The Weapon (22 page)

He wasn't looking forward to doing this for real. Shinnying up a bamboo pole in the dark, dangling over the screw . . . if he lost his grip things could go to shit fast. But if he and Sumo practiced it should go okay. He'd drop the ladder for the others after he made sure there was no after lookout. Or at least, that any lookout wouldn't be warning anybody they were there.

Back in the boat, they idled in again. This time he nudged Kaulukukui. “Get farther over to starboard, Sumo.”

“Centerline, we'll have less turbulence to fight.”

“Yeah, but most of these freighters have one screw. If one of us hits the water, we'll be better off to starboard or port, rather than centerline. Maybe we can swim clear before we get turned into fish-flavored tomato paste.”

“Mm, sounds yummy.”

“Yeah, anything fish flavored, right? You guys ready to try it this time?” Teddy called back to the silent forms behind them. Christ, he hoped none of them froze on the ladder. Better to find it out now than on the mission, though.

The stern loomed and he crouched. Hooked on, and swarmed the pole again. If it was raining, he wasn't going to make it. Maybe roughen it with a file, that'd give him a better grip if it was wet. He hit the top, swung, and almost went over backward as the rusted lifeline snaked out through the stanchions. “Fuck,” he muttered, and barely saved his balance before plummeting backward into the boat, tossing and growling below.
Good
way to break your fucking back, Oberg. Then you can drive that new Samurai from a crank-up bed.

He did the night-vision goggles check, then swapped the knife for the rock gear and kicked the ladder over. Sumo came up second, handing the helm to Carpenter, hulking up the swaying ladder with both their Kalashnikovs, extra ammo, and the tape-wrapped bricks of plastic explosive.

Wenck came up next. The gangly kid was pretty fast, considering. Wenck had wakened him the night before last nattering about hostages, a woman in a hut, hymns in the jungle. Teddy had told him to zip it. The Sayyaf did ransom snatches—everybody knew that. If they were holding missionaries, it had nothing to do with the Team. Maybe after they left, they could pass the word to somebody who could do something about it. Now Kaulukukui grabbed the kid as his head reached the deck-edge, hauled him up, and set him on his feet. Oberg watched as he oriented, swept the deck with the muzzle of his weapon, took position at three o'clock looking forward. Good.

Henrickson. The little guy was fast up the ladder, but went wide when he came off it. Oberg hauled him back and pointed him the right way. He wondered if he wanted Henrickson behind him with a weapon. The guy was fine at a computer, but Oberg could see him turning tail if the going got tough. But they only had so many bodies. Just enough to secure a ship, if they all did their jobs. Carpenter was hopeless on the ladder. He'd been looking more and more bushed since they got to the camp; said he was having trouble sleeping. The submariner seemed to be able to handle the wheel, though. He'd have felt better with two guys in the boat. The old SEAL saying: “Two is one, one is none.” But if he didn't have them, they'd still have to do the job.

“Okay, heads together here. Let's go over who goes where again.”

The wreck wasn't much like the ship they were going to board, plus, there was a big hole forward; anybody who wasn't paying attention would go down twenty feet onto jagged steel. So he'd laid out rocks and boards on the beach and run them through it a dozen times.

He put the red spot of his Pelikan on the photo. A shot of
Fengshun No. 5,
taken from directly above. Labels identified the deck house, forecastle, walkways, and where they'd find the one piece of cargo they wanted. RUS U 8789032 would be a forty-eight-foot container, painted green. It would be double locked and isolated by empty containers on
either side, above, and below, to protect the Shkval in the event of collision or fire. Unfortunately, 8789032 would not be the top stack, but one layer down. Before he'd left for Singapore, Lenson had pointed out this was probably a precaution against it being washed overboard in a storm, not to make it more difficult to steal, but the effect was the same. Since
Fengshun No. 5
had no cranes, they'd have to move the containers above it to get at the one with the weapon.

