Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (12 page)

“Shigahara is dead. He won’t be helping you.”

A shot blasted into the night air, and one of the seamen at the rail screamed and fell backward, clutching at his chest. Keanae knew in a second it had to be the fifth hijacker, the one they couldn’t find on board.

He turned and fired three shots from his pistol in the direction the shot had to have come from. He reloaded quickly.

The bullhorn voice came again. “Sounds like some of my men are still up there working for me, whoever you are. You don’t have a prayer. I give the word, we have marksmen with night scopes on shore who will clean all of you off that rail. You want to die here in the fucking rain?”

Keanae leaned out and fired five times with his pistol
at the small boat below. Another scream filtered through the darkness.

A submachine gun rattled off a dozen shots from the boat below, and Keanae lunged back to get out of the spray of lead and paint chips where the hot rounds drilled past him. The burst of automatic gunfire must have been the signal. High-powered rifles from shore cracked, and heavy lead bullets whined off the steel sides and rails of the ship. The four men there dove to the deck and rolled away from the rail, searching for something solid to hide behind. Keanae figured twenty shots from shore, then a second burst from the sub gun below ended the sniping.

“Now you see how it is,” the bullhorn brayed. “We’re at a standoff. You can’t leave; we can’t get up there. We blow up the fucking boat, it’ll be lots harder to salvage the crates in your number two hold. You could just give up. Hell, tell you what I’ll do. I’ll meet your payroll, double it for rich man, and fly you all to Majuro, where you can get a flight back to Honolulu. What could be more fair? You hear me? Who the hell’s in charge up there?”

“That would be me,” Keanae bellowed. “Who the hell are you?”

“Just a businessman trying to earn a living.”

Keanae thought he heard something, a scraping, but he wasn’t sure. He concentrated on listening to the sound of the bullhorn.

“So how about it? I haven’t heard you turn down my offer yet. How about a vote of the people? Ask your crewmen if they want to get killed trying to keep us off, or if they want a free ride back to Hawaii.”

“Not their decision, it’s mine,” Keanae shouted. He listened again—more scraping. What the hell?

Before he could lift up to investigate, two men came over the scuppers and under the rail with small Ingram-type submachine guns blasting. One of the sailors who had used a pistol took four slugs in the chest and went down without a word. Another one tried to run for better
protection behind the big crane, and he fell with slugs in both legs.

Keanae saw the men with funny goggles on. Then he knew—night vision glasses. He kept low, then lifted up and fired three times at the closest boarder, who still had the magnetic kneepads on. Two of the slugs caught him in the side and he pitched over and didn’t move.

In the faint light from a ship’s bulb, Keanae saw a third man lift over the rail and rattle off more shots. A small quiet period followed and Chief Mate Stillman shouted.

“Cease fire. Stop the shooting. We give up. I don’t want any more of my men killed in this stupid fight.”

“Smart man,” one of the machine gunners shouted. “You sailors with guns, toss them out. Should be three of you left. Do it now.” Keanae figured the talker was hiding behind one of the steel boxes bolted to the deck. Keanae was outgunned. He hadn’t even tried to fire the rifle. He waited a moment, picked his spot. He had to get back to his hiding place and choose his time again to strike. In a sudden rush he jolted across the deck and dove toward part of the hatch cover that hadn’t been reinstalled.

Two sub guns chattered, and Keanae felt a blow to his right leg as he hit the deck and rolled behind the protection. He dropped the revolver when he rolled.

“We have wounded,” Stillman shouted. “Is there a doctor on the atoll who can treat them?”

“There is,” the bullhorn voice said. “You talk that last man into surrendering and you have a deal.”

“What happens to my ship?”

“That’s not part of the deal. Who are you?”

“I’m Chief Mate Stillman, in command. Shigahara butchered our captain.”

“Sounds like Shiggy. Talk to your man.”

