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“You’d be surprised,” Schwarz started to say, trying to form another verbal jab. Fitzpatrick cut him off, raising his boot and slamming it down, driving out what little air Schwarz had in his lungs. Schwarz wheezed in pain.
“He’s cute, in a stupid sort of way,” Fitzpatrick said. “Every squad’s got one of this guy. The guy who’s always cracking jokes. The guy who never takes anything seriously. And you know what happens to that guy, big man? One day he gets fragged, and nobody much cares, because everybody is sick and damned tired of hearing him talk all the time.”
“I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing you talk,” Lyons said. He kept his voice low. It was a struggle to maintain his self-control. He wanted to punch this Fitzpatrick into a bloody bag of meat.
Schwarz was still stirring on the floor, so Fitzpatrick kicked him in the head. Schwarz grew still, his limbs slack. He was still breathing—Lyons could tell that much—but he was clearly out cold. Well, that was probably for the best. Unconsciousness was Schwarz’s best friend right now, especially because it meant he couldn’t run his mouth and take any more punishment.
“I think we’ve exhausted the entertainment value of that one,” Fitzpatrick said. He went to Blancanales, whose eyes followed the knife carefully before landing on the stun gun still on the floor. “Oh, you’re thinking about that, aren’t you, Gramps?” the Blackstar commander said. “You think that little battery-powered toy is going to put me down? You’re going to have to do that on your own. And you’re going to have to do it while your team leader watches you get your—”
Blancanales slammed the heel of his palm up under Fitzpatrick’s jaw before raking his fingers back down the man’s face. In World War II jargon, the maneuver was called a chin jab, and if Blancanales hadn’t been trying to do it while rising from the chair in which he’d been held, it might have done some serious damage. As it was, Blancanales’s full body weight was not supporting the strike. Fitzpatrick hissed in displeasure and slammed an elbow into the side of his opponent’s head. Blancanales went down but, thanks to his training, managed to perform a shoulder roll and come up again.
Fitzpatrick was ready for it. As Blancanales rolled through the fall, Fitzpatrick stuck to him like a shadow and when Blancanales started to rise again, the bigger man slammed the butt of his chromed pistol into the back of Blancanales’s skull. The Able Team warrior made no sound as he dropped to his hands and knees, stunned. Fitzpatrick stopped long enough to grin smugly at Lyons.
“Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you, Tinkerbell?” Lyons said. “Beating up a couple of guys who can barely stand because the circulation to their hands and feet has been cut off for an hour. Yeah, you’re a real macho guy.”
Fitzpatrick kicked Blancanales, but it wasn’t a rib-cracker this time. Blancanales was able to roll away from the kick. The Blackstar man dropped on top of Blancanales anyway, wrapping one thick arm around his captive’s throat. Dazed as he was, Blancanales didn’t appear to have much of a chance, not the way this “fight” had been set up against him from the start. Fitzpatrick tucked his arm into the crook of his other limb and wrapped one hand around the back of Blancanales’s head in a classic rear naked choke. It wasn’t long before Blancanales was unconscious. Fitzpatrick dropped the commando and stood, once more facing Lyons.
“Just you and me now, champ,” he said.
“I’m game for a main event,” Lyons said. “Cut me loose and I’ll show you a few things.”
“You keep calling me Tinkerbell,” Fitzpatrick said. “You saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Tinkerbell’s a fantasy,” said Lyons. “That’s what you are. A fantasy. A legend in your own mind. I’m going to break you, Tinkerbell. I’m going to show you that the real life ain’t nothing like the badass fantasy you’ve built for yourself.”
“I gotta admit,” Fitzpatrick said, “that I did not see that coming. It was about the last thing I’d thought you’d say. And now I’m going to leave you alone in here with your buddies.”
“Come on!” Lyons shouted. “What are you afraid of, you coward?”
Fitzpatrick laughed. “You probably think you’ve got me figured out, big man,” he said. “But, news flash. You don’t. Much as I’d like to kick your behind all around this room, that’s not the game. Making you watch me beat up these two, now that’s the game. I’m going to come back every half hour, give or take. Just long enough for your guys to shake it off each time I clean their clocks. Of course, it’s going to get worse as I go. Pretty soon they’ll be lucky if they still remember math. Some teeth are going to come out. And before we’re done I may start cutting off fingers, just for the fun of it.”
“Keep talking,” Lyons warned. “Just keep talking.”
