The Pirate Hunters (37 page)

Batman had arrived, dragging the moneybag with him.
This was not unusual as everyone felt better when the bag was in sight. It was stuffed with so many bills, though, it was getting hard to lift.

No one noticed anything different about him or the money-bag, but during a break in the conversation about Zeek, Batman suddenly picked up the bag and put it on the mess table.

“Anyone want to check the stash?” he asked them.

This was a first. The unwritten rule was, no one touched the money except the Batman.

“Why would we want to do that?” Gunner asked him, a bit nervously.

Batman looked right at Nolan. “Just so everyone can sleep peacefully, if we ever get to sleep on this mission.”

Nolan was as surprised as the other three, but he knew where this was coming from: the talk he had with Gunner, Crash and Twitch that day on the
Althea Dawn
, and the discussion about the money he had with Batman a short while later. Trust issues were involved and had been simmering.

Batman pushed the bag toward Gunner, who just pushed it back. “I got no problems,” Gunner said.

Batman pushed it toward Twitch, who barely seemed to notice. “Money can’t buy me love,” he mumbled.

Finally, Crash pulled the bag over to him. “You know, I think I’d like to feel it, smell it,” he said. “I haven’t seen it since old man Kilos first paid us.”

He reached deep inside the bag and started pulling out tightly wrapped packets.

But it wasn’t money. It was newspaper.

“What the fuck?” he yelled.

“I knew it!” Twitch said, suddenly coming to life.

They were all shocked—even Nolan. But Batman immediately calmed them down.

“I switched bags before we left,” he confessed to them. “Our money’s in a vault in a bank back in Aden that’s secretly run by Kilos. It’s safe, its insured, and it’s even got two guards watching over it. And there’s a special code to get in to see it.”

He passed each man a Kilos business card with a number on it.

“Here’s that code,” Batman went on. “Any one of us can go there and get his share of the money at any time. No questions asked.”

The three non-coms just glared back at him—like it was a practical joke. But it wasn’t.

“And I told Conley, that if we don’t come back, that money should be given to the families of those crewmen who were murdered in Singapore.”

“But why?” Crash finally asked. “And why tell us now, like this?”

“Because this is not a job we’re going on,” Batman replied forcefully, even angrily. “It’s a mission—just like the old days. No one’s paying us for it. We’re doing it because we have to. Just like back in Delta.”

They knew he was right. They were going after Zeek only because they’d failed to complete the job the first time.

“We
have
to do it like this,” Batman went on. “And we have to do it without the money being on our minds the whole time.”

Crash, Gunner and Twitch were all still stunned and uneasy.

But Nolan reached across the table and fist-bumped Batman.

“I agree with him,” he said. “We do this one not just for our reputation but for our honor. Like before, with Delta. That’s got to be important to us. We can’t forget that.”

The others began to say something, but suddenly, the intercom squealed to life.

“Nous avons obtenu un success,”
they heard one of the Senegals cry. “We’ve got a hit . . .”

The entire team was up on the bridge in seconds. Studying the laptop screen, they saw a satellite photo display with a green blinking light at its farthest left edge. A line of script next to the blinking light read:
Indonesian medium warship.

“That’s got to be our boy,” Crash said. “What other Indonesian ship would be way out there?”

“Looks like he’s about 300 miles west of Sri Lanka,” Batman said. That puts him about 200 miles east of us. If we pour it on, we can run into him sometime around mid-morning.”

Twitch took it all in and asked: “Yeah—but then what?”

ZEEK’S SHIP, WHICH
he’d christened the
Pasha
, had performed flawlessly since leaving the Java Sea.

It ran smooth and true through the Malacca Strait and out into the Indian Ocean. They’d sailed to Sri Lanka with no problems and stayed the night in the port of Ambalangoda to take on fuel. Anyone who saw them assumed they were an Indonesian naval ship and treated them accordingly. After fueling up, Zeek’s well-connected Chinese captain told him they would be in Somali waters in less than three days.

