The Pirate Hunters (16 page)

The brothel was soon totally engulfed in flames, lighting up the night for miles around.

“There’s some ammunition we could have saved,” Gunner observed. “That entire place is going to melt.”

While the huge fire was attracting a lot of attention on the beachfront, many of the clubs along the shoreline, some just a few doors away, remained packed with people partying and dancing.

Batman finally turned the copter away from the island and headed for home.

“Just another Friday night on Mirang,” he said.

SNAKE NOLAN WAS
woken by the sound of the team’s helicopter returning to the DUS-7.

He was lying on his bunk in his cabin, just one deck below the makeshift landing pad near the stern of the old ship. The compartment was pitch black and, until this moment, completely silent.

His body shook when he heard the thump of the copter setting down. This set his heart racing. His throat began to constrict. He really didn’t want to do what came next, but he had no choice.

He’d managed to hold himself together up to this point. Though it took a lot of work, he’d been able to throw himself into the mission, busying himself with the planning, the logistics, the overall command of the team, reviewing maps, reviewing intelligence, doing the same things over and over, until he would literally pass out from exhaustion, only to wake anywhere from one to five hours later and start all over again. Some might call it burnout, but he’d passed the burnout stage long ago.

It was no way to be. No way to live. But it was what it was, because if he did it any other way, he’d be forced to think about what his life was
really
like, and he just couldn’t take that. Not now.

He’d been operating on this self-imposed autopilot for almost a year, trying his best to avoid the demons that had plagued him since that shard of rock took out his eye in Tora Bora. His sham trial. His incarcerations. His frequent escape attempts. His mad marches across the desert to get back to that place where his old life ended and this awful new life began, as if by retracing his steps he would make it all right the second time, get his vision back and catch up to and kill the monster who had murdered 3,000 of his countrymen and crushed his own heart at the same time.

Einstein said madness was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Nolan was a walking,
talking, living, breathing example of that particular bit of lunacy. He’d been able to dig an escape tunnel a quarter-mile long with nothing but his fingernails, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t escape this loss of soul, couldn’t figure out how to get it back, to reverse time to when they were still chasing bin Laden, the Marines were still on their way to the blocking point, and his superiors, his country, and his commander in chief hadn’t let him down.

But it was impossible, because he wasn’t Superman, or Einstein, or even the old Snake Nolan, though he was killing himself on the inside trying to prove to everyone on the outside that he was all three of those people and more.

The long beard, the matted, uncut hair, the dirty clothes, the cracked fingernails.
That
was the uniform he felt more comfortable in, because that’s who he really was. Someone from another world, not this one.

The proof was in the writing on the wall. Literally. Because just as the mud walls of his jail cell in Kuwait had displayed an orgy of scribbling and nonsense, so, too, his cabin wall here on the
Dustboat
. Numbers, dates, names, locations. Arrows pointing here, arrows pointing there. Arrows pointing everywhere and nowhere.

He didn’t know what any of it meant; it just came out of him and he had to write it all down until he dropped. So it was no wonder he felt like he was no better, but actually getting worse—and that no matter what he did, sane or not, he would never be able to shake the feeling that he was falling. Never hitting anything. Just endlessly falling.

A second metallic thump over his head made him jump again; the copter was down for good. The sound knocked his equilibrium so off kilter he had to hang onto the bunk just to stop his cabin from spinning.

No, he
really
didn’t want to do what came next. But again, he had no choice. There was no magic formula to change the way things were.

He got off his bunk and steadied himself. He checked the time: 0240 hours. Batman had completed his part of tonight’s assignment. Now it was his turn.

HE MET BATMAN
, Crash and Gunner coming down the access ladder.

Beside their flight equipment and weapons, they were carrying six ripped garbage bags full of money. Batman was also carrying a stack of DVDs.

“How’d it go?” Nolan asked them.

“Only fucking crazy,” Crash wearily replied.

Gunner nodded rapidly in agreement; they both looked like they’d seen a ghost.

“It all went well,” Batman told him, calmly. “We did what we set out to do. Zeek now has his cash-flow problem and he lost his version of Langley, Virginia.”

He pointed to the bags of money. “And we might have gotten our twelve grand back and a few dollars more. So, it’s all good.”

“What’s that smell?” Nolan asked them. “Is that you guys?”

“Yes, it is,” Crash replied. “The flower thing came off slightly askew.”

Crash and Gunner continued on below. Batman stayed with Nolan until they were out of earshot.

“You sure you want to do part two?” Batman asked him. “Because I don’t mind going back out there tonight. I can take a quick squirt, drink a cup of coffee, and be good to go in no time.”

Nolan shook his head. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “But, I have to do this myself.”

Of them all, Batman best understood what Nolan was going through. Because they had been officers back in the SOF days, they were closest kindred spirits. Though they had never talked deeply about anything since Whiskey reunited, Batman was pretty sharp. He could see the torment in Nolan’s eyes.

“OK,” he finally told Nolan. “The Senegals are refueling the copter and it’s working like a charm. You still got about three hours of darkness left; should be plenty of time. Just keep your wits about you. It’s like flying around another planet out there.”

Nolan let out a long slow breath. “OK—I’ll go wake Twitch and get the show on the road.”

They shook hands, and Nolan eyed some of the titles of the DVDs Batman was carrying.

“ ‘
Tokyo Cheerleaders Part 6
?’ ‘
Bangkok Booty Part 23
?’ What’s with this stuff?”

Batman shrugged.

“Research,” he said.

NOLAN WALKED FORWARD
to Twitch’s cabin, finding him already awake and sitting on the edge of his bunk.

A small plastic bag containing several red onions hung from his doorway.

“What’s this?” Nolan asked him.

