Dangerous Tides

Once he was staring at them—a sea of yellow canisters, each with an electronic detonator affixed—he was almost taken aback by just how many the Russian had managed to capture and move. The hall was filled with them, and there was no doubt in Bolan’s mind that the explosions awaiting each were more than enough to produce a toxic cloud of incredible size. Based on the intelligence the Farm had provided, this number of canisters would be enough to poison almost the entire city.

He heard approaching footsteps and raised the Beretta.

“Beautiful, is it not?” The captain stepped into view. He was dressed in loose clothing in the local Javanese style. He held an electronic detonator in his hand.

“Place the detonator on the floor,” Bolan said, his Beretta trained on the man.

“This is a standoff,” the Russian said, laughing. “At least until I decide I wish to die. And then I will push this button and the entire city of Semarang dies with me.”

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Phil Elmore for his contribution to this work.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

—James Russell Lowell

1819–1891

There are many reasons a man hoists the black flag and takes what he wants. When he does, he’s not a romantic figure or a pirate. He’s a predator and he’s going to pay for his crimes.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

1

The SH-60B Seahawk helicopter churned purposefully out of the sky, dropping perilously close to the water and raising a wake in the already rough seas below. The chopper’s twin engines pushed it through the twilight at the urging of Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man pilot and long-time friend of Mack Bolan, the Executioner. Grimaldi imagined he could feel the spray of seawater on the helicopter’s belly as he skimmed the waves.

“We’re coming up on the insertion point, Sarge!” Grimaldi said into his throat mike.

Behind him, in the open bay of the Seahawk, Mack Bolan lowered a pair of anti-fog goggles over his eyes. Then he checked the fit of the Boker Orca dive knife strapped to his thigh over his wet suit. He had already verified that the watertight pack strapped to the small of his back was double-buckled and secure. It was almost time to leave his headset—and Grimaldi’s chopper—behind.

“Understood, Jack,” he acknowledged, keying his own mike. “Final checklist.”

“Gear?” Grimaldi said.

“Secure.”

“Plumett case?”

The Executioner checked the seals on the heavy black case, then slung it over his shoulder and across his back.

“On board.”

“Air supply?” Grimaldi asked.

Bolan checked the fit of the mouthpiece on the modified pony bottle he wore on his chest. The bottle was fixed to one of the shoulder straps of his backpack, cinched tightly in place with nylon webbing. The small gauge on the high-tech bottle read Full.

“Check,” Bolan said.

“DPV?” Grimaldi ticked off.

Bolan reached down and switched on the standby power of the electric, self-contained Driver Propulsion Vehicle Stony Man Farm had provided for him. The muted status LEDs were all green. The mounted GPS locator displayed his position relative to his target coordinates. The DPV was a sealed electric motor with a single-use power supply, essentially a giant propeller cylinder and rudder assembly. Twin joysticks jutted above and behind, containing triggers to adjust the throttle and steer the unit.

“Ready,” Bolan said.

“Good luck, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “And good hunting.” The cocky pilot turned all business as he watched his instruments. “On my mark, Striker,” he said, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “Five…four…three…two…one…mark.”

At Grimaldi’s signal, Bolan pulled off his headset and shoved the DPV out of the chopper, the twin sticks of the machine tight in his fists. He hit the water below like a stone. The heavy device pulled him beneath the roiling waves. He paused as he descended, orienting himself and taking air from the pony bottle, watching in the darkness as the GPS unit pointed the way to his destination.

Bolan thumbed the machine’s controls and held on tightly as the almost-silent device began pulling him rapidly through the water. He adjusted course with a few taps of the right-hand trigger, managing his depth by angling the DPV and his body with it.

Above him, Grimaldi would be piloting the Seahawk back to the Perry-class frigate James Richardson. The firepower available to Bolan and to Stony Man was considerable, but no amount of heavy weaponry could do the job that now faced him. No, to succeed, Bolan would have to use stealth, mounting a soft probe into enemy-held territory in order to liberate innocent men and women.

It was an all too common scenario for the Executioner.

Bolan had covered a lot of ground in the past several hours, first by jet, then by helicopter, then on the frigate, only to take to the skies once more to be dropped into the cold sea below. It had started with a single telephone call, routed to Bolan through channels from Washington by way of Stony Man Farm. The circuits connecting them were complex, but the scrambled phone briefing from Hal Brognola—speaking to Bolan from the big Fed’s Justice Department office in D.C.—had been straightforward enough.

“A cruise ship has been hijacked,” Brognola had said without preamble.

The natural assumption in the modern age was that yet another terrorist group was claiming responsibility for yet another act of violence against helpless men, women and children. Brognola quickly explained that the problem was, if anything, even more serious.

