Tiger by the Tail (6 page)

The .50 caliber round, being three times larger, can cause much more horrific damage to the human body. If it doesn’t yaw, the target simply ends up with a larger hole in their body, which can be survived given prompt medical attention. While the round does not automatically tear a limb off if it hits one, it will mangle whatever it does hit into uselessness, and provides one-shot kill capability just about every time.

Multiply that power by four, and Team Yosif had almost stepped into a gruesome whirlwind of lead death.

Every team member immediately sought cover no matter where they were. Once they were hidden from sight, Yosif and Vanel tried to get a vector on the gun to take it out. Unfortunately, it was high up and well protected, both by the slope of the earth and the large piece of freighter hull someone had hauled up and installed as armor. The gunner inside stitched rounds into anything even remotely moving in his field of fire, blasting his own people, tree branches waving in the wind, blowing apart crude huts. Basically, if it moved, he shot at it until it didn’t anymore.

Against that overwhelming firepower, the swimmers’ only choice was to hug cover and wait for divine intervention. That came in the form of Lasko’s single .50 caliber round, which accomplished as much as the Quad gunner had done with twenty to thirty rounds at a time.

When the deafening roar of the Quad .50 fell silent, Vanel and Yosif hauled ass, hustling to what they hoped was a better firing position. The other two team members hadn’t joined them yet, so it was their two carbines against a vastly superior weapon.

They had just reached their new position when the Quad .50 started up again. Apparently the new gunner was not high, for long bursts immediately started hammering near them, making both men hit the deck. Large bullet holes punched into the wall behind them, the impacts shaking the wooden floor. The bullets flew so fast and furious that the top half of the metal wall behind them fell onto the two Keldara. Although they could have moved, the two men stayed right where they were, knowing that trying to free themselves would invite the gunner to perforate the wall and themselves with a hundred or so rounds.

“Inara One to Firefly, request supporting fire on the following coordinates, over!” Yosif shouted over the din of the heavy machine gun emplacement.

* * *

“Given enough time, those guys would probably kill all of their own people, however . . .” Adams watched the emplacement fall silent again as Lasko shot the second gunner through the same hole, but a few moments later it started booming yet again. The Yosif team had been using the lulls to try to flank the big gun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get enough of an angle to clear it before it started up again.

“Mal to Team Jayne, what is your position?” Mike asked.

“This is Jayne Leader. We are above the encampment and can see both teams pinned by heavy fire.”

“Make sure that quad never shoots again.”

“Affirmative.”

* * *

Oleg Kulcyanov stood approximately one hundred twenty-five meters away from the crippled but still devastating heavy machine gun emplacement. With the rest of his team watching for tangos, he brought what looked like an oversized shotgun to his shoulder and aimed through the M2A1 reflex sight at the thundering Quad .50.

Mike had been looking for a suitable weapon system for the man-mountain that was Oleg for some time. A M249 SAW, while certainly impressive, seemed to be simply a waste of his capability to project direct fire support onto a target. Even the modern, kick-ass M60E4 just didn’t seem to be enough of a weapon for his primary team leader, difficult as that was to believe.

Mike had been weighing the pros (overwhelming one-man firepower) and cons (realistic amount of ammo that could be carried and overall weight) of a chain gun right out of
Predator
. That was before Colonel David Neilson, the Kildar’s executive officer and lead trainer, had informed him about the updated Milkor automatic grenade launcher. The U.S. Marines had ordered mods on the three-decade old weapon that had brought it into the twenty-first century with a vengeance. Since even Mike couldn’t get his hands on an XM25 system yet, the MGL-140 would have to serve, and in Oleg’s hands, it was doing that quite well; it was both easy to use and devastatingly effective.

Staring through the infrared sight that also compensated for drift, Oleg lined up his reticle on the emplacement and sent two high explosive anti-tank rounds at the target in less than two seconds. The HEAT rounds obliterated the remaining guns, as well as the pirate shooter, in an explosion that echoed off the jungle and out over the water. The blaze of flame that erupted from the emplacement sent fire fifteen feet into the air, and the impact flattened three huts around the destroyed gun.

“Jayne Leader to Mal, target has been eliminated, over.”

“Come on in and clean up the rest.”

