Deadly Straits (Tom Dugan 1)

by McDermott, R. E.

  “Not his fault, Captain. We deployed,” said the leader of the group, an American.

  Before Holt could respond, the man extended his hand.

  “I’m Bo Richards, MPS.” He nodded at a second man. “This is Ensign Hamad, US Navy.”

  Holt shook their hands, glancing at a third man who hung back, gripping his weapon.

  “By helping private firms,” Richards said, “the US can protect the strait without upsetting local governments.”

  “Riding around under the Stars and Stripes isn’t low profile,” Holt said, not buying it. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked just as the phone rang.

  The second mate held up the phone. “It’s the chief,” he said. Holt took the phone.

  “Three GI Joe-lookin’ assholes are in my engine control room. What the hell’s goin’ on, Cap?” Anderson demanded.

  “Hold one, Chief,” he said, looking at Richards. “The chief engineer’s none too pleased with your ‘deployment,’ nor am I. So just get back in your little boats and follow us.”

  “Apologies, Captain,” Richards said. “We’ll do it any way you want. However, we do need a meeting with you and the chief before we leave.”

  Holt hesitated. “Fine,” he said at last. He spoke into the phone. “Chief, can you come up to the D Deck conference room?” He nodded at the response and hung up.

  “Mr. Ortega, you have the conn,” he said to the second mate. “Course is one two five. Steering is on hand.”

  Holt listened to the man’s confirmation before turning to the third mate. “Mr. Bonifacio, get some rest, but first ask the steward to bring coffee to the conference room.”

  Holt led the group down to the conference room, swallowing his irritation at the belated realization that the third man, the silent one, had remained on the bridge. Jon Anderson joined them in the conference room, fit to be tied. As before, Richards diverted the engineer with introductions as the smiling steward arrived with coffee. As the steward served, Anderson sank into a chair beside the captain as Richards closed the door.

  Without warning, Richards slammed the steward down on the table and with one fluid movement pulled a silenced sidearm and fired twice into the man’s face. Holt and Anderson watched horrified as the steward’s blood and brains pooled on the table. They looked up to see Richards’s steady smile and dead, dead eyes.

  “Now gentlemen,” Richards said, “let’s discuss our little cruise, shall we?”

  M/T China Star

  Malacca Strait

  Due West of Port Klang, Malaysia

  Local Time 4 July

  Richards watched the bridge crew in the glow of console instrument lights. With a gun at their heads and the dead steward in front of them, the senior officers had been understandably cooperative. Most of the crew was now captive in the crew lounge. The gear had been brought aboard, and the gunboats ran dark, hugging the ship’s starboard side, their return masked by the huge ship’s own radar signature.

  The captain was on the bridge, along with Second Mate Ortega, Third Mate Bonifacio and Urbano, the helmsman, all dead tired, allowed no rest in over twenty-four hours. Richards, Yousif, and Sheibani shared guard duty, two at a time with the third napping as needed. The three hijackers in the engine room followed the same two-watching-one-resting pattern, guarding Anderson and First Engineer Benjamin Santos. By design, only the seamen on watch knew the hijackers’ numbers, and ignorant of the odds, the others captive in the crew lounge would be less inclined toward heroics.

  Not that it mattered. The thick lounge windows were all but unbreakable, and the handles of the lounge doors were lashed to the storm rail in the passageway, precluding worries of hidden keys. The steward’s body dumped in the lounge and a warning the doors were booby-trapped further discouraged resistance, enhanced by the cook’s report of grenade-festooned doors when he returned under guard with sandwiches, water, and buckets for “sanitary needs.”

  ***

  Holt squinted at the radar through watery eyes, his stomach boiling from endless coffee.

  “Southbound VLCC,” squawked the VHF, “this is Klang VTS. Report. Over.”

  He felt the gun at the back of his head.

  “OK, nice and businesslike,” Richards said.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Local Time 3 July

  “Jesse,” Mike Hill said, “two calls in two weeks. People will talk.”

  Ward chuckled. “Whadda ya got, Mike?”

  “You know that boat we been tracking? China Star?”

