Syren's Song

by Claude G. Berube

  “That first shot wasn’t an AK,” Stark said.

  “Then what was it?” Melanie asked.

  “It sounded like an M-16, but I can’t be certain.”

  The gunshots continued intermittently. A crack from the mystery rifle would echo, and AK-47 shots would follow.

  “I’m going up ahead,” Stark announced. “There’s a battle, and that means someone’s fighting back against the Tigers. Can you both keep up?” They nodded. Stark took off in a sprint. As he got close to the gunfire he slowed and looked over his shoulder. Melanie was right behind him, but Warren had fallen back out of sight.

  Stark crept up the path until he could see a clearing. He heard shouts from somewhere nearby. The stones and the altar were just as Melanie had described them. A few Tiger soldiers lay motionless on the ground. Several more had taken cover behind the altar and a couple of trees and were firing, apparently randomly, into the jungle. Stark heard the lone gunman fire another round and watched another Tiger reel back. The shooter was methodical, almost surgically precise.

  The Tigers were all facing away from Stark’s position. He had come here to investigate the mine fire and keep a low profile. But that plan had gone by the wayside. He knew that the men in front of him were terrorists who had already killed hundreds of people both at sea and ashore and were part of the operation enslaving monks and children, yet he hesitated to shoot them in the back.

  Lying prone Stark tried to steady his weapon, but his hand was shaking again. He inhaled deeply and then again until his hand relaxed. One of the Tigers was shouting commands at the others. Stark lined the leader up in his sights and fired twice, silencing him. The others turned around in shock as Stark shot another man. The other gunman took out yet another. Two Tigers remained and were about to fire in Stark’s direction when more gunfire erupted behind Stark. It took half a dozen rapid shots from the nine-millimeter, but Melanie dropped her man. The lone Tiger still alive dropped his weapon and was raising his arms when a final shot rang out from the other side of the clearing. The last Tiger was dead.

  “What should we do now?” Warren whispered as he knelt beside the still prone Stark.

  “Wait,” Stark said as he slowly pivoted the barrel of the FAL-308 back and forth in search of a target. The circumstances didn’t make sense. One man had just taken out two Tiger squads, albeit with a little help from Stark and Melanie. Given the precision of the gunfire, Stark was fairly certain the gunman would have succeeded even if the three of them hadn’t come along.

  The question remained: who was the gunman? Was he or she Sri Lankan military? It seemed unlikely that the military would send only one sniper after showing such a propensity for using overwhelming force in the previous civil war. Plus, the Sri Lankans didn’t use American military-grade rifles.

  “Melanie,” Stark whispered to his right where she was standing behind a tree. She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Can you call out loud enough to be heard?” He was risking their lives, but if the gunman was part of an American unit, then a woman’s voice in English might let the shooter know they weren’t the enemy.

  She took a deep breath and in a loud voice simply said, “Hello?” She repeated it.

  A few seconds later a baritone voice with a hint of British accent replied: “American?”

  “No,” she said immediately.

  Stark watched her closely. She had narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as if she recognized the disembodied voice. Then again, so did Stark. He stood up next to Warren and motioned the larger man to stay back as he made his way into the clearing. “Don’t shoot. I’m coming out,” Stark chanced.

  There was a rustle in the brush fifteen yards away as the other shooter emerged. Both continued to hold their rifles high.

  The gunman was clad in the plain black coveralls, boonie hat, and black vest Navy boarding officers wear. The boonie hat was tilted, but Stark could make out the man’s goatee resting on the butt of the rifle. Stark was the first to lower his gun. The gunman did the same as they approached each other.

  “Unexpected surprise, Golzari,” he said as he offered his hand.

  “Lovely. Well, we can’t start a war without Connor Stark, can we? I appreciate the assist, old man. I was running short of ammunition.”

  Warren and Melanie entered the clearing, the latter picking up speed as she came.

