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He instructed several of his men to take up arms and head to the deck below. They would find Jones and find out what had happened, what had gone wrong. Tranh, in the meantime, would do the only thing he could, and that was stick to the schedule the Russian had given him. He searched the room again for those he had just located.
“You,” he said, moving to stand over two of the captives. One was a blond woman in her forties, the other a brunette female in her twenties. They looked enough alike to be mother and daughter, which in fact they were. According to the pictures and names sent to him by the Russian, their presence confirmed by the passenger manifest, the two were Mrs. Pamela McAfferty and her daughter, Patricia, wife and daughter to Jim McAfferty. McAfferty was, Tranh had been told by the Russian, a “hawk,” whatever that meant, a congressman in the American state of New York.
Tranh did not know or care what the significance of any of that might be; he did not follow politics in any nation, much less the United States. He knew all that was required for his task. The woman and her daughter were family to a government official in the United States, and thus their presence would ensure that the Russian’s message was not ignored. They would also, hopefully, prompt the rich Westerners to pay the ransom he had demanded. The Russian had warned him the ransom was a ruse, a means of lulling their victims into thinking this was a typical hijacking, and that meant there might not be time to have it paid. That was all right. The Russian would compensate Tranh for any losses in that quarter, and so far he had made it clear that he had the money to do so.
It was really that simple. Tranh despised complications and sought to keep things as simple as possible, always.
“We weren’t doing anything, I swear!” The mother looked up at Tranh with tears in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt us! We’ll do what you say!”
“Mom,” the younger woman spoke. “Stop.”
“Yes,” Tranh said, smiling. “Do what the girl says. Your husband. Her father. Jim McAfferty, the government man.” It was not a question, and Tranh’s mediocre English did not diminish the menace in his words. “Yes?”
The mother began sobbing. It was the girl who looked Tranh in the eye, impressing the pirate captain with her mettle. “Yes, my father is Jim McAfferty. You know that already or you wouldn’t have asked.”
Tranh laughed, crumpled the printout of the ship’s manifest and tossed it casually aside. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you right. Wu!”
The Chinese pirate known as Wu, one of the two with a submachine gun trained on the women, stepped forward. He knew his role. Wu had been educated in the West and was fluent in English. He would therefore deliver the written message the Russian had prepared. Wu was easily among the more intelligent members of Tranh’s crew, and could be trusted to do this properly. The Russian had demanded Tranh’s assurances on this, as it was a very important component of the operation. Tranh had no fear of making such guarantees. He had heard Wu drone on in English often enough, about matters that were well above his head. Tranh knew himself just well enough to know that he was not smart. He was cunning. He was ruthless. He was clever. But he had never considered “smart” to be one of his qualities. He did not care, either, so long as he was able to lead his crew and make money.
Of course, also unlike Wu, he was not a child molester and a murderer who had been forced to flee more than one small nation when his habits became known. But such were the paths taken by the floating debris of the world’s people before they came to the docks that Tranh frequented in his recruiting.
Tranh sometimes wondered, when he grew introspective like this, if perhaps he was not more intelligent than he gave himself credit for. As always, he dismissed these thoughts before they could weigh him down.
There was work to be done, money to be made.
He spoke a few words of command to Noor, who nodded. The pirate stepped over several mewling hostages and, from behind one of the circular bars dominating the colorful, decadently appointed lounge, extracted several pieces of satellite video broadcast equipment. With practiced ease—Noor had been some sort of electronics technician before murdering his lover’s lover, if Tranh remembered rightly—he began to assemble and connect the equipment. First he ran the power cables. Then he assembled the small portable reflective dish, positioning it at the end of the lounge at the open entrance to the rear balcony. Finally he positioned the camera and switched it on, motioning for Wu to drag a chair from one of the gambling tables. The Chinese pirate did so, taking up his seat. From his pocket he produced the folded and refolded sheets of paper that contained the Russian’s message.
Tranh pulled back the bolt on his Kalashnikov just far enough to determine that a round was chambered. The hostages would be paralyzed with fear once they heard the message. He could not have any heroes making attempts against him before he was ready.
There would be one or two among the crowd who, understanding the full meaning of the Russian’s transmitted message, would realize there was nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain by resisting.
