The chopper touched down on the helideck and ship’s crewmen came out to unload the crates Bolan and Sifuentes had been sitting on. By their banter the soldier made them for Malaysians. A man who could have been Sifuentes’s little brother but with even more tattoos and a ’70s-porn-worthy mustache ran up as the rotors stopped. “Sifu! Haven’t seen you since Mombasa!”
“Mono!” The two Latino soldiers engaged in some sort of elaborate hand-jive. Another Latino sporting the startling combination of a beard and a mullet joined the pair, and a conversation in rapid-fire Spanish commenced. A black man with a shaved head eyeballed Bolan, then a large Polynesian man rumbled forward. “Hey! Sifu! Who’s the skinny little white lizard?”
Bolan topped Sifuentes by a head and had a lean but well-muscled physique. Then again, the big Polynesian topped Bolan by a head and looked to be a rock-solid two hundred and fifty pounds. Bolan smiled and stuck out his hand. “You must be Abe.”
Abe stared at the hand and then at Bolan like he had to be kidding.
Bolan shrugged. All eyes turned as the bikini-clad woman walked barefoot onto the helideck. She was Latina and built like a bantamweight female MMA fighter except that she clearly had some surgical augmentation filling out her bikini top. It was hard to gauge the face beneath the big mirrored sunglasses, but her lips were sensual and a short-going-to-bushy-shag haircut framed it all. The mirrored shades looked Bolan up and down. “Che, Sifu. Who’s your friend?”
“This guy?” Sifuentes enthused. “Let me tell you! This guy, he—”
“I haven’t seen blue eyes in a while.” The woman took a long look into Bolan’s arctic blue eyes. “Haven’t seen eyes like that ever.”
The woman turned and put a wiggle in her walk for Bolan as she went to the helicopter gangway. “See you around, Blue.”
The soldier felt the trouble with a capital T coming, but he smiled at the sight anyway. Big Abe’s face went from scowling water buffalo to snarling demon tiki. “Listen, white boy, you gonna—”
“That’s white man, to you.”
The helideck went silent. Abe reared to his full height in outrage. “Fucking Viking, we get all the shit details! Rampart?” Big Abe stabbed a massive finger at Bolan accusingly as he began venting his grievances. “They don’t want no brown people! They want white boys with beards like you!”
Bolan stroked his chin and prepared himself to fight a Samoan who was twice his size and ten years younger. “I don’t have a beard. I applied to Rampart Group, and they told me I was too old and I could take a Viking Associate’s slot if I still wanted a job. And that is white man to you, poi-boy. Don’t make me tell you a third time.”
The Latino contingent stared in shock.
Big Abe roared as his hands clenched into fists. “Poi is Hawaiian!”
Bolan was confident he could take Big Abe in hand-to-hand combat. He had severe doubts about being able to beat him in a stand-up fight. “You saying you never pounded taro when you were a kid, uso?” Bolan countered.
“Hmm!” Abe grunted at the Samoan word for “brother,” and Bolan knew he had scored. A slow, rueful smile crossed the big Samoan’s face. “I mighta. Once or twice. You been to my islands?”
“Does American Samoa count? I worked with a few brothers from there back in the day.”
The tension on the helideck eased considerably.
Big Abe shrugged his massive shoulders. “Where I was born, where I signed up. Where I call home. So I guess it counts. You?”
Bolan told the truth. “Massachusetts.”
“Never worked with no Bay Staters.”
Bolan smiled. “Check out the big brain on Abe.”
“We had to memorize all the states, capitals and nicknames in school.” Big Abe looked out over the Arabian Sea. “Truth? Don’t know who is farther from home, brudda.”
Bolan consulted his mental map. “You, by about three thousand miles.”
Big Abe laughed. “Check out the big brain on Blue!”
“So are we going to fight? If we are, can I have a meal and a nap first?” Bolan heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long-ass seventy-two.”
“Well, the day we do fight, I want your best. So yeah, go down to the galley. Tell Namzi you want the fried rice with julienned Spam and two fried eggs on top. I swear to God that little Indonesian shit makes magic. Plus he’s from Java, so the coffee is good.”
Bolan shoved out his hand again. “Will do.”
The Polynesian engulfed Bolan’s hand in his own but forwent the bone-crusher. “Welcome to Viking Associates, Blue. Welcome to shit detail.”
* * *
Bolan stretched out on his bunk. He put one khanjar dagger beneath his pillow and left the other in his backpack. He took out his phone and punched in the number for Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. His signal bounced off an NSA satellite, then was routed through a series of cutouts, before landing at the Farm. The firewalls and cybersecurity protocols chewed on Bolan’s communication and decided it was kosher. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered.
“You in?”
“I’m in.”
“Where are you?”
Bolan hit the GPS tracker app on his phone. “The worst stretch of ocean ever.”
“How are you doing otherwise?”
“I spent all my money on beer, knives and soap.”
“Okay...”
“I’m sending you some pictures.” Bolan had managed to photograph the Viking team currently aboard the ship while pretending to text. “They’re all former US military. I need to see their files and what you can dig up.”
“On it.”
“Thanks.”
“How are you getting along with your new playmates? Viking Associates has a pretty rough reputation.”
Bolan grunted in bemusement. Viking had worse than a pretty rough reputation. They worked cheap, had a record of not observing international protocols, as well as killing would-be pirates rather than trying to capture them or drive them off. One of their Russian teams had kept a teenage Somali pirate alive and had their fun with him before cutting him up, tying a rope around him, throwing him overboard and using him as shark bait. The fishing had been successful, word had gotten around and it had a salutary effect for ships flying the Viking flag. The problem was that two of the team members had been dumb enough to film the atrocities with their phones and send it to their friends. The videos had gone out onto the web and gone viral. Viking became a pariah. No one would hire them. They went bankrupt, and there was talk of a United Nations human rights tribunal. Rampart Group had swooped in out of nowhere, bought them out and fired most of their employees. Rampart had tagged the word “Associates” onto the security company, but Viking was still the black sheep of the private security industry and the bottom rung of the Rampart Group. As both Sifuentes and Big Abe had stated earlier, Viking Associates got all the shit details. Bolan considered his last forty-eight hours with them pretty successful.
“Well, I have a nickname, and I think the cutest girl in class likes me,” Bolan said drily.
“Sounds promising,” Kurtzman muttered.
Pictures and files started appearing on Bolan’s phone. “Just so you know,” Kurtzman said, “we do appreciate the easy requests every once in a while. The big guy is Aperaamo ‘Big Abe’ Umaga. Samoan. Tenth Mountain Division, then Ranger. Failed the Special Forces course because of ‘attitude’ problems.”
“That