finally said to Batman. “That’s what you’re telling me?”
Batman was shaking his head. “I saw him, Snake,” he insisted. “Right up there, on the top deck, near the tip of the bow.”
“You know how fucking crazy that sounds, don’t you?” Nolan growled.
“Of course I do,” Batman shot back, eyes welling up. “But it happened. It just happened. I saw him just as I’m seeing you right now. It was him.”
Nolan knew what was going on. Batman had been tabbed by someone at the party—LSD being the most likely culprit. Either that, or he was suffering delayed side effects of his time with the Ekita Clan back in Somalia. Or an avalanche of PTSD symptoms had just claimed him. Whatever the case, this was not a good situation.
“We’re getting out of here,” Nolan told him. “We’re going back to Aden right now.”
But Batman shook his head. “I can’t fly,” he said. “I can barely walk. And you stink of booze, plus you can barely drive the copter in the daytime. Who’s going to fly it now, in the dead of night?”
Nolan knew he was right. Trying to fly now, in his condition, with his limited sight and high anxiety—he might wind up killing them all.
So, if flying was not an option, then they had no other choice. They’d have to stay on the yacht and baby-sit their troubled colleague all night, making sure he didn’t harm himself or cause a disruption at the party.
Nolan said as much to Batman. But his friend was barely listening. He had his head in hands and was sobbing.
“There’s more,” he said. “Crash told me something. Something very strange.”
Batman looked up at him. “Do you want to know what he said?”
Nolan shrugged wearily. Any buzz he’d had was long gone now. “You mean, do I want to know what this figment of your imagination told you?” he asked.
Batman caught his breath and began slowly. “He said we’re about to be ‘blinded by the light.’ And that you’re going back to jail. And that we should be careful if we ever hear the word ‘moonglow.’”
Nolan just shook his head.
“Dude, climb onto one of the lounges up there and get some sleep,” he said pointing to the unoccupied top deck. “That’s the only way you’re going to come out of this.”
7
Off West Sumatra
THINGS WERE NOT going well for the Indonesian pirate gang known as the Kupak Tangs.
It was a few hours before sunrise. They were sailing on a leaky coastal freighter near a treacherous part of the Indian Ocean known as the Indischer Bank. The pirates were trying to elude a sea-borne posse, while fighting to keep their one remaining engine alive and preserving what little fuel they had left.
For the Tangs to be in this predicament would have been unthinkable a year ago. Back then, they were part of Zeek Kurjan’s immense pirate gang, a criminal enterprise that had just about all of western Indonesia under its thumb.
But two unlucky events had cursed the Tangs recently. First, their leader, Zeek the Pirate King himself, had been killed by the American mercenary group, Team Whiskey. Not a month later, Zeek’s godfather, and the patron saint of all Indonesian pirate bands, Shanghai mobster Sunny Hi, had been assassinated, most probably by the same people who’d iced Zeek.
With their two powerful patrons gone, small brigand bands like the Tangs had little chance of survival. They’d been pursued by the Indonesian state police, no longer being paid off by Zeek’s bagmen, to the point where the gang was forced out into international waters in order to escape.
Two weeks before, the Tangs had stolen the leaky freighter from the port of Balang in the Malacca Strait. Desperate to leave Indonesia in hopes of plying their trade elsewhere, they couldn’t have picked a worse ship. A relic from World War Two, its engines were shot, its seams were splitting and its electrical systems were frayed and dangerous. Worst of all, its fuel tanks were half empty when the Tangs made off with it.
They’d sailed south, toward Jakarta, but one engine died two days into their journey. Then the other started leaking oil. By the time they slipped through Bakauheni Harbor and started sailing up the west side of Sumatra, all nonessential systems aboard the vessel had been turned off, including those in the tiny galley, which made little difference because the twelve-man pirate band had almost no food aboard.
Bad weather, a dwindling water supply and fights among themselves left little doubt that, at