“Any ideas on how to get those containers off?” Oberg asked them.

“Like I said, blow 'em off,” Kaulukukui said.

“I don't think so,” Henrickson said. “From what they told Mister Lenson at NUWC, the guidance system may be pretty sensitive. We don't know how it's packed. We don't know if there are live explosives in the warhead. Given all that, I don't think we want to set off explosives that close to it.”

Teddy didn't like how the little guy said this. Henrickson seemed to think he was number two to the commander's number one. The guy might be a GS-13, but he was still just a fucking civilian. Nobody else said anything and Henrickson added, “If nobody has a better idea, why don't we just use the boat? Grapnel on to the containers above it and use the boat's engines to drag them off.”

“This T-AGS Mister Lenson's getting us. Won't it have cranes?” Wenck put in.

They looked at him. Henrickson said, “Sure, Donnie, it'll have cranes, but the less time we spend alongside the better. It'd be smarter to have everything ready to go by the time we rendezvous. The more containers we can clear away before we go alongside, the better. Right, Obie?”

“I guess,” Oberg said reluctantly. “We're gonna burn the fucker anyway. We can dump all the cargo we want, far as I can see.” He gave it a moment's more thought—there was something there that didn't sit right yet—then shrugged. “Okay, ready to play firebug?”

“Me first,” Wenck said, hands out.

They'd brought the thermite grenades and the night-vision goggles in separately from the rifles, and kept them
out of their hosts' sight, just so nobody got sticky fingers. He went over the procedure again—setting one off inadvertently could wreck the mission—and at last backed off. Took a final look around. Far off and low on the horizon a quarter moon was rising. No other lights; nothing but the stars, and the reddish, faintly shimmering moon. “Okay, Donnie, have at it. Just go slow. And, where do we plant these?”

“Right on top of the fuel tanks,” Wenck said breathlessly, fondling the grenades.
Fuck me,
Teddy thought.
Got to keep an eye on this idiot.

“And where are the fuel tanks?”

“Lower deck, forward, level with the aft end of the forecastle.”

“Okay, just go forward and set it just a little behind that gap in the deck. Here, use the flashlight! And don't fall in!”

Wenck came running back, panting. His grin was a green leer in the emerald gaze of the night-vision goggles. “Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole!”

Oberg turned off the goggles and hit the deck as night turned to noon. The column of smoke and flame roared upward, pumpkin-colored fire blended into black smoke like some enormous scoop of mandarin-chocolate ice cream. Rusty steel shuddered under his hands. A horrendous chemical stink caught in his throat. “Shit, Wenck! Where in the fuck did you put that thing?”

“Next to some old oil drums up there.”

“Oil drums?” Kaulukukui coughed. “That wasn't no fucking oil. That's gonna bring everybody here in for twenty miles around.”

Choking, brushing off greasy flakes that fell from the night and stuck to their clothes, they piled aft and down the ladder into the waiting boat. “You fucking awake, Carpenter? Haul ass out of here,” he grated.

“The fuck was that, man?”

“Just
drive!”
Fucking blackshoes, fucking retirees, fucking
civilians
. He was supposed to take
these
guys on mission? “Just fucking drive, all right?”

Much later, the moon stood above huts and trees. Firelight swayed. Figures lay sprawled, snoring, some wrapped in blankets, others in mosquito nets stencilled USAID. Broken glass sparkled where Kaulukukui had given an unasked-for demonstration of terminating bottles one-handed with an AK.

Rit sat up very quietly. When no one stirred he crawled away from the flickering circle of ruddy light. He fingered the hard long lumps in his trousers. The flashlight in one pocket, the bottle of the local rum in the other. He slung his blanket over his shoulder. Umali liked something to lie on. He did, too, considering what was probably crawling around on the jungle floor by the well. Their regular meeting place, now. He was both eager and getting fucked out. Whichever of these assholes she belonged to, she wasn't getting enough at home, that was for sure.

