The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  “So what does all this mean?” Nolan asked him.

  Scott let out a long stream of smoke. “Well, to put it bluntly, it means the Indians want to concentrate on just getting their ship back.”

  “Man, that’s fucking cold,” Batman said.

  “Well, welcome to the real world,” Scott said. “But they’re just being practical. And they want to protect their investment.”

  “OK, so the crew is gone,” Nolan said. “So what? All the Indians have to do is pay a ransom to get the ship back. I’m sure they’ve got an extra hundred million sitting around — it’s not like they’re spending it on slum dog urban renewal.”

  “Yes, but there’s a point everyone is missing,” Scott said. “You see, NATO and others who are trying to stop the Somali pirates are scared to death of setting a precedent of pirates hijacking military ships and then getting paid huge ransoms to give them back. That would be an escalation of this whole Somali pirate thing that no one even wants to contemplate.”

  “So?” Nolan asked.

  “So, with the Indian crew dead,” Scott said, “as soon as that ship reaches Somali waters, NATO is going to sink it. And they’ve already told the Indians this. Simple as that. When it happens, I’m not sure what kind of spin the Indians will put on it. Maybe they’ll just stay with the ‘hull broke and it sank’ story. But once that ship reaches the pirates’ home waters, it’s as good as gone.”

  “So, again, what do they want us for?” Nolan asked him.

  Scott almost seemed amused by the question. “Well, they want their ship back—before NATO sinks it. And that’s where you guys come in. They know the handful of you just greased almost a hundred monkeys in Indonesia. More importantly, they also know you rescued the Global Warrior without firing more than a dozen shots. Word gets around about these things, and so they look at you as experts in both beating overwhelming odds and keeping the gunplay to a minimum when necessary. Bottom line: they’d like the ship back, intact, without using excessive force.”

  Nolan needed a few moments to let all that sink in. They all did.

  “That must be some ship,” Batman said, breaking the silence.

  “It’s a bit of a national treasure,” Scott said, again somewhat amused. “Home-designed, home-built, and all that. Computers run everything. It practically sails itself. Can engage multiple threats. Packed to the gills with firepower. And eventually they want to sell them around the world. So it’s very valuable to them. And they’d rather not see it sink. Or get too mussed up, if you chaps are able to get it back.”

  “Easy for them to say,” Nolan told him.

  Scott wearily lit another cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Well, again, they’re being realists. They know it’s much easier to recover a ship if there are no hostages on board to worry about… ”

  He let his voice trail off.

  Nolan said, “But still, it doesn’t answer the question: Why are we their first option? How do they know we didn’t just get lucky in Indonesia, or aboard the Global Warrior?”

  Again, Scott was brutally frank. “Well, you’re not exactly the first option. Blackwater — or whatever they are calling themselves these days — already turned the Indians down on this one.”

  “Blackwater turned them down?” Nolan said to Batman. “That tells you something.”

  Batman asked, “What? That they’re getting fat and lazy?”

  “No,” Nolan replied. “It tells you they don’t take on jobs they know they can’t do.”

  He looked around the mess table. With the scotch and steaks gone, the team had returned to looking beat up and worn out. Crash was like a mummy, wrapped in a mile of bandages as a result of his fight in the water at Pirate Island. Twitch still had that 1,000-yard stare in his eyes. Gunner looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Even the usually animated Batman was dragging ass.

  “Can we really do this?” Nolan asked them gravely. “So soon after the Zeek thing? I mean, personally, I can hardly think straight.”

  “That’s probably the scotch,” Batman told him. “But it might be a moot point anyway.”

  He turned back to Scott on the screen. “I hope they realize it will be a major effort just for us to catch up to this ship. We could chase them across the entire Indian Ocean and still not make it.”

  “The Indians are aware of that,” Scott said. “But if you do, and you figure out a way to get the job done, it could be a big payday for you.”

