WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller (15 page)

He didn’t know, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter either; all that mattered was that the situation was changing, and things would have to happen fast on the American side if they were to have any hope of resolving the situation.

Cole suspected he knew the reason for moving the hostages back aboard the cargo ship – if the hideout was attacked, Suprapto would set sail with the boat and threaten to sink it and kill the crew unless the assault force withdrew.

Cole had reported all of this back to JSOC, and had been pleasantly surprised by the speed of the response; not a full hour had passed before Cooper was back informing Cole that the mission had been given the presidential green light.

Cooper wanted Cole to remain in position and help guide the team in. Apparently there would be a squad from DEVGRU, Cole’s own old unit, who would insert on inflatable boats up the riverine channel the same way Cole had. Once close enough they would swim underwater and enter the docks, several of their number gaining access to the ship through the steel hull, from where they would secure the hostages and re-take the hijacked vessel.

At a certain point after this initial action, other team members would emerge from the cave’s waters and take out the pirates and secure the hideout.

The Night Stalkers were still en route, but due to the limited time frame it had been decided to launch the rescue without air support. The location of the hideout precluded close naval support too, and there was no way that the Ranger battalion was going to be on-site in time.

Cole had been amazed, but impressed; air, naval and ground support was always nice, but it was
the icing on the cake. The warriors of SEAL Team Six were trained to do things without support of any kind, and were good enough to succeed without it, too. But normally, politicians were wary of sending in men without backup, just in case things went wrong and there were congressional hearings to deal with as a result.

But, he remembered, Ellen Abrams was one tough bitch; if she wanted DEVGRU to go in now, then that’s what would happen.

Cole just hoped he would be able to help.

6

Jake Navarone slipped into the slow-moving, warm waters of the riverine channel which cut through the small island; the unnamed island which held the pirates, the hostages, and the Fu Yu Shan.

Tag Johnson deflated the boat and swam down to secure it underwater, marking the spot which a small electronic buoy in case they needed to return to it later.

Navarone and Johnson and ten more men submerged themselves and swam for the cavern entrance, using Draeger rebreathable tanks which recirculated the air and therefore didn’t leave any bubbles.

Another troop would be approaching from the other side, and anoth
er was infiltrating overland. A fourth element, an ad-hoc group made up of men from the normal three troops and led by Ike Treyborne, was stationed on the opposite bank to provide reconnaissance and covering fire, plus reinforcements if needed. It was planned that Treyborne and whoever had been providing on-site intel would link up, but Navarone didn’t know whether that had happened or not; he had his own tasks to concern himself with.

The water was dark and murky, but Navarone didn’t have to see further than his low-light compass to know
where he was going, and the twelve men of Red Squadron’s Bravo Troop made steady progress towards the cave.

He couldn’t put his finger on why, but Arief Suprapto had a bad feeling. A
very
bad feeling. And as a man who always trusted his instincts, he decided to act sooner rather than later.

He had put the crew back on board the Fu Yu Shan as a precautionary measure, knowing that Chinese or US forces would be extremely unlikely to attack the vessel with hostages
onboard, and was prepared to make sail in the vessel at a moment’s notice. The engines were up and running, it was fully fuelled, and crewed by his own men.

But he still wasn’t happy, and got on his radio to Panggabean, asking for Captain Yang
Yaobang to be brought to him immediately.

And then he went to make sure that his beloved
Liang Dao Ming
was ready and waiting for him.

Cole waited patiently in the thick, dense underbrush, his eyes never leaving the pirate cave across the river from him.

The Fu Yu Shan hadn’t set sail, but the engines were on, and it looked like it had a full complement of crew members.
Cole was feeding information back to JSOC on a regular basis, who in turn were briefing the SEAL squadron in real-time. He had already described the dispositions and armaments of the pirate gang, and knew his hidden cameras were also providing much needed information.

He checked his watch – 0150, just minutes before all hell would break loose.

He was expecting the command and control SEAL troop to be here any second, ready to set up shop and provide fire support for the assault elements. He would hand over all of his equipment, and let them run the show.

He’d done enough.

But then he saw a man being dragged off the Fu Yu Shan, and brought to the pirate he’d previously identified as probably being Arief Suprapto, who stood on the dockside.

And then he watched in disbelief as first the hostage, and then Suprapto himself, were lowered down into another vessel, hidden in the water between the dock pilings. Cole
zoomed his night-vision binoculars in as far as they would go, and confirmed his fears.

It was a mini-submarine.

How the hell had he missed it?

In an instant, he considered his options – notify JSOC and let them make the decision; wait for the SEAL troop to arrive and explain the situation to its commander, and let them handle it; or option number three.

