Operation Caribe (12 page)

Batman nodded again.

“And you were paid?”

“Yes—we were…”

Jobo pounded him on the back. “Then celebrate, my boy. You deserve it.”

“But some strange things happened on that island,” Batman told him. “Things we really can’t explain.”

Jobo put his arm around Batman’s shoulder. “My friend—strange things are
always
happening out in these islands. And some of them no one can
ever
explain, even if they take a hundred years to try. The more time you spend out here, the more you will come to understand that.”

Batman thought this over. The pirates were dead. The BABE consortium had paid them. And the OAS representative was being quite clear he didn’t want to know or care how the pirates met their end.

So …

“End of mission, end of story?” Jobo asked him.

Batman finally managed a smile.

“You learn quick,” Jobo told him.

Batman turned and clinked glasses with Jennessa.

“All’s well that ends well,” he told her.

She smiled and kissed his cheeks again.

“Exactly,” she replied.

Crash, Gunner, Twitch and the Senegals had all joined them by now. They, too, were getting their glasses filled by Jennessa’s gorgeous colleagues.

“I guess our vacation starts today,” Crash said.

*   *   *

THE LITTLE CELEBRATION went on like this for a while. It was a perfect day. The warm winds were blowing, the crystal-clear water was lapping gently against the
Dustboat
’s hull, the sun was shining brightly.

Everything seemed ideal.

But not for Nolan.

He never joined the others. He spent the whole time up on the bow where the team’s helicopters had been brought, scraping off the oversized United States insignia they’d added before the assault on the pirates’ hidden camp.

His body language made it clear that he wanted to be left alone, and the members of Whiskey understood.

Flying the U.S.-marked copters and wearing the American flag on the back of his battle suit had been a reprieve of sorts for Nolan. For a little while, it was as if he were serving in the U.S. military again. Fighting for his country again.

It seemed like such a little thing, but it was hugely important to him.

Now that the mission was over, ending strangely or not, getting rid of the emblems was his job—no one else’s.

“What’s with him?” Jennessa finally asked Batman. “Doesn’t he like champagne?”

Batman just shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

Jennessa shook her head. “He’s really handsome, you know,” she said with a sigh, immediately taking the wind out of Batman’s sails. “Good build. Rugged looks. Has he ever done any modeling?”

“Only for the Army,” Batman replied with a sinister laugh.

It was true: When Nolan was an officer cadet, his picture had graced some Army recruiting posters.

“Well, the eyepatch adds just the right amount of mystery,” Jennessa went on, refilling Batman’s glass. “So please, tell him for me, no matter what he does, don’t ever do anything to screw up that face.”

PART THREE

The Sugar Men

11

Aden, Yemen

MARK CONLEY ARRIVED at the Kilos building an hour before sunrise.

Coffee in hand, he took his seat inside the OSS suite, glanced at his computer screen and let out a long sigh. More than three dozen requests for Whiskey’s services had come in overnight. Representatives from the governments of Japan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Spain were inquiring about the team’s availability. Companies from Greece, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and The Netherlands were also hoping to book them. They’d even received an inquiry from someone at a company in Los Angeles that simply said, “Call me.”

“We should just franchise this thing,” Conley thought aloud as he began the process of transferring the voice messages to text. “Then they can take over this whole freaking building.”

A letter was waiting on his desk. It was postmarked the Bahamas, three days before. Inside was a funds transfer slip from the Royal Bahamian Bank of Nassau to the Kilos-controlled OSS account in the First National Bank of Aden. The transfer was for five million dollars. An attached note read: “Wish you were here.” It was signed by Batman Bob Graves.

Wiseass,
Conley thought.

The day went on. Conley split his time between OSS stuff and his real job of running Kilos Shipping’s Middle East security department. By 11
A.M.
, he was ready for lunch.

He left the Kilos building and headed for the docks. There was a falafel stand down there that actually sold hot dogs.
Hebrew National
hot dogs, yet.

Conley ordered his usual: three pups and a Saudi Arabian Pepsi. Packing it all in a brown paper bag, he headed back to the office.

