The Executioner found what he’d been searching for

Once he was staring at them—a sea of yellow canisters, each with an electronic detonator affixed—he was almost taken aback by just how many the Russian had managed to capture and move. The hall was filled with them, and there was no doubt in Bolan’s mind that the explosions awaiting each were more than enough to produce a toxic cloud of incredible size. Based on the intelligence the Farm had provided, this number of canisters would be enough to poison almost the entire city.

He heard approaching footsteps and raised the Beretta.

“Beautiful, is it not?” The captain stepped into view. He was dressed in loose clothing in the local Javanese style. He held an electronic detonator in his hand.

“Place the detonator on the floor,” Bolan said, his Beretta trained on the man.

“This is a standoff,” the Russian said, laughing. “At least until I decide I wish to die. And then I will push this button and the entire city of Semarang dies with me.”

Dangerous Tides

The Executioner®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Phil Elmore for his contribution to this work.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

—James Russell Lowell

1819–1891

There are many reasons a man hoists the black flag and takes what he wants. When he does, he’s not a romantic figure or a pirate. He’s a predator and he’s going to pay for his crimes.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

1

The SH-60B Seahawk helicopter churned purposefully out of the sky, dropping perilously close to the water and raising a wake in the already rough seas below. The chopper’s twin engines pushed it through the twilight at the urging of Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man pilot and long-time friend of Mack Bolan, the Executioner. Grimaldi imagined he could feel the spray of seawater on the helicopter’s belly as he skimmed the waves.

“We’re coming up on the insertion point, Sarge!” Grimaldi said into his throat mike.

Behind him, in the open bay of the Seahawk, Mack Bolan lowered a pair of anti-fog goggles over his eyes. Then he checked the fit of the Boker Orca dive knife strapped to his thigh over his wet suit. He had already verified that the watertight pack strapped to the small of his back was double-buckled and secure. It was almost time to leave his headset—and Grimaldi’s chopper—behind.

“Understood, Jack,” he acknowledged, keying his own mike. “Final checklist.”

“Gear?” Grimaldi said.

“Secure.”

“Plumett case?”

The Executioner checked the seals on the heavy black case, then slung it over his shoulder and across his back.

“On board.”

“Air supply?” Grimaldi asked.

Bolan checked the fit of the mouthpiece on the modified pony bottle he wore on his chest. The bottle was fixed to one of the shoulder straps of his backpack, cinched tightly in place with nylon webbing. The small gauge on the high-tech bottle read Full.

“Check,” Bolan said.

“DPV?” Grimaldi ticked off.

Bolan reached down and switched on the standby power of the electric, self-contained Driver Propulsion Vehicle Stony Man Farm had provided for him. The muted status LEDs were all green. The mounted GPS locator displayed his position relative to his target coordinates. The DPV was a sealed electric motor with a single-use power supply, essentially a giant propeller cylinder and rudder assembly. Twin joysticks jutted above and behind, containing triggers to adjust the throttle and steer the unit.

“Ready,” Bolan said.

“Good luck, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “And good hunting.” The cocky pilot turned all business as he watched his instruments. “On my mark, Striker,” he said, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name. “Five…four…three…two…one…mark.”

At Grimaldi’s signal, Bolan pulled off his headset and shoved the DPV out of the chopper, the twin sticks of the machine tight in his fists. He hit the water below like a stone. The heavy device pulled him beneath the roiling waves. He paused as he descended, orienting himself and taking air from the pony bottle, watching in the darkness as the GPS unit pointed the way to his destination.

Bolan thumbed the machine’s controls and held on tightly as the almost-silent device began pulling him rapidly through the water. He adjusted course with a few taps of the right-hand trigger, managing his depth by angling the DPV and his body with it.

Above him, Grimaldi would be piloting the Seahawk back to the Perry-class frigate James Richardson. The firepower available to Bolan and to Stony Man was considerable, but no amount of heavy weaponry could do the job that now faced him. No, to succeed, Bolan would have to use stealth, mounting a soft probe into enemy-held territory in order to liberate innocent men and women.

It was an all too common scenario for the Executioner.

Bolan had covered a lot of ground in the past several hours, first by jet, then by helicopter, then on the frigate, only to take to the skies once more to be dropped into the cold sea below. It had started with a single telephone call, routed to Bolan through channels from Washington by way of Stony Man Farm. The circuits connecting them were complex, but the scrambled phone briefing from Hal Brognola—speaking to Bolan from the big Fed’s Justice Department office in D.C.—had been straightforward enough.

“A cruise ship has been hijacked,” Brognola had said without preamble.

The natural assumption in the modern age was that yet another terrorist group was claiming responsibility for yet another act of violence against helpless men, women and children. Brognola quickly explained that the problem was, if anything, even more serious.

“What we have,” the big Fed said, “is an act of piracy.”

“Pirates?” Bolan had not been sure he’d heard correctly.

“It’s a growing and very serious issue in certain parts of the world,” Brognola said. “As you know, pirate attacks off the cost of Africa have surged, cutting off aid to countries like Somalia. The South China Sea alone, which sees a third of worldwide commercial shipping, sees about half of the pirate attacks recorded by the International Maritime Bureau every year. We’re talking about a cost to cargo insurers upwards of a hundred million U.S. dollars a year.”

“Big business,” Bolan agreed.

“And getting worse,” Brognola said. “It’s not just Africa and other backwaters. Nobody’s immune.” He paused. “Our friends the Chinese executed over a dozen Chinese pirates not too long ago, after convicting them of murdering the crew of a freighter near Hong Kong waters. Without doubt, however, the worst pirate activity is in Indonesia. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia all patrol the Malacca Strait,” Brognola went on, “which is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. But they can’t be everywhere.”

