by Mack Maloney
But he hadn’t been shot, or burned or “stunk to death.”
His throat had been cut. Even stranger, his right ear had been cut off.
“We sure as hell didn’t do that.…” Twitch said through his gas mask.
They came upon four more pirates in front of a shack nearby. They, too, had had their throats slit, and one ear removed. Behind the shack were two more. Both had their necks sliced open, both were missing an ear.
It went on like this for the next five minutes. The team found groups of pirates in the shacks and in the jungle nearby. None had been shot or hit by ordnance. All of them had died from getting their throats slit. Each one had had an ear cut off.
This was totally baffling and bizarre. The Whiskey guys were all veterans of some of the heaviest missions of Delta Force. They rightly thought they’d seen it all.
But they’d never seen anything like this.
They moved down near the river that ran past the camp, and here they found the six men who’d run back to the encampment from the beach at the beginning of the attack. Their throats, too, had been slashed, and one ear had been removed from each of them. The blood from their hideous wounds was turning the river bright red.
The team finally stopped and had a muffled conversation through their gas masks.
“They’re all fucking dead?” Crash was yelling. “All of them?”
“Every one, so far,” Batman said. “And none of them went pretty.”
“But how?” Crash asked.
No one knew.…
“Are we going to get blamed for this?” Twitch wondered loudly.
Nolan just shook his aching head. Blamed? An odd choice of words, he thought.
They stayed together, checking each hut and finding many more bodies, all of them with their necks cut open, each with an ear sliced off.
Finally they reached the last shack — the one occupied by Captain Black himself. There were four pirates piled up near the entrance. All were dead from knife wounds to the throat, all missing one ear.
But one pirate inside was still alive. It was Black himself.
Crumpled in the far corner of the rickety structure, his throat was severely cut and his right ear was missing. He was bleeding heavily all over his white clothes, but somehow he was still breathing. They gathered around him. Medic kit in hand, Crash desperately tried to stem the flow of blood from his wounds, but couldn’t. He looked up at the others and just shook his head.
Black could barely speak, his words coming out in a bloody gurgle. Still, he tried.
“Are you blokes the cops?” he asked them weakly.
Still talking through his gas mask, Nolan yelled that they were part of the OAS.
“Never heard of you,” Black gurgled back.
Nolan knelt down beside the dying pirate. He had to know what transpired between the time the team first dropped the stink bomb and when they started the aborted attack on the camp, five minutes at the most.
“What happened here?” Nolan asked him. “Why is everyone dead?”
The pirate could only shake his head. “I don’t know, mon,” he replied with great difficulty. “We was drunk and high. Asleep. Passed out. Then, a stink bomb comes in. Weird screaming. I woke up, but I couldn’t see anything. And I couldn’t breathe because my fingers are on my nose.”
He coughed once, ejecting a small river of blood.
“Next thing I know, all my men around me are dead — and my own throat is cut, and my ear is gone. I didn’t see nobody. I didn’t hear nobody.”
Another cough, more blood.
“Ghosts,” Black struggled to say. “We were killed by ghosts.”
But Nolan didn’t believe him. He couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. He believed Whiskey had actually stumbled upon some weird mass murder-suicide. It was the only rational explanation.
Batman knelt down beside the dying pirate as well. He lit up a joint, pulled up his gas mask, took a drag, then lifted Black’s head off the bloody floor and put the joint to his lips. The pirate drew in deep.
“Want to get clean now while you can?” Batman asked him.
The pirate nodded yes, a bubble of blood coming out of his open throat.
Batman shouted behind him: “Who’s got the fucking video camera?”
Gunner was soon beside him, a small video camera in hand.
“Get all of this,” Batman told him.
He turned back to Black.
“You guys knocked off all those yachts, right?” Batman asked him.
Black nodded slowly. “Just trying to make some scratch, you know, general?”
Batman gave him another puff of pot.
“And all those people?” he asked. “You threw them into the sea?”
“Couldn’t have any witnesses, you know?” Black said. “It’s bad luck. But a lot of their stuff is here. You can have it. No good to me now.”
“You might have gotten away with it,” Batman said, taking another hit himself under his mask, “if your pilot hadn’t been a junkie and had been more careful.”
“Always a pain in the ass, that guy,” Black said after another toke. “I hope he crashes someday.”
Batman nodded. “Yeah, me, too. But you know what really screwed you? Taking those yachts on Easter. And killing those cops, man? That was fucked up. That’s what got everyone pissed off, and set everything in motion against you. That’s why they called us in.”
Black accepted another weak puff of the pot — and then a strange look came across his face.
“We done all that you say before,” he coughed, fading fast. “But no three yachts on Easter Day, mon. And definitely no cops. That was not us. We were all drunk on Easter. We could not move. That was someone else.”
“Bullshit,” Gunner said, still recording it all. “He’s freaking stoned even as he’s checking out.”
But now Nolan wasn’t so sure.
“If it wasn’t you guys,” he asked Black. “Who did it?”
But the pirate captain could no longer reply. His eyes were going up into his head, his body was starting to convulse.
