Operation Caribe

9

The next night

NOLAN WAS AT the controls of Bad Dawg Two.

It was just before midnight. Not twenty-four hours after Gunner and Crash had completed their recon of Craggy Two Cay, Whiskey was on its way back, this time in force.

They were flying low, just above the wave tops, coming from the north. Batman was off Nolan’s left wing in Bad Dawg One; Crash was with him, manning one of the door guns. Gunner and Twitch were riding with Nolan, their M4s hooked up to extended belts of ammunition. Some of the photos Gunner had taken of the pirates’ secret camp were taped to Nolan’s flight panel. He’d studied them closely and knew the numbers they told: more than thirty hardcore pirates were probably at the camp, along with two big chain guns and a lot of assault rifles. The advantage, six to one in the pirates’ favor, didn’t bother Nolan. Back when they attacked the base of Zeek the Pirate in Indonesia, Whiskey had been outnumbered almost eight-to-one, and had still come out on top.

It was the target’s makeup that troubled him. The Muy Capaz camp was so cluttered, it offered dozens of concealed places from which the pirates could fire. This meant Whiskey had no choice but to come in low, destroy the two big chain guns first, then draw the pirates’ fire and take out anyone who fell in their sights. Nolan was well aware how dangerous this would be. One round in the wrong place, like in his engine, or his skull, and the show would be over, just like that.

So in planning the mission, the team had to come up with a few tricks, things to knock the pirates off kilter before they came in so low and exposed.

Gunner suggested building a stinkpot, a weapon designed hundreds of years ago. A concoction of saltpeter, limestone and a spice called asafetida, plus lots of dead fish, it was packed in a container drenched with kerosene and lit by a fuse. When detonated, it created such a stench, it could cause waves of debilitating nausea almost immediately.

A stinkpot was now tied to Nolan’s right side strut. Made to Gunner’s specifications, it was contained in a fifty-gallon milk can they’d requisitioned from the Georgia June. If they could drop the stinkpot at the beginning of the attack, Whiskey was hoping many of the enemy gunmen would be too busy vomiting to fight.

But this was not their only psy-ops weapon. Bad Dawg One was equipped with an external loudspeaker. Typically employed for crowd dispersal or talking to hostage-takers, the loudspeaker was connected to an MP3 player in the copter’s cockpit that could play any recording at earsplitting volume.

To this end, Crash had made an MP3 loop featuring a mélange of unsettling sounds: people screaming; wounded and dying animals; horns blowing, drums beating. It was a primal cacophony, like a soundtrack for a war movie. Whiskey hoped this, too, would add to the pirates’ confusion.

Batman had chipped in by making several dozen flash bombs, using soda cans as his weapons jackets. Filled with phosphorus and aviation gas, they would not only make an ear splitting noise when they exploded, they would produce a flash of light so bright it would blind anyone nearby.

These were all good ideas. But in planning the attack, the team sensed they needed one more thing, something almost cosmically unsettling. Twitch had pointed out that back in the old pirate days, the most powerful weapon the brigands had was their flag—the skull and crossbones. When the pirates would come up on a ship, sometimes all they had to do was run up their Jolly Roger and the victim would simply give up. Fear could be a powerful weapon in battle. But what would instill such fear in these particular modern-day pirates?

Twitch made figuring that out his personal mission.

Their preparations for battle had taken the team most of the day. But as the sun went down and they began suiting up for the attack, one important question remained: what if, after hitting them with the stink bomb, the psy-ops recording, the flash grenades and Twitch’s secret weapon, the pirates wanted to give up?

The thought had crossed Nolan’s mind more than once during the day. Back in Indonesia, Whiskey had trapped dozens of Zeek’s men on a sandbar and mowed them down with a fusillade of .50-caliber machine gun fire. It was distasteful, but in the end, necessary. Zeek’s men were murderers, rapists, and sadists. The Muy Capaz were no different. Besides, eliminating them was what Whiskey was being paid to do.

So before they took off, Nolan had told the team: “Remember what Mr. Jobo said. ‘Gloves off.’ Those are his words. Those are our specs. So, that’s what we gotta do.”

* * *

THE DAY HAD passed in surreal fashion for the pirates on Craggy Two Cay.

