Finally Tommy interrupted the conversation. “Everyone has spoken, and I have listened. I understand your desire to be involved. But even if you were experienced and had all the right training, it’s only possible to take so many men. This calls for a relatively small party, and I already have close to maximum unit strength.”

“Close to?” Takoda repeated. “That means you have room for at least one of us. Two if you leave Uncle Vince here—you know he’s not qualified.”

“There’s just no way Vince is staying behind,” Tommy said. “That’s simply not up for debate.”

“Then take at least one of us,” Carl pleaded.

Tommy chewed on his lip. This rescue attempt was extra-legal no matter how one looked at it. They didn’t have Agency sanction. They didn’t have anyone’s blessing besides the Absentee-Shawnee community and some wealthy fat cat Vince met in New York. Taking a young civilian along couldn’t get him in any worse trouble. And these boys were well-trained. He’d seen to that. They hadn’t practiced hostage rescue but they knew how to think fast under pressure. He had emphasized the old axiom to improvise and adapt from their first day of training, and they were good at it. Not only that, but the speed, strength and stamina of young blood on a mission was not to be underestimated.

“I will take one of you,” he said, before he argued himself out of the decision.

The boys fell silent.

“Why did you get those haircuts?” Tommy asked.

“Because we’re warriors, ready for battle,” Takoda replied.

Tommy focused on Gunther. “Why did you not cut your hair that way?”

His firstborn met his gaze neutrally. “I didn’t think the people in that part of the world wear their hair that way. I though this sort of mission probably requires discretion, and maybe the ability to blend in with the locals. I’m worried a Mohawk would make us stand out and cause attention. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly get a Mohawk, apply warpaint, and wear a feathered warbonnet. But only if you tell me to, Chief.”

Tommy nodded. “Gunther will go with me. The rest of you stay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

SAN DIEGO

 

 

Two vessels knifed through the waves, away from the port and out to open sea. The Barbara Gee was a recreational trawler , and the Tinseltown was a diving support craft once used for underwater cinematography, as well as towing robot sharks and other sea monsters. It was now stripped of all deck machinery and had plenty of open space inside the horseshoe-shaped fence of antennas and satellite dishes, bristling from just inside the gunwales like the mutant quills of a giant aquatic porcupine.

Tied down to the deck was what looked like a radio-controlled airplane. Only it wasn’t a scale model of an existing aircraft. There were no fake windows or any markings at all. It was made of smooth, nondescript aluminum painted dull green on top, blue on the bottom.

Rocco Cavarra had procured the watercraft, and the captains, when Tommy gave the green light. The line of credit provided by Vince’s new pal in New York paid for them, and a whole lot more.

“How does that work again?” Josh Rennenkampf asked, pointing at the German shepherd mix on the deck of the Tinseltown.

“First you gots to put her in demo search mode,” Leon Campbell replied. He called down to his dog, “On station!”

Shotgun put her nose to the deck and ran immediately to the ammo crates not yet loaded in the hold below. She began the low, bellowing howl of a hound dog.

“That’s her bark for powder-type explosive,” Leon explained. “Good work, girl. Now check that one.” He pointed to the foot locker which contained bricks of C4.

Shotgun trotted over to the footlocker and yelped repeatedly at a higher pitch.

“And that there’s her bark for putty-type ordnance. Good job, Shotgun. Stand down.”

Shotgun stopped barking and returned to Leon’s side, sitting beside his feet.

“I bet she comes in handy in Iraq,” Tommy said.

Leon nodded. “She saved a few lives.”

“How long did it take you to train her?” Gunther Scarred Wolf asked.

“Well, I ain’t done with her, yet,” Leon replied. “She still tend to put herself in demo search mode all by herself when new ordnance come into a secured area. I’m workin’ on it.”

“The last thing we need on this trip is a dog,” Vince said. “You better clean up behind it, ‘cause the first time I step in something that stinks, I’m throwing it overboard.”

Tommy glared at his brother, then slapped Leon’s shoulder. “Hey, we’re glad to have a mascot, buddy.”

Dwight Cavarra came up the ladder from belowdecks huffing and puffing. “Okay, somebody else’s turn to stack gear down there.”

“I got it, Rocco,” Campbell said. “Go lay down, Shotgun.”

Shotgun slunk away to the stern and curled up on a coil of ropes.

Rocco caught Leon’s attention before he climbed down. “Hey, I think I found a stock for your M21 you’re gonna like.”

“Not one of them ‘chassis’ I hope,” Leon replied. “The ones cost both arms, a leg and your firstborn.”

“I can get you a deal on those, too,” Cavarra said. “But no: This is a polymer stock with a nice grip, and an adjustable cheek piece. A fraction of the price. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Okay, sounds good,” Leon said, and disappeared into the hatch.

“Speaking of weapons,” Tommy said, nodding to Josh, “we’re far enough away from snooping eyes, now. Show me what we got.”

Josh nodded, kneeling beside a large plastic case. He unlocked it and swung it open, pulling out a heavily-oiled M10. Out of habit he racked the bolt to check the chamber before handing it to Tommy. “It’s Christmas, Chief. Mr. Ingram has seen to our short-range room-clearing needs.”

Tommy worked the bolt himself, peering into the empty chamber, then inspected the exterior of the little blocky box of a machine pistol.

Vince stepped closer for a look at the weapon. “Is that a MAC-Ten? Those are illegal.”

Josh cocked an eyebrow up at him as he pulled another Ingram from the case. “According to who?”

“According to the law,” Vince said.

Tommy groaned. He knew there was a volatile mixture of personalities aboard, but it looked like they were going to touch off even faster than he feared.

“The law says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” Josh said. “If you’re a cop, and you sure act like one, then you swore an oath to uphold that law…not the so-called laws that violate it.”

“Those are easily converted into automatic weapons,” Vince declared. “And full-auto weapons have been banned from civilians for 80 years, hot shot.”

“These are full-auto, Vince,” Tommy said.

Vince’s complexion darkened. He appeared ready to blow a gasket. “Do you even know…? I mean, I could throw all of you… I could lose my badge just for…”

Josh handed one of the submachineguns to Cavarra. “Why waltz when you can rock & roll? Do you know what the difference is between an ‘illegal’ semiautomatic weapon and an ‘illegal’ full automatic weapon?”

Cavarra worked the bolt and gave it the once-over. “Yup. Firepower.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand and strode across the deck, stooping to unzip a nylon rifle case. From it he produced a Galil rifle with an M203 grenade launcher mounted underneath. “Remember this?”

“Fondly,” Tommy said. “In fact, I got a variety of 40mm rounds for it in some crates downstairs. Brought a 60mm mortar too, just for giggles.”

“Tommy,” Vince protested. “You know better than this! These guys are all…” the words froze in his mouth when he saw Josh screwing a suppressor onto the threaded barrel of an Ingram. “Silencers? Silencers!”

Josh rose to his feet with an irritated scowl, gesturing toward Vince with his free hand, and asked Tommy, “Is he gonna do this the whole trip?”

“A word in private,” Tommy grunted to his brother in Shawandasse.

Vince couldn’t speak their tribal language, but he understood some of the shorter phrases, and accompanied Tommy to the unoccupied bow of the boat.

“Brother, you are embarrassing me. You insisted on coming with us, even though you aren’t trained for this kind of mission…”

“I’m a professional!” Vince interrupted. “These…these civilian psychopaths you put together here want to play shoot-‘em-up with machineguns and they’re gonna get my daughter killed!”

Tommy’s own complexion darkened now, and his eyes went dead. “Professional? You’re a professional asshole, is what you look like right now. And you’re more civilian than anyone on this boat. We’re going up against people who are not gonna be impressed when you flash your badge, toggle a siren or shine your Mag-Lite in their faces. So if you wanna play King Shit Cop, we’ll drop the lifeboat over the side and you can row your ass to the airport, hop on a flight over there and try to win hearts and minds of those foreign cops with coffee and donuts. See how far you get with that. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and try to learn something, so you don’t get your daughter killed.”

Vince stared back, mouth hanging agape. In all their lives, his little brother had never talked to him this way.

“Can you handle that, Vince?” Tommy asked, but didn’t wait for an answer before stalking away to join the others.

Marius Bock, the burly South African captain of the Tinseltown, stepped out of the bridge briefly, to ask Rocco, “Aren’t those two brothers?”

Cavarra nodded.

“Well this is going to be a fun trip then, isn’t it?”

Cavarra grinned. “You didn’t sign on because you wanted to be bored, did you?”

Bock returned to the helm muttering something about loose cannon Yanks.

Tommy raised his voice to address all hands. “Let’s get a relay line going here and help Leon get the rest of our gear stowed. Then I’ll give the warning order.”

The men on board formed a line to comply, including an angry-looking Vince Scarred Wolf. But Gunther moved out of line to tug at Tommy’s sleeve.

“Dad, what’s a warning order?”

“It’s the initial briefing on the plan,” Tommy explained. “It precedes the operation order, which gives the finalized plan in greater detail.”

“How come you never taught us that?”

Tommy shrugged. “I don’t want the Shawnee Militia to work exactly like the regular armed forces, Son. They’re too rigid, top-heavy and bloated with red tape. I prefer to keep it simple, and keep the jargon to a minimum. But, with the exception of your uncle, all these men are used to formal military procedure. Things will go smoother if I speak their lingo, so just stay sharp. If you get confused, ask for clarification like you did just now. Okay?”

Gunther nodded. He and Tommy joined the relay line and they moved supplies into the hold where it would all be protected from the spray of the ocean, and from observation of any maritime busybodies.

Ten years ago or so, Tommy would have been feeling the rush of impending battle as the Land of the Big PX grew smaller behind him. Not that he had ever lusted for blood, per se, but there were times he believed he was born for combat. And he experienced it in short enough doses that he looked forward to it not unlike a scrimmage for a football player who still lived to play the game.

There was no thrill this time. He knew that any mistake he made could result in Jenny’s death. Even if they pulled everything off perfectly (which was pretty much impossible in any operation), he still may never see her again.

 

 

 

14

 

CENTRAL PACIFIC OCEAN

 

Vince stood in the ladder to the hold of the Barbara Gee, his head barely protruding from the companionway. In one hand he held a small metal can full of sand. He could just make out the bulk of the Tinseltown from his concealed position.

“Six knots!” Nigel Gibb, the Australian skipper of the Barbara Gee, called to him from the bridge. “Thirty meters! You’re about half a boat length ahead!”

Vince reached out of the companionway, cocked his arm back and flung the can. It arced through the air, smacked into a capstan and bounced onto the stern where it landed almost at Leon’s feet. Shotgun jumped up from her bed on the coil of hawser, and began sniffing the object.

Leon, his disassembled sniper rifle in his lap, said, “S’okay, girl.”

Shotgun waddled over and nudged her nose against his leg. Leon wiped cleaning solvent from one hand and reached down to pet her.

“That was 28 meters!” Rocco Cavarra called across the gap from the Tinseltown. “You’re gonna have to lead a bit more—that was too far aft!”

Vince chucked another can. This one bounced off the bulwark and into the ocean.

“You’re short again,” Gibb announced. “The beam isn’t getting any wider—35 meters and let ‘er fly!”

Vince threw another can, which landed almost perfectly amidships. “Better!” Gibb said, watching Cavarra give them the thumbs up from the other vessel.

Up toward the bow of the Tinseltown, Tommy and his son faced off against each other, trying to get in their empty hand training for the day. It wasn’t quite sparring, though they did wear padded, fingerless gloves. They practiced techniques and counters at about 75% speed while the boat swayed underfoot.

Tommy launched a combination of hand and foot strikes. Gunther slipped a punch, parried the next, and preempted a kick at his father’s ankle with the sole of his own foot. He counterattacked immediately with both hands, and what started out as a snap-kick but transformed into a roundhouse. Tommy knew his son liked to do that, though, and was ready for it, catching his leg and taking him down, where they practiced some grappling techniques.

Trained pretty much since he was able to walk, Gunther was very, very good. So good that Tommy didn’t even need to speak when they practiced most of the time.

Tommy started all his sons with San Soo Kung Fu. It was a brutal street fighting discipline in which no katas or forms were practiced. The emphasis was on ending a confrontation with sudden violence the instant it became obvious a fight was inevitable. The kicks were mostly aimed at the kneecaps and lower. Hand strikes targeted the most vulnerable areas, like the Adam’s apple, solar plexus or underside of the nose. Breaking bones and dislocation of joints were sprinkled into the mix. Biting and eye-gouging were not only acceptable, but practiced and refined for when no other option was available. San Soo was not about aesthetics, and would never be pretty enough to be shown in a movie or any kind of sporting event. It was about survival, when the stakes might be death.

Because Tommy understood every unarmed confrontation might not be possible to resolve with sudden violence in the first second or two, he augmented his boys’ training with Gracie Ju-Jitsu and a little bit of Muay Thai. But as important as the physical training was, Tommy considered mental attitudes equally crucial: No opponent should be underestimated. No advantage should be abandoned. No surrender should be conceived.

They came to the point where the day’s workout had peaked. As often happened when it was just Tommy and his oldest, they mutually agreed on this without verbal communication. Both eased into sitting positions on the deck, watching the ocean slide by.

“I think we should de-emphasize the heel hooks and arm bars and ankle locks,” Gunther said. “If it’s life or death, the other guy’s not gonna tap out, probably. While we’re busy breaking his arm, he’s got a free hand to find something he can hit or stab us with.”

“Sometimes your only option may be a submission hold,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, but shouldn’t we do our best to get the opponent in a guillotine or neck crank or something? Then we can finish him permanently and be sure.”

Tommy nodded.

After a few silent minutes, Gunther asked, “Do you think we’ll find them in time? Jennifer, Susan and the others?”

Tommy watched a seagull winging high overhead. “We can’t worry about that. We have to do everything we can to find Jenny; everything we can to get her out of there; but there’s so much we don’t have control over…it just doesn’t do any good to worry about it. All we can worry about is what we’ll do if we get the chance. Whether we get a chance or not, that’s up to…something bigger than us.”

“Fate?” Gunther asked.

Tommy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I know what you’re saying is true, Dad. But it’s still hard not to worry about the parts we have no control over.”

Tommy dropped his gaze from the seagull to Gunther and smiled momentarily. “You know, Son, you tear me right down the middle. On the one hand, I couldn’t be more proud of the man you’ve become. On the other, I hate myself for putting you in the middle of whatever is gonna happen on this trip.”

Gunther tried to laugh it off, partly to hide how good he felt to hear his Green Beret father express pride in him. “C’mon, Chief—that’s a white man’s sentiment.”

“Maybe,” Tommy said.

“I’m of fighting age. In fact, I’m as old as you were when you wore the funny green hat.”

Tommy chuckled. “Funny green hat? Who taught you to speak so disrespectfully about your father’s service?”

“Pretty sure I heard it from you.” Gunther poked a thumb behind him. “Where do you know all these guys from? Besides Uncle Vince, I mean.”

“I don’t know the captain of this boat, or the other one. They’re friends of Rocco’s.”

“How do you know Rocco?”

Tommy sighed. What the hell. He didn’t see the point of keeping it all a secret anymore. “I met him and Leon…and some other guys…on an unofficial gig. You remember when I left for a couple weeks about ten years ago, and came back with some more coup trophies?”

“When you came back with the Tommygun?”

His father nodded. “That’s when I met them. The ‘war on terror’ was underway, but the invasion of Iraq hadn’t happened yet. The Agency put together a team for an operation in Sudan. We were part of the team.”

