Juan vented his rage into the Somali by ramming an elbow into his stomach. Hakeem’s Kalashnikov clattered to the deck. As the pirate’s eyes goggled and his mouth worked to suck air into his deflated lungs, Cabrillo hit him again on the point of the jaw hard enough to fling him over the rail. Juan glanced over to see Hakeem had the bad luck of landing not in the narrow band of water separating the ship from the dock but on the transom of the fishing boat he’d first used in his attack on the Oregon. By the way Hakeem’s neck was twisted, Juan knew it was broken and the pirate was dead.
He couldn’t be more pleased.
He pushed through the panicked throng of Somalis. Water continued to fountain from the fire cannon, splattering against the ship, so it was like running through a cyclone. No one seemed to notice his white skin until a boy of maybe six carrying a stack of sheets and towels saw him and opened his mouth to shout a warning. Juan pinched his arm in the hopes of making the kid start crying, a sound coming from dozens of wailing children trying to get off the ship with their mothers. Instead, the boy dropped to the deck and wrapped his arms around Juan’s leg. Cabrillo tried to pull away, but the boy hung on with the tenacity of a moray eel. Then he made the mistake of trying to bite Cabrillo’s calf. Having never seen or even heard of a dentist, the boy clamped down as hard as he could and managed to snap off four of his baby teeth. He started to bawl as blood dripped from his blubbering lips.
Cabrillo shook the kid loose and reached his teammates. “Come on, guys.”
Mohammad Didi was almost on his feet. The water had torn away his shirt, revealing a chest riddled with shrapnel scars, while water dripped from his beard. Looking like a drowned rat, he was more determined than ever to get off the Oregon. He lunged forward and ran into the proverbial immovable object.
Franklin Lincoln towered over the Somali warlord.
“Not so fast, my friend,” the big man said, and grabbed Didi around the upper arm while at the same time pulling the pirate’s pistol from its holster.
“Help me!” Didi shouted to his men.
The powerful jet of water and the spatter it kicked up when it hit the deck made it impossible to see what was happening just ten feet away, but the yell galvanized Didi’s men. They started forward, shielding their eyes from the spray, their rifles held one-handed. Fingers were an ounce of pressure away from loosening a barrage.
“Let’s go!” Juan helped drag Didi deeper into the superstructure, with Eddie covering their rear.
The pirates broke through the waterfall-like cascade, and as soon as their eyes adjusted to the dim interior they realized that their leader was in trouble. One of them triggered off a half dozen rounds, ignoring the danger to Didi.
Juan felt the heat of the bullets singe his neck before they hit the ceiling and ricocheted down the passageway.
Running backward, Eddie put the gunman down with a double tap from his AK, then thumbed the selector to automatic and fired a wild volley of his own. The three remaining pirates dove flat, giving the team time to round a corner.
Juan took point position, listening to Linda in his ear for warnings about other pirates still on board. He paused at a corner when she told him there was an armed Somali a few feet from him. He peeked around the junction, saw the man’s back was to him, and gave him a rap on the back of the head with the AK’s butt.
Either he had miscalculated or the pirate had the hardest skull in the world, because the man turned on Juan and rammed his gun into Juan’s stomach, shoving him far away enough so he could take a shot.
Juan kicked out with his left foot as the gun swung toward him, pinning the barrel against the wall. The gunman tried to yank it free but couldn’t. Cabrillo swung his AK like a baseball bat and hit the pirate in the head a second time. The blow opened a gash on his cheek and sent him sprawling.
Linda’s next warning came the instant Juan looked farther up the corridor. Two more pirates emerged from the mess hall, their guns blazing. Juan took a bullet just above his right ankle, the impact making him stagger. He lost his balance and was falling when Eddie grabbed his arm and yanked him back around the corner.
“You okay?” Seng asked.
Juan flexed his knee. “Peg leg seems all right.” Below the knee, Juan Cabrillo had a prosthetic leg thanks to a hit from an artillery shell from a Chinese destroyer during a mission for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. It is what the boy on deck broke his teeth on.
