The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  From the outside, the 352 looked exactly like a naval vessel. Inside, it looked like a boat even an oil-rich Saudi prince would envy.

  The vessel wound up in the Zeek’s hands shortly before his two-week recuperation was complete. Several Chinese businessmen visited Prince Seeudek in his Jakarta penthouse one afternoon and beat him to within an inch of his life. The next day, from his hospital bed, the Prince resigned as commander of the 352 and designated an obscure ethnic Chinese officer in the Indonesian Navy to be its new captain.

  That officer’s uncle was Sunny Hi, the Godfather of Shanghai.

  * * *

  Zeek, his two remaining bodyguards and his new pirate band boarded their new vessel at the Indonesian Navy base at Jacca Bay — though not all at once.

  It was midnight, and at Zeek’s request, the lights on the southern end of the small naval base had been dimmed. Zeek and his bodyguards arrived at the dock in a black SUV with tinted windows, and they were quickly put aboard a motor launch usually reserved for high naval officers. It ferried them out to the 352, waiting at anchor a half mile offshore.

  At the same time, Zeek’s new army was belowdecks aboard a nearby Indonesian supply ship. They’d been waiting there since early afternoon, but were under orders to stay put until Zeek himself was aboard his new ship. Only then were they ferried over as well.

  After that, a third vessel arrived next to the 352 and unloaded all of Zeek’s new weapons and ammunition — bought on the Russian black market — plus his money and personal belongings. A brand-new helicopter gunship was also put aboard, along with a highly trained four-man Malaysian crew.

  Zeek was just forty-eight hours out of the hospital at this point, but feeling fine. He’d spent the past two days at a luxury retreat on the nearby island of Kupang, looking into the backgrounds of those people who’d come so close to killing him. Thanks to a source inside the Chinese intelligence services, Zeek had learned his mystery attackers were American mercenaries, hired guns in the employ of Kilos Shipping. They were the same people who had killed his brother Turk — the same people against whom Zeek had sworn revenge. The same people who prompted him to order the murder of the three ship crews in Singapore.

  The same people who, since the attack on his HQ, had been giving him nightmares.

  Now Zeek knew who they were, knew their backgrounds, knew how to get to them. Eventually, he would deal with them as well.

  But his biggest concern now was getting out of Indonesia — before someone tried to kill him again.

  22

  Port of Aden

  The DUS-7 was ready to sail by 1300 hours.

  All the repairs were complete, all the weapons and ammunition loaded aboard. Its fuel tanks were filled, its gas turbine refitted and calibrated. The work copter was working again.

  The only problem: Team Whiskey had no idea where Zeek was. Bebe’s information said he’d purchased a quasi-military vessel and that he was sailing to Somalia and linking up with a band of Somali pirates similar to those his brother Turk had worked with before his death. So he was definitely heading west.

  The shipping lanes between Asia and East Africa were like a superhighway, with hundreds of ships going back and forth between the continents every day. But it was an area encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles, enough to make the biggest ship seem small. Blindly searching for and finding Zeek in such a huge area would be almost impossible.

  Still, the team’s plan was to rush the DUS-7 deep into the shipping lanes and simply start looking for this unusual ship that Zeek had acquired. They knew it was an inefficient way of searching for the notorious pirate. But they couldn’t just sit in Aden, waiting for further news on him that might never come.

  They had to go hunting for him.

  * * *

  Not five minutes before they were to cast off from the Kilos berth, though, Conley appeared on the dock. He knew what Whiskey planned to do, and was well aware of what havoc a resurrected Zeek could cause along the East African coastline.

  And as it turned out, Conley was bearing two last-minute gifts for them: a small laptop and a plain wooden box. They had a quick huddle with him on the bridge.

  “Good news,” Conley told the team. “We’ve just been informed that Zeek’s new ship has a maritime locator in it. A sort of miniature black box for ships. I don’t think Zeek even knows about it.”

