The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  They walked to the living room where Crash stuck the DVD into Batman’s Sony player. The big screen came alive with a burst of static, then the image cleared to a black-and-white scene of a spare military courtroom. There were only four people in attendance. The judge was an Army officer dressed in plain unmarked fatigues with black bands covering his rank and name plate. A PFC was serving as the stenographer. Another Army officer, also in plain, unmarked fatigues, was reading off a long list of questions. And on the stand, looking beaten and exhausted, was Snake Nolan.

  A bandage covered his left eye, a cane was nearby. Most alarming, he was wearing the uniform of a private; he’d been busted down that far. A time stamp in the corner indicated the video was shot five weeks after the disastrous mission in Tora Bora. Nolan was so gaunt and pale, he looked like a ghost.

  The prosecuting officer was in the middle of questioning him. It was clear the former Team Whiskey CO was on trial for insubordination and disobeying a direct order. Yet there was no defense attorney present.

  “Those assholes in Rummy’s office wanted their pound of flesh,” Crash said. “And this is them getting it.”

  There were no histrionics. This was not Nuremberg or The Hague they were watching. Everything was calm. Everything was deliberate. A sham trial on Xanax.

  That is, until the prosecuting officer asked Nolan if he considered himself a traitor — and Nolan finally exploded.

  “I was doing what I was told to do!” he roared, ignoring the judge’s orders to lower his voice. “And when I had the chance to finally kill this son-of-a-bitch mass murderer, I took it, like any American would have. Like any American would have wanted me to. Except these people running the Department of Defense, for reasons I still can’t fathom, determined that our high-priority target was more valuable to them alive than dead. A little more than a year later, we invade Iraq on a lie. You want me to explain things to you? Well, someone please explain that to me.”

  The judge was then heard saying: “The U.S. government wants you to…”

  But Nolan loudly interrupted him: “Screw the U.S. government. And screw all of you.”

  The three ex-Delta mates were stunned, not so much at what Nolan had said, but by his condition. They’d been under enemy fire with him. Dodging artillery and mortar rounds. Charging machine-gun positions. Blowing up high-priority targets in the middle of the night. Every time, he had ice water in the veins, with never a hint of lost resolve, never coming close to losing his cool.

  Seeing their hero reduced to this was hard to take. But what came next shocked them even more.

  The video jumped to another edit point with more static. When it cleared again, the judge was announcing his verdict.

  Again, the audio was poor, but they heard the judge find Nolan guilty of all counts. His punishment was a dishonorable discharge, loss of pension, and six years hard labor in an Army prison somewhere outside the U.S. Nolan sat frozen as the sentence was read.

  But just as it seemed the farce was over, the judge dispensed another ruling: Once his prison time was served, the judge said, Nolan would be banned from ever entering the United States again. If he did, he’d be arrested for treason.

  The pronouncement seemed to astonish even the prosecuting officer. It didn’t make sense, even to him.

  The prosecutor began to say something, but the judge simply raised his hand, indicating that nothing more should be said. Then he looked directly at the camera and gave the “cut” sign.

  That’s where the video ended.

  Crash ejected the DVD and the three of them just stood there. It took a while before anyone could talk again.

  “What happened after that?” Batman finally asked.

  “They held him down in Gitmo, in solitary, away from the detainees,” Crash said. “But he kept trying to escape and was always fighting with the guards. He was just too hot to handle, so they shipped him to a Navy maximum-security brig on Sardinia — but he caused problems there, too, always trying to escape. Finally, they sent him to a military prison just outside Baghdad. He escaped from there for real. They caught him walking in the Iraqi desert, heading east.”

  “Jesuszz — what was he doing?” Batman asked.

  “He told them he was trying to get back to Afghanistan,” Crash replied gravely. “To finish the job.”

  “ ‘To finish the job?’ ” Batman whispered. “He really did lose his mind. And I thought I was nuts.”

