The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  Nolan checked his watch. The attack had lasted just four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

  He was not happy, though. “We did everything but the most important thing,” he said.

  “Don’t worry it,” Batman told him, slapping him five. “He’s dead. You got pictures. Let’s go get paid.”

  13

  Aboard the DUS-7

  Two days later

  On the menu tonight was steak au poivre.

  There were also orange patates, Maltese vegetables scorched in vin de pêche, and bourbon profiteroles for dessert. Never had the DUS-7’s galley smelled so good.

  The rusty old freighter was passing off the southern tip of Sri Lanka, heading west through heavy fog. Already halfway across the Indian Ocean, its destination was the Port of Aden.

  Team Whiskey’s job was complete, and now they were heading home. What would happen to them when they reached Yemen was anyone’s guess. They’d have some money to spend, soon at least $20,000 each. But after that was gone, who knew? A return to their jobs at the secret Saudi super-mall was a gloomy possibility.

  But this was a time for celebration. Sitting around the mess table now were the five team members plus Mark Conley, the representative from Kilos Shipping. Conley had flown aboard the DUS-7 in one of the company’s luxurious helicopters just before sundown. He’d arrived with the makings of the feast, along with Mikos Kilos’s personal chef. Conley also carried a briefcase full of money, the team’s second $50,000 payment in less than a month.

  The operation against Zeek had been a success, even if no one on the outside could agree what happened to him. Malaysian newspapers were reporting Zeek had been killed in a gunfight with his own bodyguards. A Jakarta radio station claimed the Pirate King had committed suicide. Some Internet postings and even some tweets said Zeek had died while working on a bomb and that his body had been obliterated. Indonesian law enforcement was calling his death the result of a turf war, noting the robbery at the Red Skull Bar and the burning of the brothel on Mirang as proof, because Zeek was connected to both.

  One thing was for certain: By the next day, the battleground on Pirate Island had been cleaned up. All the bodies had been taken away and the remaining camp structures burned and bulldozed. The Indonesian military had decided to raze the camp for its own protection.

  “You guys did your jobs well,” Conley told them now as he opened a bottle of champagne and poured each man a glass. “Everyone at Kilos Shipping is pleased, especially the top man. He’s still broken up over what happened to our crews in Singapore — the fact that the cops never bothered to look into their murders shows you the grip Zeek had on this area.”

  Conley raised his glass in a toast. “But just as Zeek kept his word to get back at Kilos Shipping for killing his brother, you guys kept your word in getting Zeek before he could do any more damage. For that, we thank you.”

  They drank their champagne and then Nolan presented Conley with a large manila envelope. Inside was a written account of the action against Zeek’s compound plus the photos Nolan had taken of the pirate’s demolished headquarters.

  “This is what Mister Kilos paid us for,” Nolan told Conley. “We hope he’s happy with the results.”

  Finally the meal was laid on. The team members were worn out and beat-up, but also in good spirits — even Twitch. So the conversation flowed. More champagne was opened and more toasts were made, to one another, to Kilos Shipping, to Senegal. When the celebration reached its height, Conley put a briefcase on the table and opened it. Just like the first time, it was filled with fresh, crisp packets of cash. Fifty thousand dollars in all.

  “With this, Mister Kilos sends you his undying gratitude,” Conley told them. They toasted the shipping magnate yet again and drained their glasses. Then they opened the first bottle of scotch.

  But no sooner had the sixty-year-old Macallan been poured when one of the Senegals came into the mess and whispered something in Nolan’s ear. The team leader was needed up on the deck immediately.

  With Batman in tow, Nolan went up to the main deck to find a huge U.S. Navy warship had pulled up alongside the DUS-7.

  Batman moaned. “This can’t be good.”

  It was past dusk, and the ship — the guided missile cruiser USS Robert J. Messia—had come out of the fog behind them, barely registering on the DUS-7’s rinky-dink surface radar.