Cabrillo adjusted his headset, which had come loose. “Talk to me, Linda.”
“The two who just fired are taking cover positions at the mess hall door and you’ve got a half dozen more coming up from behind.”
“Eddie, watch our back.”
Juan ran across the hall to one of the cabins. The door was locked, and there hadn’t been enough time for the Somalis to force it open and strip the cabin bare. Juan rammed a master key into the handle and threw the door open. The cabin was supposed to be for the ship’s chief engineer, so it was smaller than the captain’s cabin Eddie had used earlier. The furniture was still cheap to maintain the ruse that the Oregon was little more than a scow, and the décor consisted of Spanish bullfighting posters and models of sailing ships in bottles. He strode through the cabin and into the small head. Above the porcelain sink was a mirror affixed to the bulkhead with glue. He jabbed the barrel of his AK into the glass and smashed it to fragments. He plucked one the size of a playing card off the linoleum floor and raced out of the room.
He edged up to the corner again and eased the fragment of mirror out into the hallway so he could see the two gunmen. They were crouched at the mess door as Linda had said, one hunched down and the other standing over him. Both had their weapons trained on the corner, but in the uneven light couldn’t see the mirror.
As slowly as a cobra lulling its prey, Cabrillo inched the barrel of his assault rifle around the corner, so only a tiny bit was showing.
Some call it the sixth sense—the body’s ability to know its position relative to its surroundings, its orientation in space. Cabrillo’s sixth sense was so honed that even looking at a mirror reflection, crouched on the floor, and with six terrorists gunning for them, he could feel the precise angle he had to raise the Kalashnikov’s barrel. He brought it up a fraction of an inch and fired.
The stream of bullets smashed into the wall next to the mess hall door and ricocheted off with enough force to impact the door and slam it into the protruding barrels of the pirates’ guns. Cabrillo was moving even as the door was swinging closed, using his fusillade as cover fire. The pirates made no attempt to withdraw their weapons or open the door with rounds pounding it from the outside, which allowed Juan enough time to reach it without being seen. He jammed the barrel of his gun into the crack between the door and frame and fired off another burst at point-blank range. Blood sizzled on the hot barrel when he pulled his weapon clear. He looked through the opening and saw both gunmen were down, their bodies riddled with bullet holes.
He waved to his men, and they charged after him, Linc nearly lifting the Somali warlord off his feet to keep him moving.
“They’re coming,” Linda warned.
Juan knew she meant the six tangos she’d mentioned earlier. He dropped the magazine from the AK’s receiver and slapped home a fresh one. There was a round still in the chamber—no matter how hot things got in combat, Cabrillo knew to never let his gun empty completely—so he didn’t need to cock it. As soon as he saw the flicker of shadow moving around the corner they had just used for cover, he opened up, firing past his men in a desperate bid to buy them the time they needed to reach cover.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, and the combination of smoke pumping through the ventilators and the pall left from so much gunfire made it impossible to breathe or see that well.
A blast of light from the end of the hall was a burst of return fire. Eddie Seng went sprawling, as if suddenly shoved from behind. Unable to stop his fall with his hands, he crashed to the deck and slid into
the Chairman. One-handed, Juan grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the mess, all the while firing with his left.
Didi continued to struggle in Linc’s powerful grip as he was manhandled into the mess hall. All the furniture was gone, and, unbelievably, a pair of men was wrestling the stove out the kitchen door despite the gun battle raging just outside. When the pair realized the men who had rushed into the room weren’t their friends, they dropped their burden and reached for the weapons they’d left lying across the burners.
Juan fired fast and from the hip but still managed amazing accuracy. Both men’s chests erupted in a gush of blood and torn meat.
A secret door seamlessly built into a bulkhead clicked open. Linda had been watching them with the hidden camera and had men standing by to help. A pair of operatives rushed into the room, and ten seconds later Mohammad Didi had FlexiCuffs around his wrists. They hustled him back through the door and closed it behind them. Eddie was groaning and trying to get to his feet. Juan gently lifted him up and helped him through the door. Once through, Juan fell back on the wall with his hands on his knees, dripping water onto the plush carpet. It took him a moment to catch his breath.
