Whatever the Cost

1

The sun seared an orange fireball across the darkening crimson sky, hovering close to the horizon as it spread the last of its rays across the Strait of Malacca.

Captain Yang Yaobang leaned forward to peer out of the bridge’s wrap-around windows, watching the sun dropping low ahead of his ship, the Fu Yu Shan. He had to stare past the three gigantic cranes which were lined up across the bow, but he could still make out the huge orange disk, and the wonderful effect it had on the sky. Sunsets, he reflected, were truly glorious in this exotic area, and he doubted that he would ever tire of them.

Unable to remain in the enclosed bridge while nature was performing its dance across the skies, he left his Officer of the Watch in charge, and stepped outside.

Even at this hour, the heat hit him hard after the air-conditioned comfort of the bridge, but the sensation was pleasant, a faint breeze cooling the heat on his skin.

He breathed in the air, filling his lungs with the scents hanging on the sea breeze. Even over the diesel fumes of the vessel’s huge engines, Yang swore that he could smell sweet jasmine and delicate orchid, competing with the stench of fish and rice, spices and cigarette smoke.

He looked to the shores on either side of him, the Strait so narrow that both sides could be seen, and observed what looked like a fishing village to starboard. He put his binoculars to his eyes and looked again, this time making out the details.

Yes. A small village, boats tied up at a rickety wooden jetty, dilapidated houses crowding the shoreline, children bathing in the warm waters before dinner, women washing clothes while old men sat in wicker chairs and chatted about who knew what.

Perhaps they were chatting about the future, Yang thought, as up ahead he could already see the urban conurbation of Si Rusa and Kampung Siginting, their commercial ports and luxury beach resorts linking up with others up and down the southern Malaysian coastline, threatening to eat up villages like this in their relentless path.

Yang sighed as he stared at the village, wondering what it was called. He would probably never know. That was progress, he supposed.

He had come from a fishing village just like this one, a quiet village which had eventually been caught up in the vast sprawl of Shanghai. He shook his head sadly, putting the binoculars down.

Yes. That was progress.

Still, this little piece of Southeast Asia still managed to retain some of its exotic charm, the whole of the Indonesian archipelago still somewhere that one could get lost in, a vast area of thousands upon thousands of islands and islets, vast stretches of mysterious and unexplored coastline.

But the Strait of Malacca wasn’t just beautiful and exotic; it was also inordinately dangerous, and he had to remind himself that he was approaching the most treacherous part of his voyage.

The Fu Yu Shan was a huge container vessel sailing out of Guangzhou, China. She had left the port of Tianjin a week ago, ready for a two week voyage through the South China Sea, across the Bay of Bengal, round the southern tip of India and up the coast to the port of Karachi in Pakistan. The vessel was a key contributor to Asian and Middle Eastern trade, its thirteen and a half thousand tons carrying seven thousand more tons of cargo to the ports of the Arabian Sea. There was a growing consumer market in the Middle East which China was more than willing to exploit, and over sixty thousand vessels ploughed through the Malacca Strait every year, many of them carrying Chinese consumer goods to India, Pakistan, and further up through the Gulf of Oman. Oil came back to Asia from the Gulf nations in the same way, and it was said that a quarter of the world’s traded goods passed through this area. Yang knew this to be true; perhaps even an understatement.

The Fu Yu Shan’s first stop had been the port of Dalian, right on the north eastern tip of the Chinese coast, where she had taken on extra cargo, as well as two extra crew members. Yang frowned as he thought of these men, replacements for two of his regular crew who had become inexplicably ill just before the Fu Yu Shan was due to set sail.

Their papers said they were Chinese, and they appeared to know what they were doing, but Yang had his doubts about them. They were incredibly taciturn and grim-faced; not characteristics entirely unknown among sailors, but strange nevertheless. And the way they had been ready and waiting, at a loose end and looking for work just when Yang was in need of two extra men was perhaps just a little too convenient.

But, Yang had decided, one should never look a gift horse in the mouth; a delightful phrase that he had picked up from Tommy Yu, one of the three Chinese-American sailors he had working aboard the Fu Yu Shan. He had therefore taken the two extra men on at Dalian, despite his misgivings.