Batman threw the joint away and started shaking him.
He repeated Nolan’s question: “If it wasn’t you on Easter, who was it?”
Black came back to life for just a few more seconds. Long enough for him to manage a weak grin.
“No idea, mon,” he said. “Guess the big joke is on you.”
Then, he died.
10
The brightly painted Bell 430 helicopter appeared above the Dustboat around noon the next day.
With help from two of the Senegals, the copter landed on the coastal freighter’s empty helipad and four people stepped out.
One was Mr. Jobo, the OAS officer the team had met at the beginning of the mission. Jennessa and two other women from BABE were with him.
The women, dressed in very sexy island wear, with perfectly coiffed hair blowing in the breeze, were carrying a huge ice bucket full of champagne bottles and glasses.
Batman was immediately on hand to greet them. Jennessa gave him a warm hug and took out the first bottle and popped the cork.
“You did it!” she said happily. “You rid us of those horrible Muy Capaz people.”
Batman nodded weakly. “Apparently,” he replied.
“We got the report this morning,” she said happily. “The Bahamian police are already crawling all over that island. They’re finding all kinds of things: weapons, drugs, IDs and personal effects from a lot of the missing people. You guys did in three days what those idiots have been pretending to do for years.”
Batman didn’t reply this time — he just sipped his champagne.
“So, it’s my pleasure then,” Jennessa went on, “to give you this…”
She handed him a cashier’s check for $5 million.
“… and this,” she added, giving Batman a huge kiss on both cheeks.
Then she shook his hand and said, “If only all our vendors were as good as you.”
But Batman was still uneasy. “We usually provide a post-action debrief after a job,” he told her. “It lets you know what we did and when. And how your money was spent. It also gives details of what went on.”
Jennessa just laughed.
“No need,” she replied, adding with a whisper: “However you did it, that’s fine with us.”
Mr. Jobo agreed.
“You did the whole world a favor,” he said in his booming voice. “And especially our little piece of the world here. You know?”
Batman pulled Jobo aside.
“Look, there’s something you might want to know,” he told the OAS officer. “Those guys are gone, but—”
Jobo put up his hand and stopped Batman mid-sentence.
“Are they gone forever?” he asked. “Buried in a mass grave out there?”
Batman hesitated — but then nodded yes.
“And was that not the point of your mission? To get rid of them?”
Batman nodded again.
“And you were paid?”
“Yes — we were…”
Jobo pounded him on the back. “Then celebrate, my boy. You deserve it.”
“But some strange things happened on that island,” Batman told him. “Things we really can’t explain.”
Jobo put his arm around Batman’s shoulder. “My friend — strange things are always happening out in these islands. And some of them no one can ever explain, even if they take a hundred years to try. The more time you spend out here, the more you will come to understand that.”
Batman thought this over. The pirates were dead. The BABE consortium had paid them. And the OAS representative was being quite clear he didn’t want to know or care how the pirates met their end.
So …
“End of mission, end of story?” Jobo asked him.
Batman finally managed a smile.
“You learn quick,” Jobo told him.
Batman turned and clinked glasses with Jennessa.
“All’s well that ends well,” he told her.
She smiled and kissed his cheeks again.
“Exactly,” she replied.
Crash, Gunner, Twitch and the Senegals had all joined them by now. They, too, were getting their glasses filled by Jennessa’s gorgeous colleagues.
“I guess our vacation starts today,” Crash said.
* * *
The little celebration went on like this for a while. It was a perfect day. The warm winds were blowing, the crystal-clear water was lapping gently against the Dustboat’s hull, the sun was shining brightly.
Everything seemed ideal.
But not for Nolan.
He never joined the others. He spent the whole time up on the bow where the team’s helicopters had been brought, scraping off the oversized United States insignia they’d added before the assault on the pirates’ hidden camp.
His body language made it clear that he wanted to be left alone, and the members of Whiskey understood.
Flying the U.S.-marked copters and wearing the American flag on the back of his battle suit had been a reprieve of sorts for Nolan. For a little while, it was as if he were serving in the U.S. military again. Fighting for his country again.
It seemed like such a little thing, but it was hugely important to him.
Now that the mission was over, ending strangely or not, getting rid of the emblems was his job — no one else’s.
“What’s with him?” Jennessa finally asked Batman. “Doesn’t he like champagne?”
Batman just shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
Jennessa shook her head. “He’s really handsome, you know,” she said with a sigh, immediately taking the wind out of Batman’s sails. “Good build. Rugged looks. Has he ever done any modeling?”
“Only for the Army,” Batman replied with a sinister laugh.
It was true: When Nolan was an officer cadet, his picture had graced some Army recruiting posters.
“Well, the eyepatch adds just the right amount of mystery,” Jennessa went on, refilling Batman’s glass. “So please, tell him for me, no matter what he does, don’t ever do anything to screw up that face.”
PART THREE
The Sugar Men
11
Aden, Yemen
Mark Conley arrived at the Kilos building an hour before sunrise.
