by Peter Nealen
This was going to be an interesting entry.
The hatch was dogged shut, and when Hank tried to open it, it wouldn’t budge. They’d secured the bridge, which the original crew probably hadn’t had time to do when the pirates had boarded, presuming this had been a commercial ship that had been captured and converted. “Torch up!” Hank looked over his shoulder to see who was closest.
“Make a hole!” Juan Rodriguez wasn’t a small man, and with the addition of his gear, his armor, his horse collar, and the Broco torch on his back, he had to fight to squeeze past the other Triarii, even as they flattened themselves against the bulkhead to let him pass. He made it to the top, though, and with Hank’s help, got the torch unlimbered, pulling the igniter out of a pouch on his belt to spark the torch to life as Hank opened the oxygen tank strapped to the back of Rodriguez’s plate carrier.
The torch ignited with a hissing roar, and Juan went to work.
Sparks and molten metal flew as the torch burned through the steel. Hank gritted his teeth as some of those sparks settled on his exposed forearms and his neck. It was a narrow, close passageway, and there just wasn’t any good place to shelter from the cascade of sparks, at least not without losing security on the door, or leaving too much space that would have to be covered once Rodriguez got the hatch open.
The last bit of metal gave way under the concentrated, molten fury of the torch and Rodriguez stepped back, kicking the hatch open as he did. Only long practice and a well-developed sense of balance kept him from going over backward down the ladderwell. That, and the fact that his brother was a couple steps behind him, with one hand held up to keep him from going over.
Hank went through the hatch with Nakota on his heels.
As he turned forward, toward the big line of windows that looked out on the loot-strewn weatherdeck, covered in piping for the chemical tanks, now lit faintly pink by the rising sun, he saw a flash, and something hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer.
He staggered from the blow, only realizing that he’d been shot in the front plate as Nakota leveled his own rifle over his shoulder and shot the pirate in front of him in the face from about six feet away. He gasped for his wind, his chest aching from the impact, but kept his rifle up, pivoting toward the main console just as the pirate chieftain came at him with a ragged scream.
Hank got one shot off, blowing off half the pirate’s ear, before the little man was on him, grabbing his rifle’s forearm and throwing his entire weight onto it, driving the muzzle toward the deck as he lunged for Hank’s throat, snapping his teeth as if he was going to try to bite Hank’s throat out.
Hank pivoted again, recovering from the twin shocks of the bullet to his front plate and the sudden attack at close range, and drove the little man into the corner of the bulkhead just outside the hatch. He slammed him into the steel and heard something crack at the impact. The pirate slumped in agony for a moment, but he clearly understood that he was fighting for his life, and he redoubled his attempts to wrench the rifle out of Hank’s hands—never mind that it was slung around his body—while simultaneously trying to keep Hank between him and the rest of the Triarii who had already stormed onto the bridge, killing the last of the pirates, another skinny little man with a Norinco M4 clone.
With a wrench, Hank pulled the pirate away from the bulkhead, hooked a foot behind his leg, and dumped him on the deck. He was still fighting, so Hank clamped down on his rifle with one arm and reached back, pulling his combat knife off his belt.
The pirate saw it coming, but he couldn’t react fast enough. Hank stabbed him in the throat and kept stabbing. He didn’t stop until his hand was slick with blood and the pirate wasn’t moving anymore.
He’d nearly decapitated the little man.
Standing up, he found that Keith, Adams, and Lovell had already cleared the radio room and the battery compartment next to it. The bridge was secured. He keyed his radio, his voice still a harsh, hoarse rasp, as every fiber of his torso hurt. “This is Six. Status?”
“This is Two. Living spaces secured.” LaForce sounded a lot more chipper than Hank felt, especially considering they’d already been up for a day and a night.
“This is Three. What we can access of the engine room and the pump room is secured, but it gets hairy down here.” Navarro paused. “Boss, it’s a wonder this boat hasn’t blown sky-high already. It’s a mess down here. There’s a lot leaking out of the pump room that isn’t going to mix well with steam.”
