The Exile

by Andrew Britton

  “I’m afraid we cannot,” Martin said.

  “What are you talking about?” The man motioned past him toward the yacht. “We have to get over there. Our employer is expecting us to—”

  “That’s enough bullshit,” Martin said. “Put your hands over your heads. All three of you.”

  The men just glared at him.

  “Merde, are you deaf?” Martin jerked his weapon upward. “Let’s see your hands in the air now.”

  The lead man’s eyes continued boring into Martin as he finally frowned and raised his arms with slow reluctance. The other two followed suit a moment later.

  Alert for any sudden move, Martin slid around his side of the car, his left hand around the assault gun’s barrel, his right on the pistol grip, the back of its stock pressed into the hollow between his shoulder and chest. Out the tail of his eye he saw the sparse traffic on the street slowing down at the scene as drivers in both directions began to rubberneck. Then he became aware of something else—the warble of police sirens in the near distance. At least one of those gawkers must have phoned for the gendarmes.

  Which, Martin thought, was not the worst thing for him and Steiner. The key was to play the situation to their advantage. The Interpol-EU antipiracy task force was under no obligation to coordinate its efforts with local authorities. A little finesse, then, and their actions here might be explained as falling inside the bounds of a covert investigation. But Hassan al-Saduq had not been charged with any crimes. The task force could not violate the law, and hijacking Saduq’s yacht crossed lines Martin didn’t wish to contemplate. Or explain.

  He would have ample opportunity to consider that later, though. Right now he needed to buy Kealey and the others more time—and make sure these men stayed right where they were.

  He glanced at Steiner, nodded for him to frisk the three while he covered him with his MP9. Steiner moved quickly from the SUV to where they stood, found a holstered Beretta under the lead man’s jacket, and shoved it into his pocket. The second man had the same weapon at his side—and a Walther PPK in an ankle holster. He handed off both to Martin, who tossed them back into the SUV while keeping his rifle leveled.

  “Who do you work for?” Martin asked them. “Is it Saduq or his sailing companion?”

  Cold stares in return.

  “We already have a good idea why they came here,” Martin said. “Tell us the truth and it might help you in the long run.”

  The lead man snorted loudly, then spat in Martin’s direction. Martin just smiled—it was more or less the response he’d expected. His greater concern was that a hurried glance over his shoulder had disclosed that the arms trader’s yacht still remained berthed at the quay. He did not know if it meant the American’s mad plan—if it truly could be considered one—had led to trouble for Abby and Brun, or if they simply needed more time. But he was hoping he wouldn’t have to find ways to buy it for them and stall the gendarmes from going aboard.

  Steiner, meanwhile, had disarmed the third man, producing a Ruger semiautomatic from under his blazer. He backed toward the SUV with it as the sirens in the night got louder and closer. Within seconds the police cars appeared, their roof lights flashing, shooting past Saduq’s yacht as they arrived from the direction of the harbor.

  It had not taken them very long, Martin thought, his back to the vehicles. But he had known their precinct house was close. Limbe was a small city, with its wealthiest citizens and visitors—and therefore those the police most diligently protected—concentrated here at the shore.

  The patrol cars pulled up, their doors flying open, uniformed officers pouring out with their guns drawn. There might have been four or five vehicles. Martin was unsure of the exact number. He would neither lower his own weapon nor take his attention off the men on whom it was pointed to count them.

  “Drop your gun!” one of the uniforms shouted.

  Martin held out his identification in one hand. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “Captain Justine,” the gendarme barked. “Your weapon.”

  Martin spared the gendarme a glance. Tall and husky, he was holding his regulation Beretta out in front of him, aiming it at Martin in a two-handed police grip.

  Martin tossed his ID holder at him, heard it hit the ground. “I’m with Interpol, Captain. Léonard Martin. Since you couldn’t manage to see my goddamned identification while I held it, feel free to pick it up for a better look.”

  Justine bent to lift the holder from where it had landed near his feet, eyes quickly moving over it, then shifting to Steiner and the three men still standing with their hands up in the air.

