Cruise, page 24
“What a blood-thirsty looking gang you are,” said Bibi as she checked each member’s weapons and equipment. “You, Karla, have, I think, perhaps too many knives,” Bibi said as she gently poked the woman in the waist and chest, each time encountering one or more blades in secure sheaths.
“She throws with incredible accuracy,” Roz offered, putting her hands up and signifying that Bibi should leave the knife cache in tact. “Let her have whatever she wants.”
“Okay, but make sure of your target, Karla. It will be dark and I don’t fancy having one of those…what are they, anyway?...stuck in my neck.”
“Never happen, Bibi,” said Karla, sliding two of the double bladed daggers partly out of their sheaths and displaying how she had darkened the blades so that no reflection would give her away. “You know I’m good. We did the first raid together, didn’t we?”
Bibi nodded.
“These were my boyfriend’s knives,” Karla added. “They are Gerber Guardians. He went to Iraq with the Army and didn’t make it back. A buddy brought me his blades and I am just itching to use them on those fuckers, one at a time and slowly.”
“Right,” said Bibi. “But follow Roz’s lead and no hot-dogging, you hear?”
“Yes. I got it.”
“Good. Now who is carrying the silenced hand guns?”
Portia and Terry raised hands and then holstered their HK automatics with the silencers already fitted.
“Make sure those stay dry. The salt air raises hell with suppressors and silencers, so keep the condoms on until you need them.”
“Understood, said Terry and she nodded at Portia who also nodded back. Clearly, the tension was already building and it was time to do the final briefing and get to the boats.
“One more thing,” Groff said sharply. “No cowgirl antics. No grandstanding. We want all of you and the hostages back and alive. Don’t risk their lives even if you don’t care about your own. I want everybody back here safe and secure. Got that?”
There were ten yeses and then they headed out on deck, Roz and her five to port and Bibi and Groff, plus five to starboard. The boat drivers were already at their stations, checking equipment on the four launches. They wore ocean-racing gear: survival suits, PFDs designed to float the wearer high enough so that their mouth and nose were well clear of the surface, two different knives; one for emergency cutaway and another for personal defense, crash helmets with internal communications earphones and mikes, face shields and extra goggles. The helmets had the latest night vision gear mounted over the forehead. The boats were ready to launch. Tension was high.
On the blacked out bridge, Ingram, Norquist and their selected loyal crew reviewed their role in the plan. They would bring Altuna only close enough to the departing freighter so that she would not show up on radar. This meant staying over the horizon, beyond the curvature of the earth and unfortunately creating a much longer run for the attack boats to travel undetected. If they were picked up on anyone’s radar and challenged, plan B was for Altuna to speed to their assistance and use her superior firepower if necessary to subdue the pirates. This plan was undesirable because it meant a much greater chance of harm coming to the captives on the freighter.
Chapter Thirty Two
0245
The plan was nearly a duplicate of the one the pirates used to get on board Altuna, but the raiders this time were fewer and had to rely on surprise and stealth if they were to succeed. No one knew exactly what the freighter had as defensive equipment or weapons, but it was, as Bibi said, a given that the pirates had means of repelling boarders if they had to. The trick, she pointed out, was to get abroad and not activate any defenses at all until it was too late.
Silently, with Norquist’s still secret engine mufflers operating beautifully, Fast Boat crawled up the freighter’s wake and slipped under the overhanging stern. The single grappling hook arced up silently from its catapult and grabbed the first time. Then everyone waited to see if the hook had alerted anyone on board. A few anxious minutes later, Bibi, carrying a heavy, long rope ladder, went up the rope hand over hand, the weight and bulk of her weapons only slightly slowly her ascent. She stopped at the deck, looked around for a moment and quickly climbed over. She dropped the long ladder, made sure those in the Fast Boat had it and then moved to a security position from which she could protect the team coming up the ladder.
