There had been some question of Narmada becoming too big, too fast for his Chinese associates. But as the largest and the most powerful triad in the world, the Sun Nee On Triad did not care about the rapid growth of his operations as long as the man continued to regularly deliver the shipments of slaves and drugs.
At the three-hour mark, the radar started to beep.
“Okay, the tanker is now in missile range,” Chung announced, running his hands across the fire control board. “Should we put one across her bow or take out the bridge?”
“No, blow a hole in the side of the ship,” directed Narmada. “Use a Sidewinder. I want a big hole. Too big to stop.”
Chung almost smiled. “Put the fear of God into the cheap bastards, eh?”
“Exactly. Then re-establish contact with the Yerrel Corporation, and tell them the cost is now a million euros for us to leave.”
“Standard transfer to our Cayman Island account?”
“No, use the Luxembourg bank this time. Never repeat a pattern.”
“Aye, aye, skipper!”
“And if the Dutch refuse?” Fields asked, activating the satellite link and scrambler.
“Then blow the tanker out of the water,” said Narmada, fighting back a yawn. “They’ll pay double for the next one and triple for the oil tanker after that.” He snorted. “A million euros is dirt cheap. I should be charging them ten times that amount for our protection.”
“Sir, why don’t we, then?” asked the ensign standing at the helm, both hands on the yoke. The illuminated controls of the Black Dog curved around him in a rainbow of information.
“Because asking for that kind of money invokes the possibility of them hiring people to track us down,” Narmada replied curtly. “I’m not interested in combat—just cash.”
“Fair enough.”
“According to the public records, the tanker is full of crude oil from Kuwait,” Chung added. “This will be a major ecological disaster.”
“And even worse for their profit margins,” added Narmada, “after we release the video footage on the internet.”
The beeping of the radar took on a more urgent tone as the controls were locked, and the Sidewinder launched.
The results were spectacular.
Kingston, Jamaica
THE DISTANCE WAS beyond the Cessna’s fuel capacity, but Bolan did a little island hopping to refuel and managed to reach Jamaica alive and intact.
Parking the plane at the public hangar, Bolan headed to the home of an ex-LAPD detective who owed him more than a few large favors. From the Cessna, Bolan had made a SAT call to Stony Man, and arranged for money and credentials to be dropped off at the former detective’s house.
After less than an hour, Bolan said goodbye to his contact and left his home with several new identities and a leather briefcase full of hard cash.
Aware that a sleepy mind made deadly mistakes, Bolan checked into a nearby two-star hotel while the Cessna was being refueled and refurbished.
In the morning, Bolan washed, bought some new clothes and then, on the recommendation of the ex-LAPD, walked down to the dockyard. The supplies he needed were expensive, but then, most black-market items were. Bolan had plenty of cash, but to offer too much, too fast, would have marked him, so he haggled and dickered until both dealer and customer were mildly satisfied but not overly delighted.
His preferred weapons were available—a Beretta 93R machine pistol and a Desert Eagle .357 Magnum. His purchases also included extra ammunition for the M16 assault rifle and plenty of 40 mm shells. Finally, he bought a new laptop, a drill to open the steel briefcase, several disposable cell phones, an EM scanner, body armor and all the C4 explosives he could without drawing undue attention.
“Bank job?” asked the dealer, carefully packing away the soft, claylike bricks of high explosive into a python bag.
“Something like that,” Bolan replied.
“As long as it is not mine, eh?”
“No, nothing local. Neutral ground.”
“Miami, then?”
Bolan stared coldly at the man until he grew pale.
“Yes, of course, a small joke, eh?”
Turning to leave, Bolan paused as a trio of men started his way.
“Hey! Need some help with your luggage?” one of the men asked, flashing a smile as he reached behind his back.
Acting fast, Bolan buried an elbow in the largest man’s throat. Gasping for breath, he dropped, and Bolan slammed a fist into the solar plexus of the second. He rocked back and hit the wall, his head cracking against the old brick.
