by Mack Maloney
The buildings, bars and lounges mostly, were covered with Christmas lights and tacky Chinese lanterns. Lots of sekocis, rubber rafts and water taxis were either moving around them or tied up nearby. Altogether, the island looked like an incredibly low-rent version of a city in the sky, something from a Grade-D Star Wars movie. But the music here was loud and the lights were bright. And they were much closer to the Shangri-La city of Singapore.
They climbed off the sekoci and staggered up a gangplank to a place called the Great Fortune Lounge & Karaoke. In this part of the world, “karaoke” was a euphemism for brothel.
The lounge part was huge and crowded. There were at least 300 people jammed into the place, probably more. It took the trio a while to realize they were actually inside the remains of a large wooden sailing ship that had been converted into a massive dance hall and bar. And though it was dark inside, it was soon apparent the place was filled with two kinds of people: “happy girls”—traveling prostitutes — and the area’s criminal element.
The hall reeked of spilled beer, cigarette smoke, bad perfume and sweat. The men outnumbered the happy girls by at least three to one. And all of the men looked like escaped prisoners, hustlers, or worse: real pirates.
The man in the black pajamas led the twins and the haki across the dance floor to a particularly dark corner of the club. Here was a large rectangular table, bigger than any other piece of furniture in the place. Sitting at this table were twelve men all wearing the same style clothes: new jeans, white sneakers, black T-shirts and red bandanas. A thirteenth man, older than the rest, wore his bandana tied around his neck, allowing him to show off his long, snow-white hair.
“Zeek’s crew,” one of the twins whispered. “This means they want to meet us.”
The other twin punched his brother hard on the arm. “Do not speak that name, you fool,” he growled. “Or these people will make spare ribs of us.”
They sat at the end of the table and the men in red bandanas ignored them. A waitress appeared. The men in red bandanas ordered two bottles of whiskey and five pitchers of beer — and told the waitress to bring glasses for their three new friends. Then they called over a group of happy girls and signaled that the twins and the haki dance with them.
So dance they did.
Though none of them could move around very well — the beer and whiskey were kicking in — the happy girls they were dancing with not only looked beautiful, they were getting more beautiful with every beat of the music.
So they danced and drank, and danced some more and drank some more. And the hall got more crowded, and the stink of perfume and sweat and beer became like a fog. It got to the point where they almost forgot why they were there.
That ended when the men in the bandanas all rose as one and swept across the dance floor. The crowd parted for them like the Red Sea. The last man in the group, the pirate with the white hair, indicated that the haki should go with them. When the twins tried to go too, one look from this man discouraged them on the spot.
The last time the haki saw the twins, they were standing side by side, waving meekly, as he was led out of the club.
* * *
“My name is Bantang,” the man with the white hair told the haki, slurring his words. “I’ve lived on these islands my entire life.”
They were walking down a gangplank that led away from the lounge and to another boat. But this boat was not a sekoci. It was a yacht, a long, stiletto-shaped vessel sixty feet in length and pimped out like something from an action movie.
“Our boss heard you can really handle yourself,” Bantang told him. “If that’s true, you can make big money with us. Does that sound good?”
The haki nodded. His jaw was too numb to move.
“Our boss said you should make the rounds with me tonight,” Bantang went on. “You can see how we operate. It’s a privilege not afforded to many. It means he almost considers you part of the crew already.”
They climbed aboard the yacht and went below to a cabin that appeared almost the same size as the dance hall at the Great Fortune Lounge. The cabin was dark and the music was mellower, more European. There were couches lining the walls and, in a reversal from the last place they were in, the ratio of happy girls to guys was about three to one. Indeed, the yacht was overflowing with beautiful women.
The haki was led to one long couch, and now he sat with the main group of men wearing red bandanas. Bantang sat next to him. The haki noticed all of the men had pistols stuck in their waistbands.
Bantang whispered to him: “You’re among real pirates now.”
