David Bruns - Weapons of Mass Deception

While his partner was completing the sanding job, Ricky had been matching paint colors. He made one final adjustment to the blend and, after a few quick passes with the wand, stepped back to survey his work.

“I knew my time at Maaco would come in handy someday,” he said.

Brendan jumped to the deck. “Alright, gents, let’s move,” he called to both teams. “Everyone topside in five for the big finale. Petty Officer Rickson, you’re on cleanup detail.”

“Aye, sir,” Ricky replied over the whine of a tiny vacuum cleaner. His job was to sweep the area to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind from the operation.

Brendan waited for Ricky at the door. The SEAL held up a trash bag and flipped Brendan a mock salute. “All trash present and accounted for, sir.”

Brendan ignored him and keyed his mike. “Control, this is Alpha. Phase Two complete. Ready for Three.” Brendan snapped off the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.

By the time Brendan reached topside, he could hear the helo coming toward them. It hovered over the deck for about a minute before swinging out over the water and releasing a torrent of live fire into the sea next to the ship.

Brendan found Martinez in the group of pirates. “You’re sure they can hear this down there?”

Martinez smiled. “Oh, yeah, they can hear it.” He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and nose.

Brendan keyed his mike. “Alright, Alpha and Bravo teams, let’s go Hollywood on this piece of shit.”

The pirate teams and the SEAL teams ran to their staging posts on the ship. Live fire echoed throughout the superstructure as the “good guys” put on a show of gunning down the pirates. He listened to the “pirates” scream in mock death.

Brendan mentally checked off the bursts of fire. “Alright, let’s paint the crime scenes and get back on the main deck so we can release our guests.”

He gave a thumbs-up to the petty officer who had been in charge of the shooting on the main deck. The man unscrewed a Nalgene bottle filled with blood and painted the bulkhead where he had “killed” one of the pirates. If the North Koreans ever tested the blood, they would find it was human — compliments of a US Navy hospital blood bank.

Brendan looked past the petty officer to a watertight door that stood ajar. His heart stopped. A face looked back at him, a thin, pinched face with almond-shaped eyes and a gaping mouth in need of dental work.

The North Korean saw Brendan at the same time. The face disappeared into the ship.

Brendan charged after him, hitting his mike as he did so. “Martinez, we have a runner. I’m on the main deck.”

Ahead of him, the man spun around a post and slid down a steep stairwell without touching any steps. Brendan raced after him, cursing in a steady stream.

The fleeing man entered a long passageway, lit infrequently from lights set in the base of the wall. He was throwing terrified looks over his shoulder, and Brendan could hear him breathing in high-pitched, ragged gasps. He reached the end of the hall, his hand out for the door handle. Brendan put on a burst of speed and launched through the air.

He crashed into the man, smashing him flat against the door. It’s a kid, Brendan realized as he grabbed the skinny shoulders and slammed him facedown onto the deck. He put his knee on the boy’s back and gripped his chin. If he snapped the kid’s neck, no one would question it on a mission like this.

But he couldn’t.

He yelled into his radio. “Martinez, get down here. Third deck. Forward. Port side.”

Brendan flipped the boy over so he was facing up. The kid held up his hands in front of his face. He was crying and snot ran out of his nose. He was maybe fifteen years old and small for his age at that. Brendan eased his knee off the boy’s chest so the kid could breathe.

“You speak English?” Brendan demanded.

The terrified blank look in the boy’s eyes told him the answer was no.

Martinez came thundering up the hallway. Brendan glared up at him. “You told me this fucking ship was secure! Now I find this kid roaming around. Who knows what he saw.”

“Are you gonna waste him, sir?”

Brendan got to his feet, leaving the crying boy on the deck. “No, I’m not going to waste him. Get me a set of zip ties, we’re taking him with us.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the kid move, and Martinez started to yell. Then a white-hot stab of pain ran through his right knee. He looked down and saw the handle of a knife protruding from the back of his leg. Brendan moved the joint and felt the point of the knife scrape against the inside of his kneecap.

Martinez let loose a burst from his AK-47 and a wet slapping sound hit the floor behind Brendan.

Brendan leaned against the bulkhead and slid to the ground, keeping his right leg out straight. His ears rang from the gunfire. His vision tunneled inward to blackness.

Hashem lit another cigarette even as he crushed the last one under his heel. In the glare of the pier lights, he could see the bullet holes in the bulkheads of the Be Gae Bong .

How could this have happened? Pirates operating that far out in the South China Sea? It was rare, but not unheard of. Still, as an intelligence officer, it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

The merchant ship had pulled alongside the pier more than fifteen minutes ago and the dock crew was still fussing with the lines on the massive white-painted bollards. The men moved at a snail’s pace, clearly not accustomed to working this late at night.

Hashem made a rolling motion with his index finger to Mansour, the head of his security detail. His team was outfitted as working men, in dirty green coveralls, and as their foreman he wore an open-necked polo shirt and trousers. He wished for a breast pocket to stow his cigarettes.

Mansour drew the crew leader of the dock workers aside and was reaching into his pocket. Hashem smiled. Mansour had learned that greed is a better motivator than fear. The pace of work on the dock increased, and within minutes the crane lowered the gangway into place. Hashem crossed before they had even disconnected the crane hoist lines.

The North Korean ship captain met him on the main deck, a short, thin man with a shaggy gray crew cut and black-framed glasses. The man bowed and extended his hand. “You must be—”

“Not here,” Hashem answered curtly. “Inside.”

The captain’s smile vanished and he nodded. That was the one thing Hashem liked about working with North Koreans: they understood how to obey orders.

He followed the captain’s painfully thin shoulders into the superstructure of the ship and up three flights of steep steps. The man’s cabin was about the size of Hashem’s walk-in closet at home, with a narrow bunk, a fold-down desk, a washbasin, and a picture of the Great Successor. Hashem looked from the pudgy jowls of Kim Jong-un to the skin stretched sharply over the captain’s jawline, and he shook his head.

The captain offered Hashem the only chair and sat on the edge of his bunk.

“Tell me,” Hashem said, in English. “Everything.”

The captain spoke in passable English, describing the pirate attack. Hashem interrupted him immediately and demanded to see the chart. The captain scurried from the room and returned with a dog-eared nautical chart. Hashem drew out a tablet and compared the latest intelligence reports with the captain’s information.

He grimaced. The location was a bit beyond the operating area for pirates in that region, but not improbable. “How did they board your ship?”