“Roger.”

* * *

“Patrick?”

“Yes, Grezyna?”

“Raven has picked up a small boat that has left the north side of the island, and is heading out to sea.”

“What?” Vanner rose and walked to the screen. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his wife, but they had been over the sat shots of the island with a fine-toothed comb and hadn’t found any sign of a hidden harbor or cave large enough to hide a boat. Sure enough, a boat was heading out to sea. All he could ID was that it was an open, center-console fishing boat with twin outboards. “Any guess as to where it’s headed?”

“It’s not very large—perhaps twenty to twenty-five feet long. It is moving at approximately forty miles per hour on a heading of zero one five degrees. Open ocean that way. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“The Kildar will not be pleased that someone managed to escape the perimeter.” Vanner hit his transmit button. “Mal, this is . . . Simon . . .”

* * *

“—of course I want the cigarette brought around . . . no, Badger and I will handle this one personally . . . Roger that,” Mike said.

Still tracking the various Keldara teams’ progress, Adams turned to find Mike wearing a shit-eating grin.

“Feel like doing a bit of boating tonight?” the Kildar asked.

The master chief raised an eyebrow in unspoken query.

“Apparently some pirate with more guts than brains is trying to leave our op still breathing.”

Adams’ other eyebrow raised as he slowly shook his head. “You were just dying for a chance to take that sucker out, weren’t you?”

Mike shrugged. “I’m not going to deny it. I had been looking forward to seeing what the riceburners could do out here, but damned if we could find any. Ah well . . .”

Five minutes later, Mike was at the helm of a ’97 38-foot Fountain Fever named
Red Hot
, with the rare twin Merc 525 SC engines and a new Hardin exhaust. He’d picked it up cheap through the same liquidator in the Philippines who’d supplied the trawler and the training freighter. After a thorough search to make sure there were no drugs hidden onboard, they had been using it as a pleasure craft on the typically glass-smooth ocean.

Now he was cruising at sixty miles an hour through the clear but dark night while Adams navigated their intercept course. The FLIRs eliminated the issue of vision, other than adjusting to maintain a constant on the horizon. They had two Keldara aboard, Vil Mahona and Danes Devlich, both of whom had also gone along on the Florida op, and could handle the boat in a pinch. The only real problem was that Mike was motoring through waters that were charted, but not known to him personally. Running aground on a reef out here could be not just embarrassing, but fatal. The sharks here were both belligerent and numerous, the apex of a vicious food chain that wouldn’t mind chowing on humans if they got the chance.

Mike had left cleanup of the island to the Keldara teams already ashore. He had also notified Vanner to get the yacht in gear and follow them. However, it wouldn’t arrive on scene for another hour at least, and they were going to catch up with the pirates well before then.

At least the boat rode like a dream, slicing through the calm water and responding deftly to the wheel. After the pounding he’d taken on the Atlantic during the Florida mission, Mike had almost forgotten the sensation of running calm water with the wind in his hair.

“Mal, this is Simon.”

“Go, Simon.”

“You are approximately seven hundred meters away from the target. We grabbed a UAV shot of the boat, and they have some interesting-looking cargo on board. These guys probably unassed with the really good stuff.”

“Are you suggesting we should take them alive if possible?”

“The thought had come up, especially if they can give us any information on where that box came from or how they got it.”

“Works. Will let you know how it turns out.” Mike turned to Adams. “Our runners are trying to leave with something interesting. Try to take at least one alive.”

“Roger that. They should be visible near the horizon due north,” Adams shouted.

Even as he said that, Mike spotted movement on the horizon and opened up the throttle, making the cigarette boat surge forward.

“Got ’em. I am a leaf on the wind . . .”

“Wrong character, dude.”

* * *

Yeung Tony pounded the arm of his chair as he watched his island hideout shrink toward the horizon behind him.
Everything
gone, all in a few minutes!

The worst part was that he didn’t even know who had done this to him—but he was damn sure gonna find out.
No one
destroyed his operation and sent him running into the night without paying for it!

The whore was piloting the boat while Tony and his lieutenant scanned for signs of pursuit. She had indicated that she could handle it when he’d asked with his pistol, leaving him and his man free to watch the surrounding ocean.

