The Pirate Hunters (36 page)

Nolan took a swing at him—but Batman caught his arm before he could deliver the blow. Nolan struggled, but only briefly. Punching the ONI agent wouldn’t be good for anyone at this moment. He was furious, though, but not for the reason the others were probably thinking. Hush had hit him where it hurt and, for a split second, Nolan had actually considered telling him yes. For a split second he’d actually considered taking the payoff, just for a chance to go home.

But then he surprised himself again.

“Get fucked,” he told the agent, as Batman and Crash held him back. “You didn’t see what we saw after Zeek got through with those innocent people on Sumhai Island. You didn’t see what he’s done to people on these ships he’s hijacked. Or the kinds of lives people were living under his little dictatorship. So you guys go get fucked and tell Sunny Hi he should fuck himself, too.”

Nolan disentangled himself from the others and walked away.

“It’s your choice, Nolan,” Hush called after him, his voice a little shaky. “But just remember, orders go out, and the people who see them through don’t necessarily know all the details. So, we can’t be responsible for what happens next.”

Nolan called over his shoulder: “Neither can we . . .”

Indonesia

ZEEK THE PIRATE
died the night his headquarters was bombed.

He was shot, blown up and drowned during the surprise assault—but not before leading his men bravely against the mysterious, well-equipped and overwhelming enemy.

Zeek rose from the dead the next day, greeting the handful of his men who’d survived the sneak attack by fleeing into the jungle. Zeek was alive: They saw him, touched him. It was a miracle.

Or at least that’s the story he’d ordered those surviving minions to spread throughout the Talua Tangs.

The reality was a lot less miraculous. Zeek had escaped the attack on his headquarters that night, not by divine intervention, but for two completely earthly reasons: One, he’d had the foresight, when he built his concrete HQ, to add a tiny bomb shelter beneath it. And two, a trio of his bodyguards, trapped in the shelter with him, had taken turns holding his head above water after the shelter flooded.

The real miracle was that Zeek’s bomb shelter had held together at all. It had been built to withstand a blast from a hand grenade or an RPG, the biggest weapons a typical Indonesian pirate trafficked in. (It was actually intended as an anti-assassination safe room.) It was not designed to take a direct hit from a 200-pound bomb, homemade or not.

But it did.

Still, it wasn’t exactly watertight. Even before the island’s attackers had flown away, the shelter began filling up with water from the nearby lagoon. Trapped and unable to get out because of the tons of rubble over his head, Zeek ordered his men to take turns holding him up, allowing him to breathe from the small air space remaining at the top of the submerged shelter, while they held their breath until their lungs nearly burst. They followed his orders, terrified and in complete
darkness, for more than twelve hours. In the end, all three died of exhaustion.

Lucky for Zeek, just minutes before the third one expired, the Indonesian military arrived to raze the camp. Hearing Zeek’s screams, they dug him out of the watery grave, leaving behind the bodies of his three saviors and his similarly dressed body double in the rubble.

Zeek was lucky again that the local Indonesian military commander decided to remain his ally, but only because Zeek fulfilled the promise to give him 3,000 hits of Ecstasy, which could be sold for pure profit. So instead of putting him in jail, the military made arrangements for Zeek to recuperate at a private hospital outside Jakarta. He was released two weeks later, fit and trim, and determined to make good on his long-time desire to move his operations to East Africa, cash in on the easy pickings off the coast of Somalia, and renew his war of vengeance against his brother’s murderers, Kilos Shipping.

But to do all that, he needed a boat.

Jacca Naval Base

ZEEK HAD NEVER
owned a boat before.

He’d stolen many, hijacked many, killed for many. But in all cases, because he didn’t want to leave any kind of paper trail for some overzealous law enforcement agency to pursue, he eventually sold them, flipped them or traded them for money or weapons.

He was a pirate of the high seas, yet he had no pirate ship of his own. Even the yacht blown up during the attack on his island headquarters and the one used two nights before had been on loan to him.

But things change.

