by Mack Maloney
The chow hall bell began ringing madly around 2100 hours, waking the pirates. Usually this was the signal for the first meal of their upside-down day. But those stumbling out of the barracks felt a different vibe around the camp. Nights like this always started with a communal meal of boar and noodles, followed by more drinking. But those pirates approaching the mess hall couldn’t smell any boar cooking, nor could they see the steam that always filled the compound from the boiling of the noodles. And there was no alcohol anywhere to be found. All this was odd.
There was another strange thing: As the gang had taken a large ship not forty-eight hours before, many expected to get their share of the booty tonight, and to be paid by the gang’s paymasters. Saturday was payday for Zeek’s band. But none of the bagmen were in sight.
Zeek himself hadn’t been seen since the night before, but this was not unusual. The Boss slept during the day as well, and sometimes well into the night and even the next morning. But now, the pirates saw that Zeek’s concrete HQ was surrounded by his Badan Menjaga, his personal bodyguards, the dozen trusted inner-circle types who wore the coveted black bandana. They had set up 50-caliber machine guns behind sandbag barriers on all four sides of the building and were warning away any pirate who came close. Some of the older brigands on hand had been part of Zeek’s gang for more than ten years. They’d never seen anything like this.
One of Zeek’s lieutenants appeared in the mess hall and began ringing the communal bell again, a long series of three rings each. This was the signal that all the pirates should muster up and pay attention.
The lieutenant waited for the last of the group to assemble inside. When the mess hall was full, he began speaking.
“The Boss wants you to know trouble might be coming,” he told them starkly. “We’ve had a couple problems lately.”
A nervous murmur went through the crowd; the news was totally unexpected. The officer revealed that two of the gang’s members had been murdered two nights before, just after the rampage on Sumhai Island. Then, less than twenty-four hours ago, the pirates’ fuel dump had been blown up.
“The Boss is sure that we’re dealing with a rival gang,” the officer went on. “Or maybe something connected to his brother Turk getting iced a little while ago. But either way, he says, don’t worry. We all know it’s hard to find us here.”
He spread his arms to indicate the hideout’s natural defenses. The pirate camp was on the edge of a lagoon that was so shallow it was hard for deep-water boats to get anywhere close to it. The lagoon itself was protected on three sides by heavy jungle, and the curve of the camp’s beach was such that, even on the fourth side, looking in from the north over the sandbar, it was extremely difficult to see the pirates’ encampment with the naked eye. In their many years of pirating, no one had ever come looking for them here.
The officer went on. “The Boss is sure our location is still a secret, because there are so many islands out here, it would take weeks for someone to search each and every one. But if this rival gang does find us here, we will take care of them quickly, because we are still the biggest gang in the area, and the Boss says when we get rid of these guys, it will make us that much stronger.”
The hungover pirates let out a groggy cheer. Then the officer signaled the chow hall crew to proceed. But instead of laying out the meal, they began distributing the gang’s drug of choice—Indonesian Ecstasy. This batch was filled with extra methamphetamine, to keep the fighters wide awake for whatever might be coming.
But what would that be, exactly?
The answer came a few moments later.
IT BEGAN WHEN someone spotted two lights out on the water just beyond the entrance to the lagoon.
One was bright white, with a small red light beside it. Running lights for a good-sized vessel, the pirates figured. As word went around camp about the mysterious lights, two more popped on. The same white and red combination, about five hundred feet from the first two. Then two more blinked on about two hundred feet from them. Then four more—and four more after that.
Within a minute, it appeared that more than a dozen large boats had suddenly materialized off the pirates’ shoreline. Was this a fleet of lost fishing boats that wandered over from the nearby Pautang Channel? Or were these mother ships, launching a rival gang’s fleet of fast boats? If so, this meant Zeek’s gang was about to be overwhelmed by a horde of enemy pirates.
