The Storm_A Black Force Thriller

by Matt Rogers

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘Gut feeling.’

  ‘I promise you, I’m…’

  ‘It would be better if you were not Jimmy Neak.’

  Xu paused. He weighed the consequences, then decided it was probably best to stick to his guns. ‘Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I’m Neak.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Sounds like that disappoints you.’

  ‘If you are Neak, I have to hurt you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Da.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Because we pick up boat in open water, but no-one tell why. Not you. Not captain. So you tell. Or I hurt you.’

  ‘You sure you can hurt me? I can hold my own in a fight…’

  ‘No, you cannot.’

  As if there were no surer answer in the whole world.

  An uneasy feeling crept its way up the back of Xu’s neck, and he thought, Maybe this guy is slightly more dangerous than I thought.

  ‘How about we go to the mess and discuss this like men?’ he said. ‘Instead of you holding me hostage in this piece of shit room.’

  ‘Hold hostage?’ Gennady said with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘You’re not letting me out, I’m sure.’

  A low chill settled over the room, and another brutal boom echoed through the freighter as it ploughed headlong into another wave. Xu wondered how much of the ship’s trajectory the captain was responsible for, and whether they were drifting off-course. He doubted it. The process seemed relatively streamlined, made up of a number of different crew members stationed on watch. He then posited how long it would take for the crew to realise the captain was nowhere to be found.

  Not long.

  But Xu didn’t have long anyway.

  As the walls seemingly warped to deal with the unfathomable pressures exerted on the hull of the freighter, Gennady smiled and beckoned past his giant form. ‘I am not holding hostage. You go.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Go. If you want.’

  Xu levered himself off the bed, and Gennady bore down on him like a freight train. The giant Russian grabbed him as if he weighed nothing, slammed him hard against the opposite wall, and dropped him on the bed in a crumpled heap.

  ‘Idiot,’ Gennady hissed, sitting back down. ‘Sit fucking still. Answer my questions.’

  ‘I’m Jimmy Neak,’ Xu gasped. ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘You tell me who we meet in open waters.’

  ‘Captain’s orders. I can’t.’

  ‘Captain’s friends? Or your friends?’

  ‘Captain’s friends. I know how to get them aboard. Especially in a storm like this. That’s why I’m here.’

  A Hail Mary, but Xu hoped it paid off.

  Gennady raised an eyebrow again. Somehow, it proved the most threatening gesture imaginable. Xu struggled for breath, tasting the humidity and the stench in the atmosphere, and struggled to stay calm. He had never been manhandled like this before. Gennady had power, and ferocity, but behind that there was a lifetime of technique and drilling. The man was more than an engineer.

  ‘How?’ Gennady said. ‘How you get them aboard? Tell me, or die.’

  Fuck.

  Xu chose his next words carefully, hoping they didn’t get his skull pushed in.

  15

  In the end, his military experience saved his life.

  What would Randall Neak do?

  What would I do?

  ‘Zipline,’ he said. ‘They’ll be coming in with a fishing vessel, or something like that. They’re stealing one from a harbour in Ghana. Then they’ll fire a grappling hook in through…’

  ‘The shell door?’

  ‘The shell door.’

  Gennady nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

  Xu tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. He had no idea they were called that, but Gennady had leapt in at the opportune moment.

  Shell door.

  He stuffed that particular shred of knowledge into the back of his head for future use.

  The man shrugged. ‘Okay. You are Neak.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I might be a deckhand, but I’m… let’s say I’m well trained. You are too. Very well trained. Like, a decade of commitment. That sort of training. Who are you?’

  Gennady smiled, exposing a couple of missing teeth. ‘I am engineer.’

  ‘Before you were an engineer.’

  ‘KGB.’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘You know Gulf of Guinea?’ Gennady said, making a sweeping gesture to their entire surroundings. ‘You been here much?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Very dangerous. Pirates. All the time. So I am engineer. But I am also protector.’

  ‘The company pays you to protect?’

  ‘Not officially.’

  Xu nodded. ‘You run into pirates often?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘They go overboard.’

  ‘How many times have you done that?’

  ‘Three times.’

  ‘I assume you get a bonus for that.’

  ‘Da. Otherwise I do not do this job. I find better job.’

  ‘So you’re not really an engineer.’

  ‘I can do the work. But my main work is…’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘Da.’

  Xu understood. More than Gennady knew.

  ‘Well, it was great to meet—’

  Xu was halfway to his feet when Gennady punched him in the stomach, sending a rippling blast of molten agony through his gut. He doubled over, retched, coughed, spluttered, and collapsed back on the bed.

  ‘Do I say you can leave?’ Gennady said.

  ‘No,’ Xu spat.

  ‘You learn. Learn faster. I do not trust you, Jimmy Neak.’

  ‘You should trust me.’

  ‘I do not. I want to find out more about you.’

  ‘Just ask.’

  ‘I do not know if you tell truth. But documents know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Documents. Identification. We all give captain before we set off. Maybe I go have a look at those.’

  ‘You’d have to get past the captain for that,’ Xu said, increasingly aware of how disastrous such a decision would be if Gennady opted to follow through with it.