He had a number of specific requirements in a pirate vessel. It needed room for at least one helicopter. It needed room for his new pirate army, made up mostly of ex-convicts and maritime riff-raff now in the employ of the Shanghai crime syndicates. It needed space for weapons and ammunition. It also
needed a lifeboat, and that boat itself would have to carry a lifeboat of its own.

Plus, the ship had to have the many comforts Zeek felt entitled to while riding the seas: at least one hot tub, a big-screen TV, a bar and a pool. In other words, what Zeek needed was not so much a yacht that had some military faculties, but a military vessel that had some high-end amenities.

Enter Prince Seeudek. A third cousin of the Indonesian president’s wife, he was extremely wealthy and very shady. Better known as the Playboy of Java, he’d bought a Type 352 German-built Ensdorf minesweeper several years before and had it converted to a pleasure craft while still keeping it listed as a ship of the Indonesian Navy. He’d handpicked his crew and gone off on his own military maneuvers, which usually involved sailing to and from the casinos at Monte Carlo. The 160-foot ship had room for weapons and helicopters, and also a hot tub, many large-screen TVs, a small interior pool, a game room and even a small dance club. It also had a lifeboat that, in turn, had its own lifeboat.

From the outside, the 352 looked exactly like a naval vessel. Inside, it looked like a boat even an oil-rich Saudi prince would envy.

The vessel wound up in the Zeek’s hands shortly before his two-week recuperation was complete. Several Chinese businessmen visited Prince Seeudek in his Jakarta penthouse one afternoon and beat him to within an inch of his life. The next day, from his hospital bed, the Prince resigned as commander of the 352 and designated an obscure ethnic Chinese officer in the Indonesian Navy to be its new captain.

That officer’s uncle was Sunny Hi, the Godfather of Shanghai.

ZEEK, HIS TWO
remaining bodyguards and his new pirate band boarded their new vessel at the Indonesian Navy base at Jacca Bay—though not all at once.

It was midnight, and at Zeek’s request, the lights on the southern end of the small naval base had been dimmed. Zeek and his bodyguards arrived at the dock in a black SUV with
tinted windows, and they were quickly put aboard a motor launch usually reserved for high naval officers. It ferried them out to the 352, waiting at anchor a half mile offshore.

At the same time, Zeek’s new army was belowdecks aboard a nearby Indonesian supply ship. They’d been waiting there since early afternoon, but were under orders to stay put until Zeek himself was aboard his new ship. Only then were they ferried over as well.

After that, a third vessel arrived next to the 352 and unloaded all of Zeek’s new weapons and ammunition—bought on the Russian black market—plus his money and personal belongings. A brand-new helicopter gunship was also put aboard, along with a highly trained four-man Malaysian crew.

Zeek was just forty-eight hours out of the hospital at this point, but feeling fine. He’d spent the past two days at a luxury retreat on the nearby island of Kupang, looking into the backgrounds of those people who’d come so close to killing him. Thanks to a source inside the Chinese intelligence services, Zeek had learned his mystery attackers were American mercenaries, hired guns in the employ of Kilos Shipping. They were the same people who had killed his brother Turk—the same people against whom Zeek had sworn revenge. The same people who prompted him to order the murder of the three ship crews in Singapore.

The same people who, since the attack on his HQ, had been giving him nightmares.

Now Zeek knew who they were, knew their backgrounds, knew how to get to them. Eventually, he would deal with them as well.

But his biggest concern now was getting out of Indonesia—before someone tried to kill him again.

Port of Aden

THE DUS-7 WAS
ready to sail by 1300 hours.

All the repairs were complete, all the weapons and ammunition loaded aboard. Its fuel tanks were filled, its gas turbine refitted and calibrated. The work copter was working again.

The only problem: Team Whiskey had no idea where Zeek was. Bebe’s information said he’d purchased a quasi-military vessel and that he was sailing to Somalia and linking up with a band of Somali pirates similar to those his brother Turk had worked with before his death. So he was definitely heading west.

The shipping lanes between Asia and East Africa were like a superhighway, with hundreds of ships going back and forth between the continents every day. But it was an area encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles, enough to make the biggest ship seem small. Blindly searching for and finding Zeek in such a huge area would be almost impossible.

