King Pirate

by Tom Stern

  “What about the investigators?”

  Kelley said: “Cuchulain feeds them just enough bullshit that they feel like they’re busy and doing a good job. If he didn’t, they’d get restless. Some of them are smart. They would dig. It would only be a matter of time until they found something. And then it would be all over. Fuck that. Better for Cuchulain to sacrifice pawns every once in a while so the king stays safe.”

  “And you think Cuchulain is capable of all of this.”

  Kelley thought about Cuchulain’s coffins. “No question. He runs the IPC from behind the scenes. Cameras and microphones. What better way to decrease the chance of people on both sides of the law matching him up?

  “In person – despite all his bullshit and craziness, he’s a crafty sonofabitch. I think most of it is an act. And if it ain’t, it’s because he’s old enough to finally start cracking.

  “So what’s the next step? What’re you going to do?”

  “I have to make some calls.”

  “Starting with Asano.”

  “Right.”

  “And then?”

  Rasa sighed. “We have to build a case.”

  “After what I just told you? Fuck!”

  “Didn’t you say you worked in law enforcement in the United States? It works the same way here.”

  “What can I do to speed up the process?”

  “Perhaps,” Rasa thought, “you could tap the satellite phone. Wear a wire when next you meet with Cuchulain – “

  “Oh, shit!” Kelley shouted. “You’re talking about a step-by-step case build, with me risking my life the whole way. This isn’t the fucking New York mob. It’s one fat Irishman sitting in an office!”

  “Like you said, that man is the head of an anti-piracy organization,” Rasa explained. “If I’m going to take him down, it can’t be with anything less than the most air-tight case imaginable. Otherwise, the political embarrassment alone will land you in prison for life. Not to mention, end my career.”

  Kelley had already stopped listening.

  Breathing hard on sea air ripe with the stench of a coming typhoon, Kelley said, “Make your calls, you useless prick. I’ll take care of Cuchulain my own way.”

  “Don’t -- !”

  Kelley hung up on Rasa. He stared out across the sea. As if he could project his consciousness all the way across the water to Cuchulain sitting at the top of his tower.

  …

  On deck. Kelley addressed the crew: “We all know what’s heading our way.”

  The sea wolves nodded. They weren’t fools.

  Kelley continued, “The Yurei’s wounded. She might not make it through. But the tanker is unharmed. It’s heavy and solid and full of ballast.

  “Any man who wants to move to the tanker can go right now.”

  The crew looked at each other.

  Wa Leung asked, “Where will you be, captain?”

  Kelley placed a hand on the railing. Right here.

  None of the men moved. They stared at him, black eyes unwavering. They would stay with him.

  “If that’s how it’s gonna be,” Kelley said. “By tomorrow, we’ll either be in Kuala Lumpur, or we’ll all be in hell.”

  The men went back to work. The choice was fine by them.

  …

  Kelley sat in the galley. He opened canned food. A barometer on the wall: 30.15mm. He calmly ate.

  Kelley opened his laptop. Sped through his email, found the numbered account. He typed: “Are you Cuchulain?”

  He finished eating. The barometer read 29.85.

  Kelley went top-side to get a feel for the weather. A stiff breeze out of the southeast made tarpaulins flap in a syncopated rhythm, drumming the march of conga drum-shaped dark clouds on the horizon, swirling like devils. A long, sinister gray swell rolled out of the southeast. More clouds stacked higher in layers over the horizon.

  It was a death sky.

  …

  The waves increased in power. Ten degrees became twenty degrees. Every swell a whitecap. Lights began to sway. The groaning of the ship’s hull plates augured splitting rivets, or worse, a big crack of a steel plate itself.

  The barometer: 28.78.

  …

  Kelley’s satellite phone rang. It sounded strange and hollow in the air; the atmosphere itself had changed. It was as if reality itself was slowly bending. Kelley wondered if they’d already gone to the bottom, and now the Yurei was heading across the waters separating the living and the dead. He shook off his weird thoughts and answered the damn phone.

  Static assailed him. Shreds of words floated up from the chaos. Kelley listened. Shouted: “What?”

