Dangerous Tides

“I’m going to remove that,” he said as he reached for her gag, his tone calm and reassuring. He was no stranger to dealing with the victims of crimes such as the one he had just averted. “Don’t cry out when I do, please. Everything is going to be all right.”

The woman let him take off the gag. She froze for a moment, then threw herself at him, shaking uncontrollably, trying and failing to choke back deep, wracking sobs. Bolan, the Beretta still in one hand, hooked one arm around her and let her cry. “My name is Cooper,” he said, using his Justice Department alias. “Matt Cooper. I’m here to stop what is happening.”

The woman sobbed something against his chest. It took Bolan a moment to realize she was saying something coherent. “The…the lounge,” she managed to utter.

“What lounge?” Bolan asked.

“Deck…deck five, and six,” she stammered. “The big lounge with the casino. They’ve got them…got them all there.”

“The hostages?” Bolan asked. The young woman nodded. “All right. What’s your name?”

“Kris…Kristen.”

“All right, Kristen,” Bolan said. She had recovered enough to realize she was half naked. She found her clothes, which were rumpled but intact, and quickly dressed. Bolan turned away and checked the bound pirate once more, making certain he was still out and not playing possum. Then he reached out and beckoned to her, careful to keep his expression and his body language neutral.

“Where are we going?” Kristen asked, clearly terrified.

“To another part of this deck,” Bolan said. “These are officers’ quarters. We’re going to find you another room. You’ll lock yourself inside and stay there. Don’t come out unless I come back for you or you hear a rescue team on the ship. All right?”

Kristen nodded, eyes still wide. After locking the unconscious pirate in the cabin and tucking away the pistol he’d recovered, Bolan took the woman by the hand and led her forward, listening carefully and moving as quietly as he could. Kristen, in bare feet, made no sound as they walked. The soldier finally found quarters that looked suitable and checked to make sure the door could be securely locked from the inside.

“You’re going to leave me here?” Kristen asked.

“Don’t worry,” Bolan said. “This will all be over soon. Stay inside, make no sound and leave the door locked no matter what you do. Can you do that?”

“Yes…I think so.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “Lock the door now.”

He waited as she did so. Then he found the nearest companionway and took it to the next deck. Deck 4, according to the details in his PDA, was roughly two-thirds guest cabins forward and amidships, with more officers’ accommodations aft. Before he could approach Deck 5 and the casino lounge, Bolan would have to sweep Deck 4 for hostiles—and he would have to do it silently. He could not afford to alert the pirates guarding the hostages, nor could he risk having enemies approach from below when he did make his raid on the lounge.

Time, he knew, was precious. There was a chance the pirates he’d taken out would be missed, even discovered. He would have to take his battlefront to the enemy before that happened, to retain the element of surprise.

With the Beretta 93-R in his fist, its sound suppressor firmly in place, Bolan slipped wraithlike among the cabins of Deck 4. For the most part, the area seemed deserted. Bolan had checked almost all of the guest cabins—in some cases finding clothing and other belongings strewn about, as if searched none too gently by pirates looking for valuables—until he found one where two men were sleeping.

The first pirate had passed out on a sofa in the suite’s small living area. Empty champagne bottles littered the carpeted deck around him. A second snored loudly in the bedroom beyond. There was no telling why, on a ship full of empty cabins, these two were sharing living space. The most likely explanation was that they’d been partying with booze taken from the ship’s stores. Bolan knelt silently over the emaciated, Indonesian man, who wore a pair of cut-off cargo pants and clutched a beat-up rifle. The man awoke startled and struggled to aim his weapon. Sliding the knife quietly from its sheath, the Executioner drew it across the man’s throat. He had no choice. The man had to be dealt with before he could raise an alarm.

The Executioner slipped into the suite’s bedroom and found the snoring pirate. The man was Asian, dressed in a dirty tank top and jeans. A machete had been left on the floor next to the bed. Bolan saw, then, that the bedclothes were stained with blood. Someone had died there, and died hard. Bolan’s features creased grimly as he looked down at the sleeping predator.

