Operation Sea Ghost (21 page)

Batman began to sputter, but he had no good answer. The manager hit the “down” button and they were soon back in the casino lobby. The manager told them he’d been working double shifts for the past week and he’d never seen either of them until just a few minutes ago. When they tried to explain that they were always separated from the main lobby by workman’s equipment, he started to walk away in a huff.

Batman caught him by the arm and said: “OK—what about these?”

He and Twitch pulled out the platinum cards the Asian woman had given them when they first arrived at the penthouse; supposedly the cards gave them carte blanche at the casino.

But the manager just looked at them and laughed. “I don’t know what those things are,” he said. “But I can assure you they have no currency here.”

With that, he finally disentangled himself from Batman and walked away.

Two burly security men appeared a few moments later. They firmly escorted Batman and Twitch out the casino entrance and off the grounds.

Then they made it clear—in several languages—that neither should come back again.

If they did, they’d be arrested and put in jail.

*   *   *

BATMAN AND TWITCH couldn’t believe this was happening.

They were suddenly out on the street, with barely any money, no shelter, just the clothes on their backs and their handguns. They didn’t even have Twitch’s laptop with all the spy gear on it.

Someone
was messing with them, that much was clear. And it was imperative that they track down Maurice. However, they couldn’t do so by wandering the streets. They had to find shelter first, and then figure out what was going on.

Batman did have his debit card with him, and that meant they could at least withdraw funds from the team’s private bank account in Aden and proceed from there.

All they needed was an ATM.

They made their way through the crowded streets looking for the nearest money machine. It didn’t take long to find a bank with an ATM out front. They began the process of withdrawing $5,000, feeling that would be enough to start with. But then came a problem … the debit card wouldn’t work. As soon as Batman punched in his PIN, a message flashed on the ATM screen in French: C
ONNEXION REFUSÉE.

Connection Refused.

Obviously the ATM was malfunctioning. They walked a few more blocks, found another and tried a second time.

But once again they wound up staring at a screen flashing: C
ONNECTION
R
EFUSED.
No matter what they did, no matter how many different ways they inserted the card, or how slowly or quickly they punched in the PIN, the same message kept coming back. They found and tried a third ATM, and then a fourth. But they received the same message every time.

Was something wrong with all the ATM machines in Monte Carlo? If so, it would be an apocalyptic problem. They hung around the last ATM and waited for the next person to approach it. A German couple appeared soon after and used the money machine with no trouble. Behind them, a man from a crowd of Chinese tourists withdrew money, just as easily, as did a couple of American college students after him.

But when Batman and Twitch tried again, the result was the same: the machine just would not connect.

*   *   *

THEY MADE THEIR way down to the harbor and found the Sun Casino, advertised as Monte Carlo’s “American Casino.”

The place was crowded and everyone seemed to be wearing a cowboy hat. They went to one of the casino’s cashier cages. Their plan was to use the debit card to withdraw money in the form of chips, and then cash in the chips for the real stuff.

The cashier was friendly and cute, but no matter what she did, including calling a 24-hour bank hotline, the same message kept coming back: C
ONNEXION
R
EFUSÉE

This was getting serious now—and Batman and Twitch were running out of ideas. They discussed returning to the Grand Maison Casino to press the issue with management. At the very least they could make a case that they’d been robbed of their possessions. But the way things were going, they didn’t want to risk being arrested.

They decided a more direct route would be to simply use a public phone to call the Kilos Building in Aden and ask for the cavalry to come to their rescue.

Batman used his last five Euros to purchase a phone card. They found a public phone inside the Sun Casino and started to place the call. But as soon as Batman began dialing the number, the phone ate the card.

They both snapped at that point. Twitch punched the phone, then pummeled it with the handset. Batman took over and did everything but rip the phone off the wall in an effort to retrieve the card. But nothing happened other than them creating a huge scene.

Security arrived to escort them out. But as this was happening, a casino customer walked up and used the same phone with no problems.

