The Orpheus Deception (53 page)
Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
“Pretty sure. Like I say, short range. We searched for a base from Diapati all way to Papua; all the little islands too. No chopper.”
“What was up at the end of the valley here?”
“Come on. I will show you.”
They walked in single file along the edge of the inlet. The hills rose up sharply on both sides until they were in a shaded gorge. After about a thousand yards, the trail took a sharp left turn into a narrow valley, bounded by volcanic cliffs thinly covered in jungle greenery and stubby palms. Dalton stood at the edge of the gorge and looked down into the water, which was not the right color.
“This channel. It’s deep. Even this far from the shore. Must be fifty, sixty feet down.”
“Yes,” said Kang. “They used to have cannery here. Many years ago. Russian company. They bring in barge and dredge out the channel so they can bring in big boats right to loading dock.
“How long ago?” asked Fyke.
“Maybe twenty years. All gone now. Just ruins.”
“The factory looks like it was blown up.”
“Yes. Fire too. All fresh.”
Dalton and Fyke stood there, looking up the cut at the tangled heaps of bamboo and rusted iron about five hundred feet away.
“Where’s the canning machinery?” said Dalton.
“Sold for scrap by Bittagar. Long time. Nothing there now but rusted conveyer belts and boilers. Anything too big to move.”
Something was fluttering in the undergrowth a few feet away. Dalton climbed up the hillside and saw a piece of cloth, shredded, singed, in tatters. He held it up to the light. A woodland camo pattern was still visible. The thing was made of nylon netting, strong but light. And it was new. He stood there on the hillside, staring down at Fyke and Kang, and then letting his eyes travel along the inlet, from the sharp left turn to the charred wreckage at the end of the channel.
“Ray, how long is this part of the inlet?”
Fyke ran a practiced eye over the ground.
“Five hundred feet. Give or take.”
“And wide?”
“Two hundred feet here. Maybe a hundred and fifty at the far end.”
Dalton slid down the hillside and handed the piece of camo nettingto Fyke. “There are scraps of this stuff all over that hillside, Ray. The camo net must have been huge. Major, do you have any way of finding out who the people were who ran this cannery? You said they were Russians?”
“There would be records in Manado. Many fishers there took their catch to Pulau Maju. I will find out.”
“Thanks. Ray. Do you see what I’m seeing?”
Fyke stared at the cut for a while.
Then he had his Gestalt moment.
“The tanker. They brought it
here.
Hid it under the camo netting. So no satellites or planes could spot it. What’s up there is what’s left of the dry dock. They brought the
Mingo Dubai
right here.”
here.
Hid it under the camo netting. So no satellites or planes could spot it. What’s up there is what’s left of the dry dock. They brought the
Mingo Dubai
right here.”
Kang was watching the exchange.
“The ship?
Mingo Dubai?”
Mingo Dubai?”
“Yes,” said Fyke, his face reddening as the implications sank in.
“The
Mingo
was five hundred feet long. A beam of ninety feet. She drew almost thirty feet of water fully loaded. This channel has been dredged out to sixty feet. It would have been perfect. A hundred miles from anywhere.”
Mingo
was five hundred feet long. A beam of ninety feet. She drew almost thirty feet of water fully loaded. This channel has been dredged out to sixty feet. It would have been perfect. A hundred miles from anywhere.”
“These the same people killed all the villagers?” asked Kang.
“I think so,” said Dalton.
“Who are these people?”
“Serbians. From Montenegro.”
“You know this for sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“But where’d it go from here, Mikey?” Fyke asked.
“I don’t know. How many tankers like the
Mingo
are there?”
Mingo
are there?”
“Worldwide? Maybe five hundred, maybe a thousand, in her class. She’s one of the smallest types, a Seawaymax. Obsolete now. Too small.”
“How much can she carry?”
“Sixty thousand metric tons. Why?”
“Branco Gospic had the ship taken. Who does Gospic trade with?”
“Terrorists. The Chechyns. Taliban. Al-Qaeda. Iran. North Korea.”
“If they got hold of a tanker, what do you think those assholes would do with it? Turn legit and go into the shipping business? Or fill it full of ammonium nitrate—or something worse—and sail it into a U.S. port?”
