Rebel Trade. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ Namibia’s winds blow from landward, sweeping most of the country’s rain out to sea. The pitiful one-third of an inch that reaches soil in any given year cannot relieve the stark aridity of the Namib Desert, sprawling over 31,200 square miles of sunbaked desolation. And if that were not enough to give the coast an evil reputation, there remains the cold Benguela Current, rising as it moves along the shoreline to produce dense ocean fogs the natives call cassimbo. While that haze obscures the coast, a constant heavy surf draws boats toward land—and to their doom, if they cannot escape it.

       Hundreds of ships have left their shattered, rusting bones on the Skeleton Coast—among them the cargo ship Eduard Bohlen in 1909, the Blue Star Line’s MV Dunedin Star in 1942, the Otavi in 1945 and South Africa’s Winston in 1970. Some of those hulks were still on shore, grim warnings to the skippers of another generation, but the Skeleton Coast had earned its nickname from the sunbleached bones of whales and seals slaughtered for profit by human predators.

       So much death.

       This morning, with the first gray tentacles of mist already visible to starboard, Captain Jake Mulrooney was determined that he would not add his crewmen or the MV Cassowary to the local tally of disasters. Fog and the Benguela Current were enough to deal with, but Mulrooney also had to think about the danger posed by pirates now, while navigating African waters.

       The MV Cassowary’s cargo wasn’t anything exotic. It included lumber, mining gear and pharmaceutical supplies—any of which might draw the interest of a pirate crew while they were churning north from Cape Town toward another pickup at Port Harcourt before they started the long westward haul toward the States. Reported incidents of piracy were escalating everywhere along the coast of Africa, and while Namibia still couldn’t hold a candle to the mayhem of anarchic Somalia, it was catching up.

       More fog ahead, driven by winds from shore. Captain Mulrooney was about to issue orders for a change of course, putting more space between the MV Cassowary and the coastline, when his first mate, Don Kincaid, spoke softly, urgently.

       “We have a bogey on the radar, sir,” he said. “Approaching from the northwest at a speed of thirty-five knots. Collision course, unless they spot us and veer off.”

       Thirty-five knots was translated to forty miles per hour in landlubber’s terms, a respectable pace when compared to the MV Cassowary’s top speed of twenty knots. The unknown craft could overtake them from behind with no great effort, and approaching from the bow, to cut across their path, the intercept was guaranteed.

       Coincidence? A boater out for sportfishing or laughs, who hadn’t seen the MV Cassowary yet? Maybe. But Mulrooney couldn’t stake his life and cargo on a theory of coincidence.

       “How long to contact at our present speed?” the captain asked.

       “I make it thirteen minutes, sir,” the mate replied.

       “Hail them and ask for an ID,” Mulrooney ordered.

       “Aye, sir.”

       Staring into mist and spitting rain with Zeiss binoculars, Mulrooney listened while Kincaid broadcast the call. He was disturbed, but not surprised, when no reply came through the speakers mounted on the MV Cassowary’s bridge. Another try; the same result.

       Kincaid stated the obvious. “They’re running silent, sir.”

       “Okay,” Mulrooney said. “Identify us one more time, alert them that they’re traveling on a collision course…and warn them that we’re armed.”

       Kincaid frowned at the order but acknowledged it, and did as he was told.

       The MV Cassowary was a merchant vessel, not a battle wagon, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless. Any captain sailing into so-called third-world waters without guns and ammunition stashed aboard these days would rate the designation of a world-class idiot.

       When Kincaid’s warning brought no answer from the smaller, faster craft, Captain Mulrooney said, “Break out the hardware, Don. All hands to duty stations, just in case.”

       “Aye, sir!”

       The hardware came to half a dozen 12-gauge riot shotguns, one semiautomatic AR-15 rifle and Mulrooney’s .45-caliber Colt Combat Commander. None of the crew was trained in handling firearms, as far as Mulrooney knew, but how much skill did it take to point and fire a shotgun at close range?

       There’d be no shooting, anyway, unless the MV Cassowary was attacked. In that case, he and Kincaid would try to block any attempted boarding. Failing that…well, they could turn the ship into a floating Alamo, if need be, but Mulrooney prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

       The trouble these days was that you could never trust a pirate gang to loot a ship and leave, or even take the craft and put its crew ashore. At last count, according to the International Maritime Bureau, pirates in Somalia alone had been holding more than five hundred hostages, demanding ransom from the owners of their vessels under threat of death.

       And Mulrooney wasn’t winding up that way.

       Not while he had a trigger finger left.

       “Visual contact, sir,” Kincaid said.

       Mulrooney found the strange boat with his glasses, spotted the armed men along its rails. His stomach tightened, hit him with a sudden rush of unaccustomed nausea. Mulrooney fought it down and told his crewmen on the bridge, “We won’t be stopping. If they try to board, they’ll have to do it at top speed and under fire. Worse comes to worst, we ram them. Leave them sinking.”

       “Aye, sir!” came the chorus from his men.

       They seemed almost exuberant, as if it was some kind of game. Damned youngsters, raised in video arcades where players gunned down everything from gangbangers and cops to alien invaders with no consequence besides the loss of pocket change. It shouldn’t be that easy—and it wasn’t, in real life, as Jake Mulrooney had discovered during Operation Desert Storm. The trick to surviving a firefight was—

       “Sir!” Kincaid’s tone quickly focused the captain’s attention. “They seem to have some kind of rocket launcher.”

       “That’s an RPG,” Mulrooney said, as he observed the pirate at the speedboat’s prow. “Rocket-propelled grenade.”

       Call it the modern version of your grandfather’s bazooka or the German Panzerfäust from the Second World War. He couldn’t judge the warhead’s size or nomenclature from the MV Cassowary’s bridge, but if they scored a hit… .

       “Firing!” Kincaid announced, as if they needed any kind of play-by-play. There were no blind men on the bridge. All of them saw the RPG’s back blast, had time to note that it had scorched the small attack craft’s forward deck, and then it was a scramble for the nearest cover as the rocket hurtled toward them, riding on a tail of flame.

      A damned good shot, Mulrooney thought, with grudging admiration, as the RPG came home, smashed through the window he’d been peering from a moment earlier, and detonated as it struck the bulkhead opposite. The blast ruptured his eardrums, deafened him forever, and he saw the fireball coming for him, even with his eyes pressed tightly shut.

       Too late to fight.

      So this is what it’s like, Mulrooney thought, to go down with the ship.

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