Pirate Alley: A Novel (32 page)

*   *   *

I wandered out of the fortress into the night. Passed the sentries, who gave me the eye but didn’t stop me, and walked down the road that led to town. I checked, and no one followed me.

I was about halfway down when I passed Ricardo and his cameraman walking up. They ignored me. Just behind them came Jake Grafton and High Noon in Noon’s old station wagon. Noon was behind the wheel. I leaned on the driver’s door and got a snootful of gin smell. Apparently drunk driving wasn’t a traffic offense in Somalia.

“Too lazy to walk?” I asked Grafton.

“Mr. Noon and I are in conference.”

“I see that. You got any bright ideas on where the radio controls for the detonators are?”

“Mr. Noon assures me they are in Ragnar’s palace, third floor. And guarded.”

“What about hardwired triggers?”

“Geoff?”

“There’s one in the shack on the side of the hill. That black wire that runs from the entrance of the fort off down the hill.”

“Any others?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You want to bet nine hundred lives on that?”

“Geoff is pretty sure,” Grafton said.

“You seem to know a lot,” I said, trying to see his face.

“MI-6, old chap. That’s hush-hush, of course.”

“Righto.”

“Wear your headset. SEALs are going to assault the building. When they do, go in with them.”

“When, do you think?”

“Before dawn, I suppose. Your colleagues will be standing by with their Sakos to give you cover, and the marines have some stuff on the
Sultan.
” He sighed. “Let the SEALs do the fighting, if there is any.”

I was having my problems keeping my temper. “Jesus, where do you keep your crystal ball?” Amazingly, it didn’t occur to me just then that Grafton knew because he had scripted it. “Before dawn?” I asked.

“I suspect the Shabab crowd will assault Ragnar’s hideout, or he’ll sally forth to wipe them out. Ragnar and the boys are going to realize they’ve been had when they see the SEALs, so we are going to do our best to help Shabab come out on top. With serious casualties, of course.”

“Oh yeah.”

“If the pirates and Shabab dudes party as scheduled, we’ll invade tomorrow night.”

The light began to dawn. I’m kinda slow on the uptake, but I get stuff sooner or later. “And if they don’t?”

“We’ll improvise. Maybe go to Plan B. We’ll see.”

“Why don’t we just defend the fortress and hit the pirates and Shabab with air strikes from the carrier?”

Grafton shot me a sharp glance. “I considered that. I thought too many Somali civilians would probably get zapped, which would be politically incorrect. In this day and age you must win militarily
and
politically. I learned that in Vietnam 101.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Go up to the fortress and stay inside or on the roof until the fireworks start.”

I addressed Noon. “You got any pearls of wisdom or suggestions?” I figured an MI-6 agent who had spent the last ten years in this shithole might have more insight than Grafton or I did.

“The pirates and holy warriors have let you and Mr. Grafton walk around unmolested because they think you will make them rich. If disabused of that notion, they will kill you without a qualm. It will simply be business as usual with Ragnar. The Shabab fanatics will kill you for the fun of it.’’

I slapped the car door, and Noon drove off. Another little cloud of dust. I held my breath until it settled, then walked back up the hill.

I was worried. If I had known more about Grafton’s plan, I would have been petrified. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Sheikh Ragnar found out about the Rosen e-mail less than three hours after Rosen hit the
SEND
icon on his computer. The pirates and the Shabab had shortwave radio setups: the Shabab used theirs to communicate with fellow Islamic terrorists, and the pirates monitored international merchant ship traffic and the activities of the international antipiracy naval task force in Pirate Alley and the Indian Ocean.

The pirates’ allies got on the radio first with the news, which was headline stuff in America, Europe and Asia. Ragnar, his sons and his most trusted captains, including Mustafa al-Said, conferred in the penthouse of his lair. Al-Said pointed out that Rosen was a captive aboard
Sultan,
incommunicado. “What could he know?” he asked rhetorically.

Ragnar instinctively knew that the truth of the e-mail was not the issue. The only question that mattered was how it would be received by the local Shabab leaders, whom he assumed already had it or would get it within minutes. Would Yousef el-Din discount the e-mail as a Western provocation initiated by the infidel Americans, or would he suspect the statements might accurately predict the reaction of the pirates to Shabab treachery?