The man’s eyes fluttered open. As he opened his mouth to shout, Bolan let the knife in his right hand fall. While the blade was still in the air, his fingers found the butt of the suppressed Beretta. The weapon cleared leather with a practiced movement. As the muzzle came on target, Bolan’s finger took up the slack on the trigger, the entire motion smooth, fluid and fast. The 9 mm slug punched through the pirate’s open mouth and ended his cry before the shout could escape his lungs.

The Executioner wasted no time. He searched the bodies, again finding nothing useful. Then he stripped the bolt from the rifle and left it in a wastebasket in the suite’s bathroom. Finally, he retrieved his knife, cleaned it and sheathed it.

He was back on the hunt, moving from cabin to cabin, listening for movement and carefully, quietly checking each chamber. He could not leave anyone, could not risk discovery. The operation hinged on clearing Deck 4 before he made his run on Deck 5.

He checked his ruggedized PDA once more as he reached the aft third of the deck, the change in décor and the signs warning “crew only” telling him he was once more exploring officers’ quarters. He had checked only two of these, finding them ransacked and devoid of personnel, when he found the first of the canisters.

The waist-high metal cylinder was bright yellow and emblazoned with chemical and biohazard warnings in Cyrillic. The warnings looked as if they had been spray-painted on recently. They were much more clear than the fading paint on the scarred metal tanks themselves. Bolan had enough experience with the language—and what the words on the canisters represented—to know he was dealing with something very dangerous. He found several more canisters in more of the unoccupied cabins. Unlike the first few, however, these had electronic devices of some kind attached to them, blinking green LEDs on each device indicating they were active and possibly armed.

They were detonators.

The engagement had suddenly become something much more than a simple hijacking. Bolan used the built-in camera in his wireless PDA, capturing digital images of the canisters and close-ups of the electronic detonators. He transmitted these to Stony Man Farm immediately, relying on the satellite encryption built into the device to safeguard the intelligence he was providing. He would have to risk the transmission itself. It was unlikely the pirates had the kind of sophisticated gear that could detect outgoing wireless phone signals, satellite or otherwise, but it was not impossible. Given the weapons of mass destruction he was now standing among, they could have anything. He would take the gamble in order to learn precisely what he was dealing with, if possible. Hundreds of lives could depend on it.

Bolan completed his count of the canisters and began to work his way back to the companionway that would take him to the next deck. Until he heard from the Farm he could do nothing but continue. He was about to check his weapons once more before ascending when he heard the faintest noise behind him.

The soldier whirled and ducked as he did so. The machete sang through the air and crashed against the metal bulkhead. Bolan brought the Beretta up and just as quickly lost it; a savage, numbing blow slammed into his wrist and sent the pistol flying onto the deck.

Bolan reacted instantly, pistoning a powerful front kick into his opponent. The blow took his opponent in the stomach, doubling him over and sending him back. Bolan crouched and ripped the knife free from its sheath as the pirate he faced struck a pose with a machete. The chipped and well-used blade glinted in the corridor lights.

“That’s right, bad man,” the pirate said. “I got your ass, just me.”

“You’re American,” Bolan said, genuinely surprised. The man in front of him was easily six foot five and three hundred pounds, a muscled monster of a man. He wore a torn desert camouflage BDU blouse with the sleeves cut off and stained blue jeans tucked into U.S. Army-issue combat boots.

“That’s right, for whatever that shit means,” the man said, his teeth very white in his scarred, dark-skinned face. “I was in Iraq, man.”

“And now you’re a pirate?” Bolan said. Keeping the man talking was the only way to buy time. He could not afford to have the pirate alert the others before he was ready to free the hostages. Strangely, the man facing off against him seemed to have no urge to do so. Quite the contrary, in fact. The pirate looked relaxed, even pleased.

“I been bored a long while,” the American pirate said. When he smiled the scar creasing his forehead and left cheek turned his features feral. “Don’t go in for the rape-and-pillage act. Ain’t no sex offender, man.”

“You’re as much a part of this as the others,” Bolan said. “You’re a traitor to your nation.” He moved slightly, testing the pirate’s reactions. The big man shifted a bit but remained calm, his fingers flexing on the handle of his machete.

