The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  Nolan thanked him, and at the same time, tried to think of what to do next. Bebe actually gave him his answer.

  The gangster told him: “Zeek person is dangerous and crafty — and has much luck in him. You, your friends, are good at job. But you must learn one thing: Zeek the Pirate? He doesn’t die easily. You gotta kill a guy like that more than once.”

  With that, Bebe said good-bye and hung up.

  And at that point, everything started spinning for Nolan once again. But definitely not in a good way. In the blink of an eye, everything had changed.

  He took off his onion bag and threw it across the bar.

  Then he yelled, “Party’s over!”

  * * *

  Work on the DUS-7 began immediately.

  Most of the damage done by the seaplane to the boat itself — holes in the deck, holes on the bridge — was patched but not painted. Two new cargo masts were quickly installed. The communication antenna was replaced.

  The work copter was repaired by changing out the engine and replacing two rotor blades, but some of the bullet holes in the cockpit windows could not be fixed in time, so they remained.

  The biggest change was in the ship’s armament — a surprise, courtesy of Conley. The original customer for the M102 artillery piece needed to take delivery of it, so the field gun had to be hoisted off the DUS-7. But Conley had an even more interesting weapon to take its place.

  It was an M198 155mm howitzer. This weapon was a monster. At eight tons, it was nearly four times heavier than the M102, and at thirty-six feet, its barrel was three times longer than the old field gun. In this case, size did matter. Not only could the M198 use a wide range of shells, from armor-piercing to high-explosive to anti-personnel — it could fire them more than twenty miles, in some cases right over the horizon, meaning the intended victim might not know their demise was coming. And despite its bulk, the M198 was actually easier to operate than the M102 because it came with a computer-assisted targeting system.

  As Conley told the crew when the huge cannon was being installed, “Way back when, the people who were tracking down real pirates would have given their right arm for a weapon like this.”

  All the refit work was done by the same Kilos engineers who’d patched them up before the Zanzibar run. These were the people, many of them veterans of military navies, who assembled or disassembled a lot of Kilos Shipping’s blackmarket weapons. They were used to operating at night, doing their jobs quickly and keeping their mouths shut.

  * * *

  The work on the DUS-7 was done inside Kilos’s immense enclosed maintenance bay located next to the Kilos office building in Aden. By the next morning, the battered freighter was floated out of the bay and back to the Kilos loading dock where ammunition, fuel and more supplies were loaded on.

  Nolan was belowdecks, helping to store shells for their new gun. More than eight hours had passed since Bebe’s call, but he still felt sick. His head was pounding, his stomach twisted in knots. He was hoping the hard labor would exorcise some of these post-hangover demons, but so far, no luck.

  How could this have happened? The team’s entire reputation was built on the belief that they had put Zeek out of business back in Malacca. Their name had gone around the maritime world at the speed of light based on that one fact, and their sudden superstar status in that world had led to the three subsequent, highly lucrative jobs.

  But now this? The revelation that they didn’t even complete their biggest job successfully? To Nolan’s battered psyche, this skewed everything. Their credibility. Their tactics. Their fees. None of it seemed justified to him. He was furious with himself. He was the first to admit that deep down, with each success, he’d fallen into the biggest pitfall a celebrity can face. He’d begun believing his own headlines.

  Only one thing could right this wrong. They had to go do it all over again. Find Zeek and kill him a second time. If they couldn’t do that, they had no business working as pirate hunters. And he knew the rest of the team agreed with him.

  * * *

  It was now midmorning. Nolan was still sweating and aching from lots of heavy lifting and absolutely no sleep when he heard a collective groan from the deck above.

  “Now what?” he grunted.

  He climbed the forward ladder and saw what the grief was about. Down on the dock was a man dressed in a bad suit, wearing a bad haircut and cheap sunglasses, even though it was a cloudy day. It was an ONI agent. Not Agent Harry, though. It was his young sidekick.

  Batman had already started down the gangway to talk to him, but Nolan called him back.

  “Let me do this,” he said.

  Nolan went down to the dock and confronted the under-cover naval officer before the man could get any nearer to the ship.