Coffee in hand, he took his seat inside the OSS suite, glanced at his computer screen and let out a long sigh. More than three dozen requests for Whiskey’s services had come in overnight. Representatives from the governments of Japan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Spain were inquiring about the team’s availability. Companies from Greece, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and The Netherlands were also hoping to book them. They’d even received an inquiry from someone at a company in Los Angeles that simply said, “Call me.”
“We should just franchise this thing,” Conley thought aloud as he began the process of transferring the voice messages to text. “Then they can take over this whole freaking building.”
A letter was waiting on his desk. It was postmarked the Bahamas, three days before. Inside was a funds transfer slip from the Royal Bahamian Bank of Nassau to the Kilos-controlled OSS account in the First National Bank of Aden. The transfer was for five million dollars. An attached note read: “Wish you were here.” It was signed by Batman Bob Graves.
Wiseass, Conley thought.
The day went on. Conley split his time between OSS stuff and his real job of running Kilos Shipping’s Middle East security department. By 11 A.M., he was ready for lunch.
He left the Kilos building and headed for the docks. There was a falafel stand down there that actually sold hot dogs. Hebrew National hot dogs, yet.
Conley ordered his usual: three pups and a Saudi Arabian Pepsi. Packing it all in a brown paper bag, he headed back to the office.
Upon crossing San’nah Street, though, he found his way blocked by a huge black limousine.
As he approached, the limo’s rear door opened. A large man inside was beckoning to Conley.
“Hello, friend of my friends,” the man called out to him.
He was wearing a thick wool suit and had hands the size of baked hams. His skin was pasty white, his teeth were gold and yellow, and his nose appeared to have been broken so many times, the cartilage didn’t know which way to go next. Judging by the bulge under the man’s suit coat pocket, he was packing a firearm the size of a small cannon.
Conley knew who he was right away.
“Comrade Bebe, I presume?” he asked.
“And you are ex-Big Apple cop?” the man replied. “Good to meet you.”
Bebe was the Russian gangster who’d hired Whiskey to provide security for a cruise ship full of Russian mobsters during a trip through the Aegean Sea not two months before. As unlikely as it seemed, the gangster took a liking to the team and had provided them with crucial information about how to finally track down and kill Zeek the Pirate.
Conley had heard so much about Bebe from the team members that he would have known him anywhere.
But what was he doing here, in Aden? In a limo that barely fit through the narrow streets? And in that suit? It was almost 95 degrees and it wasn’t even noon.
“Ride with me,” he said to Conley. “I’m just needing a few minutes.”
Armed only with his hot dogs and soda, Conley climbed into the limo and it sped off. Bebe took his lunch bag from him, looked inside, and then passed him an envelope full of photos.
“Do you know this man?” Bebe asked him.
Conley studied the photos. They showed a slight, well-dressed Asian man going in and out of various buildings, walking along the street, sitting in a park. All of the photos were candids, as if the man had been under surveillance, and the locations ranged from slums to typical Chinese streets to a building that looked nothing short of Shangri-la.
The photos were blurry in spots, but that didn’t matter. Conley knew who the man was: Sunny Hi.
He was one of the most dangerous criminals in
the world, yet virtually unknown outside Asia. Boss of the Shanghai crime syndicate, Sunny Hi commanded an underworld organization so vast, its tentacles had a stranglehold not only on all of China, but on every other country along the Pacific Rim as well. Drugs, money laundering, prostitution, arms sales, murder for hire — Sunny Hi was so powerful, the ruling elite in Beijing reportedly kissed his ring whenever he requested a private meeting with them.
At his core, Sunny Hi was a pirate. His gang started out hijacking ships in the South China Sea, killing their crews, unloading the stolen cargo on the black market and then selling the commandeered ships themselves. Weapons and heroin dealing followed, as did white slavery and contract hits, and finally, a thriving business in child prostitution. His personal fortune was said to be more than $70 billion. His immediate gang numbered in the thousands; his activities affected, directly or indirectly, millions of people around the world.
But he was famously known never to have had his photo taken, or even be seen in public, which was why Conley was surprised to see so many images of him now.
“He is usually like a bug who crawls out only at night and in places where you cannot see him,” Bebe explained. “But more of late, he shows himself in the daytime. He even walks streets with his wife sometimes. He is trying to make it look like he’s leaving the criminal world behind because something grave has happened in his life. But it’s all show when it comes to his business. Inside dope says he’s as evil as ever.”
Bebe singled out a photo that showed Sunny Hi looking down into the cargo hold of a ship that was literally full of young females, several hundred at least, presumably being shipped out for prostitution around the Asian continent. They looked like cattle, and judging from the demeanor of some of the heavily armed guards also caught by the interloping camera, anyone who resisted was most likely beaten or killed, just to make an example.
“Sunny Hi has been scum of Earth,” Bebe concluded. “And when you hear that coming from man like me, you know I’m serious. I mean — criminal or not, we all have to make living, no? But selling these girls? Killing those who resist? Torturing their families? Even I know these things are wrong.”
