“Should we respond?” the XO asked.
Tao thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “By the look of it, they’ll be dead long before another ship passes this way. Keep going.”
“Help us please!” Barbanegra cried as the Triton Star passed them without a response. “If you rescue us, we’ll share the gold we were carrying on board the Goreno. Five hundred pounds of it from South Africa.”
The XO rolled his eyes at Barbanegra’s sad attempt at saving himself. With a dismissive sneer, Tao looked through the binoculars at the lifeboat. A bedraggled blond man emerged through the roof. His clothes were dirty and tattered, and his face was smeared with soot. He looked exhausted, his lips were split from a lack of water, and his right eye was covered by a ragged black patch.
But Tao’s eyes were drawn to what he was holding above his head. It was a foot-long gold brick.
“How much gold did he claim to have?” Tao asked as he stared at the ingot shining in the sun.
“Five hundred pounds,” the XO replied. “But sir—”
Tao knew well the price of gold since he was considering how to invest his bonus fee for this voyage. At its current value, a quarter ton of gold would be worth well over ten million dollars.
He put down the binoculars and commanded, “All stop!”
The XO stared at him in disbelief. “Captain?”
“You heard me.” The XO followed his orders, and they began to slow.
“Prepare our lifeboat. We’re going to bring them aboard.”
“Captain,” the XO said after relaying the command, “you can’t really believe they have that much gold on the Goreno.”
“We’ll know soon enough. If that brick he’s holding is a fake, we’ll kill them all and toss them overboard. The sharks will take care of them.”
“And if it’s real?”
“We find out where it is and get the gold off before that ship sinks. Then we kill them.”
The XO nodded in appreciation of Tao’s plan. If Barbanegra was lying, the delay wouldn’t be long, and the potential payoff was worth the trouble.
Fifteen minutes later, Barbanegra and his men climbed onto the deck of the Triton Star. Tao went down to meet them in the mess.
He arrived to find Barbanegra and five equally pathetic-looking men hungrily devouring cold-cut sandwiches and gulping glasses of water. When they were brought aboard, they were searched without them knowing it, Tao’s crew patting them down as they were helped onto the ship. His men stood around the perimeter of the dining hall with their weapons concealed as ordered. No sense in making Barbanegra suspicious.
Tao went over to Barbanegra, who was still holding the gold brick in one hand, and said, “I’m Captain Tao. Welcome aboard.”
Barbanegra, a tall man whose loose clothes hung on him like he was a scarecrow, stood and feebly shook Tao’s hand. “Thanks for coming to our rescue. We didn’t think you were going to stop.”
“We thought your ship was a derelict. Your radio signal was so weak that we almost didn’t pick it up. This is your whole crew?”
“Half. We lost the rest in the fire.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“The food and water are enough for the moment. We’ve got a more urgent matter to take care of.” Barbanegra glanced at the ingot. “You’ll help us recover the rest of the gold before she goes down? We’ll give you twenty-five percent of the value.”
So Barbanegra was still well enough to negotiate. Tao had to admire his guts.
“Why shouldn’t we take it all for ourselves?” Tao asked. “You’ve abandoned ship, and given that you’re flying the Iranian flag, it’s reasonable to assume that your cargo is being smuggled. We’re not going through Lloyd’s of London for the salvage contract, are we?”
“That’s true,” Barbanegra said. “But the bars are well hidden aboard our ship, which is taking on water and will probably go under within the next twelve hours. Then neither of us gets the gold.”
“If it is gold,” Tao said. He took a folding knife from his pocket and drew the blade across the ingot’s face, leaving a golden trench in the soft metal. It was definitely not plated lead. He picked it up and guessed the weight at twenty-five pounds. Tao tamped down his excitement at getting so lucky.
“See!” Barbanegra said triumphantly. “It’s real, just like I told you. And there are nineteen more just like it over on the Goreno.”
“Where?”
“Do we have a deal?”
Negotiating was pointless since these men would be dead within the hour anyway, but Tao had to give the appearance that he was reluctantly coming to terms.
“Fifty-fifty,” he said. “That’s our price.”
Barbanegra looked at his crew, who all nodded their agreement.
“You’ve got a deal,” Barbanegra said. He pointed at a huge black man. “Franklin here, my chief engineer, will show your men where they are.”
Tao ordered half a dozen of his men to go with Franklin in the lifeboat, leaving him with eight crew on board. Given how haggard these men were, they’d be no threat.
“Have you had enough to eat and drink for now?” Tao asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Barbanegra said.
“Then you can all join me on the bridge so we can observe the recovery operation.”
Tao glanced at his XO, who silently nodded in reply. When they had the gold in hand, the weapons would come out. Better to have all of their captives in one place when that happened.
By the time they got to the bridge, the lifeboat was approaching the Goreno and soon idled next to it as they latched a rope ladder to the railing. Franklin and five of Tao’s six men climbed up to the deck while the remaining man stayed in the boat. Franklin pointed, and they disappeared into the superstructure.
Everyone on the bridge waited in silence for a radio report that they had reached the gold. Barbanegra, who was beside Tao, collapsed down to one knee. He looked ashen, but he put up a hand and said, “I’ll be okay. Got light-headed. Just give me a second.”