  A radio message from the Navy ship told the freighter to kill its engines and prepare to be boarded. The reason? Antiterrorism patrol.

  But Nolan sensed there was more to it than that.

  A launch left the Navy ship and motored over to the DUS-7’s access ladder. Five people came aboard: three armed sailors and two men in civilian clothes.

  Nolan and Batman met them at the railing. The civilians flashed their ID cards. They were from the ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. Basically CIA agents of the high seas, the agents looked like spies out of central casting. Cheap haircuts. Off-the-rack clothes. Aviator sunglasses even though it was nighttime.

  One was older and shorter. He was Agent Harry, and he did all the talking.

  “Mind if we ask you folks a few questions?” he asked.

  “Do we have a choice?” Nolan replied.

  Both agents shook their heads no.

  They led the pair down to the mess hall. The agents groaned when they spotted Conley.

  “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Agent Harry asked the Kilos rep.

  “I’m a globetrotter,” Conley replied, not thrilled to see the agents, either. “You guys got nothing better to do than harass private ship owners?”

  The agents took out notebooks. “And you got a problem helping out your country?” Harry asked.

  Nolan indicated the bottle of expensive scotch on the table. “We’re a little busy here, guys,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Like we said — just a few questions… ”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, what was this ship’s location two nights ago?”

  Nolan started to answer, but Conley cut him off. “Two nights ago, I believe my crew was in, let’s see, was it Hong Kong?”

  The agents didn’t bother to write this down. They noticed the briefcase of money, the expensive food and the newspaper clippings about Zeek’s demise scattered on the mess table.

  “Old man Kilos is sure feeding you guys good,” Harry said. “Keeping you up-to-date as well.”

  He pointed up toward the main deck.

  “And that copter up on the stern? Not the Ferrari with rotor blades, the other one. The work copter? Just a little bit beyond civilian specs, don’t you think? Gun pod? Bomb mounts? In fact, it nearly matches the description of an aircraft that was… ah, ‘borrowed’ from a location in Saudi Arabia recently.”

  Conley just laughed. “Get to the point, will you?”

  Agent Harry asked, “I suppose you guys were nowhere near the Pautang Channel two nights ago?”

  Everyone shook their heads on cue, even the Senegals, watching all this from afar.

  “No — why?” Conley asked. “Something happen we should know about?”

  “Just a little dust-up with a local bad guy,” Harry deadpanned. “A pirate type. Someone bombed and strafed his hideout — in a helicopter. This after fucking up a couple of his businesses the night before. If you take a closer look at those newspapers, you can read all about it.”

  Conley got up, indicating it was time for the agents to go.

  “Well, thanks for the news flash, guys,” he said. “But you’re impeding commerce here.”

  The agents closed their notebooks; they knew this was fruitless. Nolan and Batman escorted them back up to the deck.

  “You could do worse than be hooked up with Conley,” Agent Harry told Nolan on the sly. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not aware of who you guys are.”

  The ONI agent looked him in the eye and said: “Message received, Major Nolan?”

  Again, Nolan started to respond, b
ut this time he stopped himself.

  “Have a good ride back,” he told the agents instead. “Don’t fall in.”

  As the agents started down the access ladder, Harry turned and said one last thing.

  “Just remember,” he told them. “Out here — word travels fast. Good or bad. Accurate or not. It might look like a big ocean, but everyone knows everyone else’s business. So, be aware — someone’s always watching.”

  With that, the agents departed.

  * * *

  Returning to the mess hall, Nolan poured them all another drink, and Conley turned his attention back to the briefcase full of money.

  “You guys earned this in spades,” he said, pushing the briefcase toward Batman, the team’s moneyman. “And it was a pleasure working with you again.”

  Conley shook hands with each member of the team. Then he asked one of the Senegals to inform his copter pilot that he was leaving. The chef had already packed his travel bag.

  But then Conley’s cell phone rang. He had a quick, hushed conversation. The team members could hear only bits and pieces of it, but Conley kept saying, “I don’t believe it. Who knows about this?” He paused and said, “OK — hold on. I’ll ask them.”

