Deadly Coast (11 page)

“But my great regret is Ilya. I tried to have him transferred away from me, so he is not tarnished by my failure. But he is stubborn man, my Ilya. He refuses to go.”

Borgdanov shook his head, as if to clear it of melancholy thoughts, and grinned.

“But now Ilya and I are, what is term? Ah yes, soldiers of fortune. And the pay from Mr. Alex Kairouz is very much like fortune to simple Russian soldier.”

“You sure you’re OK with this?” Dugan asked.

Borgdanov shrugged. “There is no future for me or Ilya in Russia, so I think this is not so bad. And the world is changing with many more opportunities for people with our training.” He smiled again. “So we become, as you Americans say, private contractors. Just so long as we must do nothing against Russia.”

“What about the others? What’s their story?” Dugan asked.

“All different, yet all the same,” Borgdanov said. “Things are not so good in Russia now. Putin is big asshole but powerful. Many people think there may be problems, and no soldier wants to shoot other Russians.” He shrugged. “But any decision is dangerous, not only for soldier but family. Better to work outside Russia. This way, we don’t have to choose side.” He smiled again. “Is good opportunity, and for this we thank you,
Dyed
.”

Dugan smiled back. “It’s the least I could do since you saved my life.”

“Yes,” Borgdanov said. “Is like they say in India, karma.”

“I didn’t know you were a student of Indian philosophy.”

“Even savages can have good ideas,” Borgdanov said.

“I wouldn’t call the Indians savages.”

“Of course they are savages,” Borgdanov said, then grinned. “They are not Russian! But don’t worry,
Dyed
. You, we make honorary Russian.”

Chapter Eleven

M/T Pacific Endurance
Arabian Sea
50 miles off Oman

Dugan felt a slight vibration under his feet, as a fixed-tank washing machine blasted the underside of the deck. He watched crewmen move between the machines, checking remote indicators for nozzle angle and rotation, while he paced the main deck. And worried.

Bound for the scrapyard,
Marie Floyd
’s tanks were already clean and gas-free, allowing Blake to reduce her normal marine crew to the minimum necessary to sail. And Blake had taken over as captain of
Marie Floyd
, dropping the headcount even further to minimize noncombatants. Dugan’s situation here on
Pacific Endurance
was a bit different. She’d been trading, and though empty, her tanks still had gasoline residue. She had to be clean before they could complete the mods, and to clean her, Dugan had to keep the whole crew. He paced the main deck and worried.

“You better mosey on down the deck a bit,” said a voice behind him. “You’re gonna wear a hole in this part. Reckon you’re a worrier.”

Dugan turned to see Joshua Woodley, aka Woody, grinning at him around the ever-present wad of tobacco in his cheek. Woody’s coveralls were streaked with rust and mud and plastered to his body by sweat.

“Yeah, I guess I am at that,” Dugan said.

Woody nodded. “Got no problems with worriers, long as they’re doing something about what they’re worrying about. I reckon you qualify.”

“How’s it coming?” Dugan asked.

“Well, we got the safe room rigged in the aft-peak tank and installed the controls. The biggest problem there was the mud, but we got ‘er washed down all right,” Woody said.

“Access?”

“We cut the engine-room bulkhead, but I got to thinkin’ about it and just put in a plywood door instead of steel. All it has to do is stop the light. We painted it to match the bulkhead, and you can’t hardly tell it’s there even with the lights on. I don’t reckon a pirate with a flashlight’s likely to find it in the dark, even if he’s brave enough to venture into a pitch-black engine room.”

“What about—”

“Relax, Dugan. It’s all in hand. Cameras, steering, sound-powered phones, jammers, everything. Just like you told me.” Woody nodded at the men moving around the deck. “This here’s the part that worries me. Edgar’s already workin’ on the tanks over on
Marie Floyd
, and we’re still cleaning. When y’all gonna be finished?”

“Not a problem,” Dugan said. “Tank mods don’t have to be finished before we hunt. We’ll work them along the way. When will everything else be finished?”

Woody looked at his watch again. “Long about noon I expect, give or take an hour.” He paused. “Two days, start to finish. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.”

“Not too shabby at all,” Dugan agreed, then added, “I’ll tell the major.”

The mention of the Russian earned him a scowl.

“What do you have against the Russians, Woody?”

Woody grunted. “Just don’t like commies. My daddy died in Korea, and I fought the bastards in Vietnam. Kicked their asses, too.”

Dugan hesitated. “I seem to recall we lost that one.”

Woody cocked an eyebrow and turned his head to send a stream of tobacco juice over the rail. “Not the part I was in.”