Twitch just shook his head. “Crash hung it there about thirty seconds ago,” he replied, his voice raspy and barely above a whisper. “Keeps the bad spirits away. I guess he thought he was doing me a favor.”

Nolan came in and sat in a chair across from Twitch. It had been twenty-four hours since they’d rescued him from his long, strange intelligence-gathering mission. While he looked slightly better, it appeared he needed a couple of weeks to recuperate. Or maybe a couple months.

“How about you?” Nolan asked him. “Are you sure about this?”

Twitch shrugged. “It has to be done,” he said, softly. “And I’m the only one who can do it. The memories are slowly coming back in bits and pieces. . . .”

He let his voice trail off, and at that moment, Nolan realized he and Twitch weren’t that different, at least when it came to having issues with toys in the attic. Both suffered from what might be called acute separation anxiety—separation from their life before their Delta careers came to such a tragic end.

Twitch spoke again. “Look at it this way,” he said, once more barely whispering. “If I was still in Delta and this mission had to be run, I’d run the mission.”

Nolan shifted nervously in the chair. “Me, too,” he said.

Twitch got to his feet, still a little unsteady. “Then let’s go,” he said.

They made their way up to the ship’s makeshift ready room. Here they climbed into their combat suits—black camos, jump boots, and a belt and holster for their Glock 9s, all courtesy of the hidden Rubber Room.

Their flight helmets were as elaborate as any fighter pilot’s. They had universal communications capability, meaning the wearer could make calls on the radio, on a sat phone, or even on a plain old cell phone without having to take his hands off the aircraft controls. They also had built-in night-vision goggles, and in Nolan’s case, an elongated scope that fit over his good eye. Both took M4 assault rifles from the weapons locker as well. Nolan also had a good luck charm with him: his old keychain, which had a device that would beep in response to a wolf whistle as an easy way to find it. He’d carried it with him every day since joining Delta.

They climbed up to the copter platform. Two of the Senegals had refueled the tiny aircraft and had attached a 50-caliber machine-gun pod and a spool of ammunition to a hard point on the left-side undercarriage. They’d also hooked an extra fuel tank on the right side for balance and backup, and had reattached the doors in case the copter had to fly at high altitude. With all this done, the little aircraft was ready to go.

Nolan climbed in behind the controls, started the engine and felt a wave of anxiety wash over him. This was the moment of truth, the moment he’d been dreading. His father had owned a Cessna 210 and had taught him the basics of flying when he was just in his teens. Later on, the Army had trained him in rotary aircraft as a prelude to joining Delta Force. So Nolan knew how to fly. But he’d yet to do it in combat with only one eye. And while he’d taken a couple of test flights in the work copter during their mad dash to Indonesia, this would be his first night flight as a cyclops. Overall, a scary situation.

He was forcing this test of will on himself, dangerously facing his fear, just to prove that he wasn’t
that
over the hill—or around the bend. If he was going to lead the rejuvenated
Team Whiskey with any kind of effectiveness, he had to successfully complete this mission. But his hands were shaking so much, he was sitting on them just so Twitch and the Senegals wouldn’t see.

It was now 0300 hours. The wind started kicking up, and the ever-present mist began swirling around the DUS-7. Nolan did a check of his instrument panel; everything looked green. The two Senegals walked around the copter one last time and then gave him the thumbs up.

He adjusted his special night-vision attachment, a gift from Kilos before they’d left Aden. It was a detachable spyglass that worked just like a standard pair of night-vision goggles, except just for one eye. It fit into his helmet’s visor, and just by tapping it, he could zoom in, zoom out, or go wide angle. Like all night-vision apparatus, it gave the world an eerie emerald glow.

He did one last check of the controls; everything was still looking good. He glanced over at his passenger, and that’s when he noticed Twitch was holding his empty Coke bottle. Nolan started to ask him about it, but then changed his mind.

“Strap in tight,” he told Twitch instead. “This might get bumpy.”

They lifted off, shaky at first, but somehow Nolan got them airborne.

But no sooner had they cleared the ship when suddenly a swirl of crumpled dollar bills began flying around the cockpit, blinding them. Nolan quickly lost the horizon and the copter began to fall. He pulled up on the collective, increased power and swatted the bills out of his way, clearing his vision again. The next thing he knew, they’d broken through the mist and were up and over the island’s tree line, heading east.

But Nolan was instantly soaked in sweat, heart pounding, hands shaking, his equilibrium again thrown out of whack. He found himself praying that some warning light would pop up on the control panel, just to give him an excuse to return to the ship. But the entire panel remained green.

This was such a foolish thing to do, he thought. He wasn’t
in any shape to fly a helicopter, day or night. Not in his condition.

Then he felt Twitch’s hand touch his right arm. He had the cap off his Coke bottle and was spilling the air from it onto Nolan.

“You’re doing just fine, sir,” Twitch said to him, his voice low, despite the sound of the copter’s spinning rotor blades. “It’s a great night for flying.”

And just like that, Nolan’s fears drained away.

NOLAN HAD SERVED
in dozens of locations around the world since joining the military. He’d seen some fairly exotic places, especially with Delta Force, but he’d never seen anything like the nightscape spread before them now. In this part of Indonesia, nicknamed the Talua Tangs, hundreds of islands stretched out as far as his nightscope allowed him to see, glistening as if floating atop an emerald sea and illuminated by a bright half moon.

Batman had been right; it was otherworldly. If the entire Earth were made up of only islands and water, it would look like this.

The largest island within his field of view was no bigger than half a mile around. Some were smaller than a football field. Yet more than two-thirds of these islands had lights visible, indicating
someone
was living on them. Off in the distance, as always, was the green-yellow glow of Singapore.