Syren's Song

by Claude G. Berube

  Stark and Warren took out the rest of their food, which had not been much to start with for a simple two-day mission, and distributed it to the children, then showed them how to sip from the CamelBaks. With food and water taken care of there was another issue—even here in the tropics the nights were cool. The best they could do after the children ate was to huddle them together to keep warm. Most fell asleep immediately.

  “Golzari, our boat isn’t scheduled to pick us up for another thirty-four hours,” Stark said quietly. “Can we get to LeFon’s RHIB?”

  “Assuming it’s still there, we can get there by midmorning if we pick up the pace. With these children slowing us down it will be noon at the earliest.” His emphasis on the word “children” indicated his distaste for the situation.

  “They’re not just children, Damien. They’re orphans,” Melanie said.

  “You don’t know that,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said softly. “I was in their village before I was taken. I saw the bodies of their parents in shallow graves. They have no one. We are not going to leave them here to fend for themselves.”

  “Fine, Melanie,” he said to his ex-wife. “I was merely pointing out that we will be in broad daylight for a good bit of the time. If we encounter more Tiger patrols, how do you propose we defend ourselves and them?”

  “We just do,” Stark said simply. “How many rounds do you have left?”

  “Seventy. I was careful.”

  “We may not have the luxury of being judicious with our shots this time.”

  Stark tried to call Syren on the satellite phone, hoping to bring in his security teams to help extract them, but had no luck. Despite Jay’s best efforts, communication problems continued to plague them. They really needed help if they were to succeed. Even if they got to LeFon’s RHIB by midday, they would be exposed once they were on the water.

  “Jay, Melanie. The two of you get some sleep. Keep close to the kids to keep them warm.” While the journalist and the scientist settled in with the children, Stark pulled out the NVGs. He handed one pair of the goggles to Golzari as they moved closer to the trail. They agreed to divide, one on each side of the path and about ten yards off the trail itself. Golzari would focus on the path coming down from the monastery while Stark watched for anyone coming up from below.

  Stark was weary, but his early career training as a surface warfare officer had accustomed him to long watch hours in the night. He allowed his body to relax while his mind stayed on high alert. Just past midnight Stark saw a flicker of light in the distance, then another, and another. “Down!” he whispered loudly to Golzari. He hoped that Warren and Melanie and the children were sleeping soundly and would make no sound that might attract the attention of the approaching insurgents.

  As the lights approached, Stark counted at least thirty Tigers walking up the path with torches. He knelt next to a tree and removed the NVGs so the torchlight wouldn’t blind him. He steadied his rifle and kept it trained on the approaching Tigers. He knew that Golzari was doing the same. The insurgents were making far better time on the trail than the foursome with the children had.

  Although his rifle barrel was steadied against a tree, it wavered as Stark’s hand continued to shake. He took a deep, quiet breath and cleared his mind, focusing on the targets. Based on their pace, and because they had not unslung their weapons, he thought Golzari could take out half of them before any managed to get off a shot. That left fifteen against two. The odds were too great. And if he and Golzari went down, the Tigers would certainly find the children. Melanie and Jay would try to protect them, he knew, but it was a risk he couldn’t take. And, of course, Stark couldn’t know if another company of soldiers was right behind this one. The only option was to let them pass.

  One by one, the Tigers walked in between Stark and Golzari, unaware that they were one wrong move away from death. Stark held his breath as they went by. As the light of the last torch, the thirty-fourth, faded in the distance up the trail, Stark slipped across to Golzari’s hiding place. “How long do you think it’ll take them to get there?” he asked.

  “Less than an hour, I should think.”

  “They’ll see the bodies and radio it in right away. Then all of them will know that someone is killing their guys,” Stark surmised.

  “We can’t go deeper into the land and hide out. We don’t have enough food or water or shelter for those children,” Golzari responded.

  Golzari was right. Besides, if they went into hiding they wouldn’t be able to give the warning about the hafnium mine. They had to move out now and start the race to the ocean and the boat.