The four brigands who’d gone out on a “flying raid” two nights before had not returned. And while it was not too unusual for gang members to simply give up the pirate life and vanish, it was odd that four would jump ship together. What’s more, no one had been able to get in touch with Colonel Cat. Had his plane crashed two nights ago? The pirates had heard nothing on their shortwave radios about any aircraft crashes on the islands. Had their colleagues been caught by the authorities, then? No one knew—and that was making everyone feel uneasy.

On the other hand, the deal that Doggie and Jacks had made the night before with the men from Africa had the potential to change Muy Capaz’s financial situation forever. If they could line up enough drug and weapons dealers and start a pipeline flowing, they would make so much money, they could spend scads of it in Badtown for weeks at a time and still have plenty left over.

So, it had been a day of yin and yang. Still, the pirates had spent it as they usually did: sleeping, gambling, fighting with each other, drinking and doing drugs. The only defensive action Black took was to post a half dozen men down on the east beach of the cay, near the mouth of the bight that split the island in two, something he did in times of heightened security at the camp.

The job of these six men was simple. They were to report anything unusual coming their way from the ocean side, the likeliest route for any attack on the hidden camp.

And something odd did arrive around midnight.

Not from the sea, but from the air.

* * *

ONE MOMENT, THE six pirates on the beach were passing a bottle of rum and only casually checking the horizon.

The next moment, hellfire fell upon them.

The noise came first—and it was incredibly loud. People screaming, animalistic wails of agony, people shouting over radio static. It was suddenly all around them. Then the night lit up with incredibly bright explosions, dozens filling the sky.

Then came the helicopters. The pirates weren’t sure of the number, but it sounded like hundreds of them. Two streaked close past them; they looked dark and menacing, loaded down with bombs and guns. But there was another thing: The emblems on their fuselages were unmistakable: the red-white-and-blue insignia, with the star in the middle?

These were Americans. U.S. military gunships sent here to attack them. Between all the noise and the flashes of light, it was as if the 82nd Airborne itself was suddenly descending on Craggy Two Cay.

The six pirates on the beach were instantly terrified. They’d never run into anything like this before.

They had no desire to take on the helicopters. None of them even shot back. Instead, they dropped their weapons and ran into the jungle, heading at top speed back to their encampment.

* * *

NOLAN’S WAS THE first copter to arrive over the hidden pirate base. Flying very low, he slowed down just enough for Gunner to light the stinkpot’s fuse and kick the malodorous weapon out the copter door; then they streaked away. The bomb landed with a splat right in the middle of the camp’s huge bonfire. It exploded instantly, hurling its contents over a wide area.

“Bada bing!” Gunner yelled.

Nolan pulled the copter up and over the camp, making way for Batman and Bad Dawg One. It streaked underneath them, MP3 blaring, flash bombs still falling from its weapons points. Batman immediately opened up with his forward cannon and took out the chain gun on the eastern edge of the camp. Then came a quick turn, another cannon barrage, and the western edge chain gun was destroyed as well.

Nolan flew over the hideout a second time. Flipping down his special night-vision telescope, he scanned the ground below. Lots of heat sources were moving about—and for a moment, it seemed like more than just three dozen people running around. But one thing was clear—the pirates seemed in a panic.

Their plan was working.

Both copters now backed off and started a slow orbit 1,500 feet above the treeline. A small white mushroom cloud was rising over the camp, the aftereffect of the stinkpot explosion. Crash’s MP3 was still blaring as well.

Again Nolan studied the camp below. So much smoke covered the target area, it was hard to distinguish the heat signatures of the pirates from the residue of the flash bombs. But that was not surprising. Everything was unfolding as they’d hoped.

The team gave the stinkpot bomb two more minutes to do its work. Then Nolan and Batman turned their copters over and began to dive again.

“Now comes the fun part,” Nolan thought grimly.

He armed all his weapons. The .50-caliber machine guns mounted on his winglets were ready to fire, as was the huge 30mm cannon sticking out of the copter’s nose. Gunner and Twitch both had their M4s up on the starboard side weapons mounts, connected to continuous belts of ammunition.

