The Weapon (27 page)

“Who's on the other side of this island?”

“Other side? I haven't checked the far side.”

“Exactly. Fishermen. Tourists. A dive boat. Or an Indonesian patrol. That's why I wanted no one ashore. And no fucking
shooting
.” Dan pointed to the boat. “Get your ass back there, Oberg. Right now.”

He held up the lizard. “Yes, take the fucking thing,” Dan told him. He picked up the rifle and threw it at Oberg. “Find your brass. Take it with you, too.” He stood breathing hard, till the SEAL angrily bent.

 

He lay awake again that night, waking from time to time and looking at his watch. Around the boat the others slept or
tossed, cramped into corners and cuddies. Their snoring waxed and waned.

At last his Seiko beeped. He rolled over, scratched himself, and got up. Across from him another dark figure stirred against the stars.

“It's time?” Henrickson sat up.

“Let's go,” Dan said.

The sea heaved darkly; a quarter moon silvered the waves. The boat rolled with a wet slapping like a snapped towel. Their lights were off, and around the deck dark shapes lay like long-dead corpses. In the hours they'd tossed out here several sets of running lights had passed. None had been on
Fengshun No.5,
but larger vessels, tankers, Dan judged, by their length and their laden-low lights.

Merchant ships weren't Swiss trains. They could run early or late, so he'd wanted to be in position well in advance of when she was scheduled to pass. Sitting on the gunwale, he reviewed their gear, each man's assigned tasks, how it would go and what could go wrong. Unfortunately, almost always what
did
go wrong was something you'd never anticipated. Murphy was alive and well.

“Petty Officer Oberg. Anything else we need to do? Set up your climbing gear, anything like that?”

“Been ready since we got here, Commander.”

The SEAL had been frosty since their set-to over the lizard, but Dan could not care less. He checked again that his weapon's safety was on. The chamber was empty anyway, he'd ordered chambers empty until they were actually
aboard, so no one would get shot by mistake, but it gave him the illusion of something to do.

He sat for a few minutes, then checked his watch again. Then again.

By 0400 he was worried. Would she arrive before dawn? He didn't think they could approach, grapple, and board by daylight. They'd be seen at once, and if she started to weave, no way they'd get aboard.

Wenck grabbed his hair, making him flinch. “Something out there,” the Carolinian muttered, sounding like he was choking. Dan put up a hand and Wenck pulled him up with him on top of the cuddy and thrust the glasses into his hands.

A distant green spark, two white lights in a near vertical line. Heading: a little east of them. “Start one engine,” he muttered, as if they could hear him from here. “Ahead slow. Course two-zero-zero magnetic. Everybody out of sight, except the helmsman.”

“Why are we running toward?” Carpenter wanted to know. Dan looked at him. Since his trial, the sonarman had barely opened his mouth, just jumped to it whenever it looked as if something had to be done. Seeing Dan's look he added, “Sorry, sir. Just wondered.”

“We want to look like a crossing contact. See if they react in a closing situation; that tells us how well the bridge is manned, how alert they are. When we get in tight, they'll lose us; we'll be below radar coverage. Then we can alter to drop in astern, but we want to look like a fisherman till the last minute.” He noticed a shadow behind the sonarman. “Obie, this'd be a good time to tell me if I'm doing something wrong.”

“Really want my input, Commander?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Teddy tried to master his growing dislike for the guy. Their asses would be on the line in a few minutes. “Okay, sir, no argument with that. But once we get alongside, it'd go smoother if you just let me call the shots.”

“You're the pros. Just remember, these guys aren't our enemies. Just merchant seamen, doing a job. We can restrain
them. We can scare them. Even threaten them, but I don't want anyone to get hurt.”

Teddy grinned in the dark. Like they were going to take over a ship and burn it, and nobody was going to get hurt? Shit, if that's what the fool wanted to believe . . . he made his voice gung-ho earnest. “Hey, you got it, sir. Just make sure your guys are behind us, and everything'll go great.”

“There's no ‘mine' and ‘yours' here, Teddy. We're all on the same team.”

Oberg gave him another “yessir.” And that seemed to finish the conversation.