“Don’t matter what you think,” the pirate scoffed. “I fought for my country. And what did I get when I got home? A big fat bag of nothing, man. And a nasty letter telling me they could call me back up anytime they felt like, even though I did my tour! I ain’t nobody’s slave, man. First chance I got I was out of there.”

“To take up with murderers and hijackers,” Bolan said.

“Kicked around from place to place a while.” The man began to circle Bolan in the corridor, forcing the Executioner to move to counter. He eyed the Beretta on the floor, beyond reach. The man caught his gaze and shook his head. “Uh-uh, tough guy,” he sneered. “I’m tellin’ my story. Don’t want to interrupt me before I’m finished.”

“All predators have justifications, rationalizations,” Bolan said. He gauged the distance, calculating a strike, knowing that for the best effect he would have to make his move while the other man was talking. Already he was breaking several tactical rules, allowing an enemy to engage him in dialogue, refusing to attack the attacker immediately. But he needed time. If he could resolve this quietly he might still have a chance.

“I ain’t no predator, man,” the pirate said, frowning. “I’m just me. I fight, that’s what I do. There weren’t nobody to fight once we got the crew taken care of. Where you been hidin’? I’d have remembered a big boy like you. We’re gonna have this out, and maybe for a few minutes at least I won’t be bored while they finish their damned game upstairs.”

So it did not occur to the pirates, at least not to this one, Bolan thought, that external forces could or would infiltrate the boat. That was good news—it indicated limited thinking. Bolan continued to circle, his knife held before him, wondering when the pirate would make the assault he was sure to initiate once he was finished with his monologue.

“There anybody else in your crew?” The pirate nodded to Bolan’s Beretta on the deck. “How many more are there? Where they hidin’? You tell me, man, and maybe I won’t cut you up real bad before I kill you. Come on, man, tell a brother how many—”

Bolan struck. He lunged inside the arc of the machete, and drove the point of his knife in a half-circle comma cut toward the man’s throat. To his credit, the American pirate was fast. He snapped his head back and brought the spine of the machete up, trying to parry Bolan’s knife arm with the only tool available to him. Bolan brought his support arm up across his chest, out of the way, as he snapped the blade of the knife diagonally into the pirate’s machete arm. The man howled as his arm was opened up. He stumbled back, dropping the machete and clutching at the terrible wound.

“You son of a—”

Bolan stomped on the man’s ankle, snapping it. As the traitorous pirate drew in a breath to scream, Bolan fell on him, driving the butt of the knife into the man’s temple. He struck again, then a third time, hammering the pirate insensate before he could make enough noise to expose the Executioner’s position.

Bolan scooped up his Beretta, press-checked it and turned back to the fallen American. The big African-American was already beginning to recover, crawling to his knees despite the grievous slash in his forearm. He smiled shakily, one pupil visibly dilated, as he got his legs under him.

“Don’t,” Bolan warned.

The pirate surged forward.

The Beretta barked a triple-burst of suppressed subsonic rounds. Bolan sidestepped as the pirate plowed into the deck, a strange groan escaping from his throat. He stopped moving and seemed almost to deflate, the death rattle that racked his big frame an almost inhuman sigh. Then the body was very still. Bolan had seen more than enough death to know that the reaper had claimed this wayward American.

He took the body by the legs and dragged it into the nearest cabin. He could not cover the blood on the carpeted deck, so he did not try. Searching the corpse, he found something that worried him—a short-range radio of the type used by hikers, hunters and ATV riders. If he was carrying this it was possible the pirate had been tasked with checking in, or at least radioing back his status when queried. Obviously he’d been hidden somewhere among the officers’ quarters, evading Bolan’s sweep. It was more than likely he’d been guarding the biohazard canisters.

The numbers of Bolan’s combat countdown had fallen to zero. Reloading the Beretta with a fresh magazine, he also checked the Desert Eagle, making sure a round was chambered. With his fist full of 9 mm death and the Desert Eagle hand cannon by his side, the Executioner took one last look around.

The short-range radio began to crackle in broken English. Whoever was at the other end was asking for the pirate to check in.

Bolan started to run.

