Yeager's Getaway, page 23
part #3 of Abel Yeager Series
“We launch the inflatables in two hours,” Mr. L said. “Until then, we are holding at our staging area, well back from the intercept location. Radar will tell us if any Coast Guard or naval vessels are in the area. If your man has given up any intelligence under... duress, then we will know in plenty of time to abort and escape.”
“It is not aborting that concerns me,” Kanoa growled. “I want to complete this strike.”
“As I was about to say,” Mr. L continued with the air of one whose patience was not inexhaustible, “if the way is clear, we have plenty of operators to continue as planned. We anticipated casualties, and our numbers are more than sufficient to the task.”
Kanoa stopped and stared at his reflection in the window glass. Shadows painted his face in harsh planes. “I just don’t like this intervention by these mystery people. They hit us hard. Who are they? Super soldiers?”
Hambone spoke for the first time since coming aboard. “Hawaii is full of haole troops, K-man. One of the reasons we’re fighting the occupation, right? Coulda been some Delta guys, y’know, out on a hike. Or SEALs—something like that.”
“Fog of war, brah,” Kenny said. He spoke less than Hambone.
Kimo lifted a butt cheek and farted his opinion of the matter. He stood and stretched. “Whatever, man. I got better things to do with my time than listen to you ladies bitch. No more rubber-boat rides for me tonight. I’m gonna grab some Z’s then maybe plow a red-dirt road. Da kine?”
THE GUPPY, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0520 Local
“Doesn’t look promising.” Monalisa had her eyes glued to binoculars while standing in the cockpit of the Guppy. The engines idled as they drifted on moderate seas, waves slapping the sides and the boat bobbing with a motion Yeager’s stomach wasn’t enjoying.
They had reached the coordinates provided by the kid from the camp more an hour earlier and found a big, fat nothing. Or put another way, they’d found ship traffic of all kinds but nothing that seemed an appealing target for terrorists. A high-stacked cargo carrier had steamed past about thirty minutes before at less than two miles distance, traveling west to east. It had proceeded without incident, sailing into the glow of false dawn and disappearing over the horizon. That was the largest vessel they’d seen.
“What’s this one?” Yeager asked. He had long since given up trying to identify any ships smaller than an aircraft carrier by examining distant lights through a wobbling pair of binoculars.
“Fisherman.”
Fishing boats spread out from the island and motored away in every direction. Several had passed them without pausing, dropping nets like water wings and chugging hard in the swells. Motor yachts of varying sizes had crisscrossed the water, none bigger than the forty-foot Cobalt and none “acting strange” as Monalisa defined it. They ignored sailboats, both as potential targets and as likely candidates to be the illusive Kekepi.
Monalisa monitored the radar and kept one ear tuned to the radio traffic, somehow able to decipher the hash from the scope and the garbled crackling noise from the speaker. Yeager admitted to himself that he would be totally lost if left on his own to try to piece together the picture she tracked in her mind seemingly without effort.
Pettigrew and Victor were both racked out below, following the warrior’s dictate to sleep whenever possible. Yeager had nodded off on the bench seat next to the cockpit, but his forty winks had been more like ten, and those were filled with bad dreams. He had given up on sleep and instead downed cup after cup of the skipper’s rocket-fuel coffee. At that point, his nerves were a jangled mess, and acid filled his stomach, threatening to burn his windpipe with toxic sludge.
“Who else do we need to check out?”
“There’s something big coming up over the horizon. Course would put it headed for Kalaeloa Harbor to the west of Honolulu.”
“The what harbor?”
“An industrial harbor. Lots of cargo off-loaded there.” Monalisa bumped the throttle and sent the Cobalt boring toward the radar contact at a moderate speed. “Let’s go check it out.”
KEKEPI, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0530 Local
Running feet thundered on the deck overhead, jarring Kimo out of a deep sleep. The king-sized bed in the yacht’s guest suite was one of the most comfortable he’d slept on in his entire life; seconds after closing his eyes, he’d conked out and snoozed for... wow. His watch read five thirty a.m. He’d sacked out for more than two hours.