  “You’re saying there’s a ‘chip in his ship?’ ” Nolan asked.

  Conley nodded. “Exactly. Every Indonesian military ship has one built in, so they can be tracked by satellite.”

  “But we don’t have a satellite,” Crash said.

  Conley passed the small laptop to them. “You do now.”

  Nolan turned the laptop on and was surprised to see a decrypted home page belonging to the Russian intelligence service pop up. A few keystrokes revealed that the page was connected to the Russian military’s satellite system.

  “With that, you can track the chip in Zeek’s ship,” Conley told them.

  “But where did all this suddenly come from?” Batman asked Conley in amazement. “The news on the chip and this laptop? Is it something Stevenson and Squire left behind?”

  “No — actually, it all just arrived here via special courier,” Conley replied, showing them a large packing envelope with a no-name return address in Moscow. “I can’t imagine who sent it,” he added drolly.

  Batman gave Nolan a hearty slap on the back.

  “Wow, Snake,” he said. “You have a godfather, too.”

  Conley gave them the second present: the wooden box. Inside was a very special artillery shell called a Copperhead.

  “This one’s from me,” he told them. “You can actually guide this thing to a target, just like a smart weapon. The instructions are in the box. It might come in handy at some point. But use it wisely. They don’t make them anymore. In fact, this might be the last one in existence.”

  * * *

  The Dustboat sailed all that day and into the night, heading southeast into the heart of the Indian Ocean sea-lanes.

  The team spent the time making sure all the new equipment worked and that the ship’s repairs were holding. They’d also wired the Russian laptop into their navigation system and begun monitoring satellite photos of the sea-lanes between Indonesia and Africa. The whole chip-in-the-ship process was extremely simple. Once the vessel in question passed beneath the satellite, the satellite would acknowledge it and give it an electronic mark. This mark would then allow anyone with a slaved-in GPS device to keep tabs on the target ship even after the satellite had passed overhead.

  The important thing was to get that mark.

  But what would happen then? The team knew that, despite their new weaponry and their partial disguise as a rust-bucket freighter, they would be at a huge disadvantage going up against Zeek’s new boat.

  Nolan had Googled the type of ship Bebe said Zeek had bought and, while a Type 357 Ensdorf was officially considered a minesweeper, it actually carried a wide array of weapons. It had a five-inch gun on its forward deck, a fierce naval cannon that could tear into the DUS-7 with ease. It was also equipped with ship-to-ship missiles, another weapon that could fold the Dustboat like a tin can. Type 352s usually came equipped with an armed helicopter and many mounted machine guns. And according to Bebe’s information, the ship was also carrying a small army of pirates Zeek had recruited for his move west.

  Team Whiskey also knew they could expect no outside assistance in stopping Zeek. Agent Hush’s visit had made it clear the U.S. Navy wasn’t going to help. And contacting the NATO anti-piracy patrols would do them no good, because Zeek had yet to do anything wrong, piracy-wise, in their eyes. Plus, Zeek’s connections to the Indonesian military establishment, and apparently to Chinese organized-crime lords, would most likely get him off even if NATO or any other anti-piracy forces actually did intervene.

  So, it was up to Whiskey to stop Zeek on their own.

  Again.

  * * * />
  By midnight, the team found themselves in the galley, once again drinking endless cups of coffee, anxious for something, anything, to happen.

  Batman had arrived, dragging the moneybag with him. This was not unusual as everyone felt better when the bag was in sight. It was stuffed with so many bills, though, it was getting hard to lift.

  No one noticed anything different about him or the money-bag, but during a break in the conversation about Zeek, Batman suddenly picked up the bag and put it on the mess table.

  “Anyone want to check the stash?” he asked them.

  This was a first. The unwritten rule was, no one touched the money except the Batman.

  “Why would we want to do that?” Gunner asked him, a bit nervously.

  Batman looked right at Nolan. “Just so everyone can sleep peacefully, if we ever get to sleep on this mission.”

