Joshuas Hammer km-8

by David Hagberg

  “What the hell, Lazlo. I trusted you.”

  Schumatz shook his head. “This has nothing to do with you,” “Who the hell is this bastard then, and what is he doing aboard my ship?”

  “All in good time,” Bahmad said. “First we’re going to assemble the crew and I’ll make everything clear. But I want to assure you that we mean you absolutely no harm. If you cooperate this will all be over with by morning.”

  “Is Green one of yours too?”

  “Yes. He’s a little hotheaded, I’m afraid. But he will be reprimanded.” Bahmad stepped aside and motioned for the captain to precede him. “I think the galley will do nicely for our meeting.”

  “I knew that something was wrong,” the captain muttered. He led them to the end of the corridor and downstairs.

  The lights were on in the galley dining room, otherwise it was deserted. Green and the others had to be hiding in the kitchen. There were four metal picnic-style tables attached to the deck, plus the head table for the officers. Bahmad sat down next to the captain at the head table and concealed his gun between them. The ship’s interphone was on the bulkhead behind them.

  “I would like you to call the crew now. That includes Mr. Gunn and the second man on the the bridge, the two in the engine room and the other ten who are off duty. I don’t care what you tell them, but if you try to issue any kind of a warning I will kill you instantly, then we will hunt the rest of them down and kill them, after which we will sink this ship. On the other hand if you follow my instructions to the letter we’ll simply lock you and your crew up, take what we have come for, which is only one very small package, and then leave.”

  “How will we free ourselves?”

  “I’ve brought plastic explosives. We’ll place a small charge on the door lock with a timer set for eight this morning. It will give us plenty of time to make our escape.” Bahmad smiled sincerely. “Believe me, Captain, I don’t want to kill anybody. There’d be no advantage in it for me.”

  Something dawned in the captain’s eyes. “The helicopter is yours?”

  “That’s right,” Bahmad said, “Mr. Green will be our pilot. All very neat, all very simple if you will cooperate.”

  The captain turned to Schumatz who had stuffed his pistol in his pants pocket and stood by the door. “Lazlo?”

  “It’s just like he says, Captain. Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  Panagiotopolous shook his head again as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, but then reached back for the telephone and entered a three-digit number. “Attention all hands,” his voice boomed throughout the ship. “Attention all hands, this is the captain. I want to see everybody in the galley on the double. That includes the bridge and engineering duty crews.” He looked at Bahmad, and repeated the announcement. When he was finished he released the talk switch and hung up the phone. “Where’s Green?”

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” Schumatz said.

  The phone buzzed and Panagiotopolous picked it up before Bahmad could stop him. “This is the captain.”

  Bahmad prodded him in the side with the gun.

  “If there’s no traffic within our twenty-five kilometer ring leave us on autopilot, make sure the alarm is set and the both of you get down here. Now.”

  The captain replaced the phone.

  “Your bridge officer?”

  “Yes. He’s a conscientious man. He’ll be along shortly.”

  “Then we’ll wait.”

  Panagiotopolous gave Schumatz another baleful look. “You had this planned from the start, didn’t you? Was it in Karachi, or was it even earlier than that?”

  “That doesn’t matter—”

  “Goddamnit, I want to know. If it started in Karachi then the company is involved.”

  “The company is not involved,” Bahmad said. “But even if it was, it would make no difference.”

  “Yes it would,” Panagiotopolous said. He suddenly looked old and tired. “It would to me.”

  The first of the crewmen showed up a minute later. “What’s up, Mr. Schumatz?” he asked. He eyed Bahmad seated with the captain.

  “Sit down, the captain wants to tell us something,” Schumatz told him, and the crewman took a seat as others drifted in. Some of them were in bathrobes and had obviously been sleeping, while others were fully dressed and looked wide awake. The two from the engine room, their white coveralls dirty, came in, followed by Gunn and the able bodied seaman from the bridge.

  “That’s the lot,” Schumatz said, closing the door.

