by Mack Maloney
But now they had twenty-three.
* * *
ONCE ALL FIRING had ceased at the compound, the team’s ground force made its way over to the hostages’ location. The second copter landed; it was a Bell X-1 the team had borrowed, along with its pilot, from the Kilos security force. Batman had the hostages ready and waiting to go. He started hustling them onto the Bell as quickly as possible. When the copter was at its limit, he tried to stuff the rest into the much smaller OH-6 attack copter, leaving room only for the pilot. But no matter how they worked it, they still had one person too many.
Only three people in the rescue force could fly a rotary craft: Batman, Snake Nolan and the pilot of the Bell copter. Batman huddled with Nolan and made a suggestion: “You fly the gunship. Take the queen of the universe and four other people with you. Everyone else can go on the Bell.”
“You mean you’re staying behind?” Nolan asked him.
Batman nodded. “It’s no big deal. Just drop everyone off, get some gas and come back. I’ll stay in the area and I’ll have my GPS locator on full power and my sat-phone, too.”
Nolan started to protest. Leaving someone behind did seem to be the only solution. But that didn’t mean Batman had to be the one.
“Why are you assuming I shouldn’t be the one to stay behind?” Nolan asked him. “Because I only have one eye?”
Batman held up his left hand. It was a metal claw prosthesis; he’d lost his real hand in the team’s action against a band of Indonesian pirates. “And I shouldn’t be, because I’m a one-armed paperhanger?” he replied.
The impasse lasted just a few seconds.
“You’re the leader of the pack, man,” Batman told him. “You need to be there to deliver that piece of ass back to her handlers, so we can collect immediately. I’ll be okay; I need a nap anyway.”
It was a bullshit explanation, but they had no time to waste. If anyone could survive out here without getting into trouble, it was Batman.
So Nolan tapped him twice on the shoulder and said, “It will take about an hour to get to that yacht and then an hour to get back here. Add in twenty minutes to tank up, and that means we’re looking at some time just before sunup. So, go hide somewhere and we’ll be back ASAP. Capeesh?”
Batman gave him a mock salute.
“Capeesh,” he said.
* * *
BATMAN WATCHED THE copters go over the horizon, disappearing among the stars to the east.
He studied his GPS locator and hoped he knew how to work the thing manually. It took him a few moments to override the commands previously programmed into the device. Finally, it began to behave.
He cleared the memory and then reactivated it. He zeroed in on his own position, then hit the enter button. A faint green light began blinking on the command screen. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Next, he checked his sat-phone. The charge was at three-quarters, which was plenty for the next few hours.
Now, all he had to do was wait someplace safe.
He walked back to the burning pirate camp, knowing it was best if he stayed deep in the bush. He checked his watch and rechecked the time line. It was close to 0300 hours. If Nolan was right, it would be just before dawn when they came back to retrieve him.
Making his way around the bodies of the pirates, he could see no suitable war souvenirs worth taking from the dead.
“Mooks,” Batman murmured, strolling around the smoldering camp. “Small time clip artists…”
He reached into his ammo pocket. Among some 50-caliber shells he found what he was looking for: a partially smoked marijuana cigarette.
He lit it off a piece of burning wood and drew in deeply.
“Breakfast of Champions,” he said.
A moment later, four bullets hit him in the back.…
* * *
NOLAN WAS ABOUT thirty minutes into the flight when he realized he’d made a huge mistake.
True, he could fly the attack copter. He’d done it many times since the team had come together. But he was also at a disadvantage because he didn’t have use of his left eye. This led to depth perception problems, especially at night, issues that were somewhat rectified by a specially built night-vision scope attached to his battle helmet and placed in front of his good eye.
But he still couldn’t relax, not even for one moment. During this dark flight over water, navigating by both the stars and dead reckoning, constantly looking for the mega-yacht and listening for the radio signal it was supposed to be sending out, all while checking his dwindling fuel supply, he caught himself thinking maybe he was the one who should have been left behind. In this case, two eyes were definitely better than one.
