Guardian of Lies

FORTY-NINE

Alim felt the steel sides of the cargo container shudder as the unremitting chop of the rotors suddenly changed. The noise woke him as his stomach told him they were descending. He checked his watch and then jumped to his feet, grabbed his rifle, and reached into the duffel bag where he found a pocket pouch containing four more loaded clips.

He strapped the pouch over his shoulder and glanced at the bag of grenades in the bottom of the duffel. Alim decided to leave them. He took one last look at Nitikin, on the floor. The Russian hadn’t stirred since they’d checked his eyeballs earlier that day.

Moving quickly around the wooden crate, he stepped over one of his subordinates who was fast asleep, and kicked the other one who was cowering like a whipped dog.

He got down in his face and told the man, “Get a rifle and load it. You are to guard the container and the Russian. If anything happens to either one, I will cut off your head and feed your body to the sharks. Do you understand?”

The man nodded.

“Move,” said Alim.

The man scurried on his hands and knees, around him and toward the duffel bag on the floor.

Alim moved to the two brothers, tapping one of them on the shoulder with the butt of his rifle to wake him. The movement woke the other as well. Afundi gestured for them to stand and join him as he unfolded a sheet of paper and laid it out on top of the wooden crate. He pointed to an area on the drawing and then to one of the two brothers.

The man nodded. He understood what he was supposed to do.

Alim gestured to the other one and pointed to another area on the drawing. The man nodded.

“According to the information there should only be seven targets. But we must get them all. If one of them gets away, there are too many places to hide. If they’re wearing red shirts, don’t shoot. Do you understand?”

Both men nodded.

They had spent two days practicing, but now they were shorthanded. They would simply have to move faster to make up the difference. He reached into the pocket pouch and gave each of the brothers an extra thirty-round clip.

“Use short bursts, and make them count.”

The descent seemed to take forever. At one point they hovered for several minutes, then climbed again, swung out, and circled. Centrifugal force sent the container in a wide arc as the three men grabbed the sides of the wooden crate and struggled to maintain their footing on the steel floor. It was the reason they were confined in the container. The chopper couldn’t land on board, but the container could be settled on the deck. And once there, their confederates would open the steel door and they could surge out and take control.

They felt the helicopter move forward slowly and then hover as the heavy cargo container swung back and forth like a pendulum from the steel cables.

When they finally touched down, it came with a jarring blow. It knocked one of the brothers off his feet and threw Alim, shoulder first, into the thin lead shield bolted to the side wall of the container. The men quickly recovered and moved toward the door.

They heard the rotors descending as the giant chopper came down close to the roof of the container, men’s voices outside yelling. This was followed by the rasp of metal cables against the outside of the steel container, and a few seconds later the ebbing noise of the rotors as the helicopter pulled skyward.

Alim pulled the bolt back on the assault rifle and let it slam forward, seating the first round in the chamber. The grinding click of metal was followed two more times as the brothers did the same.

They listened as the steel bar on the door was lifted. A second later a blast of cool, damp air rushed into the container.

Alim clicked off the safety and moved the lever down to the middle position, for full automatic fire.

As he did so, a swarthy thin man in a red T-shirt and ragged worn chinos pulled open the heavy steel door, put his shoulder to it, and pushed it wide and out of the way.

For a second the ship’s bright deck lights blinded Alim and his followers as they stood in the darkened cave of the container. Then peripheral movement caught the attention of one of the brothers.

Off to the right a short, stocky man in ragged clothes came running out of the darkness. He was swinging a long-bladed machete high over his head and closing in on the man in the red T-shirt.

Afundi’s follower swung the muzzle of his rifle and fired from the hip. The first burst went high, sending sparks off a steel railing above the target’s head and twenty feet behind him.

The man changed his path, charging the open door. Alim lowered the muzzle of his AK and pulled the trigger. The steel-jacketed rounds spun the man like a Raggedy Ann doll. One of them sparked off the blade of the machete, ripping it from his hand as he collapsed on the deck.

One down, six left.

“Go,” said Alim.

The two brothers raced from the open container and out onto the deck.

Afundi turned to his interpreter. The man was shielding himself behind the device and its wooden crate. Alim pointed to the man in the red T-shirt. “Ask him if they have the bridge under control.”

The interpreter said something in Spanish, waited for the reply, and translated for Alim. “He says they hold the bridge and the captain. They have temporarily disabled the antenna array.” That meant the ship had no radio or satellite capability, at least until Alim’s confederates reconnected the antennas.

“Good.” Alim headed out into the night air, running toward the bow of the ship. He felt the sway of the open sea under his feet. Even though everything beyond the railing was black, lost in darkness, Afundi could feel the heavy chop as the vessel bucked a stiff headwind.

As he glanced over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the open container, perched no more than two feet from the ship’s starboard gunwale. One slip and the chopper pilot would have dropped them over the side. They would have gone down, crushed by the pressures of the deep sea, never knowing what happened.

Alim heard shots coming from the other side of the wheelhouse, short bursts of automatic fire. He ducked through one of the steel doorways leading from the cargo deck into the ship’s superstructure. He moved slowly down the passageway toward the center of the ship, opening the doors, flipping on overhead lights, and checking each compartment.

He was almost through a large storage area when a sudden burst of shots from the deck above caused something to move in the far corner. Alim aimed the muzzle of his rifle in the general direction of the movement. He flipped the safety lever down one notch to semiauto and fired two single rounds into the steel bulkhead.

The ear-piercing explosions caused the two men to pop up like jacks-in-the-box from behind a row of fifty-gallon drums, their hands stretched high in the air. The two were slight of build, diminutive, and dark skinned. One of them couldn’t have been five feet tall. He was wearing an oil-stained tank top and had short shocks of black hair that seemed to shoot in every direction from his small round head. The only thing about him that was big was his eyes as they focused on the muzzle of Afundi’s assault rifle. Alim figured the two men were probably Filipino or Southeast Asian. The ship was of Panamanian registry, but the crew came from wherever wages were cheap.

Alim considered dropping them where they were until he saw the lettering on the fifty-gallon drums the two men were standing behind. He couldn’t read the words, but he knew the international symbol for flammability.

He gestured with his head and the barrel of his gun for the men to walk toward the door.

They did as he ordered with their hands in the air. Once out of the compartment, Alim marched them down the passageway toward the cargo deck. As they reached the deck, the taller of the two men looked back to get direction as to which way to go, forward or aft.

Alim nodded with his head toward the railing as he lifted the safety lever to the middle position.

The second he heard the click, the man bolted. Afundi pulled the trigger. The burst of bullets caught the Asian before he could take a second step. They ripped through his back and chest before his shocked dead body could hit the deck.

The little one stood frozen in place with his hands up, his back to Alim. His head was turned and his eyes cast down on the bloody mass that an instant earlier had been his crewmate.

With all the thought he might employ in reaching for a cup of coffee, Alim swept the muzzle of his rifle back thirty degrees and emptied the clip.

The man’s knees buckled as his body disintegrated in bits of spattered tissue and sprayed blood.

With the casual air of a hunter who has just shot a duck, Afundi turned from the riddled corpse before it could even stop moving. He went through the ritual of reloading, scrupulously depositing the empty clip into his pocket pouch. Then he headed back into the interior of the ship looking to bag another bird.