  “Private property, pal,” he told the agent. “And there’s no soliciting.”

  The agent ignored his remarks. He pulled out his ID card instead and, for the first time, Nolan actually saw his name: Agent Curt Hush.

  “Where’s your Uncle Harry?” Nolan asked him.

  “Put out to pasture,” Hush replied. “Forced retirement.”

  “How come?”

  “Too old,” Hush replied coldly. “Too out of it. And way too easy on you guys.”

  Nolan gave him a mock salute. “OK, thanks for the news flash,” he said, starting to walk away.

  Hush called after him. “I insist on asking you some questions right now. Or else…”

  Nolan spun around. He was just itching to punch someone in the face.

  “You insist? Why is that?”

  “Because I’ve been keeping track of your recent activities,” Hush told him. “And my bosses at ONI believe you might soon be directly interfering with the interests of the United States.”

  “So?” Nolan said with a straight face.

  “So, it’s in your best interest to comply this time,” Hush told him, adding ominously: “… for many reasons.”

  Nolan immediately went nose to nose with him. “I get it now — you were the bad cop of the act. Is that it?”

  “From what you and your friends are up to,” Hush replied, getting heated himself, “you’re lucky a real cop isn’t here.”

  He pointed to the DUS-7. Even though the new 155mm gun had been covered with cargo nets and the mounted M2 50-calibers draped with packing blankets, it was obvious the ship had military weapons on board. In fact, the Senegals were in the process of lifting yet another pallet of artillery shells up to the deck at that moment. Kilos engineers were also completing some final repairs of the work copter.

  “For instance,” Hush said. “What’s going on here?”

  “We’re repainting the ship,” Nolan said plainly. “It’s getting rusty on the gunwales.”

  “And where are the gunwales on this vessel, Major Nolan?”

  “Beats me,” Nolan replied. “But I know they’re getting a fresh coat.”

  “Look,” Hush said. “We know you’re going after Zeek Kurjan.”

  “And you got a problem with that?”

  Hush nodded emphatically. “Higher authority has a big problem with it. Higher authority thinks it’s best we let the situation stand as it is.”

  “I don’t speak ‘Navy,’ ” Nolan said. “Just tell me what you’re saying.”

  “Let Zeek go to Somalia to do his thing,” Hush said directly. “Can I be any simpler than that?”

  Nolan really laughed at him now — until he saw he was serious.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he growled at him. “This guy Zeek is a monster. He’s a mass murderer. He’s drug dealer. He kills kids, for Christ’s sake. We thought we greased him already — you guys know that. But we missed him somehow, and now he’s back and now he’s got to be stopped again. So you telling me to hold back makes no sense to me. If we did that, it would be like letting him get away with it all.”

  The agent smiled disdainfully. “I don’t expect someone like you to understand the intricacies of this,” he said
. “But there are logical geopolitical reasons for us to let this happen.”

  “Name one,” Nolan challenged him.

  “The Strait of Malacca is of much more strategic importance than the coast of Somalia or even the Gulf of Aden,” Hush began. “These Somali mooks grab a cargo ship or some oil coming from Saudi Arabia? Who cares? It’s all a scam anyway — the insurance companies just pay off the shipping company or they write it off as a loss.

  “But if Zeek stays in the Strait of Malacca, he might get smart someday and decide to not hijack a ship there, but sink one or two or three ships. You block that waterway and you screw up commerce around the world. Even when they clear it, everything will cost more because the insurance rates will skyrocket. The military would have to pour in money and people to provide security.”

  Nolan laughed at him again — he couldn’t help it. He’d dealt with pinheads like this for years in Delta. They got one little idea in their gray matter, and no matter how wrong it was, they stuck with it until their will was done, or another stupid little idea took its place.

  “You’re making my argument for me, genius,” he told Hush. “We plan on icing this prick once and for all. It’s our fault we didn’t do it right the first time. So now we got to go back and do it again. But if we’re successful this time, then we’ve done our jobs and you have one less problem to worry about. In fact, we’ll send you a bill after we whack him.”

  It seemed to make too much sense. And, of course, the ONI agent wasn’t buying it.

