Nolan knew the ship’s radio was in bad shape. It was old, and like the rest of the ship, was about to be canned. Plus, the electrical power was at such a low point on the ship, the radio was barely emitting static anymore.
The only other communications device Alpha had was the sat-phone the CIA agent gave them.
The agent had warned them strenuously not to use the phones unless they’d found the Z-box or found out what happened to it. But their mission of locating the mysterious box seemed like a dream at the moment.
Nolan decided this was an emergency and, basically, screw the CIA.
He pulled out the sat-phone and handed it to her.
“Do you know their telephone numbers?” he asked.
She wiped her eyes again, a bit surprised, and then took it from him.
“I can call anyone in the world?” she asked with another sniff.
He nodded. “That’s the theory.”
She thought a moment, then tried a number—but nothing happened.
She tried again. Still nothing.
She looked up at him helplessly.
“Try another number,” he suggested.
She started dialing again.
But again, to no result.
“I’m not even getting a dial tone,” she said finally.
Nolan took the phone back and removed the rear panel. He was instantly pissed. The battery was corroded beyond belief.
He looked the phone over and saw it had been made in China.
“Freaking spooks,” he said under his breath. “How to wave the flag…”
He yelled up to Gunner. He was soon on the deck with them and Nolan showed him the phone. It was so frustratingly stupid Gunner couldn’t help but laugh.
“This Z-box could have fallen out of the sky and hit us on the head,” he roared. “And there wouldn’t have been any way for us to tell them. If that ain’t typical.”
Nolan threw the phone into the ocean. “This cheap crap has totally screwed us, though,” he said soberly.
Gunner got serious again, too. “Now what are we going to do?” he asked.
Before Nolan could answer, one of the Senegals came running down the deck. He interrupted the conversation by saying in French, “You must come to the stern, right now.”
Nolan and Gunner hurried to the back of the ship, Emma trailing behind. The other Senegals were already there. They directed Nolan’s attention to the northeast horizon.
“
Brigands—beaucoup d’entre eux,
” one said.
Translation:
Pirates—lots of them.
Nolan saw a dozen motorboats heading in their direction. Each boat was brightly colored; each had a flag billowing from its back. Nolan knew who these people were right away: the
Bombay-Katum-Velay
pirate gang. Better known as the Bom-Kats, they took their name from a small chain of islands located about twenty miles off Bombay.
Recruiting small-time criminals from India’s ports, the Bom-Kats had an almost unlimited supply of manpower to draw from. They preyed mostly on coastal freighters along the west Indian coastline and luxury vessels sailing between India and the Maldives Islands. Just like pirates of old, the Bom-Kats usually killed the crew of any ship they attacked and rarely showed mercy to any passengers. Of all the Indian pirate gangs in the area, they were the most ruthless.
“Maybe this is why no one chased us out of Gottabang,” Gunner said, looking at the pirate fleet through his binoculars. “Those cutters might have tipped off these guys to get their ship back.”
“Either that or they’re just bored,” Nolan said.
To her credit, Emma wasn’t scared. She was angry.
“What would they want with us?” she asked hoarsely. “The people on this ship are in rags.”
Nolan just shrugged. “I guess they want the rags…”
He motioned to one of the Senegals to take Emma and the ship’s crew below.
“Hide them and stay with them,” Nolan said. “No matter what happens.”
When they departed, he gathered the remaining Senegals and Gunner together. Each man checked his ammo supply. Nolan and the Senegals had half-full magazines in their M4s, with three magazines each in reserve. Gunner’s Streetsweeper was about 80 percent full, plus he had a belt of C-80 ammunition, small incendiary shells that exploded like mini hand grenades.
It was a lot of firepower.
So, Nolan told them simply: “OK—you guys know what to do.”
* * *
THE FIRST BOM-KAT boat came alongside the freighter five minutes later.
Those pirates on board it were sure the
Taiwan Song
would be easy pickings. It was moving at barely five knots, its engine was smoking and it was sailing with a noticeable list. It was obviously wounded and in trouble.
