by Mack Maloney
Leaving Manila Harbor proved no problem this night. It was dark and the bay was in its usual state of confusion, ships coming and going, big and small. No one hailed them on the radio. The harbormaster knew better than to ask where they were going. After a short trip south, they turned toward the San Bernardino Strait, heading for the deeper waters of Pacific. Once there, they would sail due east, toward America.
Even the captain didn’t know what lay in the belly of the speedy smuggling ship. It did no good for him or the rest of the crew (10 others in all) to know anything more than a crate had to get to the United States quickly. But certainly they suspected something very hot was stored in their voluminous cargo hatch.
This was not the first time they’d worked for Palm Tree, either.
Besides its quickness the Sea Demon also had some advanced radar on its bridge, all the better to make sure no one was following you. Or, if they were, it told you it was time to pour on the coals. This was why there was such surprise when the radar operator, who was also the cook, spotted a large surface object about ten miles in back of them. It had appeared on-screen very quickly — that was the weird thing. One second the radar field was clear; the next it was showing this enormous blip coming up on their tail.
The cook called the captain and they both stared at the screen a moment. Even in that short time frame, the blip had gained another mile on them. This didn’t make sense. Nothing that big could move that fast.
They called for the first officer. He knew a bit about things nautical. By the time he looked at the radar screen, the blip was just eight miles away and moving as if the Sea Demon were standing still.
The first officer, a drunk and an addict, actually looked worried. He had no idea what this thing could be.
“Secret navy ship, maybe?” was his only guess.
At that moment, they got a radio call. It was from the man on stern watch. He’d spotted running lights out at 11,000 yards. They were getting bigger even as he was speaking.
This was getting scary. The three men at the radar set looked back down at the screen. The blip was now just five miles out.
“It could be a very fast-moving yacht,” the cook said. “And it might be distorting our read-out for some reason.”
The captain turned to the first officer and said: “Break out the personal weapons and the fifty-caliber. Whoever the hell this is, we don’t want anyone to know what we’ve got below. You understand?”
The first officer drew a finger across his throat. He understood.
* * *
The Sea Demon actually had a formidable arsenal onboard. These men were veteran arms smugglers, and as such they were not above picking off a few of the larder when it suited them. Each man was issued an AK-47 or an M16, leftovers from Vietnam. Each would also get a .45 pistol and a machete.
The big fifty-caliber was also a ghost of Vietnam, a powerful one. Mounted on a capson pod attached to the stern point, it fired a round so large, just one could take off a head, blow a hole clear through a stomach, or tear into the side of a tank. Or a ship. They had plenty of ammunition onboard as well. Toe to toe they could take a military patrol boat, maybe even a small frigate. A fast yacht they would blow out of the water.
The crew was cranked now as word went through the ranks that this was some kind of sports boat gaining on them. The night was dark here, stars and moon hidden by a very low overcast. At 5,000 yards, the crew could only make out the fast-moving light, and nothing of the shape around it. Still they were hungry for a kill.
Weapons were checked. The big 50 test-fired. The captain left only the helmsmen up on the bridge. The Sea Demon was still plowing along at full speed, so the orders to the helm were simple: don’t stop for anything less than a direct order.
The captain himself carried a slightly newer model M16, one equipped with a removable and very rudimentary “star scope.” It gave him a limited capability to see in the dark, a version of night vision from 30 years ago. He was standing now on the stern railing, fiddling with this scope. The wind was up and they were taking some spray. He finally got the device to blink on, this just as he heard the first officer call out: “One thousand yards…”
This was convenient, as the old star scope had a range of about that far. The captain put the rifle up on the rail, aimed it at the light, and finally looked through the scope.
The next thing he knew, the first officer was picking him up off the deck.
“What’s the problem?” the first officer asked him harshly.
The captain could not speak. He simply pointed to the night scope now lying on the deck nearby, then pointed to his eye. Then he started to crawl away.
The first officer picked up the scope, took one look, and then wanted to join the captain. What he saw in the hazy light of night vision wasn’t possible. It looked like something from a bad dream.
What was gaining so rapidly on them was not a top-secret military vessel or a sporting yacht. It was an enormous, old, and very ugly containership, much uglier than the Sea Demon. And it was making at least 50 knots.
Before the first officer could say anything, the big ship was just 300 yards off their starboard.
So the first officer shouted one word: “Fire!”
The resulting fusillade was five seconds long and only served to light up the night. Now the crew could see what the captain and his first officer had seen.
The enormous ship. Moving impossibly fast.
Everyone aboard the smuggling ship was highly superstitious; they all believed in spirits and devils. The crew fired again because now they just assumed this ship was actually from hell and was here to take them down to the depths with it. But before they could end the second volley the ghost ship was right beside them, not 100 yards away. It was actually slowing down to keep pace with the swiftly moving cargo freighter. Up close, it looked like a monster. It was at least five times the size of the smuggling ship in length and width and more than six decks higher.
Foolishly the crew started firing their weapons again. The first officer became coherent enough to shout orders to the 50-caliber-machine-gun crew; they started firing furiously as well. Their huge rounds just bounced off the side of the containership, though — literally bounced off and back toward the Sea Demon.