Tao shook his head at how easy this was going to be and went back to watching the Goreno.
A second later, to his utter shock, he felt a pistol’s muzzle pressed against his temple by Barbanegra. The other four men from the Goreno overpowered his bridge crew and took the handguns from their waistbands. It happened with such lightning speed that only the XO was able to fight back and he was knocked down with one chop to the throat. The rest put up their hands in surrender when they saw the guns trained on them.
While his men were being trussed up with zip ties, a stunned Tao gasped, “What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” Barbanegra said, his accent gone. He looked at one of his men. “MacD, once you’ve finished securing them, take your team to search the Triton Star for any stragglers.”
“Aye, Chairman,” replied the man, who suddenly seemed energetic and alert instead of haggard and weary.
Then the man called Chairman spoke to seemingly no one. “We’re secure over here, Max. Take ’em.”
Tao’s hands were tied behind his back, but he hadn’t been put on the floor with the rest of his men. He watched as his crew on the Goreno was marched out of the superstructure with their hands in the air. They were accompanied by a dozen men and women with automatic rifles who aimed them at the man in the lifeboat until he was taken captive as well.
“Good job, everyone,” the Chairman said. “Not a shot fired.” He stepped back from Tao and bent to pull down his rolled-up pant leg. Tao could now see that Barbanegra had a prosthetic limb equipped with a hidden compartment, which the Chairman closed.
Tao gaped at the man who’d taken over his ship with such ease. “Who are you people?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” the Chairman said with a wide grin as he removed the patch to reveal a second sky
blue eye. “Peg leg? Eye patch? Come on. You should know a pirate when you see one. Especially when you’re smugglers yourselves.”
“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tao stammered.
The Chairman raised his pistol and aimed it at Tao’s forehead. The pirate’s grin disappeared, replaced by a deadly serious gaze.
“We know what your secret cargo is,” the Chairman said. “We just don’t know where it is, and this is a pretty big ship you’ve got here. So tell me, Captain Tao. Where did you hide the chemical weapons?”
FOUR
Rasul Torkan, Asad’s identical twin brother, looked out the cabin porthole at the Triton Star crew being marched across the deck of the seemingly crippled cargo ship by armed men and women and knew they had to be here for him. He had only minutes to hide himself or the operation would be a complete failure.
There was only one place on the ship where he was sure they wouldn’t find him. Getting there in broad daylight without being seen would be a challenge, but he had the skills to do it. Rasul and his brother had risen through the ranks of Iran’s secret service together, their competitive natures driving each other to become top agents in the MOIS. While Asad’s specialty was sabotage, Rasul had excelled as an assassin, racking up fifteen successful kills during his stint as a government operative. Fed up with the bureaucracy and restrictions placed on them, they decided to retire and strike out on their own. Sometimes they worked as a team, other times on separate—and, in this case, complementary—missions.
Rasul was merely a passenger aboard the Triton Star. Tao would eventually give him up, but the hijackers wouldn’t see his name on the crew manifest, so they wouldn’t start searching for him right away. Since he was sharing quarters with two other crew members, he quickly tossed his belongings in with theirs. He couldn’t remain undetected for long, but maybe long enough.
He descended two flights of stairs and heard footsteps pounding behind him as he went through the outer door onto the weather deck. He crouched against the bulkhead, ready to silence anyone who emerged, but the men kept going down the stairs, heading to the lower decks.
His destination was the last row of containers. Between him and his objective, there was a gap between the containers and the superstructure that would leave him visible for a few seconds, but he had to risk it. He bent low and crabwalked until he was behind the stack.
No sirens, no shouts. He hadn’t been seen.
He kept going until he reached a refrigerated container near the stern of the Triton Star. It looked completely ordinary, as it was designed to. On the manifest, the reefer unit buried at the bottom of a stack of five was supposedly full of Mozambique oranges, lemons, and tangerines destined for the Indian market. Nothing made it stand out from the thousand other containers on board. Even if it were opened, inspectors would find nothing but fruit crates in the first twenty feet of the forty-foot-long unit. The concealed rear section, however, served a different purpose.
Rasul took a look around the corner and saw the aft end of the Goreno across the water. She was steadily righting herself from a list, something that should have been impossible for such a heavily damaged freighter. The tendrils of smoke had ceased rising from the hull.
Based on their skill in crafting a plan to take the Triton Star so easily, Rasul was sure this was more than a random hijacking. Besides, they were too far off the main shipping lanes for the attack to be a chance occurrence.
The Goreno had intercepted them on purpose. And Rasul knew what they wanted.
He ran his hand along one of the reinforcing corrugations. His finger clicked on a hidden button, and a section of the wall slid aside. He slipped inside and pressed the button to close it behind him. He flipped a switch, and halogen lamps came on.
The interior of the reefer unit had been modified to serve as a decontamination chamber. At the press of a large red button on the opposite wall, the light would turn red and nozzles in the ceiling would douse him with a concentrated hypochlorite solution that would neutralize nerve agent particles. When the decontamination procedure was complete, the light would turn green, at which point Rasul would exit through a door opposite the entrance.
