Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
The Orpheus Deception (5 page)
But perhaps not dead. Not yet. They’d need Wang to tell them the ship’s private transponder codes and the location of her EPIRB emergency beacon. If they were taking the ship off course, they probably intended to do more than just off-load her cargo to another tanker. They’d dump the EPIRB in the sea, kill the transponder. The Singapore Coast Guard would think the ship had sunk. They’d stop looking when they located the EPIRB and come back for survivors when the storm subsided.
But how many hijackers were on the ship?
If they had all come from that single cigarette boat trailing her stern, not that many, and he had already killed three of them. Another three were down there on the forepeak four hundred feet away, still senselessly hacking the Hindu cook into curried chutney. Two more up here on the deck, one man outside, and another who had just stepped back into the wheelhouse. That meant two inside the wheelhouse, perhaps three.
Someone on the stairs above him stepped up to the forward rail of the bridge and called out to the three men still mutilating the corpse at the bow, raising his voice to a hoarse bellow, to carry through the wind howling out of the night and the boom of the swells crashing over the ship’s side, speaking Tagalog with a European accent. An answering shout came from the bow: the three men crouched over the spreading puddle of flesh got to their feet and began to make their way back toward the stern of the ship.
Brendan Fitch climbed the last of the stairs and stepped softly out onto the bridge deck just as the man at the railing turned around, a large white man in a black watch cap, a blue jean jacket, and military-looking pants.
The man had a small gray pistol in his right hand and he pointed it at Fitch as soon as he saw him. Fitch threw the parang straight at the man’s head, as he drew out his Colt, and missed him completely, but, as the man ducked, his own first shot went wide. Fitch fired the Colt, the revolver bucking in his wet hands—a wild shot that spanged off the steel wall of the bridge house, struck the staircase railing a glancing blow, and slammed right back into Brendan Fitch’s rib cage.
The impact of the slug threw Fitch backward against the pilothouse wall, a cold numbness spreading out from his rib cage, but, by then, he had fired the big Colt twice more, the weapon kicking like a mule in his right hand. The man in the watch cap lurched toward the pilothouse door, firing as he stumbled across the wet decking, the little gun popping like a toy and tinny rounds ticking off the steel plate next to Fitch’s head and zipping away into the darkness. Fitch fired the Colt again—that was four rounds out and one to go—and the watch-cap man flattened against the wheelhouse door with a large black crater in his temple.
Fitch pivoted as he heard the slice-and-dice unit clattering up the gangway stairs, looked back toward the wheelhouse again, saw another white man inside the wheelhouse—short, black-haired, pale-eyed, with a well-trimmed black goatee, his narrow, sharp-featured face vividly defined by the red cabin light. He was shouting something at Fitch, but it was muffled by the glass and then carried away by the wind.
The man with the goatee raised a black weapon—in the heightened intensity of the moment Fitch recognized it as an MP5. The man aimed it at Fitch through the glass. Anson Wang was standing at the wheel behind the man, his face battered and bloody, his mouth slack. And on Anson’s far side, holding one of the ship’s .303s, its muzzle hard up against Anson’s temple, was the third mate, Vigo Majiic.
Fitch, in rage and desperation, fired his fifth and last round at the sharp-faced little man at exactly same time that the muzzle of the man’s MP5 filled up with sparkling blue fire and the glass window between them shattered into a blizzard of shards. When the broken glass fell away, the little man was still standing, but Anson Wang and Vigo Majiic were gone. Wonderful.
Six rounds out, and Fitch had managed to shoot both himself and Anson Wang with two of them. Brilliant. No rounds left in the Colt and caught between an MP5 and the salad chefs from Hell with only his hip flask to throw at them. Time to bail.
Fitch stepped over the taffrail and launched himself outward into the storm just as the bearded man in the wheelhouse fired the MP5. Several rounds plucked at his billowing shirt as Fitch hurtled through the air, hoping he had enough arc to clear the main-deck rail and reach the open water sixty feet below him. The wind tore at him as he fell through the rain and the corrugated black wall of the ocean rose up before him. He sliced into the flank of a great sea roller as another spray of machine-gun rounds punched into the foamy chop all around him. Fitch sank rapidly, for a strangely silent time, dimly aware of the great wall of the ship’s hull sliding ponderously by him in the deep, and the rhythmic pounding of the ship’s propeller, a dull, concussive booming that was coming closer every second. He felt the salt ocean around him moving in perfect time to that terrible churning prop, so near now that he felt the pull of the undertow and the ocean pulsing like jelly all around him.
He heard a muttering burble very close to his head and a long shape moved across the waves a few feet above him. His lungs aching, Fitch kicked hard for the surface, broke into the streaming air; his flailing hand struck a hard, slick surface. An angry face appeared in the air over his head, a staring yellow face with a black beard.
Fitch put a hand on the ridge of the boat’s gunwale as the yellow face leaned over to hack at him. Fitch caught the man’s wrist and jerked him over the side into the ocean. The man slashed out at Fitch one last time, even as he slipped under the waves, missing Fitch but hacking a chunk out of the gunwale right next to his head. A gasp, a cry cut off in a choking bubble, and then Fitch was alone in the black water.
The gray cigarette boat yawed crazily. The engine snarled and muttered as the long craft turned in a slow, driverless circle. Huge waves washed over the side, and the boat took on water. The storm rolled above him with a sound like a freight train crossing an iron bridge, but Brendan Fitch held on to that slick, hard ridge of the gunwale for a very long time.
In a while, the black hulk of the
Mingo Dubai
slipped away into the storm, until her running lights blinked out and he was lost in blackness, unable to see his hand in front of him. Above the roaring of the sea he could still hear the pounding of the tanker’s prop and the volcanic throb of her diesels: after a time, the noise faded, and then died away entirely and all Fitch could hear was the mutter of the cigarette boat’s engines and the wild wind howling over the South China Sea.