  “When he completed his six years, they just tossed him out on the street in Baghdad,” Crash explained. “He was picked up in the desert twice more, both times walking east.”

  Batman asked: “So, where is he now?”

  “My guy says he’s locked up in Kuwait,” Crash said. “For ‘terrorist activities.’ But my guess is, they locked him up as a favor to the U.S. military.”

  Another long silence.

  Crash finally said, “He took the fall for us — and look what it did to him. Those bastards broke him in two. Now it’s up to us to do right by him.”

  “Are you suggesting we break him out?” Batman asked.

  “If a bribe doesn’t work, then yes,” Crash said firmly. “So — are you in?”

  Batman looked around his lavish retreat and spontaneously gave Crash a bear hug.

  “Give me ten minutes to pack,” he said.

  Outside Kuwait City

  Three days later

  They didn’t recognize Nolan.

  His tiny jail cell was made of mud bricks and dirt. There was no window, no bunk. A sink the size of a water fountain served as both bathtub and toilet. A single light bulb dangling from the clay ceiling provided the only illumination. Scorpions and spiderwebs were everywhere.

  On the other side of the bars, sat a man who was a dead ringer for Jethro Tull’s Aqualung: greasy hair falling on his shoulders, a matted beard reaching his chest, a filthy sackcloth shirt and burlap pants his only clothes. His hands were scraped down to the nails, his face dark and sunken. A bandage that looked months old covered his left eye. He seemed to be shaking uncontrollably.

  More disturbing was the writing on the cell walls. It was everywhere. Numbers, letters, maps, diagrams, hundreds of arrows connecting all of it and none of it. The scribbling, as if drawn by a caveman who had gone mad, seemed to go on forever.

  A Kuwaiti lawyer had brought the three Team Whiskey members here, to the basement of al-Kabat Prison, twenty miles west of Kuwait City. Just for this, his fee was $3,000. To actually arrange bail for Nolan — if this man was, in fact, Whiskey’s former CO — would be $4,000 more, and the accompanying bribe, somewhere north of $5,000.

  Luckily, between them, Crash and Batman had the money. The question was, did they have the right madman?

  “Are we sure it’s even him?” Crash asked, peering through the bars at the motionless figure in the corner.

  “It’s him,” the lawyer insisted. He showed them a laminated ID card. Ragged around the edges and stained with blood, it bore a military ID photo of the man they had once known.

  “You have five minutes with him,” the lawyer said. “Make up your minds quickly. This is a one-time offer. I can’t guarantee that I can arrange this for you ever again.”

  The lawyer unlocked the cell door long enough for the three men to step inside, then locked it behind them.

  “Five minutes,” he said before departing.

  Batman approached the prisoner first. He wasn’t sure what to say exactly.

  But the prisoner beat him to it.

  “Is he gone?” The voice came out almost impishly, each word moving the hairs hanging over his cracked lips. “The shyster. Is he gone?”

  “Yes — he is,” Batman replied.

  The man looked up at them — and only then were they sure it was their former CO. But it was an uncomfortable meeting.

  “Bad timing,” Nolan said, his voice agitated. “Very bad timing.”

  There was something wrong here. Instead of being overwhelmed to see them, Nolan almost
seemed upset they were there.

  “What terrorist activities were you involved in?” Batman asked him.

  Nolan laughed crazily. “Is that what they say I’m in for?”

  “What were you doing?”

  He got an even crazier glint in his eye. “I was looking for him,” he barked at them.

  “Who?” Crash asked. “God?”

  “No,” Nolan said, throwing a handful of dirt against the wall. “Our high-value target. Remember? I was following leads that he was living here — I was tracking him down.”

  “By yourself?”

  Nolan went silent, and just pulled on his dirty beard.

  “Dude,” Crash said. “You’re in Kuwait. They’re on our side. Why would he be here?”

  “Why are you here?” Nolan asked them.

  They were surprised by the question. “To get you out,” Crash told him. “We’re bailing you out.”