Caught totally by surprise, the third man shook his head in disbelief and raised both hands. “Hey, look, buddy—”
That was as far as he got. Bolan slammed the toe of his boot into the man’s crotch. As he doubled over, Bolan brought up his knee, hard and fast. The man’s nose exploded into a gush of red, and he dropped to the ground, twitching.
“Friends of yours?” Bolan asked, slowly easing out a knife.
“Nothing to do with me!” cried the dealer, waving both hands.
Bolan frowned. “Unless they’d worked, and you got back everything you sold me.”
“Never! I’m an honest crook!”
Not even bothering to reply, Bolan started to advance upon the man. He backed away.
“If they’re dead,” said the dealer with a cavalier shrug, “there’s a fee for me to dispose of their bodies.”
“Your problem. Deal with it,” Bolan replied, tucking away the blade, shouldering his bags and sauntering outside.
The cab ride back to the airfield was uneventful. Polished, and with a new registration number, the Cessna now had pontoons and several extra fuel tanks.
Using the drill, Bolan easily opened the steel briefcase and was vastly pleased to find the biometric card inside, along with a thick sheath of papers involving the operation of piracy just off the coast of Brazil.
Hanging the card around his neck for safekeeping, Bolan skimmed the reports but saw nothing that he did not already know. Dozens of known pirates operated in the Atlantic Ocean, most of them just speedboats full of armed men. They ruthlessly hit anything they could find, usually killing the entire crew, and then sold the ship for a fast profit.
Some took the female passengers to Sardinia to sell as sex slaves, but many did not. They just raped and killed them. Many of the pirates were from poverty-stricken countries such as Somalia, the Philippines or Malaysia, but according to the Brazilian Coast Guard, there was also a small faction of unknown origin. Possibly an international group of freelancers.
Unknown to the Brazilians but not to Bolan. He could smell Narmada all over the reports, and it redoubled his determination to stop the man. Especially now that the captain had the command of the Constitution. With that kind of firepower and his new missiles, was there anything on the high seas that Narmada couldn’t attack? Cruise liners, oil tankers...the civilian death toll would go sky-high unless Bolan moved fast on this. Few pirates ever stopped once they’d had a taste of blood.
When he was airborne again, Bolan started a satellite link, brought Brognola up to date and then began a sweep for any sign of the GPS dust. Swinging back and forth, he managed a roughly eastern direction across the Atlantic, refueling in Cuba and Barbados. Lunch was cold turkey sandwiches and hot coffee from a new thermos.
A few hours later, Bolan got a ping on the new laptop.
He was not overly surprised to discover that the GPS signals had split. A cluster of them were still heading east—that had to be Narmada. Only now there was also a single dot heading almost due north toward nothing at all. Only deep ocean lay in that direction, aside from the tiny islands of Micronesia.
Narmada must have found a buyer for some of the missiles, Bolan realized. He tightened his hands on the yoke
. Anger flared for a moment, then Bolan smiled. Perfect. He needed some heavy artillery to take down Narmada, so why not hoist the son of a bitch on his own petard? He’d steal the missiles back and sink that fat pirate forever. The symmetry was almost poetic. Veering away from the cluster of signals, Bolan headed after the lone dot.
Micronesia was composed of more than a thousand small islands, atolls, some of them just barely large enough to properly earn the title. Which, of course, made it an excellent area for smuggling, slaves and black-market weapons.
Easing the Cessna into the gentle waves, Bolan cut the engine and let the combination of tide and inertia carry him toward land.
Using the aerials to guide his way, Bolan maneuvered the Cessna onto the beach until the pontoons scraped sand. Hopping out, he secured the anchor and then lashed the lightweight plane to a sturdy coconut tree.
Wading through the shallows, Bolan checked over his weapons for tonight. He had no idea who, or what, had bought Narmada’s missiles.