While the two talked, Keanae had been moving. He was more at home with silent movement in the woods or jungle, but here it worked as well. He had a four-foot open space he had to cross. Even in the darkness there were shafts of light stabbing into the area from the ship’s normal lights, one of them streaking across his route. He
moved across it with slow, agonizing inches, worming ahead and pausing and worming ahead. Any quick movement will attract a watcher. Before Stillman and the bullhorn finished talking, Keanae was on the far side and had cover and concealment. Then he moved swiftly down a ladder, past the crew quarters, and toward the first hold, where he had a hideout. The last surge brought a gush of dizziness to him, and he slowed, then lowered his head until the feeling passed, and hurried on to the hold, down the ladder, and to the small space he had built behind old cardboard cartons and assorted rubble from the last regular shipment. He eased in behind his camouflage and let his heart stop racing. Then he looked at his leg. The slug had gone all the way through. He took off his shirt, pulled off his T-shirt, and tore it up for bandages. Then he bound both the entry and exit wounds as tight as he could stand. At least he wouldn’t bleed to death. He had another thirty hours, maybe, to get that slug out of his shoulder. He hadn’t felt it during the heat of the battle and the escape, but now it throbbed. He dug into his pocket and took out the plastic bottle of ibuprofen the cook had given him. Four would do. He gulped them down without the help of water. Keanae felt safe here. The problem was, he was also blind and deaf to what was going on. When they stopped looking for him, he would slip up a deck and see if he could find out what the men from the island were doing.

On deck, Chief Mate Stillman had his crew assembled. He had let down a rope ladder and six men had come on board. Two were obviously Arabs, with full black beards and swarthy skin. The others were locals, undoubtedly paid well for this bit of piracy. One of the bearded ones was the leader.

He stared at Stillman in the faint light of the ship’s floods.

“Two of your sailors are dead, one wounded—I know there were five men firing from the rail. Another man
came in with his empty revolver. What about the fifth man?”

“He’s another crewman in the group over there,” Stillman said. “Why should I point him out? We’re all here.”

“You’re shorthanded.”

“Shigahara was responsible for that. I think he enjoyed killing people.”

The Arab laughed. “Yes, yes, that does sound like my little Japanese buddy. Now, where is the three million dollars?”

“He didn’t tell me. It was delivered to his cabin, the captain’s cabin. Your guess where he hid it is as good as mine.”

The three tied-up hijackers and the missing one were greeted by the Arabs like teammates. The Arab leader frowned, then lifted heavy brows.

“What the hell, you’re probably right about the fifth shooter. Now we have work to do.”

A larger boat had worked out of the entrance to the lagoon and came alongside in the darkness. It was about eighty feet long, Stillman figured. The rain came down again and the hijack leader cursed in Arabic.

The hatch cover had been lifted off the second hold, and the crane now dropped its big hooks into the depths, where crewmen rigged them on the lifting rings on both sides of a crate of plutonium. They moved three of the crates off the ship and into the eighty-foot boat below. It pulled away in the darkness and maneuvered at a cat’s crawl through the entrance to the lagoon and then up to the dock. There a crane on wheels lifted the crates off the boat to the dock. Bright floodlights outlined the progress as the men on the merchantman watched. Soon the big boat was back beside the freighter. Six men came up the rope ladder with sea bags. They reported to the bearded Arab, who welcomed them and had one of the regular crew show them to quarters. Then three more plutonium crates were eased into the boat bouncing below on the choppy sea.

One of the bearded Arabs left the ship then, along with
the three machine gunners and four other men who had helped in the off-loading. This time the boat stopped only briefly at the lagoon dock. In the bright lights, Stillman could see eight men get off the boat; then it pushed off and went back out the channel, turned south and headed into the angry Pacific Ocean.

Stillman knew they still had a chance to save the rest of the cargo and the ship. The limpet mines must have been a bluff. Keanae had slipped away and was back in one of his several hiding spots. He had told the chief mate about some of them. The one in the kitchen had been inspired, complete with food, drink, and companionship. Stillman had no idea where the CIA agent was now. The Arab man came up to Stillman as the hatch covers were eased into place and battened down.

“Chief Mate Stillman, you will make ready to get underway. We’ll be leaving within fifteen minutes. I’d suggest you get your crew cracking. You might have noticed that we added seven men to your crew. That means we now have ten men on board. All of our seamen are competent in their craft, and are all loyal to me. Each man has two weapons, so instruct your crew to do exactly as they are told at all times by my men. Now get us underway.”

