Aziz and Malik entered the bridge. They had helped themselves to some new clothes from the officers’ quarters. Aziz, only twenty-five but a veteran of a dozen hijackings, was so slender that he’d had to cut extra holes in the belt to keep his new jeans up around his waist. Malik was in his forties, and had fought at Mohammad Didi’s side against the United Nations and the Americans. Shrapnel from a street fight with a rival gang had left the right side of his face in ruin, and the blow had affected his mind. He rarely spoke, and, when he did, little of what he said made sense. But he followed orders to the letter, which was all Hakeem demanded of him.
“Go get the captain. I want to talk to him about the company that owns this ship. I want to know how much he thinks they will be willing to pay.” He studied Aziz’s eyes. “And lay off the bang.” He used the African nickname for marijuana.
The two pirates descended the stairs to the main deck. With the sun setting, the interior of the ship was gloomy. There were only a few functioning lamps, so shadows clung to the ceilings and walls like moss. Aziz nodded to the guard to untie the wire. He and Malik had their weapons at the ready when the door creaked inward. All three men gaped.
The mess hall was empty.
THREE
MALIK AND AZIZ HAD JUST STEPPED INTO THE EMPTY MESS hall when the guard felt a presence down the hall. He peered into the gloom, raising his rifle. Had he not been so spooked by the crew vanishing, he would have calmly explored the passageway. But every nerve in his body tingled with electricity as if a mild current had been applied to his skin. His finger curled around the trigger, and he unleashed a wild, ten-round burst. The juddering flame from the barrel of his AK-47 revealed the hall was deserted, while the bullets did nothing more than scrape more paint off the dingy walls.
“What is it?” Aziz demanded.
“I thought I saw someone,” the guard stammered.
Aziz made his decision quickly. “Malik, go with him and search this deck. I will tell Hakeem what has happened.”
The pirate leader had heard the gunfire and met up with Aziz halfway down from the bridge. He was holding his pistol like he had seen in music videos, arched at arm’s length and turned flat on its side, and his eyes were bright with anger.
“Who was shooting, and why?” He didn’t slow his pace when they met, forcing Aziz to double back quickly.
“The mess hall is empty, and Ahmed thought he saw someone. He and Malik are searching now.”
Hakeem wasn’t sure what he was hearing. “What do you mean the mess hall is empty?”
“The crew is all gone. The wire was still on the door and Ahmed was awake, but somehow they are gone.”
The mess door was barely ajar when they arrived, so Hakeem kicked it open with all his strength. It crashed against the doorstop with a booming echo. Just as they had left the crew hours earlier, all twenty-two members were still seated around the tables. They all had tense, anxious expressions.
“What was that gunfire?” Captain Kwan asked.
Hakeem gave Aziz a murderous look. “A rat.”
He grabbed the younger man by the arm and pushed him from the room. As soon as the door was closed behind Hakeem, he slapped Aziz across the face and backhanded him in a perfect follow-through. “You fool. You’re so stoned right now, you don’t know which is your dung hand.”
“No, Hakeem. I swear it. We all saw—”
“Enough! I catch you smoking bang during one of my operations again, I will shoot you where you stand. Got it?” Aziz’s eyes were cast down, and he said nothing. Hakeem grabbed Aziz’s jaw so their eyes met. “Got it?” he repeated.
“Yes, Hakeem.”
“Retie this door, and find Malik and Ahmed before they shoot up more of the ship.”
Aziz did as he was ordered while Hakeem lingered. Hakeem pressed his ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything through the thick metal. He glanced around the empty corridor. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but he had the sudden sense that someone was watching him. The sensation tingled at the base of his skull and raced down his back so that he visibly quivered. Damn fools will have me chasing shadows next.
Two DECKS BELOW THE MESS, in a section of the ship the pirates couldn’t dream existed, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo watched the Somali shiver. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Boo,” he said at the image on the large, flat-panel display that dominated the front of the room known as the Operations Center.
