They were getting close to the river mouth now, and Cole knew he would have to make his move soon or risk losing them forever.
He felt reverberations through the water then, and realized that DEVGRU’s assault had begun in earnest. Cole knew that they would rescue the ten hostages aboard the Fu Yu Shan.
Cole grimaced as he increased speed; he would just have to make damn sure that he rescued the eleventh.
The assault on the Fu Yu Shan went so smoothly that Jake Navarone was immensely grateful for the hours of rehearsal they’d put in. The fact was that – compared to the highly-trained SEALs of Team Four who’d been playing the enemy back in Subic Bay – the pirate gang was no match for them.
They were fine as long as they were attacking unsuspecting vessels which couldn’t defend themselves, but when it came time to face real professionals, they folded instantly.
Navarone and his men had inserted into the boat via the anchor’s hawse hole, and a concealed rear access point which had been identified from plans sent to them by the Tsing Tao Shipping Line. They had subsequently gained access to the ship completely undetected, and – once they were all in position – the assault had commenced.
Their suppressed weapons had taken the pirates out in the blink of eye, and the ship and the hostages were completely secured in under a minute from the first shot being fired. With control of the ship secured, Navarone made the call to the other assault elements to proceed, and the noise of gunfire and explosions rang out only seconds later.
In less than four minutes, Navarone heard the words of Alpha Troop commander Bill Hoggs come through over his earpiece. ‘Sector One secure,’ the experienced SEAL announced to Navarone’s relief, followed soon after by Charlie Troop commander Nelson Iboria’s affirmation that Sector Two was also secure.
‘Affirmative,’ Treyborne confirmed over the radio. ‘Location is secure, and we are ready for phase two.’
Navarone smiled, glad that they had been able to take over the hideout so quickly, but knowing that it was down to hard work, training, and professionalism. The pirates had never even had a chance to use their radar or defensive weaponry, and Navarone was glad that they had not waited for support; sometimes missions were better off with as few elements involved as possible, as it minimized the amount of things that could go wrong.
But now, as Commander Treyborne had announced, it was time for Phase Two; checking that the base was entirely secure, and then inviting everyone else to join the party.
7
Suprapto was disheartened, but pleased with himself nevertheless. The ripples through the water could only be from explosions, which meant that his base was under attack, just as his gut had told him.
How he had known, he had no idea; but he was inordinately glad he had taken Captain Yang into the submersible when he did. With the most important hostage still safe, there was still a chance for negotiation. And if Reza managed to get the Fu Yu Shan moving, all was not lost; not yet.
He smiled as his powerful lights showed the mouth of the river opening up ahead. He would soon reach open water, and be safe.
But then he felt the mini-sub lose speed, as if it had caught on something. Was it dragging something?
He tried to look around out of the clear Plexiglas cockpit, and then his heart stopped dead as he saw the masked face peering in at him from the dark waters.
Cole had reached the submersible just a few hundred yards from open water and now gripped hold of the bright yellow sides and pulled himself up to the cockpit bubble, his masked face appearing from the gloom.
He saw a man dressed in a ship captain’s uniform in one of the seats, gagged and restrained; presumably Captain Yang Yaobang of the Fu Yu Shan. In the other, his mouth wide in shock, was the pirate king himself, Arief Suprapto. The man’s hair was Samson-like in its extraordinary length, his ears and eyebrows adorned with golden rings, and Cole could see tattoos covering the muscular body which lay underneath his camouflage combat vest.
And then the look of shock was replaced by one of indignant rage, and Cole watched as Suprapto pulled a Colt .45 from his thigh holster and placed the barrel against Yang’s head, shouting at Cole through the bubble.
Cole couldn’t hear him, but the meaning was clear enough; get off the submersible, or Yang would be killed.
But rather than heed the warning, Cole shrugged his shoulders and held something up to the Plexiglas bubble, close enough so that Suprapto would make no mistake about what it was.
A thermal grenade.
