The Pirate Hunters (9 page)

Only after they’d gone did Gunner fess up.

“This place is called Al Zakkar,” he began. “It’s a secret resort, shopping mall, whatever you want to call it. Only the richest of the rich even know it exists, and only their top earners are allowed to come here or shop here.”

“It’s a
fucking shopping mall?”
Batman roared.

“It’s a very high-end resort,” Gunner replied, defending himself. “With places to shop, yes.”

“It’s a
top-secret shopping
mall?” Batman roared again.

“Hey, these Saudis got money to burn,” Gunner explained. “And this sort of stuff really turns them on.”

Batman scanned the futuristic layout.

“But again, what do they need a security force for?” he asked. “Are some Muslim hotheads threatening to blow this place up?”

“No,” Gunner said, his voice falling low now. “And actually they don’t want us to be a security force so much as they want us to be, well . . . security guards.”

“You mean like prison guards?” Crash asked.

“No, I mean security guards,” Gunner replied. “Like mall cops?”

The four team members groaned as one—even Nolan, who, now clean and shaven, was slowly coming back to life.

“Mall cops?” he said. “Jesuszz . . .”

Crash said: “Gunny—you didn’t tell me this on the phone.”

Gunner was mortified. “I know—but would you have come if I had?”

“
No,”
Crash, Batman and Twitch all answered at once.

Gunner shot back: “Hey, I said it pays good, and it does. And there’s no heavy lifting. They just need us to be visible, in the casino, in the stores. In the restaurants.”

Another groan, especially from Crash, the designated wrangler of this reunion. Nothing was unfolding as he’d imagined it.

“But if all they want us to do is walk around and look awake,” he asked Gunner, “what the hell is the helicopter for? Chasing shoplifters?”

“Not exactly,” Gunner replied, again awkwardly. “The thing is, this place is so big, we might need it to fly some of the better customers from one end to the other.”

Batman slumped down in his seat.

“Just shoot me now,” he said.

Present Day

SINGAPORE
.

More ships were loaded and unloaded here than anywhere else in the world. Half the globe’s oil supply passed through its waters. Thousands of tons of raw goods, from sneakers to SUVs, arrived in its harbor every day. At any given hour, upwards of fifty ships could be in berth taking on or offloading cargo, with three times as many anchored offshore, waiting for their turn at the dock.

On this early morning, three of those vessels belonged to Kilos Shipping. Two tankers and a container ship, they’d been loitering offshore since the previous afternoon. Singapore was the largest port in the world—so busy, ships sometimes had to wait a day or more to be unloaded.

The Kilos ships had arrived here from three different points of the globe. This was not unusual. There were dozens of Kilos vessels traversing the oceans at any given time. For a few of them to wind up in Singapore on the same day was not uncommon.

By 5
A.M.
, a berth had opened up for the first Kilos tanker. The harbormaster radioed the ship’s crew with the news. A harbor pilot was dispatched to help guide the vessel in. With any luck, the ship would be empty and on its way by noon.

Oddly, though, no one on the tanker answered the harbormaster’s radio message. He sent another, to no avail. A call was placed to the tanker captain’s personal cell phone. Still no reply.

This was strange. If anything, ship captains waited anxiously
for the call to come into berth. Every minute spent at anchor was a minute they weren’t making money.

By this time, the harbor pilot had arrived at the tanker. Warned by the harbormaster that he was getting no response from the ship, the harbor pilot climbed up to the tanker’s bridge and made a grisly discovery: The captain and the six-member crew were all dead. They’d been stripped naked, their throats slashed.

The pilot immediately informed the harbormaster, who called the harbor police. Murders in the Port of Singapore, while not unheard of, were rare. But no one had ever heard of an entire crew being killed while their ship was waiting to dock.

While the harbor police raced to the scene, the harbormaster had no choice but to continue unloading ships. They still had an open berth and many ships were waiting to dock. So the harbormaster went down to the next vessel on his list of loitering ships. It happened to be the container ship owned by Kilos.

The harbormaster radioed the ship to tell them they were next in berth. But there was no reply. He tried again—still nothing.

This time the harbormaster called the police directly. The cops boarded the container ship and made another gruesome find: The entire crew had been killed in the same way as those on their brother tanker ship: stripped naked, their throats slit.

The harbormaster immediately called every ship waiting at anchor, asking for a status check. Every vessel replied, except the remaining Kilos tanker. The harbormaster got no answer from them—but by now he had a good idea what had happened.

He had a hasty phone conversation with the chief of the harbor police.

“Only one person could have done this,” the harbormaster said, his voice a whisper. “Someone who is ‘invisible,’ if you get my meaning. My inclination is not to pursue this any further, because I certainly don’t want those kinds of ghosts knocking at my bedroom door.”

“Nor is it my desire to investigate it,” the harbor police chief admitted. “Or even report it to higher authorities. I don’t need any trouble with those spirits, either.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

Then the harbormaster asked the chief, “What can we arrange for it to look like?”

The chief was stumped. “Three simultaneous murder-suicides?” he said finally.

The harbormaster was silent for a few more moments, then said: “Well, it’s nonsense, of course. But believe me, the alternative would be worse.”

Tang Island
Indonesia
The next night

THE MAGICIAN WAS
getting tired.

He checked his watch.

“How many more?” he asked his assistant wearily.

“Just four,” was the reply. “They’ve been waiting the longest.”

The magician adjusted his fez and straightened his long flowing robes. “I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered.