Heh. Too much exercise last night.
Pounding at the door brought him upright. He scrubbed his eyes and yelled, “What?”
Kanoa stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “We’re about to launch.”
“Da kine.”
“You’re gonna be here with L and four of his guys. Kenny and Hambone too.”
“No shit. So?”
Kanoa leaned his back against the door, scratched an ear. “I don’t trust him not to leave us swinging, brah. You need to be ready to blow his damn head off if he tries to run, yeah?”
The extraction plan would rely on the Asian spy bringing the Kekepi in close to the target ship after the boys had done their job. The inflatables would get the hijack crew off, but they had limited range, so making it to the sub would require the motor yacht.
“You think he’d run off and leave all his guys?” Kimo asked.
“I think he’d run off and leave his mama. This guy’s a snake, no two ways.”
“You’re leaving Kelly, dipshit. What’s that make you?”
Kanoa straightened, his fists tightening. “Kelly volunteered,” he growled.
“Okay, but...” What about the woman? The run out and hijacking would take some time. Getting things set up and the ship in position would take a couple more hours. If he got started after the boats launched, he could maybe have his fun and still have time to take care of the spook if need be. “Yeah. No problem. I gotcha, brah.”
“C’mon,” Kanoa ordered. “Help us get the boats launched.”
“Aye, aye, Skippy.”
THE Guppy, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0540 Local
“Ahhh...” Yeager gawked through the binoculars. “Is that an LNG carrier?”
“Yep,” Monalisa said. “Big one too. One of the megacarriers.”
The craft resembled a flat-bottomed boat loaded with giant beach balls, except it was nearly as big as a shopping mall. At a distance of three miles, the carrier filled a good portion of the binoculars’ field of view. A long dark-blue hull with a blocky superstructure in the rear, the ship carried four moon-sized white domes lined up lengthwise, all connected via a construction of rods and pipes along the top.
“Could be the target,” Yeager said. “Can they blow it up?”
Monalisa cut the throttle, and the Cobalt drifted forward on momentum alone. A line appeared between her eyes as she frowned. “I... don’t think so. No. Not easily. Trying to remember a briefing from back in the day...” She drummed on the wheel with a quick bongo riff and bit her lip. “Liquid natural gas doesn’t blow up so much as it burns really, really hot if you can vaporize it and set the vapor on fire. The ships are super-safe, and the containers are engineered against impact or spillage, but...”
“But what?”
“Terrorist attack is one of the worst-case scenarios. If... wait.” Monalisa swiveled in her chair and rubbed her temples. “Let’s say terrorists hijacked an LNG ship and ran it aground in, like, Honolulu. Maybe Waikiki Bay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And let’s say they were smart terrorists and knew how to build shaped charges that could penetrate both walls of the liquefied gas container so the tank could boil off its contents in a vapor cloud. Now, the third thing the terrorists would have to do is rig some sort of delayed explosive to light off the vapor cloud. There would be a big fireball, very hot, and a sustained fire near the ship that would burn until the gas ran out.” She leveled a serious look at him. “I don’t know how much of the city would burn. Not all of it, for sure.”
“But they could righteously fuck up a big section of beach-front property, true?”
“Very true. Look at the chart. It’s right outside the mouth of the Pearl Harbor’s channel. Hitting Pearl could be what your informant meant by ‘blow it in place.’”
Informant seemed an overly charitable description of the leaking, damaged terrorist from the camp. After Pettigrew had finished his carving, the youngster had spewed information like a twenty-four-hour news service. Yeager let it pass.
The orange ball of the sun peeked over the horizon, streaking bands of high, thin cirrus clouds with morning light. A gull faced the wind off the starboard bow, frozen in place by the breeze and the perfect alignment of wings and feathers. As Yeager watched, the bird dipped and wheeled away.
