Chimera-44 Page 2

  Typically, they raided the ships for cash, robbing the crews of their personal belongings and rifling through the ship’s cash box. If the cargo was anything valuable they would hijack the ship, take it to an isolated inlet where the local naval police were paid to look the other way, and ransom the ship back to its owner for a sum of gold or foreign currency. It paid the bills, and the fact that most often the ships were foreign kept Dur from feeling bad about spending his cut.

  This hijacking had been so much more different from all the others he had been a part. The bosses, working on rumors they picked up in the bars of Jakarta, believed the Russian ship was making a powerful new drug onboard. Whether it was cancer cure, a new dick pill, or a cure for the shingles, it simply didn’t matter. What did was capturing it and the researchers working on it so they could ransom the ship back to its owners for millions. The Preman gang had even imported a dozen former military men with experience in Timor as shooters. Dur and his fellow sailors were just bus drivers along for the ride.

  He shook seawater out of his ears in the dark as a low wave lifted him and his pile of wreckage high before ebbing back down. He yelled out into the dark but received no reply.

  Everything had initially gone according to plan on the attack. They had stalked the Russian ship for days and waited until no other ship was visible for miles in any direction. Then, with a calm sea, they crept toward the Russian ship in small rubber boats from behind while their main ship remained over the horizon. Dur and Haddam, his brother, landed with the shooters who broke off into two groups, one to seize the bridge, the other to capture the lab. Haddam had gone with the bridge team and Dur, armed only with a chair leg, had accompanied the second group to the lab. They had just made it in through the series of complicated doors when the whole ship exploded around them.

  Dur had ridden a column of rushing water through a maze of passages and hatches, ever higher as the ship sank under him. In the darkness he had found and fought a monkey—of all things—who had clawed and bit his hands in the water as they shot out on deck and found themselves alone in the ocean. Dur knocked the cursed creature off a floating life ring and saw its quizzical face, small and furry; sinking downward to the ship that it had come from.

  “Haddam!” he yelled into the night repeatedly. He had promised his brother that this job would help them leave this life. His brother had seven children and a wife to support. Now they would certainly be added to Dur’s own burden.

  For quite some time he floated alone with only bits of wreckage and his own thoughts. He fought the urge to cry, to feel self-pity for his situation—to not simply push himself from the wreckage and sink to join Haddam, the monkey, and the Russians and Indonesians below him on the seafloor. He felt his pockets for anything that would identify his body if found, but they were empty. The only thing that brought him solace was the thought of the tribal Mentawai tattoo on his arm would enable whoever recovered his body to help identify it. He shook violently and his guts felt like jelly. Was this to be his last night on earth? Allah could be so vengeful sometimes, but it is His will.

  In the ocean ahead of him, he saw a light is the distance. As the waves lifted and then lowered between him and the light, it would appear and then vanish in turn. Each time it appeared, it seemed closer, larger.

  “Help!” he yelled hoarsely and waved his arms in the dark. “Help!”

  He strained his ears as his head ached. Near uncontrollable shaking had consumed his body in the warm water that enveloped him. From the light came the sound of a deep old diesel engine throbbing. He knew the engine well. It was from the Ikan Hiu, their mother ship and home. They were coming to check the wreckage.

  Allah had not forsaken him. He could be merciful sometimes as well.

  ««—»»

  Lieutenant Lachlan Wilson knew the smell of death, and the derelict vessel had it. He carefully poked around the corner of the bulkhead as he led an Australian Navy seaman from the patrol boat HMAS Larrakia around the ghost ship. In his first year with the Larrakia he had gone aboard a Liberian-flagged freighter and found a CEU container filled with illegal Chinese immigrants bound for Darwin. The tragic part of the story was that the immigrants were sealed inside the metal container in 100+-degree heat for two weeks. When he and his crew opened it for inspection, it had the same smell as the boat he was on now.