During his first night on board the Triton Star, Rasul had brought his duffel to the chamber to make sure he kept the contents away from the curious hands of the crew. All they’d been told was that he had paid to be a passenger. Only Tao knew he was accompanying two containers to their destination.
Instead of the near-freezing temperature in the other half of the refrigerated container, the air-conditioning unit kept the chamber a balmy seventy degrees even in the sweltering tropics. A medical-grade filter purified the air.
He knelt down and loaded the two weapons he’d brought with him: a Glock .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol and a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle with suppressor.
Next to the guns was a metal case. He opened it, revealing a cylindrical device pressed into a foam cutout. The size of a soda bottle, it had a metal carrying handle on top, a small spout on the bottom, and a touchpad on the front.
Rasul unzipped the duffel and removed the last item he would need for his mission.
It was a military-grade gas mask and airtight combat suit, commonly called an NBC suit for its ability to protect against nuclear, biological, and chemical contamination. It had the desert camouflage markings of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Rasul checked the equipment and made sure everything was in working order. It looked like he’d have to use them sooner than expected.
He took a seat on the floor and clicked on his phone’s encrypted texting app that was piggybacking on the Triton Star’s shipwide WiFi signal.
We have a problem, he texted.
The reply came quickly. I suspected something was wrong. I noticed that you’ve stopped. I was about to contact you to find out why.
Rasul’s boss was monitoring their position using GPS. The Global Positioning System could pinpoint the location of any ship equipped with a transponder.
A ship intercepted and boarded us.
Military?
Civilian. Freighter called the Goreno.
They might know the nerve agent is on board.
Should we launch now?
There was a pause. Only when you’re out of range.
Then the mission is aborted? He already knew that his brother had succeeded in his mission, but Rasul’s operation was just as important to the cause.
After another pause, No. I may be able to change the target and still accomplish our goals.
What are my orders? Rasul texted.
Can you still use the nerve agent to carry out the mission as designed?
There was only one device. He looked at the cylinder. To contaminate both ships, he’d need to shower them with the toxic nerve agent instead of planting the dispersal unit next to the Triton Star’s air handling intake as he’d been planning to do to wipe out the crew.
But there was no way to get the dispersal unit high enough . . .
Then Rasul remembered his sea rescue training. The Triton Star had a means for him to shoot the nerve agent into the air.
There is a way, Rasul replied.
Good. I’ll know in an hour whether we need to proceed as planned. If we do, you’ll activate the launch sequence. Let me know when you have completed the mission and I’ll send the yacht to rendezvous with you.
Understood.
Remember, we can’t let them see you get away, came the response. You have what you need to kill them all.
FIVE
Juan Cabrillo emerged onto the Triton Star’s bridge from the captain’s office a new man. Gone were the baggy clothes disguising his athletic frame and the makeup giving him the gaunt appearance of a shipwreck survivor. He was now freshly shaved and wearing a light polo shirt and black cargo pants that had been stowed in the lifeboat. The
only features he still had in common with his pirate alter ego, Eduardo Barbanegra, were the blond hair, blue eyes, and prosthetic right leg, a replacement required after he lost his real one below the knee in a battle with a Chinese destroyer years ago.
Juan was proud of how smoothly his team had pulled off the operation to take the Triton Star, especially because the CIA had given them the assignment just two days before. Though she was temporarily called the Goreno for this mission, his ship’s real name was the Oregon. They had been resupplying in the Maldives when they got the call and raced across the Indian Ocean to get into position to intercept the Triton Star. Not only were they in the right place at the right time to get the job, they were the only elite team in the world who could have done it.
As a native Californian who’d practically grown up on the beach, Juan had always been fascinated by the ocean, and his brainchild was the Oregon, a spy ship that could go unnoticed, ignored, even actively shunned, anywhere in the world. In his former position as a top CIA field operative, he had seen the need for an organization that could function outside the stifling U.S. government bureaucracy. He left to form the Corporation, a private firm that took on missions the agency couldn’t carry out itself, either because of the lack of capability or to provide plausible deniability should an operation go badly. Although his crew of elite military veterans and former CIA agents were well compensated for their work, the jobs were highly risky, and the Oregon had lost people along the way. The Corporation also did jobs for companies and foreign governments, from protecting oil platforms in dangerous waters to recovering kidnapped VIPs, but they weren’t mercenaries in the traditional sense. Everyone on the Oregon was an American patriot, and, as the Corporation’s Chairman, Juan made sure they restricted themselves to missions that were in the interests of the United States. The hijacking of the Triton Star definitely qualified.
The only other person on the bridge was Eric Stone, the Oregon’s skilled helmsman. A former Navy officer and certified genius who’d served in technology development during his service, he was one of the ship’s youngest crew members. With soft brown eyes and a gentle demeanor, he was a consummate computer nerd: an avid gamer who was notoriously shy with women. Buttoned-down and meticulous in his work, he would normally be dressed in his usual black-framed glasses, a blue oxford shirt, and chinos. But as one of the crew “rescued” by the Triton Star, he was still dressed in torn jeans and a soiled T-shirt.