  “No,” Nolan repeated. “It’s bad timing.”

  “But it’s all set,” Batman insisted. “We got the money. And you can’t stay here. You’ll die.”

  “Oh, I’m not staying here,” Nolan told them. “If you had come an hour later, you would have found this place empty.”

  Batman glanced at the others; they looked as worried as he. Nolan seemed to have gone so far around the bend, he wasn’t coming back.

  Batman tried to reason with him. “Look, Snake, we’re laying out a total of twelve grand to spring you. We got a safe room nearby, where you can get cleaned up, get some strength back, and then we’re out of here. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “And can you understand what I’m saying?” he spit back at them. “Save your money — I’m out of here in an hour anyway. I’ll meet you — outside.”

  This was going nowhere. Once again, Batman looked to the others, not knowing what to do.

  “Do we carry him out of here?” he asked. “We got about two minutes to make up our minds.”

  “That’s if they don’t just leave us here locked up with him,” Crash observed.

  Nolan started cackling. “Enough bullshit,” he said.

  He crept over to the section of the cell farthest from the door. He put his hands up on the wall and started moving them in a circular fashion.

  “Damn, he is nuts,” Crash whispered.

  “Hey — maybe not,” Twitch said.

  He pointed to the wall where Nolan was moving his hands. Like magic, the dirt was sliding away. Beyond it was a crude screen mesh, and beyond that, a long tunnel.

  Batman couldn’t believe it.

  “Jesuszz, how did you do that?”

  “I dug it,” Nolan said with no small amount of glee.

  “But how?”

  Nolan held up his cracked and bleeding hands.

  “With these.”

  Crash looked into the tunnel. It was about four feet around, seemed solid, and went so far, he could not see the end.

  “Where does it go?” he asked Nolan.

  “It ends one foot from the edge of the wadi on the north side of this place,” Nolan said. He pointed to a nonsensical-looking diagram on the wall next to the tunnel. “All the calculations are right here, I just wrote them backwards. I memorized the distances when they were bringing me in. The wadi leads to the road. I hear a lot of trucks on the road, and hitchhiking is very popular in this part of the world — no matter what you look like.”

  He glanced up at them and smiled. “I’m serious. I would have been out of here in another hour.”

  The three men were speechless, until Crash said, “You know, that wadi also leads to the parking lot, where our rental car is.”

  * * *

  The Kuwaiti lawyer was two minutes late in returning to the cell.

  “Let us decide,” he moaned. “Time to make up your mind. Does he stay or does he go?”

  Only then did he look in the cell and find it empty.

  Near Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

  The newly paved two-lane road looked oddly out of place.

  Located near a rare bend in national Route 40, the strange side road ran deep into the Saudi desert, disappearing behind two shallow mountains many miles off the highway. An elaborate white gate stood at its entrance; a large air-conditioned gatehouse was located close by. Inside the gatehouse were six Saudi district policemen each wearing a crisp, new uniform.

  Gunner was waiting for the rental car when it arrived at the gate. It had been two days since the reunited Team Whiskey had left Kuwait City, in a hurry, their bribe money still intact. A long drive across the burning interior of Saudi Arabia followed, the rented Mercedes’s air conditioning crapping out about halfway through the trip.

  But no problem. Bigger than ever, Gunner greeted them warmly, then ushered them into a stretch Range Rover waiting nearby. Two Saudi policemen were sitting in the truck’s backseat, waiting for a lift. Before the team climbed in, Gunner subtly indicated that they should talk carefully in their company.

  Gunner drove them down the long private road, confirming that it went more than thirty miles into the desert. As they roared along, they pretended to update him on their travels, making it sound like they’d all just jumped on an airliner and flown to the Middle East for this reunion. Despite the cops’ presence, Gunner couldn’t hide his excitement. He told them that when he’d first gotten in touch with Crash, he never thought it would all work out and that Whiskey would be together again. They, in turn, were genuinely glad to see him.

