by Mack Maloney
Nolan reported all this to those on board.
“Gotta be the place,” Batman said. “So hang on.”
* * *
It took the copter just three minutes to spiral down to wave-top level.
They were soon flying off the eastern edge of Craggy Two Cay. From here, the team members used their standard night-vision goggles to peer through the sea mist and into the island’s jungle beyond.
The encampment they saw was not quite what they’d been expecting. Again, they knew the pirate gang had access to a lot of money. And though it seemed to go through their hands like water, they always had the ability to make more. But this place looked more like a city dump than a hideout. Shanty shacks were surrounded by mounds of trash and debris with empty and smashed liquor bottles everywhere. Piles of broken and rusted outboard motor parts covered the small beach that led from the camp to the river. Pigs were running free everywhere.
“Some Somalis live better than this,” Crash said.
Nolan and Batman were sweating badly now inside their flight suits in the heavy, 80-degree night air. Crash and Gunner, on the other hand, were cool and comfortable.
But not for long.
The copter came to a hover just off the island’s east-facing reef. The dividing river ran through this reef, past the pirates’ camp, and then on to the other side of the island. Called a “bight,” this was not unusual topography for the Bahamas. And it would be key for what happened next.
“Ready back there?” Nolan yelled over his shoulder to Crash and Gunner.
He heard two “Rogers,” in reply.
With that, both men jumped out, hitting the water with a great splash.
Nolan waited until he received a thumbs up from them, then gave Batman the signal to go. The copter roared straight up, soon disappearing back into the night.
Crash and Gunner swam the hundred yards in through the channel. Their intent was to observe the pirates’ hideout, SEAL-style. The mild current was going with them, so they soon reached a point about twenty-five feet off the camp’s river shoreline. With their faces blackened and their eyes aided by waterproofed night-vision goggles, they started the recon.
What they saw was more of the same: lots of junk, lots of garbage, lots of engine parts and debris. There were fifteen shacks in all, arranged in a rough semicircle around a huge bonfire. Everywhere around the shacks the ground sparkled because there was so much glass from so many smashed liquor bottles. Amid all this refuse stood a tree holding a satellite dish used for receiving TV and radio broadcasts.
Crash and Gunner counted more than thirty gunmen around the camp. These had to be the hardcore pirates, Captain Black’s senior men, the ones privileged enough to actually live, eat and breathe within sight of their bloodthirsty leader. Some were gathered near the bonfire, apparently gambling. A few were fighting each other with knives and fists. The rest were drinking by the river’s edge, not far from where Crash and Gunner were quietly treading water.
The Whiskey members could see no signs of security, no lookouts, no sentries around the camp — which was good. But there was also a lot of firepower in evidence. Most dangerous were a pair of .50-caliber chain guns, one set up at each end of the camp. These nasty weapons were connected to ammo drums containing hundreds of rounds. It was obvious they were put in place to fire at any boats approaching from either end of the bight. But set up on tripods, they could just as easily be trained upward and used against a threat from above.
The pirates also had an open-sided shack filled with AK-47s hanging on racks for easy access. A similar structure next to this armory was full of weapons still in their packing crates. Gunner figured these were arms the pirates had for sale.
There were also stacks of rifles and shotguns set up next to shacks, and many others scattered haphazardly on the ground.
“There must be five weapons for every guy here,” Gunner said to Crash.
“At least,” Crash replied.
Most important, the camp was built close to the edge of the jungle. There were dozens of places in the shadows of the flora where gunmen could hide during an attack.
“This will have to be an exercise in drawing fire,” Gunner said. “We’ll have to tease them out if we want to get them all.”
“Roger that,” Crash replied.
Gunner took a lot of pictures with the team’s waterproof digital camera and then they both resumed swimming down the bight. When they reached the far side of the island, the team’s copter was waiting for them.
As soon as the pair climbed in, Nolan asked, “Well, what’s the 411?”
Gunner replied, “Muy desorganizada.”
Then Crash added, “But still muy dangerous.”
9
The next night
Nolan was at the controls of Bad Dawg Two.
It was just before midnight. Not twenty-four hours after Gunner and Crash had completed their recon of Craggy Two Cay, Whiskey was on its way back, this time in force.
They were flying low, just above the wave tops, coming from the north. Batman was off Nolan’s left wing in Bad Dawg One; Crash was with him, manning one of the door guns. Gunner and Twitch were riding with Nolan, their M4s hooked up to extended belts of ammunition. Some of the photos Gunner had taken of the pirates’ secret camp were taped to Nolan’s flight panel. He’d studied them closely and knew the numbers they told: more than thirty hardcore pirates were probably at the camp, along with two big chain guns and a lot of assault rifles. The advantage, six to one in the pirates’ favor, didn’t bother Nolan. Back when they attacked the base of Zeek the Pirate in Indonesia, Whiskey had been outnumbered almost eight-to-one, and had still come out on top.