They came up quickly and quietly. Reinholt signaled Bibi that all were accounted for and they spread out, each team going forward along the rails, checking each hatch, each ventilator, each door, for any crewmembers.
Suddenly, Roz’s A team met three semi-drunken crewmen apparently coming off watch. Without even stopping their forward advance, the team fired silenced rounds into them. They jointly helped the pirates over the rail, tossing each of the skinny bodies into the water, hoping they might find an immediate engagement with the vessel’s slowly turning propellers and thus be spared the discomfort of spending a few wounded hours hopelessly thrashing in the warm ocean before going to the bottom. At the first ladders, two of the team went below, and two went up. Roz continued forward alone. Half way along the dark side rail, she literally stumbled over Kreble, who had been happily fucking a woman on her knees, chained hand and neck to the rail and making enough noise so that Kreble didn’t even know Roz was next to him. The large caliber automatic in Roz’s hand went off the instant she bumped into his hammering ass, the first round going into his left side, breaking two ribs and severing his aorta before rumbling around in his torso and exiting through his abdomen. The man crumbled to the deck, his already limp cock slipping out of the girl’s swollen pussy. She continued to scream and Roz, after only a second’s hesitation, put her mouth to the girl’s ear and said: “I can’t release you now, but we are here to rescue you. It would help a great deal if you would continue to scream.”
Stunned by the sudden turn of events, the girl looked at Roz, who winked and moved on down the passageway, not looking back. The screams continued, even more enthusiastic than before.
The B team that went cautiously below soon discovered an impressive array of training and containment facilities. In two adjacent cabins they found women chained to steel bunks. One was stretched from the four corners of the bed, ordinary handcuffs holding her wrists and ankles in place and a metal brank on her head. She made no sound as the team cut the chains and used the same heavy bolt cutter to remove the brank. The second girl was stretched as well, but in her case, she was posed standing on her spread feet, facing the triple-decker bunks with arms chained outward and a temporary gag taped in her mouth. The end of some sort of butt plug stuck obscenely out of her ass and she trembled when the door opened and the first two of the team burst in with weapons ready. Again, the bolt cutters were used to free her, the huge inflatable plug was deflated, eased slowly out of her ass and she was given instructions to stay quiet and fall in behind the rest of the parade. Shocked and afraid, the girl followed the team leader’s instructions to stay behind them as they moved to other cabins.
In the ship’s mess area, they found their largest cache of captives. As they later learned, the mess was a sort of central assembly area where new and old slaves were trained and held in restraints, sometimes for days while the pirates carried out devious and demented activities. On this night, the five young women in the mess were all identically mounted on a unique and functional bondage pole device.
In the simplest of terms, this gadget was an adjustable, chromed steel pole with a wide metal collar at one end, a series of different sized cuffs arrayed along its middle length and a short T bar with fixed cuffs on the ends at the bottom of the pole. The pole also had rings welded on it that allowed it to hang in various ways from the walls or ceiling. On this evening, all five were attached to the poles in the same unpleasant pose, kneeling with the pole behind them, their elbows and wrists cuffed close to the pole and the T at the end holding their ankles about two feet apart. Each girl was hooded with the by now familiar leather and rubber discipline hoods that had eye, ear and mouth holes and which were, at this time, sealed shut with only the wearers’ ringed noses projecting out from the triangular opening in the front of the hood. Lined up along one bulkhead, the naked young women were totally silent as the team burst in from the hall, followed cautiously by the already rescued duo from the cabins down the hall. The nose ring of each pole-supported captive was clipped to a long chain running the length of the room. A similar chain passed along in front of each girl, also locked to a single large ring that protruded from between their slightly spread upper thighs.
“Get them down,” said Portia, the team leader. “Security, both doors. Move it, move it.” With the team guards in place, the rest went about cutting the thin chains and trying to open the collars and eight locked metal cuffs on each of the five poles. The combination hoods were easily removed once the small padlocks were cut, but the cuffs defied all efforts to remove them.
