B003IKHEWG EBOK

by Mack Maloney

  And Li was sure the Whiskey Team had no more “smart shells”; they would have used them during the sea battle. So the chances of a perfectly accurate shot at the Pasha were zero, and Li was sure the freighter’s crew knew that as well as he did.

  In other words, they were in a standoff.

  Li zoomed in his night-vision goggles all the way so he could study the freighter up close.

  The first thing he saw after focusing was a man with an eye patch, standing on the freighter’s bow, also with a night-vision device, looking right back at him.

  25

  A FORTY-FOOT CLIFF on the north side of Calzino’s harbor looked out over the jetty that formed one half the entrance to the small island’s anchorage. This vantage point offered a close-up, unobstructed view of the DUS-7 freighter, anchored only a hundred feet away.

  Commander Li ordered two of his best men to steal out of the town, climb up the cliff and set up a spy post. From their position, they could practically look right down onto the old freighter; they could even hear the people on board talking. An old pair of walkie-talkies taken from the dive shop kept these men in constant contact with Li.

  No sooner were the two spies in place, though, when they reported a strange noise coming from farther out to sea. They could see everyone on the old freighter get their weapons up and ready. They even heard one of the crewmen yell: “Who the fuck is this?”

  A boat was coming out of the north and heading toward Calzino’s harbor at high speed. The spies worried it was law enforcement or even a Seychelles naval vessel. Then they heard raucous laughter and loud music playing, and they could see brightly colored lights draped around the boat’s hull.

  They reported back to Li: “This is not the police. It’s the island’s scuba diving boat returning to port.”

  Someone on the freighter fired a flare gun; the fiery shell went right across the bow of the dive boat. The boat slowed immediately, and the music and laughter abruptly stopped.

  The freighter maneuvered slightly, blocking the dive boat’s entrance to the harbor. In seconds, the small freighter was right up alongside the dive boat.

  Watching it all through night-vision goggles, the spies reported the people on the dive boat looked confused and drunk. Sizing up the battered old freighter, with so many armed men on board, the people on the dive boat came to the only logical conclusion.

  The spies heard someone on the dive boat yell: “Pirates!”

  But then someone on the freighter fired another flare and yelled back: “We’re not pirates. Send some people over. We’ll explain everything.”

  The spies saw five people go from the dive boat to the freighter: the captain and his four diving customers, all wearing beachwear, baseball caps and sneakers. They had a quick conversation with the freighter’s crew, distinct in their blue, very non-pirate uniforms, and then all went belowdecks.

  The two parties emerged a few minutes later. The people in the beachwear climbed back onto dive boat and quickly disengaged from the freighter. They revved their engine and took off at high speed, away from the harbor and toward the southwest.

  “They are certainly heading for the next island,” the spies told Li. “They’re probably going to get help.”

  Li checked his watch. It would take a boat like that eight hours or more to reach the next island, a hundred miles away.

  He hoped his ship would be gone long before then.

  As Li was following all this, he heard a commotion back on shore. He saw two pirates were dragging another girl out of the bar, tearing her sundress and forcing her up the stairs to the penthouse.

  Another pirate came down, walked to the water’s edge and yelled out to Li: “The Boss wants to know if we are going to be attacked anytime soon.”

  Li was perturbed that Zeek would be so cavalier about the situation, but he kept his cool.

  “Tell him it’s under control for the moment,” he yelled back. “They will not attack—not just yet.”

  BUT LI KNEW the Whiskey Team would attack, somehow, some way. Their reputation depended on it, and it is what they’d done in the past. In fact, he could almost hear them plotting aboard the rusty freighter just beyond the jetty. They were cooking up something.

  But what would it be this time?

  Would they attack his larger force with a lightning-fast air strike as they did against Zeek’s headquarters back in the Talua Tangs? Li thought the Whiskey Team might not because of the hostages involved.

