Warriors

CHAPTER 29

Stoke caught the crest of a wave and shoved the heavy-duty chromed outboard throttles in opposite directions. The Contender 34 spun off the top of the curl in a perfect… pirouette. He cranked the wheel over hard to port, dipping her into the trough, and, finally, nudged the helm and swung his bow up; Miss Maria nestled up alongside Jade’s nearly vertical emerald green hull. The big yacht was riding dead in the water, her powerful engines at a deep idle. But the wind out of the south had freshened, and when Stoke felt a shudder, he saw he was banging his starboard rail against Jade’s beautifully awl-gripped green hull pretty hard.

High above the Miss Maria, two burly, bald-headed crewmen were leaning out over the rail, peering down at them. Stoke stepped aft, raised the Zeiss lenses to his eyes, and scoped them out. They didn’t appear to be armed. Which meant absolutely nothing, of course. At least they weren’t giving him the finger.

Boardings were always tricky business. Sometimes, when the inspected vessel had nothing to hide, they were routine. You did a thorough search, thanked the skipper, and got out of Dodge. Routine. Other times, they were anything but. You just never knew, was Stoke’s experience.

Until, of course, you knew.

Stoke radioed the CG cutter his position and situation, stepped once more out from under the Contender’s custom Kevlar-mesh escape T-top, and signaled up to the two at the rail. Immediately, they lowered a ladder and dropped two mooring lines, one fore and one aft. Harry, standing next to the .50 caliber he’d mounted on the bow as they’d left the dock, grabbed one line, cleated off the bow, and started upward on the dangling ladder.

Stoke kept the binocs and the spotlight trained on him all the way up the steep side. He didn’t relax until he saw Brock over the gunwales and safely aboard, assisted by the two crew.

Then Stoke rigged fenders on the boarding side and secured the stern line to an aft cleat. Miss Maria wasn’t going anywhere now. He remained standing with his legs apart in the center of the cockpit, swiveling his head back and forth continuously. He kept his eye on the crew above, his weapon at the ready, on full auto. Waiting for Harry’s sit rep, he had a clear field of fire from stem to stern.

He wasn’t going by the book and he knew it.

Normally, the standard Coast Guard boarding team of two never separates during an op like this. But Stoke didn’t want his team to present a single target up there tonight. Not just yet, anyway. Just didn’t feel right. He liked having his weapon trained on any Jade crew up topside for the moment.

They didn’t look hostile, but then, they never did until the real shit hit the fan. If CIA and Brock were right, and the Chinese were running guns illegally, things wouldn’t get spicy until he’d actually located the alleged smuggled weapons cache somewhere deep in the hull. That’s what he figured anyway.

Brock finally leaned over the rail and looked down at him, adjusting his radio’s lip-mike in front of his mouth.

“Looks clear, Skipper.”

“How many?”

“Only the two we saw on the main deck so far. Unarmed. Cooperative.”

“Stand by.”

Stoke went to the helm and shut the three big outboards down. He tuned the VHF radio to monitor 22 on cockpit speakers. This was the channel the Coast Guard cutter Vigorous was standing by on. The Coasties were sitting out there just out of visual contact, OTH, over the horizon, but they had a heavily armed helicopter with a spec-ops team aboard that could be hovering over this scene in two minutes if it all went to shit in a hurry.

Stoke slung his weapon on his back and began his ascent up the side of the emerald hull. He swung up and over the rail like a goddamn gymnast and planted his boots on the pristine teak decks.

“Good evening. I’m Lieutenant Sheldon Levy, United States Coast Guard,” Stoke said to the two crewmen. “This is USCG Ensign Brock. We’d like to speak to your captain. I believe we’re expected.”

The two guys seemed all right, deepwater suntanned, bleached-blond crew-cut boys in starched white uniforms. Unless they were wearing ankle-biter holsters, Harry was right, they didn’t appear armed. Or, for the moment, dangerous.

