Rogue Elements

“So are we going to fight? If we are, can I have a meal and a nap first?” Bolan heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long-ass seventy-two.”

“Well, the day we do fight, I want your best. So yeah, go down to the galley. Tell Namzi you want the fried rice with julienned Spam and two fried eggs on top. I swear to God that little Indonesian shit makes magic. Plus he’s from Java, so the coffee is good.”

Bolan shoved out his hand again. “Will do.”

The Polynesian engulfed Bolan’s hand in his own but forwent the bone-crusher. “Welcome to Viking Associates, Blue. Welcome to shit detail.”

* * *

Bolan stretched out on his bunk. He put one khanjar dagger beneath his pillow and left the other in his backpack. He took out his phone and punched in the number for Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. His signal bounced off an NSA satellite, then was routed through a series of cutouts, before landing at the Farm. The firewalls and cybersecurity protocols chewed on Bolan’s communication and decided it was kosher. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered.

“You in?”

“I’m in.”

“Where are you?”

Bolan hit the GPS tracker app on his phone. “The worst stretch of ocean ever.”

“How are you doing otherwise?”

“I spent all my money on beer, knives and soap.”

“Okay...”

“I’m sending you some pictures.” Bolan had managed to photograph the Viking team currently aboard the ship while pretending to text. “They’re all former US military. I need to see their files and what you can dig up.”

“On it.”

“Thanks.”

“How are you getting along with your new playmates? Viking Associates has a pretty rough reputation.”

Bolan grunted in bemusement. Viking had worse than a pretty rough reputation. They worked cheap, had a record of not observing international protocols, as well as killing would-be pirates rather than trying to capture them or drive them off. One of their Russian teams had kept a teenage Somali pirate alive and had their fun with him before cutting him up, tying a rope around him, throwing him overboard and using him as shark bait. The fishing had been successful, word had gotten around and it had a salutary effect for ships flying the Viking flag. The problem was that two of the team members had been dumb enough to film the atrocities with their phones and send it to their friends. The videos had gone out onto the web and gone viral. Viking became a pariah. No one would hire them. They went bankrupt, and there was talk of a United Nations human rights tribunal. Rampart Group had swooped in out of nowhere, bought them out and fired most of their employees. Rampart had tagged the word “Associates” onto the security company, but Viking was still the black sheep of the private security industry and the bottom rung of the Rampart Group. As both Sifuentes and Big Abe had stated earlier, Viking Associates got all the shit details. Bolan considered his last forty-eight hours with them pretty successful.

“Well, I have a nickname, and I think the cutest girl in class likes me,” Bolan said drily.

“Sounds promising,” Kurtzman muttered.

Pictures and files started appearing on Bolan’s phone. “Just so you know,” Kurtzman said, “we do appreciate the easy requests every once in a while. The big guy is Aperaamo ‘Big Abe’ Umaga. Samoan. Tenth Mountain Division, then Ranger. Failed the Special Forces course because of ‘attitude’ problems.”

“That might have been foreseeable.”

“Classic Rangers lead the way, but does not play well with others,” Kurtzman continued. “In private security he’s had goon-squad duty, and VIP ‘stand around and be huge and mean looking’ jobs. He signed on with Viking right when everything went south. He survived the culling.”

“Sifuentes was a Ranger, I know that. How come he isn’t anymore?”

“Busted for failing a drug test. Marijuana.”

“How about Mono?”

“Moisés Nilo. Squad mate of Sifuentes. Busted at the same time when their unit got drug-tested.”

“And the mullet?”

“Lazlo Mendez. He’s 101st Airborne. He was offered an early, honorable discharge to testify in a military court tribunal. The case is sealed, and his discharge papers have been redacted. You want Hal to ask for it?” Kurtzman referred to Hal Brognola, Justice Department honcho and director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm.

“No. Tell me about the black guy.”

“Jimbo Ketch, born and raised in the United States Virgin Islands. Boatswain’s mate second class. Transferred to the United States Navy Riverine Squadron, RIVRON 3.”

Bolan was detecting a theme. “Tell me how he lost his rating.”

“He got in a brawl with three other Riverines. One of them was an officer. He claimed he didn’t start it, and the attack was racially motivated, over a woman.”

“Did he win?”

“Oh yeah. He put two of them in the hospital. However, he’d been reprimanded for fighting several times in his career. He got busted back to E-3. Finished his bit and didn’t re-up. Went into private security.”

