by David Poyer
“Kahlua’s rich in vitamin K.”
“Yeah, and you’re rich in vitamin B, Sumo. B for big-assed Hawaiian bull cookies.”
They were hitching their trou, patting down to make sure they had their gear, getting ready to go aft to the boarding ladder, when the radio crackled again. “MIB, Alleycat.”
“Go ahead. Over.”
“Team leader, step outside pilothouse.”
He raised his eyebrows at Sumo. “Say again, ah . . . all right, got it, Skipper. Stepping out.” He eased the door to the wheel house closed. Through it the captain watched. “Go ahead.”
“Teddy, we’ve got a closing contact. He’s in that haze off to the southeast, but his track, we ran it back, it’s on a converging course with your boy. They might have had an exchange planned.”
He grinned and double-clicked the send button. Fun, he mouthed to Sumo through the grimy window. “Could be interesting, sir. What’s the plan? Over.”
“I’ll fade south four, five miles. Low as we are, we’ll be out of sight. Heave to and pretend to be fishing, if they’re watching their radar. Run your RHIB over to the port side, under cover of the hull. Have your skipper resume previous course and speed. Maybe we can nab two birds with one stone.”
“Especially since we can’t touch this one legally.”
“Affirmative, but gun up. Pull your sixty out of the RHIB, get it on deck. Just in case.”
He didn’t answer this, so he could say later he hadn’t heard it. Their machine gun was on the bottom of the Red Sea, but if he told Geller that, he’d pull them back aboard and stand by with the PC, and the other ship would turn tail as soon as it saw their silhouette. If it really was a smuggler.
His eyes met Kaulukukui’s.
No need to say a word.
THE little guy with the bad teeth didn’t like it, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t protest. What was he going to say—“You messed up my drug rendezvous”? Teddy yelled down to Lazaresky to run around and tie up on the port side, and to load his shotgun. The bowhook looked up, eyes wide.
Back inside, to pass the word to Cooper and Dooley. The 60 would’ve helped, but four SEALs with MP5s should be enough, and if they needed more, they had the two combat shotguns in the RHIB. Neither Lazaresky nor the bowhook, whose name Teddy had forgotten, were probably exceptional marksmen, but that was what shotguns were for. “I’ll make it quick. Everybody out of sight until we see what this new guy at the party’s gonna do. Geller thinks he might be here for the qat.”
“I’m here for the beer.”
“Fuck’s wrong with you two?” Dooley frowned. “Who punched your fast forward? You’re actin’ like a couple of fifteen-year-old girls.”
“Fuckin’ hold’s solid with that joy weed they chew. Contact high.”
“Contact high, huh? You guys kill me. Beavis and Butthead. Prob’ly snorted half of what’s down there. Where the hell’s Lazaresky going?”
Teddy explained, looking at the trawler’s captain. Whose smile had been replaced by a sick look, and whose worry beads rattled like dice in a cup. “So, ship’s headed off to the south. Us, we’ll stay out of sight until he’s alongside. Then see if this’s the other half of the deal, maybe nab some arms smugglers. Any questions?”
There weren’t, and he told Mickey and Vic to head aft, keep an eye on the crew but stay low, out of sight, and leave the channel clear on the bone mike. “Oh, and get Lazaresky and the bowhook midships with shotguns and full bandoliers.” He squinted into the glare and caught a speck far out in the brilliance that must be the incoming contact. They had to get out of sight. A uniform would be a dead giveaway.
A scuffle and squeak behind him. He turned, to see the skipper floating in midair like a scruffy angel halted in midflight.
“Fucker was going for the horn,” Sumo said. His biceps bulged, but he didn’t seem to be straining to hold him up. The skipper’s toes kicked for the deck.
“Who are these guys?” Teddy asked him. Going by the old saw: Ask ’em when they’re in pain. “What you meeting them for? They your customers for the qat?”
The Hawaiian’s grip must have tightened, because the guy’s face started to go purple. “Bass,” he whispered. “Bass.” Enough.
“Make it simple for him,” Sumo suggested.
“Listen to me, Driftwood. These your customers out there?”
“Aiwa. Aiwa. Yes.”
“Now we’re talkin’. Not so bad, is it? They buy your qat?”