“That could have gone better,” he panted.
“You can say that again,” Eddie agreed.
“You okay?”
“The bullet grazed a plate in my flak jacket. Hurts like hell, but I’m good to go. Just give me a minute.”
Giuseppe Farina approached with Dr. Huxley. Hux wore her de rigueur white lab coat over a pair of surgical scrubs and had a leather medical bag gripped in her right hand. She was in her early forties, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a no-nonsense look in her eyes.
“Not being too cowboy for you, are we?” Juan grinned at the Italian observer.
Farina cast a murderous look at Didi, and said, “I had hoped, maybe, for a little more.”
“Who are you people?” Didi demanded in accented English. “You cannot take me. I am a Somali citizen. I have rights.”
“Not once you set foot on this ship before it had cleared customs,” Juan informed him. “You’re on my territory now.” It took all his willpower not to rip the grisly necklace from around Didi’s neck and cram it down his throat.
Julia set her bag on the deck, rummaged through it, and stood holding a syringe and a pair of surgical scissors. With Didi firmly in Linc’s grip, she cut away part of his sleeve and swabbed his skin with alcohol.
“What are you doing?” Didi’s eyes had gone wide. He tried to wiggle free, but Linc’s arms were like iron bands around his body. “This is torture.”
Juan was in front of the warlord before anyone knew he was moving. He pulled Didi from Linc’s grip. With one hand around Didi’s throat, Juan used the leverage of the corridor wall to lift the Somali off his feet so they were eye to eye. Didi began to gag, but no one made a move to help him. Even their European observer was spellbound by the utter rage that puffed up the Chairman’s face and turned his skin red.
“You want to see torture? I will show you torture, you murderous piece of filth.” He used the thumb and index finger of his other hand and pinched a nerve bundle in Didi’s shoulder. Didi must have felt as if he’d been seared with a hot poker, because he let out a wail that echoed down the corridor. Juan dug in deeper, changing the pitch of the pirate’s scream as if he were playing a musical instrument.
“That’s enough, Juan,” Dr. Huxley said.
Cabrillo released his grip and let Didi, who clutched at his throat and shoulder, fall to the floor. He was weeping, and a silver string of saliva oozed out of the corner of his mouth.
“Like I figured,” Juan said as if the outburst had not occurred, “in the heart of every bully lies a coward. I wish your men could see you now.”
Hux bent over the prostrate killer and slid the needle home. A moment later, Didi’s eyes fluttered and rolled back into his skull so only the whites showed. Hux bent over him a second time and thumbed down the lids.
“Congratulations, Juan.” ’Seppe extended his hand. “Mission accomplished.”
“Not until we’re clear of Somali waters and that scumbag is off my boat.” He tapped his radio. “Linda, tell Max to cut the smoke and give me a sit rep.”
“The pirates who were chasing you are milling around the mess hall. One is checking on the guys you took down, but those boys aren’t in any condition to tell them much. On deck, the water cannons are having the desired effect. People are scrambling off the ship as fast as they can.”
“How many do you estimate are still aboard?”
“Forty-three precisely. And that includes the rebels you trapped down near the hold. The guard you left unconscious under the stairs has already been taken care of. He came awake the moment he was tossed into the water.”
“Tell Eric to make ready to pull away from the dock.”
“What do we do with the pirates still roaming around the superstructure?” Linda asked.
“Lock it down, and get the armorer up here with tranq guns and NVGs.”
In the op center, Linda relayed Juan’s orders. On the big monitor she watched as a group of kids was trying to dodge the powerful spray from one of the water cannons, turning it into a game of dare. From her seat in the middle of the room, she hit a toggle to take command of that particular cannon and cut the flow of water. The kids stopped dashing around, looking like their favorite toy had been taken away. Linda adjusted the aim and electronically opened the valve again. The blast caught the boys at the knees, knocking all six flat and tumbling them like flotsam toward the boarding stairs. They didn’t stop rolling until they landed on the dock in a sodden tangle of limbs. The boys quickly got to their feet and fled into the village.
