by Mack Maloney
Batman had been right; it was otherworldly. If the entire Earth were made up of only islands and water, it would look like this.
The largest island within his field of view was no bigger than half a mile around. Some were smaller than a football field. Yet more than two-thirds of these islands had lights visible, indicating someone was living on them. Off in the distance, as always, was the green-yellow glow of Singapore.
The whole scene was surreal—and seeing it through the eerie emerald of the night-vision gear only added to the dreamlike effect.
Their mission tonight was to find the pirates’ hideout. It would not be easy. Batman knew how to get to Skull Island and, by extension, Brothel Beach, because Twitch had taken pictures with his watch cam of those places, and the images came with transponder stamps. With that information, they had found them with the help of an Internet satellite map.
But after the drugs really kicked in, Twitch started taking the photographs less frequently, stopping altogether just before he reached the pirates’ hideout, and not starting again until he’d moved on to Sumhai Island. So on this flight, they would attempt to retrace the steps he’d taken before he’d gotten so high.
To do this, Nolan had worked out a plan using techniques learned in his Delta Force days. Twitch had seen many things while in the company of the pirates the night before, but he couldn’t remember seeing any of the bandits refueling their speedboats. Yet the pirates had no problem flying around in their swift sekocis, engines at full throttle. This told Nolan the pirates must have had access to a fuel facility somewhere close to their hideout, and that their hideout must be somewhere close to the islands Twitch had visited with them.
So if they could find some of the landmarks Twitch was sure he saw after leaving Brothel Beach, they could establish a search radius by guessing the distance a boat with an almost-empty fuel tank could go from there. Within that radius, must lie both the pirates’ fuel depot and their hideout.
Or Nolan hoped that was the case.
“I remember seeing a large billboard on one of the islands we went past,” Twitch told him now, his voice still low. “It had a big beer bottle on it. And after that we’d gone by a wrecked, three-masted ship washed up on a beach. But before all that, we went under a bridge that connected some islands where a lot of nightclubs were.
“At the time, the beer bottle sign seemed as big as a mountain. The wrecked ship looked like it was left over from the real old pirates days, and that bridge looked like the Brooklyn Bridge. It was sort of like being in Disneyland. If Disneyland was a place for druggies.”
It took them a half hour of flying over island after island, but finally Nolan spotted what he thought might be Twitch’s “Brooklyn Bridge.” It was ten miles south of Brothel Beach, at the edge of an island inlet surrounded by a halo of pink light. And it did seem like it was big enough to connect Brooklyn to Manhattan. Made of basic bamboo-and-rope construction, it was surprisingly high and at least a quarter-mile long. It was strung with blinking party lights and gas-fueled candles.
“That’s definitely it,” Twitch said softly, as they flew over the structure at about 5,000 feet, out of earshot from anyone below. “Now, I think the beer sign was after this . . .”
They began scanning every island near the big bridge, gradually working their way outward. They saw a lot of boats moving among the many islands: freighters, small tankers, fishing trawlers. But it was odd: While things were bustling below them on this Saturday night, they didn’t see any of the fast sekocis the pirates used. Nolan had the distinct impression Zeek’s men were lying low.
This time it was Twitch who spotted it first. Off to the west, probably five miles from the bridge, an old Carlsberg Ale billboard, complete with a huge bottle, stood atop a hill of palm trees. It looked like something from the ’50s.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he told Nolan.
Beyond the beer sign, Nolan spotted a large uninhabited island with a particularly rugged coastline. A place where a ship might wash up. It took them five more minutes of burning precious fuel, but finally they located the wreck of an old three-masted schooner.
“OK, the trifecta,” Nolan said, fist-bumping Twitch in triumph.
But now came the hard part.
If they assumed that night the white-haired pirate, Bantang, had left the hijacked tanker in Phillip Channel with a near-full tank of gas, then visited Skull Island and Brothel Beach before heading back for Pirate Island, how far would his remaining gas take him? Nolan figured the answer had to be twenty miles or less, because according to Twitch, Ban-tang had pushed the sekoci’s powerful engines hard, and the boat did not seem to have a large fuel tank.
