Читать книгу Rogue Elements - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Chapter Two

The Arabian Sea

The Huey descended toward the ship that was their new, temporary home. Both Bolan and Sifuentes had been surprised when the civilian-marked chopper had flown right up to the pier at dawn and someone had texted the former Ranger, instructing them to get on board, and fast. Bolan took in the ship. The Alice O’Kieffe was a small blue ’70s vintage coastal freighter. She had been converted into an arsenal ship. The majority of ports of call on the planet did not allow armed civilian ships to sail into port. The major shipping security companies like the Rampart Group and Viking got around that by keeping ships offshore and at strategic points in the shipping lanes where men and weapons could be loaded and off-loaded in international waters. The ship had a makeshift helicopter deck. Four shirtless, muscular, tattooed men were currently playing a game of two-on-two basketball. The central painted H made for a decent basketball key. The players stopped and squinted upward as the helicopter came in out of the brassy midmorning sun. Bolan raised an appreciative eyebrow at the sight of the copper-colored woman in a camo bikini sunning herself on top of a lifeboat out of sight of the rest of the crew.

Sifuentes smirked. “Dude, I know you have like, superpowers and stuff.”

“And stuff,” Bolan acknowledged.

“But B.B.? Don’t even think about it. Abe thinks she’s a lesbian. Mono thinks she might have a dick. Either way, she doesn’t mix with her coworkers, and if she did, Abe has first dibs.”

Bolan filed away that minefield of information.

The chopper touched down on the helideck and ship’s crewmen came out to unload the crates Bolan and Sifuentes had been sitting on. By their banter the soldier made them for Malaysians. A man who could have been Sifuentes’s little brother but with even more tattoos and a ’70s-porn-worthy mustache ran up as the rotors stopped. “Sifu! Haven’t seen you since Mombasa!”

“Mono!” The two Latino soldiers engaged in some sort of elaborate hand-jive. Another Latino sporting the startling combination of a beard and a mullet joined the pair, and a conversation in rapid-fire Spanish commenced. A black man with a shaved head eyeballed Bolan, then a large Polynesian man rumbled forward. “Hey! Sifu! Who’s the skinny little white lizard?”

Bolan topped Sifuentes by a head and had a lean but well-muscled physique. Then again, the big Polynesian topped Bolan by a head and looked to be a rock-solid two hundred and fifty pounds. Bolan smiled and stuck out his hand. “You must be Abe.”

Abe stared at the hand and then at Bolan like he had to be kidding.

Bolan shrugged. All eyes turned as the bikini-clad woman walked barefoot onto the helideck. She was Latina and built like a bantamweight female MMA fighter except that she clearly had some surgical augmentation filling out her bikini top. It was hard to gauge the face beneath the big mirrored sunglasses, but her lips were sensual and a short-going-to-bushy-shag haircut framed it all. The mirrored shades looked Bolan up and down. “Che, Sifu. Who’s your friend?”

“This guy?” Sifuentes enthused. “Let me tell you! This guy, he—”

“I haven’t seen blue eyes in a while.” The woman took a long look into Bolan’s arctic blue eyes. “Haven’t seen eyes like that ever.”

The woman turned and put a wiggle in her walk for Bolan as she went to the helicopter gangway. “See you around, Blue.”

The soldier felt the trouble with a capital T coming, but he smiled at the sight anyway. Big Abe’s face went from scowling water buffalo to snarling demon tiki. “Listen, white boy, you gonna—”

“That’s white man, to you.”

The helideck went silent. Abe reared to his full height in outrage. “Fucking Viking, we get all the shit details! Rampart?” Big Abe stabbed a massive finger at Bolan accusingly as he began venting his grievances. “They don’t want no brown people! They want white boys with beards like you!”

Bolan stroked his chin and prepared himself to fight a Samoan who was twice his size and ten years younger. “I don’t have a beard. I applied to Rampart Group, and they told me I was too old and I could take a Viking Associate’s slot if I still wanted a job. And that is white man to you, poi-boy. Don’t make me tell you a third time.”

The Latino contingent stared in shock.

Big Abe roared as his hands clenched into fists. “Poi is Hawaiian!”

Bolan was confident he could take Big Abe in hand-to-hand combat. He had severe doubts about being able to beat him in a stand-up fight. “You saying you never pounded taro when you were a kid, uso?” Bolan countered.