Cole then made a big show of magnetically attaching it to the hull of the Triton submersible, showing Suprapto his empty hands.
To the pirate king’s fury, Cole then held up three fingers and swam away into the murky depths.
Three minutes until the thermal grenade exploded, and the mini-sub was blown out of the water.
There was only one choice that Suprapto could possibly make.
Arief Suprapto was enraged. What had that lunatic done? Did he want to kill the captain? Did he not care if the hostage lived or died? What sort of man was this?
And now he was swimming away, brooking no further negotiation, so confident was he that Suprapto would have to land the mini-sub, pop the hatch and escape before the grenade blew.
And the kicker was that this man was right; that is exactly what he would have to do. His pride was great, but his desire to survive to fight another day was greater yet.
As the counter timed down, Suprapto turned the mini-sub and piloted it straight for the south bank.
Cole watched and waited as the Triton two-man submersible rose to the surface, racing south until it collided with the muddy riverbank, beaching itself.
The huge Plexiglas dome popped open moments later, just as Cole made it to shore himself.
Cole raced towards the beached submarine, kicking off his flippers, stripping away his SCUBA gear, and pulling a stainless steel SIG Sauer 10mm from a shoulder holster as he ran.
He had the handgun up and aimed as he neared the sub, its yellow paint – now covered in mud – reflected eerily in the moonlight. He looked around, trying to trace the pirate and his hostage.
In the light from the moon and stars, Cole saw the tracks leading through the thick mud. Suprapto was already well away from the vessel, dragging Captain Yang by his hair into the jungle.
Cole fired a shot into the air, and Suprapto stopped in his tracks. He could have shot the man, but it was important that he be kept alive – if possible – for questioning.
An explosion rocked the shore, the thermal grenade exploding and blasting the Triton submersible into a million pieces.
Flames licked at the edge of Cole’s vision, illuminating the scene in front of him as Suprapto pulled Yang towards him, arm around his neck as his Colt .45 was once again aimed at the captain’s head.
The fire played over Suprapto’s savage face, flickering in his reptilian eyes. The pirate king’s tongue flicked out, licking his lips.
‘Let me go,’ he said in broken English. ‘Let me go, or else you have to explain why captain has no head, eh?’
Cole kept his aim steady. ‘I don’t really have to explain myself to anybody,’ Cole said, his voice as steady as his gun.
A shot rang out and Suprapto’s body was wrenched violently backwards, the Colt flying from his hand. He dropped to his knees, blood spurting from the gunshot wounds in his arm, Cole’s single shot penetrating both the forearm and the bicep.
Captain Yang staggered back, eyes wide with shock at how close he had come to death.
Cole moved toward the injured pirate, who held his arm in agony as he stared at Cole with burning hatred, flames still flickering across his blood-spattered face.
Cole kicked the man onto his back, stepping down with his boot onto Suprapto’s bicep, the damaged bone fracturing under the pressure, and placed the barrel of his gun between the pirate’s eyes.
‘Now let’s talk,’ he said with a smile.
‘We’re just miss
ing the captain, sir,’ Navarone explained to Commander Treyborne as they stood on the cargo ship’s main deck. ‘Yang Yaobang.’
The hostages were walking freely around the dockside now, trying to get some life back into their unbound limbs and some sense back into their terror-riddled minds.
Ted Grant, a shooter from Alpha Troop who was also a trained psychologist, had set aside some space on the bridge to talk to the hostages, and was holding conference in the semi-private room.
The bodies of the dead pirates had been collected and placed in rows to be examined, and the few remaining survivors were corralled in the rock pen where the Fu Yu Shan’s crew had recently been staying.
‘I know,’ Treyborne replied. ‘Our contact saw that Suprapto was making off with him in a damn freakin’ mini-sub, and took off after them. I don’t –’
‘Hold it!’
Navarone heard the call from the cavern entrance, and he and Treyborne raced over to the rear of the ship to find out what was happening.
