The Pirate Hunters (41 page)

It came at first as a low noise in the night. A drone, splitting the silence. Mechanical, powerful. Coming from the south.

It was a helicopter—a big one.

A moment later, it went over the town, an SA-321G Super Frelon heavy-lift copter. Unmarked, painted dark foreboding gray, it was flying low and fast.

It turned north over the harbor, making a lot of noise and gradually slowing down. The pirates on the seawall waved at it, and the people on the copter waved back. Everyone knew this was not law enforcement or a Seychelles military aircraft. This was what they’d been waiting for.

The copter continued its wide turn over the harbor. A man appeared in its open cargo door. There was a winch attached to it, and he was fastening a crate to the hook on the end of its rope. This box no doubt contained both the power knuckle needed to repair the ship’s engine and the shells needed to load the
Pasha
’s deck gun.

The copter slowed further. Li yelled to crewmen on the
Pasha
to illuminate the ship’s searchlight and guide the copter over to them so they could deliver the crate to the deck of the ship.

The crew complied, and the copter blinked its navigation lights in response. The men in the copter understood. The aircraft turned sharply out of its circle and headed for the pirate ship. For the first time since arriving on Calzino, Li actually relaxed. Because the helicopter had gotten here so quickly, he’d won his battle of time with the Whiskey Team. The advantage was now his.

Li lit a cigarette and waited. The copter passed over the cliff, going into its final turn—when suddenly there was a tremendous flash of light. It streaked through the darkness, over the harbor and hit not the helicopter, but the cliff just below it. The resultant explosion threw tons of rock into the air. This plume of debris shot straight up into the copter’s rotors, disintegrating them. The copter came down fast, crashing on the cliff with a sharp, violent explosion.

It all happened so quickly, Li was stunned. They all were. It wasn’t apparent at first what had occurred. Then Li realized the Whiskey Team guys had spotted the copter, deduced it was in league with the pirates and, knowing they probably couldn’t hit it with a shot from the howitzer, did the next best thing: They fired a high-explosive shell at the cliff. The debris, in turn, downed the chopper.

Li was devastated.

“Now we’re
all
stuck here,” he groaned.

WATCHING THIS FROM
the penthouse window, Zeek was instantly furious.

He made his way down to the street, pushing aside anyone who got in his way. He had a heated conversation with Li, and against his
capo
’s advice, ordered his men to retrieve the last two surviving dive shop workers and stand them up on the seawall. He then ordered the
Pasha
’s searchlight be beamed on them, and when he knew the people on the freighter were watching, he ordered two of his men stand up on the wall with
the hostages, put their guns to their heads and blow their brains out.

Zeek laughed as the two men were executed, shaking his fist at the freighter. But just as quickly, the two pirates who’d performed the execution had their heads blown away in quick succession. They fell over just as promptly as the hostages, some of their blood splattering on Zeek’s shirt.

They’d been shot by a sniper rifle, fired from the freighter.

Li screamed to his men to take cover behind the seawall. Zeek instantly disappeared into the night. Someone yelled that they should look at the helicopter on the freighter. Its blades were turning!

Another shout said look up on the cliff. Two black men could be seen there, brutally stabbing Li’s spies. Their bodies were thrown off the cliff into the water below.

Shaken down to his boots that this had all happened so quickly, Li turned his night-vision goggles back toward the freighter, convinced the attack was coming at any second. And once again, he saw the one-eyed man in the blue combat suit standing on the bow, looking back at him.

But wait a minute
, Li thought.

Something was different here.

Wasn’t his patch over the other eye before?

THE FIVE REMAINING
hostages were being held in the penthouse.

They were the four American girls and the last employee from the bar, a young African waiter. The girls had never entirely stopped crying, now several hours into this nightmare. The young man was in shock. Zeek had violated all of them.

They’d been left with Zeek’s two remaining bodyguards, men who’d survived the attack on his island headquarters back in Indonesia by running into the jungle. Before going out to the street to preside over the ill-advised execution of the two dive shop employees, the Pirate King had given the bodyguards just one order: If the people on the freighter attacked, then one way or another, these hostages should not see the sun come up the next morning.