Kicked out of their second casino in just thirty minutes, Batman and Twitch knew the time had come to break the rules. Batman took out the special sat-phone the Agency contact had given them back on
The Immaculate Perception.
They were going to use it not to call the Agency, but to call Aden—and deal with any fallout later.

But though Batman repeatedly dialed the number, the call would not go through. When he finally removed the back of the sat-phone, he discovered the battery was corroded beyond all hope.

“I think I’m going crazy,” he said, hurling the useless phone into the harbor. “I think I’m actually going insane.”

Twitch shook his head. “Welcome to my world.”

They both collapsed to the curb, feeling and looking homeless.

“I guess we’re not going to any of those parties,” Twitch groaned.

“Someone is
really
fucking with us,” Batman said. “They get us into the city’s best penthouse, then make it seem like we don’t exist? They have us chase some maniac—and he gets picked up by a fucking Harrier? I swear they’re fucking up the ATM machine and pay phones too.”

“But why play with us?” Twitch asked. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to kill us?”

Batman shook his head. There were no answers.

Only their situation was clear. They had no sat-phone. No place to stay. No money. No nothing …

And there was a good chance they’d been taken for ten million dollars.

16

Indian Ocean
0200 hours

THE SEA HAD become motionless.

There was no wind. Not even a breeze.

The night sky was clear; the stars above were sizzling. It was still brutally hot.

Nolan had spent the last hour on the bow of the
Taiwan Song,
at the very tip of the ship, looking out at it all,
feeling
it all.

Waiting …

This was the calm before the storm and he knew it. The only question was, what kind of a storm would it be?

Why did the Bom-Kats attack the second time?

That was the question that kept coming back to him. He could understand the first attack. They saw the old ship as easy pickings. But they were met with enough firepower to deter a small army. Still they came back again—and with a diversionary plan yet. And cameras.

Why?

After a lot of thought, Nolan knew there was only one explanation.

Gunner was suddenly beside him. He handed Nolan a cracked cup holding something warm and soupy.

“What’s this?” Nolan asked, trying to identify the steamy brownish liquid.

“It’s coffee and cheongju,” Gunner told him. “This is what the ship’s crew was drinking when we broke up their party. I found a little left in the pot.”

Nolan sipped it—it was awful.

“Fuck me,” he said with a grimace. “You sure this isn’t from a bilge pump somewhere?”

“It wouldn’t be this tasty if it was,” Gunner said, drinking a cup of his own.

They were quiet for a few moments. Nolan felt the cheongju making its way through his system. It had a slightly numbing effect.

“They know,” he told Gunner unexpectedly.

“Who knows what?” Gunner asked.

“The Bom-Kats,” Nolan said. “They must know we have a very special passenger on board.”

Gunner thought about it. “It
would
explain why they hit us the second time,” he said. “But how did they find out?”

Nolan shrugged. “We’ve been lax on security,” he said. “They were probably watching us through high-power binoculars, and after the first attack, she was up on deck when we should have kept her below. I’ll bet they started listening to our radio traffic after that and figured it out. Why else would they come aboard with cameras if not to take a picture of her in case they couldn’t kidnap her? As dopey as that sounds, I can’t think of anything else that makes sense.”

He wiped the sweat from his brow. “And that means they’re going to hit us again,” he went on. “They’ll try to roll over us, then take her and God knows what. Asking for a ransom will be just a small part of it, I’m sure.”

Gunner knew Nolan was right. “So what are we going to do when that happens?”

Nolan looked out at the motionless water and just shook his head. They were still chugging along, still trying to make it to the Lakshadweep Islands. But at the moment, they could have been halfway to Africa for all he knew. The ship’s condition was getting worse by the minute. The electricity was failing steadily. Every pump on board had stopped. The leaks below had become endemic and the remaining engine was close to its last gasp. And they were now battling a fifteen-percent list.

