Reprisal!- The Eagle's Sorrow Read online

  WILLIAM COLLINS PUBLISHING

  PRESENTS…

  REPRISAL!

  The Eagle’s Sorrow

  Cliff Roberts

  FIRST EDITION

  William Collins Publishing, London 2014

  Reprisal! The Eagle’s Sorrow!

  Copyright © 2014 by Author Cliff Roberts

  All rights reserved –Cliff Roberts aka Cliff Popkey

  This book or parts thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any form without permission. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction, Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  To Donna, my one true fan and inspiration for life, my wife and my darling!

  To Nick Wale of NOVEL IDEAS--keep up the GREAT work! Your PR efforts have made it happen!

  And, of course, special thanks to the readers who make it all worthwhile.

  INSPIRATION:

  Belief is the most important element to success! If you truly believe, there is no end to what you can achieve! –Cliff Roberts

  You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

  You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

  You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

  You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

  You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

  You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.

  You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

  —Abraham Lincoln

  THINK YOU KNOW HOW GOVERNMENT WORKS?

  YOU KNOW THE GOVERNMENT HAS SECRETS?

  YOU READ NEWSPAPERS?

  YOU WATCH TV?

  YOU KNOW POLITICS IS A DIRTY GAME?

  BUT YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING…

  IT GOES DEEPER THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The night was black as tar. The small sliver of the moon and the numerous stars seen earlier now failed to penetrate the deepening cloud deck racing ahead of the storm blowing in from the Indian sub-continent. In the lexicon of the local sailors, those who sail the waters of the Straits of Malacca, this was a pirate’s night!

  Captain Akbar Singh of the ultra-large supertanker, Formosa’s Pride, laden with 4.5 million cubic feet of Bahrainian liquefied natural gas worth over a hundred million dollars, understood the meaning of the local saying all too well. Five years ago, he had been the first mate on a container ship that had the misfortune to be traveling the Straits of Malacca on a very similar night.

  The ship was the Northern Star, and it became the first super container ship to be attacked by pirates in the straits. The ship was over 1100 feet long and 120 feet wide. It was loaded with eight thousand containers, or nearly three quarters of a billion dollars’ worth of electronics from Japan and Korea, bound for Europe. The attack on the Northern Star was, and is still, the deadliest attack upon a containerized cargo vessel on record.

  The pirates approached the ship under the cover of darkness, attacking from the stern where there is little, if any, monitoring of the sea. There is no radar and no lookout, since it’s quite rare to have a ship crash into the stern of another in open waters. Therefore, the navigational safeguards and any lookouts, if posted, are directed forward and to the sides.

  To conceal their vessels further, the pirates use small, fast, inflatable boats known as Zodiacs to overtake their prey. The standard ship’s radar doesn’t pick up objects as small as the Zodiacs, allowing the pirates to come within reach of the ship unnoticed. They stage themselves in the water, covered under black tarps, just outside the shipping lanes. When a ship passes, they uncover themselves and race up from behind, then use grappling hooks and/or extension ladders with hooks attached to the ends to hook onto the railings or the gunnels and climb aboard.

  The pirates typically choose to attack in the dead of night between two a.m. and five a.m. when the absolute minimum number of crew members are awake and working throughout the ship. The pirates who attacked the Northern Star two years ago had used that exact attack plan when they boarded the giant cargo ship.

  At approximately three a.m. local time, the pirates boarded the ship. It is estimated that only ten pirates took part in the raid, but they were brutally efficient. They appeared to have been dressed in black from head to toe, and to have been armed with AK 47s, handguns and machetes.

  The first two men onboard went directly to the bridge, which made sense since the bridge is the ship’s nerve center. The second mate and three crewmen were on the bridge working the third watch. They were taken completely by surprise when the two pirates burst through the doors at the rear of the bridge.

  The pirates shot and killed all four men before they could raise an alarm, then quickly shut down the engines and all communications, isolating the crew and relieving themselves of having to steer the ship or monitor the radios.

  Two other pirates stormed the engine room moments after the bridge shut down the engines, thus ensuring no one would try to manually restart them. Mercifully, the pirates who stormed the engine room did not kill the crew they found there. Instead, they chose to intimidate the men by pistol whipping a couple of them and threatening to kill all of them if anyone tried to escape or fight back.