His hut was built on stilts just like every other hut on the tiny, picturesque island. It was located close to the beach and looked out on the Strait of Malacca to the west and the Phillip Channel to the east.

This island was one of literally thousands in the area, each its own little Bali Hai. Off in the distance, dominating the northern horizon, was the shimmering city-state of Singapore. On a night like this, with clear skies and calm seas, it looked like a real-life Shangri-La.

The magician’s hut was cluttered with shelves that held the
tools of his trade: potions, flash powder, a few skulls, empty bottles of many shapes and sizes. On the floor by his feet was a basket where he kept his money.

“Let them in,” he finally told his assistant, not hiding his annoyance. “But after these four, I must go to sleep.”

The four men climbed into the hut. The magician almost laughed when he saw them. The first two were twins, so big, they just about took up all the extra space in the hut. The third man, heavily tattooed, was more average size, as was the fourth, who was wearing a pair of ancient 501 jeans.

The tattooed man was their spokesman.

“Many thanks for seeing us,” he told the magician.

“You brought money, I hope?” the magician asked.

“Yes, we did.”

“The correct amount?”

“Yes, for sure.”

The magician settled back down and fumbled for a cigarette.

“What do you need my help for?” he asked them. “What is it that you want to accomplish?”

“We want to become part of Zeek Kurjan’s pirate crew,” was the reply.

The magician immediately blew some magic powder into the tattooed man’s face. Suddenly, the man couldn’t talk.

“You cannot
ever
speak that name here or anywhere else,” the magician growled as the tattooed man’s face turned red and he began to choke. “Did you hear about those fools over in Singapore—those murdered crews? The police tried to hush it up, but that just guaranteed everyone would be buzzing about it. Those people who were killed were probably speaking that name carelessly, as you just did. That brings bad luck from which even I can’t save you.”

The magician blew more powder into the man’s face and he recovered. The rest of the group shifted uneasily.

“Our friend is a fool,” one of the large twins said. “But he speaks the truth. That is our dream. To make some real money.”

The magician finally lit his cigarette. “This dream won’t
come easy,” he told them. “You must prove yourself—all of you.”

“That’s why we’re here,” the tattooed man said, though his tongue was still thick and aching. “We want to make our bones—and be noticed.”

“So then go get noticed,” the magician replied through a cloud of smoke. “Why are you bothering me?”

“Because we need your magic,” the man said. “This is what everyone has told us.”

The magician took a long drag on his cigarette and sighed. He held out his hand. “Pay up first. Twenty dollars and no less.”

The tattooed man collected five American dollars from each man and passed them to the magician. The bills were wet and ragged.

The magician counted them out, then studied the line of bottles on the shelf behind him. He checked the money again, then selected an old quart-size juice bottle.

He blew into the bottle then sealed it with a twist cap. He handed the bottle to the tattooed man.

“When you go to make your bones,” the magician said, “open this first, pour it on your boat, and your boat will become invisible.”

The tattooed man took the empty juice bottle, studied it, and then looked back at the magician.

“But what about us?” he asked. “We want to be invisible, too.”

The magician was perturbed. He took down a much smaller plastic Coke bottle, hastily blew into it, capped it and flipped it to the spokesman.

“Here you go,” he said. “Open it, pour it on yourselves and you will become invisible, too—until you want to be seen, that is. Simple as that.”

The magician yawned and crushed out his cigarette. The meeting was over.

The four men got up to go, but the magician stopped them.

“But don’t forget: Do not speak that name recklessly,” he told them, seriously. “Because if you do, that dream of yours will go up in smoke—and you’ll all go up with it.”

THE SHIP APPEARED
right on schedule.

It was slowing down, as all ships did when leaving the Malacca Strait and entering the Phillip Channel, its engines reducing their sound from a dull roar to a low groan.

Hiding in the reeds on the southern shore, the four fledgling pirates watched it go by. It was a small freighter, 120 feet long, just the type of game they wanted to take down first, to get their feet wet.

By the time its bow light cut through some low fog, the freighter had slowed to barely five knots. The tattooed man started the engine on their motorboat and steered it out into the strait. It was midnight and a slight wind blowing off the islands had caused most of the thin mist to disappear.

“Now?” one of the twins asked.

The tattooed man took out the empty juice bottle the magician had given him, uncorked it and pretended to spill the air all over the boat.

“We are now invisible,” he said. “I hope . . .”

They allowed the ship to pass, and then the tattooed man opened the motorboat’s throttle and they were quickly roaring up to the back of the freighter.

He turned the steering of the boat over to the other twin, and they almost capsized while changing places. Then the tattooed man took the long bamboo pole from the bottom of the motorboat and attached a hooked knife to one end.

“You’re sure you are better with this than with a hook and rope?” one twin asked the tattooed man.

“I’m sure,” he replied. “I have the magic.”

They were now right up against the ship’s stern. The twins were doing their best to keep the boat out of the vessel’s wake, but it was becoming a rough ride.

Nevertheless, the tattooed man stood on the motorboat’s bow and launched the bamboo stick up toward the ship’s railing. He missed. He tried again—another miss. A third time not only missed, but it was only by sheer good luck that he was able to catch the pole as it fell away from the freighter.

This was not going well.

The fourth man silently made his way to the front of the motorboat. He took the bamboo stick from the tattooed man and heaved it up toward the stern of the freighter. It caught the railing on the first try. Then he took the plastic Coke bottle from the tattooed man’s pocket, uncapped it and let the air within pour all over him. Then he yanked on the pole to make sure it was secure, put a big knife between his teeth, and started to climb.