King Pirate

by Tom Stern

  Tsung leapt into the last launch boat. Landing on the fiberglass with a thud. He almost fell into the savage water. But Kelley caught him by the arm. He squeezed. Kelley’s grip was strong enough to cause pain.

  “Launch!”

  The speed boat plunged to the water below. As the crew had practiced many times before, the motor was already screaming in mid-air. They hit the water running. Within seconds, the four assault craft were within boarding range of the slow tanker.

  The crew of the Krait unlimbered their fire hoses. Water streams lanced down at the sea wolves. Thousands of psi concentrated into deadly arcs, searching for victims, sending up rooster tails in long trails along the ocean surface. The streams played around the speed boats, always just a half-second behind.

  The sea wolves dodged and maneuvered. The lead boat came up against the Krait. Kelley watched from a hundred yards away as the wolves readied their grappling hook. The men on the Krait noticed the boarder. They concentrated the hoses. Three watery streams swept to the same point at once. The focused blast pressure instantly flipped the speed boat, sending the wolves into the ocean before they could fire the hook. The craft flipped.

  One down. Three left.

  Kelley brought the mike to his mouth. “Back off! Back off!”

  The three boats circled away. Kelley and his crew watched as the hose streams sought after them. They fled out of range. With nothing else to hose down, the Krait’s crew turned their hoses onto the fallen wolves, treading water in the ocean below them. With cruel efficiency, the crewmen aimed at one swimming raider after another, pushing them below the surface.

  Kelley couldn’t stand it. “They can’t get us all at once! On my order… on my order… now! Go-go-go! Take those assholes down!”

  The three boats moved in like a school of sharks. The Krait’s crew saw them coming. They brought the hoses up. Firing at the speed boats. Trying to repel boarders.

  Kelley’s speed boat veered to the left, even as one of the terrible streams splashed water across the side. Another two seconds, and they’d have flipped.

  Kelley brought up his AKM. Triggered the GP-30. A grenade flew from its barrel like a frightened bird. The shot arced, it was wild. But the flying grenade touched the railing above, skittered and rattled onto the deck.

  To the surprise of the sea wolves, instead of an explosion, the grenade round released a yellowish cloud. Tear gas. Before the attack on the Krait, Kelley had gone to the Toy Box and replaced the chambered rounds with their non-lethal cousins.

  The streams momentarily abated. Now was their chance.

  “Gas ‘em! Hit ‘em hard!” Kelley screamed.

  More grenades popped from the launchers. Hissing as they went, each landing on the Krait’s deck with an audible fumph. Wisps of tear gas misted over the railing.

  “Tsung, take your team and come with me,” Kelley said into the mike. “The rest of you, fish our guys outta the water.”

  Tsung replied: “Is just two teams enough?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Kelley took up the grappling hook. Fired.

  They dragged themselves up the cables to the edge of the Krait’s deck. The bitter tang of tear gas came lightly to their noses. Even in the smallest wisp, it stung their eyes and churned their stomachs. Kelley paused, held up a hand for the men to stop.

  They weren’t wearing gas masks. Kelley didn’t want to watch his wolves get floored by the same gas they’d fired. He peeked up over the side.

  The Krait’s crew writhed on the deck. Choking on vomit. Tearing at their burning eyes. Completely incapacitated. Kelley searched for waiting guns. Nothing. They were out.

  Kelley kept his hand up. Waiting for the salty wind to blow enough of the gas away for them to board. He gave it five seconds. Ten seconds. The gas quickly dissipated.

  “Cover your faces!”

  Kelley swung up over the side of the railing. Brought his shirt up over his nose and mouth even as he ran into the midst of the fallen crew.

  Kelley brought out a handful of plastic zip-ties. He gave half to Tsung. Kelley fell to the work of tying up the Krait’s crew. Within two minutes, they were all bound, wrists and ankles.

  The entire assault took just over two minutes.

  The yellow gas had completely vanished from the deck. Kelley brought down his shirt, took a light breath. It was gone. He nodded to his wolves.

  Kelley grabbed a member of the crew. “Where’s your captain?”