“Is not mine. But they buy. Yes.”
“For what? Cash? Weapons?”
He didn’t answer. Teddy looked out the starboard side window, to see the other ship gaining detail. Maybe a mile now. “Your arm getting tired yet?” he asked his swim buddy. Sumo shook his head. “They trade what, Jack? Work with me here. Things can get a lot worse for you.”
“Trade guns. Yes.”
“Kind of guns?”
“Don’t know words.”
“Machine guns? Grenades? Stinger missiles?”
“Grenades.”
“Chinese?”
He nodded and Teddy winked at Sumo. A double thump as the guy’s shoes hit the deck, followed by his ass as he collapsed. “Get up, you ain’t fuckin’ hurt,” Teddy told him. He pulled the throttle back to what he figured was dead slow. The engine-beat fell to a putter.
He’d been thinking about how to deploy, and come to the conclusion the wheelhouse gave the best field of fire, field of view, and control of the situation. He removed his cap and took a knee at the starboard door, where he could see the approaching ship but not be made even with glasses. Kaulukukui took the port side. The skipper sat whimpering and wiping his nose with the back of one hand, kneading his neck with the other. “Suck it up, you ain’t hurt,” Teddy told him again.
“Charlie Babbitt twisted and hurt his neck. Serious injury,” Kaulukukui said.
“What’s that from?”
“Rain Man. Don’t you think he looks like—”
Teddy grinned. “He does look kinda like Dustin.”
“Lose ship. Lose cargo,” the captain moaned.
“Ain’t a thing we can do to the cargo, Jack. It’s yours, free and clear. All we want’s whoever’s pushing the RPGs. Now that’s contraband, anybody’s book.”
“Kill family,” the guy whined. “Al-Sheekh, he will kill family. Those his grenades.”
“Well, whoever Al-Sheekh is, he’s gonna have to write it off. Maybe he can get a tax break, huh?”
“Here.” Sumo was holding out something to the guy. Teddy blinked. “Want a Slim Jim?”
Kaulukukui got back a look of disgust, fear, and revulsion. “He doesn’t want your Slim Jim,” Teddy told him. “Put it back in your pants.” He raised up a little and checked the other ship. “Nearer.”
“Definitely nearer,” Kaulukukui said.
“Try to warn these assholes again, you’re the first one I shoot,” Teddy told the skipper. “You transfer cargo out here? At sea?”
“At sea. Aiwa.”
“At sea, definitely,” Kaulukukui said.
“Shut up, Rain Man. Christ.”
They waited, then Teddy peeped again. The other was a coaster, longer than the dhow, with a container lashed down on deck. Maybe that was where they stowed the ordnance. Easier to dump, if they had to. On the other hand, you wanted to keep your explosives cool. Out on deck in this sun the inside of a container could hit two hundred easy. Hot enough to bleed the binder out of a shaped charge. Heads were moving around on the foredeck. He cleared his throat, trying to slow his heart down. Excitement, but probably still some of the effects of the fucking qat. Man, the stuff had an unpleasant high.
The skipper got up and stood at the wheel watching the other ship, panting like an overheated dog.
Sumo. “Man, wish we had Jelly Man and Shamal back of us.”
“We do.”
“Four miles away. What if these dudes resort to violence?”
“Like always. Take the fight to t
he enemy, man.”
“Wish we had that sixty. Lay down some covering fire.”
“Well, we ain’t got it. Can get you that guy in the ghetto hat, get you his bolt action, though.”
“Fuck you.”
Yeah, it’d have been nice, but he wasn’t worried. They had six-shooters. More than enough to take a merchant.
Gradually the coaster neared. It sheered off for a time, as if waiting for a signal, but the skipper insisted there was no signal. Even a headlock in Sumo’s beefy arm failed to dislodge that insistence. Teddy did a comm check with Shamal and thank God got them. Geller asked if he wanted them to come in. “No sir, they haven’t committed themselves yet. Soon’s they do, we’re gonna need you here in seconds.”
“Well, maybe not in seconds, One. We can go to flank emergency and get to you in about eight, ten minutes, though. Just pass the word. Over.”
“He’s got his helm over,” Kaulukukui murmured. “Coming alongside, starboard side.”
“Good, he won’t see the RHIB.”
