War Lord

by David Rollins

  ‘Yes, I know this,’ he said, now beaming.

  ‘That’s where I’m going. Hurry.’

  The two guys from the hotel were getting gamer, about to cross the road.

  ‘It is near, only five minute,’ he said, still grinning, counting the money and noting the tip.

  Five minutes, now. Amazing what a few bucks will do.

  Twenty-nine

  Where had they taken Petinski, and for what purpose? Were the fucks gonna hammer bolts through her wrists too? I was concerned about her, but I had another, more pressing job to get done. As much as I didn’t like it, putting her life first would compromise it big time. I had no choice but to put her out of my mind.

  Randy’s timetable was screwing with my head. Wednesday the fifth was still three days away, but what had the timing been based on? ‘Twenty days’, the note had said. Were they all twenty-four-hour days, or was Day Twenty a twelve-hour day? It would have been far more convenient, to say nothing of more accurate, if the note had said it would be delivered at three p.m. on Wednesday the fifth, Pacific Daylight Time. For all I knew, the physics package was already beginning to smoke. Whatever, there wasn’t a lot of time left in which to warn Uncle Sam about how, where and when. I just had to get on with it and hope I wasn’t too late. Sticking with my original timetable, I still had roughly seventy-two hours left, give or take, to do something – whatever that happened to be.

  The way I figured it, Ed Dyson had been murdered because an expert weatherman’s services were no longer required. He’d ceased to be essential to whatever the plan was because, quite simply, the W80 was on the brink of detonation and the weather was locked in. Morrow’s murder was probably just an opportunity that presented itself, a handy second bird killed with the same stone that took out Dyson. I stifled a yawn, shook my head to clear it, and tried to focus on what I had to do next.

  Out my window I saw my hotel, the Southern Sun, its neon glowing in the night sky. My bed was in there somewhere. More than almost anything else, I wanted to crawl into it. It was four thirty-seven a.m. and within around an hour, the sky would begin to lighten and the day would heat up. Frankly, I wasn’t ready for it. Jet lag on top of no real shuteye for far too long, plus the effects of successive adrenalin hits ebbing and flowing through my system had taken its toll. Thinking straight was a problem.

  Pulling out the energy bars taken from Petinski’s bag, I tore the wrappers off both and stuffed them into my mouth. They were chocolate coated and caramel flavored and tasted sickly sweet, but they were Weight Watchers so at least they wouldn’t go straight to my hips. I drank the juice to get rid of the taste of the bars. Then I needed something to get rid of the taste of the juice, which wasn’t really juice, and the aspartame hit fizzled after a few seconds.

  I rubbed my face and slapped my cheeks. I was dragging along the bottom, the world moving in slow motion. I yawned – unstifled this time – my mouth wide, lips stretched tight against my teeth. The cab took a sharp corner and the pirate’s overnight bag on the back seat rolled and thumped heavily against the door. I pulled it into the front with me, set it on my lap and the foul smell of those leaves leached from its pores. Khat. The pirate pick-me-up . . . produced an effect similar to speed when chewed or brewed up like tea. I pulled the zip back and the meaty vinegary sour sweaty stench floated out of it like an evil cloud.

  ‘You have khat?’ the driver asked, the smell obviously familiar to him.

  I took the bundle out of the bag. It reeked of pickled decay.

  ‘This is good,’ he continued, attracted rather than repelled by the stink. ‘I have this for when I drive day and night. This is your khat?’

  If I said yes I was sure he was going to ask if we could be pals. ‘A friend’s,’ I replied.

  ‘You have had before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You chew some. You look tired.’ His concern was touching.

  ‘How much do you take?’

  ‘Three leaf, no more. Chew good. Not to swallow.’

  Was not swallowing this stuff the equivalent of not inhaling? I could promise him that there’d be no swallowing because the smell was so vile I figured they wouldn’t stay swallowed for long if I did. I pulled three leaves with their long stems from the bundle. I had a big day ahead. In fact, the day ahead filled me with dread, especially if I was right about what was on board the African Spirit. And meanwhile, as I said, keeping my thoughts corralled was proving a real challenge. The damn things kept wandering off.