The op center was the high-tech brains of the vessel, a low-ceilinged space that glowed faintly blue from the countless computer screens. The floors were covered in antiskid, antistatic rubber, and the consoles were done in smoky grays and black. The effect, as was the intention, was a darker version of the bridge of television’s star-ship Enterprise. The two seats directly in front of the main display panel were the ship’s helm and weapons-control station. Ringing the room were workstations for radio, radar, sonar, engineering, and damage control.
In the middle sat what was known as the Kirk Chair. From it, Cabrillo had an unobstructed view of everything taking place around him, and from the computer built into the arm of the well-padded seat he could take control of any function aboard his ship.
“You shouldn’t have let them do that,” admonished Max Hanley, the president of the Corporation. Cabrillo held the title of chairman. “What if Mohammad Didi’s boys came back when the secret door was open?”
“Max, you worry like my grandmother. We would have retaken the Oregon from them and gone to plan B.”
“Which is?”
“I’d tell you as soon as I came up with it.” Juan stood and stretched his arms over his head.
He was solidly built, topping out near six feet, with a strong, weathered face and startlingly blue eyes. He kept his hair in a long crew cut. An upbringing on the beaches of southern California and a lifetime of swimming had bleached it white blond. Though he was on the other side of forty, it was still thick and stiff.
There was a compelling aura about Cabrillo that people picked up almost immediately but could never really put their fingers on. He didn’t have the polish of a corporate heavy hitter or the rigidity of a career soldier. It was more a sense that he knew what he wanted out of life and made certain he got it every day. That, and he possessed a wellspring of confidence that knew no bottom—a confidence earned over a lifetime of achievement.
Max Hanley, on the other hand, was in his early sixties and a veteran of two tours in Vietnam. He was shorter than Cabrillo, with a bright, florid face and a halo of ginger curls in the shape of a horseshoe around his balding head. He could stand to lose a few pounds, something Juan delighted in teasing him about, but Max was rock solid in every sense of the word.
The Corporation had been Cabrillo’s brainchild, but it was Max’s steady hand that made it such a success. He managed the day-today affairs of the multimillion-dollar company and also acted as the Oregon’s chief engineer. If any man loved the ship more than Juan, it was Max Hanley.
Despite the seven heavily armed pirates roaming the vessel and the twenty-two crew members held “captive” in the mess hall, there was no concern in the op center, especially on Cabrillo’s part.
This operation had been planned with meticulous attention to detail. When the pirates had first come aboard—arguably, the most critical moment, because no one knew how they were going to treat the crew—snipers positioned in the bows had held all seven Somalis in their sights. Also, the deck crew wore micro-thin body armor, which was still under development in Germany for NATO.
There were pinhole cameras and listening devices secreted in every hallway and room in the “public” parts of the ship, so the gunmen were observed at all times. Wherever they went, at least two members of the Corporation shadowed them from inside the Oregon ’s hidden compartments, ready to react to any situation.
The old freighter was really two ships in one. On the outside, she was little more than a derelict trying to stay one step ahead of the brea
ker’s yard. However, that was all a façade to deflect her true nature from customs inspectors, harbor pilots, and anyone else who happened to find themselves aboard her. Her state of dilapidation was meant to make anyone seeing the Oregon immediately forget her.
The rust streaks were painted on, the debris cluttering her deck was placed there intentionally. The wheelhouse and cabins in the superstructure were nothing more than stage sets. The pirate currently manning the helm had zero control over the ship. The helmsman in the Operations Center was fed data from the wheel through the computer system, and he made the appropriate course corrections.
All this was a shell over perhaps the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering ship in the world. She bristled with hidden weapons, and had an electronics suite to rival any Aegis-class destroyer. Her hull was armored enough to repel most low-tech weapons used by terrorists, such as rocket-propelled grenades. She carried two minisubs that could be deployed through special doors along her keel, and a McDonnell Douglas MD-520N helicopter in her rear hold, hidden by a wall made to look like stacked containers.