His very famous passenger was not helping the situation. In fact, she was making it worse just by her presence.
Emma Simms was sitting right next to him, strapped into the copilot’s seat. She hadn’t stopped fidgeting since they’d taken off, which was distracting him. Even worse, like a little kid, she kept asking Nolan, over and over: “Are we there yet?”
When she wasn’t bugging him on their ETA, she’d spent the time contemplating her reflection in the copter’s side window, fussing with her hair, trying to manually curl her eyelashes, pinching her cheeks for color and trimming her fingernails by biting off the tips.
She’d asked him not once, not twice, but three times if he knew whether any paparazzi would be waiting for her once they arrived on the yacht. He’d replied each time with a simple, “I don’t know,” to which she responded with a pout.
So, half the time Nolan was wishing he’d stayed instead of Batman; the other half, he was wishing she’d been the one they’d left behind.
By contrast, the four ex-hostages riding in the back couldn’t have been more grateful. Two were Swiss nationals, one was Indian, the other Austrian. They were marine biologists snatched from their research boat by the Shaka pirates four months ago. Several times during the flight, each one had reached forward and patted Nolan on the back, thanking him for getting them released from their little hell.
Emma Simms never noticed. She was more interested in her cuticles.
* * *
NOLAN FINALLY LOCATED the mega-yacht sailing about 180 miles off the northeast tip of Somalia. The vessel had all its lights on and had been sending out radio signals to the copters for the past hour.
Both the OH-6 and the big Bell went into a loose orbit around the vessel. It had two helipads: a large one at its stern and a smaller one on its bow. Nolan let the Bell land first, using the larger stern pad. He watched as members of the yacht crew swarmed toward the Bell, helping the hostages out and guiding them below.
Nolan then set down on the bow, his fuel reserves running out just as he hit the pad. He disengaged the engine and was heartened to see other members of the yacht’s crew were standing by, ready to pump his copter full of gas for the return flight to retrieve Batman.
Once his primaries were shut off, he told his passengers they could open the doors and get out. Again, each hostage in the back took the time to awkwardly hug Nolan, endlessly thanking him for their rescue.
Emma Simms did no such thing.
She simply opened the door and got out without a word.
4
Somalia
CHIEF BOL BADA had seen it all: The pirates tying up the young white woman. The beginning of her torture. The sudden attack from the sky. The slaughter of the Shakas.
Bada was the leader of the Ekita Clan, a family of two hundred who lived on a piece of land bordering what used to be the Shaka base.
The Ekita despised the Shaka, but like many Somalis of the countryside, and especially those who lived near the sea, they had few traditions of war or conflict. They were nothing like the pirates. Whenever the Shaka came to this place to do their evil deeds, the Ekita melted into the jungle and waited for them to leave. Sometimes it took a few hours, sometimes days. Sometimes, the Ekita had to stay in hiding for weeks.
This time, with the other members of his clan safely
hidden away, Chief Bada had slipped down close to the Shaka base, as he’d done many times before, to keep an eye on the pirates until they left.
But this night, he’d seen something incredible.
For once, someone had actually attacked the Shakas on their home turf. The men in helicopters, falling out of the sky, dressed like monsters—they had overrun the Shaka, who could do little to stop them. The pirates shot at their attackers, but with no result because the strange warriors seemed unaffected by bullets—that was the amazing thing. They looked like Americans, the people from the sky. But bullets did not hurt them? Bada knew America was highly advanced. But had they reached the point where bullets did not harm their soldiers?
All this would have made a great story to tell the family around the campfire, but a new twist had been added. One of these strange warriors had fallen right into Bada’s arms. His comrades had left him behind for some reason, and he’d been shot, in the back, and he’d collapsed into the same bush where Bada had been hiding.
