[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel

by Richard Marcinko

  It wasn’t clear whether this was my shipment or not. It might be, and that was one reason I wanted to tag it. But even if it wasn’t, following it would give us more information about the smuggling network, and potentially more data on connections with the bank, our friend Veep, and Allah’s Rule. It would also keep us at least one step ahead of the Christians in Action, who as far as we could tell didn’t know about the shipment or the connection to Bangladesh.

  The craft we were using was not your plain vanilla Zodiac, if there is such a thing. Longtime readers—and shouldn’t you all be?—will remember my good friend Steve Seigel,27 aka “Indian Jew,” among other embroidered titles. Steve is now CEO of Zodiac North America, and despite admonishments to the contrary, continues to associate with riffraff like yours truly. Even more incredibly, he has opened the doors of the factory and its R&D department to Red Cell International. It’s an arrangement that benefits us both—we get to play with their newest toys; they get to see what they can do in real-world situations.

  Clearly, I have the better end of the deal.

  The craft Steve’s people had loaned us featured a motor that made use of a new fuel technology. Combined with technological improvements related to the hull, it had a tremendous range and a decent speed, without sacrificing anything in the way of seaworthiness—assuming you didn’t mind getting wet.

  Even so, we couldn’t carry enough fuel and still have room for weapons and ourselves. Because of that, we’d arranged to be refueled in the morning, with a helo drop courtesy of Trace. Assuming she could tear herself away from Garrett for a few hours.

  A navy operation would choose from a variety of tools to find the target; everything from satellites to small UAVs could be employed to track down the needle in the haystack. All we had was Shunt’s access to the company computer system, a pair of infrared glasses, and a small marine radar unit. Shunt got us into the general vicinity, but a night fog rendered the IR practically useless. The radar, however, came through. Made by Raymarine, it had roughly a fifty-nautical-mile range, and we found the cargo ship with no trouble.

  I wish I could say that about our approach. Murphy was working overtime as Mongoose plotted to take us up into the ship’s wake, where we would be especially difficult to detect. The wind, which had been nonexistent when I jumped, had gradually whipped itself into a frenzy. That diminished the fog, but the whitecaps rose so high that it felt like the bow was being pummeled.

  “Weather report said this was supposed to hold off for another couple of hours,” groused Mongoose, struggling to keep us on course. I’m not sure that Noah could have done a better job against the sudden tempest. A sea squall literally materialized from nowhere, constructing itself from a momentary depression or whatever it is the meteorologists use to explain Murphy’s various whims.

  In one way, the sudden surge was good news—it meant there would be less of a chance that anyone would see us coming aboard, let alone be on deck when we climbed up. But we still had to get there, and for a good half hour that seemed to be an impossible mission. A blind man climbing Mount Everest on his hands and knees would have made more progress than we did.

  The worst of the storm suddenly slipped past, and Mongoose found himself struggling to keep us from ramming the side of the ship. He pulled us alongside the stern of the heaving monster, bucking the waves as Shotgun and I prepared to go aboard.

  There are a number of ways to get onto a ship at sea clandestinely. The easiest is to find a line trailing off the stern or one of the sides. It sounds ridiculously inept, but more often than not someone aboard has forgotten to square away a line (or rope, for you landlubbers). The line inevitably ends up trailing off through the water, a veritable escalator to the deck. But the sailors aboard the Indiamotion—our target ship’s name—were operating under the supervision of a competent master and mate; nothing dangled off the side.

  Shotgun took a collapsible aluminum pole from the side of the boat and began uncollapsing it, extending the base and adding a similar pole until he had a veritable Empire State Building of tubular aluminum in his hands. At the tip we rigged a hook and a thin but strong line, and as our little rigid-hulled boat bounced in the water, Shotgun tried to lasso the line onto the ship above.

