The Pirate Hunters ph-1

by Mack Maloney

  The two pirates behind him were able to pull him out. Still, he found himself covered with the sticky stuff from the waist down. To add to the misery, just after coming out of the pool, he tripped and found himself covered in bird feathers. For some reason, there were hundreds of dead birds in the rock forest, and their rancid feathers were everywhere. It was disgusting.

  Li resumed running. It was maddeningly hard work trying to quickly navigate around the stones in the dark, resulting in many bashed knees and elbows, as well as dealing with the tar pits, which came up at the most unexpected places. Just five minutes into the chase, Li and his men were bruised, battered, sticky and exhausted.

  They reached a rare clearing. Several large pools of tar bubbled away. It would have been almost impossible for the pirates to cross — except the Whiskey Team guys had placed wooden planks across the pools, obviously when they were first sneaking up on the town. But they had made a mistake by leaving them in place during their retreat, because now Li and his men ran over them easily, avoiding the tar.

  Once the small army was across, they were faced with a hill of granite blocks — some natural, some discarded when a quarry operated here. The hill was about fifty feet high, and there was no easy way around it.

  Li and his men had no choice but to climb it, another grueling exercise. But it was worth it — because on the other side of the mound they found the large section of the rock field that had been blasted away by the howitzer’s shells.

  And perhaps the artillery shells had been shot here to clear away a particularly dense part of the rock field, and open up a path to the water, where Li was sure the dive boat was waiting for the Whiskey Team. But it appeared something had gone wrong. The shelling had destroyed a lot of slabs but had opened up a virtual ocean of bubbling tar in the process. The size of several large swimming pools, the pit was practically impossible to go around.

  So where were the people they were pursuing? They certainly hadn’t crossed this obstacle. Li used his night-vision goggles to scan the rock forest to the south and at last he spotted them again, the Delta guys and the hostages. They were in two groups. About five hundred yards away, with the light from the rising sun glaring off their brightly colored clothes, the four female hostages and one Whiskey Team guy in beachwear were moving with some difficulty through another field of slabs. About two hundred yards behind them were two more Whiskey Team guys, the ones who’d thrown the bomb out the window. They, too, were also moving as fast as they could over the difficult terrain.

  But also from here, farther to the south, Li could see the remains of the old quarry — and at that moment, he realized that the fleeing hostages and their rescuers had been forced to take a wrong turn. Instead of heading for the sea, the escapees — unable to pass over the newly opened sea of tar — had turned inland and were now running toward the blind canyon that led into the old quarry itself.

  “We have them,” Li thought.

  He hurried his men down the other side of the hill and toward the south, away from the water, following the tarry footprints that led them in that direction.

  They soon reached edge of the quarry, and here the hellish terrain changed. No longer was it a field of giant, crooked monoliths. Rather, they were on the edge of a narrow, man-made road, cut out of deep, solid rock. This road led into the quarry.

  Li called his men to a halt and took a quick head count. He’d started out with thirty men, and to their credit, despite many bashed knees and elbows, and many tumbles into the tar, all had been able to keep up with him. He had them check their weapons, making sure every AK-47 had a full ammo clip.

  Then he contemplated the narrow man-made canyon. The road was tapered at the bottom of it, and the canyon’s sheer walls were at least thirty feet high and impossible to climb. It was clear that this was a place of no escape; that there was only one way in and one way out. A scary proposition for any military commander.

  Looking deeper into the twisting, turning canyon, Li could see the two Whiskey Team members who’d dropped the bomb onto the street running full tilt down the quarry road. Off in the distance, maybe a quarter mile away, were the main party of escapees, the four girls and the other Whiskey Team gunman.

  “We’ve got them for sure,” Li declared, but thinking to himself, “don’t we?”

  He ran everything through his mind. The Whiskey Team’s stunning rescue attempt, their mysterious shelling of the rock forest, their throwing the time-delayed fused shell in among his men, then this crazy, bone-crunching pursuit.