“What’s the profile of the attacks?” Bolan asked.

“The pirates have historically targeted commercial shipping vessels, but they’re branching out. Now we’re seeing civilian tourists targeted. A couple of years ago, an American cruise ship was attacked in Somali waters by pirates in speedboats who fired machine guns and an RPG at the larger ship.”

“I remember that. Didn’t they use some kind of sonic weapon to defend themselves?”

“A long-range acoustic device,” Brognola said. “The LRAD supposedly helped drive off the pirates, but there’s debate about just how effective it was. In reality the ship rammed one of the pirate boats and ground it under her bow. That was enough to do the job.”

“So what’s happening now?” Bolan asked.

“It’s terrorism and that’s all it is. The motive may be financial rather than political, but they’re the same enemies you’ve faced down time and again.”

“What are the details?” Bolan asked.

“The Duyfken Ster,” Brognola said. “Holland registry, part of a cruise line that operates regularly in Indonesia, is now in the hands of pirates. The ship was taken off the coast of Java after making port in Semarang.”

“How did they do it?”

“The reports are a little sketchy,” Brognola said, “but at least a dozen men, maybe more, in two high-speed launchers, came at the ship from either side and boarded her using grapples. They swarmed the bridge, we believe, and established armed control over the rest of the ship. As you can imagine, there was no real resistance. Using the ship’s radio, they’ve relayed a demand to shore.”

“What do they want?”

“Money,” Brognola said. “And lots of it. They’ve threatened to kill the passengers if they see any overt show of force.”

“So what’s our involvement?” Bolan said.

“A couple of the passengers are connected,” Brognola said. “Family members of a U.S. congressman were taking the cruise. While officially the U.S. has done nothing but condemn the taking of the ship, much less acknowledge that the pirates have lucked in to high-value hostages…unofficially, the president wants these pirates taken down, and hard.”

“Why no official involvement?” Bolan asked.

“The usual reasons,” Brognola sighed. “Territoriality. Issues of sovereignty. Stubborn pride. None of the local governments involved wants to admit it is not capable of solving the pirate problem, even though the situation is widely known to be out of control. If we come in and mop it up for them, we’ll have shamed them on the world stage. The U.S. isn’t well-liked in that corner of the world, of course, and we’ve been told, more or less politely, to mind our own damned business.”

“Even if lives are at stake?”

“You know as well as I do, Striker, that political expedience is always going to trump human life.”

“Not for me,” Bolan said. “Never for me.”

“And not for the Farm,” Brognola nodded. “The Man has given us his blessing. We need results. And we need them quickly and quietly.”

“Then let’s do it,” Bolan had agreed.

Several hours and a few thousand miles later, the Executioner held tightly to the control sticks of the DPV, the wake churned by the machine’s motor beating an almost pleasant staccato against his wet suit-clad chest. His waterproof pack tugged against its straps. He was making good time and, according to the GPS unit on the DPV, he was exactly on course.

It did not take long for the preprogrammed coordinates—updated every few seconds as Stony Man Farm coordinated real-time satellite surveillance overhead—to match Bolan’s GPS-tracked location. The soldier paused to input a brief set of commands on the DPV’s keypad. Using the electronic locator, he oriented the DPV and pressed the key.

The little machine whirred quickly away, freed of Bolan’s two-hundred-plus pounds of man and equipment. Bolan watched it disappear into the murky darkness of the underwater world before kicking with his feet, pushing himself toward the surface.

The Executioner let his face mask, then his head, break the surface as he took in his surroundings. The stern of the giant cruise ship loomed ominously above him in the moonlight. He waited, quietly treading water, counting off the numbers in his head.

The shock wave, when it came, was not terribly large, but he could feel it nonetheless. The explosives packed into the nose of the DPV obliterated the machine at its preset coordinates, just off the bow of the ship. The charge was designed to produce as much noise and light as possible while posing little risk to the ship itself.

As the bomb blew, Bolan reached back over his shoulder and released the seal on the Plumett case. The heavy Plumett AL-54 he carried had been tuned and modified by the Farm’s armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger. Its range was more than adequate for the task. Floating in the water, Bolan lined up the launcher on one of the struts of the deck openings above the shipboard marina. He fired.

He could hear shouting from somewhere forward on the ship as the lightweight carbon fiber grapnel hit its mark, the Plumett’s 8 mm polyester rope streaming behind it. Without hesitation, Bolan pulled the quick release, letting the Plumett case fall away. He scrambled up the polyester line hand over hand, his traction-surfaced wet-suit gloves providing purchase as he went.

Bolan landed as quietly as he could. He released the waterproof gear bag and began removing its contents, methodically and efficiently gearing up after he removed his flippers. The combat harness inside the bag contained a holster and magazine pouches for his Kissinger-tuned Beretta 93-R machine pistol, which rode in its custom shoulder holster with sound suppressor attached. Over the right thigh of his wet suit, Bolan strapped on a rig for his. 44 Magnum Desert Eagle. Spare magazines rode in the belt pouches on the black web belt he clipped around his waist. Also in a pouch on his waist was a knurled aluminum combat flashlight.

Bolan took out waterproof, no-slip synthetic moccasins to cover his feet. They would give him silent traction on the cruise ship’s decks. The last item he removed was his ruggedized PDA phone, the muted face of which he illuminated briefly. According to the plans in the PDA, he was on Deck 3, above the ship’s raised marina. When the steel mesh enclosure of the marina was lowered to form a pool, guests on the cruise ship could use that to swim in the sea and also avail themselves of the Zodiacs, water skis and sailboats kept on hand. But partying on the water was the last thing on the minds of those trapped aboard the vessel. Bolan was keenly aware of the presence of innocents on board, all around him. He drew the Beretta and press-checked it to verify that a 124-grain subsonic hollow point round was chambered.