  The decision was made. I put the leaves in my mouth and started to chew. The taste was bitter – opposite to the super-sweet chocolate bars and berry-flavored water I’d just had. I chewed, lowered the window and spat.

  ‘No, no! You waste it. You swallow this,’ he explained, waving his fingers generally around his mouth, ‘not the leaves.’

  I assumed he meant I had to swallow the saliva. Nasty. I hit the button to close the window, then stuffed a few more leaves in my mouth.

  ‘You have khat for me also?’ he asked.

  I looked at him.

  ‘I give you discount . . .’

  Discount? Wasn’t I in credit here? ‘Does it affect your driving?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Make driving easy. Car drive itself.’

  Hmm . . . maybe I should have asked that question before I started chewing. I was hoping for a wakeup call from this stuff, not Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I noticed that my heart rate was up. I’d also started sweating and breathing harder, a tingling sensation running through my butt and legs like a low-voltage current. The exhaustion was lifting.

  ‘How long does the effect last?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sometime two hour. You like khat?’

  ‘How far now to Magogoni Street?’ I asked.

  ‘We are here.’

  Yeah, it was dark but the road was still familiar, and so were the smells being fanned through the vents.

  ‘There’s someone I need to speak with here, and I’ll need you to translate for me.’

  ‘I will do this for ten dollar.’

  ‘You’ll do it because I’ve already paid you a fortune.’

  I chose that moment to pull the .38, flick the cylinder to one side and replace the two empty chambers with spare rounds from my pocket.

  The driver regarded me with horror. ‘I will do it,’ he said, getting the message. ‘We are friends now, yes?’

  ‘Drug buddies.’ I returned the gun to my sock.

  ‘Yes.’

  I gave him three leaves from the bundle and tucked the rest inside my shirt. I then fished around in the bag until my fingers found the ski mask and scarf. ‘Park here,’ I told him, motioning at the wrecking yard.

  He pulled carefully off the packed dirt into the sand. I tucked the ski mask inside my shirt, tied the scarf around my neck, grabbed the bag and got out.

  ‘Good khat,’ the driver told me, now standing on the other side of the vehicle, rolling his eyeballs.

  I spat the quid onto the road. Whether it was good quality or not, all I knew was that I now felt great, like if I shut my eyes and thought about it hard enough, rockets would sprout from my heels and to hell with the boat I’d come here to collect. ‘This way,’ I told him, and walked toward the beach, resisting the desire to break into a canter.

  There was no moon and my own hands were no more than dim shapeless forms. I led the way between a couple of beached hulks, the driver still with me, and cut along parallel to the waterline until I found the tarp covering the boat I’d rented. My heart was thumping away like jungle drums. Grabbing a handful of tarp, I flung it back. But then I stopped, every muscle frozen, because a long curved blade was being held under my throat, my whiskers scraping against the honed steel and making it hum. Stale tobacco, sweat and fish stench filled my nostrils. A familiar combination. It was the toothless old man who’d rented me the boat. He pulled the knife harder against my throat when I tried to speak. But then just as suddenly the steel was removed. He made some exclamation o
f recognition and slapped me on the arm with the flat of the blade, pals again.

  ‘He say, he was n-not sure it was you,’ the driver stammered. ‘He was about to kill you, then me.’

  The sound coming from the old man suggested a giggle.

  ‘What changed his mind?’

  ‘He say you smell bad. He remember it.’

  Right. ‘Let him know I’m here for the boat.’

  The driver started talking and the two of them went back and forth like I wasn’t here.

  ‘Hello . . .’ I said after a good minute of this.

  ‘I tell him you have had khat – first time for you,’ said the driver. ‘He said he hopes you are okay.’

  ‘What about the boat?’ I said, ignoring the subplot.

  ‘He want to know why you want it now. It is dark, there is nothing to see. Do you want to fish?’

