Killer Instincts v5 (2 page)

Within moments of getting strapped in, Andre lifts us off the deck, then banks out and over the port side of the yacht before flying alongside the ship's hull, heading due south. I see Steiger on the deck now, watching us fly off into the night. I think for a moment he's looking straight at me.

Flight time to target is less than thirty minutes. Andre has the helo skimming the waves, no small feat for a guy who's never flown into combat. There's little light to fly by, and we're running dark to keep hidden. Thankfully, he's got an excellent pair of night vision goggles and he seems comfortable flying with them. The ocean is calm and although we're no more than ten feet off the deck, I'm not at all nervous. Well, okay, only a little bit nervous.

Before we make contact, I take a paint-stick from my pocket and blacken my hands, neck, and face. The other three painted up before we boarded, but I felt uneasy about walking around a multi-million dollar yacht drinking from a china cup while wearing my war-face. I make sure I don't miss a spot, even pulling my sleeves up and getting along my wrists and lower forearms. While the others darkened up as a matter of habit, and to make themselves less of an obvious target in the low light, I need to become invisible tonight.

"I see the ship," I hear Andre say over the helo's communications headsets. I look out past the open doorway of the helicopter and see a faint glimmer of light in the dark.

"Comms test," I say. We all tuck our earbuds in underneath the headphones, make sure our throat mics are sitting comfortably and the radios are on the right channels and frequencies.

"Kenny here," I hear Kenneth over his throat mic.

"Tommy here, Ken sounds good," Tommy replies.

"This is James, I'm hearing you guys." James is leaning out of the open doorway now, SAW tucked into his shoulder.

“Andre speaking, does everyone hear me?" Again, I can't tell if Andre is terrified or just excited.

I press my mic button. “William here. Everyone sounds good."

Twenty seconds out, and Andre has the Colibri screaming across the ocean. We're probably six feet off the deck now, and well over a hundred miles an hour. Five seconds out, Andre cuts the throttle back sharply and bounces high. We suddenly pop up out of nowhere off the ship's starboard bow, the tail rotor pushing the helicopter around a hundred and eighty degrees, bringing us to a full stop over the cargo ship's elevated foredeck.

"Here comes the whirlwind," I whisper to myself.

In the span of three heartbeats, I unclip myself from the safety harness, draw back the bolt on my Uzi, and jump out into the night.

There is a simple plan. I drop onto the foredeck of the freighter, hopefully unnoticed, while the rest of the team makes a balls-out assault against the ship's bridge only a few seconds later. Their job is to bring the ship to a halt, cut off communications, and draw as much attention to themselves as possible while holding the bridge against the ship's crew. Simple, certainly not easy, but to the point. If they aren't all dead in the next thirty seconds, chances are those three can handle themselves against the human trash sailing this bucket.

My job, on the other hand, requires a little more finesse.

I fall an easy three meters and drop-crouch onto the raised foredeck. Amazingly, I don't snap an ankle or impale myself on some sharp metal protrusion in the process. By the time I stand up, Andre has the Colibri hovering over the ship's bridge, a thrumming black shadow blocking out the stars. The freighter is operating with only the dim glow from the bridge windows to illuminate the ship. Above this, the helicopter is all but invisible.

Muzzle flare, on the other hand, is easy to see from this distance. The three mercenaries drop onto the roof of the bridge, then down onto the gangway that runs around the superstructure port and starboard. Automatic weapons fire and shotgun blasts light up the night. Even a hundred meters away, it drowns out the sound of the retreating helicopter.

"Moving to loitering position," I hear Andre say over the radio. He's climbing to two thousand feet and circling us half a mile out.

"William copies," I reply.

The foredeck hatchway below me slams open. This is what I've been waiting for, someone to leave the gate open so I can get to the chicken coop. Three guys with assault rifles are running across the main deck of the freighter, heading towards the bridge.

"William here, going below. Hold fire five seconds," I announce over the radio.

"James copies."

