Satisfied with Panfillo, the skipper glanced to starboard where Estèban Santiona manned the .41 on that side. He was heavyset, was Santiona, but the weight helped him control the vicious vibration of the HMG. Something, at least, made the sailor such a bloody good gunner; in informal competition with the gunners of the other boats in the tercio Santiona had, frankly, kicked the rest of the patrol boat maniple's posteriors.
"Estèban," Pedraz shouted over the roar of the engines and the pounding of the water. "Leave a couple of the bastards for the rest to practice on, got it?"
"Si, mi skipper," the rotund gunner answered without looking up.
The Ironsides and Pedraz had worked out a simple method by which the supercarrier could vector in the patrol boat to the targets without being too obvious about it. The method was that the Trinidad and its sister ship were assigned a flight number, Blue Jay Four Three. The Ironsides' radio room broadcast vectors under that flight number. Pedraz heard and adjusted his course while Agustin's skipper merely followed Pedraz. The carrier couched the directions in terms of naval aviation but had schooled Pedraz to ignore the parts irrelevant to him. They'd also told him not to acknowledge the directions. For further deception, Ironsides had put up an aircraft which would follow those directions.
One never could tell who might be listening.
UEPF Spirit of Peace
The computer on Robinson's desk spoke. "Captain Wallenstein, I have discovered an anomaly."
"Go," ordered the captain, simply.
"There are two small surface craft in the area of focused observation that should not be there. Moreover, when the largest of the vessels in the area broadcasts certain directions, an aircraft responds by taking those directions, but so do the surface craft."
Crap! "Show me."
The Kurosawa immediately panned in to show the Trinidad and the Agustin skimming the waves, leaving broad V-shaped wakes behind them. Resolution was just fine enough for Wallenstein to make out darkened blobs on deck that had to be men.
She hit an intercom button. "Admiral? Marguerite. Come back to your quarters immediately."
* * *
Abdulahi could read a chart as well as the next pirate. When Robinson called to warn him of the position, direction and speed of the patrol boats bearing down on his men he knew immediately that they were on an intercept course. He tried frantically to call the leader of the band on the radio but, maintenance being what it was among the Xamari . . .
It took longer than a radio would have, had it been working, to get through via cell phone. It was pretty amusing, really, that Xamar couldn't have police, fire or medical services, that courts were right out, and that transportation was catch as catch can. Even so, somehow they managed to keep cell phone service up and running. Some called it "connectedness."
What a silly word, Abdulahi thought, while waiting for his son to answer the phone. It's touted as the route to civilizing the more barbaric parts of Terra Nova, whatever "civilizing" may mean. In practice, it means that a slave dealer in Pashtia can know whether the price for fourteen year old female virgins or fat little boys is higher in Kashmir or among the brothels of Taurus. It means the drug smuggler can easily learn both where he might obtain the best price for his merchandise and where the risk of arrest is least. It means money laundered from crime and corruption. It means corruption extending its influence to yet new places from its more familiar paths.
"Connectedness" means that, when you mixed a gallon of cat piss with a gallon of goat's milk, the mix tastes a lot more of the former than of the latter.
When we in Xamar were still a real country then being connected to the rest of the globe would probably have been a good thing, for us and for everyone else. As is? It makes everything worse. I couldn't be the pirate I am, nor what used to be my country the mess that it is, without our "connectedness." And I'm not sure it wasn't our "connectedness" to the rest of the globe that ruined us.
* * *
"Lungile" he was called by his Bantu-speaking concubine mother, herself taken as a girl in a slave raid by Abdulahi. "The good one," it meant, and to his mother he had indeed been a good son. As son of Abdulahi, Lungile was the leader of the three pirate vessels. Nineteen-years-old and closing to action, Lungile didn't hear the ringing at first over the straining, gasping sounds of his boat's overused and undermaintained diesels. On approximately the fourteenth ring he noticed it and answered, "Yes, Father?"
"My son, it's a trap. How far are you from the target?"
"Perhaps forty minutes, Father." The boy's voice sounded calm enough. "What it is this time? More of their silly sound machines? We can face those. What to fear from a demon's wail?"
"Ai, forty minutes? Then it is too late for you to take hostages. And it may be too late also for you to turn around and make it back to shore. Lungile, my son, it is not the sound machines. There are two small warships almost upon you. Our friends say they are fast, partly armored and well armed with cannon and machine guns. They say the boats are from the infidel mercenaries."
It was still an even and calm voice that answered, "Then we will run, Father, and if we cannot escape we will sell our lives as dearly as possible."
The boy's mother had never been a favorite, but Abdulahi had always had a soft spot in his heart for the boy, himself. So brave and forthright he was, so full of fire was his heart. I will miss this boy. I will . . .
"My son . . . " and the father's voice choked with emotion and pain, " . . . if you must die then, yes, die like men."
"Il hamdu l'illah, Father; we shall if we must."
* * *
In CIC, aboard the Ironsides, a sailor huddled over a screen and watching a real time image from a military satellite. He whispered a curse and announced, "They're turning for home."
The captain looked at the ops board and answered, "They're probably too slow to escape but they might get in close enough to swim for it."
"Wouldn't matter, Cap'n," his ops officer said. "If those legion boys catch 'em in the water they'll kill 'em anyway."
"War crime?"
"No, sir. In this one type of case the international law enforcement model makes perfect sense. It really is a law enforcement problem and the law says, 'kill 'em,' skipper. Fleeing Felon Rule, it's called."
The captain nodded. "Call the Trinidad. Give them the code word for we've been made and give them the pirate's new course."
* * *
"A stern chase is a long chase," Lungile whispered to himself. "But when one boat is four times faster it isn't long enough."
His own boat had begun life as a sport fisher, back when Xamar had actually had tourism. As such, it had a flying bridge and a climbable mast above it. Lungile stood atop that mast, gripping the ladder with one hand and surplus Volgan binoculars with the other. Through the binoculars, pressed tight to his eyes, Lungile searched for his pursuers. He'd caught glimpses of them, each one closer, when waves happened to have lifted both boats simultaneously. The mercenaries boats looked . . . Lungile searched for the right word . . .