Tranh would show them that there were still losses he could inflict. He would shoot for the legs and then torture any who resisted. It would help him pass the time until the Russian’s damnable operation was completed and he could collect his pay.
Noor muttered something, which Tranh took to mean that they were finally ready. He motioned to Wu with his Kalashnikov. The Chinese man cleared his throat and looked into the camera lens, waiting for the light that told him the broadcast had begun. Then he spoke, his English almost without accent, his voice clear, as he read ponderously from the Russian’s sheaf of papers.
“Attention, dogs of the West,” Wu said, his lack of inflection a curious contrast to the words the Russian had written in English. “For too long, the imperialist West has lorded its wealth and its power over the rest of the world. For too long, arrogant Western nations and their lapdog allies have been free to send their troops around the globe, bombing and attacking and killing whomever they pleased. For too long, the world’s smaller nations have lacked the ability to fight back.
“This lack ends today. Included in this transmission…” Wu paused, as was indicated on his notes, looking up at Tranh. Tranh nodded and removed the special transceiver the Russian had given him from the leather pouch at his belt. He pressed a button on the device. The LEDs began to blink green, though the Cyrillic labeling on them meant nothing to Tranh. Finally, the device’s lights winked out, one by one. Tranh nodded again to Wu.
“Included in this transmission,” Wu began again, “is coded data. Those who need to decipher it will know how. Using this information you may contact your benefactor—”Wu stumbled a little over the phrasing “—in order to obtain, for a price, the weapon you are to see demonstrated here today.”
A murmur went up among the hostages. Tranh was not surprised. He was, in fact, pleased. He wanted that fear caught in the transmission. He had made sure the hostages were in the frame when instructing Noor, through sign language, where to place the camera when the time came. He knew what the Russian wanted. He sympathized, insofar as he was capable of caring about politics. First and always, Tranh cared about enriching himself. If he performed well, the Russian would call on him for other jobs. So far their partnership was new, but had already produced certain benefits, such as the Soviet-era surplus weaponry the Russian had been able to provide.
“This weapon is available to all who wish to purchase it,” Wu continued reading. “Provided your goals are to strike a blow at the hated West. In exactly one hour from this transmission, a sample of the weapon will be activated. Video of its effects on those held on this ship will be provided. The volume of the weapon used today is six times the unit of sale. The price and terms for each unit of sale have been included in the coded burst.”
Tranh understood, as the Russian had explained to him, the critical timing of the next hour. His men had gas masks and had been made to understand that these would protect them, but this was a lie. The Russian had been very clear that the substance in the canisters, once unleashed, was corrosive. It would eat through masks and the hull of the ship alike, though of course it would eat plastic much more quickly than metal. Two of Tranh’s men, with their useless gas masks in place, would stay behind and use the small digital phone cameras, transmitting their digital images to Tranh’s own phone. It would be enough for the Russian’s purposes. The men had no idea that they would die before they could leave the ship, of course; their masks would protect them just long enough to let them record the death throes of the passengers before the chemical weapon claimed them, too.
The rest of Tranh’s crew would have to be clear of the ship before the canisters detonated. He was relying on Merpati for this; she would bring the speedboat back when her watch, synchronized to Tranh’s, reached the appointed time. For now she was moored somewhere out in the darkness.
That darkness worried Tranh. The explosion that had drawn some of his men to the bow of the ship had produced no enemies to shoot. Had there been men to repel, Tranh would feel better. With no one to face, the pirate captain was forced to ponder what the mysterious explosion could mean. He had known there was a chance, however slim, that some law enforcement or military group would stage an attack on the ship in an attempt to save the hostages. He had counted, as had the Russian, on the presence of the American government man’s family to discourage such an attempt.
The West was notoriously weak when it came to hostages. As long as they thought there was a chance those held would be released unharmed, they would not use force to resolve the situation. It was one of the things that made the West easy to defeat. For all their superior military might, they were helpless in the face of basic guerilla tactics. Put a gun to a single woman’s head and an entire army could be held in check by weak-kneed politicians. Tranh did not pretend to understand this particular failing on the part of such rich, strong countries. He knew only that it worked in his favor.