The haki also noticed some of the pirates were now wearing T-shirts that seemed to be from the same shipping company.
“Those are the clothes of their enemies who have passed on,” Bantang explained. “You heard about what happened over in Singapore Harbor recently? Those people are dead, but their clothes have come to good use.”
One of the pirates produced a paper bag and dumped its contents out on the table. The others cheered and drunkenly applauded him.
What he’d spilled out was a load of large blue capsules. They looked like cold medication except they were the size of horse tranquilizers.
“We do drugs now,” Bantang said to the haki. “The night just begins here.”
The pirates fell upon the small mountain of blue capsules and started gobbling them up.
“These are Ecstasy,” Bantang explained. “Big favorite of the Boss.”
In most parts of the world Ecstasy meant MDMA, a drug that made the user feel not only high, but also in love with the rest of humanity, at least until the effects wore off. In Indonesia, though, Ecstasy meant something different. Here, it was a hodge-podge of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and usually two or three hallucinogens all mixed together in one capsule. Under Indonesia’s harsh drug laws, possession of any of these substances would mean life in prison. But getting caught by law enforcement was obviously not the pirates’ concern.
“Take one,” Bantang urged the haki. “Big Boss is in love with Ecstasy. He wants all his men to be, too.”
The haki recognized this for what it was. A test.
So, he took what looked to be the biggest capsule in the bunch. Then, snatching the beer out of Bantang’s hand, he popped the capsule into his mouth and swallowed it by draining the beer.
The pirates cheered wildly. They started comically imitating the haki’s action. In just a few seconds, the party atmosphere on the yacht skyrocketed.
The happy girls on hand also indulged — and soon they were stripping off their clothes and doing lap dances. The haki jumped up and began dancing frenziedly with two Chinese girls. The large cabin began to spin. He drank more beer. The cabin began spinning faster.
It was only when the two Chinese girls fell over that the haki realized the yacht was moving. He was able to grab onto Bantang for support. He looked up at him as if to say: Where are we going now?
Bantang’s eyes were so red it was hard to make out his pupils.
“Wait and see,” he replied with a wink.
* * *
What followed was a high-speed boat trip in and out of the inlets of the Talua Islands. It went by so fast, the intoxicated people on the yacht felt like they were flying. It ended near a place called Pootan, another narrow strip of water connecting the Strait of Malacca to the Phillip Channel.
This was an especially dangerous place for ships in transit, as they had to slow down due to the narrow waterway and shallow depth. It was a prime place for pirate attacks.
And that’s what had just happened here. The speeding yacht came up on a midsized oil tanker that had been seized by more members of the Red Bandana pirate gang.
The yacht tied up next to the dead-in-the-water ship. Bantang took the haki up with him along with several other pirates.
“As you are my helper tonight,” Bantang told the haki, “I will need your muscles to help me carry some money.”
As they reached the deck of the tanker, s
everal different things were happening at once. There were at least two dozen pirates systematically going through the ship, looting and taking anything not bolted down. Seven hapless crewmembers of the tanker were on their knees next to the starboard railing, blindfolded, their hands tied behind them. Showing not the slightest hesitation, two pirates came up behind them and nonchalantly shot each prisoner in the back of the head.
Two smaller tankers had tied up on the other side of the hijacked ship, and their crews were in the process of off-loading oil from the big tanker into their smaller holds. Another group of pirates was painting the bridge and changing the hijacked ship’s name and registration numbers.
Most surprising, an Indonesian Navy patrol boat was motoring back and forth nearby, its crew watching the whole thing. Every once in a while, they would wave to the pirates and the pirates would wave back.
“We are like ants taking over a hive,” Bantang said to the haki. “There will be nothing left when we are done. No clues. No witnesses. Everything is covered.”
A pirate approached Bantang and gave him a cardboard box. It was full of money, at least $40,000 American.
“You know what to do with this,” the pirate told him.
