“The sharks around here are notorious,” the man said, smiling. “Let’s see how long it takes one to turn up.”
It was about fifteen minutes before the first fin swept in. To Mike it looked like a Mako. That made sense; the pelagic hunters cruised the blue water constantly, looking for the fast deep-water fish that were their primary prey. But they weren’t averse to eating a human, either, as this one proved by sweeping in and attacking the head of the man he’d shot.
“Lower him a bit more,” Mike said as the driver started retching. “Let’s see how fast they eat him. And bring me the other guy from the boat. Time to feed the sharks.”
In another ten minutes the water was teeming. The crew, most of them trying to struggle as they saw what was going to happen, were shot, one by one, and tossed over to chum up the sharks. All the while, the driver was held in place, forced to watch.
“Okay,” Mike said, smiling that faint, friendly smile. “Even having seen all this, I won’t kill you. You may not believe me, but I’m a man of my word. So you wanna give me the coordinates of the container?”
“You cannot do this!” the driver said. “You are American!”
“And that means we’re the good guys, right?” Mike asked, pulling the man back by his hair. “Wrong. We’re junkyard dogs that get kept on a leash. Because if we had our way this is what we’d do to all you motherfuckers. You think you have the market on brutality? Ask the Indians how brutal we can be. Ask the Japanese. Ask the Germans. You’re finally getting a taste of your own medicine and now you’re going to FUCKING TELL ME or I’m going to feed you to the sharks, one bit at a fucking time. LOOK AT THEM!” Mike screamed, holding the man’s head down so he was looking right at the red churned water. The bodies were still being torn apart; even that many sharks, and there were a lot of sharks, couldn’t finish off the crew of a freighter fast. “I’M GOING TO FEED YOU TO THEM FEET DOWN UNLESS YOU TELL ME THE FUCKING COORDINATES!”
“Fuck you, you goat sucking…” The man was crying now.
Mike gestured for the winch and hooked up a sling under the man’s bound arms.
“Wanna talk?” he asked mildly. “Let me tell you something, you Islamic fuck. A woman I dearly loved was killed by your kind about two months ago. I can’t really be said to be over that. Now, I dearly want to add you to the frenzy, just push you over the fucking side and be done with it. But, as I said, I won’t kill you. If you tell me the coordinates. If you tell me now, you can leave this ship with all your limbs intact. But when I tell them to lift you up, you are going into the water. So you want to tell me? Come on, it’s just a few numbers. You can do it. A few numbers. I know you know them. You’ve got them memorized. You punch them in and erase the track after you’ve done the pickup.”
“No,” the driver said, whimpering.
“God, you people are sooo stupid.” He straightened up and gestured.
“Please!” the driver said as he was lifted into the air. “You cannot do this to me!”
“Did I listen to any of the rest of them?” Mike asked as the diver was lowered over the side. “Do you listen to the pleas of your victims? To the men whose throats you cut? To the little girls that get raped for the sins of their brothers? Do you care for those you’re starving to death in the Sudan? Did you listen to the pleas of the pilots you dragged through the streets of Mogadishu? Did you jump for joy when the Towers fell? Did you, YOU CAMEL-SUCKING FUCK?”
The driver probably wasn’t hearing him. He was screaming as he was lowered, slowly, towards the water. His legs were drawn up to his waist, but that just left his balls the most exposed. He must have realized that because as the first shark came out of the water after him he bent upwards, straining to keep his crotch out of the water.
“Hold it there,” Mike said, lifting a hand. “Let’s see how good of shape he’s in. In fact, bring it up a little. I don’t want them getting a bite until I say.”
The winch was jerked up so that the driver was dangling about three feet over the water. The sharks, having finished off most of the crew, were circling underneath hungrily.
“One little set of coordinates,” Mike yelled. “I’ve got all night. Really. We brought packed lunches.”
The driver couldn’t hold the pike position and he straightened out after a minute or two, his legs quivering as he tried to hold them up. Finally, they too began to straighten. The left went first, dropping straight down as his strength gave way and he screamed as his foot disappeared into the maw of a tiger shark that had turned up for the feast.
“Up,” Mike gestured as the severed limb started squirting blood.
The driver was rapidly lifted and a tourniquet was on before he hit the deck, eliciting another scream as his stump hit the steel deck.
“I can do this all night,” Mike said. “One. Piece. At. A. Time. We’ve got whole blood with us. If you lose too much we can give you more.”
“They will kill my family,” the Yemeni gasped. “I have a mother, a sister, in Yemen. They will kill them.”
“We’ll take care of them,” Mike said. “I will make sure of it. They will be taken to a safe place. Now tell me the coordinates.”
The driver gasped out some coordinates.
“Okay, now say it backwards,” Mike said.
“What?”
“SAY IT BACKWARDS YOU SON OF A DISEASED CAMEL!” Mike screamed. “FAST!”
The driver stuttered coordinates again.
“Close enough,” Mike said. “But I’m holding you to that. If it’s not there…” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Okay, now I have a few more little questions to ask…”
Chapter Twenty-One
“I have a probable location on the mother lode,” Mike said as the Hind headed back to base. He gave the admiral the coordinates. “And you can suspend monitoring operation on the freighter.”
“Will do,” Ryan said. “I’ll send a team to those coordinates immediately.”
The radar tech’s face was frozen when the CIC officer approached.
“PO, you can suspend monitoring the suspect vessel,” the officer said, then paused. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the tech said, shifting the zoom on her screen.
The officer wasn’t sure what was wrong. He’d gotten good at ignoring things on screens he wasn’t supposed to see but he had to admit he’d sneaked a peek at this one. And there wasn’t much there. Just a few boats moving south and an aerial track right at the edge of detection.
In the center of the screen there was just… nothing.
Come to think of it, wasn’t there supposed to be a ship there?
It wasn’t their usual job but they could do it. The Seahawk helo was nominally an antisubmarine warfare bird. But over time it had done Search and Rescue, flown the mail and everything else that was possible to do in a helo capable of carrying 8000 pounds over 380 nautical miles.
Now it was looking for a magnetic anomaly at a given set of coordinates. Suited up in the back were two SEALS with the mission to check out the contact, if any.
The Seahawk swept southward and slowed as it approached the coordinates.
“We got anything?” the pilot asked over the intercom.
“Negative so far,” the sonar tech watching the Magnetic Anomaly Detector said. “Wait. MAD, MAD, MAD. Right on the coordinates.”
The co hit the release for a smoke and fire buoy, then the Seahawk banked back around. The pilot came in low over the buoy, hovering, as the sonar tech lowered the sonar sensor on a cable.