Wu had finished his recitation and Noor was beginning to pack up the satellite transmission equipment. The hostages were starting to cry and sob anew as what they had heard began to reach them beyond their fear. Tranh eyed them, finger hovering over the trigger guard of his Kalashnikov, wondering who among them might decide to surge forward.
Then he heard what sounded like gunshots from the lower deck.
Tranh’s first thought was that his men had gotten carried way and started firing at each other. Or, he thought, it was possible they had found some passengers hiding somewhere and were eliminating them. When the gunfire continued, however, he became concerned.
Word of the transmission would reach around the world quickly enough, and those whom the Russian sought as customers would seek him out. But the Western powers would be alerted, as well. The Russian had stressed as much; Tranh was well aware that now, with their true plan out in the open, forces might well convene on the ship. An hour’s time was supposed to be enough for Tranh to finish his business, make the example and get out, while preventing those who wished to free the hostages from mounting an effective assault.
Merpati was circling the ship in a long, slow patrol of the area, and had detected no approaching vessels. The speedboat had a crude fish-finder electronics package that would, Tranh hoped, alert them to the approach of something large like a submarine. Therefore there was no way they could be taken by surprise unless, somehow, the enemy had risked sending men before the message.
They would have to be on board already.
Tranh turned, Kalashnikov in hand, to face the nearest lounge doorway leading to the companionway to the deck below. Some fleeting forewarning of danger, some dread sensation, made him duck his head and cradle it in his arm.
The deafening blast and sudden burst of brightness sent flashes of white fire dancing through his closed eyes. Tranh was knocked onto his back, the world disappearing in a burst of light and sound.
4
Some pirates streamed past the Executioner as he stood pressed against the bulkhead opposite the corridor where they ran. They had descended from Deck 5, and moved with a haste that could mean only one thing. Time was up. There was no more need for stealth. The pirates knew there was a problem aboard.
Bolan drew the Desert Eagle from its holster with his right hand, filling his left with the Beretta. As one of the pirates approached, Bolan stepped out into the corridor. He leveled both guns at arm’s length, drew in a breath, let it out halfway and chose his targets. Then he took up slack on both triggers.
The weapons fired.
The Desert Eagle sounded like the hammer of some angry war god in the enclosed space of the corridor. The pirates were taken completely by surprise as the slugs ripped into them. Bolan made several head shots on the closest targets, his keen marksman’s instincts kicking in as he knocked down the enemy like bowling pins. One of the pirates, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, triggered a blast. The pellets went wide and shattered a decorative planter affixed to the bulkhead, blowing the plastic plant to shreds.
The Executioner tracked the man and triggered a single round from the Desert Eagle. The .44 Magnum slug blew a channel between the man’s eyes. He crumpled in a twisted heap, dead before he reached the deck.
Two more pirates who had ducked into nearby cabins emerged with Kalashnikovs in their hands. They blazed away down the corridor, their aim wild, fear evident in their faces as the orange muzzle blasts from their rifles lit their faces. Bolan stood his ground, crouching slightly, and pumped a triple burst from the Beretta into one pirate while triggering a .44 Magnum blast into the other.
Sudden silence followed the gunfire.
Bolan quickly assessed his targets visually, verifying that they were dead or out of action. Then he ran back the way he’d come, toward the companionway, holstering the Beretta and charging up to Deck 5 as he unclipped a flash-bang charge from his combat harness.
A pirate with a Kalashnikov somehow saw him and covered his face as Bolan planted one foot against the lounge door. As he shoved the door open, he tossed the primed flash-bang, ducking backward and shielding his ears while squeezing his eyes shut. The grenade burst, a miniature sun filling the lounge with merciless noise.
Bolan waited just long enough for the effects to reach tolerable levels. He stormed the lounge, both guns in his hands, scanning the writhing crowd of hostages and pirates in order to discern hostiles from innocents. The first pirate, the one he’d seen through the door, had crawled off somewhere in the blast. Bolan instead focused on those pirates he could see among the crowd, moving through the lounge with his guns leveled. A pirate clutched at a submachine gun and tried to rise. Bolan shot him. Another attempted to find the door, moving among the screaming, sobbing hostages. Bolan ended his struggles with a single round to the head. The Executioner made several circuits through the large, cluttered lounge space, ending the lives of the pirates before they could harm the hostages. Gunfire echoed and the smell of fired cartridges filled the space, competing with the sounds and smell of fear.
