Piracy on the High Seas - part 2

Whatever had possessed Brad Hudson to agree to this job was lost on him now. The dreams of an exciting life at sea, being out on your own, the only IT guy on a big tanker - saving the ship from a cyberattack! Or some other grandiose tech fantasy - had disappeared in a puff of smoke after the first three days at sea. It took 34 days to go from Miami, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up into the Gulf of Aden. And now, after being on land and loading oil for four days, the return trip had started. Endlessly, the numbing blue sea of the western Indian Ocean stretched on.

Brad stretched his arms up in a yawn, attempting not to fall asleep at the starboard railing. When he’d read all the propoganda about companies needing to guard their ships at sea due to increased pirate threats he assumed that once the massive tanker had got around the Cape of Good Hope he’d be popping off warning shots every few hours. Or at least once a day. So far the most exciting thing had been some practice shots with the other private security aboard the Delilah Blue.

Brad had applied for, and been offered a job by, the Global Maritime Security Firm. The GMSF mainly provided private protection against piracy on the high seas, along with other bodyguard and protective services. He’d been assigned as IT support for the ship. Despite that, he still needed to know how to fight. So after his hiring he’d trained with the Black Swamp Securities company. After three months there and a week-long training voyage at sea GMSF assigned him as a contractor to the oil tanker Delilah Blue.

It didn’t help that he didn’t fit in so well with the other 7 men assigned with him from GMSF. All of them had been prior military, mostly Marines and two Army guys - one of whom had been a US Army Ranger. Now they spent most of their days playing cards, watching movies, running the decks to stay in shape & stave off boredom, and once in a while launching a bright orange target bouy off the sides of the huge ship to take practice shots with their weapons.

All. Very. Mundane. Brad thought as he guessed at what time it was. He’d given up wearing a watch, there was no point out here. When the sun went down, he slept - unless he had a night watch. When it rose, he ate - or whenever he was hungry. And the computer equipment all ran fine. Generally the problems occured when one of the hired hands did something wrong which a little instruction and some mouse clicking could fix.

“How’s it going, kid?” came the gruff voice of Abner Clairemont.

Brad shrugged, “Same as every other day: boring.”

“Us Marines aren’t enough fun for you?” Abner asked.

“No no, not that. I just expected a little excitement on this cruise, is all. We haven’t even had a radar blip save for that one Navy cruiser who was patrolling the area. I thought these were pirate infested waters?” Brad replied.

“Only someone who hasn’t been shot at would want to get shot at,” Abner chided.

“Well, the ads for this kind of job promised adventure,” Brad explained.

Abner nodded, “So do the Marines’ ads. A lot of Marines - a lot of every military branch - get stuck in some dead-end boring ass place for months on end. I knew a guy who got snowed in at a South Korean outpost for three months. They lived off one MRE a day until the area around them thawed enough to get supplies in. No, I think I’ll take the high seas any day.”

“Fair enough. Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much,” Brad sighed.

Abner clapped him on the shoulder, “Don’t stress it, kid. You’re a civilian. You’re supposed to complain.”

“Hm,” Brad moaned ruefully. Remembering something then, something he’d been researching when the shitty satellite internet on the ship worked. Pulling up the M4 carbine he carried he pulled free the magazine to show it to the former active-duty Marine. “Tell me something, Ab: why don’t we have armor-piercing rounds? Aren’t these solid brass rounds just standard training rounds?”

Abner took the bullet magazine from the younger man and grinned, “Yea, what of it? We’re civilians. Only military can have armor-piercing rounds.”

“What if we get attacked by some pirates with body armor, or thick hulls these rounds can’t go through?” Brad asked.

Abner laughed outloud, “Kid, you don’t need armor piercing rounds against skinnies. Trust me: none of them have body armor. And the boats they’re using are barely held together as it is, they don’t have the resources to add extra armor.”