“It’s this one.” Yeager nodded toward the LNG carrier. “Has to be. It’s the right coordinates. It’s the right kind of potential for mass destruction. I’m feeling it in my gut.”
Monalisa regarded him with narrowed eyes. “But what if you’re—wait.” She snagged the binoculars, focused them directly ahead, and watched for a long count of five then handed Yeager the glasses. “You’re a psychic son of a bitch.”
Yeager lifted the glasses and panned ahead, following Monalisa’s pointing finger. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth hurt when the jiggling view settled on the thing she had seen. Six or seven hundred yards to the west of their position, two inflatable boats skimmed across the surface of the ocean. The details weren’t clear by the light of dawn, but he could make out enough to identify numerous people in each boat. The craft arrowed across the open water, headed straight for the LNG carrier.
Yeager tracked back along the line of travel. The breath he’d been holding hissed out. There it was, smaller than a black dot on the flaming orange sea. “You see that on radar?”
After a pause, she said, “Yep. Looks like a ship. About the size of a yacht. Better go wake up the two sleeping beauties.”
Yeager nodded, his throat too tight to speak.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Kekepi, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0622 Local Time
From the plush sofa in the salon aboard the Kekepi, the man known as Mr. L typed a short, coded phrase into a heavy-duty laptop. The laptop was attached to an encryption device and satellite antenna that would take the phrase, garble it, compress it further, and squirt it into the ether as a tiny blip of a transmission, virtually undetectable to any listeners who might wish to intercept it. The message would update his commanders—not based in Pyongyang, as he’d led Kanoa to believe—with a status code relaying that the intercept of the LNG carrier was underway.
A flurry of activity would ripple through the small suite of offices housing the Institute for Policy Implementation. Located in an office complex in the Changping District in northwest Beijing, the Institute was a unique experiment of combined operations from several bureaus and divisions, from the Military Intelligence Division, First Bureau, to the PLA’s Second Department. It included elements of the PLA’s special operations forces—in this case, the troops led by Lieutenant Peng, aka Manu Ho. Rarely known to play well together, the various Chinese military intelligence forces had formed the Institute for Policy Implementation to plan, coordinate, and execute the false-flag operation code named White Swan.
Key to the operation’s inception had been Mr. L’s recruitment of angry American and potential rebel Kanoa Ino. With the seeds of violent protest present in the form of Kanoa’s band of disaffected Hawaiians, Mr. L’s superiors pieced together a joint operation with multiple goals.
Objective one: teach the Americans a lesson regarding their meddling in Taiwan—though Mr. L had little confidence the lesson would sink home, as objective two ensured blame would be deflected onto the demon of the Americans, the hapless North Koreans. Objective three was a bonus, though not insignificant by any means. If “Manu Ho” and the Hawaiians should succeed in capturing the Golden Sun and steering it into the channel connecting Pearl Harbor with the open sea, they would weaken the operational capabilities of the US Pacific Fleet for a period of time. Once the boat was placed in the channel, Mr. L would enter a series of keystrokes on his satellite phone and remotely blow the demolition charges planted by Ho’s men. This would scuttle the massive LNG carrier in the narrows of the channel, blocking Pearl Harbor like a cork in a bottle, which would deny the US the use of their vital Pacific refit-and-refueling base and severely hamper US naval operations in the Pacific Rim.
Mr. L closed the laptop. Morning sun powered in through the east-facing windows of the salon, forcing him to squint. His stomach complained at his lack of attention to biological concerns—it had been a long night, and the stress of dealing with the barbarians had prevented him from eating. With all of them gone except for the baboon, Kimo Ekewaka, his stomach was putting in a reminder for sustenance.
Kimo Ekewaka. As though thinking about him had conjured the ugly giant, Kimo entered the salon and grunted an acknowledgment as he passed through. Mr. L sneered at the man’s back. In his silly sports uniform and black combat pants, the man walked barefoot through the glass doors at the rear of the salon and down the ladder. Headed to the crew quarters and his captive victim, no doubt.