At the same time, he handed Bantang a bulky, ancient-looking mobile phone. It was one of many the haki could see the pirates using. While he couldn’t pick out individual conversations, he was sure that this was how the pirates communicated with their Indonesian coconspirators.
“Old these days means more secure,” Bantang told the haki, showing him the 1980s-era mobile phone. “Anyone can listen in on cell phones, but no one tracks the old stuff. One big rule for us? Owning a cell phone is punishable by death. Cell phones mean detection by people who are not under our pay. Always remember that.”
Bantang held up the old phone.
“When our boss puts out a call on his old phone network,” he explained, “his allies act immediately. Other pirates, police, military people we’ve bought off. If he ever needs help, he calls on this and they all come running.”
But truth was, the haki could barely hear Bantang anymore, because at this point the Ecstasy began kicking in. His head was suddenly spinning with colors. His hands were covered in gold dust; what he imagined was the happy girls’ perfume was suddenly visible to his naked eyes. The stars above him were moving, creating intricate patterns and twirling circles. The night was folding and then refolding itself into one long hallucinatory play, and the haki was just one more actor in it.
The next thing he knew, he was on another sekoci, speeding along with Bantang, heading for a new destination.
* * *
It was a twenty-minute trip to Skull Island.
This place was similar to the island where the Great Fortune Lounge was located: lots of shacks on stilts by the waterside, a few dance halls and many places to buy liquor and drugs.
But this island also had a small downtown and main street, and the most prominent business here was a place called the Red Skull bar.
Run by a woman named Miss Aloo, it looked like something out of a 1930s movie, especially to someone under the influence of Indonesian Ecstasy. Old, in disrepair, and surrounded by dreary palm trees, it was adorned on the outside with cracked stained-glass windows and pieces of ancient nautical trash like old wooden anchors and the main mast of an eighteenth-century sailing ship. Customers went through squeaky swinging doors to enter the smoky, smelly, vile saloon within, complete with a piano player, an untethered brass-colored macaque monkey, a rope-and-teak bar, hundreds of bottles of exotic liquor and — because of the frequency of fights — a soggy, filthy mop and a bucket that, on some nights, could be filled with both water and diluted blood.
Bantang and the haki made their way through the mob of customers, ducking and dodging punches thrown randomly in the drunken throng, continuously fending off the monkey, which seemed intent on picking their pockets, and the small army of happy girls who were trying to do the same.
“Be careful,” Bantang yelled back ominously to the haki as they waded through the madhouse. “Some of those girls aren’t girls at all.”
They eventually reached their destination, the bar’s kitchen, which, the haki learned, also served as the unofficial bank for the red bandana pirates.
They were greeted with much respect and fear by the kitchen staff. One bowed and scraped as he opened a door that appeared to lead into a food storage cabinet but actually revealed a huge set of steel doors bound by a combination lock.
This was Zeek’s local depository. Bantang astutely worked the lock’s tumblers, and soon swung the massive doors open. A vault the size of a walk-in closet was on the other side.
Sitting in the corner of the kitchen was a man who looked more Middle Eastern than Indonesian. He rose from his seat as soon as the vault door opened. Bantang gave the box of money to him.
“We wait while he counts it,” Bantang explained. “Then we’ll lock it up and be on our way to our next stop.”
The Middle-Eastern man counted the money with the dexterity of a casino pit boss. It took him just three minutes to declare the box held $47,522. Then Bantang counted out $5,000 and gave it to the Middle-Eastern man.
“You know the cut,” Bantang told him. “Four thousand for the Mandarin, one thousand to your boss.”
Without so much as a thank you, the Middle-Eastern man stuffed the money under his shirt and went out the back door.
“Jihadist vulture,” Bantang grumbled. “If only the Boss trusted a more reasonable bank, like one in Switzerland.”