  Because ID would blow the charade in an instant.

  ‘Captain does what I say,’ Gennady said. ‘Otherwise I do not protect ship when things go bad.’

  ‘Those are private documents.’

  ‘Yes. But I look anyway.’

  Xu shrugged, noncommittal. The longer he lingered on this particular subject, the more likely Gennady was to follow it up. ‘Suit yourself. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘Believe what you want.’

  ‘Clean yourself up,’ Gennady said. ‘You on watch in two hours. Then we intercept boat in four hours.’

  Xu stomached a gulp. ‘That soon?’

  ‘You did not know this?’

  Xu shook his head. ‘No, no. I knew. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.’

  ‘Four hours.’

  ‘Yes. Four hours.’

  ‘Go.’

  Xu found himself hesitant to make a move, but Gennady stepped back to demonstrate that he meant it this time. Xu scurried past, fearing another resonating strike to thunder down on the back of his neck and paralyse him forever.

  But it didn’t come.

  He lurched out onto the catwalk, his ribs and chest searing with pain, his neck sore from landing head-first on the mattress. Gennady had tossed him around with ease.

  KGB, Xu thought. Jesus Christ.

  His lightning fast reflexes could trump almost anyone in the realm of combat, but it couldn’t get past the kind of hyper-alert vigilance that came from a career in the ranks of the KGB. Xu had seen it in Gennady’s eyes. The man never dropped his guard, not for a s
econd, even when he hadn’t the slightest suspicion that the strange new deckhand wasn’t who he claimed to be.

  Now, though, Gennady would be permanently looking for signs of trouble.

  Xu made it back to his room, crossed the threshold, slammed the door closed, pressed his back against the steel, and fought down the bitter aura of panic choking his insides, constricting them, twisting the imagined knife into his gut.

  There was too much to process.

  A bundle of IDs sat in the empty cabin of the now-deceased captain. Gennady had the character traits and the initiative to ignore his superiors and investigate things himself. A simple glance at the real Jimmy Neak’s ID — whether that was a passport or some kind of license — would immediately reveal Xu’s deception. Concurrently, Randall Neak and four of his JSOC buddies were in the process of high-tailing it through the Gulf of Guinea to intercept the freighter. When they got here, confrontation was inevitable, considering any chance of backup from Lars or the U.S. military had been thwarted by the torrential rain and waves battering the merchant vessel mercilessly.

  As he stood there processing the situation, a dull throb worked its way up Xu’s torso. Gennady had restrained the blows he’d dished out, stopping himself short of causing permanent damage, but they’d still packed a punch. Xu imagined he would wake up the next morning with mottled bruises across his chest and stomach.

  If he made it that far.

  He grimaced, tensed his legs and spread his feet wide to ride out another gruelling descent over the crest of a wave the size of a mountain, and steeled himself for what was to come.

  None of it would be pleasant.

  All of it would be necessary.

  16

  Two and a half hours later, Xu stepped into the wheelhouse on shaky legs.

  The long low room had meagre illumination, something he found strange considering it was pitch black outside. He wondered how the crew members on watch stopped themselves falling asleep on the job, nodding off in the darkness as the freighter groaned all around them.

  They’re probably used to this, he thought. This is normal to them.

  It wasn’t to him. His stomach churned, notably empty after he’d vomited its contents into the grimy toilet bowl hours earlier. He couldn’t keep anything down — the seasickness wasn’t debilitating, but it frustrated the shit out of him all the same. He could push through almost any discomfort or inconvenience, but he needed food in his stomach to survive. He needed nutrients to fuel any fistfights headed his way in the near future.

  And he wouldn’t get them if he couldn’t keep solids down for longer than ten minutes.

  Pale and sweating and shaking from the effects of the storm, which had only worsened over time, he met the gaze of the lone crew member currently stationed in the wheelhouse. The grizzled white guy barely glanced at him on the way out, swivelling off the stool in the centre of the room and hobbling across the linoleum. On the way past, he mumbled, ‘Fucking deckhand put on watch…’

  Xu twisted to face the old guy. ‘Am I not supposed to be here?’

  The man shrugged his stooped shoulders. ‘Not my call. We just follow the schedule.’

  ‘Why do you think I was put on watch, then?’

  Another shrug. ‘Don’t know, mate. Looking for something out there, maybe? Not a whole lot to see.’

  He cackled and limped straight out of the wheelhouse, disappearing into the cold steel corridors of the ship. Xu wondered if the guy knew how accurate his bad joke had really been.

  He planted himself onto the stool and gripped the edge of the table nearby with white knuckles, keeping himself in place as the freighter climbed and dropped, over and over again, endlessly, tackling the waves without hesitation.

  The beast wouldn’t hesitate.

  The clock began to tick. Xu sat, patiently waiting for all hell to break loose, wondering if Gennady would discover his true identity before the boatload of corrupt Special Forces soldiers arrived. Either way, shit was bound to hit the fan. He’d momentarily considered trying to sniff out the bundle of IDs and torch them, but that would arouse suspicion more than anything. No, it was best to play his role — whatever that entailed. If it meant keeping watch, he would keep watch.

