LITMIR.BIZ

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women.

      It was an all too common scenario for the Executioner.

      Bolan had covered a lot of ground in the past several hours, first by jet, then by helicopter, then on the frigate, only to take to the skies once more to be dropped into the cold sea below. It had started with a single telephone call, routed to Bolan through channels from Washington by way of Stony Man Farm. The circuits connecting them were complex, but the scrambled phone briefing from Hal Brognola—speaking to Bolan from the big Fed’s Justice Department office in D.C.—had been straightforward enough.

      “A cruise ship has been hijacked,” Brognola had said without preamble.

      The natural assumption in the modern age was that yet another terrorist group was claiming responsibility for yet another act of violence against helpless men, women and children. Brognola quickly explained that the problem was, if anything, even more serious.

      “What we have,” the big Fed said, “is an act of piracy.”

      “Pirates?” Bolan had not been sure he’d heard correctly.

      “It’s a growing and very serious issue in certain parts of the world,” Brognola said. “As you know, pirate attacks off the cost of Africa have surged, cutting off aid to countries like Somalia. The South China Sea alone, which sees a third of worldwide commercial shipping, sees about half of the pirate attacks recorded by the International Maritime Bureau every year. We’re talking about a cost to cargo insurers upwards of a hundred million U.S. dollars a year.”

      “Big business,” Bolan agreed.

      “And getting worse,” Brognola said. “It’s not just Africa and other backwaters. Nobody’s immune.” He paused. “Our friends the Chinese executed over a dozen Chinese pirates not too long ago, after convicting them of murdering the crew of a freighter near Hong Kong waters. Without doubt, however, the worst pirate activity is in Indonesia. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia all patrol the Malacca Strait,” Brognola went on, “which is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. But they can’t be everywhere.”

      “What’s the profile of the attacks?” Bolan asked.

      “The pirates have historically targeted commercial shipping vessels, but they’re branching out. Now we’re seeing civilian tourists targeted. A couple of years ago, an American cruise ship was attacked in Somali waters by pirates in speedboats who fired machine guns and an RPG at the larger ship.”

      “I remember that. Didn’t they use some kind of sonic weapon to defend themselves?”

      “A long-range acoustic device,” Brognola said. “The LRAD supposedly helped drive off the pirates, but there’s debate about just how effective it was. In reality the ship rammed one of the pirate boats and ground it under her bow. That was enough to do the job.”

      “So what’s happening now?” Bolan asked.

      “It’s terrorism and that’s all it is. The motive may be financial rather than political, but they’re the same enemies you’ve faced down time and again.”

      “What are the details?” Bolan asked.

      “The Duyfken Ster,” Brognola said. “Holland registry, part of a cruise line that operates regularly in Indonesia, is now in the hands of pirates. The ship was taken off the coast of Java after making port in Semarang.”

      “How did they do it?”

      “The reports are a little sketchy,” Brognola said, “but at least a dozen men, maybe more, in two high-speed launchers, came at the ship from either side and boarded her using grapples. They swarmed the bridge, we believe, and established armed control over the rest of the ship. As you can imagine, there was no real resistance. Using the ship’s radio, they’ve relayed a demand to shore.”

      “What do they want?”

      “Money,” Brognola said. “And lots of it. They’ve threatened to kill the passengers if they see any overt show of force.”

      “So what’s our involvement?” Bolan said.

      “A couple of the passengers are connected,” Brognola said. “Family members of a U.S. congressman were taking the cruise. While officially the U.S. has done nothing but condemn the taking of the ship, much less acknowledge that the pirates have lucked in to high-value hostages…unofficially, the president wants these pirates taken down, and hard.”

      “Why no official involvement?” Bolan asked.

      “The usual reasons,” Brognola sighed. “Territoriality. Issues of sovereignty. Stubborn pride. None of the local governments involved wants to admit it is not capable of solving the pirate problem, even though the situation is widely known to be out of control. If we come in and mop it up for them, we’ll have shamed them on the world stage. The U.S. isn’t well-liked in that corner of the world, of course, and we’ve been told, more or less politely, to mind our own damned business.”

      “Even if lives are at stake?”

      “You know as well as I do, Striker, that political expedience is always going to trump human life.”

      “Not for me,” Bolan said. “Never for me.”

      “And not for the Farm,” Brognola nodded. “The Man has given us his blessing. We need results. And we need them quickly and quietly.”

      “Then let’s do it,” Bolan had agreed.

      Several hours and a few thousand miles later, the Executioner held tightly to the control sticks of the DPV, the wake churned by the machine’s motor beating an almost pleasant staccato against his wet suit-clad chest. His waterproof pack tugged against its straps. He was making good time and, according to the GPS unit on the DPV, he was exactly on course.

      It did not take long for the preprogrammed coordinates—updated every few seconds as Stony Man Farm coordinated real-time satellite surveillance overhead—to match Bolan’s GPS-tracked location. The soldier paused to input a brief set of commands on the DPV’s keypad. Using the electronic locator, he oriented the DPV and pressed the key.

      The little machine whirred quickly away, freed of Bolan’s two-hundred-plus pounds of man and equipment. Bolan watched it disappear into the murky darkness of the underwater world before kicking with his feet, pushing himself toward the surface.

      The Executioner let his face mask, then his head, break the surface as he took in his surroundings. The stern of the giant cruise ship loomed ominously above him in the moonlight. He waited, quietly treading water, counting off the numbers in his head.

      The shock wave, when it came, was not terribly large, but he could feel it nonetheless. The explosives packed into the nose of the DPV obliterated the machine at its preset coordinates, just off the bow of the ship. The charge was designed to produce as much noise and light as possible while posing little risk to the ship itself.

      As the bomb blew, Bolan reached back over his shoulder and released the seal on the Plumett case. The heavy Plumett AL-54 he carried had been tuned and modified by the Farm’s armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger. Its range was more than adequate for the task. Floating in the water, Bolan lined up the launcher on one of the struts of the deck openings above the shipboard marina. He fired.

      He could hear shouting from somewhere forward on the ship as the lightweight carbon fiber grapnel hit its mark, the Plumett’s 8 mm polyester rope streaming behind it. Without hesitation, Bolan pulled the quick release, letting the Plumett case fall away. He scrambled up the polyester line hand over hand, his traction-surfaced wet-suit gloves providing purchase as he went.

      Bolan landed as quietly as he could. He released the waterproof gear bag and began removing its contents, methodically and efficiently gearing up after he removed his flippers. The combat harness inside the bag contained a holster and magazine pouches for his Kissinger-tuned Beretta 93-R machine pistol, which rode in its custom shoulder holster with sound suppressor attached. Over the right thigh of his wet suit, Bolan strapped on a rig for his. 44 Magnum Desert Eagle.

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