by Mack Maloney
Still, after five minutes of this, the situation remained chaotic. Batman and Twitch were still trapped up on the front of the Vidynut, with no ammunition for their M4s. Those Indian sailors who’d almost been executed were still stuck at the back of the warship with no weapons at all; joining them were their two colleagues who’d somehow managed to escape from the bridge. The pirates were still firing at both groups and at the DUS-7 from positions up near the bridge and behind the clutter that made up most of the ship’s deck behind the super-structure. With no more small arms ammo left on the Dustboat, the Senegals had been reduced to firing flare guns, which, while forcing some of the pirates to keep their heads down, had started several more fires on the Vidynut. So Gunner had no choice but to keep firing the big artillery piece to protect his colleagues and the Indian crew.
But the ultramodern warship was taking a hell of a beating in the process.
NOLAN RETRACED HIS steps, leading the line of freed sailors up the lower passageway, up the ladder, to the third deck, and then to the second. The higher they climbed, the louder the noise and thicker the smoke became.
When the line of sailors finally made it to the hatch leading out to the main deck, Nolan called them to a halt.
“This will make you a very big hero back in India,” Vandar told him. “We will not forget what you have done for us here today.”
Nolan indicated they should all be quiet. Then he opened the hatch leading to the main deck.
Nolan went out first; Vandar was right behind him. They looked around the main deck—and were stunned. The top of the warship was a mess of twisted metal, rivers of spraying oil and multiple fires, devastated by the DUS-7’s artillery weapon in its battles with the enemy gunmen. The damage had at least tripled since Nolan had gone below just two minutes ago.
Vandar surveyed the scene—and nearly collapsed. His demeanor changed immediately.
“This is bad,” he started moaning. “Very, very bad . . .”
Nolan and Vandar, telling the rescued sailors to stay in place, fought their way through the smoke and flames, stopping at the aft part of the smoldering superstructure. Nolan, judging by the number of pirates’ bodies among the wreckage on the deck, estimated at least half the hijackers had been killed. But by the amount of fire still coming from the top of the superstructure, he guessed most of the remaining hijackers were up on the bridge, and there were still at least a dozen of them. It was just about the only place on the ship that wasn’t on fire, or smoking heavily.
“That bridge alone cost almost thirty million!” Vandar groaned.
As if on cue, another shell from the DUS-7 streaked over the heads, causing them to hit the deck. It smashed into the main mast just behind the bridge, sending it crashing down on the top of the control center’s glass bubble.
Vandar groaned again. “You are destroying us in order to save us.”
Nolan spotted Batman and Twitch still holding on at the bow. He signaled them to come aft, which they did under cover of Gunner sending yet another shell smashing into the superstructure.
They made it to the front edge of the superstructure; Nolan and Vandar were at the back end. Nolan slid his M4 across the deck where Batman could retrieve it. He immediately took out six of the twelve rounds Nolan had left and gave them to Twitch. Nolan now had an AK-47 as his primary weapon, as did Vandar. They took up positions near the two aft stairways leading up to the bridge: Nolan on the portside, Vandar going over to starboard. Batman and Twitch had similarly positioned themselves near the bridge’s forward stairways. Now, they had the four bridge entrances covered. And thanks to Gunner and the field gun, just about the entire deck under the bridge was either thick with billowing smoke or crackling flames.
The pirates were trapped.
The four began firing up at the bridge, but it was impossible to tell if they were hitting anything or not. Their barrage didn’t last long in any case, as they all ran out of ammunition at just about the same time.
“Now what?” Batman yelled to Nolan.
Nolan had to think. “I’d like to get those mooks out of there somehow without totally wrecking the place,” he yelled back to him. “I mean, it would be good to keep at least one thing intact!”
“I think that ship has sailed!” Batman yelled in reply.
Nolan reached into his satchel and produced what he thought was a flash grenade. He told Vandar, “Shield your eyes—these things can burn your retinas.”