Ragnar was acutely aware that el-Din, a homicidal paranoid sociopath, would shoot first and think later. He began issuing orders to call his men to arms.

As Ragnar suspected, el-Din and his lieutenants didn’t even consider the possibility that the e-mail was a fraud. They heard about it from al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, where the news of Rosen’s e-mail was on television and the Internet. The Shabab indeed intended to betray the pirates, take the ransom money and kill all the hostages, so if the pirates learned of their plans, of course they would react violently. The only question in el-Din’s mind was whether he could strike before the pirates were ready to defend themselves. The holy warriors awoke their troops, who grabbed weapons and ammo and ran to their armed pickup trucks.

*   *   *

“The Shabab is on the move in Eyl West,” the drone controller reported to the Flag Ops Center aboard
Chosin Reservoir
. Everyone on the net heard the report in their headsets.

“They’re excited in Eyl East,” the drone operator reported less than a minute later. “Manning pickups, warming them up, armed men running to get aboard.” I was wearing a headset and recognized Wilbur’s voice.

I was standing with Jake Grafton, High Noon and the two Mossad agents Grafton had brought with him, Zahra and Ben, just inside the entrance to the fortress. Two emergency lanterns provided a little light, though not much. The Israelis were eyeing an Arab in decent, though rumpled, clothes who had had the ill luck to walk up on the group of strangers. The expression on his face was wondrous to behold as the fact sank in these two might be Mossad agents, or at least Israelis. Or perhaps it was just his conscience. He walked quickly away back into the gloom of the interior. The Israelis glanced at one another. I heard one say, “Mohammed Atom.”

A pickup with a machine gun in the bed, a technical, came racing up the hill just as Wilbur announced on the net, “Lots of action in Eyl West. Armed men running everywhere.” As I watched, a man got out of the passenger side of the pickup and conferred with the guards, who sent runners to pass the word to all the men in foxholes around the fortress.

Then the guy got back into the pickup and it roared off down the hill, its unmuffled exhaust rattling through the building as it faded.

When it was gone, I turned around, but the two Mossad agents had disappeared. “Who is Mohammed Atom?” I asked Grafton.

“An agent for Iranian interests throughout the Arab world. I think the guys would like to have a chat with him.”

*   *   *

The television news teams were flaked out in a shack a hundred yards or so south of Ragnar’s building, a shack with an old shirt for a door, candles for lights and a privy out back. The owner, a woman, was all smiles when they arrived, directed there by High Noon, who apparently knew everyone in town.

Sophia Donatelli got the best bed in the house, an old mattress suspended on ropes through a wooden frame. She inspected it while the BBC reporter, Rab Bishop, and Ricardo from Fox chattered away on their satellite telephones to their producers in England and America. Donatelli had seen worse accommodations, when she was just getting started in the business, and had thought that bug-infested beds and dirt floors were well behind her. She decided to sleep with her clothes on, as did everyone else. The ringing of a satellite telephone brought them awake about 3:00
A.M.
, which meant it was midnight in London and 7:00
P.M.
in New York. While Rab Bishop was listening to someone tell him of the Rosen e-mail, they heard truck engines start, men running and shouting, and saw pickup headlights spear the night.

Ricardo grabbed his satellite phone and was the first to charge out of the shack. The rest of the crews were right behind him. They paused in front of the shack to watch. The sound of a distant machine-gun burst was quite audible and made the men boarding the pickups pause to listen.

“Whatever is happening, we’ll have a devil of a time broadcasting it,” Rab Bishop remarked. “Still, I suppose we can try. Let’s get the generators going so we can datalink to the satellite.”

Ricardo ran toward Ragnar’s building. He was within feet of the door when he met a pirate coming out. The man had an AK at high port and was on a dead run. When he saw Ricardo with his satellite phone glued to his head, talking a blue streak, he halted.

He gestured once, back toward the south, and when Ricardo didn’t instantly obey, triggered a burst right by the reporter’s ear.