Both copters were soon down to just ten feet off the deck, quickly slowing to half speed. In this dangerous maneuver, they wanted the pirates to fire at them and reveal themselves, so Whiskey would know where to fire back. Nolan was in the lead, with Batman a little behind and off to the right. Anyone who showed himself to shoot at Nolan would find himself in Batman’s sights an instant later.

The noise of the two copters flying so low was deafening—but Nolan could still hear Crash’s soundtrack booming between his ears. The attack quickly turned nuts. It was loud and fast and full of smoke and flames and flashes of light going off in all directions.

But … something was wrong.

Nolan knew it right away.

No one—not a single pirate—was shooting back at them. In fact, he could see nothing at all moving around the camp.

The pirates were not a disciplined army; there was no way they’d all taken cover and were keeping their heads down.

Nolan completed his pass and did another quick infrared scan of the camp. He saw heat sources strewn all over, but none of them was moving. It was almost as if they were all dead already.

His radio suddenly came to life. It was Batman.

“You see what I see?” he asked Nolan.

“I think I do,” Nolan replied. “It’s already a ghost town.”

Batman radioed back: “But there’s no way we greased any of these guys already. We just got here.”

Nolan’s head started spinning. The gig had been almost too easy up to this point. Now this curveball—and he had no idea how to explain it.

“We got to find out what’s happened down there,” he radioed back to Batman.

Batman clicked his radio mike twice.

“Roger that,” he told Nolan. “See you on the ground.”

* * *

A MINUTE LATER, the two copters had set down in a field just west of the small camp.

The five team members climbed out and checked their equipment. They were all dressed the same: black camouflage battle suits, flak jackets and oversized battle helmets. Each man was carrying an M4 assault rifle equipped with a night scope, and each was breathing through a gas mask. Each man was wearing his OAS badge as well.

But they were also wearing huge American flags on their backs. This was their version of the Jolly Roger. They’d believed nothing would put the fear of God into the brigands like seeing the Stars and Stripes coming at them.

That’s why Twitch quipped, “Maybe we scared them all to death.”

Whatever happened, though, the smell was awful.

“At least your stink bomb worked,” Crash yelled through his mask to Gunner. “It smells like one skunk crawled up another skunk’s ass and died.”

Could that have done it? Nolan wondered. Had the smell from the stinkpot been so overwhelming, it had actually killed all the pirates?

He didn’t think so. It had to be something else.

The team formed up on the edge of the hideout, then put about twenty feet between them. Weapons ready, they began walking into the encampment.

They moved slowly, sweeping the camp with their night-vision goggles, ready for anything, working their way through the stink and fog.

But they could see no movement at all. No one was trying to run. No one was throwing up from the putrid cloud. No one was shooting or resisting them in any way.

Nolan gave out a loud, short whistle—the signal that the team should be wary of booby traps or an ambush. But as they moved cautiously into the camp, their weapons pointing in every direction at once, it was soon obvious there was no opposition.

They found the first pirate in the middle of the camp. He was lying face down near the huge bonfire, not far from where the stink bomb had hit.

But he hadn’t been shot, or burned or “stunk to death.”

His throat had been cut. Even stranger, his right ear had been cut off.

“We sure as hell didn’t do that.…” Twitch said through his gas mask.

They came upon four more pirates in front of a shack nearby. They, too, had had their throats slit, and one ear removed. Behind the shack were two more. Both had their necks sliced open, both were missing an ear.

It went on like this for the next five minutes. The team found groups of pirates in the shacks and in the jungle nearby. None had been shot or hit by ordnance. All of them had died from getting their throats slit. Each one had had an ear cut off.

This was totally baffling and bizarre. The Whiskey guys were all veterans of some of the heaviest missions of Delta Force. They rightly thought they’d seen it all.

But they’d never seen anything like this.

They moved down near the river that ran past the camp, and here they found the six men who’d run back to the encampment from the beach at the beginning of the attack. Their throats, too, had been slashed, and one ear had been removed from each of them. The blood from their hideous wounds was turning the river bright red.

The team finally stopped and had a muffled conversation through their gas masks.

“They’re all f*cking dead?” Crash was yelling. “All of them?”

“Every one, so far,” Batman said. “And none of them went pretty.”