“Look for keys,” shouted Portia, as she started opening cabinets and drawers along the walls.
“Here, try these,” one of the squad said, tossing a small ring of keys to her.
“Where did you find them?” Portia asked as she tested and succeeded in opening the first of forty cuffs.
“I took them off the clown down the hall before I blew his ass away,” was the girl’s reply. No one saw that happen and now, no one cared. The real key was to quickly get the captives topside and ready to go to the Fast Boats when they came along side.
As she removed the hoods from the second and third captives, Portia noticed that they were Lynda and Gail Johnson, the missing twins. Working fast, she said nothing and moved the girls towards the exit.
To starboard, Bibi split her team the same way, as planned, and she and Groff moved forward. The pairs going to the upper decks were instructed not to enter the bridge unless they had to, but to get to the radio room and make sure no signals were sent. Roz, Bibi and Groff all met on the deck below the bridge, then split again, with Groff joining Reinholt and taking the port side stairs up to the bridge. Meanwhile, the eight team members clearing the super structure encountered pitifully weak resistance. They opened cabin doors, shot and otherwise quickly dispatched each crewman and woman they found and then moved on, searching for the area where the prisoners were held. In less than ten minutes from the time all of the team was aboard the ship, they secured all areas, dumped seven bodies over the side and discovered the holding cells on C deck, freeing their bound and tormented inhabitants. Among those freed were Wink, Ann Norquist and her two daughters.
Chapter Thirty Three
Getaway
Fast Boat II, the launch with the largest passenger capacity, eased along side and the teams, which converged on the starboard rail, began the difficult task of transferring the former captives to the bobbing, rigid inflatable twenty feet below. This was accomplished with each girl, fitted with a life jacket and an attached safety line, escorted down the swaying ladder and onto the launch’s pitching deck. This process took time, but allowed Groff and Bibi to deal with the unpleasant task of making sure there were no survivors among the pirate/slaver crew
Isa and Capstan Oberly, who were conveniently on the bridge when Bibi burst through the starboard door, both reached for their automatics, only to freeze in mid reach and then collapse when the .45 ball ammunition slugs entered their skulls almost exactly between the eyes. Both recoiled backwards only to receive an additional hollow-nosed .45 round in the spine from Roz’s weapon. Two additional shots from Groff’s suppressed SMG took out the others on the bridge.
“Everyone out,” Bibi ordered. “Jena, get a final head count. Roz, are you sure we have everyone who was held here?”
“Double checked every space we could find. We’ve got the twins, all three Norquists and others. No one really knows how many captives were here.”
“Okay. Check with any who are coherent and make sure we haven’t missed any storage spaces. Then call the boats once again and have them do a headcount. I’ll be out of here in less than five. Jean, you take over RIB #1 and be ready to grab me. I’ll be moving fast, so have two team members ready to grab my harness on the first pass.”
“Got it,” said Groff, moving out the starboard bridge door and heading for the deck rail where the ladders still swung free.
Following the plan, everyone except Bibi exfiltrated to the RIBs and Fast Boats. As soon as they were loaded, the boats disengaged and moved off, holding course about a cable length away.
Bibi moved quickly through the freighter’s bridge and radio shack, seeking something that would allow her to do the most damage quickly after they escaped. The C4 explosive charges they brought with them were already set in the engine space, so she wanted something else to make sure that they wouldn’t have to return to a half sunk wreck and finish the job. The well-equipped galley behind the bridge, intended to provide coffee and quick meals for those on duty, provided her with exactly what she sought. In a well-vented storage room behind the cooking and prep area, she found the twin propane tanks that provided gas for hot water and cooking. This was a separate system from the main electrical network on the ship, but was well suited to Bibi’s intended purpose. She shut off the full time ventilation blowers and used her multi-tool kit to quickly disconnect the copper pipes leading from the tanks through the wall and into the kitchen. Then she opened the regulator valves on both tanks and left the room, leaving the door open. In the galley, she quickly filled mixing bowls with olive oil and 151 proof rum and placed them carefully into the double microwave ovens over the counter, setting the timers at ten minutes.