“You know they’re not commies,” Dugan said, changing his approach.

“Near enough. Just give it a rest, Dugan. Me and Ivan ain’t never gonna be bass-fishin’ buddies. Got it?”

“Loud and clear.” Dugan turned to head for the deckhouse, as Woody fell in beside him. “I’ll get Blake on the horn and see if he’s ready to go hunting.”

M/T Marie Floyd
Arabian Sea
125 miles off Oman

Blake peered down at the radar screen as the
Marie Floyd
steamed west at ten knots. She was ballasted deep and, for all appearances, a tempting target—a slow ship full of valuable cargo with her main deck near the waterline. He nodded at the blip showing
Pacific Endurance
running a parallel course on his port beam, well to the south. He and Dugan had agreed to run separately to avoid raising suspicions, but close enough to support each other if necessary. Otherwise, the radar screen was surprisingly clear except for a drillship he’d passed fifteen miles back, now showing on his starboard quarter. He wasn’t too surprised, most ships were running farther to the north in the supposed safe lanes thinly patrolled by the warships of various nations. But for their plan to work, they had to steam into the heart of ‘injun country,’ as Dugan had called it.

As Blake started to move away from the radar, something caught his eye. A faint blip that, as he watched, changed from an intermittent to a steady target. Something small. He watched and waited, and positions at six-minute intervals showed the craft moving at twenty knots on a course taking it between his ship and
Pacific Endurance
. If it was a pirate, he’d turn toward whichever ship he saw first, and
Marie Floyd’s
bridge was ten feet higher than that of
Pacific Endurance
.

As if reading Blake’s mind, the blip changed course toward
Marie Floyd
and increased speed. Blake crossed to the phone on the bridge control console and dialed into the ship’s public-address system. “Attention all hands. Pirates sighted on fast approach. All hands to their stations. All nonessential crew to safe room. Now! This is not a drill. Repeat. This is not a drill.”

Blake hung up, moved to the VHF, and keyed the mike. “Big Brother, this is Little Sister. Do you copy? Over.”

“We read you five by five, Little Sister” came Dugan’s voice over the speaker. “And we have you on radar and understand your situation. Over.”

“Roger that, bro,” Blake said. “Going dark. Will call when we’re done. Out.”

“We’ll be waiting, sis. Good Luck. Big Brother, out.”

Blake was re-racking the mike when the console phone rang.

“Ready to switch steering to emergency local,” said the chief engineer from the steering gear room.

“Take it, Chief,” said Blake, and hung up. The phone rang again, this time from the engine room.

“Ready to switch engine to local control,” said the first engineer.

“Take it, First,” said Blake, and hung up again as the console alarms began to buzz discordantly, informing him that systems were in emergency override.

He silenced the alarms, and moved to a set of recently installed switches on the aft bulkhead, activating jammers to cancel all radio and cell-phone signals, making
Marie Floyd
a black hole communications-wise. He glanced around to ensure he’d missed nothing and then raced through the chart room to the central stairway, flying down the stairs two at a time. He stopped on A-deck to watch the dark-haired young Russian sergeant divide his men three and three between the officers’ and crew mess rooms.

“Ready?” asked Blake.

The young Russian nodded. “
Da
,” he said, and patted his gas mask before pointing through the door at the sound-powered phone on the bulkhead of the officers’ mess. “We wait your order.”

Blake nodded as the Russian stepped into the officers’ mess and closed the door behind him. Blake opened the door to the machinery spaces and started down the stairs, the oppressive air wrapping him like hot, thick cotton, as the noise of the main engine and generators assaulted his ears. Bypassing the engine control room, he continued down to the generator platform level and aft to the rear bulkhead of the engine room. He swung open the almost-invisible plywood door and stepped into the jury-rigged safe room, closing the door behind him to block out at least a bit of the noise, if not the heat. The second mate sat in a folding chair tack-welded to the deck in front of a makeshift control panel facing the bulkhead. He was peering into one of two monitors mounted on the bulkhead in front of him, which displayed the sea ahead of the ship. In his hands was an oblong control box with a thick black cable running from it and up the bulkhead. He looked up as the captain entered.

“Everything OK?” Blake asked.

“Seems to be,” the second mate said, glancing down at the control in his hand. “It takes a bit of getting used to. But it works fine as long as I remember that up is right rudder and down is left rudder.”

Blake nodded, looking up to where the cable disappeared through the overhead into the steering gear room above. He smiled despite the tension. Trust an engineer to come up with the idea of wiring the spare crane control pigtail into the emergency steering servos. He looked over at the benches that lined the bulkhead, now occupied by his reduced crew and the Texans of the riding gang. He nodded at them and turned back to the second mate.