Navarone saw an athletically-built man carrying a blood-stained half-naked pirate across his back, a man in a captain’s uniform limping along behind them.
The SEAL who had his gun pointed at the men listened to the athletic man speak, and nodded his head in understanding, turning back to look up at the deck of the Fu Yu Shan.
‘Sir!’ he called up. ‘It’s the Asset! He’s got Captain Yang with him, and Suprapto!’
Treyborne grinned. ‘I’ll be right down!’ he said happily.
Cole remembered Ike Treyborne. They had served together in SEAL Team Six, back when they had both been lieutenants. He’d been a good man, and Cole was delighted to see that he was still operational, despite his rank.
But even though Cole recognized Treyborne, it was unlikely that the commander of Red Squadron would recognize him; he’d changed considerably through plastic surgery since his days as Mark Kowalski.
‘So you’re the Asset?’ Treyborne asked with a smile as he met Cole by the dockside. Cole nodded, and Treyborne extended his hand, pumping it furiously. ‘Well, I gotta tell you, I’m damned glad you were here. You did an amazing job. Really, I mean it.’ Still shaking Cole’s hand, his eyes narrowed. ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Cole said noncommittally. ‘I’ve been around.’
Treyborne laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have.’ He looked down at the body of Arief Suprapto, unmoving on the dock. ‘Is he –‘
‘Dead?’ Cole finished, then nodded his head. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Captain Yang’ – he gestured behind him at the dazed Chinese captain, whose eyes were still staring off into the distance – ‘got a bit carried away, picked up Suprapto’s Colt .45 when I was questioning him and blew a hole in his chest. Guess he had a lot of built-up frustration.’
Treyborne laughed again, Cole’s deadpan humor overcoming the disappointment. ‘You said you questioned him?’ he asked hopefully, as Captain Yang was led away by one of his men.
‘I did,’ Cole replied seriously. ‘And I think we need to talk.’
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Treyborne said as he listened to Cole’s debrief. ‘So what does it all mean?’
Cole had managed to convince Suprapto to tell him everything – or at least as much as he was able to tell him before Captain Yang had gone and put a .45 slug in his heart.
It had been the Korean agents back in Jakarta which had made Cole so determined to get answers. Why were they interested? What was their part in all this?
It hadn’t taken long for Suprapto to admit that the hijacking wasn’t opportunistic; he had been hired specifically to target that particular vessel. Cole learnt that Liang Kebangkitan had been hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the Fu Yu Shan, earning the princely sum of twenty million US dollars for one small crate.
Suprapto didn’t know what was in the crate, and Cole believed him; he had merely travelled to the mainland and handed over the wooden box to his JI contact, Umar Shibab, who had put it in his jeep and driven off. For some reason, Suprapto suspected he had been planning on flying it out somewhere else, but didn’t know why he’d thought that; perhaps something the man had said.
What Suprapto did know was that there had been two highly trained men on the ship who had tried to defend the cargo; and when the pirate leader had quizzed the captain about them, it transpired that they had joined the crew at Dalian – the same port where the crate had been taken on board.
Cole knew the port of Dalian – it was right next to North Korea.
‘I think our best possible guess,’ Cole answered Treyborne, ‘is that North Korea was trying to smuggle something out of the country and into Karachi, possibly for use nearby, or else for further transportation elsewhere. And Jemaah Islamiyah – or one of the larger, better funded groups behind it – got wind of what it was, and decided it wanted it for itself. So they hired these pirates and took control of the crate.’
‘And we think that inside the crate is…’
Cole nodded his head. ‘A weapon most likely, yes. What kind? I’ve got no idea. But obviously powerful enough to be worth all this effort, as well as twenty million US dollars.’
Treyborne breathed out slowly. ‘Nuclear?’ He watched as Cole shrugged his shoulders, and his own slumped. ‘Ah, shit. So this thing’s far from over, I guess.’ He bowed his head as he thought. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I guess we better tell the president.’