  Kelley strained to hear. It sounded like Rasa. Kelley kept the phone to his ear. Rasa spoke quickly. Frantically. Kelley tried to piece it together.

  Suddenly, the static broke for a split second. It was just long enough for Kelley to catch the end of a sentence: “– Cuchulain’s coming for you!”

  And the phone jagged into solid static. The storm ravaged the signal. Kelley disconnected.

  …

  Kelley stood on the bridge with Tsung and Dao Jia. The ship pitched and swayed. They clung to handholds to avoid getting dashed to the floor. Wind ululated over the crashing, roaring waves. Rain cascaded through the broken windows. It was like driving through a car wash in a convertible. But Kelley refused to abandon the controls. They had to shout over the din.

  Kelley said, “He wants us dead! Out here on the water, before we can get a signal. Before we get back to Kuala Lumpur and start talking.”

  With short, broad strokes, Kelley had brought the siblings up to speed on the danger Cuchulain represented. Now they understood why Kelley had kept his inside involvement from them.

  “It’s suicide to come out here,” Dao Jia said.

  Kelley shook his head. “Cuchulain’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. Rasa wouldn’t call out that warning unless he heard about a mission to find us, either Cuchulain himself or an IPC-sanctioned military force.”

  Tsung’s muscles tightened as he struggled with his one good hand to keep standing. He said, “There’s no way Cuchulain can find us in this storm.”

  “I’m telling you, he knows that. He’s a sly bastard. He wouldn’t try it unless he thought – “Kelley did an abrupt double-take. He climbed across the bridge to the radio console.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Kelley turned and shouted, “Did we check the tanker for ShipLok?”

  “Huh? No! Why would a pirate craft activate a ShipLok?”

  Kelley dialed to the ShipLok distress frequency.

  The alarm filled the cabin.

  Dao Jia’s eyes went wide. “Sonofabitch!”

  Kelley flipped off the signal. “They’ve been tracking us this whole time!”

  And that’s when the satellite phone rang. All three officers of the Yurei stared at the phone like it’d started telling their fortunes. And, in a way, it did.

  A wave took the Yurei. The phone bounced to the floor of the bridge. Kelley snatched it up. He put it on speaker.

  “This is Ryan Kelley of the Yurei!”

  “I know who yeh are, ya daft cunt.” The words poured out of the phone, filling the bridge. So loud, they blew the sound of the wind and waves away. The reception was impossibly strong.

  Tsung: “How is it so clear?”

  Kelley answered by squinting through the storm. He realized a more powerful receiver could amplify the signal, even on the edge of a typhoon. But Kelley also knew a receiver that strong cost a ton of money, equipment typically only found on a large merchant or research vessel. Or a war ship.

  “Still there, Kelley?”

  “The hell do you want?”

  “I think we both know what that might be,” Cuchulain bellowed. “Yer a pirate. I have the proof. And yer goin’ to the bottom, yeh greasy rat! There’s no escapin’ it!”

  Kelley saw it: the dark, angular shape of the war ship rolling on the waves. Close, terribly close. Even so,
she was the vaguest of silhouettes in the roiling murk surrounding them. Only with his years of experience did Kelley get a fix on the ship – she was one of the Kedah-class fast patrol boats the Malaysian Coast Guard used.

  It was good and bad news. If the Coast Guard was on their asses, it meant the Yurei was already within the 12- mile mark of Malaysia’s shore. Almost home. But on the bad side, Kelley knew if he could see the Coast Guard ship in the midst of this ferocious storm with his naked eye, they could see him.

  Kelley yelled into the phone, “I can see you!”

  “Doubt that, lad. Ah’m sittin’ dry in KL. Those blokes y’see are just my friends here t’kill you.”

  As if on command, the patrol boat opened up with its main gun. She fore-mounted an Oto Melara 76/62 rapid medium-range gun. It fired two-pound high explosive rounds at a rate of 120 a minute, with an effective range of up to 8000 meters. Originally designed for anti-aircraft duty, the 76/62 was more than enough to sweep a deck, or take the Yurei apart in its weakened state.