One false move and Harry would have them both facedown on the deck, hands cuffed behind with plastic ligatures.

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” the older one said. “Captain’s expecting you. Please follow me up to the bridge, gentlemen.”

They climbed three sets of exterior steps, the second crewman bringing up the rear. This was a vulnerable moment, and Stoke was glad when it was over.

A solid wall of frigid air greeted them as a hidden door in the stainless steel bulkhead slid back to reveal every wannabe megayachtsman’s wet dream. The yacht’s darkened bridge looked like the control room of the damn Starship Enterprise. A huge crescent-shaped console beneath the wraparound windows, cutting-edge electronics up the wazoo, all of it lit up like rows of Vegas slots in a personal home theater.

They stepped up and inside, Stoke already freezing his ass off in the frigid AC air.

“Captain?” the mate said, almost loud enough to be heard anywhere aboard.

No answer.

“Cap’n,” the mate said it again, ushering them forward, “I have Lieutenant Sheldon Levy from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Vigorous aboard, sir.”

No response.

Stoke registered alarm, and his finger found the inside of the trigger guard. He didn’t see anyone in the room looking or acting remotely like the skipper. Nor did anyone at the controls say anything. The crew, all Chinese from what he could make out in the smoky red darkness, were staring at the two of them like they’d just landed from Mars. The whole thing? Starting to look like a first-class goatfuck.

“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” Stoke said quietly into his helmet mike.

“What. The. Fuck,” Harry agreed.

A giant captain’s chair in black leather was mounted on a gleaming steel hydraulic piston. Higher than all the other seats at the console by a few feet. The chair was so damn big you couldn’t tell whether or not there was anybody sitting in it. Suddenly, it began descending slowly toward the deck.

A disembodied voice from out of the deepest heart of the southland came from the chair.

“Hey! How y’all doing, Lieutenant… Levy, is it?”

“Correct,” Stoke said to no one. “Sheldon Levy.”

“Captain Randy Wade Wong, Lieutenant Levy, how can we help y’all?”

The powered chair swiveled on its axis. And Stoke and Harry got their first good look at this modern-day Ahab. He was wider than he was tall. A hybrid, Stoke thought. Half Chinese, half American. The combo didn’t really work. A wide flat jigsaw of a face, where the individual pieces didn’t seem to have come from the same box. He was wearing huge gold Elvis Presley mirrored sunglasses, which didn’t help his look.

Captain Wong said, “Damn, Lieutenant, I gotta say, you don’t look like any Sheldon Levy I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, funny, right? But then, like I always say, look at Sammy Davis Jr.”

Wong laughed out loud.

“You, sir, I will vouchsafe, are the largest man I have ever seen,” Wong said.

“And the thing is, Cap? What you see here? Man, this is just the facade,” Stoke said, edging ever closer to him.

What a piece of work was this Randy Wong character. A short, stocky guy, all gussied up in crisp whites, who managed to fill the big black chair. His small lace-up white shoes still quite didn’t reach the deck, and he was swinging his feet back and forth like a toddler.

Wong said, “If the man mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad comes to the man mountain,” he said, still swinging his legs back and forth as he neared the deck.

Harry whispered in Stoke’s earpiece, “Seriously, Skipper, this ship of fools is deranged.”

The captain’s feet touched the deck, where he pushed out of his chair and said, “Well, well, well, and what can we do for y’all on this whole lovely South Florida evening?”

He had his tiny fists on his hips like a miniature dictator might do.

“We have orders to search your vessel, Captain Wong,” Stoke said.

“Is that right?”

“Is the owner aboard?”

“She is not.”

“She?”

“The owner is a woman.”

“Interesting. And who exactly is the owner of this vessel?”

“That would be my employer.”

“Her name?”

“Moon.”

“First name?”

“Madame.”

“Madame?”

“Madame Moon?”

“Yep.”

“Aboard?”