The Executioner knew this world only too well.
Stepping deftly over struggling passengers, who appeared to be recovering from the blast, Bolan found the nearest exit doors, leading forward. He burst through, knowing he could trigger a trap, but knowing, too, that he had no time to spare waiting out his enemies. As he threw himself through, low and fast, the unmistakable burst of Kalashnikov fire ripped through the air above his head. The hollow metallic sound of the AK-pattern receiver was burned indelibly in Bolan’s brain, something he would not forget for as long as he lived. From the deck, Bolan brought up both the Desert Eagle and the Beretta, punching snap-fired rounds into the pirate’s belly and knocking him down.
Something beeped.
Bolan hurried over, his guns trained on the fallen pirate. The small man, who looked Vietnamese to Bolan’s practiced eye, looked up at him, his eyes glazing, as blood pumped from the wounds in his stomach. He made no attempt to reach for the fallen rifle he’d held. On the deck next to him was an electronic device Bolan did not recognize, and an open wireless satellite phone.
“Too…” the pirate said.
Bolan leaned closer, mindful of a sneak attack.
“Too…late…” the pirate whispered.
“What is too late?” Bolan asked urgently. “Who are you?”
“Tranh…” the pirate said, his voice failing. “You…killed…me…” His words turned into a death rattle. “But…you…die.”
The pirate stared up in death, eyes empty. The Executioner grabbed the phone. Whatever call the man had made had been disconnected. He tried reestablishing it, but with no luck.
Tranh, Bolan thought. Most likely he had been Vietnamese. It was information the Farm might need. Who had he called? Allies nearby? There was no way to know. But there were more pressing concerns. Bolan scooped up the electronic device. He read over the Russian lettering and examined the blinking indicators.
His eyes widened.
Bolan ran. He checked the hostages visually as he ran back through the lounge, making sure there were no living pirates still moving about. People tried to speak with him, but he ignored them, jumping over those still crouched on the floor, heading for the companionway. He made Deck 4 and found the nearest of the canisters.
The electronic detonator registered a countdown.
Bolan took out his PDA satellite phone and hit the preprogrammed, scrambled contact number for Stony Man Farm. He waited as the call went through. Barbara Price, Stony Man’s honey-blond, model-beautiful mission controller, answered almost immediately.
“Barb,” Bolan said. “I have a problem, now. The canisters I sent pictures of. The detonators on them are counting down. I’ve got several here. I’ve got less than fifteen minutes.”
“We’re analyzing it, Striker,” Price said without preamble. “Passing you to Akira now.”
Akira Tokaido, one of the Farm’s expert computer hackers, came on the line. “I have traced the schematics of the device based on the pictures,” he told Bolan. “It’s a Soviet-era signal receiver and detonator package containing a small but powerful Russian plastic explosive.”
“The canisters?” Bolan asked. “What’s in them?”
“No time,” Akira said. “But trust me, Striker, you don’t want them exploding.”
“Evacuation?”
“There are three hundred passengers and crew on that ship.” Barbara Price’s voice cut in again. “We can’t get them out in time. We could airlift a few, but not nearly enough.”
“Options?
“Each device can be deactivated separately. But you’ve got to hurry,” Akira said. “Each device contains four screws on the side panel. Unscrew those and expose the internal wiring. There are blue, brown and red wires. Cut the blue wire in each detonator. That’s it.”
“Tamper safeguards?”
“None,” Akira said. “It’s designed to be simple.”
Bolan was already removing the folding multitool he carried in his combat harness. He snapped open the screwdriver bit and began unscrewing the panel on the detonator. When the wires were visible, he cut the blue one.
The countdown stopped. The detonator’s LEDs winked out.
The soldier had no time to celebrate his victory. He moved from canister to canister and then from cabin to cabin, finding and neutralizing the detonators as he went. He could not afford to miss any. The numbers fell as he worked furiously, hoping that there were no other pirates loose aboard to make trouble while he undid this horrific work. When he reached the final canister in the last officer’s cabin, he saw the readout on the device.
He was not going to make it.
