But there was work to be done before I’d be able to have my fun for the night. My first objective was to disable all of Báltaí’s comms. I wanted no distress messages sent out. Then I’d shut down the engines. Once the ship was mine, I could get on with the real business of the evening: dispatching tangos.
21
1746. USING THE BULKHEAD TO MASK OUR MOVEMENTS, I made my way amidships, to the crew hatchway that would bring us to ladders leading up past the quarterdeck and the saloon deck to the upper deck. That’s where the bridge and the communications shed were located.
We came up to the hatch, and stacked opposite the hinge side, tight against the bulkhead and careful to keep our heads below the thick double-paned glass of the hatch’s port. With my pistol locked in my right hand and held close to my body, I eased my left hand along the cold metal, and grasped the handle firmly so I could e-a-s-e it gently open.
The fucking handle moved on its own. I jerked my hand back just as the door swung open.
He came through the hatchway, a cigarette in his left hand. Obviously, he was no sailor, because his focus was straight down, looking down toward his feet, moving ever so carefully so as to clear the hatch combing without tripping, or losing his balance as the ship rolled in the swells.
Mr. Landlubber didn’t see me until it was too late because: his gaze was elsewhere, he hadn’t expected to come upon anyone, and his eyes were accustomed to the bright fluorescent interior lighting, and it was dark on deck. When he did see me he dropped the cigarette and opened his mouth in panic, as if to scream.
But it was too late. I’d shifted my grip on the Beretta even as he’d opened the door, and using all my energy, I hit him squarely upside the temple with the side of the pistol, breaking as many bones in his face as I could with the sucker punch. Mr. Landlubber went down, and as Boomerang slid behind me and eased the hatch closed I dropped on top of the sumbitch, pounding his face with the butt of the pistol until he stopped moving. I caught my breath, wiped the bloody weapon on his clothes, then stuck it in my belt. Then, still straddling the crewman, I broke his neck, just to make sure he wasn’t going to make any more noise.
I rolled off him. Quickly, Nod and Timex searched him. He carried no weapon—that was a good sign—or identification. That made sense, too. What the hell do you need a wallet for in the middle of the fucking ocean? The two SEALs lifted Mr. Landlubber’s body off the deck, carried it to the side, and rolled it over the railing into the roiling sea.
Now the clock really was ticking, because sooner or later—and the weight was certainly on the “sooner” part of the equation—somebody was going to miss the asshole we’d just tossed overboard. I silent-signaled. We stacked again, I drew my pistol and then eased the hatch open.
1748. Show Time. I cut the pie and made entry. The passage was deserted. There were two ladderways, one leading up, the other going down. Mick’s portside crew was descending—going to hell in a hand-basket if the situation went bad. Me, I was the eternal optimist: I knew we were heaven-bound.
Pistol at low ready in a two-handed grip, I led the way up the narrow ladder, moving deliberately tread by tread, trying to keep my wet running shoes from squishing audibly as I climbed. My head poked above the landing on the saloon deck. On the forward-most part of this deck were the masters’ cabins: two-room suites each, with private baths for Gerry and Gwilliam. Brendan O’Donnell’s quarters had to be somewhere on this deck, although we didn’t have a clear picture of where. It didn’t matter: I’d come back and find out as soon as we’d neutralized the rest of the ship. Meanwhile, I followed the sketch in my head and located the ladderway to the upper deck.
1749. Scan and breathe. Scan and breathe. I could feel the tension in my upper body as I took the first three treads of the ladder. Tight behind me, Boomerang’s pistol covered the field of fire mine did not. We moved in a balletic syncopation, the choreography having been worked through years of working as a team. Unlike the goatfuck op that opened this book, we were now a well-oiled unit, operating with the cool efficiency of a killing machine. We knew one another’s body language; we’d taken fire together—and returned it. We had stood shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, against formidable odds, and we’d won every battle.
Tonight was no different. Oh, sure, my breathing was shallow, and there was a slight feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach. But that is always the case when a Warrior goes into battle. Show me a man who has no sense of fear, and I’ll show you a man I do not want working with me. Show me a man who can handle his fear, whose fear gives him the edge in battle, and I’ll show you a man I want as a part of my unit.