Zeek had stayed awake for the entire trip so far—in fact, high on Ecstasy, he hadn’t slept in a week. With the promise of trouble-free sailing ahead, though, he’d decided to retire to his spacious quarters to finally crash.

But no sooner had he unbraided his beard and taken a handful of barbiturates to help him sleep, the CO of his new pirate band, a man named Commander Fun Li, came to his quarters to tell him he was needed back up on the bridge.

Li was ex-Chinese special forces. He was a slight man, taut, muscular and fearless. He was a protégé of Sunny Hi, and thus was under orders to be devoted to Zeek. But even an egotist like Zeek recognized Li wasn’t just some lackey. He was the real deal, brilliant when it came to strategy, tactics, intelligence and weaponry. The Pirate King had never had anyone as sharp and knowledgeable under his command before. It was Li’s job to get Zeek, his ship and his new band of
pirates to Somalia safe and in one piece. He was committed to doing it well.

Li escorted Zeek back up to the bridge. The agitated pirate entered the control center to find the ship’s captain hunched over a large radar screen.

“Unwelcome company,” the captain murmured to him.

Zeek looked at the seas around them. Nothing had changed since he’d left a few minutes before. It was a bright, sunny morning; the sea was extremely calm—sailing conditions couldn’t have been better. There were four other ships within sight. One was about five miles ahead of them; it was a Panamanian-registered supertanker. They’d been following this ship since leaving Sri Lanka. Behind them, by about ten miles, was an old Filipino freighter heading for the Suez Canal. It had been following them since early morning.

Off to the portside, Zeek could see a rusty freighter heading in the opposite direction. Behind it by a mile or so was what appeared to be an even older freighter, also heading east.

So what was the problem?

It wasn’t the other ships that were concerning the captain. Instead, he pointed to the sky right above the
Pasha.

Zeek looked through the bridge window to see a small heli cop ter overhead, flying along, keeping pace with them.

He was immediately concerned.

“How long has that been up there?” he asked the captain.

“Five minutes,” was the reply.

Zeek turned to Commander Li, who had the copter in his binoculars.

“What kind of helicopter is it?”

Li reported: “It’s not a large aircraft. It could be from an oil platform or an oil exploration ship. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Or it could be a military craft,” he replied.

This Zeek did not want to hear.

He pulled the binoculars from Li’s hands and studied the copter himself. It was probably 1,000 feet above the
Pasha
, moving in perfect sync with the ship. It was hard to see what
color it was, or what type. It
was
small, though, which bothered him, because the copter that had led the attack on his headquarters back in Indonesia had also been small.

Zeek had planned a carefree crossing of the Indian Ocean. He had thought he’d covered everything. The ship, his political connections, his new army of bodyguards. The promise of fertile new pirating ground.

But this helicopter . . . this worried him.

Zeek unhappily decided to forgo his sleep, took some meth, and stayed on the bridge to watch the helicopter pacing them.

He asked Li about launching the ship’s own helicopter—a German-built Bo-105 gunship. But Li asked, to what end?

“Harassing that copter will just bring attention to us,” he said. “That’s the last thing we want.”

The 352 also had six 50-caliber machine guns onboard: two on the bridge railing, two on the bow and two on the stern.

Zeek pointed to the nearest 50-caliber and asked: “Could we shoot it down if we wanted to?”

Li thought a moment. “Probably,” he replied. “But again, it would attract a lot of attention to us.”

He spread his hands out to indicate the handful of ships going in both directions around the
Pasha
.

“So there’s
nothing
we can do?” Zeek asked him angrily. “Except watch the infernal thing?”

“Nothing else,” Li replied.

And after twenty minutes, the copter flew away.

THE COPTER REAPPEARED
two hours later, close to noon.

Once again, it was first spotted on the ship’s air-defense radar, a blip coming from the northwest.

It took up station right above the
Pasha
just as before, this time moving as the sun moved, making it difficult for anyone on the ship to look up at it very long with the naked eye.