  “Dear God!” Golzari managed to say before she cocked her arm and hit him squarely in the nose. He dropped to his knees, blood dripping from his face onto the ground.

  Stark grabbed her to prevent further violence, or worse yet murder, but then realized that she could already have shot Golzari had she wanted to.

  “Hello, Melanie,” Golzari said still holding his nose.

  Stark released her when he realized that Golzari not only knew her but wasn’t going to retaliate.

  Melanie immediately spun around, walked over to her pack, and dug out a camera.

  Golzari wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve and rose.

  “Does everyone do that when they first meet you?” Stark asked him.

  “Not everyone, no,” Golzari replied. “Just you and my ex-wife.”

  Stark nodded and began to check the bodies while he let that sink in. All the men had been killed by clean shots. Then he checked their weapons and pockets.

  “Care to fill me in?” Stark asked. Melanie continued to photograph the scene, ignoring the living men in the clearing.

  “What else is there to say? Melanie and I were married,” Golzari said matter-of-factly.

  “Briefly,” she snapped. “But I wasn’t his type.”

  “I see,” Stark said. “Well how about we keep this reunion short? Jay, keep an eye on the trail back there. Our little shootout at the OK Corral has surely warned the guards at the monastery.”

  “You don’t have to worry about them. I just came from there,” Golzari said.

  “Just you?” Stark asked.

  “There weren’t that many, and they weren’t that professional. Not unlike the band you and I encountered at Old Mar’ib,” Golzari said.

  “Then you were lucky. What about the monks and children?”

  Melanie stopped taking photos of the soldiers to hear Golzari’s response. Golzari knew his ex-wife well enough to understand that this was the reason she had come.

  “I would normally tell you it’s not worth going up there, but I suspect Melanie needs to see it for her report.”

  Melanie picked up her pack. “Then let’s go,” she said stoically.

  The group repacked and started up the trail, Stark and Golzari in the lead.

  “How’s your nose,” Stark asked.

  “No worse than when you assaulted me at the embassy in Sana’a.”

  “Assault is a strong word. Given what she just did, I’d call that a greeting. So what the hell brings you here, Damien? This isn’t exactly an embassy.”

  Golzari shared the basics as they walked up the trail—a DS agent had been murdered in Singapore for investigating the theft of scientific equipment; the trail had led him to a young Tamil scientist and zirconium mines; and a fortunate encounter with USS LeFon in Chennai had led to his presence here. In exchange, Stark told him of Syren’s letter of marque, the seizing of Asity, and the mine fire seen from their drone.

  Melanie bolted ahead of them when they reached the outskirts of the monastery. Stark tried to hold her back in case reinforcements had arrived since the battle in the clearing.

  “No,” Golzari said to him. “Leave her alone. You can’t stop her. And she needs to see this.”

  Melanie walked past the bodies of the guards Golzari had killed. There were at least a dozen. Some were slumped behind the ancient columns, having vainly tried to hide from Golzari’s expert shooting. Others were lying face down, shot in the back. Golzari clearly hadn’t distinguished between the men who were fighting and those who had elected to run from him. Her ex-husband, she knew, could be as vicious a killer as the Iranian Savak guards who had t
rained him.

  She approached the bodies of the victims, the monks she had seen when she was brought in as a prisoner. They had been lined up, and each had been shot twice in the head. The monks of the ancient monastery at Mount Iranamadu were no more.

  But where were the children? She looked around for shallow graves like those she had seen at the abandoned village but saw nothing to indicate that they had been killed. She turned to Golzari as Warren took up a position at the head of the trail and Stark checked the bodies of the dead Tigers, as he had done in the clearing.

  “Where are they?” she asked Golzari.

  “Who?”

  “The children. There were children here. They were working as slaves.”

  “I saw none, Melanie,” Golzari said. “They were executing the final few monks as I arrived, before I was close enough to respond.”