  In the end, after several tense minutes, the pirates tied up the engine room crew and locked them in a small tool cage before they went in search of treasure. In the meantime, the rest of the pirates began their search of the superstructure in the crew’s quarters. Upon bursting in, the pirates showed the sleeping crewmen no mercy, quickly shooting or hacking the crew members to death.

  Two crewmen on forward watch survived the attack by virtue of being over a thousand feet away in the bow castle, performing maintenance on the anchor motor. Three other crewmen moving around the superstructure doing routine maintenance were not so lucky. The pirates met them in a companionway on “C” deck, and before they even realized what was happening, the pirates shot and killed them.

  The bridge deck housed the bridge, the radio room, purser’s office, captain’s office, captain’s quarters, and the captain’s mess in that order. One deck down, on “B” deck, were the junior officers’ quarters, their mess, the medical bay and doctor’s quarters, and several storage rooms. Before the echoes of the gunshots faded from the bridge, one of the pirates began removing electronic equipment, using tools that he had carried onboard in a knapsack. The other pirate began searching the cabins behind the bridge.

  The search began with the pirate kicking in the door to the radio room. He wasted little time, immediately firing a half-dozen rounds into the room destroying the radio, fax and several computers. He then checked the closet and the cabinets, which were filled with spare parts for the electronics on board, making sure no one had hidden in them before moving on to the purser’s office.

  The ship’s captain, Travis Hovath, unknown to the pirate searching the radio room, had been awakened by the gunshots on the bridge moments before. He was already preparing to do battle when he heard the first door being kicked in down the companionway.

  Captain Hovath was a big man, a g
iant bull of a man by oriental standards—six-foot-six, 275 pounds with huge biceps. He was an Australian in his mid-sixties who lacked an ounce of couth and was rude as hell. He’d served in the Australian Navy on fast attack boats during Vietnam where he claimed to have killed more than a dozen Viet Cong by crushing their skulls. He bragged that he could still perform the feat.

  In every port of call throughout Southeast Asia, he had tried to demonstrate the feat over and over by picking fights in some of the worst waterfront dives imaginable. He figured killing a few of the undesirables who frequented those dives probably wouldn’t draw the attention of the police. In fact, they most likely wouldn’t be missed at all. After a few beers, he’d show you his collection of scars to prove it.

  If he’d been an American, the crew (all men from Southeast Asia and India) would have called him a cowboy, which is a very derogatory slur in Southeast Asia. But since he was an Aussie, they just called him an asshole.

  While the pirate made a cursory search of the purser’s office, Captain Hovath slipped out of his cabin and into a storage closet across the companionway and waited for the pirate to approach.

  After quickly searching the three forward cabins, the pirate stepped in front of the captain’s cabin, firing a dozen rounds through the door before kicking it in. As the door swung open, slamming against the bulkhead, Captain Hovath made his move.

  The pirate stared dumbfounded into the cabin, wondering where the captain could be. The answer came in the form of a pair of huge hands grabbing him around his head from behind.

  Immediately, the pirate began struggling, trying to squirm away, but the captain, with a devilish grin on his face, held tight and began increasing the pressure on the man’s head. It was as if a vice had been clamped down upon his skull. The pirate kicked at Hovath’s legs, but the vice-like grip just tightened further as the captain lifted the man two feet off the floor by his head.

  The pirate thrashed wildly about, struggling for all he was worth as the captain continued to squeeze. Dropping his gun, the pirate clawed at the captain’s hands. It was a useless attempt to break free. The captain increased the pressure, and the pirate let out a piercing scream of pain. His hands clawed one last time at the captain’s hands then dropped limply at his sides.

  Slowly, the pirate’s face began to contort. His facial features began to compress, forcing his eyes to nearly touch at the bridge of his nose. Blood began trickling from his nose, eyes and ears.

  Still, the pressure continued. The pirate’s eyes started to bulge outward, and the bones in his jaw and face began to snap under the pressure. Suddenly, there was a loud pop, and the pirate went limp. The pressure had finally shattered his skull.

  Hovath held the lifeless body by the head. He looked in the bullet-pocked mirror across the room at the grotesque caricature the face had become. The pressure had folded the face in upon the nose and popped the eyes out of their sockets. They now lay elongated on the dead man’s cheeks with fluid oozing from the pressure cracks that had formed in them, like two cracked eggs. His mouth was a monstrous, twisted hole filled with rotted, misaligned teeth and blood. Captain Hovath couldn’t help but smile with self-satisfaction at his handiwork. It was proof positive he was still a man.