No sailor, in a big boat or small, ever wanted to get caught out in the water with no gas. Indeed Twitch recalled Bantang’s motorboat running out of fuel just as they’d reached the pirates’ hideout.
So Nolan commenced a long slow orbit, starting at the island where the wreck was and working his way out. They scoured every island below, paying attention to those few that did not have any lights burning on them, as they figured it would probably be a darkened island that held Zeek’s headquarters. But it was frustrating, because there were so many islands and many of them, dark or not, looked the same.
At first the search seemed useless. There were even more islands in this part of the Talua Tangs, all shapes, all sizes. Worse, they were all thick with jungle, their canopies being almost impossible to penetrate even with the night-vision goggles.
“They could have bonfires burning down there and we wouldn’t see them,” Twitch said. “I don’t think smoke could even get up through those trees. It’s the perfect camouflage.”
But then they got lucky.
Nolan had a good feeling just before he spotted it; then Twitch saw it, too. Not on an island, but on the water. A long thin oil slick.
It didn’t seem that unusual at first. The water among the hundreds of islands was heavily traveled by boats of all sizes, they used gasoline or diesel, and most leaked some fuel. But this was different. This slick was leeching out of a small, dark, triangular island about fifteen miles north of Beer Bottle Island and almost a straight shot from where the three-masted schooner was beached. The slick was several shades of blue, green and red. When enhanced by the night-vision goggles, it almost looked psychedelic floating on the calm water.
Nolan eased the copter down to twenty feet, both he and Twitch looking in all directions to make sure no one else was in the vicinity. Hovering above the oil slick, they turned their night-vision goggles on high and looked into the jungle on the triangular island. Both immediately saw a steel pipe, maybe six inches in diameter, running out of the forest and along a small, rocky beach before ending in the water, just where the slick began.
Nolan thought it conceivable that an island-hopping tanker could pull up to the end of this pipe, hook on and pump fuel into a storage tank hidden in the jungle. Had they found what they were looking for?
“I’d like to think we hit the jackpot,” he told Twitch. “But . . .”
Then they got lucky again.
“Here comes company,” Twitch announced softly.
Nolan looked over his right shoulder and saw three fast boats approaching the island. He immediately pulled up on the copter’s collective and they went straight up, fast, climbing back to 5,000 feet and out of sight. He began circling the island.
The three boats arrived just off the end of the pipe. One stayed in place while the two others landed on the rocky beach. Sure enough, they could see four men get out of the two boats and walk into the jungle, each carrying what looked to be a gas tank.
“They’re filling up,” Twitch said. “But they’re also being careful, leaving a guard boat offshore.”
“After what happened last night and now earlier tonight, I can see why they’d be nervous,” Nolan agreed.
They continued orbiting, and in a few minutes the four men emerged from the jungle, obviously carrying full gas tanks. The ta
nks were loaded onto the two boats, which soon departed. Nolan followed them.
It was not a minute later that they spotted a small island with a lagoon on its western side and a sandbar on its north. About half the island’s forest had been hacked down, and in the clearing they saw a low two-story concrete building along with many small huts, a barracks and a mess hall. A crooked-finger-type dock stretched into the lagoon, with berths for a few dozen fast boats. Most important, there was a large yacht docked in a stream located away from the rest of the boats.
“That’s the place,” Twitch confirmed. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
Sure enough, the two boats they were following pulled up to the dock and those aboard climbed off, carrying their recently filled fuel tanks with them.
Nolan fist-bumped Twitch again.
“Good work, my brother,” he said.
THEIR RECON MISSION was a success. But on a hunch, Nolan flew the copter back to the island where the pirates’ fuel depot lay hidden. The third fast boat, the one that had been keeping guard, had taken off in another direction, heading toward another dark island nearby.