The soldier pulled the grapnel free from its position wrapped around a railing strut. He hooked it through the empty gear bag and tossed both over the side so they would not be found and give away his presence prematurely. Then he stalked forward.

He made his way through the ship’s galley, which was dark and smelled of spoiled food. He dared not risk using the flashlight he carried, as it would give away his position to anyone lurking nearby. Instead he crept among the counters, half-crouched, threading his way past fallen pots and pans and puddles of alcohol dotted with broken glass.

There were bullet holes in some of the bulkheads. Dried blood coated the floor and made a grisly path toward one of the walk-in coolers. Bolan had no doubt he would find bodies inside. Either the pirates had felt it necessary to make an example of some of the crew, or even the passengers, or they had met resistance and snuffed it out. Either way, it was likely the cooler was now a morgue. The Executioner passed it by, knowing there was nothing he could do for those already dead.

Moving silently, Bolan paused just outside the entrance to the galley. Through the open hatchway he could smell tobacco. There was a sentry out there. Pressing himself against the bulkhead, his back flat on the painted metal, he leveled the Beretta 93-R across his chest. Then he took his left hand, balled it into a fist and simply knocked on the bulkhead.

He tapped three times, waited and tapped again.

“Budi?” a voice asked, uncertain. The sentry called Budi’s name twice more before asking something in what Bolan assumed was Indonesian. Finally, Bolan rapped on the wall yet again.

“Budi!” the sentry said angrily. Bolan listened as the man walked to the entrance and stepped through.

“Sorry, Budi’s not here,” Bolan whispered. The startled sentry turned to look at him, a Kalashnikov held in his hands, ready to open fire. Bolan triggered a single suppressed round from the Beretta. The head shot dropped the terrorist, dead before he hit the deck. Bolan snatched the AK-74 before it could clatter to the floor.

Several seconds passed as Bolan waited, listening. There was no more movement from beyond the galley. Holstering the Beretta, he placed the terrorist’s weapon on the deck and quickly searched the corpse. He found nothing of use—a spare magazine for the Kalashnikov, a Pakistani-made folding knife, a few loose coins from countries in the region. It took only a moment to drag the sentry to the galley’s cooler. He was not surprised to find it filled with corpses, most of them dressed as cooks and shipboard stewards. Bolan added the pirate to the pile and secured the cooler door.

Scooping up the Kalashnikov, Bolan popped the cover. He pulled the bolt, recoil spring and plunger assembly free, hiding the now-useless rifle behind a metal garbage bin. He dropped the parts inside the bin itself. There was no sense leaving functioning weapons behind. It was a lesson he’d learned on the many battlefields he’d walked through the years.

Satisfied, Bolan continued on, through the bowels of the ship, determined to free the passengers. The pirates had expected two hundred or more soft targets, plus the crew. He was going to give them a lot more than they’d bargained for.

The Executioner had come aboard.

Hell was coming with him.

2

A sweep of the ship’s luxury restaurant yielded nothing. The faint smell of food starting to spoil filled the air. Many of the place settings held half-finished meals, glasses of wine overturned, leaving red stains across the white linen tablecloths. Here and there were pools of dried blood and bullet holes. The pirates had not gone easily with the passengers or the ship’s crew. That much was obvious.

Bolan crept through the restaurant and checked his bearings. Beyond the restaurant, the remainder of this deck—to the bow—held officers’ quarters. There was also a medical facility. Bolan found that and checked it first, finding some of the supplies scattered around, the drawers and cabinets emptied. A few empty plastic bottles littered the floor. Bolan picked one up. It was a prescription painkiller, from the label. The pirates must have gone through and swept up anything with narcotic value, of which there would be plenty among medical stores. From the mess made of some of the first-aid supplies, it was possible that one or more of the invaders had been wounded during the attack. Either that, or they’d allowed medical treatment to be given to wounded crew or passengers. There was no way to be sure yet.

As he stalked through the officers’ cabins, Bolan paused at each hatchway, listening. When he heard nothing, he moved on to the next, and repeated the process as he moved through the section. He was getting close to the bow when he heard muffled cries from one of the cabins. He stopped, the Beretta 93-R steady in his grip, as he assessed the situation.

A woman cried out, her voice muted by something, most likely a gag. There was the sound of a hand slapping flesh, and another cry of pain from the woman. Then a man’s voice, saying something angrily—Bolan was certain it was in Vietnamese, a language with which he’d had some experience—followed by a second voice, in broken English.

Bolan waited as long as he dared, as the two men laughed and again struck the woman. He gritted his teeth. When the man speaking in English said, “Let’s finish with her,” he knew he had no more time to assess the threat.

The Executioner used his left shoulder to shove the partially open door the rest of the way, launching himself through the hatchway with gun in hand. As he hit the floor and rolled on his leading shoulder, he quickly surveyed the room. On the bunk against one bulkhead, two men held a young woman, wearing only her underwear. One had a kitchen knife, possibly taken from the galley. An ancient Tokarev pistol had been left on the small metal writing desk nearby. The pirates—both of them dark skinned and clad in mismatched camouflage fatigues—looked up in disbelief as the intruder tumbled into the small cabin.

That look of disbelief was all one of them would ever wear again. The man with the knife got out a single curse in Vietnamese before a 124-grain hollow point from Bolan’s Beretta silenced him forever, snapping his head back as he crumpled onto the bunk. The knife clattered to the deck.

