Operation Sea Ghost (6 page)

BATMAN EVENTUALLY EXCUSED himself from the table and made his way to the tip of the yacht’s extended bow. There was no one up here, which is just as he wanted it.

His spirits were soaring into overdrive. The night sky above seemed to be on fire, with the stars revolving and dancing and moving in elaborate patterns. The air itself smelled glorious. The water below looked like a lake of champagne.

He felt all this, truly and deeply, even though he’d not had a drop of alcohol or any drugs since coming aboard. These things really
didn’t
interest him anymore. He was naturally high. Feeling like a huge weight had been lifted from him, he was seeing life as it really was for the first time. And life was wonderful.

He whispered under his breath: “Thank you, Chief … thank you for saving me.”

That’s when he sensed someone behind him, someone close enough to touch him. He turned, expecting to find the Italian or the Austrian, looking for another joint.

Instead he saw a strange glowing figure materializing before his eyes. The figure was dressed all in white, yet Batman could see right through him.

A ghost …

Was that possible?

The apparition looked him in the eyes—and Batman felt his knees turn to rubber.

This was no ordinary phantom.

Batman knew him well.…

*   *   *

NOLAN HAD DRAINED four beers in thirty minutes. He was still hanging back from the rest of the guests and constantly checking his watch.

The encounter with the headwaiter had burst his bubble. Now he was counting the minutes before they could get off this tub.

A woman approached him out of the dark. She was not a model, but then again not unattractive. Maybe in her forties, blond, with a good shape and a nice tan.

California …

Nolan knew it the moment he spotted her.

She introduced herself, but Nolan didn’t really catch her name. She was with
People
magazine.

“I was just briefed by studio publicity about this rescue mission,” she said. “And someone told me you were involved?”

Nolan was nonchalant. “I was,” he replied.

“Do you know that Miramax is already talking about a movie?”

“Seriously?” he asked.

“You sound shocked.…”

“I shouldn’t be, I guess,” he said. “Things move pretty quick these days.”

She took out a small tape recorder. “So, how did it go?” she asked him. “During the rescue mission?”

Nolan shrugged. “We got the gig, flew in, found the bad guys’ camp, blew it up, rescued the hostages and flew back.”

“And how many pirates did Emma herself take out?” she asked.

Nolan laughed. But then he realized the reporter was serious.

“None that I saw,” he replied. “She was tied up until the battle was over.”

“Interesting,” the reporter said. “Can I use that?”

Nolan shrugged again. “Sure, why not?”

Suddenly all activity on the yacht came to a stop. Everyone’s attention was drawn to the center of the mid deck where a dozen people had been led up from below. None of them were wearing party gear; just the opposite, in fact, many were dressed in rags. Nolan realized who these people were: the twelve other hostages Whiskey had rescued earlier that day.

A half dozen photographers followed them up on deck, all from
People
. The hostages were made to line up in two awkward rows, the photographers turning them this way and that. Then giant flash reflectors were put in place. Strobes were tested. Light readings taken. Soon enough, they were ready to take a picture.

But someone was missing.

Emma Simms.

Thirty seconds later, she appeared across the deck, making a grand entrance as usual. But to say she looked beautiful was like saying the ocean was wet.

Radiant. Striking. Transcendent …

Even those words didn’t come close.

She was wearing an elegant white gown, with a plunging neckline—but nothing too drastic. Her hair was flowing blond curls. Her face angelic.

But she also looked terminally bored and totally uninterested in her own party.

She was ushered to a spot in the front row of the hostages. Once she was settled, she gave her publicist a curt nod and the photographers started snapping away. A warm smile came across her features, as she looked left and right, up and down. The dozens of strobes flashing on fast advance made for an interesting special effect.

Then, just like that, it was over. The cameras stopped, the strobes died away. Emma stood up and, without a word, disappeared below, a small contingent of handlers following in her wake.

The other hostages were led over to the starboard-side gangway. A small ferry leased out of Aden was waiting below. With no ceremony, the hostages were put aboard and dismissed. The last one to go was the woman who’d been horribly scarred by the Shaka. Once loaded, the ferry pulled away and disappeared into the night.

Nolan couldn’t believe it.

