Syren's Song

by Claude G. Berube

  How could Stark forget? It was one of the conditions he had reluctantly agreed to when he hired Jay. But to his surprise, Jay’s yoga sessions had proved as beneficial as the more strenuous routines that Gunny Willis had instituted. And Willis admitted that the flexibility the crew gained from yoga was a good complement to their other physical training. Even Stark had embraced the discipline.

  With that the mad scientist, still humming, entered the darkened container and secured the door behind him.

  Stark had a penchant for hiring misfits—at least the right ones. When he first met Jay on Syren—back when the U.S. Navy was still calling her Sea Fighter—Warren already had a reputation for being a nonconformist. And then he lost his job with the federal government after some minor indiscretions. When Stark purchased the discarded experimental SWATH (small waterplane-area twin-hull) ship, Warren was the first person he hired. Stark tracked him down in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he was living in a doublewide with no furniture except a bed and working in a barn full of unrecognizable equipment.

  Stark made his way further aft and observed the deck crew working on the stern boat ramp. Of all the legacy systems on the ship, this was the one that never seemed to work properly. They’d have to completely redesign it after this assignment. In the meantime, one of the crew was trying to jury-rig the small-boat recovery system.

  A few minutes later Stark made his way topside. Syren rode smoothly at twenty knots in the calm seas between India and Sri Lanka. Dozens of local fishing boats peppered the waters, but the helm deftly guided the ship and steered well clear of them. A large long-line trawler from China was the only foreign ship present. Stark recognized the construction. Chinese trawlers were quickly depleting the world’s few remaining untouched fisheries. The world had no interest in stopping them because many other nations did it themselves.

  Stark had never been to Sri Lanka, but he didn’t expect to spend much time there on this mission. After resupplying in Colombo, their assignment was to head to the northeast coast where the Tamil Tigers were thought to be based, as they had been in the recent civil war. If he could find the Sea Tigers’ base of operations, he might be able to prevent another civil war and needless deaths. If not, then Stark and Syren would simply leave and head to the Gulf of Aden. And then he could return to Ullapool and Maggie.

  “Four weeks,” he said aloud, though no one was topside to hear him. Four weeks of patrolling waters he didn’t know. There was always an element of risk in Highland Maritime’s operations. Stark had faced such a risk—and paid a high cost—when he had intervened in the Quebec separatist affair. People had died, including someone close to him. It had cost him his career in the Navy and had made him an expatriate, a man without a country. Then there was the incident in Yemen he had been drawn into just months before. More people had died, some by Stark’s own hand, but he had averted a wider conflict. Now Sri Lanka. He vowed to himself that there would be no more deaths if he could help it.

  Mullaitivu District

  Melanie pulled herself together and started out again, desperately trying not to think about what she had just seen and the evil men could do left unchecked, unaccountable, unexposed. She had vowed to expose the evildoers and make them accountable through her work.

  Only weeks before, while she was on a retreat in Thailand, a Buddhist monk had told her that he had lost contact with some members of his order in Sri Lanka. Neither he nor anyone he knew had heard from them in months. The Sri Lankan government would not help, and even the local Tamils refused to investigate. The monastery had stood for nearly sixteen hundred years on Mount Iranamadu in the Mullaitivu District, the highest point in northeastern Sri Lanka. Would she help, he asked?

  How could she say no? She and the monk shared the same dojo in Phuket, where she had been based as a freelance journalist for the better part of two years learning the martial art of muay thai. The monk had been her spiritual guide in the aftermath of her last assignment in the jungles of South America, where her life had shattered into tiny pieces. She was still trying to put it back together.

  Her boss at the newspaper had told her it would be a simple but dangerous short-term assignment. And she would need to take a photographer. Her sister Callie had recently graduated from journalism school and was ready—begging—for her first assignment. Melanie put her off, but the boss had other plans. The paper wanted a sister act—journalist and photographer. The storytellers would become a story themselves. And so the paper hired Melanie and Callie and sent them to the tri-border region of South America known as Ciudad del Este to investigate the ties between the drug trade and a terrorist organization.