“And the woman?”

“Bianca Maria Ibarra, United States Marines. Military and Police. She made sergeant. Served in Iraq with distinction. Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She was accepted into the United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, graduated at the top of her class.”

“And?”

“Conduct unbecoming. Apparently Miss Ibarra has a bad habit of getting a little too friendly with superior officers, apparently sometimes more than one at the same time. She was up for a dishonorable discharge. Rumor was she was going to testify about the dishonorable behavior of a number of officers. Her discharge was reduced to general. She applied to several California police departments and was rejected. She currently holds a private investigator’s license in the State of California as well as a California private patrol operator license to provide security and bodyguard services.

Bolan considered his new teammates. “Quite the band of fallen heroes.”

“It is odd. Rampart buys out Viking, cleans out the bad apples, rebuilds the brand and then restocks it with this riffraff.”

Bolan didn’t know his team yet, but he knew Sifuentes was Ranger all the way, and he was willing to bet Abe would fight an armored fighting vehicle with his bare hands for a teammate. “I wouldn’t call them riffraff just yet.”

“So what would you call them?”

Bolan was starting to have an inkling about that. “Expendables.”

“Really? How so?”

Bolan considered his mission. The UK’s MI6 had intercepted chatter that nuclear materials from North Korea were being smuggled on a freighter to Iran. There had been a plan to intercept that ship, but it had dropped off the planet in the Arabian Sea. All hands were lost, including the security team from Rampart Group. The loss had been attributed to Somali pirates. Section 6 was damn good. They might have lost eyes on that ship, but they kept their ears open on that line of chatter. They caught wind of a rumored second ship smuggling nuclear material. It disappeared in the Strait of Malacca with all hands and a Rampart Group team. MI6 had pulled strings and gotten a former British SAS sergeant hired by Rampart Group.

Bolan tapped the file, and up popped a photo of the grinning, prematurely balding, impossibly broad-shouldered Colour Sergeant Terry Wellens. He looked like a member of the royal family on steroids.

Sergeant Wellens, his team and the ship they’d been guarding had disappeared. Bolan had done his homework. It was shocking how many ships sank, ran aground or outright disappeared on the 70-plus percent of Planet Earth that was ocean.

As far as MI6 was concerned, once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action. Then one of the supposedly lost Rampart team members showed up on Interpol facial recognition in the Netherlands. Bolan tapped another file. The military file photo of blond, high-and-tight-haircutted, ramrod-straight Lance Corporal Jup Gein of the Bundeswehr Airborne Brigade 1 contrasted sharply with the grainy security photo of a rumple-suited, mustachioed, shaggy-haired man drinking coffee in an outdoor café in Amsterdam, but the Interpol software gave the resemblance 87 percent.

Bolan gave it 99 percent.

Interpol recognition software did not recognize spec ops operators at rest.

Bolan did.

The photo had been taken months after Gein, Wellens and their ship had disappeared.

Trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions was a worldwide concern. The UK had brought its concerns to the desk of the President of the United States. The President had flexed the Farm option. Favors had been called in within the private security community, and Viking Associates had hired Bolan on. The problem was, that was exactly the strategy MI6 had used to get a man into Rampart, and their man was MIA.

“If we’re right, and Rampart Group is involved in very bad things, they may need to not make the next couple of ships disappear, and rather than making their teams disappear, it might look better if there were bodies. Bodies of people no one will miss, like Viking bodies, but that will still raise a hue and cry and give Rampart more business.”

“That’s an ugly little scenario you have there.”

Bolan agreed. Reported pirate attacks on ships were genuinely down. That was because many navies of the world had deployed fighting ships into well-established pirate waters, and many commercial ships were now flying flags and advertising online that they were sporting a contingent of armed security guards. Strangely enough, despite that, genuine ship vanishings were up.

Every instinct Bolan had honed in battles on every continent on Earth told him something was going on.

“So how are you proceeding?”

“Have to wait for a job and see what happens. I’ll give it a week. If we dig up nothing after that, we have to come up with a whole new plan. Meantime, I’ll mix and mingle, try to pick up some intel.”

* * *

Bolan went with his nose and followed the smell of coffee into the mess.

“Oh my God!” Sifuentes enthused to a rapt audience over pad thai, mac and cheese, coffee and corn bread. “You should have seen Blue! So he cuts the first guy’s hand off, catches the grenade and hot potatoes it to me!”