Zeek’s men had to find out what was going on. With their officers’ blessing, a handful of them climbed into one of their own fast boats and headed out of the lagoon. Not thirty seconds later, those back on the island heard five distinct pops! Then the fast boat floated back in again.
The five pirates were still in it. They were all dead—each with a massive gunshot wound to the head.
The pirates began to panic. Many ran to get their weapons, which they usually kept in their fast boats. But suddenly a long stream of tracer fire came out of the night, tearing into the gang’s boats along the crooked finger dock and systematically exploding them like car tires. As the pirates reacted to this, another stream of tracer fire riddled the island’s generator hut. In an instant, the power plant blew up and all the lights went out.
Pirate Island was suddenly in the dark.
Aboard the DUS-7
NOLAN CLIMBED INTO the passenger seat of the work copter and strapped in.
“Now comes the hard part,” he thought aloud.
He laid his M4 across his knees and put his helmet on. He was dressed in his usual battle suit with several belts of ammunition slung over his shoulder. He was anxious about the upcoming action.
Batman climbed in behind the copter’s controls. Nolan was happy to let him do the flying; just getting inside the copter still gave him the shakes. Batman did a quick check of the flight systems and saw everything was green, including the 50-caliber gun pod attached to the copter’s left-side hard point and the APO—the asymmetrical piece of ordnance—they were carrying on the right.
Close by on the mid-deck, the Senegals were putting the finishing touches on an unusual weapon, a throwback to the Vietnam era: five M2 50-caliber machine guns attached to a steel frame about ten feet long. A single belt of ammunition fed each weapon, ninety rounds per belt. A rudimentary camshaft had been slotted through the M2s’ firing mechanisms and attached to a pulley on one end of the steel frame and a large rotating bolt on the other. Depending on the amount of cranking done on the pulley, from one to all five of the weapons could be fired at once.
The steel frame sat on a wooden pallet supported by four hydraulic jack stands. The pallet could be hand-moved up and down, and left and right, but not very far. Gunner, the contraption’s designer, had assured them that if all went well, a whole lot of aiming and moving wouldn’t be needed for this cannonade machine to work. One of the guns had just taken out the pirates’ rubber boat fleet and their generator. But would all five work in concert when they needed them? That remained to be seen.
At the far end of the DUS-7, Gunner and Crash were reeling out a long rope, on the end of which were fourteen wooden rafts, built in the Dustboat’s tiny workshop. Each raft held a battery-powered searchlight and a smaller blinking red light. Called a Bailey String, it was an old British trick from World War II designed to make an enemy think there was a squadron of unknown warships offshore when no such ships existed at all.
Like the cannonade machine, the rafts were about deception, which was just about the only advantage Team Whiskey had in its mission against Zeek. Though they had wounded their adversary by robbing his bank and busting up his spy ring, his fuel supply and his communications system, there was no getting around the fact that they were outnumbered at least eight to one. They were also somewhat limited in their ammunition, had no real heavy munitions, and had a diminishing supply of aviation fuel. If they were going to get Zeek, it had to be tonight, on their terms. And it all had to happen in less than five minutes, because after that, the element of surprise would be gone.
&nbs
p; “Cutting through all the bullshit,” Batman said to Nolan now, “what do you think the chances are that all this hocuspocus is going to work?”
Nolan didn’t answer right away. It was an odd question. When they were in the military, they never talked about how good a plan was, or their chances of making it. They just went and did it because it was their duty. Even their first job for Kilos, saving the Global Warrior from Turk’s gang, had been undertaken with that mind-set.
But this—this was different. They were directly taking on a superior force, in their enemy’s territory, against overwhelming odds, for—well, for a paycheck. Though there was an ancillary reason to rid the world of Zeek and his scum, basically it came down to the fact that they were now mercenaries doing a job that they would get paid for if all went well. And if things didn’t go well, there would be no one left to get paid.