I drop down onto the main deck, tucking myself in behind the hatch. I wait a second, listening for the sounds of voices or pounding feet coming closer, and when I hear nothing, I slip around the hatch and down into the stairwell. Moments later, I hear the burp-roar of James' SAW, and I know the defense of the bridge is well underway. I glide down one level, my sneaker-shod feet making no noise on the rusted metal stairs. My Uzi is up and in front of me, pointing everywhere my head and eyes turn. I don't have any night-vision goggles or laser sights, nothing to restrict my senses or field of view, nothing to distract my attention from the task at hand. The dingy caged light bulb on each stairwell level provides just enough illumination to see down to the next level.

I'm two decks down, the level I need to reach, and I'm about to exit the stairwell when I hear the sound of booted feet coming down the corridor towards me in a hurry. I slip behind the hatch, let the Uzi sling back along my side, and I draw the Ruger .22 auto from its holster. The thigh rig is custom leather, molded to fit the gun, and holds it tight without need for a snap-catch that might be heard. The pistol has a round chambered, safety off, a little dangerous but it means there's no chance of a tell-tale "click" giving me away.

I love this gun. Richard acquired it for me seven years ago, after I got back from an extended stay in the Middle East, a "coming home" present of sorts. A heavily converted Ruger MK II .22 automatic, the five-inch barrel is completely shrouded with an integral suppressor, and when fired, the report doesn't make much more noise than dropping a paperback novel onto a desk, just a soft "thump" sound you won't even hear one room away.

I've seen similar models on the market, built by companies that sell to special military and law enforcement outfits, or private citizens who have all the appropriate permits and pay their fees to the federal government. I highly doubt the sale of this pistol ever made its way into anyone's accounting ledger. More likely, it wound up listed as a factory defect and marked down as destroyed, after a fat envelope of cash passed between hands with a wink and a nod. It's amazing what can be done through discreet back-channels under the guise of flag-waving, anti-fascist militant patriotism. These days, the whole "Don't Tread On Me, Big Brother" shtick is one of Richard's favorite ways of soliciting black market goods and services. Thank you, Patriot Act.

A man steps through the hatchway and into the stairwell, a battered AK-47 in his hands. He doesn’t notice me lurking back behind the hatch, and he never will. I bring up the Ruger, take half a step forward, and fire three quick shots point blank into the base of his skull, severing his spinal column in less than a second. Subsonic .22 ammunition doesn't always have the oomph needed to get through the skull at odd angles, so instead of killing the computer by trying to shoot through the case, I blow away the cable instead. Either way, it's lights-out for this guy. I catch him with my free hand as he rag-dolls to the floor.

Yup, that's how I do it. Not pretty, but it gets the job done.

After I drag the body behind the stairs, I unsling the Uzi and continue down the corridor running along the centerline of the ship. I've memorized the plans for this deck, and I know the hold is three bulkheads aft of the stairwell I just descended. It sounds like a fucking war zone up on the top-deck right now. I can hear the hard thumps of the occasional grenade going off, and if I press my fingers feather-light to the metal of the corridor, I swear I can even feel the irregular vibrations of small-arms fire ricocheting off the steel hull. I can't hear the comms from the team in the bridge - I'm tuned into another channel so that I don't have their constant chatter in my ear distracting me - but I can hear the occasional shout or scream coming from up above, and I only hope it's not my team getting wiped out. The whole point of the plan was for me to go in solo, nice and quiet-like, and secure the women while the rest of the team draws the crew away. However, that only works if a lucky grenade or opportune cross-fire doesn't wipe the three of them out, leaving me all alone on a ship filled with pissed-off Liberians carrying smoking AK-47s.

I hear the rattle of a chain around the next dogleg in the corridor. I glide up to the doorway, and take the tiniest peek around the corner of the open bulkhead hatch. Twenty feet down the corridor, three men stand around a hatch secured with a steel chain and a padlock the size of my fist. Two of them have AKs hanging at their chests, while the third - better dressed and, unlike the other two, not looking like he woke up in the gutter - has a slick-looking Steyr SMG in his hand. He's berating the other two, who are doing an admirable job of fumbling with the lock and the chain. It looks like I got here just in time, because I have the distinct feeling that the three of them are here to open up the hold containing the women and fill it with auto-fire.