But now they were entering the pirate-infested waters of the Malacca Strait, his doubts began to resurface.

The Strait was so well travelled by marine traffic because it offered direct passage between the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal without having to round the Indonesian island of Sumatra and cross the deeper waters of the Indian Ocean. But the result was a choke point, a narrow stretch of busy water in which it was very difficult to escape being boarded if attacked. And the thousands of islets, along with the multitude of rivers which snaked away inland, provided innumerable hiding places for the pirate gangs.

Piracy in the Strait stretched back to the fourteenth century, reaching its heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the arrival of European colonizers and their wealthy trade vessels.

Things weren’t as bad anymore, Yang reflected, and yet piracy had never really been stamped out — there were still hundreds of attacks every year, from amateurish attempts by opportunistic criminals, to more sophisticated attacks by professional gangs and terrorist groups. The governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore had all committed forces to patrolling the Strait, although the Indian Navy also had to help out due to the ineffectualness of Indonesia’s maritime forces.

But Yang hadn’t got to his position by relying on others, and he made sure that the Fu Yu Shan was properly equipped to deal with a boarding, should pirates ever decide to attack her. There were no sound guns or any of the other specialist, high-end — and therefore prohibitively expensive, for his shipping line at least — equipment that some vessels had, but Yang believed in the basics. He therefore had barbed wire and electric fences, as well as several water cannon and — most importantly — several trained men with Chinese QBZ-03 assault rifles and FHJ-84 62mm rocket launchers, as used by the PLA’s special operations units.

Yang surveyed the calm waters of the Strait once more, breathing in the sweet air as the sun finally slipped away beyond the horizon, leaving the world a suddenly darker place.

Yang sighed. The beauty was gone now.

All that remained was the danger.

2

‘So what’ve you got?’ asked James Dorrell, Director of Central Intelligence.

Samuel Trenter coughed and adjusted his tie before he replied. You didn’t just answer the director with the first thing that came into your head, especially if you wanted to keep your job.

Trenter also knew that Dorrell had plenty of other things on his plate. The Russian Federation, one of the signatories of the tripartite Mutual Defense Treaty, had just ousted its previous president, Vasilev Danko, and installed the much more expansionist and imperialist-minded Mikhail Emelienenko in his place. His opinion on the treaty was widely reported to be less than positive, and US intelligence was working overtime to draw up a reliable profile on the man and his possible intentions.

The problems in Russia also tied in with a disturbing rise of nationalism and right-wing politics which was gaining ground throughout Europe, threatening the very stability of the EU. France was only one step away from electing a National Front government, and several other countries were not far behind.

But Trenter’s area of expertise wasn’t Europe, and he wasn’t paid to second-guess the director’s priorities. He had been at the CIA for ten years now, working out of different desks within the Directorate of Intelligence, but right now he was posted to the Office of Asian Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis, where he specialized in the Korean peninsula.

And whereas in the past, the majority of trouble in that area had stemmed from North Korea’s desire to reunify — violently if necessary — with the South, nowadays South Korea also had plenty of problems with Islamic terrorism.

It had all started when the South Korean military helped with the capture of Abu Haq Maliki, a leading al-Qaeda leader who had been travelling through the country for covert arms talks. There had subsequently been a public demonstration by South Korean Muslims, asking for Maliki’s release and denouncing the South Korean government as pawns of the United States.

The demonstration had got out of hand — nobody quite knew how — and soldiers had fired shots at the crowd. What followed was a bloodbath, with a dozen protestors killed in what the press deemed ‘a display of unbridled savagery’.

South Korea had been the target of terrorism ever since — attacks to both exact vengeance, and to improve Muslim rights in the country — and the CIA had been keeping an ever closer eye on the area, fearful that it could presage a new spread of terrorism throughout the Asian continent.

Trenter saw Director James Dorrell’s expectant face across the desk from him, and knew he had to give an answer to the man’s question. It was important enough, he told himself.

‘There’s been a lot of traffic sir, a notable increase in communications that suggests something big’s about to happen, perhaps a major attack of some sort.’