“Let’s see where those other guys went,” he said to Twitch.
They found the pirates’ boat beached on the next island over from the fuel depot. The tree cover wasn’t quite as thick here, and there was a tall cliff on the island, somewhat unusual. Nolan focused his nightscope on the cliff and spotted two pirates walking toward it. Twitch saw them, too. Nolan moved the copter around the island, and that’s when they got lucky again.
On the other side of the cliff was a large satellite dish.
“Jesus, what are these guys doing—talking to Venus?” Nolan asked. “Those things went out of style in the ’80s.”
Twitch’s memory started flooding back again. “They showed me one of these old portable telephones they use,” he said. “They really were stuff from the ‘80s, pull-out antennas and all that. But the reason they used them was they knew these days, people eavesdrop on cell phones, but don’t bother with the old shit. They told me whenever Zeek was in trouble he’d put out a call on this old phone system and all his friends would come running.”
Nolan patted Twitch on the back. This was an important find. Not only had they discovered Zeek’s hideout and where he kept his fuel—they’d also uncovered the heart of his communications network.
But more important, they had both proved to themselves that they could still handle a hazardous mission without freaking out. The question now was: What should they do about all this?
“We don’t have the firepower to deal with the hideout,” Twitch said. “But the fuel tank and the sat dish? I think we got to take them out now. These guys are slippery and they’re unpredictable. We could come back out here tomorrow night or even in a few hours, and it could all be gone.”
Even though it would be tipping their hand to the pirates, Nolan had to agree. “If we deprive them of fuel and a way to call their friends, it will make our ultimate goal easier. It will also let them know that someone is out to get them for real this time. That could go either way for us. But we’ve got to take the chance.”
NOLAN KNEW TAKING out the satellite dish would be easy. At least twenty feet across, it was a fat target.
They waited for the two pirates to depart, and once they were out of sight, Nolan eased the copter down to a point just above the top of the cliff. Moving the aircraft sideways a bit allowed Twitch to lean out the right side door and aim his M4 down at the large umbrella-shaped dish.
“Anything in that superstitions book about shooting up one of these things?” Twitch asked Nolan. “Ten years of bad phone service or something?”
“Let’s hope not,” Nolan told him.
That’s all the prompting Twitch needed. He opened up on the dish, his rounds shredding it as if it was made of paper. And suddenly he was screaming like a madman.
“Can you hear me now?” he was yelling wildly as he fired away. “You fuckers! Can you hear me now?”
HE DESTROYED THE antenna in less than thirty seconds. Taking out the pirates’ fuel tank would be harder.
First they had to find it. It took nearly a dozen passes over the heavily forested island before Twitch finally spied a silver-colored fuel tank through not only a canopy of jungle but a blanket of camouflage netting as well. Now they had to figure out the best way to destroy it.
Putting the copter into a hover close to the tank and firing the gun pod wouldn’t do. The tank looked capable of holding about 2,000 gallons. The resulting explosion would probably vaporize them and their copter. Standing off at a safe distance and shooting at it would probably not work, either—there was a good chance they’d run out of ammunition before one of their rounds penetrated the forest, the camouflage netting and the tank itself.
The third option was for Nolan to strafe the tank, making passes like a fighter pilot, hoping a close-in fusillade would puncture it, but not so quickly that they couldn’t get out of the way first.
But there was a hitch. Nolan was barely a copter pilot—and hardly a fighter pilot. And he knew there was a difference between flying and flying well. Just as someone who drove a Chevy pickup truck could conceivably drive a ten-speed Ken-worth double trailer rig, it took years of accumulated experience to keep it on the road. Even though his anxieties had eased since he’d left the ship, he had concentrated most of his energy on just staying in the air. Any extracurricular activities would be a challenge.
He checked the time. It was already getting light and they had only about five minutes left before they would have to head back to the ship. So they had to do something fast.