The bodyguards had smuggled a personal stash of Ecstasy aboard the
Pasha
, something forbidden by Commander Li. They had recently taken two hits apiece and, oblivious to what was happening on the street outside, were now stagger-ingly high. They’d been routinely molesting the girls, cutting pieces from their dresses with their razor-sharp knives just to hear them scream. But fueled by meth, coke and LSD, the pirates were soon raging with blood lust.

They had already gone through the hostages’ personal belongings. But now, keying in on the young man’s wallet, they found a picture of his mother.

The pirates punched each other in triumph. Their game could begin.

They took the picture of the man’s mother and attached it to the far wall of the dimly lit penthouse. Then they forced the man to the other end of the room, put him on his hands and knees and told him to retrieve the picture. But as the man began crawling toward it, he was struck on the back with a gun butt by one of the pirates. He fell heavily to the floor, but was urged on by the pirates to try again. The man began crawling again, only to be kicked in the teeth by the second pirate. Crying now, the man tried a third time to get to the picture, only to be stomped on his neck by both pirates. The girls watched horrified as the man bled heavily from his nose and mouth.

Still, he tried again. But just as he was reaching for the photo, both pirates hit him with their gun butts, delivering a crushing blow to the man’s spine. The man went into a violent convulsion, let out a bloody gasp and died, only inches from his mother’s picture.

The pirates dissolved into fits of laughter.

“I just can’t stop killing,” one pirate roared to the other. “It’s an addiction.”

The pirates picked up the dead man and threw him aside.

Then they turned their attention to the girls.

One was wearing a locket around her neck. Ripping it off her, the pirates found a picture of her grandmother inside. She fought them violently to get it back, but to no avail. They tacked it up on the wall just under the big plate glass window.

Then they threw her on the floor at the other end of the room and said: “Go get it.”

The girl started crawling, terrified and choking on her tears, knowing what was to come. She’d gone just a few feet when the first pirate raised his knife to slash her.

That’s when the girl looked up and saw, reflected in the picture window’s glass, a man incomprehensibly dressed in beachwear—Izod shirt, cargo shorts and designer sunglasses—but wearing a battle helmet and combat boots and holding an assault rifle with a bayonet attached to it. He was standing in the penthouse doorway.

Even more inexplicable, this man was smeared with tar—and feathers.

She looked right at him through the reflection and couldn’t help but think:
Where did he come from?
He made a simple movement with his hand and mouthed two words to her: “Stay down.”

She screamed and went flat on the floor. The pirate went to cut her—but then there were two shots. The pirate looked down at his chest and was astonished to see twin gushes of blood flowing out of him.

The whole room froze. No one said a word.

Then the pirate fell over, hitting the floor hard.

The other pirate was so shocked, he couldn’t move. The man in the beachwear simply walked up to him and plunged his bayonet into his back. The pirate opened his mouth to scream, but was prevented from doing so by the bayonet slicing across his throat. He fell over a moment later.

The girl on the floor started to scream again, but Snake Nolan put his hand over her mouth and whispered urgently to her: “You’re OK. We’re here to save you.”

TAR
.

It was on Nolan’s boots, on his hands, it was even in his hair.

The strange thing was—he also had feathers on him. Tarred and feathered.

Weird.

He’d done many forced marches during his days in Delta Force. He’d tramped across deserts, over mountain ranges, through jungles and swamps. Before that, he’d gone through some of the worst basic training imaginable. Crawling through pig guts with live ammunition flying over his head was just the beginning of those ordeals.

But he’d never been through what he’d experienced in the past half hour.

He, Crash and Twitch had just endured more than a mile forced run over the jagged rocks and tar pits that made up the impassable back end of Calzino Island. They’d been dropped off at a point on the far western side of the atoll by the dive boat, and while the pirates’ attention was drawn to the DUS-7 and what Nolan hoped they believed was an impending frontal attack on the town, he and the others came in through the back door, so to speak. It was Team Whiskey’s equivalent of Hannibal going over the Alps with elephants. They knew the only way to save the hostages was to come at the pirates from the direction they expected least.

