Authors: David Stone

The Orpheus Deception (43 page)

BOOK: The Orpheus Deception

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“No. Civilians. Maybe fifteen men in each boat, no uniforms— they look like jihadis—got those keffiyeh things and their faces covered—loaded with AKs and RPGs. Fucking Somali pirates, is my guess.”

“What do we do? We can’t let them come aboard.”

“All we have are the SAWs. Only really effective out to five hundred yards max. But they can pop an RPG into us from a thousand. And we can’t let them shoot the shit out of the hull or cripple the rudder either, can we?”

“What will we do?”

Tarc came back into the wheelhouse, his sharp face rocky and his expression murderous. Through the open door, Majiic could hear the hornet sound of the outboards over the rhythmic rumble of the tanker’s engines. The radio hissed and crackled on channel 16, the public frequency, a hoarse, guttural string of Somali and then an abrupt switch to accented English.

“You, on the tanker. We are the Somali Coast Guard! You are in Somali waters. Make full stop. We will board and check your papers. Reply!”

Within a few seconds, the speedboats were less than a hundred yards out, two long, low cigarette boats with rust-stained hulls and huge twin outboards. Both boats were packed with skinny, long-skulled men with chiseled Caucasian features and light brown skin, the distinctive Somali mix of Arab and African blood. One boat cut right in a spray of white curl and headed for the stern of the tanker, taking a position fifty yards off the seething water around the prop and the rudder. A small, bent man in the bow aimed an RPG at the prop, set himself, and waited for the order. The other boat carved a slicing arc left through the water and came up alongside their port side, at a range of less than a hundred feet, where it slowed to match the pace of the huge tanker. The tanker loomed over the cigarette boat like the edge of a cast-iron cliff, massive and unscalable. The ship’s radio came alive again, a man barking orders in a hard, snarling tone.

“On the boat. Switch to channel 30.”

Majiic looked at Tarc.

“Do it,” said Tarc. “Everybody listens to 16. We don’t need the damn U.S. Navy coming to help us.”

Majiic got on the radio, said, “Roger. Switching to 30.”

Tarc was on the ship’s intercom.

“Jakki, you there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You see these fucking niggers alongside?”

“I do. You want us to come on deck?”

“No. I don’t want the hull marked up. We have to clear the Customs wharf in Aden. Stay below. Get everyone ready. Keep your coms on.”

“Yes, sir. Will do. Out.”

The radio crackled up again, a hectoring bray.

“On the ship. I am Colonel Mahmud Sia, of the Somali Coast Guard. Lower your gangway, and get all papers ready.”

Majiic could see the man who was talking, a tall, skeletal, gray-haired Somali wearing a ragged tan shirt over baggy cargo pants and some sort of British forage cap without any brass badge on the peak. The rest of the men—boys, really, all of them in their late teens and early twenties—looked like feral dogs; unshaven, eyes reddened by the sea wind, dripping with sweat in the blast-furnace heat, wearing everything from basketball shirts and jeans to the shalwar kameez of Pakistan. They were obviously members of some warlord’s army, but it seemed to Majiic that they had fallen on hard times. They looked hungry and dirty, and their weapons might have been stored in a litter box. But Majiic knew that you could drop an AK-74 in the sand and drive a truck over it, then pick it up, work the bolt, and light up a platoon. He had seen it done.

“Emil, what am I supposed to tell this guy?”

Tarc had made a decision. The decision scared him a little, that much Majiic could see in his eyes, and that worried him even more, because, if Emil Tarc was going to do something that frightened even Emil Tarc, then things were about to get seriously hairy. Tarc got on the intercom again.

“Jakki, send a couple of your smaller guys up to lower the gangway. No weapons. Tell them to look nervous.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You’re gonna let them come on board, Emil? Jakki and his men could blow those sand niggers out of the water in two minutes.”

“And what if we catch an RPG in the rudder and can’t steer anymore and we have to get towed to Aden? And they’ll get at least one shot off, you can count on that. I can’t get this hull marked up. We steam into Aden with a string of AK fire stitched across the bow and there’ll be a huge investigation. Everybody’ll know we tangled with the Somalis. The U.S. Navy is all over this region. I don’t want to draw
any
attention. You follow?”

