The Weapon (28 page)

“Can you make it?”

Lenson, sticking his fucking oar in from back by the helm. Teddy didn't bother to answer. He crouched, watching
the edged silhouette above them move away. The Hondas picked up speed and he heard that chatter again. Just so it held up until they got away, that was all he asked. The boat fell, rose, and he lunged again, grunting with effort. The hook clanged and grated and fell away. “Keep it fucking steady!” he shouted over his shoulder. His shoulders and arms burned but he blocked it. They could hurt when he was on that deck. If he made it.

Lenson, at his side. “Want me to give it a try?”

“Get off my back, Commander. Just give me room.”

The boat roared forward. He staggered to his feet and had the pole halfway up when fiberglass crunched into steel as the prow slammed into the freighter. He lost his balance and shot forward. Just as his feet left the deck he pushed off, stretching upward and twisting in midair to get the hook turned backward, not sideways, the way he'd angled it the first two tries. It clanged into something hard, vibrating down the pole, and all at once he was swinging free, dangling through the dark air at what felt like a terrific speed, boots kicking. He struggled to get himself up the pole. But it was slick with the spray and his gloves slipped as he swung back and forth above the roaring maelstrom below him. The bulky weight of the rolled boarding ladder was like two full packs dragging him down. He stared upward. All that fucking hook had to do was make a quarter turn and it would come right off.

He got his knees locked on bamboo and started inching.

 

When he reached the deck edge he got an arm over it and hung there while his eyes decided whether to come out or stay in their sockets. When they stayed he raised his head slowly.

No lookout came out of the shadows to kick him back overboard. That didn't surprise him. The ship might have posted one going through the Strait, but that lay miles back. A merchant could do a lot to discourage boarders. But the only antiboarding measure he spotted here was barbed wire, already salt-rusty, wound perfunctorily around the top liferail.

He got an arm over the lower rail, pushed the rolled-up caving ladder through, then followed it, wriggling under. He backed instantly into the shadow of a large winch and crouched immobile, waiting for an alarm, a shout, a probing beam.

None of those things came. He gave it fifteen seconds, counting it out and trying to work the cramps out of his long muscles, then pulled the lashings off the ladder. Staying low as he rolled out from behind the winch, he locked two large stainless carabiners around a lifeline stanchion and kicked it over the side. He got out his Glock and sawed through the barbed wire and let it drop overboard.

Kaulukukui came over the rail and handed over Teddy's AK without a word. Obie checked magazine seating, safety, sight position. He felt better armed. He pointed to a light burning above a doorway, what looked like a starboard side passageway. Gliding from shadow to shadow, they took position.

Teddy turned his attention back to the ladder as another head bobbed above the liferail, followed by a boot. The way the guy came over it he'd have castrated himself if the wire had still been there. When he stood Teddy saw it was Lenson. The commander oriented and joined them. “Where's Sumo?” he whispered

Teddy pointed. “Perimeter. Till we're all aboard.”

“Going to be light soon. Got to get moving.”

As far as he was concerned, they weren't going anywhere until everyone was aboard. “You got comms with the boat?” Lenson nodded. “Check it. Then tell me you got it. Sir.”

Dan hesitated, then nodded. He put the radio to his mouth and made sure the earbud was in. “Carpenter?”

“Here.”

“Donnie and Monty coming?”

“On the ladder.”

“As soon as they're aboard, drop back half a mile and follow us. Zigzag, so it looks like you're not keeping station, in case anybody's got you on radar. Singaporean patrol craft,
or anybody. I'll check in when I can, but I can't tell you how often that'll be. If we call, or you see a flare, come in fast.”

Carpenter aye-ayed and Dan clicked off. He started forward, but Oberg pulled him back. “Let us lead, Commander. This is our job.”

“Okay, but I don't see you leading.”

Oberg fought to keep from backhanding him. “We got two more men to come. Just keep your pants on, Commander.”

Dan looked anxiously back. It was getting lighter with every passing minute. Where in the hell were Donnie and Monty?

 

Donnie was halfway up the ladder when it just got to be too much. His eyes squeezed closed. His hands cramped. He hunched in as it swayed. After a moment Henrickson, below him, slapped his boot. “Donnie! Wenck! You okay?”

