by Mack Maloney
Maurice was shaking his head.
“But don’t you see?” he said, lighting yet another cigarette. “We can’t get you another ten million. We were lucky to scrape together the ten million that asshole was supposed to give you, and that was by pure stealing from other departments. No one at Langley or at the Pentagon or in the White House even knows this goddamn thing is happening—and believe me, the way things are now in Washington, if we filched another ten million from somewhere, inside two minutes, a hundred people would know and they’d start asking questions about where it went.”
“So, do you think Audette stole it?” Batman asked him. “Had it wired into his own account or something?”
Maurice just shrugged. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “But nothing would surprise me at this point. I mean, this thing has been screwed from the start. That much I do know. The whole thing with staging a fake battle with the pirates? Sinking a ship over the Java Trench? I mean, they don’t even do stuff like that in James Bond movies. It’s crazy.”
Batman opened another bottle of mineral water.
“But what if we had bought a seat at the game,” he asked Maurice. “And you couldn’t sniff this thing out before the game started? What would have happened then?”
Maurice shrugged again. “Then we would have found you both tuxedoes, you would have showed up for the game, infiltrated the location, then identified and pursued whoever won the box.”
Batman thought a moment. “And what would have happened if we’d made it into the game and actually won the damn thing?”
Maurice laughed.
“Well, that would have been heaven,” he said. “Neater and sweeter. You would have gotten your fee, we would have gotten the box and western civilization as we know it would have been saved. The money would have flowed then, my friends—and whatever the Agency said they were going to pay you, you would get. But it’s back to the drawing board now.”
Maurice looked genuinely disheartened. He eyed the bar. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Help yourself,” Batman told him.
Maurice poured out two fingers of Macallan and downed it.
“And you don’t know what it is?” Batman asked him earnestly. “The box, I mean?”
Maurice slowly shook his head no. “My pay level doesn’t go that high. Just some kind of scary weapon someone dreamed up long ago that might still be functional. That’s all I know and frankly, that’s all I want to know. Anything beyond that is just too disturbing to think about.”
Batman thought deeply about all this. The sun was reflecting off one of the shiny buildings nearby, warming his face in a very pleasant fashion. Words started coming to him, phrases from the past: One for ten split; Low risk assessment; Cash-rich environment; Government-backed funds upon transaction completion; No tax exposure.
Suddenly he said: “OK—let’s do it.”
Maurice was confused. “Do what?”
“Do the buy-in,” Batman said. “We got money in the bank. We’ll pay the entrance fee and we’ll pretend to get into the game.”
The little man didn’t believe him. “You’re kidding, right?”
Batman shook his head. “If you know so much about us,” he began, “then you must know that we just made ten million for saving America’s sweetheart—and that was just one of a few very lucrative jobs we’ve had lately. You must also know that before I got into busting pirates I was busting nuts on Wall Street. If someone came to me and said I could put up ten million to make a hundred—and get my initial investment back—all of it tax-free? I’d do it in a heartbeat. In fact, I used to do it all the time, sometimes overnight. In the business it’s similar to a Shearson Short-Stake Derivative. And they work all the time. So, let’s do it. Let’s save the country and make some money. Unless it’s too late to pay the fee?”
Maurice was suddenly excited again. He checked his watch. “We have about ten minutes. If you can access your account online, we can do it all right here. I have the secret gagnant Web site address; it’s just a matter of transferring the funds.”
Batman turned to Twitch. “Do you have any problem with this?”
Twitch shrugged. “Hey, we have a pile of money in Aden and it’s as much yours as it is mine. Plus the other guys might appreciate you saving their big payday for them.”
“My partner has spoken,” Batman told Maurice.
The little man pulled out a BlackBerry Torch.
But then Twitch groaned.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “We can’t do it here.”
“Why not?” Maurice wanted to know.
Twitch spread his hands to indicate the suite. “Because there’s no Wi-Fi here,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get it ever since we arrived.”
Maurice smiled; he looked very relieved.
“Not a problem,” he said. “Watch this.”
He snapped his fingers twice above the BlackBerry, then showed them the screen. A Wi-Fi icon had suddenly appeared and was pulsating with vigor.
Batman and Twitch were puzzled.
“How did you do that?” Twitch asked him.
Maurice just smiled again. “You guys have been out to sea too long. Wi-Fi is all around us. Just because you can’t get it on a laptop doesn’t mean it isn’t here. You just got to know where to look.”
He opened a page on the BlackBerry, then passed it to Batman. Two minutes of key punching later, ten million dollars from Whiskey’s account at the Bank of Aden had been deposited in the secret account of the Grand Gagnant.
“Now what?” Twitch asked.
“Now we wait,” Maurice replied. “Hopefully, we’ll get the location of the game in a couple hours and then we’ll start the ball rolling on this. I’ve got a good crew with me—seven people holed up at seven different places around the city. If everything goes right, we’ll either have the Z-box or a pretty good idea of its location in less than forty-eight hours. Then you guys get your money back and your big payday, all without breaking a sweat.”
There was a short silence. Then Batman asked, “One last question. How did you know when we were coming here, I mean enough to have all this waiting for us?”
