Black Flag: A Taskforce Story (5 page)

Dylan checked his watch and felt a little shiver run down his spine, goose bumps growing on the flesh of his neck. It was dinnertime in the captain’s mess, which meant it was showtime for him. He left his stateroom and went around the corner, going down five decks’ worth of stairs, his feet causing an echo as they tromped on the metal.

He reached the main deck and exited the superstructure, now surrounded on all sides by twenty- and forty-foot Conex containers. He pulled the map out of his pocket just as he exited the row of containers and almost had it ripped out of his hand by the ocean breeze. He backed up, using the tower of Conexes to block the wind, and studied the map. He wove his way through the maze until he was midship and began reading serial numbers on the locking tags designed to prove that the container hadn’t been breached during the voyage.

He wondered how the men inside had faired. According to Dragos, they’d been steeled to this sort of punishment, but Dylan himself didn’t think he would have had the courage to get locked up inside a Conex with no way out. If Dylan didn’t free them, they wouldn’t be found until Charleston, some four days away.

He reached the end of the row and came up empty, feeling the sweat form under his arms. The Conex wasn’t there. He looked up and saw a tower of containers seven tall. He’d been told it would be on the deck level. If it was seventy feet in the air, there was nothing he could do.

He crawled up one level and began to scoot from Conex to Conex like a monkey, beginning to panic. About to quit, running through his mind what he would say to Dragos, he matched the serial number of the Conex. The third one from the edge of the deck. He read the number again to be sure, then cut the tag before dangling precariously, attempting to open the Conex handles. They were seated in place and attached to long bars with tongues that mated with a metal receptacle at the top and bottom, and he didn’t have the leverage to get them to release.

He hammered the handles with his fists, breaking them free a quarter inch at a time, then yanked the door, seeing a sliver of a gap appear. He leaned over and prepared to hoist the door as far as he could when someone on the inside kicked, causing it to spring open and knocking him to the deck ten feet below.

He landed hard on his side, feeling his shoulder wrench and having the wind punched from his lungs in the impact. He lay unmoving, staring at the stars above his body, gasping for air. A duffel bag landed next to him, missing his head by inches. He rolled upright and a man landed feetfirst.

Dylan looked up and saw the eyes of a shark. No humanity at all. Five seconds later, two more men landed, both looking the same way. Dylan picked up the duffel bag and said, “I have to get these weapons to Costin and Dragos. You know what to do?”

In English so heavily accented he could barely understand it, the first man said, “Yes. Easy. Start killing.”

Dylan ran off, entering the superstructure and climbing up to the passenger-level deck. He knocked on Dragos’s door and waited, knowing a plan had been set in motion that he could not stop. Knowing he was now complicit in the deaths of at least twenty people. Wondering if his life was going to make it twenty-one.

Dragos opened the door and Dylan saw Costin in the room, all three of them on the manifest as paying passengers from Grolier Recovery Services. They had no doppelgänger for the woman, but her body would be here shortly, and nobody on the boat would be able to testify that she hadn’t boarded before it sailed.

Dragos took the duffel, zipping it open and pulling out lethal little black guns with long magazines. When he saw Dylan still standing in the doorway he said, “Go get the computer chips. Bring them to me.”

Dylan nodded, his eyes wide, then took off in a shambling run, his adrenaline almost overpowering his ability to function. He staggered down the same stairwell, past the officer’s mess, where he heard four distinct pops.
It’s happening. They’re killing everyone on board.

Remembering the wind, he stopped before exiting the superstructure and pulled out a different map. The one rescued from the boat wreck. He studied it, seeing the container holding the microprocessors was behind the superstructure, at the stern of the ship. He memorized the location, then the serial number of the locking tab, before stuffing the map back in his pocket. This one was six levels up, and on the second-to-last row of the entire ship. The good news was the last row was only five Conexes high, so he could stand on the roof of the fifth Conex while opening the one on the sixth level. The bad news was he’d have to climb to the top on the last row to get there, and if he slipped, he wouldn’t be falling to the deck. He’d be falling into the ocean far below.

