Allah make it soon, prayed Basaev.
Chapter Seventeen
Holt peered into the predawn gloom as China Star crept along at dead slow. He muttered and moved to the radar, his escort’s late arrival just the latest irritation. He still chafed at the peremptory e-mail from this Dugan, ordering him to board the “escort team leader” for a “pre-transit conference.” And his own company hadn’t backed his protest.
The VHF squawked. “China Star, this is MPS team leader. Do you copy, over?”
“I copy, MPS,” the captain said. “I have two targets to starboard. Is that you, over?”
“Affirmative, China Star. Five minutes out. Are you rigged for boarding, over?”
“Starboard side. I’ll light it up.” He walked over and threw a breaker, and floodlights bathed the boarding area and the adjacent sea in a circle of light.
“Thank you, China Star. I have a visual on the ladder. See you in five, out.”
“Bonifacio,” Holt barked. “Make yourself useful. Go meet our guest and escort him to the bridge.” Third Mate Bonifacio scurried out, cursing the curiosity that led him to hang around after he was relieved.
Holt heard the engines now, a growing roar that subsided as the boats cut speed, one paralleling the ship as the second moved crab-like into the light to the pilot ladder. I’ll be damned, he thought, looking at the flag. US Navy. Then he cursed as not one but six black-clad figures scrambled aboard. He waited until an agitated Bonifacio arrived with visitors in tow.
Holt looked at the group. “You seemed to have lost a few, Bonifacio.”
“Captain, I told them—”
“Not his fault, Captain. We deployed,” said the leader of the group, an American.
Before Holt could respond, the man extended his hand.
“I’m Bo Richards, MPS.” He nodded at a second man. “This is Ensign Hamad, US Navy.”
Holt shook their hands, glancing at a third man who hung back, gripping his weapon.
“By helping private firms,” Richards said, “the US can protect the strait without upsetting local governments.”
“Riding around under the Stars and Stripes isn’t low profile,” Holt said, not buying it. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked just as the phone rang.
The second mate held up the phone. “It’s the chief,” he said. Holt took the phone.
“Three GI Joe-lookin’ assholes are in my engine control room. What the hell’s goin’ on, Cap?” Anderson demanded.
“Hold one, Chief,” he said, looking at Richards. “The chief engineer’s none too pleased with your ‘deployment,’ nor am I. So just get back in your little boats and follow us.”
“Apologies, Captain,” Richards said. “We’ll do it any way you want. However, we do need a meeting with you and the chief before we leave.”
Holt hesitated. “Fine,” he said at last. He spoke into the phone. “Chief, can you come up to the D Deck conference room?” He nodded at the response and hung up.
“Mr. Ortega, you have the conn,” he said to the second mate. “Course is one two five. Steering is on hand.”
Holt listened to the man’s confirmation before turning to the third mate. “Mr. Bonifacio, get some rest, but first ask the steward to bring coffee to the conference room.”
Holt led the group down to the conference room, swallowing his irritation at the belated realization that the third man, the silent one, had remained on the bridge. Jon Anderson joined them in the conference room, fit to be tied. As before, Richards diverted the engineer with introductions as the smiling steward arrived with coffee. As the steward served, Anderson sank into a chair beside the captain as Richards closed the door.
Without warning, Richards slammed the steward down on the table and with one fluid movement pulled a silenced sidearm and fired twice into the man’s face. Holt and Anderson watched horrified as the steward’s blood and brains pooled on the table. They looked up to see Richards’s steady smile and dead, dead eyes.
“Now gentlemen,” Richards said, “let’s discuss our little cruise, shall we?”
Richards watched the bridge crew in the glow of console instrument lights. With a gun at their heads and the dead steward in front of them, the senior officers had been understandably cooperative. Most of the crew was now captive in the crew lounge. The gear had been brought aboard, and the gunboats ran dark, hugging the ship’s starboard side, their return masked by the huge ship’s own radar signature.
The captain was on the bridge, along with Second Mate Ortega, Third Mate Bonifacio and Urbano, the helmsman, all dead tired, allowed no rest in over twenty-four hours. Richards, Yousif, and Sheibani shared guard duty, two at a time with the third napping as needed. The three hijackers in the engine room followed the same two-watching-one-resting pattern, guarding Anderson and First Engineer Benjamin Santos. By design, only the seamen on watch knew the hijackers’ numbers, and ignorant of the odds, the others captive in the crew lounge would be less inclined toward heroics.
Not that it mattered. The thick lounge windows were all but unbreakable, and the handles of the lounge doors were lashed to the storm rail in the passageway, precluding worries of hidden keys. The steward’s body dumped in the lounge and a warning the doors were booby-trapped further discouraged resistance, enhanced by the cook’s report of grenade-festooned doors when he returned under guard with sandwiches, water, and buckets for “sanitary needs.”
Holt squinted at the radar through watery eyes, his stomach boiling from endless coffee.
“Southbound VLCC,” squawked the VHF, “this is Klang VTS. Report. Over.”
He felt the gun at the back of his head.
“OK, nice and businesslike,” Richards said.
“Jesse,” Mike Hill said, “two calls in two weeks. People will talk.”
Ward chuckled. “Whadda ya got, Mike?”
“You know that boat we been tracking? China Star?”
Ward sat up, interested. “Yeah.”
“Well, she picked up admirers. Two Malaysian boats as escorts.”
Christ, that was fast, thought Ward. “Malaysians? You sure?”
“Not positive,” Hill said, “but the two guys in each boat are Asian, and they’re flying red-white-and-blue flags. A stern wind is keeping the flags limp, but they’re red-and-white striped. That means US or Malaysia. I know it’s not us, so it must be them. The boats look a lot like our Dauntless 34s, but that’s a pretty common design.”
“Two guys per boat is a bit light. Our crews are bigger.”
“Lemme look again. Shit, there’s a ladder rigged. They’re on board. I should have caught that.”
“Actually, I’m relieved,” Ward said. “We passed a back-channel warning to the locals but got no response. Any other friendlies in the area if they need help?”
“There’s a CARAT exercise on to the south,” Hill said, using the acronym for the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training exercise. “A multinational cluster fuck. Us, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I’d hate to lead that parade.”