Mirage tof-9

by Clive Cussler

  Instead of reacting, he’d sat seemingly unaware until Winters pressed the still-warm barrel of his Beretta against the back of Juan’s head. “Sorry about this, Captain, but there’s been a change of plans.”

  Hali, standing at the wheel, turned sharply with a quick intake of breath because he hadn’t heard Winters until he spoke.

  “Stand easy,” Juan said in Arabic.

  “Yes, sir.” Hali fell into the role of frightened crewman.

  “What is it you want?” Cabrillo asked, switching to English.

  “Number one is, I want you to cut the engines.” Winters moved around so he could cover both Cabrillo and Kasim. An M4 assault rifle was slung across his chest.

  Juan suspected a man like Gunny Winters, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, would speak at least some Arabic, so he gave the correct orders to Hali at the helm station. The beat of the engines, an artificial noise created to muffle the whine of the Oregon’s true power plant, eased down until the only sound was the subtle hiss of water floating past the ship’s steel sides.

  The morning was as beautiful as only the tropics can be. The sun was up, but the heat and humidity were still some time away. There was the merest of breezes, and the waves were long and ponderous and swelled no more than a few inches.

  “What other weapons do you have besides the M60s you used on the pirates last Friday?” Winters asked.

  Cabrillo had to admit he was impressed. Judging by the silver in his high-and-tight haircut, Winters was closer to fifty than forty. He had been operating on stress, caffeine pills, and little sleep for over a week and yet he still looked pretty good. Yes, there was the beard, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he had lost none of his military discipline and little of his bearing. In a different world, the two of them would probably be friends.

  “I keep a Tokarev pistol in the safe in my cabin, and my first engineer has a shotgun.”

  “Tell your man to go and get them. He is to slide them, breeches open, through the door at the rear of the bridge. If I see him or any other member of your crew, you will die. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Juan relayed the orders, noting wryly that Winters did seem to understand because he nodded when Juan explained the safe’s combination. Two minutes later, a sawed-off shotgun came sliding from the passageway behind the bridge, followed a moment later by a battered Tokarev pistol. The pistol’s slide was locked back so it could not fire, and the double barrels of the shotgun were broken open so it was evident it was not loaded. Winters squinted at the pistol, satisfying himself that the magazine had been pulled.

  “Toss them both overboard, please, Captain.”

  Cabrillo picked up the two weapons, crossed over to the starboard wing bridge, and heaved the weapons over the side of the ship. He knew that Winters wouldn’t be too concerned by the M60s down on the deck. In the close confines of the bridge, such a weapon would kill a hostage just as surely as the kidnapper.

  Juan returned and stood by the helm. Winters had positioned himself well back from the windows in case he’d been lied to and someone had a scoped rifle. Again, Juan was impressed.

  “Now what?”

  “I want two crewmen to man that gantry derrick down on deck and start heaving the empty containers over the side.”

  “What about your three companions? Surely they will have something to say about this.”

  “They’re dead,” Winters said bluntly. “Now carry out my orders. And have your wheelman return to the hallway behind us for further instructions.”

  Juan yelled through the back door to Hali and told him what to do. It took a little more time to organize a work detail. Eddie Seng and Franklin Lincoln soon strode out of the superstructure and made their way to the mast crane. Eddie fired up the diesel that powered the controls, and though it smoked as if it were about to expire, it ran as smooth as a sewing machine.

  While Linc took the controls, Eddie scrambled up onto the first of the deck-loaded containers. He lugged a rusted wire sling that had four hooks, which could be attached to the four corners of a container, and a central loop for the hook coming down the crane’s main cable.

  By the time they had one of the containers dangling over the side of the ship, a new noise could be heard out over the water, the unmistakable beat of a helicopter’s rotors. The noise grew until it filled Cabrillo’s head. He could not see the chopper because it was coming up from the southeast and was soon hovering over the stern. He motioned to Winters that he wanted to see from the bridge wing. The old gunny nodded.

