Tiger by the Tail

by John Ringo

  “Can you terminate tango and subdue the woman without detection, Four?”

  “Yes.” Vanel had been figuring out exactly how to do this while waiting for an answer.

  “Roger, you are go.”

  “Roger, Four out.” Taking a deep breath, Vanel ducked under the water’s surface and began pushing himself toward a narrow, open space by the dock. Forty-five seconds later, he broke the water again just enough to grab the side of the crude dock. Above, he heard soft grunts and a rhythmic motion that made the boards creak. Drawing his pistol, Vanel cleared the barrel and action. Gripping the edge of the dock with one hand, he hoisted himself up, supporting his body with his left arm while extending his pistol toward his target.

  The two were huddled together, the woman sitting on the man’s lap while he rocked back and forth. Her head lolled on her shoulders in what was mostly likely a drug-induced stupor as the pirate thrust into her. Vanel took in the sight even as he drew a bead on the man’s temple and squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet made a neat entry hole just above the pirate’s eye. It took a fist-sized chunk of bone and brains with as it blew out the other side of his skull. The man flopped to the deck while the woman stared at her suddenly limp john. Before she could react, Vanel was kneeling beside her. He brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of her neck, knocking her out. After rolling the dead pirate’s body over the side, he secured the unconscious woman’s hands and feet with zipties and improvised a gag from a strip of her threadbare mini-skirt.

  “Tango is down and woman is secured. Continuing insertion.”

  “Roger.”

  Holstering his pistol, Vanel readied his carbine and crept to the narrow path leading to the first row of shanties. Other than the two romantics, all of the activity seemed to be coming from higher up. Regardless, they were going to sweep and clear as they went, to prevent any nasty surprises from appearing in their sixes.

  Reaching the first hut, Vanel gave his night vision a chance to readjust after the brightness outside before peeking into the interior. Seeing no one, he signaled the rest of the team to sweep forward and ducked inside, clearing the room from left to right.

  The floor of the stinking hovel was covered in sleeping mats, filthy clothes, empty beer bottles, and the remains of crude meals. Vanel held his position until the rest of his team had rejoined him.

  “Team Jayne is in position and ready to begin their sweep,” Yosif informed his squad. “Let’s move out.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The boy is good.”

  Having watched Vanel take out the pirate and subdue the woman on the dock, Mike nodded at Adams’ remark. He kept his field glasses trained on both teams as they began their sweeps of the lower huts, occasionally panning up to that reinforced slab of steel above everything. “Chief, make sure Blue Hand is zeroed in on that piece of armor up top.”

  “I was wondering about that thing myself. Think we got trouble?” Adams asked as he opened a channel to Lasko.

  “Don’t know. Could be the king pirate just likes to sleep in more protection than his lackeys. We’ll keep an eye on it as the op develops.”

  “Lasko’s already zeroed in on it as one of his secondary targets.” Adams returned to watching the teams clear the first level. “So far, so good. You know what that means.”

  “Yeah—it’s bound to go to hell sooner or later. Wait, let me make sure. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’”

  “Oh, you evil bastard.”

  * * *

  Flanked by Yosif, Vanel crept from hut to hut, making sure each one was empty. On the last one, he pushed aside a ragged blanket and almost took a parang to the chest. He managed to turn the blade aside with the barrel of his HK and push the defender off him. With a shout, his attacker leaped forward, blade raised to chop his skull in half.

  Vanel lined up his carbine and triggered a three-round burst into the man’s chest, dropping him in his tracks. Hearing movement inside, he pushed forward to see a blanket still swinging from someone ducking through a back exit, their footsteps slapping the ground as they fled. With Yosif right behind him, Vanel cleared the exit, making sure no one was waiting to ambush them, then took off in pursuit.

  Though Vanel was short and muscular instead of tall and broad like his kin, the walls of the narrow alley brushed his shoulders, making him twist sideways and trot down the winding path. Rounding a corner, he glimpsed the runner scrambling up a chain dangling off a tugboat prow that had been wedged into the trees.