“I want you to think about that,” Fitzpatrick said. “I want you to think about what I just did, and what I’m going to do. Wait for twenty minutes. A guy like you probably can do it in his head. I don’t care if you count it off. Just wait for it. And when I come back, know that I’m going to keep taking your little boys apart until you give me the information. It’s not a lot to ask. It won’t even get anybody else killed. Are their lives—” he gestured to Blancanales and Schwarz “—worth what you’re withholding?”
The big Blackstar man took the time to strap the two Able Team operatives back into their chairs. Then he left, closing the door behind him.
Lyons blew out a sigh of relief.
Schwarz opened one eye. “Is he gone?”
Blancanales opened both of his. “I thought that guy would never shut up.”
“He talks almost as much as Gadgets,” Lyons said.
“Hey,” Schwarz complained. “That’s not fair. I think he cracked my ribs.”
“First good news I’ve heard all day,” Lyons teased.
“Then get ready for the second good news,” Blancanales said. There was a click. Blancanales shifted in his chair and, suddenly, his hands were in front of him, unrestrained. Using the folding knife he had lifted from Fitzpatrick’s pocket during the fight, he cut the fresh zip ties securing his feet. Then he cut Schwarz’s bonds and went to free Lyons.
“Gadgets,” Lyons said, “you still owe me twenty bucks.”
“Pol, can I borrow twenty bucks?” Schwarz said.
“Depends,” Blancanales answered. He held up the brown leather billfold he had also picked from the Blackstar commander’s pocket. “How much cash you figure a guy like that carries on him?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Captain!” shouted McCarter over the klaxon. “Keep your people working on the repairs. We’ll handle the threat out there!”
The Filipino captain seemed unconvinced, but stopping his ship from sinking was foremost on his mind. He said something that McCarter either couldn’t understand or could not hear—it was indecipherable to the Briton—and turned back to his repair team. McCarter, meanwhile, held his Tavor tighter to his body and rushed back up the gangway to take the ladder to the deck. James hurried close behind.
Once on the deck, McCarter immediately started taking fire. He ducked back, using the metal shell around the gangway for cover. “Look out! Contact forward!”
James scooted up around his team leader and managed to make the deck before sparks caught on the metal. Bullets rang like angry bees around both men. James was fast, though, faster than the enemy gunfire. He dodged in and around the structural outcroppings on the deck, using them for cover, working his way to the left. McCarter took the cue and started working toward his own right. The gunfire was coming from the bow, whereas they were currently amidships.
Abruptly a storm of wind and sea spray caught him in the face. He looked up, following the noise. The Sikorsky shot past, flying laterally, as Grimaldi lined up the nose. Then the great chopper’s guns and grenade launcher opened up, targeting a section of the water itself. McCarter watched, amazed, until the gunfire from forward of his position drove him back behind the cover of the next “step” in the deck layout.
“G-Force!” he called, pressing his transceiver against his ear. “Come in! What are you doing?”
There was still no reply. McCarter had thought perhaps something about the structure of the ship had interfered with their signal, perhaps depending on where Grimaldi was positioned relative to McCarter and James. But now, on the deck, with line of sight to the chopper, he still could not raise a signal. What the bloody hell was going on?
“David,” said James in his earbud, “I’ve got eyes on them. They’re hiding behind a railing about five meters from the bow. The area just to the left of the gray tarp. I’m seeing some grappling hooks, too. Looks like not all the pirates were blown up when we took out that first launch.”
“Makes sense,” McCarter responded. “The rats found the nearest sinking ship.”
Just then, another set of explosions rocked the damaged Filipino vessel. McCarter was drenched once more with spray. What he saw, when he looked to the sea once more, was bewildering for a moment. Grimaldi was still strafing the water and sowing the waves with 40 mm grenades. Then there was yet another explosion, bigger than what a grenade or even a series of grenades going off could create.
That cheeky bastard, McCarter thought. He’s detonating whatever those submersible torpedo weapons are. He’s keeping them off us.
There was no way to explain what was interfering with his communications with the chopper, but Grimaldi was obviously alive and doing fine…or as fine as a man could do while taking fire in a combat zone. There was small-arms fire coming from the second motor launch, the one that survived, and that boat was now making fast circles well wide of the Filipino ship. The idea, McCarter imagined, was to keep the launch out of range of the Filipino ship’s guns and to avoid becoming a target for the Sikorsky.