  The fourteen men assembled were curious, but none of them seemed alarmed or in the least bit suspicious until Bahmad prodded the captain to his feet with the MAC 10.

  Several of them jumped up.

  “Sit down or I shall kill your captain,” Bahmad warned. The first few seconds of these kinds of situations were always the most dicey. Anything could happen if the crew acted in concert.

  Some of the men turned in desperation to Schumatz who had pulled out his pistol. But he pointed his gun at them.

  “Do as he says, gentlemen,” Schumatz shouted. “Sit down! Now!”

  Now they were confused, some of them frightened, others sullen, obviously looking for a way out. But they had lost the moment when they could have done something, and Bahmad smiled inwardly at this little triumph. In general people were like cattle.

  “My name is not important,” Bahmad said. “But with the help of Mr. Green and Mr. Schumatz I am taking over this ship for the next eight hours. We’re going to lock you in the pantry dry storage area while we conduct our business. When we are finished you will be released unharmed. I give you my word. The last thing we want or need is a bunch of injured men. It’s not why I’m here.” Bahmad looked at them. There were a couple of men who were obviously potential troublemakers, but it was too late for them to put up any effective resistance, and he could see in their eyes that they were just realizing that fact now.

  “At least stop the ship before you leave,” the captain told Bahmad. “I don’t want to run into anything.”

  “As you wish,” Bahmad said. “You’ll be a little cramped, I’m afraid, but it shouldn’t be too bad for a few hours.”

  “Who the fuck are you trying to bullshit?” one of the crewmen demanded angrily. “You’re going to kill us all.”

  “Why would we do such a thing?”

  “You don’t want any witnesses.”

  Bahmad smiled faintly. “If that were the case we would have killed those of you who were sleeping in your beds and taken the bridge and engine room first. It certainly would be a lot less messy than calling you all down here and shooting you dead.”

  The crewman had no answer for that and he said no more, but he was suspicious.

  “On your feet, please,” Bahmad instructed. They did as they were told with a lot of hesitation. But there was no leader among them and they didn’t know where to turn or what to do. “I would like you to follow Mr. Schumatz, in single file please, to the dry storage locker. If anyone decides to try something, I will shoot the captain first and then turn my gun on you.”

  No one said a thing.

  “Very well,” Bahmad said. He nodded to Schumatz who walked into the kitchen and through to the pantry where he opened the heavy door into the large walk-in locker, men stepped aside, his pistol at the ready.

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Schumatz?” one of the younger crewmen asked. “Is it drugs?”

  “You’ll read all about it in the newspapers in a few days, Rudi,” Schumatz said. “Now inside with you so nobody has to get their ass shot off.”

  “Well, I hope you rot in hell, you dirty prick,” Rudi Gunn said, and he walked into the storage locker. The captain was the last in and he turned to face Bahmad. “Eight hours?”

  “Or less,” Bahmad assured him. He motioned to Schumatz who swung the door shut, the lock dropping into place with a loud snap.

  Bahmad turned around. “Joseph,” he called.

  Green, Fernandez and M
endoza came around the corner from the other side of the kitchen. Green’s face was animated with excitement. “That was god dammed smooth,” he said. He held his pistol in both hands, and he kept looking at the locker door. “Are we going to kill them now?”

  “First things first. I want you to go up to the bridge and stay there for the time being. I’m going to have Lazlo stop the ship, but I want you to make sure that the autopilot is set and that we’re on course, and make sure that no one has been trying to reach us by radio. From this point on we have to be on the watch for the U.S. Coast Guard.”

  “But I want—”

  “I know, Joseph, but for now I need you on the bridge,” Bahmad said soothingly. “Your time will come.”

  Green backed up and looked at the others, but then his head bobbed. “Okay, but when the time comes I want Panagiotopolous.” He turned and left.

  “I’ll tend to the engines,” Schumatz said.

  “Give us an hour and then come up to the bridge, please.”

  Schumatz glanced at the locker door then left.

  “Why are you stopping the ship?” Fernandez asked suspiciously. He was jumpy.