Bantang took a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen cupboard and opened it. He took a mighty swig, gargled with it and swallowed. Then he passed the bottle to the haki, who at this point was too intoxicated to speak, even if he wanted to.
“The ships we take are never reported as being stolen,” Bantang told him, pocketing another $1,000 in cash and then closing up the vault after putting the rest of the money inside. “They’re repainted, reflagged and sold for a percentage through the Shanghai Chinese. We split the cargo, and the Boss keeps the money, except what we pay the Muslim terrorists to stay out of our way and what we pay our informants. That, my friend, is how the world goes round.”
* * *
They were soon on the sekoci again, zipping along the water at what felt like supersonic speed.
The haki’s head was drowning with colors and voices and faces. Sometimes when he glanced over at Bantang, he thought he saw a happy girl driving the boat instead. And even though the haki couldn’t remember exactly where they’d been just a few minutes before, he couldn’t shake the notion that a monkey was chasing them.
Bantang told him they had one more errand to run. They were soon at another island, this one long and thin, like a finger sticking out into the channel. There was no dock for them to tie up to. Bantang ran the motorboat right up onto the beach, which, from the haki’s point of view, seemed to go on forever.
Just up from this beach was a dirt road that was home to a handful of waterfront establishments. Like the other islands visited this night, these businesses were mostly saloons and lounges.
The big building was trimmed with bright green neon lights. It was called Kucing Jantan Rumah—roughly translated, Home of the Tomcat.
It was a brothel, one of the largest in this part of Asia. Bantang and the haki went around to the rear entrance and let themselves in. They met a woman who looked to the haki like a madam in the rear vestibule; she was coming out of a room that had a hidden door that went flush up against the wall as soon as it was closed. The haki got a brief glimpse inside this room and saw it was filled with communications equipment: telephones, radios and such. Odd for a brothel, he thought.
Bantang and the madam had a brief discussion, and then Bantang passed her a packet of money. She handed him two glasses of champagne and disappeared upstairs.
Bantang gave one glass to the haki and they toasted and drank.
“The girls who work out of here go all ov
er Asia,” Bantang told him. “They have regular customers among ship captains, military people and the police. But they are also our spies — and they are much better than the CIA or the Russian spy network. From these people we know which ships are heading our way, which ships to target and attack. The girls also have contacts in the newspaper business, and that assures us that such attacks never get into the media, so the population of the world does not know when a ship is taken here like they do every time a pin drops off Somalia.
“Not that it makes any difference; the insurance company just writes off the ship as being a loss anyway, as if it had sunk or caught fire or wound up in a boneyard. They don’t have the time or resources to come after us. We are then able to commit the perfect crime.”
But the haki wasn’t really listening to him anymore. He’d caught a glimpse of several of the brothel’s workers in the next room over and was now banging his head against the vestibule wall, trying not to have a drug-induced, involuntary orgasm.
* * *
Their errands done, they were soon speeding toward yet another destination. This one was not in the Phillip Channel, but was located back within the tangle of islands off Talua. They went under a wooden bridge that seemed a mile high and a mile long; It connected two islands that were homes to many lounges and bars. On a hill on an island nearby, a huge beer bottle was spilling out not magic air but a sea of beer on the trees below. On another island, they saw a wrecked, three-masted ship so old it seemed like something out of an old pirate movie. And while the haki had managed to shake the notion that a monkey was chasing him during all this, he believed now that the fish under their boat were mad at them because they were going too fast.
They soon arrived at yet another island just as the sekoci ran out of gas.
“Happens every time,” Bantang said.
He managed to drift through the island’s expansive lagoon and reach a long, crooked-finger dock sticking out from the beach. It was obvious this island was different from the others they visited this night. It was hidden among a gaggle of other islands probably twenty miles in from the Phillip Channel. It had only one approach, and the water surrounding it was very shallow, especially on the north side, which featured a stout sandbar. There was no way a large vessel, such as a major warship, could ever get anywhere near this place.