1750. Upper deck. Still no sign of opposition. The radio shack was forward, between the bridge and the captain’s quarters. Since you never bypass an unsecured area during a takedown, we’d shift positions: Nod and I would deal with the captain’s bunk room; Boomerang, Timex, and Digger would go on to the radio shack. With luck, I’d catch up in time to join them and take down the bridge.
I was six feet from the spar-varnished oak door to the captain’s cabin when we heard the first gunshots, coming from below. Three hammers—those are double taps—followed by two shotgun blasts. So much for surprise. No need to be stealthy anymore. I hit the cabin door with my foot, smashing it inward. I went in crouched, moving fast, taking territory as I went. My pistol was in low ready. I was scanning and breathing, scanning and breathing, searching for threats. On the starboard side of the small cabin, a gray-haired man of about fifty was reaching for a small automatic pistol that hung in a scabbard holster off the headboard of his single bunk.
I used my Command Voice. “Drop the fucking gun.”
He hesitated. Good. My pistol came up. I got a good sight picture, and as the sumbitch realized what I was doing and started back for his weapon, I shot him once-twice-thrice. No, I didn’t quite make all three center mass shots. One of ’em hit him in the upper leg. The second caught him in the belly, and the third in the shoulder.
He screamed at me in Kraut. But he didn’t stop thrashing around, trying to get his weapon out. The fucking ball ammo—full-metal-jacket—wasn’t worth jackshit. I heard more gunfire. His face turned toward the noise. I rushed him, my pistol up and my sight picture improving by the millisecond, and shot him twice in the head. That quieted him down.
I sensed something behind me. I whirled, Beretta up, and saw Nod’s face in the doorway. “Radio shack secure.”
“Good.” I jerked my thumb toward the corpse. “Grab his gun. Check this place for intel and paper. Then catch up with us.”
Nod didn’t have to be told what to do twice. “Ayeaye, Skipper.”
I backed out of the captain’s cabin, turned to port, and kept going. I looked into the radio shack as I continued toward the bridge. A single crewman sat, sprawled facedown, atop a desk crammed with commo gear. Like the captain, he wasn’t going to be going anyplace soon—except overboard.
I ran onto the bridge, saw that the wheelhouse was secure, and waved at Digger. “Follow me.”
I reversed course. I charged down the passageway to the ladder leading down to the saloon deck, Digger following at my heels, his sawed-off shotgun at port arms.
I turned, and started down the ladder. At the bottom, a dark-skinned crewman brought the muzzle of his submachine gun up.
“Gun—” I threw myself back as he pressed the trigger and hosed the ladderway. He must have caught a 240-volt line with a couple of shots, because the ceiling of the ladderway started to spark. I rolled away from the bullets. But not quickly enough: a ricochet caught the side of my neck. Shit, that hurt. I hoped it hadn’t nicked an artery.
Digger lunged past me, his shotgun arm extended down the ladderway. One-handed, he fired twice blindly. The shotgun blasts were answered by a scream. I rolled to the head of the ladderway and peeked around. I saw the subgun lying at the bottom of the stairwell. No time to lose. I scrambled to my feet and dropped down the steep, narrow flight of stairs, landing so hard at the
bottom that I heard the tendons in my ankle pop.
Oh, fuck, I didn’t need to be crippled. Not now. Not ever. I kicked the subgun toward the bulkhead, turned, and tried to find a target. A trail of blood led down the carpeted passageway, toward the stern. From below, I heard more sporadic gunfire.
Nod, a Walther in his hand, dropped down the ladderway. I handed him the submachine gun—an old Uzi mini in 9-mm—and continued forward, and jerked my thumb toward the blood trail.
“You take him down. Digger and I are going forward.”
1754. Carefully, I pushed at the handle of the doorway that led to the Kelleys’ suites. There was no reaction, so I eased the thick metal door open, cut the pie, and visually checked the corridor.