3

Tranh Khong held his Kalashnikov close to his bare chest, cradling it one-handed against his wiry frame as he breathed in the smell of fear. In his hand he clutched a dog-eared sheet of paper, printed from one of the machines in the bridge of the Duyfken Ster. He ran down the list with his eyes, his lips moving over missing and stained teeth, as he matched the two names to those listed on the screen of the wireless phone he also held in that hand. He then flipped the phone shut and stuck it in his pocket, pausing to adjust the heavy brown leather pouch slung haphazardly through the belt loops of his cutoff jeans. The device inside was as necessary, if not more so, than his phone or all the radio equipment aboard. Even so, it still galled him to have to haul it around.

“They are here,” he said in English, as much to worry the cowering captives as because it was the closest thing his band of thugs had to a common language. Forgetting his minor irritations, he looked out over the men, women and children sitting on the floor of the lounge. Most of them had their heads in their hands as they knelt or sat cross-legged amidst the colorful slot machines and other gambling tables. Tranh smiled a gap-toothed smile, jerking his chin toward a female couple near the middle of the multilevel lounge. Two of his crew hurried to obey, the worn French MAT-49 submachine guns in their hands no less deadly for their age.

They were a motley collection, Tranh and his pirates. The majority were Javanese, castoffs from the coastal scum that Tranh found easily enough when he made port and recruited in the local dives. One was even American, a man named Jones, whom Tranh used for his most brutal tasks. A couple were Indonesians of Chinese descent, and one was Vietnamese like Tranh. They wore ill-fitting and cut-down clothing, a mixture of military surplus fatigues—like the sleeveless camouflage BDU jacket Tranh wore open over his jutting ribs—shorts, combat boots or sandals, and whatever civilian clothing they liberated in raids. Thrust in their belts or worn in mismatched holsters and web gear were the weapons they had accumulated—everything from Kalashnikovs like Tranh’s, to modern and even antique handguns. They had a few M-16s, and a Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenade launcher that, Tranh had been told, had once been the war trophy of Afghani mujahideen.

All but one of his group were men. The woman among them, known only as Merpati, was as vicious a creature as Tranh had ever encountered. It would be wrong to say Tranh’s men passed her around. It was more accurate to say that Merpati chose to go from berth to berth among them, doling out her favors at her whim, drawing her knife on those who offended her or who would not stomach refusal on those rare occasions she offered it. Tranh himself had put mutilated corpses overboard on two occasions, after Merpati’s ill humor claimed the would-be lover of the moment.

The pirates’ backgrounds could not have been more diverse, really, but they had things in common. They were, to a man, killers and cutthroats, criminals wanted for all manner of brutal, miserable crimes. Theirs was almost a club, a gang, their predatory lifestyles joining them in a kinship none of them would have been able to express had they been fully aware of it. Tranh himself was only dimly capable of defining it within his head. It did not matter, ultimately. Only profit, only their continued success, mattered to Tranh. He had taken on this job as much for long-term goals of survival as for the short-term gain of the pay the Russian had offered him. One fed the other. One was the other. It was enough.

Adnan bin Noor chattered something in Malaysian, which Tranh understood well enough. Noor held one of the small walkie-talkies they’d liberated from a small fishing trawler raided months ago. Noor was not happy, and when Tranh heard what he had to say, Tranh was not happy, either.

Jones was not answering.

Tranh had picked Jones for the critical task of guarding the Russian’s tanks because he knew the man was not easily distracted. Jones lived to kill and seemed to take no pleasure in the other distractions Tranh’s crew pursued. He did not drink, to Tranh’s knowledge, and he never took his pleasure with those few women they encountered when raiding vessels.

If Jones was not at his post and not answering his radio, something was probably wrong. And that was bad, for if Tranh was to collect the ransom for the hostages and then fulfill the Russian’s demands in order to get the remaining half of the payment promised, he would have to adhere to the Russian’s timetable.

It was exactly the wrong time for one of the few men on whom Tranh was depending to stop being where he was supposed to be, to stop answering when he was called.

Tranh snatched the radio from Noor. “Jones!” he said. “Jones! Answer!”

