B003IKHEWG EBOK

by Mack Maloney

  And the people in the blue suits that the pirates had been watching? They were the American students who’d returned from scuba diving on the nearby exotic coral reefs. They were straw men. That’s why Nolan, Crash and Twitch now sported the latest in J. Crew summer wear.

  But they knew only half the mission was done. To successfully rescue the hostages, they had to get out of the little town fast. And their escape route had to be the way they came in—over some of the roughest terrain any of them had ever experienced. The question was, could their hostages take it as well?

  Nolan pushed his helmet’s visor up and tried to unstick his hand from his M4, but he couldn’t. Both his hands and the weapon’s stock were covered with tar.

  Crash was with him; Twitch was watching the hotel’s rear entrance, keeping an eye on their escape route. They’d been in the town for three minutes, taking the students’ advice to look for the hostages in the penthouse first. But that was long enough. They had to get going.

  Yet there was one more piece of business they wanted to attend to.

  “Where’s the head creep?” Nolan asked the girls.

  They knew right away who he meant.

  “He left when the shooting started out on the street,” one girl said. “He never came back.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Crash groaned. “I would have given anything to stick him.”

  “Me, too,” said Nolan. “But that time’s coming soon enough.”

  Nolan made his way to the picture window and, taking the laser designator from his pocket, blinked it three quick times toward the Dustboat. Almost instantly, a light near the M198 blinked three times in response.

  “OK,” Nolan said. “Now for phase two.”

  Just as the words were out of his mouth, they heard an enormous screech.

  One of the M198 shells fired from the DUS-7’s howitzer streaked over their heads and landed somewhere in the back of the resort, in the forest of granite stones and tar pits. When it hit, the whole building shook.

  No sooner had the noise of the first shell exploding faded away when another shell went overhead—then another and another. It was Gunner, pouring it on.

  “I’m glad he’s on our side,” Crash said, hearing another shell go over.

  Nolan checked his watch and then said, “Time to go.”

  Crash went ahead to the hallway as Nolan started moving the girls out the penthouse door. But no sooner was he gone when Crash fell back into the room again.

  “Freaking company,” he announced. “Coming our way.”

  Everything just stopped and Nolan listened. In between the sounds of the howitzer shells going overhead, he could clearly hear footsteps rushing up the hotel’s front stairs.

  Voices were calling out: “Boss—where are you? Boss?”

  Nolan just looked at Crash and grimaced. It seemed the pirates didn’t know where Zeek was, either—and in light of the overhead bombardment, a lot of them rushed up here looking for him.

  The pirates reached the top floor just as Crash locked the door to the penthouse. They were soon calling through the door for Zeek. Getting no response and knowing the hostages were in the penthouse, they tried opening the door, to no avail. Nolan put the four girls in the bathroom, telling them to get in the hot tub and to stay there no matter what.

  As the pirates started to break down the door, another M198 shell went overhead and crashed in the rock forest behind the town. Nolan and Crash stood in the middle of the room and raised their weapons.

  The door burst apart a moment later—splinters going everywhere. . . .

  At least a dozen pirates were on the other side.

  Nolan began to squeeze his trigger—Crash, too.

  Then the lights went out.

  Nolan fired first. With three rounds he shot the first three pirates through the door, killing them. One of them had a flare gun. It went off and sent a blinding, flaming missile streaking across the room, where it bounced off the plate glass window and right back into a fourth gunman’s chest, blowing it apart and lighting the man on fire. Three more pirates lunged ahead, blinded by the burning flare. Nolan jammed his bayonet into one of them and shot the other two, using one bullet for each.

  Crash used the butt of his M4 to knock another pirate off his feet; his boot to the gunman’s throat crushed his larynx and killed him instantly. Nolan hit the floor, rolled to his left and fired his M4 point blank into a pirate’s armpit, blowing out the man’s rib cage. As this was going on, the pirates were firing wildly at them, but Nolan and Crash never stopped moving—that was the key. Bullets were flying everywhere, many of them tracer rounds. Nolan could hear them whizzing past his ears and feel their heat as they went by his face. None had hit him . . . at least not yet.

  The pirate with the burning flare in his chest fell over, emitting ungodly screams and bathing the penthouse in a weird red glow. Another pirate lunged at Nolan, but Crash’s fist came out of nowhere and punched the man hard on his temple. He fell into Nolan, knocking him to the floor again and finally separating him from his sticky M4, breaking off his bayonet in the process.

  The next thing he knew, Nolan was crawling across the wet rug, trying to make his way through the crumple of bodies, bullets and blood, looking for something to shoot with. He found an AK-47 and started firing it at the door, but after just four rounds, it ran out of ammunition. Nolan tried to crawl back to the center of the room to find his own weapon, only to get punched hard in the jaw. He knew it was Crash who did it.

  More tracer rounds bounced off the walls. Nolan lashed out with his field knife and, by pure luck, hit a pirate in his middle, toppling him. Nolan grabbed the pistol in the man’s hand and, by the light of the flare, shot two more pirates—but then this gun, too, ran out of ammunition.