‘What sort?’

Trenter readjusted his tie again. ‘I’m afraid we don’t know that yet sir. Communications are scrambled, the NSA is still trying to decode it all, but there’s been a three hundred percent increase in message traffic between known terrorist groups in the Arabian Peninsula and cells we believe are operating within South Korea.’

Trenter swallowed hard. Traditionally, part of an intelligence officer’s job was to be cautious — if you constantly blew the whistle, exhaustion and even disbelief would soon set in. It was like the boy who cried wolf — you couldn’t set alarm bells ringing too often, or else people would simply stop listening to the alarm. And nobody wanted to be proved wrong.

But Dorrell was different, and he’d spelled out to his colleagues many times that he had an open door policy — if they thought something was happening, he wanted their honest opinion as well as mere reportage. And Trenter respected Dorrell immensely for this. He had been one of the few political appointees who had kept their jobs after the assassination attempt on President Ellen Abrams eighteen months ago, and her belief in him was a measure of his strengths as an important leader within the US intelligence community.

What Trenter had was thin, and not something he would have approached Dorrell’s predecessor with; but it was something, and his gut instinct told him that a major terrorist operation was about to occur within Korea.

‘Possible ramifications for the United States?’ Dorrell asked.

‘It depends on what exactly happens, sir. Obviously, South Korea is a major ally of ours; we denounced that attack on the demonstrators of course, but we’re very much in bed with them. They expect our protection, and if such an attack goes ahead, the entire world will expect us to help the South Korean government to respond.’

Dorrell nodded his head, deep in thought. And Trenter knew what he was thinking; helping the South Korean government to respond could involve a number of things, not the least of which would be military action. And with US forces already spread thinly on the ground, this wasn’t something the administration would want.

‘Okay Sam,’ Dorrell said at last, ‘obviously we can’t let this attack go ahead. You have authorization to pick another six officers to work on this with you — full time, round the clock. I’ll speak to the chief at NCTC,’ Dorrell continued, ‘and get them to assist. I want answers, and I want solutions.’

Trenter nodded in agreement. ‘Yes sir,’ he said, standing up. ‘Thank you.’

Dorrell acknowledged him with a wave of the hand. ‘Let’s just hope it’s a waste of time, son. For all our sakes.’

3

Wong Sheng peered out at the black waters from the port side of the Fu Yu Shan, lighting a cigarette as he scanned the view in front of him.

All quiet.

Wong knew it would be; for all Captain Yang’s worrying, there hadn’t been an attack on this shipping line’s vessels in decades.

Maybe it was just luck, he thought idly as he puffed on the cigarette, watching the end glow red against the black sea; and luck could always run out.

And yet he wasn’t worried. He believed in fate, and if it was meant to be, then who was he to waste time worrying about it? And if anyone was foolish enough to attack the Fu Yu Shan, he thought with amusement as his hand reflexively dropped to caress the cold steel of the assault rifle slung from his shoulder, then they’d be sorry. They’d be really sorry.

Wong took another hit off the cigarette, exhaling the smoke up towards where the stars would normally be. But not tonight; tonight, they were covered behind a blanket of cloud, cloaking everything in darkness. There was a heavy atmosphere, Wong decided, almost as if the dark was pressing in on him, wrapping him up in it.

A perfect night for a surprise attack, a part of his mind tried to scream at him; and yet it only came through as a whisper, his mind dulled by the monotony of the voyage and a diet of cigarettes and whisky, and was easy to ignore.

Wong peered back across the ship, the huge loading cranes above the cargo containers, the expansive high-rise of the bridge and watch tower looming above him. He knew there were other armed men out there, friends and colleagues of his posted around the ship at regular intervals.

But there was nothing else out there; nothing at all.

Wong started thinking about Karachi. The population was heavily religious, predominantly Muslim, and Wong had no time for any of that. Not drinking, not whoring, that just wasn’t natural, at least as far as he was concerned.