“Jesus.”
“Exactly. How many ports in the United States?”
“Why just the U.S.?”
“Because that’s who we work for, Ray. We’ll let everyone else know, alert all their agencies, but we’re concentrating on the U.S. How many?”
“Hell . . . maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“What are the major ones? I mean, ones that could handle a midsized tanker like the
Mingo?”
Mingo?”
“Got to be at least eighty. Port of South Louisiana. Houston. New York and New Jersey—”
“New York? Christ. They’re gonna have to go to red, bring in Homeland Security, the Navy, the Coast Guard—”
“Major, can you patch us through to a landline from the chopper?”
Major Kang nodded.
“Sure. Come with—”
Two things happened at once.
The Major’s radio set beeped, and they heard the sound of a plane closing in. The sound seemed to come from all around them, echoing and reechoing up and down the inlet. Kang picked up his radio and thumbed the CALL button, barking out a question in Chinese.
The reply was a tinny crackle. Kang issued some orders. He was putting the radio back in his belt and reaching for his pistol when a large aircraft flew straight across the cut, blocking out the sun, a twin-rotor Osprey, olive-drab, without markings.
They all looked up as the Osprey, in hover mode, hammered down the gorge toward the KIPAM Blackhawk parked on the beach. The rear loading ramp was open, and there was a figure in the bay, a young Asian boy, in jeans and a bomber jacket, standing behind a tripod-mounted weapon. An M134 Minigun. Beside the gun mount stood a crate with a belt of ammo running up to the gun. The kid on the trigger was looking east toward the beach and did not seem to notice them.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said Fyke, staring up.
The Osprey disappeared behind one of the hills, banking. Kang was on the radio, speaking urgently. They heard the sound of the Blackhawk’s engines starting to turn over. Then they heard a sound, like a silk curtain being ripped apart, but insanely loud and close. Kang and Dalton looked at each other. There was a popping sound, return fire—Kang’s two Marines had M4s—and the pilot had a Beretta—then the ripping sound returned, a terrible rising-and-falling sound, with a machinelike whirring chatter under that, like a chain saw cutting through lumber. It cut off abruptly.
They heard the rotor pitch changing, getting louder. The Osprey was coming around again. The three men looked for cover. There was only the tangled wreckage at the far end of the gorge. Nothing had to be said. They ran for cover, stumbling along the rocky edge of the channel, Kang out front, Dalton staying close to Fyke, Fyke laboring, limping, breathing hard.
They were almost there when a black shadow crossed the green hillside about a hundred yards down from their position, and a moment later the Osprey thundered ponderously across the roof of the gorge, coming to a stop midchannel, turning slowly as the pilot searched the ground.
The ruins of the cannery were fifty feet, thirty feet—the Osprey was coming around slowly, sunlight glinting off the windshield, the rotors two disks of spinning light. Dalton, looking back as he ran, could make out the sharp brown face of a man sitting at the controls, and someone else, a round, flabby face, a face he knew, leaning into the window next to the pilot, also scanning the cut. Kang had stopped at the edge of the wreckage, staring up at the Osprey, his face hardening. He jerked out his Beretta just as Dalton reached him.
“No, Major. He hasn’t seen us yet—”
Kang paid no attention. He lifted the piece up, aimed. Fyke and Dalton stumbled past him and burrowed into the ruins behind him. It stank of gasoline and death. The beams of the old cannery had tumbled inward, tenting a space beneath them; hard, stony ground, littered with spent shell casings, slivers of bamboo, spilled oil, and bits of pulpy material that were probably decaying human flesh. This cave-like opening led back to a larger area, cut into the hillside, some kind of storage room.
Dalton and Fyke, on their hands and knees, scrambled toward the area, with no thought other than to get as much solid matter as they could between them and that minigun. They heard the Major’s Beretta as he fired—single shots, carefully aimed, measured, one after the other, reaching to nine before the minigun opened up on him. Again that terrible zippering sizzle.
A hard rain of rounds chattered across the ruins. They couldn’t see what had happened to Kang. They didn’t need to. Bits of Kang were splattering against their backs as they ran. Fyke fell hard, slamming his knee into a jutting stone. His face went white with pain. Dalton reached him, tugged him across the last ten feet into the little open area at the back. They came to a full stop up against what looked like the curved side of a huge steam boiler, set right up against the face of the cliff.