  Nolan thought for a few more moments. He asked Gunner, “What’s our supply situation — I know it’s not good.”

  Gunner read from a list. “We’re very low on 50-caliber ammo; we’re very low on M4 ammo. The copter’s gun pod is completely empty, and its gas tanks are almost dry. We’re OK on ship fuel at the moment, both diesel and turbine. But we’ll burn most of it out if we decide to really put the pedal to the metal and start chasing this ship.”

  Nolan turned to Conley. “Can Kilos help us out?”

  Conley nodded. “You guys were there when we needed you,” he said.

  “I mean, do you have one of your ‘special ships’ nearby?” Nolan asked him. “The ones that carry your ‘special cargoes?’ ”

  Conley checked his BlackBerry. After a few moments he replied, “It so happens that answer is yes. And we also have a heavy-lift copter available for delivery. But remember, it will be potluck. We just never know what’s available.”

  “So are you interested or not?” Scott asked them. “The Indians are going nuts waiting for an answer.”

  Again, Nolan looked at the team gathered around the table. The unknown was if they were in any shape to take on another mission so soon.

  Finally Nolan asked Scott the big question. “If we do this, and do it right, how much are we talking about?”

  Scott didn’t hesitate. “If you get the ship back — and, of course, recover the bodies of the crew, if possible — the Indians will give you two million dollars cash. No questions asked.”

  Batman whistled. “That’s some serious fucking coin.”

  Even Twitch was paying attention now. They all were.

  Crash mumbled through his bandages. “Beats going back to the mall.”

  Nolan massaged his tired temples. The whole thing was so weird and unexpected, a big decision that had come at him right out of the blue.

  “Let’s take a vote,” Batman suggested.

  Nolan knew it was the only thing to do. He couldn’t deny the team a chance to make such a huge sum of money, even if they didn’t have any idea how they were going to pull it off.

  Finally he said to them, “You’ve heard it all. You got the facts. So, for a two-million-dollar split, raise your hand if you want to try to save this boat.”

  Everyone around the table immediately raised his hand. Even the Senegals standing nearby voted yes.

  Nolan rubbed his weary head again, but finally raised his own hand.

  “It’s unanimous, I guess,” he said to Scott. “Tell them we’ll take the gig.”

  There was some high-fiving and grunts of approval around the table, except from Twitch, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Now I know how an undertaker feels,” he said.

  15

  The Kilos helicopter arrived just before midnight.

  It was an S-64 heavy lifter, a civilian version of the U.S. Army’s CH-54 Skycrane. Pimped for night flying and sea duty, it had been built especially for the shadowy shipping company to move large pieces of contraband between vessels at sea under cover of darkness. A huge crate shrink-wrapped in black plastic hung from its cargo sling.

  On the bow of the DUS-7, flashlights in hand, Nolan and Batman guided it in. The ship was 100 miles west of the Maldives and just ninety miles behind the hijacked Indian warship. A combination of the small freighter’s great speed and the captured warship’s low cruising rate of fifteen knots had closed the gap between them significantly.

  Conley had flown on to Mumbai, taking the Kilos chef with him, bu
t not before talking to his contacts inside the U.S. intelligence community. His sources told him the U.S. was watching the commandeered ship via spy planes and drones. He also learned that, while the U.S. could understand India’s desire to have a private company to retake the ship before it reached Somali waters, the Pentagon was less than happy to learn that private enterprise was a group of ex-Delta Force guys who had a major beef with Uncle Sam. When Conley told that to the team, they knew it was official: They were now foreign mercenaries.

  The big copter approached the ship gingerly. It took some maneuvering, but finally the S-64 was able to rest its load on top of the freighter’s hold hatch. Nolan and Batman hastily unhooked the wires and, with a wave to the pilot, sent the aircraft on its way.

  They contemplated the delivered object for a moment. It was much bigger than they had expected; they only really needed two kinds of ammunition. But they had no idea what the shipping company had sent, except that the captain of the container ship had said he hoped they’d find it “helpful.”