  Things went wrong when Melanie began checking sources with local law enforcement. The next day three men dragged the young women from their hotel room, threw them into a van, and took them to an encampment a few miles from town. They gagged and bound the two to stakes facing one another, the older protective sister in no position to help the baby of the family. Melanie was forced to watch for two days as the cartel brutes beat her sister—forced to look into Callie’s pleading eyes. Whenever the gag was removed she cried out to Melanie, who fought wildly against the rope binding her to the stake. By the end, Callie could no longer cry out. When she was nearly dead from the pain and exhaustion, they threw water on her face to wake her just long enough to look at Melanie one more time as one of the thugs took a knife and slit her throat. Melanie watched the blood pour out of her sister’s body as it slumped limply against the stake. Never, if she lived to be a hundred, would she forget Callie’s eyes as the life drained from her body.

  The cartel men focused on Melanie the next day. She said nothing, refused to cry out, only stared at each attacker’s face, memorizing every feature. She was barely conscious when she heard gunfire and saw the cartel members running around haphazardly. She fought to stay awake, to record everything in her memory. She suspected the men were special forces because they killed each of the dozen men swiftly and mercilessly. They unbound Melanie and then untied her sister, respectfully covering her body.

  She wrote the story—all of it—for the paper and promptly resigned. Every assignment from now on would be of her choosing, and she chose to shine light into the shadows cast by drugs and terrorism. She vowed never to allow any photographer to work with her again. And, she decided, she needed to know how to defend herself. That was what had brought her to Thailand and the dojo, and the Buddhist monk.

  She had seen many signs of violence since coming to Sri Lanka, though it wasn’t clear who was responsible. She intended to find out. She turned her back on the mass grave, repacked her bag, drank some water, and started once more toward Mount Iranamadu.

  By midafternoon she was within a few miles of the mountain and monastery. When she heard voices she stopped and took cover beneath some tall ferns. Five men in tiger-striped fatigues and ball caps with weapons slung on their shoulders walked by thirty yards to her left. One was talking, another was laughing. She carefully brought out her camera and took some quick shots just after they passed her, taking care to stay low.

  Even that slight movement was enough to alarm a bird sitting on a branch above her. The sound of its flapping startled the soldiers. Two of the men immediately swung around and took their weapons off their shoulders. A few more birds took off, and one of the men laughed and motioned the others forward. One man, however, remained behind to take a closer look. He had walked ten yards in her direction when he saw her. Fortunately, he wasn’t one of the soldiers who had unslung his weapon.

  Melanie had no choice. She shoved the camera inside her backpack and ran as fast as she could, jumping over a fallen tree and ducking branches as deftly as if she were on the rugby pitch back at school. She heard shouting behind her as the soldiers took up the chase. She had a full hundred-yard lead on them, but she didn’t know the area. She heard some shots and darted to the left. The telltale sign of birds flying from their perches as she passed suggested the soldiers would have no d
ifficulty following her.

  Melanie eyed a grove of trees ahead and summoned another sprint. When she was out of sight, she stopped briefly behind a clump of three trees with thick ferns growing at the base. She reached into her backpack and turned on the voice recorder and her mobile phone’s recorder, and then tucked the backpack under a fern. Another shot was fired. She couldn’t see her pursuers yet, but she knew they were closing in. She rose to her feet and ran again, this time away from the backpack at an angle perpendicular to the approaching soldiers. In less than a minute she had crossed the grove and reached an open field half the size of a rugby pitch two hundred yards away. She looked back and saw the way was clear, then darted across the field. Her rugby days were years behind her, but she had never run faster.

  She made it to the far side of the field and ran north along its perimeter before entering the jungle again. Someone was shooting behind her, but that was no longer important. Far more pressing were the five soldiers standing ahead of her, weapons raised. She had been so concerned with escaping the ones she saw that she hadn’t considered that other teams would be nearby.