“No, Lieutenant. As it happens, she’s in England. We were proceeding there to pick her up. Until you interrupted our voyage.”

“Miami is not your final port of call?”

“No, Lieutenant Levy. Philadelphia, New York, and then Southampton. The one in England.”

“That’s it?”

“No. We are taking the owner aboard at Southampton. A sybaritic cruise in the Greek isles, as she describes it.”

“Your last port of origin was?”

“Caracas.”

“Right, Caracas. My paperwork says something else. Are you bringing anything into the United States that you now wish to declare?”

“You mean like diseased fruits and vegetables? Like exotic and endangered birds of the rain forest? Rotten avocados?”

“No. I mean like drugs. Or weapons.”

“Ah. No, Lieutenant. In that case, nothing to declare.”

“How many crew aboard?”

“Seven altogether, not counting me.”

“I want you to muster them all here on the bridge. Not now, but right now.”

“Well now, I don’t know if I can do—”

“That’s an order, Captain. I am authorized by my government to search this vessel. If you resist, or cause me and Ensign Brock here even a hint of trouble, we can handle this in a different way. The USCG cutter Vigorous is standing by. Would you like me to radio her skipper now and tell them that you are not cooperating?”

“Hell, no, Lieutenant Levy. I ain’t got nothing to hide here, son. You search this old barge all night long, you want to. Ain’t nothing worth spit aboard this vessel but a Rolls-Royce automobile.”

“Make the muster announcement over the PA system, Captain. Get ’em up here on the double. All of them.”

He did, but he wasn’t happy about it.

Once all seven crew members were accounted for, and had been patted down and searched for weapons by Harry Brock, Stoke said to the guy, “Where you from, Cap?”

“Me? Lower Bottom, Kentucky. Know where that is?”

“No. Where is it?”

“Down in the holler. Just below Upper Bottom. My beloved mother was a coal miner’s daughter. My father from Shanghai was another story altogether. Crazy little dude, seriously. Hazardous.”

Stoke nodded and said, “Ensign Brock, guard these men while I initiate the search. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Anybody gives you any trouble, you order in the chopper from the Vig. Got it?”

“Aye, sir.”

Stoke started in the forward hold.

There were only two objects of any note, covered in canvas drop cloths, which Stoke ripped away. A brand-new Rolls-Royce Ghost in the same emerald green shade as the yacht. And a thirty-foot Aquariva speedboat, an old one, a beauty. Madame Moon apparently knew how to live.

Next, having come up empty in the largest hold, the one located amidships, he headed for the stern. “Nothing forward or amidships,” he said to Harry on the radio. “Going aft.”

He stepped silently through an open door in the after bulkhead and found himself at the top of a steep flight of steel steps leading below, the bottom steps lost in the semidarkness.

Voices.

He took a breath and held it.

Two men down below, talking quietly, unaware that someone was listening. He could smell the cigarette smoke wafting up, could sense them, waiting for him.

The captain had said there were seven crew members, but with these two unaccounted for, he’d apparently meant nine. Big mistake.

If he went down the steps, they’d see his boots before he saw them. Silently, he removed two of the four grenades hanging from his web belt — a flash-bang for disorientation and a smoker to blind them.

He pulled the pins and threw them downward hard enough to bounce off the iron deck below. In the movies you always see the grenades being rolled across the deck. Which gives the bad (or good) guys the opportunity to pick them up and toss them back where they came from. No. Like an onside kick, you bounced those bad apples as hard and fast as you could off the deck.

First, the loud CRACK and blinding light of the flash-bang, then the muffled WHOOMPH of the smoker. Stoke grabbed the rails on either side of the stairs, raised his feet, and slid rapidly to the now-smoke-filled bottom of the hold.

One of the two guys began firing wildly into the smoke hoping to get lucky. Didn’t work out for him. Stoke saw his muzzle flash and instantly dropped him with his nine-millimeter H&K automatic pistol.