Big Abe called bullshit.

Sifuentes sighed in memory of the action. “The next guy in? The next guy? Blue just about beheaded the son of a bitch.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m talking ear to ear, Abe. Like ‘Assassin’s Creed’–worthy.”

Ibarra leaned in. “With what?”

Sifuentes drew one of his khanjar daggers from beneath his shirt and set it on the table. “With these. One in each hand. If you blinked, you missed it. If any of those assholes blinked, they died in the dark. It was that fast. I got one of them. With a Mini-Uzi Blue delivered with his toe. Blue got three, two with knives, one with that commandeered grenade.”

“Bullshit,” Abe reiterated.

“Oh, and then there was the guy climbing up the drainpipe.”

“What happened to him?” Mendez asked.

“We defeated him like the rest.” Sifuentes nodded in memory. “With science, and soap. Plus, he’s the guy I hot potatoed the grenade onto. He’s all messed up.”

Bolan walked into the mess. “Hey, fellas!” He nodded at Ibarra. “Felita.”

Ibarra smirked. “Call me B.B.”

Big Abe shook his head. “Sifu’s talking all kinds of crap about you and he in Salalah, brah.”

“It went ugly real fast.” Bolan nodded. “We had to improvise.”

Mono slurped noodles. “I believe it.”

Bolan went to the galley counter. Namzi ran a hand through his comb-over and gave the Executioner a big, red-stained, betel-nut-chewing smile. Bolan smiled back. Indonesians were considered the most smiling people on earth, and if there was one person on a ship at sea you wanted to ingratiate yourself with, it was the cook. Namzi heaped noodles onto Bolan’s tray with a Chinese cleaver that could behead an ox. “I make your chai just right!”

Bolan bowed slightly. “You’re the best.”

Namzi bowed back. The soldier took his tray and sat at the team table. When the team looked at him expectantly, Bolan shrugged. “Do we have a job? I spent all my money buying Sifu knives and beer and soap. I need to get paid.”

The entire table burst out laughing. Big Abe rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you this, Blue. You and Sifu’s stories match up.”

“Lying.” Bolan shrugged again. “Too much to remember. But I’ll tell you this.”

Ketch spoke for the first time. “What’s that?”

“It wasn’t good.”

The table went quiet and hung on Bolan’s words.

“As a matter of fact, it got really sketchy back there in Salalah, and local thugs don’t usually bring hand grenades.”

“What are you saying, brah?” Abe asked.

“That’s all I’m saying. Do we have a job?”

“Yeah, we got a job.” Big Abe nodded. “A freighter going right up the Gulf of Aden, pirate alley, right past Somalia, and Yemen is at war.”

“Destination?”

“Yanbu, Saudi.”

“You know, I’m new, but I had a bad feeling in Salalah, and I’m having one now.”

“So what are you saying, brah?” Abe repeated.

“Just what everyone already knows. I’m thinking we need to mind our Ps and Qs, watch each other’s asses, and watch the horizon, 360, 24/7.”

Sifuentes grinned. He was totally ready to roll with Bolan again. He held up his hand and his fingers curled for the fist bump. “Fuckin ay’, Blue! Me and you! Let’s get stabby!”

Bolan fist bumped and looked around the table. “Do we have guns?”

Ibarra shook her head. “Kind of.”

Chapter Three

Bolan took up his weapon. “Cool.”

“Cool?” Ibarra sneered. “Screw you, cool breeze. Rampart gets the latest German technology. Everything is all HK and gleaming. Viking gets this surplus, Italian, Saving Private Ryan shit. Rumor I heard is the Italians were going to donate it to the Kurds fighting ISIS, and even they didn’t want it. It’s like they’re setting us up to fail.”

Bolan examined his Beretta Model 1959 rifle. It was missing significant amounts of finish. The wooden stock had a crack in the forearm, and it did indeed look a lot like a prop from an American World War II movie except that it took a twenty-round magazine and had a muzzle brake the size of a cigar for launching rifle grenades. Bolan raised an eyebrow, a hopeful note in his voice. “Do we have grenades?”

Big Abe kicked a crate in disgust. “We have bayonets.”

“Cool.” Sifuentes got happy. “Have I told you what Blue does with blades? I’ll take two!”

Bolan nodded at a crate with Italian words on it, and numbers that implied ammo. “Do we get any trigger time, or is that strictly for the job?”

