Chimera

Part II: The Thai Disconnect
CHAPTER 1

One year later… on board the Muluku, off Westport, New Zealand

It was a moonless night, the seas were calm, and the nearby fog bank seemed to go on for miles. All in all, perfect conditions for the sixty-two foot Muluku — a poorly-maintained charter yacht turned sports fisher running at quarter-speed thirty nautical miles off the northwest coast of Westport — to perform the simple tasks for which she had been modified. But even so, the ship and her crew approached the fog bank with understandable caution.

The bridge radar screen was showing a big-target blip that should have been the rusting structure of a two-hundred-foot commercial fishing trawler — five hundred yards out and twenty degrees off the Muluku’s port beam; but there was no visible sign of anything on that heading except swirling fog.

Huang Kat-so, the captain of the converted smuggler, cursed as he brought the portable radio up to his mouth.

“Ged, do you see anything?” he demanded, speaking softly into the radio.

“Negative, Captain, no contact,” Gedimin Bulatt — a lanky muscular man in his late thirties, dressed in rubber-soled boots, faded levis, a worn flannel shirt and stained windbreaker — replied into his radio as he stared out across the water from his position on the bow into the wispy darkness.

Bulatt had a Vietnam War vintage M16 rifle slung over his shoulder; and four 30-round rifle magazines, two 15-round pistol magazines, and a loaded 40-caliber Sig-Sauer semi-auto pistol in the ammo pouches and holster of his assault vest. With his scraggly white beard and short white ponytail just barely visible from the bridge in the wispy fog now surrounding the boat, Bulatt provided a very appealing and soothing image to Huang: that of a tough and able seaman on bow watch, keeping an eye out trouble or treachery as well as imminent collisions.

“This damnable radar is useless! We must be getting close. Keep your eyes opened,” Huang Kat-so ordered as he dropped the speed of the Muluku down another notch.

“Aye, sir.”

Under anything resembling normal operating conditions, the linking-up of two ocean-going vessels in the middle of the night, thirty miles off shore in deep water, and under reasonably calm weather conditions, would have been an easy thing to accomplish, fog or no. But both ships were purposefully operating ‘black’ — without any bridge, navigation or running lights — and Muluku’s long-outdated radar system was intermittently reliable at best; which meant the trawler might well be five hundred yards off the Muluku’s port beam… or fifty… or perhaps not even there at all.

Must be out of my mind, trusting these idiots to know what they’re doing at night out on the open water, Bulatt thought as he strained to listen for some distant creak or clank of rusted steel that might reveal the trawler’s presence.

He’d already stored an inflated life vest near his bow station; and he was ready to strip off his armament, dive overboard with the inflated vest, and swim for his life the moment he spotted the bow of the big trawler coming out of the fog on a collision course.

It was a perfectly reasonable precaution on Bulatt’s part. Huang Kat-so had a well-earned reputation among the Maui fishing boat community for his indifferent seamanship, casual maintenance schedules, and reluctance to spend much — if any — of his profits on his boat and bare-minimum crew; the outward impression being that the south-east Asian immigrant was just barely eking out a living off his occasional deep sea fishing clients.

Which probably isn’t far from the actual truth, Bulatt reminded himself, wondering — with some vague degree of curiosity — how many clients in their right minds had ever chartered a second trip on the Muluku after spending an uneasy night on the leaky sports fisher; putting up with the erratically functioning galley, heads and bilge pumps, while the Captain and his two deck hands took turns steering their more-or-less seaworthy craft not too far offshore in a mostly fruitless effort to find a place where fish might actually be biting.

But Bulatt was also well aware that the disgruntled clients were only a cover for the high-six-figure incomes that Huang Kat-so was making off his illicit business ventures; the latest of which had caused him to go looking for a reasonably trustworthy bodyguard who could also function as a number two deck hand when the previous holder of that job suddenly found himself in serious trouble with the law.

A sudden screech of heavy rusted objects rubbing against each other out in the foggy darkness snapped Bulatt’s head around to the right.