  At least this time they didn’t get my equipment, she thought. And this time they won’t get my baby sister.

  Singapore

  The white complex of buildings where Golzari awaited his contact took up an entire city block between North Bridge Road and Beach Road in the heart of Singapore. It had been the colonial house for the British government prior to World War II; after Japan’s successful invasion in 1941 it became Japanese headquarters. Today the complex included a luxury hotel and several bars. A bar seemed an unlikely place for a meeting, but Golzari’s contact had insisted on it—and had insisted as well that the Diplomatic Security agent pay for the meal. Golzari had been to Raffles several times, but he preferred the hotel’s formal dining room to the historic bar, which fell short of his standards of cleanliness. He shuddered when he shifted in his chair and the discarded peanut shells on the floor crunched beneath his elegant Ferragamo shoes.

  Mallosia imperatrix is a beetle found in the Middle East. One of Golzari’s few memories of his childhood in Iran, before his family fled after the Ayatollah rose to power, was crushing one of those beetles. Its tan-and-yellow body had a honeycomb pattern not unlike that of the roasted peanut shells he was now stepping on. The beetle had made a distinctive crunch when young Damien pressed his sandal onto it. The peanut shells on the floor made the same sort of sound when stepped on, but much louder, like the crushing of dozens of beetles. He imagined the peanuts as bugs, their exoskeletons breaking from the weight of his shoe as their guts spilled out.

  Agent Blake’s secretary had given Golzari the file on Academic Solutions earlier in the day. There was little in it, just one letter from the government of Singapore stating that no articles of incorporation or any other record on the company existed. Golzari thought that curious. The Singaporean government was rather obsessive when it came to such details. Surely someone would have known about a company operating in this small state. The only other piece of paper in the folder had a local phone number. He called it from Blake’s phone.

  “Why did you not call sooner?”

  “I was unavailable,” Golzari replied.

  “You are not Blake.”

  “No. He is dead.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. Golzari’s previous investigations had taught him to say nothing, just wait. The man would either hang up if he was scared and guilty or would say something if he was scared and an informant. Fortunately for Golzari, it was the latter.

  “Why do you call me?”

  “For the same reason Blake did,” Golzari responded.

  “Information.”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me today at three o’clock in the bar at Raffles. You know this place?”

  “Yes. I assume you mean the Long Bar?”

  “Yes. And bring money.”

  “How much?” Golzari asked.

  “Enough.” With that the call ended.

  Enough. Golzari also knew from experience that someone willing to meet him on very short notice with few details needed cash, not a ticket to another country. That meant a few thousand dollars, which he didn’t have.

  Golzari had selected a corner table in the nearly empty Long Bar. The last time he had been here was with Robert, when they were young agents. Robert had insisted that he have a Singapore Sling because the cocktail had been created at this very bar. Golzari now wondered if the bartenders continued to make Singapore Slings after the Japanese army captured the city.

  A couple of young Americans sat at the bar, easily recognizable by their blue jeans, flip-flops, and Polo shirts. A Singaporean man and two young women sat at a table on the other side of the bar from Golzari. They appeared to be immersed in themselves and turned their heads from the table only long enough to call to the bartender for more drinks.

  Golzari stared at his ginger ale and waited. The rows of palm fans suspended from the ceiling swished the air back and forth. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a short man peer into the bar, looking first at the Americans, then at the table of three, and finally at Golzari. Like a hunter not wanting to spook his prey Golzari kept his eyes on his drink as the man entered the bar and walked slowly toward him. The steady crunch of peanut shells betrayed his approach.

  “Are you the person I spoke with earlier?”

  Golzari raised his head and looked the man in the eyes. “Yes. Have a seat.”

  The man complied hesitantly. “Where is my money?”

  “Where is my information?” Golzari responded.

  “The company Blake asked about does exist.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know through my work.”

  “Why did the government write to Blake that they had no record of Academic Solutions?”