Climbing a low ridge of black volcanic basalt, Bolan checked the other side through his night vision goggles. At first the area beyond seemed deserted. Then slowly shapes took form in the darkness—people, moving and talking around several large crates on a clear patch of ground. Bolan recognized most of the missiles by the size and color of their containers—LAW, LOKI, Javelin and even a Carl Gustav rocket launcher. The old and the new combined. In the smoky shadows of the night, Bolan could vaguely see a couple of boats lashed to the rocks. What looked like a hovercraft and a hydrofoil, of all things. Whoever these people were, they clearly had money.
Bolan spotted three more large wooden boxes with a familiar company logo...Martin Jetpacks! Not good. Terrorists in jetpacks, armed with missiles. Suddenly, Bolan was very glad he’d decided to neutralize this sale.
Laughing, one of the figures lit a cigarette, and the brief flare of light revealed four men and a woman. They were all dressed in black, the same as Bolan, and carried holstered automatics equipped with silencers.
The woman reached into a pocket and flipped open what strangely resembled an FBI commission booklet. Bolan paused, uncertain of whether these were criminals or undercover agents buying illegal weapons.
Because there was no way to be sure, Bolan instantly decided to scrub the mission. But as he started to leave, one of the men grabbed the booklet and flung it into the water.
“Idiot!” he screamed, slapping her across the face. “I told you we needed CIA identification! The FBI cannot get close enough to Dagstrom for us to kill him!”
Dagstrom...Richard Dagstrom, the billionaire? That was a twist for Bolan. These were just assassins, not terrorists. Yet Narmada had sold them missiles....
“Look, I did my best,” the woman started, backing away.
“We do not accept failure,” growled another man, grabbing her hair and viciously yanking back her head. “You had one job to do, and you failed!”
Even as Bolan raised the M16, the second man buried a knife into the woman’s stomach, and the other slashed open her throat. Blood arched high, and she dropped.
“Now what?” asked the first man.
The second man spit on the corpse. “We’re paid to kill Dagstrom. If we do not deliver...”
“Then his son will hire others to kill us. Yes, I know.”
“All right, we still try. Kill the father...and if he gets in the way, the son, too.”
“At the regatta?”
He scowled in confusion. “The what?”
“The race, old friend. It is a rich man’s word for when they race their pretty little yachts and try to act like sailors.”
“Yes, at the race.”
The soft pad of a foot in sand made Bolan turn around fast and fire. The brief muzzle flashes of the Beretta flared, showing an armed man carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The round took him squarely between the eyes, and the corpse fell backward to tumble lifeless down the ridge.
Turning around again, Bolan bit back a curse. The other men were gone, shadows on the move. Now they were hunting him in the darkness.
Swinging up the M16, Bolan put two pounds of pressure on the six-pound trigger and waited. His every sense was alive and alert. He could not see the other men, but he could feel them.
If they were smart, they’d try to outflank him. The horns of the bull. One on each side and one staying with the crates, using them as cover. Bolan would be an idiot to shoot at those. The Martins would probably just burst into flames, but the missiles would violently explode, wiping everything off this tiny island in a single, hot blast of chemical hell.
Just then, the dull throb of diesel engines filled the night.
Bolan turned and fired. The 40 mm round flew straight across the island and slammed into the hydrofoil. The resulting blast illuminated the night, and several men screamed.
Machine guns chattered into life, tracers filling the darkness, ricochets zinging wildly off the basalt, throwing out painful coronas of broken volcanic glass.
As something onboard the hydrofoil exploded again, Bolan used the flash of light to target the hovercraft. A man stood at the tiller, struggling to get the engines into operation. The 40 mm shell punched clean through his torso, blowing a ghastly spray of organs and intestines across the cowling.
Dropping back, Bolan rolled to a new position, rose and fired the M16. He repeated the maneuver twice more, each time coming a little bit closer to the stacks of missiles, trying to force anybody hiding out into the open.