“The Agency. You mean the CIA?”

Tommy nodded again.

Gunther watched the waves silently for a while. He had examined every souvenir in his father’s study many times. He knew his old man was a badass back before Gunther was born, but evidently Tommy Scarred Wolf was still doing some hardcorps stuff later on, too. “Did Mom know what you were doing?”

“Not all the details. I don’t think she wanted to know.”

“Wow, Dad. I had no idea. I think you told us you were going on a hunting trip.”

Tommy shrugged.

“What about Josh?”

“We knew each other in Special Forces.”

Gunther studied his father’s face closely. “Were you enemies? Seems like you two have some bad blood.”

Tommy frowned. “No, actually, we were good friends. We had one deployment together. I was getting short, and he was the newest guy on the team.”

“Short?”

“On my way out. Not much time left before discharge.”

“Oh, right. Right.”

“I guess I became like a father or big brother or something to him. He was like my shadow. And we kept in touch even after I got out. He visited us a couple times—don’t you remember?”

Gunther shrugged. “Seems like a lot of white men visited you when I was growing up. You were always taking them hunting or something.”

“Once you’ve been in SF, you’re never completely out,” Tommy said. “At least it’s been that way for me. It permanently changed the way I think, in some ways, and the type of men I prefer to hang out with, if any. After that trip to the Sudan, I made an effort to look up my old buddies. Anyway, Josh was one of them.”

“What happened?”

Tommy shook his head, sadly. “Josh was a real idealist. Most patriotic boy scout you ever seen. And it was all genuine—God, mom, apple pie—he was all about that. Not like some of these people you hear spouting off because they want your vote or something. He really believed it. It was annoying sometimes, but he was so sincere, it was kind of admirable, too. He was selfless, sacrificial, dedicated…all the things a soldier is supposed to be in a perfect world.”

“He sure doesn’t seem that way, now.”

“He’s bitter. And I can kind of understand. I was disillusioned, too, after Somalia and some of the other BS that went on. But when Josh was disillusioned, he fell from a much greater height, so reality hit harder, I guess. I’m not sure when it happened, but I know he was still in SF during and after the invasion of Iraq.”

“He just got out?”

Tommy shook his head. “No, Son: the invasion; not the occupation. The war was won over there in a couple months in 2003. The occupation is what took years, and when almost all of the American casualties took place. He was there for some of that, too.”

“That’s kinda’ cool: you two served together--you fought in the first war with Iraq; he fought in the second.”

“Gulf War One was nothing compared to what those young guys went through this time,” Tommy said. “Desert Storm was barely more than a parade, or a live-fire exercise.” He shrugged. “The only reason it was such a big deal is because it was the only show in town right then. If there had been a real war going on at the time, people would remember Desert Storm about as much as they remember the Aleutian campaign.”

“That’s an exaggeration, Dad.”

“Hey, I thought it was a big deal, too, once. I mean, it was something generals had been fantasizing about since 1945, and there wasn’t much to compare it with. The last conflict most people could remember was Vietnam; so Schwartzkopf was an overnight military genius and we were all a bunch of instant war heroes. Because we were allowed to win…up to a point.”

“Weren’t the news networks all saying how the Republican Guard was going to mop the floor with you? But you skull-stomped them. You could have rolled right into Bagdad if you wanted.”

Tommy almost grinned. Gunther had an appreciation for history—enough to study it on his own. He probably knew things about Desert Storm Tommy didn’t even know. But Tommy didn’t quite grin. “The 101^st took a chopper ride. The Marines created a diversion. But it was the big boys who broke Saddam’s back. Air Force and Navy bombs crippled Iraq. Our tanks smashed what was left of the Republican Guard. Most of the Iraqi Army surrendered without a fight.”

Tommy’s A-Team was one of several that went Scud-hunting in the Gulf. Most of his medals were from those operations. And a good deal of his souvenirs were, too. But even that probably paled in comparison to what SF had been doing in the new millennium.

“We popped some caps,” he said, stretching his neck. “Then went back Stateside to show off our combat patches and tried to compare ourselves to the Vietnam vets.” Tommy shook his head. “These guys that served during the Iraq occupation—now they can compare their war to Vietnam. Josh can do that.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened between you and him,” Gunther said.

Tommy sighed. “I don’t know if it happened during the war or before, but Baby Face…Joshua…his attitude toward the government totally changed. He hates politicians and bureaucrats worse than he used to hate Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat. To him, his own government is the enemy. I work for that government, so he sees me as a sellout.”

Gunther cocked his head sideways. “So he’s one of those right wing anti-government types.”

Tommy nodded. “Feds call them ‘PatCons.’ Or ‘ConFans’—Constitution fanatics. For the media and politicians, though, he’s a ‘right wing extremist’.”

“Is he a racist?”

“I can tell you’ve been watching too much TV, Son.”

 

In the hold below, Joshua Rennenkampf was remotely piloting the UAV with a small control console surrounded by stacks of other electronic equipment. Leon Campbell brought over one of the radio headsets he and Cavarra would be using, and stood looking over Josh’s shoulder.

“I still don’t understand how you get internet out here,” Leon said. “I mean, ain’t no Three-G or Four-G towers out in the middle of the ocean, right?”

“I have my ways,” Josh replied, cryptically.

“I just wanna know these things gonna work like you say they gonna work.

Josh ignored his statement. “Check this out—found it on YouTube: this is one of the hostages we’ll be risking our fourth points to save.” Still, half-watching the video feed from the UAV, Josh moved one hand to a computer.

With a mouse click, a frozen video began rolling on the monitor. A middle aged professor roamed back and forth in front of a huge dry erase board.

“Finally, after decades and decades of madness,” Professor Wycliffe said in the video clip, “Panama was making great strides—real, tangible progress.” He motioned with one hand to a cloud of words and phrases written on the board in green script, such as “free elections,” “return of canal zone,” “dignity,” “international trade” and “national health care.” The hand he used held a dry eraser, which he moved in a circling motion to indicate the entire word cloud.

“But because the United States was opposed to these things,” Wycliffe went on, now slapping the eraser against the board right underneath the phrase national health care, “an excuse was found, using the War on Drugs, of all things, to invade. Crack troops from the U.S. slaughtered 4,000 civilians. Helicopters fired missiles into people’s apartments. Oh, it was a big party.”

Josh paused the clip, chuckling.

“Is that what it was?” Leon quipped. “Funny—I thought we went there to sack Noriega.”

“Shows what you know,” Josh said. “You just wanted to keep little Roberto from being able to get his teeth cleaned.”

“And slaughter civilians, don’t forget,” Leon said.

Josh nodded. “Look at what this guy says about World War Two.”

Josh brought up another YouTube clip, with Art Wycliffe in a different outfit in front of the same dry erase board.

“World War Two was, like, the perfect war,” Wycliffe said, with a curious smile for his students. “The liberals felt good about it, because we were helping save the oppressed people of the world. The useful idiots—conservatives—felt good about it, because nationalism and flag-waving was at a fever pitch—you know how they like to swoon and worship that piece of cloth on a pole. American flags everywhere. And the right-wingers loved it, because they could go out and kill Japs.”

Josh paused the clip. “I’ve actually been trying to find some poop on Harrison Travis. He’s the guy financing this deal. Wycliffe is a friend of the family.”

“Travis must be filthy rich,” Leon remarked.

“Not just that,” Josh said, typing in a different URL. “He’s got power—political power.”

“Never heard of him,” Leon admitted.

“Not surprising. He’s an insider. People are only familiar with the figureheads—the politicians owned by guys like him.”

Leon looked perplexed. “If he got power, then why’s he fundin’ us?”

“That’s what I don’t get. He’s in all the same think-tanks as the figureheads. He’s been appointed to a dozen unelected positions in Washington. When you get that high up, with that kind of pull, he could easily get Delta Force or the CIA to handle a hostage rescue.”

“Plausible deniability?” Leon suggested.

“Why? And miss out on all that positive press? Think Bin-Laden raid, but this time our courageous leader is rescuing some innocent college girls, not pulling off an assassination. He’d want everybody to know about this.”

“Must be a reason,” Leon said.

Josh shrugged. “Yeah. But I’ll have time to worry about that after this operation. The important thing is to get those girls out of there.”

“Hoo-wah,” Leon agreed.

 

 

 

 

15

LOTYR ISLAND

 

 

Shiara had put all the girls up for auction on the secure internet site—all except for Nicole Blake. His boss called and ordered him to withdraw Trina. Obviously he wanted her for his own stable.

Candy was the only one who hadn’t met the minimum bid, yet. Perhaps, with her Asiatic features, she wasn’t exotic enough? No matter—she was pretty, and would catch someone’s attention soon enough. There was a live auction coming up, which always brought higher prices—it just took more time than online.

Shiara already had a buyer for the boat, too. The boss sent a launch from the mainland to collect the loot. One man took the yacht, and the girls were herded onto the launch.

 

Jennifer was blindfolded, and assumed the other girls were, too. None of them cried anymore. Maybe they had run out of tears.

Rough hands pushed her outside under the burning sun, then escorted her along a slightly swaying platform—probably the dock she had seen before. Somebody yanked her to a stop, then lifted her up, swung her around, and dropped her in what must be another boat of some kind, the way it moved underneath her.

She was shoved into a sitting position. She had to scoot forward because her wrists were bound behind her and the position was very uncomfortable.

“Who all is here?” she asked, quietly. “This is Jenny. Who else is here?”

Trina, Judy and Susan all announced themselves.

A male voice gave a guttural warning in another language.

“Does anyone know what happened to Candy, or Dr. Blake or Dr. Wycliffe?”

Somebody kicked her in the shin, hard. She cried out from the pain. The same male voice grumbled something in reply.

“Where’s your God, now?” Judy muttered. Trina and Susan both made “hmph” noises.

Jennifer had no idea where she was being taken. At least she hadn’t been raped.

Yet.

 

 

 

16

PHILIPPENE SEA

 

 

They sailed into their rendezvous point in the late morning. They had cleaned their weapons, test-fired them, and cleaned them some more. Tommy led them in action-on-the-objective rehearsals until all of them could do it in their sleep. He also trained everyone on the 60mm mortar, and other weapons systems.

Plan “A” was a good one…if the opfor (opposing force) behaved in a logical manner. Otherwise it would all be a hopeless gaggle. There were so many variables—so many things that could go wrong. So far, he worried most about Rocco and Leon’s subunit task, though he trusted both men implicitly. Today his team was gaining manpower, which was ostensibly a good thing. But they would have to catch up quickly on the mission specifics, and he didn’t know all of these people.

They dropped anchor beyond the reefs and lowered the Zodiac CRRC 450 over the side of the Tinseltown. This would be a good opportunity to see just how quiet the outboard motor really was. Bock, the Tinseltown’s skipper, would pilot the craft.

Once down in the raft, Bock fiddled with the motor for a minute before bringing it to life. Puffs of smoke came from it as it coughed to an idle, then it settled into a steady hum. It was muffled fairly well by the thick engine cowling. Tommy could hear the motor, as he bent over the gunwale, but he doubted anyone on the little island could hear it over the crashing of the surf.

Their South African skipper chugged away for the island, dodging coral as he went.

Tommy turned to Gunther. “Tell Josh to raise Mac on the radio. Let him know his ride is here.”

Gunther nodded and went below.

As he waited, Tommy took in the exotic tropical scenery all around him. Hard to believe that these islands, and most of the peaceful waters they’d been sailing through, was once the theater of a desperate struggle with history hanging in the balance.

Michael Fastwater had been wounded in the campaign against the Japanese for control of the Pacific. Tommy had never known him to be without his eye patch or stump of an arm. But at one point he must have been a healthy young man with two good eyes and two good hands…and would have kept it all, aging normally like anyone else, had he not answered his nation’s call to war.

Once upon a time, Tommy was envious of other veterans—the ones who fought in “real” wars. His operations in the Gulf and peacetime snooping-and-pooping rodeos seemed pathetic by comparison. Now he was thankful for occupying the point of history he did. Suppose he had been around to fight in Vietnam, or in Gulf War Two—what would have been the point? How much was accomplished by all that human sacrifice? Not enough for him to be proud of.

And he might not have lived long enough to hatch this hare-brained scheme for rescuing Jenny.

His mood darkened worse still. He wished he was the superhuman warrior hero some of them back on the rez thought he was. The Tommy Scarred Wolf they imagined could sniff Jenny out 10,000 miles away, slip in and out like a ghost ninja and count coup on the pirates while rescuing her without so much as a scratch.

Gunther reappeared at his side. “Contact made. They’re coming in.”

Shortly he saw the small watercraft emerge from behind some small reef, then wind its way through more. It disappeared behind a large barrier reef. When it became visible again, he could make out how overloaded it was.

Jake McCallum, a gigantic man packed with muscle, would have been enough of a cargo all by himself, for a timid pilot. But there was another man aboard—who looked like he might be a local—and a Caucasian woman, plus heaps of bags and gear.

Captain Bock handed a coil of rope to Mac when he pulled alongside and cut the quiet motor. Mac tossed it up and it sailed into Cavarra’s hands. Rocco quickly tied it off on the nearest cleat and dropped the rope ladder.

The woman climbed up first, Mac assisting with a steady push from below. Now that she was close enough for visual inspection, every man on the Tinseltown was at least a little jealous of Mac’s position and part in this particular stage of the mission. Next up was Mac himself, and then the Asian man. Last up would be Captain Bock, after he got the sling attached to the boat so it could be winched up the hull.

Mac nodded at Leon, recognized Cavarra and flashed that Eddie Murphy smile of his. He grabbed Cavarra’s hand and pulled him in for a half-hug. “Long time no see, Rocco!”

Rocco slapped the huge merc’s back and said, simply, “Mac!”

Mac turned to Tommy and, his expression a bit more serious, wrapped him in a bear hug. “How you holdin’ up, Chief? Wish the circumstances were different, but it’s great to see you.”

Tommy nodded and said, “Thanks for signing on, Mac.”

Mac let go of his old buddy, stepped back and half-turned, gesturing to the other newcomers. “Just call me when you need people, Chief. Found a couple folks who fit your criteria pretty good.” Waving toward the Asian man he said, “This is Barry. He’s from the region we’ll be in. Speaks the major local languages, plus English, and he’s one of my demo guys.”

Barry, about five-foot-nine, in good shape and possibly 30 or younger, raised a hand. “Hello, everyone.”

Mac indicated the attractive female. “This is Doc Ingrid. A real doctor—combat surgeon. Please don’t call her a nurse. Speaks English just fine and not bad to look at.”

“I am not Muslim, so it is fine to look at me,” the woman said. She had some sort of Scandinavian accent.

Tommy pointed to each of his shipmates in turn. “That’s my brother, Vince. My son, Gunther. Josh, our commo guy. Leon, our sniper. Rocco, who will be wearing a couple different hats.”

Everyone shook hands and gave polite nods.

“As soon as the Captain is ready, we’ll be underway. We’ve got less than a full day to get you new people familiar with the plan, and rehearse the mission. Then we’ve got to switch boats and send off our special detachment. There won’t be room on the other boat for rehearsal, so we have to make every minute before that count. Gunther and Barry, go help get that boat put away, so the captain can get back to the helm.”

Gunther moved out to comply. Barry said, “Yes, sir,” and joined him.