  M/V Syren

  Syren’s speed saved her. She could accelerate to more than fifty knots in less than thirty seconds, but it was only because of Olivia Harrison’s quick thinking that the order to do that had been given, and not before the ship paid a price.

  Syren was operating, as Stark had ordered, just over the horizon, waiting out the forty-eight hours before sending a RHIB to extract Stark and Warren. Harrison had been in similar situations when she was a lieutenant serving in a Royal Navy frigate in the Persian Gulf. The worst part of it was the waiting—the edginess that interfered with people’s sleep, rest, and work.

  The ship was humming along at a slow, easy seven knots in a box pattern. The Sri Lankan coastline was barely visible from the bridge level, with the lights of Mullaitivu off to the northwest and the aura of Trincomalee’s lights reflecting in the night sky well to the southwest. Occasionally they saw the lights of fishing boats to the east. Perhaps a few of those were Sri Lankan, but more likely they were the Chinese long-line trawlers that Syren’s crew had seen en route to their current assignment. The larger trawlers were easily identifiable from their lighting scheme.

  Syren had just completed a box when radar reported that one of the trawlers to the east was approaching the Highland Maritime ship at seven knots—the standard speed for fishing vessels dredging the sea to serve the markets in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and elsewhere. The ship fit the pattern, but Harrison remained skeptical, particularly when she was informed that another trawler to the north had changed direction and was now operating in a large circular pattern. She made a decision. “CIC, bridge. I’d like to get some eyes in the sky again. Is the bird ready to fly?”

  “Fuel cells are recharged, XO,” came the reply. “She’ll be on the flight deck in five minutes.”

  Harrison summoned the on-call security team to the deck just in case. The men positioned themselves at their six stations at the foredeck, mid-deck, and aft as the UAV was awakened and lifted from the small elevator on the starboard side of the pilothouse. When Olivia was new to the ship Stark explained that the admiral who had helped design Syren fifteen years before had anticipated the wide use of UAVs and had offset the pilothouse to the port side of the ship to allow room for them. The flight deck was designed to hold two standard helicopters, but an area on the starboard side of the pilothouse was set aside for UAVs.

  The UAV lifted off as the aviation controller below in the CIC ordered the device to an altitude of two thousand feet. “Which direction, XO?” he asked.

  “North first. I want infrared on that trawler. Then we’ll check out the one to the east.”

  The trawler to the east had closed to seven miles now while the trawler to the north was six miles away. The UAV sighted on the closer trawler, and the aviation technician began patching in the feed to one of the monitors on the bridge so Olivia could see what the UAV was recording in real time. The feed showed the darkened outlines of a few figures walking aft along the port side of the trawler to join more figures. Olivia blinked as the size of the ship seemed to change. She stood up to take a closer look at the monitor.

  She had seen this happen just a few days ago. This was another trawler with stern doors. A small boat squirted from the trawler’s stern like from a calving whale. Another part of the ship lit up as the contrail of a rocket blinded the UAV. Olivia and the bridge crew
could see well enough from their vantage point to know that they were looking at a Sea Tiger attack.

  “All ahead flank, right full rudder, come about to one-two-zero degrees!” she ordered as a small fireball lit the sky.

  “Bridge, CIC. We’ve lost contact with the UAV,” came a voice.

  Olivia knew what that meant. The Tigers had fired a tactical EMP, and the UAV was now dead and falling to the ocean, where it would sink to its final resting place.

  “Speed?” she asked the helm.

  “Forty knots. Forty-two. Forty-four.”

  She had to hope they could outrace the small speedboat, which likely had its own EMP rocket launcher. Harrison checked the radar again. Syren would soon be in the vicinity of the second trawler. What if that too was a mother ship? “Security, this is the bridge, aft fire teams focus on the small speedboat approaching us from astern. Weapons free,” she ordered on the shipwide intercom. The two fire teams took a few seconds to locate the small boats—the trawler had released a second one—with their NVGs. Both speedboats were heading straight toward Syren at top speed; then they started zigzagging.

