Pirate Alley: A Novel (40 page)

Out at the airport, Willis Coffey looked at his watch, misread it and told the guys on his net to start shooting. The sniper rifle boomed, submachine guns opened fire, and within seconds all the Shabab warriors in the five positions they occupied around the airstrip were dead, wounded or standing with their hands up. The CIA team ceased fire and moved in.

As they did, one of the standing men leaped to a machine gun in a truck bed and cut loose. He managed to spray the area and wound a man before he was killed.

When the controller aboard ship said, “Go,” the SEALs on the beach cut loose with submachine guns and M-3s. Aboard
Sultan,
Quinn’s men opened up on the trucks with the Big Fifty.

On the upper deck, Vince fired his M-3 at the approaching boat. The charge literally went through the boat and detonated in the water, lifting the boat and breaking it in half. It quickly sank, taking most of the men with it. Two managed to stay afloat until the SEAL in the pilot sponson shot them; then they slipped under.

A Shabab lieutenant standing on the balcony of the lair saw the muzzle flashes coming from the beach, aimed his RPG-7 and triggered off a rocket. Fortunately he had launched an antiarmor warhead, which vented its main charge into the sand. One man was injured. Before the holy warrior could reload, he was cut down by a .338 Lapua Magnum slug fired by E.D.

The recoil of the Sako jerked the rifle off target, so E.D. brought it back to the balcony as he chambered another round. He looked for his man, and saw only a hand hanging over the lower railing.

I got him! Holy damn!

E.D. scanned with the rifle scope and found a man who had apparently bailed from a pickup running toward the entrance to the building. It was actually a fairly difficult shot at a moving target, but E.D. didn’t miss this time. The 250-grain bullet striking with about three tons of energy swept the man off his feet, killed him instantly and dropped him on the plaza like a sack of rocks, and continued on its way. It struck a stone a half mile out, ricocheted and plunged into the ground five miles southwest of Eyl.

Meanwhile the trucks in the plaza were being riddled. One was already on fire, with RPG rounds cooking off in the bed.

E.D. chambered another round.

*   *   *

Yousef el-Din heard the racket. It sounded as if World War III had started right outside, all at once. A fervid believer in the efficacy of treachery, he instinctively knew that the Americans had lied. They weren’t coming tomorrow with two tons of currency: They were here now with enough firepower to overwhelm the Shabab’s men, and quickly.

He extracted the radio controllers from his pocket—he had two—and turned them both on. Waited for the little green lights. First the
Sultan
prisoners.

He looked at the fortress, a massive dark shape up there against a dark sky. He pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

He pointed the device at the fortress and pushed the button repeatedly.

Those damned pirates! Doubtlessly they improperly installed the radio controls and detonator. Incompetent fools!

Well, he still had the unit to blow this building. The batteries and radio control and fuse were installed by al-Gaza, the Hamas expert. It would explode. But the time was not yet. He would explode it when the building was full of Americans. A true believer to the core, Yousef was ready to die. He would take the American infidels with him to Paradise to prove his faith to Allah.

Meanwhile he shouted down the staircase to the men on the floor below. They were armed with RPG-7s. “The fortress,” he shouted. “Shoot at the fortress!”

The fact of the matter was that the fort was a bit too far for the RPG-7 rockets, which had a maximum range of a thousand yards, a few feet more than half a mile. Unfortunately, the fort was almost six thousand feet away from the lair. Yousef didn’t know the range of the rockets; technical matters were a bit beyond him. On the floor below three men fired rockets—lots of back blast that nearly asphyxiated them and their loaders on the spot—that went zipping off trailing fire from their rocket exhaust. The trajectory of one of the rockets was insufficiently elevated; it went into the ground and exploded at eight hundred yards. The other two were elevated enough, but the warheads self-destructed at a thousand yards, making a flash and spraying shrapnel in a cone-shaped pattern ahead of them.

From the lair, the fact that the rockets hadn’t reached the target was not readily discernible in the darkness. Looking up the fiery trail, it appeared the flashes had actually occurred on or around the fortress.