Maurice smiled again. “The pilots—of that flying boat?” he said. “They’re on our payroll. It’s surprising how much you learn flying rich people around the Persian Gulf.”
He snuffed out his cigarette. “Now I suggest you guys relax, take a snooze, whatever—but keep a low profile. I’ll be back in a couple of hours after I put out the word on this asshole Audette and see what his sorry excuse is. In the meantime you’ve got to maintain this façade that you’re mysterious high rollers. The people running the game have no ethics when it comes to who plays, just as long as they have the cash. So don’t let anyone see you drinking cheap beer, OK?”
Maurice got up to go. He shook hands with both of them, thanking them profusely.
“It’s funny,” Batman told him. “All this time we thought we were getting this royal treatment just because we flew in on Emma Simms’s airplane.”
Suddenly Maurice’s eyes lit up.
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “What’s she like, by the way? As advertised?”
“If you’re interested in the lifestyles of rich and bitchy, sure,” Twitch said.
Maurice seemed embarrassed for a moment.
Then he lowered his voice and said, “Listen, when this is all over, if you guys could arrange for me to meet Emma Simms in person, I’d consider it a big personal favor.”
14
Indian Ocean
THE SECOND PIRATE attack on the Taiwan Song came as a total surprise.
The hours following the first assault had been hectic. Thinking the pirates were gone for good after being bested in their initial attempt, Nolan had washed the blood off the sides of the ship, just for Emma’s sake.
Once done, he’d headed for the bridge where, by switching around some of the dying electrical circuits, the ship’s crew had finally gotten the shortwave radio
working well enough to produce static. When further adjustments were made to the ship’s battered antenna, the radio, like a small miracle, screeched to life. After a little more fine-tuning, the ship’s crew declared it able to reach stations along the west coast of India and even up into Pakistan.
Emma spent the long afternoon trying to get a message out to personal contacts she had in the area, asking them to accept the ninety-nine Untouchables as refugees, the first step in getting everyone off the leaky, dangerous ship. And she had a fairly impressive list of people to contact.
Her first choice was friends at the Pakistani headquarters of the Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross. This considerable organization was headquartered in the city of Karachi. Two years before, in return for a sizable fee, Emma had done a series of photo shoots for them, posing with starving kids in one of Pakistan’s largest refugee camps. The Crescent’s donations skyrocketed, at which time, the charity’s executives told her if they could ever return the favor, all she had to do was ask—and she’d believed them.
She had no idea, though, if the Crescent’s headquarters’ communication center had a shortwave radio, or if they did, what channel they could be contacted on. But as this headquarters was situated in Karachi, and Karachi was a port city, with Nolan’s help, she contacted the city harbormaster on a channel found in the Taiwan Song’s radio handbook. It took forever, but finally someone was able to tell them the radio channel on which to contact the Crescent’s Karachi location.
So far, so good. But after spending an hour getting someone to actually reply to her radio call, the person she spoke to—a low-level functionary—said the Pakistani Crescent was too overburdened to take on the care of ninety-nine more refugees—especially Indian refugees.
This was just the beginning of an exasperating six hours. After the Pakistani connection went nowhere, Emma used the same tactics to contact the Indian Red Cross’s Mumbai office. The previous year she’d lent her image to an assortment of their ads, again for a large fee. It took more than two hours and many repeated hailing calls until she finally got the radio channel she needed from the Mumbai District Police. But while they were glad to talk to her, once she explained why she was calling, no one at the Indian Red Cross office wanted anything to do with the ninety-nine Untouchables, especially after they heard they’d come out of Gottabang.
She did not give up, though. She began taking a series of long-end-around routes to contact political figures she knew in both India and Pakistan, but all to no avail. Then she found a phone exchange in Gujarat that could patch her from the shortwave right into the Indian phone system. Through this, she tried contacting movie stars, pop stars, and moneymen she knew in Bollywood. But none was interested in helping her.
In sheer desperation she even tried to contact Tamil Nadu—the location of the Mother Theresa Mission. Though she got through to them, after first contacting the local police, the person she talked to just kept repeating: “We have no boats. We have no boats.” Finally, they just hung up on her.
This was how she spent the long, uncomfortable sweltering day. Nolan was always close by, but Emma did all the work—and bore the burden of the maddening indifference as each contact on her list turned her down.
By the time the sun started to set, it was clear that, while Emma had managed to rescue some of the most unfortunate people on the planet, no one wanted to take them in.
Night fell. It was still many hours before the Shin-1 would return, and they weren’t sure what would happen when it arrived. Even if the flying boat could take some of the refugees, where would they bring them?
“Have you ever heard of the SS St. Louis?” Emma asked Nolan, once she finally twitched off the radio.
He told her the name sounded familiar.
“I read a script about it once,” she went on. “This ship full of Jewish refugees somehow got out of Nazi Germany right before World War Two began. When they set sail, they were sure that some other country would take them in. But every time they reached a destination, the refugees were barred from going ashore. With each stop, it got worse—even the United States wouldn’t let them in.
“Finally they had to go back to Europe. When the war started many of the passengers wound up in the concentration camps and were murdered.”
