by Mack Maloney
Prior to leaving the Shin, Nolan told one of the Senegals that if Alpha had to go to the beach, he should pretend to stay behind to watch the RIB — and that he would try to make Emma Simms stay behind with him. But as soon as they made it to shore, she was the first to jump from the boat, ruining the plan. She had her camera out and was demanding someone take pictures of her. When no one would, she stormed off, marching up the beach alone, in full view of anyone who might be looking in their direction.
Nolan ran after her, practically tackling her and pulling her back into the shadows. “This place is lousy with people who won’t mind shooting any of us — and not with a camera,” he told her sternly. “Why can’t you just stay with the goddamn boat?”
She waved him off. “Because I got this goddamn suit on,” she snapped back at him. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
He kept hold of her arm, though. “If you move more than two feet away from me,” he told her, “I’ll shoot you myself.”
Hiding the RIB in some shore vegetation, by this time the rest of the squad had caught up to them. Nolan told them to check their weapons and their breathing masks. Then they began their search of the grimy beach.
They made their way slowly at first, moving carefully among the heaps of cut steel and burning trash. The beach reminded Nolan of a battlefield that war had passed by. The carcasses of dozens of ships lay tossed about as if discarded by some giant hand. Some were in pieces; others had yet to be broken. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. There were also hundreds of tools scattered about — sledgehammers, huge hacksaws, acetylene torches. Apparently once quitting time arrived, all of Gottabang’s 20,000 workers just dropped whatever they were using at the moment and walked away.
All this clutter, plus the smoke and the night, made moving around the beach slow and difficult. Nolan soon realized they had to split up. Two Senegals would search the water’s edge along the southern part of the beach. Two more would take the northern end. Gunner and the fifth Senegal would take the midsection. Being stuck with Emma Simms, Nolan would search the area closest to where the RIB was hidden.
He was hoping this would be the safest part of the mile-long beach to check. Because it was far from the cutting yards and the workers’ shantytowns, it seemed the place where they were least likely to run into Gottabang’s security thugs.
Once the squad dispersed, Nolan and Emma Simms set out, staying close to one another but not talking, which was fine with him. They passed dozens of pools of discarded fuel, oil and bloody-red lubricants. The beach was so polluted, the sand was luminescent green in some parts, so soaked through it was with toxic chemicals. Sky-high piles of insulation and mountains of ship’s wall paneling soon surrounded them. Random jagged pieces of metal, lit by countless fires, big and small, were everywhere.
They reached an area jam-packed with giant pieces of broken ships. Bows, sterns, midsections. Some were cut neatly in sections, others were torn and jagged as if they’d been blown apart. It was like walking through a city where the streets contained block upon block of nightmarish buildings. These pieces towered over their heads, blotting out the night sky as effectively as the ever-present cloud of toxic smoke.
They moved along like this for nearly a half hour, Nolan checking for a ship name on every stern they came to. Every few minutes he would feel his sat-phone click twice, the signal from the other search teams checking in. But nothing beyond those two clicks meant they had no good news.
One part of Nolan was actually hoping they wouldn’t find the remains of the ship on the beach. It was pretzel logic, but if the ship was not here, then that meant it was still out there, somewhere. If it had been broken already, then the contents and the pirates would be scattered by now.
Besides, if they didn’t find evidence of the missing vessel here, they could leave quickly, dump Emma Simms, and resume the search somewhere else.
* * *
Nolan was certain the recon mission was a bust when he returned to the water’s edge and saw the other search parties all heading in his direction.
Each group reported the same thing: not even the barest clue of the Pacific Star had been found.
So much for Plan B.
Now they had to return to the RIB and get out of there. But when Nolan turned around to tell this to Emma Simms, she was nowhere to be seen.
“Where the fuck did she go?” he bellowed through his oxygen mask.
They fanned out immediately and began looking for her.
All kinds of thoughts were going through Nolan’s mind now, not the least of which was that she could still get them all killed. But then after running about 100 feet back into the canyon of broken ships, he suddenly found her.
She was standing at the back of a severed stern they’d missed somehow, looking at the name painted below the intact railing.
She saw him coming and simply pointed up.
Nolan adjusted his nightscope and read the name.
Pacific Star …
She handed him her camera.
“Make sure you get my good side,” she said.
10
Shadey Hadari was Gottabang’s Master Cutter.
He’d been employed at the breaking yard since it opened nearly twenty years before. This was substantial longevity as the Gottabang operation averaged one death, and usually a dozen mangling injuries, per day. Due to its outrageously hazardous working conditions, people looked up to Hadari as a sort of holy man, simply because he’d lasted so long at the most dangerous job in the world.
All these years of work had taken a toll on him, though. He was missing his left arm up to the elbow. He had just two fingers and a thumb on his right hand. His right foot was devoid of toes; his left ear was gone, as was all his hair, including his eyebrows and eyelashes. He had exactly two teeth left in his mouth.
He needed the help of a cane to walk and an ancient hearing aid to carry on a conversation. Though he was just thirty-eight years old, he looked twice that age at least.
