Читать книгу Threat Factor - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

Indian Ocean

Captain Danilo Andreychuk was worried. He had watched a trawler keeping pace with the Vasylna for the better part of two hours. Examining the rusty hulk through his binoculars from half a mile away, he could not escape a sense that he was being stalked.

It was entirely reasonable that Captain Andreychuk feared treachery. These waters, off the east coast of Somalia, teemed with hijackers and pirates who liked nothing better than to prey on merchant ships—stealing their cargo, sometimes offering it back for ransom to the rightful owners and frequently committing acts of needless violence against the transport crews.

And the Vasylna was a prime target.

Her cargo was supposed to be a deep, dark secret, but Andreychuk knew that every ship afloat sprang leaks from time to time. Some leaks let water infiltrate the cargo holds, while others provided information to the sea wolves who paid well for tips involving profitable merchandise.

With the exception of his first mate, Mykola Shymko, the captain didn’t trust the other members of his crew as far as he could throw them—preferably overboard. They were a mixed lot, competent enough as long as he was watching them perform their duties, but he assumed that most of them were ex-convicts. Their crude tattoos spoke volumes with respect to lives pursued outside the law.

Andreychuk noted that the trawler had drawn closer while he was distracted by his private thoughts. He had been debating whether he should hail the other ship, when a gruff voice behind him asked, “Is something wrong?”

The captain turned to face his latest client, known to him as Grigory Glazkov. The man was Russian, with a military look about him—flinty eyes and roughly chiseled features set beneath a graying crew cut that was thinning at the crown.

“I hope not,” Andreychuk replied. “But maybe so.”

Glazkov had seen the trawler now and recognized its flag. “Liberian,” he noted.

“Maybe,” Andreychuk said. “Maybe not.”

Glazkov had to have known that many vessels listed in the Liberian International Ship & Corporate Registry were Liberian in name only, logged as a matter of convenience that frequently included tax evasion and concealment of the true owner’s identity. The trawler’s flag—resembling that of the United States, but with only one star in its blue canton, and eleven red-and-white stripes in its field instead of thirteen—told Andreychuk nothing.

“Can we outrun them, if need be?” Glazkov inquired.

Andreychuk shrugged and said the obvious. “She’s keeping up so far.”

They were two miles offshore from Bargaal, still some thirteen hundred miles from their intended destination of Mombassa, Kenya. Andreychuk had no idea how fast the nameless trawler could travel—and now he saw that it didn’t matter. “Speedboats!”

From Glazkov’s lips, it sounded like a curse.

And so it was.

Three sleek powerboats—one red, two white—had suddenly appeared from the trawler’s starboard shadow and were racing toward the Vasylna at full speed, fairly skimming across the ocean’s surface. Each carried five or six men, and Andreychuk didn’t need his binoculars to know they were armed.

“You can repel them, yes?” Glazkov demanded.

“Perhaps.” Andreychuk’s tone left no doubt of his skepticism.

Even as he spoke, the first speedboat reached the Vasylna, one of its passengers raising a stubby weapon to his shoulder and squeezing its trigger. With a muffled popping sound, a grappling hook hurtled over the Vasylna’s port-side railing and caught hold, trailing a crude rope ladder behind it.

“We must fight back!” Glazkov barked at him, reaching underneath his jacket to produce an automatic pistol.

“Not so fast, Comrade,” another voice said from behind the Russian.

Glazkov and Andreychuk turned as one, to find a stocky figure standing in the wheelhouse doorway. Mykola Shymko held a pistol of his own, aimed at the Russian’s head.

“Full stop, Captain, I think,” the first mate said.

So much for trust.