I take all of this in with a one-second glance, before I slip back behind the hatch. I've got to kill them all without raising an alarm, because if anyone nearby hears something unusual, I'll find myself trying to get a half dozen scared, starving girls out of that hold while being shot at, and the thought doesn't appeal to me. With a soft click, I extend the Uzi's metal stock, and shift the fire-selector to automatic. Snugging the stock into my shoulder, cinching the sling in tight, I lock the weapon to me so it's an extension of my body, and I lean out into the hatchway about four inches, exposing my arm, shoulder, and just enough of my head so I can sight down the weapon.

And in three seconds, it’s over. I cut down Steyr-man first with a burst through the skull. Before his body even hits the deck, one of the two other gunmen is spinning on his heel, blood gouting from his face and throat. The third man takes only half a step before he takes a five-round burst through the heart, knocking him flat on his back. I have to admit, killing that fast and with that kind of accuracy is a skill that takes a lot of practice and experience to achieve. That I've lived long enough to get so good always gives me a mixture of pride at my own prowess, tinged with an inkling of dull horror that it's been at the expense of more lives than I want to tally.

I don't want to give anyone a moment to squeeze a trigger for the last time, or pull a frag grenade from somewhere and make a mess, so I rush the twitching bodies, examining my handiwork as I cover the distance. One of the slobs and Mr. Steyr are both long gone. The slob looks like I cored out the center of his chest with a hand trowel, and his boss is missing most of his skull. But the third man, although choking on his own blood and missing an eye and part of his face, is trying to get his AK pulled around, so I line up the Uzi and fire a three-shot burst through his brainpan. His skull finishes coming apart, he twitches twice, then lies still.

I bring the Uzi up and cover the other end of the hallway for a full five heartbeats, waiting for the pounding feet and the shouts and racking slides that would signal to me I'm seconds from death, but there's only silence. Convinced that no one was close enough to hear the suppressed growl of the Uzi, I draw my Ruger with one hand and reload the SMG as fast as I can with the other. The one-handed reload is slow but necessary, so I can keep the corridor covered with the Ruger just in case.

Turning to the hatch securing the hold, I see that the padlock's been opened and the chain is just hanging there, tangled around the hatch's locking wheel. I don't know what to expect, and I doubt there's a light on, so I pull the little tactical flashlight from my belt and clip it underneath the muzzle of the Uzi. I then take a deep breath, spin the hatch wheel and pull the door open quickly, getting the Uzi up as fast as I can as I sweep the muzzle of the SMG across the room, looking for a goon hiding in the corner somewhere with an AK or pump shotgun.

I needn't have bothered. Although the tactical light helped, there is a lone, dim bulb high up in the ceiling, protected by a rusting basket of steel wires. The room is hot and damp and reeking of piss and shit and sweaty fear, about twelve feet deep and twenty wide, with a ten foot ceiling. The room is empty of furniture, just piles of what appear to be army surplus blankets here and there, each pile occupied by a young, filthy wretch trembling in utter, abject, mortal fear. There are a couple of plastic gallon jugs of water in one corner and a foul-looking bucket in the other corner, a half-used roll of toilet paper nearby. Otherwise, the room is devoid of any objects that could be hefted or pried loose or otherwise used as a weapon (or a means of suicide, depending).

Stepping to the side of the doorway, so I'm out of sight of anyone who might approach the hatch, I risk letting the Uzi hang from its sling, and I put a finger up to my lips, the other hand making a "get up" gesture to all the women on their makeshift beds. They all look at me like I've got a roaring, bloody chainsaw in my hands, and I'm sure they think I'm just another one of their captors. Looking around the room, I try to identify Maryanne, and even when I take the photo provided by Steiger out of my pocket to confirm what she looks like, it's tough to pick her out. The girl in the photo is laughing, blonde hair well-coiffed and clean, wearing a prom dress or some kind of evening wear. The best approximation I can find is a disheveled, battered girl in the far corner of the room, curled into a fetal position and wearing nothing more than a dingy, over-sized white t-shirt.

"Maryanne Steiger?" I call out softly to the girl in the corner. I see her stiffen, but she doesn't move.

"Maryanne, your grandfather sent us. We're here to get you and these other girls off the ship."