Upon crossing San’nah Street, though, he found his way blocked by a huge black limousine.

As he approached, the limo’s rear door opened. A large man inside was beckoning to Conley.

“Hello, friend of my friends,” the man called out to him.

He was wearing a thick wool suit and had hands the size of baked hams. His skin was pasty white, his teeth were gold and yellow, and his nose appeared to have been broken so many times, the cartilage didn’t know which way to go next. Judging by the bulge under the man’s suit coat pocket, he was packing a firearm the size of a small cannon.

Conley knew who he was right away.

“Comrade Bebe, I presume?” he asked.

“And you are ex-Big Apple cop?” the man replied. “Good to meet you.”

Bebe was the Russian gangster who’d hired Whiskey to provide security for a cruise ship full of Russian mobsters during a trip through the Aegean Sea not two months before. As unlikely as it seemed, the gangster took a liking to the team and had provided them with crucial information about how to finally track down and kill Zeek the Pirate.

Conley had heard so much about Bebe from the team members that he would have known him anywhere.

But what was he doing here, in Aden? In a limo that barely fit through the narrow streets? And in that suit? It was almost 95 degrees and it wasn’t even noon.

“Ride with me,” he said to Conley. “I’m just needing a few minutes.”

Armed only with his hot dogs and soda, Conley climbed into the limo and it sped off. Bebe took his lunch bag from him, looked inside, and then passed him an envelope full of photos.

“Do you know this man?” Bebe asked him.

Conley studied the photos. They showed a slight, well-dressed Asian man going in and out of various buildings, walking along the street, sitting in a park. All of the photos were candids, as if the man had been under surveillance, and the locations ranged from slums to typical Chinese streets to a building that looked nothing short of Shangri-la.

The photos were blurry in spots, but that didn’t matter. Conley knew who the man was: Sunny Hi.

He was one of the most dangerous criminals in the world, yet virtually unknown outside Asia. Boss of the Shanghai crime syndicate, Sunny Hi commanded an underworld organization so vast, its tentacles had a stranglehold not only on all of China, but on every other country along the Pacific Rim as well. Drugs, money laundering, prostitution, arms sales, murder for hire—Sunny Hi was so powerful, the ruling elite in Beijing reportedly kissed his ring whenever he requested a private meeting with them.

At his core, Sunny Hi was a pirate. His gang started out hijacking ships in the South China Sea, killing their crews, unloading the stolen cargo on the black market and then selling the commandeered ships themselves. Weapons and heroin dealing followed, as did white slavery and contract hits, and finally, a thriving business in child prostitution. His personal fortune was said to be more than $70 billion. His immediate gang numbered in the thousands; his activities affected, directly or indirectly, millions of people around the world.

But he was famously known never to have had his photo taken, or even be seen in public, which was why Conley was surprised to see so many images of him now.

“He is usually like a bug who crawls out only at night and in places where you cannot see him,” Bebe explained. “But more of late, he shows himself in the daytime. He even walks streets with his wife sometimes. He is trying to make it look like he’s leaving the criminal world behind because something grave has happened in his life. But it’s all show when it comes to his business. Inside dope says he’s as evil as ever.”

Bebe singled out a photo that showed Sunny Hi looking down into the cargo hold of a ship that was literally full of young females, several hundred at least, presumably being shipped out for prostitution around the Asian continent. They looked like cattle, and judging from the demeanor of some of the heavily armed guards also caught by the interloping camera, anyone who resisted was most likely beaten or killed, just to make an example.

“Sunny Hi has been scum of Earth,” Bebe concluded. “And when you hear that coming from man like me, you know I’m serious. I mean—criminal or not, we all have to make living, no? But selling these girls? Killing those who resist? Torturing their families? Even I know these things are wrong.”

Bebe lit up a cigarette.

“This man affects maybe one quarter of people on planet right now,” he went on. “In five years, maybe half. In ten years, the way Chinese dragon is behaving, who knows? Maybe he will control entire world?”