  Obviously, the first three things had been brilliantly planned. But just as his intuition had told him earlier, Li was certain the Whiskey Team had run out of its share of double-blessed luck. Maybe they’d become too clever, too intricate — but surely they had reached the end of the line when their artillery shells placed an insurmountable obstacle in their path instead of freeing them to make it to their boat and safety.

  This was where the tide turned. The Whiskey Team was a bright star that had burned too quick. These three guys they were chasing were key players. Snuffing them out would enhance Li’s street cred immeasurably. That was probably the most important reason of all to finish them off.

  Li never really gave his men the go sign. He simply checked his weapon’s ammo load and started running down the canyon alone. A second later, the rest of the pirates were right behind him.

  The canyon twisted sharply right and fell off about twenty feet before becoming straight again. When Li reached this sharp bend, he could see the shadows of two people moving along the canyon wall about a hundred yards ahead of them.

  He leapt on the first high rock he came to and looked for the rest of the fleeing group farther down the canyon. He spotted them, now only about two hundred yards away. He rejoined his men and they ran on and on. It was a real foot chase now. As long as the fleeing group stayed in the canyon and thought someone was in pursuit, then they would eventually run right into a dead end.

  The pirates ran a half-mile farther, slipping, gashing bones and skin, but never slowing down. The canyon began to twist and turn again, and more than once they got fleeting glimpses of some of the fleeing hostages and their rescuers going around the next corner, just up ahead.

  Then they arrived at one particularly sharp turn, one too sharp to go around blindly. The team stopped and Li stuck his head around the corner. For the first time he could look down into the quarry itself, and there, out in the open, he spotted all of them: the three Whiskey Team guys and the four girls. They looked as dirty and banged up as Li and his pirates.

  Standing in front of the far quarry wall, they were just realizing they had nowhere else to go.

  They saw Li as soon as he saw them. A vicious gunfight ensued as the three Whiskey Team guys fired their weapons back at the small army of pirates. Li and his men took turns firing around the corner, expending lots of ammunition. It got to the point where pirates in the back were passing their fully loaded AK-47s to the men in front for them to use once their ammo had been expended.

  This went one for almost five minutes, when the gunfire finally stopped.

  Li looked around the corner again and saw the rescued and their rescuers were gone. He charged forward, and in seconds, he and his men reached the bottom of the quarry and found — nothing.

  Except a rope ladder dangling from the farthest corner of the place.

  At that moment, Li’s walkie-talkie came alive. It was one of his lieutenants back at the town calling him.

  The man said six words: “The helicopter is no longer there.”

  Li didn’t know what he was talking about at first.

  “Say again?” he shouted into the radio. “What do you mean?”

  “You told us to keep an eye on the freighter’s helicopter and tell you if it moved,” the man explained. “Well, it’s moved. It is no longer there.”

  Li’s heart sank to his feet. A moment later, he heard the sound. He turned and realized the copter had swooped down behind them
.

  It sent a stream of bullets at the pirates as it went by, hitting a few. Some of the pirates fired their AK-47s at it, but the copter was moving too fast — and the pirates were practically out of ammunition anyway.

  Besides, the copter was not here to kill them. It turned and fired six rockets at the wall up near the last bend in the quarry road, the place where the intense gunfight had played out. The resulting explosions effectively sealed the road shut.

  And just like that, it was the pirates who were trapped.

  Already they could hear the booming of the large gun on the rusty freighter sending a shell high into the air, heading their way.

  Li fell to the seat of his pants.

  The Whiskey Team guys had fooled him. Their plan wasn’t like their assault on Zeek’s HQ. Not really. Neither had they seen the need to turn into ghosts like when they retook the Global Warrior. Nor had they chosen to once more risk going toe-to-toe with the Pasha on the high seas.