  The man struggled to answer. Fighting for breath. Kelley dumped him on the deck. Found a second man. Gripping the zip-tie around his wrists, Kelley hauled the man to his feet. He repeated the question.

  “Below decks,” the man gasped.

  Kelley traded a hunter’s sneer with Tsung. A coward. Like a pack of wolves after a wounded deer, Kelley and his men leapt across the Krait to the doors leading below-decks.

  “Split up,” Kelley told them. “Go slow. Don’t get killed by this moron.”

  Kelley drew out his fighting knife. Easily bouncing the hilt in his hand, loosening up in anticipation. A part of him hoping the captain would resist.

  Knife up, Kelley moved down halls lit by flickering fluorescents. Eyes on the corners. Kelley threw open every door he came across. Quarters. The mess. An office. The confines of a merchant ship were intimately familiar to Kelley. He’d worked on dozens, including models very similar to the Krait. The lay-outs hardly changed. Kelley made his way down the corridors as if he’d been working her for months.

  Kelley came upon the door leading to the cargo tank itself. He didn’t think the captain would hide in there. But Kelley’s police training wouldn’t let him leave an uncleared area at his back. Kelley unlatched the heavy door. He pushed through.

  Even in the smallest modern tanker, the actual hold was a vast space by any reckoning. He expected to immediately hear the deep sloshing of the ship’s liquid cargo shifting against the sides of the hull as she rolled with the ocean’s movements.

  Instead, Kelley only heard a vast, hollow throoming of waves reverberating against the ship. Kelley froze in his tracks. Something very close to fear rattled up his spine. Kelley found the light box. He hit the buttons.

  One-by-one, massive overhead banks of fluorescent lights popped on. By section, they flared up over the cargo hold until the entire space was lit.

  Kelley looked down into the yawning tank.

  It was empty.

  …

  Tsung found the Krait’s captain in the lav, sitting on a toilet with his knees drawn up to his chin. He dragged the squealing man topside and flung him to the metal deck. The sea wolves laughed. The tied-up crew only averted their eyes, embarrassed by their skipper’s behavior.

  Kelley appeared in the doorway moments later. Tsung had raising him on the mike. The wolves cheered their own captain, the exact opposite of the pathetic creature in charge of this ship. For they still thought the Krait’s captain was a pirate.

  Kelley didn’t share their mirth. With wild eyes, he grabbed Tsung by the arm. “Go to the bridge and shut off the ShipLok!”

  “The what…?” Tsung didn’t understand. Why would pirates send an emergency alarm to the Coast Guard?

  “Just do it!”

  Tsung took several men and ran up the metal steps.

  Meanwhile, the rest of Kelley’s raiders clambered up over the railing. Half of them dripping wet from their dip in the sea. They glared at the Krait’s crew.

  Kelley gripped the Krait’s captain by his short hair. Wrenching the man’s head back to look up at Kelley.

  “What are your orders from Yap Chew?”

  The captain just shook his head, terrified. Kelley shook him like a caught rabbit. “Talk, dammit. What did he tell you to do?”

  Tsung’s voice came over Kelley’s mike. “You were right, the ShipLok’s activated. But why -- ?”

  Kelley brought the fighting blade to the captain’s throat. “You’ve got five seconds to tell me everything you know, you sonof
abitch!”

  The captain only gibbered and wept. This was not a pirate. He was the captain of a corporate merchant vessel. The sea’s equivalent of a truck driver. A normal guy with a wife and family. A civilian. Kelley dropped him.

  Tsung and his guys returned. “We killed the ShipLok.”

  Another raider said, “And we found the ship’s safe.”

  Disgusted, Kelley waved it off. “Doesn’t matter. They hit the alarm. Someone’ll come.”

  Tsung said, “Who cares? All they’ll find is open ocean.”

  “No,” Kelley replied. “We’re not taking the Krait.” Tsung blinked, thunderstruck. Kelley answered his surprised look by saying, “The fucking thing’s empty. It was a set-up. My source was bad.”

  “Who is it? I’ll kill him myself!”