  “It’s a phantom ship, Lieutenant,” said the sailor behind him as he clutched his Steyr AUG rifle.

  Wilson agreed with a nod as he pointed his Browning Hi-Power 9mm in front of him, at the ready for anything. The derelict ship had been spotted drifting a hundred miles offshore by a passing patrol plane last week and the Larrakia had been dispatched to check it out. It was a Javanese two-masted pinisiq, a ship unique to Southeast Asian waters. Built on a design mix of Chinese junks, Indian dhows, and Dutch schooners, the pinisiq was the most common locally built vessel that plied the thousands of islands of the world’s largest archipelago. Its description and dimensions match a pinisiq named the Ikan Hiu missing out of Belwan for the past two years.

  Intelligence had passed along that the Indonesian Navy suspected the ship to be implicated in a number of pirate attacks in the Straits of Malacca. Odds are the pirates hijacked it, deep-sixed the original crew, repainted it, and had used it since then. Either way, the away team from the patrol boat was on high alert as they inspected it.

  Wilson opened the hatch leading into the ship’s wheelhouse and gagged at the stench. Inside the small structure, billows of flies coated the windows and walls, crowding for space on any surface. The grime-streaked deck of the compartment held four figures that had once, before the decay had set in, been human. One was bloated and swollen like a child’s balloon. Another had what looked to be a shotgun blast to the face. Still another, who was face down on the deck had what appeared to be the plastic handle of a screwdriver extending out from the back of his head.

  Wilson pressed the button on his radio mic to call the Larrakia, “Larrakia, Away Team. Be advised we have found four bodies here. You may want to call Darwin and let them know to advise AFP that we have possible homicides here.” The Australian Federal Police would want to come in and take over the ship. The Navy’s job was defense, not criminal investigation.

  “Will do, Away Team, be safe over there.”

  Wilson moved to the hatch at the rear of the bridge and peered down into the interior of the ship. He fished a flashlight from his life vest and triggered a beam down the ladder well. More flies buzzed up to greet him from below. He was so glad that this was his last week in the Patrol Group. Next Monday he reported to his new assignment as a naval attaché. Tuesday he was set to leave for Los Angeles, and then for a month-long Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii. He just had to get through today.

  “Well, this is what they pay us the big bucks for,” he said with a forced smile to the sweat-soaked sailor behind him, and started down the ladder.

  “I’d rather drag my balls through broken glass than go down there, sir,” came the response back even as the sailor was slinging his rifle to follow him.

  With the small flashlight in his mouth, Wilson carefully climbed down the ladder with one hand for his pistol and the other for the rungs. He came out into what looked to be the ship’s galley, as evident by a number of pots slowly moving on the wall with the drift of the derelict vessel. He played the flashlight along the perimeter of the new compartment and illuminated the dark in rays of passing light. It was a wreck of dishes, blood, and filth. Flies scattered in the light like bats in a cave and buzzed around his eyes and mouth as he stood there. On a table mounted against the wall was another body.

  “Look at that bloody Muppet there, sir,” said the sailor as he aimed his rifle at the body atop the table.

  Wilson concentrated the beam of his flashlight on the cadaver in question and examined it briefly from arm’s length away. The skin and flesh on the face of the man had been pulled away from the skull, exposing teeth and pink bone to th
e air. The beam of the flashlight reflected white from the teeth now visible due to the absence of the cheek muscles. The man was shirtless and the skin of his brown chest showed circular bite marks and a slash from one side of his ribcage to the other. In the open wound, pink lung tissue bulged from around a cage of exposed ribs. A double handful of maggots hurriedly worked along the opening to accomplish their own mission. On the arm closest to Wilson, he could see an ornate tattoo in what looked like Indonesian script.

  “Sir…” said the sailor in a deep whisper, “the eyes.”

  Wilson pointed the light back to the face of the body on the table and stopped on the eyes. Ever so slowly, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wing as it sat on a flower, one of them was blinking.