But it was all a false pretense, he’d found to his pleasure when he’d first visited the city; the men who lived there were no different from those anywhere else on Earth. And in the end, Karachi turned out to be more than cosmopolitan enough to cater for a man of his tastes; when he’d been there last year, a friend of his had found an exquisite place with the finest women. Cheap too, even for someone who’d grown up in the slums of Canton.

What was that girl’s name again? he wondered as he took another lazy drag of his cigarette. Adeela? Aisha? Something like that, he supposed, but it hardly mattered anyway; he was sure to be able to find something else when he was there, something equally exotic, equally alluring. And hopefully, equally able to –

Wong’s breath caught in his throat as he felt something wrenching his head back from behind, covering his eyes, pulling back, back, exposing his neck –

Wong dropped the cigarette, ignoring the burning sensation in his leg as the glowing end landed on his squirming thigh, trying to wrench the hand from his face, forgetting all about the assault rifle slung uselessly from his shoulder, unable now to get it, and his fingers clawed at what must have been a person behind him, his nails dragging across skin, clothing –

And then he felt the cold steel of the blade against his throat, felt the sharp edge dig into the fragile skin there, dig and cut straight across, and finally he tried to scream, although it was too late for that, too late for anything except to watch his own blood spray from his severed throat into the black sea beyond.

Arief Suprapto looked down at the dead man at his feet, arterial spray covering the steel railings, regretful that he’d had to die.

He was regretful, yet not remorseful; it wasn’t a moral problem at all. It was just that he preferred to capture people alive, as the more crew members they were able to hold hostage, the more money they could make.

But this man had a gun, which made him a threat which needed to be eliminated; even if Suprapto had managed to subdue him without killing him, in his experience men with guns could be troublesome even after they’d been disarmed. And so Suprapto had a standing order among his men that anyone with a weapon should be killed instantly. It negated future threats, and sent a direct and very clear message to the rest of the crew.

Don’t fuck with us. We mean business.

Who needed words when you had actions?

He received the all-clear from his men over his radio earpiece; the amateurish guards were down all over the ship, and the first phase of the plan was complete.

Suprapto smiled; just because he was called a pirate didn’t mean that he wore an eye patch, carried a parrot on his shoulder and used a cutlass. On the contrary, his men were armed to the teeth with cutting edge weaponry, sourced by an agent who had access to vast stockpiles on the Southeast Asian mainland. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos — there was more military-grade equipment freely available there than almost anywhere else on the planet.

And it wasn’t just weapons either; his men had night-vision devices, secure communications gear, advanced surveillance equipment and — most importantly for sea-faring pirates — high-speed, near-silent attack boats, stealthy craft which could transport a crew of armed men quickly and without detection.

Suprapto had led his pirate gang since he was seventeen, nearly thirty years ago now; and he had taken command in the traditional way, by violently killing the previous captain and thus earning the respect of the battle-hardened men he now controlled. Respect that had lasted for three successful decades, an unusually long time for this sort of job.

But Suprapto was ruthless, a quality he prided himself on above all others; if he survived, it was only because he was prepared to do more — torture more, scheme more, plan more, kill more — than any of the pretenders to his crown.

And that was truly how he saw himself — with a crown, the King of Pirates like his hero Liang Dao Ming, who had run roughshod over the area seven hundred years ago with thousands of loyal followers.

But now wasn’t the time for grandstanding, Suprapto recognized as he checked the luminous dial of his diver’s watch.

Now was the time for phase two of the assault plan.

He almost felt sorry for the crew.

Almost.

4

‘Where is the ship now?’

The question was asked by a man whose small stature and feminine voice belied the enormous power he wielded, and his sociopathic ability to use that power without consideration for how it would affect others. To Lieutenant General U Chun-su, Director of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, people were merely pawns to be used in the worldwide game of espionage and counter-espionage; a game he enjoyed enormously.

‘The ship is on course,’ came the reply from Major Ho Sang-ok, who — despite the power he wielded over his own domain — stood rigidly to attention in front of his superior. Ho was in charge of the RGB’s Third Bureau, known as Office No. 35 due to its location in a former office of the Korean Workers’ Party headquarters. Charged with the collection of foreign intelligence and the conduct of overseas operations, Ho was a feared and respected officer; and yet he still shrank from the man in front of him.