The cabin had a porthole. Bolan ripped the Desert Eagle from its holster and pumped several rounds through the heavy glass. Then he knelt, letting the Desert Eagle rest on the floor. He picked up the canister, adrenaline and desperation lending strength to his movements. He heaved the heavy steel tank, detonator and all, out the porthole, past the broken shards of glass. He waited to hear it hit the sea.
It exploded.
The Executioner could feel the vibrations through the deck and against the hull. He backed away, slowly, knowing that it would do no good if the sea had not neutralized or contained the canister’s deadly contents. When he was racked with no ill effects, he took out his PDA once more and dialed the Farm.
“It’s done,” Bolan said. “One of the tanks exploded in the water after I threw it overboard. What can you tell me?”
“You should be okay, Striker,” Barbara Price’s voice responded, relief only too evident in her tone. “Bear and Akira have a full workup on what we’re dealing with, based on the intelligence you forwarded. The Russian lettering sidetracked us briefly, because it was added to the tanks long after they were made. The containers are Saudi in manufacture.”
“Tell me,” Bolan said simply. He was making his way to Deck 5 once more, as he listened.
“The substance is a concentrated acid developed by the Saudis,” Price informed him. “U.S. Intelligence knew about it maybe twelve years ago. As far as we knew the Saudis themselves quashed it because they were worried it was too powerful.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s bad, Striker,” Price said. “A few drops of it poured onto the ground, exposed to the air, creates a toxic cloud that acts like nerve gas. It’s corrosive, too, so it eats through protective seals and right through gas masks.”
“When blown up?”
“When explosives are used on it, it becomes much more volatile,” Price confirmed. “If those canisters had blown aboard ship, the toxic cloud produced would have killed everyone on board, and anyone in an open boat within a few hundred yards of the ship, depending on the wind.”
“Deadly,” Bolan said.
“That’s why the Saudis tried to put the genie back in the bottle,” Price said. “They executed the scientist who created it, in fact. That was largely believed to be for show. But they were serious about containing it, making sure it didn’t leave the country.”
“Seems the Saudis didn’t want to become known as sponsors to the world’s terror organizations with this new weapon,” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Stony Man cybernetics team, put in. “You know how tenuous their relationship with us has always been.”
“Exactly,” Barbara Price confirmed. “U.S. Intelligence sources call it Theta-Seven, though none of our people are quite sure what the Saudi designation was, or is. Last we knew the existing supply had all been destroyed. At least, that’s what the Saudis told U.S. government officials through channels, at the time.”
“Obviously some slipped through the cracks,” Bolan said, stopping as he entered the Deck 5 lounge. The passengers were shaken but appeared to be overcoming the effects of the explosion. The notion that perhaps their long nightmare was ending finally seemed to be dawning on them, at least in a few cases.
“The pirates are neutralized,” Bolan said. “What about the tank in the water?”
“Don’t eat the fish that’ll be floating around the boat,” Kurtzman said darkly, “but the acid is heavier than water. It would have descended. The hull might be scarred a little, or even damaged, based on the power of the explosive charge. But you’re not in danger of breathing any nerve gas clouds.”
“All right,” Bolan said. “Get the authorities in on this. We need people aboard this ship. The cruise line will need to assign personnel. I don’t know how many of the crew are dead, but it’s probably a lot. We’ll need medical teams, too. I don’t know how many of these people were brutalized. And the ship will have to be searched from top to bottom. There could be some pirates or passengers hiding until this blows over.”
“We’re going through the appropriate channels,” Price told him. “You should have more support on site than you can handle shortly.”
“Good,” Bolan said. “Striker out.”
The Executioner moved among the hostages, doing what he could to reassure them. Several of them thought the big black-clad warrior was another of the pirates, at first, despite what he’d done to those holding them. Bolan saw to it that some of the more responsible among the adults, those who admitted to having previous experience with firearms, were given weapons taken from the pirates. A few were officers from among the ship’s crew, Bolan was grateful to see.
“Excuse me, sir?” a young woman’s voice called to him. Bolan turned to see someone he recognized from the briefing Stony Man had sent him electronically. It was Congressman Jim McAfferty’s daughter. The young woman’s mother was close by, looking shell-shocked.
“Yes?” he asked.