  As he stood fixated on the blinking eyelid, the lieutenant reached for his radio to tell Larrakia to send over the medic. The crackle feedback of the radio was electric for the injured man and Wilson froze as he saw the head pivot towards him on the table. He took a step back and extended his pistol out defensively into the man’s face.

  “What the hell…” said the sailor behind him as he brought his own weapon up to the injured man’s face.

  “Stay there please, sir. You have been injured,” Wilson said, struggling to regain his composure. “We have help coming.”

  The man sat up on the table and pivoted his legs over the edge in one fluid movement. As he did so, dark and thickly mottled organs pressed against the jagged wound across his chest. The man pushed himself off the table and onto his feet, swaying briefly before he caught his sea legs again. With arms outstretched, he reached for Wilson and opened his mouth in a raspy guttural sound.

  The sailor’s rifle was deafening inside the sealed metal box of the compartment as three rounds of 5.56x45mm NATO green tip barked the short distance from the muzzle to the decomposing man’s face. In a shower of congealed black spray, the man staggered backwards and slumped to the deck.

  Wilson turned to the sailor, his ears ringing and yelled, “Are you mad?” as he wiped blood and fluids from his face and eyes that had splattered there from the inconceivably mobile attacker.

  The sailor shrugged and stammered an explanation that the young lieutenant could not make out in the shadows of the compartment, illuminated only by the puddle of beam coming from his flashlight. The radio crackled in Wilson’s ear but was drowned out by the sounds of pounding on the bulkhead walls. They were not alone on the ship.

  He pulled the sailor close to him and yelled in the man’s ear, “Let’s go back on deck. There is something very wrong here.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year, sir!” yelled back the equally deafened sailor as he checked his weapon and slung it over his shoulder.

  Wilson scrambled up the ladder well back to the putrid wheelhouse of the ship and turned to help the sailor up. As soon as the man’s head and shoulders popped above the hatch, his face contorted into horror.

  “They’ve got my legs! They’ve got my legs!” the man screamed as he struggled to heave himself out of the hatch to safety. With the Steyr AUG slung across the sailor’s shoulder, it was trapped by the confines of the well and useless to the man.

  Wilson shone his light down the narrow ladder well and caught the sailor’s attacker in the illumination. It was the same cheek-less tattooed man who had just eaten three 5.56mm rounds at point blank range only a moment before. He was hungrily tearing at the flesh in the back of the sailor’s thigh with his teeth. Other hands were reaching up as well from the galley below. Recoiling back in horror, Wilson let go of the sailor and the man disappeared down the hatch. His screams filtered back up the ladder well and filled the bridge, echoing off the rusty metal.

  The lieutenant fought the urge to look down into the compartment below, but mustered enough strength to slam the hatch closed and dog it down to keep it that way.

  “Larrakia, Away Team,” he said breathlessly into the microphone of his portable radio over the screams below deck. “The situation here has changed…”

  — | — | —

  Chapter 3:

  WPA Flight 6551

  Peter Soto watched as his son licked his finger, jabbed it into the tiny bag and swirled it around the bottom. The bag had formerly held a half dozen salted cashews, heavy on the salt and light on the cashews. Over the years, airline flights, even intercontinental ones had become skimpy on the snacks. If he had paid cash instead of traded his miles in for this flight, he would have almost felt the need to complain.

  “Where are your brothers?” he asked James, the oldest of his three boys. Of course, it wasn’t just James, but David and Andrew, the elementary-aged boys that needed the most attention.

  The teenager shrugged as he licked the salt from his fingers, with his ear buds from his iPod crammed deep into his ears he probably had not even heard what he asked. Peter reached across the aisle and pulled one of the buds out of the man-child’s ear.

  “Where are your brothers?” he asked again with the same type of firmness he used with his employees.

  “They went to the bathroom, Pops. It’s not like they can leave the plane or anything,” the boy said with all the disinterested sarcasm that only a sixteen-year-old that knew everything could properly muster.