It was empty. It was short, not more than twenty feet long. There were two doorways at the far end, one facing the other. Those would lead to the master suites. A second pair of facing doors were at my end of the passage. Those were the “honored guest” staterooms.
Time to pay a social call. I kicked in the port-side door. The cabin was dark. I reached in and switched on the light. The stateroom appeared to be empty. But I wasn’t about to assume anything. As Digger covered me I did a quick search and came up dry.
I turned and kicked in the opposite doorway. The second stateroom was just as dark as the first. If this had been a normal op I would have tossed a flash-bang, or better, a concussion grenade, and then gone in to pick up the pieces. But we didn’t have any grenades, which meant I was going to have to do this the hard way. And so my hand moved toward the light switch. But then, my nose twitched with the scent of aftershave, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. And we all know what those sensory signals mean.
I flung myself onto the deck, the Beretta extended in both hands, just as a volley of gunfire erupted from the darkness. I tracked the muzzle blast and fired at it from my prone position. There was a scream. I started to scramble to my feet, but Digger smacked me back onto the deck, firing both barrels of his O/U, then quick-reloading. “He’s still moving,” he shouted, and fired again.
An Irish-accented male voice screamed “Oh, fuck” from the darkness of the room. I didn’t give a shit what Brendan O’Donnell was doing. I wanted my hands around his murdering throat. This was one of the TIRA scumbags who’d taken children hostage and killed my shipmate.
“Hit the fucking lights.”
They flashed on. I blinked, then found my target. He was on his knees behind the bed, trying to unjam his pistol. I churned my feet and lurched forward, threw myself over the bed, and landed on top of the sumbitch, sending him onto his back, writhing. He was tall and broad shouldered, with longish hair and pale white skin, and the sort of defined muscles that come from regular sessions on the weight pile. There was also blood on the front of his dark T-shirt. Good—that meant Digger or I had hurt him.
But we obviously hadn’t done our jobs well enough, because the cockbreath still wasn’t down for the count. First things first: I knocked his pistol away. It went skittering across the rug. His hands free, he came back at me, raking at my eyes, then smashing the heel of his hand into my jaw, hard enough to knock it out of alignment.
Oh, geezus that hurt. But I didn’t stop. I wrapped him up, my elbows and knees doing a job on whatever parts of his body they could find. My fingers worked his face, trying to rip his eyes out. We rolled around for a while, each of us fighting for the advantage. And then, and then, suddenly, I had him. I could feel it in the pit of my gut.
Oh, he was strong—jailhouse strong—but he didn’t have staying power. That’s what real-life training is all about. That’s what Warriordom is all about. It’s more than a matter of pumping iron and doing reps. It’s about keepin’ on keepin’ on, no matter what the odds, no matter what your condition.
I rolled on top of him, got my face close to his ear, bit it—hard—and then whispered into what was left of it that he was going to die—soon. He spat in my face and tried to bite my nose off. I replied by head-butting him, sending him smack back onto the deck. That shook him up. He dropped his hands, giving me a small opening, and I clapped both his ears between my hands. He tried to wriggle away, but there was no way I was going to let go of him now. I straddled his shoulders and got my hands around his neck, my thumbs just below his Adam’s apple—and then I applied pressure and broke his windpipe. I mashed down as hard as I could. I told him: “Butch Wells died because of your fucking pals—now it’s your fucking turn.” I applied terminal pressure and watched his eyes cloud over and roll back into his head.
And when he’d stopped moving, I took my pistol and put a round in his head, just to make sure he wasn’t going to ever get up again. No sense taking chances, right?
I looked down at my watch. It was 1756. Time for the Kelley brothers to die.
Timex and Goober appeared in the passageway. “Engine room’s secure, Skipper,” Goober reported. “Six tangos down and out.”
Timex said, “Bridge is secure, too. We bagged a total of seven, including the one we tossed overboard.”
Mental calculation: six plus seven gave me a baker’s dozen. “Any survivors?”
The satisfied grins on my men’s faces told me everything I had to know.
“Anybody hurt?”
Goober reported that Mick had a cut on his face—a ricochet. Nothing serious. And Boomerang’s team was undinged.