  ‘Tell him I need to get aboard the African Spirit, one of the ships out in the channel. Let him know I have to get on it without anyone seeing me.’ In this part of the world, I figured telling him the truth about what I wanted would be like jumping in a New York cab and saying, ‘Follow that car.’

  Another conversation in Swahili blossomed between the two men.

  ‘He say he cannot do this,’ the driver said finally.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He say he cannot do it with the boat you have paid for.’

  I sensed a loophole. ‘But he can get me on the ship some other way?’

  ‘Yes, this is correct. He say for this you can pay him in khat.’

  ‘But I paid him in advance already,’ I said.

  ‘You pay for this boat,’ the driver replied, slapping the single hull dinghy under the tarp. ‘Not for this boat.’ He pointed at the faint outline of a desiccated outrigger hauled up on the sand nearby.

  I was starting to feel like a fleeced American, outfoxed by the wily locals.

  ‘He say he want six leaf for this boat.’

  I sighed, pulled the wad from my shirt, counted out the right amount, then handed an extra leaf to the driver. ‘A tip,’ I said, ‘for handling the negotiation.’

  ‘It was a hard negotiation.’ His hand stayed out. I sighed again and folded out two more leaves. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  The old guy walked a little up the beach to a jumble of packing crates and began unstacking them. A few moments later he returned with a small portable outboard motor in one hand and a makeshift ladder in the other. He mumbled something to the driver and walked over to the outrigger.

  ‘You must help get the boat to the water,’ the driver told me.

  The way I was feeling I could toss it into the drink with one hand tucked behind my back. I went over, lifted a hull and dragged it to the water’s edge, then trotted back for the bag.

  ‘So how is this going to happen?’ I asked. ‘How’s he going to get me aboard the African Spirit?’

  The two locals went into a huddle.

  ‘You are lucky,’ the driver told me when they broke for air. ‘Achmed say the sides of your ship are low to the water and, as you can see, he has brought a ladder.’

  The low-tech solution was dubious but I didn’t have a lot of choice. I checked my watch. Sunrise wasn’t far off. It was now or never.

  ‘Achmed say there are many boats like his out fishing this morning and this will help.’

  Out on the water the only boats visible to me belonged to the lights out in the channel, hard white points of light on the cargo vessels. The African Spirit, though, was still running dark.

  ‘If you do not need me, I will go now,’ said the driver. ‘Good luck with your mission.’

  ‘. . . that you won’t tell anyone about,’ I said.

  ‘Of course not,’ he replied, a hand on his heart.

  Sure.

  He and Achmed said goodbye with a handshake.

  ‘Hey,’ I told him, raising a hand. ‘Thanks for your help.’ I’d put the guy through plenty. He’d complained but he hadn’t buckled.

  ‘Yes. Thank you also, sir. Now I will not have to work for a long time.’ He waved and walked away, disappearing in the darkness.

  The old guy’s papery voice piped up. From his hand movements, I worked out that he wanted me to drag the boat into the water and then jump on. I took the .38 out of my sock and stuffed it in the front of my pants. The old guy gave me an encouraging gummy smile and braced himself at the back of the outrigger. He pushed, I pulled, and the worn old craft released its grip on the shore and moved into the warm wavelets phosphorescing green and blue as they rolled through the trash onto the sand. We jumped in at the same time, the old guy grabbed a paddle and stroked a few times before throwing it in the bottom of the boat and firing up the outboard.

  Within moments we were scooting across the harbor in the general direction of the channel. Achmed was right about the fishing, and there were hundreds of outriggers like the one beneath me out on the water, netting and fishing with lines. He circled the row of cargo ships to scout the best approach, pointing out the positions of men he could see on the African Spirit’s deck. I couldn’t see a thing. He brought the outrigger toward the ship from an angle close to its stern. Other outriggers were fishing in close to it.

  I slipped the ski mask over my head and dropped it down so that it covered my neck. The scarf I retied around my head so that some of the fabric flopped down over part of my face. As a disguise, it was only slightly better than wearing a clown suit with big floppy shoes and a flower that squirted water. I was at least twice as broad as any of the pirates I’d seen and wouldn’t pass for one of them for more than a split second. So basically, this was going to go well, or I’d be fish food. No middle ground.