And the people in the blue suits that the pirates had been watching? They were the American students who’d returned from scuba diving on the nearby exotic coral reefs. They were straw men. That’s why Nolan, Crash and Twitch now sported the latest in J. Crew summer wear.

But they knew only half the mission was done. To successfully rescue the hostages, they had to get out of the little town fast. And their escape route had to be the way they came in—over some of the roughest terrain any of them had ever experienced. The question was, could their hostages take it as well?

Nolan pushed his helmet’s visor up and tried to unstick his hand from his M4, but he couldn’t. Both his hands and the weapon’s stock were covered with tar.

Crash was with him; Twitch was watching the hotel’s rear entrance, keeping an eye on their escape route. They’d been in the town for three minutes, taking the students’ advice to look for the hostages in the penthouse first. But that was long enough. They had to get going.

Yet there was one more piece of business they wanted to attend to.

“Where’s the head creep?” Nolan asked the girls.

They knew right away who he meant.

“He left when the shooting started out on the street,” one girl said. “He never came back.”

“Son of a bitch,” Crash groaned. “I would have given anything to stick him.”

“Me, too,” said Nolan. “But that time’s coming soon enough.”

Nolan made his way to the picture window and, taking the laser designator from his pocket, blinked it three quick times toward the
Dustboat
. Almost instantly, a light near the M198 blinked three times in response.

“OK,” Nolan said. “Now for phase two.”

Just as the words were out of his mouth, they heard an enormous screech.

One of the M198 shells fired from the DUS-7’s howitzer streaked over their heads and landed somewhere in the back of the resort, in the forest of granite stones and tar pits. When it hit, the whole building shook.

No sooner had the noise of the first shell exploding faded away when another shell went overhead—then another and another. It was Gunner, pouring it on.

“I’m glad he’s on our side,” Crash said, hearing another shell go over.

Nolan checked his watch and then said, “Time to go.”

Crash went ahead to the hallway as Nolan started moving the girls out the penthouse door. But no sooner was he gone when Crash fell back into the room again.

“Freaking company,” he announced. “Coming our way.”

Everything just stopped and Nolan listened. In between the sounds of the howitzer shells going overhead, he could clearly hear footsteps rushing up the hotel’s front stairs.

Voices were calling out: “Boss—where are you?
Boss
?”

Nolan just looked at Crash and grimaced. It seemed the pirates didn’t know where Zeek was, either—and in light of the overhead bombardment, a lot of them rushed up here looking for him.

The pirates reached the top floor just as Crash locked the door to the penthouse. They were soon calling through the door for Zeek. Getting no response and knowing the hostages were in the penthouse, they tried opening the door, to no avail. Nolan put the four girls in the bathroom, telling them to get in the hot tub and to stay there no matter what.

As the pirates started to break down the door, another M198 shell went overhead and crashed in the rock forest behind the town. Nolan and Crash stood in the middle of the room and raised their weapons.

The door burst apart a moment later—splinters going everywhere. . . .

At least a dozen pirates were on the other side.

Nolan began to squeeze his trigger—Crash, too.

Then the lights went out.

Nolan fired first. With three rounds he shot the first three pirates through the door, killing them. One of them had a flare gun. It went off and sent a blinding, flaming missile streaking across the room, where it bounced off the plate glass window and right back into a fourth gunman’s chest, blowing it apart and lighting the man on fire. Three more pirates lunged ahead, blinded by the burning flare. Nolan jammed his bayonet into one of them and shot the other two, using one bullet for each.

Crash used the butt of his M4 to knock another pirate off his feet; his boot to the gunman’s throat crushed his larynx and killed him instantly. Nolan hit the floor, rolled to his left and fired his M4 point blank into a pirate’s armpit, blowing out the man’s rib cage. As this was going on, the pirates were firing wildly at them, but Nolan and Crash never stopped moving—that was the key. Bullets were flying everywhere, many of them tracer rounds. Nolan could hear them whizzing past his ears and feel their heat as they went by his face. None had hit him . . . at least not yet.