Ted Grant, a shooter from Alpha Troop who was also a trained psychologist, had set aside some space on the bridge to talk to the hostages, and was holding conference in the semi-private room.
The bodies of the dead pirates had been collected and placed in rows to be examined, and the few remaining survivors were corralled in the rock pen where the Fu Yu Shan’s crew had recently been staying.
‘I know,’ Treyborne replied. ‘Our contact saw that Suprapto was making off with him in a damn freakin’ mini-sub, and took off after them. I don’t —’
‘Hold it!’
Navarone heard the call from the cavern entrance, and he and Treyborne raced over to the rear of the ship to find out what was happening.
Navarone saw an athletically-built man carrying a blood-stained half-naked pirate across his back, a man in a captain’s uniform limping along behind them.
The SEAL who had his gun pointed at the men listened to the athletic man speak, and nodded his head in understanding, turning back to look up at the deck of the Fu Yu Shan.
‘Sir!’ he called up. ‘It’s the Asset! He’s got Captain Yang with him, and Suprapto!’
Treyborne grinned. ‘I’ll be right down!’ he said happily.
Cole remembered Ike Treyborne. They had served together in SEAL Team Six, back when they had both been lieutenants. He’d been a good man, and Cole was delighted to see that he was still operational, despite his rank.
But even though Cole recognized Treyborne, it was unlikely that the commander of Red Squadron would recognize him; he’d changed considerably through plastic surgery since his days as Mark Kowalski.
‘So you’re the Asset?’ Treyborne asked with a smile as he met Cole by the dockside. Cole nodded, and Treyborne extended his hand, pumping it furiously. ‘Well, I gotta tell you, I’m damned glad you were here. You did an amazing job. Really, I mean it.’ Still shaking Cole’s hand, his eyes narrowed. ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Cole said noncommittally. ‘I’ve been around.’
Treyborne laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have.’ He looked down at the body of Arief Suprapto, unmoving on the dock. ‘Is he —‘
‘Dead?’ Cole finished, then nodded his head. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Captain Yang’ — he gestured behind him at the dazed Chinese captain, whose eyes were still staring off into the distance — ‘got a bit carried away, picked up Suprapto’s Colt .45 when I was questioning him and blew a hole in his chest. Guess he had a lot of built-up frustration.’
Treyborne laughed again, Cole’s deadpan humor overcoming the disappointment. ‘You said you questioned him?’ he asked hopefully, as Captain Yang was led away by one of his men.
‘I did,’ Cole replied seriously. ‘And I think we need to talk.’
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Treyborne said as he listened to Cole’s debrief. ‘So what does it all mean?’
Cole had managed to convince Suprapto to tell him everything — or at least as much as he was able to tell him before Captain Yang had gone and put a .45 slug in his heart.
It had been the Korean agents back in Jakarta which had made Cole so determined to get answers. Why were they interested? What was their part in all this?
It hadn’t taken long for Suprapto to admit that the hijacking wasn’t opportunistic; he had been hired specifically to target that particular vessel. Cole learnt that Liang Kebangkitan had been hired by Jemaah Islamiyah to hijack the Fu Yu Shan, earning the princely sum of twenty million US dollars for one small crate.
Suprapto didn’t know what was in the crate, and Cole believed him; he had merely travelled to the mainland and handed over the wooden box to his JI contact, Umar Shibab, who had put it in his jeep and driven off. For some reason, Suprapto suspected he had been planning on flying it out somewhere else, but didn’t know why he’d thought that; perhaps something the man had said.
What Suprapto did know was that there had been two highly trained men on the ship who had tried to defend the cargo; and when the pirate leader had quizzed the captain about them, it transpired that they had joined the crew at Dalian — the same port where the crate had been taken on board.
Cole knew the port of Dalian — it was right next to North Korea.
‘I think our best possible guess,’ Cole answered Treyborne, ‘is that North Korea was trying to smuggle something out of the country and into Karachi, possibly for use nearby, or else for further transportation elsewhere. And Jemaah Islamiyah — or one of the larger, better funded groups behind it — got wind of what it was, and decided it wanted it for itself. So they hired these pirates and took control of the crate.’
‘And we think that inside the crate is…’
Cole nodded his head. ‘A weapon most likely, yes. What kind? I’ve got no idea. But obviously powerful enough to be worth all this effort, as well as twenty million US dollars.’
Treyborne breathed out slowly. ‘Nuclear?’ He watched as Cole shrugged his shoulders, and his own slumped. ‘Ah, shit. So this thing’s far from over, I guess.’ He bowed his head as he thought. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I guess we better tell the president.’
8
The mood throughout the White House Situation Room had been buoyant and enthusiastic after the first transmissions from General Cooper — the hostages and ship were safe, and Liang Kebangkitan had been subdued without any serious US casualties. President Tsang Feng had also been delighted with the news, and there had been an air of excited satisfaction within the members of the National Security Council.
But then Cooper had patched Commander Ike Treyborne through directly to the NSC, and the mood had been soured immediately.
Could the hijacking of a cargo ship really have just been for the sake of one small box? A small box of unknown origin, which could contain anything?
‘What else can we get from Suprapto?’ asked Catalina dos Santos, worry across her handsome features.
On the satellite video uplink, Treyborne shook his head sadly. ‘Regrettably, Arief Suprapto was killed before we could finish questioning him. But I think we need to take this seriously and start making some moves. On the one hand, we need to pursue the Jemaah Islamiyah lead and find out where the cargo went, and on the other, we need to trace the cargo back to wherever the hell it came from so we can find out exactly what it is we’re dealing with.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Commander,’ Jeb Richards said, ‘but let me establish something here. All we really have — in terms of suspecting this wasn’t just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill hijacking — is the word of this unknown operative?’ Richards asked. ‘Nobody else knows anything about it?’
‘Captain Yang was also there when Suprapto was questioned, but at the moment he’s been sedated and is unable to be of any help.’
‘How convenient,’ Richards said. He took a drink of his coffee, set the cup down, and cleared his throat. ‘So let me get this straight. The pirate leader winds up dead, this Asset claims that Yang shot him, and then comes back with a report of a mystery weapon from North Korea? Which we can’t really corroborate now, one way or another?’ Richards looked around the room. ‘Does that strike anybody else as a little hard to believe?’
‘I’ll vouch for the man,’ President Abrams said forcefully.
‘Ah, Ellen?’ Clark Mason interjected smoothly, and Jeb Richards watched in anticipation, knowing that Abrams’ confidence was about to be somewhat curtailed. He took a long slurp of coffee and waited for Clark Mason to begin in earnest.