He resided in a shack that was close to the beach and set away from the shantytowns where the rest of the cutting crews lived. Though built like the others, of wood and leftover ship paneling, the shack’s location was considered a perk, the only reward for Hadari’s long service to the multimillionaires who owned the ship-breaking operation. Its location was ideal only because most of the toxic smoke that rose from the beach did not usually blow in his direction.
Still, Hadari rarely slept, so numerous were his ailments. That’s why he was wide awake when Benja, his second cousin’s half-nephew, came to his shack in the dead of night asking if they could talk.
Benja was just twenty years old, but he, too, was covered with scars and bubbled skin, the result of coming in contact with so many harmful chemicals. He’d worked at Gottabang just six years, but in the day-to-day operations, he was considered a senior man as well.
Hadari motioned him inside, indicating he should close the rickety door behind him so no rats would get in.
“Visitors are here to talk to you,” Benja told Hadari. “They are looking for a missing ship.”
Hadari did not understand. Visitors? No one ever visited Gottabang.
“I found them, or I should say they found me, down at the water’s edge,” Benja went on nervously. “They want to know about a certain ship that came here to be chopped. I told them you were the wisest man on the beach. That if anyone knew, you would.”
But Hadari still didn’t understand. He’d been hit on the head by various objects so many times over the years, some things just didn’t register. He was still stumped by Benja’s news that visitors had come to the beach.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” he finally replied, his voice raspy and barely above a whisper. “If they are looking for a ship, let them float around in the bay, searching for its name. If it’s not here, let them walk among the junk piles on shore and see if they recognize what’s left of it.”
Benja fidgeted a bit. “They have d
one that, uncle, with only partial results. They are pressed for time and they feel they shouldn’t really be here in the first place.”
“And if they are outsiders, then they are right,” Hadari shot back at him. “So why did you bring them to me?”
Benja replied by taking something out of his shirt pocket. It was a hundred-dollar bill, the equivalent of a year’s pay for him.
“Because they gave me this,” he said. “And they said they’d give you even more, if you would talk to them.”
Hadari’s eyes went wide at the sight of the bill.
“Well, then bring them in, you fool!” he roared. “Why do you delay?”
Alpha Squad squeezed itself into the tiny shack a moment later.
Hadari’s expression said it all. This was not what he’d been expecting. He’d assumed the “visitors” were just some steamer bums looking for their lost wreck — rich steamer bums, but bums nevertheless. These people were soldiers, dressed in battle armor and carrying enormous weapons.
“My God, are you Americans?” Hadari asked them.
“We’re working for Americans,” Nolan corrected him.
“Not those cursed environmentalists, I hope?” Hadari said.
Nolan emphatically shook his head no. “Not a chance.”
“Is that a woman with you?” Hadari asked, looking at the heavily armored Emma Simms.
“She’s just along for the ride,” Nolan said, hastily pushing her to the rear of the group. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if word got out that the world’s most famous actress was here, in the worst place on earth.
Hadari looked her up and down again, but bought the explanation.
“You people lost a ship?” he asked them in creaky English.
“We are looking for one, yes,” Nolan replied. “We know it’s already been broken.”
“Then you really haven’t lost it,” Hadari said with a toothless smile.
“What we need is information on it,” Nolan said. “We think pirates were involved in bringing it here. Can you help us?”
Hadari hesitated. Talking to the Americans alone could get him severely punished, if not killed, by Gottabang’s brutal overseers. Adding the topic of pirates would only seal a painful death.
But Nolan had assumed as much, so he pulled out a wad of cash — his best weapon of all — and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill.
He stuffed it in Hadari’s ragged shirt pocket.
“This is for your trouble,” Nolan told him. “For starters…”
Hadari considered the money for a moment and then yelled to his half-nephew. “Get outside and keep a watch out. If you see any guards coming, you must tell us before you run away like a little child. Do you understand?”
Benja understood. He disappeared out the front door and took up station just outside the little shack.
“Now, we can talk,” Hadari said. “There was a ship that came in here late yesterday. And yes, it had a crew of pirates — they called themselves the Tangs. The whole thing was very hush-hush, though. Their ship went to the head of the line of those waiting to come up to the beach.
“Our men tore it down in just a matter of hours. The big boss put every available person on it. It ceased looking anything like itself within the first hour.”
“What about the cargo it was carrying?” he asked Hadari.
Hadari nodded slowly. “It is so unusual that a ship arrives here still bearing cargo. When one does, it’s a bit of news. And yes, this ship was full of guns and something else.”
Nolan got excited. “What was the ‘something else?’”
But Hadari just shook his head. “Something strange, very unusual. But at least to me, something unknown. Before the ship was cracked, the pirates made arrangements to transfer their guns and this unusual thing to another ship. Something along the lines of a seagoing tug, I believe. Pirates favor such boats, especially if they are on the run, because they tend to blend in.”
Hadari lit a cigarette. “What is it that you’re really looking for then? The guns or the unusual thing?”
Nolan took off his helmet and rubbed his tired eye.
