by Tom Stern
…
Minutes later. On the bridge of the Yurei. Kelley grabbed his Zeiss binocs and went out onto the catwalk surrounding the bridge. He faced the west, scanning the water.
Nothing.
His eyes drifted to the satellite phone. The one he’d used to talk to Cuchulain all through this privateer campaign against King Pirate.
What a fucking laugh.
Tsung was inside with Dao Jia. Watching the radar. Tsung called: “Getting close!”
Kelley swore under his breath. Where the hell’s this damn ship?
And that’s when he heard it. A sound he was able to instantly identify, no matter how quiet or distance.
The telltale whumping of an approaching helicopter.
Kelley squinted, trying to get a bearing. There! A dark, tiny spec standing out against the shaded sky opposite the rising sun.
He glassed the spec. Focused on the swiftly-approaching chopper. Details leapt up at Kelley. His heart lurched against his ribs.
It was a Soviet-era Mi-24D “Hind” gunship, the kind used in their disastrous Afghanistan campaign in the early-‘80s. As the U.S.S.R. collapsed less than a decade later, arms dealers had gutted the stockpiles, selling off Hinds to third world militaries. Heavily armored and laden with weaponry, they were no less lethal in the 21st century. The Hind coming towards them was painted black. It bore no insignia. The binoculars were so accurate that Kelley could already see the glint of the Hind’s four murderous 57mm rocket pods and nose-mounted 12.7mm anti-personnel machine gun. At least he didn’t see any of the anti-tank missiles the Hinds sometimes mounted. Kelley thanked God for small favors. Newborn sunlight reflected from the cockpit’s glass. It was almost as heavily armored as the rest of the chopper. The canopy could repel a .50-caliber round. The cockpit was pressurized to protect the pilot and gunner from ABC warfare.
This was one seriously bad motherfucking helicopter.
Tsung came to stand next to Kelley. “A chopper?”
“Worse – it’s a gunship, armed and armored.”
Tsung’s grasped at straws. “Maybe they sent it to fly escort on the tanker.”
“Bullshit. It wouldn’t have the fuel range to cover the trip. We’ve been seen. That Hind’s coming for us.”
In the face of impending death, Tsung didn’t move. He stood frozen, fear hijacking his senses. Kelley roughly grabbed him. Shaking Tsung out of his reverie.
“Hit the alarm, damn you! Battle stations!”
Tsung came out of it. He dashed back into the bridge and sounded the alarm. The sudden whoop echoed across the ship.
Kelley dove to the deck. His sea wolves were already leaping for the speedboats, thinking the alarm was the signal to attack.
Kelley didn’t know the Malay word for helicopter. So he just shouted in English: “Don’t launch! They sent an attack chopper after us! Get the RPGs! Battle stations!”
The men blinked, confused even as the men who knew some English translated for the others. Kelley ran to the railing and pointed. Every man’s head swiveled as one. In the silence, they heard the deep, distant rotors. Understanding came to them in a flash. They sprang for their weapons.
Kelley had trained his crew well in raiding. But he never thought they’d have to ever repel a helicopter attack. There was no plan in place. They’d have to make it up as they went along. He hoped they’d figure out something before it killed them all.
Dao Jia said: “The Toy Box.”
Kelley answered with a sharp nod. He grabbed two men by the shirts. “Come with me.”
Below decks, the hull’s thick steel seemed to offer a promise of safety. Kelley knew it was an illusion. The Hind would tear them wide open.
He came to the hidden compartment. Worked the locks. Opened it. His hungry eyes spun across the black market ordinance. Grenade launchers, machine guns, charged explosives and more. But not a single damn thing for anti aircraft fighting.
There was no question: Kelley would die fighting. He turned to the sea wolves. “Help me with this.”
Together, the three men were strong enough to bring out the 14.5mm heavy machine gun, and its tripod and ammunition boxes. Kelley doubted it would be enough to punch through the Hind’s armor. He didn’t have a choice. It was their only bet.
By the time they got the yards-long machine gun hauled up to the deck, the Hind was already close enough to be clear to the naked eye. Its nose was dipped forward, charging at them at full speed. The Hind would be on them in less than a minute.