  The man paused when the three people at the table on the other side of the bar laughed loudly. The Americans paid their bill and left just as three well-dressed Asian men took stools nearby. Golzari’s informant grew even more visibly nervous.

  “Relax,” Golzari said. “This is a very safe place.” As a precaution, though, he reached under his single-breasted suit jacket and undid the strap on his holster. His very discreet tailor at Gieves & Hawkes in London modified every one of his suits so that the cut hid his pistol.

  The man said softly, “The government official Blake contacted was being paid by another company to protect the information.”

  “You have proof?”

  “I am the man being paid.”

  Golzari hid his distaste. He had seen this before. A corrupt official being paid for information—or in this case to hide it—gets greedy and wants money from the other side as well. “What’s the name of the company?”

  “The money first. Give me the money.”

  “I don’t have it here. You’ll have to come to the embassy for it.”

  “No,” the man said, slamming his fist on the table. The others in the bar looked in their direction briefly and then went back to their drinks. The two young women seated at the table stood up.

  “You will have money. Two thousand,” Golzari offered.

  “No, ten thousand.”

  “Five thousand,” Golzari countered. “But first you must give me the name so I can confirm that the company exists.”

  The two ladies were not walking toward the restroom. They were walking toward him. My God, he thought. Are those hookers coming over to proposition us?

  “Very well. It’s Zheng Research and—”

  At that moment each of the women reached into her purse. Golzari’s reflexes and training took over as he grabbed his Glock 19 with one hand and threw the table aside with the other. His response distracted them for just a second, long enough to delay them from raising their pistols. Golzari had no time to order them to drop their weapons even if he had known what language to use. He fired two shots, one at each of the women. Both fell. The three men at the
bar turned toward the commotion, jumped off their stools, and pulled out their own weapons. Golzari reacted with two more shots. The first dropped the closest man, the second hit but only delayed the next man. The third man ran toward Golzari’s contact, firing all the while and hitting the corrupt government employee with each shot before the Diplomatic Security agent could train his weapon on him. Two shots ended the third man’s assault and Golzari turned back to the second man, who was doubled over and holding his leg. He still had the strength to raise his weapon, but Golzari was too quick. Three more shots and the man was as dead as the other four.

  Golzari crouched, anticipating more shots from somewhere. The bartender was yelling something from his hiding place behind the bar. Golzari turned to the table where the women had been sitting, but the man who had been with them was gone. Golzari had no way to determine if he had been part of the attack or simply their unwitting pawn.

  Golzari bent over his contact, who clearly was dead. His eyes and mouth were wide open, and the blood leaking from the bullet wounds that peppered his chest soaked the peanut shells that littered the floor. Golzari thought once more of Mallosia imperatrix as he holstered his gun and crunched across the floor toward the inevitable conversation with the police.

  USS LeFon, Southern Bay of Bengal

  Rear Adm. Daniel Rossberg, who owed his Navy career to connections rather than accomplishments, had been on LeFon for a day. During that time he had chewed out the captain, insulted every sailor he encountered, dressed down every chief petty officer, and threatened with court-martial nearly every officer. Only Ens. Bobby Fisk escaped Rossberg’s displeasure, and only because Commander Johnson had ordered Fisk to remain in his stateroom until they reached Sri Lanka.

  Jaime Johnson had been on Rossberg’s last ship briefly, but it was as an unconscious patient awaiting transport to a medical facility, so she had never met him. Nevertheless, his reputation preceded him. The nephew of an influential senator who sat on the Armed Services Committee and the brother of the admiral in charge of OLA, the Navy’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Rossberg had proceeded smoothly up the promotion ladder, every assignment cherry-picked for him, even after losing his last command. Jaime had not been on USS Bennington during the Battle of Socotra, but she knew directly from a few of those present—Bobby Fisk, Connor Stark, and her helicopter detachment—what had really happened. Rossberg’s arrogance and intransigence had cost the lives of most of the ship’s officers and chief petty officers.