  “We’re going to set some explosives and sink her here.”

  Fernandez’s eyes strayed to the locker door. “You’re going to let them drown, huh?”

  Bahmad shook his head. “Either finish the job, or walk away right now and we’ll call it even.”

  Fernandez and Mendoza exchanged a look and Mendoza nodded. “I say kill them now.” “Si,” Fernandez said with some hesitation. He pulled the MAC 10’s top-mounted bolt and he and Mendoza stepped apart directly in front of the locker door. When they were ready he nodded.

  Bahmad unlatched the door, pulled it open and quickly got out of the way. Someone inside shouted something in desperation, but Fernandez and Mendoza opened fire, unloading their thirty-round magazines in a couple of seconds, immediately reloading and firing again.

  The noise hammered off the steel bulkheads. Spent shells skittered hollowly like metal popcorn across the deck. And finally the screams and cries of the Margo’s crew subsided until Fernandez stopped shooting and stepped back.

  “Madre de Dios” he said softly, and he crossed himself.

  Everyone in the storage locker was down. Blood was splashed everywhere; on the overhead, the walls and boxes on the shelves, and lay in thick pools on the floor.

  “Make sure that they’re all dead,” Bahmad said.

  “You do it,” Fernandez answered in disgust.

  “Finish the job, Captain. It’s what you were hired for.”

  Mendoza was excited. He reloaded and went to the locker door. He fired a couple of shots into the bodies, then a couple more. Fernandez joined him, reloading his gun, and he too fired into the bodies.

  Bahmad raised his MAC 10 and fired a short burst, at least a halfdozen rounds catching the two drug runners in the backs of their heads. They were driven forward into the locker on top of the pile of bodies, none of which was moving any longer.

  Bahmad stood for a long time listening to the relative silence, and waiting. The storage locker doorway had a raised lip so very little blood had gotten out into the pantry, only a few splashes here and there on the deck.

  Finally the distant vibration of the engines died and he could feel the change in motion as the ship began to slow down.

  He laid the MAC 10 aside for a moment to push Fernandez’s and Mendoza’s legs all the way inside the locker and close the door, then went back through the galley to the main athwart ship corridor. A radio played music from somewhere, barely audible. It sounded Latin. A woman was singing. Other than that, the ship was very quiet.

  Outside, he looked over the rail. The Aphrodite’s bridge was deserted, and the boat wallowed at the end of her tether, her engines idling with pops and throaty rumbles in neutral. Everything had gone smoothly to this point, but he smelled trouble now.

  He scrambled down the ladder to the speedboat and hopped nimbly aboard the foredeck. He nearly lost his footing on the slowly pitching deck, but then regained his balance and sprinted aft to the open bridge. When the Margo’s engines had been shut down, Morales had dropped the Aphrodite’s engines into neutral and since he was no longer needed to tend the helm he’d gone below. But why? To do what? Get a beer?

  Bahmad dropped down on the deck between the curving windscreen and the sleek radar bridge just as Morales, a pistol in his hand, came from below.

  “What the fuck—” he said, rearing back,

  Bahmad calmly raised his MAC 10 and fired a burst into the man’s chest, driving him backward down into the main saloon with enough force that he broke his spine on the edge of a cabinet before landing dead in a bloody heap.

  One step at a time. It was all coming together. He could see with perfect clarity each step he had taken from the mountains in Afghanistan months ago when he had first devised his operation, here and now to this point. There wasn’t much left to do except deliver the package at the correct time and place, and history would be his.

  Careful not to step in the gore, Bahmad went below and let his eyes sweep the cabin. There were several empty beer cans on the table, an empty speed-draw holster on the cushioned se tee and a bullet-resistant vest lying next to it. It was curious that the man hadn’t taken the time to put it on if he thought there was going to be trouble, unless he’d been interrupted. The SSB radio was on and still tuned to the frequency that he’d used to contact the Margo. Nothing was different, and yet he sensed something; something just outside of his awareness, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was missing something that was possibly important and it irritated him.