“We may need that fucker.”
Teddy didn’t answer. He was studying the faces on the bridge opposite as it closed. The other ship had tires over the side for fenders. Not many crew on deck, three or four, moping around in that half-assed way you got around noon when it was this hot. No weapons in sight. Good.
Then other men filed out of a little after-structure stretched with canvas like a tent, and he sucked breath. Four, five, six . . . eight. Each on one end of a wooden box like the ones, empty now, down in the hold.
All gun-heavy with AKs and PKMs, the sniper variant. The men carrying them weren’t black. Arabs or Iranians. Middle Eastern rather than African.
Weapons for qat. Nobody had mentioned this in the team’s predeployment brief. Smuggling, yeah. Cigarettes. Booze. Somali emigrants. But not this.
The coaster was drifting in, the last few feet vanishing, the coaster’s side five, eight feet higher than the dhow’s low midships. He pulled the VHF over. Murmured, “Alleycat: Alleycat One. Target’s alongside. Guys on deck with AKs, carrying crates of RPGs. I ah, I think we need that backup now.”
As he let up on the button a long blast of airhorn ripped out above their heads. He snapped around to see the skipper, baring rotten incisors at them, knuckles white on the horn lever.
Kaulukukui loomed over him from behind. Only for a second. Then the captain was slumping again, head twisted over his shoulder, like an owl’s.
Teddy cracked the door to see not what he expected, guys taking cover. Somebody’d taught these dudes to take the fight to the enemy too, because half of them had dropped their crates and were rushing to the side.
As he watched, from above deck level and twenty yards away, the two ships drifted together. Heavy worn rubber tires compressed with a squirt of reddish dust. A jar shivered though steel. And with a concerted yell four shooters from the other ship jumped the five feet down to the dhow’s deck and split up. Ice touched Teddy’s spine as he realized each carried his weapon the exact same way. They weren’t facing ragtag crewmen, but something more dangerous.
“Fuck,” he was muttering, when the first burst cracked out, followed by the booms of shotguns. One of the boarders looked startled. He straightened, then deflated like a cheap balloon.
Score one for Lazaresky. Unfortunately, the men left on the coaster had dropped to their bellies and were starting to shoot too. Within seconds a truly impressive volume of fire was clattering across the deck, most focused on a little sternhouse Teddy assumed was where Cooper had taken his guys.
“We got to take the pressure off Crabmeat and Skunk,” Sumo shouted. Teddy nodded, trying to figure out how. If he went out on the wing he’d be exposed. There was no splinter shield or bulwark. But he’d have a rest on the life rail, and a perfect enfilade down the line of prone shooters below. He went to the bone mike. “Crabmeat, y’there?”
No answer. Not good, but he couldn’t wait. Time to earn that combat-zone pay. He eased back the bolt to check the load, checked that the rear sight had the biggest aperture dialed in, wiggled the front sight to make sure it was secure, loosened the second mag in the pouch, and gestured covering fire to Kaulukukui.
Rolling out the door, he took a knee, thumbed the selector to semiautomatic, and put the front sight on the closest shooter.
HE got three rounds off, all head shots, before they realized they were being fired on from above. The third he called low, the guy was still kicking on the deck, but he’d let go his rifle and Teddy didn’t think he needed another tap. Especially since the others were jerking their heads around, yelling, reorienting on him. He double-tapped a torso shot and the target went limp. But by then the last guy was up in a crouch, aiming at him, and he was late, late . . . time went gluey as he waited for the flash and impact of the bullet . . . then Kaulukukui’s MP barked from the other side of the bridge and the guy wavered and went down.
Teddy whipped left, covering the pilothouse opposite, and shot a man in a white shirt with blue piping who was trying to quick-draw a pistol out of a holster. The guy behind him, eyes huge, stuck his hands into the air. Teddy shot him too, two rounds center chest, just so he wouldn’t get any ideas.
He swiveled right again, thumbed to full auto, and walked a burst up the sprawled bodies till the mag went dry. He stepped back into the wheelhouse and speed-reloaded without taking his eyes off the other deck. He pulled the mag and checked that the top round had fed. “Clear,” he yelled.
“Going aft,” Sumo shouted from the far side.