Of all the veterans aboard, Cavarra had held the highest rank. But this was Tommy’s mission, and Rocco was fine with whatever role he was needed to play. So right now he put on a friendly smile for Ingrid, and included Mac in his instruction as he spoke. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you your sleeping quarters. “You’ve got your own compartment, Doc, and we’ve put some medical supplies in there with you. Mac, I’m afraid you’ll be racking out with the rest of us.”

“Like I haven’t smelled enough hairy armpits in my life,” Mac said.

Rocco led Ingrid down belowdecks.

Mac clapped an enormous mitt on Tommy’s shoulder. “We got almost the whole gang here.”

“Bojado’s the only one missing,” Tommy agreed. “He wrote me that he went back in the Marines and was there for the first few years in Iraq. Haven’t heard from him in a while.”

Tommy, Rocco, Mac, Leon and Carlos Bojado were the only survivors from the Sudan mission. This was shaping up to be a reunion, of sorts.

Bock reappeared in the bridge and switched on the electric winch to raise the anchor. “Alright, I hope that’s everyone and everything, because we’re underway.”

The sound of the heavy chain pulling through the iron nostril in the bow ceased, and the tremendous engines droned to life.

“Rocco!” Tommy called, “You and Leon should transfer over to the other boat, now.”

Leon nodded. “Copy that, Chief.” He climbed down below to fetch Cavarra.

Both men, Shotgun, and a modest quantity of gear were transferred to the Barbara Gee, then the Tinseltown steamed back for open sea.

 

 

 

 

17

SOUTH CHINA SEA

 

 

Tommy had drilled the concept of the operation with his main force repeatedly from the time of their last stop. Rocco and Leon, during the same period, went through their subunit task repeatedly together.

Now the two men were back on the Tinseltown with everyone else. Josh reviewed the call signs and other commo stuff one last time. Tommy went over contingencies and the matters which warranted repetition. Then finally, everyone gathered around them to bump fists.

Mac nodded at Leon. “See you on the objective.”

Leon nodded back.

“Take some caffeine pills or something,” Mac added, “you lazy slab of meat.”

“Look at ‘em,” Barry, the new guy, said, smirking. He was a wisecracking dude who everyone had come to like fairly quickly. He now burst out in song. “Ebony and ivory…together in perfect harmony…”

Everyone snickered at this. Rocco shook his head and pinched at his olive-colored forearm. “I don’t know about ivory. I think us Sicilians are more like cedar or something.”

They all snickered some more. Not because it was funny, but because they all needed to keep it light. Take the edge off the gravity of the situation. If Rocco and Leon screwed the pooch—and there were a dozen ways that could happen—then the mission would fail.

The Zodiac was lowered over the side again. Rocco and Leon climbed down and detached it from the sling. Their gear was lowered down to them. Then the last rope connecting them to the Tinseltown was dropped over the side. Leon caught it and coiled it up in the bow of the boat.

On the deck of the Barbara Gee, Shotgun stood watching Leon drift away. Nigel squatted beside her and scratched behind her ears.

Distance grew quickly between the large vessel and its castoff. Rocco started the quiet motor, let it warm for a minute, then throttled up and piloted them away as night fell quickly over the sea.

 

Rocco was an old-school sailor. He had a handheld marine GPS with him, but for now he used the stars and his luminous compass to navigate. He had studied the charts several times, so that he had a mental picture of this part of the world. Leon had studied them with him, and had picked things up pretty fast, considering he had never sailed or studied oceanic charts before.

When the moon rose, it should only be a sliver. That was fortuitous. They wanted to see, but weren’t as eager to be seen.

Rocco patted the jerry can next to him. This was really too far a journey to undertake with this small of a boat. If the weather reports were wrong and the sea got much heavier, they’d be in trouble. If a storm popped up, they would be fish food. Just have to hope it stays like this, he told himself.

The inflatable rode the waves such that Leon was glad he’d taken some more Dramamine before debarking from the big boat.

Leon watched the starlit water slide past them and let his mind wander back to Valdosta, Georgia and the life he led there before his “big adventure” began. It seemed like somebody else’s life, now. First he became a soldier; then a grunt; then a paratrooper; then a sniper, then a mercenary. Each step—each new thing he became, like the click of a ratchet—took him further and further away from that old life.

After Blue Spoon, then Desert Storm, he imagined his duty was done. But after 9/11, he began having the dreams. Not nightmares—more like fantasies. He was recruited by the CIA for the Sudan mission, and he knew his fate was sealed. He would always be a soldier, in some capacity or another. For a period of time he wrestled with his conscience, admitting to himself that, as a sniper, he was really just a full-time assassin.

He was that and more.

Well, thank God he was, because Tommy needed just such a man right now. And if he did his part, and everyone else did theirs, one tiny little piece of this world would be made right again.

“Why don’t you get some shut-eye,” Rocco called to him. “I’ll wake you up to relieve me in about four hours if I need it.”

Leon nodded. “Good plan, boss.” He slid himself down in the boat in between their patrol packs and other gear, adjusted his boonie hat over his face, and as only a veteran of the infantry can do anytime, anywhere: fell immediately asleep.

For Dwight Cavarra, this whole operation was like the Beatles’ rooftop concert—one last nostalgic foray along roads once heavily traveled, but now overgrown. He knew the situation was grim. He didn’t make light of what could happen to Tommy’s niece and the other hostages. Yet he was overjoyed to be back in action.

There were enough similarities between this and some of the missions he undertook as a SEAL that, with a little imagination, he could relive a slice of his glory days. Maybe this was even better. Without all the paperwork, micromanaging, red tape and other bureaucratic BS, this wasn’t so much like war as it was like playing with GI Joes in the back yard.

After the Sudan mission, he quit the SpecOps game cold turkey, and concentrated on making up for lost time with his kids.

His kids were grown and on their own, now. The only thing standing in his way of getting back to the old life was age. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be reminded of his own antiquity, in spades. But for now, he navigated the little boat by the stars over the vast, mighty ocean and enjoyed the rush.

 

MALACCA STRAIT

 

The island loomed up out of the dark before them. Rocco, now using the GPS, instructed Leon where to steer the boat. They avoided a lagoon and other obvious landing areas of the small island, choosing, instead, a stretch of coast where the trees extended right out to the shore.

They had navigated around to the back of the island and were now between it and a larger land mass to the west. The tide, such as it was, allowed them to cut the motor and paddle the last couple hundred meters in.

When the nose of the boat scrubbed against the narrow apron of beach sand, Rocco stood. Using his paddle for balance, he stepped from the bow onto land. He grabbed the rope tied to the nose cleat and moved farther inland, then held onto it as Leon debarked after swinging the outboard up into its locked portage mode.

They drug the boat between two trees and over some lower foliage to get it completely out of the water. Maneuvering to the right and left to avoid other trees, they hauled it some 50 meters inland.

They had discussed how this part of the mission would go, back on the Barbara Gee, and there was no need to speak out loud, now. They opened their respective waterproof containers and got their silenced pistols loaded and holstered, first. Both Ruger SR9s had magazines loaded with subsonic 9mm rounds. Next their rifles came out of the sonar buoy containers.

Leon pulled on his night vision goggles—having slept the most during the trip, he would stand watch until daybreak. Rocco stretched out in the Zodiac, using the inflated gunwale for a pillow. Both men smeared bug repellant into their exposed skin, now assured that no capsized boat or other oceanic disaster would rinse it off of them. They put it on especially thick around the ears. Rocco went the extra mile and pulled a camouflage hood made of mosquito net over his head, cinching it around his neck with a drawstring.

Finally, Cavarra closed his eyes and let the drain of prolonged tension send him into a temporary dimension of rest.

When the light of dawn signaled Cavarra to awaken, he sat still for a moment, just listening and waiting for his eyes to focus.

He heard faint rustling nearby. Slowly he sat up and glanced around.

Leon, now without the night vision goggles, was collecting foliage with which to camouflage the Zodiac. His lazy brown eyes came to rest on Rocco and he gave an upward thrust of the chin which, in this circumstance, served as a “good morning.” He then pointed through the jungle to a spot some 20 meters to the north.

Rocco’s gaze followed the gesture and he understood quickly that Leon had found a better place to stash the boat. It was a depression encompassed by a wall of thick tropical brush, darkened by the shade of converging trees overhead. A little bit of camouflage atop the boat and someone would just about have to trip on it to know it was there.

Once the Zodiac and accompanying gear was stashed, they donned the radios and headsets Josh Rennenkampf gave them. Rocco opened the watertight case protecting the big radio, attached the antenna Josh had custom-made for this operation, detached the keypad module clipped to the radio body and flipped it open. He entered the simple two-digit code on the keypad which meant “landing successful.” The acknowledgement code came back after less than a minute. Then he closed it, put it away and joined Leon in studying the map.

Both men were comfortable with old-school orienteering, and could have found their location on the map by surveying nearby terrain features. But it all went faster by using the GPS.

They moved out.

Even this early in the morning, the heat was murderous. Both wore ghillie hood-overs now, with rucksacks and load-bearing gear, with rifles at the ready, all of which only made the heat worse. The fun faded fast for Cavarra now. His breathing was labored, joints and body parts protesting with every step under the modest weight he was carrying. This movement wouldn’t have phased him when he was young and dumb. Even ten years ago it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. Right now, though, it was like torture.

This is why you can never be a rock star operator again, he told himself. Father Time is a sadistic prick.

They moved slowly, as if stalking game, keeping abreast of each other but with plenty of distance between. They picked out their paths as they went, avoiding silhouetting themselves as much as was possible. Out of habit, Leon measured their progress by his pace count—still memorized after all these years. When they came within a half-klick of where the pirate air strip should be, their movement changed from slow to agonizingly slow. They walked at a crouch most of the time, crawled when necessary, and stopped frequently to listen and observe.

When the airstrip appeared ahead, they halted. Lowering to the prone, Cavarra wriggled the binoculars out of his patrol pack and flipped up the lens covers. Camouflage mesh stretched over the objective lenses reduced the chance of reflecting sunlight with the glasses. He had stopped in a spot with deep shade, as an extra precaution.

He knew the main building was close to the airstrip, but it still took a few moments to identify a portion of its wall through a gap in the foliage. He covered the lenses, lowered the glasses and searched for his comrade out in the bush. He had noted Leon’s last location before assuming his present position, but could see no trace of him, now.

Some distance away, lying on his belly, Leon used a monocular to pinpoint the same features Rocco had. Then he searched the surrounding terrain until he spotted a potential hiding spot with a commanding view of both the air strip and the back of the building.

Home sweet home, he thought to himself, and checked his gear to ensure it was ready for a long, hot, tedious crawl.

 

 

 

18

INDIAN OCEAN

 

 

The Tinseltown sat at anchor in a rocky cove around the back, or east, side of Singapore, and the Barbara Gee with her. Tommy had drilled his team repeatedly without let-up since sending Rocco and Leon off on their way. Now most of them slept while Barry monitored radio traffic. Josh had found the frequency their pirates used, and established a frequency-hopping algorithm for Tommy to communicate with Rocco and Leon.

Tommy sat with Barry Teor, reviewing the log of reports from Rocco.

Josh had done some cyber-legwork on the pirate who was their likely target. Luharto had begun like the typical pirates in these parts—capturing cargo ships and holding the crews for ransom. It became lucrative enough that he soon had multiple crews operating in the region.

Just about a year before, however, he assigned one of his pirate crews with a new task: capture private, recreational watercraft and sell them on the black market. Russian mafia kingpins and Chinese industrialists gobbled them up as fast as he could deliver them. Men taken from the sea were usually murdered, while women and children were sold into sex slavery. The prices paid for attractive captives could sometimes be better than the ransoms received for hostage crews.

Luharto lived like a king, now, running his empire from his lavish estate on Sumatra, no longer getting his own hands dirty. Based on Josh’s intel, the crew doing the dirty work to Jenny and her friends was led by a pirate named Shiara, a Javanese sailor who once worked in a legitimate fishing operation.

Some of Rocco’s transmissions had been sent with the simple prearranged brevity codes, such as “landing successful” (zero-five) and “in position” (one-eight). Others were sent in short verbal transmissions.

Josh had sent the UAV over the island, confirmed much of what the sniper team reported, and gave Tommy an idea of the topography and features his snipers couldn’t see.

Few pirates on the island besides the Cessna pilot ventured behind the building at any time. None of the girls had been seen, but at least one had been heard crying out from within the building. The pilot took off just after first light and returned to refuel before going out again. He made three trips that day.

Security was a joke. Every so often a casually dressed male with an SKS rifle would emerge from the back door and wander around for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette or talking on a cell phone. Sometimes they would stroll along the air strip and back. Six different ones had been identified so far.

The pathetic security was encouraging. It probably meant they didn’t monitor any radio traffic themselves, besides frequencies of the nearest authorities and common freqs for ships and boats. Likely they had no idea that they’d transformed from predator into prey.

There were at least seven of them—the six seen and the leader. But there were probably more.

What bothered Tommy was that this was just one day of observation. Without at least one more day of the same, he couldn’t guess if this was a pattern.

But did Jenny have one more day?

 

The radio came to life. Two voices chattered back-and-forth in Indonesian.

Barry translated, “The pilot is on his way back from his last scouting trip. No tempting marks for today. One of them sort of grumbled something about ‘the females,’ and they both referred to an auction. The implication is it will take place soon.”

Tommy stood and closed his notebook. “Keep listening, and make notes. Josh will relieve you about 0200. Get what sleep you can when he does, ‘cause when I wake you up, it’s game time.”

 

 

 

19

LOTYR ISLAND

 

 

Captain Shiara stirred when he heard the Cessna take off. He remembered his new bed-warmer next to him, rolled over and uncuffed Nicole, pushing her head under the covers.

She made no protest, waking quickly and putting some enthusiasm into her work.

I may keep her, Shiara thought. She was turning out to be a good one, after that initial friction. Maybe he wouldn’t need to cuff her anymore, soon. But he would wait at least until the bruising in his groin healed, first.

When they were done, he dozed some more, but was roused awake when his radio man burst into the room.

“Captain! Private boat entering the strait. Female aboard—very marketable.”

Shiara roused himself quickly, put on his robe and checked to ensure Nicole Blake was again cuffed securely to his headboard. He followed his man to the radio room in time to catch the digital images, taken by his pilot, downloading.

The boat was a nice late-model recreational trawler, and the female was a nice late-model blonde. Exotic womanflesh brought great prices at auction, and pale-skinned blondes were top-tier. This woman made a snatch worthwhile all by herself.

And surely he would get a chance to sample her charms before the next auction.

“Did you check the boat?” Shiara asked.

The radio man nodded. Privately owned, out of San Diego.”

“California is giving us some good business,” Shiara mused, then left the room and half-ran to his men’s quarters. He kicked and banged on their doors, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Time was of the essence, as it always was when a target appeared. If Shiara let the boat get too far along the strait, another pirate might get to it first. So far as he knew, they were still all going after cargo ships—but why take a chance?

He got them up and screamed into their drug-addled ears as they got dressed. Finally, armed with rifles and submachineguns, they climbed into the skiff and shoved off from the dock. He watched them go and lit up a cigarette. Then he returned to his house, where he issued orders to his bottom bitches to get the remaining females ready for the block. The next live auction was coming up soon and this new female was just in time.

 

The pirates on the skiff kept radio contact with the Cessna until they were sure of their intercept course, then they motored on at full throttle.

There were nine of them. Most were armed with rusty SKS rifles they almost never had to use. Aza--their leader on this intercept--had an MP-5, used mostly to shoot at monkeys in trees when flying on opium. Their targets had never resisted capture, but the pirates had shot a few ugly ones for sport anyway. They couldn’t shoot the woman on the boat they were after today, obviously, but maybe they could have some fun with whoever else was on board.