  He glanced at Morales’s body, then went forward to the head where he shot out the sea cocks for the toilet and sink.

  Water immediately began gushing into the boat in two-inch streams.

  He did the same for the se acock serving the galley sink, and the sea cocks for the aft stateroom toilet, sink and shower sump.

  Already the water was a couple of inches above the floor boards, the bilge pumps unable to keep up. Bahmad opened several portholes so that the boat would sink easier without trapped air, then went up to the open deck, closing and latching the door. Aft on the sundeck, he pulled up the two large teak floorboards exposing the slowly idling engines nestled in their spotless, silver insulated compartments. They were huge ten-cylinder supercharged diesels and needed a lot of water for cooling. Two hoses, each of them five inches in diameter, sucked raw water from the sea through strainers and directed the flow to the massive heat exchangers. Bahmad reloaded and shot both hoses completely apart. Instantly two streams of seawater with the strength of firehoses began rushing into the engine compartment, flooding the air intakes. Within seconds the diesels sputtered and died.

  Bahmad calmly climbed back up onto the foredeck and made his way to the bow. The boat was already down six inches on her lines. He jumped across to the Margo’s boarding ladder, then took out his stiletto and cut the tether holding the powerboat.

  The Aphrodite slowly began to drift away, her bow much higher now than her sinking stern. She would be completely gone in minutes.

  Topsides Bahmad found the control for the boarding ladder and brought it up, secured it in its cradle and closed the rail gate.

  The last he saw of the Aphrodite before he went inside, she was fifty yards away, her aft deck awash, her bow rising up at a sixty-degree angle.

  U.S. Coast Guard Station San Diego, California

  “Coast Guard Station San Diego, Petty Officer Wickum.” the young man answered. It was 2:00 a.m. and he’d just started on his fifth cup of coffee this shift to keep awake. Absolutely nothing worth a shit was on television tonight.

  “This is Special Agent Susan Ziegler with the Drug Enforcement Agency, let me talk to your OD,” she said urgently.

  “Yes, ma’am, stand by.” Wickum slid over to the duty officer’s door. The young ensign, his feet propped up was reading a copy of Playboy. “Got a
woman from the DBA on one for you, sir. Sounds stressed.”

  The OD put the magazine down and picked up the phone. “Ensign Rowley, may I help you, ma’am?”

  “I’m Special Agent Susan Ziegler, DBA. I’m about a hundred miles south of you, just outside Ensenada. Is your MECODIR program up and running?”

  “Ma’am—”

  “I’m on your list, Ensign, look me up. Star-seventeen bright Do it quick because you might have a problem coming your way.”

  “Stand by,” Ensign Rowley said, he put her on hold. “We’ve got a possible MECODIR request,” he told Wickum. “Pull it up while I make sure she’s who she says she is.” MECODIR was a Message Content and Direction program that was new to the Coast Guard. Receivers scanning millions of frequencies automatically monitored radio transmissions from seaward around the clock, recording their content and the direction they came from for review by the Coast Guard itself along with a host of other law enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies. It was a NASA-designed program that had gone operational six months ago. Messages were stored digitally for up to one month. If they were not retrieved by then they were automatically erased. Maydays, or other standard distress calls, kicked off alarms so that human operators could intervene.

  Susan Ziegler’s name and the proper identifier code were listed in the authorized users manual and he reconnected with her.

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re up and running.”

  “We received a partial message that we think came from one of our deep cover agents about twenty minutes ago. Since then there’s been” nothing. We think that he’s aboard a fifty-foot speedboat called Aphrodite somewhere off shore. We’re not sure how far out he was, but we picked him up on fourteen three-ten at oh-one-forty hours on a relative bearing of two-five-four degrees. Puts him a little south of west from us.”

  Wickum slid back to his console and brought the MECODIR program up on his monitor.

  Ensign Rowley could see him on the other side of the glass partition. A couple of the other night-duty operators drifted over to see what was going on. “Okay, ma’am, we’re pulling that up now. Be just a couple of secs.”