  “What’s going on here?” Justine barked.

  Martin took a long, deep breath and held it, wishing he had the vaguest notion of how to explain.

  Aboard the Yemaja, the two deckhands had been raising fenders and pulling in lines when they heard the scuffling below on the quay.

  Leading the way up onto the boat, Abby and Brun behind him, Kealey came off the stairs to see one of the hands turning from the rail toward the master cabin. His MP9 holstered, Kealey took one running stride after him, another, and then grabbed him before he could run in under the tail of the flybridge, clamping his right arm around his throat and hauling him backward while jamming a knee into the base of his spine.

  The deckhand groaned in pain but managed to take a decent swing at Kealey as he was unwillingly spun in a circle. Kealey easily ducked the blow, bounced up on his knees, and punched him hard in the face, smashing his nose with his fist. As the man’s legs folded, Kealey moved in to hit him again, taking no chances, delivering a second blow across his jaw, feeling it give at the hinge, then grabbing his sleeve and tossing him against the rail. The man slammed back into it before he crumpled to his knees, spitting and coughing up blood.

  Kealey looked around to check on his teammates. He did not see Abby anywhere, but picked up Brun in close pursuit of the deckhand who’d been hauling the lines. The crewman ran aft outside the master cabin toward the stern and, to Kealey’s surprise, revealed himself to be armed, stopping in the main cabin just inside the entrance to pull a gun on the Interpol agent.

  His assault rifle already in his grip, Brun pumped a short burst into the crewman’s midsection. Staggering backward, he somehow remained on his feet long enough to return fire, the round he had triggered catching Brun above the elbow, before he turned in a swoony half circle and dropped to the floorboards in a heap.

  Kealey dashed back toward the rear deck. Enclosed by a paneled curve of glass, the main cabin ran the full beam of the yacht to form a luxury suite with leather chaise lounges and teak floors and furnishings. Hassan al-Saduq was on the other side of the window panels amidships, his gaze momentarily meeting Kealey’s before he hastened down a hatchway beside the cockpit to the lower deck. But Kealey saw no sign of the man he’d met at the hotel. And Abby? Where was she?

  Kealey hooked through the cabin entrance to Brun, who stood just inside it, clutching his arm, bracing himself against a ladder running up to the flybridge.

  “Shit,” Kealey said, eyeing his left shirtsleeve. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “Just a nick,” Brun said through gritted teeth.

  “You’re losing blood.” Kealey shook his head. “It won’t stop by itself.”

  Brun waved him off with his right hand—the one still holding his assault gun. “I’m all right,” he said. “You’d better get on with things.”

  Kealey expelled a breath. “Where’s Abby?”

  Brun angled his chin at the ladder to the flybridge. “Up top,” he said. “She went after Saduq’s friend and—”

  The yacht abruptly jolted as its engines thrummed to life below-decks, almost throwing Kealey off his feet. He simultaneously grabbed the rail of the ladder and reached out to steady Brun, then stole a glance at the cockpit. It remained unoccupied.

  The captain, then, was also up on the flybridge. The boat would have a second pilot’s station up there. K
ealey drew his submachine gun, gave Brun a nod, and scrambled up the ladder.

  He was pulling his way up off its final rung behind an open-air banquette seat when he heard the crack of a gunshot, the bullet whistling past his ear less than an inch to his right. Raising his head slightly above the back of the seat, Kealey took in everything at once: The pilot’s station was up toward the bow on the port side of the sundeck, the captain at the throttles. His quarry standing behind it with a pistol in his hand and a brown rucksack over his shoulder. Farther toward the rear, Abby had taken cover behind a fixed stowage container near the starboard rail.

  The pirate got off another shot at Kealey, but it missed by a slightly greater distance than the first. Instead of dropping down behind the banquette, Kealey heaved himself up over the ledge of the flybridge without a moment’s indecision, then squeezed a burst of fire over the seat back and scurried to his left. With Abby behind the single stowage container on the right side of the deck, and just the banquette between him and the gunfire, he would have far less protection here. But Kealey wanted to divide the pirate’s attention—and aim—by giving him widely separated targets.