His assailants were riding in a caravan of pickup trucks that appeared off in the distance just before this man had been shot. Someone in the caravan had fired at the lone soldier, and then all the pick-up trucks had raced toward the burning compound.
Chief Bada wanted no part of these new people. They were not Shaka pirates; they were their sponsors, the much-feared Jihad Brotherhood, Muslim fundamentalists who had taken over just about every major city in Somalia. As vicious as the Shaka could be, they were mere insects compared to what these religious fanatics could do.
Bada knew he’d have to get out of there quickly if he ever wanted to see his family again. If these people caught him, they’d cut him up alive.
But he could not leave the wounded warrior behind.
So Bada recalled one of his family’s oldest chants and whispered it, over and over.
And that’s how he and the wounded warrior who had fallen on him became one with the jungle.
* * *
THE CARAVAN OF pickup trucks arrived at the devastated Shaka compound just seconds after Chief Bada had finished his chant.
Three dozen in all, many of these Brotherhood gunmen weren’t even African—they were Arabs from Yemen, Syria and Iraq. They were dressed better than most religious fighters in Somalia, with crisp green camo uniforms and spiffy black boots. It was important for their reputation to be recognized instantly wherever they went; this outfit filled the bill. And though it was against the will of Allah to wear jewelry around one’s neck or in one’s earlobes, the Brotherhood were known for wearing gaudy silver rings. Some had them on every finger—the bigger and thicker, the better.
The Brotherhood was allied with the Somali pirates for one reason only: money. They’d sent the brigands out looking not for ships to hijack, but for high-profile persons to kidnap and hold for ransom. In exchange for guns, ammunition and the blessing of the Brotherhood to ply their trade, the pirates would snatch whomever they could from yachts and other pricey vessels and hold them for as long as necessary.
It had worked out well so far. They’d kidnapped several Dutch priests, the son of an Indian industrialist and a handful of marine scientists. The Brotherhood had been counting on somewhere around two million dollars when these people were finally ransomed.
But they’d been very excited to learn that earlier this night the pirates had managed to kidnap a very famous American movie actress—someone who would bring in tens of millions in ransom. Yet on arriving at the pirates’ base camp, the Muslim fighters were stunned to find the place destroyed, their allies dead—and all those valuable hostages gone. Also missing was the man they’d just shot from far away, because they thought he was a police officer or maybe even a UN peacekeeping soldier.
None of this made sense. The jihadists were here to see the movie actress in the flesh, confirm her identity, then discuss with the pirates’ leader how big of a ransom they should ask for.
But instead, they’d found little more than a smoking hole in the ground, and a lot of dead pirates lying around.
The leader of the jihadist gang was baffled. Who could have done this?
He spat twice on his hand and wiped it on his brow, a jihadist custom.
“Oh Allah,” he said. “Please have mercy on us.”
* * *
BATMAN WAS TERRIFIED.
He was being dragged through the brush and razor-sharp vegetation was cutting him all over. It was dark and he was disorientated and weak. He’d lost his weapons; his GPS locator and sat-phone were also gone. From his shoulders to his tailbone, his back felt like someone had hit him four times with a sledgehammer.
Every part of the past twenty minutes seemed hazy. He recalled that Whiskey had squashed the pirates, that they’d freed the hostages and that he’d agreed to stay behind to make room in the helicopter. He remembered lighting up the roach … and then suddenly, boom! He was out like a light.
But then, someone fell on top of him and hid him or made him invisible or something. Next thing he knew he was looking at some bad actors in green camos and polished boots who were inspecting the devastated pirate camp not ten feet from where he lay. Their rings—they all wore many silver rings. That had stuck in Batman’s mind. And that these guys didn’t look like Africans at all.
Then, he was being dragged through the bush, and was too stunned and weak and sick to fight back.
He was finally hauled to a stop and only then did he realize he was not in some lion’s den, but in a small village of straw huts, hidden on all sides by high foliage.
