by Tom Fugate
We ran for about five minutes before we saw him. The sea was smooth enough that we were not being pounded by the movement of our boat. His bright yellow boat reflected the rays of the setting sun and stood out from the water. When he sighted us he veered northward and toward deeper water. The boat jumped ahead as he put the throttles to the firewall. His turn swung back until he was headed due west. His lead was about a mile by the time I could make a turn toward the west myself. John took over the throttles and pushed them forward hard. My boat was now riding on a very small part of the hull as our speed topped out. We were gaining rather quickly but how long would it take. My boat had a big advantage in speed. I would have opened the weapons control panel and fired some 2.75” rockets in his direction but we had taken them out before we headed to the Bahamas. Their gun control laws were tough enough that we did not want to found out their about laws about bigger stuff. Most countries frown on people who bring weapons of war into their borders.
I motioned for John to take the wheel from me. I held onto the railing as he slid into my position. Jake moved right one spot to take John’s vacated position. Using the railing I made my way into the small cabin below the foredeck. As I moved through the area I braced myself against the movement of the boat. I was moving to the bunk along the port side. There was a storage locker below that bunk but that was not my objective. Working a hidden latch I opened a concealed and water tight locker between the inside hull and the outer hull. Unfastening Velcro straps I took out a rifle, a FN-FAL, and several magazines full of 7.62 NATO ammunition. There was also a small shoulder bag in the space. The bag looked as if it was full of 3 inch diameter balls about 5 of them. The rifle had an odd almost L-shaped gizmo on the muzzle. I put a magazine in the rifle and made my way back outside. The gap was shrinking and was down to a few hundred yards by the time I was again in the open air.
Reaching into the bag I took out one of the balls. The object looked like a big wad of bubble gum with a metal tube sticking out of one side. I slid the tube over the gizmo on the rifle. Chambering a round I then pointed the rifle in the direction of our quarry. The Morgan grenade was rocket propelled and packed a large explosive punch. In the end it turned out to be one of those items that never found a market and was replaced by other things. Flipping up the grenade sight attached to the rifle I aimed to place the grenade near but not on our target. I did not want to kill him outright. I fired and as the bullet went down the muzzle some of the hot gases were vented into the launcher under the barrel and ignited the rocket. With a loud whoosh and trailing flame the bomb went downrange. It impacted the water about 50 yards ahead and just to the right of the yellow boats path. The detonation threw a fearsome geyser of water into the air. Robertson veered away from the blast. I reloaded, planning to fire to the other side.
The boat in front of us then did the unexpected. They began a turn that would bring them back toward us. As they came out of the turn the scene was reminiscent of a joust of old. Two massive beasts were headed toward each other at breakneck speed. A series of flashes appeared on the other boat and then there were some impacts on our hull. Someone on the other boat was firing at us with some sort of automatic weapon. We ducked down. Removing the grenade from the rifle I flipped the selector to full auto and sprayed a burst at the other boat. They kept running directly at us and veered away at the last moment as the bodyguard, who was driving, decided ramming was not a good idea. Melvin Robertson fired at us as they passed and then threw something. His toss was well off the mark as his boat began to dance in our bow wave and then the wake. There was a thud and then water sprayed into the air. He had thrown a grenade. I raked the back of his boat as they passed. The big bullets pounded into the stern of his boat. Liquid flowed out of the holes. I must have gotten his fuel tanks.
You could see him screaming at his bodyguard. Robertson had the hand grip of a submachine gun in one hand and another grenade in the other. Watching them as we began our own turn I saw the second man struggling with Robertson. I saw the muzzle flashes as the second man was shot multiple times by the gun in Robertson’s hand. The man went down. Robertson dropped the gun and grabbed the wheel of the boat. Now at the wheel Robertson tried to get the boat turned back toward us. The grenade in one hand made his handling of the wheel awkward. After he made the turn I saw him ram the throttles forward to rush at us. I saw him move his right hand to near his left hand that was on the wheel of the boat. Without taking his hand off of the wheel he hooked a finger into the pin of the grenade to pull it free. I had reloaded and a fresh magazine was in my rifle. I prepared to fire directly at him when a hand reached up and slammed into Robertson’s crotch and then the arm wrapped around the leg of the standing man as he doubled over. I saw Robertson’s hand open as the pain hit him and saw the grenade fall free. My brain went into hyper speed mode and time seemed to crawl. A few seconds later, that seemed like an eternity, there was a bright light and then the sound of the explosion came across the water. A moment later there was a much louder explosion and the boat disintegrated into bright yellow pieces. The grenade had either ignited the gas tanks or ignited pooling leaking gas that my rifle fire had caused. When the shock wave got to us my brain slowed back to normal.
A dying man had decided not to go quietly. I guess in the end it was the same drugs that Robertson had smuggled and sold that had caused his death. A sane man would probably have taken his chances in court, but cocaine is not conducive to rational thought. Drug induced paranoia will never end well. I had really wanted to take our quarry in for trial. Dying was justice that was much quicker than he deserved. He was dead and I had not killed him so I had not succumbed to the siren call of revenge. I have said it before that Karma is a stone cold bitch. Robertson had found that out the hard way.
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The following is an excerpt from the next Lee Thomas novel.