“But how?” Crash asked.

No one knew.…

“Are we going to get blamed for this?” Twitch wondered loudly.

Nolan just shook his aching head. Blamed? An odd choice of words, he thought.

They stayed together, checking each hut and finding many more bodies, all of them with their necks cut open, each with an ear sliced off.

Finally they reached the last shack—the one occupied by Captain Black himself. There were four pirates piled up near the entrance. All were dead from knife wounds to the throat, all missing one ear.

But one pirate inside was still alive. It was Black himself.

Crumpled in the far corner of the rickety structure, his throat was severely cut and his right ear was missing. He was bleeding heavily all over his white clothes, but somehow he was still breathing. They gathered around him. Medic kit in hand, Crash desperately tried to stem the flow of blood from his wounds, but couldn’t. He looked up at the others and just shook his head.

Black could barely speak, his words coming out in a bloody gurgle. Still, he tried.

“Are you blokes the cops?” he asked them weakly.

Still talking through his gas mask, Nolan yelled that they were part of the OAS.

“Never heard of you,” Black gurgled back.

Nolan knelt down beside the dying pirate. He had to know what transpired between the time the team first dropped the stink bomb and when they started the aborted attack on the camp, five minutes at the most.

“What happened here?” Nolan asked him. “Why is everyone dead?”

The pirate could only shake his head. “I don’t know, mon,” he replied with great difficulty. “We was drunk and high. Asleep. Passed out. Then, a stink bomb comes in. Weird screaming. I woke up, but I couldn’t see anything. And I couldn’t breathe because my fingers are on my nose.”

He coughed once, ejecting a small river of blood.

“Next thing I know, all my men around me are dead—and my own throat is cut, and my ear is gone. I didn’t see nobody. I didn’t hear nobody.”

Another cough, more blood.

“Ghosts,” Black struggled to say. “We were killed by ghosts.”

But Nolan didn’t believe him. He couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. He believed Whiskey had actually stumbled upon some weird mass murder-suicide. It was the only rational explanation.

Batman knelt down beside the dying pirate as well. He lit up a joint, pulled up his gas mask, took a drag, then lifted Black’s head off the bloody floor and put the joint to his lips. The pirate drew in deep.

“Want to get clean now while you can?” Batman asked him.

The pirate nodded yes, a bubble of blood coming out of his open throat.

Batman shouted behind him: “Who’s got the f*cking video camera?”

Gunner was soon beside him, a small video camera in hand.

“Get all of this,” Batman told him.

He turned back to Black.

“You guys knocked off all those yachts, right?” Batman asked him.

Black nodded slowly. “Just trying to make some scratch, you know, general?”

Batman gave him another puff of pot.

“And all those people?” he asked. “You threw them into the sea?”

“Couldn’t have any witnesses, you know?” Black said. “It’s bad luck. But a lot of their stuff is here. You can have it. No good to me now.”

“You might have gotten away with it,” Batman said, taking another hit himself under his mask, “if your pilot hadn’t been a junkie and had been more careful.”

“Always a pain in the ass, that guy,” Black said after another toke. “I hope he crashes someday.”

Batman nodded. “Yeah, me, too. But you know what really screwed you? Taking those yachts on Easter. And killing those cops, man? That was f*cked up. That’s what got everyone pissed off, and set everything in motion against you. That’s why they called us in.”

Black accepted another weak puff of the pot—and then a strange look came across his face.

“We done all that you say before,” he coughed, fading fast. “But no three yachts on Easter Day, mon. And definitely no cops. That was not us. We were all drunk on Easter. We could not move. That was someone else.”

“Bullshit,” Gunner said, still recording it all. “He’s freaking stoned even as he’s checking out.”

But now Nolan wasn’t so sure.

“If it wasn’t you guys,” he asked Black. “Who did it?”

But the pirate captain could no longer reply. His eyes were going up into his head, his body was starting to convulse.

Batman threw the joint away and started shaking him.

He repeated Nolan’s question: “If it wasn’t you on Easter, who was it?”

Black came back to life for just a few more seconds. Long enough for him to manage a weak grin.

“No idea, mon,” he said. “Guess the big joke is on you.”

Then, he died.