Commercial craft were historically banned from carrying weapons, but because of the spike in piracy off the eastern coast of Africa, a number of countries had changed their rules, which had introduced a new opportunity for enterprising security firms. Increasingly ships that routinely made the run hired gunmen to stave off hijacking attempts and to act as a defense against pirates, who were typically after easy targets, not gun battles; although lately, as an international naval presence had massed in an effort to curb piracy, reports had surfaced of more aggressive attacks where the pirates had engaged, using automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The mate grunted assent as he left the bridge to wake the guards. Salome was cutting along at eighteen knots, and the other boat chugging through the seas at scarcely half that, so he felt no particular urgency as he wound his way down the stairs to where the security men were slumbering.
He roused the two sleeping gunmen with barely concealed delight and stood at their cabin door as they quickly pulled on clothes. Both donned Kevlar vests over their shirts and then scooped up their Kalashnikov AKM assault rifles before following him to the bridge.
“What have we got?” Ari, the taller of the two, asked the watchman.
“Doesn’t look like much.” He pointed to a bright spot on the glowing radar screen. “This guy, right here. No lights, on a heading that shouldn’t get much closer than a couple of miles. But I figured you’d want to know. Earning your keep and all. Maybe get to fire off those popguns.”
Ari ignored the jibe. His job wasn’t to get into a pissing contest with the crew. This was just another boring gig, one of hundreds of voyages he’d made, where nothing had ever happened – almost disappointing, given the buildup the company had given him when he’d applied for the position. He’d had visions of exotic ports and clashes with pirates on the high seas, not a virtually endless supply of diesel fumes and seasickness.
He looked at Barry, his partner, and grimaced.
“Not a lot to get excited about. You want to stay awake for this? I’m going to go back and try to get some more sleep. At the snail’s pace they’re moving, it’ll be like watching ice melt…”
“Sure. I agree. Won’t take two of us to keep an eye on the situation.”
Ari shook his head and trudged back to the narrow stairwell that led to the main deck level, carefully ensuring that his gun barrel pointed down at all times. Another false alarm in a long string of them. Every time a ship saw anything other than another tanker these days in the waters around Somalia, it was a fire drill – but at this point in his two-year-long career it had been a wash.
He had mixed feelings about that – some of the other men he worked with had been in firefights with pirates, and those had always ended with the attackers turning tail the second anyone shot back at them. They were opportunistic, extremely poor, and uninterested in doing battle to make their money, which was why the deterrent value of his company was undeniable. A few bursts across the bow of a pirate vessel and it would veer off in search of more benign prey. At least that’s what he’d been told, and he had no reason to doubt it.
Up on the bridge, Barry set his rifle down and moved to the coffee pot, resigned to spending the last hour of darkness staring at the screen and trying to stay awake.
~ ~ ~
Jiang Li, a thirty-year-old steel-hulled Chinese fishing trawler, had been hijacked three weeks earlier, and the crew held aboard as the leaky tub was used as a mother ship for the pirates who had taken her without a fight. Two fast skiffs trailed the boat, towed by stout rope, and over time the fifteen Chinese crew members had grown apathetic about their lot; they weren’t paid enough to risk their lives fighting the pirates, and it was unlikely that their owner would pay much of a ransom for their return, so they were just taking it day by day as the twenty-one armed Somali gunmen kept them on the deck where they could be used as human shields if any warships approached – which, so far, none had shown any interest in doing. A multi-national coalition force had sent ships to patrol the area, but it was a vast ocean, and the sector the pirates operated in was bigger than all of Europe, making the effort largely hit or miss.
Two ebony-skinned gunmen heaved the ropes and brought the skiffs to the stern as the pilot cut power, and in a few minutes eighteen of the heavily armed fighters had loaded aboard. The target was Salome, a medium-sized freighter hauling cargo to the Middle East. An accomplice with internet access in Mogadishu had alerted them to its passage, and their leader had decided it was a viable target.
Salome was operated by a prominent Israeli shipping company with offices in most major European ports, which made it an excellent candidate for ransoming – the value of the cargo alone would be worth many millions, perhaps over ten, so a ransom of a few million could be in the offing, rewarding them handsomely even after their financial backers had been paid. Pirating had become a booming cottage industry, and opportunities were now traded on an ad hoc exchange in Korfa, although the market was down since the success rate had dropped – a function of the increased military presence now patrolling the area.
The powerful outboard motors cranked to life, and a few moments later the boats were slicing through the waves, bound for where Salome was moving inexorably north, oblivious to the magnitude of the threat headed its way.
~ ~ ~
“Damn. Two bogies, small, just separated from the fishing boat. Looks like they’re headed straight for us,” the watchman said, eyes following the glowing dots on the screen as they moved away from the larger blip that was the Chinese fishing vessel.
“Speed?” Barry asked, standing, his heart rate accelerating at the prospect of an attack. Ribbons of red and orange were just beginning to light the sky as the sun fought its way over the horizon, and if it hadn’t been for the approaching small craft it would have been another breathtaking sunrise at sea to behold.