Tony’s gaze returned to the olive-green box on the floor of the twenty-five-foot boat, which he had anchored among the huge mangroves that grew on the island’s north side, perfectly camouflaging it. They’d carried the box along a hidden trail he had carved out himself, narrowly missing another team that had been coming in from the west side, lead by a giant, masked man dressed in black with a huge fucking gun in his hands. Seeing him had let Tony know that whoever had come for him and his crew definitely wasn’t local, which puzzled him.
Who the fuck are those guys?
Private ship security out for payback? Mercenaries hired by the Indonesian government?

“
Pemimpin!
” Yeung’s man, who had also been watching the island through a pair of night-vision binoculars, pointed due south. “
Kami yang diikuti!
”

Grabbing the glasses from the other man, Tony scanned the waters to the south and saw a larger boat rapidly approaching. “
Taik!
” He tossed the binoculars back and grabbed his AK-47. “Faster!”

Their boat leaped ahead, but it was obvious that they weren’t going to outrun their pursuers.
No matter
, Tony thought as he knelt at the rear of the crew compartment and waited for their enemy to come within range.
Time to make the fuckers that destroyed my life pay!

* * *

“Got movement on the target.” Adams had his M4 aimed at the boat about three hundred meters away. “I think they’ve spotted us.”

“In that case.” Mike throttled back a bit and readied the one million candlepower spotlight. “Vil, disable their engines.”

The Keldara sighted on the stern of the boat with his M4 and squeezed the trigger. Three rounds smacked into it, and the engines immediately began to miss, then died a few seconds later.

Shouting and automatic weapons fire began coming from the pirates’ boat, but Mike quickly swung them out of range of the AKs. “We don’t really
need
another boat right now, I suppose.”

“Especially one without a working engine,” Adams replied.

“Anyone here speak Chinese?” Mike shrugged when they all shook their heads. “Didn’t think so. I don’t even think Anastasia does. Simon?”

“Yes, Mal?”

“Give me a short, phonetic command to surrender in Chinese and Korean.”

There was a brief pause before Vanner relayed the commands in both languages. Mike picked up a megaphone.

“Drop your weapons and surrender, or we will open fire!” He repeated it in Korean, and got another volley in their general direction as the only reply.

“Now they’re pissing me off.” Mike grabbed his M4. “Master Chief, Vil, Danes, let’s see what we all can do to persuade the good folks over there to surrender. Remember, try to take at least one of them alive.”

“With pleasure,” Adams replied as he sighted in on the other boat. “Purple doo-rag.” He squeezed the trigger, and three hundred yards away, the man with his head covered by a purple kerchief dropped. “Only wounded. Swear.”

“Okay, you wanna play?” Mike said as he took aim. “Receiver of the AK held by the man next to him.” He held the M4 steady, exhaled, and fired. The loud cursing drifted over the water to them as the man found himself holding a useless hunk of metal and wood.

Over the next few minutes, the four shooters carefully and precisely wounded the opposition while taking exactly no successful return rounds. They followed this up by putting several holes into the boat’s hull. This was more difficult than it appeared, as it took a few rounds to insure that the hull was penetrated at the correct angle to let water in. The boat was listing to port when the two bloodied men and what looked like a young woman held up their hands and allowed the Kildar’s boat to pull alongside.

The three pirates were brought aboard, thoroughly frisked, and their hands and feet secured with zip-ties. Mike had the two Keldara haul the mysterious green box aboard as well, and left the damaged boat to sink into the vast depths of the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Now
this
is interesting.”

Mike was clustered with Adams, Vanner, Greznya, Vil and Danes around the strange green box.

“Anybody seen anything like it before?”

“It’s a green rugged conditions shipping case,” Adams said. “Seen a million of them in my time.”

“Well, duh,” Mike replied. “What I don’t get is why there’s no markings on it at all. That should mean it’s not military, since they stamp things every which way. But it
screams
high-level military hardware of
some
kind.” Mike bent over, examining a pair of odd, round holes, one on the upper left and one in the upper right corner of the front of the case. He was pretty sure those were the lock mechanisms, but there was no identifying name or any real way to get an idea of what they were up against. “I don’t remember any keys. Adams?”