Zeek had spent all the time between sightings on the bridge in a highly restless state. He was fighting the contradicting effects of the drugs he’d ingested—meth to stay awake, barbiturates to go to sleep—and losing on both ends. When the
copter reappeared, he ordered his two bodyguards onto the deck of the ship with their AK-47s close by, but following Li’s advice, not in view. The same ships were in front of and in back of the
Pasha
, and as Li reminded him several times, the last thing they wanted was to call attention to themselves.

But Zeek was getting anxious. Who was in the helicopter?

Who was watching him?

THIS TIME THE
copter stayed above them for more than an hour. Tension ran through the ship the whole time. The bodyguards were forced to sit in the sweltering sun, looking extremely uncomfortable. The pirate army was told to stay below, out of sight. Meanwhile Zeek spent all this time on the bridge, looking into the sun, burning his retinas.

Once again he discussed with Li shooting down the copter—or at least trying to—and taking their chances with anyone who saw them. But again, Li talked him out of it. It would be impossible to keep other eyes from seeing such an action, and then reporting it. Zeek reluctantly heeded his advice.

At exactly 1330 hours, the copter disappeared again.

The tension eased, and for a moment, Zeek actually thought he could finally retire to his quarters and get some sleep.

But that idea was crushed when, at 1331 hours, the ship’s radio screeched to life. The initial message was garbled and spoken in broken English, but the gist was clear. The
Pasha
was being told it should stand by and prepare for boarding by a NATO ship on anti-piracy patrol.

Zeek was instantly furious—this was the
last
thing he needed. This wasn’t a typical vessel they were sailing here. Only a few members of European royalty had yachts that resembled military ships, and he was sure they didn’t have compartments belowdecks filled with illegal weapons and newly recruited pirates. Political connections or not, Zeek was nervous at the thought of real military people tramping through his new ship.

The
Pasha
received three more messages via the radio, telling them to stand by, that the anti-piracy boarding party was on its way. During this time, Zeek made calls back to his
friends at Indonesian naval headquarters and to Sunny Hi’s personal phone, leaving frantic messages each time.

Waiting for the boarding party stretched on into the late afternoon. No NATO ship ever appeared. Replies to the radio frequency used by the mysterious caller went unanswered. The
Pasha
passed through a series of rainsqualls, but upon coming out of each one, they could still see no NATO ship, no changes at all, except that the Filipino ship that had been traveling behind them had been replaced by a rusty, broken-down coastal freighter.

Finally, Zeek and Li came to realize they’d been the victims of a hoax. There was no NATO boarding party on its way. The question was: Who would do this—and why?

By 1800 hours, Zeek was so wound up he could barely talk. It had been a bad day for him. He stormed back to his expansive cabin, determined to get some sleep, when he received yet another message from the bridge.

The helicopter was overhead again.

Zeek could not be contained this time. He signaled the crew to what amounted to battle stations, then climbed into his own battle gear and rushed back to the bridge, ready for war.

He told Li he had only one question: What was the best way to shoot down the helicopter—with the ship’s machine guns or by sending their own copter aloft?

Li knew that, despite his deep connections, the wrong answer might get him a short trip over the side. But it was his job to stay cool and rational.

“If you want to shoot it down, I recommend shooting it down with the machine guns,” he told Zeek. “Because launching our copter would give it a clue something was up. But . . .”

“But what?” Zeek asked.

“But we
mustn’t
do it in front of witnesses,” Li emphasized. “It would be too rash, and it would cause a lot of suspicions.”

“What do you suggest then?” Zeek asked him.

“Let’s move out of the shipping lanes,” Li advised. “See if this pest follows. Once we are out of sight of prying eyes, you can do what you want with him.”

Zeek saw the wisdom in this right away.

“Do it then,” he said. “Move us—and hurry.”

THE
PASHA
MADE
a long, slow turn to the southwest at 1810 hours. They were now a few hundred miles west of the Maldives. Diverging here was not so unusual if the ship’s destination was South Africa or even South America.

When the
Pasha
changed course, the trailing helicopter did as well. By the time the pirate ship passed over the horizon and beyond the sight of other vessels in the major shipping lanes, there was still an hour of sunlight left.