Several dozen people had gathered around him. By their clothes, or lack of them, and their painted faces, he knew they were people of the bush. Some were kids; they were poking him, touching his arms and legs, checking to see if he was real. The adults stayed back, though, studying him as if he’d just fallen from the stars.
Finally, he turned over to see that he’d been dragged here by a fierce-looking Somali man.
“You are now among the Ekita,” this man boasted to him in broken English, beating his own chest with every word. “Chief Bada has brought you here and you are a very lucky man.”
Somehow Batman managed to unfasten his battle armor and crawl out of it. The chief produced a broken mirror and showed him the four large bruises on his back. They were purple and hideous, but Batman knew, had it not been for the body armor, the bruises would have been bullet holes, and he would be dead.
The chief sat him up.
“You are the first magical warrior to visit Ekita in three hundred years,” he told Batman gravely. “You fly. You defeat bullets. You kill the Shaka and you wear a suit of enchantment. We must know: How do you do all these things?”
Batman was just getting his senses back. He took off his gloves to reveal that his left hand was missing and that a mechanical prosthesis was in its place.
The villagers gasped. The chief was fascinated. “So you’re made of metal?” he asked Batman.
Batman waved his comment away.
“Just this hand,” he said. “The rest of me is bone and muscle.”
The chief translated for his villagers. This animated them further.
“Then we must learn from you,” the chief declared. “We must heat you and consume the result.”
Two women appeared carrying a wooden cup. It contained a blood-red liquid with what looked like tiny tulip bulbs floating in it. The chief urged Batman to drink it in one gulp. It smelled awful, but thinking it was some kind of pain reliever, drink it he did. But he quickly became even woozier than before.
Then he heard the chief say: “Now for the heating, so you will be one with us.”
The crowd of villagers parted to reveal a giant campfire blazing away in the middle of the village. On top of it was a huge steaming pot.
Two men picked up Batman and began carrying him toward the steaming cauldron. The villagers became very excited. But Batman was getting concerned. He could actually see vegetables floating around inside the pot.
&n
bsp; “What are you going to do?” he asked the chief anxiously. “Put me in that?”
“Yes—we are,” the chief replied. “It’s part of the process. It will change you … and it will change us.”
“But—it looks too hot for me to go into,” Batman said, becoming very alarmed.
The chief put his finger in the steaming water, tasted it and laughed.
“For our purposes,” he said with a grin. “It is the perfect temperature.”
5
Gulf of Aden
REFUELING WHISKEY’S ATTACK copter took just fifteen minutes. This was lightning quick for the yacht crew, who were not practiced in the art of quick aircraft turnarounds.
In the time the copter was getting serviced, Nolan had a chance to down two amphetamine pills and reset his weapons. Then he took off again, got a bearing via his rudimentary navigation system, turned west and hit the throttles. The mission to retrieve Batman had begun.
Gunner and Twitch were with him. They were the other half remaining of Team Whiskey. Gunner LaPook was a giant of a man from Cajun Country in Louisiana. He was the team’s door breaker; whenever Whiskey assaulted a fortified position, Gunner went in first. His weapon of choice was the Streetsweeper, essentially a machine gun that fired shotgun shells. He was a tall, beefy individual and fierce looking. All tats and muscles, he looked like a WWE wrestler.
Twitch was a Kanaka, a native Hawaiian, and he was as diminutive as Gunner was tall. His nondescript Asian features, as well as a talent for languages, were a great advantage for the team, as he was able to go undercover just about anywhere in the world and blend in. He was a little off kilter, though; “edgy” was a polite description. He’d lost his leg during Whiskey’s ill-fated pursuit of bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. Just as Batman wore a prosthesis on his left arm, Twitch wore one for his right leg.
Both Gunner and Twitch were still wearing their experimental body armor, as was Nolan. It had worked well in their assault against the Shaka camp; though both Gunner and Twitch had been hit by pirate bullets, deep bruises were the only result.