With that, Nolan threw the grenade right through the broken rear windshield of the bridge. He was prepared for a blinding flash—but got a tremendous explosion instead. It was so powerful that it blew out every remaining window on the bridge and in the cabin below it.
Only then did Nolan realize that he’d thrown a frag grenade into the bridge instead of a harmless, if blinding, flash grenade. More damage . . .
That was enough for him. He had to end this.
The warship was smoking and on fire in a dozen places already, and it was a miracle they all hadn’t been killed. But too many innocent people had died in this incident: the Indian sailors murdered during the takeover and those who’d crashed in their helicopter trying in vain to reach the ship.
Nolan strongly suggested Vandar look away. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly. Gunner heard him. Nolan just pointed to the bridge and gave the knife-across-the-throat sign. Gunner understood.
He and the Senegals repositioned the field gun and loaded it. One more signal from Nolan confirmed what he wanted them to do. Gunner pulled the firing cord and, for the first time, the field gun opened up directly on the Vidynut’s bridge.
It took five high-explosive shells crashing into the ship’s control center before all fire from the pirates ceased. Nolan signaled Gunner to stop. Then, from the four stairways, the team members and Vandar climbed up to the bridge deck, already knowing what they would see. The bridge was no more than a heap of jagged metal and broken glass. The pirates who’d hidden there were now just small piles of smoldering bones.
This little war was over and the Vidynut was back in friendly hands.
But at what a cost. Once again, Nolan looked around at the fires, the many holes in the ship’s deck, the part of the super-structure where the bridge used to be. It had all happened in less than ten minutes.
But amid the sound of crackling flames, they heard a voice calling out to them. They rushed to the port side of the ship to see Crash down below. He was holding onto one of the lifeboats that had been blown overboard earlier in the fighting and had become entangled on other wreckage hanging over the side.
Batman looked down at him and said, “How’s he going to explain this one to his grandkids?”
Retrieving a heavy rope, they were soon lifting their wayward colleague up to the deck.
“You know how long I’ve been yelling down there?” he barked at them, climbing up over the railing.
But then he stopped and looked around the Indian ship. It was burning and smoldering in so many places, he couldn’t count them all.
“Wow,” Crash said. “What the hell happened up here?”
Nolan wiped his dirty, sweaty brow.
“Just another job well done,” he said.
IT TOOK A while to search the Vidynut to make sure every pirate had been killed. They found thirty-three bodies, but figured at least another dozen had been blown to pieces or burned to dust. It worked out to about one artillery shell per dead pirate. And it was many more hijackers than the team had expected to face.
Extracting the DUS-7’s nose from the gash in the side of the Vidynut took a long time and a lot of muscle power. Only with the entire complement of freed Indian sailors lined up on the DUS-7’s deck pushing against their ship, plus the Senegals reversing the freighter’s nearly burned-out engines did the two vessels finally come unstuck.
But just as soon as the ships were separated, the Vidynut began listing violently to starboard and taking on water through the hole made by the DUS-7. This
set off a mad rush through the smoking ship to seal off a slew of watertight compartments and prevent it from sinking. Even tightened up, though, the ship was still left listing almost thirty degrees.
Finally, the Dustboat took the warship under tow and turned back east, calling in their position and heading toward Mumbai.
In the next few hours, they were buzzed by several U.S. Navy P-3 patrol planes, and more than once they thought they could see way, way up the thin contrails of a TR-1 spy plane looking down on them.
Around noon they were met by two Indian destroyers heading west at full speed. It was touch and go getting the Vidynut’s towline attached to one of the ships. When that was done, the freed Indian sailors were transferred to the second destroyer.
Each sailor shook hands and hugged the Team Whiskey members and the Senegals before departing. Commander Vandar gave Nolan his captain’s hat and sword—a huge gesture of respect. The team CO accepted the gift graciously and bid Vandar good-bye.
As Vandar walked the shaky gangplank to the destroyer, Crash said only loud enough for Nolan to hear: “And don’t forget to put that check in the mail.”