“That’s the good news.” Abe took a bayonet and popped the top of the nailed ammunition crate with shocking hand and wrist strength. “We got two thousand rounds of ammo.”

“Pistols?” Bolan inquired.

“I told you!” Abe growled. “This shit! And bayonets!”

Bolan wasn’t entirely displeased. If the battle was ship to ship, he preferred something with some reach and penetration, and when targets were swarming you there was something very focusing about telling your team to fix bayonets. “We got cleaning kits?”

“Yeah, and web gear.” Big Abe kicked another crate. “Like any of it is going to fit me...”

Bolan sat cross-legged on the deck and fieldstripped, cleaned and lubricated his rifle as if his drill sergeant were timing him.

“Wow,” Big Abe grudgingly opined. The team watched, rapt, as Bolan reassembled the weapon and loaded a magazine.

He rose. “Need a target.”

Big Abe took up the empty rifle crate and hurled it into the ship’s wake. “There you go.”

Bolan watched the aged yellow pine box bobble and churn in the turbulence.

“Yo, Blue.” Big Abe’s features set into scowl mode. “Anytime.”

Bolan would have preferred an optic, but the Beretta’s iron sights were a clone of the WWII Garand rifle’s. Connoisseurs considered them the greatest battle sight of all time. Bolan watched the crate leave the ship’s wake and gently bob on the surface. Ibarra raised a pair of range-finding binoculars. “You’re at three hundred meters, Blue.”

Bolan nodded and gave the sight-adjustment drum a couple more clicks.

“Four hundred meters.”

Bolan waited as the ship sailed away from the crate.

“Five hundred meters.”

Bolan waited. He allowed himself that he was on a ship in motion on the ocean and armed with a rifle he had never shot before. He decided to cut himself some slack. He dropped to one knee. “Tell me when we get to eight hundred.”

Murmurs broke out on the bow.

Ketch gaped. “Holy shit.”

“Bullshit,” Abe declared.

Ibarra lowered her optics in shock and then brought them back up to her eyes. The Viking team collectively held its breath.

“Eight hundred meters.”

Bolan fired.

Ibarra got excited. “You’re about five meters in front of it! Raise you aim and—”

Bolan fired and fired again. The rifle crate spun, bobbed and spit splinters as bullets tore into it. Bolan fired on methodically. Sifuentes jumped up and down waving his arms. “Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!”

The rifle locked open, oozing smoke out the chamber. The crate had been reduced to swiftly dispersing kindling. Sifuentes strutted like a peacock. “My mad, bad, big brother Blue! That’s what I’m talking about! Anyone doubting us now?”

Ketch slowly shook his head. “No.”

Big Abe stared. “That’s fucked up.”

Mendez stroked his beard like a sage. “That was some shooting.”

Bolan nodded modestly. “Thank you.”

Sifuentes was giddy. “He could have done it throwing his knives!”

Mono stepped up eagerly and handed Bolan a fresh magazine. “Teach me!”

“Maybe.”

“You know,” Ibarra said with deadly seriousness, “I just might sleep with you.”

Bolan reloaded his rifle. “Cool.”

* * *

Bolan sipped an ice-cold Stella Artois beer. The team’s mood had visibly improved. Alcohol was strictly controlled on arsenal ships. They were filled with soldiers of all nations, bored out of their minds as they proceeded to proverbially hurry up and wait for their job slots as freighters sailed across the vast oceans at a snail’s pace. However, Team Viking had a job in the morning, and each member had been issued two beers. Another way to relieve bored, disgruntled fighters was to give them trigger time, and the team had burned a thousand rounds at floating targets while Bolan had walked the firing line on the bow and given tips and adjusted sights.

It helped that the cook had a thing for Bolan and had weezed each team member an extra beer and a couple of shots of Indonesian tuak palm wine from the pantry. Sifuentes had been convinced to take a break from his usual death metal, and was playing Mexican club music out of a phone dock and attached mini speakers. There was a lot of laughing and telling tales that kept getting taller. Ibarra seemed incapable of keeping her body from moving to the music even when seated. Bolan idly considered asking her to dance, but he didn’t want to make Abe jealous. Ibarra had noticed Bolan noticing her, and her smile got wider with every drink.

His eyes flicked to the door to the mess.

A second later a huge black man walked in. “Well, looky, looky here.”