“So much the better,” Hank croaked. “It’ll make it easier to send this tub to the bottom.” He sucked in a painful breath. “Still, let’s hope that it holds together long enough to sweep it for captives. I don’t want to send any of them down with it.”
***
It was almost noon by the time they clambered back down the ladders and into the Zodiacs. Hank was giving the sky careful, wary looks. If the Chinese had satellites watching their allies, this could get dicey in the long run.
That the pirates had been Chinese proxies had become certain as they’d swept the decrepit ship. For one thing, it had turned out that the Brilliant Titan had been owned by a Chinese-held company, and had disappeared without any note only a few months before, only to show up in pirate hands south of Indonesia. That wasn’t nearly as damning as the shipping schedules and overhead imagery that were clearly printouts from Chinese satellites.
Which was another reason that Hank was watching the sky, increasingly uncomfortable about continuing this op in broad daylight. As near as he could tell, they’d accounted for all the pirates, and short wave and satellite internet monitoring wasn’t picking up anything about heavily-armed raiders disguised as fishing boats. At least, not according to Harbin on the Bell Challenger, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on such things.
But if the Chinese eyes in the sky were watching…
There was nothing for it. They’d just have to hope they hadn’t attracted enough attention for the Chinese to start tracking the Jacqueline Q and the Bell Challenger as they continued north. Especially after the S-70s had come in to take the handful of surviving hostages off the ship.
None of them had been in very good shape. They’d been emaciated, sick, and had clearly been beaten. All of them had squinted at the morning sunlight as if they hadn’t seen the sun in days, if not weeks, as they’d been loaded up.
Hank had steered clear. His job was killing pirates and making sure the ship went down.
He had too many memories of Arturo to want to get too involved with rescued prisoners. Emotional attachment wasn’t something he could afford anymore.
LaForce cast off the last of the lines and brought his Zodiac puttering out to join the other three where they were roughly holding station about a hundred yards from the ship. The small craft that had been tied up alongside were already starting to sink, either because the Triarii had shot holes in them, or they’d just opened the drains on the newer and fancier ones. They’d all get sucked down with the Brilliant Titan in the next half hour, anyway.
With LaForce’s boat joined up, they turned south and opened up the throttles. They didn’t have as far to go this time. The Jacqueline Q was already visible on the horizon.
Behind them, a faint crack announced the charges going off. The Brilliant Titan had already been sitting low in the water—it had taken some effort, but the Triarii had fully ballasted all the tanks, filling them with saltwater and bringing the old tanker as low to the surface as possible. A few waves had even slapped over the gunwales before they’d disembarked.
The ballast alone wasn’t enough to sink the ship. The charges against the “sea chests” in the engine room, and more against the longitudinal ribs at the bulkhead between the engine room and the pump room had been necessary to finish the job.
It wasn’t an impressive death. The tanker got lower and lower at the stern, until she finally slipped under the waves, dragging the still-moored small raiding craft with her.
One less Chinese proxy to worry about.<
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Far too many to go.
Chapter 4
Hank had never been to the Philippines before. That was a little odd, in retrospect, given the sheer distances his Marine Corps career had covered. There’d been a lot of Eastern European and African deployments at the time, though, so he’d somehow never ended up on a WestPac float.
Still, there was a strange familiarity to the town of Narra, as he and Chan walked up the narrow lane from the docks. They could have hired a tuk-tuk or rented motorcycles—which seemed to be the two primary sorts of vehicles on Palawan, that they’d seen so far, anyway—but after a couple months on ship, both men were more than happy to stretch their legs.
Hank looked around, trying to put his finger on what seemed familiar to him. After about half a mile, he thought he had it. “This looks an awful lot like Mexico.”
“I was just thinking that it seems a lot like Kurdistan, but wetter.” Chan had a history that Hank had wondered at more than once. He was older, pushing fifty, but still hard as woodpecker lips. Not that he looked it. He looked slightly dumpy, almost soft, until you saw him in action.
