the edge of the jungle. There were dozens of places in the shadows of the flora where gunmen could hide during an attack.
“This will have to be an exercise in drawing fire,” Gunner said. “We’ll have to tease them out if we want to get them all.”
“Roger that,” Crash replied.
Gunner took a lot of pictures with the team’s waterproof digital camera and then they both resumed swimming down the bight. When they reached the far side of the island, the team’s copter was waiting for them.
As soon as the pair climbed in, Nolan asked, “Well, what’s the 411?”
Gunner replied, “Muy desorganizada.”
Then Crash added, “But still muy dangerous.”
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