“What we have,” the big Fed said, “is an act of piracy.”

“Pirates?” Bolan had not been sure he’d heard correctly.

“It’s a growing and very serious issue in certain parts of the world,” Brognola said. “As you know, pirate attacks off the cost of Africa have surged, cutting off aid to countries like Somalia. The South China Sea alone, which sees a third of worldwide commercial shipping, sees about half of the pirate attacks recorded by the International Maritime Bureau every year. We’re talking about a cost to cargo insurers upwards of a hundred million U.S. dollars a year.”

“Big business,” Bolan agreed.

“And getting worse,” Brognola said. “It’s not just Africa and other backwaters. Nobody’s immune.” He paused. “Our friends the Chinese executed over a dozen Chinese pirates not too long ago, after convicting them of murdering the crew of a freighter near Hong Kong waters. Without doubt, however, the worst pirate activity is in Indonesia. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia all patrol the Malacca Strait,” Brognola went on, “which is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. But they can’t be everywhere.”

“What’s the profile of the attacks?” Bolan asked.

“The pirates have historically targeted commercial shipping vessels, but they’re branching out. Now we’re seeing civilian tourists targeted. A couple of years ago, an American cruise ship was attacked in Somali waters by pirates in speedboats who fired machine guns and an RPG at the larger ship.”

“I remember that. Didn’t they use some kind of sonic weapon to defend themselves?”

“A long-range acoustic device,” Brognola said. “The LRAD supposedly helped drive off the pirates, but there’s debate about just how effective it was. In reality the ship rammed one of the pirate boats and ground it under her bow. That was enough to do the job.”

“So what’s happening now?” Bolan asked.

“It’s terrorism and that’s all it is. The motive may be financial rather than political, but they’re the same enemies you’ve faced down time and again.”

“What are the details?” Bolan asked.

“The Duyfken Ster,” Brognola said. “Holland registry, part of a cruise line that operates regularly in Indonesia, is now in the hands of pirates. The ship was taken off the coast of Java after making port in Semarang.”

“How did they do it?”

“The reports are a little sketchy,” Brognola said, “but at least a dozen men, maybe more, in two high-speed launchers, came at the ship from either side and boarded her using grapples. They swarmed the bridge, we believe, and established armed control over the rest of the ship. As you can imagine, there was no real resistance. Using the ship’s radio, they’ve relayed a demand to shore.”

“What do they want?”

“Money,” Brognola said. “And lots of it. They’ve threatened to kill the passengers if they see any overt show of force.”

“So what’s our involvement?” Bolan said.

“A couple of the passengers are connected,” Brognola said. “Family members of a U.S. congressman were taking the cruise. While officially the U.S. has done nothing but condemn the taking of the ship, much less acknowledge that the pirates have lucked in to high-value hostages…unofficially, the president wants these pirates taken down, and hard.”

“Why no official involvement?” Bolan asked.

“The usual reasons,” Brognola sighed. “Territoriality. Issues of sovereignty. Stubborn pride. None of the local governments involved wants to admit it is not capable of solving the pirate problem, even though the situation is widely known to be out of control. If we come in and mop it up for them, we’ll have shamed them on the world stage. The U.S. isn’t well-liked in that corner of the world, of course, and we’ve been told, more or less politely, to mind our own damned business.”

“Even if lives are at stake?”

“You know as well as I do, Striker, that political expedience is always going to trump human life.”

“Not for me,” Bolan said. “Never for me.”

“And not for the Farm,” Brognola nodded. “The Man has given us his blessing. We need results. And we need them quickly and quietly.”

“Then let’s do it,” Bolan had agreed.

Several hours and a few thousand miles later, the Executioner held tightly to the control sticks of the DPV, the wake churned by the machine’s motor beating an almost pleasant staccato against his wet suit-clad chest. His waterproof pack tugged against its straps. He was making good time and, according to the GPS unit on the DPV, he was exactly on course.

It did not take long for the preprogrammed coordinates—updated every few seconds as Stony Man Farm coordinated real-time satellite surveillance overhead—to match Bolan’s GPS-tracked location. The soldier paused to input a brief set of commands on the DPV’s keypad. Using the electronic locator, he oriented the DPV and pressed the key.

The little machine whirred quickly away, freed of Bolan’s two-hundred-plus pounds of man and equipment. Bolan watched it disappear into the murky darkness of the underwater world before kicking with his feet, pushing himself toward the surface.

The Executioner let his face mask, then his head, break the surface as he took in his surroundings. The stern of the giant cruise ship loomed ominously above him in the moonlight. He waited, quietly treading water, counting off the numbers in his head.