“More,” el-Din roared down the staircase. “Shoot, shoot, shoot at the infidel dogs!”

Three more grenades roared out on their rockets, trailing fire.

The second salvo was the last. The Big Fifty aboard
Sultan
chewed into the room in a long rolling burst. When it ended, the three RPG men and their three loaders were dead or bleeding to death.

Meanwhile, on the plaza below, all six of the pickups were either on fire or being riddled with automatic gunfire. A few of the men were still alive, huddling under a truck chassis or behind the stones around the fire pit. A thoughtful observer would note that the scene looked much like the one last night, only the actors were Shabab warriors, not pirates.

Amazingly, the evening fire in the cooking pit was still burning. Its glare competed with the light from the burning trucks. Several of the tires had caught fire, and they burned with little intensity but gave off copious quantities of noxious black smoke. There was little wind, so the tire smoke lay over the area like fog.

The generator in the basement of the lair was still running fine. The lights were still on in the old pile, which was beginning to resemble a burned-out tenement building in Philadelphia or the Bronx.

*   *   *

The marines were advancing toward the town. They had to be careful when they used their weapons so they wouldn’t shoot each other. They came under fire from fighters in the brush and those in buildings or in pickups. Machine guns chattered, RPGs lit up the night, and assault rifles belched bursts.

At the airport, the parachutists were rounding up surviving Shabab fighters. They collected eight who were uninjured and three with bullet wounds. All eleven had their hands bound behind them with plastic ties, and their ankles tied together. The wounded were not treated.

Some of the Shabab warriors had hit the brush, running for their lives. The lieutenant in charge had expected that, and he didn’t have the people or time to chase them. He merely kept some men on guard and hoped the Somalis kept right on running.

*   *   *

Ricardo, Sophia Donatelli and Rab Bishop from the BBC were beside themselves. They could hear the battle going on in the town, but they were stuck in this damned old pile of rocks. They made a corporate decision to move operations to the roof, film what they could, and send it to the satellites whenever they could get the generators running. If ever.

As they raced for the stairs carrying armloads of equipment, they passed by two Royal Marines in battle dress standing near the entrance with their weapons. Ricardo and Rab Bishop did a double take.

“I say, I think the cavalry is here,” Bishop said.

“Damn, we’re gonna get rescued,” Ricardo echoed.

“Let’s adjourn to the roof and get these cameras grinding,” Sophia Donatelli told them. “We can interview the shooters later.”

So they went. The cameras were on, recording muzzle flashes and RPG launchings, when a helicopter went over with its machine guns blazing at the lair.

Ricardo was beside himself.

“We’re going to get rescued,” he screamed into his mike, and the digital camera recorded it on the sound track.

This was the scene when the SEALs on the beach charged the lair. The Big Fifty aboard
Sultan
laid down covering fire; helicopters materialized out of the darkness and added their machine guns to the fusillade. The cameras on the fortress roof caught it all, for later rebroadcast.

The fusillade stopped as the SEALs gained the lobby. They went up the stairs in pairs, alert for grenades or booby traps. The surviving Shabab warriors were shell-shocked. They offered no resistance, so were quickly immobilized with plastic ties on wrists and ankles, searched for weapons and radio controllers, and left where they lay.

In the penthouse Yousef heard the infidels’ footsteps thundering on the stairs, the shouts, the occasional shots, and knew the moment had come to leave this earth for Paradise.

He pushed the button on the controller that was to trigger the explosives in the basement, the trigger that the Hamas expert had assured him would work. The explosion al-Gaza swore would take him, el-Din and a hundred infidels to Paradise.

He pushed the button … and nothing happened.

El-Din’s bodyguard had seen what the Shabab leader was doing, tossed down his weapon and curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Sixteen years old, he had been herding goats until six months ago, and had never imagined what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of a barrage from automatic weapons wielded by a modern military force. His nerves were shot. He was incapable of even standing.

As the SEALS topped the stairs, they saw Yousef el-Din viciously kicking the boy lying in the rubble, and cursing him and his ancestors. The SEALs swarmed them both, immobilized them in seconds with plastic ties and confiscated the radio controllers.