  “Forget it. There’s nothing here for us. Leave the crew bound, whoever answers the ShipLok signal will release them. But we have to go. Right now.”

  Kelley made for the grappling hooks. Unhooked one. About to throw himself over the railing. He hesitated. Turned back around.

  No one else was moving.

  “Didn’t you hear me?”

  The sea wolves looked from one man to the next. Finally, the raider who had gone with Tsung, Al Buq, stepped forward.

  “What about the safe?” Al Buq asked.

  “I told you. These men aren’t pirates. I got bad information. C’mon – “

  The men grumbled. Another raider came forward. “We lost a man below. Xiao Lu. These dogs drowned him with their hoses.”

  The rescuers nodded, faces tight with fury. It was true.

  “Captain, are you saying we should let such as these kill one of us without a little payback?”

  Kelley faced each man in turn. They were united. If he tried to make them leave empty-handed, they might go along out of respect for him. But it would fester in their hearts. They’d see one weakness and imagine more. They’d plot mutiny, or leave at the first opportunity.

  When they’d left port, Kelley thought his crew was at last sailing under him out of friendship and revenge. Kelley cursed himself for his naiveté. Despite their experiences together, these men were criminals. A scorpion stings because that is its nature.

  Kelley needed the Yurei and a crew to affect his revenge. If word got out in KL that he was soft, that crews risked their lives for nothing, he’d never be able to get another together. Tsung and Dao Jia might stand by him, but that was not enough.

  King Pirate would overwhelm him with sheer numbers. If he lost the Yurei, it was only a matter of time before he woke up to find a gun barrel in his face. Or worse.

  Kelley weighed his options. “Take the safe.”

  The raiders cheered him and charged up to the bridge to take their booty.

  Al Buq wasn’t done. He said, “What of our loss?”

  The implication was obvious. They expected blood for blood. And they wanted Kelley to give it to them.

  Before he could change his mind, Kelley drew his knife and stalked toward the Krait’s captain. A sacrificial lamb on the altar of Kelley’s bloodthirsty vengeance.

  Kelley raised the knife.

  And stopped.

  He resheathed the blade. Turned to Al Buq: “Vengeance is a matter of honor. There is none in murdering a helpless man.”

  “Then cut his bonds, give him a knife and let him die like a man!”

  “Look at him. He’s not a fighter. It would be the same,” Kelley said. “There is no honor in this, Al Buq. If you want blood for blood, then we take it from King Pirate and his crews.” Kelley drew closer to the other man. “And if you touch this captain or his crew, I’ll find my blood in you. Are we clear?”

  Al Buq was a lifetime criminal, a vicious killer who’d taken his first life at the age of twelve. A thief, hit man and pirate-turned-privateer. Kelley knew he would never back down. So he smashed Al Buq to the deck.

  Kelley stared around at the other men. Daring them to step up for a helping. No one did.

  The raiders came back with the contents of the safe. Kelley glanced at it. Stacks of paper in a dozen currencies. He gave the okay. The raiders split it up amongst themselves.

  “Back to the Yurei. We’re gone.”

  This time, the sea wolves followed.

  Kelley avoided Tsung’s eyes.

  …

  Two hours later. On the bridge. In open sea.

  “What happened back there, Kelley?”

  “I told you, I got bad information.”

  “From who?”

  “An inside source.”

  “Dammit! Inside what?”

  Kelley didn’t say anything.

  Tsung paced. “I’ll follow you, but only if I know what I’m following. I thought this was a punitive mission against pirates. But now we are the pirates!”

  Dao Jia quietly listened from the corner. “Did you take a share of the loot, Kelley?”

  “No! Of course, not!” he snarled. Sickened with himself. Feeling defensive; a rare occurrence, and something he wasn’t familiar with. “If I tried to make the men leave that ship without anything to show for their death, all of this would fly apart. Then where would we be?”

  “Where are we now?” Dao Jia asked. “Following whims from your secret ‘sources?’ I know you want this revenge. But how far are you ready to go to get it? Are you going to turn yourself into someone you hate just to strike back against someone who’s wronged you? And then where are you? What are you? The kind of dogs you swore to hunt. And after that, how long until another privateer gets sent to stop you?”