Dao Jia rushed over to help. Working like a man possessed, Kelley set up the tripod. They balanced the main gun up, snapped it into the fitting. He fumbled with the ammunition box, heavy with hundreds of full metal jacket rounds. He’d never put this exact kind of gun together before. One of his sea wolves ran over, showed Kelley the right way. They got it in. Kelley worked the action. He took hold of the twin-grip trigger mechanism. Swiveled the gun around. Kelley faced down the Hind.
The Hind’s pilot saw Kelley and the gun. It climbed in altitude. It came within striking distance of the Yurei’s port bow.
Kelley opened up with the 14.5mm heavy machine gun, sending a stream of its massive bullets into the air. It roared: RAH-chah-cha-chah-chah-DAH! The gun bucked like a crazed animal. So ferocious and loud and powerful it was like you could tear the world in half with the Goddamn thing. Kelley felt the rush of pure destructive ability course up his arms. He grit his teeth. Eyes wide. Feet planted. Dick hard.
And the bullets just sparked off the Hind’s jet-black armor. They might as well have been Indiana fireworks. Kelley kept firing, even as he realized the best they could throw at the Hind was useless.
His sea wolves popped off RPG rounds. A half-dozen grenades crumped in a staggered staccato as they leapt from the tubes to die in glorious explosion against the Hind.
The Hind pilot neatly sluiced the chopper away; an elegant side-step. The grenades passed through the air where the Hind had been a moment ago, leaving white trails behind as they fell one-by-one to explode uselessly in the sea. A Stinger missile would have tracked the Hind and brought it down. Kelley was desperately short on Stinger missiles at the moment.
Having easily fended off the Yurei’s best shots, the Hind replied in kind.
Kelley abandoned the machine gun, ran and threw himself face-first against the deck as the first rocket hissed out of the Hind’s pod. It struck the exact spot Kelley had mounted the 14.5mm gun. The explosion punched a hole in the deck and disintegrated the machine gun, sending a cloud of shrapnel in every direction. Kelley’s men screamed and died as pieces of the machine gun stabbed through their bodies at white-hot speeds.
The Hind kept moving, circling. Wary of RPG rounds. Another rocket fired. It blasted against the Yurei’s starboard hull. Kelley tumbled across the deck as the ship lurched in response.
He slammed against the railing. Pulled himself to his feet. Ran for the bridge.
A third rocket came. Striking the hull a dozen meters forward. The stench of explosive material and burning steel flooded the air.
The Hind switched to its 12.7mm. The four-barrel machine gun whirled into a deadly blur, spewing bullets like a dragon breathing fire. Hundreds of rounds lanced across the Yurei’s decks, accompanied by a terrible ripping sound.
The machine gun chased and found Kelley’s sea wolves, biting their bodies in half, sending gory explosions of blood across the decks in the wake of cut-short screams. Lives instantly ended in spectacular fashion. It was the ultimate expression of the strength of technology versus flesh.
The machine gun rounds rang against the Yurei’s steel hide like a deafening rainstorm on a metal roof. It was as if the crew had merely been thrown into a huge, loud machine designed to chew them to pieces.
Death came for these men like a rabid animal, pouncing from one to the next. Blood and screams and the ripping machine gun combined into a single, mind-breaking cacophony.
Kelley ducked around the corner of the bridge. The Hind tr
acked after him. Kelley ran. The bullet stream tracking only a few feet behind him.
Kelley took cover under the stairway, slipping under the metal like he was sliding into first. Knowing it only bought him seconds; the Hind had only to twitch its position around to find a clear shot. As if frustrated at momentarily losing its prey, the Hind spat another rocket into the ship, bursting against the port side.
In this darkest moment, Kelley got angry.
The Hind again spun around the stricken ship, searching for targets. It gave Kelley the precious three seconds he needed to gallop up the stairs, into the bridge.
Another stream of machine gun rounds swept up at him, shattering the thick glass windows around him. Kelley fell to the floor, face pressed against the steel. He covered his head. A storm of glass shards splashed across him.