“You let those niggers on board and they’ll kill us all.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to see.”

Majiic stared at Tarc, who gave him back a slate-hard glare for a moment, and then he broke into a crazy grin. He looked like a happy jackal.

“What the hell? Come on, Vigo. It is a good day to die!”

Majiic groaned. During the crossing of the Indian Ocean, the crew had passed the time watching old DVDs on the ship’s ancient television. Last night, the feature was
Dances with Wolves.
It was hopeless.

A few minutes later, he and Tarc were standing by the rail with compliant expressions on their faces while the first of the Skinnies came up the railing. Two of Jakki’s men—both in mufti and trying to look harmless, in spite of their shaved heads and hard eyes—stood nearby, watching the older one, the gray-haired man in the British cap and the ragged tans, as he stepped down onto the decking, glaring around the ship, the whites of his eyes showing, his ragged teeth bared as he wiped his forehead with a filthy sleeve. Up close, he looked feverish and sickly, and he stank of urine. Was he seasick? Or was it something worse? He had a large Colt .45 in his left hand, and he pointed it at Tarc’s head, his trigger finger inside the rusty guard.

“I am Colonel Mahmud Sia. Who are you?”

“My name is Captain Emil Tarc, Colonel Sia. You don’t need that gun, sir. We’re all unarmed, and happy to cooperate with the Somali Coast Guard. This is my first mate, Vigo Majiic.”

Colonel Sia blinked at the two of them, perhaps a little puzzled by their bland, smiling countenances. Could these two unarmed fools actually
believe
there was such a thing as a Somali Coast Guard? Their polite manner had put him off balance. But, then, never before had the captain of such a large ship ever let them come on board. Usually, they’d throw down a valise of cash just to be left alone. Colonel Sia found himself dizzily contemplating an undreamed-of success, actuallytaking a huge oil tanker that, alas, none of his men knew how to operate. So, for now, no killing.

The rest of his men—thirty-two, by Majiic’s count—had clambered aboard and were milling about, staring uneasily at Colonel Sia and waiting for his signal to start the killing. A group of them walked over to Jakki’s men and stood right in front of them, glowering, eye to eye, screaming in a rush of Somali. Jakki’s men looked straight ahead into the middle distance, stony. Colonel Sia barked at them and they backed away.

“Where are your crew?”

“All below, sir. Too hot to stay on deck.”

Colonel Sia frowned at Tarc, as if he had forgotten his name or how he had come to be standing in front of him. Sia was blinking in the heat, his red eyes glazing over. It took him a few seconds to process what Tarc had said. Watching Sia, Majiic felt he was under the influence of a drug. Hashish, or maybe just khat. The man’s focus would come in and out, as if he was in a half-world between dreaming and waking. He opened his mouth, wiped his forehead with his sleeve again, and then his focus seemed to return. He snarled out some orders. His men flinched and then they grinned and ran into the gangway doors, clanging down the stairs into darkness, leaving only Sia and, presumably, his bodyguard, a comically short, one-eyed man with a torso too large for his skinny legs and an expression on his face that reminded Majiic of the look that some KLA soldiers had worn when they were getting ready to rape their captives—a wet-lipped, open-mouthed, slack-jawed look. He was holding a short-stock AK-74. He had some sort of native stiletto shoved into his belt. Colonel Sia holstered his Colt, snapping the retaining band over the butt.

He made a hard face and held out a pink-palmed hand.

“Papers!”

Tarc handed him a sheaf of meaningless papers he had hastily scooped up off the plotting table, glancing briefly at Sia’s bodyguard as Sia fumbled through the papers. Sia’s drugged mind churned aimlessly, as he tried to get an idea of what the cargo was, thinking about where he would sell it and how much he could make on it. And who would buy the tanker itself, once he had killed the crew. But, mainly, how he could avoid sharing the money with these dirty mongrels at his heels, and how
good
it felt to be on the winning side of destiny again after so many years of failure and squalid defeat. He folded the papers up and stuffed them into his shirt.