When they saw the silhouette of the recreational trawler on the horizon, Aza called it in to Shiara, who told him to confirm the markings when they got close enough to see them. He did, and Shiara confirmed that this was their target.

Ferocious scowls set into the faces of the pirates as the anticipation built. They held all the cards in the pending confrontation and were already feeling the rush of power. They were the ultimate authority in this time and place. They were the law. And they couldn’t wait to prove it.

As they drew closer they noticed the outline of the woman. She had been reclining, sunning herself, but now sat up and waved. Stupid female —she wouldn’t be so happy to see them when she got a closer look.

She did get a closer look, and stopped waving. She was quite an attractive woman, they all noticed, as she scrambled off the top of the pilot house and met someone at the bridge. The one she met was a man—another westerner—and looked to be in his 50s or so. They would, indeed, get to have some fun today, even before Shiara got around to sharing this new exotic woman with them.

What none of the pirates paid much attention to were the lumpy shapes scattered around the deck, and atop the pilot house where the woman had been sunning. As the boats drew nearer, the lumpy shapes proved to be objects covered by cargo netting. Or perhaps fishing nets. What they were doing, in such quantity, on a recreational boat, never crossed anyone’s mind.

The skiff, coming in perpendicular to the private boat, maneuvered around to take an almost parallel course, and matched the boat’s speed to stay abreast. Now the distance closed more gradually, so that when the two vessels came together there would be minimal damage.

When the distance closed to 30 meters, the man in the bridge called out something none of them understood. There didn’t seem to be enough fear in his tone of voice. Well, they would remedy that soon enough.

Only a couple of the pirates noticed a small object sailing through the air toward them. It landed in the skiff with a thump and some of them got a glance at it. It was a cylindrical object, with a metal casing full of holes. Smoke wisped from one end of it.

Before anyone had time to think about this strange occurrence, there was a blinding, deafening explosion.

The pirates closest to the detonation cried out, dropping their weapons, hands instinctively drawn to their eyes and ears. Only a couple pirates even remembered what they were supposed to be doing in the seconds after the shocking explosion. And only Aza was still facing toward the other boat. He stood, staring dumbly, as the lumpy shapes under the netting began to move. Even with his ears still ringing, a new rage of noise jolted him again, as fire streaked the morning.

 

***

 

Nigel Gibb called out the range and speed when the pirate skiff was still too far out to attempt boarding, but close enough to be well inside the effective range of an Ingram machine pistol. Vince Scarred Wolf popped up through the companionway and heaved the stun grenade just as he had practiced.

The flash-bang hit right on target and produced better results than any of them expected. All over the Barbara Gee, men threw off the netting they’d been using for camouflage and leveled their suppressed Ingrams, opening fire while the loud reverberations from the flash-bang still rang through the air.

They used long bursts, then shorter ones, hosing the pirates with a deluge of hot lead. They were careful to keep their aim high enough not to ventilate the skiff. The pirates danced and spasmed in place for an almost comical second while the .45 slugs chewed their torsos into ragged hamburger.

As suddenly as it began, it ended, with no cease-fire signal necessary. As the noise of suppressed full-auto fire diminished, a tinkling sound punctuated the brief episode—the showers of spent brass hitting the deck of the Barbara Gee. Before the last casings rolled to a stop, Josh, Mac and Tommy had changed to full magazines.

The pirate at the helm of the skiff had been riddled and fell overboard. Now the unmanned motor settled to an idle and the skiff rapidly lost speed.

Tommy Scarred Wolf turned to Nigel. “Bring us in, skipper. And tell Marius to get a move on.”

Nigel throttled down and steered their boat over to the skiff. The others kept their weapons at the ready, watching the skiff for any sign of movement. Nigel picked up the radio mike and keyed it, giving their South African captain of the Tinseltown a quick brevity code for “rendezvous ASAP.”

Barry had volunteered for double-tap duty and, as the boats came together, he jumped into the skiff, let his Ingram dangle from its shoulder rig and drew a long, wicked-looking kukri knife. He kicked, prodded and probed the pirates to determine which ones were still alive. Only two were. He tossed the others overboard, after removing their shirts, and dragged the two still breathing together against the gunwale.

On the Barbara Gee, Gunther stood watching, now replacing his own magazine with a fresh one. Tommy put a hand on his shoulder.

“You all right?”

Gunther nodded, his expression blank.

“Keep sharp,” Tommy said. “This was the easy part.”

Gunther nodded again, keeping his eyes on the pirate skiff.

Tommy gave his son’s shoulder a squeeze. He was going to be okay. He wasn’t on the verge of crying or vomiting; nor was he gleeful or even, necessarily, pleased. Maybe one of those reactions would come later, hours after today’s action when the absence of adrenalin left him weak and jittery, replaying the violence of the day over and over in his mind. But so far he was doing great.

Tommy made a visual check of the others. Nigel was concentrating on keeping the boats together. Mac and Josh glanced at the skiff impassively, but mostly scanned the surrounding sky and waters to make sure they themselves didn’t get a rude surprise. Vince climbed onto the deck and surveyed the carnage with a clinical cop’s eye. Ingrid turned her back to the scene, entirely.

Tommy had been worried about his son, but Ingrid appeared to be the one horrified by what happened. He moved to her side and asked, “How you holdin’ up, doc?”

She wiped some tears away. “I am fine. I am a surgeon. I see blood and body parts all the time.” She spoke as if trying to convince herself what she’d just seen was no big deal.

Tommy rested a comforting hand on her upper back. “Yeah, but you’re used to putting people back together; not taking them apart. You can go below if you like. Take a minute or two with some privacy. Leon’s dog is down there—you can keep each other company.”

She shook her head, blinked more tears away and forced a smile. “I’ll be fine. It’s just…they never had a chance, did they? I mean, you can’t say it was a fair fight.”

“If we find ourselves in a fair fight,” Tommy said, “it means our tactics suck.”

Ingrid stared blankly at him for a moment, then glanced around, spotted Josh Rennenkampf and walked over to him.

One of the two living raiders on the skiff was torn up pretty bad, with a sucking chest wound on top of numerous other bullet entries. Barry spoke to him softly in another language. The pirate replied weakly in a rattling gasp. Evidently not happy about the response, Barry hacked at his neck with the kukri. A fountain of blood spurted from the pirate’s neck. Barry lifted the severed head by the hair and held it facing the pirate who was still alive. He barked out something to the pirate in a challenging tone. The pirate flinched and averted his gaze from the macabre display.

Barry set the head on the man’s chest and talked harsh and loud. At the pirate’s initial response, Barry slapped him across the face.

The pirate said something else. Barry thumped the pommel of his knife against the bullet wound in his arm. The pirate shrieked, tears spilling from both eyes. Barry repeated a question, in a sort of mocking tone.

“Josh?” Ingrid called, softly, standing near him toward the bow of the Barbara Gee. Her voice quavered, had a cautious tone, and she maintained a distance from him as if he might swing around suddenly and attack at the sound of her voice. She didn’t consciously imagine him doing something like that; her precaution was merely instinctive.

Josh swiveled his neck to gaze askance at her. “Hey, doc. What’s up?”

“I’m ready to take over the drone. I remember your lesson,” she said. “But I would feel more comfortable if you were there with me for at least the first part of the UAV flight.”

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll launch in a minute. You’ll probably need to patch up that guy Barry is working on though, when he’s done with him.”

The guy in question screamed again, and she flinched. “Sorry,” she said. “I understand it needs to be done. It’s just…”

He nodded and flashed her a sympathetic smile.

Back on the skiff, Barry rose and exchanged a nod with Tommy.

“Yo, doc!” Tommy called. “See what you can do for this prisoner.”

Vince and Gunther boarded the skiff and clumsily hauled the wailing, sobbing pirate over to the Barbara Gee. Barry and Tommy came together for a quick conference.

“There’s seven more men back on the island,” Barry reported, “including the boss, the pilot and the radio operator. They’re normally not armed inside the building, except when they’re dealing with the hostages.”

“Where do they keep the girls?” Tommy asked.

“Large room on the north side of the house, except for the two professors. One of them is being held in the crew’s annex; the other is in the captain’s quarters. There are some other girls on-site, who are loyal to the captain. Three of them. But they’re never armed.”

“How are the girls guarded?” Tommy asked.

“They have a man sit in the hallway outside their door.”

Tommy asked about doorways, windows, and other physical aspects of the building. He adjusted his plan accordingly and called his team together to brief them.

 

 

 

20

 

 

The Tinseltown, moving at flank speed, made the rendezvous and the wounded pirate was transferred aboard her along with Ingrid.

Mac patted the pistol holstered on her hip before leaving her. “Don’t hesitate to use that if you need to,” he said. “And keep the bastard tied down.”

“And sedated” she said, nodding.

By this time a lot of weapons and gear had been transferred to the skiff.

Mac got into the skiff. Ingrid secured her patient, and as she was finishing, Josh came aboard. He checked the drone’s controls, and fuel level, then turned it into the wind on its rotating quick-take-off platform. Ingrid finished what she was doing and joined him.

Josh turned so that she could see the controls on his remote, and reacquainted her with everything. “You want to run it from the beginning?” he asked. “Take-offs are easier than landings, so you might as well.”

She took the remote from him and, following his instructions, started the engine.

“Just the wind out here is generating lift, even without the engine running,” he reminded her. “If we released it from the platform, it would lift off right now just from that. You ready?”

She nodded.

He reached across her hands to push a button and the clamps holding the UAV to the platform released. The little plane gained altitude quickly, especially after she gave it some throttle.

She remembered to switch on the camera feed, but had trouble seeing what was on the screen with the sun glaring on it. Josh saw her dilemma and said, “Let’s go below. The console there is nicer; you can sit down; the screen is bigger and easier to see.”

She kept her eyes glued to the screen and instruments, which made it necessary for him to guide her physically down into the hold with hands on her waist and shoulder. Once situated, he switched over to the other controls. He gave her a few reminders and pointers, then had to run.

When he climbed back on deck, Tommy was yelling, “Let’s go! This has taken too long and they might already be suspicious.”

All of them now had the pirates’ shirts on over their own vests and gear. Tommy, Vince, Gunther and Barry were in the skiff. Josh and Mac stayed on the Barbara Gee. Both boats got underway.

 

Often on an air mobile or a jump into harm’s way, when a soldier was feeling the jitters, the ride seemed to go too fast, and all too quickly he was out in the suck, wishing he could ride for another few minutes. For Tommy, this ride was agonizingly slow. Every minute that ticked by was another minute in which something horrible could happen to Jenny.

Gunther’s nerves were on edge. The ambush of the pirates had been too easy. He’d never seen combat before, but it just couldn’t be that simple.

Well, his dad told him what just happened was the easy part. That meant the next engagement was going to be worse.

How much worse? The gruesome death scene he’d participated in replayed in his mind. Would Uncle Vince, or dad, or himself soon be billowed about by a gusting hail of automatic fire like the men on the skiff had?

Would Gunther fight well? If killed, would he die well?

He breathed deep and went over the plan in his mind. Gunther had never taken up smoking, as his brother Takoda had. But if somebody was to offer him a cigarette now, he’d smoke it.

Dusk settled in over the strait. An island grew larger before them. Gunther glanced back at his father, steering the skiff. Tommy’s eyes narrowed and hardened, fixed on the island. Gunther knew that look: it meant his father was very dangerous at the moment. It was barely-suppressed fury, and he’d only seen it a few times from his father. A few times was more than enough. A whole can of whupass was about to bust open.

This must be the pirates’ island ahead.

Nobody broke radio silence. That meant neither the sniper team, nor Ingrid via the UAV cameras, saw any cause for alarm yet.

The dock took shape before them. Tommy kept the skiff plowing toward it, only cutting the motor twenty meters out. Tommy finally keyed his mike. “Anvil, this is Hammer. Guns up. We’re about to go hot, over?”

“This is Anvil,” Rocco’s voice replied over the radio. “We are guns-up. Over.”

“Roger, out.”

The skiff banged against the dock. Gunther tied them up swiftly and they all unassed the skiff, striding in a spread-out column toward the building. Barry was on point, with an AA12. Tommy was next, then Gunther, and Vince brought up the rear. Behind them, Nigel eased the Barbara Gee against the dock far more gently. Josh and Mac dropped onto the dock now armed with Stoner LMGs and humped along after their comrades.

Once on solid ground, Josh cut across to a position at the northeast corner of the building, with a sector of fire right across the front door. Mac took position at the southeast—catty-corner to where the sniper team lurked, with a sector of fire across the south side of the building.

The others stacked on the door. Barry tested it; found it unlocked; turned the knob and pushed it open. He slipped inside quickly and buttonhooked to the left. Tommy entered next, hooking right.

Inside, the kitchen was to the left. In it, a man turned from the refrigerator with a pitcher of something in his hand. His eyes locked on the strangers, but just as his expression registered surprise, Barry fired a burst from the full-auto shotgun and the storm of buckshot blew gaping holes through the guy.

Yelling sounded elsewhere in the house.

Gunther slipped inside and went right; Vince came in and went left. In two pairs they began to sweep the house.

An armed man burst out of the nearest hallway with an SKS swinging up to bear. Tommy cut him down with a four-round burst and entered the hallway. Gunther stepped over the corpse and followed his father.

Tommy found a locked door, flattened his back to the wall beside it, waited for Gunther to position himself on the opposite side, then pushed away, whirled and kicked the door in. A bathroom—nobody inside.

Across the house Barry kicked a door in. He and Vince entered as they had trained to, and found a guy cowering on all fours underneath a table stacked with radio equipment. He began to plead with them but Barry ripped him in half with the AA12. They marked the room secured and moved on.

 

The back door flew open and the pilot charged out, in a sprint for the Cessna. He didn’t charge into Leon’s scope picture quite dead-on, but at less than 200 meters it was still a chip shot. He hadn’t made it five meters before Leon Campbell put a jacketed rifle ball through his chest, just above the third button on his shirt.

Rocco confirmed the guy was done, then gave Leon an update on the wind speed and direction. Leon relaxed and resumed normal breathing, watching the back door again.

 

Inside, Gunther heard heavy footfalls behind him. He spun and dropped to the floor just as two men appeared in the mouth of the hallway, running across from right to left. He fired. One of them was knocked off his feet but the other kept going, disappearing from sight.

Gunther began easing down the hall toward the hidden bad guy, but Tommy grabbed him by the vest and said, “Hold up.”

Tommy keyed his radio. “Rap Star; Mountain Man: anybody come through the front door?”

 

Outside, Josh led the running man slightly and tore off a burst from the light machinegun. The man cartwheeled like a rag doll.

“This is Mountain Man. Roger, Hammer. Short guy. Blue shorts. Polo shirt. Had an SKS. Over?”

“That’s him,” Tommy replied.

 

Barry and Vince positioned themselves by another door. Vince pointed to the floor and Barry’s gaze followed. Through the gap between the floor and the bottom edge of the door shadows projected, revealing frantic movement inside. Their ears still rung from the rapid fire twelve gauge bursts, but they heard voices inside and some sounded female.

Barry pulled a flash-bang. Vince tried the door. Locked.

The door was cheap waferboard sandwiched around a pine frame common for interior construction. Vince’s boot heel hit it just beside the knob and it splintered open. Barry tossed a flash-bang inside and pulled the door shut again. The voices rose in volume and frequency, then the stun grenade detonated.