“Your buddy’s dead. Drop your weapon!” he shouted to the other guard, taking a knee and swinging his weapon through an arc. “I want to hear that bad boy hit the deck.”

Silence. He could feel the guy moving to his left inside the smoke, trying to get behind some cover or come up next to him.

“Really? That’s how you want to do this? Last chance.”

The guy was getting closer; Stokely could sense more than hear his rubber-soled advance across the oil-slick deck. Enough. Stoke flicked his assault rifle to full auto and sprayed lead from left to right, the full 180 degrees. He heard the guy scream once and drop heavily to the deck.

“Two tangos down,” he told Harry.

“Motherf—”

“Don’t say it.”

They’d been guarding a hidden door.

Thick and heavy, it was locked, but Stoke molded a handful of plastic explosive around the latch and blew it. He switched on his powerful LED torch and peered inside the darkened hold.

Crates.

Stacks of them all the way to the ceiling. Wooden, about twelve feet long by four feet wide, secured by heavy steel bands. Identical Chinese markings in red on each box. He counted them, five stacks of six, thirty. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone, got the Camera Genius app running and snapped a bunch of pictures he could e-mail to Harry, who could e-mail them to the brass at Langley. Now. Tonight. Technology.

“Bingo,” he said into his mike.

“What?” Harry said.

“Don’t know yet. But something and a lot of it down here. Everybody behaving up there?”

“Restless. Wong’s getting itchy.”

“Lice or crabs probably. Look. I’m going to open a crate. I’ll be back in ten. These are bad guys. He had two extra crew down here in the aft hold guarding a stockpile of something. Shot at me without warning. Not alive anymore. Somebody messes with you up there, you mess right back, Harry.”

“Roger that, Stoke. I’m cool.”

The crates were heavy as hell, but he managed to manhandle one of the ones on top down to the deck. They all had the same big red symbol on the lid. Stoke grabbed a shot of it with his iPhone, then started on the steel band with his heavy shears.

Two minutes later he lifted the lid and peered inside the crate.

Five minutes after that he was racing back up three decks to the bridge, on the radio to the CG cutter, describing what he’d found and asking for immediate assistance. The CG skipper said the Vig was on her way to arrest the crew and take the vessel in tow, but he was launching the chopper with an assault team now for their immediate safety.

He said the helo would be hovering over the yacht in four minutes max and the team would fast-rope to the deck.

When Stoke stepped inside the bridge, he could tell the captain was surprised to see him still alive. Not part of the game plan.

“You lied to me, Randy,” Stoke said. “A big no-no.”

“I just drive the bus, pal.”

“Yeah. Now I’m going to throw you under it, pal. You’re toast. And your boys waiting for me in the aft hold? They’re not alive anymore. That send you a signal? Asshole.”

“What’d you find?” Brock asked.

“Drones,” Stoke said. “Attack drones, twelve feet long. Painted with this weird matte-black coating. Every one of them has this symbol on each wing.”

He held up his iPhone so Harry could see the shot he’d taken of the stubby-winged UAV in its crate.

“Jesus. That thing looks seriously badass. Nose cannon. Missile mounts on the wings and shit. What’s that symbol?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Where’s my funky little Chinese interpreter when I need him?”

“Dead. We could use him. But it would be messy.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Stoke looked hard at the Jade’s skipper. “Listen up, sideshow, get one your homeboys over there to tell me what this symbol means. Send him over here with his hands up. Now.”

A young Chinese officer came forward, and Stoke held up his cell so the kid could see the picture he’d snapped below.

“What’s that symbol mean, son?” Stoke asked him. “That thing on the wings of the drones.”

“Rheaven,” the guy said, “rhymes with ‘heaven.’”

“In English, please.”

“Raven.”

“Like the bird?” Stoke said.

The guy lowered his eyes and giggled like a girl.

In that moment, Stoke finally understood the meaning of the word inscrutable.