“That might have been the coldest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told the reporter. “Miss Perfect was there for about two hours. Some of those people had been held prisoner for years.”

“Welcome to ‘Emma’s World,’” the reporter said. “And we’re all just visiting.”

She pulled out her small tape recorder and sighed. “Time to go to work. Can’t keep the Princess waiting.”

With that, she, too, disappeared belowdecks.

*   *   *

NOLAN WENT LOOKING for the rest of Whiskey. He wanted to get off the yacht in the worst way now. But as he was climbing up to the top deck, he ran into Gunner and Twitch on their way down.

Both looked rattled.

“You gotta come with us,” Gunner said. “And I mean,
right now
.”

Nolan followed them to the forward top deck, probably the only spot on the mega-yacht devoid of guests. They stopped at the starboard lifeboat station and pointed beneath it.

“Take a look under there,” Twitch told him.

“Is this a joke?” Nolan barked back.

“Just look,” Gunner urged him.

Nolan looked under the lifeboat—and saw Batman squeezed into an incredibly small space underneath, curled up in a fetal position and shaking violently.

“What the fuck…” Nolan gasped.

“We can’t get him to come out,” Gunner said. “Something is wrong with him, big time.”

Nolan reached in, grabbed his colleague by the collar and, with much effort, eventually slid him out. But Batman was still trembling mightily.

“What the
fuck
is the matter with you?” Nolan demanded to know.

“I’m not sure,” Batman answered, barely able to speak. “Something very fucked up just happened.…”

Nolan looked into his eyes. “What did you take tonight?” he asked him. “What kind of drugs?”

“Nothing.…” Batman just managed to whisper. “I swear, no drugs.…”

“How much booze then?”

But Batman was shaking his head no.

“Not a drop,” he insisted. “I’ve been drinking nothing but water since you guys picked me up this morning.”

Nolan detected no stink of alcohol around him. Nor were his pupils dilated or his eyes overly red.

Nolan told Gunner and Twitch to stand fast, and make sure no one, especially the magazine reporter, got past them.

Then Nolan led Batman up to an isolated point of the bow, out of earshot of the others.

“OK, what the hell is going on?” he asked him.

Batman’s face was ashen. His eyes were watery and sunken.

Nolan asked him again: “What is it? Tell me.…”

Batman wiped his brow, cleared his throat, then looked Nolan straight in the eye.

“I just saw Crash,” was all he said.

*   *   *

CRASH …

The name went through Nolan like a knife.

These days Team Whiskey consisted of four members. But they were once five.

Jack Stacks, aka “Crash,” had been their team’s sniper back when Whiskey was part of Delta Force. A surfer dude from southern California, he’d been a SEAL transfer when he first joined Delta, and eventually wound up fighting with them through the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.

When the team was hung out to dry after their bin Laden debacle, Crash was the only one who stayed in the business, working as a mercenary. It was he who put the team back together; it was he who kept it going. No argument, Crash was the heart and soul of Whiskey.

He was also the first to die, drowned by a renegade SEAL team who’d hijacked a U.S. Navy nuclear sub in the Caribbean. Nolan and Twitch were the ones who’d found him, floating face down near some isolated Bahamian islands, beyond resuscitation. After recovering the hijacked sub, the first thing Whiskey did was bury Crash at a veterans cemetery in Florida, a temporary interment until relatives could claim his body. All that had happened not a month ago. The team hadn’t been the same since.

“So, you’ve lost your mind?” Nolan finally said to Batman. “
That’s
what you’re telling me?”

Batman was shaking his head. “I
saw
him, Snake,” he insisted. “Right up there, on the top deck, near the tip of the bow.”

“You know how fucking crazy that sounds, don’t you?” Nolan growled.

“Of course I do,” Batman shot back, eyes welling up. “But it happened. It
just
happened. I saw him just as I’m seeing you right now. It was him.”

Nolan knew what was going on. Batman had been tabbed by someone at the party—LSD being the most likely culprit. Either that, or he was suffering delayed side effects of his time with the Ekita Clan back in Somalia. Or an avalanche of PTSD symptoms had just claimed him. Whatever the case, this was not a good situation.