As the mini-sub’s hatches were closed and it sank beneath the calm waters of the cavern, Cole decided in a heartbeat on option three.

Jump in the river and follow the damn thing himself.

‘Where in the hell is he?’ Ik
e Treyborne asked as his group came across the site that had been used by the recon operative. All of his things seemed to still be there, but no sign of the man himself.

Maybe he’d heard them coming and had decided to make himself scarce? Maybe he didn’t want to be identified, even by DEVGRU?

But then Treyborne’s earpiece cackled to life, his direct line to JSOC. ‘Our asset has identified a small submersible leaving the dock,’ came the voice of Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, ‘possibly containing one hostage and Arief Suprapto, the pirate leader.’

Damn!
Treyborne wondered how he’d known they were coming.

‘He’s pursuing the submersible himself, so as not to interfere with the planned operation,’ Cooper advised him. ‘You are therefore to continue as planned.’

‘Yes sir,’ Treyborne said as he looked at his watch, checking down the line to verify that his men had strung themselves out in proper formation. It was 0159, and his SEALs had their weapons trained on the pirate hideout. Next to them, two liaison officers from China’s Special Operations Command scanned the opposite bank and reported back to their own commander, who had based himself at Sembawang.

Treyborne wished the unknown agent luck with the submarine, but he had his own job to do.

And there was just one minute left until it began.

Cole had managed to strap on his SCUBA gear and was in hot pursuit of the mini-sub as it accelerated slowly away down the channel towards the river-mouth and the open water beyond.

The vehicle was easy to follow, the pilot using lights to illuminate the dark waters ahead. Cole wondered what the SEAL troop coming this way up the river would think.

Cole swam as quickly as he could; the sub was going slowly for now, Suprapto being careful in the narrow channel, but as soon as it left the mouth of the river and entered the
open water, it would be able to disappear instantly.

Cole recognized the model as a Triton two-man submersible, primarily designed for use by the owners of luxurious super-yachts. The two adjacent seats were entirely exposed by a large Plexiglas bubble, situated in a bright yellow horse-shoe. It had a top speed of only three knots, but that would be more than enough to lose a lone swimmer if it opened up.

They were getting close to the river mouth now, and Cole knew he would have to make his move soon or risk losing them forever.

He felt reverberations through the water then, and realized that DEVGRU’s assault had begun in earnest. Cole knew
that they would rescue the ten hostages aboard the Fu Yu Shan.

Cole
grimaced as he increased speed; he would just have to make damn sure that he rescued the eleventh.

The assault on the Fu Yu Shan went so smoothly that Jake Navarone was immensely grateful for the hours of rehearsal they’d put in. The fact was that – compared to the highly-trained SEALs of Team Four who’d been playing the enemy back in Subic Bay – the pirate gang was no match for them.

They were fine as long as they were attacking unsuspecting vessels which couldn’t defend themselves, but when it came time to fac
e real professionals, they folded instantly.

Navarone and his men had inserted into the boat via the anchor’s hawse hole, and a concealed rear access point which had been identified from plans sent to them by the Tsing Tao Shipping Line. They had subsequently gained access to the ship completely undetected, and – once they were all in position – the assault had commenced.

Their suppressed weapons had taken the pirates out in the blink of eye, and the ship and the hostages were completely secured in under a minute from the first shot being fired. With control of the ship secured, Navarone made the call to the other assault elements to proceed, and the noise of gunfire and explosions rang out only seconds later.

In less than four minutes, Navarone heard the words of Alpha Troop commander Bill Hoggs come through over his earpiece. ‘Sector One secure,’ the experienced SEAL announced to Navarone’s relief, followed soon after by Charlie Troop commander Nelson Iboria’s affirmation that Sector Two was also secure.

‘Affirmative,’ Treyborne confirmed over the radio. ‘Location is secure, and we are ready for phase two.’

Navarone smiled, glad that they had been able to take over the hideout so quickly, but knowing that it was down to hard work, training, and professionalism. The pirates had never even had a chance to use their radar or defensive weaponry, and Navarone was glad that they had not waited for support; sometimes missions were better off with as few elements involved as possible, as it minimized the amount of things that could go wrong.

But now, as Commander Treyborne had announced, it was time for Phase Two; checking that the base was entirely secure, and then inviting everyone else to join the party.

7

Suprapto was disheartened, but pleased with himself nevertheless. The ripples through the water could only be from explosions, which meant that his base was under attack, just as his gut had told him.

How he had known, he had no idea; but he was inordinately glad he had taken Captain Yang into the submersible when he did. With the most important hostage still safe, there was still a chance for negotiation. And if Reza managed to get the Fu Yu Shan moving, all was not lost; not yet.