It was the target’s makeup that troubled him. The Muy Capaz camp was so cluttered, it offered dozens of concealed places from which the pirates could fire. This meant Whiskey had no choice but to come in low, destroy the two big chain guns first, then draw the pirates’ fire and take out anyone who fell in their sights. Nolan was well aware how dangerous this would be. One round in the wrong place, like in his engine, or his skull, and the show would be over, just like that.
So in planning the mission, the team had to come up with a few tricks, things to knock the pirates off kilter before they came in so low and exposed.
Gunner suggested building a stinkpot, a weapon designed hundreds of years ago. A concoction of saltpeter, limestone and a spice called asafetida, plus lots of dead fish, it was packed in a container drenched with kerosene and lit by a fuse. When detonated, it created such a stench, it could cause waves of debilitating nausea almost immediately.
A stinkpot was now tied to Nolan’s right side strut. Made to Gunner’s specifications, it was contained in a fifty-gallon milk can they’d requisitioned from the Georgia June. If they could drop the stinkpot at the beginning of the attack, Whiskey was hoping many of the enemy gunmen would be too busy vomiting to fight.
But this was not their only psy-ops weapon. Bad Dawg One was equipped with an external loudspeaker. Typically employed for crowd dispersal or talking to hostage-takers, the loudspeaker was connected to an MP3 player in the copter’s cockpit that could play any recording at earsplitting volume.
To this end, Crash had made an MP3 loop featuring a mélange of unsettling sounds: people screaming; wounded and dying animals; horns blowing, drums beating. It was a primal cacophony, like a soundtrack for a war movie. Whiskey hoped this, too, would add to the pirates’ confusion.
Batman had chipped in by making several dozen flash bombs, using soda cans as his weapons jackets. Filled with phosphorus and aviation gas, they would not only make an ear splitting noise when they exploded, they would produce a flash of light so bright it would blind anyone nearby.
These were all good ideas. But in planning the attack, the team sensed they needed one more thing, something almost cosmically unsettling. Twitch had pointed out that back in the old pirate days, the most powerful weapon the brigands had was their flag — the skull and cross
bones. When the pirates would come up on a ship, sometimes all they had to do was run up their Jolly Roger and the victim would simply give up. Fear could be a powerful weapon in battle. But what would instill such fear in these particular modern-day pirates?
Twitch made figuring that out his personal mission.
Their preparations for battle had taken the team most of the day. But as the sun went down and they began suiting up for the attack, one important question remained: what if, after hitting them with the stink bomb, the psy-ops recording, the flash grenades and Twitch’s secret weapon, the pirates wanted to give up?
The thought had crossed Nolan’s mind more than once during the day. Back in Indonesia, Whiskey had trapped dozens of Zeek’s men on a sandbar and mowed them down with a fusillade of .50-caliber machine gun fire. It was distasteful, but in the end, necessary. Zeek’s men were murderers, rapists, and sadists. The Muy Capaz were no different. Besides, eliminating them was what Whiskey was being paid to do.
So before they took off, Nolan had told the team: “Remember what Mr. Jobo said. ‘Gloves off.’ Those are his words. Those are our specs. So, that’s what we gotta do.”
* * *
The day had passed in surreal fashion for the pirates on Craggy Two Cay.
The four brigands who’d gone out on a “flying raid” two nights before had not returned. And while it was not too unusual for gang members to simply give up the pirate life and vanish, it was odd that four would jump ship together. What’s more, no one had been able to get in touch with Colonel Cat. Had his plane crashed two nights ago? The pirates had heard nothing on their shortwave radios about any aircraft crashes on the islands. Had their colleagues been caught by the authorities, then? No one knew — and that was making everyone feel uneasy.
On the other hand, the deal that Doggie and Jacks had made the night before with the men from Africa had the potential to change Muy Capaz’s financial situation forever. If they could line up enough drug and weapons dealers and start a pipeline flowing, they would make so much money, they could spend scads of it in Badtown for weeks at a time and still have plenty left over.
So, it had been a day of yin and yang. Still, the pirates had spent it as they usually did: sleeping, gambling, fighting with each other, drinking and doing drugs. The only defensive action Black took was to post a half dozen men down on the east beach of the cay, near the mouth of the bight that split the island in two, something he did in times of heightened security at the camp.
The job of these six men was simple. They were to report anything unusual coming their way from the ocean side, the likeliest route for any attack on the hidden camp.
And something odd did arrive around midnight.
Not from the sea, but from the air.
* * *
One moment, the six pirates on the beach were passing a bottle of rum and only casually checking the horizon.
The next moment, hellfire fell upon them.
The noise came first — and it was incredibly loud. People screaming, animalistic wails of agony, people shouting over radio static. It was suddenly all around them. Then the night lit up with incredibly bright explosions, dozens filling the sky.
Then came the helicopters. The pirates weren’t sure of the number, but it sounded like hundreds of them. Two streaked close past them; they looked dark and menacing, loaded down with bombs and guns. But there was another thing: The emblems on their fuselages were unmistakable: the red-white-and-blue insignia, with the star in the middle?
These were Americans. U.S. military gunships sent here to attack them. Between all the noise and the flashes of light, it was as if the 82nd Airborne itself was suddenly descending on Craggy Two Cay.