The shock wave, when it came, was not terribly large, but he could feel it nonetheless. The explosives packed into the nose of the DPV obliterated the machine at its preset coordinates, just off the bow of the ship. The charge was designed to produce as much noise and light as possible while posing little risk to the ship itself.

As the bomb blew, Bolan reached back over his shoulder and released the seal on the Plumett case. The heavy Plumett AL-54 he carried had been tuned and modified by the Farm’s armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger. Its range was more than adequate for the task. Floating in the water, Bolan lined up the launcher on one of the struts of the deck openings above the shipboard marina. He fired.

He could hear shouting from somewhere forward on the ship as the lightweight carbon fiber grapnel hit its mark, the Plumett’s 8 mm polyester rope streaming behind it. Without hesitation, Bolan pulled the quick release, letting the Plumett case fall away. He scrambled up the polyester line hand over hand, his traction-surfaced wet-suit gloves providing purchase as he went.

Bolan landed as quietly as he could. He released the waterproof gear bag and began removing its contents, methodically and efficiently gearing up after he removed his flippers. The combat harness inside the bag contained a holster and magazine pouches for his Kissinger-tuned Beretta 93-R machine pistol, which rode in its custom shoulder holster with sound suppressor attached. Over the right thigh of his wet suit, Bolan strapped on a rig for his. 44 Magnum Desert Eagle. Spare magazines rode in the belt pouches on the black web belt he clipped around his waist. Also in a pouch on his waist was a knurled aluminum combat flashlight.

Bolan took out waterproof, no-slip synthetic moccasins to cover his feet. They would give him silent traction on the cruise ship’s decks. The last item he removed was his ruggedized PDA phone, the muted face of which he illuminated briefly. According to the plans in the PDA, he was on Deck 3, above the ship’s raised marina. When the steel mesh enclosure of the marina was lowered to form a pool, guests on the cruise ship could use that to swim in the sea and also avail themselves of the Zodiacs, water skis and sailboats kept on hand. But partying on the water was the last thing on the minds of those trapped aboard the vessel. Bolan was keenly aware of the presence of innocents on board, all around him. He drew the Beretta and press-checked it to verify that a 124-grain subsonic hollow point round was chambered.

The soldier pulled the grapnel free from its position wrapped around a railing strut. He hooked it through the empty gear bag and tossed both over the side so they would not be found and give away his presence prematurely. Then he stalked forward.

He made his way through the ship’s galley, which was dark and smelled of spoiled food. He dared not risk using the flashlight he carried, as it would give away his position to anyone lurking nearby. Instead he crept among the counters, half-crouched, threading his way past fallen pots and pans and puddles of alcohol dotted with broken glass.

There were bullet holes in some of the bulkheads. Dried blood coated the floor and made a grisly path toward one of the walk-in coolers. Bolan had no doubt he would find bodies inside. Either the pirates had felt it necessary to make an example of some of the crew, or even the passengers, or they had met resistance and snuffed it out. Either way, it was likely the cooler was now a morgue. The Executioner passed it by, knowing there was nothing he could do for those already dead.

Moving silently, Bolan paused just outside the entrance to the galley. Through the open hatchway he could smell tobacco. There was a sentry out there. Pressing himself against the bulkhead, his back flat on the painted metal, he leveled the Beretta 93-R across his chest. Then he took his left hand, balled it into a fist and simply knocked on the bulkhead.

He tapped three times, waited and tapped again.

“Budi?” a voice asked, uncertain. The sentry called Budi’s name twice more before asking something in what Bolan assumed was Indonesian. Finally, Bolan rapped on the wall yet again.

“Budi!” the sentry said angrily. Bolan listened as the man walked to the entrance and stepped through.

“Sorry, Budi’s not here,” Bolan whispered. The startled sentry turned to look at him, a Kalashnikov held in his hands, ready to open fire. Bolan triggered a single suppressed round from the Beretta. The head shot dropped the terrorist, dead before he hit the deck. Bolan snatched the AK-74 before it could clatter to the floor.

Several seconds passed as Bolan waited, listening. There was no more movement from beyond the galley. Holstering the Beretta, he placed the terrorist’s weapon on the deck and quickly searched the corpse. He found nothing of use—a spare magazine for the Kalashnikov, a Pakistani-made folding knife, a few loose coins from countries in the region. It took only a moment to drag the sentry to the galley’s cooler. He was not surprised to find it filled with corpses, most of them dressed as cooks and shipboard stewards. Bolan added the pirate to the pile and secured the cooler door.