Barry and Vince poured into the room. There were two women and a smooth-faced little man. Barry ordered them all face-down on the floor. A tall blonde woman hesitated. Vince thought for an instant Barry was going to gun her down, but she finally complied after some threatening gestures.

Barry covered them, and the doorway, while Vince zip-cuffed their hands behind their backs. He zip-cuffed their ankles together, as well, then they marked the door and moved on.

 

Tommy and Gunther entered their next room after the flash-bang. Toward the back wall two Asian women cowered, holding their ears, tears streaking their faces. A man with an AK popped up from behind them and fired with his muzzle in between the women.

Tommy and Gunther fired simultaneously and the man’s head practically disintegrated. The women screamed and fled in panic, but Gunther wrapped one arm around both their necks and flung them down on the floor while Tommy moved in with the zip cuffs.

“Is that his blood, or yours?” Tommy asked, staring at Gunther’s head.

Gunther put a hand to the side of his head and winced. His hand was now slick with blood. “Um, mine.”

Tommy cursed, stood erect and closed the distance to examine his son’s head. He pulled a field compress from his vest rig. “Hold still! That chickenshit son of a bitch parted your hair. How do you feel?”

“It’s starting to hurt,” Gunther replied.

“No dizziness, funny vision, nausea?”

“No. I’m okay.”

Fear squeezed at Tommy’s chest. If the bullet had struck just an inch or two inward, his son would be dead now. He pressed the compress against the bullet crease and tied it down, watching close to ensure the bleeding stopped. “If you start feeling weird, you let me know right away. Copy?”

Gunther nodded. “I copy. I think it’s just a flesh wound, Dad.” He squatted to finish cuffing the women.

Tommy threw one last glance at the body of the dead shooter. “Chickenshit son of a bitch!”

They marked the room and continued their sweep. They encountered no opfor in the next two rooms.

As they approached the last door in the hall, they heard a female voice sobbing and screaming. The room was in the location where Tommy expected the hostages to be, and there was a chair across the hall from the door, where the guard must have been sitting before he heard the opening shots and ran to meet his death.

Tommy didn’t want to risk a flash-bang with Jenny and the other girls in there. They were meant to be non-lethal but anything could happen with an explosive device. There might be opfor in there, hiding among the hostages. Calling out to the girls might inspire a pirate to start shooting through the walls.

Tommy glanced at his son, backed against the wall on the opposite side of the door from him. He pointed to a stun-grenade on his vest and shook his head, then pushed out from the wall, spun and kicked in the door.

The screaming intensified as they entered the room. They scanned the dim room for targets but saw no threats. In fact, they saw nobody standing at all.

“We’re Americans!” Tommy announced. “We’re here to get you out! Are there any armed men hiding in here?”

“No,” someone replied. “Please don’t shoot!”

“Tommy?” Vince’s voice called from the hallway behind them.

“Yo!”

“We’re outside the door! You’re covered!”

“Copy that!”

“Building is secure,” Barry said.

With his Ingram still at the ready, Tommy thrust his chin toward Gunther. “That looks like a light switch next to you. Flip it.”

Gunther turned, searched the wall, found the switch and turned on the lights.

There were no pirates in the room. They found two hostages tied to beds—Professor Wycliffe and Candy. Jennifer Scarred Wolf and Susan Pyrch were nowhere to be found.

 

 

 

21

 

Reasonably sure that the pirate base was now secure, Tommy had Mac and Josh pull in and double-check all potential hiding places.

Both the hostages were naked, and manacled to the iron-framed beds. Wycliffe was belly-down. Gunther pulled sheets off the unoccupied beds and covered their bodies while Vince and Barry searched the pirates for keys to unlock them.

“We’re going to unlock you in just a second,” Gunther told Candy as he draped the sheet over her.

“Th-thank-you,” she stammered, hoarsely. Tears were still rolling out of her eyes.

As he covered Wycliffe, Gunther tried not to think about the bloodstain or where he saw it on the guy’s body. “You’re going to be alright, Doctor Wycliffe.”

Wycliffe said nothing, but just stared blankly into space.

Mac entered the room to take a look. “What are those for?” he asked, pointing to the poles fixed in the floor.

“It’s a rape rack,” Candy replied. “Like what some dog breeders use. Only for humans.”

Gunther found it all too revolting. He had to leave the room.

 

One pirate survived the assault, and he happened to be the captain. Four women, besides Candy, were found. Three of them were from the region, and had been working for Shiara for a while. The fourth was Professor Blake.

Everyone was questioned, separately. They remained separated while their stories were checked against each other.

Candy knew the least of anyone, and was quickly escorted to the Tinseltown, now docked outside, where Doc Ingrid attended to her.

Wycliffe was not very responsive, and mainly just stared through people. He was delivered to Doc Ingrid, too.

No torture or even threats were needed for Shiara and the others to spill their guts.

The other girls had been picked up days ago. Trina was delivered straight to Luharto—Shiara’s boss. Jennifer, Susan and Judy had been sold to pimps in Medan, a city of over two million. Luharto’s estate was located just outside Medan.

Shiara and his women didn’t know which whorehouses were owned by the pimps, or where they were located in Medan. But they knew the same pimp had bought both Jennifer and Susan.

 

Tommy glanced at his brother and saw he was on the brink of utter despair. Tommy was almost there, himself. But he couldn’t afford to be. There was still a possibility of getting Jenny back and he had to exploit it somehow, quick.

Medan was a big city, but it wasn’t nearly as big as Jakarta. There were only so many places prostitutes could operate out of in any given city—they would just have to track them down. According to Candy and Dr. Blake, none of the girls had yet been raped. And they were all alive. Things could be worse.

He called all his men together for a powwow on the Tinseltown. They sat in a circle on the deck, all struggling with disappointment to one degree or another, except the unflappable Barry Teor.

Tommy spoke to his brother, first. “This is our chance to do cop stuff, Vince. We’re gonna have to meet with that contact in the Indonesian police. See if he can help us find the girls.”

Vince nodded, but said nothing, his gaze downcast.

“Josh, Barry,” Tommy said, “I don’t see any other way to do this: You’re gonna have to impersonate johns. You’re the only two who speak the language fluently. You’ve got to start with the whorehouses. Then massage parlors. Karaoke rooms. Prostitution is everywhere, from what I gather. Even shopping malls and discos. If you have to work your way down to street walkers, that’s what you’ll have to do.

Josh scowled. “Chief, this is gonna draw all kinds of attention. Some foreigner making the rounds, sniffing around all the whores but never renting one…”

Barry grinned and shrugged. “So we may have to rent one now and then to keep up appearances.”

Nobody laughed.

“I don’t know what to say, other than be smart about it,” Tommy said. “Try to avoid causing suspicion. Maybe you should take the fancy brothels, where foreigners are more likely to visit; and Barry can check out the places where local johns tend to go.”

“She-it, Chief. Talk about a needle in a haystack…”

“You don’t have to remind me, Josh,” Tommy snapped.

Josh looked away from his former friend, a little ashamed of himself. Tommy needed support now, in whatever way he could get it. He didn’t need somebody whining about how difficult it was going to be. “I’ll do my best, Tommy.”

“We have a safe house in Medan,” Tommy said. “That’s where most of the rest of you will stay. If Josh or Barry get into trouble, they can run to you. If they’re in trouble and stuck somewhere, you run to them.”

“If we get stopped by the local police or something,” Gunther asked, “what do we do?”

“Mac and Leon have passports,” Tommy said. “They can march right in during broad daylight, and secure the safe house. The rest of you will have to slip under the wire. Take the skiff in. Then stay inside the safe house either until the mission is complete, or until shit hits the fan.”

Tommy now made eye contact with Leon, while pointing at Vince. “We have some clothes Jenny wore. Take your dog. I know you don’t speak the language, but I need you to take Shotgun around town—see if she picks up the scent.”

“Alright, Chief. We’ll see what we can do.” He rubbed the fur on Shotgun’s head as if reassuring her that they weren’t asking for trouble nosing around in a strange city full of predators where he couldn’t speak the language.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you all that you need to pack heat,” Tommy said. “But none of the big stuff. Keep it concealed and do whatever you can to keep from getting searched.”

Everyone nodded.

Tommy looked toward Cavarra. “I need at least one guy to stay with the ship to help Marius protect our ride home. That’s you, Rocco.”

Cavarra nodded. He was the oldest of the bunch, so it only made sense to keep him in the rear. Oh, well.

Tommy turned back to Barry and Josh. “I want you two to get started right away. Take that local cash we found in the pirate stash and divide it between you. Then take the Barbara Gee...”

“We’ll take the Cessna,” Barry interrupted. “I can fly it to Medan. That leaves the boat for you and Vince, whenever you’re ready to go. Your police contact is all the way over in Jakarta, right?”

Tommy pursed his lips, in thought. “I was thinking we should take the plane, since we have farther to go and are starting later.”

“It will look better if you two arrive together on that boat,” Barry insisted, pointing to the Barbara Gee. “It will look more like an official visit, that way.”

“More official than arriving in a plane?” Josh asked, skeptically.

“Trust me,” Barry said. “This is my country, so I know. They will be taken more seriously, and raise less suspicion, if they arrive in that boat. Besides, the plane only carries two anyway.”

Josh never heard this thing about a boat being more respectable than a plane from his ex-wife. But then, Barry should know what he was talking about, being from here. Besides, Josh didn’t want to be any more difficult or negative than he had been already. He shrugged.

“Fine,” Tommy said. “Fire it up. You two can di-di-mau right now.”

Josh rose. “Wilco, Chief. I’ll grab the cash while Barry gets the bird ready.”

Barry put a restraining hand against Josh’s chest. “I’ll get the money, my man. You need to work your magic on the internet and see if you can get a lead on some of those Relokalisasis.”

“Relocate what?” Leon asked.

“Sexual entertainment complexes,” Barry said, with a chuckle.

As Barry made his way over to the Barbara Gee to get the loot, Josh stared after him for a long moment.

It wasn’t like pimps posted their occupational profiles on the web and could therefore be connected to street addresses of their bordellos—an internet search that could produce any leads on this would take days. And why the flattery and the “my man” stuff? Shouldn’t Barry be getting the Cessna ready for a flight while Josh grabbed the money? Was this a tactic to take more than half the cash for himself so nobody was the wiser?

Or am I just being paranoid, Josh wondered. It wouldn’t be the first time, now would it?

He went below. He had the names of a couple pimps. He might as well search for them and see if anything turned up. There was nothing to lose but time.

 

The Cessna took off a half hour later. Tommy and Vince were still trying to catch their police contact in Jakarta on the phone.

The others watched the plane disappear out over the Strait.

“He knows how to fly, too,” Gunther remarked, shaking his head slowly.

“He’s a multi-talented guy,” Mac said. “It’s lucky he came along when he did. He’s just what we needed for this deal.”

“Joshua doesn’t seem to trust him,” Rocco observed.

Mac frowned. “Rennenkampf is one of those Aryan Nations types. He hates Barry ‘cause he’s Asian—and he’s got more skills than Rennenkampf does.”

“Aryan Nations?” Leon echoed, with a sour, unbelieving look. “Why you say that?”

“Come on, Cannonball,” Mac groaned. “The man is whiter than white. His last name’s even German. He’s a gun nut; hates the government; lives by himself up in the boonies to get away from all the Jews and niggers…I guarantee you he’s got a Nazi flag somewhere in his bedroom. Or at least a Confederate flag”

“Dad says he’s not a racist,” Gunther said, shrugging.

“I haven’t heard him refer to race at all,” Rocco added.

Mac spread a huge hand against his own chest. “Hey, I’m a brother. And as a black man, you pick up on certain things. You got to, to survive. Ain’t that right, Cannonball?” He reached out and prodded Leon, who didn’t respond.

“It’s a black thang,” Mac went on, inflecting a ghetto accent he didn’t normally use. “Y’all wouldn’t understand.”

He prodded Leon again, grinning, nodding, and waiting for confirmation.

“Actually,” Leon said, “he ain’t gave me no reason to think he’s bigoted at all.”

Mac’s expression transformed quickly to one of disgust. “Nigga, are you serious?”

“Like I told you,” Cavarra said, “I never heard him so much as mention anything about race.”

“Oh, come on, now,” Mac protested. “You didn’t hear him make that remark about gays today? What about all that conspiracy stuff he pulls up on the internet?”

“Sounds like you never heard him say anything about race, either,” Cavarra said.

Mac shook his head. “Oh, that’s right—you’re one of those anti-Obama people too, Rocco.”

Rocco nodded. “I love my country, so yeah, guilty. You gonna call me a racist next?”

“What’s Obama got to do with any of this?” Leon asked.

Mac shook his head sadly. “Toms, coons, bucks…”

Leon shot him a hard look.

“So he called these pirates a bunch of faggots,” Rocco said, shrugging. “We all used to talk that way. What’s it got to do with skin color?”

“You need to join the 21^st Century,” Mac said. “Both of you.”

“Like we agreed back in 2008,” Rocco told Mac, “if we want to stay friends, we should probably not talk politics.”

Tommy reappeared from below. “We got him.”

“The Indonesian cop?” Gunther asked.

“Yup. He says don’t bother coming to Jakarta. He’s got a cousin in the Medan Police he’s gonna have help us out. We got his info. Leon, you can come with us and get set up in the safe house.”

“We might as well all go,” Gunther said. “Right?”

Mac flashed his Eddy Murphy grin at the young man. “We don’t want to arouse any attention. More than three foreigners arriving together might be pushing our luck.”

“And besides that,” Tommy said, “I’d like to have as many escape options as I can. You two coming in on the skiff tonight gives us one more. Something happens to our boat, we can get out on yours, and vice-versa. We’ve got the Zodiac on the Tinseltown as a last resort.”

“More importantly,” Mac said, slapping Gunther’s shoulder, “I’m gonna wire the pirate crib to blow later, and your dad says you want to learn about demolitions.”

Gunther nodded, his eyes lighting up.

Tommy and Vince got aboard the Barbara Gee and had a brief discussion with Nigel. Leon Gathered his gear and, with Shotgun trotting along behind, followed them. Shiara and his mini-harem were already aboard, cuffed and tied, to be turned in to the local police when contact was made.

As soon as the dog came on board, she put her nose to the deck and began yelping. Vince’s satellite phone began ringing at almost exactly the same moment.

Vince gestured to his phone before answering it. “Can you shut her up for a minute?”

Leon began to command Shotgun to stand down, but the words stuck in his throat. He turned to Tommy, instead. “We didn’t have no C4 on this boat, did we?”

Tommy shook his head, thumbing behind his back toward the pirate base. “It’s all on the Tinseltown, besides what we offloaded to blow the house back there.”

Leon’s eyes widened in horror. “Get off the boat! Get off the boat!”

Without waiting for a response, Leon scooped up Shotgun and leapt off the boat, running up the dock away from the Barbara Gee.

Tommy hesitated only for a second, then lifted one of the pirate women and bolted himself. “Vince; Nigel: Off the boat! NOW!!”

Nigel and Vince stared at him, confused.

“There’s an explosive charge on the boat! MOVE!!”

Still looking a bit confused, they followed him onto the dock.

As they ran past the Tinseltown, Tommy called out, “Marius, cast off! Get her away from here!”

In all the hustle, chaos and panic, Vince decided not to take the phone call.

Once back on the island, well away from the dock, everyone gathered around Leon, looking for an explanation.

“You’re sure about this?” Mac asked him.