“Fast. At least twenty-five knots. They’re moving at a ninety-degree angle to our position, so they’ll be on top of us in just a few minutes. The fishing boat is only a couple of miles away from us now, so you can do the math.”
“Get someone to wake Ari. I’m headed down to the deck to set up a firing position. I don’t really even need them in range. Six hundred meters out I should be able to throw a few bursts their way. That should send them running,” Barry explained, grabbing his rifle from where he’d stowed it in a corner of the bridge.
“All right. Consider it done,” the mate said, rising from his swivel chair and preparing to follow him. “I’ll go get the captain, too.”
As they entered the stairwell, the mate cleared his throat. “Why don’t you shoot at them from up here, on the superstructure? Wouldn’t that give you a better position? Shooting from the highest possible point?”
“Flexibility. I want to be able to cover both sides of the ship, as well as the bow and stern. I can’t do that as easily from up top because of the railing and the configuration of the walkways – and there’s less cover.” He paused as his foot hovered over the next step. “Look. Just do me a favor and get Ari. We’ll need all the time we can get. And tell him to bring some more ammo, as well as our sidearms,” Barry snapped, perfunctorily dismissing the mate. With his first real-life pirate attack imminent, he wasn’t in the mood to play twenty questions.
Once outside, the salt wind lashing at his face, he looked around until he found a suitable spot where he could lie on the deck and fire while presenting as small a target as possible, as he’d been trained. It had been seven years since his service days, and a maritime exchange was different than firing at fighters in the desert, but the basics remained the same. A gun was a gun, even on a moving platform like a ship under way, and maintaining rigid control over your reactions was still essential, regardless of the turf.
Ari was by his side three minutes later, an excited expression on his face, and handed him two spare magazines and a pistol.
Barry raised the neoprene-sheathed binoculars, scanned the water, and poi
nted into the distance. “There they are. I can just make them out. They’re definitely hostiles. Boats are bristling with guns. And it looks like they’ve got binocs, too. Shit. They’re splitting up now. Probably going to try to get one on the starboard side while the other one takes the port. Tricky bastards, I’ll grant them that. They’ll try to approach more toward the stern. That’s what all the latest reports say is the standard M.O. What’s the range?” Barry asked.
“About nine hundred meters. I’d give it another minute and then let them have a few rounds. That should put the fear of God into them. Oh, wow. They also have RPGs. Nice.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the grenade launchers. Those things are all but useless over a hundred yards. Two hundred would be a prayer,” Barry said.
“You want me to move to the other side?”
“Nah. Not yet. I have a feeling this’ll be over before it starts.”
“I wish the cheap pricks at the company had equipped us with Barretts and scopes. This kind of sucks. There’s nothing I hate worse than a fair fight,” Ari griped.
“The scope wouldn’t have done you much good with the seas like this. They’re bobbing around pretty good, and we’re not exactly standing still. Besides, it won’t matter. Once they hear my rifle and see the bullets shredding the water around them, they’ll back off.”
“Be nicer if we had a .50 caliber machine gun. That would make short work out of them.”
“Or ack-ack guns. Like the Navy. Kaboom. Party over.”
They waited as the ship continued plowing north, their nerves hyper-tuned by the prospect of their first real engagement. Barry squinted down the barrel of his assault rifle and prepared to fire.
“Range?”
“Maybe six hundred, but closing fast.”
“That’s my guess too. All right. Let’s get this show on the road.”
The stuttering report of the AKM echoed off the topsides as Barry fired four bursts at the nearer of the two boats, breaking his promise to himself to try to avoid hitting them with the warning volley. Once he was actually trying to sight the bucking rifle on the boats, he realized that he would be lucky to get within a dozen yards of the bouncing skiff.
Ari peered through the glasses and then swallowed hard. “They aren’t turning.”
“Shit. Dumbasses. Well, time to open up on ’em, then…”
“Damn. And they don’t just have AKs. Now that they’re closer, I can make out some other weapons. Looks like at least one sniper ri–”
A rain of slugs hammered the metal around them as the lead boat opened fire, eight guns blazing on full automatic, hurling hundreds of rounds at their position. Most slammed harmlessly above and below them, but one caught Barry in the neck and ripped through the side of his throat, sending a spray of arterial blood onto Ari’s face. Barry grunted as he dropped his rifle and clutched at the wound, his eyes surprised and then panicked, his life burbling through his hand as he groped blindly for his weapon.
“Oh, God, Barry–” Ari’s expression had changed from eagerness to horrified fright, and for a few seconds he froze, torn between doing something to help his friend and continuing to fire at the rapidly approaching boats. Barry groaned as he weakened, deciding the priority – Ari needed to repel the pirates before he did anything else, otherwise they were both going to wind up dead.
He drew a bead on the closest skiff and fired, his weapon now on full auto, and saw two men collapse in the lead craft as three of his rounds found home.
That was the last thing Ari registered. A ricochet shattered the back of his skull, instantly liquefying his brain, killing him before he even realized he’d been hit. Slugs continued to pepper the ship, and another bullet shredded through Barry’s chest, ending his agonized struggle as his limp, blood-soaked hand fell lifelessly at his side.