  “You have a large enough catch down below,” the pirate shouted. “Leave me and be satisfied with it.”

  Kealey did not answer…but given their situation, it was hard to see what he meant. Leave me. Did the pirate think he could toss them Saduq in exchange for command of the boat? What good would that do him if they were all stuck on it together? Unless…

  Kealey realized what was happening all at once. The yacht was clipping along over the water now, its captain pushing thirty knots at the helm, and it was obvious the pirate hadn’t ordered him to pour on the speed without good reason. He was not taking flight—there was no one in pursuit—and to Kealey that could only mean one thing.

  He did not intend to remain on the Yemaja, but intended to meet up with another vessel somewhere out on the bay.

  The pirates in the motor launch wore head scarves, military-style khakis with swim vests over them, and lightweight tactical combat boots. They were armed with fully automatic rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, with several wearing daggers or machetes in scabbards at their waists. Like their leader, Nicolas Barre, they had scorpion tattoos on their necks as symbols of their brotherhood.

  In the vessel’s otherwise blacked-out wheelhouse, the maritime GPS unit presently casting a muted glow over the pilot’s face had guided them to the exact coordinates Barre had set for their rendezvous. But having reached it well ahead of the scheduled meet time, they had anticipated there would be little for them to do for the next twenty minutes or so but await the yacht’s arrival.

  Now, however, the man behind the wheel saw the unexpected brightness of a bow light pierce the darkness no more than 50 or 60 meters off to starboard. Listening, too, he could hear the throb of a powerful engine grow louder by the moment.

  Turning quickly from the wheelhouse, he leaned forward against his craft’s low gunwale and peered in the direction of the oncoming vessel with his night vision binoculars.

  “Asad…what is it?”

  The pilot looked at the man who’d come up beside him, passed him the glasses, and took notice of the stunned, puzzled expression on his face.

  “It must be the yacht,” the man said. “But for it to approach at that speed without Nicolas signaling ahead—”

  “We’d better hurry up and prepare, Guleed,” the pilot said.

  On his haunches behind the banquette, Kealey lined his gun sight on the pirate as the yacht raced over the black water of the bay. He did not want to get into a shoot-out here on the flybridge. He wanted the man for information, and that meant he did not want him dead. But he had no intention of letting him escape with the unknown contents of the rucksack—a bag he had not carried with him from the Hotel Bonny Bight, and that he therefore had picked up on the yacht. He wanted to know what was in it.

  Kealey was fairly confident he could squeeze off an accurate volley even with the vibrating movement of the boat. Aim for the man’s legs, with a short three-round burst, and it would cut them out from under him. Miss his target, on the other hand, and all kinds of chaos would erupt. But the alternative was to remain at an impasse until they reached whatever was waiting for the pirate out in the night. If Kealey was going to do it, he couldn’t wait.

  He inhaled deeply, then held his breath, preparing to pull the trigger on his exhale, the old sniper’s technique….

  He never had the chance to get off his salvo. An instant before he would have fired, the pirate’s weapon abruptly produced a loud report, then a second and third, the bullets slamming into the banquette in front of him. Kealey barely had time to wonder what had prompted his shots before the yacht veered sharply to starboard, throwing him off balance. Then he angrily realized he’d waited too long—they had reached the meet point.

  He tried to spring to his feet to return the fire, and the yacht careered again, this time turning even more sharply in the water, the violent motion flinging him onto his side and knocking the assault rifle from his grasp. As it skittered across the deck, he saw Abby clinging to the fixed stowage container, struggling to hang on to it so she wouldn’t tumble across the flybridge.

  Kealey heard his own furious snarl as he again tried to right himself and saw the pirate holding tightly onto the rail, peering down over the side of the boat. God damn, God damn! They’d been taken for idiots, suckered….