The huge ship then moved in even closer. Suddenly one of the containers on its bow dropped its walls. Inside was a weird igloolike object, with a long barrel sticking out of it. Officially this was known as a CIWS — for close-in weapons system. In reality it was a Gatling gun. Computer controlled, aimed, and driven, it could fire 600 rounds a second.
Gatling guns made a very strange sound when they were fired. A sort of electrical burping. That’s what the Sea Demon’s crew heard now as the CIWS gun opened up and, in a single two-second barrage, took out the freighter’s mast, all of its antennas, and half the flying bridge. As this was happening, another container down on the ghost ship’s stern dropped its walls, too. It also contained a CIWS. This gun opened up on the freighter’s rear quarters, its barrage going over the crew’s heads, snapping metal stanchions and running hooks and walking right down the rear end to where the ship’s turnscrews lay. It continued its massive fusillade until something somewhere below the waterline was heard to crack!
The smuggling ship shook from one end to the other. Below the waterline, both its propellers had been blown away.
Those who dared to look up from the deck of the smuggler in the next few seconds saw the strangest sight of all. The huge containership had come up right next to the freighter and, still moving at 25 knots, brutally side-swiped them. The noise of the collision was deafening, the sparks blinding. Then in the midst of this, the smugglers saw armed men swinging over on ropes, as if this were a Ship of the Main being taken over by pirates. What was wrong with this picture? It was the men cowering on the deck who were supposed to be the buccaneers.
The first two soldiers to reach the smuggling ship fired a long stream of tracers over the heads of the fr
ightened crew. Again no translation was needed here. Every crew-man threw his weapon as far away as he could. The two raiders were then joined by two more. Then two more. Then four. Then eight. Most were wearing some version of the same combat uniform: black, with a huge helmet and many weapon posts. Many wore a patch on the left shoulder showing the New York City Twin Towers with the Stars and Stripes behind. Upon seeing this, the crew of the smuggling ship moaned as one. They knew they were doomed now. These were the Crazy Americans.
And they were the real demons of the sea.
* * *
Fox and Bingham both hurt their backs swinging over from the Ocean Voyager to the smuggling ship.
“We’re too old for this shit, Bingo!” Fox yelled, catching his breath after a slippery landing around middecks. Meanwhile the younger Navy guys and even a few of the Spooks were swinging between the two ships with moves smoother than Zorro.
Bingham yelled back in agreement but then straightened himself out. The deck was chaotic. The bridge of the smuggler had been blown away by both Gatling guns. The noise being made by the two ships slamming into each other was earsplitting. Back on the stern, the Navy guys were solving the problem of POWs. There wouldn’t be any. They cut the Sea Demon’s only lifeboat loose from its mooring and then one by one threw the members of the smuggling crew over the side. It would be up to them to sink or swim after that.
Both ships had just about come to a stop by now. The Sea Demon’s captain was the last guy to get tossed over the railing; then Fox, Bingo, and a squad of sailors and SDS guards bounded below decks.
They soon found themselves in the very large, nearly empty cargo hold. The Sea Demon really was little more than a hull with engines. “Is this the same as hollowing out your wheel well to move some grass into Laredo?” Fox asked enigmatically.
“Absolutely,” Bingo replied, spraying his flashlight all over the darkened chamber.
There was only one piece of cargo in the hold — it was the second crate.
The Americans swarmed all over it, yanking nails out with their trench knives, small crowbars, and, in at least one instance, teeth.
There was no rhyme or reason to it, but enough nails were removed at the right time for the four walls of the big coffin to fall down simultaneously.
“God damn!” Fox cursed. “Did we chase the wrong horse…”
The crate was empty.
* * *
It was called Katang Bay.
One of many dirty inlet beaches found south of Manila Airport, it was about a mile from the seaside slums of Makak. Katang Bay was bordered on three sides by enormous debris-strewn sand dunes. Windswept and foreboding, these dunes seemed as tall as skyscrapers in the darkness.
This was where Ryder found himself now, atop of one of these monsters. Looking over the edge, it seemed like a mile down to the bottom and the beach below. Small waves were lapping up against the shore nearby. Rodents scurried about as the water splashed in, then retreated back into the bay. A torch was burning atop a small jetty that extended out into the water. A few boats were bobbing nearby.
And the third crate was there, too, sitting in the oily sand about twenty feet from the water’s edge. Just as they had been told, it had been dumped here on the beach closest to the airport, or, more accurately, thrown off the back of a truck without ever stopping. An obstacle course of refuse and filth stood between the crate and the dunes. The beach was a disposal ground for several shantytowns nearby, a kind of combination junkyard and garbage dump. If the smugglers wanted to put the crate someplace where it would never be found, they’d dumped it in the right spot.
Martinez and the B-2 pilot John “Atlas” were with him. Ryder knew this was a bit of a fool’s errand, coming here to look for the insignificant third box. But he felt it was necessary for reasons other than the mission. Martinez’s mental condition had deteriorated badly over the past week or so. Sure, he’d popped Aboos with the rest of them during their island-hopping campaign to Manila. But at the same time he’d become more remote than ever, at times almost catatonic. Ryder had to get him home, back to the United States to his family and proper psychological care, before he slipped any further into the abyss. So this was his solution: take Martinez here, giving him a sense that he was helping out but at the same time keeping him out of the line of fire.