No fool, Ricardo turned and ran. Talking all the way, breathlessly. Literally a running commentary. His producer in the States put the conversation on the network. Within minutes, millions of people were listening to Ricardo’s voice. The audience grew exponentially. All over America, people stopped what they were doing to watch Fox and listen to Ricardo.

*   *   *

The SEALs came out of the ocean silently, almost invisibly. They were in black wet suits, had black balaclavas on their heads and wore night-vision goggles. They crawled up onto the beach and scanned the empty Eyl town square and Ragnar’s building with the night sights on their rifles.

Four pickups with machine guns surrounded Ragnar’s lair. Other pickups roared up the river road toward Eyl West. Sounds of gunfire and muzzle flashes came from that direction.

The SEAL team leader, Chief Petty Officer Al Dunn, scanned the dark city with his night-vision binoculars. He saw men moving from house to house, carrying weapons. No women. No kids. Just armed men. He counted … and quit when he reached a dozen.

Dunn keyed the mike on his headset. “Blue Leader from Red Leader. Let’s be ready with suppressing fire on those people in town when I give the word.”

“Roger, Red Leader.”

Aboard the
Sultan,
Bullet Bob Quinn settled in behind his .50-caliber sniper rifle. He could see people through his night-vision scope. His spotter, just beside him, would call his targets. Under the Rules of Engagement, he could only shoot people who had weapons. He relied upon his spotter to confirm the weapons.

Settling in a good shooting position with the rifle on a solid rest, loaded, Bullet Bob stared through his scope and watched the crosshairs move as the ship he was on rose on the ocean swells. The crosshairs moved regularly in a predictable, slow, sinuous dance.

The last of the pickups headed west on the river road, each crammed with armed men, some with RPG-7 launchers and bags of warheads, some with AKs, leaving only the four around Ragnar’s building.

Through his night sniper scope, Quinn studied the four machine-gun emplacements on Ragnar’s roof. He could see people moving around, standing up, looking here and there, carrying ammo belts.

Each gun was surrounded by a little wall of sandbags, making a nice little fortification for protection from small-arms fire. Nothing else. Still, since they were six stories above ground level, the machine-gun crews had positions that commanded the square and town.

Quinn took stock of his breathing and heart rate. Normal, he decided. He took several deep breaths, then willed himself into a shooter’s calm.

*   *   *

Aboard
Chosin Reservoir
Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington checked to see where his drones were, then the fighters from the carrier. They were airborne and in about five minutes would be at the Initial Point, where they would hold until needed. If they were needed. Their ability to hold was finite. Fuel was always a consideration. Tankers were in the air, but they could merely top off tanks, not keep a strike force airborne indefinitely.

The MEU was not ready to storm Eyl. Tomorrow it would be, but not tonight. Tomorrow marines would come ashore in armored personnel carriers to the north and south of town. They would land on the beaches and get ready to roll into Eyl. They could kill every pirate and holy warrior in the place, rescue the hostages and be out of there in a couple of hours. Tomorrow.

Grafton’s objective tonight was the radio controls for the bomb in the trenches around the fortress. The SEALs would neutralize the explosive potential of the cargo of the freighter grounded near it. If the trench bomb or shipload of fertilizer exploded, there would be no
Sultan
passengers or crew alive to rescue.

Jake Grafton wanted, if possible, to let the pirates and Shabab kill each other while he disabled the trench bomb. Every pirate and holy warrior who got launched for Paradise tonight was one less the marines and SEALs would have to face.

In the flag spaces aboard
Chosin Reservoir,
Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington tried not to think about the possibility of the bombs detonating. He already had SEALs on the beach and ships in the harbor. If those bombs exploded, he was going to lose American fighting men … and everyone in that fortress, including Jake Grafton, Toad’s friend and mentor for many years. Toad tried to take his mind off Jake Grafton. Stop worrying about the marines. About the SEALs. About the eight hundred and fifty civilians imprisoned in that fortress. Stop worrying about how their families would feel losing these people. Think about how to win
.

Toad knew what Grafton would say, because he knew Jake Grafton.
Put all those people out of your mind, Toad. Concentrate on the job in front of you. And with a free and easy mind, go forth and give battle.