The second pirate was smarter and faster. He threw himself at Bolan, probably realizing he had no other chance. The smaller man slammed into the soldier, knocking him back against the writing desk, one hand scrabbling at the desk as the other locked a viselike grip on Bolan’s gun hand. Even as he grappled with the pirate, Bolan knew the man was going for the unattended Tokarev.

Bolan had greater upper-body strength, but the pirate fought like a madman, fear of death and surging adrenaline lending strength to his desperate efforts. Bolan managed to lock his elbow around the pirate’s free arm, effectively stopping his attempts to grab for the Tokarev. Then he slammed a series of vicious knee jabs into the pirate’s gut. The man cried out and bent over, losing his hold on Bolan’s wrist. The soldier immediately clubbed the pirate on the back of the head with the Beretta. The man went limp and Bolan allowed him to collapse to the floor.

The woman on the bunk began to sob into her gag. Her eyes were wide and moved from Bolan to the dead man beside her, then back to Bolan again.

“It’s all right,” Bolan said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.” From a small pouch on his web gear he produced a flat roll of black fabric tape and two plastic strap cuffs. He used the tape to gag the unconscious pirate. Then he used the cuffs to secure the smaller man’s ankles and cuffed the wrists behind the man’s back.

Once the prisoner was secured, the Executioner turned to the distraught woman. Bolan judged her age at early twenties, at most. Smeared makeup and tangled blond hair did not hide her good looks. The pirates had obviously known what they wanted when they picked her out of the crowd. Bolan eased closer to her, slowly, careful not to startle her.

“I’m going to remove that,” he said as he reached for her gag, his tone calm and reassuring. He was no stranger to dealing with the victims of crimes such as the one he had just averted. “Don’t cry out when I do, please. Everything is going to be all right.”

The woman let him take off the gag. She froze for a moment, then threw herself at him, shaking uncontrollably, trying and failing to choke back deep, wracking sobs. Bolan, the Beretta still in one hand, hooked one arm around her and let her cry. “My name is Cooper,” he said, using his Justice Department alias. “Matt Cooper. I’m here to stop what is happening.”

The woman sobbed something against his chest. It took Bolan a moment to realize she was saying something coherent. “The…the lounge,” she managed to utter.

“What lounge?” Bolan asked.

“Deck…deck five, and six,” she stammered. “The big lounge with the casino. They’ve got them…got them all there.”

“The hostages?” Bolan asked. The young woman nodded. “All right. What’s your name?”

“Kris…Kristen.”

“All right, Kristen,” Bolan said. She had recovered enough to realize she was half naked. She found her clothes, which were rumpled but intact, and quickly dressed. Bolan turned away and checked the bound pirate once more, making certain he was still out and not playing possum. Then he reached out and beckoned to her, careful to keep his expression and his body language neutral.

“Where are we going?” Kristen asked, clearly terrified.

“To another part of this deck,” Bolan said. “These are officers’ quarters. We’re going to find you another room. You’ll lock yourself inside and stay there. Don’t come out unless I come back for you or you hear a rescue team on the ship. All right?”

Kristen nodded, eyes still wide. After locking the unconscious pirate in the cabin and tucking away the pistol he’d recovered, Bolan took the woman by the hand and led her forward, listening carefully and moving as quietly as he could. Kristen, in bare feet, made no sound as they walked. The soldier finally found quarters that looked suitable and checked to make sure the door could be securely locked from the inside.

“You’re going to leave me here?” Kristen asked.

“Don’t worry,” Bolan said. “This will all be over soon. Stay inside, make no sound and leave the door locked no matter what you do. Can you do that?”

“Yes…I think so.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “Lock the door now.”

He waited as she did so. Then he found the nearest companionway and took it to the next deck. Deck 4, according to the details in his PDA, was roughly two-thirds guest cabins forward and amidships, with more officers’ accommodations aft. Before he could approach Deck 5 and the casino lounge, Bolan would have to sweep Deck 4 for hostiles—and he would have to do it silently. He could not afford to alert the pirates guarding the hostages, nor could he risk having enemies approach from below when he did make his raid on the lounge.

Time, he knew, was precious. There was a chance the pirates he’d taken out would be missed, even discovered. He would have to take his battlefront to the enemy before that happened, to retain the element of surprise.

With the Beretta 93-R in his fist, its sound suppressor firmly in place, Bolan slipped wraithlike among the cabins of Deck 4. For the most part, the area seemed deserted. Bolan had checked almost all of the guest cabins—in some cases finding clothing and other belongings strewn about, as if searched none too gently by pirates looking for valuables—until he found one where two men were sleeping.

The first pirate had passed out on a sofa in the suite’s small living area. Empty champagne bottles littered the carpeted deck around him. A second snored loudly in the bedroom beyond. There was no telling why, on a ship full of empty cabins, these two were sharing living space. The most likely explanation was that they’d been partying with booze taken from the ship’s stores. Bolan knelt silently over the emaciated, Indonesian man, who wore a pair of cut-off cargo pants and clutched a beat-up rifle. The man awoke startled and struggled to aim his weapon. Sliding the knife quietly from its sheath, the Executioner drew it across the man’s throat. He had no choice. The man had to be dealt with before he could raise an alarm.

The Executioner slipped into the suite’s bedroom and found the snoring pirate. The man was Asian, dressed in a dirty tank top and jeans. A machete had been left on the floor next to the bed. Bolan saw, then, that the bedclothes were stained with blood. Someone had died there, and died hard. Bolan’s features creased grimly as he looked down at the sleeping predator.

