What did those damn sailors want?
He sighed; time for Plan B.
‘Hasyimi,’ he said into his radio, ‘bring me the ship’s blueprints.’
O and Jang waited silently behind a section of wooden crates, watching through the sights of their assault rifles. Whoever came down the stairs next would be dead.
It was a shame that the other crew members were being killed, but there was no way on earth that the two soldiers would ever surrender. It wasn’t in their nature, and nor was it in their orders. And soldiers — especially from the strict hierarchical culture of the homeland — were expected to follow orders.
And so they would wait here to protect their crate, and they wouldn’t move until their own dead bodies were pried away, if it came to that.
But O and Jang hoped it would not; the pirate captain was obviously reluctant to damage the cargo by leading a full assault, and he seemed to have given up executing the crew members too. They knew that in the end, the pirates would come down those stairs though — they would have to if they ever wanted to unload this cargo. And even if the pirates used hostages as human shields to cover their attack, both men were prepared to go through the hostages to get to the enemy.
O reacted as something came bouncing down the stairs, a small metal canister; then another, then another.
‘Smoke!’ O told Jang, but Jang was already pulling on his respirator, just part of the special equipment they’d smuggled aboard in case of an attack.
Weapons up, they watched the stairs through their darkened lenses, struggling to see through the spiraling smoke, waiting for any sign of the assault which was surely to follow.
O heard a guttural noise from next to him, and turned to Jang. Even through the smoke, O could see the tip of a knife sticking out of his friend’s throat, having been rammed straight through the neck from behind.
O tried to turn, to shoot, but it was too late, and he felt the burning sensation of cold steel being plunged into his kidneys again, and again, and again.
The smoke cleared within minutes, and Suprapto and Panggabean surveyed their victims as they lay spread-eagled on the floor, thick blood pooled around their bodies.
‘Good job, Reza,’ Suprapto beamed. ‘Good job.’
‘Thank you, Admiral,’ Panggabean said happily. ‘Your knife work pretty nice too.’
Suprapto looked down, and had to admit that Panggabean was right; the blow through the spinal column and out of the windpipe was perfect.
He looked around the cargo hold in satisfaction. Everything was safe, just as it should be.
‘Bring down the hostages!’ he called to his men upstairs.
‘What about the bodies?’ Panggabean asked.
‘Leave them,’ Suprapto ordered. ‘They can serve as an example to the others.’
Panggabean grinned with a mouth full of gold. ‘Yes, sah,’ he confirmed, stepping over a sticky puddle of congealed blood to retrieve the men’s weapons. The boss had style, that was for sure.
The two dead men would certainly make a fine example for anyone.
‘Status?’ the disembodied, digitized voice of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, known to his vast legions of followers only as The Lion, said over the encrypted line.
The secretive and feared leader of a radical group not yet known to the West, Quraishi listened patiently to the answer whilst sipping on a cup of jasmine tea.
The prognosis was good.
‘Excellent,’ came the rasping voice. ‘My colleagues will take immediate delivery.’
The call ended instantly with that single announcement, the secure phone replaced in its cradle.
Sipping the sweetly-scented tea, The Lion smiled.
The ravaging, terrorizing, and ultimate destruction of the Great Satan that was Western civilization was finally about to begin.
PART ONE
1
The stench of fetid vegetation hit Mark Cole’s nostrils hard, steam rising from the jungle around him as he approached his battered 4x4.
It was just another day in the hill country of northern Thailand, a hundred degrees with seventy-five percent humidity, the air so close and thick you had to almost push your way through it. But Cole had long since become accustomed to it, and it no longer bothered him.
In fact, nothing bothered Cole anymore. He merely existed, and for the time being, that was enough for him; perhaps even too much.
He swatted away the flies and mosquitoes, knowing it would be better by the coast. It would be a long drive, but it was time to work, and he had long since outstayed his welcome in the shacks and bars of the forested interior. He now sought employment in the busy bars and nightclubs of the coastal resorts, and had recently been hired to work security at a Go-Go bar in Pattaya.
He had no interest in the girls, and he had no interest in the money; all he wanted was the action that came with the job, the relentless stream of drunken revelers arguing with the girls, refusing to pay, threatening the bar staff, fighting among themselves. It was a perfect environment for Cole, and offered him what he wanted the most, the only thing he now craved.
Pain.
The journey took six hours in the rusty Hi-Lux pickup, and when he drove into town he could see that it was going to be a busy night. It was barely into the afternoon, and already he could see groups of foreigners — Americans here, Brits there, Australians and Germans too — falling over themselves, skin burnt from too much sun, judgment ruined by too much alcohol, loud and boisterous, keen to sample the delights of the orient they had heard so much about, whether that meant a cocktail watching the glorious sunset, or a session with one of the Go-Go girls in an upstairs back room.
Cole saw it all, and yet saw none of it. Nothing moved him now; he was an automaton, and could see no way out for himself, no way of recovering his humanity.
Ever since his family had been killed in front of him, the brains of his wife, his son, his daughter, sprayed and splattered across his face as they were shot in the head at point-blank range.
He had killed those responsible, of course; but it had done nothing to fill the void, that vast, horrific void which filled his soul and ate away at him piece by piece, until there was nothing much left at all; just the man stood in front of the Climax Club on Walking Street, waiting for the action to start.
It didn’t take long.
Only ten minutes into his shift, Cole was called inside, and he could see immediately what was happening — a crowd of men was trying to pull one of the dancers off the stage.
Another bouncer called Steve, a huge Maori who packed a punch but moved too slowly, had already been knocked out cold by one of the party goers. Other customers backed away, others moved in to join the fun; barmen tried to help and the other girls started to jump onto the trouble-makers, clawing and biting.
Cole wasted no time, and waded right into the melée.
‘Hey!’ he called out, instantly seeing the first man turn to him, fist cocked. A part of him instinctively wanted to react, to destroy the arm as it came towards him, but he ignored that side of him with a powerful force of will, taking the shot instead.
It was a hard punch, connecting with Cole’s cheekbone, and left him momentarily dazed, his head swimming. His eyes refocused, and he saw another fist hurtling towards him.
This one caught him on the ear, disrupting his balance even more, and then he felt another fist smack into his forehead and he was down on the floor.