Kelley looked up. And saw what he needed: the sniper rifle. Kelley crawled on his elbows across the bridge, ignored the glass slicing through his shirt and biting skin. He brushed away the broken glass over the rifle. It was intact.
The Hind stalked after fresh victims. The machine gun killed so instantaneously that the men they found rarely had time to scream. The return-fire from RPGs eerily stopped. Crouched against the metal under the bridge’s shattered windows, Kelley wondered if any of his crew was still alive.
Another ripping came from the Hind. Thunderous. It was close. Almost directly above the deck. Moving in to tear out the wounded Yurei’s throat.
Kelley worked the action on the sniper rifle. He would have only one shot before the Hind turned and found him. Despite his muscle and scar tissue that made Kelley such a badass against his fellow man, he knew the machine gun would shred his fragile human body as easily as any other.
The wind of the Hind’s rotors blew through the bridge, strong enough to scatter anything that wasn’t nailed down. Bits of broken glass swirled through the room.
Covering his eyes against the razor wind, Kelley chanced a look over his cover. He was right: the Hind hovered almost directly over the Yurei’s deck. Smoke poured from the places rockets had kissed; it swirled in a dark tornado around the Hind.
Kelley kneeled. He steadied the rifle against the steel window sill, poking its muzzle between fangs of broken glass.
Kelley took a deep breath. As he exhaled, he found the no-mind. The twin roaring of the Hind’s rotors and guns fell into the distance, soft and murky as if it were coming from the bottom of the ocean. The smoke became transparent. Kelley’s raging heart quieted. The blinding dawn light reflecting from the Hind’s cockpit window decreased until Kelley could see through its glass. He could see the gunner. And the pilot. In the calm of the no-mind, Kelley felt as if he could stare directly into the pilot’s eye. Into his mind. That perfect moment hovered on the edge between life and death.
But the pilot was not Kelley’s target. The bullet would not pierce the glass. Kelley knew the Hind had only one weak spot. Its back rotor. Completely unarmored.
Kelley fired.
Anything less than a perfect shot would have rebounded off the thick armor on the Hind’s tail. Or miss. Or strike one of the tail rotors, failing to deliver a killing blow.
But none of these things happened. In the pure clarity offered in the no-mind, Kelley watched the bullet exit the rifle’s muzzle, zip across the distance between him and the Hind, smash through the central hub of the tail rotor.
The wings of the tail rotor wavered on their axis. Bent diagonally, they chopped into the Hind’s tail. The pilot scrambled to fight the controls. Too late. The Hind drunkenly whirled off the Yurei’s starboard side. It tilted. The spinning top rotors found the water. The Hind violently cartwheeled across the ocean’s surface. Smashing the gunship to pieces as it progressed. The nose caught the water. The Hind flew apart in a resounding explosion. It sank.
Kelley stood. Staring out at the water, watching the Hind vanish beneath the waves. The silence was like a living thing.
…
Half the crew was dead.
It took hours to put out the fires, but the wounded Yurei lived.
Tsung’s arm was broken. The concussive blast from a rocket strike had thrown him against the railing and knocked him unconscious. He’d lain on the deck as the Hind swept it with the auto-cannons. It was a small miracle that he was alive.
Dao Jia was covered with bloody cuts from flying glass and shrapnel. But she was relatively unscathed.
Their prey – the oil tanker – was still intact.
Little was left of the men killed by rockets and machine guns. Kelley hosed their remains off the broken deck.
Kelley’s sea wolves were rough men with violent criminal backgrounds. They took pain well, and knew how to patch themselves up.
Two men were wounded beyond repair. Kelley asked each man if he wanted to go to Kuala Lumpur, to a hospital. They both refused. They both chose a quick death. Kelley gave it to them. One squeeze of the finger, and he delivered the last gift to a strong man.
…
The next day. Limping north up the Malacca Strait.
They held a burial at sea for the fallen men.
Kelley and Tsung and Dao Jia and the Leung brothers and the rest of the remaining sea wolves stood on the broken deck. All of them facing the water, to which they consigned the spirits of their fallen friends.
Kelley stepped forward. He looked from one face to the next. Meeting their eyes.