Leon glanced down at Shotgun. “She smell plastique in the boat somewhere. She didn’t smell it last time she’s on board, so it was put there recent. And there ain’t no reason for it to be there.”

Tommy glanced around the group. “Did anybody here put explosives on that boat, for any reason?”

He saw nothing but blank looks.

Vince’s phone rang again. He took the call and put the phone to his ear.

“Hello. Yeah, we talked to him. Why do you ask? Let me call you back in a few minutes.”

Vince hung up and glanced at his brother. He had looked defeated and depressed since finding out his daughter wasn’t here, but now he had a hard glint in his eyes.

“Who was that?” Tommy asked.

“Barry,” Vince replied, and marched down the dock toward the Barbara Gee.

“He doesn’t believe me about the plastique?” Leon asked.

Tommy didn’t answer. He’d seen that look on the faces of many cops, including his brother. Vince was playing on a hunch.

Tommy followed after him. When he caught up, he asked, “Why was he calling?”

Vince climbed aboard without looking back at Tommy. “He wanted to know if we got hold of our local police contact. And he asked if you and I were underway.”

Tommy climbed onto the boat after him. The two of them searched. In the engine room, stuck to the fuel tank, was a quarter pound of C4 with a cellular detonator. Tommy pulled the detonator out of the explosive, handed it to Vince, and peeled the C4 off the tank.

Back out on the dock, everyone stared at them expectantly.

Tommy called Marius on the radio to have him bring the Tinseltown back in.

Vince turned to Leon. “You were right. You better have your dog check the other boats, too.”

 

Once everyone was satisfied there were no more hidden bombs, Vince dropped the cellular detonator on the island, some 50 meters away from the pirate’s house. He then joined the others where the dock met the island, and called Barry back.

“Hey, sorry about that,” he said into the phone. “Did you guys make it alright? Anybody give you trouble about the unmarked plane? Mmm. Yeah, that’s probably the safe bet. Huh? Yeah, we’re in the Barbara Gee, me and Tommy, on our way. Why do you keep asking? Hello? Hello?”

He pulled the smart phone from his ear and studied the screen for a moment.

There was a loud crack on the island as the detonator’s priming charge blew.

Rocco stated the obvious. “He wanted to make sure Tommy and Vince were both on the boat before he touched it off.”

Mac blanched, thunderstruck. “I don’t get it. Why would he want to kill you two?”

“Why would anyone be trying to kill you?” Gunther asked.

Tommy had turned a bit pale, himself. “Those are really good questions. I don’t have an answer, yet.”

 

 

 

22

 

 

Tommy texted Josh:

 

Stop using phone. Call me on team com Frequency Algorithm B.

 

Shortly after, Josh broke silence on the backup frequency-hopping scheme he’d established for their radios.

He reported that Barry had landed the Cessna in an empty field outside of town and they had just abandoned it there. Shortly after landing, he and Barry had parted ways.

When asked if anything strange had happened, he said Barry had begun to pick up Josh’s laptop case a couple times, before Josh told him no thanks and grabbed it himself. He had also been insistent in recommending Josh take a room at a certain hotel in Medan. As he left the field where the plane was parked, Barry was already making phone calls.

Tommy warned him to keep away from that hotel, and to get rid of his sat phone. He explained what had almost happened to him and his brother, and Leon.

 

The men sat around the radio cabin, all looking frustrated and confused.

“How long have you known this guy?” Vince asked Mac.

“He joined SSI about a week ago,” Mac said, shrugging. “He had good references. No red flags from his CIA dossier. He knew his stuff. He seemed like a good man.”

“If he was working with the pirates, he wouldn’t have let us wipe them out,” Gunther said. “Would he?”

“Who could plant somebody in my Private Military Company on short notice?” Mac asked. “And why would they? How would they even know we would be involved in this? When Barry joined up, we didn’t know anything about Tommy’s niece or even that he would be contacting us.”

“Luharto doesn’t have that big of an operation. He couldn’t,” Rocco said. “Why is the big question. If we can answer that, then we can figure out who.”

Gunther shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. What have any of these girls done to anyone that would make them want to sabotage a rescue attempt?”

Tommy exchanged a look with Vince and puffed his cheeks, exhaling heavily. “Time is still of the essence, here. We can theorize who’s behind this and why afterwards. Right now we have to drive on. The important thing we’ve learned is that we’ve been compromised to some extent. So we should quit using our sat phones. In fact, take the batteries out because they can act as bugs or homing devices even when shut off. Leave them on the boat when you go in.”

“How about the safe house?” Mac asked.

“It might not be so safe,” Tommy replied. “We do need some sort of operations base; but we’ll have to find our own.”

“Don’t use the credit cards,” Rocco said.

Tommy nodded. “We’re gonna have to convert as much plastic as we can to cash, and then pay for everything that way.”

Vince shook his head. “Come on. You don’t really think…” He threw up his hands.

“You and me will have to talk about it later,” Tommy said. “But you saw the bomb. If it wasn’t for Leon’s dog, we’d be dead now. Barry was planted in Mac’s company before you and me even knew we’d be here doing this. Whoever has the juice to do that can probably follow us via credit card purchases.”

“It don’t get much more messed up than this,” Leon said.

“We’ve got to stick to two-man teams,” Tommy said, and turned to his brother. “As soon as we meet with the local police, you’re gonna be with Josh. Mac and Leon; Gunther with me. Once we convert some cash, we’ll divvy it out. We’ll buy pre-paid cell phones for every swinging Richard—tactical com will be too conspicuous in town. Every team gets their own room. We’ll keep our bases fairly spread out in town, but close enough that we can come to help each other out if need be.” He turned to his son. “You got those maps printed?”

Gunther nodded and stood, handing out a sheaf of paper to everyone except Rocco and Ingrid, who would be staying with the boats.

“We’re still going in the same way we planned,” Tommy said. “But if, by chance, anybody crosses paths with Barry…try to take him alive.”

 

The Barbara Gee docked at a busy marina on Sumatra’s eastern coast. Serving travelers from all over the world, the marina employed multi-lingual staff and Tommy was able to negotiate with them to keep the boat there on a day-by-day basis.

Vince, Tommy and Leon split up the credit cards and visited different banks in Medan, each pulling out cash advances—enough to cover expenses, but not so much as to arouse suspicion at any one bank.

When they met back at the boat later, they brought their concealed weapons out of the hold along with Leon’s dog. They said their goodbyes to each other and to Nigel, and set out on foot into Medan.

Tommy and Vince met up with Josh, who negotiated a room for them near the police station where their contact worked. From there he headed across town to do the same for Leon.

The Scarred Wolf brothers stored their weapons, change of clothes and other gear in the room.

Vince lit up a cigarette and sat on the bed. Tommy stood by the window.

“Have you thought about why somebody wants to get rid of us?” Tommy asked.

Vince nodded. “The investigations.” He exhaled a long stream of smoke through his nose.

“Not so farfetched, after all, is it?”

“Alright, alright,” Vince said. “You told me so. You were right.”

“We were both looking at pieces of the same puzzle,” Tommy said. “The bombing; the murders; the informant who warned weeks in advance; the arms-trafficking; the key suspects allowed to escape, then declared to have never existed…it’s all tied together. We were working it from two different ends, toward the center.”

“But why kill us? It’s not like we’re the only people who know about this.”

“They can discredit other whistle-blowers,” Tommy replied, shrugging. “It would be hard to convince people that me and you are white supremacists, though. No matter how many times they say it on the evening news.”

“White supremacists?”

Tommy nodded. “You haven’t noticed anybody who challenges the official story gets painted as a tinfoil hat-type? But if he presents too strong an argument, they have to paint him as a Nazi or Klansman or something, to make sure nobody listens to what he’s saying, no matter how well it lines up with the evidence. They can’t do that with us.” Tommy pointed to the red-brown skin on his arm, then at Vince’s.

“This all sounds like something your gun-nut pal pulled off of InfoWars,” Vince said.

“Therefore it can’t be true,” Tommy retorted. “And we didn’t find a bomb in our boat.”

Vince took a long drag on his cigarette. He felt like the world was caving in around him. His daughter was kidnapped and sold to sex traffickers, and most of what he assumed about the world around him was turning out to be false. He hadn’t wanted to believe most of what he’d been learning for the last few months. He still didn’t want to believe the media had an active role in the crimes and cover-ups going on.

“Is it the FBI after us?” Vince wondered, aloud. From the highest levels of the bureau down, there was involvement in crimes and atrocities that could be embarrassing if news of it leaked past the mainstream media and into the awareness of enough taxpayers. The FBI wasn’t above assassinations, by a long shot.

“They might lose a lot of face if anybody pays attention to what we’re finding out,” Tommy said. “But how would they have known to plant Barry inside Mac’s company, even before I contacted Mac?”

“Same way we would know,” Vince said. “You make a list of known accomplices and what their assets are, then you come up with contingencies. You said Cavarra was talking to somebody at the CIA about the kidnapping, right?”

Tommy bit his lip. “Yeah, but he’s known her for years. She’s the one who gave us all the good poop on the pirates. We couldn’t have found that island without her.”

Vince studied his cigarette thoughtfully. “It’s a lot easier to bump somebody off here than back home, right? I mean, we’re mixed up with human trafficking gangs; shooting it out with pirates…just begging to get killed, right? They can blame it on the pirates and who would question it? That’s what happens when you take risks like that. The CIA and FBI may not like each other, but they close ranks when they need to.”

“Now who sounds like a conspiracy whack-job?”

“We can talk about that later. What’s important now is, who we can trust while we’re looking for Jenny.”

“Leon, Mac, Rocco and Josh,” Tommy said. “Aside from them, we only got each other and Gunther.”

“All for a damn sorority boat trip,” Vince said, head dropping into his hands.

Jenny wasn’t in a sorority, but now was not the time to split hairs. “This whole deal is a huge turd burger,” Tommy said. “But we’re here. This is the closest we’ll ever get to finding Jenny. We might as well go meet with this detective. We have to try whatever we can, no matter how much of a long shot, and even when it’s risky.”

Vince put out his cigarette and stood. “I’m with you on that.”

Vince checked his .38 and put it in his ankle holster. Tommy tucked his Browning 9mm into his waistband at the small of his back, hidden by the tail of his loose tropical shirt. They left for the police station.

They met detective Patral at the appointed time, but rather than speak with them in his office, he led them outside the station and to a street corner café where he ordered tea and food for all of them. He was a very educated man who spoke English quite well. He had the hard, skeptical eyes of a veteran cop, but the soft hands of a desk-bound city boy.

Patral studied Vince over the table. “Your daughter was kidnapped by pirates, I understand.”

“That’s right,” Vince said. “A pirate named Luharto. His captain’s name is Shiara. They took my girl and six other people; and stole the boat they were on.”

Patral drummed his fingers on the table. “How did you acquire this information?”

Vince gave him a brief summary. Patral glanced at Tommy a few times as he listened.

After listening patiently until Vince was done, Patral took a sip of tea and said, “You are obviously hoping the police will help you find them.”

Vince and Tommy nodded. “As much help as we can get,” Tommy replied.

“Do you know how many of our own citizens go missing here every week?” Patral asked. “We can’t even keep up with the reports; much less investigate them. It’s no secret that human trafficking is very big here. Girls are stolen right off our streets—sometimes sold by their own parents—most are taken to the Middle East or Europe, and never seen here again. The people trading these girls, and some little boys, are very powerful, my friends.”

Patral dropped his voice and leaned forward over the table. “They are much more powerful than the police here, or even in Jakarta. You say Luharto runs this particular pirate organization. If you had any idea how powerful and revered a businessman he is, you would not have even mentioned his name. To be honest, my friends, had my cousin not asked me, I would not have even met with you.”

“So you’re not going to help us?” Tommy asked, jaw flexing.

“How could I help you?” Patral asked. “I have people I answer to; and I have a caseload already. How would I justify setting all that aside to concentrate on finding your people? You think because you are Americans you should be the priority.”

“Don’t even start that bullshit!” Vince snapped. “My daughter has been taken against her will by slaving perverts who want to rape her…or who knows what. I’m a father, and I’m asking you one cop to another…whatever countries we happen to live in.”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive, my friends…”

Vince growled, “Quit calling us your friends if you have no intention of being a friend.”

“Very well. I am sympathetic to your problem, gentlemen, but I don’t think you appreciate my position. I cannot give you special consideration and if I even mentioned Luharto in connection with an investigation, my career would end. What could you offer me to balance that?”

“If you want money,” Vince said, “we can…”

“Listen,” Tommy interrupted, “we don’t assume anything. We met with you to see if you could help. Or would help. in any way. What if we gave you Shiara and some women that were with him?”

Patral fished a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and lit up. “You understand you have no jurisdiction here. If you are holding an Indonesian citizen against his will, you could get in enough trouble that even your government could not help you.”

“Oh, he’s an Indonesian citizen, huh?” Vince snarled. “Here we thought he was a pirate—a thieving, murdering rapist. We thought somebody who considers himself a cop would be more interested in putting him away than wiping his ass for him.”

Patral lifted his hand, waving off Vince’s anger. “If I were you, I would feed them to the sharks and forget all about it.”

“Okay,” Tommy said, with a heavy sigh. “Can you at least tell us what parts of town we should look around in?”

“That was my next point,” Patral said. “You shouldn’t look around at all. You are only asking for trouble.”

“We don’t care about Luharto,” Vince said. “We don’t want trouble. I just want Jenny back.”

“Look, Patral,” Tommy said. “You know where the prostitution is in this city. At least give us that, and save us some time.”

Patral sighed. “Do you have a map?”

 

 

 

23

 

MEDAN, INDONESIA

 

 

Gunther and Mac came in that night, as planned, after reducing the pirate house to a pile of rubble. Leon, Josh and the Scarred Wolf brothers all met with them at a street side café. Pre-paid cell phones were passed around and numbers exchanged. Tommy and Vince shared what they learned about where the red light districts were.

Before they broke up, Josh informed them of the radio conversations he had with Nigel and Marius.

“There’s a heavy squall coming in,” Josh said. “Big typhoon coming in from the South China Sea.”

“I thought typhoons couldn’t happen this close to the Equator,” Mac said.

“They’re not supposed to,” Josh said. “But it’s happened before. It’s coming toward Malaysia with 90-mile an hour winds. It should lose strength the closer it gets to the equator. Maybe be reduced to a tropical storm by the time it makes landfall here. Like 40 mile an hour winds, hopefully less. But nobody and nothing is prepared for that kind of weather on this island. Nigel says he can’t stay in the marina or the boat will get beaten to splinters. He wants to take it to a hurricane hole to sit out the storm. He’s waiting to hear from us, if you need to take the prisoners ashore, or if anyone here needs to get back on the boat before he casts off.”

Tommy cursed and ran a hand through his hair. “What about the Tinseltown?”

“Marius says it’s big enough to keep out at sea,” Josh replied. “But he’s still going to try and outflank the storm and avoid the worst of it.”

“How far away will that take him, in miles?”

“About 300.”

“That’s just peachy,” Mac said. “How far away is the hurricane hole?”

“He’s actually taking it to Singapore. He says that’s as good as a hurricane hole.”

“So much for havin’ a way out of here if things go sideways,” Leon said.

“How long can Nigel wait?” Vince asked.

“He has to get underway by noon tomorrow at the latest.”

Tommy’s jaw bunched up. This turd-burger of a situation had just become even crappier. “Well, there it is. We’re stuck here for the duration of the storm, at least.”

“We should revise our contingencies,” Josh said.