  The stream of red-glowing tracers flashed across the sea between the two ships. Half of the rounds slammed into the arcing waves, the rest sprawling across the tormented sky. They had a visual fix on Kelley’s ship but, even with electronic guidance, they could do little more than fire wild in the raging typhoon.

  That evil red finger probed the storm for them again. And again. It would eventually find them.

  Cuchulain howled and ranted. His words blurred into the crazed symphony of the storm and guns. Kelley couldn’t make out intelligible words. He didn’t know if it was because of the noise, or if Cuchulain was so lost in his fervor that he was beyond the ability of making sense.

  Kelley didn’t care. The patrol boat was drawing closer. Luckily, she was tacking against the wind. The weather itself held the Coast Guard back. But it was just a breathing space. The Yurei was living on borrowed time.

  Kelley ignored Cuchulain’s wailing. He blocked it out, trying to touch on the no-mind. Trying to fucking think. He looked at the instruments. At the patrol boat. At the Yurei.

  “What’re we gonna do, Kelley?” Dao Jia screamed over the storm. “We can’t abandon ship in this!”

  And an idea came to Kelley.

  “Full speed ahead!”

  “What did you say?” Tsung yelled.

  “Full speed ahead! Straight down the typhoon’s throat! It’s our only chance!” He turned to Dao Jia. “Get our men on the tanker. Tell them to kill the ShipLok. Let me know when it’s done.”

  Kelley left the bare safety of the bridge. Only an idiot or a madman would go out onto an open fore deck when the ship was in the middle of a typhoon. Kelley hoped he was neither or both. He made his way as quickly as possible. Clutching every surface for dear life, white fingers curled around cold, slippery metal bars. A single strong wave would wash him out to sea, gone forever. That wave would come. He only had a few seconds.

  Kelley thought he heard a female voice behind him. He turned. The rain came so thick and hard that he couldn’t see through it, like trying to read a book through a shower door. A thin shape wavered at the edge of his sight. That slight, piercing female voice came again.

  Kelley guessed it was Dao Jia, sticking her head out the bridge. Is the ShipLok down? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t make out a single fucking word. Kelley had to go to work, anyway. He hoped that’s what Dao Jia was trying to say. If he managed to pull off what he was trying to do and the tanker’s ShipLok was still up, it would be all for naught. Kelley had no choice. He took the chance.

  Kelley made it below decks. To the Toy Box.

  …

  Another stream of rounds shot from the patrol boat. Against the bleak sea, the close-firing tracers from the 76/62 made every shot seem like an alien death ray from a War of the Worlds machine. Hunting for the Yurei.

  Kelley held his prize to his chest with one hand. He crept across the deck to the opposite speed boat. The chains holding it to the Yurei barely held. The boat swung in the sea’s rhythm, thudding against the hull. Avoiding the boat’s arc so he wouldn’t get his damn leg broken, Kelley got as close as he could. He wrapped an arm around the railing.

  The Yurei ran full-speed into the typhoon. The patrol boat right on their heels.

  The Coast Guard ship again spat fire. This time, it found the mark. The entire Yurei shuddered with the impact. She listed dangerously. Smoke erupted from the aft deck. A horrible crack broke across Kelley’s ears. It wasn’t thunder. The 76/62 had snapped something.

  The Yurei took the next waves with less grace. The ship moved like a car with a flat tire on the expressway, clumsy and broken.

  If that Goddamn gun hit them again, Kelley knew they were all dead.

  He heard a sound like Dao Jia screaming. Again. Was the ShipLok down? He prayed it was. Now or never.

  Kelley brought out his weapon. It was an RPG launcher.

  Eyes blinded, limbs numb, Kelley blundered his way to the launch mechanism. He flipped the switch. The speed boat tumbled to the water below. The tarp fluttered like a cape. It obscured the speed boat’s details. That didn’t matter. Kelley was sure that, like all of the other boats, his sea wolves kept a ready store of spare grenade rounds on each.

  The loose speed boat flopped into the wake of the Yurei. A tossing, floating, fully-fueled bomb.