  Tsung stepped to Kelley. “I. Am not. A pirate,” he breathed. “And I won’t let you make me become one.”

  He left. Dao Jia followed him.

  Kelley watched them go.

  …

  That night. Kelley sat at the bridge. Whiskey in hand. Trying to fight off a deep Irish melancholy as he worked at his laptop. Checking the lanes, reading the reports Cuchulain smuggled him from IPC whenever he could. Searching for an answer.

  The laptop beeped. Kelley opened his inbox.

  An email from a numbered account. No name. The subject line read: I Own Your Ass Now Kelley.

  Trepidation rising, Kelley opened it. The email had no text. Just a picture. It was satellite photo. Dated from that day. That morning.

  It was a scene of open ocean. Empty, except for two freighters. One of the freighters was very familiar to Kelley. The photo was impossibly sharp. The details were so accurate that he could even make out “Yur—“ on the side.

  Yap Chew had offered a prize Kelley couldn’t deny. Kelley had even known it could be a trap. But Chew had set a trap within the trap.

  And Kelley walked straight into it.

  …

  They moved fast.

  After the scene on the Krait, morale was low. Kelley felt the looks of the men as he passed. Especially Al Buq. He was going to be trouble.

  Kelley directed them closer to shore. He thought a successful raid against the pirates would turn things around.

  That’s when they started seeing the helicopters. Black, with no insignia. They always stayed at a distance. Kelley didn’t trust it. Without flying into paranoid delusion, he decided to err on the side of caution. They quickly went back out to sea. Farther from the shipping lanes. It was a catch-22.

  For three days, they hunted for pirates without success. As if they’d been guided away from the Yurei. This was the worst possible time to become idle. The men got restless. Kelley reintroduced the late-night matches. His wolves fought viciously.

  Dao Jia came to Kelley’s cabin late on the third night. Making sure no one was in earshot, she shut the door behind her.

  “Al Buq’s been keeping an eye on me,” she said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s been talking to the men. Nothing I can hear, little whisperings. I couldn’t hear much, but you can make a guess.”

  “A mutiny.”

&
nbsp; “That’s not all. Al Buq knows we’re close. I think, when you and Tsung are taken care of, it’s only a matter of time until he comes for me. And he won’t be alone when he does it.”

  Kelley’s immediate thought was to track down Al Buq and kill him.

  “Do you want to stay in my cabin tonight?”

  Kelley watched Dao Jia’s mind work. She finally said, with a trace of steel, “No, I can take care of myself.”

  She moved for the door. Kelley caught her. “You don’t have to be a hard ass with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m your friend.”

  Her laugh was bitter. “Have you thought about what I said the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for Kelley to continue.

  He said, “It’s easy to get so caught up in something you lose sight of where it’s taking you.”

  “Are you doing anything about that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What am I going to see?”

  “You’ll see,” he smiled.

  “Better be good, Kelley.”

  “Or else?”

  She playfully pushed him, the first hint of friendliness between them since the Krait. “Do you remember that cross-dresser who tried to knife you?”

  Kelley laughed. “You’re going to put me in a dress?”

  “That’ll be the day. Sweet dreams.”

  Dao Jia left Kelley alone. After the door closed behind her, he put a hand against the metal. It was cold. After a while, it warmed to his touch.

  …

  The call came at three in the morning. Kelley was a light sleeper. He had the sat phone up to his ear by the second ring. Kelley answered with a thudding heart. He expected it to be Cuchulain. Kelley thought the satellite photo of the Krait would have gone to him by now. Kelley didn’t want to talk to Cuchulain about that just yet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Kelley, did I wake you? It’s Asano.”

  Kelley smiled into the phone, relieved. “Don’t worry about it. What’s up?”

  “You told me you thought the oil tanker routes were going to the King Pirate out of Japan.”

  Kelley sat up in his bunk. “You’re not calling just to remind me of something I said.”