  Ward sat up, interested. “Yeah.”

  “Well, she picked up admirers. Two Malaysian boats as escorts.”

  Christ, that was fast, thought Ward. “Malaysians? You sure?”

  “Not positive,” Hill said, “but the two guys in each boat are Asian, and they’re flying red-white-and-blue flags. A stern wind is keeping the flags limp, but they’re red-and-white striped. That means US or Malaysia. I know it’s not us, so it must be them. The boats look a lot like our Dauntless 34s, but that’s a pretty common design.”

  “Two guys per boat is a bit light. Our crews are bigger.”

  “Lemme look again. Shit, there’s a ladder rigged. They’re on board. I should have caught that.”

  “Actually, I’m relieved,” Ward said. “We passed a back-channel warning to the locals but got no response. Any other friendlies in the area if they need help?”

  “There’s a CARAT exercise on to the south,” Hill said, using the acronym for the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training exercise. “A multinational cluster fuck. Us, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I’d hate to lead that parade.”

  Ward laughed. “Sounds like everything’s OK. Thanks for the update.”

  “No sweat, pal,” Hill said and hung up.

  ***

  For all his relief that his backdoor warning had paid off, Ward couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. He was in the supermarket two hours later, shopping for his Fourth of July cookout, when it hit him. He rushed through the checkout to his car and began punching numbers into his sat phone, praying his gut feeling was wrong.

  M/T China Star

  Malacca Strait

  West of Port Dickson, Malaysia

  Local Time 4 July

  Sheibani moved through the chart-room curtains onto the darkened bridge.

  “We’re close,” he whispered. “Best deal with the excess crew as they sleep.”

  “It’ll make the others more difficult,” Richards protested.

  “They will hear nothing in the engine room,” Sheibani said, “and we tell these their shipmates tried to escape, and a few were injured by booby traps, and the rest gave up after warning shots. It will calm them long enough. Soon we’ll be in Indonesian waters and no longer need them. Any fool can ground a ship.”

  “OK. Will you do it?”

  “Yes. I will take Yousif.”

  “No,” Richards said. “That leaves me too thin here.”

  “You do well to remember who is really in charge, Richards.”

  The comment hung in the air until Richards broke the silence.

  “All right,” he whispered, “but go quietly and hurry back.”

  Sheibani smiled in the dark as he moved away. He’d included Yousif as an afterthought to salve his pangs of conscience. He would not let the young man die without dipping his sword in the blood of the infidel.

  ***

  Sheibani peeked in a window. Men slept sprawled on sofas and armchairs or the deck. Three insomniacs played cards in the light of a lamp. He moved back and targeted the window, nodding for Yousif to take another. They opened fire, stitching holes around the edge of the thick glass before directing fire into the center, sending a maelstrom of shards inward, followed by grenades as they ducked low. Sheibani rushed to the window after the explosions, unmoved by the carnage, firing at anything that twitched. He looked over at Yousif bent over a puddle of vomit.

  “Control yourself and rejoice
in the blood of infidels. Come, a few still squirm. We will toss in two grenades each and finish it.”

  Yousif shook his head, mute.

  “Beard of the Prophet, you are a woman. I will finish alone. Go.”

  Yousif stumbled up the stairs to the bridge as explosions sounded behind him. Sheibani arrived on the bridge moments later to find Yousif trembling in the dark, wiping vomit from his chin. Sheibani’s foul mood was tempered by the ease with which his captives accepted his tale of attempted escape. If they noticed the patterns of shots and explosions didn’t match the story, it hadn’t registered. A comforting lie was more palatable than a terrifying truth.

  ***

  Sheibani erred in thinking his act went unnoticed below. Engineers are attuned to sound and vibration, for unexpected noises invariably herald problems. In the control room, Anderson and Santos felt the shocks through their feet, though their guards were oblivious.

  Anderson paced in front of the control console. Unlike Holt, preoccupied with conning the ship, his automated engine room allowed him time to think. With Americans among them, he figured the hijackers nonsuicidal. He was partially right; Yousif and the men in the boats were eager martyrs, while Richards and Sheibani planned escape. The three guards in the engine room were also unenthusiastic martyrs, Burmese mercenaries hired by Richards.