“Skinnies” had been the term used to refer to the Somali-based pirates, or any Somali, for decades. The general malnutrition of the people in the country made it a technically-accurate statement, if not an alltogether very rude one.

Abner handed back the magazine, “Trust me: if any are stupid enough to attack this boat the weapons we have will be plenty fine to fend them off.”

“Right. Your first escort cruiser out, right? A couple of their skiffs came in?”

“Right. Maybe twenty guys packed in tight on those two boats. They got close enough to open up with their AKs and my team opened fire,” Abner said shaking his head as his eyes lost their focus, looking back in time to that incident. “That kind of shit isn’t fighting, it’s a massacre. We outright killed at least half of them before they even got close enough to attempt boarding. Someone knocked off the driver of the first boat and it went out of control, narrowly missing the rear of the tanker I was on before getting lost out in the sunset. The other wised up enough to haul ass before getting any closer. Between the eight men protecting our ship we must’ve put three hundred rounds in the water. They maybe fired back fifty or so.”

“I guess that doesn’t sound so adventurous, after all,” Brad admitted.

Abner shook his head again, “It wasn’t. That kind of thing doesn’t get on the nightly news. No YouTube or Parascope live streams here either. It just happens, and the world keeps spinning.”

Abner stood and more gently patted his shoulder this time, “Just wanted to check on you, kid. Keep watching the seas. Maybe some whales will swim by and jump for you.”

***

Gu Xi Zhao counted the large-denomination Somali Shillings out in his hands before placing them on the makeshift desk which sat atop of the pirate lord’s deck. The boat was just about 12 meters long; 40-feet in the traditional American measurements. Strapped to its sides were a pair of 20-foot skiffs. Each mounted with a pair of high-octane motors. In total the Chinese captain had paid out 10,000 shillings to the elderly, gray-bearded, dark-skinned man. That wasn’t even 120 Chinese Yuan; a pittance of a payment that wouldn’t even pass for an accounting error in China. In the dirt-poor land of Somalia it was a small fortune.

The pirate lord, The Elder as he was simply called, eyed Zhao suspiciously. No one paid pirates this well. Even when a pirate did manage to capture an oil tanker successfully to raid its stores they couldn’t make this much money selling it on their black market. The Elder was considering if this deal was worth the trouble. But the money was far too tempting. His greed won out. He scooped up the money and jibbered something to his aid.

The young boy, who was maybe 12, spoke in terrible broken Chinese but it was good enough to understand, “Elder says we’ll find this US ship: the Delilah Blue. We’ll hunt her down for you, Mister Yoshi.”

Zhao nodded at his fake Japanese alias and also found some irony in the fact that the boy didn't know he using a Japanese name while speaking Chinese. He responded to the boy, “Good. It is five days out of port now. Make haste and report back to me. If you can break the engines, shoot holes in her hull so the oil spills out, I can pay you more. But it must be an absolute catastrophe for the Americans. No witnesses, no prisoners.”

The boy told this to The Elder, who in turn warbled at the boy again who translated, “The Elder will do this. You will hear from us in two days.”

Zhao nodded, turned and left with his two armed escorts aboard one of the pirate’s skiffs. The Eagle Soldiers didn’t wear their uniforms when dealing with the pirate lord, and had let their beards grow out to show some stubble. They also didn’t carry their typical QBZ-95 rifles either but had them aboard their stealth boat which sat no further than 10 meters away. Standing guard along the stealth boat’s sides were the remaining five Eagle Soldiers, their driver was inside the enclosed cabin preparing to have them depart.

Back aboard the Project 041 ship one of the soldiers asked Zhao, “Sir, are we to follow them?”

Zhao replied, “No. Let them go for now. Once their mission is complete we’ll kill their entire crew and sink that ugly boat.”

“And if they don’t succeed?”

“Then we’ll kill them, anyway. Take us away from here,” Zhao said as he went below decks.

***

“Starboard side! Here they come!” shouted Abner, “Hold fire!”