He couldn't answer. The dark was all around him, rushing in his ears. He felt ashamed, but he still couldn't move. Like pushing the buttons on a disconnected game controller.

“Donnie!” The hand again, shaking his foot. He kicked it off savagely. “Jeez—you almost got me in the head!”

“Wenck!” From above. “You're holding up the program. Get the fuck up here!”

“I can't.” His voice sounded choked and high even to him.

Something long came down and cracked across his back. He flinched, then gasped as something sharp hooked into his ass. It jerked upward, stabbing him painfully an inch away from his balls. “Get the fuck up here!”

Oberg, that was who was jabbing him. Donnie let go with one hand and groped wildly for whatever it was he was jabbing him with. “Knock it off,” he half screamed, half whispered.

“Get up here or I'll tear you a new asshole for real. Now, dickhead!”

The pain jabbed again, he felt the hook tearing skin, and he yelped and suddenly his hands moved and he scrambled the last few reeling feet and a hand came through the lifelines
and got the back of his collar. “Oberg. What the fuck you poking me with—”

The SEAL laid the bamboo aside, and the cruel steel clanged on the deck. “I'll fucking ream you up the ass with something sharper than that, you don't get with the fucking program. Get that AK in your hands and follow me.”

“Fuck you,” he muttered, but not out loud. His legs were shaking even worse than at the range in Virginia. Something warm and wet was trickling down his leg. He couldn't tell if it was piss or blood.

“Get moving!” A shove, and he stumbled after a shadow, starting at every sound, fingering his rifle and trying desperately to remember if up was “safe” or if it was “fire.”

 

Monty Henrickson followed Kaulukukui, making sure he kept his rifle pointed away from the Hawaiian's broad back. They'd gone over this again and again on the printouts. Once aboard, divide into three teams. Oberg and Lenson to the comm room and bridge. Wenck to the engine room, and Kaulukukui and Henrickson to the crew's quarters.

So he knew where he was going, but it was different drilling it and actually running in the dark through passageways and up ladders you'd never seen before. What the layouts didn't show was how spooky they were, how grimy, the white paint probably the original paint, never touched or even washed probably since the ship had left the builder's. It had the air of a hospital fire-exit stairwell, a space that belonged to no one and no one took care of, just transited on his way from here to there. But the big man ahead of him went up surefooted and silent. He hugged the edges of the passageways and “sliced the pie” on the corners, covering his advance with the muzzle of his Kalashnikov. Monty followed in the combat crouch they'd learned at GrayWolf, trying to work spittle into a dust dry mouth.

A man turned the corner so suddenly he ran into Kaulukukui. The SEAL had him down and was zip-tying him before Monty understood what was happening. The crewman
rolled to look up at them and Monty instinctively covered his face. Then lowered his hand. With the beards, black scarves over their mouths, camo paint, and the dirty, ragged clothes they'd traded for with the rebels, he didn't have to worry about being identified. As long as they remembered not to speak English, and whatever Kaulukukui was shouting at the guy, it sure wasn't American. The big Hawaiian hauled the sailor up and shoved him on ahead of them.

They came to a narrow passageway walled with doors. The crew's quarters. Monty started pulling doors open, pointing the gun, yelling at startled Asian faces in random Russian. “
Davai! Ponemayite? Kto rukkava'ditiel?
” Their cabins looked like rooms in a frat house: cluttered with beer cans, porn mags, snack wrappers, crammed with the tinny noise of cheap CD players and the flicker of VCRs. They stared back terrified, putting their hands up at once. Ahead the SEAL was shouting, too, herding men out into the passageway and zip-tying them. When they had them all out and lying on their faces Kaulukukui mouthed:
search them
. Monty bent and started patting and slapping bodies. They were little men, most of them, about his own size. They acted passive, as if they didn't want to resist. Maybe he and the SEAL were pretty frightening.

He remembered they were supposed to be thieves, and went back and got wallets and watches and stuffed them into a cheap red Marlboro tote from one of the rooms. Two had cell phones and one a knife and he took those, too. When he signaled they were clean, Kaulukukui gestured them to their feet.