  He turned back to the team. “Well, the squid cops were right: Word does travel fast out here.”

  “Why? What’s going on?” Batman asked.

  “This is one of our contacts in Mumbai,” Conley told them. “An Indian Navy warship has been hijacked by Somalis somewhere near the Maldives. It’s a brand new high-tech vessel, highly automated and worth about a hundred million bucks. The pirates are threatening to kill the crew and blow it up if their demands aren’t met.”

  “Tough situation,” Batman said, pouring the team another scotch.

  “It sure is,” Conley said. “That’s why the Indian government wants to know if you guys can get it back for them.”

  PART FOUR

  The Taking of the Vidynut

  14

  AT FIRST, THE Indian Navy thought its new fast-attack boat had been lost at sea.

  The futuristic warship, christened the INS Vidynut, had been on a shakedown cruise near the Maldives Islands as part of its final sea trials before commissioning. It was designed and wholly built by the Indian Navy itself, which had made extensive use of lightweight composite materials in its construction. That’s why Navy officials feared the Vidynut’s hull had given way, and the 180-foot-long, 1,000-ton ship had gone down with all hands during stormy weather in the Kardiva Channel, northwest of Male, the capital of the Maldives.

  But the Vidynut had not sunk, at least not yet. A different fate had befallen it.

  The ship had made a scheduled port call to Male, where it took on fuel and stores for the 800-mile voyage back to its home port of Mumbai. Most of the twenty-man crew had been given shore leave in the pricey, internationally known vacation spot, with its officers invited to dine at the president’s mansion. Just four sailors were left on the ship during its last night in port.

  Sometime after midnight, two small boats came up alongside the Vidynut, and a dozen armed men climbed aboard. They brutally murdered the four sailors on watch, and as other crewmen returned from shore leave, they were seized and viciously beaten. Most were tied up below.

  The invaders had collected all the weapons on board and forced those sailors assigned to bridge duty to prepare the ship to sail. Once the captain and his officers returned, they, too, were overpowered, beaten, and put below. Just like that, the highly advanced warship was in the hands of armed intruders.

  Those intruders turned out to be Somali pirates.

  * * *

  At last report, the Vidynut was heading west. The pirates had met cohorts on other ships along the way, and it was now estimated there were at least thirty gunmen on board, almost twice the number as the hostages. The story of the hijacking had not yet reached the media; at the moment, the Indian government preferred the public to think their showpiece, one-of-a-kind fast-attack vessel — versions of which they hoped to sell to other countries — had sunk rather than been taken over by Somali gunmen. The assumption was that the pirates were intent on getting back to Africa and ransoming the vessel, the first warship taken by seaborne bandits in the modern era.

  It was by far the most audacious act yet by the Somali pirates, carrying out a bold hijacking an entire ocean away from their home waters. The Indian government was deeply embarrassed and wanted nothing more than to get their warship back quickly, but quietly.

  Those few who knew about the situation were guessing the Somalis’ asking price for return of the Vidynut would be at least $100 million.

  * * *

  “But why us?” Nolan asked, taking a deep gulp of coffee. “I mean, other than the fact that we happen to be in the same time zone? We’re just five guys. India has one of the largest navies in the world. Can’t they do anything?”

  In just a few minutes, everything had changed aboard the DUS-7. The booze and food had been taken away and the team was drinking cups of strong Senegalese coffee. Conley had remained on board. He was keeping a line open to his contact in Mumbai, and this person was trying to answer as many questions as possible about the hijacking. The mess table was now covered with maps of the Indian Ocean.

  “Yes, India has a huge navy,” Conley said in response to Nolan’s question. “But this thing has turned into a political monster. Above all, the Indian Navy doesn’t want to be in the position of having one of its warships fire on another. It’s bad for business.”