The man’s eyes fluttered open. As he opened his mouth to shout, Bolan let the knife in his right hand fall. While the blade was still in the air, his fingers found the butt of the suppressed Beretta. The weapon cleared leather with a practiced movement. As the muzzle came on target, Bolan’s finger took up the slack on the trigger, the entire motion smooth, fluid and fast. The 9 mm slug punched through the pirate’s open mouth and ended his cry before the shout could escape his lungs.

The Executioner wasted no time. He searched the bodies, again finding nothing useful. Then he stripped the bolt from the rifle and left it in a wastebasket in the suite’s bathroom. Finally, he retrieved his knife, cleaned it and sheathed it.

He was back on the hunt, moving from cabin to cabin, listening for movement and carefully, quietly checking each chamber. He could not leave anyone, could not risk discovery. The operation hinged on clearing Deck 4 before he made his run on Deck 5.

He checked his ruggedized PDA once more as he reached the aft third of the deck, the change in décor and the signs warning “crew only” telling him he was once more exploring officers’ quarters. He had checked only two of these, finding them ransacked and devoid of personnel, when he found the first of the canisters.

The waist-high metal cylinder was bright yellow and emblazoned with chemical and biohazard warnings in Cyrillic. The warnings looked as if they had been spray-painted on recently. They were much more clear than the fading paint on the scarred metal tanks themselves. Bolan had enough experience with the language—and what the words on the canisters represented—to know he was dealing with something very dangerous. He found several more canisters in more of the unoccupied cabins. Unlike the first few, however, these had electronic devices of some kind attached to them, blinking green LEDs on each device indicating they were active and possibly armed.

They were detonators.

The engagement had suddenly become something much more than a simple hijacking. Bolan used the built-in camera in his wireless PDA, capturing digital images of the canisters and close-ups of the electronic detonators. He transmitted these to Stony Man Farm immediately, relying on the satellite encryption built into the device to safeguard the intelligence he was providing. He would have to risk the transmission itself. It was unlikely the pirates had the kind of sophisticated gear that could detect outgoing wireless phone signals, satellite or otherwise, but it was not impossible. Given the weapons of mass destruction he was now standing among, they could have anything. He would take the gamble in order to learn precisely what he was dealing with, if possible. Hundreds of lives could depend on it.

Bolan completed his count of the canisters and began to work his way back to the companionway that would take him to the next deck. Until he heard from the Farm he could do nothing but continue. He was about to check his weapons once more before ascending when he heard the faintest noise behind him.

The soldier whirled and ducked as he did so. The machete sang through the air and crashed against the metal bulkhead. Bolan brought the Beretta up and just as quickly lost it; a savage, numbing blow slammed into his wrist and sent the pistol flying onto the deck.

Bolan reacted instantly, pistoning a powerful front kick into his opponent. The blow took his opponent in the stomach, doubling him over and sending him back. Bolan crouched and ripped the knife free from its sheath as the pirate he faced struck a pose with a machete. The chipped and well-used blade glinted in the corridor lights.

“That’s right, bad man,” the pirate said. “I got your ass, just me.”

“You’re American,” Bolan said, genuinely surprised. The man in front of him was easily six foot five and three hundred pounds, a muscled monster of a man. He wore a torn desert camouflage BDU blouse with the sleeves cut off and stained blue jeans tucked into U.S. Army-issue combat boots.

“That’s right, for whatever that shit means,” the man said, his teeth very white in his scarred, dark-skinned face. “I was in Iraq, man.”

“And now you’re a pirate?” Bolan said. Keeping the man talking was the only way to buy time. He could not afford to have the pirate alert the others before he was ready to free the hostages. Strangely, the man facing off against him seemed to have no urge to do so. Quite the contrary, in fact. The pirate looked relaxed, even pleased.

“I been bored a long while,” the American pirate said. When he smiled the scar creasing his forehead and left cheek turned his features feral. “Don’t go in for the rape-and-pillage act. Ain’t no sex offender, man.”

“You’re as much a part of this as the others,” Bolan said. “You’re a traitor to your nation.” He moved slightly, testing the pirate’s reactions. The big man shifted a bit but remained calm, his fingers flexing on the handle of his machete.

“Don’t matter what you think,” the pirate scoffed. “I fought for my country. And what did I get when I got home? A big fat bag of nothing, man. And a nasty letter telling me they could call me back up anytime they felt like, even though I did my tour! I ain’t nobody’s slave, man. First chance I got I was out of there.”

“To take up with murderers and hijackers,” Bolan said.

“Kicked around from place to place a while.” The man began to circle Bolan in the corridor, forcing the Executioner to move to counter. He eyed the Beretta on the floor, beyond reach. The man caught his gaze and shook his head. “Uh-uh, tough guy,” he sneered. “I’m tellin’ my story. Don’t want to interrupt me before I’m finished.”

“All predators have justifications, rationalizations,” Bolan said. He gauged the distance, calculating a strike, knowing that for the best effect he would have to make his move while the other man was talking. Already he was breaking several tactical rules, allowing an enemy to engage him in dialogue, refusing to attack the attacker immediately. But he needed time. If he could resolve this quietly he might still have a chance.

“I ain’t no predator, man,” the pirate said, frowning. “I’m just me. I fight, that’s what I do. There weren’t nobody to fight once we got the crew taken care of. Where you been hidin’? I’d have remembered a big boy like you. We’re gonna have this out, and maybe for a few minutes at least I won’t be bored while they finish their damned game upstairs.”

So it did not occur to the pirates, at least not to this one, Bolan thought, that external forces could or would infiltrate the boat. That was good news—it indicated limited thinking. Bolan continued to circle, his knife held before him, wondering when the pirate would make the assault he was sure to initiate once he was finished with his monologue.