  So, would they wait until the Pasha put out to sea and fight another ocean battle, this one close-in and more reminiscent of the Vidynut incident? Li thought the Whiskey Team probably did not want this either, because this time they would not be fighting a ragtag bunch of Somalis in the ship-to-ship encounter, but rather a large, experienced armed force with a working naval gun and innocent lives aboard.

  So, again, how would the attack come? Based on his knowledge of the Whiskey Team, Li thought he knew the answer. Other than the area around the harbor, the rest of Calzino’s terrain was impassable. When he Googled the island earlier, the description read: “Made up of impenetrable fields of jagged rocks, an old granite quarry, and hundreds of pools of bubbling tar which present insurmountable obstacles to humans and animals alike.”

  This meant the Whiskey Team only had one option left—which was good, because Li would be ready for it.

  He took a rubber raft from the ship and traveled the twenty-five or so feet to shore in a matter of seconds. Then he ordered his pirates to assemble in the street. Inside a minute, his small army was standing before him, except the people guarding the hostages, the two spies up on the cliff, and the crewmembers still on the Pasha.

  Li told them he suspected the freighter crew would attempt a simultaneous attack-and-rescue mission. They would drive their ship into the harbor to get as close as possible to the Pasha for an accurate shot at it with their M198 howitzer. At the same time, they would use their helicopter to locate and rescue the hostages. If they were successful in both these things, the Whiskey Team could then back off and shell the town with impunity, dooming the pirate army.

  “These people are worthy adversaries,” Li told his men. “They not only found the Pasha moving in the shipping lanes, they successfully forced us into the open and they came close to sinking us and killing us all. So, to be clear, these people will attack us—it’s just a matter of when.”

  It was a nightmare scenario that rattled many of the pirates. After all, they were brigands and outlaws, not elite soldiers. But Li told them not to worry, as he already had the perfect countermeasures in mind.

  He told his men their biggest advantage was in their numbers. Roughly sixty fighters survived the attack at sea, along with twelve ship’s crewmen who could use a weapon if need be. Nearly six dozen AK-47s firing at once would sent up a giant wall of lead, a gauntlet that even a ship the size of the freighter would have a hard time getting through. A ruptured fuel line or some kind of catastrophic explosion would spell immediate doom for the battered ship. Simply killing the tenman crew in a long coordinated, fusillade also would work. Either way, the pirates would present a formidable field of fire—enough, Li told them, to turn the freighter’s mad dash into a suicide mission.

  He turned and pointed at the rusty freighter waiting on the other side of the jetty.

  “We just need to keep our eyes on their helicopter,” he told them. “When that copter moves, then they will move. They’re reckless, and that means they’re dangerous. We outnumber them almost eight to one. But we cannot allow them to surprise us. So—watch that helicopter. When it leaves, that’s when they’ll attack.”

  Li put the majority of his men along the harbor seawall, spacing them every five feet or so all along the brief shoreline. The rest of the pirates stood at the doorways of the three buildings. He ordered them to watch the skies around them at all times.

  Li then checked with each man, making sure he knew his role, making sure his weapon was in working condition and th
at he had enough ammunition. He bolstered them with good thoughts and good morale, while forbidding them to take any kind of drugs until the battle was over. By the time he reached the end of the defensive line, his men were hyped up and just waiting for the freighter to attack.

  But deep down, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, Li was anxious. He prayed for the supply copter to get there soon with the power transfer knuckle and especially the five-inch shells. When that happened, they could repair the ship and fire their five-inch gun at the rusty freighter at will, knowing the cowboys would probably not fire back for fear of hitting the hostages. They might even get lucky and sink the damn Whiskey boat before it even had a chance to attack.

  But that all depended on when the supply copter arrived.

  Only then would the equation change.

  LESS THAN AN hour later, Li’s prayers were answered.

  It came at first as a low noise in the night. A drone, splitting the silence. Mechanical, powerful. Coming from the south.

  It was a helicopter—a big one.

  A moment later, it went over the town, an SA-321G Super Frelon heavy-lift copter. Unmarked, painted dark foreboding gray, it was flying low and fast.