Mr. L shuddered. No matter. Ekewaka and the woman were loose ends that would soon be tied off, along with other Hawaiians. Once Mr. L had sunk the Golden Sun, he would give the order for his men to go down to the crew quarters and gun down both victim and tormentor. The Kekepi would head out to sea, leaving Ho and his men to escape via a different route—one unknown to Kanoa and his people, who would be left hanging, martyrs to their idiotic cause. It would interesting to see how the Americans reacted to the evidence and whether they’d have the strength to confront North Korea—
A shout from outside drew his attention.
Mr. L frowned and crossed the salon. He took the companionway then the ladder that led to the pilothouse. There, a Special Forces commando with knowledge of piloting ships the size of the Kekepi was seated at the wheel. Sergeant Wei, if he remembered the man’s name correctly.
“What is happening, Sergeant?” Mr. L demanded.
The man pointed off to the starboard side of the ship. “A vessel approaches. A pleasure craft smaller than this one.”
KIMO STOPPED BY THE soldier guarding the woman’s cabin and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go get some food or sleep, or go fuck yourself some other way.”
The soldier recognized the dismissal if not the words. He nodded crisply and trotted away.
Kimo entered the small cabin and stopped, confused for a second by the empty beds. Where did she—ah, the door to the head is closed. “Locking yourself in the bathroom won’t help, sistah. You might as well come out so I don’t get too mad.”
Silence.
He tried the handle, which of course was locked. “Fine, we do it the hard way.” Kimo reared back and smashed the door with his heel—and rebounded as the door refused to budge. He was cocking his leg to kick it again, the first trickling of anger simmering into his veins, when he noticed the hinges on his side of the door. It opened outward.
“Oh, I’ma gonna take special time with you,” he growled.
After pulling a combat knife from a scabbard on his belt, Kimo jammed the point between the latch plate and the door, digging at the spring-loaded bolt where it entered the latch. He jimmied and pried at the gap, the wood crackling as he widened it. Kimo shifted his grip and shoved the blade deeper. He put his weight behind it and heaved.
The door popped open and banged him in the shoulder. He stepped into the head. It was empty.
KEKEPI, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0625 Local
Mr. L blinked to confirm the evidence. Sure enough, a white-with-blue-trim yacht motored toward them on a converging course. Sun glinting off the window prevented him seeing inside, but on the foredeck lounged a white woman in a bright-pink two-piece bikini. The woman tottered to her feet and tilted her head back to drain the last few drops from a champagne bottle. As she stood, the top of her suit fell off, revealing her bare breasts. She seemed not to notice or care.
“You got any more bubbly?” The woman’s slurred voice came to Mr. L through the open glass doors leading to the narrow strip of deck along the starboard gunwale. She had addressed the question to Private Xiao, who stood just outside the door.
“Go ’way! Go ’way!” Xiao yelled. Per standing orders, he was making an effort to remain covert and held his sidearm at his back, out of sight of the woman.
“Why you bein’ so darn orn’ry?” the half-naked woman groused. “We’re outta booze. Comprendo savvy that, Charlie?”
“No booze! Go ’way!”
Maybe it was the air of stillness around the woman, as though no other revelers were present on the approaching craft, that raised Mr. L’s hackles. Or maybe what bothered him was the fact that he couldn’t see past the sun’s glare on the smaller yacht’s windows. What disturbed him most, he concluded, was the sudden appearance of the boat in the middle of the ocean just moments after they had launched attack teams to hijack a ship. Party girl or not...
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “Alert your men.”
“For naked woman?” Wei’s voice carried a trace of a sneer.
“Go ’way!” yelled Xiao from the railing.
The oncoming boat idled closer, its rails only ten meters from the Kekepi’s.
“Wait, wait, wait.” The woman pitched her champagne bottle overboard and reached into the towels strewn about her feet. “I’ll trade you a little sumpin’, sumpin’...”