The six pirates on the beach were instantly terrified. They’d never run into anything like this before.
They had no desire to take on the helicopters. None of them even shot back. Instead, they dropped their weapons and ran into the jungle, heading at top speed back to their encampment.
* * *
Nolan’s was the first copter to arrive over the hidden pirate base. Flying very low, he slowed down just enough for Gunner to light the stinkpot’s fuse and kick the malodorous weapon out the copter door; then they streaked away. The bomb landed with a splat right in the middle of the camp’s huge bonfire. It exploded instantly, hurling its contents over a wide area.
“Bada bing!” Gunner yelled.
Nolan pulled the copter up and over the camp, making way for Batman and Bad Dawg One. It streaked underneath them, MP3 blaring, flash bombs still falling from its weapons points. Batman immediately opened up with his forward cannon and took out the chain gun on the eastern edge of the camp. Then came a quick turn, another cannon barrage, and the western edge chain gun was destroyed as well.
Nolan flew over the hideout a second time. Flipping down his special night-vision telescope, he scanned the ground below. Lots of heat sources were moving about — and for a moment, it seemed like more than just three dozen people running around. But one thing was clear — the pirates seemed in a panic.
Their plan was working.
Both copters now backed off and started a slow orbit 1,500 feet above the treeline. A small white mushroom cloud was rising over the camp, the aftereffect of the stinkpot explosion. Crash’s MP3 was still blaring as well.
Again Nolan studied the camp below. So much smoke covered the target area, it was hard to distinguish the heat signatures of the pirates from the residue of the flash bombs. But that was not surprising. Everything was unfolding as they’d hoped.
The team gave the stinkpot bomb two more minutes to do its work. Then Nolan and Batman turned their copters over and began to dive again.
“Now comes the fun part,” Nolan thought grimly.
He armed all his weapons. The .50-caliber machine guns mounted on his winglets were ready to fire, as was the huge 30mm cannon sticking out of the copter’s nose. Gunner and Twitch both had their M4s up on the starboard side weapons mounts, connected to continuous belts of ammunition.
Both copters were soon down to just ten feet off the deck, quickly slowing to half speed. In this dangerous maneuver, they wanted the pirates to fire at them and reveal themselves, so Whiskey would know where to fire back. Nolan was in the lead, with Batman a little behind and off to the right. Anyone who showed himself to shoot at Nolan would find himself in Batman’s sights an instant later.
The noise of the two copters flying so low was deafening — but Nolan could still hear Crash’s soundtrack booming between his ears. The attack quickly turned nuts. It was loud and fast and full of smoke and flames and flashes of light going off in all directions.
But … something was wrong.
Nolan knew it right away.
No one — not a single pirate — was shooting back at them. In fact, he could see nothing at all moving around the camp.
The pirates were not a disciplined army; there was no way they’d all taken cover and were keeping their heads down.
Nolan completed his pass and did another quick infrared scan of the camp. He saw heat sources strewn all over, but none of them was moving. It was almost as if they were all dead already.
His radio suddenly came to life. It was Batman.
“You see what I see?” he asked Nolan.
“I think I do,” Nolan replied. “It’s already a ghost town.”
Batman radioed back: “But there’s no way we greased any of these guys already. We just got here.”
Nolan’s head started spinning. The gig had been almost too easy up to this point. Now this curveball — and he had no idea how to explain it.
“We got to find out what’s happened down there,” he radioed back to Batman.
Batman clicked his radio mike twice.
“Roger that,” he told Nolan. “See you on the ground.”
* * *
A minute later, the two copters had set down in a field just west of the small camp.
The five team members climbed out and checked
their equipment. They were all dressed the same: black camouflage battle suits, flak jackets and oversized battle helmets. Each man was carrying an M4 assault rifle equipped with a night scope, and each was breathing through a gas mask. Each man was wearing his OAS badge as well.
But they were also wearing huge American flags on their backs. This was their version of the Jolly Roger. They’d believed nothing would put the fear of God into the brigands like seeing the Stars and Stripes coming at them.
That’s why Twitch quipped, “Maybe we scared them all to death.”
Whatever happened, though, the smell was awful.
“At least your stink bomb worked,” Crash yelled through his mask to Gunner. “It smells like one skunk crawled up another skunk’s ass and died.”
Could that have done it? Nolan wondered. Had the smell from the stinkpot been so overwhelming, it had actually killed all the pirates?
He didn’t think so. It had to be something else.
The team formed up on the edge of the hideout, then put about twenty feet between them. Weapons ready, they began walking into the encampment.
They moved slowly, sweeping the camp with their night-vision goggles, ready for anything, working their way through the stink and fog.
But they could see no movement at all. No one was trying to run. No one was throwing up from the putrid cloud. No one was shooting or resisting them in any way.
Nolan gave out a loud, short whistle — the signal that the team should be wary of booby traps or an ambush. But as they moved cautiously into the camp, their weapons pointing in every direction at once, it was soon obvious there was no opposition.
They found the first pirate in the middle of the camp. He was lying face down near the huge bonfire, not far from where the stink bomb had hit.