The Bom-Kats weren’t expecting to find a mother lode aboard the rusty old ship. Rather, at the moment, it was the ship itself they were after. Their allies among the Gottabang security force had asked them to be on the lookout for the crippled vessel. If they found it, they could do whatever they wanted with whomever and whatever they found on board. The important thing was they’d get a payment for returning the vessel to the notorious ship-cracking beach.
It wasn’t typical pirate work. But it was a payday, so why not take it?
The first pirate boat had reached the ship with no problem. They’d seen people scrambling about on deck as they drew closer, but that was routine. Whenever they seized a ship, the resulting panic and confusion always worked to the Bom-Kats’ advantage.
The first boat tied up to the freighter’s port-side access ladder. Here it lingered until a second boat arrived. Each boat had four pirates in it. Two more boats were waiting off the ship’s starboard side, being held in reserve. The remainder of the pirate fleet stayed about a quarter mile away, simply to watch.
Once everyone was in position, two pirates from the first boat started to climb the steep access ladder. Ten feet from gaining the railing, the pirate first in line looked up to see an African man looking down at him from the railing.
The pirate thought the man was part of the crew and wanted to surrender. But an instant later, he saw the barrel of a huge weapon pointing down at him. He actually saw a bright flash from this weapon—but then he saw no more.
The pirate behind him took almost the full blast from this same shot after it had nearly decapitated the man in front of him. Both dead men fell back down the ladder, hitting the water with a sickening splash.
All this happened in a heartbeat. The pirates in the second boat immediately pulled out their AK-47s. They hadn’t expected any resistance from this ship’s crew. They’d been told four drunken, unarmed Koreans had stolen the ship. Besides, in situations like this, the imperiled crew usually fled to the engine room and locked themselves inside, letting the pirates do their dirty work unchallenged.
But now shots had been fired and two of their comrades had been killed. The Bom-Kats were forced to fight back.
As soon as the first two pirates had been shot down, three more gunmen, two Africans and a white man, appeared at the midship railing and fired at the second boat. This fusillade was so powerful it punched a hole in the brightly painted vessel, sinking it in an instant. Its four occupants were tossed into the sea and quickly caught up in the ship’s wake, drowning them.
Two pirates were left in the first boat; they tried frantically to rev their engine and get away, but a fourth African gunman appeared on the railing directly above them. He fired straight down onto their heads, killing them and blowing the speedboat to bits.
The pirates on the third and fourth speedboats, waiting not far away from the ship, were stunned by what was happening. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. They turned to escape.
That’s when another figure appeared at the railing. He was a large white man holding a huge weapon. He started firing at the two speedboats, expertly spitting out small incendiary projectiles on high arc trajectories. Both boats were hit in seconds, exploding into flames.
And that was enough for the Bom-Kats.
The remainder of the fleet, watching this from a quarter mile away, turned south and quickly fled.
* * *
FIVE MINUTES AFTER the battle ended, Emma was back up at the railing. The other Senegal and the ship’s crewmen were close behind.
Even though none of the pirates had made it aboard the ship, Emma was greeted by a grisly scene. The freighter was moving so slowly, and the sea was so calm, a couple of the dead pirates had been caught in the current and were ghoulishly keeping pace with the ship. Also some of the water around the vessel was faintly pink with blood.
“Was this all necessary?” she asked, looking over the side and shuddering.
“They weren’t coming for milk and cookies,” Gunner replied. “They just didn’t expect a tub like this to be armed.”
Emma was close to tears.
She grabbed Nolan by his arm. “We have to get that radio working somehow,” she said. “I have to contact my friends and get us out of this.”
At the same time, the ship’s original crewmen were also surveying the post-battle scene, especially noting the bodies still floating around the slow-moving ship.
They were incredulous. They knew well how pirate-infested these waters were. They also knew how brutal the Bom-Kats could be. Yet the brigands had been dispatched in a matter of seconds.
The crewmen looked at Nolan, Gunner and the Senegals.
Then one asked in broken English: “Who
are
you people?”
* * *
ABOUT A MILE away, the lead boat of the Bom-Kats gang lingered behind as the rest of the fleet retired.