Their plan was simple then—or as simple as they could make it. Now that they’d gotten the pirates’ attention with the Bailey String, and by popping their rubber boats and killing their electricity, they would use the copter to attack the pirates from the south side of the lagoon. This way, they hoped the confused brigands would flee to the north side of the camp, to the small sandbar located on the only side of the small island that was in any way exposed. Waiting for them there, just 300 feet offshore, would be the DUS-7 and the Senegals and their cannonade machine.
“Our chances?” Nolan finally replied. “Ten of us against eighty or so of them? I’d say fifty-fifty.”
Twitch had just climbed into the back of the helicopter. He’d heard what they were talking about.
“Fifty-fifty?” he said to Nolan. “Once again, always the optimist.”
With that, Batman hit the throttles and eased the overloaded copter into the air.
BACK ON THE stern, Crash and Gunner watched the copter go overhead. That was their cue to start the next part of the plan.
They tied the rope holding the Bailey String to the stern railing and climbed down to a rubber boat cinched to the back of the unmoving ship. Gunner was carrying a backpack filled with explosives.
Once in the rubber boat, Gunner carefully laid down the backpack. Then Crash handed him his M107 sniper rifle. The huge weapon was still warm from the five shots Crash had just fired, taking out the five pirates who had come out to investigate the mystery lights off the island’s shoreline.
“You’re sure you know how to use it, right?” the ex-SEAL asked him.
Gunner studied the big M107. “Hey—I’m the weapons guy here, remember?” he said. “I can fire anything.”
With that, Crash went over the side of the rubber boat and into the water.
“Jesuszz, I thought it would be like bathtub warm down here,” he gasped. “It’s freaking freezing.”
“Global warming,” Gunner told him. “Or cooling? I don’t know, ask Al Gore.”
Gunner handed Crash the backpack full of explosives. Crash strapped it on—and immediately began to sink.
Gunner reached down and grabbed him, pulling him back to the surface.
“Damn, are you going to be able to do this?” he asked his colleague. “That pack is too heavy for you to swim with.”
Crash readjusted the pack and tried it again. He didn’t sink this time, but it was obvious that the loaded backpack was weighing him down.
“Are you sure you can make it?” Gunner asked him again.
“I have to,” Crash told him. “Just take good care of my gun.”
With that, he swam away into the dark.
Gunner watched him go, then looked the sniper rifle up and down again. Yes, he was the team’s weapons master, but he’d never dealt with this type of gun before. It was a third longer than a typical combat weapon and felt twice as heavy. Its scope was almost as long as its barrel, and it had an elaborate foldout brace on its tip to steady it when it was fired. It took an enormous 12.7mm round. If it hit right, a bullet that size could cut a person in two.
Gunner climbed back up to the stern of the ship. His job now: If any of the pirates directed anything, from a flashlight to a searchlight at one of the Bailey String rafts or the Dustboat itself, he was to shoot them immediately with Crash’s M107. This way they would eventually stop trying to find out what was going on out beyond their shoreline.
But as Gunner tried to set himself on the stern, he studied the weapon a third time and just shook his head.
“How the hell does he shoot this thing?” he said.
THE WORK COPTER circled the island once, and its occupants took stock of the situation below. Crash was on his way. Gunner was in place. The blacked-out DUS-7 was anchored where it needed to be, the cannonade machine armed and ready to go. It was time for the copter to make its presence known.
Flying with no running lights, Batman pushed the aircraft down to just twenty feet and flew right over the pirates’ HQ, gun pod blazing, making an ungodly noise. The barrage tore into the concrete structure, causing an explosion of fire and rock. The attack was on—and the clock was ticking.
The flash from the explosion lit up the entire pirate camp. In its glow, the pirates could be seen scattering or hitting the dirt. Batman turned the copter over and pointed it toward the finger dock. He squeezed the gun pod trigger and took out many of the pirates’ boats that hadn’t been sunk in the initial barrage from the ship.