Chan and his family had emigrated to the US from Hong Kong before the “One Country, Two Systems” lie had finally died its inevitable death. He’d spent time in the Marine Corps and the Army, before going contract and spending years deploying to trouble spots all over the world. He’d seen more of the world than Hank had, and Hank had been all over the place.
He was also still fluent in Mandarin, which was part of why he’d jumped on this operation.
“Huh. I guess Third World architecture is similar all over.” Hank watched as another pair of motorcycles buzzed by, one of the riders ducking beneath leafy tree branches that draped over the narrow road. “Lots of cinderblock and corrugated sheet metal.”
Chan nodded. Both men had dressed down, donning the lightweight khakis and loose polo shirts they’d brought but hadn’t worn since leaving the Gulf of Mexico, and they looked as much like tourists as two professional soldiers could. They were carrying, but their subcompact SIG P365 Nitrons disappeared easily beneath their untucked shirts. “Cheap materials are cheap materials, and when most people are poor, they’re going to use what they can get.” He glanced around some more. “Lot of color, though. That’s why I thought of Kurdistan. The rest of Iraq just sticks with plain cinderblock or dingy white plaster. A lot of the Kurds paint their houses bright colors. Greens, pinks, oranges, stuff like that. Seems the Filipinos do the same.”
“Saw some of that in parts of Mexico, too.” Granted, Hank and his section hadn’t seen a lot of Mexico, but Cuidad Camargo had still been a good distance south of the border. They’d seen a fair bit of territory on the way down there.
A Kia Bongo truck passed them as they reached the outskirts of town. “Lots of Kia and Toyota, too,” Chan remarked.
Hank was watching the people even more than the rest of their surroundings, taking in their attitudes, their demeanors. For the most part, the residents of Palawan seemed to be just going about their business, with none of the general furtiveness he’d come to expect in an active warzone.
He dropped his voice slightly, so as not to be overheard. “Seems like some of the intel we got about what’s been going on here on Palawan might not be all that spot on. Or at least it painted a bit more of a violent picture than reality bears out.”
“Par for the course, really. Incident reports can be a bit misleading until you get on the ground.” Chan would know. “Palawan’s been in this weird ‘Schrödinger’s Island’ state for a while now. You’ve got the wealthy Western tourists calling it ‘The Best Island in the World,’ ‘Paradise on Earth,’ blah, blah, blah. At the same time, Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped people and dragged them back to Mindanao, the New People’s Army’s been active here, and now it sounds like the Chinese have been pushing pretty hard for the last year.” He snorted. “Sound familiar?”
Hank laughed without humor. “Yeah. Sounds like Mexico.”
“Just hopefully with fewer cannibalistic slasher gangsters.” Chan shuddered a little. “I’ll take jihadis and Communists over narcos any day of the week.”
“You and me both, brother.” After some of the things he’d seen in Mexico, Hank wasn’t sure if he wanted to never go there again, or if he just wanted to head south to hunt down and kill every last cartel member he could find. It was a fine line.
They turned right and headed up Puerto Princesa South Road. Hank was already sweating like a pig, though not so much from exertion—while there hadn’t been space for a lot of distance PT aboard the Jacqueline Q, he’d kept his section in shape with a lot of kettlebell work and even more burpees and eight count bodybuilders. And squats. Lots and lots of squats. But the heat and humidity were plenty oppressive this close to the equator, and after years in the Southwest, he wasn’t used to the latter anymore.
As they passed the sprawling, green-painted Narra Municipal Hall, Hank spotted the first sign that things weren’t quite as idyllic on Palawan as the tourist literature—or even the locals’ demeanor—would have suggested. Two Mahindra Enforcers with red, white, and blue Philippine National Police markings were parked near the street, with a dozen men standing around them in black fatigues, wearing body armor and helmets and armed with M16s. The PNP were taking the threats seriously.
Both Triarii section leaders pointedly ignored the Philippine police, but they were carefully scrutinized as they went past. A few of the cops gave them a look and dismissed them, but a couple watched them intently, focused more on Chan than on Hank. Hank knew he looked American, but Chan could easily pass for mainland Han Chinese if he wanted to, Western clothing or no.