  Cabrillo stepped out into an artificial gale kicked up by a Sikorsky S-70, the civilian version of the Black Hawk helicopter. The chopper’s side door was already open, and as soon as the craft was stabilized over the fantail, a pair of thick ropes tumbled down to the deck. Two men followed them even before they had been fully deployed, dropping like stones until braking just before they smashed into the steel. Another pair followed a second behind them.

  And then the chopper veered off and began thundering back south. The men were dressed in black combat fatigues and were loaded with gear and weapons. They had fast-roped with the precision of Special Forces, which was precisely what they had been.

  “Your crew will remain inside the ship at all times,” Winters said from where he crouched. “I don’t care where just so long as they remain out of sight. If they venture too close to a doorway or window, they will be shot.”

  “Hali,” Juan called.

  “I am here, Captain. What was that noise?”

  “Four more soldiers have boarded the ship. Pass the word that I want all crew members to go to the mess and wait there. No one is to go near the deck at any time. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Captain. We will wait in the mess hall until you come for us.”

  Juan wondered whether he and his crew were meant to survive this ordeal or if Winters and his masters would eliminate them as potential witnesses. He suspected the latter. Not only was the crew witness to this hijacking, scuttling the ship would actually cover the theft from the crime bosses. A judicious SOS call, and a search and rescue that discovers the ship already well down at the head and beyond salvage, and, voilà, a billion dollars, free and clear, from your partners.

  The empty container hit the water with a tremendous splash and bobbed like a red cube of ice in a drink. Eddie clutched the wire sling after detaching it from the container and was swung back on board.

  Winters cursed when he shot a glance out the wing window. He no longer feared a sniper since his men controlled the deck. “I forgot to tell you to open the door so the containers sink.”

  “I will pass that along.” There was an old bullhorn in a cabinet under the chart table.

  “Go outside, Captain, and my men will kill you before you take two steps. Do either of your guys out there speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  The former Marine took the bullhorn and strode out onto the bridge wing. “Hold fast. It’s Winters.” His amplified voice boomed and echoed while down below two of his guards swung their guns up and took aim before relaxing once again. “You two, working on the crane. From now on, open the container’s doors so they sink. Raise your arm if you understand.” The Asian crewman who’d met with them on the dock back in Umm Qasr raised a hand in a nervous wave. Winters returned to the bridge. Though he’d spoken to the men outside, he’d never once taken his eyes, or the aim of his pistol, off the Chairman.

  It took three hours to unload all the empty containers. By the time Eddie and Linc had finished, a boat had approached. It looked like a typical oil field tender with a boxy superstructure hunched over the bows and a long open rear deck. On the deck sat the Sikorsky helicopter that had dropped off Winters’s men, as well as an enormous crane on crawler tracks. Between the two was ample room for The Container.

  Cabrillo understood at once why they had brought their own crane. When the mission to steal The Container was laid out, Winters and his American partners didn’t know if the ship chosen to smu
ggle the money out of Iraq had its own derricks to transfer cargo. Prudently, they had assumed it did not and brought their own crane with them on this high seas rendezvous.

  “In case you are wondering, we are not going to kill you,” Winters said conversationally as he watched his partners steaming closer.

  “I am not reassured,” Juan said.

  “No. It’s true. The way we figure it, there’s no way you can show up in Jakarta with tales of us betraying the others. They might believe you, they might not, but they surely will make you pay for losing their money. Your only chance of staying alive is to sell this ship in some backwater port and vanish.”

  Cabrillo said nothing.

  “I’ve had a bellyful of killing,” Winters went on. “Those three down below—” His voice suddenly cut off as a new sound enveloped the ship, the banshee scream of one of her 20mm Gatling guns opening up on the approaching tender. The rounds tore into her stern like a predatory cat rakes the haunches of its prey. Steel was shredded as easily as paper. The tender’s rudder was shot completely off, and rounds destroyed the stuffing box where the single driveshaft passed out of the hull and into the sea. The shaft itself snapped under the onslaught, and her bronze propeller popped free like a rotten tooth.

