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“Where are you?”
Bolan hit the GPS tracker app on his phone. “The worst stretch of ocean ever.”
“How are you doing otherwise?”
“I spent all my money on beer, knives and soap.”
“Okay...”
“I’m sending you some pictures.” Bolan had managed to photograph the Viking team currently aboard the ship while pretending to text. “They’re all former US military. I need to see their files and what you can dig up.”
“On it.”
“Thanks.”
“How are you getting along with your new playmates? Viking Associates has a pretty rough reputation.”
Bolan grunted in bemusement. Viking had worse than a pretty rough reputation. They worked cheap, had a record of not observing international protocols, as well as killing would-be pirates rather than trying to capture them or drive them off. One of their Russian teams had kept a teenage Somali pirate alive and had their fun with him before cutting him up, tying a rope around him, throwing him overboard and using him as shark bait. The fishing had been successful, word had gotten around and it had a salutary effect for ships flying the Viking flag. The problem was that two of the team members had been dumb enough to film the atrocities with their phones and send it to their friends. The videos had gone out onto the web and gone viral. Viking became a pariah. No one would hire them. They went bankrupt, and there was talk of a United Nations human rights tribunal. Rampart Group had swooped in out of nowhere, bought them out and fired most of their employees. Rampart had tagged the word “Associates” onto the security company, but Viking was still the black sheep of the private security industry and the bottom rung of the Rampart Group. As both Sifuentes and Big Abe had stated earlier, Viking Associates got all the shit details. Bolan considered his last forty-eight hours with them pretty successful.
“Well, I have a nickname, and I think the cutest girl in class likes me,” Bolan said drily.
“Sounds promising,” Kurtzman muttered.
Pictures and files started appearing on Bolan’s phone. “Just so you know,” Kurtzman said, “we do appreciate the easy requests every once in a while. The big guy is Aperaamo ‘Big Abe’ Umaga. Samoan. Tenth Mountain Division, then Ranger. Failed the Special Forces course because of ‘attitude’ problems.”
“That might have been foreseeable.”
“Classic Rangers lead the way, but does not play well with others,” Kurtzman continued. “In private security he’s had goon-squad duty, and VIP ‘stand around and be huge and mean looking’ jobs. He signed on with Viking right when everything went south. He survived the culling.”
“Sifuentes was a Ranger, I know that. How come he isn’t anymore?”
“Busted for failing a drug test. Marijuana.”
“How about Mono?”
“Moisés Nilo. Squad mate of Sifuentes. Busted at the same time when their unit got drug-tested.”
“And the mullet?”
“Lazlo Mendez. He’s 101st Airborne. He was offered an early, honorable discharge to testify in a military court tribunal. The case is sealed, and his discharge papers have been redacted. You want Hal to ask for it?” Kurtzman referred to Hal Brognola, Justice Department honcho and director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm.
“No. Tell me about the black guy.”
“Jimbo Ketch, born and raised in the United States Virgin Islands. Boatswain’s mate second class. Transferred to the United States Navy Riverine Squadron, RIVRON 3.”
Bolan was detecting a theme. “Tell me how he lost his rating.”
“He got in a brawl with three other Riverines. One of them was an officer. He claimed he didn’t start it, and the attack was racially motivated, over a woman.”
“Did he win?”
“Oh yeah. He put two of them in the hospital. However, he’d been reprimanded for fighting several times in his career. He got busted back to E-3. Finished his bit and didn’t re-up. Went into private security.”
“And the woman?”
“Bianca Maria Ibarra, United States Marines. Military and Police. She made sergeant. Served in Iraq with distinction. Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She was accepted into the United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, graduated at the top of her class.”
“And?”
“Conduct unbecoming. Apparently Miss Ibarra has a bad habit of getting a little too friendly with superior officers, apparently sometimes more than one at the same time. She was up for a dishonorable discharge. Rumor was she was going to testify about the dishonorable behavior of a number of officers. Her discharge was reduced to general. She applied to several California police departments and was rejected. She currently holds a private investigator’s license in the State of California as well as a California private patrol operator license to provide security and bodyguard services.
Bolan considered his new teammates. “Quite the band of fallen heroes.”