Another twist, and now Batman had lined up in back of the main group of pirates, coming at them from the south. He opened up again with the gun pod while Nolan and Twitch added rounds from their M4s. From ground level, it was hard to figure out just what was going on. There was a lot of smoke, dust and spray in the air—and a lot of noise. Many of the pirates couldn’t even see the helicopter; many thought the gunfire was coming from the ships offshore. At this point, Zeek’s black bandana bodyguards started firing their 50-caliber machine guns, but not at any real targets. A lot of their return fire was falling harmlessly into the lagoon.
Batman turned the copter around and strafed the HQ again. They were so close to the ground that Nolan could see chips of concrete flying off Zeek’s lair. Again, he and Twitch added their M4s to the fusillade, blasting any pirates who came within their enhanced field of vision.
Once Zeek’s elite bodyguards realized they were being attacked from both air and sea, most of them scattered. But a few regular pirates stood their ground and finally seeing the copter, raised their weapons to get a shot at it.
This didn’t deter Batman. He dove even lower on the camp, the gun pod spitting out massive streams of tracer fire. A lot of this was now hitting its mark and the copter crew could see pirates falling to the ground, wounded or killed, some of them in pieces.
The team’s plan seemed to be working. Those pirates who could were fleeing toward the north end of the lagoon. The unlit, darkened DUS-7 was lying in wait for them; the Senegals had the cannonade machine ready to fire. Their fusillade would come from nowhere, and the pirates would have nowhere else to go. At least that was the plan.
Nolan just hoped it worked—this time.
The last of Zeek’s bodyguards were close to all-out panic by now. They began waving their 50-caliber machine guns around madly, but again, they couldn’t find anything real to shoot at.
Amid the chaos, one bodyguard turned on his ancient portable phone, only to find there was no service. Other bodyguards tried their phones, also to no avail. They’d never been told that, just as their fuel dump had been destroyed, their secure, if antiquated, phone system had lost its transmitting dish.
Now it seemed tracers were washing all over the island, like a wave crashing to shore. The remaining bodyguards freaked out and started firing wildly in all directions, but wound up cutting down some of their own men. They were still convinced a small offshore navy was bombarding the pirates’ camp, while a ghostly aircraft of some kind was shooting at them from above.
One of the bodyguards finally took out a personal cell phone—a strict violation of Zeek’s rules, but a necessary act of despera
tion. Under the intense fire, he called the only people who could help the pirates in a situation like this: their partners in crime, the Indonesian military. Dialing the local naval headquarters, the bodyguard, saying he was under direct orders from Zeek, hastily explained that the Boss needed assistance on Pirate Island quickly, and that he was willing to pay any amount of money to get it.
But the Indonesian naval officer on the other end of the phone turned him down flat. Not because of the danger—but because he’d heard Zeek wouldn’t be able to pay.
“Word is your boss got no money to operate,” the officer said. “And that he has much bad luck on him.”
The bodyguard was stunned. He’d heard nothing of this—but he had to think quickly.
“We will pay you in girls,” he told the navy officer.
But the man said no again. “All your girls are gone, too. Your brothel is empty. Your whores are on their way to Bangkok.”
Again, the bodyguard was shocked.
But he had one more form of currency to offer the officer.
“Ecstasy,” he said. “One thousand hits, free to you.”
The officer just laughed at him and started to hang up.
“OK—make it two thousand,” the bodyguard said, pleading.
There was a long silence. Then the officer said, “Make it three thousand and you’ve got a deal.”
THE WORK COPTER made more passes over the camp; the gun pod was lit and smoking, and Nolan and Twitch were spraying gunfire everywhere. His anxiety gone, Nolan felt the adrenalin pumping through his body. He was high from it. Soon, the next part of the plan would kick in: finding Zeek himself. Nolan was getting psyched for that.
He had plans for Zeek. They all did. The photos Twitch had taken of the massacre on Sumhai were impossible to erase from his mind. As hideous as it sounded, he wanted to do to Zeek what Zeek had done to those innocent villagers. Scald him to death. Drown him in boiling oil. Tear open his guts and leave him to try to stuff them back in.