  USS LeFon

  The ten-thousand-ton warship slid smoothly through the water at eight knots. Normally a destroyer traveling so slowly bobbed like a cork with every wave she struck. But LeFon was no ordinary destroyer. She was the newest—the seventy-fourth—of the Arleigh Burke class, one of the best-designed warships of the past century. Jaime Johnson stood on the bridge and admired her command. She knew good luck had brought her here—despite her unorthodox return to active duty and her lack of formal training in the command pipeline.

  Johnson had served as chief engineer in USS Stout, another Arleigh Burke destroyer, before leaving the Navy to raise her kids after the divorce. She had remained in the Navy Reserve but had jumped at the chance to go back to sea when Connor Stark hired her for Highland Maritime. He needed an experienced young officer to command his small fleet’s flagship, and she fit the bill. Kirkwall provided security to the offshore supply vessels coming out of Yemen and bound for the oil rigs under construction south of Socotra Island during the height of the Somali piracy crisis.

  She had nearly died when Kirkwall went down and had thought her days at sea were over for good. And then, as Johnson was recovering from her injuries, Stark somehow managed to get her command of one of the Navy’s latest warships. The order had come down from the president himself. She still wasn’t sure how Stark had managed it. Regardless, she was grateful to be back at sea and serving her country once again, even though it meant leaving her children with her parents while she was on deployment.

  She walked into the CIC, the ship’s eyes and ears. LeFon was steaming independently for now, the only U.S. warship in the region. The Sri Lankan theater was just another backwater for the United States, which had its hands full dealing with far more serious threats off North Korea and elsewhere. Jaime’s orders from Seventh Fleet were clear: fire only if fired upon or otherwise clearly and imminently threatened by the Sea Tigers, and protect and defend U.S.-flagged commercial shipping. Ensign Fisk had been right to question her loan of the RHIB to Golzari, but the potential loss of a RHIB was the least of the Navy’s worries right now.

  Jaime sat in the captain’s chair in the CIC gleaning everything she could from the wide tactical screens before her. Ensign Fisk was standing behind the TAO, working on his qualifications even during the current high alert. Bobby had the potential to be a good captain someday. She knew that he had reacted with good sense and courage in the battle at Socotra, and she intended to do what she could to help him on his path. Adequate officers were common in the Navy. Excellent officers were far harder to find.

  Only the occasional necessary chatter between the stations and the bridge broke the quiet of the CIC. Every hour Jaime shifted her position between the CIC and the bridge, stopping only to get fresh coffee. As the day progressed, more ships emerged over the horizon. She kept LeFon a healthy distance from them and made sure that each was monitored for any sudden moves that might suggest Sea Tigers were operating it. She wished again that she could put up a helicopter because surface radar simply could not provide the same situational awareness than an airborne monitor offered. But all flight operations in the area remained suspended. The ship had carried two Scan Eagle UAVs, but those had been removed in India and shipped to Navy assets operating off Korea. The Navy had even taken her two RQ-21A Blackjack UAVs.

  She sat back in the starboard bridge chair and read her e-mail. Operational security under the current conditions limited e-mail access to the captain, the XO, and the operations officer. The daily unencrypted traffic included a message from her eleven-year-old daughter with her Christmas wish list. Jaime smiled as she read it. Dolls, a dollhouse, a kite, a skateboard, and a jump-rope were far more traditional requests than the robot, new iPad, goPro camera, and self-sustaining aquarium her nine-year-old daughter had asked for. Though Jaime had more in common with her technologically savvy younger daughter, she appreciated the simplicity of her older daughter’s tastes. How much simpler could one get than the paper, wood, and string of a kite? She imagined flying the kite with her daughter when she returned from deployment, guiding it in the wind and making it dance in the air, all with a just piece of string held in her hands. A kite didn’t need anything but the wind—and it wasn’t affected by technology either. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t work with technology, now did it?

  Jaime picked up the phone and called the command master chief. “Master Chief, I need a couple of your sailors to help with a little project.”

  “No problem, Captain. What do you need?” he asked.

  “I need a camera. And I need someone to build a kite.”