Everyone except Bolan jumped in his or her seat. Sifuentes lunged to punch the music off. Mendez and Mono made sad attempts to hide their tuak shots. The man was as tall as Bolan but built like Big Abe. The most startling thing about him were his almost honey-colored amber eyes. They literally seemed to have the power to smolder even while he smiled, and the smile was not friendly. Bolan noted the man was wearing a Rampart Group black baseball hat and openly carrying a Glock holstered on his thigh. The man turned his unfriendly smile on Big Abe. “Abraham.”

The Samoan glowered back, but it was pure, frustrated rage, as if Superman had walked into the room and Abraham was fresh out of kryptonite. “Hyram.”

“Having a little party, are we?”

“Seemed appropriate.”

“Oh, I can think of about a dozen reasons why this is inappropriate.”

Big Abe had no answer.

“You know—” Hyram made a show of sighing and rolling his disturbing eyes “—I keep trying to clean up you Viking assholes. To make something out of you, or at least salvage something of value, and this?” Hyram just let that hang.

His smile turned overfriendly when he looked at Ibarra. “Yo, chica. How long are you going to swim in the tide pool with these losers?” He made a “come to me” motion with both hands and leered. “All you gotta do...”

Fear and rage twisted Ibarra’s features. Bolan took in the rest of the table. It was like some bad Western where the whole town was terrified of the gunfighter who had taken up residence.

Ibarra snarled like she was about to say or do something suicidal. “You know what, Hy?”

Hyram grinned like he was cocking a gun. “What?”

Bolan finished his shot of tuak and set it down on the table a little too hard. “You know, that sounds suspiciously like sexual harassment.”

The only sound was Namzi gasping in terror.

Bolan followed his shot with a pull on his beer. “Doesn’t Rampart have some kind of training film about that? Or someone in Human Resources you can talk to?”

The town was silent as a new gunfighter walked out into the street. Bolan had made his decision when the man had walked in and he had seen his teammates’ reactions. The soldier had won over Big Abe and the rest of the team with charm. The man before him would not be swayed by any charm offensive. He would take it as ass licking, and kowtowing to Hyram would ruin any chances of furthering the mission. The big man leered in false amusement.

“Well, now, you must be Blue. Heard about you. Read the report. I’d call it bullshit, but then again, Sifuentes isn’t known for brains, much less imagination.”

The Latino bristled but said nothing.

Bolan reached into the beer bucket and twisted the cap off. “Sifu saved my life last night. Two of us with knives, five of them with Uzis, and he was Johnny on the spot. Played hot potato with a live grenade, dropped it on the asshole climbing up the drainpipe, then he commandeered one of their weapons and turned into a human wall of lead.”

“Yeah, and what were you doing during all that?” Hyram said, sneering.

“Cutting lunch meat.”

“Well!” Hyram threw back his head and laughed. “All right, white boy!”

Abe slammed a hand on Bolan’s shoulder in warning. The Executioner smiled and ignored it. “That’s white man to you, honey gaze.”

Hyram stopped laughing.

“What’s your claim to fame again?” Bolan asked.

“Forgive me, old man.” Hyram leered again. “You’re new. So I’ll explain it to you. Once. I’m your supervisor. Though these days I feel more like a yard duty at a Montessori School. As a Viking associate, you may disport yourself as you wish while on R & R, as long as you don’t endanger the reputation of the company or your fellow associates. When waiting on station on an arsenal ship or on a mission, there shall be no intoxication. Which, if you had read your contract, puts you in violation, and subjects you to being given a verbal warning, being written up or, should the situation warrant—” Hyram cracked his knuckles in happy expectation “—being subjected to disciplinary measures.”

Bolan nodded. “I get it.”

Hyram seemed almost disappointed. “You get it?”

“Yeah, I get it, but my signing bonus was short, the five connecting flights sucked, and did I mention me and Sifuentes? Our R & R in Salalah was neither restful nor relaxing.” Bolan tossed back the rest of his beer. “So fuck you.”

Hyram stepped forward. “Oh, Blue...”

“No!” Bolan rose and pumped feigned rage as he pointed an accusing finger. “Fuck you! Me and Sifu had knives and liquid soap. They had grenades! Now you want to give me a public dressing-down? I am too old for this shit! Put a weapon in my hand and point me in a direction or send me home with a severance check! You wanna dance?” Bolan took the khanjar dagger from behind his back and slammed it on the table. “Helideck! Knives! Right now!”