care of all the work. A single person can drive the whole thing.”
“And how many pirates are there?”
“Five in all,” Zamal said.
“And any idea where they are on board?”
“Again—they’re outsmarting us,” Zamal replied. “They came aboard wearing clothes similar to the crew. Heavy work shirts, overalls, bandanas, hard hats. They have the real crewmembers doing their routine maintenance tasks, so when we look through our long-range binoculars, we can see people walking around on deck all the time. We just don’t know who’s bad and who’s good.”
The one-eyed man studied the ship further. “And how much gas is in that thing again?”
“A half-million cubic feet,” Zamal replied.
The man with the earrings whistled again. “If it blows, it will make a pretty big hole in the ocean.”
Zamal nodded grimly. “Now you understand why we’re all anchored so far away.”
* * *
ZAMAL BROUGHT THE five men below and led them on a long trek to the front of the huge pleasure craft. It was like walking through a luxury hotel. They passed by gigantic guest areas, salons, spas and dining areas. Giant bedrooms led into lavishly appointed private lounges and Jacuzzi spas. One cabin featured an infinity pool looking out onto the sea. Another held a movie theater, complete with candy counter and popcorn machine. Still another had six billiards tables, and another, a complete tailor’s shop. One of the largest cabins was a children’s playroom. It was filled with a variety of toys, many of which were strewn about on the floor. Dozens of boxes, unopened on the shelves, held more.
“The owner is a big movie fan,” Zamal explained, playing the unofficial tour guide. “He loves billiards and dressing well. And, as he has many wives, he also has many, many children.”
They finally reached their destination: the captain’s master galley. This cabin had the look of an ultra-exclusive, modern restaurant, all tablecloths and candles and tasteful chandeliers. The mega-yacht’s owner, Prince Saud el-Saud, was waiting here. He also owned the hijacked LNG carrier, which bore his name. A small man with a huge mustache and glasses, he sat at the head of an enormous dinner table, wearing the traditional Saudi thwarb and ghutra an iqal, looking worried.
Sitting to el-Saud’s right was a younger man, a Westerner wearing sunglasses and a bad suit. To his left sat an older African man wearing rumpled doctor’s scrubs. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
The five visitors fell into seats at the other end of the table. The Prince studied them up and down. He knew a lot about them; most people in this part of the world did, especially those who made their living moving cargo on the high seas.
They were Team Whiskey. Former members of the elite Delta Force of the United States military, they’d been part of the small army of American special forces who’d pursued Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. The rumors said Team Whiskey actually cornered bin Laden near the mountain fortress of Tora Bora and had him in their gun sights, only to be ordered by someone at the highest level of the administration in Washington to let him go.
When bin Laden escaped, Whiskey raised such holy hell with their higher-ups, they were eventually bounced from the U.S. military altogether. Their leader—the man with the eye patch—created such a stink, he was imprisoned for seven years on trumped-up charges and then forbidden to ever set foot on U.S. soil again.
Prince el-Saud had obtained dossiers on each man. The team’s leader, “Snake” Nolan, had lost his eye, and apparently part of his sanity, during that futile chase after bin Laden. “Crash” Stacks, he of the blond spiked hair and dangling earrings, was the team’s marksman and could put a bullet up someone’s nose from four miles away. “Gunner” Lapook, the tattooed giant of the group, was the weapons expert and door-kicker. When the team needed to do a forced entry, he always went in first. “Twitch” Kapula, a native Hawaiian, was the team’s explosives man. Small and muscular, with dark skin and Polynesian features, he’d left his right leg, and part of his sanity, back in Tora Bora, too.
The fifth team member was “Batman” Bob Graves, the man missing his left hand. In a world where prosthetic limbs looked like real human appendages, Graves’s false hand most closely resembled a Trautman Hook. An invention of the 1920s, it was two pieces of dull steel, each about four inches long. With its slightly bent