WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Read online

  Suprapto had led his pirate gang since he was seventeen, nearly thirty years ago now; and he had taken command in the traditional way, by violently killing the previous captain and thus earning the respect of the battle-hardened men he now controlled. Respect that had lasted for three successful decades, an unusually long time for this sort of job.

  But Suprapto was ruthless, a quality he prided himself on above all others; if he survived, it was only because he was prepared to do more – torture more, scheme more, plan more, kill more – than any of the pretenders to his crown.

  And that was truly how he saw himself – with a crown, the King of Pirates like his hero Liang Dao Ming, who had run roughshod over the area seven hundred years ago with thousands of loyal followers.

  But now wasn’t the time for grandstanding, Suprapto recognized as he checked the luminous dial of his diver’s watch.

  Now was the time for phase two of the assault plan.

  He almost felt sorry for the crew.

  Almost.

  4

  ‘Where is the ship now?’

  The question was asked by a man whose small stature and feminine voice belied the enormous power he wielded, and his sociopathic ability to use that power without consideration for how it would affect others. To Lieutenant General U Chun-su, Director of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, people were merely pawns to be used in the worldwide game of espionage and counter-espionage; a game he enjoyed enormously.

  ‘The ship is on course,’ came the reply from Major Ho Sang-ok, who – despite the power he wielded over his own domain – stood rigidly to attention in front of his superior. Ho was in charge of the RGB’s Third Bureau, known as Office No. 35 due to its location in a former office of the Korean Workers’ Party headquarters. Charged with the collection of foreign intelligence and the conduct of overseas operations, Ho was a feared and respected officer; and yet he still shrank from the man in front of him.

  Both men accepted that this was how life was in their great nation – the system revolved around fear; fear of your superiors, fear of failure, and most importantly of all, fear of their great Communist Leader, President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As soon as the people below you stopped being afraid of you, you were finished. It was survival of the fittest in its purest human form, and both U and Ho reveled in such a system. If other counties didn’t agree with how they did things, it just meant that they were weak.

  ‘When is it due in Karachi?’ U asked next, his voice still lilting softly.

  ‘Seven days sir, it should dock on Monday at twelve noon.’

  U nodded his head. ‘Good. Excellent. Are the correct assets in place in Pakistan to receive the goods?

  ‘Yes sir, our agents are ready and waiting.’

  ‘Excellent,’ U repeated, before concern furrowed his brow. ‘Is there any danger of our cargo being intercepted? I have heard that there is much danger from pirates in those waters, and I am fearful that the Fu Yu Shan is just a civilian ship.’

  Ho had anticipated this question, and had his answer already prepared; he knew U would expect no less. ‘We have examined patterns of attacks in the area, and foresee no difficulties,’ Ho said confidently. ‘Pirates are becoming much less common, and tend not to attack ships of this size any more, especially with the increased naval activity and better on-board security measures and tracking devices. And,’ he continued with a glint in his eye, ‘there are armed guards in case of any trouble, as well as two of our own men who we managed to place aboard the ship as crewmembers at Dalian.’

  ‘Are they good?’

  Ho nodded. ‘The best, sir. Both experienced Captains from our Sniper Brigades.’

  U grunted in satisfaction. The Sniper Brigades were North Korea’s elite of the elite. He was confident that the men would guard the cargo with their lives.

  U was due in a meeting with the Minister of State Security later that evening, and he knew that the minister would be briefing President Kim the very next morning. He was only grilling Major Ho because it was of such paramount importance that everything was in place, that the operation went perfectly.

  As President Kim had made clear on more than one occasion, the inevitable and destined reunification of Korea depended on it.

  The two men whose documents named them Xiao Tong and Yan Yanzhi looked at one another, one brief glance that carried with it an hour’s worth of conversation. There was no fear in their eyes, no panic; only clear, hard resolution.

  It was time to fight.