Tommy nodded. “Everybody take out the topo maps I gave you.”

They produced the laminated topographical maps Tommy had acquired for the whole team, and unfolded them. Tommy began giving them grid coordinates for new rally points, outside the city. He also advised everyone to buy tents, space blankets and rain jackets, just in case. After much discussion, it was agreed that Shiara should remain a prisoner, for now, but the women working for him should be released in Singapore.

The sole surviving pirate from their waterborne ambush had died, either of shock, fever, or some internal wounds not evident to his captors. Not too many tears were shed over him.

The rain began to fall an hour after they split up and headed back to their respective places.

 

The next day passed and the boats were long gone. The squall blew into Medan with a vengeance. It was only the border of the actual typhoon—a thunderstorm being pushed along in front of the meteorological monster. Still, Medan gradually began to resemble Venice, Italy.

Josh sat down heavily at the bar of a nude dancing club and ordered a beer. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He had bought a cheap suit, and carried his laptop case with him everywhere he went…which was mostly whorehouses of various class. He posed as a john with very specific tastes. He had already seen two girls who had to be younger than 12 years old, offering their bodies for rent—in addition to all the older prostitutes who had probably started just as young.

He wanted to cry or start shooting indiscriminately. Maybe both.

But he would do neither. When he finished his beer, he would continue window-shopping through the meat markets peddling female flesh. Suck it up and drive on.

Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined Tommy Scarred Wolf would show up out of the blue at his home one day, asking for a favor like this. And he probably wouldn’t have guessed he would agree to it, either. But despite his disappointment in Tommy for some of his decisions, he missed his old friend. Tommy had helped him out too many times to count, back in the day, and so far as Josh could remember, this was the first time Tommy asked him for anything.

So here he was, wading through throngs of whores, pimps, and cutthroats watching his every move, no doubt hoping to roll the “rich westerner” once he got too drunk or high to defend himself.

Welcome to civilization.

Josh just wanted to be back on his mountain, and to be left alone. “Civilization” was a cesspool full of people he couldn’t trust, and he wanted no part of it.

And civilization in Indonesia made it even worse, because it reminded him of Jenai.

In Special Forces, soldiers were once required to learn at least one foreign language. For some unknown reason, the Army had him learn the national language of this country. They went so far as to send him to Jakarta after language school, to immerse him in the culture and be forced to become fluent in national Indonesian.

When he met Jenai, she was humble, and giving, considerate, polite and even-tempered. Not to mention gorgeous. She was also enamored with him; and he with her. The next time his unit got a block of leave, he went back to her. After his third visit to Jakarta, Jenai came to the States with him.

By the time their divorce was final, she was not so humble, giving, considerate or polite. She certainly wasn’t even-tempered. Western civilization had transformed her into someone he didn’t even like.

Josh sighed. He was stalling himself, because he didn’t want to see any more whores today. He finished his beer, left the bar, and continued slogging through the downpour looking for prostitution.

 

 

 

24

 

 

Jennifer Scarred Wolf awoke from one nightmare into another.

It was a tremendous thunderclap that awoke her. She stirred in the cot and glanced around the dark room. Six other cots were occupied by girls. A couple of them also stirred, but most were too doped up to wake.

One of the girls was Quisling—that was Jennifer’s name for her—and her cot blocked access to the door from the inside, so none of the girls could escape. She bolted upright at the crash of thunder and whipped her head around in all directions, startled and confused. Quisling climbed out of bed, wavered on her feet for a moment trying to stabilize her balance, then opened the door and staggered down the hall. In her drowsy condition, she forgot to shut and lock the door behind her.

Jennifer jumped out of her cot, stomach growling. She had been waiting for chance like this. She hadn’t eaten or drank since being confined in this place, because she knew that’s how they were drugging the others.

There was no bathroom available to them—just a chamber pot that was changed once a day. She faked eating the rice they gave her, and got rid of it while sitting on the chamber pot. Except for the strange red vegetables in the rice—she saved those. When nobody was looking, she chewed them into paste and mixed them with a mouthful of water, added red nail polish from the bottle shared by the other girls, then smeared it into her napkin, and put it back on. When Quisling inspected her, she found a red stain on the napkin. Thankfully, Quisling had no interest in smelling the napkins as part of her inspection, or even looking at it more than a second in the dim light. Jennifer’s period had stopped a couple days ago, but she didn’t want them to know that.

Whatever drug they were using, it was powerful. Just chewing the vegetables and swishing the water made her vision go funny after a while. She could only imagine what would happen if she ingested it.

She imitated the sluggish, disoriented manners of the other new girls so her captors would think her drugged, too. But sooner or later they would get suspicious about how long her flow was lasting. When she was found out, they would put her in the rotation and her virginity would be stolen in a very ugly manner.

Her cousin Takoda was a great mimic. She had learned how to imitate people by watching him do it so often. So nobody got suspicious about her dazed-and-confused act.

It looked as though maybe all her subterfuge had finally paid off.

There was no window in this room, but she had seen one on the way when they first brought her here. It was down the hall to the right.

She stood and wrapped the sheet from the cot around her. They had taken her clothes and the only garments she was allowed to wear were a lacy black brassier and skimpy black panties.

She strode quickly and quietly to the door and peeked out in both directions. Down the hallway to the left she saw moving shadows being cast from a room, and a few irritated voices conferring. A growing puddle of water spread from the room into the hall. The roof must have sprung a leak in what sounded like a heavy downpour outside.

It’s now or never, she told herself. But her legs didn’t want to move. Fear choked her. If she was caught, what would they do to her? She didn’t want to guess. But she knew what would happen if she stayed, and she didn’t like that idea, either. She willed her muscles to move, and ran awkwardly down the hall to the right.

She came to the window and searched for the latch. It didn’t want to budge, but with strength she didn’t know she had, she unlatched it. Grabbing the crosspiece, she heaved upward. The wood began to groan and she stopped immediately. She could tell this was going to be a noisy window. If she slid it open, it would make enough noise to alert somebody, and she didn’t think she could outrun pursuit barefoot, wrapped in a sheet, in some city she wouldn’t know if it was pointed out to her on a map.

Fear froze her again. She didn’t know what to do; only that she had to do something. And fast.

Then she saw lightning flash outside the window.

Lightning always preceded thunder. First the flash, then the boom. She firmed her grip on the window and when the thunder cracked, she threw it open.

She lifted a knee up to the windowsill and levered her body into the opening. She looked down into a narrow alley and realized she was on a second story window. There was nothing soft to land on in sight.

Her mind went back to childhood, when she used to play with her cousins and Uncle Tommy over at his place. Those boys loved to rough-house. One day they were clowning around at jumping and falling, and Uncle Tommy taught them how to fall without hurting themselves. He had done some parachuting in the Army. When she asked to participate, he taught her, too. She had never practiced it since that day, but she still remembered how Uncle Tommy made them repeat, “Balls of the feet; calves; thighs; buttocks; push-up muscle!”

She didn’t have much in the way of push-up muscles, but she jumped. When she hit the hard-packed dirt alley, it stunned her, but she rose to her feet feeling little pain through the flood of adrenalin.

The sheet had snagged on something and now hung torn from the window. Rain poured down heavy. Her hair and underwear were drenched almost instantly.

She ran.

Jennifer had no idea where she was going, but her instincts told her to get as far away from that place as she could. The alley led to a street and she turned right. She ran for a block and turned left. She continued this zigzag route through the torrential rain, putting as many buildings as she could between her and any potential pursuers, until she could run no more.

She stopped and leaned against a wall, gasping for breath. She could make out cars, by their headlights, through the sheets of rain, but saw nobody on foot. Then she noticed some shapes that drew her closer until she could distinguish them through the rain.

Clotheslines. With clothes on them.

The lines were strung between an apartment porch and a telephone pole. It looked like somebody had been in the process of taking the laundry down when the downpour became too intense to continue. Get inside and let the clothes get one more rinse—that’s what she would have done back in Oklahoma if caught in a sudden thunderstorm.

Despite the ungodly heat of this region, the rain was very cold. She needed something to wear soon or she’d get sick. And the idea of wandering around a strange city wearing nothing but slutty underwear didn’t have much appeal, anyway.

She wouldn’t have ever imagined stealing something a few days ago, but she found a shirt and pants that fit her and put them on. She prayed for forgiveness as she did, but would wait to feel guilty later. Still soaked and shivering but with at least some of her body heat being held in, now, she moved on at a walking pace.

She needed to find a police station. As the daughter of a cop, she had the utmost confidence in people with badges. If she could find the local police, she would tell them what happened and they could begin searching for Susan and the others. Maybe they would let her call back home.

But she didn’t see hardly anyone out tonight in this nasty weather.

She kept walking, arms crossed under her breasts, head down so she could see anything she might be about to step on.

She came to a major street and noticed several taxi cabs parked under an overpass. She took tentative steps toward them, then stopped. She only spoke English, and was doubtful many people understood it wherever this place happened to be.

She continued. She would just have to pantomime the concept of police somehow.

She stopped again. She had nothing to pay a cab driver with.

She started again. If she could get them to just point her to a police station, she would walk there.

She stopped again. Could she trust a cab driver? What if he was part of the gang that controlled the place she just escaped from?

She jumped when somebody tugged on her shirtsleeve from behind, and spoke with a heavy Germanic accent.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

 

 

 

25

 

 

Josh was running through the rain between two brothels, wishing he’d bought an umbrella with the suit because it would strengthen his wimpy white-collar geek disguise, anyway, when his pre-paid cellphone began to ring. Once he reached the safety of a door overhang, he took the phone out of his pocket and answered.

“Yeah?”

“Josh, it’s Leon.”

“What’s up, Cannonball?”

“Been tryin’ to call you all day. Either your cell or mine had lousy signal.”

“Sorry. What’s up?”

“I think Shotgun picked up a scent, but I can’t be sure.”

“Tommy’s niece?” Josh asked, his spirits rising.

“Right. We got some clothes she wore. But I think this monsoon is washin’ the spoor away. We can’t narrow it down to any particular building.”

“Give me a ball park and I’ll check it out.”

Leon gave him a couple intersections and landmarks. Josh copied them down with grease pencil on the back side of his laminated map.

“That’s about all my hound can do in this weather,” Leon said. “And I can’t talk with anybody, so we callin’ it a night.”

“Okay,” Josh replied. “Thanks, compadre.”

Josh found the neighborhood on his map, then flagged down a taxi.

The cab driver arrived in the target neighborhood, still arguing with Josh that the center of the red light district was a few blocks away. Josh insisted that he wanted to be dropped off between two of the intersections Leon told him about. The cabbie finally shrugged, and asked if he could drop him off at the local cab stand since it was in the right vicinity and Josh had no specific address. Josh agreed.

The “cab stand” was under an overpass, where several other taxis parked. Drivers rolled down their windows and shouted to each other as they loitered. Josh paid his driver, got out and made his way to the city block Leon had bracketed.

He slogged through about 75 meters of storm when he saw someone emerge from a side street. It looked like a two-legged drowned rat about five feet tall.

He ducked under the awning of a closed Laundromat and peered through the rain. Pretty much everyone had fled indoors, except his masochistic self, so this was worth a closer look.

The person was barefoot. Had they lost their sandals in a flooded street?

As they drew closer, he recognized the shape and movement as distinctly female. The shirt was much too big, but so soaked it clung to her as if glued. She stopped under an abandoned street vendor’s umbrella, sagging and being buffeted around by the gusting wind. This was about 20 meters from his own shelter. She stared toward the cab stand and started toward it a few times, but stopped herself each time. Her body language screamed, “Desperate, but Wary.”

Then she turned her head to glance behind her nervously. As she did, Josh got a look at her face.

It was Jenny!

He had studied the photos collected and distributed by Tommy and his brother, of all the kidnap victims. Her deep brown eyes had a glow obvious even in cheap digital photos. Making a modified saluting gesture to shield his eyes from the rain, he left his shelter and range-walked toward her, examining her face as he drew near.

She looked haggard and scared, but she had the same nose, same mouth, same chin, and same forehead. This was Jennifer Scarred Wolf.

How should he go about this? He didn’t want to spook her. He wanted her to know she would be safe, now. He hadn’t even thought about this part of it because, frankly, he hadn’t expected to find any of the girls on this haystack-needle quest. He decided to try humor, and for some reason Terminator II came to mind.

“Come with me if you want to live.” he said in his best Austrian accent, which he and most of his old Fifth Group buddies once practiced on a regular occasion to deliver lame jokes and horrible puns.

The girl whirled to face him, grim with alarm.

Bad choice, Rennenkampf. She’s probably never seen the first couple Terminator movies.

“It’s okay, Jenny,” he said, in his normal voice. “I’m here to help you. My name is Josh. I came here with your father and your Uncle Tommy. We’ve been looking for you.”

Her mouth opened but no words came out—only a choked-off squeak.

“It’s okay, Jenny,” he repeated. “We came to find you and take you home.”

“Who are y-you?” she stammered.

“My name is Josh Rennenkampf. I’m a friend of your uncle, Tommy Scarred Wolf. We were in the Army together. We came here to find you and the other girls, and get you back home.”

There were strange changes in her countenance as realization registered through the shock and despair she must have been dealing with all this time. Then she burst into tears and threw herself against him.

He instinctively wrapped his arms around her, to protect her from the wind and cold, but also to give her whatever comfort he could.

No way, he told himself. She was the first person he encountered after leaving the taxi. He hadn’t knocked on a single door. What were the odds? The Man Upstairs must have been looking out for this girl.

Now that he had found her, he needed to get her off the street and into the safe house as quickly as he could. But something told him to just hold her tight for a moment until she found composure.

Finally, he picked her up and carried her to the cab stand. He hired a taxi and had it transport them a few short blocks from the room they were staying in. He didn’t want her subjected to more of the cold rain, but he also didn’t want any cab driver to know where he was staying. Now was no time to get sloppy.

Josh led her by the hand along the streets to the apartment he was staying at. When they made it inside the building, he let go of her and they both took a moment to squeegee water off their skin as best they could with their hands. She was shivering visibly.

“Upstairs,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

She nodded. He led the way up the stairs.

Looking back over his shoulder, he asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she said. “And thirsty. And cold. And weak.”

Weak, my ass, he thought. She was a survivor. Somehow she had escaped from the traffickers, and he wanted to hear how. But for now she deserved a meal, a hot shower, a comfortable bed, and some peace of mind.

He knew the bastards must have raped her. Had she been forced to service customers after they sold her, too? Of course she had—that’s why they took her in the first place. He tried not to think about that. Now was not the time.

He reached his door and knocked on it. “It’s Josh. I’m coming in, and I’ve got someone with me.” He unlocked the door, opened it, stepped through swiftly, pulling her after him, and had the door locked behind them fast.

Vince had stood from his chair and was now frozen, staring, his pistol in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other.

When Jenny realized who it was, she cried, “Daddy!” and ran to him. They embraced and the waterworks started all over again. Through her unintelligible sobbing speech, she kissed him all over his pudgy, craggy face. He held her tight to him and said, “My baby. My baby.”

Josh turned away from the family reunion and pulled his laptop case out of its plastic covering. Despite his precaution, the case was damp. He opened it. The case was designed for a large laptop, but inside was a fairly small notebook computer. The rest of the space was taken up by foam padding…except for a custom cutout in the bottom of the foam, shaped perfectly to fit around an Ingram machine pistol and suppressor.