  Nolan rolled over just as someone shot a stream of bullets into the floor. The penthouse’s massive waterbed exploded, sending a deluge of hot water throughout the room and knocking everyone off their feet. The huge wooden wheel that had been tacked to the wall over the waterbed came crashing down on top of Nolan, almost knocking him out. He rolled out from under it and discovered that some of the spokes had come apart. They were fitted with sharp brass tips. He grabbed one and started swinging it at all the bodies he saw around him, hoping he’d hit anyone except Crash.

  One of his swings connected. He heard a bone crack, and once more a pirate fell on top of him. Still without a weapon, he forced the piece of wood into the man’s mouth and down his throat while pummeling with his other, very sticky hand. This stunned the pirate long enough for Nolan to grab his pistol and shoot him in the chest. Only then did the pirate’s body go limp and Nolan was able to push him away.

  The flare in the pirate’s chest, splashed by the waterbed explosion, finally sizzled itself out, again plunging the penthouse into complete darkness. Just before the last of the illumination faded away Nolan caught a quick glimpse of Crash about five feet away, fighting desperately with two pirates, punching and flailing about wildly. Nolan shot one of the pirates in the buttocks, dropping him in an instant. Crash pushed the second one to the floor, where Nolan put a bullet in his head.

  Suddenly a pirate was standing right over Nolan, looking down at him, reflected in the bare light of the moon outside. Nolan raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened—this weapon was now out of ammunition. But an instant later, the pirate’s chest was ripped open by three bullets. Crash had found Nolan’s M4 and emptied it into the gunman. The man fell hard to the floor.

  It seemed like a lifetime, but all this had taken place in no more than thirty seconds. And suddenly everything got quiet again. The penthouse was still except for the grunting and shallow breathing of the dying.

  But then a beam of light shot through the room. Someone with a flashlight was walking over the dead and injured, inspecting the bodies. In the glare, Nolan could not see who it was. The light fell on him and Crash, who was now on the floor right beside him.

  A moment of hope—t
he thought that the person with the flashlight might be Twitch—was dashed when the light lowered a little and revealed the face of another pirate, this one holding an AK-47 with, of all things, a bayonet attached.

  Neither Nolan nor Crash had any weapons left. They were partially pinned under rubble and bodies. This pirate looked down on them, realized only they were alive among all his dead compatriots, and took two giant steps toward them.

  Nolan looked into his eyes and realized the man was simply deciding which one of them to bayonet first.

  The pirate’s gaze fell on Nolan. He took one more step forward, raised his weapon, and started its downward motion—but suddenly stopped.

  There was a strange noise, like someone opening a zipper, and the next thing Nolan knew, there was a long steel spear sticking out of the man’s stomach.

  A fishing spear, fired by someone from behind.

  The pirate fell to the floor to reveal one of the girl students kneeling behind him, an old, expended spear gun still in her trembling hands.

  TWITCH HAD BEEN so mesmerized and deafened by the M198 artillery shells going over his head and landing in the rock forest behind him, that he didn’t hear the commotion going on up in the penthouse.

  His job here was to secure their means of escape. But it was hard to ignore the ultra-bright balls of light that streaked across the sky, hitting about 2,000 feet away. It was like a fireworks show from a dream.

  This was why he was so startled when the door he was guarding burst open and the four girl hostages stumbled out.

  Nolan was right behind them. Twitch handed him a backpack he’d been holding on to.

  “OK, you know what to do,” Nolan told him, as another shell went over their heads and crashed into the rock forest beyond.

  “Roger that,” Twitch told him.

  With that, Twitch took out his empty Coke bottle and went about pouring some air from it on each mystified girl.

  Meanwhile, Nolan hastily said to them: “Stay with my friend here. When he tells you to run, just start running and don’t look back. We’ll catch up with you.”

  But as Twitch began leading the female students away from the rear of the hotel, the one Nolan had saved from being slashed during the cruel game, grabbed the Whiskey CO by the arm.

  “You have to come with us!” she told him, as if she would not take no for an answer.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not yet—now get going.”

  She started to protest, but she could tell Nolan was serious.

  So, she grabbed him, hugged him, and kissed him full on the lips.

  Then she disappeared into the dark with the others.

  NOLAN RETURNED TO the penthouse, a little shaken, and flashed the laser pen six times out the window. Six blinks from a light on the DUS-7 was his reply. The M198 immediately stopped firing—and everything got quiet once more.

  Crash took the backpack from him and reached inside. He produced one of the M198’s artillery shells and carefully placed it on the floor.

  It had a timer and fuse attached to it.

  “This bit better work,” Crash said.

  “Well, it was your idea, wasn’t it?” Nolan asked him.

  Crash just shook his head. He, too, was covered with tar and feathers. “I can’t remember back that far,” he confessed. He looked the shell over. “It checks out,” he declared. “As far as I can tell.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Nolan replied.

  He peeked out the huge window and saw several dozen pirates below, still aligned along the seawall, hugging the concrete, eyes focused on the DUS-7, which had just stopped firing.