They went down port and starboard simultaneously, running the short ladders from the wheelhouse to the deck as shotgun blasts boomed below. Teddy ran in a crouch, reminding himself Cooper and the two RHIB crewmen were back here too, he not only had to not shoot them but to make sure any misses on the bad guys wouldn’t hit them. Absolute control of every round was the only way to prevent blue on blue aboard ship. He hoped the coxswain and bowhook had the same idea.
He rounded the corner to run full tilt into a wiry little guy coming the other way. Their weapons clattered together and the other’s fired. Teddy smelled burnt powder and sweat and tobacco. He felt a jerk on his sling and brought his MP around into the guy’s face and pulled the trigger.
Not even the dead click of a pin on a dud round. The trigger didn’t even move as he stared into the guy’s eyes. Who apparently had some problem with his AK as well, because he suddenly gave up trying to shoot and backed up a step, jerking at the front of it. The glint of a short bayonet unfolding.
Ah, fuck, Teddy’s mind said.
He started to go for his sidearm, then remembered: he hadn’t brought one. He’d always thought carrying another full mag for the HK made more sense. But just now, looking down at the dished-out white-metal scar where the bullet had struck the receiver, he had to admit: maybe not the best idea he’d ever had.
The guy charged. Teddy did too, trying for a hand on the barrel so he could twist it up and go under with the knife already in his hand. Funny, he hadn’t thought of drawing it, but there it was. But he missed his grip and the bayonet with the guy’s weight behind it drove right into his solar plexus.
A textbook bayonet attack, but he felt the point snap as it hit the trauma plate in the vest at the same moment the sharper-than-a-razor thin-bladed Glock filleted up the inside of the guy’s thigh. It snicked through the femoral and he curved the blade left, heard it ripping through cloth and flesh, felt another light resistance as the guy’s eyes widened. His lips drew back and he screamed. The blade grated into the pubic bone.
Out and in again, slicing upward. His boy had forgotten about bayoneting anybody—he just wanted to get away. But Teddy had his head with his left hand, pulling him in, tight sweaty embrace, grappling, the guy clawing to fight free. He kept forcing the blade up, the guy going to tiptoe, trying to rise off his blade like a worm off the hook you were threading into its pith. But Teddy had his arm under it now, angling the point upward, trying for the heart or
the big arteries beneath. Then gave a final twist and pulled it out.
He shoved with all his strength and the guy stumbled back, opened up like a chicken, everything falling out, till his heels hit the edge of a coaming and he toppled backward.
“You won’t be much good to those forty virgins now,” Teddy told him, wiping the Glock on his trousers and stooping for the Kalashnikov. He cleared the jam as two more booms from inside the deckhouse blew out a window and sent another boarder over the side.
Then it was over and his ears were ringing and his whole front was bloody, but he kept going. It was when you thought it was over that you made sure it was over. He tested each body with the Glock and found one wounded man who’d do for intel. Sumo was working the coaster’s deck. As they passed, Teddy going aft, Kaulukukui forward, the Hawaiian said, “Skunk caught one.”
“Bad?”
“He’s not in good shape.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
“That was why he wasn’t answering up on the bone.”
“Fuck. Boat crew?”
“Lazaresky got nicked. Took half his ear off. Got the guy who shot him, though. Orange Hat. Even did a combat reload on the Mossberg.”
“These assholes fought. We had to kill ’em all.”
“I thought ragheads didn’t do that.”
Teddy squinted up at him. The combat chill was gone and he felt angry now. Dooley, hard down. A perfectly good guy. “Oh, they do, Sumo. You get the right ones, they do.”
“AHOY BOAT ONE.”
He waved acknowledgment as Shamal came alongside, fenders out. Both 25mms were pointed at him, and three other MGs from the bridge and afterdeck. “Eight minutes,” Sumo said, looking at his watch. “Seemed like longer.”
The PC came alongside with a bump and lurch. Geller and Lenson stood on the port wing in armor vests and helmets. They looked down with startled expressions.
Teddy became aware that several of the sailors topside were aiming cameras. And that he was dripping with blood, surrounded by motionless bodies and empty brass, brandishing a bayoneted AK. He lowered it, snapped the safety on, and considered. Then shouted up, “You ever take a really good shit, and look down in the toilet and say, Hey! Good job?”