  Nolan was as surprised as the other three, but he knew where this was coming from: the talk he had with Gunner, Crash and Twitch that day on the Althea Dawn, and the discussion about the money he had with Batman a short while later. Trust issues were involved and had been simmering.

  Batman pushed the bag toward Gunner, who just pushed it back. “I got no problems,” Gunner said.

  Batman pushed it toward Twitch, who barely seemed to notice. “Money can’t buy me love,” he mumbled.

  Finally, Crash pulled the bag over to him. “You know, I think I’d like to feel it, smell it,” he said. “I haven’t seen it since old man Kilos first paid us.”

  He reached deep inside the bag and started pulling out tightly wrapped packets.

  But it wasn’t money. It was newspaper.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled.

  “I knew it!” Twitch said, suddenly coming to life.

  They were all shocked — even Nolan. But Batman immediately calmed them down.

  “I switched bags before we left,” he confessed to them. “Our money’s in a vault in a bank back in Aden that’s secretly run by Kilos. It’s safe, its insured, and it’s even got two guards watching over it. And there’s a special code to get in to see it.”

  He passed each man a Kilos business card with a number on it.

  “Here’s that code,” Batman went on. “Any one of us can go there and get his share of the money at any time. No questions asked.”

  The three non-coms just glared back at him — like it was a practical joke. But it wasn’t.

  “And I told Conley, that if we don’t come back, that money should be given to the families of those crewmen who were murdered in Singapore.”

  “But why?” Crash finally asked. “And why tell us now, like this?”

  “Because this is not a job we’re going on,” Batman replied forcefully, even angrily. “It’s a mission — just like the old days. No one’s paying us for it. We’re doing it because we have to. Just like back in Delta.”

  They knew he was right. They were going after Zeek only because they’d failed to complete the job the first time.

  “We have to do it like this,” Batman went on. “And we have to do it without the money being on our minds the whole time.”

  Crash, Gunner and Twitch were all still stunned and uneasy.

  But Nolan reached across the table and fist-bumped Batman.

  “I agree with him,” he said. “We do this one not just for our reputation but for our honor. Like before, with Delta. That’s got to be important to us. We can’t forget that.”

  The others began to say something, but suddenly, the intercom squealed to life.

  “Nous avons obtenu un success,” they heard one of the Senegals cry. “We’ve got a hit…”

  The entire team was up on the bridge in seconds. Studying the laptop screen, they saw a satellite photo display with a green blinking light at its farthest left edge. A line of script next to the blinking light read: Indonesian medium warship.

  “That’s got to be our boy,” Crash said. “What other Indonesian ship would be way out there?”

  “Looks like he’s about 300 miles west of Sri Lanka,” Batman said. That puts him about 200 miles east of us. If we pour it on, we can run into him sometime around mid-morning.”

  Twitch took it all in and asked: “Yeah — but then what?”

  23

  Zeek’s ship, which he’d christened the Pasha, had performed flawlessly since leaving the Java Sea.

  It ran smooth and true through the Malacca Strait and out into the Indian Ocean. They’d sailed to Sri Lanka with no problems and stayed the night in the port of Ambalangoda to take on fuel. Anyone who saw them assumed they were an Indonesian naval ship and treated them accordingly. After fueling up, Zeek’s well-connected Chinese captain told him they would be in Somali waters in less than three days.

  Zeek had stayed awake for the entire trip so far — in fact, high on Ecstasy, he hadn’t slept in a week. With the promise of trouble-free sailing ahead, though, he’d decided to retire to his spacious quarters to finally crash.

  But no sooner had he unbraided his beard and taken a handful of barbiturates to help him sleep, the CO of his new pirate band, a man named Commander Fun Li, came to his quarters to tell him he was needed back up on the bridge.