The plan was to take them to the crew's dining area, one deck down, and hold them till they heard from the bridge team. He kicked the closest sailor. “
Davai, tep'yer!
” he shouted, waving the rifle, trying to look as if he wanted nothing more than to mow them all down. They shrank back, palms up to placate him, then scrambled where Kaulukukui pointed, his normally placid face the snarling mask of a Polynesian war god as Monty urged the last shaking kid along with his rifle-butt.

Look at me,
he thought. He tried to grin, but his lips were so dry they cracked. Childhood fantasies fulfilled mingled with utter fear. This was no joke. If they got caught doing this, it was an act of war. But it was still every boy's fantasy, and he was living it.

Look at me. Mom! Look!

I'm a pirate!

 

Donnie headed through the portside door. He swallowed, fingering his AK. The Commander had said not to chamber rounds, but as soon as he'd turned away Oberg had locked and loaded. Donnie hesitated, then did, too.

All at once, he was alone. He hesitated, not wanting to do this. Wishing there was somebody with him. Then made himself head for the ladderway down.

He crept down two decks through echoing brightly lit ladderwells whose turns were too sharp. His steps echoed. His breath echoed, too.

The ladderwell ended at a watertight door. Machinery-roar vibrated the air. After a second he reached up with the butt of the AK and smashed the light over the door. Glass tinkled and pinged.

Inside the air was much hotter, the roar much louder. He moved along steel catwalks between huge engines. The reek of hot lubricants boiled off them. He tried the combat waddle they'd learned at GrayWolf, but finally just jogged along, bent at the waist.

He found one guy in that whole huge space, ensconced in a glass-enclosed booth overlooking the engine floor. Heart pounding so hard he quivered, he eased the door open. Cold air flooded out.

The watchstander sat at a control panel reading what looked like an Asian version of
Hustler
. His pants were around his ankles. He had something pink on his lap. A tube ran from it to a bulb in his hand.

Donnie stared, then cleared his throat. The engineer looked up. His eyes grew round. He squeaked, reaching for an intercom.

His snap shot was deafening in the little booth. And to his utter and complete astonishment, it connected. The intercom exploded. The engineer recoiled, crashing his chair over backward, sending the pink apparatus flying. He crawled across the deckplates, trying to pull his pants up, pleading in Chinese.

Donnie gained confidence, hearing him sob. He spread-eagled him across the control panel and patted him down. He zip-tied his hands and pushed him out of the booth. He looked at the magazine, then tucked it into the small of his back. A souvenir. The corner of the pink thing peeked out from under the console. He hesitated, then kicked it out of sight.

 

Seven decks up, Dan and Oberg were zip-tying the bridge team. One had made no attempt to resist, just dropped his eyes and stood waiting to be told what to do. The other, an older European who'd come storming up in a terry bathrobe, had begun shouting at them in Italian. Dan made him for the captain. Oberg pushed them both into a little nav compartment behind the bridge, after checking that there were no radios in there, and shut them in after waving his gun in their faces.

Meanwhile Dan was studying the helm console, the autopilot, and the radar. He checked their course: 035. About what he'd made it as, when they'd been maneuvering to board. He found the RPM indicators for the main diesels and the speed log. Both held steady. If they stayed that way,
Fengshun No. 5
had three hours on this course before they ran afoul of another high island. Past that was the open China Sea.

Oberg was hunting along the bulkhead. He threw a switch. Lights came on down on the deck. He flicked four more. The whole foredeck lit up like a stage set.

They looked down over a square mountain of containers. Some new, others rust-stained, painted all the colors of a clinical depressive's rainbow.

“Okay, which one is it?” Dan muttered.

Oberg took out the overhead shot and oriented it with the walkways. “Standard length container. Green. Double locked and isolated by empty containers all around it.” He pointed to the port side, a third of the way forward from the bridge. “One down from the top. If it's where this says it is.”

“We've got to get the crew off. Get them in the boats and shove them off.” Dan looked at the radar again, then at his chart. “As soon as they're out of sight we alter course. Come left and head for Point Juliet.”