“The ‘unusual thing,’” he replied wearily.
Hadari used his cane to tap him twice on the shoulder. It was almost a fatherly gesture even though they were close to the same age.
“You are looking in the wrong place,” Hadari said. “Whatever the ‘unusual thing’ is, it’s gone from here by now.”
Nolan peeled off two more hundreds. He passed them to Hadari, whose eyes welled up at the sight of the money.
“Thank you, sir,” Nolan told him.
“Good luck in your quest,” Hadari started to say … but he was interrupted by Benja bursting through the door,
“The security guards are coming!” he said breathlessly.
“How many?” Hadari asked anxiously.
“At least twenty,” Benja replied. “They have their machine guns and machetes. They might be heading for the Black Hole.”
Then as predicted, Benja ran away.
“Go…” Hadari told Nolan and company urgently. “Out the back door and through the worker’s settlements. Make your way back to the beach from there. But don’t stop for anything — no matter what you see!”
* * *
Suddenly, they were running.
Gunner was up front. Then came Emma Simms, the Senegals still in a protective formation around her. Nolan was bringing up the rear.
In their previous line of work as special operators for Delta Force, Nolan and Gunner had stolen into many unfriendly places, gathered intelligence and then gotten out, sometimes clean and smooth, sometimes with an army of bad guys on their heels. They excelled in both means of escape, but never with an uninvited guest along.
As soon as they went out the back of Hadari’s shack, they tumbled down a hill and found themselves on the edge of a massive slum. This was the Gottabang workers’ shantytown. It was a horrible sight, thousands of decrepit hovels stretching for as far as Nolan’s eye could see. Most were made of tin sheeting and cardboard, or leftover materials from the broken ships. They were crowded together in conditions that seemed impossible to support even the lowest of animal life, never mind humans. Yet, here they were.
The stink was unbelievable, even through the breathing masks. There was no sanitation here, no running water, certainly no electricity. Trash and excrement were everywhere. Even worse, the smoke from the toxic fires burning on the beach nearby hung over the slum like a cloud that refused to blow away. Animals — small dogs, cats, rats, chickens, snakes and some unidentifiable — scattered or slithered away as Alpha ran past.
Then there were the people. Nolan saw them only as eyes, staring out of the shadows, watery, frozen, unaffected as Alpha went splashing on by. With weapons pointing in all directions, night-vision goggles, heavy body armor and oversized Fritz helmets giving them an otherworldly appearance, Nolan would have thought, in the heat of the moment, these people would have shown some emotion: fright, wonder, amusement.
Something …
But they all looked dead inside.
Nolan could hear Emma Simms’s muffled voice screaming out complaints throughout this dash. They were moving too fast. The body armor was hurting her knees. The smell was making her sick. She was going to catch some disease because the people here were looking at her.
Truth was, had she not been with them, Alpha would have been able to move a lot quicker.
Finally Nolan shouted an order and the Senegals on either side of her, reached under her arms and began half carrying her, half dragging her.
This did not stop her from complaining, though. She began yapping faster and more virulently than before.
They were totally unfamiliar with the lay of the land; all Nolan knew was they were heading north, which was the general direction of where the Shin was waiting. He’d looked behind every few seconds to see if anyone was chasing them, but saw no one.
It took Alpha five minutes of fl
at-out running but Nolan finally spotted the other edge of the slum terminating at the base of a sandy hill. Beyond, he could see the water and the waiting Shin.
If they could just make it over that hill …
* * *
Gunner was the first to reach the top of the rise.
Even with all the confusion going on around them, Nolan clearly heard his colleague cry out. Not in pain, but in surprise.
The Senegals went over next, two carrying Emma Simms between them. They, too, cried out and came to a halt. Seconds later, Nolan scrambled up the crest — and he stopped cold as well, finally seeing what had frozen the others in their tracks.
It was another slum, much smaller, and separated from the one they’d just run through. Here, the shacks were clustered in a rough circle with a sewage ditch splitting it down the middle. But the shacks themselves looked more like cages. Most were fashioned out of cargo crates only two or three feet high.
It was obvious there was no running water here either, no electricity, no sanitation facilities. And, if anything, the stink was even more overwhelming, the conditions more putrid. It made the shantytown Alpha had just passed through look luxurious by comparison.
The Black Hole …
That’s what Hadari’s nephew had called it.
At first, though, Nolan thought the place was empty, only because he couldn’t believe anyone could actually live in a place like this.
But then he started seeing faces in the blackness. They looked especially eerie through his nightscope. They seemed to be floating in space at first. Initially a few pairs, then a few more. Then a dozen, then several dozen.
Gunner was the first to take out his flashlight and shine it into the center of the camp. What they saw was revolting.
There were about a hundred people here, staring out from the crates.
Auschwitz …
That was the first word that came to Nolan’s mind. These weren’t humans looking back at him as much as they were collections of bones wrapped in loose skin. They were emaciated beyond belief. Sunken eyes, sunken stomachs. Loose teeth. Many had lost their hair.