“Port in a Desert Storm”
Coming soon
When he entered the room I was still sitting in the chair that my feet had been tied to. My hands were still behind my back as they had been when I was put into the chair in handcuffs. The look on his face was evil. There was no doubt that he was planning something very antisocial. I gave him my best “I know something you don’t know” look. He almost staggered with the intensity of my gaze. I saw the knife in his hand and did not think he was there to cut me free.
“You really don’t want to do that.” I said in a hard steady voice. I knew he understood English.
“Yes, I do. I shall enjoy this. You shall suffer before you tell me of your spying and then die.” His voice was hard and had the accent of a fluent but non native English speaker.
“Last chance to change your mind. You can still walk away from this alive.” He hesitated in mid step when I said those words and looked at him with a look that promised very bad things for him.
Snarling his progress toward me resumed. His grip on the knife changed to a point down grip for driving downward like an ice pick. He was so enraged that he did not notice the slack in the bindings around my ankles. The knife was raised above his head as he continued forward. He was used to fearful and helpless victims. The rage grew in his eyes when I smiled coldly and showed no fear of him.. Dealing with the fact that I did not cower from him warped his ability to think. There is a constant among bullies any where in the world. They do not deal well with loss of control, a loss of power over their victims.
“INFIDEL,” he screamed at me.
My feet stayed on the floor as they moved to each side and the ropes that were now just draped around them fell away. The soles of my shoes were solidly on the floor. Keeping my feet flat as I moved them sideways, the ropes would not be a problem. Standing quickly I spun slightly to the left to turn my body away from him. My right hand was gripping the side rail of the chair back as I rose. The light weight aluminum office chair crashed into his torso on the left side. I hit him with the chair one more time.
He staggered but did not go down. I dropped the chair. Using a large object as a club can quickly become awkward and I had already accomplished what I wanted with the chair. His left arm hung numbly. Still he continued toward me waving the knife. My left hand grasped the wrist holding the knife. My right arm slashed out and my wrist and forearm crashed into his throat. His eyes bulged outward as his trachea was hit, a devastating but not fatal blow. The knife dropped to the floor as he fell down. He gasped for breath and still tried to reach for the AK-47 that hung on his back by a sling. I kicked him viciously on the chin. The force imparted to his head by my carbon fiber toed hiking boots snapped his neck. His struggles stopped. Those were handy boots. They hit like steel toed boots and still pass through airport security.
I had not planned to kill him, but I would not be bothered by his death. The viciousness of he and his friends had been on display since my companions and I had been brought to this Iraqi airfield as human shields. I had bruises from the “persuasion” that had been used to handcuff and tie me. Besides, he had just tried to kill me. I have said this before, but it does bear repeating. Trying to kill me really pisses me off.
They should have done a better job of searching me. Of course, most people are not looking for a paperclip on the back waistband of someone’s pants. That paperclip is something that I had had with me for years. With a bit of practice standard handcuffs can be picked with a paperclip. Once my hands had been freed the rest was easy. Now I had to get the other hostages freed and get them the hell out of here. I knew from my last communication with the home office that a war was about to start and airfields would be hit hard. Everyone knew that the allied coalition was going to kick Sadaam’s army out of Kuwait but most people were not aware of how imminent the attack was. Getting my companions headed away from the airfield would be the easy part. I would get them headed in the right direction and then I would see about getting myself back on the safer side of the battle lines. I looked at my now deceased companion, making sure he was deceased and then looked around the room. Several things caught my eye.
“I can work with this.” I thought half out loud. On hand I had duct tape and rope. I checked the dead man’s pockets. There I found cigarettes and a lighter. I pulled the sling of the rifle off of his body and set the gun aside. There was a sheath for the knife that he had planned to use on me on the belt that held his spare ammunition. I got the sheath off and put it onto my own belt. He also had a copy of a Russian handgun on the belt. I did not bother with the holster and just put the pistol into my belt. The belt with the spare AK magazines I hung over my shoulder.
The room I was in was on the second floor of a storage/hangar building on this little used airfield out in the boondocks of Iraq. There was a window that looked out toward the field. There were aircraft scattered around the field under camo netting. Saddam had dispersed his air force to slow down its destruction. I pulled a table to a position near the window but well back from it. I lifted my very dead companion onto the table from his waist up. His feet I duct taped to the floor. The rope that I had found went under his arms and around his chest. I tied this end into a loop behind him. The other end of the rope went across a beam above him. The end of the rope went around a vertical pole in the open room. When I finished he was almost in a standing position but leaning slightly toward the window.
Now the duct tape got used again. This time I fastened the assault rifle to his hands. Next I took his shoe strings, tied them together and tied the resulting long string to the trigger of the Kalashnikov. I had already made sure that the weapon was ready to fire except for the safety being on. The other end of the shoe strings was tied off to a heavy box that I moved near enough to the table for the string to reach. I had found some lubricating oil on one of the shelves. I used that to soak a spot on the rope and then taped one of the cigarettes vertically onto that portion of the nylon rope. I left the cigarette unlit for the moment.
Now that I had my diversion ready to go it was time to find the other five people who had been brought here with me. They had been downstairs in this building when I had last seen them. Closing the door I quietly went down the stairs. The first ground floor room that I checked was empty, but it did contain something useful. There were still sealed plastic bottles of water in a small refrigerator near a desk. I drank down the water in one of the bottles and then used the knife to alter the end. I cut the cap end from the plastic container and used the duct tape to fasten it to the muzzle end of the pistol. My makeshift suppressor would only be good for one or possibly two shots, but that might give me enough of an edge to survive.