Conley put all the photos back in the envelope and tried to hand it back to Bebe. But the Russian insisted he keep it.

“I know you and your friends have major beef with Sunny Hi,” Bebe told him. “He was money man behind the departed Zeek. Plus, you and friends know this man is capable of many bad things. So,
you
must stop him somehow. Especially now that he loosens up, showing himself more in the light.”

Conley was more than a little surprised.

“Us?” he asked Bebe. “Why
us
?”

The gangster smiled, displaying his mouth full of dingy, gold-capped teeth.

“Because these days, you are superheroes,” the Russian said. “And no one else will dare do it. No country. No mafia. No military will go after him. They are afraid or too busy elsewhere. Fate of world is in your hands.”

With that, Bebe signaled his driver to stop. The limo door opened and Conley realized they were back where they started on San’nah Street.

“Take my word for this,” Bebe went on. “Now is time to whack this monkey. It won’t be easy. Will be very dangerous, in fact. I will be in touch with more information on his location, but I know foolproof plan is needed here because this man is not stupid. He is very, very smart. But you must help world. Save kids. He is pirate. You are pirate killers. Think it over.”

Conley stepped out onto crowded San’nah Street. Bebe waved to him, then closed the door and the limo roared away.

Only then did Conley realize Bebe still had his hot dogs and soda.

The Gulf of Siam
One week later

THE
HONG SONG STAR
was a mid-sized, Kilos-owned freighter home-ported in Ko Si Chung, Thailand.

Sailing off the Thai coast, one day out of port, the freighter was overtaken by pirates. Ten of them in all, they approached in a large motorboat, hooded and armed with machine guns. Climbing a ladder left unattended on the bow, they quickly rounded up the crew and seized the bridge without firing a shot.

In all, it took less than five minutes for the
Hong Song Star
to fall to the hijackers. In its cargo hold was 12,000 tons of sugar, worth about eight million dollars. Or at least that’s what it said on the ship’s manifest.

The pirates immediately locked the crew in the engine room, giving them plenty of food and water and DVD players for entertainment. There they remained while the hijackers repainted and renumbered the ship. By the next morning, the freighter had been rechristened the
Ocean Song
.

At noon that day, the crew was brought back up on deck and fed a hot meal. While they ate, a fleet of Vietnamese fishing boats approached in the distance. Confirming with the freighter’s captain that all was OK, the pirates put the crew overboard in life rafts. The Vietnamese fishermen picked them up within minutes. The master of the fishing fleet immediately radioed the International Piracy Center and reported what had happened.

Meanwhile, the hijacked ship disappeared into heavy fog to the east.

Only once the Vietnamese fishing boats were out of the ship’s sight did the pirates finally take off their masks.

There were ten of them in all: the five Senegals and the five members of Team Whiskey.

“If hijacking ships is really
that
easy,” Batman said, throwing his mask into the sea, “maybe we’re in the wrong business.”

*   *   *

AN HOUR LATER, a Chinook helicopter appeared over the ship.

Flying out of a secret Royal Navy installation near Singapore, the copter hovered about fifty feet from the freighter’s stern while two men slid down an access rope, both landing with a thump.

One was Dr. Alan Stevenson, the ex-Special Air Service physician who had hired Team Whiskey almost two months before to retrieve the mother of all microchips after it had been buried on an island off Zanzibar. The second man was also ex-SAS, a surgeon named Dr. Mace.

The Senegals helped them to their feet and picked up their heavy bags. Stevenson gave a thumbs-up to the copter pilot, and the huge aircraft flew away.

Both doctors were quickly brought below.

Two hours later

BATMAN KNOCKED TWICE on Nolan’s cabin door and went in.

He found his friend sitting on his bunk, eye patch in place, staring into space.

“Are you ready for this?” Batman asked him.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Nolan replied.

Batman said, “I mean, are you
sure
you want to go through with it?”

Nolan shrugged. “No, I’m not—but I’m going to do it anyway.”

Batman shook his head. “You realize we’re not so deep into this thing that we can’t call it off. Who would know?”