  “No — there will be a problem if Zeek gets hit,” he said.

  Nolan was stumped. “But why? Who wants him to stay alive? Certainly not the Indonesians around the Talua Tangs. If he’s out of the equation, they won’t be under his smelly little thumb anymore.”

  “It’s not the little Indonesians we’re worried about,” Hush said. “It’s the Chinese.”

  Nolan just stared at him. “The Chinese? How do they have a dog in this fight?”

  “They’re Zeek’s godfathers,” Hush revealed. “They’ve been quietly providing his protection for years. They’re the reason he’s been able to get away with all this stuff. He’s been sending them a percentage of everything he takes in — and they’ve been watching his back in return.”

  Nolan still didn’t understand. He knew the Chinese government was run by a bunch of scumbags. Ripping off U.S. citizens with shitty products. Hacking into U.S. defense mainframes. Their involvement in the misery of Darfur. And a million other things. That sort of stuff didn’t surprise him. But why would they get in bed with a common pirate?

  “You’re telling me those assholes in Beijing give a crap about a mook like Zeek?” he asked the agent.

  Now it was Hush’s turn to laugh. “And you call me a cub scout?” he said. “I’m not talking about the people in Beijing. They don’t run that country. I’m talking about the crime syndicates in Shanghai. They’re the grease that makes that whole enterprise go, and one of them — a guy named Sunny Hi — is very close to Zeek. He’s the guy who provides him with cover.”

  “And he’s in love with Zeek because?…”

  “Because Zeek provides Shanghai with Happy-Happy girls,” Hush replied. “Of all shapes and sizes.”

  “And ages?”

  The ONI agent shrugged. “It’s just another form of currency in that part of the world,” he said. “You better learn that if you want to play with the big boys. And know this too: If you piss off Sunny Hi, he can make things very difficult for us. He can slow down seaborne shipments to the U.S. He can prevent our cargo ships from docking in China. He can convince his buddies in Beijing to stop buying U.S. Treasury notes. It’s a long list — all of it bad.”

  Nolan tried to let this all digest. Then it hit him.

  “You bastards,” he swore at Hush. “You knew we didn’t grease Zeek when you came to see us that first time. You just wanted the dirt on how we did it so — so what? So you could tell him how to avoid us next time?”

  Hush’s face turned crimson.

  “Who the fuck’s side are you guys on?” Nolan spit at him.

  “Look, Nolan,” Hush said, taking a step backward. “We know you’ve been able to make an incredible amount of money here in the last few weeks. Why don’t you just relax and enjoy it. It’s like making a killing at the poker table. You’ve got to know when to walk away. I mean, at the very heart of it, you’re running an illegal enterprise here. Technically speaking, you’re as much a criminal as the guys you’ve been paid to stop.”

  The whole Team Whiskey crew was crowded around them by now, listening to the exchange.

  “And here’s another thing,” Hush said. “We know your situation at home. You play ball here and maybe we can help you with it. Get the military court to reverse its order. Get you back on home turf again. That’s gotta be what you want, right?”

  Nolan took a swing at him — but Batman caught his arm before he could deliver the blow. Nolan struggled, but only briefly. Punching the ONI agent wouldn’t be good for anyone at this moment. He was furious, though, but not for the reason the others were probably thinking. Hush had hit him where it hurt and, for a split second, Nolan had actually considered telling him yes. For a split second he’d actually considered taking the payoff, just for a chance to go home.

  But then he surprised himself again.

  “Get fucked,” he told the agent, as Batman and Crash held him back. “You didn’t see what we saw after Zeek got through with those innocent people on Sumhai Island. You didn’t see what he’s done to people on these ships he’s hijacked. Or the kinds of lives people were living under his little dictatorship. So you guys go get fucked and tell Sunny Hi he should fuck himself, too.”

  Nolan disentangled himself from the others and walked away.

  “It’s your choice, Nolan,” Hush called after him, his voice a little shaky. “But just remember, orders go out, and the people who see them through don’t necessarily know all the details. So, we can’t be responsible for what happens next.”