  Water began flooding her engine room in such volumes that the crew down below never stood a chance. The fusillade lasted just seconds, but it was enough to doom the ship to a fast-approaching death.

  Juan had been expecting the blast from the Gatling. It had all been preplanned days ago as they gamed various boarding scenarios. Had a helicopter approached the Oregon where The Container could be hoisted off, it would have been shot down. They had left the Sikorsky unmolested because the empty containers had yet to be pulled free from the hold, and also because it did not have the lift capacity to carry off the cash-filled container.

  If it was all in hundred-dollar bills, it would still weigh eleven tons. Twenty-two thousand pounds of money. It would be more if smaller denominations were thrown into the mix.

  The distraction of the tender’s destruction gave Juan no advantage. Gunny Winters nearly shot him in the face when Cabrillo charged. The old Marine had the reflexes of an Olympic fencer and the concentration of a Zen master. Even as the Gatling continued its dreadful wail, Winters was ready for a fight. Juan had barely pushed Winters’s arm aside when the gunny cycled through four snap shots, the noise exploding in Cabrillo’s ear. They crashed, chest to chest, and Juan felt like he’d run into a cement-block wall. Winters was about Juan’s height, but under his loose shirt his body was thick with muscle. Winters smashed forward with his head like a striking cobra and would have crushed Cabrillo’s nose had the Chairman not whirled back, maintaining his grip on Winters’s gun hand. A lightning kick aimed for his groin came next, and Juan twisted his leg to take the massive blow on his thigh. His leg felt weak down to his toe.

  Most fighters armed with a pistol would concentrate on using the weapon and ignoring everything else. Not this man. He came after Juan with everything he had. It was as if the pistol clutched in his right hand was meaningless. Meanwhile, Cabrillo opened himself up to punches and kicks as he was forced to maintain his grip on the gun hand.

  The Gatling finally went silent, and smoke poured from the hundreds of holes shot into the tender’s hull. The fight in the wheelhouse was in its seventh second when Cabrillo realized he was more than likely going to lose. And that set him off — the idea of defeat. He slammed Winters’s hand into a window frame again and again until the pistol fell to the deck.

  He released the hand, knowing it would be useless to Winters, and threw a combination of punches that the gunny expertly parried. Juan just had to buy a few more seconds. The plan called for his people to overwhelm the guards on deck and retake the bridge. Max would be storming through the door any second with Linc and MacD on his heels.

  Winters’s right hand should be worthless and yet he managed to unsheathe a fighting knife he carried strapped inside his shirt. Cabrillo fought the natural urge to get away from the blade. Instead, he stepped closer, limiting Winters’s ability to swing the knife. Winters flipped the blade and started to plunge it into Juan’s shoulder. Juan grabbed at his wrist, but the former Marine had the better position and superior leverage, and the knife sliced into the meat of Cabrillo’s trapezius muscle. Winters was angling the blade so it would eventually find the major arteries feeding the brain.

  Hot blood poured from the wound and down his chest. Cabrillo roared as he tried to keep the knife from digging deeper while Winters tried just as hard to ram the blade all the way home.

  It went in an inch. The deeper it was driven, the less Juan could check its remorseless plunge. He could sense his opponent gathering himself for one last effort, one last thrust, that would kill him.

  He felt the spray of blood on his face before he heard the shot. Winters collapsed, lifeless, the knife ripping savagely from Cabrillo’s body as he collapsed in a heap. Max stood in the doorway leading aft, a compact Glock in his hand still pointed at the ceiling, still smoking.

  “The other four surrendered without a fight,” Hanley said.

  “I had just about every advantage under the sun, and he still nearly killed me.” Juan peeled back his sodden shirt to look at his wound. It was a small slit, and little blood was seeping out.

  “Better get Hux up here with her sewing kit,” Max remarked mildly.