  It turned north over the harbor, making a lot of noise and gradually slowing down. The pirates on the seawall waved at it, and the people on the copter waved back. Everyone knew this was not law enforcement or a Seychelles military aircraft. This was what they’d been waiting for.

  The copter continued its wide turn over the harbor. A man appeared in its open cargo door. There was a winch attached to it, and he was fastening a crate to the hook on the end of its rope. This box no doubt contained both the power knuckle needed to repair the ship’s engine and the shells needed to load the Pasha’s deck gun.

  The copter slowed further. Li yelled to crewmen on the Pasha to illuminate the ship’s searchlight and guide the copter over to them so they could deliver the crate to the deck of the ship.

  The crew complied, and the copter blinked its navigation lights in response. The men in the copter understood. The aircraft turned sharply out of its circle and headed for the pirate ship. For the first time since arriving on Calzino, Li actually relaxed. Because the helicopter had gotten here so quickly, he’d won his battle of time with the Whiskey Team. The advantage was now his.

  Li lit a cigarette and waited. The copter passed over the cliff, going into its final turn—when suddenly there was a tremendous flash of light. It streaked through the darkness, over the harbor and hit not the helicopter, but the cliff just below it. The resultant explosion threw tons of rock into the air. This plume of debris shot straight up into the copter’s rotors, disintegrating them. The copter came down fast, crashing on the cliff with a sharp, violent explosion.

  It all happened so quickly, Li was stunned. They all were. It wasn’t apparent at first what had occurred. Then Li realized the Whiskey Team guys had spotted the copter, deduced it was in league with the pirates and, knowing they probably couldn’t hit it with a shot from the howitzer, did the next best thing: They fired a high-explosive shell at the cliff. The debris, in turn, downed the chopper.

  Li was devastated.

  “Now we’re all stuck here,” he groaned.

  WATCHING THIS FROM the penthouse window, Zeek was instantly furious.

  He made his way down to the street, pushing aside anyone who got in his way. He had a heated conversation with Li, and against his capo’s advice, ordered his men to retrieve the last two surviving dive shop workers and stand them up on the seawall. He then ordered the Pasha’s searchlight be beamed on them, and when he knew the people on the freighter were watching, he ordered two of his men stand up on the wall with the hostages, put their guns to their heads and blow their brains out.

  Zeek laughed as the two men were executed, shaking his fist at the freighter. But just as quickly, the two pirates who’d performed the execution had their heads blown away in quick succession. They fell over just as promptly as the hostages, some of their blood splattering on Zeek’s shirt.

  They’d been shot by a sniper rifle, fired from the freighter.

  Li screamed to his men to take cover behind the seawall. Zeek instantly disappeared into the night. Someone yelled that they should look at the helicopter on the freighter. Its blades were turning!

  Another shout said look up on the cliff. Two black men could be seen there, brutally stabbing Li’s spies. Their bodies were thrown off the cliff into the water below.

  Shaken down to his boots that this had all happened so quickly, Li turned his night-vision goggles back toward the freighter, convinced the attack was coming at any second. And once again, he saw the one-eyed man in the blue combat suit standing on the bow, looking back at him.

  But wait a minute, Li thought.

  Something was different here.

  Wasn’t his patch over the other eye before?

  THE FIVE REMAINING hostages were being held in the penthouse.

  They were the four American girls and the last employee from the bar, a young African waiter. The girls had never entirely stopped crying, now several hours into this nightmare. The young man was in shock. Zeek had violated all of them.

  They’d been left with Zeek’s two remaining bodyguards, men who’d survived the attack on his island headquarters back in Indonesia by running into the jungle. Before going out to the street to preside over the ill-advised execution of the two dive shop employees, the Pirate King had given the bodyguards just one order: If the people on the freighter attacked, then one way or another, these hostages should not see the sun come up the next morning.