Then it was Show Time again. “Okay, assholes, let’s go to work.”
We stacked in two two-man teams. Timex had picked up an Uzi somewhere in his travels. He took point on the port-side door, with Goober backing him up; Digger and I stacked outside the starboard suite.
“Go—” I stood back and kicked the fucking door in. It splintered inward, knocked off its hinges.
Pistol up, I made entry. The suite was as lavish as its pictures in the Observer Sunday magazine. All done in polished wood, brass, and chrome. I swept into the living room. It was empty. To my left—looking toward the bow—was a cracked doorway. I approached the door carefully, eased it open, making sure no one was concealed behind it, reached for the light switch, and flipped the lever up.
Lights on. I made entry into what was one of the Kelleys’ bedrooms. There was a king-size bed—rumpled. And a serving tray, with a half-eaten sandwich and a pint glass half-filled with beer.
I searched the bedroom and adjoining bath carefully. One Kelley was gone—probably trying to hide somewhere.
But the other one was In Custody, as they say on the America’s Most Wanted. I could hear him screaming obscenities. Obviously, from what he was saying, he didn’t think much of Goober’s mother. Which wasn’t going to do him a lot of good in the personal well-being department, because Goober was quite devoted to his mother.
Yup—the bitching stopped in midsqueal. I walked across the hallway and found Goober standing atop Gwilliam Kelley, who was on the deck, moaning. From the way Gwilliam’s nose was bleeding onto the five-hundred-quid a square yard pastel Aubusson, Goober had given the asshole a whole new nasal passage or two.
I looked approvingly at my two SEALs. “Bring him up top to the bridge. I’m gonna look for Gerry.”
1804. Gerry wasn’t hard to find. Not at all. He was on the stern, trying to figure out how to lower the launch. He wasn’t having very much luck. He may have been a software genius, but as a sailor he was mechanically challenged.
I came up behind him. He whirled toward me. His face went through a kaleidoscopic range of expressions. And then he said, “You!”
I gave him my War Face. “Remember what I told you, Gerry? We talked about retribution. Well, it’s time to do the Old Testament thing.”
He gave me the fancy-ass dojo moves again. His hands did all the fucking Oriental shit that hands can do. Claw. Hammer. Whip. Sword. Axe—all that intricate stuff, with the accompanying whoops and screeches and hai-karate, kung-phooey horse puckey. He was a real Bruce Lee wannabe.
And then he came at me—whoop-whoop. I let him get close, and then I
stepped aside, smacking his face with my open palm as he went by.
He looked at me, incredulous, a puddle of drool moving down his chin.
“Yo, Gerry, you losin’ it already?”
He gritted his teeth and came at me again. I gave him an elbow in the back of the neck that staggered him against the stern rail.
“I am the only son of the God of War,” I told him. “The Old Testament God. The God of the desert. The Nameless Name.” I advanced on him. He came at me. Feinted left, then right, then left again, and then struck.
It was a decent hit—his fist caught me in the solar plexus hard enough to take my breath away. But as you know, I do a thousand sit-ups every day, and my stomach is about as taut as a fucking fifty-five-gallon oil drum. So, he dinged me, but he didn’t hurt me.
I raised my arms in a tolerable imitation of a bar punk egging an opponent on in the parking lot of Danny’s Dew Drop Inn or similar establishment. “Hey, Gerry, whatsa matter? You hit like a girl.”
Oh, that riled him. He came at me again. This time I simply sucker-punched him. He never saw it coming because he was tunneling. All he saw was my face—which is what he was aiming at.
Y’know, I wondered how many thousands of pounds sterling he had spent on his martial arts training. Probably a lot of them. But here is the thing: all the dojos in the world and all the wisdom of all the karate masters will not train you for a real life encounter with someone who wants to kill you, and will do whatever they have to do to achieve that objective.
The real world is not the mat in a gym. The real world is not The Karate Kid Part Six. The real world is concrete pavement, or gravel, or cold water. The real world is nasty and tough and bloodthirsty. I know—because I AM the REAL WORLD.
Detachment Bravo Page 30