Brad stood six or seven feet away from Abner as the small skiff came thundering in on a pair of powerful outboard engines. It had to be at least a half-mile out still. In short order it’d be coming in real close; close enough to engage with their rifles. And “small” was a relative term. In comparison to the massive tanker it was small, dainty even, yet it was a good 20 or 25 feel long.

“Maru,” Adbner called on the radio to the team’s former US Army Ranger, “give them a warning shot once they’re in range. Just one.”

“Copy that, standing by on warning shot,” the sniper returned. A handful of moments passed, “Firing.” The long-barreled rifle the man was using roared thunder as he fired at the approaching pirate skiff.

From the distance Brad was viewing from the splash of the bullet’s impact in front of the approaching pirates was almost impossible to notice. The gaggle of pirates aboard the skiff probably didn’t notice either with how much that small boat was bouncing around the uneven water.

“Hold fire,” Abner called again, “I’m going let the get a little closer and fire another warning shot.”

“Boss, I can see them with AKs through my scope,” Maru said.

“Understood, hold fire,” Abner confirmed. The main squared the rifle up on his shoulder. The skiff was maybe 150 or so yards away. He fired a single round again in an attempt to ward off the pirates.

This time the pirates did notice, and began firing their AKs wildly at the large vessel. Brad’s heart had escalated to fight mode, hammering like a rapid war drum in his chest and ears. Brass rounds were clanking deafeningly loud off the hull, one pinging away at the hardened steel half-wall in front of him.

“Return fire!” Abner shouted as he began pulling the trigger on his M4-style carbine mercilessly. A hellish cacohony of thunder rose to piercing levels. Brad wasn’t aiming particularly well down his barrel, the adrenaline in his system throwing off his steady hand and aim. Nonetheless he fired at the pirate vessel. Or at least in its general direction. The 5.56mm NATO rounds travelled nearly instantly to their target at such a short range.

Then his weapon quit firing. He looked at it dumb founded for a second, unsure why it had stopped.

“Reload, Hudson!” Abner shouted at him.

Ah yea, no shit! Brad realized, dropping the spent magazine from the rifle.

“And get your fucking head down!” Abner shouted again.

Brad had just been standing straight up and not taking cover behind his barrier. Now crouching he inserted a new magazine and slapped the charging handle to snap the first round of the new magazine into place. Standing up to look again now, the skiff was less than fifty yards away in terms of literal distance, but was coming up along side the tanker vessel. Brad leaned over and began pulling back hard on the trigger for all it was worth.

He didn’t quite conciously register the fact until his next magazine was dry, but the pirates were all dead or grievously injured. None, except the man controlling the engine was moving. Even he was hunched over, clutching his left side as a generous amount of blood was emptying from his body.

The skiff plowed into, and then bounced off of, the tanker from the actuce angle it had been approaching from. As it roared away back into the deep blue, the pirates’ attack apparently halted, Brad subconciously re-locked the trigger safety on his rifle.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” Abner called over the radio.

Brad turned to face Abner, his own heart still hammering wildly. He removed the magazine from his rifle and tucked it into a pouch on his waist. The former Marine walked over to him calmly, as he conversed with the other 4-man fireteam leader through the radio. Brad absently listened to their conversation.

After a moment the Marine grabbed Brad but his left bicep, “You ok, kid?”

“You weren’t kidding. That kind of thing is a massacre,” Brad said looking down at the deck, but only seeing the crushingly thin bodies of the bullet-riddled pirates in his mind.

“No, I wasn’t kidding. And see: we didn’t need armor piercing rounds. These kill well enough,” Abner said.

Brad nodded. “Yeah... yeah I think I need to go think on some things. I’m not sure who, but I’m pretty sure I just killed at least one person today.”

“It’s easier said than done, but I’ll tell you this: once you do it, it’s not so hard the next time. Especially if that son of a bitch is trying to kill you.”