  Xiao Tong – born Jang Kuk-ryul, in a little village outside the North Korean capital of Pyongyang – had been asleep when the pirates first boarded the ship. His comrade-in-arms, Yan Yanzhi – who Jang knew by his original Korean name, O Sin-sul – had been keeping watch, and saw the pirates silently slipping aboard and assassinating the ship’s guards.

  A soldier from the age of eighteen, O had been a member of the elite Sniper Battalion One for ten years. He was a hardened professional, and therefore managed to restrain the urge to take on the ship’s attackers head-on. Against such odds he would more than likely lose, and Jang would probably end up being killed in his bed.

  And so O had made a tactical retreat, waking Jang and collecting their hidden weapons cache before heading to the cargo hold. After all, their mission was the cargo, and not their fellow crew members. All that mattered was protecting the crate which had been taken aboard at Dalian.

  And now, as they waited in the cargo hold, they knew what would have already happened above. The pirates – for that is surely what they were – would have secured the ship, rousing men from their beds, raiding the watch tower and the bridge, taking control of the engine rooms, until the whole vessel was theirs.

  O and Jang wondered if the crew – now hostages – would be brought down to the cargo hold to be guarded until the ship docked in whatever secret cove the pirates’ hideout was located. Both soldiers decided that this is what they would do if raiding the ship, as the container area was the largest area, and the easiest to secure by a few armed men.

  As they heard the sound of feet shuffling down metal steps, muffled cries and aggressive shouts, Jang and O exchanged their looks, and realized they were about to find out if it was also – as they hoped – the easiest area to defend.

  5

  Arief Suprapto was pleased.

  The taking of the Fu Yu Shan had gone entirely without incident, all the guards had been subdued without even getting a shot off, and he’d caught the captain asleep in his cabin. A quick pistol-whipping had been enough to subdue the man after he’d offered his first gesture of defiance, and he hadn’t put a foot wrong since.

  Now, with his own trusted men on the bridge and in the engine rooms, and the ship’s Automatic Identification System tracking device disabled, he led the fourteen crewmembers – now his hostages – down the steel steps towards the cargo area, where they would be secured for the remainder of the journey.

  ‘Admiral!’ the call came over his radio, crystal clear and frantic.

  ‘Yes,’ Suprapto answered, pleased to hear his rank announced over the radio. He had conferred it upon himself of course, but after thirty hard years at sea, should he not be an admiral? ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘There might be a problem sir,’ the voice said nervously. ‘Not including the armed guards we killed, we’ve accounted for fourteen of the crew, but the manifest states there should be sixteen. Two men were taken on at Dalian.’

  Shit! A problem like this he didn’t need. ‘Organize a search!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Right now!’

  ‘We’re already on it, Admiral. We’re combing every square inch of this ship.’

  ‘Very well. Keep me informed.’ He clicked off the radio, and thought. Two men. Not regular crew members, it would seem. Taken on at the port of Dalian. Why? And why were these same two men the ones that were now missing?

  It was an anomaly, and Suprapto didn’t like anomalies. He liked to control everything, to know
everything. Control was what gave him his power.

  He needed to reassert control.

  His men were combing the ship for the two fugitives, but hadn’t yet found them.

  The cargo area was secure. Safe. Where would he go if he needed to hide?

  Down below.

  Were the two men here? Could they be armed?

  Suprapto’s eyes took in the gigantic loading bay below him in a fraction of a second, his mind calculating vectors and angles faster than any supercomputer could ever hope to.

  And then he moved.

  The bark of the AK-47 assault rifles in the enclosed steel chamber was deafening.

  ‘Shit!’ Jang cursed as the pirate captain leapt out of the way at the last second, pulling one of the hostages down to cover him. Jang’s bullets instead hit a man he recognized as the cook, the rounds rippling through his body and killing him instantly.

  The stairwell leading down to the cargo hold was the perfect area for an ambush. With the pirates confined to the narrow steps – just as the Fu Yu Shan had been trapped in the narrow Strait – it should have been as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

  But then that damn captain had moved just before Jang pulled the trigger. How could he possibly have known?