“It is odd. Rampart buys out Viking, cleans out the bad apples, rebuilds the brand and then restocks it with this riffraff.”
Bolan didn’t know his team yet, but he knew Sifuentes was Ranger all the way, and he was willing to bet Abe would fight an armored fighting vehicle with his bare hands for a teammate. “I wouldn’t call them riffraff just yet.”
“So what would you call them?”
Bolan was starting to have an inkling about that. “Expendables.”
“Really? How so?”
Bolan considered his mission. The UK’s MI6 had intercepted chatter that nuclear materials from North Korea were being smuggled on a freighter to Iran. There had been a plan to intercept that ship, but it had dropped off the planet in the Arabian Sea. All hands were lost, including the security team from Rampart Group. The loss had been attributed to Somali pirates. Section 6 was damn good. They might have lost eyes on that ship, but they kept their ears open on that line of chatter. They caught wind of a rumored second ship smuggling nuclear material. It disappeared in the Strait of Malacca with all hands and a Rampart Group team. MI6 had pulled strings and gotten a former British SAS sergeant hired by Rampart Group.
Bolan tapped the file, and up popped a photo of the grinning, prematurely balding, impossibly broad-shouldered Colour Sergeant Terry Wellens. He looked like a member of the royal family on steroids.
Sergeant Wellens, his team and the ship they’d been guarding had disappeared. Bolan had done his homework. It was shocking how many ships sank, ran aground or outright disappeared on the 70-plus percent of Planet Earth that was ocean.
As far as MI6 was concerned, once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action. Then one of the supposedly lost Rampart team members showed up on Interpol facial recognition in the Netherlands. Bolan tapped another file. The military file photo of blond, high-and-tight-haircutted, ramrod-straight Lance Corporal Jup Gein of the Bundeswehr Airborne Brigade 1 contrasted sharply with the grainy security photo of a rumple-suited, mustachioed, shaggy-haired man drinking coffee in an outdoor café in Amsterdam, but the Interpol software gave the resemblance 87 percent.
Bolan gave it 99 percent.
Interpol recognition software did not recognize spec ops operators at rest.
Bolan did.
The photo had been taken months after Gein, Wellens and their ship had disappeared.
Trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions was a worldwide concern. The UK had brought its concerns to the desk of the President of the United States. The President had flexed the Farm option. Favors had been called in within the private security community, and Viking Associates had hired Bolan on. The problem was, that was exactly the strategy MI6 had used to get a man into Rampart, and their man was MIA.
“If we’re right, and Rampart Group is involved in very bad things, they may need to not make the next couple of ships disappear, and rather than making their teams disappear, it might look better if there were bodies. Bodies of people no one will miss, like Viking bodies, but that will still raise a hue and cry and give Rampart more business.”
“That’s an ugly little scenario you have there.”
Bolan agreed. Reported pirate attacks on ships were genuinely down. That was because many navies of the world had deployed fighting ships into well-established pirate waters, and many commercial ships were now flying flags and advertising online that they were sporting a contingent of armed security guards. Strangely enough, despite that, genuine ship vanishings were up.
Every instinct Bolan had honed in battles on every continent on Earth told him something was going on.
“So how are you proceeding?”
“Have to wait for a job and see what happens. I’ll give it a week. If we dig up nothing after that, we have to come up with a whole new plan. Meantime, I’ll mix and mingle, try to pick up some intel.”
* * *
Bolan went with his nose and followed the smell of coffee into the mess.
“Oh my God!” Sifuentes enthused to a rapt audience over pad thai, mac and cheese, coffee and corn bread. “You should have seen Blue! So he cuts the first guy’s hand off, catches the grenade and hot potatoes it to me!”
Big Abe called bullshit.
Sifuentes sighed in memory of the action. “The next guy in? The next guy? Blue just about beheaded the son of a bitch.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m talking ear to ear, Abe. Like ‘Assassin’s Creed’–worthy.”
Ibarra leaned in. “With what?”
Sifuentes drew one of his khanjar daggers from beneath his shirt and set it on the table. “With these. One in each hand. If you blinked, you missed it. If any of those assholes blinked, they died in the dark. It was that fast. I got one of them. With a Mini-Uzi Blue delivered with his toe. Blue got three, two with knives, one with that commandeered grenade.”