Both men accepted that this was how life was in their great nation — the system revolved around fear; fear of your superiors, fear of failure, and most importantly of all, fear of their great Communist Leader, President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As soon as the people below you stopped being afraid of you, you were finished. It was survival of the fittest in its purest human form, and both U and Ho reveled in such a system. If other counties didn’t agree with how they did things, it just meant that they were weak.

‘When is it due in Karachi?’ U asked next, his voice still lilting softly.

‘Seven days sir, it should dock on Monday at twelve noon.’

U nodded his head. ‘Good. Excellent. Are the correct assets in place in Pakistan to receive the goods?

‘Yes sir, our agents are ready and waiting.’

‘Excellent,’ U repeated, before concern furrowed his brow. ‘Is there any danger of our cargo being intercepted? I have heard that there is much danger from pirates in those waters, and I am fearful that the Fu Yu Shan is just a civilian ship.’

Ho had anticipated this question, and had his answer already prepared; he knew U would expect no less. ‘We have examined patterns of attacks in the area, and foresee no difficulties,’ Ho said confidently. ‘Pirates are becoming much less common, and tend not to attack ships of this size any more, especially with the increased naval activity and better on-board security measures and tracking devices. And,’ he continued with a glint in his eye, ‘there are armed guards in case of any trouble, as well as two of our own men who we managed to place aboard the ship as crewmembers at Dalian.’

‘Are they good?’

Ho nodded. ‘The best, sir. Both experienced Captains from our Sniper Brigades.’

U grunted in satisfaction. The Sniper Brigades were North Korea’s elite of the elite. He was confident that the men would guard the cargo with their lives.

U was due in a meeting with the Minister of State Security later that evening, and he knew that the minister would be briefing President Kim the very next morning. He was only grilling Major Ho because it was of such paramount importance that everything was in place, that the operation went perfectly.

As President Kim had made clear on more than one occasion, the inevitable and destined reunification of Korea depended on it.

The two men whose documents named them Xiao Tong and Yan Yanzhi looked at one another, one brief glance that carried with it an hour’s worth of conversation. There was no fear in their eyes, no panic; only clear, hard resolution.

It was time to fight.

Xiao Tong — born Jang Kuk-ryul, in a little village outside the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — had been asleep when the pirates first boarded the ship. His comrade-in-arms, Yan Yanzhi — who Jang knew by his original Korean name, O Sin-sul — had been keeping watch, and saw the pirates silently slipping aboard and assassinating the ship’s guards.

A soldier from the age of eighteen, O had been a member of the elite Sniper Battalion One for ten years. He was a hardened professional, and therefore managed to restrain the urge to take on the ship’s attackers head-on. Against such odds he would more than likely lose, and Jang would probably end up being killed in his bed.

And so O had made a tactical retreat, waking Jang and collecting their hidden weapons cache before heading to the cargo hold. After all, their mission was the cargo, and not their fellow crew members. All that mattered was protecting the crate which had been taken aboard at Dalian.

And now, as they waited in the cargo hold, they knew what would have already happened above. The pirates — for that is surely what they were — would have secured the ship, rousing men from their beds, raiding the watch tower and the bridge, taking control of the engine rooms, until the whole vessel was theirs.

O and Jang wondered if the crew — now hostages — would be brought down to the cargo hold to be guarded until the ship docked in whatever secret cove the pirates’ hideout was located. Both soldiers decided that this is what they would do if raiding the ship, as the container area was the largest area, and the easiest to secure by a few armed men.

As they heard the sound of feet shuffling down metal steps, muffled cries and aggressive shouts, Jang and O exchanged their looks, and realized they were about to find out if it was also — as they hoped — the easiest area to defend.

5

Arief Suprapto was pleased.

The taking of the Fu Yu Shan had gone entirely without incident, all the guards had been subdued without even getting a shot off, and he’d caught the captain asleep in his cabin. A quick pistol-whipping had been enough to subdue the man after he’d offered his first gesture of defiance, and he hadn’t put a foot wrong since.

