LITMIR.BIZ

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watching a BBC news report on an ongoing hostage situation somewhere in the Gulf of Aden. “Pirates,” he said. He’d dealt with modern pirates before, both in Somali waters and in the South China Sea. The former were mostly fishermen, out of their depth and desperate. The latter tended toward smuggling and drug running.

      “So they’d have you think,” Brognola said. Bolan glanced at him. “Well, they might have been pirates to begin with, but they’re claiming to be terrorists right now. They might be something else tomorrow.”

      “It’s not the pirates we’re worried about,” Ferguson said. He made a face. “Show him, Spence.” Spence tapped the tablet again, and a recording began to play on the screen. It was the same ship, Bolan saw, only from a different angle. He squinted.

      “Camera phone?” he asked.

      “These pirates are very social-media friendly,” Chantecoq murmured.

      As Bolan watched, a man parachuted toward the deck. Spence froze the image and zoomed in on the parachutist’s face. “Recognize him, Cooper?” Brognola asked.

      Bolan shook his head.

      “Nicholas Alva Pierpoint. Sustainable technologies wunderkind,” Brognola supplied.

      “Never heard of him,” Bolan said.

      “If you had, I’d be more upset than I am now,” Brognola said drily. “He decided to make a public display of idiocy and parachuted onto his own hijacked ship to deliver the ransom, despite the collective scream of his lawyers.” Bolan watched as Pierpoint was led away. Brognola sighed. “Turned out the bloodsuckers were right for once. It was a singularly bad idea, and Pierpoint got added to the hostages, whereupon our merry band of pirates revealed that they were terrorists, and they’d trade the hostages for the release of certain prisoners in the usual places—Guantanamo Bay, Israel, Nigeria.”

      “Any pattern?” Bolan asked.

      “None. We think somebody picked names out of a hat and went for broke.”

      “So it’s a scam. What do they really want?”

      “Near as we can figure, to sell the ship to the highest bidder. And in fact, a number of said bidders have shown up. We’ve got surveillance footage from various ports of call, including Hargeisa International Airport, and a drone spotted the whole lot of potential buyers a few hours ago—guess where?—being welcomed aboard the Demeter.” Spence brought a number of grainy pictures onto the screen. One was of an antiquated speedboat hurtling across the water. There were several figures in it.

      “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.

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