The Exile rk-4

by Andrew Britton

  Martin spared the gendarme a glance. Tall and husky, he was holding his regulation Beretta out in front of him, aiming it at Martin in a two-handed police grip.

  Martin tossed his ID holder at him, heard it hit the ground. “I’m with Interpol, Captain. Leonard Martin. Since you couldn’t manage to see my goddamned identification while I held it, feel free to pick it up for a better look.”

  Justine bent to lift the holder from where it had landed near his feet, eyes quickly moving over it, then shifting to Steiner and the three men still standing with their hands up in the air.

  “What’s going on here?” Justine barked.

  Martin took a long, deep breath and held it, wishing he had the vaguest notion of how to explain.

  Aboard the Yemaja, the two deckhands had been raising fenders and pulling in lines when they heard the scuffling below on the quay.

  Leading the way up onto the boat, Abby and Brun behind him, Kealey came off the stairs to see one of the hands turning from the rail toward the master cabin. His MP9 holstered, Kealey took one running stride after him, another, and then grabbed him before he could run in under the tail of the flybridge, clamping his right arm around his throat and hauling him backward while jamming a knee into the base of his spine.

  The deckhand groaned in pain but managed to take a decent swing at Kealey as he was unwillingly spun in a circle. Kealey easily ducked the blow, bounced up on his knees, and punched him hard in the face, smashing his nose with his fist. As the man’s legs folded, Kealey moved in to hit him again, taking no chances, delivering a second blow across his jaw, feeling it give at the hinge, then grabbing his sleeve and tossing him against the rail. The man slammed back into it before he crumpled to his knees, spitting and coughing up blood.

  Kealey looked around to check on his teammates. He did not see Abby anywhere, but picked up Brun in close pursuit of the deckhand who’d been hauling the lines. The crewman ran aft outside the master cabin toward the stern and, to Kealey’s surprise, revealed himself to be armed, stopping in the main cabin just inside the entrance to pull a gun on the Interpol agent.

  His assault rifle already in his grip, Brun pumped a short burst into the crewman’s midsection. Staggering backward, he somehow remained on his feet long enough to return fire, the round he had triggered catching Brun above the elbow, before he turned in a swoony half circle and dropped to the floorboards in a heap.

  Kealey dashed back toward the rear deck. Enclosed by a paneled curve of glass, the main cabin ran the full beam of the yacht to form a luxury suite with leather chaise lounges and teak floors and furnishings. Hassan al-Saduq was on the other side of the window panels amidships, his gaze momentarily meeting Kealey’s before he hastened down a hatchway beside the cockpit to the lower deck. But Kealey saw no sign of the man he’d met at the hotel. And Abby? Where was she?

  Kealey hooked through the cabin entrance to Brun, who stood just inside it, clutching his arm, bracing himself against a ladder running up to the flybridge.

  “Shit,” Kealey said, eyeing his left shirtsleeve. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “Just a nick,” Brun said through gritted teeth.

  “You’re losing blood.” Kealey shook his head. “It won’t stop by itself.”

  Brun waved him off with his right hand-the one still holding his assault gun. “I’m all right,” he said. “You’d better get on with things.”

  Kealey expelled a breath. “Where’s Abby?”

  Brun angled his chin at the ladder to the flybridge. “Up top,” he said. “She went after Saduq’s friend and-”

  The yacht abruptly jolted as its engines thrummed to life below-decks, almost throwing Kealey off his feet. He simultaneously grabbed the rail of the ladder and reached out to steady Brun, then stole a glance at the cockpit. It remained unoccupied.

  The captain, then, was also up on the flybridge. The boat would have a second pilot’s station up there. Kealey drew his submachine gun, gave Brun a nod, and scrambled up the ladder.

  He was pulling his way up off its final rung behind an open-air banquette seat when he heard the crack of a gunshot, the bullet whistling past his ear less than an inch to his right. Raising his head slightly above the back of the seat, Kealey took in everything at once: The pilot’s station was up toward the bow on the port side of the sundeck, the captain at the throttles. His quarry standing behind it with a pistol in his hand and a brown rucksack over his shoulder. Farther toward the rear, Abby had taken cover behind a fixed stowage container near the starboard rail.

