Chapter 132 I Accede to Your Reques
"Tell him, I"ll give him one more day to consider. Also, in the coming days, as long as there"s a s.h.i.+p on the sea…" Inside a room decorated with all sorts of expensive, wild animal parts such as ivory utensils and a rhinoceros horn, the interpreter officer in a suit and leather shoes translated what Chen Fan said word for word.
"Is this really what he said?" Abadi"s eyebrows jumped as he sat on the chair.
"Yes, leader!" The interpreter officer looked at his watch and said, "He said he would execute this strike in twenty minutes. Seven minutes have already pa.s.sed."
"Thirteen minutes…" Abadi knocked gently on the quartz table. "Bertrand told me previously that the time he says is right on the dot…"
Sinking more than thirty pirate s.h.i.+ps docked at the port in one go? If this was really the case, the other party would need at least three submarines.
"Impossible..impossible." Abadi did not believe that the other party had such great abilities. If the other party had the power to control three submarines, why would he need to do s.h.i.+pping?
"Leader, what should we do?" The interpreter officer stood at the side. Although he sounded arrogant over the phone, he was no fool. The previous incident of the sinking of the two pirate s.h.i.+ps had caused him to feel terrified.
Abadi stood up and said with agitation, "Inform all the sailors immediately. Get them to sail all the pirate s.h.i.+ps out of the port to anywhere. Just don"t gather at the same place."
The fastest speed that a submarine can go underwater is just twenty knots, but the slowest pirate s.h.i.+p can travel at thirty knots. He wanted to see how many submarines the other party had to corner the pirate s.h.i.+ps.
"Yes, leader!"
Five minutes later, the quiet Erigavo Port suddenly turned chaotic. Two to three hundred fierce-looking black men gathered from all over, as they ran onto the pirate s.h.i.+ps for their lives.
The pirate s.h.i.+ps of various sizes were accompanied by black smoke and a roaring sound that reverberated through the entire port. They took action so fast? The electric eel watched the "great escape" of the pirate s.h.i.+ps in a daze as he hid in the sea one thousand meters away.
I gotta strike immediately, or else it would be much more difficult after the pirate s.h.i.+ps disperse. The electric eel held the pike and quietly followed a white 300-ton pirate s.h.i.+p. The speed of the s.h.i.+p was thirty-five knots. Chen Fan waited for it to travel out for more than two kilometers before controlling the electric eel to slip to the front of the s.h.i.+p. With a few moves, he raised the pike so that the pirate s.h.i.+p would hit right onto the pike at a speed of seventeen meters per second.
Bang!
The thirty-meter long pirate s.h.i.+p suddenly jumped up, as if it had hit a mountain peak on the sea, before landing heavily on the water surface, splas.h.i.+ng huge waves. A five-meter long huge crack formed at the bottom of the pirate s.h.i.+p, and seawater rushed in madly because of the pressure.
"Headquarters, headquarters, we hit an underwater reef, we hit an underwater reef. Quickly send people to help, the s.h.i.+p"s gonna sink in one minute…" Looking terrified, the captain of the pirate s.h.i.+p grabbed the radio and shouted. "Headquarters, quickly send help…"
"Roger, roger. Report your location immediately and get your life jackets on. I"ll get the s.h.i.+p nearby to save you!"
On the left side of Erigavo Village, inside a 5,000 square meter, four-story white building, Brock, the radio liaison, immediately located the nearest vessel according to the satellite positioning system on the screen. After connecting to the s.h.i.+p"s radio frequency, he shouted, "s.h.i.+p Number Twenty-Seven cruising at lat.i.tude 11.18.29 north and longitude 48.17.16 east has. .h.i.t an underwater reef. Please rush to its rescue, please rush to its rescue…"
Buzz…"This is s.h.i.+p Number Thirteen, roger, roger, we will arrive in around five minutes."
"How could there be underwater reefs?" Brock pulled the sea chart and tagged the location quickly with the use of calipers, but the chart clearly showed that there was no symbol for an underwater reef.
After less than a minute, a terrified cry came from the radio again. "This is s.h.i.+p number thirteen...this is s.h.i.+p number thirteen. We also hit an underwater reef, please quickly send help…"
"Report your exact location!" Brock shouted into the radio.
After using satellite positioning and getting the nearest s.h.i.+p to rush over to help, Brock grabbed the phone at his side and dialed thirteen numbers in three seconds.
"Leader, something bad"s happened…" Brock shouted madly. "Our s.h.i.+ps...two of our s.h.i.+ps. .h.i.t a reef within five minutes."
"What?" Abadi jumped up from the chair immediately. "I"ll be there in ten minutes."
Ten minutes later…
Another s.h.i.+p cruising at twelve nautical miles away gave out a loud roar, and a huge crack appeared at the bottom of its cabin, as if it was chopped by an axe.
"Headquarters, headquarters, our s.h.i.+p hit an underwater reef at lat.i.tude 11.32.45 north and longitude 48.53 east. Please send help immediately, please send help immediately…"
"Ah…" Brock was dumbstruck. Although he didn"t know about Chen Fan"s threat, he knew that it was definitely not a coincidence. It was impossible for three s.h.i.+ps to hit a reef consecutively within fifteen minutes. There must be an unknown reason behind this.