  But he would be ready if…

  Light.

  Out there. In the darkness. In the raging black seas.

  Xu flashed a panicked glance at the clock on the far wall.

  ‘You said four hours,’ he whispered.

  Randall Neak was early.

  The floodlight was unmistakeable. It disappeared and reappeared at random, but the longer Xu stared out the dirty, foggy window, the clearer he saw. There was some kind of small fishing vessel out there in the madness, fearlessly battling the mountainous waves. And it appeared to be making a beeline for the freighter, like an ant sneaking up on an elephant.

  Two decks below, a distant shout of alarm echoed up through the ship’s interior.

  Someone else had spotted the vessel.

  Pirates? Xu thought.

  No.

  There had been no fear in the outcry — more of an alert, informing the rest of the crew that they were set to intercept the fishing boat a little earlier than expected.

  Because the crew knew what was happening.

  The captain had told them that much.

  They just didn’t know why.

  The tiny fishing vessel fighting for life in the storm, bombarded by torrential rain and sea spray, was a sight to behold. It put Xu into a hypnotic, trance-like state — he couldn’t quite believe someone could be daring enough to try and make this kind of approach. But it was their only option, and if Neak thought he could fetch hundreds of millions of dollars for such a complete package of information, he would be willing to try anything. As soon as they got themselves aboard the freighter, they could lay low and wait to disembark the next time the giant merchant vessel docked — wherever its next destination was.

  Not if Xu had anything to do about it.

  But he stayed at the window too long, transfixed by the tiny boat, searching for it when it disappeared amidst the waves, hoping that it would capsize and throw its contents — the invaluable laptop — to the bottom of the ocean, to rest forever.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Instead the boat — which Xu could see now was a civilian fishing trawler — finished traversing the final gargantuan wave and surged fast up to the side of the freighter, its movement frantic. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw smoke wafting from the tiny cabin. The high seas had ravaged the trawler. It was on its death bed.

  That’s why the men aboard were handling it like madmen.

  They were moving with an urgency he hadn’t anticipated.

  Xu only realised they had pulled up alongside the freighter at the last second. He shook himself out of the stupor — something about the violent motion of the ship in the waves had kept him fixed in place, rooting his feet to the ground, making him hesitant to move anywhere.

  But he had to.

  Right now.

  He glimpsed a dark flash of an open cavity in the side of the freighter’s hull — a chunk of metal had been opened outward.

  The shell door.

  Sure enough, exactly what Xu thought would happen unfolded.

  A jet black cable, barely visible against the backdrop of the churning waves, speared from the deck of the trawler into the side of the freighter, skewering a line to the shell door. If he blinked, he would have missed it. Still shocked by how fast things were moving, he pressed his face to the grimy window, his breath fogging the chipped glass. He watched a cluster of tiny silhouettes expertly manoeuvre themselves onto the zipline and shimmy out into thin air, dangling a few dozen feet above the raging swells.

  If they fell, they would die.

  Nerves of steel, Xu thought.

  Then his heart hammered in his chest as he realised they would be aboard in less than a minute, if the transfer went off without a hitch.

&nbs
p; Shit.

  You’re supposed to be down there.

  He knew what he was supposed to do, but some kind of firewall in his mind prevented him from putting his thoughts into action. He was still skewered to the spot, unmoving as the freighter crested another wave and plunged down into the darkness.

  Bang.

  They hit the bottom of the wave.

  James Xu burst off the mark and lurched into action.

  Do or die.

  17

  Xu shifted his mindset as he raced through unfamiliar hallways.

  He gave himself permission to kill, and to kill freely. If these men boarding the ship were Randall Neak and his buddies, then their motivation couldn’t be mistaken — they had murdered their brothers in arms and a high-ranking intelligence official, as well as dozens of innocent people across Africa, in the name of profit. Xu had met countless of their types before, and if he survived this, they wouldn’t be the last. But they would have to die. All of them. Because they certainly weren’t going to let him leave this ship with his health intact, so he would do the same to them.

  And if they weren’t the JSOC boys, then the freighter was in the process of being boarded by pirates.

  Either way, they would die.

  Xu sprinted up to the captain’s quarters, bouncing off walls in the process, paying no mind to the soreness inflicted by Gennady. It had all fallen to the back of his mind — norepinephrine and adrenalin and cortisol were flooding his brain like a shot of heroin, narrowing his vision to a tunnel. There was only one way off this boat, and that was through the deaths of all the men currently clambering aboard. That condensed his priorities to a small list.

  Number one, get the shotgun.

  He found the appropriate door and yanked down on the handle, putting his shoulder into the metal and powering it open. It slammed against a solid object and jolted halfway through its swing, sending the side of Xu’s head slamming into the door. He grimaced, put more weight into the push, and forced the object away.

  It was the captain’s body.

  The dead man had rolled up against the other side of the door in the chaos of the storm. Xu rolled the corpse off the Remington 870 and snatched the shotgun up by its wooden handle. He placed one hand on the fore-end — also wood — and sprinted straight back out into the corridor.