He smiled as his powerful lights showed the mouth of the river opening up ahead. He would soon reach open water, and be safe.

But then he felt the mini-sub lose speed, as if it had caught on something. Was it dragging something?

He tried to look around out of the clear Plexiglas cockpit, and then his heart stopped dead as he saw the masked face peering in at him from the dark waters.

Cole had reached the submersible just a few hundred yards from open water and now gripped hold of the bright yellow sides and pulled himself up to the cockpit bubble, his masked face appearing from the gloom.

He saw a man dressed in a ship captain’s uniform in one of the seats, gagged and restrained; presumably Captain Yang
Yaobang of the Fu Yu Shan. In the other, his mouth wide in shock, was the pirate king himself, Arief Suprapto. The man’s hair was Samson-like in its extraordinary length, his ears and eyebrows adorned with golden rings, and Cole could see tattoos covering the muscular body which lay underneath his camouflage combat vest.

And then the look of shock was replaced by one of indignant rage, and Cole watched as Suprapto pulled a Colt .45 from his thigh holster and placed the barrel against Yang’s head, shouting at Cole through the bubble.

Cole couldn’t hear him, but the meaning was clear enough; get off the submersible, or Yang would be killed.

But rather than heed the warning, Cole shrugged his shoulders and held something up to the Plexiglas bubble, close eno
ugh so that Suprapto would make no mistake about what it was.

A thermal grenade.

Cole then made a big show of magnetically attaching it to the hull of the Triton submersible, showing Suprapto his empty hands.

To the pirate king’s fury, Cole then held up three fingers and swam away into the murky depths.

Three minutes until the thermal grenade exploded, and the mini-sub was blown out of the water.

There was only one choice that Suprapto could possibly make.

Arie
f Suprapto was enraged. What had that lunatic done? Did he
want
to kill the captain? Did he not
care
if the hostage lived or died? What sort of man was this?

And now he was swimming
away, brooking no further negotiation, so confident was he that Suprapto would have to land the mini-sub, pop the hatch and escape before the grenade blew.

And the kicker was that this man was right; that is exactly what he would have to do. His pride was great, but his desire to survive to fight another day was greater yet.

As the counter timed down, Suprapto turned the mini-sub and piloted it straight for the south bank.

Cole watched and waited as the Triton two-man submersible rose to the surface, racing south until it collided with the muddy riverbank, beaching itself.

The huge Plexiglas
dome popped open moments later, just as Cole made it to shore himself.

Cole raced towards the beached
submarine, kicking off his flippers, stripping away his SCUBA gear, and pulling a stainless steel SIG Sauer 10mm from a shoulder holster as he ran.

He had the handgun up and aimed as he neared the sub, its yellow paint – now covered in mud – reflected eerily in the moonlight. He looked around, trying to trace the pirate and his hostage.

In the light from the moon and stars, Cole saw the tracks leading through the thick mud. Suprapto was already well away from the vessel, dragging Captain Yang by his hair into the jungle.

Cole fired a shot into the air, and Suprapto stopped in his tracks. He could have shot the man, but it was important that he be kept alive – if possible – for questioning.

An explosion rocked the shore, the thermal grenade exploding and blasting the Triton submersible into a million pieces.

Flames licked at the edge of Cole’s vision, illuminating the scene in front of him as Suprapto pulled Yang towards him, arm around his neck as his Colt .45 was once again aimed at the captain’s head.

The fire played over Suprapto’s savage face, flickering in his reptilian eyes. The pirate king’s tongue flicked out, licking his lips.

‘Let me go,’ he said in broken English. ‘Let me go, or else you have to explain why captain has no head, eh?’

Cole kept his aim steady. ‘I don’t really have to explain myself to anybody,’ Cole said, his voice as steady as his gun.

A shot rang out and Suprapto’s body was wrenched violently backwards, the Colt flying from his hand. He dropped to his knees, blood spurting from the gunshot wounds in his arm, Cole’s single shot penetrating both the forearm and the bicep.

Captain Yang staggered back, eyes wide with shock at how close he had come to death.

Cole moved toward the injured pirate,
who held his arm in agony as he stared at Cole with burning hatred, flames still flickering across his blood-spattered face.

Cole kicked the man onto his back, stepping down with his boot onto Suprapto’s bicep, the damaged bone fracturing under the pressure, and placed the barrel of his gun between the pirate’s eyes.

‘Now let’s talk,’ he said with a smile.

‘We’re just missing the captain, sir,’ Navarone explained to Commander Treyborne as they stood on the cargo ship’s main deck. ‘Yang Yaobang.’

The hostages were
walking freely around the dockside now, trying to get some life back into their unbound limbs and some sense back into their terror-riddled minds.