 

The lights rose from the sea, glimmering out toward them like reaching hands. Behind them one engine burbled, driving them along at a trawlerlike eight knots. Kaulukukui was sprawled on top of the cuddy with the night-vision goggles, watching the oncoming ship. “Get me an ID,” Dan called. “I'm not going in till we have a positive ID.”

He bent, shielding the lit numerals with his body, and switched his handheld to the bridge-to-bridge frequency. He had no intention of answering any calls, but it might serve to tell them they'd been detected.

It didn't seem that they had. The massive shadow drove steadily on. They crossed its bow a thousand yards ahead of it, the bulging froth at its stem glimmering in the moonlight. He made out a shadowy mass aft, probably an accommodation block. But now he was closer this ship looked bigger than what they'd been briefed to expect. Which was a 900-TEU, feeder-sized containership of about ten thousand gross registered tons and a hundred and sixty meters long.

But he couldn't hang around while he decided if this was it or not. It was really tearing along. If they were going to make it into position without a long stern chase, he had to tuck himself in. “All right: Lights out.” Their running lights snapped off. “Come left, angle in toward the stern as she passes,” Dan told Carpenter, on the helm. “Come on, kick her in the ass, Rit! Full RPM, let's get up on plane.”

Sumo turned his head, the protuberant muzzle eye of the
night goggles making him look inhuman against the lights of the ship. “I don't think that's Feng Shui.”

“It's
Fengshun,
not ‘Feng Shui.' ”

“Right. But that's not the name I'm reading on the bow.”

“Oh, shit,” Dan muttered. “Angle in more,” he told Carpenter. “All engines, flank— What's it say? Can you read it?”

“
Van Linschoten
, it says.”

“That doesn't sound Chinese,” Henrickson muttered.

“No, it doesn't. More rudder, Rit. Look at the stern, Sumo. Can you get a home port?”

“A - m - s . . . I think an R—no, a T—”

“Amsterdam.” He could make it out himself now. Along with the white tumult at the base of the black hull-cliff, where the screw lived. He shivered, envisioning falling into that frothy doom. It would be like diving into a tank of hungry sharks. The bow wave hit them with a rushing crash and they grabbed for handholds as the boat climbed under their feet, then aimed her nose for the bottom.

He grimaced and glanced to the east. The horizon was not yet visible, but it was getting there. Back when he'd been a navigator, he'd be already dressed and shaved, up in the nav shack deciding which stars to shoot. He slammed his fist into the gunwale and felt skin peel off it. “Sheer off. Lights on! Monty, they said it was coming through the Strait tonight? That was firm intel?”

“I don't know about intel, they said it was from VTIS.”

VTIS was the vessel traffic information service, the maritime safety ship reporting system that tracked traffic through major straits. “That should be good dope, then.”

“Then where is it? Broken down? Running behind schedule?”

“I don't know,” he muttered. He slammed his fist into fiberglass again, felt blood trickle. It seemed like this whole Shkval-hunt was Jonahed. Every time they got set up to actually
do
something—

“More lights, sir,” Wenck called.

He sucked breath. There they were, another set of red and green and white. He checked behind them; the Dutch ship
dwindling, already low to the horizon. It had gone past faster than he'd expected, huge, towering, a freight train. Getting up a ship's stern in the dark, the black cliff moving at fifteen or twenty knots, would not be easy. He wiped sweat and blood off on his pants, checked his gear again, checked it again.

The oncoming ship grew even more swiftly than the one that had just creamed by. She seemed smaller, but maybe that was the rain-colored half-light that was gradually filtering up out of the sea, the unearthly radiance that seemed to come from nowhere and not really even to be light. She was stacked deep with containers and he could make out the outline of cranes forward, or maybe just one.

The boat rocked again, crossing the wave system the Dutchman trailed behind him. Dan made out streaks of creamy foam lying parallel to their course. He could almost see his guys now, see the team's weapons, the bamboo poles, the boarding ladder rolled up in the bow. They didn't have much longer, if they were going to pull this off. He swung back and focused. This sucker was really roaring along. Was it the right one? He couldn't wait. Not with dawn coming. After the molasseslike hours out here, suddenly events were moving so fast he felt overwhelmed.