She looked up at Nolan. Tears were streaking the last of her eye shadow. “I’m afraid that’s what’s going to happen here,” she said.
Without thinking, he took her hand. It was curiously cold.
“It won’t,” he told her. “I promise.”
She looked at him with unadorned eyes. He realized for the first time just how huge and blue they were. There was an awkward silence between them. Her eyes were locked on him. In a way it felt like he was meeting her for the first time.
That’s when one of the Senegals suddenly appeared on the bridge.
He shouted: “Brigands … encore!”
Pirates … again.
Nolan couldn’t believe it.
“Are you sure?” he asked the man. “After what we did to them this morning?”
The Senegal pointed to the rear of the ship. Nolan activated his nightscope and was disheartened to see at least a dozen lights approaching the freighter in the dark, coming from the east. They had the same markings as the ones that attacked earlier. Each one was also flying what appeared to be a colorful flag.
No doubt about it. It was the Bom-Kats, again.…
“What is this?” Nolan groaned. “Didn’t these guys have enough?”
The Senegal said in French: “Quelques brigands n’obtiennent jamais assez.”
Some pirates never get enough.…
Nolan grabbed a pressurized foghorn they’d found on the bridge and blew it three times. Gunner was belowdecks trying to get the electrical systems working better. The other four Senegals were attending to the ship’s balky bilge pumps. Within seconds of hearing the horn, they were up on deck, weapons ready.
Emma looked at Nolan; her eyes were watering up again.
“You know what you have to do,” he told her. He realized he was still holding her hand.
She hurried down to the mess hall; Nolan motioned for one of the Senegals to follow her, the ship’s regular crew was right behind.
* * *
THE PIRATES’ ATTACK was coming from the rear this time—a change in their tactics.
The Bom-Kats knew the old ship was heavily defended, yet they appeared intent on doing a second assault—a notion that baffled Nolan.
The pirates might have speculated the ship was carrying drugs or weapons, and that was the reason for all the firepower on board. But drugs and guns were readily available in this part of the world, both were cheap and plentiful. The Bom-Kats were crazy to attack the ship again, thinking that sort of treasure awaited them.
But that’s exactly what they were doing.
And Alpha Squad had to get ready for them.
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER the pirates’ speedboats were just 500 feet from the stern.
Nolan had set Alpha’s defensive positions the best he could. Because Gunner was holding the most individual firepower, Nolan suggested he hide behind the aft railing support beam, a thick strut of metal which looked out over the dead astern.
Nolan put two Senegals behind the starboard lifeboat station, which was now empty but still gave them adequate cover. The two other Senegals Nolan positioned atop the aft power shack, a five-foot-high hump located right behind Gunner’s location.
Once they were set, Nolan climbed up to the second work railing—a sort of crow’s nest where the ship’s crane could be operated. It was about twenty feet off the rear deck. From here he could see everything from midships back.
Everyone had his nightscope goggles on and working. They could clearly see the pirates creeping up on them. Everyone knew to hold fire until they could determine exactly how the Bom-Kats were going to attack.
The pirates’ speedboats finally passed through the ship’s
weak wake. There were four of them this time. Nolan counted six men in each, three times the strength of the pirates’ first attack. As before, the majority of the Bom-Kats fleet stayed off about a quarter mile away.
Alpha Squad allowed the pirates to throw hook ladders up to the aft railing. The hooks were large and three-prong; the ladders were made of reinforced clothesline. Four of the ladders quickly latched on. The pirates were ready to climb.
Nolan did one last check of the squad. Each man was ready, weapon up, just waiting for his order to fire.
The pirates began climbing; this was their most vulnerable position. Alpha Squad was well hidden in the dark, aiming right down at them. Few things in combat came this tidy, Nolan thought.
But he didn’t hesitate for more than a second.
He cried out: “Now!”
The resulting explosion of gunfire was so bright, it lit up the entire back of the ship. The five M4s plus Gunner’s Streetsweeper tore into the pirates, killing most of them instantly. As before, those not killed outright were thrown back into the sea, most of them horribly wounded, to be swept away by the current.
It all took just ten seconds. Two dozen pirates were dead, and none of them had come within six feet of getting aboard the Taiwan Song.
So, what was the point of this?
No sooner had Nolan called out ceasefire than he knew something was wrong.
Pirates weren’t soldiers. They weren’t in the business of doing massive armed assaults on ships. And certainly not a ship as worthless, yet heavily defended as the Taiwan Song.
Something wasn’t right here.
He yelled for the rest of the squad to stay in position. Then he ran full tilt away from the aft section, past the cargo bay, past the bridge, up to the bow. He looked over the edge—and saw six pirates, dressed in black, climbing up a rope ladder. Each one was armed with an M-16. Each was also carrying a camera and a strap around his neck. Weird …
It was clear the attack on the aft section had been a diversion. This was the main raiding party.
Nolan opened up on them. Two of the pirates didn’t even see him standing above them. He killed them immediately then shot two more as they became entangled in the rope ladder. The fifth and sixth men fell into the water. He shot them as well—two short barrages each—finishing them off.