  “Your concern for my well-being is touching.”

  “Ah, but I did just save your life.”

  “A charge I can’t deny.” Juan looked down at Winters’s corpse. “Tough old bird.”

  “What do they say, there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine.”

  Within a few minutes, the bridge was crowded. Hux had Juan on a seat with his shirt off so that she could clean, stitch, and dress the wound. Max was overseeing the rescue of the passengers and crew of the oil field tender. The boat was sinking by the stern so steeply that her bow was already out of the water. She was going too fast for them to launch a lifeboat, so men jumped free, with life jackets if they could find them, and started swimming for the big freighter they had come out here to rob.

  Linda, MacD, and Mike Trono, all armed, were near the lowered gangplank ready to welcome their new guests.

  Cabrillo refused anything stronger than Tylenol and was back on his feet in time to see the crawler crane rip from its restraining chains and smash its way across the tilted deck and destroy the already-submerged helicopter.

  “Someone’s not getting their toys back.”

  “Dollars to donuts,” Max said around the stem of his pipe, “the tender and crane were rented, but that helo was owned by whoever financed this little caper.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Juan agreed.

  The tender’s bow was now sticking straight up in a frothing roil of air bubbles escaping from the countless 20mm punctures. And then she was gone. The water continued to boil for a few seconds, but the hull planed off far enough that that too came to an end. All that remained was a small slick of oil and a few pieces of unidentifiable flotsam.

  The first of the survivors reached the boarding stairs. Each was thoroughly patted down and told to sit on their hands in an open section of deck near the four men who’d choppered aboard.

  Juan and Max went down to the deck to inspect their prize. As they had guessed, the tender’s crew was hired help — in this case, native Indonesians who probably worked the oil fields off Brunei. They would be detained and questioned but ultimately released. What interested Juan were the four Westerners. Two of them, he suspected, were the two from Iraq. The other two were older, and while they looked like a couple of drowned rats after their unexpected swim, they both had a sage dignity and a predisposed haughtiness. He didn’t recognize either of them, and they remained mute when he asked their names.

  Cabrillo rolled his eyes. He took out his phone, snapped pictures of their faces, and e-mailed them to Mark Murphy, who was still plugged in to the
DoD databases. They got a hit right away, and the answer rocked Juan back on his heels.

  “Max, do you know who we have here?”

  “A rat.”

  “True, but a former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army kind of rat.”

  “Deputy Under? That’s a real title?”

  “Gotta love bureaucracies. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hillman? Don’t know who your friend is yet, but I’m guessing you’re the top dog here.”

  “Who are you people?”

  “Sorry, my party, I get to ask the questions. I think it’s funny that you thought you would get away with it. You honestly thought the Pentagon would casually write off a billion dollars? A billion untraceable dollars. This money will be funding black ops for years, and you thought the military would simply forget about it.”

  By the crestfallen look Hillman shot Cabrillo, that was precisely what he and his co-conspirators thought.

  “They have been planning on recovering this money for years,” Juan continued. “True, no one knew who had it, but they were damn sure they were going to get it back. We even knew you and your Iraqi buddies would turn on each other in the end. Had we made Jakarta, I fully expect a few hundred of al-Qaeda’s finest there for the reception.”

  “Where’s Gunny Winters?” asked one of his friends from back in Umm Qasr, one of the men they suspected would be a former officer above Winters.

  “He was one of your men?” Juan asked.

  “I had the privilege of being his commanding officer on his last tour.”

  “He was a good Marine?”

  “The best.”

  “He’s dead.” The man already knew because he didn’t react. “Max shot him while he was trying to skewer me like a pig, and now that good Marine is going to be forever known as a traitor and a thief. I hope all you are proud of yourselves.”

  “What happens next?” This from one of the guards who’d fast-roped down from the Sikorsky.

  He looked too young to be part of the original cabal. Juan guessed he was a former soldier now working as a mercenary and had been hired on for this job. He probably didn’t know what was fully at stake.