“Hmm!” Abe grunted at the Samoan word for “brother,” and Bolan knew he had scored. A slow, rueful smile crossed the big Samoan’s face. “I mighta. Once or twice. You been to my islands?”

“Does American Samoa count? I worked with a few brothers from there back in the day.”

The tension on the helideck eased considerably.

Big Abe shrugged his massive shoulders. “Where I was born, where I signed up. Where I call home. So I guess it counts. You?”

Bolan told the truth. “Massachusetts.”

“Never worked with no Bay Staters.”

Bolan smiled. “Check out the big brain on Abe.”

“We had to memorize all the states, capitals and nicknames in school.” Big Abe looked out over the Arabian Sea. “Truth? Don’t know who is farther from home, brudda.”

Bolan consulted his mental map. “You, by about three thousand miles.”

Big Abe laughed. “Check out the big brain on Blue!”

“So are we going to fight? If we are, can I have a meal and a nap first?” Bolan heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long-ass seventy-two.”

“Well, the day we do fight, I want your best. So yeah, go down to the galley. Tell Namzi you want the fried rice with julienned Spam and two fried eggs on top. I swear to God that little Indonesian shit makes magic. Plus he’s from Java, so the coffee is good.”

Bolan shoved out his hand again. “Will do.”

The Polynesian engulfed Bolan’s hand in his own but forwent the bone-crusher. “Welcome to Viking Associates, Blue. Welcome to shit detail.”

* * *

Bolan stretched out on his bunk. He put one khanjar dagger beneath his pillow and left the other in his backpack. He took out his phone and punched in the number for Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. His signal bounced off an NSA satellite, then was routed through a series of cutouts, before landing at the Farm. The firewalls and cybersecurity protocols chewed on Bolan’s communication and decided it was kosher. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered.

“You in?”

“I’m in.”

“Where are you?”

Bolan hit the GPS tracker app on his phone. “The worst stretch of ocean ever.”

“How are you doing otherwise?”

“I spent all my money on beer, knives and soap.”

“Okay...”

“I’m sending you some pictures.” Bolan had managed to photograph the Viking team currently aboard the ship while pretending to text. “They’re all former US military. I need to see their files and what you can dig up.”

“On it.”

“Thanks.”

“How are you getting along with your new playmates? Viking Associates has a pretty rough reputation.”

Bolan grunted in bemusement. Viking had worse than a pretty rough reputation. They worked cheap, had a record of not observing international protocols, as well as killing would-be pirates rather than trying to capture them or drive them off. One of their Russian teams had kept a teenage Somali pirate alive and had their fun with him before cutting him up, tying a rope around him, throwing him overboard and using him as shark bait. The fishing had been successful, word had gotten around and it had a salutary effect for ships flying the Viking flag. The problem was that two of the team members had been dumb enough to film the atrocities with their phones and send it to their friends. The videos had gone out onto the web and gone viral. Viking became a pariah. No one would hire them. They went bankrupt, and there was talk of a United Nations human rights tribunal. Rampart Group had swooped in out of nowhere, bought them out and fired most of their employees. Rampart had tagged the word “Associates” onto the security company, but Viking was still the black sheep of the private security industry and the bottom rung of the Rampart Group. As both Sifuentes and Big Abe had stated earlier, Viking Associates got all the shit details. Bolan considered his last forty-eight hours with them pretty successful.

“Well, I have a nickname, and I think the cutest girl in class likes me,” Bolan said drily.

“Sounds promising,” Kurtzman muttered.

Pictures and files started appearing on Bolan’s phone. “Just so you know,” Kurtzman said, “we do appreciate the easy requests every once in a while. The big guy is Aperaamo ‘Big Abe’ Umaga. Samoan. Tenth Mountain Division, then Ranger. Failed the Special Forces course because of ‘attitude’ problems.”

“That might have been foreseeable.”

“Classic Rangers lead the way, but does not play well with others,” Kurtzman continued. “In private security he’s had goon-squad duty, and VIP ‘stand around and be huge and mean looking’ jobs. He signed on with Viking right when everything went south. He survived the culling.”

“Sifuentes was a Ranger, I know that. How come he isn’t anymore?”

“Busted for failing a drug test. Marijuana.”

“How about Mono?”

“Moisés Nilo. Squad mate of Sifuentes. Busted at the same time when their unit got drug-tested.”