“There anybody else in your crew?” The pirate nodded to Bolan’s Beretta on the deck. “How many more are there? Where they hidin’? You tell me, man, and maybe I won’t cut you up real bad before I kill you. Come on, man, tell a brother how many—”

Bolan struck. He lunged inside the arc of the machete, and drove the point of his knife in a half-circle comma cut toward the man’s throat. To his credit, the American pirate was fast. He snapped his head back and brought the spine of the machete up, trying to parry Bolan’s knife arm with the only tool available to him. Bolan brought his support arm up across his chest, out of the way, as he snapped the blade of the knife diagonally into the pirate’s machete arm. The man howled as his arm was opened up. He stumbled back, dropping the machete and clutching at the terrible wound.

“You son of a—”

Bolan stomped on the man’s ankle, snapping it. As the traitorous pirate drew in a breath to scream, Bolan fell on him, driving the butt of the knife into the man’s temple. He struck again, then a third time, hammering the pirate insensate before he could make enough noise to expose the Executioner’s position.

Bolan scooped up his Beretta, press-checked it and turned back to the fallen American. The big African-American was already beginning to recover, crawling to his knees despite the grievous slash in his forearm. He smiled shakily, one pupil visibly dilated, as he got his legs under him.

“Don’t,” Bolan warned.

The pirate surged forward.

The Beretta barked a triple-burst of suppressed subsonic rounds. Bolan sidestepped as the pirate plowed into the deck, a strange groan escaping from his throat. He stopped moving and seemed almost to deflate, the death rattle that racked his big frame an almost inhuman sigh. Then the body was very still. Bolan had seen more than enough death to know that the reaper had claimed this wayward American.

He took the body by the legs and dragged it into the nearest cabin. He could not cover the blood on the carpeted deck, so he did not try. Searching the corpse, he found something that worried him—a short-range radio of the type used by hikers, hunters and ATV riders. If he was carrying this it was possible the pirate had been tasked with checking in, or at least radioing back his status when queried. Obviously he’d been hidden somewhere among the officers’ quarters, evading Bolan’s sweep. It was more than likely he’d been guarding the biohazard canisters.

The numbers of Bolan’s combat countdown had fallen to zero. Reloading the Beretta with a fresh magazine, he also checked the Desert Eagle, making sure a round was chambered. With his fist full of 9 mm death and the Desert Eagle hand cannon by his side, the Executioner took one last look around.

The short-range radio began to crackle in broken English. Whoever was at the other end was asking for the pirate to check in.

Bolan started to run.

3

Tranh Khong held his Kalashnikov close to his bare chest, cradling it one-handed against his wiry frame as he breathed in the smell of fear. In his hand he clutched a dog-eared sheet of paper, printed from one of the machines in the bridge of the Duyfken Ster. He ran down the list with his eyes, his lips moving over missing and stained teeth, as he matched the two names to those listed on the screen of the wireless phone he also held in that hand. He then flipped the phone shut and stuck it in his pocket, pausing to adjust the heavy brown leather pouch slung haphazardly through the belt loops of his cutoff jeans. The device inside was as necessary, if not more so, than his phone or all the radio equipment aboard. Even so, it still galled him to have to haul it around.

“They are here,” he said in English, as much to worry the cowering captives as because it was the closest thing his band of thugs had to a common language. Forgetting his minor irritations, he looked out over the men, women and children sitting on the floor of the lounge. Most of them had their heads in their hands as they knelt or sat cross-legged amidst the colorful slot machines and other gambling tables. Tranh smiled a gap-toothed smile, jerking his chin toward a female couple near the middle of the multilevel lounge. Two of his crew hurried to obey, the worn French MAT-49 submachine guns in their hands no less deadly for their age.

They were a motley collection, Tranh and his pirates. The majority were Javanese, castoffs from the coastal scum that Tranh found easily enough when he made port and recruited in the local dives. One was even American, a man named Jones, whom Tranh used for his most brutal tasks. A couple were Indonesians of Chinese descent, and one was Vietnamese like Tranh. They wore ill-fitting and cut-down clothing, a mixture of military surplus fatigues—like the sleeveless camouflage BDU jacket Tranh wore open over his jutting ribs—shorts, combat boots or sandals, and whatever civilian clothing they liberated in raids. Thrust in their belts or worn in mismatched holsters and web gear were the weapons they had accumulated—everything from Kalashnikovs like Tranh’s, to modern and even antique handguns. They had a few M-16s, and a Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenade launcher that, Tranh had been told, had once been the war trophy of Afghani mujahideen.

All but one of his group were men. The woman among them, known only as Merpati, was as vicious a creature as Tranh had ever encountered. It would be wrong to say Tranh’s men passed her around. It was more accurate to say that Merpati chose to go from berth to berth among them, doling out her favors at her whim, drawing her knife on those who offended her or who would not stomach refusal on those rare occasions she offered it. Tranh himself had put mutilated corpses overboard on two occasions, after Merpati’s ill humor claimed the would-be lover of the moment.

The pirates’ backgrounds could not have been more diverse, really, but they had things in common. They were, to a man, killers and cutthroats, criminals wanted for all manner of brutal, miserable crimes. Theirs was almost a club, a gang, their predatory lifestyles joining them in a kinship none of them would have been able to express had they been fully aware of it. Tranh himself was only dimly capable of defining it within his head. It did not matter, ultimately. Only profit, only their continued success, mattered to Tranh. He had taken on this job as much for long-term goals of survival as for the short-term gain of the pay the Russian had offered him. One fed the other. One was the other. It was enough.