  Kelley waited for the careening speed boat to find the middle water between the Yurei and the pursuing Coast Guard ship. Another red stream from the 76/62 lanced at them. Kelley held his breath. If it struck the speed boat early, their only chance was gone.

  It didn’t. It missed. Water exploded in a line, tracking the Yurei’s wake. A pause in the firing came. They were reloading. The Yurei was barely making eleven knots. She was limping in a storm. The Coast Guard craft was swiftly catching up. With closing distance and electronic targeting systems, Kelley estimated he had exactly as much time as it took the ship’s gunner to strike a fresh clip into the gun before they all died.

  He fired the RPG after the speed boat.

  It missed. The wind caught the grenade in mid-air. It veered off in a random direction. The round exploded into the ocean.

  Kelley swore. He reloaded as fast as humanly possible.

  The 76/62 barrel came up. Swiveling around to find the Yurei. The waves got higher. Thirty degrees, at least. The gunner held his fire. Waiting for a clear shot.

  Kelley slammed the fat grenade round home. He aimed and pulled the trigger.

  The rocket-propelled grenade left behind a white contrail that was instantly swallowed in the storm. But this time, Kelley had corrected for wind. Still, it didn’t hit the speed boat. But it exploded in the water directly behind the engine. Next to the fuel tank.

  With all of his fuel going up in flames beneath a full box of grenades, the speed boat exploded with a bright and flashing fury great enough that, even in a typhoon, it was awe-inspiring.

  The patrol boat involuntarily lurched. This was a ship built to catch smugglers. It wasn’t armored for full-on naval warfare. Kelley watched as the blasting speed boat tore a rent up the side of the riveted hull. Not enough to break her. But it was a huge, dark gash. The kind that would make the craft take on water. And, Kelley hoped, force her skipper to call off the chase.

  He was right. The ship fell behind. The 76/62 fell silent as the crew turned to the present task of surviving the typhoon on a ship with a damaged hull.

  Kelley smiled into the wind and rain.

  …

  The rain came down so hard that walking was like swimming. Kelley had to fight to move. It was hard to breathe.

  Dao Jia and Tsung had given up on speaking. They couldn’t hear each other. Human words became vague, garbled noise. The sky was so dark, the rain so thick, that they could only see by the frequent lightning strikes. Their sensory world devolved to a flickering staccato. It was like piloting a jumbo jet through a dance rave.

  The rain soaked the instruments. The instruments shorted out. Water was into everything
. The storm battered them so long that they got used to it. Kelley and his officers stopped actually sailing the ship. They merely clung to something solid and survived from one moment to the next. The rest of the crew was below, strapped down to whatever they could find, and trying not to vomit.

  Kelley hoped the tanker’s ShipLok was off, or else another patrol boat might come for them. And they would die. He hoped the tanker was still behind them. Without instruments, or the ability to see anything, he couldn’t tell. All he could do was try to avoid drowning.

  …

  Lights. Kelley saw lights. With eyes blurred by rain and lightning, he saw lights. On the not-too-distant horizon. He had never seen anything in his life that had brought him so much joy.

  They were the welcoming lights of Port Sweetenham.

  A small, cold hand touched his arm. Dao Jia. She pushed the drenched hair from her face and smiled. They were going to live.

  Kelley grinned back, bittersweet. Even if they weren’t instantly arrested, he had one more job to do. And he’d probably get killed doing it.

  …

  The Yurei staggered into port. Kelley was surprised the entire ship didn’t fall apart when it stopped moving. The rain slackened, but never let up. Thunder rattled the city. Lightning flared.

  A freighter isn’t like a car pulling into a spot. It takes some time to dock. Kelley figured he had a few minutes to wrap things up before he had to go.

  Kelley found his laptop. He brushed the rain water off the cover with a hand that wasn’t much drier. He punched the power button, expecting nothing. Amazingly, the machine whirred to life.

  He checked the email. Found another message from a numbered account. Like the other two, it was a different number combination. But Kelley had no doubt all three were from the same person, sending from a scrambled email account.

  Kelley asked the mysterious sender if he was Cuchulain. The reply email simply said: “Does it matter?”