“And the mullet?”

“Lazlo Mendez. He’s 101st Airborne. He was offered an early, honorable discharge to testify in a military court tribunal. The case is sealed, and his discharge papers have been redacted. You want Hal to ask for it?” Kurtzman referred to Hal Brognola, Justice Department honcho and director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm.

“No. Tell me about the black guy.”

“Jimbo Ketch, born and raised in the United States Virgin Islands. Boatswain’s mate second class. Transferred to the United States Navy Riverine Squadron, RIVRON 3.”

Bolan was detecting a theme. “Tell me how he lost his rating.”

“He got in a brawl with three other Riverines. One of them was an officer. He claimed he didn’t start it, and the attack was racially motivated, over a woman.”

“Did he win?”

“Oh yeah. He put two of them in the hospital. However, he’d been reprimanded for fighting several times in his career. He got busted back to E-3. Finished his bit and didn’t re-up. Went into private security.”

“And the woman?”

“Bianca Maria Ibarra, United States Marines. Military and Police. She made sergeant. Served in Iraq with distinction. Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She was accepted into the United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, graduated at the top of her class.”

“And?”

“Conduct unbecoming. Apparently Miss Ibarra has a bad habit of getting a little too friendly with superior officers, apparently sometimes more than one at the same time. She was up for a dishonorable discharge. Rumor was she was going to testify about the dishonorable behavior of a number of officers. Her discharge was reduced to general. She applied to several California police departments and was rejected. She currently holds a private investigator’s license in the State of California as well as a California private patrol operator license to provide security and bodyguard services.

Bolan considered his new teammates. “Quite the band of fallen heroes.”

“It is odd. Rampart buys out Viking, cleans out the bad apples, rebuilds the brand and then restocks it with this riffraff.”

Bolan didn’t know his team yet, but he knew Sifuentes was Ranger all the way, and he was willing to bet Abe would fight an armored fighting vehicle with his bare hands for a teammate. “I wouldn’t call them riffraff just yet.”

“So what would you call them?”

Bolan was starting to have an inkling about that. “Expendables.”

“Really? How so?”

Bolan considered his mission. The UK’s MI6 had intercepted chatter that nuclear materials from North Korea were being smuggled on a freighter to Iran. There had been a plan to intercept that ship, but it had dropped off the planet in the Arabian Sea. All hands were lost, including the security team from Rampart Group. The loss had been attributed to Somali pirates. Section 6 was damn good. They might have lost eyes on that ship, but they kept their ears open on that line of chatter. They caught wind of a rumored second ship smuggling nuclear material. It disappeared in the Strait of Malacca with all hands and a Rampart Group team. MI6 had pulled strings and gotten a former British SAS sergeant hired by Rampart Group.

Bolan tapped the file, and up popped a photo of the grinning, prematurely balding, impossibly broad-shouldered Colour Sergeant Terry Wellens. He looked like a member of the royal family on steroids.

Sergeant Wellens, his team and the ship they’d been guarding had disappeared. Bolan had done his homework. It was shocking how many ships sank, ran aground or outright disappeared on the 70-plus percent of Planet Earth that was ocean.

As far as MI6 was concerned, once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action. Then one of the supposedly lost Rampart team members showed up on Interpol facial recognition in the Netherlands. Bolan tapped another file. The military file photo of blond, high-and-tight-haircutted, ramrod-straight Lance Corporal Jup Gein of the Bundeswehr Airborne Brigade 1 contrasted sharply with the grainy security photo of a rumple-suited, mustachioed, shaggy-haired man drinking coffee in an outdoor café in Amsterdam, but the Interpol software gave the resemblance 87 percent.

Bolan gave it 99 percent.

Interpol recognition software did not recognize spec ops operators at rest.

Bolan did.

The photo had been taken months after Gein, Wellens and their ship had disappeared.

Trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions was a worldwide concern. The UK had brought its concerns to the desk of the President of the United States. The President had flexed the Farm option. Favors had been called in within the private security community, and Viking Associates had hired Bolan on. The problem was, that was exactly the strategy MI6 had used to get a man into Rampart, and their man was MIA.

“If we’re right, and Rampart Group is involved in very bad things, they may need to not make the next couple of ships disappear, and rather than making their teams disappear, it might look better if there were bodies. Bodies of people no one will miss, like Viking bodies, but that will still raise a hue and cry and give Rampart more business.”