Now, with his own trusted men on the bridge and in the engine rooms, and the ship’s Automatic Identification System tracking device disabled, he led the fourteen crewmembers — now his hostages — down the steel steps towards the cargo area, where they would be secured for the remainder of the journey.

‘Admiral!’ the call came over his radio, crystal clear and frantic.

‘Yes,’ Suprapto answered, pleased to hear his rank announced over the radio. He had conferred it upon himself of course, but after thirty hard years at sea, should he not be an admiral? ‘Go ahead.’

‘There might be a problem sir,’ the voice said nervously. ‘Not including the armed guards we killed, we’ve accounted for fourteen of the crew, but the manifest states there should be sixteen. Two men were taken on at Dalian.’

Shit! A problem like this he didn’t need. ‘Organize a search!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Right now!’

‘We’re already on it, Admiral. We’re combing every square inch of this ship.’

‘Very well. Keep me informed.’ He clicked off the radio, and thought. Two men. Not regular crew members, it would seem. Taken on at the port of Dalian. Why? And why were these same two men the ones that were now missing?

It was an anomaly, and Suprapto didn’t like anomalies. He liked to control everything, to know everything. Control was what gave him his power.

He needed to reassert control.

His men were combing the ship for the two fugitives, but hadn’t yet found them.

The cargo area was secure. Safe. Where would he go if he needed to hide?

Down below.

Were the two men here? Could they be armed?

Suprapto’s eyes took in the gigantic loading bay below him in a fraction of a second, his mind calculating vectors and angles faster than any supercomputer could ever hope to.

And then he moved.

The bark of the AK-47 assault rifles in the enclosed steel chamber was deafening.

‘Shit!’ Jang cursed as the pirate captain leapt out of the way at the last second, pulling one of the hostages down to cover him. Jang’s bullets instead hit a man he recognized as the cook, the rounds rippling through his body and killing him instantly.

The stairwell leading down to the cargo hold was the perfect area for an ambush. With the pirates confined to the narrow steps — just as the Fu Yu Shan had been trapped in the narrow Strait — it should have been as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

But then that damn captain had moved just before Jang pulled the trigger. How could he possibly have known?

O had been blessed with more luck; his high-powered 5.45mm rounds had hit three of the pirates, with fatal results. Bodies toppled down the steps, limp and lifeless. He would surely have tagged more, but the others reacted to their captain’s shouts and started moving, pulling hostages in front of them, already retreating back up the steel staircase.

Jang tried to track them with his gun, but it was useless; they were gone.

‘Admiral!’ said Reza Panggabean, breathless. ‘What the hell was that?’

Suprapto ignored the screams of the hostages as his men controlled them back on the top deck, two having to be clubbed to the ground before order was restored; his mind was elsewhere.

Panggabean was one of Suprapto’s best men, utterly fearless and equally loyal. Suprapto clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Resistance,’ he said, with a tone which was equal parts regret and excitement.

Panggabean’s face lit up. ‘We can burn them!’ he offered.

Suprapto shook his head. ‘They killed three of my men. Believe me, I would like nothing better than to burn them. But we need that cargo, remember? Smart of them, hiding there. They know we’ll make money from selling the cargo, that we’ll be unwilling to damage it.’ Suprapto hung his head, deep in thought.

Two men, armed with AK-47s by the sound of them. But what else would they have down there? He knew the men on deck had rocket launchers, and wondered if there were more in the cargo hold.

He frowned. He didn’t want to make a mess of this. As well as the huge sum the vessel and crew would fetch for ransom, there was also the colossal amount of money promised to him for a single, special crate in the hold below. He had no idea what it was, and nor did he care; but he didn’t want it damaging.

He exhaled slowly, then breathed in the sweet night air, cold in his nostrils after the blazing heat of the day.

He couldn’t risk a frontal assault, as there was too much danger of the cargo being damaged; and if the enemy had rocket launchers, his own men might come off the worst.

But there was always negotiation.

Turning quickly, he grabbed one of the hostages by the collar and hauled him towards the steps. In the blink of an eye, Suprapto fired a round into the man’s head and kicked the lifeless body down the stairwell.