He heard nothing but static.

Tranh began barking orders. The hostages sensed the sudden tension in his words and manner, and began to cower, whimper and cry even more. Tranh was tempted to have a few of them pistol-whipped, but he didn’t have time.

He instructed several of his men to take up arms and head to the deck below. They would find Jones and find out what had happened, what had gone wrong. Tranh, in the meantime, would do the only thing he could, and that was stick to the schedule the Russian had given him. He searched the room again for those he had just located.

“You,” he said, moving to stand over two of the captives. One was a blond woman in her forties, the other a brunette female in her twenties. They looked enough alike to be mother and daughter, which in fact they were. According to the pictures and names sent to him by the Russian, their presence confirmed by the passenger manifest, the two were Mrs. Pamela McAfferty and her daughter, Patricia, wife and daughter to Jim McAfferty. McAfferty was, Tranh had been told by the Russian, a “hawk,” whatever that meant, a congressman in the American state of New York.

Tranh did not know or care what the significance of any of that might be; he did not follow politics in any nation, much less the United States. He knew all that was required for his task. The woman and her daughter were family to a government official in the United States, and thus their presence would ensure that the Russian’s message was not ignored. They would also, hopefully, prompt the rich Westerners to pay the ransom he had demanded. The Russian had warned him the ransom was a ruse, a means of lulling their victims into thinking this was a typical hijacking, and that meant there might not be time to have it paid. That was all right. The Russian would compensate Tranh for any losses in that quarter, and so far he had made it clear that he had the money to do so.

It was really that simple. Tranh despised complications and sought to keep things as simple as possible, always.

“We weren’t doing anything, I swear!” The mother looked up at Tranh with tears in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt us! We’ll do what you say!”

“Mom,” the younger woman spoke. “Stop.”

“Yes,” Tranh said, smiling. “Do what the girl says. Your husband. Her father. Jim McAfferty, the government man.” It was not a question, and Tranh’s mediocre English did not diminish the menace in his words. “Yes?”

The mother began sobbing. It was the girl who looked Tranh in the eye, impressing the pirate captain with her mettle. “Yes, my father is Jim McAfferty. You know that already or you wouldn’t have asked.”

Tranh laughed, crumpled the printout of the ship’s manifest and tossed it casually aside. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you right. Wu!”

The Chinese pirate known as Wu, one of the two with a submachine gun trained on the women, stepped forward. He knew his role. Wu had been educated in the West and was fluent in English. He would therefore deliver the written message the Russian had prepared. Wu was easily among the more intelligent members of Tranh’s crew, and could be trusted to do this properly. The Russian had demanded Tranh’s assurances on this, as it was a very important component of the operation. Tranh had no fear of making such guarantees. He had heard Wu drone on in English often enough, about matters that were well above his head. Tranh knew himself just well enough to know that he was not smart. He was cunning. He was ruthless. He was clever. But he had never considered “smart” to be one of his qualities. He did not care, either, so long as he was able to lead his crew and make money.

Of course, also unlike Wu, he was not a child molester and a murderer who had been forced to flee more than one small nation when his habits became known. But such were the paths taken by the floating debris of the world’s people before they came to the docks that Tranh frequented in his recruiting.

Tranh sometimes wondered, when he grew introspective like this, if perhaps he was not more intelligent than he gave himself credit for. As always, he dismissed these thoughts before they could weigh him down.

There was work to be done, money to be made.

He spoke a few words of command to Noor, who nodded. The pirate stepped over several mewling hostages and, from behind one of the circular bars dominating the colorful, decadently appointed lounge, extracted several pieces of satellite video broadcast equipment. With practiced ease—Noor had been some sort of electronics technician before murdering his lover’s lover, if Tranh remembered rightly—he began to assemble and connect the equipment. First he ran the power cables. Then he assembled the small portable reflective dish, positioning it at the end of the lounge at the open entrance to the rear balcony. Finally he positioned the camera and switched it on, motioning for Wu to drag a chair from one of the gambling tables. The Chinese pirate did so, taking up his seat. From his pocket he produced the folded and refolded sheets of paper that contained the Russian’s message.