  O had been blessed with more luck; his high-powered 5.45mm rounds had hit three of the pirates, with fatal results. Bodies toppled down the steps, limp and lifeless. He would surely have tagged more, but the others reacted to their captain’s shouts and started moving, pulling hostages in front of them, already retreating back up the steel staircase.

  Jang tried to track them with his gun, but it was useless; they were gone.

  ‘Admiral!’ said Reza Panggabean, breathless. ‘What the hell was that?’

  Suprapto ignored the screams of the hostages as his men controlled them back on the top deck, two having to be clubbed to the ground before order was restored; his mind was elsewhere.

  Panggabean was one of Suprapto’s best men, utterly fearless and equally loyal. Suprapto clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Resistance,’ he said, with a tone which was equal parts regret and excitement.

  Panggabean’s face lit up. ‘We can burn them!’ he offered.

  Suprapto shook his head. ‘They killed three of my men. Believe me, I would like nothing better than to burn them. But we need that cargo, remember? Smart of them, hiding there. They know we’ll make money from selling the cargo, that we’ll be unwilling to damage it.’ Suprapto hung his head, deep in thought.

  Two men, armed with AK-47s by the sound of them. But what else would they have down there? He knew the men on deck had rocket launchers, and wondered if there were more in the cargo hold.

  He frowned. He didn’t want to make a mess of this. As well as the huge sum the vessel and crew would fetch for ransom, there was also the colossal amount of money promised to him for a single, special crate in the hold below. He had no idea what it was, and nor did he care; but he didn’t want it damaging.

  He exhaled slowly, then breathed in the sweet night air, cold in his nostrils after the blazing heat of the day.

  He couldn’t risk a frontal assault, as there was too much danger of the cargo being damaged; and if the enemy had rocket launchers, his own men might come off the worst.

  But there was always negotiation.

  Turning quickly, he grabbed one of the hostages by the collar and hauled him towards the steps. In the blink of an eye, Suprapto fired a round into the man’s head and kicked the lifeless body down the stairwell.

  ‘Come up now with your hands up,’ he shouted down after the body, ‘and I promise you, you’ll live. Believe me, you’re worth more to me alive than dead. But trust me on this – the ship and the cargo are worth far more than the crew, and I’ll send another of your friends down to join you every minute until you surrender. Your time starts now!’

  Suprapto could see the fear in the eyes of every hostage, the anticipation on the faces of his own men. He checked his diver’s watch. Thirty seconds, and no sign of the men.

  Forty.

  Fifty.

  Damn.

  Suprapto grabbed another hostage, shot him, and hurled him down the stairs.

  ‘Do you believe me now?’ he screamed. ‘Will you risk every man aboard, or will you give yourselves up?’

  He waited, but there was no answer.

  Shit. He didn’t want to kill any more hostages; they really were quite valuable.

  What did those damn sailors want?

  He sighed; time for Plan B.

  ‘Hasyimi,’ he said into his radio, ‘bring me the ship’s blueprints.’

  O and Jang waited silently behind a section of wooden crates, watching through the sights of their assault rifles. Whoever came down the stairs next would be dead.

  It was a shame that the other crew members were being killed, but there was no way on earth that the two soldiers would ever surrender. It wasn’t in their nature, and nor was it in their orders. And soldiers – especially from the strict hierarchical culture of the homeland – were expected to follow orders.

  And so they would wait here to protect their crate, and they wouldn’t move until their own dead bodies were pried away, if it came to that.

  But O and Jang hoped it would not; the pirate captain was obviously reluctant to damage the cargo by leading a full assault, and he seemed to have given up executing the crew members too. They knew that in the end, the pirates would come down those stairs though – they would have to if they ever wanted to unload this cargo. And even if the pirates used hostages as human shields to cover their attack, both men were prepared to go through the hostages to get to the enemy.