‘Come up now with your hands up,’ he shouted down after the body, ‘and I promise you, you’ll live. Believe me, you’re worth more to me alive than dead. But trust me on this — the ship and the cargo are worth far more than the crew, and I’ll send another of your friends down to join you every minute until you surrender. Your time starts now!’

Suprapto could see the fear in the eyes of every hostage, the anticipation on the faces of his own men. He checked his diver’s watch. Thirty seconds, and no sign of the men.

Forty.

Fifty.

Damn.

Suprapto grabbed another hostage, shot him, and hurled him down the stairs.

‘Do you believe me now?’ he screamed. ‘Will you risk every man aboard, or will you give yourselves up?’

He waited, but there was no answer.

Shit. He didn’t want to kill any more hostages; they really were quite valuable.

What did those damn sailors want?

He sighed; time for Plan B.

‘Hasyimi,’ he said into his radio, ‘bring me the ship’s blueprints.’

O and Jang waited silently behind a section of wooden crates, watching through the sights of their assault rifles. Whoever came down the stairs next would be dead.

It was a shame that the other crew members were being killed, but there was no way on earth that the two soldiers would ever surrender. It wasn’t in their nature, and nor was it in their orders. And soldiers — especially from the strict hierarchical culture of the homeland — were expected to follow orders.

And so they would wait here to protect their crate, and they wouldn’t move until their own dead bodies were pried away, if it came to that.

But O and Jang hoped it would not; the pirate captain was obviously reluctant to damage the cargo by leading a full assault, and he seemed to have given up executing the crew members too. They knew that in the end, the pirates would come down those stairs though — they would have to if they ever wanted to unload this cargo. And even if the pirates used hostages as human shields to cover their attack, both men were prepared to go through the hostages to get to the enemy.

O reacted as something came bouncing down the stairs, a small metal canister; then another, then another.

‘Smoke!’ O told Jang, but Jang was already pulling on his respirator, just part of the special equipment they’d smuggled aboard in case of an attack.

Weapons up, they watched the stairs through their darkened lenses, struggling to see through the spiraling smoke, waiting for any sign of the assault which was surely to follow.

O heard a guttural noise from next to him, and turned to Jang. Even through the smoke, O could see the tip of a knife sticking out of his friend’s throat, having been rammed straight through the neck from behind.

O tried to turn, to shoot, but it was too late, and he felt the burning sensation of cold steel being plunged into his kidneys again, and again, and again.

The smoke cleared within minutes, and Suprapto and Panggabean surveyed their victims as they lay spread-eagled on the floor, thick blood pooled around their bodies.

‘Good job, Reza,’ Suprapto beamed. ‘Good job.’

‘Thank you, Admiral,’ Panggabean said happily. ‘Your knife work pretty nice too.’

Suprapto looked down, and had to admit that Panggabean was right; the blow through the spinal column and out of the windpipe was perfect.

He looked around the cargo hold in satisfaction. Everything was safe, just as it should be.

‘Bring down the hostages!’ he called to his men upstairs.

‘What about the bodies?’ Panggabean asked.

‘Leave them,’ Suprapto ordered. ‘They can serve as an example to the others.’

Panggabean grinned with a mouth full of gold. ‘Yes, sah,’ he confirmed, stepping over a sticky puddle of congealed blood to retrieve the men’s weapons. The boss had style, that was for sure.

The two dead men would certainly make a fine example for anyone.

‘Status?’ the disembodied, digitized voice of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, known to his vast legions of followers only as The Lion, said over the encrypted line.

The secretive and feared leader of a radical group not yet known to the West, Quraishi listened patiently to the answer whilst sipping on a cup of jasmine tea.

The prognosis was good.

‘Excellent,’ came the rasping voice. ‘My colleagues will take immediate delivery.’

The call ended instantly with that single announcement, the secure phone replaced in its cradle.

Sipping the sweetly-scented tea, The Lion smiled.

The ravaging, terrorizing, and ultimate destruction of the Great Satan that was Western civilization was finally about to begin.