Dangerous Tides

“Too…” the pirate said.

Bolan leaned closer, mindful of a sneak attack.

“Too…late…” the pirate whispered.

“What is too late?” Bolan asked urgently. “Who are you?”

“Tranh…” the pirate said, his voice failing. “You…killed…me…” His words turned into a death rattle. “But…you…die.”

The pirate stared up in death, eyes empty. The Executioner grabbed the phone. Whatever call the man had made had been disconnected. He tried reestablishing it, but with no luck.

Tranh, Bolan thought. Most likely he had been Vietnamese. It was information the Farm might need. Who had he called? Allies nearby? There was no way to know. But there were more pressing concerns. Bolan scooped up the electronic device. He read over the Russian lettering and examined the blinking indicators.

His eyes widened.

Bolan ran. He checked the hostages visually as he ran back through the lounge, making sure there were no living pirates still moving about. People tried to speak with him, but he ignored them, jumping over those still crouched on the floor, heading for the companionway. He made Deck 4 and found the nearest of the canisters.

The electronic detonator registered a countdown.

Bolan took out his PDA satellite phone and hit the preprogrammed, scrambled contact number for Stony Man Farm. He waited as the call went through. Barbara Price, Stony Man’s honey-blond, model-beautiful mission controller, answered almost immediately.

“Barb,” Bolan said. “I have a problem, now. The canisters I sent pictures of. The detonators on them are counting down. I’ve got several here. I’ve got less than fifteen minutes.”

“We’re analyzing it, Striker,” Price said without preamble. “Passing you to Akira now.”

Akira Tokaido, one of the Farm’s expert computer hackers, came on the line. “I have traced the schematics of the device based on the pictures,” he told Bolan. “It’s a Soviet-era signal receiver and detonator package containing a small but powerful Russian plastic explosive.”

“The canisters?” Bolan asked. “What’s in them?”

“No time,” Akira said. “But trust me, Striker, you don’t want them exploding.”

“Evacuation?”

“There are three hundred passengers and crew on that ship.” Barbara Price’s voice cut in again. “We can’t get them out in time. We could airlift a few, but not nearly enough.”

“Options?

“Each device can be deactivated separately. But you’ve got to hurry,” Akira said. “Each device contains four screws on the side panel. Unscrew those and expose the internal wiring. There are blue, brown and red wires. Cut the blue wire in each detonator. That’s it.”

“Tamper safeguards?”

“None,” Akira said. “It’s designed to be simple.”

Bolan was already removing the folding multitool he carried in his combat harness. He snapped open the screwdriver bit and began unscrewing the panel on the detonator. When the wires were visible, he cut the blue one.

The countdown stopped. The detonator’s LEDs winked out.

The soldier had no time to celebrate his victory. He moved from canister to canister and then from cabin to cabin, finding and neutralizing the detonators as he went. He could not afford to miss any. The numbers fell as he worked furiously, hoping that there were no other pirates loose aboard to make trouble while he undid this horrific work. When he reached the final canister in the last officer’s cabin, he saw the readout on the device.

He was not going to make it.

The cabin had a porthole. Bolan ripped the Desert Eagle from its holster and pumped several rounds through the heavy glass. Then he knelt, letting the Desert Eagle rest on the floor. He picked up the canister, adrenaline and desperation lending strength to his movements. He heaved the heavy steel tank, detonator and all, out the porthole, past the broken shards of glass. He waited to hear it hit the sea.

It exploded.

The Executioner could feel the vibrations through the deck and against the hull. He backed away, slowly, knowing that it would do no good if the sea had not neutralized or contained the canister’s deadly contents. When he was racked with no ill effects, he took out his PDA once more and dialed the Farm.

“It’s done,” Bolan said. “One of the tanks exploded in the water after I threw it overboard. What can you tell me?”

“You should be okay, Striker,” Barbara Price’s voice responded, relief only too evident in her tone. “Bear and Akira have a full workup on what we’re dealing with, based on the intelligence you forwarded. The Russian lettering sidetracked us briefly, because it was added to the tanks long after they were made. The containers are Saudi in manufacture.”

“Tell me,” Bolan said simply. He was making his way to Deck 5 once more, as he listened.

“The substance is a concentrated acid developed by the Saudis,” Price informed him. “U.S. Intelligence knew about it maybe twelve years ago. As far as we knew the Saudis themselves quashed it because they were worried it was too powerful.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s bad, Striker,” Price said. “A few drops of it poured onto the ground, exposed to the air, creates a toxic cloud that acts like nerve gas. It’s corrosive, too, so it eats through protective seals and right through gas masks.”

“When blown up?”

“When explosives are used on it, it becomes much more volatile,” Price confirmed. “If those canisters had blown aboard ship, the toxic cloud produced would have killed everyone on board, and anyone in an open boat within a few hundred yards of the ship, depending on the wind.”

“Deadly,” Bolan said.

“That’s why the Saudis tried to put the genie back in the bottle,” Price said. “They executed the scientist who created it, in fact. That was largely believed to be for show. But they were serious about containing it, making sure it didn’t leave the country.”

“Seems the Saudis didn’t want to become known as sponsors to the world’s terror organizations with this new weapon,” Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Stony Man cybernetics team, put in. “You know how tenuous their relationship with us has always been.”

“Exactly,” Barbara Price confirmed. “U.S. Intelligence sources call it Theta-Seven, though none of our people are quite sure what the Saudi designation was, or is. Last we knew the existing supply had all been destroyed. At least, that’s what the Saudis told U.S. government officials through channels, at the time.”

“Obviously some slipped through the cracks,” Bolan said, stopping as he entered the Deck 5 lounge. The passengers were shaken but appeared to be overcoming the effects of the explosion. The notion that perhaps their long nightmare was ending finally seemed to be dawning on them, at least in a few cases.

“The pirates are neutralized,” Bolan said. “What about the tank in the water?”

“Don’t eat the fish that’ll be floating around the boat,” Kurtzman said darkly, “but the acid is heavier than water. It would have descended. The hull might be scarred a little, or even damaged, based on the power of the explosive charge. But you’re not in danger of breathing any nerve gas clouds.”

“All right,” Bolan said. “Get the authorities in on this. We need people aboard this ship. The cruise line will need to assign personnel. I don’t know how many of the crew are dead, but it’s probably a lot. We’ll need medical teams, too. I don’t know how many of these people were brutalized. And the ship will have to be searched from top to bottom. There could be some pirates or passengers hiding until this blows over.”

“We’re going through the appropriate channels,” Price told him. “You should have more support on site than you can handle shortly.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “Striker out.”

The Executioner moved among the hostages, doing what he could to reassure them. Several of them thought the big black-clad warrior was another of the pirates, at first, despite what he’d done to those holding them. Bolan saw to it that some of the more responsible among the adults, those who admitted to having previous experience with firearms, were given weapons taken from the pirates. A few were officers from among the ship’s crew, Bolan was grateful to see.

“Excuse me, sir?” a young woman’s voice called to him. Bolan turned to see someone he recognized from the briefing Stony Man had sent him electronically. It was Congressman Jim McAfferty’s daughter. The young woman’s mother was close by, looking shell-shocked.

“Yes?” he asked.