He told Twitch to strap in as tightly as possible. He then rose to about 2,000 feet, turned the copter around, pushed the nose down and began his dive. Right away the aircraft started vibrating madly. The controls became heavy and the engine began screaming. Even Twitch seemed concerned.
But Nolan knew there was no turning back. About five hundred feet above the fuel tank, he hit the gun-pod trigger and kept it depressed until he finally peeled away just about fifty feet out. He’d been able to follow the gun pod’s tracer rounds as they streaked through the jungle toward the bare silhouette of the tank—and this initial barrage looked impressive. But there was no explosion. They would have to go around again.
Soaked in sweat again, Nolan once more climbed, turned the copter over and began a second dive. He started firing farther out this time, trying to concentrate on the line of red tracers as it tore through the trees. His dive was steeper and it lasted longer, but again, no explosion—just some flaming branches.
“We only have ninety-three shells left,” Twitch reported, checking the pod’s readout screen.
Nolan climbed for a third time. He was not diving steep enough, which meant not enough of his rounds were hitting the target in a concentrated area.
This time, he climbed to 2,500 feet, turned and pushed the nose of the copter into an extremely sharp dive.
Twitch let out a yelp as they started going nearly straight down. Nolan hit the trigger, and somehow Twitch recovered enough to stick his M4 out of the copter’s open door, adding its bullets to the gun pod’s rounds.
Nolan was using all his strength to keep the copter steady in the suicidal plunge—but the big Kenworth was starting to run off the road. Just as he thought he was going to lose it, there was a sudden bright flash followed by a plume of deep red fire. Only then did the force of the explosion hit them. Nolan turned the copter immediately, but it was the shock wave that actually saved them, throwing them sideways about a hundred feet, away from the fireball.
The explosion was gigantic. Though the noise was a bit muted—more of a whomp!—it was all Nolan could do to regain control of the copter. He pushed the throttle forward, getting them away just as the flames were licking at the tail rotor. Looking behind him, Nolan saw a huge hole in the jungle and the remains of not one, but actually three fuel tanks burning furiously.
Mission acco
mplished. . . .
He returned to the controls and the job of escaping, and only then did he realize that Twitch had been hit. A piece of shrapnel had come through his open doorway, ripped through his safety harness and tore into his upper right arm.
“Jesuszz, Twitch—talk to me!” Nolan yelled to him over the noise of the copter’s engine going full out.
“I’m still feeling no pain, sir,” Twitch yelled back. “And it’s just a nick. I’m OK.”
But he was bleeding, and at that moment, Nolan realized they didn’t have any bandages on the copter.
They looked around the cockpit for something, anything that could serve as a dressing. But the aircraft was small and spare to begin with, and they found nothing.
That’s when Nolan reached inside his flight suit and pulled out something else he’d been carrying with him: a small, slightly torn U.S. flag. He handed it to Twitch. “Use this,” he said.
Twitch looked at the flag and quickly realized he’d seen it before.
“This is the team flag,” he said, astonished. “Our flag from Tora Bora.”
Nolan didn’t say anything. He just concentrated on getting the copter on course and back to the ship.
Twitch applied the flag to his shoulder and soon the bleeding was down to a trickle.
Then he said to Nolan: “Our flag—you kept it after all these years?”
Nolan nodded slowly and just said: “Yeah—after all these years.”
12
Pirate Island
The next night
ZEEK’S GANG MEMBERS were creatures of the night.
They did their robbing, hijacking, whoring, drug-taking and killing after dark. Then, like vampires, they were home before dawn, sleeping during the day, only to rise again when the sun went down.
That’s why, this night, none of the pirates were aware their fuel dump had been blown up less than twenty-four hours before. Most had been passed out in their bunks at the time of the explosion a few miles away; some were so intoxicated, a small atomic bomb wouldn’t have roused them. The noise, the smoke, the flames—Zeek’s army noticed none of it. Even those pirates charged with standing watch had been asleep when the dump went up.