  The yacht kicked to a halt, its mainframe shuddering, throwing Kealey back onto the deck. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed hold of the banquette in front of him and launched to his feet, but by then the pirate had already leaped down from the pilot’s station and was on his way over the side.

  Kealey ran forward, grabbing up his rifle as he hurtled toward the rail just in time to see the launch speeding away from the yacht ahead of a churning wake of foam, vanishing in the pitch darkness, taking the pirate and the rucksack with it.

  Expelling a disgusted breath, he turned to the pilot’s station, grabbed the boat’s captain by his collar, and tossed him off his seat.

  “Stay away from those controls, you stupid bastard,” he said, pushing the bore of his gun against the man’s temple with such force, it bent his head back. “You move this boat an inch—a fucking inch—and I swear I’ll blow your useless brains out.”

  Rushing down the ladder from the flybridge now, past Brun to the hatchway and down again, and then through a passage on the lower deck, Kealey reached the master cabin amidships, where Saduq had holed up behind his locked door.

  He stood outside the door, inhaled, and then kicked it below the handle so that it went flying inward with a loud bang, the frame buckling around it, partially torn away from the side of the passage.

  Saduq stood staring at him from the middle of the cabin, his eyes wide in his face.

  “Who are you?” he said. “What is it you want?”

  Kealey stormed into the cabin and pushed him so hard that Saduq went flying backward over a chair into the wall, the breath woofing from his lips.

  “Who I am doesn’t matter,” Kealey said. “All that does is that you’re going to talk.”

  CHAPTER 16

  GULF OF GUINEA, CAMEROON

  “This isn’t complicated, Mr. al-Saduq,” Kealey said. “We know how you earn your living. We know you came to Limbe to broker an arms and equipment deal between Ishmael Mirghani and the man who jumped overboard with what is presumably a considerable sum of money. We have a good idea about the merchandise on the selling block—”

  “If you already know so much, then what more do you hope to learn from me?” Saduq said.

  Kealey looked down at him, the assault rifle in his hand pointed down at the floor. They were in the Yemaja’s master cabin minutes after he had slammed in its door, Saduq on a cushioned teakwood armchair against the wall, Brun sitting on the bed with his own MP9 on his lap and a pressure bandage around his arm—the wrap having come from a first aid kit th
ey had gotten the boat’s captain to provide. Abby, meanwhile, had brought the captain down off the flybridge to the interior pilot’s station, where she was presently standing guard over him.

  Kealey’s dark gray eyes regarded Saduq with an almost casual detachment. “I hate to repeat myself,” he said. “But the key here for everyone really comes down to keeping things simple. What we want from you are answers to the questions we don’t know. There are only a handful that matter.”

  “And they are…?”

  “The identity of the person who made off with the rucksack. And what you think he’s going to do with the money now that he almost certainly realizes you’ve been captured.” Kealey paused. “Most of all, Mr. Saduq, we’re interested in Mirghani’s plans for the shipment, should he get his hands on it…meaning the name of its end user. That information would take us all a good way toward getting off this boat. In fact, I can almost guarantee it will eventually get you back to shore alive and in one piece.”

  Saduq stared up at him from his chair. “Who are you?” he asked. “By what authority do you seize my vessel with impunity and try to intimidate—”

  Kealey didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. He took a lunging step forward, clamped his hand under Saduq’s chin, and pushed his head back against the cabin wall. Saduq grunted out in surprise.

  “You are out of your mind,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s true,” Kealey said. “It even might be one of the reasons I’m here. But there’s one thing you’ve got absolutely right—no maybes. I am in command of your ship. My people have boarded her, and from this point on we control where she goes. And decide what happens to you.”

  Saduq regarded him, quickly summoning up his composure. “Are you CIA?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  “Maybe so, but I can tell you are an American,” Saduq said. “I have many long-standing and high-placed relationships within your country. If you are CIA, I can promise your brutish tactics will not be taken lightly by those who sent you.”