It said something about what had been going on that the PNP was watching the obviously Chinese man more than anyone else.
Still, despite the discomfort of the hard stares they were getting from the Philippine cops, they kept strolling along and soon were back in the quiet of a road only lightly trafficked by motorcycles, tuk-tuks, scooters, and the occasional Toyota Hilux or Kia Bongo.
It wasn’t far to the corner of Osmena Avenue, and they strolled up toward the increasingly crowded and partially covered Narra Public Market. It wasn’t quite like some of the souks that Chan had been in, but open-air markets are open-air markets. The Public Market wasn’t their destination, anyway.
About a block north, they came to a small, mostly open restaurant, painted yellow and orange with a yellow fence around a small patio, bearing a sign that read, “burgerbytz,” in all lower-case letters. Hank gave it a slightly uncertain look, but then shrugged. It didn’t look like the absolute cleanest of restaurants, but he’d eaten in far worse places.
After all, the rule of thumb during his time at Camp Pendleton in California had been that if the burrito joint looked like it belonged in Iraq, the food would be better than in any of the shinier places. And it had been a solid rule.
Chan had clearly been in far worse places, because he didn’t even hesitate as he walked in, though he might have muttered something about preferring an actual Filipino place instead of a burger joint.
The man in the back corner who raised his hand as he spotted them looked vaguely Filipino, except that he stood half a head taller than almost anyone else in the restaurant, and probably weighed at least two hundred pounds. He wasn’t exactly out of place, but he was different enough to attract Hank’s notice.
The two Triarii sat down across from him. “Welcome to Palawan.” The man had a half grin on his face, and his accent was pure Californian. Which Hank didn’t exactly like, not after the last time he’d been in California.
There was a reason most of that state was considered a no-go zone for most Triarii. For a lot of regular Americans, too, for that matter.
“Nice enough place.” Hank held out a hand and Miguel Benavides shook it. The retired 1st Special Forces Group Master Sergeant had a grip like a vise. “Seems more like the tourist pamphlets than the intel reports.”
Benavidez chuckled a
s he shook Chan’s hand. Hank hadn’t met the man before, but he’d been briefed. With an American father and Filipino mother, Benavidez had been a natural pick for 1st Special Forces Group, so he’d naturally spent half his career in 10th Group, working in Eastern Europe and Africa. Only later on had he managed to wrangle an assignment to 1st Group, and had finished his career there. With extensive contacts on both sides of the Pacific, thanks to his time in SF and his family, he’d been the natural contact man to fly out to the Philippines prior to the bulk of the Triarii force arriving by sea.
If the Chinese hadn’t been directly involved in the cyber attack that had taken down about sixty percent of the US power grid, or the rash of terrorist bombings that had all but paralyzed the supply chain in the immediate aftermath, they’d certainly moved fast to take advantage, seizing de facto control of most of the US’ West Coast ports under the guise of “humanitarian relief,” and then supporting and inciting Mexican cartels and the revolutionary Soldados de Aztlan to invade much of the Southwest, up to and including attempting to wrest control of the West Texas oilfields from American hands.
Now, months later, retribution could begin to move forward.
“We need to wait for Doug.” Chan sat back in his chair and scanned the menu.
“He’s already here.” Benavidez waved toward the back. “Ran to the latrine just before you guys came up the road.”
Hank just nodded as he picked out his lunch. There was surprisingly little hurry at this stage in the game. So long as their presence and purpose hadn’t been compromised to the ChiComs, they could take their time. They had to. Guerrilla warfare is a patient man’s game.
“So, seems a lot quieter here than some of the intel we got Stateside suggested.” Hank decided to feel Benavidez out. The man had flown out just before the Jacqueline Q had sailed, so he’d had a couple of months on the ground to gather as much information as he could, as well as get a good handle on the local atmospherics. “I mean, hell, we were getting reports that the Vietnamese Army was openly fighting Chinese proxies on this island.” He glanced around at the incredibly normal townscape around them. “Doesn’t look like that from here.”