  Indiamotion was a medium-sized vessel that could be used for bulk carrying and containers, though it carried most of its cargo in the latter on this voyage. The ship had a relatively low gunwale amidships, and the three rails gave us plenty to aim at. However, the waves not only affected Shotgun’s judgment but his balance in the boat, and he had a hell of a time getting his hook into position. The pole clanked and clattered until finally a good nudge from the waves—or Murphy—sent Shotgun flailing backward. He just managed to keep himself from the drink.

  The same could not be said for the pole.

  I fished it and the line out while he cursed at Mongoose for not keeping the boat steadier. This led to a terse debate about the fine points of seamanship. In the meantime, I took matters into my own hands—I grabbed the grappling hook, made sure our line was clear, and pretended I was a cowboy.

  I got the hook around the rail and a post on the first try.

  “All aboard,” I yelled at Shotgun.

  “You lucky son of a bitch.”

  “Skill,” I told him, swinging up on the line.

  Murphy must have heard me bragging. With my first pull the ship lifted suddenly and our boat ducked down. I smacked my right knee against the side. It felt like I’d been kneecapped with a sledgehammer. It was all I could do to hang on.

  “You goin’ up, or what?” yelled Shotgun behind me.

  I grappled my way to the deck, falling rather than climbing over the rail. Sucking some serious wind, I righted myself, got my MP5 into position, and scanned fore and aft to make sure we hadn’t been spotted.

  I almost wished we had. Shooting someone would have taken the edge off my pain.

  Shotgun popped his head over the rail and came aboard. I moved across the deck to a spar connected to the cargo crane. Pulling off my waterproof ruck, I took out a small package wrapped in plastic. Cutting the covering away revealed what looked like a slightly oversized pack of off-brand cigarettes wrapped in a thin filament wire. The wire was an antenna. I twisted it around the spar and taped the box beneath it on the side opposite the deck, hidden from view. The box held a satellite radio scanner, which would pick off radio frequencies used on the ship and transmit them back to Shunt, literally phoning them over our own circuits. Once he had the frequencies, he could then use our equipment to monitor the transmissions.28 There was also a GPS sending unit in the box, which would help us keep track of the ship independently of the shipping company’s system.

  I tested the setup by using my phone to call Shunt.

  “Strong coms,” he told me. “They’re not talking to anyone at the moment.”

  “Let me know if you hear anything good.”

  “Will do.”

  I took a few steps back to make sure the wire and device were hard to spot. Shotgun, watching the deck, gave me a thumbs-up between bites of his Twinkie.

  “Sea spray adds a little flavor,” he said, unwrapping another.

  “Put down the food and let’s find the container with our drugs,” I told him.

  “Aye, aye, Cap,” he said, stuffing the snack cake in his mouth.

  Not only was Indiamotion a relatively modest-sized vessel, but according to the documents that Shunt had tracked down, she was carrying only eleven containers. We had the serial number of the one with the drugs, thanks also to his detective work. More importantly—since I suspected that it might have been switched—Shunt had managed to track down the origin of nine of the other ten containers and determined that none of them had originated in India. He had numbers and even color descriptions for all of them. Worst-case scenario, we could tag the two remaining containers and follow each to its destination.

  Or so I thought.

  “Say, Dick, I’m not the greatest at coun
ting,” said Shotgun as we moved toward the bow. “But I’m thinking there’s more than a dozen containers here. Like, a lot more.”

  Over sixty, in fact. Either the ship had taken on cargo that didn’t appear on its records—imagine that.

  Or we were on the wrong ship.

  The name was right, at least. While I called Shunt and told him to recheck his data, Shotgun began scrambling up the stacked containers, inspecting each one. The rain and waves made it difficult to hang on, and it was slow going. The ship’s running lights shed little light on the containers, and Shotgun had to be as discreet as possible using the flashlight attached to his wrist.

  “That’s the right one, Dick,” said Shunt. “Listen, an Italian navy vessel just hailed them. They’re only a couple of miles west.”

  “They ask to board?”

  “Negative. But it sounds like they’re going to come real close.”

