Operation Sea Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

vegetation was cutting him all over. It was dark and he was disorientated and weak. He’d lost his weapons; his GPS locator and sat-phone were also gone. From his shoulders to his tailbone, his back felt like someone had hit him four times with a sledgehammer.
    Every part of the past twenty minutes seemed hazy. He recalled that Whiskey had squashed the pirates, that they’d freed the hostages and that he’d agreed to stay behind to make room in the helicopter. He remembered lighting up the roach … and then suddenly, boom! He was out like a light.
    But then, someone fell on top of him and hid him or made him invisible or something. Next thing he knew he was looking at some bad actors in green camos and polished boots who were inspecting the devastated pirate camp not ten feet from where he lay. Their rings—they all wore many silver rings. That had stuck in Batman’s mind. And that these guys didn’t look like Africans at all.
    Then, he was being dragged through the bush, and was too stunned and weak and sick to fight back.
    He was finally hauled to a stop and only then did he realize he was not in some lion’s den, but in a small village of straw huts, hidden on all sides by high foliage.
    Several dozen people had gathered around him. By their clothes, or lack of them, and their painted faces, he knew they were people of the bush. Some were kids; they were poking him, touching his arms and legs, checking to see if he was real. The adults stayed back, though, studying him as if he’d just fallen from the stars.
    Finally, he turned over to see that he’d been dragged here by a fierce-looking Somali man.
    “You are now among the Ekita,” this man boasted to him in broken English, beating his own chest with every word. “Chief Bada has brought you here and you are a very lucky man.”
    Somehow Batman managed to unfasten his battle armor and crawl out of it. The chief produced a broken mirror and showed him the four large bruises on his back. They were purple and hideous, but Batman knew, had it not been for the body armor, the bruises would have been bullet holes, and he would be dead.
    The chief sat him up.
    “You are the first magical warrior to visit Ekita in three hundred years,” he told Batman gravely. “You fly. You defeat bullets. You kill the Shaka and you wear a suit of enchantment. We must know: How do you do all these things?”
    Batman was just getting his senses back. He took off his gloves to reveal that his left hand was missing and that a mechanical prosthesis was in its place.
    The villagers gasped. The chief was fascinated. “So you’re made of metal?” he asked Batman.
    Batman waved his comment away.
    “Just this hand,” he said. “The rest of me is bone and muscle.”
    The chief translated for his villagers. This animated them further.
    “Then we must learn from you,” the chief declared. “We must heat you and consume the result.”
    Two women appeared carrying a wooden cup. It contained a blood-red liquid with what looked like tiny tulip bulbs floating in it. The chief urged Batman to drink it in one gulp. It smelled awful, but thinking it was some kind of pain reliever, drink it he did. But he quickly became even woozier than before.
    Then he heard the chief say: “Now for the heating, so you will be one with us.”
    The crowd of villagers parted to reveal a giant campfire blazing away in the middle of the village. On top of it was a huge steaming pot.
    Two men picked up Batman and began carrying him toward the steaming cauldron. The villagers became very excited. But Batman was getting concerned. He could actually see vegetables floating around inside the pot.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked the chief anxiously. “Put me in that?”
    “Yes—we are,” the chief replied. “It’s part of the process. It will change you … and it will change us.”
    “But—it looks too hot for me to go into,” Batman said, becoming very alarmed.
    The chief put his finger in the