Final Assault

“You recognize this guy, I’m sure.” Spence zoomed in on one of the men in the boat. He was a big man with a round face and double chin. But he had a strangler’s hands, crisscrossed with scar tissue. The man’s name was Gribov, and he was an ex-KGB operative. Gribov, like a lot of former KGB men, had found new employment with a group of Pacific gangsters called the Yellow Chrysanthemum.

Bolan stared at the broad, squashed face of the notorious killer. “Who else?” he said.

“S. M. Kravitz,” Spence continued, tapping the tablet. The image of Gribov pixilated and was replaced by that of a thin man in an expensive suit with hair the color of sand and eyeglasses so thick a welder could have used them. He was walking through an airport. “Until recently, he was one of the money men for the Society of Thylea, as well as half a dozen other European right-wing organizations. God only knows who he’s working for now, since the Society got rolled up, but he’s here and looking altogether uncomfortable, what with all the armed brown folks.”

Bolan grimaced at the mention of the Society of Thylea. Gribov was a killer, but the Society was worse, wanting to wipe out two-thirds of the human population. He’d seen to their destruction personally, although both Ferguson and Chantecoq had, in their own ways, helped.

“This handsome fellow is Walid Nur-al Din,” Spence said as Kravitz’s lean shape was replaced by a Middle Eastern man dressed in battered fatigues and body armor and climbing out of a truck. His face was marred by an oddly geometric pattern of scars. “Syrian, mouthpiece of the Black Mountain Caliphate, one of several splinter groups of ISIL still fighting in Syria. Nearly got his face peeled off by a Bouncing Betty a few years ago, which did not improve his general temperament.” Spence tapped the tablet again.

“And finally, representing the Black Serpent Society, Mr. Drenk.” Drenk was Eurasian and, like Gribov and Kravitz, dressed as if he were heading to a boardroom, rather than the deck of a recently hijacked ship. He was walking along the shore toward a waiting boat. “Drenk is a nasty customer—they’re all nasty customers, but Drenk is the worst—with a file so thick we couldn’t bring it on the plane for the weight limit. Drenk isn’t known for his negotiating skills, so God only knows what he’s planning.”

Spence looked up from his tablet. “Those are the ones who took the bait. Garrand—the man who’s leading the terrorists—has four potential bidders, and we can’t allow any of them to take possession of the Demeter.”

“Why?”

“The Demeter is one of a kind. Lots of hush-hush goodies went into that particular basket—green technologies, mostly, things that’ll make a lot of the usual suspects angry, when and if they permeate the corporate membrane,” Spence said.

“You make it sound as if this Pierpoint had some covert help,” Bolan said. “That’s it, isn’t it? All that technology—it was government funded, wasn’t it?”

Spence shrugged. “Partially, and through third parties, most of whom have an interest in seeing the United States of America weaned off foreign oil. Pierpoint’s smart. He knows the ship is a good way of showing off all these previously underfunded projects in one fancy package. Once the money starts coming in, that tub will be stripped for salvage quicker than sin. The problem is, nobody bothered to file off the serial numbers.”

Bolan laughed. There was precious little mirth in the sound. “You’re afraid that if the ship falls into the wrong hands, people will—what?—figure out that the federal government was slipping a few extra bucks to Pierpoint under the table in a bid to undercut certain major industrial concerns?”

Spence looked at Brognola. “You were right. He’s clever.”

“No, just experienced,” Bolan said. He shook his head. “And it’s not a good enough reason. So elaborate.”

“Fine, you want more? Imagine what a savage like Gribov could do with a ship like that. Or Walid. You a movie fan, Cooper? Rule one—never give a super-vehicle to a bad guy. Especially when the vehicle in question is an ocean-going fortress. Which the Demeter is. It can sit out of sight in international waters forever, like the goddamn Flying Dutchman, only instead of ghostly sailors it has a crew of Jihadists or gunrunners or revolutionaries. All three maybe—that’s the worst-case scenario.”

Bolan was silent. The thought was not a pleasant one, he had to admit. Whoever got the ship would be in possession of a state-of-the-art vessel. Brognola cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable, and Bolan wondered how much pressure he was under to help clean up this mess. “If there were anyone else capable of doing this, Cooper, I’d have dealt them in. But everyone is up to their bootlaces in blood and bullets, and this needs handling soon,” Brognola said.

“How many hostages?” Bolan asked after a minute. That was his main concern. The men and women on the Demeter, crew included, were innocent, and Bolan was determined to see them to safety, if possible.

“At least twenty passengers, but we’re not sure how many crewmembers are helping the kidnappers and how many might have been imprisoned. That’s not counting Pierpoint himself.”

Bolan sat back. In truth, he had decided to take the assignment the minute Brognola had asked him, such was his respect for the other man. But he needed to know the stakes before he went in. “So you’d like me to free the hostages and take the ship back.” Bolan examined the schematics Spence had brought up on the screen, his mind already pinpointing important areas. He wondered how many men the criminal bidders had brought—potentially three or four apiece, at least, if whoever was in charge was stupid enough to allow them to bring bodyguards. That meant the enemies could number fifty or more. He’d faced long odds before, but rarely like this.

“No, we’d like you to scuttle it, frankly.” Spence made a face. “Pierpoint messed up, and so did we when we trusted him not to. Best for everybody if we wipe the board clean.”

“Best for you, you mean,” Bolan said. Spence shrugged.