“Locking down now,” Mark Murphy said after typing at his workstation for a moment. He made the last keystroke, and all over the ship hidden steel shutters slammed closed over every door, hatch, and window, effectively sealing the entire superstructure.
A cat might have been able to maneuver in such darkness, but a man without night vision goggles was as good as blind.
Linda switched the internal cameras to thermal imaging and scanned the feeds until she had checked every compartment and hallway. There were still thirteen people locked inside the ship. When she switched the cameras to low-light mode, she made out that they were all armed men. Over the speakers, she could hear them calling out to one another, but no one dared move from where he stood.
Just as Linda finished her sweep, Juan came over the radio. “How do we look?”
“We’ve got thirteen. The pirates who were in the mess are out in the hallway now with the others you tangled with, so I’d say you’re clear.”
“Good enough for me.”
“Happy hunting.”
Two decks above, Juan doused the lights in the hallway and slid a pair of third-generation night vision goggles over his eyes. In his hand he carried a sleek-looking pistol with walnut grips and an especially long barrel. Powered by compressed gas, the tranquilizer gun could fire ten needles laced with a sedative so potent it would drop an average-sized man in ten seconds. While that may sound like a short amount of time, it could give a gunman ample opportunity to loosen an entire magazine from an automatic weapon—hence the darkness.
Eddie and Linc were similarly armed.
Cabrillo opened the secret door again. Through the goggles, the world had gone an eerie shade of green. Reflective surfaces shone a bright white that could be distracting had Juan and his people not been so used to NVGs. When the hatch closed behind them, they padded forward until they were pressed to the mess hall door. The air still smelled sharply of smoke.
“There are three of them to your right,” Linda said over the tactical net. “Ten feet down the corridor and moving away from you.”
Using hand signals, Juan relayed the information to his men and like wraiths out of a nightmare they slid out the mess and took aim simultaneously. The tranquilizer guns gave a soft whisper, and even b
efore the darts found their marks Cabrillo and the others were back in the mess.
The barbs hit the men in their shoulders, the ultrafine needles having no trouble piercing clothing and lodging in flesh. The sharp sting made all three whirl around, and one opened fire in panic. The muzzle flash revealed an empty corridor, and for the second time in twelve hours Malik and Aziz were chasing ghosts.
“This ship is crewed by evil djinns,” Aziz managed to wail before he was overtaken by the drug. Malik, who was a larger man, swayed for a moment before he, too, tumbled flat, landing on the unconscious third rebel.
“Ten to go,” Linda said. “But we’ve got another problem.”
“Talk to me,” Juan said tersely.
“The pirates on shore are getting organized. There’s some guy rallying them to reboard the Oregon. He has maybe twenty-five or thirty looking like they’re going to try it.”
“Am I on the speakers?”
“Affirmative.”
“Mark, pop open one of the deck .30s and scatter that crowd. Eric, pull us away.”
Eric Stone and Mark Murphy shot each other a grin and made to carry out Cabrillo’s order. Murphy keyed in the command to one of the .30 caliber machine guns hidden in an oil barrel on deck.
The barrel’s lid hinged open and the weapon emerged in a vertical position before its gimbal lowered it until the barrel was pointed at the earthen embankment behind the dock. On Murphy’s computer, a camera slaved to the M60 gave him a sight picture, including an aiming reticle.
He loosened a volley over the heads of the crowd, the gun barking and a string of empty shell casings falling to the deck in a metal rain. The armed pirates either dropped flat or vanished over the embankment. A few lying prone returned fire, raking the area where the remotely operated gun still smoked. Their 7.62mm rounds were as effective as hitting a rhino with a spitball.
Next to Murphy, Eric Stone dialed up the power from the magnetohydrodynamic engines. The water this deep into the swamp was brackish from having mixed with fresh, but it maintained enough salinity for him to ramp the ship up to eighty percent capacity. He engaged reverse thrust. The power of the massive hydro pumps boiled the water at the Oregon’s bow, and the great ship began to back away from the wooden dock.