Scooping up the Kalashnikov, Bolan popped the cover. He pulled the bolt, recoil spring and plunger assembly free, hiding the now-useless rifle behind a metal garbage bin. He dropped the parts inside the bin itself. There was no sense leaving functioning weapons behind. It was a lesson he’d learned on the many battlefields he’d walked through the years.

Satisfied, Bolan continued on, through the bowels of the ship, determined to free the passengers. The pirates had expected two hundred or more soft targets, plus the crew. He was going to give them a lot more than they’d bargained for.

The Executioner had come aboard.

Hell was coming with him.

2

A sweep of the ship’s luxury restaurant yielded nothing. The faint smell of food starting to spoil filled the air. Many of the place settings held half-finished meals, glasses of wine overturned, leaving red stains across the white linen tablecloths. Here and there were pools of dried blood and bullet holes. The pirates had not gone easily with the passengers or the ship’s crew. That much was obvious.

Bolan crept through the restaurant and checked his bearings. Beyond the restaurant, the remainder of this deck—to the bow—held officers’ quarters. There was also a medical facility. Bolan found that and checked it first, finding some of the supplies scattered around, the drawers and cabinets emptied. A few empty plastic bottles littered the floor. Bolan picked one up. It was a prescription painkiller, from the label. The pirates must have gone through and swept up anything with narcotic value, of which there would be plenty among medical stores. From the mess made of some of the first-aid supplies, it was possible that one or more of the invaders had been wounded during the attack. Either that, or they’d allowed medical treatment to be given to wounded crew or passengers. There was no way to be sure yet.

As he stalked through the officers’ cabins, Bolan paused at each hatchway, listening. When he heard nothing, he moved on to the next, and repeated the process as he moved through the section. He was getting close to the bow when he heard muffled cries from one of the cabins. He stopped, the Beretta 93-R steady in his grip, as he assessed the situation.

A woman cried out, her voice muted by something, most likely a gag. There was the sound of a hand slapping flesh, and another cry of pain from the woman. Then a man’s voice, saying something angrily—Bolan was certain it was in Vietnamese, a language with which he’d had some experience—followed by a second voice, in broken English.

Bolan waited as long as he dared, as the two men laughed and again struck the woman. He gritted his teeth. When the man speaking in English said, “Let’s finish with her,” he knew he had no more time to assess the threat.

The Executioner used his left shoulder to shove the partially open door the rest of the way, launching himself through the hatchway with gun in hand. As he hit the floor and rolled on his leading shoulder, he quickly surveyed the room. On the bunk against one bulkhead, two men held a young woman, wearing only her underwear. One had a kitchen knife, possibly taken from the galley. An ancient Tokarev pistol had been left on the small metal writing desk nearby. The pirates—both of them dark skinned and clad in mismatched camouflage fatigues—looked up in disbelief as the intruder tumbled into the small cabin.

That look of disbelief was all one of them would ever wear again. The man with the knife got out a single curse in Vietnamese before a 124-grain hollow point from Bolan’s Beretta silenced him forever, snapping his head back as he crumpled onto the bunk. The knife clattered to the deck.

The second pirate was smarter and faster. He threw himself at Bolan, probably realizing he had no other chance. The smaller man slammed into the soldier, knocking him back against the writing desk, one hand scrabbling at the desk as the other locked a viselike grip on Bolan’s gun hand. Even as he grappled with the pirate, Bolan knew the man was going for the unattended Tokarev.

Bolan had greater upper-body strength, but the pirate fought like a madman, fear of death and surging adrenaline lending strength to his desperate efforts. Bolan managed to lock his elbow around the pirate’s free arm, effectively stopping his attempts to grab for the Tokarev. Then he slammed a series of vicious knee jabs into the pirate’s gut. The man cried out and bent over, losing his hold on Bolan’s wrist. The soldier immediately clubbed the pirate on the back of the head with the Beretta. The man went limp and Bolan allowed him to collapse to the floor.

The woman on the bunk began to sob into her gag. Her eyes were wide and moved from Bolan to the dead man beside her, then back to Bolan again.

“It’s all right,” Bolan said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” From a small pouch on his web gear he produced a flat roll of black fabric tape and two plastic strap cuffs. He used the tape to gag the unconscious pirate. Then he used the cuffs to secure the smaller man’s ankles and cuffed the wrists behind the man’s back.

Once the prisoner was secured, the Executioner turned to the distraught woman. Bolan judged her age at early twenties, at most. Smeared makeup and tangled blond hair did not hide her good looks. The pirates had obviously known what they wanted when they picked her out of the crowd. Bolan eased closer to her, slowly, careful not to startle her.