  The bodyguards had smuggled a personal stash of Ecstasy aboard the Pasha, something forbidden by Commander Li. They had recently taken two hits apiece and, oblivious to what was happening on the street outside, were now stagger-ingly high. They’d been routinely molesting the girls, cutting pieces from their dresses with their razor-sharp knives just to hear them scream. But fueled by meth, coke and LSD, the pirates were soon raging with blood lust.

  They had already gone through the hostages’ personal belongings. But now, keying in on the young man’s wallet, they found a picture of his mother.

  The pirates punched each other in triumph. Their game could begin.

  They took the picture of the man’s mother and attached it to the far wall of the dimly lit penthouse. Then they forced the man to the other end of the room, put him on his hands and knees and told him to retrieve the picture. But as the man began crawling toward it, he was struck on the back with a gun butt by one of the pirates. He fell heavily to the floor, but was urged on by the pirates to try again. The man began crawling again, only to be kicked in the teeth by the second pirate. Crying now, the man tried a third time to get to the picture, only to be stomped on his neck by both pirates. The girls watched horrified as the man bled heavily from his nose and mouth.

  Still, he tried again. But just as he was reaching for the photo, both pirates hit him with their gun butts, delivering a crushing blow to the man’s spine. The man went into a violent convulsion, let out a bloody gasp and died, only inches from his mother’s picture.

  The pirates dissolved into fits of laughter.

  “I just can’t stop killing,” one pirate roared to the other. “It’s an addiction.”

  The pirates picked up the dead man and threw him aside.

  Then they turned their attention to the girls.

  One was wearing a locket around her neck. Ripping it off her, the pirates found a picture of her grandmother inside. She fought them violently to get it back, but to no avail. They tacked it up on the wall just under the big plate glass window.

  Then they threw her on the floor at the other end of the room and said: “Go get it.”

  The girl started crawling, terrified and choking on her tears, knowing what was to come. She’d gone just a few feet when the first pirate raised his knife to slash her.

  That’s when the girl looked up and saw, reflected in the
picture window’s glass, a man incomprehensibly dressed in beachwear—Izod shirt, cargo shorts and designer sunglasses—but wearing a battle helmet and combat boots and holding an assault rifle with a bayonet attached to it. He was standing in the penthouse doorway.

  Even more inexplicable, this man was smeared with tar—and feathers.

  She looked right at him through the reflection and couldn’t help but think: Where did he come from? He made a simple movement with his hand and mouthed two words to her: “Stay down.”

  She screamed and went flat on the floor. The pirate went to cut her—but then there were two shots. The pirate looked down at his chest and was astonished to see twin gushes of blood flowing out of him.

  The whole room froze. No one said a word.

  Then the pirate fell over, hitting the floor hard.

  The other pirate was so shocked, he couldn’t move. The man in the beachwear simply walked up to him and plunged his bayonet into his back. The pirate opened his mouth to scream, but was prevented from doing so by the bayonet slicing across his throat. He fell over a moment later.

  The girl on the floor started to scream again, but Snake Nolan put his hand over her mouth and whispered urgently to her: “You’re OK. We’re here to save you.”

  TAR.

  It was on Nolan’s boots, on his hands, it was even in his hair.

  The strange thing was—he also had feathers on him. Tarred and feathered.

  Weird.

  He’d done many forced marches during his days in Delta Force. He’d tramped across deserts, over mountain ranges, through jungles and swamps. Before that, he’d gone through some of the worst basic training imaginable. Crawling through pig guts with live ammunition flying over his head was just the beginning of those ordeals.

  But he’d never been through what he’d experienced in the past half hour.

  He, Crash and Twitch had just endured more than a mile forced run over the jagged rocks and tar pits that made up the impassable back end of Calzino Island. They’d been dropped off at a point on the far western side of the atoll by the dive boat, and while the pirates’ attention was drawn to the DUS-7 and what Nolan hoped they believed was an impending frontal attack on the town, he and the others came in through the back door, so to speak. It was Team Whiskey’s equivalent of Hannibal going over the Alps with elephants. They knew the only way to save the hostages was to come at the pirates from the direction they expected least.