“That’s an ugly little scenario you have there.”

Bolan agreed. Reported pirate attacks on ships were genuinely down. That was because many navies of the world had deployed fighting ships into well-established pirate waters, and many commercial ships were now flying flags and advertising online that they were sporting a contingent of armed security guards. Strangely enough, despite that, genuine ship vanishings were up.

Every instinct Bolan had honed in battles on every continent on Earth told him something was going on.

“So how are you proceeding?”

“Have to wait for a job and see what happens. I’ll give it a week. If we dig up nothing after that, we have to come up with a whole new plan. Meantime, I’ll mix and mingle, try to pick up some intel.”

* * *

Bolan went with his nose and followed the smell of coffee into the mess.

“Oh my God!” Sifuentes enthused to a rapt audience over pad thai, mac and cheese, coffee and corn bread. “You should have seen Blue! So he cuts the first guy’s hand off, catches the grenade and hot potatoes it to me!”

Big Abe called bullshit.

Sifuentes sighed in memory of the action. “The next guy in? The next guy? Blue just about beheaded the son of a bitch.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m talking ear to ear, Abe. Like ‘Assassin’s Creed’–worthy.”

Ibarra leaned in. “With what?”

Sifuentes drew one of his khanjar daggers from beneath his shirt and set it on the table. “With these. One in each hand. If you blinked, you missed it. If any of those assholes blinked, they died in the dark. It was that fast. I got one of them. With a Mini-Uzi Blue delivered with his toe. Blue got three, two with knives, one with that commandeered grenade.”

“Bullshit,” Abe reiterated.

“Oh, and then there was the guy climbing up the drainpipe.”

“What happened to him?” Mendez asked.

“We defeated him like the rest.” Sifuentes nodded in memory. “With science, and soap. Plus, he’s the guy I hot potatoed the grenade onto. He’s all messed up.”

Bolan walked into the mess. “Hey, fellas!” He nodded at Ibarra. “Felita.”

Ibarra smirked. “Call me B.B.”

Big Abe shook his head. “Sifu’s talking all kinds of crap about you and he in Salalah, brah.”

“It went ugly real fast.” Bolan nodded. “We had to improvise.”

Mono slurped noodles. “I believe it.”

Bolan went to the galley counter. Namzi ran a hand through his comb-over and gave the Executioner a big, red-stained, betel-nut-chewing smile. Bolan smiled back. Indonesians were considered the most smiling people on earth, and if there was one person on a ship at sea you wanted to ingratiate yourself with, it was the cook. Namzi heaped noodles onto Bolan’s tray with a Chinese cleaver that could behead an ox. “I make your chai just right!”

Bolan bowed slightly. “You’re the best.”

Namzi bowed back. The soldier took his tray and sat at the team table. When the team looked at him expectantly, Bolan shrugged. “Do we have a job? I spent all my money buying Sifu knives and beer and soap. I need to get paid.”

The entire table burst out laughing. Big Abe rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you this, Blue. You and Sifu’s stories match up.”

“Lying.” Bolan shrugged again. “Too much to remember. But I’ll tell you this.”

Ketch spoke for the first time. “What’s that?”

“It wasn’t good.”

The table went quiet and hung on Bolan’s words.

“As a matter of fact, it got really sketchy back there in Salalah, and local thugs don’t usually bring hand grenades.”

“What are you saying, brah?” Abe asked.

“That’s all I’m saying. Do we have a job?”

“Yeah, we got a job.” Big Abe nodded. “A freighter going right up the Gulf of Aden, pirate alley, right past Somalia, and Yemen is at war.”

“Destination?”

“Yanbu, Saudi.”

“You know, I’m new, but I had a bad feeling in Salalah, and I’m having one now.”

“So what are you saying, brah?” Abe repeated.

“Just what everyone already knows. I’m thinking we need to mind our Ps and Qs, watch each other’s asses, and watch the horizon, 360, 24/7.”

Sifuentes grinned. He was totally ready to roll with Bolan again. He held up his hand and his fingers curled for the fist bump. “Fuckin ay’, Blue! Me and you! Let’s get stabby!”

Bolan fist bumped and looked around the table. “Do we have guns?”

Ibarra shook her head. “Kind of.”