As for the crew’s accommodations, they rivaled the grandest rooms on a luxury cruise ship. The men and women of the Corporation risked their lives every day, so Juan wanted to ensure they were as comfortable as possible.
“Where’s our guest?” Max asked.
“Chatting up Julia again.”
“Think it’s the fact she’s a doctor or a looker?”
“Colonel Giuseppe Farina, as his name implies, is Italian. And I happen to know he considers himself the best, so he is after her because she is female. Linda Ross and all the other women have blown him off enough since he first came aboard. Our good Dr. Huxley is the last one left, and since she can’t leave medical in case there’s an emergency Colonel Farina has a captive audience.”
“Damned waste to have an observer with us in the first place,” Max said.
“You go with the deal you’ve got, not the one you want,” Juan pontificated. “The powers that be don’t want anything to go wrong during the trial once they get their hands on Didi. Farina’s here to make sure we follow by the engagement parameters they set out for us.”
A sour look crossed Max’s pug face. “Fighting terrorists using the Marquis of Queensbury rules? Ridiculous.”
“It isn’t so bad. I’ve known ’Seppe for fifteen years. He’s all right. With no way to extradite Didi through legal channels, because Somalia doesn’t have a functioning court system—”
“Or anything else.”
Juan ignored the interruption. “We offered an alternative. The price we pay is ’Seppe’s presence until we get Didi into international waters and the U.S. Navy takes him off our hands. All Didi has to do is set foot on this ship and we’ve got this in the bag.”
Max nodded reluctantly. “And we’ve loaded what looks like enough explosives aboard so he’ll want to see it for himself.”
“Exactly. The right bait for the right vermin.”
The Corporation had taken on what was an unusual job for them. They typically worked for the government, tackling operations deemed too risky for American soldiers or members of the intelligence community, on a strictly cash-only basis. This time they were working through the CIA to help the World Court bring Mohammad Didi to justice. U.S. authorities wanted Didi sent straight to Guantánamo, but a deal was hashed out with America’s allies that he be tried in Europe, provided he could be captured in a manner that didn’t include rendition.
Langston Overholt, the Corporation’s primary contact in the CIA, had approached his protégé, Juan Cabrillo, with the difficult task of grabbing Didi in such a way that it couldn’t be construed as kidnapping. True to form, Cabrillo and his people had come up with their plan within twenty-four hours while everyone else involved had been scratching their heads for months.
Juan glanced at the chronometer set in one corner of the main view screen. He checked the ship’s speed and heading and calculated they wouldn’t reach the coast until dawn. “Care to join me for dinner? Lobster Thermidor, I think.”
Max patted his belly. “Hux has me scheduled on the StairMaster for thirty minutes.”
“Battle of the Bulge redux,” Juan quipped.
“I want to see your waistline in twenty years, my friend.”
THE SHIP REACHED the coastline a little after dawn. Here, mangrove swamps stretched the entire width of the horizon. Hakeem took the wheel himself because he was most familiar with the secret deepwater channels that would allow them access to their hidden base. While this was the largest vessel they had ever taken, he was confident he could reach their encampment without grounding, or at least get close enough so they wouldn’t have much trouble unloading their cargo.
The air was hazy and heavy with humidity, and the moment the sun peeked over the horizon the temperature seemed to spike.
As the big freighter eased deeper into the swamp, her wake turned muddy brown from the silt her engines churned up. Hakeem had no idea how to read the fathometer mounted on a bulkhead at the helm, but only eight feet of water separated the ship’s bottom from the muck. The trees grew denser still, hemming in the ship, until their branches almost met overhead.
The channel was barely wide enough for him to maneuver. He didn’t remember it being so small, but then again he had never seen it from the wheelhouse of such a large vessel. The bow plowed into a submerged log that would have holed his fishing boat, but to the freighter it was a mere annoyance scraping along the hull. There was one more turn before they reached their base, but it was the tightest one yet. The opposite bank looked closer than the length of the ship.