  Li was ex-Chinese special forces. He was a slight man, taut, muscular and fearless. He was a protégé of Sunny Hi, and thus was under orders to be devoted to Zeek. But even an egotist like Zeek recognized Li wasn’t just some lackey. He was the real deal, brilliant when it came to strategy, tactics, intelligence and weaponry. The Pirate King had never had anyone as sharp and knowledgeable under his command before. It was Li’s job to get Zeek, his ship and his new band of pirates to Somalia safe and in one piece. He was committed to doing it well.

  Li escorted Zeek back up to the bridge. The agitated pirate entered the control center to find the ship’s captain hunched over a large radar screen.

  “Unwelcome company,” the captain murmured to him.

  Zeek looked at the seas around them. Nothing had changed since he’d left a few minutes before. It was a bright, sunny morning; the sea was extremely calm — sailing conditions couldn’t have been better. There were four other ships within sight. One was about five miles ahead of them; it was a Panamanian-registered supertanker. They’d been following this ship since leaving Sri Lanka. Behind them, by about ten miles, was an old Filipino freighter heading for the Suez Canal. It had been following them since early morning.

  Off to the portside, Zeek could see a rusty freighter heading in the opposite direction. Behind it by a mile or so was what appeared to be an even older freighter, also heading east.

  So what was the problem?

  It wasn’t the other ships that were concerning the captain. Instead, he pointed to the sky right above the Pasha.

  Zeek looked through the bridge window to see a small heli cop ter overhead, flying along, keeping pace with them.

  He was immediately concerned.

  “How long has that been up there?” he asked the captain.

  “Five minutes,” was the reply.

  Zeek turned to Commander Li, who had the copter in his binoculars.

  “What kind of helicopter is it?”

  Li reported: “It’s not a large aircraft. It could be from an oil platform or an oil exploration ship. Or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or it could be a military craft,” he replied.

  This Zeek did not want to hear.

  He pulled the binoculars from Li’s hands and studied the copter himself. It was probably 1,000 feet above the Pasha, moving in perfect sync with the ship. It was hard to see what color it was, or what type. It was small, though, which bothered him, because the copter that had led the attack on his headquarters back in Indonesia had also been small.

  Zeek had planned a carefree crossing of the Indian Ocean. He had thought he’d covered everything. The ship, his political connections, his new army of bodyguards. The promise of fertile new pirating ground.

  But this helicopter… this worried him
.

  Zeek unhappily decided to forgo his sleep, took some meth, and stayed on the bridge to watch the helicopter pacing them.

  He asked Li about launching the ship’s own helicopter — a German-built Bo-105 gunship. But Li asked, to what end?

  “Harassing that copter will just bring attention to us,” he said. “That’s the last thing we want.”

  The 352 also had six 50-caliber machine guns onboard: two on the bridge railing, two on the bow and two on the stern.

  Zeek pointed to the nearest 50-caliber and asked: “Could we shoot it down if we wanted to?”

  Li thought a moment. “Probably,” he replied. “But again, it would attract a lot of attention to us.”

  He spread his hands out to indicate the handful of ships going in both directions around the Pasha.

  “So there’s nothing we can do?” Zeek asked him angrily. “Except watch the infernal thing?”

  “Nothing else,” Li replied.

  And after twenty minutes, the copter flew away.

  * * *

  The copter reappeared two hours later, close to noon.

  Once again, it was first spotted on the ship’s air-defense radar, a blip coming from the northwest.

  It took up station right above the Pasha just as before, this time moving as the sun moved, making it difficult for anyone on the ship to look up at it very long with the naked eye.

  Zeek had spent all the time between sightings on the bridge in a highly restless state. He was fighting the contradicting effects of the drugs he’d ingested — meth to stay awake, barbiturates to go to sleep — and losing on both ends. When the copter reappeared, he ordered his two bodyguards onto the deck of the ship with their AK-47s close by, but following Li’s advice, not in view. The same ships were in front of and in back of the Pasha, and as Li reminded him several times, the last thing they wanted was to call attention to themselves.