Adnan bin Noor chattered something in Malaysian, which Tranh understood well enough. Noor held one of the small walkie-talkies they’d liberated from a small fishing trawler raided months ago. Noor was not happy, and when Tranh heard what he had to say, Tranh was not happy, either.

Jones was not answering.

Tranh had picked Jones for the critical task of guarding the Russian’s tanks because he knew the man was not easily distracted. Jones lived to kill and seemed to take no pleasure in the other distractions Tranh’s crew pursued. He did not drink, to Tranh’s knowledge, and he never took his pleasure with those few women they encountered when raiding vessels.

If Jones was not at his post and not answering his radio, something was probably wrong. And that was bad, for if Tranh was to collect the ransom for the hostages and then fulfill the Russian’s demands in order to get the remaining half of the payment promised, he would have to adhere to the Russian’s timetable.

It was exactly the wrong time for one of the few men on whom Tranh was depending to stop being where he was supposed to be, to stop answering when he was called.

Tranh snatched the radio from Noor. “Jones!” he said. “Jones! Answer!”

He heard nothing but static.

Tranh began barking orders. The hostages sensed the sudden tension in his words and manner, and began to cower, whimper and cry even more. Tranh was tempted to have a few of them pistol-whipped, but he didn’t have time.

He instructed several of his men to take up arms and head to the deck below. They would find Jones and find out what had happened, what had gone wrong. Tranh, in the meantime, would do the only thing he could, and that was stick to the schedule the Russian had given him. He searched the room again for those he had just located.

“You,” he said, moving to stand over two of the captives. One was a blond woman in her forties, the other a brunette female in her twenties. They looked enough alike to be mother and daughter, which in fact they were. According to the pictures and names sent to him by the Russian, their presence confirmed by the passenger manifest, the two were Mrs. Pamela McAfferty and her daughter, Patricia, wife and daughter to Jim McAfferty. McAfferty was, Tranh had been told by the Russian, a “hawk,” whatever that meant, a congressman in the American state of New York.

Tranh did not know or care what the significance of any of that might be; he did not follow politics in any nation, much less the United States. He knew all that was required for his task. The woman and her daughter were family to a government official in the United States, and thus their presence would ensure that the Russian’s message was not ignored. They would also, hopefully, prompt the rich Westerners to pay the ransom he had demanded. The Russian had warned him the ransom was a ruse, a means of lulling their victims into thinking this was a typical hijacking, and that meant there might not be time to have it paid. That was all right. The Russian would compensate Tranh for any losses in that quarter, and so far he had made it clear that he had the money to do so.

It was really that simple. Tranh despised complications and sought to keep things as simple as possible, always.

“We weren’t doing anything, I swear!” The mother looked up at Tranh with tears in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt us! We’ll do what you say!”

“Mom,” the younger woman spoke. “Stop.”

“Yes,” Tranh said, smiling. “Do what the girl says. Your husband. Her father. Jim McAfferty, the government man.” It was not a question, and Tranh’s mediocre English did not diminish the menace in his words. “Yes?”

The mother began sobbing. It was the girl who looked Tranh in the eye, impressing the pirate captain with her mettle. “Yes, my father is Jim McAfferty. You know that already or you wouldn’t have asked.”

Tranh laughed, crumpled the printout of the ship’s manifest and tossed it casually aside. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you right. Wu!”

The Chinese pirate known as Wu, one of the two with a submachine gun trained on the women, stepped forward. He knew his role. Wu had been educated in the West and was fluent in English. He would therefore deliver the written message the Russian had prepared. Wu was easily among the more intelligent members of Tranh’s crew, and could be trusted to do this properly. The Russian had demanded Tranh’s assurances on this, as it was a very important component of the operation. Tranh had no fear of making such guarantees. He had heard Wu drone on in English often enough, about matters that were well above his head. Tranh knew himself just well enough to know that he was not smart. He was cunning. He was ruthless. He was clever. But he had never considered “smart” to be one of his qualities. He did not care, either, so long as he was able to lead his crew and make money.

Of course, also unlike Wu, he was not a child molester and a murderer who had been forced to flee more than one small nation when his habits became known. But such were the paths taken by the floating debris of the world’s people before they came to the docks that Tranh frequented in his recruiting.

Tranh sometimes wondered, when he grew introspective like this, if perhaps he was not more intelligent than he gave himself credit for. As always, he dismissed these thoughts before they could weigh him down.

There was work to be done, money to be made.

He spoke a few words of command to Noor, who nodded. The pirate stepped over several mewling hostages and, from behind one of the circular bars dominating the colorful, decadently appointed lounge, extracted several pieces of satellite video broadcast equipment. With practiced ease—Noor had been some sort of electronics technician before murdering his lover’s lover, if Tranh remembered rightly—he began to assemble and connect the equipment. First he ran the power cables. Then he assembled the small portable reflective dish, positioning it at the end of the lounge at the open entrance to the rear balcony. Finally he positioned the camera and switched it on, motioning for Wu to drag a chair from one of the gambling tables. The Chinese pirate did so, taking up his seat. From his pocket he produced the folded and refolded sheets of paper that contained the Russian’s message.

Tranh pulled back the bolt on his Kalashnikov just far enough to determine that a round was chambered. The hostages would be paralyzed with fear once they heard the message. He could not have any heroes making attempts against him before he was ready.

There would be one or two among the crowd who, understanding the full meaning of the Russian’s transmitted message, would realize there was nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain by resisting.

Tranh would show them that there were still losses he could inflict. He would shoot for the legs and then torture any who resisted. It would help him pass the time until the Russian’s damnable operation was completed and he could collect his pay.