  The pirate got off another shot at Kealey, but it missed by a slightly greater distance than the first. Instead of dropping down behind the banquette, Kealey heaved himself up over the ledge of the flybridge without a moment’s indecision, then squeezed a burst of fire over the seat back and scurried to his left. With Abby behind the single stowage container on the right side of the deck, and just the banquette between him and the gunfire, he would have far less protection here. But Kealey wanted to divide the pirate’s attention-and aim-by giving him widely separated targets.

  “You have a large enough catch down below,” the pirate shouted. “Leave me and be satisfied with it.”

  Kealey did not answer…but given their situation, it was hard to see what he meant. Leave me. Did the pirate think he could toss them Saduq in exchange for command of the boat? What good would that do him if they were all stuck on it together? Unless…

  Kealey realized what was happening all at once. The yacht was clipping along over the water now, its captain pushing thirty knots at the helm, and it was obvious the pirate hadn’t ordered him to pour on the speed without good reason. He was not taking flight-there was no one in pursuit-and to Kealey that could only mean one thing.

  He did not intend to remain on the Yemaja, but intended to meet up with another vessel somewhere out on the bay.

  The pirates in the motor launch wore head scarves, military-style khakis with swim vests over them, and lightweight tactical combat boots. They were armed with fully automatic rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, with several wearing daggers or machetes in scabbards at their waists. Like their leader, Nicolas Barre, they had scorpion tattoos on their necks as symbols of their brotherhood.

  In the vessel’s otherwise blacked-out wheelhouse, the maritime GPS unit presently casting a muted glow over the pilot’s face had guided them to the exact coordinates Barre had set for their rendezvous. But having reached it well ahead of the scheduled meet time, they had anticipated there would be little for them to do for the next twenty minutes or so but await the yacht’s arrival.

  Now, however, the man behind the wheel saw the unexpected brightness of a bow light pierce the darkness no more than 50 or 60 meters off to starboard. Listening, too, he could hear the throb of a powerful engine grow louder by the moment.

  Turning quickly from the wheelhouse, he leaned forward against his craft’s low gunwale and peered in the direction of the oncoming vessel with his night vision binoculars.

  “Asad…what is it?”

  The pilot looked at the man who’d come up beside him, passed him the glasses, and took notice of the stunned, puzzled expression on his face.

  “It must be the yacht,” the man said. “But for it to approach at that speed without Nicolas signaling ahead-”

  “We’d better hurry up and prepare, Guleed,” the pilot said.

  On his haunches behind the banquette, Kealey lined his gun sight on the pirate as the yacht raced over the black water of the bay. He did not want to get into a shoot-out here on the flybridge. He wanted the man for information, and that meant he did not want him dead. But he had no intention of letting him escape with the unknown contents of the rucksack-a bag he had not carried with him from the Hotel Bonny Bight, and that he therefore had picked up on the yacht. He wanted to know what was in it.

  Kealey was fairly confident he could squeeze off an accurate volley even with the vibrating movement of the boat. Aim for the man’s legs, with a sho
rt three-round burst, and it would cut them out from under him. Miss his target, on the other hand, and all kinds of chaos would erupt. But the alternative was to remain at an impasse until they reached whatever was waiting for the pirate out in the night. If Kealey was going to do it, he couldn’t wait.

  He inhaled deeply, then held his breath, preparing to pull the trigger on his exhale, the old sniper’s technique…

  He never had the chance to get off his salvo. An instant before he would have fired, the pirate’s weapon abruptly produced a loud report, then a second and third, the bullets slamming into the banquette in front of him. Kealey barely had time to wonder what had prompted his shots before the yacht veered sharply to starboard, throwing him off balance. Then he angrily realized he’d waited too long-they had reached the meet point.