  Mount Iranamadu

  The grounds of the monastery rose in tiers formed by retaining walls built of flat granite stones. The level ground in between the walls held the remnants of untended gardens interspersed among the pillars and rudimentary statues of Buddha. At least four dozen small caves had been carved into the mountain-side behind the large main plaza. These were where the monks lived. One cave opening was far larger than the others—clearly the mine entrance. A few overturned wheelbarrows were strewn about near it, as were some simple tables. The plaza itself bore Golzari’s methodical work. Each Tiger had been shot—once.

  “Is this the only trail up here?” Stark asked Golzari.

  “There’s a smaller path on the other side of the plaza that’s only wide enough for one person,” he replied as his eyes followed Melanie. “That’s how I came up.”

  “She’s really your ex-wife?” Stark asked as he checked another Tiger’s gun and pockets.

  “Yes,” Golzari said curtly.

  “She slugged you pretty good,” Stark said, failing to add that he too had been a victim of her fighting skill. “What happened?”

  “We wanted . . . different things,” Golzari said, scanning the perimeter.

  “Yeah, well that happens,” Stark said noncommittally. He supposed it did, but when it came to relationships, Stark had no clue. He had never married. His work had been everything to him. He couldn’t figure out Maggie. And all during the Yemen incident he had had no idea that Ambassador Sumner and the president of the United States were lovers.

  “You’ve been ransacking the bodies rather thoroughly, Stark. Found anything?”

  “Nothing much. Extra ammunition. No food or water. They must have supplies back in their trucks. We saw plenty of those earlier. It’s the AK-47s that bother me.”

  “What about them?” Golzari asked.

  “No serial numbers on any of them; nothing to identify their point of origin. That means mass production of untraceable weapons.”

  “Third party?”

  “Has to be. Do you think the Tigers could manufacture these in large numbers?” Stark asked.

  “Doubtful.” Golzari took an AK and examined it more closely.

  “Best guess?”

  “I can narrow it down to the three likeliest.”

  “Russia, China, and North Korea.”

  “You’re smarter than you look, Stark.”

  Stark laughed. “Smarter? No. Just getting wiser with each new gray hair and adventure. Player A, B, or C gives them unmarked guns. Why? What
do they get from the Sea Tigers? They always get something in return. Maybe it’s as simple as money. But then the Tigers would have had to come up with the money. This isn’t exactly a wealthy region,” Stark observed.

  “Someone trying to destabilize the country? We’ve seen that before.”

  “Yeah, but what would any of those three have to gain? Whoever it was knew about the attacks in advance—knew the Tigers were going to need a lot of weapons for a full-scale civil war. You don’t just make and deliver that many weapons overnight.” Stark turned to Warren. “Hey, Jay, let’s go get what we came for.” Warren took one last look down the main trail and started walking toward the large cave.

  “What did you come for, old man?” Golzari asked Stark.

  “A good look around. We’re trying to find the Sea Tigers’ base.”

  “You think it’s here?”

  “We had a UAV up last night that saw a mine fire. I figured it was enough out of the ordinary to check out,” Stark said.

  “Your hunch proved right.”

  “It would have helped if you hadn’t killed them all, Golzari. We might have been able to get some information.”

  “I’ll try to be a poorer shot next time.”

  Stark and Golzari joined Warren, and the three walked toward the mine entrance. Melanie remained where she was, deep in thought and quietly recording the activities in the plaza. Stark looked back at the trailhead from time to time.

  “Huh,” Warren said aloud as he inspected the work area and the mine entrance. The overturned wheelbarrows, hammers, and piles of broken rock confirmed that the ore had been mined inside the cave, brought through this entrance in wheelbarrows, and then broken up with hammers. The monks had probably been forced to do the heavy work with picks while the children had separated the metal from the rock with hammers.

  “What do you think?” Stark asked Warren.

  “I think it’s good that you brought me, boss,” he said with his hands on his hips. “This is new.”