  No one seemed intent on destruction; they had neither stopped the inert-gas system nor ventilated the cargo tanks into the explosive range. They were either intentionally leaving the ship in a safe condition or were inept. They didn’t seem inept.

  Anderson didn’t figure he and Santos were there by accident. Their captors anticipated a possible need for a senior engineer, and while they might kill one to coerce the other, if either escaped, the other likely wouldn’t be killed. But he sensed they were nearing some climax, perhaps connected to the shocks he’d felt. Time was getting short.

  He watched the guards out of the corner of his eye. The engineers were accustomed to long periods in the windowless control room and at least had the distraction of monitoring the main engine and engineering plant. Their guards had no mental stimulation whatsoever, and being confined in a box had taken its toll. They were noticeably less alert than they had been when the ordeal started over twenty-four hours before. Anderson took a chance.

  ***

  Santos watched as Anderson turned toward him and repeatedly arched his eyebrows to get his attention. He stared silently as Anderson looked at the CO2 alarm on the bulkhead then pointed at him with a finger shielded by his body. Santos grew more puzzled as Anderson then looked pointedly toward a rack of emergency-escape masks used for tank entry and discreetly pointed to himself. The chief obviously had a plan, but what? He was still trying to piece it together when Anderson turned to the senior of the three guards.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “We’re not going to escape aft, so how about bringing down more sandwiches before I find another way out of here?”

  The hijacker looked confused. “You no talk.”

  “Santos can go with one of your guys,” Anderson pressed. “They can leave and shut that door tight.” He pointed to the door leading to the deckhouse stairs.

  “No. No eat. Shut up now.”

  Suddenly, Santos understood, but the hijacker wasn’t cooperating. Anderson turned back to the console, disappointment on his face, but Santos was elated. He caught Anderson’s eye and nodded. He’d plotted his own escape for hours. The only thing stopping him had been his fear of retaliation against Anderson. Now it seemed the chief had a plan of his own.

  ***

  “Toilet.” Santos hugged his stomach and moved toward the door.

  The nearest hijacker leveled his weapon. “You stop.”

  Santos moaned. “Must go toilet.”

  The man spoke and the others laughed, obviously at Santos’s expense. The head man nodded, and the underling escorted Santos out the door to the engine-room toilet and the deckhouse stairs beyond. As the control-room door shut behind them, Santos hurried across the narrow vestibule to the toilet. He tried to close the toilet door, but as expected, his captor shook his head, so Santos shrugged down his coveralls and sat, glaring out at the man. Minutes later, he pulled up his coveralls and moved to the small sink, his back to the hijacker. He turned on the water and extracted a fistful of powdered hand soap from a container on the sink, his actions hidden by his body. He murmured a prayer and turned off the water.

  Surprise was complete as soap flew into the guard’s face. His weapon hung slack as he jammed fists to burning eyes. In one fluid motion, Santos plucked a pen from his pocket and drove it into the man’s throat. Blood covered Santos as he grabbed the man’s wrists and pinned him against the bulkhead, praying no sounds of the struggle reached the control room. The man gasped and bled out, powerful spurts soaking Santos’s face and front. It took an eternity before the flow dwindled, and a stench filled the space, signaling loss of sphincter control. He let the body slide down the bulkhead and stood trembling, willing the face from his memory.

  Santos cleaned himself as best he could with paper towels from the toilet. A mop from the cleaning-gear locker became his improvised lock, jammed across the narrow passageway between the outward-opening control-room door and the opposite bulkhead, its tangled head compressed tight against the door just above the knob. He grabbed the hijacker’s gun and hurried up the stairs.

  USS Hermitage (LSD-56)

  Malacca Strait

  North of Riau Island, Indonesia

  Captain Jack Leary, USN, sat in his ready room with the sat phone at his ear.

  “Captain Leary, this is Jim Brice from the embassy in Singapore. I’m conferencing in Jesse Ward from Langley. We need your help. Go ahead, Jesse.”