  Now came the moment of truth. A problem that Team Whiskey knew they would face ever since they wound up at the entrance to Calzino’s harbor: How would they deal with the pirates if they managed to get the hostages safely out of town? Just blowing up the Pasha and leaving it to NATO or the Seychelles government to sort out was never a consideration. With Zeek’s connections, if they went that way, there was a good chance many of the pirates would either get off or get away, Zeek included.

  No, the team was going to end it, here, with Zeek and his killers, one way or the other.

  They faced two options, then. Once the hostages were out of danger, they could bombard the town with the dozen or so M198 shells they had left and then do what the brigands expected them to do: sail into the harbor and launch a brutal frontal assault, hoping that the big howitzer, the copter and their 50-caliber machine guns could sink the Pasha and kill all the pirates. But there were still dozens of enemy fighters on the island, all of them armed with AK-47s. Despite their big artillery piece and the air asset, there were still only ten warm bodies in Team Whiskey. It stood to reason some of them might not survive a battle like that.

  So, Whiskey reached into its bag of tricks and came up with another way of dealing with the pirates.

  Nolan and Crash set the fuse on the artillery shell, squeaked open the plate glass window, and gave the shell a mighty heave. It hit the pavement on the road outside—and bounced.

  The clanging startled all the pirates nearby. They looked up to see Nolan and Crash looking down at them, giving them the finger.

  Some pirates began pointing at them. Some began shooting at them. But some, out of pure curiosity, went over to investigate the shell.

  And that’s when it blew up.

  COMMANDER LI WAS standing about 100 yards from the explosion. He saw bodies fly up in the air and he felt the concussion, the shock wave, and the heat. Shrapnel hit his arm, his forehead and his shoulder. They were all minor wounds, not that it would’ve made any difference.

  He was momentarily confused because at first he thought this had been an artillery shell fired into their midst, and that the attack was on for real. But they had seen nothing shot off the freighter, nor had they heard the distinctive whump! of the M198 firing.

  More confusing, he’d caught a glimpse of two men up in the penthouse looking down at the street just after the bomb went off. One of these men was wearing an eye patch, and it was over his left eye. But hadn’t Li been watching this same man on the freighter for the past two hours? How could he be in two places at once?

  All these thoughts went through his head in a split second—and suddenly it all fell into place. The hostages were gone. Rescued. The Delta Force guys had freed them. How? By coming over what had been advertised as Calzino’s impassable terrain, and in the back door, right under Li’s nose. And who were the people in the blue uniforms he’d been watching on the freighter? Stand-ins. Probably the American students who’d returned from diving.

  So the Whiskey Team hadn’t fallen back on their old tricks after all. This was something new. Now, only the ship’s mysterious shelling a short while ago didn’t make sense.

  Li was furious to the point of not being able to move or to speak. But he recovered quickly and stood up amid the cloud of debris. One thing he did know: No matter how skillful their rescue of the hostages, the Whiskey Team members still had to retreat the same way they came in, and this time they’d have the hostages with them.

  So had the shelling been an effort to create some kind of path for them, to blast some part of the impassable terrain to make it easier for them to get out?

  Maybe . . .

  In any case, blasted or not the Whiskey guys had to go back over that hellish ground to escape.

  And that meant Li would be able to pursue them.

  He started running down the street, yelling that every one out of two pirates lined up against the seawall should follow him.

  This small army quickly came together. About thirty in number, they ran through the dive shop and reached the far edge of the town just in time to see the two armed men in beachwear running into the forest of twisted rocks beyond.

  Li had been right.

  “If we get them now,” he yelled to his men, “then we can end this thing for good!”

  The chase was on.

  THE PIRATES RUSHED headlong into the chaotic
, rocky landscape.

  But right away, the terrain became far worse than Li had imagined. When the Web site said this part of Calzino was impenetrable and a danger to humans and animals alike, it actually underestimated the conditions. Thousands of granite slabs stuck out of the ground, looking like so many enormous, twisted gravestones. Li’s men soon discovered it was almost impossible to run around the slabs or between them; most were too close together. They were reduced to bouncing off them, ping-pong style, with mixed results. In the meantime, they’d lost sight of their prey in the dark.

  “Spread out!” Li yelled to his men. “Call out if you pick them up again!”

  Moving as fast as he could, Li was dizzy, trying to recall what else he’d read about the terrain on the southern part of Calzino. Just as he remembered the Web page had mentioned an old quarry on the far side of the island, he was introduced to Calzino’s second impassable terrain drawback: He toppled into a tar pool.

  The two pirates behind him were able to pull him out. Still, he found himself covered with the sticky stuff from the waist down. To add to the misery, just after coming out of the pool, he tripped and found himself covered in bird feathers. For some reason, there were hundreds of dead birds in the rock forest, and their rancid feathers were everywhere. It was disgusting.

  Li resumed running. It was maddeningly hard work trying to quickly navigate around the stones in the dark, resulting in many bashed knees and elbows, as well as dealing with the tar pits, which came up at the most unexpected places. Just five minutes into the chase, Li and his men were bruised, battered, sticky and exhausted.