  Batman patted the side of the tightly wrapped crate.

  “I wonder what’s underneath all that,” he said. “A couple tons of ammo, maybe?”

  “Let’s find out,” Nolan replied.

  It took them five minutes just to cut the plastic wrap off the cargo. Then they had to pull apart the crate itself, which took another ten minutes. When it was open, both men were stunned at what they found inside.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” was Batman’s response.

  It wasn’t a crateful of ammunition or even more machine guns. It was an M102 field gun, an artillery piece that at one time was the mainstay of the U.S. Army’s infantry forces. It was a powerful weapon, big and bold on two wheels, weighing almost two tons, and capable of firing high-explosive shells up to seven miles. But what the hell were they going to do with it?

  “Jesus Christ,” Nolan said. “We needed ammo for our pop guns, and they send us an atomic cannon.”

  * * *

  An hour later, the team was gathered back in the mess hall.

  Outside, the sea was beginning to swell and the wind was growing stronger. The coffee cups were starting to rattle in the ship’s galley.

  Several things had happened in the past hour. They’d managed to tie down the artillery piece with chains, ropes and electrical wire to a spot near the front of the ship. The delivery also included forty-eight rounds of high-explosive artillery shells. The team stored them in an empty lifeboat locker nearby.

  The Indian government had given them access to a classified Indian Navy Web site where they were able to get a GPS reading on the Vidynut. With their dual propulsion systems working overtime, they were now within seventy-five miles of the hijacked warship and still closing fast.

  Most important, Team Whiskey had been able to download blueprints of the Vidynut, which they were studying now, even as the Indian Ocean outside was sounding a little more agitated.

  The Vidynut was, indeed, futuristic in almost every respect. Aside from its virtually complete automation, the ship itself looked like it was going 100 knots even when it was standing still. It was all curves and smoothed-out right angles; anything that could be flared on the drawing board had been. It was also stuffed with a lot of sophisticated electronics as well as extensive communications and radar arrays. Though the only weapon visible above deck was a four-inch naval gun on the bow, belowdecks there were six automated missile launchers: four for short-range attacks and two for long-range engagements. The Vidynut could sink a ship four times its size from more than fifty miles away.

  Its superstructure was three levels high, beginning about one-third of the way down from the bow, and took up the middle of the ship. The bridge was located at the top of the superstructure in a swept-back, all-glass bubble, its roof festooned with antennas and spinning radar dishes. The ship’s stern was devoted to holding the long-range missiles themselves, plus an elaborate, almost stylish-looking exhaust stack that would have seemed at home on a Klingon warship. The deck was so cluttered there was no way the team could ever land their work copter on the hijacked missile boat.

  Not that they would have to. After tossing around many ideas for an hour or so, the team had come up with a simple — make that very simple — plan to recover the ship and collect their two million dollars. And it was the blueprints that gave them the idea.

  Assuming they were able to catch up to the Vidynut, their first objective would be to get as close to the warship as possible without arousing the pirates’ suspicion. Because the DUS-7 was such an old ship, they were hoping the hijackers would not suspect them of being anything other than a rust-bucket freighter moving through the Indian Ocean.

  Once they were within range of the Vidynut, though, they would fire one shell from the M102 artillery piece, hoping for a hit on the ship’s propellers, which — due to the craft’s ultra-modern, shallow-hull design — were just a couple of feet below the water line. With its props disabled, the ship would be dead in the water.

  And that was it. If the ship had no means of propulsion, it couldn’t get to Africa. If it couldn’t get to Africa, NATO couldn’t sink it.

  The Dustboat would just sit a safe distance away, snipe at the pirates if they showed their faces, but basically wait them out. Conley had told them the Indian ship had only about a three-day supply of food and water. Soon the pirates would get hungry, thirsty and hot. Eventually, they’d crack.