  “How about their other armed forces, then?” Nolan asked him. “They must have their own version of Delta Force. Can’t they attempt a rescue?”

  “Their top special operations unit is called MARCOs,” Conley replied. “Basically Indian Marine commandos. But most of them were deployed to the Kashmir a few weeks ago, and it would take at least two days for them to get their shit together to even attempt a rescue. By that time, the pirates will be almost halfway to Somalia and out of range of their helicopters. The MARCOs are not exactly a rapid-reaction force, I guess.”

  “Makes you wonder if the pirates knew that before they started this operation,” Batman opined. “Maybe they’ve been doing their homework — the scary little bastards.”

  Nolan drained his coffee and poured another.

  “OK, but don’t the Indians have an aircraft carrier?” he asked Conley. “Get the commandos to the carrier, launch them from the carrier to the hijacked ship. Simple.”

  “Again, a good idea,” Conley said. “Trouble is, their carrier, the Viraat, is currently in Japan on a goodwill cruise, which is what it does about ninety percent of the time.”

  “Not exactly taming the Mighty Main, are they?” Gunner said.

  Conley held up his finger and listened for a moment to his contact on the other end of the phone. Then he said: “Well, I guess it wasn’t like some of them weren’t trying. We just heard a force of Indian Army soldiers training on the Maldives when all this happened jumped on their helicopter and took off after the ship, thinking they could get it back. Trouble was, they weren’t trained for these things. They were just regular troops, with no experience in seaborne ops. They took off, got lost, ran out of gas and crashed into the ocean probably fifty miles short of their goal. All thirty-five of them drowned. They would have been national heroes if they had managed to pull it off. But… listen, rescue missions and such? We’re actually beyond all that now.”

  “What do you mean?” Nolan asked.

  Before Conley could answer, his laptop started beeping.

  “Good, finally,” he said. “I’ll let my friend tell you directly.”

  He opened the laptop and went to the Skype Web page. He pushed a few keys, then set the laptop on the mess hall table in front of the team. They were soon looking at a live video image of Conley’s contact in Mumbai.

  His name was Nigel Scott. He was a middle-aged Englishman, balding but dapper. He was sitting in an office overlooking Mumbai Harbor, sm
oking a cigarette and drinking what they assumed was coffee. He seemed a bit ruffled, as if he hadn’t slept in a while.

  “Give them the 411, will you, Scotty?’ Conley asked him, opening up the audio connection. “Explain the difference between a rescue mission and a recovery operation.”

  Scott lit one cigarette off another.

  “I’ll put it to you bluntly, gents,” he began, his face filling the laptop’s screen. “The way the Indians are looking at this thing now, that ship’s crew is as good as dead. There are several reasons for this. First, the four guys the pirates killed in Male weren’t just shot, they were butchered, horribly, with machetes. When the Indian government contacted some ex-FBI profilers about this, the profilers told the Indians these pirates are so vicious, there’s no way they’ll let the hostages survive. The pirates want to ransom the boat and are prepared to wait as long as it takes — days, weeks, months. But they don’t want to deal with the hostages, caring for them, feeding them and so on. They’re just an unwanted complication. The ship itself is the real prize.

  “As proof of this, the Indians discovered that someone on the ship managed to surreptitiously open a communications link on the main control panel — so Mumbai can hear a lot of what the pirates are saying on the bridge. And what they’ve heard confirms that the profilers were right: The pirates were talking about how they’re going to kill the crew whether a deal is made or not.”

  “Sounds like these guys have taken a page from Turk’s book,” Batman observed. “Why bother with the human baggage?”

  “Now, the pirates contacted the Indians early on by sat phone,” Scott went on. “And the Indians, of course, told them they don’t deal with terrorists, which is what everyone says at the beginning of these things. The pirates pretended to be pissed off, threatened to kill the hostages, but again, it makes no difference because the people eavesdropping on them know they’re going to execute the crew no matter what — probably sooner rather than later — and there’s really nothing the Indians can do about it.”