Aboard was Bompat Kalish, the commander of the pirate group. He was a large man with many tattoos and body piercings. At the moment, he was furious—and baffled. He’d just watched a number of his men being killed in the unsuccessful attack. Why was such an old wreck of a ship so heavily defended? According to his contacts at Gottabang, it was supposed to be barely crewed and not worth fighting for.
Kalish had been pirating for thirty years. He knew whoever killed his men were professionals, not just tramp seamen with rifles.
His conclusion: There was something different about this ship.
He held a pair of very powerful binoculars to his eyes, studying the freighter as it chugged its way southwest. He focused in on the railing near the bridge—and couldn’t believe his eyes.
There was a blond woman up on the bow, talking to one of the gunmen. But this was not just any blond woman. Kalish thought he recognized her.
His binoculars had a small camera built in. He could take a photograph of anything he saw through the eyepieces. He zoomed all the way in on the blonde and then snapped a couple pictures.
Then, he showed the photos to his second-in-command.
This man couldn’t believe it.
“Do you believe in God?” Kalish asked him.
“No—not until now,” the man replied.
They went below to the captain’s cabin. Its walls were covered with photos of a young blond girl.
Kalish held the photo in his binocular screen next to one of the wall photos.
“It is her,” Kalish said. “I’m sure of it.”
“I am, too,” the second-in-command said. “But what would the world’s most famous actress be doing on that old tub?”
Kalish shook his head and licked his lips.
“God be praised, I don’t know,” he said. “But this changes everything.”
13
Grand Maison Casino
Monte Carlo
“ANY LUCK YET, girls?” Batman called over his shoulder.
The quartet of bikini-clad beauties was sitting at the penthouse’s rococo table, huddled around Twitch’s laptop. They were timidly pecking at the computer’s keys and studying the screen with great uncertainty.
“Nothing,” one cooed in a French accent. “No Wi-Fi anywhere…”
A second added: “Monsieur Bat? You need to find another way to amuse yourself. This is boring.”
Batman poured himself another glass of mineral water and contemplated her comment.
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said to himself.
He was sitting out on the penthouse’s immense balcony; Monte Carlo, in all its opulent splendor, was spread out before him. This was the life—and he knew it. His divan was layered with thrice-spun Egyptian cotton; his robe was the finest Iranian silk. His sunglasses were Dolce & Gabbanas his cigar was a Cohiba Behike. There were a dozen bottles of expensive liquor less than an arm’s length away. Courvoisier cognac; Macallan Whiskey; Romano Levi grappa. In the top drawer of the balcony’s Leptis Magna marble table was a cube of Moroccan hashish. In the bottom drawer, a bag of pure cocaine. Both were courtesy of the management.
But still, Batman was not partaking; even his cigar wasn’t lit. He was getting high in another way: by inhaling the sweet smell of success all around him. It was in the air. In the trees. In the glare of the sparkling buildings he saw everywhere he looked. The surroundings alone were intoxicating him. And whether this had to do with Chief Bada’s bubble bath, or something else entirely, Batman was definitely jonesing on them.
The view from the balcony was spectacular. It overlooked both the casino’s giant pool and its rear concourse, where everything was either gold, green, white or aqua blue, and everybody was one of the Beautiful People. Beyond the casino’s grounds was Albert Boulevard, the
l’avenue principale
of the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix. Batman could clearly see both the race’s starting point and its finish line from here. Farther out, beyond the wavy tree-lined streets, was the magnificent harbor, jammed with mega-yachts. Beyond that, the sparkling Mediterranean Sea.
In between getting thrown out of Delta and starting up their pirate-busting business, Batman had made a killing on Wall Street. He’d wheeled and dealed his way through hundreds of exotic financial transactions, earning his trading company tens of millions of dollars on a daily basis and growing himself a small fortune. When he was at the height of his Master of the Universe powers, he’d stayed and played in places like this. He knew the taste of the good life was hard to get rid of once it’s been on your tongue.
Seeing all this glamour and wealth, and knowing it substituted for oxygen in Monte Carlo, made him realize just how much he missed those days.