  “Go find them and don’t come back until you do,” he said to the boy. This was greeted with a dramatic sigh as the teenager lurched forward into the huge forest of seats inside the Boeing 777 jumbo jet to seek his lost siblings. The 777 held three aisles of three seats each across and the boys had the whole of the far aisle to themselves in seats 40A, 40B, and 40C. Peter was just across the aisle from them in 40D, so that he could block them in if he needed to.

  Peter settled back into his seat and resumed browsing his e-reader. Of their 31-hour journey back home from Australia, the 7491-mile West Pacific Airline flight from Sydney to Los Angeles was by far the longest single leg. Once that was behind them all they had to do from LA was hop a flight to Atlanta, then a short one-hour hop to Mobile and a drive back home to Gulf Shores. He needed a vacation from his vacation.

  The Australian trip was a chance for him to reconnect with his boys. The three had spent all year with their mother in Montgomery while he lived in an empty four-bedroom house in Gulf Shores. Since the divorce, he had seen less and less of them, but that had all changed after the custody agreement had been modified. They were enjoying going back to school and he enjoyed not having to write four-figure child support checks every month to that shrew. The boys had collectively voted for a trip to see what Australia had to offer and Peter had made it happen.

  The passenger on the center aisle seat next to him lolled his head once more onto Peter’s shoulder. The man was fast getting on his nerves. He had been agreeable enough when he first boarded. Said his name was Wilson or something like that. Some Crocodile Dundee navy-type going to LA and then Hawaii for an exercise, he had said. The guy looked like hammered dog shit. Sweating, coughing, pale, and clammy, Peter jokingly wondered to himself if he was going to make the 15-hour flight without dying. He had heard rumors in Sydney about some sort of flu outbreak in Darwin, but dismissed it. After all, Darwin was a continent away from Sydney. He glanced at his watch, five more hours until they reached LAX.

  He saw his sons coming back down the aisle of the jumbo jet towards him. James stood behind the two younger boys, pushing them along like a warden with two prisoners.

  “They were wandering around upstairs,” the teenager said with a half-frown, “I had to promise the stewardess that they’d stay in their seat the rest of the flight.”

  “We just wanted to see the plane, Dad,” offered David, the youngest of the three boys. “It’s huge.”

  “Yes and so was the one we flew to Australia in last week,” he replied, “Now the three of you get in those seats and don’t move until we get to California.” On the flight out David had been fascinated by the hydraulic toilet seat in the bathroom.

  “But what if we have to go to the bathroom?” asked David
with a shocked look.

  “Hold it.”

  The boys climbed into their seats and slumped in a rare gesture of solidarity.

  “Buckle yourselves in,” Peter ordered.

  “But the sign isn’t lit up,” protested James, pointing to the dark FASTEN BELTS sign at the front of the cabin. The world of teenage injustice had to be crushing. “Mom wouldn’t make us unless the sign was on.”

  Peter dropped his voice to a low rasp, “I’ll give you something to whine about if you keep it up, mister.”

  The three boys, in a display of juvenile showmanship, dramatically buckled themselves into their seats. David looked dejectedly out the window at the passing clouds. Andrew pulled out the tablet he got for his birthday and, with his lip poked out, started tapping on different menus. James returned to the world of his iPod.

  Peter resumed his own book and willed the flight to speed up. They were all cranky after being cooped up all day on the plane. He was sure everything would be ok when they got back home. The flight attendants should be serving the rubber chicken dinner soon and after that, they would be almost to LA.

  It was then that he noticed the blood.

  At first, it was just a single bright red blossom about the size of a dime on his right forearm. Then as he watched two more dripped down to join the first. It took him a moment to realize that it was coming from the sick Australian Navy officer buckled into the seat next to him, but when he did, he seethed.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, elbowing the man in his side. “You are bleeding on my arm.”

  No response other than a mumbled grunt came from the man.