Bibi left the galley, sprinting back through the wheelhouse and out onto the deck, avoiding the remaining bodies of the pirate/slavers and their hapless security team. As she ran across the deck, she saw RIB #1 coming closer to the hanging ladders, ready to take her aboard. With Jean at the helm of one and Jenna easily handling the other, the small boats kept up with the ship and they were using only low power. Bibi waved to Groff and charged over the rail, safety rope in her gloved hands, but not attached to her harness. The last thing she wanted was to be dragged along the ship’s side, attached to the rope, if she missed the transfer to the RIB. She actually slid more than climbed down the ladder and jumped when the first RIB came as close as it was going to get. Four strong hands grabbed her harness and pulled her aboard.
“Go, go, go,” Bibi shouted.
Groff slammed the throttle/shifters full forward, spinning the wheel to the right. The RIB leapt into the wave, heeling over as it crossed the ship’s bow wake while all occupants grabbed safety rails and seats. As the three big, four-cycle, 300 hp Mercury engines spun up to full RPMs, Groff turned away from the ship’s rusty hull and adjusted the trim tabs a bit to get maximum lift with the full load they carried.
With its triple engines screaming, the lightweight RIB literally flew over the waves, leaving only the lower drive units and a bit of the center keel even touching the crests. Behind them, Jenna’s RIB #2 and Fast Boats I and II easily kept up and they took a course that was ninety degrees perpendicular to that of the freighter, which was under half-ahead power and auto-pilot, aimed at the African coast, a mere three thousands miles away.
In ninety seconds, they were more than a mile away from the ship and headed at top speed towards where they hoped Altuna would rendezvous. They were another mile or two into their new course when there was a bright flash, then another, followed by several sharp concussions as the now distant freighter seemed to jump in the water, settle a bit at the bow, then roll over and slowly sink out of sight.
“What was that?” Groff shouted in Bibi’s ear as the team women clung to the seats of the speeding boat and looked back at where the freighter had been. The site was now marked only with a black smoke cloud over the water.
“Someone forgot to check their ovens,” Bibi said with a grin. “Want to go back and look for survivors?”
Groff smiled her usual secret smile and focused on the GPS.
Both Norquist girls, still suffering shock and fear from their time on the ship, began to cry and Bibi put an arm around each and had them sit in the well-padded bucket seats, then offered to strap them in. Both declined, understandably not wishing further restraint of any kind. Connie, Carol and Roz strapped in and fell asleep almost at once.
Groff piloted the speeding craft easily, leading the four-boat, staggered V formation on a compass and GPS heading towards the rendezvous waypoint with Altuna. Jenna, by now able to demonstrate her already superb piloting skill, slipped her RIB in a bit closer on the left flank, Fast Boats I and II closed in on the right and the four powerful speedboats made good time through the moderate chop. As darkness fell, Groff pointed to a bright, flashing, pinpoint speck on the horizon and altered course a few degrees. Before sunrise, they were along side Altuna, having easily made contact without breaking radio silence. The Fast Boats took their passengers to the lowered swim platform. The freed girls, each with a team escort, went quickly up the boarding ladder to the stern deck, were given blankets and taken to the clinic. At the same time, the crews climbed the suspended gangway to the hull doors on each side and the RIBs were quickly lifted up and stowed in their cradles.
Groff and Bibi went to the bridge and briefly discussed their destination with Ingram. The decision was to go back to St. Thomas, but to stay offshore while Bibi and Groff went ashore and got in touch with US authorities. All agreed to continue radio silence and to maintain a low profile until it was clear that at least the most dangerous elements of the slavers had been neutralized. By mid morning, Altuna rested at anchor and both USCG and several other officials were on board, carefully interviewing the released captives and debriefing Groff and Bibi.
