger, something in the movements, something in the mannerisms of the attackers.
Kolt stopped in his tracks. The aggression showed by a few of these boy-men did not sync with what Raynor had been told about the standard operating procedure of a typical Gulf of Aden takedown. The gesticulations of one young Somali, perhaps the leader, were especially curious. His wide white eyes and screams at the Filipinos seemed wild and animal-like. He shoved men to the ground, hit them over the head with the butt of his rifle, kicked them while they squirmed on their backs on the hot metal deck.
Raynor quickly knelt behind a coil of ropes at the edge of a container bay, not forty yards from the melee. The sudden movement made his stomach roll and his body weight sway on his rubbery legs.
From this distance he could plainly hear the pirate leader. “I am Abdiwali. I am in charge of ship now! Where is captain?” the young man screamed in English. No one said anything. He pushed a young crew member toward the ship’s tower to fetch him. Then, with a wave of his hand, he sent four of his men off in different directions, presumably to round up the officers and anyone else on board. As they moved out, the leader fired a half magazine into a yellow shipping container just over the heads of the cowering crew.
The American private security contractor did not know what to do. His job, on paper anyway, would have him walk toward the leader right now, assure him Jorgensen Shipping was ready to work together with their good friends the Somalis to come to some reasonable agreement on the tariff necessary to allow this freighter to continue on through these waters with its full complement of cargo and crew.
But Raynor had a very bad feeling about this, and the last thing he was going to do at the moment was saunter up to the pirates with a smile on his face and declare himself in charge.
Kolt turned, still in a low crouch, and ran.
* * *
The teenage Filipino deckhand sat on his tiny lower bunk on G Deck. In his hand he cradled the rusty revolver he’d bought in port in Athens to keep the largest rats at bay. He heard the crack of rapid-fire gunshots several levels below him on the main deck. He’d never fired the weapon in his hands, never even opened the cylinder to check the status of the ammunition that came with it.
The young man shook from head to toe. This was his first experience with pirates. He’d been told by his crewmates that there was nothing to fear, but the young man was simple, anxious by nature, and quite reasonably afraid of guns pointed in anger by shouting men. He began near convulsions as running footsteps approached from down the hall. His door latch clicked, and he raised the tiny revolver awkwardly.
“Walter, Walter, it’s okay.”
It was the American, the long-haired security man who stayed in his cabin all day and smelled of drink. The man who’d come to look at his gun on the third day out of Naples but with a chuckle had allowed him to keep it after learning why he’d bought it, made Walter promise to kill a rat for him someday.
Walter lowered the pistol with an audible sigh of relief.
“I need to borrow your gun.”
The young Filipino held it out in his quaking hand. The Am
erican looked determined, confident. He took the weapon, spun it nimbly on a finger, slid forward a catch and dropped the cylinder, pulled out a round and held it up to the light. In under three seconds he’d put it all back together again, slipped the revolver under his undershirt in the small of his back, and turned to go back into the hall.
Walter called out to him. “Mr. Kolt! There are many pirates with big machine guns. You have only five little bullets. Five little bullets will not stop them.”
The American leaned back into the cabin. The eyes that had watered with the effects of liquor for the past week now glinted sharp and bright with purpose. “No. But five little bullets just might buy me one of those big machine guns.”
The American turned away again. His running footsteps faded down the hall.
* * *
Captain Thor Thomasson walked past the huge containers on the main deck. Two pirates flanked him and held his arms and waved rifle muzzles up in his face to spur him forward. He wore his formal coat buttoned up, held his head high and his nose up, kept a proud chin. He could hear his officers behind him as they were pushed along at gunpoint as well.
He was angry at these filthy brigands, of course. Considered them the vermin of the sea, the absolute scourge of a profession of great honor and nobility. But as angry as he was at these poorly dressed, sweat-dripping black and Arab men around him, he was incalculably more furious at that son-of-a-bitch American alcoholic security officer who should already have been on his satellite phone wiring funds to these cretins’ Nairobi bank accounts.
Where the hell was that drunkard Raynor?
Captain Thomasson was led in front of the leader of the pirates and shoved down to his knees, which was a shock to the Norwegian mariner. He was screamed at in French and English and Somali and Arabic. Spit flew from the young pirate leader’s mouth as he shouted and yelled and waved his gun around in wild arcs.
Thomasson had endured hijackings before, but this was clearly different. These men were whipped into a fierce rage, and they almost looked as if they wanted to kill.
* * *
Kolt Raynor ran down the stairs to B Deck, turned the corner, and all but crashed into two surprised pirates. Both men raised their rifles at him quickly. He could tell some drug was amping up their brains. Their jerking and ticlike movements were hard to judge. He put his hands out, palms forward, waist high.
And he smiled as he spoke. “Francais? Parlez vouz Francais mes amis?”
One of the men nodded and said he did speak French.
“Tres bien. Je suis avec l’ societe de transport Jorgensen. Tu va bien.”
Everything is okay, he assured them. He spoke politely and calmly.
In French he continued, “I have the authority to offer you payment for our safe passage. Look, my friends, I will show you my credentials.”
Kolt’s right hand slowly began to reach into his waistband. The men had spread apart warily, one on each side of the gangway, and each kept his AK on his chest. They had been somewhat calmed by Kolt’s words and his demeanor, but they were no amateurs, and they were no fools. As his right hand lowered to his side one of the men shouted at him to freeze.
Raynor’s hand movement transitioned from slow and cautious to a whipping blur. He reached behind his back as he took a quick sidestep to his right. His hand appeared, and before either pirate could react, he shot the man on his left through the right eye. The second man jolted in shock, began to squeeze the trigger of his AK-47, but two rounds to the neck short-circuited his central nervous system and his finger relaxed.