Josh took the Ingram out and tsked at the moisture that had found it. From his travel kit he produced a shaving brush and some gun oil in an innocent-looking aftershave bottle, and took it all to the bathroom. After wiping down the weapon with a hand towel, he started the shower for Jenny. He disassembled the Ingram, brushed on a fresh film of oil and reassembled it.

Stepping out to the main room, he announced, “The water’s steaming now. Go jump in the shower and we’ll find something dry for you to wear.”

The girl turned her gaze on him and flashed a smile before moving to comply. It was a great smile.

Once she was in the shower, the two men rustled through their belongings and came up with a tee-shirt, sweat pants and a hoodie she could bundle up in for the night. They had to get her body temperature up above the comfort level to ensure a fever didn’t set in from her exposure and drenching. As they rummaged, Josh filled him in on how he found her.

Vince made a point of locking eyes with him afterward. “Thank-you. I mean that.”

“Welcome,” Josh replied. The hardnosed career cop and the borderline anarchist didn’t like each other much, but finding Vince’s daughter had at least dialed down their mutual animosity.

Vince set the clothes on the sink for his daughter, then closed the door behind him as he came out of the bathroom.

“I’m gonna run get us some food,” Josh said. “Tomorrow I’ll go buy some clothes for her when the stores open…if they open at all during this diarrhea-of-the-sky. And speaking of diarrhea, get her to take a few of those tablets while I’m gone or the local cuisine might wreck her stomach. I put some bottled water in the fridge last night—she might be dehydrated, too.”

Vince nodded once. He wasn’t used to taking orders from what he considered “civilians” (non-police), but he supposed he’d have to keep doing it until he got his daughter home.

With his custom M1911 in a shoulder holster under his suit jacket, Josh opened the apartment door and turned back to say, “I should be back within the hour. Why don’t you call Tommy; I’ll call Leon and let him know we found her.”

 

 

 

26

INDIAN OCEAN

 

 

Rocco sat on the bridge with Marius, as the old sailor ran the Tinseltown away from the storm. The waves were high and rough, but Marius Bock didn’t seem to be overly concerned. Currently, he was repeating some of his experiences on a corvette in the South African Navy to Rocco, for at least the 20^th time since they’d known each other. Rocco didn’t mind.

Candy, Blake and Wycliffe remained below. They rode out the storm inside their cabins, and now remained there most of the time. Ingrid went below to check on them periodically and, being completely ignorant about how to deal with rape victims, Rocco was glad to let her do it.

When Ingrid came above decks that night, she had an excited smile on. “They found one of the girls!” she declared.

Rocco Cavarra stood from his seat. “Hoo-yah! Which one?”

“Vince’s daughter.”

Rocco and Marius grinned. Nobody came out and said Jennifer was “more important” than the other girls, but Tommy’s connection made it personal for them, and was the whole reason this rescue attempt was even put together.

“Do they have a lead on the other captives, then?” Marius asked.

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said. “And Josh didn’t go into detail about her condition, either.”

“That damn typhoon has bloody good timing,” Marius grumbled. “Doesn’t it?”

Rocco nodded. “We could have her on board safe with us.” He yawned, suddenly realizing how fatigued he was.

“You’ve got to be exhausted,” Ingrid said. “I haven’t seen you sleep since we’ve been on this ship.”

Rocco didn’t answer. He was bushed, but couldn’t risk leaving the Tinseltown unguarded in these waters.

“Somebody’s got to hold down the fort,” Marius said. “Keep the Huns at bay and all that.”

“I’ll stay up with the captain,” Ingrid offered. “If anything happens, I’ll wake you up.”

“Listen to her, Rocco,” Marius said. “You aren’t much use to us with double vision, are you then? I’m going to find a cove to drop anchor in soon, and get some shuteye of my own. We can stand watch in three hour shifts.”

Rocco chewed his lip, then turned to Ingrid. “Okay, but get that spare AA12 from below and keep it with you.”

Her eyes widened. “That shotgun, machinegun thing? I don’t think I can…”

“Sure you can. There’s hardly any recoil. And I’ll sleep better knowing somebody’s up here with a whole can of whupass.”

 

MEDAN

 

Josh returned to the apartment with a huge bag of American fast food. At least the logos and packaging looked American. How it tasted might be another thing. But the Yankee franchise had been the only eatery open in the storm, which was threatening to get even worse.

He found Vince questioning his daughter about her captors, taking notes, as they both sat on the bench/couch. Josh set the food bag on the table and began unpacking it. Her eyes big and round, Jennifer appeared beside him and asked what was hers.

“Take whatever you want,” he said.

She snatched up a burger and fries, closed her eyes and mumbled something briefly, then tore into it standing right there.

Josh decided to let her eat her fill before he took anything for himself, so he grabbed his duffel and shut himself in the bathroom. Glad to have no more need for his john/trick costume, at least for the time being, Josh stripped off the suit and showered before dressing in some dry, comfortable cargo pants and a long, baggy tee-shirt.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Jennifer was still cramming groceries down her neck. He sat in the chair opposite the couch and said, “Jenny, we still need to find the other girls. Is there anything you saw or heard that could help us find them?”

Jennifer swallowed a mouthful of burger, and said, “Susan and I were bought by the same guy. He was a short, fat man with lots of jewelry. I think I heard him called ‘Nidal.’ I don’t know what happened to Judy.”

Josh retrieved his laptop and booted up. Shiara had used a different name for the pimp. Now he could cross-reference with this name to narrow his results from the vice arrests in Medan—if he could hack into the police database. He hadn’t been able to yet; but then he had spent most of his time prowling the red light districts instead of hacking.

Leon’s dog couldn’t help him anymore, and he might wander the streets for years without catching sight of one of the other girls. If he could find some poop on this “Nidal” guy, maybe he could pinpoint his operations, and concentrate his search for Susan Pyrch there.

 

Jennifer awoke the next morning feeling better than she had in a week. She rolled out of bed, visited the bathroom and entered the main room, to see a bleary-eyed Josh bent over his laptop at the table.

“Good morning,” she greeted.

He flashed her a weary grin and replied, “Mornin’,” in a scratchy voice.

She sat opposite him at the table and asked, “Where’s my dad?”

“Went to get us some breakfast,” Josh said. “With the language gap, he might bring something back awful interesting.”

She laughed, and it felt good to do so. “Wouldn’t it have been better for you to go?”

Josh leaned up straight, stretched, and rubbed his tired eyes. “He’s been going stir-crazy and wanted to get out for a bit. And I’m in the middle of tracking down the guy that bought your friend.”

“Have you been up all night?”

He nodded and yawned. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Any luck?”

“I’m workin’ on it.”

She tried not to think overly much about Susan or the others. They may not have been as fortunate as she was, and she really wanted to be optimistic if at all possible. “I haven’t really thanked you, yet. You said your name is Joshua?”

He nodded. “Or Josh. No big deal. I’m just one of the people involved. And I understand if you’re not feeling a lot of gratitude after what’s happened to you.”

Joshua--she liked that name. “Well, I’m thanking you anyway, Joshua.”

“My pleasure.”

“You said you’re a friend of my uncle’s?”

He leaned back and stretched again, clasping hands behind his neck. “We go back, me and Tommy. I was lucky enough to wind up on his A-Team as my first assignment in Group.”

“Army talk,” she said, with a crooked grin.

“When I was a rookie,” he explained, “Tommy was my first boss. He was kind of a legend, and everybody looked up to him. He was a fantastic leader, and I learned a lot from him.”

“I knew he was a war hero,” Jennifer said. “When we first got kidnapped, I found myself hoping that he would come find us, somehow. But then I told myself it was silly to expect that.”

Joshua studied her eyes for a long moment and she found the heat of his gaze to be intense.

“What?” she asked.

He shrugged, grinning again. “I guess it wasn’t so silly after all.”

“I guess not,” she agreed. “So you were a Green Beret, too.”

He nodded.

“I think I remember you visiting a couple times when I was young,” she said.

“Tommy and me were friends for years,” he said, his features growing cloudy.

The end of those visits years ago, plus his demeanor now, led her to deduce the friendship had ended for some reason. “Then what happened?”

He cleared his throat and shut his laptop. “I’m surprised your dad hasn’t told you about me. You might as well hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, first: I’m one of those right-wing extremist boogeymen you’re always hearing about on TV.”

“Really?” Now her interest was piqued. “You see black helicopters and secret concentration camps and watch Alex Jones and all that?”

“In between imagining surveillance cameras everywhere and building fertilizer bombs. Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you use sarcasm.”

“That, too.”

“I hope you’re kidding about the bombs,” she said.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was?”

“I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

His eyes widened slightly at that, then narrowed, as if suspicious she was playing with him.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I prefer to judge people by their own fruit; not what popular opinion says I should believe about them.”

Now he really looked suspicious she was playing with him. But he said, “Well, that being the case…no, I don’t build bombs or plot any kind of violence. I pretty much keep to myself, try to mind my own business and stay out of the rat race.”

“Where do you live? Please don’t tell me in an Idaho bunker or something.”

“Close enough,” he said. “I’ve got a dome-home in Colorado, out in the sticks.”

“Too cool!” she exclaimed. “Do you have horses?”

“Not yet, but I’m thinking about it.”

Jennifer had been hoping for something to distract her from worrying about her friends, and Joshua fit the bill nicely. In some ways he reminded her a lot of Uncle Tommy. In other ways he seemed different from anyone she had ever met. But before she could probe any further, her Dad arrived with some more pseudo-American fast food.

Joshua stood and made a saluting gesture. “I’m gonna go get Jenny some clothes and shoes. Then I have to shut my eyes for a few hours, y’all.”

“Don’t you want to eat first?” Jennifer asked. He must have been starved after eating so little the night before, then working straight through until this morning.

“Um, put mine in the fridge and I’ll get to it later,” he said.

“Let him go,” her father said. “He’s been up all night.”

“You don’t want to eat your food cold,” she insisted. “Come on—eat with us.”

He stared at her curiously for a moment. In the minimal interactions they’d had so far, it seemed he was consistently surprised by the things she said.

He hesitated, but sat back down and waited for Vince to unpack the bag.

 

***

 

Jake McCallum wished he’d thought of it before, but had forgotten all about the translator program for his iPod. Now, armed with it, he visited the nearest red light district himself. Business was slow during the storm, and madams were probably a little more attentive to his requests than they normally would be.

He searched until the iPod’s battery went dead, then he went back to the room he shared with Leon, recharged it and went out again.

As the rain-soaked afternoon darkened into evening, he got a call on his pre-paid cell.

“Mac, it’s Josh.” His voice sounded deep and gravelly, like he’d just woken up recently.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“I found three places owned by the guy who took Susan. I have addresses. Tommy says you found a way to talk to the locals?”

“Yeah. Translator app. It helps them understand me; but I still have trouble understanding them.”

“Better than nothing,” Josh said. “I have an address close to your AO. Can you check it while I try the other ones?”

Mac’s heart surged. Maybe this wasn’t all an exercise in futility after all. “Hell yeah. Text it to me.”

Mac received the text right after ending the call, and marched back to the room.

Inside the seedy hotel room, he found Leon reclined on one of the beds with a paperback in one hand and his Ruger SR9 in the other. He watched Mac come in with mild curiosity.

“Lock-and-load, Cannonball! We got a lead, and you’re my backup.”

Leon dropped the book and planted his feet on the floor. “What’s up?”

“The other Indian girl. We found some places owned by the dude who bought her. We’re gonna check one out.”

Leon glanced at Shotgun, standing alert since before Mac had even reached the door outside. “Hey girl. You wanna go for a walk? Play in the puddles?”

Shotgun wagged her tail.

“Man, leave the stupid dog here,” Mac said. “She’s just gonna draw attention to you.”

Leon shook his head, hard. “That’s a big negative. These people cook and eat dogs over here, man. Our landlord’s probably been diggin’ out his recipes ever since he saw her. I ain’t leavin’ her by herself.”

Mac shook his head and stripped off his rain jacket, water droplets shaking off in all directions. He dug through his gym bag, brought out the vest bristling with Ingram magazines and shrugged into it. Over that he draped a tropical shirt that hung loose off his enormous musculature. Then he slung on a shoulder rig, and attached the silenced Ingram to it.

Watching this with increasing interest, Leon said, “Slow your roll, Mac. Are we goin’ in hot?”

“No. But we need to be locked, cocked and ready to rock. If we find her, we might not get a red carpet to walk her out of there on. And somebody’s already tried to frag Tommy and Vince. I don’t want to take chances. Do you?”

Leon sighed, then quickly changed. He pulled on Gore-Tex socks and boots, and a black tee-shirt before donning his own chest rig. He covered everything with his own rain jacket, and finally picked up the briefcase containing his broken-down sniper rifle.

They went through the room, policing up everything they didn’t want to leave behind, and stuffing it in their gym bags.

They gave each other the once-over at the door.

“Guns up?” Mac asked.

“Rock steady,” Leon said.

They bumped fists, then stepped out into the storm, Shotgun trotting behind.

 

 

 

27

 

INDIAN OCEAN

 

The Tinseltown rocked gently on the waves, at anchor amidst a tiny archipelago where the water was just deep enough at low tide to float a vessel of her size. Marius had dropped anchor early that morning, after finally getting under clear sky.

The outward edges of the storm radius now safely behind them, Rocco Cavarra watched the typhoon pass them by on the radar. Medan had been right in the outer edges of the surrounding storm, but it had just shifted direction. Now the worst of the storm was going to tear right through the city. There was another, much smaller object in motion painted by the radar, too. Perhaps a flock of seagulls. It should be winging into sight within a few minutes, given its trajectory.

The sound of female laughter startled him, and he looked up from the screen. Both Ingrid and Candy were out sunning on the deck. He stood, stretched and left the bridge to wander over. He hadn’t heard any laughter for a while and it was good to hear, especially from Candy.

They glanced up at him as he approached. “Hello, Mr. Cavarra,” Candy greeted.

He gave them a smile. “You two look like you’re on vacation.”

“We were wondering if you might take us to one of those islands,” Ingrid said. “I see banana trees, and we might be able to find coconuts and mangoes, too.”

“That does sound good,” he replied, sitting on the hawser. “Maybe after the skipper wakes up.”

“So is ‘Rocco’ your real name?” Candy asked.

Rocco chuckled. “My real name is Dwight. But I guess people prefer to call me by a real Dago-sounding name.”

“What part of Italy are you from?” Ingrid asked.

“I’m from California,” Rocco said. “But my parents were from Sicily.”

“Cool,” Candy said. “Can you speak Italian?”

“Yeah. Once upon a time I spoke it better than I spoke English. I sounded just like Chico Marx.”

“Who?” Ingrid and Candy asked, in unison.

Rocco never answered, suddenly aware of an engine noise wafting through the wind. He rose to his feet, listened for a moment until he was sure he heard right, then strode back to the bridge where he retrieved the binoculars stashed in the captain’s console. He climbed atop the forecastle and panned the horizon in the direction of the sound. The girls remained in positions of repose on deck, but watched him, chatting quietly with a sober disposition.

“What is it?” Ingrid called.

“Don’t know, yet,” he called back. He hoped it wasn’t a naval patrol from any of the countries in the region. Hopefully it was just some storm chaser out following the typhoon at a safe distance. It sure wasn’t a flock of seagulls.

For a time the noise faded, and Rocco began to relax. Then it grew in volume again. It grew in volume to the point he knew the source would be in visual range any time now.

And then it was.

It first appeared as one low, long shape on the sea. As it grew closer, the shape separated into four smaller silhouettes.

“Ingrid!”

“Yes?” she replied.