It was the same for Atlas. He, too, had fought aggressively against the Aboos, but the ordeal of his plane crash and the horrific imprisonment that followed had also taken its toll. Plus, he was a pilot, not a special-ops guy, and it was just a matter of time before he got hurt or even killed. So Ryder had suggested he come with him, too. They’d been up here for about ten minutes. All they had to do now was sit and wait for the others to call.
Ryder shifted over Atlas and slid up next to Martinez. No surprise the Army officer had been silent since arriving here.
“What do you think, Colonel?” Ryder asked him. “All quiet on the Western Front?”
Martinez just looked out on the beach. Though there was a lot of hustle and bustle happening nearby, the beach itself was very much away from it all, isolated on the edge of the sprawling dirty, grungy metropolis of Manila. Martinez said nothing.
“Don’t worry, Marty,” Ryder told him. “We’ll be going home soon. We’ve done everything these people expected us to do and more. No matter how this ends, we fulfilled our promise, so they have to fulfill theirs. I think we could all use a few burgers and some good hooch, don’t you?”
Finally Martinez smiled, probably for the the first time since the events at Hormuz. Maybe burgers and beer was all that the shell-shocked Delta officer needed, Ryder thought. He patted Martinez on the shoulder. “And when we get back,” he said, “I’ll even let you buy the first round.”
Martinez began to reply…but the words wouldn’t come out. And he wasn’t smiling anymore. Suddenly he was pointing frantically down to the beach.
“What is it?” Atlas asked, right next to him.
Ryder slipped on his night-vision goggles again. He saw first one, then two, then three human images on the scope. They seemed to have marched right out of the water. Ryder relayed all this to the other two.
“Could be pearl divers,” Atlas said. “That’s a big business around here.”
Ryder tried to focus in on the figures, but the glare of the city lights nearby made them look ghostly and indefinable on the night scope. At least one of them was carrying a combat rifle, though.
“Diving for pearls — or shooting clams?” he murmured.
At that moment, their cell phone rang. Ryder answered it. It was Ozzi.
“Did the guys on Ocean Voyager call you?” the DSA officer asked him urgently.
“Not yet,” was Ryder’s reply.
“Well, they called us,” Ozzi told him excitedly, “and they came up negative with the cargo ship.”
Ryder had to take a moment to let this sink in. Just as they had suspected, a mysterious plane had left Manila Airport shortly before the Kai team burst into the warehouse. An equally mysterious freighter had left Manila Bay earlier in the same time frame. The split American teams had taken off in hot pursuit.
“You mean they got the Buddhas?” Ryder finally asked Ozzi.
“No,” Ozzi replied hastily. “We got the Buddhas; that’s all the airplane was carrying. The crate aboard the cargo ship was empty….”
Ryder looked over at Martinez and Atlas. They could hear Ozzi’s voice because he was yelling so loudly into the phone. Atlas started to say: “But if the Kai got the Buddhas, and the cargo ship’s crate was empty…”
Then he stopped. They all looked back at the crate on the dirty beach. The decoy that really wasn’t a decoy at all….
“Sh-i-i-i-t!” Ryder cried, dropping the phone. He yanked his weapon off his back and went over the top, rolling down the mountain of sand. Atlas and Martinez were right behind him. All three were slipping and sliding down, so out of control at one point both Martinez and Atlas overtook Ryder in the confuse
d race to the bottom.
Just as the three landed at the foot of the dune, they saw a flare go up about fifteen hundred feet offshore. It was followed by a great boom! An object came flying out of the night from the same direction where the flare was launched. It was a grappling hook; they could see the reflection off its prongs as it landed with a thud on the beach. It was attached to a rope that disappeared into the dark water. No sooner had it come down than the three ghostly figures retrieved it and hooked it onto the crate.
The Americans got to their feet and began running. Helmets flying, ammo belts falling off, they were like three soldiers who’d overslept and missed the start of the battle. They’d been fooled again, the smugglers’ shell game sucking them right in. And now, if they let this crate escape, the Stinger missiles would be on their way to the United States, with no way to stop them.
The crate started to move. It was on a skid made of eight pontoons, which had lain hidden under the wet sand. The crate was being pulled right into the water, the three men who’d done the attaching casually riding on top of it. It started to sink at first but then bobbed back up and leveled off. By the time the Americans reached the spot where the crate had stood, it was already disappearing into the darkness.
Ryder came to a slippery halt, pulled his weapon up, pulled his night goggles down, and started firing. His tracers lit up the night. The three men riding atop the crate had to hastily dive into the water, his bullets came so near. For the first time they realized someone had seen what they had done. They were soon swimming madly alongside the big floating box.
Meanwhile Atlas and Martinez had plunged right into the water, firing as they went, and kept on going. Ryder followed, still shooting his weapon. He did not stop firing until he was up to his neck in the water and holding the rifle over his head.