“We all die,” he said. “To think otherwise is just a joke within a dream. The only difference comes in how you live, and how you die. We should envy these men. They died in the best possible way: quickly, with courage and honor. Their spirits are beyond the suffering of this world.
“These men are gone, but we remain. And now the question becomes, ‘What do we learn from their example?’”
In a repeat of the day he’d brought them together, Kelley drew his fighting blade and slit his palm. He slapped the bloody handprint against the side of the ship.
“Their blood is mingled with this ship. And so is mine. My blood will remember theirs.”
Dao Jia came forward. She took out her own knife and cut her hand. Tsung and the others pressed to join her.
And, in so doing, announced to each other that their fight would be to the death.
…
Open ocean. Storm clouds built. The world darkened.
The Yurei sailed next to the commandeered oil tanker. The surviving pirates were locked in the oil tanker’s mess hall under guard. The surviving sea wolves piloted both ships with skeleton crews.
The going was slow. The seas got rough. Waves threw themselves at Kelley’s ships, as if trying to persuade him from his course. Kelley learned a long time ago the futility of battling the sea’s desires. It had undercurrents that were too similar to those of its spiritual cousins, whatever you wanted to call them: destiny, fate, karma. But, in this, Kelley would not be deterred. His ships sliced through the waves, destiny be damned. Nothing could stop him.
Tsung came into the bridge. Stood with Kelley. Taking in what the instruments told him. Looking out the window. Seeing what the ocean told them.
He said, “If I had to guess –
“We’re heading straight into the jaws of a typhoon.”
Tsung nodded. If Kelley knew, and they kept their course, that meant there would be no argument. He tried, anyway. “The Yurei is wounded. The tanker is on a skeleton crew. Could mean our death.”
“It won’t. We’ll make it through.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m Ryan-fucking-Kelley, and something so small as a typhoon isn’t enough to stop me.”
Kelley left.
…
Typhoons can be hell on reception, Kelley thought with a wry frown. He knew the call he had to make. He’d been dreading it. Thinking of reasons to put it off. Generally acting like a pussy about it. But this might be his last chance.
Kelley took a deep breath. Time to face what needed doing. He slid the card from his s
hirt pocket. Carefully punched the numbers. And waited.
The phone rang.
The phone rang.
And Leftenan Madya Maritim Rasa of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency answered.
“Rasa? This is Ryan Kelley.”
“I knew you’d call.”
…
Kelley told him everything. From the beginning. All the way up to the present moment. Kelley didn’t fool himself that this was the “end.”
Or – to be accurate, Kelley told him almost everything. He left out a lot about Anastasia, when it didn’t have anything to do with her role as an investigator for the IPC.
Rasa listened. He asked questions. He took notes. The conversation lasted for over an hour. Whenever the sea wolves came close, Kelley moved. They got the hint. They left him alone. Even Dao Jia kept her distance. She could see from the look Kelley gave her that this was a conversation that would determine their eventual fates.
Kelley finally stopped talking. Rasa ran out of questions. There was a long moment of silence.
Kelley: “Well?”
Rasa: “Why did you call?”
“Because you’re an asshole.”
“But – “
“I think we’re on the same side.”
Rasa chuckled. He said, “If you’re right about Cuchulain, it would mean the head of the littoral states’ foremost anti-piracy organization is, in fact, the leader of the most dangerous and extensive pirate gang in the Malacca Strait.”
“It all makes sense,” Kelley replied. “Sanjay Gupta’s getting confidential shipping information from inside the government the IPC is supposed to protect. He’s taking calls right at his desk in the IPC. That would be phenomenally stupid, unless he was just obeying orders from the man watching over him. Sanjay’s not hiding his actions from the man above him. He’s passing the info he gets directly to Cuchulain. It explains why Gupta doesn’t have a system in place for sending the information he gets. There’s no reason. All he has to do is go into Cuchulain’s office.
“For all I know, Han’s in on it, too. He’s the day-to-day guy. He’d be the first to notice this bullshit. The only reason he wouldn’t report it to someone is if he was taking a cut. Or if they had something over him. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The foxes are running the henhouse.”