The mate watched the gunfight from one of the bridge side windows, and when he saw the two guards get shot he made a snap decision and abandoned his position with a yell to the watchman and the pilot.
“They’re hit. I’m going down. No way am I going to spend months in some Somali shithole,” he warned, sprinting by them.
“Wait. That’s not your job. Don’t get involved or they’ll shoot you too,” the watchman cautioned. “This is bad enough as it is. Two already dead…”
“The only way we’re going to avoid being taken hostage is if we keep shooting. I’m not about to be tortured for months before they kill me. I’ve heard the stories,” the mate said, ending the discussion, and then he ducked through the door and descended the stairs at a run.
When he reached the deck, the two pirate boats were only a hundred yards away. Ducking to present a smaller target, he bent down and picked up one of the rifles, taking in the carnage at his feet with a determined expression. He’d spent time on the battlefield years before in the military and was no stranger to death, but the slick blood pooling on the deck was a stark reminder of its reality. The pirates spotted him, and three of the shooters began blasting away at his position. He dropped to the deck next to the dead men and returned fire, and then watched in horror as one of the attackers shouldered an RPG and launched the grenade directly at his position.
The shell went wide, but the blast rocked him, destroying his hearing and blowing a hole in the metal superstructure. He blinked dust out of his eyes and then the pain hit – his leg was bleeding where errant shards of shrapnel had torn through it, leaving a burning mess of mangled flesh and oozing blood in their wake.
He fought to keep the rifle steady as he fired again and again at the approaching boat, and grinned with satisfaction when two more of the assailants slammed backwards from his bullets; and then his expression froze as a row of slugs shredded his torso from his shoulder to his ribcage. The Kalashnikov fell from his grasp as he convulsed in shock. He watched helplessly as another RPG hit the top of the superstructure above him and detonated, blowing all of the communications antennae and radar arrays into the sea and showering the bridge below with a rain of deadly debris.
The first skiff reached the port side of the ship, near the stern, and one of the pirates swung a grappling hook at the end of a knotted cord and let it fly. It clanked against the deck until it found purchase on the steel rim. After a cautionary pull on the rope, the first gunman climbed up the ship’s side, followed closely by three more. The second boat repeated the procedure, and two minutes later ten heavily armed pirates stood on the deck, surveying the destruction. One of the men approached the fallen security guards and the mate, and after toeing them and confirming they were dead, confiscated their weapons, sliding one of the pistols into his belt with a leer before passing the remaining guns to his fellow pirates.
The crew stayed inside. Nobody wanted to risk the wrath of an angry boarding party that had sustained casualties by doing anything that could be construed as defiance. A merchant seaman’s duties didn’t include taking on armed murderers, and not a man among them wanted to join the dead.
When the leader of the pirates reached the bridge, the watchman and the captain were lying amidst the wreckage, bleeding from their noses and ears, the second grenade’s detonation having wreaked as much havoc inside as it had above. The pilot’s body was a shapeless heap in the far corner, his neck broken, eyes staring sightlessly into eternity. The leader pulled his newly acquired pistol from his waistband and grinned malevolently, and after a quick perusal of the wheel and transmission levers, turned and shot both men in the head.
“Open the engines up, full throttle, and head for land. We should be able to make the cove before dark tonight. We’ll drop anchor and then deal with the crew. Maybe they’ll be worth something more than the ship, maybe not. Nadif, you take first watch. The rest of you, go gather the crew and search them, then lock them in one of the storage rooms and mount a guard outside the door. I don’t want any surprises,” he instructed, and his men rushed to obey.
The leader was a different kind of pirate than those who had come before: born in the war-torn s
outh, brutal, vicious, and completely remorseless. While many plying the trade were ex-fishermen or local villagers fallen on desperate times, he was a new breed of professional criminal who had sought out his current vocation for the riches it could bring – and as he’d just proved, he was willing to kill and be killed to achieve his ends.
The big ship increased speed, edging to twenty knots as Nadif set a course for the eastern shore of Somalia – a windswept desert pounded by huge surf and plagued by radiation from the toxic waste that European and Indian firms had been dropping in the coastal sea for years, unhindered by any Somali naval force and unmoved by the blight of disease their deadly refuse left as its legacy leaked out along the poisoned coast. One of the men radioed to the fishing boat and it set a course for land as well, its usefulness for the time being at an end, the fate of its crew uncertain as the reluctant owner negotiated with the pirates for its return.
Chapter 3
Ten years ago, Baghdad, Iraq
Rifle fire chattered as fires burned out of control from the battles that had been fought for the last five days between Iraqi forces and invading troops. A pall of black oil smoke hung over the city from wells that had been ignited to hide troop movements, and the fighting raged from street to street as the Coalition forces advanced through the city. The night was a near-constant series of explosions and gunshots as soldiers loyal to Saddam Hussein battled with the invaders in fierce building-to-building fighting. Whole tracts of the city were out of control, with looters running unchecked through the streets as gunfire erupted in sporadic bursts.
JET V - Legacy Page 2
