He rolled the camera into a tight loop and placed it in his pouch, then headed for the door. He paused for a moment, then carefully opened it. Hassan didn’t move.
He removed the syringe of sedatives from his pouch. As he stepped forward, the sound of his boots on the floor alerted Hassan, who, without turning, barked a question in Somali.
Hassan was still waiting for an answer when John wrapped his left hand around the man’s mouth and jammed the syringe into his neck.
The man jerked as the auto-plunger injected the contents, and John wrestled him to the ground. The chair scraped against the stone floor, but John was already wrapping his legs around the Somali pirate, squeezing hard, pinning the man to the floor as he waited for the sedatives to take effect.
Hassan thrashed, desperately trying to cry out, but John’s grip was like iron across the man’s mouth. The pirate managed muffled grunts, his legs kicking uselessly. John prayed for the sedatives to hurry, hoping the man’s panic would send blood rushing through his body, hastening their effect.
The man’s thrashing slowed, his resistance fading, as the drugs did their job. It took another thirty seconds before John felt the man go slack. Hassan sprawled on the floor in a heap, unmoving. John stood, huffing for air, then bent to grab the man. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
A small boy, no more than six or seven, stood in the doorway to the bedroom, watching him with wide eyes, the whites around the edges like brilliant marbles in the reflected light. The boy hadn’t spoken. His head swiveled from Hassan to John, terrified.
John froze.
A stream of options tumbled through his head, all of them ending in the boy’s death. If he shot the boy, even with the suppressed M11, it would wake the others in the house. He had no other sedatives, and he couldn’t take the boy with him.
Who am I kidding? I can’t kill an innocent boy, even if he’s the son of a pirate. Too many children are dead because of me. I won’t add another.
He slowly raised his finger to his VISOR, approximately where his lips were. He stepped slowly towards the boy, praying not to spook him. The boy watched, rooted in place. When John was close, he grabbed the boy and wrapped his hand around the boy’s mouth, his arm around the boy’s neck. He squeezed hard, careful that the boy’s throat was in the crook of his elbow, his bicep and forearm pressing against the boy’s carotid arteries and jugular vein.
The boy quivered, and he tried to force John’s arm from his neck, but it was in vain. The boy was too young to offer any real resistance and was soon passed out on the floor, barely breathing.
John relaxed his hold, praying that he hadn’t inflicted any permanent damage, and the boy would stay unconscious long enough to allow him to get Hassan to shore. He squatted, grabbed Hassan, and threw him across his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He carried the pirate to the door, checked outside to see if the men on patrol had returned, then staggered south toward the beach.
Hassan weighed close to one hundred and fifty pounds, and John’s legs quickly tired as he carried the pirate through the dirt streets. Without the Implant to help, his legs were burning, the pain in his prosthetic so great he could hardly think. He stopped two hundred yards from shore and shifted the man’s weight, trying to catch his breath.
“TM,” he said. “I’m almost there.”
His coms crackled. “I’ve got eyes on you.”
There was gunfire in the distance, coming from Ely, but then gunfire from the pirate enclave to the east joined in.
Either the boy woke up or the patrol found Hassan missing.
Through sheer force of will he staggered forward, until he saw Taylor standing near the ocean, his HK at the ready. He reached the boat and unceremoniously dumped the pirate in the rubber bottom.
He heard engines revving and realized the pirates were starting their trucks, ready to blast down the beach, looking for their leader.
Jenkins glanced between them before giving them a thumbs up. “Time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
They pushed the boat back into the sea until they were up to their hips in water and turned the boat around, then pulled themselves up over the edge and flopped inside. Jenkins started the gas motor — no time for stealth — and gunned it. The craft’s front rose as they began pounding against the waves, heading back to the Peleliu.
Apparently they had underestimated how badly the pirates wanted their leader back.
John turned and zoomed in with the VISOR. Boats were being launched into the surf, boats that were retrofitted to be fast and maneuverable. “They’re coming after us,” he shouted.
“Don’t worry,” Jenkins shouted back. “We’ve got this covered.”
They pounded across the surf, well past the shore, and headed into deeper waters, the pirates in pursuit. He heard an occasional crack of gunfire, but it was nearly a mile behind them.
As they headed back to the Peleliu, he turned again and saw the pirates getting closer. Jenkins had the Zodiac moving at top speed, but two pirate ships were closing the gap, their boats rising well above the surf and slapping back down. The pirates didn’t seem to care if they lost their ships. He looked over to Taylor, who watched the approaching pirates, then turned to Jenkins. “How far is the Peleliu?”
Jenkins gave a quick glance back to the pirates. “We’ve got this covered!”
John shook his head. “They’re gaining on us!”
“I said, we’ve got this covered!”
He wanted to slap the man, but then he heard a dull roar and saw streams of tracer fire, like laser bolts from the heavens, streaking across the darkened sky.
He looked up and saw lights from the planes as they roared past, darts of flames blasting behind their engines as they roared past. Twenty-five millimeter projectiles stitched across the boats following them, and the pirate’s boats simply ceased to exist. They dissolved like cardboard, dropping men into the Gulf.
The chain guns screamed through the night and he saw heat blooms in his VISOR as the fuel on board the remains of the boats ignited. Within moments, burning wreckage littered the ocean surface. The jets banked hard and headed back out to sea, the sound of their engines rumbling across the ocean.
Taylor watched the scene behind them, mouth hanging open
Jenkins had a triumphant smile plastered across his face. “Harriers, baby! We got this covered! Hooyah!”
John shook his head, then collapsed, his weary body finally giving out. Hooyah.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Smith waited patiently with Dewy Green for Hobert and Nathan Elliot to join them. Dewey twitched nervously, his ungainly hands and arms moving in rhythm to an unseen orchestra, his fingertips drumming on the tabletop.
They were in the bottom most reaches of the complex. Dewey’s office was a maze of desks, tables, and computers. He was amazed that Dewey could be productive in the whirlwind of clutter. Papers and USB thumb drives littered the desks around them, along with stacks of movies and science fiction novels.
Dewey’s singular ability was becoming an expert in anything, given enough time. When assigned a task, he lost interest in the outside world, devoting himself to solving whatever problem consumed him. It was why he had assigned Dewey the very task they were about to discuss.
Dewey wiped the sweat dripping from his brow, even though the temperature in the office was frigid. It wasn’t for comfort… Dewey had so many computers and servers that extra air conditioning was needed to keep the equipment running. The requisition form for the extra cooling had been the first thing to pique his curiosity about the young man.