He found the row of Conexes and began climbing, using the locking devices that seated them together for stability. He reached the fifth level and walked across the roof, the rocking of the boat and the howling wind making him feel precarious even standing on solid metal. He found the Conex, matched the serial number, and jammed open the door, the hinges screaming in protest in the night air. He got it far enough to squeeze through, and turned on a penlight. Instead of being packed to the gills, like he had expected, the twenty-foot container held a single cardboard box, a foot square. He opened it, seeing the modern art of silicon chips and data bus ports. He smiled, set the box in his backpack, and zipped it up.

He went to the entrance and was preparing to clamber back down to the deck when he saw something bouncing in the moonlight. A brief glimpse of light in the darkness. He focused on it and saw it was a small boat, riding right next to his ship. At first he thought it was their exfiltration vehicle, wondering why it had closed the distance so soon. Then he caught movement on the deck and saw a figure clambering up and over the railing.

His mouth slacked open for a second, his mind running through the ramifications.
Someone else is coming on board. Real pirates.

He scrambled down to the deck and took off running toward Dragos. Toward the only thing that could help.

I saw Jennifer crest the rail and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Our little speedboat was bouncing around like a cork in the water, and the hull to the container ship being less than fifteen feet away was disconcerting to say the least. Especially since we were both traveling forward at twenty knots.

There had been a huge fight about who, exactly, was going to drive the boat while the others climbed into the container ship. Knuckles said it certainly couldn’t be him, because he’d trained relentlessly in shipboard takedowns and knew all about going from a small boat to a large vessel.

I, of course, said there was no way I was remaining behind. I’d done such operations in training only maybe once or twice, but I wasn’t going to sit out just because the infiltration was a little rough. Brett said the same. As a former Recon Marine, he’d done a few boat assaults as well and would be handy in the fight. Problem solved.

Jennifer would drive our speedboat, pulling it up alongside the ship and holding it there while we navigated the weird pole-ladder construction the pirates had built.

Unfortunately, from the assembly, it looked like they had no intention of swapping boats while they were in motion. More like they intended to stop the container ship and have a leisurely exfiltration, with someone on the ship ensuring a solid anchor for the ladder. Not something we were going to be able to duplicate.

Jennifer had finally popped the man-bubble of testosterone with a little bit of common sense. She said, “You guys weigh much, much more than me. You can’t guarantee a solid anchor from the first gaff. Let me climb it, then reseat it.”

I said, “No way. You drive the boat. We need guns up top. We’ve all done this before.”

She said, “Pike, that’s stupid. You guys may kick my ass in a hundred different skills, but you don’t hold a candle to me in one. I can climb.”

Knuckles said, “She’s right, and there’s another point. Getting to the top requires someone with skill driving the boat below. Someone who can match the ocean, set the speed, and keep the ladder from getting jerked around. Someone who’s done this before and knows what to look for.”

I said, “So you’re going to do it? Is that what you’re saying? Because I’m no better a boat driver than Jennifer.”

“Fuck no. I’m going up. I’m the only guy in this whole crew who’s done this as part of my day job.”

Brett said, “Stop it. Both of you. I’ll drive the boat. I stressed my arm wound with the swim the other night anyway. I probably shouldn’t be climbing. But nobody better talk about this when we’re done.”

I’d looked at Jennifer with a scowl, but all she’d done was smile. We’d closed on the boat and began thinking through the assault.

The average landlubber sees the size of container ships, then hears stories about pirates in Somalia taking them over and can’t reconcile how that happens. I mean, after all, the ships are enormous, up to three football fields in length, and riding above the sea like skyscrapers. How could a few skinny Somali pirates take that thing over?