  He spoke in very general terms about the security job he’d arranged for them. They would need uniforms and firearms, of course. And he’d arranged for lodging for them. He also mentioned their employers had just leased a helicopter for their use.

  “They were looking for people who knew their way around weapons and could keep their mouths shut,” Gunner told them. “I figured one out of two ain’t bad.”

  Thirty-two miles into the desert, they finally reached their destination. But it was not an oil or gas field, the type of place the others had expected they’d be protecting.

  Instead, it was a man-made oasis with a huge resort area built up around it. Casinos, swimming pools, water parks, restaurants, all under a half-dozen immense glass domes. The place looked like Monte Carlo, Las Vegas and Disneyland, all rolled into one — if such a place had been built on another planet, in a galaxy far, far away.

  “What kind of security force does this place need?” Batman asked, authentically puzzled. “They expecting an attack from Mars or something?”

  Gunner had stopped at another guardhouse by this time. He turned to the pair of cops riding in the back.

  “Thanks, guys,” he said. “I can take it from here.”

  The two policemen left without saying a word.

  Only after they’d gone did Gunner fess up.

  “This place is called Al Zakkar,” he began. “It’s a secret resort, shopping mall, whatever you want to call it. Only the richest of the rich even know it exists, and only their top earners are allowed to come here or shop here.”

  “It’s a fucking shopping mall?” Batman roared.

  “It’s a very high-end resort,” Gunner replied, defending himself. “With places to shop, yes.”

  “It’s a top-secret shopping mall?” Batman roared again.

  “Hey, these Saudis got money to burn,” Gunner explained. “And this sort of stuff really turns them on.”

  Batman scanned the futuristic layout.

  “But again, what do they need a security force for?” he asked. “Are some Muslim hotheads threatening to blow this place up?”

  “No,” Gunner said, his voice falling low now. “And actually they don’t want us to be a security force so much as they want us to be, well… security guards.”

  “You mean like prison guards?” Crash asked.

  “No, I mean security guards,” Gunner replied. “Like mall cops?”

  The four team members groaned as one — even Nolan, who, now clean and shaven, was slowly coming back to life
.

  “Mall cops?” he said. “Jesuszz…”

  Crash said: “Gunny — you didn’t tell me this on the phone.”

  Gunner was mortified. “I know — but would you have come if I had?”

  “No,” Crash, Batman and Twitch all answered at once.

  Gunner shot back: “Hey, I said it pays good, and it does. And there’s no heavy lifting. They just need us to be visible, in the casino, in the stores. In the restaurants.”

  Another groan, especially from Crash, the designated wrangler of this reunion. Nothing was unfolding as he’d imagined it.

  “But if all they want us to do is walk around and look awake,” he asked Gunner, “what the hell is the helicopter for? Chasing shoplifters?”

  “Not exactly,” Gunner replied, again awkwardly. “The thing is, this place is so big, we might need it to fly some of the better customers from one end to the other.”

  Batman slumped down in his seat.

  “Just shoot me now,” he said.

  PART THREE

  The Ghosts of Happy-Happy

  6

  Present Day

  Singapore.

  More ships were loaded and unloaded here than anywhere else in the world. Half the globe’s oil supply passed through its waters. Thousands of tons of raw goods, from sneakers to SUVs, arrived in its harbor every day. At any given hour, upwards of fifty ships could be in berth taking on or offloading cargo, with three times as many anchored offshore, waiting for their turn at the dock.

  On this early morning, three of those vessels belonged to Kilos Shipping. Two tankers and a container ship, they’d been loitering offshore since the previous afternoon. Singapore was the largest port in the world — so busy, ships sometimes had to wait a day or more to be unloaded.

  The Kilos ships had arrived here from three different points of the globe. This was not unusual. There were dozens of Kilos vessels traversing the oceans at any given time. For a few of them to wind up in Singapore on the same day was not uncommon.