JonDlundyn Parker adventure # 8
November 29th 2006 16:28
A Modern Day Pirate
CHAPTER 8
Drifting and helpless.
Karu Maru was a medium size tanker compared to the behemoths of the world. It specialised in carrying prepared fuel around the world. While sailing from the Bay of Bengal into the South China Sea via the Straights of Malacca it had been hijacked. A very fast speedboat had pulled up along side and men had boarded quite simply with grappling hooks and ropes. A very old fashioned system, almost as old as piracy itself.
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When Lundyn’s ketch arrived on the scene he was only one of many vessels on the site. There were several speedboats that had bought in the press, the Indonesian navy patrol boat, the ship’s lifeboat and the ship that had returned the crew. There were two tugs now arranging a tow. Lundyn arranged to board the ship via the pilot’s ladder that was swung over the side. The General, who drove the ketch’s outboard powered zodiac, delivered him and Roscoe to the ship. On board they made themselves known to the commanding officer from the Indonesian navy and to the ship’s captain who was arranging for the engineers to carry out what repairs they could while the ship was taken into tow. The owners and the insurance company did not want to get into an expensive long tow to a suitable port. They hoped for a repair at sea that would enable the ship to carry on under its own steam.
The ship had been equipped with a video surveillance system. It was set up to cover the whole ship. It was used to cover the insurance companies butt in the event that the ship was to be alleged to contaminate the environment during loading or discharging fuels. An astute crewman had turned it on when he realised that an attack was under way. The navy officer asked if Lundyn wanted to see it. It was a fairly difficult tape to follow. It showed figures running around the deck all armed with what seemed like sub-machine guns. The figures were difficult to discern but as they ran up the steps to the bridge one camera picked up the faces. All seemed to be of Asian origin, young hard looking men with determined scowls on their faces. Then an alarm went off in Lundyn’s brain, two faces he had last seen on a cruiser tied up in the Swansea channel. They should have died with the rest of the crew when the cruiser blew up but here they were on a pirate expedition in the South China Sea! Lundyn was positive of his identification and he knew whom they had worked for in the past. No second-guessing as to whom they worked for now. The video went on and apart from the unloading of the fuel at which point the video had been discovered and turned off it seems there was not much more information. The second ship was not easily identifiable but the insurance company had experts available for that. He was sure that the second boat would be identified but would soon be unrecognisable or sunk once the cargo had been disposed of. It would probably even be a scam to sink the vessel just for the insurance at a later date. The modern pirate had many tricks.
Lundyn and Roscoe made a tour of the ship and could not find anything that required their attention. It would be a very brief report to the company. It was not going to be worth their while mentioning that they recognised the pirates. That would get them into a mess. Roscoe still had not disposed of the cash he had lifted from the drug boat and Lundyn could not afford being implicated in the blowing up of the cruiser full of would be assassins off Swansea Heads. Piracy these days was every bit as rife as in the days of old Bluebeard. It was costing the world economy many billions of dollars in lost revenue and it was making some people very, very rich. At first it was just a matter of some fisherman taking advantage of a situation. Now it was quite obvious that a number of experts were following the ships by computer and broken radio codes and computer hacked lists of cargo. The ship that was to be pirated was simply and usually viciously attacked. No survivors were normally left and once the cargo was shifted from one ship to another or in some cases the ship simply underwent a cosmetic face change or it was sunk.
That was the only fly in the ointment here. It seemed like a professional and well thought out attack. But the ship was simply left to float with an unusable engine and the crew allowed to live, albeit in a drifting lifeboat. It seemed like a new operation or… the man responsible for blowing up the ship had been blown up while sitting on a plastic chair off Swansea Heads! That would explain the connection, of the two recognisable crew. The trail still leads to Bangkok and once again Lundyn was in the right place at the right time.
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Boat Heaven
TomN