  The man was pulling himself onto the deck as Vanel and Yosif both shot at him. The bullets chopped into wood and sparked off the metal hull as the man rolled to cover.

  “All Father’s Beard!” Vanel hissed as he exchanged magazines. “I know I hit him!”

  Yosif radioed back to base for orders. “Kildar said continue our sweep forward. Rest of the team will clear pieces below.”

  “Roger.” HK ready, Vanel began creeping forward again, alert for any noise or movement.

  * * *

  Yeung Tony leaned back and watched a young Chinese prostitute prepare his batu kilat, vaporizing the methamphetamine in a glass pipe that concentrated the fumes. She offered the pipe to him and Tony inhaled the pungent chemical smoke, eager to chase the white dragon again. While he did that, he forced the girl’s head down between his legs.

  As the meth entered his lungs, then his bloodstream, he grinned at the heightening of his senses as he adjusted the signature purple doo-rag on his head. The drug made everything around him crystal clear, like his eyes had just switched into high definition. From the whores fucking him and his men on the large, improvised balcony below to the riches strewn around his room, cash and designer clothes interspersed with high-end electronics, like the 65-inch LCD television mounted on one wall, he saw it all.

  He ruled it all.

  An average-looking man, half-Malay, half-Korean, Tony wasn’t the leader of this group because of his strength or ability with a weapon. Rather, it had been his skill at planning hijackings and his uncanny ability to figure out where the local authorities were patrolling that had cemented his leadership. It had also helped that he’d killed the last two challengers to his position, both securing his rule and establishing his ruthlessness.

  Now numbering seventy-five strong, his group roamed the seas around the Archipelago with impunity, his teams striking three or four ships in a night. With much of the region’s attention still focused on the Straits of Malacca, Tony knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities began patrolling farther east. But he didn’t expect that to happen for at least another few months. In the meantime, he and his people would enjoy the fruits of their labors. And the profits from selling the box they’d recovered from the last boat should enable them to expand even more. It might even allow them to bribe someone inside the port authority to pass along information on desirable shipments. Inhaling another hit, Tony leaned back, letting his mind drift to fantasies of leading a pirate army to plunder the seas with impunity.

  His dreams of bigger and better things were interrupted by two sergeants, both grim-faced, entering his quarters. Between them was one of the lanun, holding a blood-soaked bandage to his thigh.

  “Penambuh! Dajal-dajal hitam-bertopeng!” the wounded man babbled in Malay.

  The mention of killers and black-masked devils, along with the creeping paranoia instilled by the drug, put Tony on high alert. Knocking the whore aside, he pulled up his pants and stood. “Might be special forces fucking with us. Radio the lookout ship and see if any suspicious boats are in the area.”

  “We’re trying, but cannot get a reply—”

  “Taik!” Tony punctuated the Malay profanity by spitting on the ground. “Goddamn Indonesians might be here already! Get everyone up and armed, now! Get on the quad and shoot anyone out there that’s not us!” He pointed at his other sergeant. “You, get the boat ready!”

  As he spoke, the chatter of automatic weapons fire exploded in th
e compound. As his second sergeant ran out the door, Tony scrambled for the room behind his living space, dragging the prostitute with him. “Come on, whore!”

  In here was more loot from their heists—high-end electronics, from LCD televisions, Xboxes, and Playstations to a full-size arcade game, more designer clothes, and paintings, leather furniture, and artwork taken from luxury yachts. Ignoring all of it, the pirate leader grabbed a set of night vision goggles and put it on his forehead. He ran to an unmarked box, one meter long by half that deep and wide, that seemed to be a complete piece of smooth, olive-green metal with no seams, just two metal handles.

  Drawing a pistol from his waistband, Tony grabbed one end of the case and pointed the gun at the whore. “Pick it up, or you die!”

  The girl grabbed the other end and hauled ass after him. Tony left through a side opening, making sure he was in darkness before he positioned the goggles over his eyes and turned them on. He then headed down a dark, narrow trail into the jungle, tugging the box and the prostitute behind him.

