PROLOGUE
The South China Sea
Yanuar Wijeya squinted at the ship in the distance as he stood on the bow of the Penuh Belut, a rust-eaten, twenty-five-meter dhow, or Arab freighter, that served as the mother-tender to his two fast-attack motor craft. Salt spray flecked his face. In his gnarled fingers he held a pair of binoculars, only one half of which still worked. The other set of lenses was badly cracked and stained. With one eye closed, he could see his first mate, Mhusa, in the lead fast-attack vessel. The deceptively soft popping of gunfire, mild at this distance, told him that his men were already taking fire from the Filipino freighter.
The freighter was a large one, many times the size of his own craft. While it could have outrun the Penuh Belut, it had no chance to flee the motor craft. The captain of the Filipino vessel had opted to turn and fight rather than let Mhusa’s crew use the freighter for target practice.
Wijeya wore combat boots without laces on otherwise bare, callused feet. His cut-off jeans were bleached yellow-white from dirt, oil and the pitiless sun. The handle of a machete jutted from the MOLLE-equipped scabbard on his back, which also bore a pistol-grip shotgun. In the rhinestone-studded belt that barely held his pants above his hips, Wijeya carried two Indonesian kerambit knives. The ring-handled knives with their curved blades were the only reminder of his homeland, which was otherwise a place he was happy to leave behind. Also behind his belt was a pitted Soviet Bloc Makarov pistol. Wijeya had himself pried the pistol from the fingers of a dead man.
From the pouch tied to his belt, Wijeya took a khat leaf, telling himself he would permit himself no more this afternoon. The drug was a pleasant one, a stimulant that sharpened his senses, helped him keep his edge. He had, however, seen too many men fall under the spell of the leaves. He had no desire to hollow himself out, or worse, to become distracted and sick if the supply were to dry up. Khat, like every other luxury aboard the Penuh Belut, ebbed and flowed. There were days that they were rich and days that they were poor. Until very recently, the poor days had far outnumbered the rich ones.
But not so much now.
As if his benefactor could read his thoughts, the satellite phone in Wijeya’s pocket began to vibrate. Sighing, the pirate captain pulled the device out and pressed the glowing green key. The voice he heard was familiar. Its owner had never wasted time saying hello to him, or asking after the well-being of his crew.
“Are you on schedule?”
“We are doing it now,” Wijeya answered. He was not an uneducated man. He spoke English well; he had attended the National University of Singapore, a final gift from his once-affluent parents. His father had been a supremely arrogant man, unable to see the folly of his ways even when a series of reckless investments had left the family destitute. The thought made Wijeya want to laugh. His benefactor reminded him often of his father. It was the haughty way both men spoke. Perhaps, one day, the invisible man on the satellite phone would swallow a gun barrel the way Wijeya’s father had.
The thought brought a smile to the pirate’s lips.
If only my father could see how far I’ve come, he thought. There was real bitterness in him, he knew. But a man was what he was. He remained as he had been made.
“We are taking the ship now,” Wijeya said. He pressed the working half of the binoculars closer to his eye and recited the registration number of the vessel. “This is the one you specified, yes?”
“Yes,” said the voice. “Are you in the correct position? The locations have been calculated for specific impact. It’s a pattern. I don’t want you to deviate from it.”
“This you say to me every time we speak. I waited until we reached the coordinates you specified. I was careful. I am always careful.”
“See that it remains that way,” the voice warned. “Your success in the region is thanks to the XM-Thorns I’ve been sending you.”
“Yes. This I know,” said Wijeya. “Very well. You promised us more. And more rifles. More ammunition for them.”
“You will have it,” the voice promised. “Put in to your usual port and I’ll make sure the provisions are waiting for you. I always do.”
“Yes,” said Wijeya. “This I know.”
“No prisoners this time,” said the voice. “Leave none alive.”
“But—” Wijeya began.
The line went dead. Wijeya took the phone from his ear and stared at it. Always, it was the owner of the voice who cut off the transmission. Never had the mysterious speaker bothered with parting sentiments. The pirate switched the phone to standby, noting the battery charge percentage, and tucked it back into his pocket.
He told himself that this invisible man, the voice, was a means to an end. He had first encountered emissaries of the voice while in one of the ports of call his crew frequented. Those had been lean days, scratching out a living taking whatever vessels they could, never daring to attack a ship much larger than their own. Controlling the crew, in those days, had likewise been difficult. It was back then that Wijeya had been forced to fall back on his Silat training; the martial art of the blade that, when he had learned it as a child of privilege, had been little more than theory to him.
Again he laughed to himself. When his father had agreed to pay for private lessons from a wizened old man from a nearby village—a man renowned for his Silat prowess—no doubt Wijeya’s parents had thought the move one to keep their rebellious son out of trouble. Give him the discipline of a martial art, they had thought. Give him something to fill his idle hours. Yet today Wijeya had killed no less than four men in personal hand-to-hand combat with his kerambit knives. Three of those had been crew members who sought to take the title of captain from Wijeya. One had been a drunken fool in a port town, who had been quicker with a switchblade than Wijeya would have thought the old drunk capable. The scar that now curled across Wijeya’s abdomen was proof of that.
He told himself to focus on the task at hand, to stop wool-gathering while his face grew slick with droplets of sea foam. Once more he pressed the working lens of the binoculars to his eye. Behind him, he could hear Lemat, the little Frenchman, bearing the walkie-talkie. Lemat’s approach was wreathed in static. Wijeya smiled at his own joke.
“Captain,” said Lemat. “The launches report they are ready.”
“Tell them to begin the attack,” Wijeya directed, never taking his eye from the motor craft circling the target freighter. Sporadic gunfire continued from the deck of the target ship. That was a surprise, honestly.
Shipping lines, despite the increased dangers to their freight from pirate crews like Wijeya’s, had felt the turn of the global economy just as had everyone else. They were always looking for ways to cut costs. One of the methods they employed was cutting back crews, which left little extra manpower for such things as guards. Wijeya knew that some of the ship captains had taken it on themselves to purchase, quite illegally, arms with which to equip their men. The idea was that in the event of pirate attack, the crew would take up weapons and fight off boarders. Every major shipping company had corporate policies forbidding this practice, but men had a way of ignoring rules that could get them slaughtered.
Still, it would not matter. Not in this case.
“Move us in,” Wijeya told Lemat. “Prepare to support our boarding crews.”