  “Damn,” Li whispered as the M198 shell bore down on him. “It was Tora Bora. They were the pursuers that day. But today, they made us chase them.”

  26

  Batman carefully put the copter down on the rocky beach, then helped each of the four girls climb out.

  The dive boat was anchored nearby, bouncing in the high waves. Batman left the girls in the care of its captain, the un-sung hero who had ferried the disguised Nolan, Crash and Twitch to the far side of the island in the first place.

  What was sure to be a tearful reunion among the four rescued women and their scuba-diving boyfriends would take place soon, but after that, the dive boat captain would head full-speed to Mahe, the nearest island, hoping to find help.

  The four girls, still in shock, thanked Batman profusely for what the team had done. Batman wished them safe passage then took to the skies again. Team Whiskey still had things to do.

  He flew back to the quarry to pick up his three out-of-uniform colleagues. He found them still staring into the old excavation pit; some of the pirates’ bodies continued to burn fiercely down below. It had taken just six M198 shells fired pinpoint into the quarry to annihilate the army of brigands. The team had been prepared to spray the thirty or so bodies with more gunfire, just to make sure they were all dead. But one look at the results of the bombardment told them that would not be necessary. No one could have survived that.

  “Wow — I thought the party on that sandbar was bad,” Batman said, looking into the pit and thinking back to the battle on Pirate Island. “But at least it was over in a few seconds for these guys.”

  Nolan felt his stomach do a flip. “Torn in half by machine guns or blown to pieces by artillery — dead is still dead. And we’re not even at the end of it yet.”

  Without another word, they grimly reloaded their M4s, climbed into the copter and headed back to town.

  In just thirty minutes, everything had changed. The hostages were safe, and combining the unexpected fight in the penthouse, the hand-carried M198 fused-bomb attack and the slaughter in the quarry, nearly two-thirds of the pirates were dead.

  But now the team had to deal with those who remained.

  As the copter approached the town, Nolan radioed Gunner and told him to initiate the next part of the plan. Gunner complied by loading and firing the M198, sending a single shell high over Calzino. This was not some high explosive he’d sent aloft, but a star shell — a bright retarded-flight flare that created an artificial sun over the tiny harbor even as the real sun was starting to break on the eastern horizon.

  Those couple dozen pirates who remained in place against the seawall had no idea what was going on. Without their charismatic leader Commander Li, they weren’t sure what to do. The purpose of the star shell then was to further distract the already distracted gunmen.

  As they were looking up at the flare, wondering was it was about, the copter came in behind them. Flying parallel to the waterfront street, moving very fast and very low, it aimed its gun pod and opened up — and in one sweep, took out more than half the remaining pirates, some before they knew what hit them.

  Those who avoided being cut down were faced with escaping into the rock forest or diving into the sea. Most chose the sea, only to be shot up by the Senegals firing the 50-caliber machine guns from the deck of the Dustboat. The few pirates who actually tried to disappear into the rock forest behind the town were hunted down and eliminated by the team members firing their M4s from the copter.

  It was distasteful and bloody, but the team knew that just like back on Pirate Island, no mercy could be shown here. The pirates, if not murderers and sadists themselves, were working for one, so the world was better off without them. Plus, the team had to send a message to any other sea gangs in the area thinking about doing what Zeek’s crew had tried to do. It was important that these pirate wannabes knew their life expectancy would drop dramatically if they ran into Team Whiskey.

  The stiffest battle of the clearing operation turned out to be against the crewmen of the Pasha. They’d been almost an afterthought for most of the long, bloody night. But after dealing with the pirates on land, and dropping off Nolan, Crash and Twitch near the seawall, Batman dove on the ship and strafed it from one end to the other.

  His actions were met with a hail of gunfire, but much of it was misdirected, underscoring the fact that the people on the ship were sailors and not seasoned fighters. The team’s response, though, started a brief but furious clash in which the copter, the Dustboat and the team members on shore fired at the Pasha from three different directions. At one point, the tracer fire was so intense it blotted out the newly rising sun.

