the pirates didn't know, not being devotees of domestic American politics. It was, in fact, that even a less than entirely successful hostage rescue proved a plus to presidential job approval rating, and the more a plus the more pirates were killed, while the less so as some were saved for trial.
The ship ahead, with the white painted gantry moved almost all the way back to the superstructure, was barely moving. The yacht, on the other hand, was moving and closing the distance between them quickly. At a range of about a kilometer, the pirate skipper lifted a night scope to his right eye. This was a single intensifier version, once intended for mounting on a light anti-tank weapon.
'That's odd,' said the pirate. He pulled the scope away from his eye, closed that eye, and looked again. Nope, just the running lights. He put the scope back to his eye. But there are a dozen other lights that pop up in the scope. And what the hell's that sound?
The skipper turned the scope toward the sound and spotted the helicopters, three of them in formation, rotoring in.
'Turn around!' he shouted to the helmsman. 'It's a trap!'
Borsakov called Cruz on the radio. 'There's a boat out there, maybe eighty or ninety feet long. It's turning around and running like hell. What do you think it is, Mike? Police? Somebody's navy?'
'We saw it,' said Kosciusko from the Merciful's bridge. 'I even readied a party in case it was pirates. Probably not navy or police or they wouldn't be running. Might have been a case of mistaken identity.'
'Might have,' Cruz agreed. 'No matter, Merciful, I'll be on station, ready to land in about forty seconds.'
'Ground guides are on station and waiting, Mike,' Kosciusko replied. 'Your spot is marked as Alpha in IR chemlights.'
The helicopter passed above the superstructure and gantry, the turbulence caused by them, even at the current low speeds, causing it to shudder and buck. Cruz saw the letter 'A' outlined with, he guessed, about twenty-five or thirty chemlights. Still other lights marked the inside edges of the rows of containers lining both sides, rear, and front of the landing area. He didn't bother counting the lights as he was much too busy lining his helicopter up.
Russian helicopters tended to vibrate a bit more than western ones. Thus, Cruz's feet were encased in reverse stirrups to hold them to the pedals. He moved these up and down, slightly, to control the speed of the tail rotor and thus his orientation with respect to the ship. He pushed the cyclic, the control stick, forward, moving his Hip a few meters in that direction, and then pulled it back to stop motion. Satisfied with that, his left hand played with the pitch control, changing the pitch of the main rotor and bringing the bird down several feet.
A quick glance left and right told him that his was going to clear the containers easily enough. He again lowered himself several feet.
At that point, however, Cruz encountered a somewhat more serious surface effect than he was used to. Naturally, helicopter pilots were used to surface effect; they encountered it every time they landed and took off. Normally, however, the air had free means of escape to all sides. In this case, the containers created an open topped box that allowed less air than usual to escape to the sides, hence forced more of the air than usual upward, largely negating the changes in pitch Cruz made.
The helicopter began to shake alarmingly at the violent updraft. Ugh! Suckage! They never covered this at Kremenchug. With a nervous sigh, Cruz eased the collective still further, but gently, gently. This had the unlooked for effect of reducing the updraft, causing the chopper to lurch downward. Cruz's heart jumped into his mouth. Fuck!
'Artur,' he called over the radio, 'this is trickier than we planned. The containers have created a sort of up- facing tunnel. You still disperse air forward and back, but there is more of an updraft. Watch out for that and watch your pitch.'
'Roger, Mike,' came the answer. 'I ran into something like this in a draw in Afghanistan a long time ago. Be really careful to keep level; any lateral variation can potentially spill all the air out one side and send you crashing into the other.'
'Roger,' Cruz replied, with a calm he absolutely did not feel. Double fuck. An inch at a time it will have to be.
Again Cruz nudged the collective and again the Hip dropped until the updraft cancelled out the reduction in effective power. Again . . . again . . . again . . . again . . .
And then the helicopter was sitting on the flight deck, rocking up and down. Mike breathed a sigh of relief and began the shutdown cycle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
'A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.'
-Patricia de Lille,
South African Politician, quoting Cicero,
with regards to a corrupt arms deal
D-103, Durban, South Africa
They came to the port in fifty-three foot shipping containers; the vehicles within driven up on log ramps to reduce the space taken up inside, and with commercial boxes at each end to cover against the chance of a casual inspection. Additional containers had nothing each but three turrets mounting 90mm guns inside. A further two contained ammunition, one with a mix of anti-tank and anti-personnel, the other with a hefty load of TP, or training practice, and a small amount of high explosive. Not a one of the containers was properly and accurately marked.
Victor, Dov, Viljoen, and Dumi were all present for the loading. Only Victor planned on leaving the ship before its departure. The others, billeted in what would nominally have been crew's quarters and in containers, would stay aboard through the rebuild.
'I'm almost surprised you could move so quickly,' said Victor.
'Went downtown,' Viljoen replied. 'Found a bunch of unemployed black fellahs, offered them a thousand Rand apiece for four day's work. Course, it was more complex than that. Had to get them all uniforms and spend a half a day teaching them to at least look semi-military. And Dumi and I did all the driving. Paid the same friend of ours in the Ammunition Corps that provided the ammunition to arrange the transportation.'
'There's nothing that isn't for sale here,' Dumi added.
'Nothing that isn't for sale with your people in charge,' Viljoen said, smiling.
Dumisani answered seriously, though his eyes said he was joking, 'Well . . . I think yours were actually the