They could go no farther. Fyke pulled himself up, set his back against the boiler, pulling out his Beretta, breathing in short, sharp gasps. The space was coal dark and smelled of burned flesh. Thin shafts of sunlight pierced through gaps in the ruins in front of them, blades of hard-yellow light, with motes of dust drifting inside them. They could hear the thrumming sound of the Osprey; the pounding of her rotors seemed to bounce off the rocks behind their heads. A huge black shadow cut off the thin beams of sunlight. The vibration of her rotors and the hurricane wind of her downdraft drove clouds of dust up into their eyes, choking them. The Osprey hovered overhead for a moment. Dalton and Fyke were holding their breaths, looking up; their pistols were useless. There was a moment of stillness inside the cascade of wind and the pounding beat of the rotors. They distinctly heard a metallic snap, the gunner pulling the lever, and then the fire rained down again, for a full minute, six thousand rounds, each round the size of a lipstick tube. The minigun was literally shredding the wreckage, the gunner methodically sweeping the muzzle back and forth, pouring rounds down on the ruins, brass shell casings tumbling out of the loading bay and falling down in a cascade, the casings tinkling as they fell like coins through the cracks and fissures, some of them dropping right in front of Dalton and Fyke. The firing seemed to go on forever, a terrible, drumming impact. Fyke had his hands over his ears; Dalton was staring out at the open ground, watching the rounds drilling in, stitching an exploding trench right across the stones and coming closer. Closer, stone chips flying, stinging their faces. Then the firing stopped.
THE OSPREY HOVERED
for a time, turning slowly in the sunlight, the gunner staring down at the smoking ruin below him and thinking that nothing could have survived that. Sergeant Ong came to the open bay, looked down. The boy watched him, his brown eyes wide and his hands slightly numb from the high-frequency vibration of the weapon.
for a time, turning slowly in the sunlight, the gunner staring down at the smoking ruin below him and thinking that nothing could have survived that. Sergeant Ong came to the open bay, looked down. The boy watched him, his brown eyes wide and his hands slightly numb from the high-frequency vibration of the weapon.
“If there’s anybody there, Mr. Ong, they have to be dead.” Ong looked down at the tangle of steel and wood for a while, and then turned and looked back into the darkness of the interior. Lujac was standing there, staring back out at him.
“No,” said Ong. “We have to make sure. We put it down on beach. Come back on foot. If Dalton alive in there, we burn him out.”
Lujac could barely hear what Ong was saying over the roar of the engines and the ringing in his ears. But he got the general idea. He came forward to the open bay and looked down at the smoldering ruins a hundred feet below him. Then he looked over at Ong, smiled brightly, and shot him in the middle of the forehead with Corporal Ahmed’s little popgun. Ong tumbled out of the open bay, falling awkwardly, arms flailing, and slammed into the wreckage, hard, splitting open like a mango. The boy at the gun station was staring back at Lujac, his mouth open, a shy, nervous smile playing around the corners of his lips.
Lujac glanced back, saw the pilot craning around to look toward the back of the plane, unsure of what had just happened. Lujac patted the cute little gunner boy affectionately—perhaps more than affectionately—on the side of the face and then walked back through the interior to the cockpit. Lujac put his silver gun in his pocket, lifted his hands up to show he was harmless, and sat down in the copilot’s chair.
“And what’s your name?” he asked, unfurling a broad warm smile.
“Sam Bobby Gurlami.”
“I suggest you get us the hell out of here, Sam Bobby Gurlami.”
“Why?”
“Because you just shot the shit out of a KIPAM Blackhawk and killed a whole lot of Marines, and I’m willing to bet at least one of them got to his radio before he died. They will resent this. Extremely. People will come.”
Sam Bobby took this in, and then he powered the Osprey up and hit the button that closed the rear bay. They were at a thousand feet and climbing when he brought the nacelles forward and turned the chopper into an airplane. He had it up to three hundred miles an hour a few minutes after that. Sam Bobby got the Osprey settled down and then looked over at Lujac.
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