Mingo Dubai
slipped away into the storm, until her running lights blinked out and he was lost in blackness, unable to see his hand in front of him. Above the roaring of the sea he could still hear the pounding of the tanker’s prop and the volcanic throb of her diesels: after a time, the noise faded, and then died away entirely and all Fitch could hear was the mutter of the cigarette boat’s engines and the wild wind howling over the South China Sea.
2
Singapore Coast Guard confirms that a 500-foot tanker (MINGO DUBAI) disappeared from radar (presumed sunk) 6 miles off the Kepulauan Lingga Lighthouse after clearing the Strait of Malacca and entering the South China Sea. The vessel, registered in Belize to a numbered corporation (298767 CR) based in Mexico City, was en route to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, with 30,000 tons of caustic soda aboard. The prevailing conditions were gale-force winds and extremely heavy seas, and indications are that the vessel experienced a rogue wave that raised the stern and bow sections, causing the ship to break in two. No emergency message was received by Singapore Maritime Patrol, and a subsequent helicopter overflight observed extensive caustic spill in the water with attendant fish kill and three corpses that could not be recovered. The ocean depth in this part of the South China Sea is 3,000 feet. A sonar scan is pending the subsidence of the storm and the availability of a ship properly equipped. No lifeboats were observed from the flyover, and it is not known whether the vessel’s EPIRB beacon was not activated or malfunctioned upon immersion.
Out of a crew of 28, composed of Malays, Dyaks, and Serbian sailors, only 1 man was pulled from the water, a British national serving as first mate aboard the MINGO DUBAI and carrying ID as one BRENDAN MICHAEL FITCH. FITCH reported to his rescuers that the ship did not in fact sink and was instead hijacked by crew members aided by unknown assaulters who boarded from a high-speed craft during the storm. This allegation cannot be confirmed, and is contradicted by the presence of the caustic soda spill and debris sightings. FITCH claimed to have overcome the pilot of the assault craft and taken possession of it, but, when found, was adrift on a section of fiberglass hull of unknown origins. It is the preliminary conclusion of the Singapore investigators that the MINGO DUBAI was sunk through rogue wave action that may have been exacerbated by the fact that FITCH, the Officer of the Watch at the time, was drunk at his station in the wheelhouse. FITCH was examined by a Coast Guard medic in the chopper en route to Singapore and was found to have a blood-alcohol level equal to the level of complete intoxication, according to Singaporean authorities. A gash in his rib cage that FITCH contended was a bullet wound was found to be inconclusive, since no round was discovered in the wound. FITCH was held, pending a full maritime inquiry by the Singapore Police, and local sources say he is being interrogated by Singaporean officials at a secure facility in an unknown location. This incident was tagged and forwarded to Langley HQ for further action by our staff at Singapore Sub-Station HALO because an intake body scan conducted by Singapore SID revealed an Agency tracing implant registered to a contract employee (6064-988C) of the Agency at LONDON STATION (seconded from the SAS) (real name RAYMOND PAGET FYKE—operational code IBIS) and was at the time of his disappearance in November of 2002 under a DETAIN / SEQUESTER / DO NOT INTERROGATE order filed with INTERPOL and related agencies, which raises the issue that the debriefing of IBIS by Singaporean Intelligence officers may constitute a serious security risk for the USA. MESSAGE ENDS.
CLANDESTINE SERVICES
EXECUTE/ADDENDUM re xr266gt EYES/DIAL
Preliminary Humlnt received from agents on site in Singapore has been evaluated by this office and it has been concluded that the unilateral and unrestricted interrogation of IBIS by Singaporean SID agents or their official proxies is an unacceptable risk to national security.
Therefore London Station, as the last station of active service for IBIS, will take such immediate action as is necessary to remedy the situation and neutralize the vulnerability by any means available and without restriction. Results only will be recorded. Zulu time initiates immediately. Operational Protocols appended:
DIAL/EYES—DG/CS—CATHER
3
Kotor, Montenegro
Branco Gospic, a heavy-bodied, slope-shouldered bull of a man with cold gray eyes and a bald skull distorted into a chestnut shape by a near-miss mortar round, was sitting stiffly upright—his bullet-pocked belly would tolerate no other position—on an iron bench on the pillared balcony of his villa overlooking the Montenegrin coastal village of Kotor. The ancient fortress spread itself out below him, a stirring prospect if the man had cared to care—which it was not in his nature to do—a sweeping view of a fjordlike, craggy coast, the huge slab-sided mountain walls rising up to meet the parapet of the medieval fortress on the peak, built by the Venetians in the years of their naval power to stem the northward tide of the Ottoman Turks. The great triangular fort overlooked a blade-shaped deepwater inlet filled with pleasure boats and trawlers, and out to the far west the slate-gray sea churned with shards of glassy light as the pale winter sun slid down into Italy on the far shore of the Adriatic.
Two hundred feet beneath his balcony, a broad, stone-paved seawallstuck out into the water like the prow of a battleship. Although fall was dying in the air and the first snowflakes of winter were feathering the stones of Venice, on the eastern side of the Adriatic the evening was still just warm enough for the people of the old town to be out walking the seawall; pretty girls in Parisian dresses, gliding along on shell pink clouds of self-esteem, watched by roving packs of sharply dressed young men, sporting huge mustachios in the latest Serbian manner; sagging old men, burned out by the eternal ethnic wars, staring out to sea with glazed, dead eyes; feral children, running wild on the stones, calling out with harsh voices, their green kites trailing in the salt wind.
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