  The plan fit perfectly with the team’s own supply situation. While they were extremely low on M4 and 50-caliber ammunition, they had plenty of supplies and now the artillery piece. It was an incredibly simple way to make a cool two million.

  But it was not to be. Because just moments after putting the finishing touches on the idea, just as they heard the wind outside getting louder and felt the ship’s rocking get a little rougher, one of the Senegals came down from the bridge holding the latest weather report. A huge complication had just appeared on the horizon.

  A storm was blowing up from the Cape of Good Hope, aiming right for the middle of the Indian Ocean. With heavy rains, high winds and particularly high seas, the gale was already going full force, and the Vidynut and the DUS-7 were heading right for it.

  But that was not the problem. The problem was, the DUS-7 was still some seventy-five miles behind the Vidynut, meaning they would be hit by the full force of the typhoon’s 100-knot winds, which would probably blow it farther from the hijacked ship than they were now. By the time they recovered, the Vidynut would be that much closer to Somali territorial waters — and they’d be so far behind, it would be almost impossible for them to make up the lost time and distance.

  Batman did the calculations. When he realized their gloomy conclusion, he threw the weather report across the mess hall.

  “The way this thing is blowing in,” he said angrily, “there’s no way we’re going to catch that freaking ship.”

  16

  It was dark. It was hot. It smelled of oil, blood and urine. It was crowded and grown men were crying. The ones who were still alive, that is.

  Vasu Vandar was in hell. He just hadn’t died yet.

  Vandar was captain of the INS Vidynut. What had started out as a night of high honor, dining at the home of the president of the Maldives, had turned into a nightmare when Vandar returned to his ship to find it had been taken over by the Somali pirates and the intruders had brutally killed four of his men. Then he had to endure the humiliation of getting under way at the point of an AK-47.

  Now he and most of his crew were stuffed inside the stern bilge station, a tiny compartment located at the bottom of the warship, just waiting to die. The compartment, filled with heating pipes, fuel lines and pumps for the ship’s toilets, measured just ten feet by six feet. This is where the pirates had put them — fourteen men in all, plus the bodies of those they’d killed.

  There was no light in here, no food or water. The sailors were barely able to breathe. Vandar had told his men not to talk,
but he could hear many of them weeping. Others were hallucinating, going mad, crying out. Vandar couldn’t blame them for that. He was going mad as well.

  He knew by now that there was no way out of this. He also knew ransoming the crew was not part of the pirates’ agenda. They wanted the ship. He and his men were just complications.

  Vandar also realized no help was coming. The Indian Navy’s only aircraft carrier was way up in Tokyo Bay, throwing flowers at the Japanese. The Vidynut was far beyond the reach of any of India’s helicopters. He also knew it was not likely the Indian government would accept another country’s direct help in saving them.

  “We have had a navy for 5,000 years,” he thought glumly. “And now, when we need them, they are nowhere to be found.”

  He tried to will himself to accept the cold fact that the end was near for him and his men; it was a hard thing to do. But whether they were to be shot or stabbed or just simply left in here to suffocate, Vandar couldn’t imagine them lasting much longer. The only question was why the pirates were waiting so long?

  He could now hear some of the men praying, their way of spending their last moments alive. Vandar was dealing with his last breaths in a different way. When he was captured, though the pirates had searched him, they’d missed a pen he always kept his pocket. It had a tiny light attached to it to help him write in the dark when the ship was training under blackout conditions.

  He was using this bare light now, and this pen, to write aimlessly on the compartment walls.

  * * *

  The storm hit just after 2 A.M.

  The sound of the water crashing against the hull rose in volume, and soon they could feel the Vidynut being tossed around like a toy. This only added to the misery of the sailors jammed into the small, hot space. Some began wailing again. Vandar ordered them to quiet down, to save air. In his heart, though, he was praying the hull’s composites would fail, and that the ship would break up in the tempest. A death by drowning would be preferable to suffocation in an airless space, inches away from a dead man.