“In this weather?”

“Yes. Beautiful, isn’t it? I couldn’t have ordered a better storm, or one at a better time. It’s made to order for the rest of our little operation here. As you’re moving the ship, Kassir here will be watching you. He’s a qualified pilot and first mate, so be sure you are exact in following his orders. He’ll give you the heading and speed and see that you stay with it. Oh, you have no operating radio, so we have brought two on board with us. Now, move.”

Behind the ship, on the atoll, a heavy truck had pulled up to the dock. Two of the large crates were loaded on board with the crane, and it sped away into the night. It followed a narrow road near the coast of the island and past a small hill to the southern half, which was nearly flat and had
been bulldozed and rolled down until the coral had been packed so tightly with the sand and soil that it made a nearly concrete-like surface. The landing strip was only eight hundred yards long, and there were definite restrictions on how big a plane could be landed there.

The runway was unlighted. Sitting at the extreme north end of the hard surface was a Spartica aircraft. None of the men at the small field had ever seen one before. They were told it had been used in South America for decades as a rugged and highly reliable short-hop transport plane for heavy loads. Its loading hatch was over eight feet square. The truck pulled up near the plane and waited. Five minutes later, coming out of the misty rain, the rolling crane eased up to the truck and positioned itself, put down its outrigger braces and hooked up to one of the crates.

Loading it was tricky. They had to lift it near the hatch, then slowly lower it onto a dolly that eased it backward into the plane inches at a time. More dollies were positioned under it as the crane let it down gently. Then it was safe on the dollies and rolled back in the plane, and the second crate came and was offloaded the same way.

The pilot and engineer came back and checked the load. They measured and had the crew move the boxes forward four feet each before they were tied down.

Two minutes later, through the darkness and the continuing spatter of raindrops, the stubby winged plane’s two wing-mounted turboprop engines roared into life. The pilot checked his engines a moment. Then he gunned them, stormed down the short runway, and lifted his wheels off the ground with only thirty feet to spare. The craft turned and headed due west. The pilot, an Italian, settled into his job. He was using the name of Pasquale for this trip. Just the one name. He had a long flight ahead of him. He had put on added fuel tanks in Majuro and had enough gas to fly for three thousand miles before stopping. That excited him. Then, too, there was the promised bonus of fifty thousand dollars when he delivered the two crates. He had no idea what was in them,
but it must be highly valuable. For a brief moment he thought of changing his course and vanishing among the hundreds of islands in Micronesia. He might be able to sell the goods for millions. The men who hired him were Arabs, and he wondered what the valuable cargo was. But he had dismissed the idea. His copilot would never go along with the idea. He would have to kill the man. He shrugged. No way was he going to kill his own brother.

The South Pacific

On board the
Carl Vinson CVN 70

At dawn the carrier task force was only twenty miles off Bikar Atoll. A valley in the series of heavy weather cells provided a clear view of the small island, and both the Hawkeye and a pair of F-14s reported that there was no freighter anchored off the island.

“I don’t like it,” Murdock said. “She could have been there for three or four hours. I want to go in with our two Sixties and check out the locals. Can we take off in fifteen minutes?”

The CAG said the two Sixties were still at standby. Murdock hustled his men into the birds and they launched thirteen minutes later. On the short hop to the atoll Murdock checked with Communications. Yes, they had been given approval by the powers in Majuro to land on any of the atolls they thought might be involved in the hijacking.

The two birds came into the small island from the north and landed on the airfield just south of the small settlement. A pickup truck hustled out to where they dropped out of the choppers. A tanned Caucasian about forty-five, with Navy wings pinned to his flight jacket met them with a big grin.

“Be damned—a real live SH-60. Didn’t think I’d ever see another one of them long as I lived. Name’s Quartermier. Welcome to Bikar.”

Murdock shook his hand. “Commander Murdock, sir.
We’re looking for a hijacked freighter that was headed this way. Did it stop here?”