  He tried to spring to his feet to return the fire, and the yacht careered again, this time turning even more sharply in the water, the violent motion flinging him onto his side and knocking the assault rifle from his grasp. As it skittered across the deck, he saw Abby clinging to the fixed stowage container, struggling to hang on to it so she wouldn’t tumble across the flybridge.

  Kealey heard his own furious snarl as he again tried to right himself and saw the pirate holding tightly onto the rail, peering down over the side of the boat. God damn, God damn! They’d been taken for idiots, suckered…

  The yacht kicked to a halt, its mainframe shuddering, throwing Kealey back onto the deck. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed hold of the banquette in front of him and launched to his feet, but by then the pirate had already leaped down from the pilot’s station and was on his way over the side.

  Kealey ran forward, grabbing up his rifle as he hurtled toward the rail just in time to see the launch speeding away from the yacht ahead of a churning wake of foam, vanishing in the pitch darkness, taking the pirate and the rucksack with it.

  Expelling a disgusted breath, he turned to the pilot’s station, grabbed the boat’s captain by his collar, and tossed him off his seat.

  “Stay away from those controls, you stupid bastard,” he said, pushing the bore of his gun against the man’s temple with such force, it bent his head back. “You move this boat an inch-a fucking inch-and I swear I’ll blow your useless brains out.”

  Rushing down the ladder from the flybridge now, past Brun to the hatchway and down again, and then through a passage on the lower deck, Kealey reached the master cabin amidships, where Saduq had holed up behind his locked door.

  He stood outside the door, inhaled, and then kicked it below the handle so that it went flying inward with a loud bang, the frame buckling around it, partially torn away from the side of the passage.

  Saduq stood staring at him from the middle of the cabin, his eyes wide in his face.

  “Who are you?” he said. “What is it you want?”

  Kealey stormed into the cabin and pushed him so hard that Saduq went flying backward over a chair into the wall, the breath woofing from his lips.

  “Who I am doesn’t matter,” Kealey said. “All that does is that you’re going to talk.”

  CHAPTER 16

  GULF OF GUINEA, CAMEROON

  “This isn’t complicated, Mr. al-Saduq,” Kealey said. “We know how you earn your living. We know you came to Limbe to broker an arms and equipment deal between Ishmael Mirghani and the man who jumped overboard with what is presumably a considerable sum of money. We have a good idea about the merchandise on the selling block-”

  “If you already know so much, then what more do you hope to learn from me?” Saduq said.

  Kealey looked down at him, the assault rifle in his hand pointed down at the floor. They were in the Yemaja ’s master cabin minutes after he had slammed in its door, Saduq on a cushioned teakwood armchair against the wall, Brun sitting on the bed with his own MP9 on his lap and a pressure bandage around his arm-the wrap having come from a first aid kit they had gotten the boat’s captain to provide. Abby, meanwhile, had brought the captain down off the flybridge to the interior pilot’s station, where she was presently standing guard over him.

  Kealey’s dark gray eyes regarded Saduq with an almost casual detachment. “I hate to repeat myself,” he said. “But the key here for everyone really comes down to keeping things simple. What we want from you are answers to the questions we don’t know. There are only a handful that matter.”

  “And they are…?”

  “The identity of the person who made off with the rucksack. And what you think he’s going to do with the money now that he almost certainly realizes you’ve been captured.” Kealey paused. “Most of all, Mr. Saduq, we’re interested in Mirghani’s plans for the shipment, should he get his hands on it…meaning the name of its end user. That information would take us all a good way toward getting off this boat. In fact, I can almost guarantee it will eventually get you back to shore alive and in one piece.”

  Saduq stared up at him from his chair. “Who are you?” he asked. “By what authority do you seize my vessel with impunity and try to intimidate-”

  Kealey didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. He took a lunging step forward, clamped his hand under Saduq’s chin, and pushed his head back against the cabin wall. Saduq grunted out in surprise.

  “You are out of your mind,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s true,” Kealey said. “It even might be one of the reasons I’m here. But there’s one thing you’ve got absolutely right-no maybes. I am in command of your ship. My people have boarded her, and from this point on we control where she goes. And decide what happens to you.”