McCarter tried to gauge just how many men might be aboard that launch. It couldn’t be that many, given the boat’s size. If the fast-attack boat had carried a limited payload of Thorn rockets, that might explain why the crew had turned to whatever those torpedo-like devices were. He made a note to scan back through his dossier in the Farm’s mission brief to look for other technical specs on RhemCorp weaponry. So far, the Thorns were the only ones that had been used in previous attacks, and thus those were the only ones McCarter had bothered to familiarize himself with.
A shipment of rockets was one thing; weapons could go missing, and frequently did, when they were shipped overseas. But if the pirates were equipped with a full array of RhemCorp’s catalog, that looked very bad for Harold Rhemsen and his company.
None of which made a damned bit of difference right now, McCarter considered as the ship on which he was currently taking fire might sink out from underneath all of them at any minute.
“How many shooters do you have?” McCarter asked James. He did his best to work his way up toward the bow. The deck of the Filipino ship descended from the bridge area to the bow in graduated steps, each step bordered by a metal railing and whatever structural reinforcement was required for the equipment built into that area. This translated into plenty of cover, but it also meant the shooters near the bow could keep laying down bullets relatively unhindered from farther down the deck.
“I’ve got eyes on two,” James said. “No, scratch that. Three. One looks half scorched, but he’s mobile. They’ve all got Kalashnikovs and they look plenty mean.”
“They’ve got nowhere to go unless they take down this ship,” McCarter said. “If they can’t make it safe for the other launch to swing back and pick them up, they’re out of luck. I think the penalty for piracy, even internationally, is still hanging around these parts, mate. Can’t say I blame them.”
“Yeah.” James said nothing more for several moments, giving McCarter time to get into position.
Finally the Briton judged he was as close as he was going to get to the pirate boarders. Around them on the deck, fires still continued to burn, although the Filipinos had all disappeared. They were below, trying to keep the ship afloat. Hopefully none of the fires up here would get bad enough to seriously endanger the boat before they could be attended to.
From where he was now positioned, McCarter could see the tops of the three pirates’ heads. One of those heads was shaved bald and looked very red, then very black. Those were nasty burns. Shock and exposure might kill that man before somebody could put a round through his dome. For now, though, the pirate was mobile and fighting.
“I’ve got them, too, now,” McCarter advised James. “On my mark, I want you to lay down enough fire on the left to drive them over to the right. There’s a gap in the railing there. Just crowd them, mate. Drive them toward the gap. I’ll do the rest.”
“Affirmative,” James said.
“Now!” McCarter ordered.
James’s Tavor started belching 5.56 mm death. The Stony Man commando squeezed measured bursts from the weapon, which Phoenix Force had used many times before. The compact design and modular ergonomics made the rifle a favorite among combat troops. It was comfortable and accurate. The red-dot optics offered good, fast, target acquisition, and the rate of fire was quick enough to be truly fearsome.
From his position, McCarter was basically guessing. In combat, you took what you could get. Much like a hunter who ascertains his target then fires at the shadow where his target will be, McCarter simply waited for what light he could see through the gap to disappear. He did not need much. A single moment was all it would take.
There it was.
McCarter fired, just once, then once again for good measure. The shadow disappeared from the gap. That would be his pirate target falling away from the section of railing that had betrayed him.
“Lather, rinse, repeat,” James said through the transceiver. Once more he drove the pirates back toward the gap where McCarter could see them, and once more McCarter took the shot that was offered. The trick would not work a third time, however. No matter how hard James tried to light up one section of the railing, the third and final pirate simply would not move from his spot.
“I think he might be down,” James said. “I can’t get him to budge.”
A shot rang out from where the pirate was sheltered. There was a pause, then two more shots, one of which ricocheted close to McCarter.
“No such luck,” McCarter stated. “He’s still with us, mate.”
“Cover me,” James directed. “I’m going over there and have a talk with that man.”
McCarter allowed himself a tight, grim smile. When Calvin James had a heart-to-heart talk with someone, it usually involved the business end of a combat knife. The Stony Man commando was one of the most experienced knife fighters McCarter had known in his professional career.
The Sikorsky continued to make arcs overhead, its guns blazing, chasing and harrying the motor launch. Finally, though, the pirate craft stopped making circuits closer to the Filipino ship and started to recede instead. McCarter reached for his earpiece, intending to give Grimaldi orders. If they could make sure the ship was going to stay above the water line, the Briton would feel comfortable tasking the Sikorsky once more with pursuing the pirates back to their tender. No sooner had he touched the earbud than he realized, of course, that he could not.