“We’re getting out of here,” Nolan told him. “We’re going back to Aden right now.”

But Batman shook his head. “I can’t fly,” he said. “I can barely walk. And you stink of booze, plus you can barely drive the copter in the daytime. Who’s going to fly it now, in the dead of night?”

Nolan knew he was right. Trying to fly now, in his condition, with his limited sight and high anxiety—he might wind up killing them all.

So, if flying was not an option, then they had no other choice. They’d have to stay on the yacht and baby-sit their troubled colleague all night, making sure he didn’t harm himself or cause a disruption at the party.

Nolan said as much to Batman. But his friend was barely listening. He had his head in hands and was sobbing.

“There’s more,” he said. “Crash told me something. Something very strange.”

Batman looked up at him. “Do you want to know what he said?”

Nolan shrugged wearily. Any buzz he’d had was long gone now. “You mean, do I want to know what this figment of your imagination told you?” he asked.

Batman caught his breath and began slowly. “He said we’re about to be ‘blinded by the light.’ And that you’re going back to jail. And that we should be careful if we ever hear the word ‘moonglow.’”

Nolan just shook his head.

“Dude, climb onto one of the lounges up there and get some sleep,” he said pointing to the unoccupied top deck. “That’s the only way you’re going to come out of this.”

7

Off West Sumatra

THINGS WERE NOT going well for the Indonesian pirate gang known as the Kupak Tangs.

It was a few hours before sunrise. They were sailing on a leaky coastal freighter near a treacherous part of the Indian Ocean known as the Indischer Bank. The pirates were trying to elude a sea-borne posse, while fighting to keep their one remaining engine alive and preserving what little fuel they had left.

For the Tangs to be in this predicament would have been unthinkable a year ago. Back then, they were part of Zeek Kurjan’s immense pirate gang, a criminal enterprise that had just about all of western Indonesia under its thumb.

But two unlucky events had cursed the Tangs recently. First, their leader, Zeek the Pirate King himself, had been killed by the American mercenary group, Team Whiskey. Not a month later, Zeek’s godfather, and the patron saint of all Indonesian pirate bands, Shanghai mobster Sunny Hi, had been assassinated, most probably by the same people who’d iced Zeek.

With their two powerful patrons gone, small brigand bands like the Tangs had little chance of survival. They’d been pursued by the Indonesian state police, no longer being paid off by Zeek’s bagmen, to the point where the gang was forced out into international waters in order to escape.

Two weeks before, the Tangs had stolen the leaky freighter from the port of Balang in the Malacca Strait. Desperate to leave Indonesia in hopes of plying their trade elsewhere, they couldn’t have picked a worse ship. A relic from World War Two, its engines were shot, its seams were splitting and its electrical systems were frayed and dangerous. Worst of all, its fuel tanks were half empty when the Tangs made off with it.

They’d sailed south, toward Jakarta, but one engine died two days into their journey. Then the other started leaking oil. By the time they slipped through Bakauheni Harbor and started sailing up the west side of Sumatra, all nonessential systems aboard the vessel had been turned off, including those in the tiny galley, which made little difference because the twelve-man pirate band had almost no food aboard.

Bad weather, a dwindling water supply and fights among themselves left little doubt that, at the moment, the Tangs were probably the most unsuccessful pirate gang on the planet.

This was the situation when the leaky freighter reached the Indischer Bank. This place was known for two things: its brutally thick fog banks and for being a massive spawning ground for the Indonesian short fin eel, considered a delicacy throughout Asia. It was also situated directly over one of the deepest parts of any ocean, anywhere: the 25,000-foot Java Trench.

Desperate, the Tangs had come up with a somewhat workable plan. They wanted to enter the Indischer Bank at its foggiest, find a good-size fishing ship there, hijack it and then quickly flee the area. This way they could not only get a clean vessel to escape on, they might possibly find its cargo hold full of something they could eat.

Their porous coastal freighter had only the most rudimentary sea surface radar, something bought at a RadioShack. Still, the Tangs had it working at full power as they approached the Indischer around 0300 hours. As expected, there was an enormous fog bank this morning. Pointing the radar into the mist, they were hoping to find at least a dozen fishing boats working the misty waters.