  I told Mongoose over the radio to turn on the radar and track them. He also moved the Zodiac to the other side of the ship.

  “How long are you going to be?” he asked.

  “We’re going as fast as we can. Slip away if you have to. Just make sure you’re not seen.”

  “Roger that.”

  Fifteen minutes passed. Shotgun found two of the containers Shunt had said were not ours, which at least confirmed that any mistake he’d made was consistent. But our container was nowhere to be seen.

  “A thousand to go,” he said.

  “Don’t exaggerate,” I told him. “I’ll take the next row.”

  “With that knee?”

  “My knee’s fine.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “Nah.”

  “That cursing before was just celebrating how happy you felt.”

  “Something like that.”

  The cargo containers were stacked with about four feet between the rows, and it was easy enough to walk between them and check out the bottom containers. Ours was not among them.

  Metal pipes ran straight up and down the fronts of most of the containers, giving me handholds to use to climb. I picked one in the middle and began hoisting myself up. The rain made the pole slippery, and the soles of my sodden athletic shoes (what us old-timers used to call tennis shoes or sneakers) felt as if they’d been greased. The ship’s heaving didn’t help. I finally managed to get to the top of the crate, and shined my wrist light on the serial number of the container at the top.

  Not my container.

  I worked my way up to the next container.

  No joy.

  Had the ship been steadier, I might have tried moving across sideways as Shotgun had done. But all this motion and the rain that was kicking up again made for a Murphy party waiting to happen. I backed down to the deck, then moved to the next crate.

  “It’s none of the ones on bottom of the next row,” Shotgun told me. “But I did find two of the ones on Shunt’s list. Maybe we should check above them.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Wanna Twinkie?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Last one.”

  “Shame.”

  We moved around the corner to the next row. Shotgun scrambled up the side of the cargo like he was bounding up an escalator.

  Show-off.

  He was fast, but he had just as much trouble reading the serial numbers on the crates as I did. They were scratched and in some cases obscured with grease and graffiti. He’d gotten about a third of the way through when I heard a very loud crash followed by a scraping sound coming from somewhere aft on the ship.

  Ships in even a light storm are not exactly places of serene quietude. To hear anything above the ocean and the steady thump of the vessel’s power plants meant it was really loud. And loud sounds on a ship are uniformly bad sounds.

  My first thought was that one of the cargo containers had come unmoored. I quick-checked the ones where Shotgun was climbing, then went out along the rail to see the others. The containers left a narrow passage along the starboard side of the ship; the scraping noise echoed loudly against the wall of metal, and any second I thought I was either going to be crushed or thrown out to sea.

  But neither happened. The containers seemed secure.

  Finally I saw what it was: a large metal whaleboat had come off its divots and was hanging against the side of the forward superstructure, flapping like a loose shutter with the wind and the waves. The boat hung by a single line at the bow, and besides clanging it was doing a good bit of damage to the ship’s superstructure. Sooner or later, the crew was going to have to deal with it.

  Make that sooner, rather than later—a door a few feet from the dangling boat opened, its yellow light obvious in the blackness. Two figures emerged, took a look, then retreated.

  I backed around to Shotgun, telling him what I’d found over the radio as I went.

  “Maybe they’ll just cut it loose,” he said.

  “Not likely. The boat’s probably more valuable to the ship’s company than the crew.”

  That wasn’t a joke.

  “Should we hide?” he asked.

  I glanced around. There wasn’t much of anywhere to hide. But as long as they were only dealing with the boat, there wasn’t a need—we were well out of their vision.

  I told Shotgun to stay put and went back around the side, intending to keep an eye on the crew and the boat. Turning the corner, I saw a pair of men in slickers coming down the ladder and heading in my direction. The captain, wisely concerned that his cargo might come loose and create a real problem, had detailed a party to investigate and make sure all of the containers were secured.

  (III)

  I’m sure the sailors were every bit as unhappy about their assignment as I was. But that wasn’t of much comfort.