Well, never let it be said Rit Carpenter let down the honor of the sub force. He oriented by Polaris and headed between the huts. Past another fire, lighting Lenson's face as he sat with Captain Abu. The commander had just gotten back to camp when the team had come back from drilling out at the wreck. Abu was shaking his hands up and down, talking rapidly; the American was listening intently. Rit faded past, and neither looked his way.

Sighing as he left the last hut behind, he headed down the path that led to the sea, looking not directly in front of him but using the edges of his sight to stay between the dark towerings of jungle on either side. As the firelight faded he gradually made out the white glow of the foot-smoothed path. His mouth began to water. He fingered another lump in his trousers.

There were always women. And some were always open to suggestion. You just had to be tuned in. When you were, it was all around you. When you weren't, you'd bop on past and never even notice. Like fucking Donnie. The kid was so nervous around women, even girls his own age, he wasn't going to ever get any. He wondered if he should ask Umali if she had any friends.

The path turned this way and that, perfectly visible now under the moonlight. He hummed under his breath. “Rolling home,” he sang softly. “Rolling home, by the light of the silvery moo-oo-oo-oon; happy is the day, when a sailor gets his pay. . . .”

“Reet?”

The half-whisper came from the darkness to his right. He stopped short, peering. Was he there already? He'd thought it was another hundred yards.

“Umali? That you?”

Was that a whispered yes? A moving shadow; was that her, beckoning? Maybe this
was
it. He swung the blanket off his shoulder. Touched the bottle in his pocket, then the hardness next to it. This wouldn't take long.

“Here I am, baby,” he murmured, stepping into the dark.

 

 

 

Abu looked up from the fire when the shouting started. Dan had been sounding him out on his plans, but the Sayyaf chief had been evasive. He tilted his head, listening to the distant yelling. Then suddenly rose.

“What is it?” Dan said, getting up, too.

“You come with me.”

When they reached where the path left the hamlet to head down to the well and then the beach, four men were headed toward them, shining flashlights and carrying torches. Dan grinned at the torches. They looked like the villagers from
Young Frankenstein.
He quit grinning when he saw who they were dragging.

“Carpenter, you didn't,” he breathed. “Not again.”

The submariner's eye was swelling closed and blood was running down his temple, dripping onto his bare chest. He didn't meet Dan's eyes. He started to speak, but was kicked into silence. Behind him, not beaten but plainly terrified, was a slight woman who hugged a head wrap, though she was naked from the waist up.

Abu shouted at them, and the men shouted and shook their fists back. Izmin, the squat, ugly little man who'd sat with the Americans in the headquarters hut, kept shaking
the woman and spitting on her. She looked fixedly before her, gaze unfocused.

“Okay, okay, what's going on,” Dan said, but no one paid any attention.

Oberg burst out of the hut area, Kalashnikov muzzle-down along his leg. Kaulukukui followed, also armed. Without a word each went to a knee, flanking Dan. Behind them the Abu Sayyaf were boiling out, rattling the bolts on their new weapons. Whatever the guys dragging Carpenter were shouting was heating the others to ignition point. Amin grabbed one of the torches and started beating the woman with it, scattering sparks over her hair and clothes. One of the others got the torch away from him, and someone else beat the sparks out. But they didn't act eager to do it, and there was a lot of muttering.

Abu and Ibrahim were pushing the crowd back, shouting questions. They shoved the woman forward, gesturing angrily at her.

“Teddy? Can you understand what they're saying?”

“Not a lot, sir. That's Tausug they're spouting. Looks like they caught Izmin's wife, I guess maybe his senior wife, with Carpenter here.”

“Anything we can do about it?”

“Christ.” For the first time since Dan had known him, Oberg looked uncertain. He rubbed his mouth with the back of the hand that wasn't holding the AK. “Well . . . she's dead meat, that's for sure. My take, him, too. The rest of us, we're gonna be golden if we can get out of here with our heads still attached.”