  Harrison kept a close eye on the radar and watched the boats’ patterns. Her teams couldn’t train their weapons on the small boats, which quickly closed to three miles. At this range Syren couldn’t outrun a rocket. Harrison was about to order the forward fire team to train their weapons on the second trawler, now on Syren’s forward port quarter, when light exploded from its deck—once, twice, and again. Olivia heaved a sigh of relief. Those weren’t rockets. She was seeing the steady fire of a warship’s main guns. The only warship in the area she knew of was LeFon, which must have changed her lighting pattern to imitate a trawler’s. Otherwise she would have been running completely dark to minimize detection.

  “Helm?”

  “Fifty-one knots, ma’am!”

  One of LeFon’s shells hit close enough to a speedboat to capsize it. The other boat closed to two miles. The weapons teams managed to hit the speedboat, but two seconds too late. It had fired its rocket. The EMP detonated a mile from both Syren and LeFon. Sparks burst from the equipment on the bridge as the three crewmembers reflexively shielded themselves with their arms. The warship’s gun went silent and the ship turned to starboard, out to deeper water. Harrison picked up the mike for the ship-to-ship radio, but it was dead. The shipwide intercom still worked, but Syren’s radar had gone blind.

  “Helm, follow LeFon but keep us at the current distance,” Harrison called before ordering the operations officer to gather damage control reports. Grabbing a large flashlight, she went onto the bridge wing and began flashing in code: “No radar. No comms. Request accompany LeFon.” She repeated the message several more times before she received a reply from the warship: “Take station three hundred yards to our port. We have no radar or comms either. Stand by.”

  Two ships operating in such close quarters without modern communications or radar created a dangerous situation, but Harrison was far more worried about her captain and chief scientist. Their satellite phone could no longer communicate with Syren. They were stranded ashore, and she had no way to find them.

  DAY 14

  Mullaitivu District

  Stark felt oddly like Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring as he shepherded his little group toward the coast. Except the children under his protection were not hobbits but very real boys and girls. Using his translation app Warren had managed to inform them that the four adults were taking them to the ocean and their boat to save them from the Tigers. The children accepted that but said little in return.

  They stuck close to the vegetation to avoid being spotted as the sun began to rise. The children tugged at Stark’s clothing, begging him to stop. Stark finally gave in and let them rest. He had no more food to give them, but the CamelBaks still contained some water. It would have to be enough.

  “How far, Golzari?”

  Both Golzari and Warren pulled out maps. Golzari pointed to a spot, and Stark was dismayed to see that they would have to pass by a couple of villages and cross some roads, including the coastal highway where Stark and Warren had seen the convoy going south.

  “Five miles as the crow flies. Maybe an hour and a half to two hours depending on our protectees,” Golzari said.

  Stark just shook his head. There were too many unknowns. Would they encounter more patrols? What would happen if they reached the boat and it had been discovered? Were the children more at risk with them than they would be if left on their own here? People in a nearby village would look after them. Stark immediately dismissed that idea. These children had witnessed the horrors at the mine. The Tigers would never allow them to live.

  He checked the map. The boat was in a heavily vegetated area, but the vegetation didn’t extend all the way to their current location. They would benefit from some cover for another three miles but would have to traverse one mile of open area until they reached the final mile with cover all the way to the water. He checked his watch, realizing they had already stopped for ten minutes. Time was not on their side.

  “That’s it, folks. No other options. We keep going until we get to the boat,” Stark said. “We carry the younger ones if we have to.”

  Twice more they spotted patrols in the distance, but each time, fortunately, before they were seen. Their luck continued for the time being. After an hour they reached the open area. The thick vegetation stopped abruptly about twenty feet above the fields and a road. Half a mile away, between them and the next patch of vegetation, sat three trucks carrying twenty Tigers with drawn weapons. Stark and Golzari had faced this situation before, but they had had cover, there were no children with them, and they didn’t face potentially hundreds of other soldiers converging on them.