“Do you think you can do it?” Aziz asked.
Hakeem didn’t look at him. He was still angry about the incident the night before. “We’re less than a kilometer from camp. Even if I don’t, we can unload the ship and ferry everything back.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel, bracing his feet a little farther apart. The prow eased into the corner, and he waited until the last second to start cranking the wheel. The ship didn’t respond as quickly as he had hoped and continued to drive toward the far bank.
Then, ever so slowly, the bows started to come about, but it was a little too late. They were going to hit. Hakeem slammed the engine telegraph to full reverse in hopes of lessening the impact.
Several decks below, Cabrillo sat in his customary seat in the op center. Eric Stone was by far the Oregon’s best ship handler; however, he was currently locked in the mess hall pretending to be Duane Maryweather. In this instance, Cabrillo wouldn’t have had him at the conn anyway. For waters this tight, Juan trusted no one but himself in control of his ship.
Though Hakeem had called for full reverse, Cabrillo ignored his command and hit the bow thruster instead. He also turned the nozzles of the directional pump jets that powered the ship as far as they would go.
Back on the bridge, it had to have seemed that a miracle wind had come up suddenly, although none of the trees moved. The bow swung sharply around as if pushed by an invisible hand. Hakeem and Aziz exchanged a startled look. They couldn’t believe the freighter could turn so quickly, and neither realized the vessel had also righted itself in the channel after coming out of the turn. Hakeem uselessly turned the wheel anyway, still believing he had control.
“Allah has surely blessed this mission from the start,” Aziz said, although neither man was particularly religious.
“Or maybe I know what I am doing,” Hakeem said sharply.
The pirate camp lay on the right-hand bank, where it rose until it was almost level with the freighter’s deck. The high ground protected the area from tides and spring flooding. There was a hundred-foot-long wooden dock built along the shore, accessible from the bank by several flights of steel stairs dug into the hard soil. The stairs had been taken from one of the first ships they had hijacked. Hakeem’s boat was tied to the jetty along with two other small fishing vessels.
Beyond the bank lay the camp, a sprawl of ha
phazardly placed buildings made of whatever could be salvaged. There were tents once meant for refugees and traditional mud huts, plus structures built of native timber and sheathed in corrugated metal. It was home to more than eight hundred people, three hundred of them children. The perimeter was defined by four watchtowers made of lengths of pipe and weatherworn planks. The grounds were littered with trash and human waste. Half-feral dogs roamed in lean, mangy packs.
Throngs of cheering people lined the riverbank and crowded the dock to the point there was a real danger of its collapsing. There were half-naked kids, women in dusty dresses with infants strapped to their backs, and hundreds of men carrying their assault rifles. Many were firing into the air, the concussive noise so common here that the babies slept right through it. Standing in the center of the dock, and surrounded by his most trusted aides, was Mohammad Didi.
Despite his fearsome reputation, Didi wasn’t a physically imposing man. He stood barely five foot six, and his self-styled uniform hung off his thin body like a scarecrow’s rags. The lower half of his face was covered in a patchy beard that was shot through with whorls of gray. His eyes were rheumy and ringed in pink, while the whites were heavily veined with red lines. Didi was so slender that the big pistol hanging from his waist made his hips cock as if he suffered from scoliosis.
There was no trace of a smile, or any other expression, on his face. That was another of his trademarks. He never showed emotion—not when killing a man, not when holding one of his countless children for the first time—never.
Around his throat was a necklace made of irregular white beads that on closer inspection revealed themselves to be human teeth fitted with gold fillings.
It took Hakeem fifteen frustrating minutes to maneuver the big freighter to the dock, once approaching so fast that the people standing on it fled back to the riverbank. It would have taken longer, but Cabrillo finally had enough of the Somali’s pathetic attempts and docked the ship himself. Pirates on the rail threw ropes down to the crowd below, and the ship was made fast against the pier.
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