Still, the team’s plan was to rush the DUS-7 deep into the shipping lanes and simply start looking for this unusual ship that Zeek had acquired. They knew it was an inefficient way of searching for the notorious pirate. But they couldn’t just sit in Aden, waiting for further news on him that might never come.

They had to go hunting for him.

NOT FIVE MINUTES
before they were to cast off from the Kilos berth, though, Conley appeared on the dock. He knew what Whiskey planned to do, and was well aware of what havoc a resurrected Zeek could cause along the East African coastline.

And as it turned out, Conley was bearing two last-minute gifts for them: a small laptop and a plain wooden box. They had a quick huddle with him on the bridge.

“Good news,” Conley told the team. “We’ve just been informed that Zeek’s new ship has a maritime locator in it. A sort of miniature black box for ships. I don’t think Zeek even knows about it.”

“You’re saying there’s a ‘chip in his ship?’ ” Nolan asked.

Conley nodded. “Exactly. Every Indonesian military ship has one built in, so they can be tracked by satellite.”

“But we don’t have a satellite,” Crash said.

Conley passed the small laptop to them. “You do now.”

Nolan turned the laptop on and was surprised to see a decrypted home page belonging to the Russian intelligence service pop up. A few keystrokes revealed that the page was connected to the Russian military’s satellite system.

“With that, you can track the chip in Zeek’s ship,” Conley told them.

“But where did all this suddenly come from?” Batman asked Conley in amazement. “The news on the chip and this laptop? Is it something Stevenson and Squire left behind?”

“No—actually, it all just arrived here via special courier,” Conley replied, showing them a large packing envelope with a no-name return address in Moscow. “I can’t imagine who sent it,” he added drolly.

Batman gave Nolan a hearty slap on the back.

“Wow, Snake,” he said. “You have a godfather, too.”

Conley gave them the second present: the wooden box. Inside was a very special artillery shell called a Copperhead.

“This one’s from me,” he told them. “You can actually guide this thing to a target, just like a smart weapon. The instructions are in the box. It might come in handy at some point. But use it wisely. They don’t make them anymore. In fact, this might be the last one in existence.”

THE
DUSTBOAT
SAILED
all that day and into the night, heading southeast into the heart of the Indian Ocean sea-lanes.

The team spent the time making sure all the new equipment worked and that the ship’s repairs were holding. They’d also wired the Russian laptop into their navigation system and begun monitoring satellite photos of the sea-lanes between
Indonesia and Africa. The whole chip-in-the-ship process was extremely simple. Once the vessel in question passed beneath the satellite, the satellite would acknowledge it and give it an electronic mark. This mark would then allow anyone with a slaved-in GPS device to keep tabs on the target ship even after the satellite had passed overhead.

The important thing was to get that mark.

But what would happen then? The team knew that, despite their new weaponry and their partial disguise as a rust-bucket freighter, they would be at a huge disadvantage going up against Zeek’s new boat.

Nolan had Googled the type of ship Bebe said Zeek had bought and, while a Type 357 Ensdorf was officially considered a minesweeper, it actually carried a wide array of weapons. It had a five-inch gun on its forward deck, a fierce naval cannon that could tear into the DUS-7 with ease. It was also equipped with ship-to-ship missiles, another weapon that could fold the
Dustboat
like a tin can. Type 352s usually came equipped with an armed helicopter and many mounted machine guns. And according to Bebe’s information, the ship was also carrying a small army of pirates Zeek had recruited for his move west.

Team Whiskey also knew they could expect no outside assistance in stopping Zeek. Agent Hush’s visit had made it clear the U.S. Navy wasn’t going to help. And contacting the NATO anti-piracy patrols would do them no good, because Zeek had yet to do anything wrong, piracy-wise, in their eyes. Plus, Zeek’s connections to the Indonesian military establishment, and apparently to Chinese organized-crime lords, would most likely get him off even if NATO or any other anti-piracy forces actually did intervene.

So, it was up to Whiskey to stop Zeek on their own.

Again.

BY MIDNIGHT, THE
team found themselves in the galley, once again drinking endless cups of coffee, anxious for something,
anything
, to happen.