  Nolan called over his shoulder: “Neither can we…”

  21

  Indonesia

  Zeek the pirate died the night his headquarters was bombed.

  He was shot, blown up and drowned during the surprise assault — but not before leading his men bravely against the mysterious, well-equipped and overwhelming enemy.

  Zeek rose from the dead the next day, greeting the handful of his men who’d survived the sneak attack by fleeing into the jungle. Zeek was alive: They saw him, touched him. It was a miracle.

  Or at least that’s the story he’d ordered those surviving minions to spread throughout the Talua Tangs.

  The reality was a lot less miraculous. Zeek had escaped the attack on his headquarters that night, not by divine intervention, but for two completely earthly reasons: One, he’d had the foresight, when he built his concrete HQ, to add a tiny bomb shelter beneath it. And two, a trio of his bodyguards, trapped in the shelter with him, had taken turns holding his head above water after the shelter flooded.

  The real miracle was that Zeek’s bomb shelter had held together at all. It had been built to withstand a blast from a hand grenade or an RPG, the biggest weapons a typical Indonesian pirate trafficked in. (It was actually intended as an anti-assassination safe room.) It was not designed to take a direct hit from a 200-pound bomb, homemade or not.

  But it did.

  Still, it wasn’t exactly watertight. Even before the island’s attackers had flown away, the shelter began filling up with water from the nearby lagoon. Trapped and unable to get out because of the tons of rubble over his head, Zeek ordered his men to take turns holding him up, allowing him to breathe from the small air space remaining at the top of the submerged shelter, while they held their breath until their lungs nearly burst. They followed his orders, terrified and in complete darkness, for more than twelve hours. In the end, all three died of exhaustion.

  Lucky for Zeek, just minutes before the third one expire
d, the Indonesian military arrived to raze the camp. Hearing Zeek’s screams, they dug him out of the watery grave, leaving behind the bodies of his three saviors and his similarly dressed body double in the rubble.

  Zeek was lucky again that the local Indonesian military commander decided to remain his ally, but only because Zeek fulfilled the promise to give him 3,000 hits of Ecstasy, which could be sold for pure profit. So instead of putting him in jail, the military made arrangements for Zeek to recuperate at a private hospital outside Jakarta. He was released two weeks later, fit and trim, and determined to make good on his long-time desire to move his operations to East Africa, cash in on the easy pickings off the coast of Somalia, and renew his war of vengeance against his brother’s murderers, Kilos Shipping.

  But to do all that, he needed a boat.

  Jacca Naval Base

  Zeek had never owned a boat before.

  He’d stolen many, hijacked many, killed for many. But in all cases, because he didn’t want to leave any kind of paper trail for some overzealous law enforcement agency to pursue, he eventually sold them, flipped them or traded them for money or weapons.

  He was a pirate of the high seas, yet he had no pirate ship of his own. Even the yacht blown up during the attack on his island headquarters and the one used two nights before had been on loan to him.

  But things change.

  He had a number of specific requirements in a pirate vessel. It needed room for at least one helicopter. It needed room for his new pirate army, made up mostly of ex-convicts and maritime riff-raff now in the employ of the Shanghai crime syndicates. It needed space for weapons and ammunition. It also needed a lifeboat, and that boat itself would have to carry a lifeboat of its own.

  Plus, the ship had to have the many comforts Zeek felt entitled to while riding the seas: at least one hot tub, a big-screen TV, a bar and a pool. In other words, what Zeek needed was not so much a yacht that had some military faculties, but a military vessel that had some high-end amenities.

  Enter Prince Seeudek. A third cousin of the Indonesian president’s wife, he was extremely wealthy and very shady. Better known as the Playboy of Java, he’d bought a Type 352 German-built Ensdorf minesweeper several years before and had it converted to a pleasure craft while still keeping it listed as a ship of the Indonesian Navy. He’d handpicked his crew and gone off on his own military maneuvers, which usually involved sailing to and from the casinos at Monte Carlo. The 160-foot ship had room for weapons and helicopters, and also a hot tub, many large-screen TVs, a small interior pool, a game room and even a small dance club. It also had a lifeboat that, in turn, had its own lifeboat.