THE TEAM CONTACTED Conley, who was in Mumbai, and made plans to hook up with him. While this was happening, another U.S. Navy aircraft came into view and buzzed the Dustboat. It wasn’t a P-3, though. It was an SH-60 Seahawk helicopter.
It circled the DUS-7 at such a low altitude, the team members finally got the message. It wanted to land.
Crash guided the gray camo copter onto the ship’s forward cargo hatch, the same place the Kilos copter had delivered the field gun just the night before. That was now hidden away, as were all their weapons.
Once the copter touched down, two men climbed out. Dressed in civilian clothes and sunglasses, they were the ONI agents, Agent Harry and his sidekick.
Nolan and Batman groaned when they saw them. They met the agents at midships.
“Really—don’t you guys have anything better to do?” Nolan asked them.
“Plus, your fan Conley jumped ship,” Batman added. “So there’s really no one here for you to harass.”
Agent Harry looked them up and down and shook his head. “Black camos for sea ops?” he said. “You either got a lot to learn or you just like dressing up to play soldier.”
Nolan bit his tongue again. “What can we do for you?”
Both men took out their notebooks. “Just routine stuff again,” Harry said. “Like where have you been since we last spoke? How did you get that gash on your bow? And how much did the Indians pay you for their recovery operation?”
Nolan just laughed at them. “You guys want a cup of coffee or something? Or a drink?”
“OK, message received,” Harry said. “But please understand, we have to do these things. It’s our job to go through the motions. I mean, we find out everything eventually anyway.”
“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Nolan told them.
They closed their notebooks and started to walk away, when Harry stopped and took an envelope out of his shirt pocket.
He handed it not to Nolan, but to Batman.
“I almost forgot,” he said. “Mister Graves—this is for you.”
Batman looked it over. “What is it? My draft notice?”
Harry shook his head. “No—actually it’s from the U.S. Treasury Department. They’ve successfully gone through the Ninth Circuit Federal Court to get a recovery order against all held materials at your former residences on Park Avenue, on Martha’s Vineyard and, through a British court, in the Bahamas.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Batman asked.
Harry’s smirk became a dark smile.
“I’m not an accountant,” he said. “But what I think it means, Mr. Graves, is that you’re now dead broke.”
• PART FIVE •
Protecting Chastitsa Zvyozd
17
Mauritius
Four days later
NOLAN WAS DOWN $5,000.
It had happened so quickly. One round of baccarat, a couple of spins of the roulette wheel, a disastrous turn at the blackjack table. Five grand, gone in less than a half hour.
Nolan’s reaction was typical. He walked down to the beach, ordered his next drink to be a double, and asked the cabana girl if she could bring him some more suntan lotion.
It had been like this for four days now. The team was staying at the ultraluxurious Nadee‘d resort on the island nation of Mauritius. Nolan had never seen a place like this, never realized such a place could even exist. If heaven has a beach, it will look like this.
Mauritius was located about 650 miles east of Madagascar; 1,500 miles from the east coast of Africa. It was a playground for the ultra-rich and ultra-beautiful, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the warm waters of the southern Indian Ocean. This was where the team had come to heal their wounds, to chill out, and spend some of the money they’d earned . . . and stolen.
They were here at Conley’s suggestion. The food, equal measures French, African, Chinese and Indian, was out of this world and the booze was never-ending. And the women—even with only one good eye, Nolan knew he’d never seen women so beautiful, so sensuous, and so available as the ones he’d met here.
The team had spent their days hanging out on Union Beach, a pristine, white-sand shoreline that looked like something created by a film studio’s special-effects department. Palm trees were perfectly placed every few dozen feet, many with small shade huts and hammocks attached. Each of these stations had two gorgeous waitresses at their beck and call, massages and applications of suntan lotion included. And when it got particularly hot in the midafternoon, the waitresses just couldn’t resist going topless and dragging their customers into the water.