  Startled by the scream, the pirate’s partner in crime dropped the sonar screen he’d just torn out of the console, causing it to loudly shatter on the floor. He then quickly grabbed his gun and headed towards the companionway door that led to the cabins behind the bridge. Stepping into the companionway, he was met by the body of his partner as it flew through the doorway.

  Repulsed by the horror of the twisted and distorted face hurtling towards him, the pirate stepped back, trying to avoid the grotesque aberration; but he wasn’t fast enough and was sent crashing backwards to the floor. As he fell, the pirate tried to fend off the gruesome corpse, dropping his gun in the process. That proved to be a fatal mistake.

  Following closely behind the corpse, the captain brought the dead pirate’s gun to bear on the second pirate now sprawled on the deck and fired several rounds. He quickly scanned the room for other threats and, finding none, turned and left to enlist the help of the first and third mates in defending the ship.

  Rousing the men from sleep, the captain practically had to drag the two junior officers from their berths for, in their slumber, they were oblivious to the gunfire that had happened only minutes before.

  The first mate, Akbar Singh, and the third mate, Abdu Desai, quickly dressed and followed Captain Hovath back up to the radio room, where he ordered Desai to switch out the damaged radio for the spare as quickly as possible. He then ordered Akbar to retrieve the gun from the bridge. Both men quickly did as they were told, while the captain paced the companionway like a caged animal.

  Akbar was revolted by the scene on the bridge. Four of his shipmates and two pirates lay dead, one of whom had a head that appeared to have been crushed. Blood covered the floor and, for a moment, Singh wanted to vomit. Fighting back the urge to heave, Singh scooped up the gun and ran back to the radio room.

  The third mate, Desai, was already sending an S.O.S. when Singh returned. The effort proved to be a futile gesture as the local police said the ship was too far out for their small craft to reach it safely, and the military claimed they were too busy patrolling the tourist areas where there had been a disturbance and it would be several hours before they could render assistance. The operator did assure them though that they would come to their aid as soon as possible.

  This enraged the captain further, and his face took on a wild expression—one of barely controlled madness. Knowing they were on their own, the captain quickly instructed Akbar Singh on how to use the AK 47. He also switched the gun from full auto (known as the “spray and pray” setting) to the single shot setting and made sure the safety was off.

  He explained that with the gun on the single shot setting, Singh would not waste his ammunition; plus, he’d have some control over where his shots went. He then ordered Singh to go to the crew quarters and bring the crew back up to the bridge since this was where they would make their stand.

  Although he was badly shaken and completely unsure if he could even shoot the gun, Singh started to walk away. He was stopped short by the captain who reminded him to keep the gun pointed towards the enemy—in other words, straight ahead. Then he was given one last instruction. He told him to shoot anyone he didn’t immediately recognize before they shot him.

  So off Singh went, scared out of his wits, though more afraid of the captain in his current state of rage than of the pirates. Slowly, Singh made his way down the stairs until he stood at the edge of the hatchway outside the crew quarters, listening. He stood there as if frozen, yet trying to melt into the metal walls, fear dictating his inaction. As he stood there, immobile, a series of loud popping sounds abruptly startled him out of his complacency.

  He knew instinctively that the loud popping sounds had to have been gunfire but, in the enclosed space of the stairwell, he couldn’t be sure where the sound had come from…up, down or right outside the hatch. He realized that the pirates could be on the same deck he was, and to stay in one place meant he’d be an easier target.

  His whole body was shaking as he started moving in what seemed like slow motion. It took all his courage to step into the companionway where he immediately hugged the wall for support. Disoriented with fear, he clung to the wall and slowly slid down the companionway to the first doorway.

  Inside was the crew’s mess. It appeared to be empty with nothing out of place, so Singh continued moving forward, hugging the wall until he made it to the next doorway—the crew’s quarters. He stood trembling at the edge of the door, listening for any sound, hearing nothing. The silence was deafening in its intensity. If it hadn’t been for the trembling of his hands, which shook the gun and caused the belt to click regularly against its stock, he would have sworn he’d gone deaf.

  He stood there for several moments, clutching the gun in a white-knuc
kled death grip and shaking violently. He was unsure he could walk, but he had no choice. To stay here would be suicide. Finally summoning the courage, he slowly peeked his head around the door jamb. It was a horrific scene. Bile immediately leaped up his throat and it was all he could do to hold it in. He pulled back and leaned heavily against the wall, his stomach churning violently as he sagged against the wall and took several deep breaths.