  Achmed cut the motor and the outrigger drifted between several identical boats. A low-frequency hum was immediately audible coming from the African Spirit. Its diesels were turning. The ship’s hull rose out of the water to a height of around ten feet. I didn’t see how getting me aboard was going to be done. The old guy was fiddling with the ladder, pulling it out from the bottom of the boat. Then he laid it down so that it formed a walkway out to the smaller outboard hull. He motioned at me to come quick. I scampered back to where he was and saw what he was pointing at. There were small rungs and indentations in the side of the ship that began at around the height of my shoulder. No time to dawdle, I ran across the ladder to the small outboard hull and then leaped up when I got to the side of the ship. The fingers of my right hand found the rung and I dangled there for a second or two, wondering what would have happened if I’d missed it. Glancing down, I saw the boat had been replaced by black water, Achmed allowing his craft to drift back among the other fishing boats nearby.

  My body pressing against the steel of the African Spirit’s hull, I could feel its mechanical heart beating within, a pulse that felt almost alive. I twisted around and hauled myself up, getting my hand within reach of the next rung. This was my damaged hand, the one still swollen from the snake venom, and it ached painfully when it took my weight. But my boot found the lowest of the footholds pretty much right away and up I went.

  My eyes were now fully adjusted to the dark. Looking toward the east, there was still no hint of the sun’s arrival, but it wouldn’t be long in coming. Raising my head slowly above the edge of the gunnel, I could see two of the pirates on watch, smoking and talking. They wore black urban assault body armor, FN FAL assault rifles slung over their shoulders like the guy I’d seen the night before; they also had NVGs, though one had his set pushed up on his head while the other’s dangled uselessly around his neck. The smell in the night air told me they were smoking weed. Off they strolled to the opposite side of the deck, having a nice chat and a joint. Their training mightn’t have been worth a pinch of shit, but their weapons loadout was top shelf. Two words popped into my head: von Weiss.

  I waited another minute, listening, observing. Close by, sitting on top of the hatch cover over the hold closest to the ship’s superstructure and taking up a lot of room, was s
omething beneath a canvas tarp. Hearing and seeing nothing else noteworthy, I hopped over onto the deck and went to investigate what it might be. Ducking under the bottom edge of the canvas, I crawled in. It was dark in there even though the sky was now hinting at the coming dawn. Though I couldn’t see a thing, my fingertips reported the smooth hull of a boat. Working along to its stern, I found three large outboards hanging off the back.

  A deep rumble that thrummed up through the steel plate beneath my feet combined with a slight loss of balance to inform my senses that we were moving.

  Shit.

  Thirty

  The tender’s fuel tanks were enormous, and further augmented by a collapsible 270-gallon bladder. So not only did this baby undoubtedly have some go, it also had range. The light improved as I continued to investigate, locating a cooler stocked with – among other things – thirty bottles of chilled mineral water. Lucky for me because, with the sun climbing above the horizon, there was already enough heat under this tarp to bake a chicken. Those other things, by the way, included a dozen bottles of Krug champagne, several kilos of smoked salmon, cured hams and salamis, a selection of cheeses and four large tubs of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream – a cut above the usual survival rations, in my experience.

  I found no IDs on the runabout, but I did find a locker beneath the floor. Inside it were two pairs of shooter’s gloves, size large; two FN FAL assault rifles and half a dozen extra mags to go with them; two pairs of NVGs; half a dozen M26 frag hand grenades; two black urban assault body armor vests with webbing; and, most surprisingly, a drum-fed Atchisson AA-12 fully automatic assault shotgun with spare drum. I’d seen this weapon demonstrated but never used one. From memory, it could pump out three hundred rounds per minute and packed a kick like Chuck Norris with a hangover. Food, horsepower, guns and gas: was this some kind of escape pod, or a means for the African Spirit to project a little power? It was certainly capable of both.