So losing a bit at the tables didn’t bother Nolan much. These memories were worth the scratch.
The DUS-7 was docked at a marina belonging to the Mauritius Coast Guard. Located on the south side of the island, it was far from the armada of mega-yachts that frequented the mid-ocean paradise. Resting in a double-locked vault at that marina’s office, under constant guard by the Senegals, was the team’s growing bundle of money: the $50,000 payment from Kilos Shipping for their mission against Zeek, their original payment from Kilos for saving the Global Warrior, and the proceeds from the Red Skull robbery less the money that went out the helicopter’s windows, and most surprisingly, the entire two million fee from the Indian government, which Conley managed to shame Delhi into paying since their crew had been saved even though the futuristic Vidynut was nearly a total loss.
It all added up to more than $2.1 million, mostly in hundreds, with some thousands, and literally kept in a bundle to avoid the taxman. They had tied the bundle together with rope and duct tape and stuffed it in a sea sack that was now resting in the Coast Guard’s vault.
Their plans at the moment? Nothing more complicated than getting more drinks, playing more games of chance, and meeting more women. They were booked at the resort for an open-ended stay.
IT WAS JUST after noontime on their fourth day that their order of drinks was delivered not by a topless waitress, but by a man in a thick wool suit.
“Am I hallucinating again?” Nolan asked, raising the brim of Vandar’s captain’s hat to get a better glimpse at the man. He was middle-aged and looked like a former boxer. His face was big and beefy, scarred under both eyes, and featured an oft-broken nose. Pasty and white, it appeared like he hadn’t spent more than two minutes in the sun in his entire life.
“Can we help you?” Batman asked him.
The man pleasantly passed around the drinks and took a seat near the team.
“Was nice work in Malacca,” he said in a thick Eastern European accent. “And getting warship back for Indians? You guys getting famous.”
No one on the team knew what to say. They were supposed to be keeping a low profile.
“How do you know about us?” Nolan finally asked the man.
“We hear about you on the Twitter,” the
man replied. “Everyone know about you now. Word is around. They say: ‘These parni can do anything. Protect you. Save life. Get ship back.’ ”
“What’s Twitter?” Crash asked.
“So, you made us,” Nolan said to the stranger. “Is this just a hello?”
The guy shook his head. They could all see that he was packing a huge handgun under his thick blue suit coat.
“Is hello and is also to ask question,” he replied. “Are you guys interested in some more work?”
Twenty-four hours later
“MAN, THAT PLACE on Mauritius was a real dump,” Crash said.
The rest of Team Whiskey did not disagree.
The five of them were standing on a helipad near the entrance to a place called Kinkokos. It was a Greek island fifty miles southeast of Athens, one of hundreds of islands of the Aegean Sea. Kinkkokos was one big privately owned resort. Featuring rolling hills, lush fields, waterfalls, bubbling streams, with exotic plants growing everywhere, it boasted mansions, a marina and landing pads for a fleet of helicopters. It was all surrounded by miles of pearl-white beaches and incredibly clear, blue water. In many ways, it did put anything on Mauritius to shame.
The team had just been deposited here by a Boeing 234UT helicopter, a long-range dual-rotor aircraft that was as luxurious as anything any of them had ever flown in. It had carried them over from Athens airport after a private jet flew them up from Mauritius. They’d been hired for another job, one not so clear-cut as their previous gigs. The man they’d met on the beach in Mauritius—they knew him only as “Bebe”—represented a “family business” based in Moscow. Exactly what this family business did was still a mystery. But the team certainly had some theories about that business . . . and the nature of the “family.”
The family was hosting a weekend party for its myriad associates. This fête was to take place on a cruise liner the family had leased for the occasion to sail the Aegean Sea. There would be some business to attend to, but mostly it would be a bash above the waves. Each guest was bringing his own bodyguards, a limit of two, but Bebe was under orders from the family’s patriarch to hire some extra security to supplement the paid guns looking out for their guests. That’s where Team Whiskey came in.