Bang! The red door of the control room was knocked open, and Abadi walked in with a grim poker face.
"Leader, leader…" Brock pointed at the screen of the satellite positioning with his trembling finger. "Just a moment ago, another s.h.i.+p met with a mishap!"
"I got it. Get the nearby s.h.i.+p to rush over to help…" Abadi stood behind him with his hands on his back.
It must be that Asian kid. It must be that Asian kid! Abadi"s face was extremely gloomy, but he couldn"t figure out how the kid was able to damage the s.h.i.+ps without making them sink immediately.
Could it be done by launching uncharged torpedoes? Abadi could only come up with this possibility after thinking for a long while. Although he didn"t have the ability to get high grade goods like torpedoes, he was no stranger to having knowledge in this area. A torpedo traveling at fifty to sixty knots and hitting the bottom of a small ton s.h.i.+p that is twelve-millimeters thick would cause the s.h.i.+p to sink within a short period.
As a matter of fact, Abadi couldn"t be blamed for focusing his guess on torpedoes. Beneath the surface of the sea, only torpedoes and anti-s.h.i.+p missiles could cause this situation. However, it would be too far-fetched to say that it was an anti-s.h.i.+p missile attack, because the cost of one anti-s.h.i.+p missile was the same as a small size submarine. No idiot would burn his money this way, even if he was a rich American.
Although his guess was totally unrelated to the truth, even if he got high on one kilogram of heroin, Abadi would never think that the culprit was a seventy-meter-long electric eel holding a forty ton pike. After all, this was a world of materialism. Even if Abadi saw the electric eel with his own eyes, he would just think of it as a humongous sea creature, instead of someone"s "criminal tool".
Just as Abadi was steeped in fantasy, the thrilling shout from the radio brought his thoughts back to reality.
"Headquarters, headquarters, this is s.h.i.+p Number Three, this is s.h.i.+p Number Three. We"ve also hit an underwater reef, please send help immediately…" As he listened to the heart-wrenching voice in the radio, Abadi felt a flame burning from under his feet which shot all the way up to his skull.
"Adjust the frequency to public waveband." The joints of Abadi"s hands gave out a cracking noise.
After a series of disorderly sound waves, Abadi grabbed the voice transmitter of the radio. "h.e.l.lo, this is Abadi. Listen up everyone. Take an S-shaped route at maximum speed immediately. If there"s anything unusual, send a sailor to watch the surface of the sea and make a detour immediately."
"Yes, sir!" Dozens of replies came together from the speaker. However, when the handmade Cuban cigar in Abadi"s mouth was smoked halfway, the radio gave out a depressing sound again.
Bang! Abadi pounded his fist angrily on the table, and sent everyone in the room trembling.
"Interpreter officer, come over here!" Abadi took out his mobile phone and pressed a few numbers.
When the interpreter officer rushed over, there were already thirteen s.h.i.+ps that suffered the same fate.
d.a.m.n it! How many submarines did he need to do this? Abadi had initially thought that the other party could only have three submarines at the most, but now it seemed like this figure was way too conservative.
...
Over seventy pirate s.h.i.+ps were sailing in all different directions. After destroying thirteen of them, the electric eel"s search became more difficult. After searching for around five minutes at its speed limit of eighty knots and not seeing anything suspicious, Chen Fan controlled the eel to gradually slow down its speed to sixty knots.
It was too tiring to swim at that speed. Just like the case of a sprinter, although the explosive speed is very fast, it can not be maintained for long.
Ring!! The mobile phone on the cabinet rang non-stop. At over thirty meters deep, the electric eel looked from a distance away and saw that there were no vessels for the time being. Therefore, Chen Fan retrieved his thoughts and answered the phone.
"h.e.l.lo, Mister Interpreter Officer, your leader changed his view so fast?" Chen Fan bantered.
"I"m Abadi!" The interpreter officer translated word for word, and even his tone was exactly the same.
"Hey, what"s up?"
"I would like you to put a stop to this immediately!" Abadi took a deep breath. "As for the compensation, we can discuss it."
"500 million, there"s no room for discussion!" Chen Fan sounded calm. "Didn"t you kidnap my crewmen and even threatened to kill them? I"m one who bears grudges."
Abadi frowned deeply, and he was on the verge of collapse. What exactly was the background of the other party that he had such abilities? "The most I can do is return you the ransom money, and pay you another 50 million USD!" Among all those who had been blackmailed by him, Chen Fan was probably the only one who could make Abadi say something like this.
"You seem to have overlooked one thing." Chen Fan"s voice was still very calm. "You"re not in the position to bargain with me at all. As long as you"re still in the pirate trade, I"ll be able to target your Achilles heel. So, I think you better get the amount ready that I requested. Although this amount is painful to you, your loss will only get bigger if you don"t do this."
"In the end, you will realize that you don"t have any s.h.i.+ps to sail out to sea. This means that all the pirates under you can only sit back and watch all the cargo s.h.i.+ps at sea which represent "money" and not be able to do anything."
The other end of the phone was silent for half a minute.
"Alright, 500 million!" Abadi finally said as he gritted his teeth. "I"ll raise 500 million within three days, but you have to stop the attack on my s.h.i.+ps during this period."