  Leary listened. When Ward finished, Jim Brice spoke.

  “Port Klang has nothing unaccounted for near China Star, and they didn’t send out any escorts,” he said.

  “Are they following up?” Ward asked.

  Brice sighed. “I suspect they’ll drag their feet until she’s out of their waters.”

  “That’s not gonna hack it,” Leary said. “Any threat needs to be handled before the passage narrows at Phillip’s Strait. But what can we do about it?”

  “Can you check it out?” Ward asked.

  “I’m running a multinational effort planned for months. I can’t just head north.”

  Ward persisted, “Maybe one vessel—”

  “Look, Ward,” Leary said, “I can’t go into territorial waters without consulting my counterparts. And they’ll request instructions, and we’ll get no decision until the tanker is in flames or safe and halfway to Japan. See my problem here?”

  Ward sighed. “Yes, I do, Captain, but what can we do?”

  After a long silence, Leary replied. “I guess we take a risk. I can get a chopper over her without being too obvious. If there’s a problem, we close, and if that ends well, we call it a multinational effort and all take a bow. If not… well, I never wanted to be an admiral anyway.”

  “Thanks, Captain,” he said. “By the way, is that sailor from the hijacking with you?”

  “Broussard? Yeah, he’s one of our referees.”

  “Might be a good idea if he was on that chopper.”

  M/T China Star

  Malacca Strait

  “Where the hell have you been?” Richards demanded.

  “Preparing our escape,” Sheibani said. “Allah smiles on the prepared.”

  “Good,” nodded Richards, mollified. “How much longer?”

  “We turn into the western channel now and ground off Rupat Island in an hour, maybe a bit longer. I will reduce speed. I don’t want to ground hard enough to breach both the outer and inner hulls.” He smiled. “It is difficult to swim in crude oil.”

  Richards returned the smile, heartened by mention of escape. Sheibani moved to where Ortega stood near the helmsman.

  “Make your course one seven oh,” Sheibani said.

  Holt stepped in
from the wing just as the second mate protested. “The western channel is too shallow. We cannot!”

  Sheibani shot Ortega in the head, and Holt recoiled as wet bits of brain hit his face and slid from his chin to fall beside Ortega’s twitching corpse.

  “One seven oh,” Sheibani repeated, and the terrified helmsman spun the wheel.

  “Half ahead,” Sheibani said.

  Bonifacio stood on the far side of the bridge, waiting, but the captain stood frozen, staring down at Ortega’s body, barely visible in the predawn light. Bonifacio raced to the console.

  “Half ahead, aye, sir,” he shouted.

  Such a pity, Sheibani thought. Just when I get these monkeys trained I have to kill them.

  ***

  Anderson stole a glance at the clock, willing Santos to hurry.

  The head man said something, and his underling started for the door. Anderson’s mind raced, desperate to buy Santos time, when unexpected motion caused him to grab the console storm rail as the ship turned.

  The head man reached the console just as the engine control changed to half ahead.

  “What you do?”

  Clueless, thought Anderson, looking past the head man to the second man, halfway to the door, unsure what to do given the new development.

  “I do nothing,” Anderson said. “We don’t control here. Bridge do.” He pointed to the phone. “You talk friends. They tell you.”

  The hijacker picked up the phone, and when he hung up, Anderson launched into a stream of technobabble.

  “OK, OK. You shut up now.” The hijacker stuck the gun in Anderson’s face, Santos forgotten for the moment. Anderson sneaked a look at the time. Damn it, Ben, what’s taking so long?

  ***

  Santos stood in the CO2 room, racked with indecision. Was he really meant to trigger the CO2? He had a gun now. Should he try to rescue Anderson? He felt the ship turn and slow and decided to trust his instincts. He crossed himself, pulled the release, and raced aft.

  ***

  “What you do?” the senior terrorist demanded, gun to Anderson’s chest.

  “Not me. Bridge do,” Anderson screamed over the alarm. “Big mistake. Someone started gas to put out engine-room fire. Gas comes in twenty seconds!” He pointed to the raucous alarm and the large red sign beneath it.