Bells rang. Whistles blared. A scramble siren went off. But none of this did any good. The gunboat’s crew was already heading toward their battle stations, but there was nothing to scramble to. The sad truth was, for all the firepower packed in the gunboat, it was useless now. The travelers had indeed spent a lot for money and had spent wisely. No pirate vessel had come within fifteen miles of them.
But no one had expected anything to be coming from the air.
The AC-130 rose slightly in altitude as it approached the gunboat again. Its engines suddenly began screeching louder than before—this was the noise the four propellers made when their fuel was pulled back and they’d been ordered to reduce speed. Engines protesting, the pilots put the big aircraft into orbit about 1200 feet directly above the gunboat. The pilot dropped the left wing, and now all four doors on that side of the fuselage snapped open.
The stream of fire that came out of the gunship now lit up the sea for twenty-five miles around. It lasted no more than twenty seconds, just enough for the big airplane to make one circuit around the hapless gunboat. The violence it visited on the water was so quick, so intense, so heated, that steam enveloped the gunboat. A few of the vapors were blood red. When the smoke and the mist and the sea spray finally cleared, there was nothing left.
The gunboat and its crew were gone.
Its job done, the airplane departed in the same direction from whence it came. It would fly all the way to Bahrain. There it would land at a secret base and pick up a trunk full of dollars. This would be the second installment in its contract with sea pirates. The crew would split fifty percent of the take, and what remained would be sent to a special Swiss bank account controlled by others. The crew would then take off and refuel in the air, before returning to base. If all went well, they would be down and eating dinner by 1800 hours, another day’s work behind them.
As for the travelers—they were now easy pickings. The pirates moved in and methodically attacked and boarded each vessel. Anything of value was taken; the captains and crews were immediately killed. All eligible females were snatched, along with all the guns and radio gear.
Once each boat had been visited by the pirates, the sea thieves would fire 22-mm cannon shells into its hull. A ten-second burst was usually all that was needed. Invariably something would catch on fire or the holes made would be big enough to cause water to pour in. No one remaining on any boat survived. All either drowned, or did not last long in what was some of the most shark-infested waters of the world. More than 160 men, elderly women, and children met their end this way.
The pirates, as always, made a clean getaway.
Chapter 11
Seven Ghosts Key
Midnight
The storm came up so quickly, Smitz didn’t have time to close the window in his billet.
The rain and wind blew in, like a pair of unseen hands, causing a small tornado to swirl madly around his room. It scattered his previously orderly papers everywhere, and soaked just about everything he considered valuable, including his fax machine, his change of clothes, and his bunk. Then, just as quickly, it stopped, even before he could get the window closed, leaving him dripping wet and his room in a shambles.
His world turned upside down again. Just like that.
He’d been lying on his bunk, going over his NoteBook entries for the day, when the sudden wind came up. Located in base’s tiny control tower, one floor down from the control room itself, his ten-by-ten billet had been a storage closet originally. When Smitz first landed on Seven Ghosts Key, his rooming options were limited to bunking in with the Marines in Motel Hell or staying with the pilots in the basement of the building adjacent to Hangar 2. Instinct told him that with this operation, it was best that he didn’t get to close to the personnel involved. Especially the pilots.
So he’d tried sleeping in the Big Room the first few nights. But between the laughing murals, the lizards scurrying everywhere, and the tale of the seven CIA people who’d vanished from the island bouncing around his head, the place had given him a major case of the yips. Smitz valued his sleep, and wanted to lay his head somewhere that was not overrun with reptiles or ghosts. When Rooney suggested that the empty supply room in the tower might be more comfortable, Smitz jumped at the chance.
He lay back down on his bunk now, disgusted that in just a few seconds his place had become a small disaster area. But this was nothing new. This assignment had been a struggle from the start, and nothing he’d seen lately indicated that it was going to change anytime soon. A small twister in his room was just more of the same.
The screwiness had not ended that night in Bethesda. If anything, it had grown worse. Not only was he almost as much in the dark about this operation’s goals as the personnel called in to do the job, but since arriving on Seven Ghosts Key, Smitz had been fighting a silent, but nonstop battle with his office back in Washington for both the information and equipment he needed to see the thing through. Getting the intelligence assets. Getting the humans. Getting the Tin Can software. Getting bunks for the Marines. All of it a battle. For some reason, he’d had to fight for every last nut and bolt of the essentials, and with his nemesis Larry Stone back in D.C. controlling the spigot, it was even harder than expected.
Smitz was getting so weary of it, he’d wished more than once that some ghost would swoop down and spirit him away. But then they’d have to change the name of the island.
The strange thing was, only stuff relating to the upcoming operation seemed to have a hard time squeezing itself through the supply pipeline. Espresso for the restaurant, fresh steaks for chow, tapes for everyone’s VCRs—all these things he could get, via the twice-weekly visits by CIA-contracted cargo planes. But trying to secure the correct-size computer disk for the Tin Can’s hard drive had taken three weeks. Getting the two tapes he’d shown at the recently completed briefing had taken nearly as long. These selective delays were stupid and weird, like just about everything associated with the project. Yet every time he cabled Stone to ask why it seemed some things were being held up intentionally, he never received an adequate reply.
It was like fighting a losing battle from the start.
Smitz put his last dry towel under his head now, took off his glasses, and tried to rest his tired eyes. This operation was the biggest and most complex he’d ever been assigned. He was, after all, still a junior officer in the CIA’s Special Foreign Operations Section. His job for the past two years had been essentially carrying spears for the section’s bigger operatives. Cleaning up their dirty work, getting funds to them if they were offshore, writing their reports if they were not. The solo projects he’d handled had been appropriately unimportant. Meeting with Cuban dissidents, interviewing fake Russian nuclear scientists, telling half-truths to disaffected mullahs. Kid stuff…
Why then had Jacobs given him this assignment literally from his deathbed? Had it been a vote of confidence from the old dog to a young wolf making his way up the ranks? Or had it been just the opposite—a chance for him to fail and get weeded out to some real crappy CIA desk job, like the Agricultural Intelligence Section. Was that the reason Stone was squeezing his balls so hard on this one? Smitz didn’t know. He was the first to admit that the project was a little over his head. The question was, could he still rise above the waves and see it through?