There was a television mounted on the wall above the bar, and something caught his attention; his head snapped round, bottle paused at his lips.
It was CNN. A picture of a large container vessel; the caption read Chinese cargo ship hijacked!
His years in the SEALS made a story like that unmissable; he had been trained to re-take hijacked ships, and it was still in his blood, even after all this time.
‘Could you turn it up please?’ Cole asked the barman in English. He’d picked up the Thai language over the past few months, but didn’t want to draw attention to himself; as a foreigner, it was safer to speak English like all the other tourists. ‘And another bottle of Chang.’
The barman nodded, turned up the TV and slid another beer over to him. Cole slipped some coins onto the bar, his attention riveted to the screen. He’d been out of it for so long, this was the first time he’d seen the news in months.
Cole looked around briefly, seeing only a handful of people interested in the news story; most were laughing and drinking, oblivious to anything else around them.
Cole turned back to the CNN report.
Even with the television volume turned up, it was a struggle to hear over the Euro pop which still blared out incessantly from the tinny speakers around the bar; but with concentration, he managed to make out most of what was being said.
‘The Fu Yu Shan was hijacked last night off the Sumatran coast while sailing down the notorious Strait of Malacca,’ the anchor spoke over the picture, which now turned into a satellite image of the area, charting the ship’s course from northern China, down the coast through the South China Sea, and around Singapore and the Malaysian peninsula.
‘This area has a reputation for piracy, and although recent efforts by the combined naval forces of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and India have helped to curb such attacks, they do still occur with alarming frequency. However, this is the first hijack of such a large vessel in a very long time. Anything over three hundred tons has to be fitted with a tracking device known as an Automatic Identification System, and this has deterred many pirate groups from targeting the bigger ships. It seems that somehow the AIS has been disabled on the Fu Yu Sham however, which experts believe mean that it was a professional attack, by an experienced criminal gang.
‘There haven’t been any ransom demands as yet, but the Chinese government is outraged by the incident, and has agreed to do everything in its power to help the Tsing Tao Shipping Line resolve the situation. It is believed that the ship alone is worth in excess of forty million dollars, and the cargo some thirty million more, and that is to say nothing of the human cost.
‘Our own government is taking a special interest in this also, as it transpires that three of the crew members are US citizens. President Abrams had this to say earlier today —’
The satellite imagery of the Strait of Malacca faded away to be replaced by footage taken inside the White House Briefing Room. Cole’s blood turned cold at the sight of the place; it was there that he had saved Ellen Abrams, jumping across the backs of journalists as he shot the president’s personal bodyguard through the eyeball just as the man was about to empty his own pistol into the back of the president’s head.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, but Abrams looked just the same, and the room was exactly as it was that fateful day; even the journalists crammed into the small space looked like the same ones who had been there during the incident.
Cole swallowed a big gulp of Chang and concentrated on what Abrams was about to say.
‘First of all I would like to express how deeply shocked and angered I am — how the American people are — that such an outrageous act has taken place. Piracy is a despicable act of the worst sort of criminality, and we will not stand for it. I have already spoken to President Tsang Feng of the People’s Republic of China to express our solidarity in this matter — not only due to our Mutual Defense Treaty, but also as three of our own citizens have been taken hostage with the ship.
‘Acts of piracy are the same as acts of terrorism, and the stance of the government of the United States is to take the fight to the people who commit such acts. As such, I would like to give a warning to the people behind this attack — release the hostages and the ship now, and you will not be hurt. If you do not, then you will suffer the consequences.’
Questions started to be fired out, but the camera cut back to the studio for analysis; Abrams’ statement must have been broadcast already, and this was just a replay.
‘We have with us in the studio Dan Baker,’ the news anchor said, gesturing with an open palm to a well-dressed man sitting opposite on a comfortable-looking couch, ‘former US intelligence agent and current head of Washington think-tank The Neptune Group.’ The anchor turned to the man, eyebrows raised. ‘So tell us, Dan. What sort of leads do we have? Do cases like this get cleared up quickly? How easy is it to find a pirate hideout?’
‘Well, you have to read between the lines, the information that’s been released so far is sketchy at best. There’ve been no names released, either Chinese or American, no details about what the ship was carrying. The fact is, there have been no demands, and we don’t even know if it has been hijacked. In a way, we hope it has.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All we know so far is that the ship has disappeared.’
‘You think it might have been sunk?’
‘It’s a possibility, but both governments are saying hijack, which makes me think that maybe there have been demands, we’re just not being told about them. So analyzing such a situation when nobody’s sharing any information can be really tricky. But to answer your question, the odds are not in our favor. It doesn’t seem that we have any leads, and in any case, it is notoriously hard to find a ship once it’s been taken in these waters.’
‘Really? A one hundred and fifty metre, twenty-thousand ton cargo ship is so easy to hide?’
‘You have to remember that there are literally thousands of little islands in this area, many uninhabited, most unexplored. Some of them have river access deep inland. And ships which travel the Strait are typically smaller than ocean-going vessels, perfectly capable of navigating such waterways. And once they’re hidden in a cove somewhere, camouflaged or sheltered, it’s not impossible to take one of these ships and make sure it’s never found, even with surveillance drones flying straight overhead.’
‘That sure doesn’t sound too positive.’
Baker shook his head. ‘It’s not. Pirates in the Strait of Malacca have been doing this for seven hundred years, don’t forget.’
‘Any likely candidates?’
‘Well, from what we can tell, it would appear that the main pirate group in that area goes by the name of Liang Kebangkitan, which means something like the “revivers of Liang”, a reference to a famous pirate king of the fourteenth century. However, we don’t know where they’re based, or anything about the group’s leadership. It’s suspected it has some links to terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, but we have nothing else on it.’
The conversation continued, but Cole was no longer listening.
Liang Kebangkitan.
He’d heard the name before, when he’d been living in a village just north of Surin. He’d been staying at the home of a small-time arms dealer appropriately named Boom Suparat, who’d rented him a room and been willing to ask no questions.