  I slipped through the open space between the container rows to the other side of the ship. Two men were coming along that side as well, and in fact had made a little better progress.

  Retreating, I joined Shotgun halfway up the container stack. He’d curled his arm around a metal pipe and looked a bit like a gorilla—not least of all because he had pulled a banana out of his backpack and was munching it.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “We have sailors coming to inspect the containers,” I told him. “How the hell can you eat?”

  He just shrugged.

  We could avoid the sailors by climbing to the very top of the containers, but that would expose us to anyone on the bridge. As bad as the lighting was, we’d still be pretty obvious up there. And hiding on the deck wasn’t much safer. We could go over the side, but even then we’d be risking a chance of being seen.

  “We’ll hide in one of the containers,” I told him. “You have the picks, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He reached into his fanny pack and pulled out the small kit. I’m much better at picking locks than he is. Larceny is in my blood; his is filled with cholesterol.

  I scanned the nearby containers to see which would be the easiest to get into. There are some very high-tech locks out there these days, with fancy electronic gizmos that alert the owners when they’ve been tampered with. Even the less sophisticated models can be tricky to get around, at least if you’re in a hurry. The two nearest containers had what looked like Enforcer locks, electromagnetic models that would be a pain to tamper with. I skipped them, clambering up to a more battered model that had an old-fashioned steel wire loop and key lock. The steel would have given the wire cutters we had with us a hard time, but the lock itself was easy to pick.

  Or would have been, if I could have done it without hanging off the container in the rain while the ship started rolling at an unhealthy rate.

  I fumbled badly with the tools, my hands getting colder and wetter by the second. Shotgun came over and leaned over me, providing a little shelter. Finally, the pins gave, and I slipped the lock apart. The whole process might have taken only a dozen seconds, but it seemed as if it had lasted a full hour. What happened next was nearly instantaneou
s: I undid the latch, and Shotgun pulled the right door open.

  And swung out on the pipe as the ship lurched. The door was wide open, easily visible. Murphy was having his little tease. Just as I reached to grab the door back, the ship bucked and the panel came flying toward me. As I ducked, it reversed course, smacking Shotgun against the front of the next container.

  Better him than me.

  He kicked himself away from the container, reaching his hand toward me as he swung in. I grabbed it and pulled him into the interior of the container. He squeezed past me; I wedged my foot against the opening and held the door in place, a narrow crack of very dim twilight filtering through from the ship’s lights.

  “What are we going to do if they come up and lock it?” asked Shotgun, squirreling back around.

  “We push the door out and clobber them,” I told him. As much as I wanted to complete our mission without being detected, I wasn’t about to spend the next two days locked in a cargo container with Shotgun.

  I leaned over and peered through the crack. There just wasn’t enough light to see to the deck, and so I had no idea how the search was progressing. Meanwhile, Shotgun began a search of his own.

  “Oh my God!” I heard him say in a barely muffled voice. “These are boxes of peanuts. I love peanuts. And cashews! And look at this—dried apricots.”

  He’d stumbled on a culinary nirvana, or at least the trail-mix version.

  * * *

  We spent about twenty minutes in the cargo container, probably about fifteen minutes more than we needed to. The metal interfered with our radios, and I couldn’t get Mongoose or Shunt. Not that they would have been helpful: Shunt didn’t have eyes-on, and Mongoose had pulled the Zodiac far enough away to keep from being spotted. Finally I slipped the door open and looked around, clambering down to the deck while Shotgun filled his ruck and every pocket he had with goodies.

  The crewmen who’d been sent to deal with the whaleboat were still at it, trying to secure it to its divots on the side of the superstructure. From where I was standing at the edge of the cargo area, the proceedings looked a lot like an outtake from a Three Stooges movie, with Emil Stika as a guest star. The two men would raise the boat up, then lose it as the ship lurched. They weren’t quite strong enough to get the job done.