  O reacted as something came bouncing down the stairs, a small metal canister; then another, then another.

  ‘Smoke!’ O told Jang, but Jang was already pulling on his respirator, just part of the special equipment they’d smuggled aboard in case of an attack.

  Weapons up, they watched the stairs through their darkened lenses, struggling to see through the spiraling smoke, waiting for any sign of the assault which was surely to follow.

  O heard a guttural noise from next to him, and turned to Jang. Even through the smoke, O could see the tip of a knife sticking out of his friend’s throat, having been rammed straight through the neck from behind.

  O tried to turn, to shoot, but it was too late, and he felt the burning sensation of cold steel being plunged into his kidneys again, and again, and again.

  The smoke cleared within minutes, and Suprapto and Panggabean surveyed their victims as they lay spread-eagled on the floor, thick blood pooled around their bodies.

  ‘Good job, Reza,’ Suprapto beamed. ‘Good job.’

  ‘Thank you, Admiral,’ Panggabean said happily. ‘Your knife work pretty nice too.’

  Suprapto looked down, and had to admit that Panggabean was right; the blow through the spinal column and out of the windpipe was perfect.

  He looked around the cargo hold in satisfaction. Everything was safe, just as it should be.

  ‘Bring down the hostages!’ he called to his men upstairs.

  ‘What about the bodies?’ Panggabean asked.

  ‘Leave them,’ Suprapto ordered. ‘They can serve as an example to the others.’

  Panggabean grinned with a mouth full of gold. ‘Yes, sah,’ he confirmed, stepping over a sticky puddle of congealed blood to retrieve the men’s weapons. The boss had style, that was for sure.

  The two dead men would certainly make a fine example for anyone.

  ‘Status?’ the disembodied, digitized voice of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, known to his vast legions of followers only as The Lion, said over the encrypted line.

  The secretive and feared leader of a radical group not yet known to the West, Quraishi listened patiently to the answer whilst sipping on a cup of jasmine tea.

  The prognosis was good.

  ‘Excellent,’ came the rasping voice. ‘My colleagues will take immediate delivery.’

  The call ended in
stantly with that single announcement, the secure phone replaced in its cradle.

  Sipping the sweetly-scented tea, The Lion smiled.

  The ravaging, terrorizing, and ultimate destruction of the Great Satan that was Western civilization was finally about to begin.

  PART ONE

  1

  The stench of fetid vegetation hit Mark Cole’s nostrils hard, steam rising from the jungle around him as he approached his battered 4x4.

  It was just another day in the hill country of northern Thailand, a hundred degrees with seventy-five percent humidity, the air so close and thick you had to almost push your way through it. But Cole had long since become accustomed to it, and it no longer bothered him.

  In fact, nothing bothered Cole anymore. He merely existed, and for the time being, that was enough for him; perhaps even too much.

  He swatted away the flies and mosquitoes, knowing it would be better by the coast. It would be a long drive, but it was time to work, and he had long since outstayed his welcome in the shacks and bars of the forested interior. He now sought employment in the busy bars and nightclubs of the coastal resorts, and had recently been hired to work security at a Go-Go bar in Pattaya.

  He had no interest in the girls, and he had no interest in the money; all he wanted was the action that came with the job, the relentless stream of drunken revelers arguing with the girls, refusing to pay, threatening the bar staff, fighting among themselves. It was a perfect environment for Cole, and offered him what he wanted the most, the only thing he now craved.

  Pain.

  The journey took six hours in the rusty Hi-Lux pickup, and when he drove into town he could see that it was going to be a busy night. It was barely into the afternoon, and already he could see groups of foreigners – Americans here, Brits there, Australians and Germans too – falling over themselves, skin burnt from too much sun, judgment ruined by too much alcohol, loud and boisterous, keen to sample the delights of the orient they had heard so much about, whether that meant a cocktail watching the glorious sunset, or a session with one of the Go-Go girls in an upstairs back room.