Read Online Star of Africa (Ben Hope, Book 13) by Scott Mariani - Free Book Online

not, but it’s rare you get off so lightly now. See, when these shit-eaters first started showing up twenty years ago, you were dealing with a few rag-tag fishermen making six hundred dollars a year, who thought five, ten thousand was the haul of a lifetime. Didn’t take ’em long to figure out you could make a whole lot more by snapping up the whole ship and holding the cargo and crew for ransom.’
    Jude was staring at him. ‘They kidnap the crews?’
    ‘This is all news to you, huh, sonny? Sure, these fuckers would kidnap their own mothers for a buck. They’re taking hundreds of millions a year now in ransoms. It’s big business. Instead of wooden skiffs they’re coming out in speedboats, tooled up to the nines with Kalashnikovs, high as kites on fuckin’ khat and ready to murder anyone who gets in their way. And they don’t just cover a few miles out from the coast like they used to. Not when they can use stolen vessels as mother ships and hunt over the whole ocean looking for a juicy tanker to knock off. It’s a whole other ball game now, and it’s about goddamn time someone did something about it.’
    ‘I had no idea it was so bad.’
    Gerber pulled a disgusted face. ‘Well now you have. Bring ’em on, I say. They want a fight, they’ll get a fight like they won’t believe. I’d rather be dead than wind up a hostage in some Somali stinkpit, or sold as a fuckin’ slave to work in a damn copper mine.’
    Jude’s head was still spinning from what Gerber had told him when he sat down to eat later with Mitch, Condor and another AB called Lang. ‘Hey, s’matter, English? You don’t think my jokes are funny any more?’ Mitch said in a mock-hurt voice after Jude failed to break up at some stupid crack. Jude admitted what was on his mind.
    ‘That old fart Gerber’s just looking to scare your Limey ass,’ Mitch said.
    ‘Can’t get it up no more, so he wants to play
Platoon
instead,’ laughed Condor. ‘Thinks he’s still in ’Nam. You know why they don’t issue weapons to merchant crews? So that trigger-happy dudes like Gerber can’t shoot the crap out of every bunch of poor schmuck fishermen that come within a thousand-yard range, and call it self-defence. Who’s gonna insure us for that?’
    Jude wasn’t sure. It had sounded pretty plausible the way Gerber described it.
    ‘That’s right, man, don’t listen to his cranky bullshit,’ said Lang, munching loudly on a bacon sandwich and spitting bits out as he talked. ‘Sure, the pirates might hit a vessel now and then, but we’re talking small trawlers and private yachts mostly. Few years back, they took a pop at a German naval tanker thinking she was a merchant and those Krauts chewed their asses up something terrible. I’ll bet ol’ Gerber didn’t tell you what happened last time a pirate crew touched an American ship, did he?’ Lang dragged his forefinger across his throat and smiled wickedly, bits of bacon stuck between his teeth. ‘I got two words for you. Navy SEALs.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Let’s just say, our boys went home. The bad guys wound up as fish bait.’
    ‘These waters are safe as houses,’ Mitch said, ramming home the point. ‘Hell, safer. Naval destroyers patrol up and down the coastline the whole time. Thank your fellow Limeys for that one. We even so much as smell a pirate, all Cappy O’Keefe has to do is dial up UKMTO on the sat phone, and the cavalry’ll be all over us before you can say Jack Robinson.’
    ‘Who the fuck
was
Jack Robinson, anyway?’ Condor asked.
    ‘Fuck should I know?’ Mitch shot back at him.
    ‘Always wondered about that,’ Condor said absently.
    Jude already knew about United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the clearing house that governed shipping security in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. But he still wasn’t entirely convinced.
    ‘Okay,’ he said, dubiously. ‘Then if we’re so safe and there’s no risk, then why do we keep the pirate cages locked all the