  The normally optimistic Warren, carrying one child on his back and another under his left arm, hung his head in resignation. Stark heard Melanie mutter something like “not again” as she took out a long-range lens in what she assumed would be her final photos of this mission.

  Golzari just took a calm breath and assessed the situation. “End of the line, old man,” he said with a smile. “This isn’t Old Mar’ib.”

  Stark smiled back as he recalled that firefight—if one could smile about such a thing. It had been one hell of a battle. Stark and Golzari had literally been at each other’s throats before the ambush. But the battle had forced them to work together and forged them into an effective team for the remainder of their respective missions in Yemen.

  “What was it you said then, Damien? I thought it was the Alamo and you preferred the Siege of Malta?”

  “Indeed. But this is no Siege of Malta. I can’t think of any battle in history that would apply to the current situation,” the British-educated agent said.

  Stark assessed the situation. If soldiers were posted here, it was likely that other trucks and soldiers were posted on the road north and south, to the west, and elsewhere. Stark closed his eyes for a few moments, enjoying the warmth of the midmorning sun and listening to the hard breathing of the children and the adults and the occasional click of Melanie’s camera. He had a sudden memory of the first time he worked with Warren; it had been on the Sea Fighter project. Warren had tested positive during a random drug test. He had a thing for marijuana back then, and it had destroyed his government career. Stark’s eyes flew open. Yes! And he realized his hand had stopped shaking.

  “Not history, Damien. Movies.”

  “Movies aren’t real, Connor.”

  Stark handed his rifle to a surprised Melanie and removed his vest and blouse, giving those to her as well. He gave his backpack to Golzari.

  “What are you doing?” Warren asked him.

  “Damien, I believe your education is deficient in one area—American pop culture. Have you ever seen The Breakfast Club?” Stark asked.

  “No,” Golzari said distastefully. “Why?”

  “Oh, boss,” Warren interrupted. “You’re not thinking of going Bender here. No, sir, we’re in this toget
her.”

  “Who is Bender?” Golzari and Melanie asked simultaneously.

  “Classic decoy move,” Stark answered. “Five kids are in detention. They escape the detention room and wander the halls; then they realize the assistant principal is about to intercept them. Bender starts yelling and singing, leading the assistant principal off in a different direction while the others get away.”

  “You can’t, boss,” Warren said. “I’ve heard you sing. They’ll run in the other direction for sure.”

  “Very funny, Jay. Golzari, get these people to your boat and then to either LeFon or Syren. As soon as I take off, follow the jungle north a few hundred yards. If the soldiers follow me, wait and then make the dash to the other side. Tell my XO to get the ship out of here and warn the Sri Lankan government about the hafnium mine and weapons. Got it?”

  “Understood,” Golzari said. He knew Stark was following the only option available to them, whether or not it was viable.

  Stark shook Jay’s hand, but the big scientist pulled him closer and hugged him. “We’ll come back for you,” he promised.

  Then Stark looked at Melanie. “Save these kids,” he said. “And cut your ex-husband some slack. Try not to shoot him in the back. I hit him when I first met him too.” She couldn’t suppress a wry chuckle. Then she raised her camera and took a photo of him in his black T-shirt and gray coveralls. He reached down to push something further down inside his right boot, then unholstered his Beretta and headed back the way they had come.

  A few minutes later they heard three shots and then, in the distance, saw Stark running at full speed across the open field. Golzari carefully watched the reaction of the Tigers. Their attention was focused completely on Stark, who was a mile away from them at that point. One of the men waved to the others, then all three trucks sped off in Stark’s direction. Stark diverted into a rice paddy where the trucks would not be able to chase him. That meant the Tigers would have to pursue him on foot.