  * * *

  Fifteen meters below the chattering AK-47, Vanel heard updates over his radio as the operation shifted into high gear.

  “All units, this is Mal. Engage enemy at will.”

  “—Team Jayne is moving to engage—”

  “—Inaras Two and Three have cleared lower level and are moving to support positions—”

  “Inara Eight—encountering moderate fire—moving to flank—”

  Yosif and he kept moving higher up the pirates’ base, taking out all targets of opportunity. It helped that the shooting was confusing most of the drunk or drugged pirates, making them easy prey.

  Covering each other’s advances, Vanel and Yosif mowed down three clusters of the enemy before they even knew what hit them. A brief transmission from Yosifs Two and Three, saying they were coming up behind the Leader and Four, made the two Keldara smile at the doubling of their firepower.

  The pair was heading for the next group of ramshackle buildings when bullets began chopping splinters from the wall next to Vanel. He ducked back around the corner, but not before taking two rounds in his body armor. The impact made him gasp, but a quick check showed the bullets hadn’t penetrated. The left side of his chest did feel like it had been hit with a hammer, though.

  Tracking the wild rounds back to their origin, Vanel gave the shooter another moment to empty his magazine. The moment the lead stopped flying, he poked his carbine around the corner and fired two bursts at where he had last seen the muzzle flashes coming from. The position stayed silent afterward.

  Hearing more gunfire right behind him, Vanel didn’t turn to check on his leader until a loud crash shook the boards under his feet. He glanced back to see the mangled body of a pirate on the ground a few meters away, bloody bullet holes pocking his upper chest.

  “Fuckers are dropping from the sky now!” With a grin, Yosif motioned for Vanel to move out. Rising to his feet, he was about to round that corner again when the night was shattered by the thunder of something much larger than an automatic rifle.

  * * *

  “Quad .50!” Adams was on his radio, watching as the emplacement tracked any movement and the four barrels spit death. “Sonsabitches got their hands on a quad!”

  “I love firepower,” Mike said. “Except when it’s on the other side.”

  This shooter, however, was either wounded or high, as he seemed to be firing indiscriminately, the big rounds chewing up anything they were aimed at, building, the pier, pirates—and coming way too close to the Keldara on the ground.

  “Blue Hand, take him out!”

  * * *

  On the Big Fish, Lasko exhaled and fired in the millisecond between two heartbeats. The SLAP-T round would have easily pierced the double-walled steel ship plate protecting the gun emplacement, except it didn’t have to. The Keldara sniper had aimed for the narrow slit through which one of the bottom barrels protruded. The large, armor-piercing bullet mangled the ammo box and cored through the mount. Even after penetrating all that, it still had enough kinetic energy left to rip through the gunner, tearing him almost in half.

  The quad mount fell silent for a few seconds, but its three remaining guns starting firing again.

  * * *

  There is a world of difference between getting shot with a 7.62x39mm round and a 12.7x99mm, or .50 BMG round.

  Assuming the average AK shooter does manage to hit you, which is unlikely past 150 yards, if the bullet flies true, it will penetrate and make a good-sized hole in its target from which much blood will flow. If it tumbles during flight or on impact, the wound cavity and subsequent injury will both be much worse. Add the possibility of fragmentation to all of this, and the 7.62 is a definite manstopper, no doubt.

  The .50 caliber round, being three times larger, can cause much more horrific damage to the human body. If it doesn’t yaw, the target simply ends up with a larger hole in their body, which can be survived given prompt medical attention. While the round does not automatically tear a limb off if it hits one, it will mangle whatever it does hit into uselessness, and provides one-shot kill capability just about every time.

  Multiply that power by four, and Team Yosif had almost stepped into a gruesome whirlwind of lead death.

  Every team member immediately sought cover no matter where they were. Once they were hidden from sight, Yosif and Vanel tried to get a vector on the gun to take it out. Unfortunately, it was high up and well protected, both by the slope of the earth and the large piece of freighter hull someone had hauled up and installed as armor. The gunner inside stitched rounds into anything even remotely moving in his field of fire, blasting his own people, tree branches waving in the wind, blowing apart crude huts. Basically, if it moved, he shot at it until it didn’t anymore.