He keyed the VHF and tried for an accent. Fortunately ship-to-ship commercial comms were nearly always in English, or at least, something resembling that language. He said slowly, “Motor Vessel
Fengshun
, Motor Vessel
Fengshun
, this is Motor Vessel
Van Linschoten,
ahead of you in eastbound channel, over.”

“This is
Fengshun Number Five
. Over.”

“This is
Van Linschoten
. Be advised we have lost rudder hydraulics. Advise you proceed with caution as we are slowing and do not have steering control.”

“This is
Fengshun
. Hear you loud and clearly. We are slowly. Are you need help?
Fengshun
,
Fengshun
. Over?”

He clicked the transmit button on and off quickly, giving the effect, he hoped, of a broken signal. He caught Oberg squinting at him. No time to interpret. He said urgently to
Carpenter, crouched at the wheel, “Same drill as before. Down her port side. Lights off as we close. Then cut in tight under her stern,
tight,
line up and match speed. Got it?”

He said he did. Dan watched the pilothouse as they neared. Dim yellow lights glowed behind the large square windows high above the container-crammed deck. They had to be there.
Someone
had answered up on 12. He still couldn't see anyone though.

“Chinese characters,” the Hawaiian said from the bow. “This might be our boy.”

Dan looked back at the horizon, at the men lying on the ceiling boards, at the swiftly approaching vessel. He stared at the white water at the stem but couldn't tell if it was lessening, if they were shedding speed. He could almost make out the large white letters that marched along the black wall. It was still dark, but the day was coming. “All three engines,” he snapped to Carpenter. “Hold your course . . . hold your course . . . now. Lights off.”

Carpenter flipped a switch and spun the wheel. The boat was only just starting to turn when the bow wave hit them. They rose, tipped crazily, almost went over. Dan crouched, butt tight against the gunwale, clinging to the helm console. Spray shot over the side and drenched them. The Hondas spooled up, bellowing together in a chorus of power. Beside him Oberg turned his ear as if to hear them better. The boat shot past the swiftly moving steel wall, now only yards away, and hit a slick patch. “Cut left! Cut left and line up!” Dan shouted.

“Son of a bitch—”

Oberg grabbed for the wheel but Dan pushed him back. The chunky sonarman hunched over the console. The boat bounced, snarled, canted hard as it came hard left again. The stern loomed alarmingly close. “Cut power! Cut power!” Dan nearly screamed, but kept it to a guttural shout.

“Jesus Christ,” Henrickson shouted. “He's gonna slam into—”

“Why don't all you fuckfaces just shut the fuck up,” Carpenter said between gritted teeth. He pulled two throttles
back and left the middle one all the way forward. “She's slowing down. Get Oberg ready.”

But when Dan turned the SEAL was already on the bow, holding the long thin shadow of the bamboo pole like a harpooner about to thrust. Kaulukukui stood behind him, holding a coil of line out of the way. They crouched tensely, staring up at the gigantic stern swaying above them, like figures caught on a heroic frieze. Dan pushed back from the helm, willing himself by main force not to grab the wheel as Carpenter wrestled it this way and that. A pale luminescence played down from the stern light, swaying high above. The pulse of the freighter's screw hammered at the soles of his feet through sea and fiberglass and leather like the repetitive pounding against its bars of a maddened panther. He balanced as the boat tossed in the screw wash, as the bow swung crazily, lurching and bouncing in the turbulence.

Ahead of him, Oberg was reaching up.

 

Teddy cursed between clenched teeth. The idiot on the helm couldn't keep it steady for even a second. Behind him Sumo had his hand in his belt, trying to brace him, but he still staggered, trying to keep from falling overboard, while riveting his attention on the deck-edge above. It was higher than he'd expected. Subtract the boat's and his own height, he might have just enough bamboo to hook on, but not a millimeter to spare.

“Can you get it?” Lenson yelled.

“Wait one—gonna have to—”

The bow surged and he lunged with it, thrusting with the pole to his tiptoes. The grapnel skidded off, the point grating on metal. The bow dropped away and the pole came back down and nearly took him into the water with it before he and Kaulukukui got it under control. There didn't seem to be any lip, or water channel, on the deck edge, the way he'd expected, for the hook to lock on. That wasn't good.