Rogue Elements

“So how are you proceeding?”

“Have to wait for a job and see what happens. I’ll give it a week. If we dig up nothing after that, we have to come up with a whole new plan. Meantime, I’ll mix and mingle, try to pick up some intel.”

* * *

Bolan went with his nose and followed the smell of coffee into the mess.

“Oh my God!” Sifuentes enthused to a rapt audience over pad thai, mac and cheese, coffee and corn bread. “You should have seen Blue! So he cuts the first guy’s hand off, catches the grenade and hot potatoes it to me!”

Big Abe called bullshit.

Sifuentes sighed in memory of the action. “The next guy in? The next guy? Blue just about beheaded the son of a bitch.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m talking ear to ear, Abe. Like ‘Assassin’s Creed’–worthy.”

Ibarra leaned in. “With what?”

Sifuentes drew one of his khanjar daggers from beneath his shirt and set it on the table. “With these. One in each hand. If you blinked, you missed it. If any of those assholes blinked, they died in the dark. It was that fast. I got one of them. With a Mini-Uzi Blue delivered with his toe. Blue got three, two with knives, one with that commandeered grenade.”

“Bullshit,” Abe reiterated.

“Oh, and then there was the guy climbing up the drainpipe.”

“What happened to him?” Mendez asked.

“We defeated him like the rest.” Sifuentes nodded in memory. “With science, and soap. Plus, he’s the guy I hot potatoed the grenade onto. He’s all messed up.”

Bolan walked into the mess. “Hey, fellas!” He nodded at Ibarra. “Felita.”

Ibarra smirked. “Call me B.B.”

Big Abe shook his head. “Sifu’s talking all kinds of crap about you and he in Salalah, brah.”

“It went ugly real fast.” Bolan nodded. “We had to improvise.”

Mono slurped noodles. “I believe it.”

Bolan went to the galley counter. Namzi ran a hand through his comb-over and gave the Executioner a big, red-stained, betel-nut-chewing smile. Bolan smiled back. Indonesians were considered the most smiling people on earth, and if there was one person on a ship at sea you wanted to ingratiate yourself with, it was the cook. Namzi heaped noodles onto Bolan’s tray with a Chinese cleaver that could behead an ox. “I make your chai just right!”

Bolan bowed slightly. “You’re the best.”

Namzi bowed back. The soldier took his tray and sat at the team table. When the team looked at him expectantly, Bolan shrugged. “Do we have a job? I spent all my money buying Sifu knives and beer and soap. I need to get paid.”

The entire table burst out laughing. Big Abe rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you this, Blue. You and Sifu’s stories match up.”

“Lying.” Bolan shrugged again. “Too much to remember. But I’ll tell you this.”

Ketch spoke for the first time. “What’s that?”

“It wasn’t good.”

The table went quiet and hung on Bolan’s words.

“As a matter of fact, it got really sketchy back there in Salalah, and local thugs don’t usually bring hand grenades.”

“What are you saying, brah?” Abe asked.

“That’s all I’m saying. Do we have a job?”

“Yeah, we got a job.” Big Abe nodded. “A freighter going right up the Gulf of Aden, pirate alley, right past Somalia, and Yemen is at war.”

“Destination?”

“Yanbu, Saudi.”

“You know, I’m new, but I had a bad feeling in Salalah, and I’m having one now.”

“So what are you saying, brah?” Abe repeated.

“Just what everyone already knows. I’m thinking we need to mind our Ps and Qs, watch each other’s asses, and watch the horizon, 360, 24/7.”

Sifuentes grinned. He was totally ready to roll with Bolan again. He held up his hand and his fingers curled for the fist bump. “Fuckin ay’, Blue! Me and you! Let’s get stabby!”

Bolan fist bumped and looked around the table. “Do we have guns?”

Ibarra shook her head. “Kind of.”

Chapter Three (#u11f59329-cc40-5af7-bf13-a805005f1517)

Bolan took up his weapon. “Cool.”

“Cool?” Ibarra sneered. “Screw you, cool breeze. Rampart gets the latest German technology. Everything is all HK and gleaming. Viking gets this surplus, Italian, Saving Private Ryan shit. Rumor I heard is the Italians were going to donate it to the Kurds fighting ISIS, and even they didn’t want it. It’s like they’re setting us up to fail.”

Bolan examined his Beretta Model 1959 rifle. It was missing significant amounts of finish. The wooden stock had a crack in the forearm, and it did indeed look a lot like a prop from an American World War II movie except that it took a twenty-round magazine and had a muzzle brake the size of a cigar for launching rifle grenades. Bolan raised an eyebrow, a hopeful note in his voice. “Do we have grenades?”

Big Abe kicked a crate in disgust. “We have bayonets.”

“Cool.” Sifuentes got happy. “Have I told you what Blue does with blades? I’ll take two!”

Bolan nodded at a crate with Italian words on it, and numbers that implied ammo. “Do we get any trigger time, or is that strictly for the job?”

“That’s the good news.” Abe took a bayonet and popped the top of the nailed ammunition crate with shocking hand and wrist strength. “We got two thousand rounds of ammo.”

“Pistols?” Bolan inquired.

“I told you!” Abe growled. “This shit! And bayonets!”