Kolt returned the hot pistol to the small of his back, stepped forward, and gently took the rifle from the second dead man’s hands even before his body hit the metal deck. This rifle he slung over his shoulder. He lifted the identical AK from the ground next to the first pirate, opened the collapsed wire stock with a snap, and continued walking toward the bow side of the superstructure.
* * *
“Go see what that was!” Abdiwali shouted to two of his men, and they started off at a run toward the ship’s superstructure. Captain Thomasson remained on his knees, the hot metal burning his white skin through his pressed trousers. His fellow officers were lined up on their knees alongside him. The Filipinos stood behind the Norwegians. All were terrified by the erratic actions of their captors.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
Thomasson had offered money, money to be wired anywhere in the world. The pirate leader had laughed at him and told him they would kill them all and take their cargo and their boat and earn ten times the money his company would be willing to pay for their miserable lives.
Just then cracking Kalashnikov fire echoed off the large wall of containers behind them. The origins of the noise were hard to pinpoint. All the pirates, and all the captured crew, looked up at the superstructure. There, a lone man stood on B Deck, fifty yards away, holding an assault rifle over the scene.
Thomasson squinted in the glare of the sun off the windows of the superstructure. Finally he said, “Raynor?”
THREE
Kolt Raynor had just killed four men at close range, two with the pistol, and two more with a “borrowed” Kalashnikov. It had been easy. But now, at a distance, he found holding the sights on a small target extremely difficult. The ship rocked gently from side to side, Raynor had not trained with a rifle in years, and his physical condition had deteriorated to the extent that he was already winded from running a short distance and climbing a few flights of stairs.
And, there was no question in his mind, he was legally drunk.
But what he lacked in capability, he attempted to make up for in bluster.
He shouted at the attackers below him. “I’ve killed four of you already! Turn around and get back on your boats or I’ll kill you all!”
The leader of the pirates screamed back at him. “I will shoot the captain!” Abdiwali grabbed Thomasson by the pressed and starched collar of his uniform and pulled him up to his feet. Held the AK to the officer’s neck and gripped him close, using the thick man for cover.
The punishing sun scalded Kolt’s face. He squinted, sighted carefully across the top of his AK. The weapon rocked back and forth in his hands. Raynor was furious with himself for drinking on duty. At the same time, he desperately wanted a tall shot of bourbon to help calm his nerves. He worried about his abilities, and he worried about the weapon in his hands. Raynor had not sighted this weapon—he didn’t know how accurate it was even in the hands of a stone-cold-sober shooter.
Still, it was only fifty yards. In his military service Raynor had routinely popped head-sized targets with iron sights at four times the distance. He told himself that fifty lousy yards, even buzzed and firing an unfamiliar weapon, would be no problem. He tightened his aim on the pirate’s forehead, pushed the captain out of his mind, slowly and confidently pressed the trigger.
Boom. The weapon’s recoil slammed the stock against his shoulder, and in his alcohol-addled state his knees were wobbly. It took him a long moment to refocus downrange.
The pirate leader remained standing.
Captain Thor Thomasson fell to the deck. He writhed on the ground, clutching his shoulder.
“Oh shit,” Raynor mumbled.
Abdiwali screamed, “What is wrong with you? Are you crazy? I will kill everyone!” Quickly the pirates made human shields of all the ship’s officers, and Abdiwali pulled the injured Captain Thomasson back to his feet and held him between the superstructure and himself.
Blood ran down the blue sleeve of the captain’s uniform.
Kolt Raynor slowly lowered his weapon, dropped it to the deck, and raised his hands.
* * *
Abdiwali hit the wounded captain on the head over and over with the wooden stock of his gun while he waited for his men to bring the bearded man down from B Deck. He’d lost four men today, but he would take twenty-five lives as repayment. Then he and his surviving men would ransack the ship, and spend some time searching for lo
ot. Then they would climb back on their boats and speed toward the coast before NATO ships or helicopters arrived.
This would be a fun afternoon, and Abdiwali would get it started by making the bearded infidel now approaching beg for his wretched life.
“Abdiwali!” shouted one of the pirates pushing him along. “He is American! He had Mustafa’s rifle, and he had a pistol hidden in his pants.” The pirate shoved the American down onto the hot deck at his leader’s feet. The man went down on his hands and knees, began spewing vomit, ejecting sick bile on the pirate’s sandals and bare legs.
First Abdiwali leaped back and screamed with anger. Then he raged forward, used the butt of his rifle to pound the top of the man’s head. The two pirates flanking the disgusting creature followed suit, and all three began hitting him with their rifles as he rolled on the deck in his own effluence.
When they slowed their attack he crawled back up to his hands and knees. The man on his left raised his gun high to rain one last powerful blow down on his back. Suddenly the cowering American leaped up toward the descending rifle, spun his back to the pirate’s chest, and grasped the AK as it swept down. The sling was around the Somali’s neck—the American pulled the gun in front of him and yanked the choking pirate off his feet, spinning him around to his back and holding him off the ground while he kicked and gagged, strangling the pirate with the pirate’s own rifle’s sling.
Abdiwali frantically tried to turn his weapon back around from its butt-forward position, but the puke-covered infidel was too fast. The American stepped closer, still using the sling to choke the rifle’s owner. The barrel of the AK pressed against Abdiwali’s forehead, and it shoved him backward to the bow’s railing. One more strong push and Abdiwali would fall two stories to the water below.