Ted Grant, a shooter
from Alpha Troop who was also a trained psychologist, had set aside some space on the bridge to talk to the hostages, and was holding conference in the semi-private room.

The
bodies of the dead pirates had been collected and placed in rows to be examined, and the few remaining survivors were corralled in the rock pen where the Fu Yu Shan’s crew had recently been staying.

‘I know,’ Treyborne replied. ‘Our contact saw that Suprapto was making off with him in
a damn freakin’ mini-sub, and took off after them. I don’t –’

‘Hold it!’

Navarone heard the call from the cavern entrance, and he and Treyborne raced over to the rear of the ship to find out what was happening.

Navarone saw an athletically-built man carrying a blood-stained ha
lf-naked pirate across his back, a man in a captain’s uniform limping along behind them.

The SEAL who
had his gun pointed at the men listened to the athletic man speak, and nodded his head in understanding, turning back to look up at the deck of the Fu Yu Shan.

‘Sir!’ he called up. ‘It’s the Asset! He’s got Captain Yang with him, and Suprapto!’

Treyborne grinned. ‘I’ll be right down!’ he said happily.

Cole remembered Ike Treyborne. They had served together in SEAL Team Six, back when they had both been lieutenants. He’d been a good man, and Cole was delighted to see that he was still operational, despite his rank.

But even though Cole recognized Treyborne, it was unlikely that the commander of Red Squadron would recognize him; he’d changed considerably through plastic surgery since his days as Mark Kowalski.

‘So you’re the Asset?’ Treyborne asked with a smile as he met Cole by the dockside. Cole nodded, and Treyborne extended his hand, pumping it furiously. ‘Well, I gotta tell you, I’m damned glad you were here. You did an amazing job. Really, I mean it.’ Still shaking Cole’s hand, his eyes narrowed. ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked.

‘It’s possible,’ Cole said noncommittally. ‘I’ve been around.’

Treyborne laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have.’ He looked down at the body of Arief Suprapto, unmoving on the dock. ‘Is he –‘

‘Dead?’
Cole finished, then nodded his head. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Captain Yang’ – he gestured behind him at the dazed Chinese captain, whose eyes were still staring off into the distance – ‘got a bit carried away, picked up Suprapto’s Colt .45 when I was questioning him and blew a hole in his chest. Guess he had a lot of built-up frustration.’

Treyborne laughed again, Cole’s deadpan humor overcoming the disappointment. ‘You said you questioned him?’ he asked hopefully, as Captain Yang was led away by one of his men.

‘I did,’ Cole replied seriously. ‘And I think we need to talk.’

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Treyborne said as he listened to Cole’s debrief. ‘So what does it all mean?’

Cole had managed to convince Suprapto to tell him everything – or at least as much as he was able to tell him before Captain Yang had gone and put a .45 slug in his heart.

It had been the Korean agents back in Jakarta which had made Cole so determined to get answers. Why were they interested? What was their part in all this?

It hadn’t taken long for Suprapto to admit that the hijacking wasn’t opportunistic; he had been hired specifically to target that particular vessel. Cole learnt that Liang Kebangkitan had been hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the Fu Yu Shan, earning the princely sum of twenty million US dollars for one small crate.

Suprapto didn’t know what was in the crate, and Cole believed him; he had merely travelled to the mainland and handed over the wooden box to his JI contact, Umar Shibab, who had put it in his jeep and driven off. For some reason, Suprapto suspected he had been planning on flying it out somewhere else, but didn’t know why he’d thought that; perhaps something the man had said.

What Suprapto
did
know was that there had been two highly trained men on the ship who had tried to defend the cargo; and when the pirate leader had quizzed the captain about them, it transpired that they had joined the crew at Dalian – the same port where the crate had been taken on board.

Cole knew the port of Dalian – it was
right next to North Korea.

‘I think our best possible guess,’ Cole answered Treyborne, ‘is that North Korea was trying to smuggle something out of the country and into Karachi, possibly for use nearby, or else for further transportation elsewhere. And Jemaah Islamiyah – or one of the larger, better funded groups behind it – got wind of what it was, and decided it wanted it for itself. So they hired these pirates and took control of the crate.’

‘And we think that inside the crate is…’

Cole nodded his head.
‘A weapon most likely, yes. What kind? I’ve got no idea. But obviously powerful enough to be worth all this effort, as well as twenty million US dollars.’

Treyborne breathed out slowly. ‘Nuclear?’ He watched as Cole shrugged his shoulders, and his own slumped. ‘Ah, shit. So this thing’s far from over, I guess.’ He bowed his head as he thought. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I guess we better tell the president.’