8
The mood throughout the White House Situation Room had been buoyant and enthusiastic after the first transmissions from General Cooper – the hostages and ship were safe, and Liang Kebangkitan had been subdued without any serious US casualties. President Tsang Feng had also been delighted with the news, and there had been an air of excited satisfaction within the members of the National Security Council.
But then Cooper had patched Commander Ike Treyborne through directly to the NSC, and the mood had been soured immediately.
Could the hijacking of a cargo ship really have just been for the sake of one small box? A small box of unknown origin, which could contain anything?
‘What else can we get from Suprapto?’ asked Catalina dos Santos, worry across her handsome features.
On the satellite video uplink, Treyborne shook his head sadly. ‘Regrettably, Arief Suprapto was killed before we could finish questioning him. But I think we need to take this seriously and start making some moves. On the one hand, we need to pursue the Jemaah Islamiyah lead and find out where the cargo went, and on the other, we need to trace the cargo back to wherever the hell it came from so we can find out exactly what it is we’re dealing with.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Commander,’ Jeb Richards said, ‘but let me establish something here. All we really have – in terms of suspecting this wasn’t just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill hijacking – is the word of this unknown operative?’ Richards asked. ‘Nobody else knows anything about it?’
‘Captain Yang was also there when Suprapto was questioned, but at the moment he’s been sedated and is unable to be of any help.’
‘How convenient,’ Richards said. He took a drink of his coffee, set the cup down, and cleared his throat. ‘So let me get this straight. The pirate leader winds up dead, this Asset claims that Yang shot him, and then comes back with a report of a mystery weapon from North Korea? Which we can’t really corroborate now, one way or another?’ Richards looked around the room. ‘Does that strike anybody else as a little hard to believe?’
‘I’ll vouch for the man,’ President Abrams said forcefully.
‘Ah, Ellen?’ Clark Mason interjected smoothly, and Jeb Richards watched in anticipation, knowing that Abrams’ confidence was about to be somewhat curtailed. He took a long slurp of coffee and waited for Clark Mason to begin in earnest.
‘Yes?’ Abrams asked impatiently.
‘It’s just that you might not want to pin yourself too closely to this Asset. I’ve received intelligence that this operative is the former agent known as Mark C
ole, one of Charles Hansard’s hired assassins.’
Mason paused as there were collective gasps from around the room, and Richards admired his sense of theater.
‘Although he was believed to have been killed in Austria, at the time of his supposed death there was still an arrest warrant out for him, relating to the deaths of dozens of our own agents throughout Europe.’ Mason looked around the room, all eyes turned to him. ‘He was also implicated in the death of Bill Crozier, who at the time was Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.’
‘Those agents who were killed were all later suspected of being tied to Hansard’s own group,’ Abrams fired back, ‘and there was never any evidence that this man had anything to do with it.’
‘Nevertheless,’ weighted in Milt Staten, the Attorney General, ‘having spoken to Clark and some of our other colleagues, it is clear that this Mark Cole – if it is indeed him – should be brought in for questioning on charges of assassination, treason and murder.’
Abrams looked around the room, disbelief on her face; it was clear that she felt she’d been set up, betrayed. Richards’ smile only widened.
‘I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a warrant for his arrest,’ Staten concluded with a grave tone, ‘if you’ll beg my pardon, Ellen. I felt time was of the essence.’ He turned then to the image of Commander Treyborne, who was waiting patiently yet furiously as the politicians went about their self-interested cliquish little games back in the capital. ‘Commander Treyborne,’ Staten instructed the military officer, ‘as Attorney General of the United States, I order you to arrest Mark Cole and bring him back to the United States for questioning and possible trial for the aforementioned charges.’
Richards nodded across the table at Mason, still smiling. Assassination, treason and murder.
Perfect.
‘And I suggest,’ Richards added, just to get his own little dig in, ‘that we take whatever this killer has to say about mystery crates and North Korean agents with a very large pinch of salt.’
WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 16