  Finally, though, the people on the boat ran out of ammunition, and all firing ceased. The Senegals brought the Dustboat about a hundred feet into the harbor, and now with calm water below, Gunner fired off an M198 shell that hit the Pasha square on its tail, destroying its propulsion systems.

  Everything quieted down after that. None of the team members were enthusiastic about going aboard the burning ship and searching it cabin by cabin to root out any dead-enders. So they just waited for them to show up on deck themselves, trying to escape the smoke and flames. When they did, Crash dispatched them with his sniper rifle.

  It took about a half hour of this before the team felt certain most of their adversaries had been eliminated. Finally it was time for them to get down to the real order of business.

  Finding and killing Zeek.

  * * *

  From what the team could determine, the Pirate King hadn’t been seen since shortly after the executions on the sea-wall. That had been more than an hour ago, which meant he could be anywhere on the island by this point.

  So, Gunner and the Senegals moved the DUS-7 even closer to the waterfront and directed the boat’s powerful searchlight through the early-morning haze and smoke and onto Calzino’s three buildings. And while Batman circled above, Nolan, Crash and Twitch began their grim search.

  They started in the dive shop, an open-air building with few places to hide. Still, they tore the place apart, looked in every box, every storage cabinet and locker, even inside the anti-bends decompression chamber. But they found no sign of Zeek.

  Next, they tossed the bar. The kitchen, the freezer, the cellar, the bar itself, under every table and couch, even in the rafters of the drop-down ceiling. Nothing.

  The hotel was the most difficult to search. It was three floors, nine rooms, many closets and supply cabinets, a laundry and a kitchen — and there were dead bodies just about everywhere. Each corpse had to be checked, each air vent and bathroom searched. They even looked under the beds.

  Nothing…

  They returned to the street and had a short sat-phone conversation with Batman, still orbiting above. The sun was fully up now and in the early-morning light the little town looked surreal. With all the bodies lying about, it was like the set of a Living Dead movie.

  Nolan took it all in and asked aloud: “What’s that famous line? ‘I’ve become Death, the dest
royer of worlds.’ ”

  “Bingo that,” Crash agreed.

  Their conversation with Batman was whether Gunner should bombard the town anyway, just in case Zeek was indeed still hiding in there, somewhere. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do this, though. So instead, they decided that Batman should fly over the rock forest once again, to see if the Pirate King had somehow made it out of town and was lost among the stones.

  Then the others searched all three buildings a second time.

  But again, they found nothing.

  * * *

  As the sun climbed steadily in the sky, the day grew hot. Nolan, Crash and Twitch, sweating madly, still sticky with tar and wearing the awful beachwear, went through the buildings a third time, again unsuccessfully.

  Finally, they took a breather on the sea wall. Nolan didn’t smoke, but he wished he could have a drag or two on a cigarette now — or even a joint would do.

  They were all exhausted. They hadn’t slept in almost three days, hadn’t eaten in that time either, hadn’t even downed a cup of coffee.

  They’d eliminated Zeek’s new gang, wrecked his new warship, wrecked his plans to move his bloodthirsty operations to Somalia. But none of them felt any sense of accomplishment, because they had not yet found the Pirate King himself.

  They bitched and moaned for a few minutes, the only noise being the rumble of the Dustboat’s engines idling in the harbor and the faraway, high-pitched whine of the work copter flying over the rock forest again.

  Their eyes naturally fell on the Pasha, just a couple of dozen feet off the beach. It was smoking heavily, flames shooting out of several openings, and it was listing badly to port. It was a wreck, but it was also the only place they hadn’t searched.

  They all came to the same conclusion simultaneously.

  “Man, I don’t want to do this,” Crash said, speaking for all of them.

  “It has to be done, though,” Twitch replied gravely. “So, ship ahoy.”