“Audio contact, off the starboard bow!” Bulatt hissed into his radio, and then braced himself as Huang Kat-so quickly reversed both engines; bringing the Muluku around in a sweeping arc to starboard while the first deckhand — a small, wiry and darkly tanned man of indeterminate age and ethnic origin — ran forward to the bow with a grappling-iron gun.

Slowing, the hulking structure of the big fishing trawler — resting at anchor, Bulatt quickly noted with a sigh of relief — became visible in the surrounding fog.

Demonstrating an unexpected degree of professional seamanship, Huang Kat-so brought the Muluku alongside the larger ship, and then held her steady against the current while Bulatt and the first deckhand quickly rigged protective booms on the port side of the yacht. Then the first deckhand brought the brass butt stock of the grappling-iron gun up against his shoulder, aimed it over the bow of the trawler, pulled the trigger, watched the metal hook arc up into the darkness — dragging a thin nylon line in its wake — and then heard the heavy hook clang against the trawler’s steel deck.

Three minutes later, after the first deckhand and Bulatt managed to get a drooping nylon-rope pulley system hauled back from the trawler connected to the yacht’s bridge, the first man-sized, weighted and net-wrapped burlap bag slid down the pulley-rope and then — aided by some extra pulling by Bulatt — landed on the deck of the Muluku with a loud thump.

As Bulatt worked quickly in the darkness to unsnap the hundred-and-twenty-pound bag from the pulley line and drag it over to the opened top of the bait tank that was actually a hidden storage hold, a second net-wrapped bag swooped down onto the deck; followed by a third, fourth and fifth. The acrid smell of ammonia and decomposed fish tissue filled the air.

As soon as Bulatt had the fifth bag unsnapped, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small flashlight, twisted the head ninety degrees until it clicked, and then pressed what normally would have been the ON button.

Moments later, the roar of diesel engines echoed across the water; and the darkness suddenly exploded into blinding daylight as the searchlights from three ocean-going speedboats centered on the trawler and the Muluku, immediately followed by the booming sound of a ship’s loudspeaker:

“AHOY ALL SHIPS! THIS IS THE NEW ZEALAND FRIGATE OTAGO! STAND BY TO BE BOARDED!”

Off in the distance, the running lights of two helicopters were suddenly visible, both aircraft clearly vectoring in on the two ships.

“Quick, the bags! Throw them overboard, now!” Captain Huang Kay-so yelled from the bridge.

The first deckhand ran toward the bait tank; and then yelped in surprise when he felt his wrist being grabbed and then suddenly found himself tumbling head-over-heels to the wet deck.

“Leave the evidence alone, mate. You’re about to be arrested — ” Bulatt advised.

“By who… you?!” the first deckhand exclaimed, looking confused.

“No, the cavalry.”

The first deckhand leaped up with a knife in his hand, lunged at Bulatt, then gasped in pain — the knife clattering to the deck — as he felt his wrist snap. The impact of a flashlight butt behind his ear dropped him to the deck unconscious.

Up on the bridge of the Muluku, Captain Huang Kat-so watched his first deckhand go down, blinked in shock, and then lunged for a wall-mounted shark rifle… just as a SEAL-suited figure leaped over the bow of the Muluku next to Bulatt and fired a stream of assault rifle rounds several inches above the Captain’s head. Chunks of shredded fiberglass flew in all directions.

The Captain dropped the rifle, yelling frantically, “No, don’t shoot! I surrender!”

“About time you got here,” Bulatt commented to the SEAL-suited figure.

Interpol Agent Pete Younger winked at Bulatt, and then glared up at the Muluku’s bridge. “Captain Huang Kat-so, be advised you are under arrest for violation of the New Zealand Endangered Species Act. United States Special Agent Gedimin Bulatt is my witness.”

The Muluku Captain stared down at Bulatt in disbelief as the U.S. Fish amp; Wildlife Special Agent glanced down at his watch.

“Don’t ham it up too much, bud,” he whispered to Younger. “You’ve still got paperwork to do and we’ve got a plane to catch.