“To-may-to, toh-mah-to,” he said, smiling. Bolan didn’t like that smile, but there were innocent people to think about, and he was going to need help to get them out alive. If that included Spence, so be it.

“What do we know about the hijackers?” Bolan asked. “Whose flag are they flying?”

Chantecoq cleared his throat. “They’re not terrorists, no matter how they’re dressed. We know that much.” He handed Bolan several files and a handful of grainy photographs. “We caught faces with that last drone survey. They’re careful, but after a few days, even the most careful are due a slip. Their leader is suspected to be Georges Garrand. Former member of the Foreign Legion, former contractor for several Eastern European governments, including a leader currently in exile. Until recently, he was employed by Pierpoint Solutions as a security consultant. He was responsible for most of the security measures on the ship. Pierpoint fired him personally just after the Demeter set sail.”

“Fired him?” Bolan asked.

“By social media, no less. For all the world to see,” Chantecoq said, gesturing grandly. He smiled thinly. “Clever, no?”

Bolan didn’t reply. He flipped through the file. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before. Garrand was a mercenary. A very effective mercenary, but then, he’d fought those more than once. Still, Garrand was no thug—he was a decorated soldier with medals for bravery and a reputation for getting the job done. It was clear that Garrand was no saint, but neither was he the sort of man content to play hired gun for very long. As Bolan scanned the papers and photos, the meaning behind Chantecoq’s words finally registered. He looked up. “He was fired publicly? Why?” Bolan answered his own question a half second later. “To divert suspicion that this was an inside job.”

“That’s the working theory,” Ferguson said, running his palms over his head. “We’ve had Pierpoint’s domestic operations under investigation for several months. When we started looking into the Demeter project, it rang all sorts of bells. Too many wrong names too close to a project like this.”

Bolan nodded. “Like Garrand.”

“And a few others,” Ferguson said. “All of whom have records longer than my arm. Once we started digging into them—and Demeter...”

“It alerted us,” Chantecoq finished. “We are very interested in Mr. Garrand. He’s on our list. So we started to investigate as well, which alerted our American cousins.” He gestured to Spence.

“And here we are,” Spence said, spreading his hands. “Bouncing a hot potato back and forth until it landed in Hal’s lap. Sorry, Hal,” Spence added. He didn’t sound sorry.

Bolan resisted the urge to shake his head. All these government agencies only seemed to make the situation more and more complicated.

“Stuff your sorries in a sack,” Brognola grunted as he shoved an unlit cigar between his teeth.

“So, what do you want from me?” Bolan asked.

“We’ve got a boat that’s too high profile to stay above the water line, full of hostages and crewed by the lost and the damned,” Spence said. “Saturday morning serial territory, huh, Cooper?”

“Depends. How am I getting on the Demeter—jet pack?” Bolan asked, already thinking. He would need explosives, not many, placed at the correct points. Every structure had its weak spots, and the Demeter was no different. Once the ship started taking on water—

“Ha! No,” Spence said. He brought up a map and tapped a dot on the screen. Bolan recognized the Somali coastline. “This is Radbur. Old town on the coast of the Republic of Somaliland. Right on the Gulf of Aden, within spitting distance of our merry band of hijackers and the Demeter. Mostly fishermen. And these days, where there are fishermen, there’ll be pirates.”

“And you happen to know one of these pirates?”

“Indeed I do,” Spence said. “His name is Axmed. He was a pirate before it was popular and a smuggler in the off season. The Somaliland Navy has a price on his head, as do the Ethiopians, but he’s a relatively friendly guy.”

“Relatively?” Bolan asked.

Spence ignored him. “Axmed owes me one. If I know him like I think I do, he’s been eyeing the Demeter all this time. Hell, he’s probably already planning to try for it, especially given the traffic we’ve registered going in and out of the region. I bet some of Garrand’s guests went through Radbur on their way to the Demeter. That town’s been a smuggler’s paradise since the pashas were in power.”

“So I’ll—what—catch a ride with this Axmed?” Bolan said, looking at Brognola.

Spence clapped his hands together. “If you ask him nicely, yeah. And bring him a gift.”

“I have a better plan,” Bolan said bluntly. “You come with me and ask him yourself.”

5

Gulf of Aden

Drenk stood in silence, his coat folded over his arms, as the mercenary called Yacoub showed him his cabin. “The drinks cabinet is full, of course, and the galley is stocked,” he said, looking at his watch, then the floor. The mercenary wouldn’t meet his eyes. Few men dared to, a thought that brought Drenk no end of amusement.

Drenk looked about and then said, “The others?”

The Moroccan twitched as if stabbed. “In—ah—in their own cabins.”

“How many?”

“I don’t see how that—”

Drenk cocked his head. He said nothing. Drenk was not one to repeat himself. Yacoub swallowed and said, “Three others.”

“Is that all?” Drenk smiled. “How fortunate. I have always preferred intimate gatherings.”

“We expected more, but no dice,” Yacoub said, stepping toward the door. Drenk did not try and stop him, nor did he say anything about the way Yacoub’s hand dipped for the gun on his hip.

“That is always the way, in these matters. Only the truly interested bother to show up,” Drenk said without turning around. He heard the door shut behind him as the mercenary made a hasty exit, and he laughed.

Others had been scheduled to arrive. A dozen or more, in fact. He had taken care of three of them himself, waylaying them at airports and harbors. One he’d fed to the sharks in the Gulf. One he’d bribed. The third...well. That had been fun. For a moment, he allowed himself to enjoy the memory.

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