“Everybody accounted for?” Blake asked.

“Yes sir,” the man responded. “Everyone is here except the Russians. The chief and the first engineer are at the engine-side controls.”

Blake nodded and picked up the sound-powered phone mounted on the console, moved the selector switch, and turned the crank. Forty feet away, beside the big main engine, a light lit on a similar phone and the chief engineer answered.

“Engine side.”

“All accounted for, Chief,” said Blake. “Have the First kill the engine-room lights, then stand by to stop the engine. I’ll call you when we’re ready.”

“Roger that,” said the chief engineer, and he hung up and slipped the earmuff back over his ear. He nodded to the first engineer, who stood ready at the door to the plywood enclosure they’d built around the engine-side control station, and the first exited the little room and walked to a breaker box. They’d disabled the emergency-lighting circuits earlier, so as the First toggled breaker after breaker, the engine room was plunged into pitch darkness. The man looked around in the inky gloom, satisfied no pirate would brave the dark, and switched on his flashlight to make his way back to the little sanctuary.

When he opened the door to the little hut, the single 40-watt bulb was like a blazing sun. He stepped inside and closed the wooden door behind himself before releasing a rolled-up tarp, which fell over the door. Even if a pirate was brave enough to descend to their level, no light would leak out to reveal their position. The chief nodded his approval, and both engineers settled in to wait.

Pirate launch
Arabian Sea
125 miles off Oman

Abdi grinned at his men as the Zodiac sped down the starboard side of the big ship fifty meters away. They’d been at the extreme end of their search pattern and ready to turn back when he’d spotted the tanker. He passed the ship’s stern, then circled and cut speed to trail her, expecting evasive maneuvers. He read her name—M/T
Marie Floyd
—and below that, in strangely fresh-looking paint, her hailing port—Monrovia, Liberia. His smile broadened as the ship began the expected radical course changes to slew the stern from side to side and make boarding more difficult. But difficult was childishly easy for him, for he was Abdi, first among the first-boarders of the clan
Ali Saleeban
. He was already dreaming of his first-boarder bonus.

He signaled his best driver to take the tiller of the outboard, then moved through his men to the bow as the driver edged the inflatable closer to the ship, matching her maneuvers. Abdi pulled his sat-phone to alert the rest of the group far behind that he was about to begin an attack, and emitted an irritated grunt when he saw he had no signal. No matter, they’d know soon enough. He pocketed the phone and balanced himself in the bow of the boat, and motioned for the short ladder with hooks on the end.

His tiller man was good, and he didn’t have to wait long. As the next course change started the ship’s stern moving away from them, the launch shot forward against the ship side, and Abdi hooked the ladder over the bottom rail of the handrail and leaped onto it. He scampered up the ladder like a spider and jumped over the rail, unslinging his assault rifle, ready to ward off any counterattack. But there was none. He flashed a grin over the side and motioned his men up, and in seconds they joined him as the driver moved the Zodiac off a safe distance.

M/T Marie Floyd
Safe room

Blake stared at the monitor, swinging the stern from side to side as he watched the pirate launch close on the port quarter.

“Yes! There he is,” Blake said. “First guy aboard. And here come the rest. I count five … six … seven aboard, one pulling the boat away.”

Blake turned the selector on the sound-powered phone and cranked.

“
Da
?” said the young Russian.

“Seven pirates, repeat, seven papas aboard,” Blake said. “One papa in boat.”

“We are ready.”

“Good. Get your masks on and stay on the phone,” Blake said.

Blake watched the second monitor as the pirates moved out of sight. He switched to the camera in the A-deck passageway and waited. Within seconds the lead pirate burst through the door, gun at the ready, then called back to his men, who joined him in the passageway. The pirates moved toward the central stairwell, as beside Blake, the second mate counted. “… five … six … seven! They’re all in, Cap!”

Blake threw a switch on the makeshift control panel and powerful magnets sucked home bolts in all the outside deckhouse doors and the doors to the stairwell on all the upper decks. He threw another switch and the lights went out in the deckhouse, plunging the pirates into darkness.

Blake picked up the phone. “Gas ‘em,” he said.

“
Da
,” answered the Russian, as Blake toggled on the night-vision camera just in time to see pre-constructed slots open in the doors from the officers’ and crew mess rooms to disgorge tear-gas grenades, one after another. Trapped in the passageway and unable to see, the pirates were screaming and slamming into each other in their panic, which increased as the grenades clattered unseen on the deck and choking gas billowed around them. In seconds they began to fall, coughing and gagging.