  Against that overwhelming firepower, the swimmers’ only choice was to hug cover and wait for divine intervention. That came in the form of Lasko’s single .50 caliber round, which accomplished as much as the Quad gunner had done with twenty to thirty rounds at a time.

  When the deafening roar of the Quad .50 fell silent, Vanel and Yosif hauled ass, hustling to what they hoped was a better firing position. The other two team members hadn’t joined them yet, so it was their two carbines against a vastly superior weapon.

  They had just reached their new position when the Quad .50 started up again. Apparently the new gunner was not high, for long bursts immediately started hammering near them, making both men hit the deck. Large bullet holes punched into the wall behind them, the impacts shaking the wooden floor. The bullets flew so fast and furious that the top half of the metal wall behind them fell onto the two Keldara. Although they could have moved, the two men stayed right where they were, knowing that trying to free themselves would invite the gunner to perforate the wall and themselves with a hundred or so rounds.

  “Inara One to Firefly, request supporting fire on the following coordinates, over!” Yosif shouted over the din of the heavy machine gun emplacement.

  * * *

  “Given enough time, those guys would probably kill all of their own people, however . . .” Adams watched the emplacement fall silent again as Lasko shot the second gunner through the same hole, but a few moments later it started booming yet again. The Yosif team had been using the lulls to try to flank the big gun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get enough of an angle to clear it before it started up again.

  “Mal to Team Jayne, what is your position?” Mike asked.

  “This is Jayne Leader. We are above the encampment and can see both teams pinned by heavy fire.”

  “Make sure that quad never shoots again.”

  “Affirmative.”

  * * *

  Oleg Kulcyanov stood approximately one hundred twenty-five meters away from the crippled but still devastating heavy machine gun emplacement. With the rest of his team watching for tangos, he brought what looked like an oversized shotgun to his shoulder and aimed through the M2A1 reflex sight at the thundering Quad
.50.

  Mike had been looking for a suitable weapon system for the man-mountain that was Oleg for some time. A M249 SAW, while certainly impressive, seemed to be simply a waste of his capability to project direct fire support onto a target. Even the modern, kick-ass M60E4 just didn’t seem to be enough of a weapon for his primary team leader, difficult as that was to believe.

  Mike had been weighing the pros (overwhelming one-man firepower) and cons (realistic amount of ammo that could be carried and overall weight) of a chain gun right out of Predator. That was before Colonel David Neilson, the Kildar’s executive officer and lead trainer, had informed him about the updated Milkor automatic grenade launcher. The U.S. Marines had ordered mods on the three-decade old weapon that had brought it into the twenty-first century with a vengeance. Since even Mike couldn’t get his hands on an XM25 system yet, the MGL-140 would have to serve, and in Oleg’s hands, it was doing that quite well; it was both easy to use and devastatingly effective.

  Staring through the infrared sight that also compensated for drift, Oleg lined up his reticle on the emplacement and sent two high explosive anti-tank rounds at the target in less than two seconds. The HEAT rounds obliterated the remaining guns, as well as the pirate shooter, in an explosion that echoed off the jungle and out over the water. The blaze of flame that erupted from the emplacement sent fire fifteen feet into the air, and the impact flattened three huts around the destroyed gun.

  “Jayne Leader to Mal, target has been eliminated, over.”

  “Come on in and clean up the rest.”

  “Roger.”

  * * *

  “Patrick?”

  “Yes, Grezyna?”

  “Raven has picked up a small boat that has left the north side of the island, and is heading out to sea.”

  “What?” Vanner rose and walked to the screen. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his wife, but they had been over the sat shots of the island with a fine-toothed comb and hadn’t found any sign of a hidden harbor or cave large enough to hide a boat. Sure enough, a boat was heading out to sea. All he could ID was that it was an open, center-console fishing boat with twin outboards. “Any guess as to where it’s headed?”