Scrambling to the top of the ladder, he reached up toward the first man's waiting hand so he could be helped over the gunwale.
His upper body and elbows were already on the freighter's deck when Chien Lo, coming aft to investigate the mysterious thumps he had heard moments earlier, discovered to his horror that his ship was under siege.
Crouched on deck, the first pirate heard the boatswain's footsteps a split second before he actually pivoted on his haunches to see him approaching. By then he'd decided what to do. He didn't know how many other crewmen would be on deck, but would not wait for them to be alerted. The man had to be taken out right away.
Chien Lo had halted several yards toward the fore of the deck, staring at the invaders in shock and dismay, his legs turned to brittle shafts of ice. He had perceived the intention of the man already on board even without being able to see his face. The dark, narrow eyes peering through slits in his hood told him everything he needed to know. There was murder in them, pure and simple.
Chien Lo broke suddenly from his paralysis, spun around, and ran for the vessel's bow, where he knew the pilot would be manning the bridge. But the smallish pirate's swiftness and agility were good for more than just climbing. He sprang to his feet and streaked after Chien, whipping his knife from its scabbard, moving almost silently despite the thick-soled boots he had worn to provide traction while boarding the freighter.
He overtook the boatswain in a flash, lunging at him, grabbing him from behind, locking his arms around his chest, the force of his tackle throwing him belly-down onto the deck.
Chien produced a little bleat of pain and fear as a hand twisted itself into his hair and yanked his head up and back. Then the hard, cold edge of the pirate's knife met the soft, warm flesh of his throat and sliced it open from ear to ear.
Chien felt no real pain, only something that shook through his nerves like raw voltage. Then the pirate released him and his face hit the deck again and he died with a long, spasmodic shudder, his nose, mouth, and eyes in a pool of his own blood.
The pirate rose to his feet, dragged Chien's body to the edge of the deck, and kicked it overboard. In the vastness of the open sea it seemed there was hardly a splash as it hit the water and was swallowed up.
When the pirate returned to where he'd tied the ladder to the handrail, he found that the second pirate had managed to haul himself aboard. The rest of their team and five of the men in the other raiding party were also on deck, waiting for the last pirate to complete his climb.
A moment later he was up and they were all racing toward the forward part of the ship.
The pilot sank beneath the wheel in a lifeless heap, his blood pattering from his maps and Playboy pin-ups like falling rain. His killer had made fast work of him after entering the bridge, stealing up from behind, and slicing open his throat just as the first man aboard had done to Chien Lo. Caught completely by surprise, he hadn't even known what hit him, let alone gotten a chance to hail for assistance.
Now a second pirate came in, sidestepped the corpse, and took the wheel. His eyes roaming over the instrument panel in front of him, he nodded to the first man, who clapped him on the back, sheathed his dripping blade, and then rushed outside to give the others the good news.
They had taken full control of the vessel. Next they would deal with its remaining crew.
'Get on you knees, hands behind you heads!' the Iban shouted from the stairwell. Although every one of the ship's hands looked like Malays, he'd barked his orders through his bandanna in a serviceable if unpolished English. The national language had many variations in dialect, and he wanted to avoid confusion.
The crewmen gaped up at him from the card table, faces stunned, playing cards spilling from their fingers in a fluttery welter. Footsteps clattered behind the pirate leader as the rest of his band followed him down the metal risers from the deck.
'Do it now or I kill you all!' the Iban grunted, noting the crew's frozen hesitation and motioning them away from the table with the snout of his Beretta 70/90.
The four men complied, making no attempt at resistance, getting up in such a rush they clumsily knocked over several chairs.
They knelt in the middle of the cramped little hold and looked at the raiders in silence.
The Iban noticed that one of the captives had slipped off his wristwatch and was holding it out in his hand, offering up the timepiece as if to get done with the affair as quickly as possible. He knew what the man was thinking, and almost pitied him. None of the recent anti-piracy operations by Malaysia, Indonesia, the Phillippines, and China had done anything to decrease the high incidence of attacks in local waters. With thousands of jungled islands and vast stretches of ocean to patrol, the naval authorities could not hope to keep pace with their quarry, let alone ferret out their hidden land bases. Regional shipping companies were well aware of this, and simply figured losses to theft and hijacking into the overall cost of their operations.
The pirate chief's eyes moved over the faces of the sailors. While they looked tense and anxious in the cast of an overhead light fixture, none of those faces seemed especially fearful. And why should they be? The men were seasoned hands. They would have been through hijacks before, and expected to be robbed and sent off safely in dinghies and lifeboats. That was how it usually went.
The poor, stupid bastards hadn't any idea what had happened to their mates up above.
The Iban waved over one of the pirates who had come rushing down the stairs at his heels. The man stepped up to him and leaned in close for his orders.
'I don't want their papers messed up, Juara,' the Iban warned in a coarse whisper, this time speaking his native tongue, Behasa Malayu. 'That happens, all this is for shit, you understand?'
Juara's affirmative grunt was muffled by the dirty white towel shrouding his mouth and chin. A blockish, thick-necked man with a shaved head and lot of surplus weight around the middle, he gestured briskly to a couple of the other hijackers, who moved toward the kneeling seamen and ordered them to toss everything in their pockets onto the floor.
The ship's hands again did as they were told without challenge. Juara covered them with his rifle while his two companions went and gathered up their surrendered possessions, depositing them in a small heap on the table. When the hands had finished emptying their pockets, the pirates frisked them down to make sure they hadn't withheld anything.
Satisfied they'd gotten what they wanted, they nodded to Juara.
Juara motioned the pair back to his side, then turned to look at the Iban headman.
'Get it over with,' the Iban said.
He tried to keep his voice hushed, but it was deep enough to seem almost booming in the constricted silence of the hold. A terrible understanding dawned on the crewmen's features as their captors swung up their rifle barrels.
Now they finally know, the pirate thought. And they fear.
One of the ship's hands opened his mouth to scream and started to his feet, but then the raiders triggered their weapons and he fell backwards, his clothes riddled with bullet holes, most of his head blown away. Swept by the hail of gunfire, the rest of the Kuan Yin's crew also went down in a cloud of blood, bone, and tissue, their arms and legs sprawling out wildly in their final throes.
The big Iban waited for the guns to stop their racket, then stepped over to the card table and randomly lifted a wallet from the pile of items that had been taken from the crewmen. He was eager to finish this last bit of business and return to the open deck; his ears rang from the shooting, and the air down here stank of burnt primer, blood, and the voided bowels of the dead.
He opened the wallet and found a driver's license in a transparent plastic sleeve. There was more identification in the other compartments. The slain crewman to whom the wallet had belonged was named Sang Ye.
The Iban made a low, pleased sound in his throat. He hoped the sailor had lived his life fully and spent his money well. At any rate, his wallet and identity now belonged to someone who would make good use of them.
There were big things in the works, very big, and the Iban was eager to reach Singapore and get cracking.
He thought of the sheet of paper folded in his breast pocket, thought of the instructions that were written on it, thought of everything they were worth to him. Surely more than he'd made in any dozen hijacks.
The American, Max Blackburn, didn't stand a chance.
No more than the crew of the ship had stood one…