The truth is that the ships
are
large, but once on the open ocean they ride fairly low in the water. A gap of only about fifteen meters separates a small boat running alongside with the main deck. Get a ladder to that, and you can start scampering up like monkeys.

Usually, the next question is how can they possibly get enough pirates on the boat before the massive crew begins to react, but the little known truth is that the enormous cargo vessels do one thing: Transport cargo. Because of that, there isn’t a large crew. There’s no lido deck, no cruise director, no company of cooks down below. The average container ship has a crew of fifteen to twenty, and they work on shifts, so at any given time a third are asleep. The pirates need to take down about seven people. Not that hard when the target has no weapons.

Because of international agreements, no merchant marine vessel is armed, which guarantees easy pickings. If you can get to the main deck of a merchant marine cargo vessel with a gun in your hand, you can take the ship. Pile on three or four other pirates and you’re looking at a fait accompli.

Our problem was that we were going against men we
knew
were armed, and thus we needed a little stealth. We had to get on top of them before they realized they’d been attacked. And we had to do it without dropping anyone in the ocean, which meant Jennifer going up first.

Halfway up her climb the boat had bucked, coming perilously close to the hull of the container ship. Jennifer had been flung out, her feet losing contact with the ladder. Brett had expertly held the course, neither jerking the wheel to compensate nor allowing us to collide, and Jennifer whipped her legs up like a trapeze artist, locking them back in place. A few moments later, she was clambering up as if nothing had happened.

She reached the top and leaned over, flashing a penlight to let us know she was okay. We watched her pull the grapple off the deck and reseat it into a well, guaranteeing that, short of Brett driving off and severing the ladder with brute horsepower, we would all make it to the top.

Knuckles said, “She is scary good,” then started climbing.

Eight minutes after that I was swinging in space, learning in real time what
scary good
really meant. The ladder—and I use that term loosely—was swinging back and forth like a hammock, and the spray from the water was threatening my tenuous grip. I saw the water rushing below, the boat weaving back and forth, almost colliding into the hull of the giant ship, and knew if I fell, I’d be dead.

It took me twice as long, my hands and legs vise gripped on the ladder, but I finally made it to the top. I rolled on the deck and heard Knuckles say, “Man, you are slow as shit.”

I said, “You weren’t saying that swimming to the island, when you were running out of air.”

I rolled upright and cast off the ladder, letting Brett drift off, keeping us in overwatch. He’d either see the ship stop and my flare, or he’d circle the water waiting for the cavalry to arrive from the alert we’d given to the Taskforce over the Internet BGAN terminal.

I slid my MP7 off my back and prepared for the assault, seeing Knuckles had already done so with his own. Jennifer was holding an MP5, a weapon she’d taken from the pirate in the boat. All in all we had two MP7s, one MP5, and two Glock 19s. Sounds like a pretty potent arsenal, but the problem was the MP7s used a different round from the MP5 and the Glocks. They fired a weird cartridge of 4.6 x 30mm, while the MP5 and Glocks both shot a standard 9mm. From our little assault on Navassa Island, we had a total of five magazines of MP7. From Jennifer’s boat assault we had three MP5 magazines and two magazines for each Glock.

I’d taken a Glock and an MP7 with two magazines, leaving Knuckles with three for his MP7. I’d given Jennifer the MP5, and Knuckles got the other Glock. Best we could do. Like the tactics for an ambush, I wanted the maximum casualty producer up front, with Knuckles and me, but we didn’t have a lot of ammunition to sustain a fight.

I finished positioning my magazines for quick retrieval and ran my hands over the pistol and other kit, satisfied. I said, “Knuckles, your show. What’s the focus?”

“Okay,” he said, “if they’re going to take the ship, they have to have the bridge. That’s the center of gravity. We get up there and see if it’s under control. If it is, leave them some weapons and start hunting. If it’s not, clear it out.”

I looked at Jennifer and said, “Sounds good to me. You’re in back. Pull security.” I turned to Knuckles. “You know how to get there?”