“We got to fight them off again,” he finally replied. “Somehow…”

“That won’t be easy,” Gunner said. “We’re just about out of ammo. Not just you, all of us. It could be a big problem.”

Nolan sipped his laced coffee again.

“Actually I think the biggest problem we have is below,” he said.

Gunner knew what he meant. Emma Simms. “If it dawns on her that
she’s
the cause of this…” he said.

“She’ll go nuts,” Nolan finished the thought for him. “Or get even nuttier.”

“If that’s possible,” Gunner said.

Nolan drained the last of his drink.

“I’ll bet in a million years she never dreamed she’d wind up here,” he said. “With us, with those poor people below, with a bump on her head or a lesion on her brain or whatever the hell happened to her.”

He threw his cup overboard.

“I guess being the world’s most famous movie star isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he said.

*   *   *

THEY WENT UP to the bridge where they found the five Senegals. They were just as hot and exhausted as he and Gunner.

Nolan expressed his thoughts on the Bom-Kats’ actions. The Senegals could only agree.

“Le monde devient fou sur une belle femme,”
one said.

The world goes crazy over one beautiful woman …

Nolan laughed grimly. He replied:
“Toute ce qu’il faut est une…”

All it takes is one …

They spent the next few minutes taking inventory of their ammunition supply. The results were disheartening.

They had six M4s between them, all of them adapted to be belt fed. The problem was they had more empty belts than full ones. In all they had just 223 rounds. Split six ways, that was not a lot. In any kind of major firefight, 223 rounds could be gone in a matter of seconds.

Gunner’s ammo supply was especially low. He’d gone ashore at Gottabang with a full load in his Streetsweeper—but he’d expended 95 percent of his shells in the battle against the beach’s security forces and while repelling the first two pirate attacks. Now he had just three shells left, all of them of the incendiary variety.

Each man also had a Beretta sidearm—but there were no extra clips for them. And there were definitely no other firearms on the ship, nor were any of the Korean crewmen armed.

At the end of it, Gunner said, “We might be kinda screwed here.”

Nolan could only agree. “We’ve got to come up with some other kind of weapon,” he said. “Something outside the box.”

Gunner looked around the barren bridge. “Something like what? There’s not much of anything on this tub.”

Nolan asked one of the Senegals to retrieve the ship’s original crew. Within a minute, the four Korean sailors were on the bridge. Though they’d stayed in the mess hall with Emma and the ninety-nine refugees during the previous two attacks, after viewing the aftermath of those battles, they were well aware what Alpha was capable of.

Yet, they were hardly soldiers, and when Nolan told them he thought the pirates were going to attack again, the Koreans became very nervous. Then Nolan asked them: Were there any other weapons aboard the ship? Anything at all?

The crew members settled down enough to think. Through hand signs and rough English they confirmed there were no guns aboard. Nothing along those lines.

But maybe …

The four men disappeared below deck, but within another minute, two were back. They were carrying a bucket filled with a thick red liquid.

Though it looked like blood, Nolan recognized it as hydraulic fluid.

The sailors explained that in one of their last bits of duty, on the day before the ship was due to be broken, they had drained all hydraulic pipes on board, simply to save the workers on the beach from doing the messy job. The fluid itself had been poured into empty diesel barrels; four were now located in the ship’s cargo hold.

But what good would this be?

“Make hot,” one of the crewmen said. “Dump on bandits. Burn skin…”

Nolan looked at Gunner, who just shrugged.

“Boil that stuff up and pour it on someone coming up a ladder?” he said. “Could be nasty.”

The other two Koreans arrived. They were carrying a box containing an array of kitchen knives, ranging in size from a dinner knife to a butcher’s cleaver to something that resembled a cutlass.

A chill went through everyone on the bridge. If a fight ever came to the point of using some of these things as weapons, then it really
would
be a battle for their lives.

Nolan started to thank the Korean sailors, but then each one took a couple long knives and put them in their belts.