The Sikorsky turned to present the cockpit to the deck of the Filipino ship. McCarter checked for enemy fire. There was none. The gunfire had all ceased. The only sounds now were the distant whine of the motor launch as it retreated, the crackling of flames aboard the Filipino ship and the ringing of the alarms belowdecks. McCarter stood and signaled Grimaldi to come closer.
As the chopper turned, McCarter could see that there was damage to the fuselage. Wisps of smoke trailed from a scorched hole in the helicopter. There was some connection between the damage and the radio failure, but McCarter had no idea what that could be.
T. J. Hawkins began to descend on a drop line. The youngest member of Phoenix Force hit his quick-release when he was still a couple feet from the deck. He dropped and absorbed the fall with his knees.
“Hawk,” said McCarter when he joined him, “what’s the condition of the chopper?”
“They hit us with something,” Hawkins said.
“One of the Thorn rockets?” McCarter asked, knowing as he said it that it could not be true. If the Sikorsky had taken a Thorn it would have been damaged much worse than it had been.
“No. Some kind of nonexplosive warhead that crippled our electrical systems,” Hawkins elaborated. “Jack is keeping the chopper up there, but there’s a whole lot that’s not working. He says he needs time to set her down and get her properly repaired.”
“Then following the pirates is out of the question,” McCarter said.
“Jack says we’re lucky he hasn’t taken up swimming, so I’d say yes, that’s about the size of it,” Hawkins drawled. “He says if you want anything, flash him with Morse where he can see you.”
“Bloody hell,” McCarter swore. “My Morse code is as rusty as my…well. Actually, it does seem to come up now and again, doesn’t it?”
The Briton worked his way around to where James had gone to have his “talk” with the third boarder. He found James going through the pockets of the dead man, who was slumped against the railing on the deck in a spreading pool of his own blood.
“Ghastly,” McCarter commented. “Did you put him down?”
“No,” James said. “Found him like this. I guess those last few shots were his way of saying goodbye. He’s got a nick in his femoral artery. Bled out fast.”
“I’m sure no one will mourn his passing,” McCarter said. “Not much, anyway.” The man was gray from blood loss. As it turned out, this was the scorched pirate, who had evidently gotten the worst of the explosion that had obliterated the first of the pirate launches.
There was a sudden bustle of activity from below. The Filipino captain and several of his men emerged. Four of the sailors carried M-16 A-1 rifles, one of the standard infantry weapons of the armed forces of the Philippines. The soldiers took up formation, two kneeling, two standing, and aimed their weapons at McCarter, James and Hawkins. The captain looked more than a little annoyed.
“We no sink,” he said.
“Now see here, mate,” McCarter said. “I realize perhaps now that things are under control, you’re feeling like asking just what we’re doing on your ship. But as you can see—” he pointed to the helicopter hovering overhead “—we’re the reason you didn’t get blown out of the water.”
“I check with my government,” the captain said. “You no move.”
“That’s fair enough, mate,” McCarter said. “We no move. But I’d like to signal my chopper to put in to port. He’s got electrical problems.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed and his hand drifted to the M-9 automatic now holstered on his belt. Evidently the captain had decided, after seeing to the damage to his vessel, that a trip to the armory had been in order. McCarter couldn’t say he blamed the man. Under the circumstances, it seemed unlikely that McCarter would himself just ignore boarders who claimed to be on the right side.
More crew members were moving around the deck now, using portable extinguishers to put out the fires still burning. The captain watched them, probably to make sure everything was under control. In the distance across the water, several vessels were now approaching.
James pointed, but the captain shook his head.
“You called for help?” McCarter asked the captain.
“Navy coming,” the captain announced. “Hope you three check out.”
“We will, mate,” McCarter said. “We will.” He took his signal mirror from a pouch on his web gear and angled it at the chopper. Hoping he was getting the message across, he did what he could to flash “port” a couple of times. Grimaldi got the hint, dipped the nose of the helicopter then turned and limped away.
“There goes our ride,” James said.
“I’m sure the captain here could be convinced to help us put in to port,” McCarter said. “Once he’s determined to his satisfaction that we’re not his enemies. Which I think he already understands, for the most part.”
“I can feel his understanding through those four assault rifles,” Hawkins said.
“People have different ways of expressing trust,” James said.
McCarter wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the Filipino captain crack a smile.
“Trust issues,” the captain noted.
“What’s that, mate?” McCarter asked.
“I have,” the captain said, grinning.
The troops lowered their weapons. James and Hawkins exchanged glances.
“Don’t we all,” James said. He blew out the breath he had been holding. “Don’t we all.”