Outside the shooting was dying down. A burst or two now and then, and silence for long seconds. Then nothing.

In the fortress, people began cheering as the shooting trickled off. When the night was silent they filled the old stone fortress with shouts of joy and cheering.

*   *   *

One of the SEALS found Grafton and me in the basement, ready for anything. The generator was still snoring, the light was on, and the wet-suit-clad man with a submachine gun looked like an apparition from the black lagoon. Still, he was the best sight I had seen in years. I almost kissed him while he tried to salute Jake Grafton.

“Admiral Grafton, Admiral Tarkington’s compliments, sir. He said we would find you and Mr. Carmellini in the basement.”

Even though he wasn’t in uniform, Grafton saluted him back. “The fortress? The hostages?”

“They’re okay, sir. The building is still standing. The Royal Marines secured it.”

Grafton got a sappy grin on his face, grabbed the SEAL, who was built like a middleweight prizefighter, and gave him a hug that nearly crushed him.

We went up the stairs, through the lobby, and walked out onto the plaza. The stench of burning trucks and tires almost gagged me. We were just in time to hear the swelling of jet engines passing overhead.

“Globemasters,” he said by way of explanation. “C-17s. We’re flying the hostages out of here.”

Even as he spoke, two choppers with landing lights ablaze were landing on the roof of the fortress to pick up people and transport them to the airport. They settled in like birds on their nests. Over the water were other choppers, all with their external lights shining brightly and landing lights stabbing the darkness.

Grafton was soon surrounded by officers, SEALs and marines. The senior marine was Colonel Zakhem. He saluted, and Jake Grafton grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go. Kept pumping it.

I wandered off and found a place to sit. My leg was throbbing and I felt drained. Exhausted.

I looked at my watch. Only nine thirty. The whole damn thing hadn’t taken an hour.

*   *   *

The arrival of the choppers, the news that they were leaving tonight, now, flying home, reduced many of the hostages to tears. Suzanne and Irene cried and laughed at the same time and hugged each other fiercely, then started hugging everyone in sight.

The
Sultan
’s crew began herding passengers up the stairs to the roof in groups of twelve or so. There they were led to the idling choppers and helped aboard. When the chopper crew made a sign, the passengers backed away to wait for the next one, which was hovering nearby. The loaded chopper lifted off and the next one landed.

Two marine armored personnel carriers pulled up to the door, and the Royal Marines led people out. Someone suggested the women leave first, but Arch Penney nixed that. Families, he said. Keep the families together. So they went in couples, usually holding hands, carrying what little they had. Some were sobbing, all were joyously happy.

Arch Penney stood with the Royal Marine lieutenant keeping an eye on the operation, and he wore a broad smile.

Julie and Marjorie materialized beside him. “Go,” he said. “You two get on the next vehicle. I’ll be along after a while.”

“We’ll wait for you.”

“I’ll see you wherever the planes take us. I have to ensure we get all the crew out of here.”

Julie locked him in a hug, and Marjorie did likewise. And they went.

Penney murmured the names of his passengers, all those he knew, as they walked past. “Mr. Jones, Harriet, Reverend Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen … Benny. I’m sorry about all this. I’ll get your address from the company and write you when I have time. Thank you for your courage and example.”

Others got the same treatment. Von Platen with his three friends, a farm implement dealer from Iowa, a bookseller from Birmingham, a retired schoolteacher and her companion from Stoke-on-Trent …

Over their heads the helicopters were coming and going. More APCs rolled up, more smiling marines helped people into them …

Arch Penney wiped the tears from his eyes and kept shaking hands.

*   *   *

Sitting in the plaza made me restless. Everyone was busy except me. I tried my headset. “E.D.?”

No answer. I tried three or four more times, but he didn’t reply. Willis Coffey called from the airport and wanted to tell me all about what had happened out there, but the controller aboard ship shut him up with a curt admonition to keep the net clear.

The shooting seemed to have stopped, but who knew? Anyone could take a potshot at an infidel at any time. I kept my Kimber in my hand and started walking toward the location where I had left E.D.