  Saduq regarded him, quickly summoning up his composure. “Are you CIA?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  “Maybe so, but I can tell you are an American,” Saduq said. “I have many long-standing and high-placed relationships within your country. If you are CIA, I can promise your brutish tactics will not be taken lightly by those who sent you.”

  Kealey looked at him. “You seriously believe that’s true?”

  Saduq nodded. “I am an international businessman, not someone to be treated like a cheap criminal.”

  Kealey looked at him another moment, then grabbed him under the chin again and smashed him back with greater force than before, keeping his fingers locked around his throat.

  “I want answers,” Kealey said. “We’re staying on this boat together until I get them, do you understand?”

  Saduq said nothing. Staring at him, Kealey was struck with an odd sense of dissociation; it was as if he’d been watching the scene in the cabin unfold from some significant remove and taken cold recognition of two things. The first was that he once might have felt a mixture of anger and admiration for Saduq’s unfaltering composure. The second was the complete and utter absence of any feelings or compunctions within him at all. It was exactly as he had told Abby before. He just wanted to get the job done.

  “I asked if you understood,” he said and slammed the arms merchant back into the wall a third time.

  Saduq remained silent. Kealey’s upper and lower molars clicked together. All right, have it your way. He raised his gun and pressed its bore into the middle of his captive’s forehead, tightening his grip around his neck, clamping off his windpipe.

  “Let’s try again,” he said in a flat, mechanical tone, looking directly into Saduq’s eyes. “Do you understand me? Yes or no?”

  Saduq swallowed and took a thin, wheezing breath, his Adam’s apple a hard, straining lump against the rigid vise of Kealey’s hand. Not letting up, Kealey dug his fingers in deeper, bringing the gun barrel to bear against his forehead with a pressure that made the skin pale around it in a small circle.

  “Yes or no?”

  Saduq produced a strangled, gurgling sound, his tongue writhing thickly in his mouth, the veins of his temples pulsating, his eyes bulging in their sockets. “ Yeesss, ” he croaked at last.

  Kealey unlocked his fingers from Saduq’s throat without moving his gun from his forehead. At alm
ost the same instant, he heard Brun shift on the bed, shot him a quick glance, and detected a measure of discomfort in the Interpol agent that had nothing to do with the physical pain of his gunshot wound. This registered in Kealey’s awareness with no more emotion than anything else about his situation. It was just another factor to be inventoried should it enter into play.

  “The man who came aboard with you,” Kealey said, his eyes darting back to Saduq. “Who was he?”

  The arms dealer swooped air into his lungs, his chest heaving up and down. “A Somali brigand,” he sputtered.

  “Does he have a name?”

  “He…he calls himself Ali.”

  “What do you mean ‘calls himself’?”

  “I cannot…cannot tell you…whether it is…his true identity.” Saduq pulled in another rapid series of breaths. “He is…a lieutenant. Nothing more. I have dealt with his group in the past.”

  “Its leader, then,” Kealey said. “Give me his name.”

  “He goes by many aliases… I know him as Dafo,” Saduq said, massaging his throat. “They say he is based in Puntland…Boosaaso, Haradheere, or Eyl. But he communicates only via telephone and e-mail, and it’s uncertain whether he even resides on the continent.”

  “And that’s the best you can do?”

  “As far as what you have asked to this point,” Saduq said, looking him squarely in the eye. “I am prepared to tell you whatever else I might know about him…and can help with other information you wish to know.”

  “I’m sure,” Kealey said. “Except you’re full of shit.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Shaking his head in denial, Saduq began to respond, but before his lips could shape another word, Kealey bunched his collar in his fist and yanked him up off his chair, hauling him forward so he left his feet. He threw him to the cabin floor on his belly, the armchair momentarily getting tangled between his legs and clattering over sideways. As Saduq tried gathering himself, Kealey came up behind him, grabbed the back his shirt, and half dragged, half lifted him to his feet.