Patriot

CHAPTER 45

First thing Stoke and his black-clad Raiders did aboard the Viktor Leonev, CCB-175, they assembled all the ship’s Russian Navy officers up on the bridge and Stoke laid down the laws. How the boarding and search would be conducted. What they could expect and not expect. How the law demanded they behave during a lawful boarding. How he, Stokely Jones Jr., demanded they behave, law or no law.

The message behind his message?

Don’t fuck with me. Don’t fuck with my crew.

Expecting the Russian crew to be hostile, Stoke was prepared for anything. Got some dark looks and some evil eyes, but everyone kept their damn mouth shut and called him “sir” when they spoke to him through Gator, the team’s translator. The Russian captain behaved himself too, doing as Stokely ordered: going on the PA system to inform the entire crew that they were to cooperate with the commandos now aboard and commencing a search of the vessel without hesitation.

Harry Brock and Stoke were up on the bridge along with a SEAL warrior, a Florida cracker name of “Gator” Luttier. Had an HK automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Gator was sheer badass material, and he was just itching for some Russian dipshit to give him some shit.

He’d gone to the University of Florida on a football scholarship, majored in Chinese and Russian as an undergraduate, graduated from Florida law school, tried being a divorce lawyer in West Palm for a while before going to SEAL school out at Coronado, ending up as a UDT explosives specialist.

Gator had eventually tired of wading into rich people’s shit, their messed-up marriages, listening to either side of their sad little stories until he just couldn’t freaking take it anymore, no matter how lucrative his family law practice was becoming.

“Lieutenant White, gimme feedback,” Stoke said to the Coast Guard leader in his lip mike.

“Cleared forward and amidships and heading aft. Collecting arms. No resistance,” Ryan White replied. White, a former U.S. Coast Guard skipper, had driven USCG frigates before being wooed away by Hawke Industries’ Marine Division to helm Blackhawke whenever the captain was away from the bridge. He was also a headbanger who liked to shoot bullets.

“Say your location.”

“Port side, amidships, sir, on the rail.”

“Thirty seconds,” Stoke said, looking at Brock and Gator. “Gator, Brock, and I are coming down to finish this Easter egg hunt. You cool, Lieutenant?”

“Born cool, Skipper,” White replied.

“I know that, son. Those Russkie boys start misbehaving? Just give the Stoke a shout-out.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Can I borrow one of your guys?”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Stoke smiled. This new generation of hard-ass navy men showed the ones who’d gone before some respect. They knew the old Stoke had done three SEAL combat tours and honored guys who’d served in the shit and — Never mind about all that; time was a’wastin’. There was bad crap aboard this Russian rust bucket — Stoke knew it in his gut. He nodded in the direction of the two former navy guys covering the officers with their MP5s.

“Okay, you fellas got the conn. Gator, Mr. Brock, and I are taking over what’s left of this search. Anybody makes a move on you, you shoot first and apologize later. Law of the sea, understand?”

“Yes, sir!” they shouted in unison.

Stoke, Brock, Gator, and a lanky kid they borrowed from White named, oddly enough, Fat Jesse Saunders, a skinny blond-haired boy from Waycross, Georgia, descended the steep flight of aluminum steps down into the bowels of the ship. Saunders was packing a double-slung submachine gun with a pistol grip he could get at in a big hurry if need be. Fat had the kind of loose-limbed confidence of someone who could make good use of any kind of weapon at all, including his hands and feet.

When they got to lowest deck and moved aft, they came to something they hadn’t encountered aboard this vessel before. Stoke had borrowed a SCAR H-CQC machine gun with the short thirteen-inch barrel. “What have we here, gentlemen?” Stoke said, eyeing the two gorillas standing in front of a thick steel door.

A locked door, most likely. A locked door with two armed Russian military policemen positioned squarely in front of it, automatic weapons at port arms. Some stenciled Russian gibberish was written in red on the right-hand door, Stoke noticed. Heavy, steel doors. And the two guys were wearing Russian Army uniforms.

Army? On a naval vessel?

Gator turned to Saunders and said, “Fat?” But Saunders’s gun was already up and trained on the two Russkies.

“What’s the sign say, Gator? Ask them that,” said Stokely. Gator asked the question in slow but sure Russian. The two guys looked at each other before one of them answered the question.

“He says this is KGB HQ aboard the vessel, sir. Their military intel unit. No admittance.”

“Seriously, Gator? No admittance? Is that what he said? Well, hell. Do what you gotta do, Fat,” Stoke said.

In the blink of an instant, Saunders made a blindingly fast move forward. In one fluid motion, he leaned into the two guards, his two hands out like twin pistons, seizing both weapons and whipping them away from the Russians.

Stoke said, “Thank you kindly, Fat. Now, Gator, tell those two boys to stand aside before I perform rifle-butt dentistry on their asses.”

“Yes, sir,” Gator said, shouting an order. The two angry young men stood reluctantly aside.

“You see that palm plate access doohickey on the wall there, Gator? Tell one of them to put his hand on it. We’re going in there.”

Gator told them. They both glared back, shaking their heads in the negative.

“Tell them if they refuse again I’ll cut one of their fucking hands off and do it that way.”

To make his point, Stoke pulled out the assault knife sheathed on his right leg. “Tell them to open that goddamn door!”

Like magic, it was open sesame time in the KGB kingdom. Fat Saunders soon had the two military cops facedown on the deck, cuffing their wrists behind their backs.

“Gator, stay out here and keep these two boys facedown on the deck, got that?”

“Bet yo’ ass.”

“I don’t bet. Fat, you’re coming in with us.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for nuthin’, Skipper.”

Stoke stepped through the opening first. It wasn’t KGB; it was storage. The ship’s hold was cavernous. Lit only by a smoky blue light that swirled around like ground fog on a moonlit night. Nobody home. No personnel, no desks, no communications, nothing. He signaled his guys to follow and moved deeper into the mist.

“Shit!” Stoke cried out in the swirling mist. He felt like he was walking into a void. And then he slammed into something solid, and it startled the living bejeezus out of him.