Noor muttered something, which Tranh took to mean that they were finally ready. He motioned to Wu with his Kalashnikov. The Chinese man cleared his throat and looked into the camera lens, waiting for the light that told him the broadcast had begun. Then he spoke, his English almost without accent, his voice clear, as he read ponderously from the Russian’s sheaf of papers.

“Attention, dogs of the West,” Wu said, his lack of inflection a curious contrast to the words the Russian had written in English. “For too long, the imperialist West has lorded its wealth and its power over the rest of the world. For too long, arrogant Western nations and their lapdog allies have been free to send their troops around the globe, bombing and attacking and killing whomever they pleased. For too long, the world’s smaller nations have lacked the ability to fight back.

“This lack ends today. Included in this transmission…” Wu paused, as was indicated on his notes, looking up at Tranh. Tranh nodded and removed the special transceiver the Russian had given him from the leather pouch at his belt. He pressed a button on the device. The LEDs began to blink green, though the Cyrillic labeling on them meant nothing to Tranh. Finally, the device’s lights winked out, one by one. Tranh nodded again to Wu.

“Included in this transmission,” Wu began again, “is coded data. Those who need to decipher it will know how. Using this information you may contact your benefactor—”Wu stumbled a little over the phrasing “—in order to obtain, for a price, the weapon you are to see demonstrated here today.”

A murmur went up among the hostages. Tranh was not surprised. He was, in fact, pleased. He wanted that fear caught in the transmission. He had made sure the hostages were in the frame when instructing Noor, through sign language, where to place the camera when the time came. He knew what the Russian wanted. He sympathized, insofar as he was capable of caring about politics. First and always, Tranh cared about enriching himself. If he performed well, the Russian would call on him for other jobs. So far their partnership was new, but had already produced certain benefits, such as the Soviet-era surplus weaponry the Russian had been able to provide.

“This weapon is available to all who wish to purchase it,” Wu continued reading. “Provided your goals are to strike a blow at the hated West. In exactly one hour from this transmission, a sample of the weapon will be activated. Video of its effects on those held on this ship will be provided. The volume of the weapon used today is six times the unit of sale. The price and terms for each unit of sale have been included in the coded burst.”

Tranh understood, as the Russian had explained to him, the critical timing of the next hour. His men had gas masks and had been made to understand that these would protect them, but this was a lie. The Russian had been very clear that the substance in the canisters, once unleashed, was corrosive. It would eat through masks and the hull of the ship alike, though of course it would eat plastic much more quickly than metal. Two of Tranh’s men, with their useless gas masks in place, would stay behind and use the small digital phone cameras, transmitting their digital images to Tranh’s own phone. It would be enough for the Russian’s purposes. The men had no idea that they would die before they could leave the ship, of course; their masks would protect them just long enough to let them record the death throes of the passengers before the chemical weapon claimed them, too.

The rest of Tranh’s crew would have to be clear of the ship before the canisters detonated. He was relying on Merpati for this; she would bring the speedboat back when her watch, synchronized to Tranh’s, reached the appointed time. For now she was moored somewhere out in the darkness.

That darkness worried Tranh. The explosion that had drawn some of his men to the bow of the ship had produced no enemies to shoot. Had there been men to repel, Tranh would feel better. With no one to face, the pirate captain was forced to ponder what the mysterious explosion could mean. He had known there was a chance, however slim, that some law enforcement or military group would stage an attack on the ship in an attempt to save the hostages. He had counted, as had the Russian, on the presence of the American government man’s family to discourage such an attempt.

The West was notoriously weak when it came to hostages. As long as they thought there was a chance those held would be released unharmed, they would not use force to resolve the situation. It was one of the things that made the West easy to defeat. For all their superior military might, they were helpless in the face of basic guerilla tactics. Put a gun to a single woman’s head and an entire army could be held in check by weak-kneed politicians. Tranh did not pretend to understand this particular failing on the part of such rich, strong countries. He knew only that it worked in his favor.

Wu had finished his recitation and Noor was beginning to pack up the satellite transmission equipment. The hostages were starting to cry and sob anew as what they had heard began to reach them beyond their fear. Tranh eyed them, finger hovering over the trigger guard of his Kalashnikov, wondering who among them might decide to surge forward.

Then he heard what sounded like gunshots from the lower deck.

Tranh’s first thought was that his men had gotten carried way and started firing at each other. Or, he thought, it was possible they had found some passengers hiding somewhere and were eliminating them. When the gunfire continued, however, he became concerned.

Word of the transmission would reach around the world quickly enough, and those whom the Russian sought as customers would seek him out. But the Western powers would be alerted, as well. The Russian had stressed as much; Tranh was well aware that now, with their true plan out in the open, forces might well convene on the ship. An hour’s time was supposed to be enough for Tranh to finish his business, make the example and get out, while preventing those who wished to free the hostages from mounting an effective assault.

Merpati was circling the ship in a long, slow patrol of the area, and had detected no approaching vessels. The speedboat had a crude fish-finder electronics package that would, Tranh hoped, alert them to the approach of something large like a submarine. Therefore there was no way they could be taken by surprise unless, somehow, the enemy had risked sending men before the message.

They would have to be on board already.

Tranh turned, Kalashnikov in hand, to face the nearest lounge doorway leading to the companionway to the deck below. Some fleeting forewarning of danger, some dread sensation, made him duck his head and cradle it in his arm.

The deafening blast and sudden burst of brightness sent flashes of white fire dancing through his closed eyes. Tranh was knocked onto his back, the world disappearing in a burst of light and sound.

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