“Yeah. These ships are basically all the same. Follow me.”

We jogged to the superstructure and started climbing, one gun in front pulling cover until the stairwell turned, then another gun, a leapfrog like a kid’s game with deadly consequences. We went through three levels, continuing up to the bridge, then heard some pops. Gunfire. Knuckles held up a fist and crouched. I put my head next to his.

“What do you think?”

“They have to have the bridge to control the ship, but that might already be done. Someone’s shooting. Might be starting the slaughter.”

I thought for a second, then said, “Fuck it. Time to get in the fight.”

Knuckles smiled and said, “My thought exactly.” He moved to the exit door and I turned to Jennifer. “Watch our backs. This is it. Gunfight coming.”

She nodded, her jaw clenched tight, and Knuckles popped the door. We slid down the hall, reaching a recreation room. Inside, I could see two bodies on the floor, a man with a massive revolver and a man on his knees.

Dylan.

He screamed, “Dragos, what the fuck are you doing? I got you the chips! I got you here! I didn’t double-cross you. Why on earth would I tell you about them coming?”

The man called Dragos said, “You are a worm. I can’t predict what you’ve set in motion, but I know if there’s someone on this ship, you brought them.”

He cocked the hammer of the revolver, and Knuckles pulled his trigger. The man’s head snapped back and he flung against the wall, slipping through a crimson spray and sliding onto the floor. I entered and put my barrel on Dylan. When he recognized me he went through a little seizure, then placed his hands in front of his face in a praying gesture, saying, “Yes, yes, yes.”

I tapped his head with my barrel and said, “Look at me.”

He did, babbling that he had no idea what was going on and that he was a victim just like us. I put my barrel between his eyes and said, “You say one more thing I think is a lie, and I’m going to split your brain open. Understand?”

He gave me a silent nod, his eyes showing a slow recognition that we weren’t a bunch of academic professors. Finally realizing he’d broken the glass on what he thought was the bunny exhibit only to have a pack of wolves escape. Realizing that
he
was the bunny.

I short-circuited the thought process, slapping him in the head again.

“How many? Where are they focused?”

He spilled his guts, begging to remain alive. There were six people including him. Counting the dead guy Knuckles had killed, and adding Dylan, that left four alive to fight. All were currently located inside the captain’s mess, where they were going to kill the majority of the officers before moving up to the bridge and killing the men driving the boat. They’d get the crew in the quarters belowdecks last, letting them sleep through the slaughter before getting their own destiny.

I almost shot him out of pure disgust. “Why is it necessary to kill everyone? Why not just take what you want and leave them locked up?”

He looked at the man Knuckles had shot and said, “We didn’t want anyone to know what we’d taken. We were covering it up with another crime. Getting the authorities focused on something else.”

“What are you taking?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, afraid. I tapped him with the barrel and said, “What was the target?”

“Microprocessors for U.S. ballistic missile development. Controlled export items and something that the U.S. would want back, unless they were looking at something else.”

“Where are they?”

He hesitated, and I slapped the back of his head. “Where?”

He slid over a backpack. I tossed it to Knuckles and said, “How were you going to cover it up?”

He said nothing and I slapped him again. He raised his hands to protect his face and said, “You. We were going to make it look like an attempted drug smuggling gone bad. There’s a container of marijuana on the hull, and other evidence. They’d spend so much time trying to sort out the murders that the chip theft would be lost. The company certainly wouldn’t bring it up, since they weren’t supposed to be shipping the microprocessors on a boat in the first place.”

He was talking in a conversational tone, and I detected a hint of pride in his plan, pissing me off. I raised the barrel to his eyes and he rolled on the floor with his arms over his head, screaming, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

I said, “You got one chance to live. You help us get the drop on your crew, and I’ll spare you. You don’t, and I’ll kill you by dragging your worthless ass behind the boat.”