“I will keep these for our official records.”

Tarc pretended to give a damn what he did with the papers, just for the effect, but, since Sia was already a dead man, he didn’t really put his heart into it. He had been watching the way the bodyguard was staring at Vigo Majiic, a hungry look on his face, a sideways smile of anticipation.

Tarc turned to Majiic and said:

“Hey, Vigo, I think Baboon Boy likes you.”

The guard, who understood English, stepped in with the AK raised, butt first, striking at Tarc’s head, which wasn’t there because Tarc had gone in under the man’s left arm and taken the stiletto out of the man’s belt and punched it with all his force deep into the man’s lower belly and then ripped up, the man’s mouth open but no sound coming out, now on the tips of his toes as Tarc repeatedly jerked the blade upward until he finally felt it grating against the man’s sternum. Arterial blood spattered wetly across Colonel Sia’s shirt as he clutched at the Colt in his holster, which caught on the holster’s buttoned strap and held there long enough for Tarc to jerk the AK out of the bodyguard’s hands, pivot on a heel, and drive the butt into Sia’s midsection. The bodyguard was staggering back, a look of blank disbelief on his face, as his bloody entrails spilled out over his boots like purple-and-green snakes escaping from a sack. Tarc reversed the AK and fired a single round into the bodyguard’s face, exploding it into a red ruin and spraying the deck behind with the contents of his skull.

Sia hit the deck and curled up, retching.

And then it was over, and silence came back in a rush, although Majiic’s ears were ringing from the sound of the shot. Tarc knelt down beside the crumpled form of Colonel Sia, tugged the Colt out and handed it up to Majiic, and waited politely for Sia to finish puking, mild disgust showing on Tarc’s blade-sharp features. Then he hooked his index finger into Sia’s open mouth and dragged him by the flesh of his left cheek into a kneeling position. Sia’s chin and most of his left arm was coated in vomit. He knelt in front of Tarc, weaving slightly, his mouth working silently and his bony chest heaving. Tarc stood over him, looking down, waiting.

After a while, Sia found some brave words.

“My . . . men . . . will . . . kill . . . you . . . all.”

Tarc grinned, leaned down, wiped his fingers off on Sia’s shirt, patted the man’s cheek, straightened up and pulled the radio out of his back pocket.

“Jakki? How many are still alive?”

“Eleven. Wait. What? Okay, thanks. We just lost one. So, ten.”

“Can they walk?”

“Not far.”

“Bring them up.”

Ten minutes later, the survivors of Colonel Sia’s little armada were standing naked on the foredeck of the tanker, in a tight, trembling crowd, while the crew of the tanker—Jakki’s Bulgarian mercenaries—stood around and watched them with blank indifference. Several of the captives had knife wounds, and all had been beaten into bloody submission. They stared out at the men who had taken them, unbelieving. What had happened belowdecks had been a nightmare in a steel maze. Most of them had been taken in grimly efficient hand-to-hand combat, their throats cut or their bellies opened or their backs sliced down the spine. The ones who had survived had survived only done so because they dropped their weapons and begged for their lives, tears streaming down, leaving black streaks on their dirty faces. And now, here they were, on the gently heaving deck of a huge tanker, under a sky of brass on a sea of hammered copper.

Tarc dragged Colonel Sia across the deck plates and stood him up in front of his men. Sia’s eyes were bloodred and he was gasping like a man who had run all through the night to escape the terrible thing chasing him only to find that it that had been waiting patiently for him in his room when he finally got back home. Majiic, watching the scene and knowing Emil Tarc as he did, felt a stirring of pity for the old man. Which was ridiculous. He made a face and spat the sentiment out on the deck.

“Colonel Sia?” said Tarc, speaking softly, but loud enough to be heard over the bass vibrato of the engines coming up through the deck. Sia tried to straighten his shoulders and then slumped into limp defeat again.

“Yes. What do you want?”

“Do you know what a black flag means?”

BOOK: The Orpheus Deception

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