Then a man stood, one arm dangling limply and dark fluids dribbling from numerous small wounds. But the man also held a Hafla DM-34 flamethrower pointed directly at the pile of missiles on the sandy ground.
“Go ahead, shoot me!” he laughed. “And I’ll blow this fucking island off the map!”
Instantly changing targets, Bolan shot the middle crate.
The wooden planks splintered, exposing the jet pack inside. Then the lightweight control panel was torn away, the fuel lines burst and the machine exploded into a fireball that rapidly expanded outward to engulf the last assassin.
Covered with fuel, the man began to shriek and run around, slapping at his burning face. The flamethrower started to discharge, the incendiary round streaking away into the sea.
Mercifully, Bolan put a long burst from the M16 into the human torch, and he tumbled down the basalt cliff to roll into the shallows.
A fast sweep of the tiny island showed there were no more people hiding. Checking among the smoldering wreckage, Bolan saw that two of the Martin jet packs were totally destroyed, the internal machinery splayed in the sand.
The third was intact, its wooden crate only slightly burned. The Martin or the missiles? Bolan had to choose. The Cessna had a very specific weight limit, and the new pontoons were already pushing that hard.
For a long moment, Bolan debated the matter, considering his options. Then he started dragging the splintered crate across the sand toward the waiting TN....
A few minutes later, Bolan was high in the air when the first C4 charge ignited. The blast highlighted the entire island, rattling the trees and blowing a sandstorm across the clear, azure water.
Chapter 9
Madeira Island, Portugal
A low and steady wind whistled through every crack of the makeshift bunker. The cinderblock walls, reinforced with sand bags, and a thick concrete roof offered little protection from the inclement weather. The only source of heat was coming from a large, portable electric generator that dominated half of the bunker.
“I thought it was supposed to always be warm in the Middle East,” grumbled Private Eugene Synder, tugging down a wool cap.
“Not at night, boot,” replied Sergeant Chris Waybridge, striking a match across his cheek and lighting a fat cigar.
“Is...is that a Cuban?”
> “Of course! Only the best here. Help yourself.”
“No charge?”
Sergeant Waybridge flashed a predatory smile.
“Thought so,” muttered Private Synder. “Pass.”
“Smart boy. I knew that you’d fit into my organization just fine.”
The private shrugged. “Can’t live on what the Army pays.”
“Ain’t it the truth, son?” Sergeant Waybridge chuckled and blew a smoke ring.
Kerosene lanterns hung from iron hooks set into the sloping ceiling, and in the far corner, a brand-new percolator bubbled away, filling the air with the smell of fresh coffee. The sandy floor was covered with heavy plastic shipping containers full of M16 assault rifles, ammunition, grenades held together with duct tape, old MRE packs dangerously near their expiration dates, dirty medical instruments and assorted barrels of miscellaneous trash. It was garbage to the American troops but gold to many others who had less than nothing.
Exhaling a long dark stream of sweet smoke, Chris Waybridge looked out across the vast and sandy landscape of his private domain. It had taken the soldier many years to slowly work, weasel and connive his way through the ranks of the U.S. military system to finally reach his vaunted position of authority: quartermaster. And then to step on just enough toes to be demoted to his ultimate goal—Disposal of Obsolete Weaponry. Many people considered the job a punishment detail.
A lot of American soldiers were stationed in the Middle East, and a lot of equipment got badly damaged and needed to be destroyed. Burying it in the sand accomplished nothing, and blowing it up cost more than most politicians ever knew. Thus the bent rifles, broken knives, bottles of whiskey marked as “broken in transit” and dented canteens were dutifully packed into sealed garbage containers and shipped off to Sergeant Waybridge on Madeira Island to be cataloged, listed, numbered and then unceremoniously dumped into the deep blue sea. Except that most of what sank into the ocean was scrap iron brought in from Spain, and the rest was resold to the highest bidder.
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