“Bullshit,” Abe reiterated.
“Oh, and then there was the guy climbing up the drainpipe.”
“What happened to him?” Mendez asked.
“We defeated him like the rest.” Sifuentes nodded in memory. “With science, and soap. Plus, he’s the guy I hot potatoed the grenade onto. He’s all messed up.”
Bolan walked into the mess. “Hey, fellas!” He nodded at Ibarra. “Felita.”
Ibarra smirked. “Call me B.B.”
Big Abe shook his head. “Sifu’s talking all kinds of crap about you and he in Salalah, brah.”
“It went ugly real fast.” Bolan nodded. “We had to improvise.”
Mono slurped noodles. “I believe it.”
Bolan went to the galley counter. Namzi ran a hand through his comb-over and gave the Executioner a big, red-stained, betel-nut-chewing smile. Bolan smiled back. Indonesians were considered the most smiling people on earth, and if there was one person on a ship at sea you wanted to ingratiate yourself with, it was the cook. Namzi heaped noodles onto Bolan’s tray with a Chinese cleaver that could behead an ox. “I make your chai just right!”
Bolan bowed slightly. “You’re the best.”
Namzi bowed back. The soldier took his tray and sat at the team table. When the team looked at him expectantly, Bolan shrugged. “Do we have a job? I spent all my money buying Sifu knives and beer and soap. I need to get paid.”
The entire table burst out laughing. Big Abe rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you this, Blue. You and Sifu’s stories match up.”
“Lying.” Bolan shrugged again. “Too much to remember. But I’ll tell you this.”
Ketch spoke for the first time. “What’s that?”
“It wasn’t good.”
The table went quiet and hung on Bolan’s words.
“As a matter of fact, it got really sketchy back there in Salalah, and local thugs don’t usually bring hand grenades.”
“What are you saying, brah?” Abe asked.
“That’s all I’m saying. Do we have a job?”
“Yeah, we got a job.” Big Abe nodded. “A freighter going right up the Gulf of Aden, pirate alley, right past Somalia, and Yemen is at war.”
“Destination?”
“Yanbu, Saudi.”
“You know, I’m new, but I had a bad feeling in Salalah, and I’m having one now.”
“So what are you saying, brah?” Abe repeated.
“Just what everyone already knows. I’m thinking we need to mind our Ps and Qs, watch each other’s asses, and watch the horizon, 360, 24/7.”
Sifuentes grinned. He was totally ready to roll with Bolan again. He held up his hand and his fingers curled for the fist bump. “Fuckin ay’, Blue! Me and you! Let’s get stabby!”
Bolan fist bumped and looked around the table. “Do we have guns?”
Ibarra shook her head. “Kind of.”
Chapter Three (#u11f59329-cc40-5af7-bf13-a805005f1517)
Bolan took up his weapon. “Cool.”
“Cool?” Ibarra sneered. “Screw you, cool breeze. Rampart gets the latest German technology. Everything is all HK and gleaming. Viking gets this surplus, Italian, Saving Private Ryan shit. Rumor I heard is the Italians were going to donate it to the Kurds fighting ISIS, and even they didn’t want it. It’s like they’re setting us up to fail.”
Bolan examined his Beretta Model 1959 rifle. It was missing significant amounts of finish. The wooden stock had a crack in the forearm, and it did indeed look a lot like a prop from an American World War II movie except that it took a twenty-round magazine and had a muzzle brake the size of a cigar for launching rifle grenades. Bolan raised an eyebrow, a hopeful note in his voice. “Do we have grenades?”
Big Abe kicked a crate in disgust. “We have bayonets.”
“Cool.” Sifuentes got happy. “Have I told you what Blue does with blades? I’ll take two!”
Bolan nodded at a crate with Italian words on it, and numbers that implied ammo. “Do we get any trigger time, or is that strictly for the job?”
“That’s the good news.” Abe took a bayonet and popped the top of the nailed ammunition crate with shocking hand and wrist strength. “We got two thousand rounds of ammo.”
“Pistols?” Bolan inquired.
“I told you!” Abe growled. “This shit! And bayonets!”
