The Aden Effect (16 page)

“Shadows are longest with the sunrise or sunset,” he said, unusually pensive. “Have you seen much of the Chinese here?”

“No, but my sources say they have a lot of access to the Yemeni government.”

“Good sources?”

C. J. paused. “The Indian ambassador. Gavaskar.”

“How well do you know . . . him? Her?”

“Him. We've met several times. At first he was cautious, as if he was assessing my reaction to everything he said. He didn't have much to say in our first few meetings, but then he started to offer up more information than I'd asked for.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“I've corroborated everything he's told me. If he's trying to pull one over on me, he's doing a damn good job. No, I think he wants to work with us somehow but is waiting for the right moment.”

“What would they gain by working with us here?”

“The same thing the Chinese are after, probably—oil.”

“I don't know, C. J. It's not called the Indian Ocean for nothing. Bill said the Chinese have been active all over the place. Maybe Ambassador Gavaskar is looking for an ally to fend them off.”

“I've thought of that. We don't have any assets here that they could use. Maybe they're setting the stage just in case there's an opportunity.” Her voice trailed off as she contemplated the possible chess moves on an imaginary three-sided board. Then she changed the subject. “Connor, I want to run something else by you. I want to conduct a humanitarian assistance operation. Not just an American effort, though. I would contact every NGO I know to bring people together for this.”

“Here?”

“No. Socotra. An earthquake did a lot of damage to some of the towns along the island's northern coast. It wasn't a big enough catastrophe to merit attention internationally—only a few deaths—but as I understand it the Yemeni government isn't doing much to help. We could bring medical staff, construction aid, supplies. What do you think?”

“That depends,” Stark mused. “Are you asking from a political or a security perspective?”

“Well, politically, we'd have to run it by the Yemenis, of course. If we propose this publicly, it would be like telling the Socotrans—and mainland Yemenis too—that the government is either unable to address their needs or doesn't care. That would risk a destabilized government with possibly regional implications. The ruling family isn't held in terribly high regard as it is. But it's the security aspects I'd like advice on.”

Stark thought for a moment and then said doubtfully, “Honestly, from a security standpoint it would be a nightmare. If we can't protect our own assets with what we have now, how can we put humanitarian workers at risk?”

“You're right. I've been thinking the same thing. But there has to be some way to do this. It's important.”

Connor couldn't mistake the focused look in her eyes. She'd looked the same way when she was about to conduct a legislative end-run in the Senate for their old boss. She wasn't going to give up on this idea. “I'll put out some feelers to the Yemenis and work on the security issue. If we can find a way around those two things, then I'm in.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. ‘I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'”

“Damn, now I know we're dead in the water,” she said with a grin. Connor responded in kind and rose to leave.

“Connor?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we on the same team?”

“No,” he curtly replied as he left the room.

Abdi Mohammed Asha looked forward to relaxing in the seaside hotel in this pearl of a city on the Yemeni coastline. Mukalla reminded him of the home he missed—far from the ragged city of snow and the Americans and the Bantu émigrés he had left behind in the United States. There was a reason Bantus were shunned in Somalia, and even here in Yemen. They were beneath him, beneath his clan. But they had had their uses. And Asha had made good use of the skills he had learned from his former warlord. That economically battered American city had welcomed the Bantus with open arms and open wallets, and when he arrived he took what little money they had. He threatened the men, he threatened the women; and every one of them paid a protection fee. One of the Bantus had tried to resist early on by threatening to report him to the authorities. His body was found in the river the next day. After that the Bantus paid him without question.

His distaste for the Bantus ran deep, but the people he truly abhorred were the do-gooder college students at Antioch College who tried so hard to help the Bantus assimilate into a culture that hadn't asked for them and didn't want them. The Antioch students, spoiled children of soft Americans, were so easy to manipulate, so gullible. They wanted to know about Somali culture, history,
and language. They wanted to know what it was like to live under cruel warlords. So Asha told them. He had been just a simple fisherman, he told them. And the bad warlords took his fish, his boat, and his nets, leaving him with nothing. The students cried for poor Asha, so happy that he was now living in Antioch—not that a single one of
them
would ever deign to live there. After four years they drove off in the BMWs provided by their parents and fought for economic justice. In the meantime, they talked to him and he quietly sold them khat. He took particular pleasure in using the boy whose father ran American foreign policy, a foreign policy that hurt the Somali warlords and the people they called “pirates,” as his mule.

The luxurious hotel pleased him. He was a man of power again, and such men deserved the very best. Mukalla had once been a powerful city, the capital of the governorate of Ghaydah, and young Ahmed al-Ghaydah himself had reserved this spacious room overlooking the Gulf of Aden. Asha was safe here. Once Hu's plane had taken him from England to Yemen, Asha had taken no chances, used no credit cards. No one would find him. He would travel between Yemen and Somalia only by boat.

Asha admired his image in the mirror as he rubbed Euphoria into his face and neck. Then, locking the door carefully behind him, he went to Ahmed's house in the city, where they smoked apricot-flavored
shisha
, an indulgence he had greatly missed in his exile. Asha exhaled, producing a great cloud of smoke. “Excellent, Ahmed, Allah be praised.”

Al-Ghaydah leaned back against his cushion. “Faisal's plans are going well, Abdi Mohammed.”

“Do we have enough people now?”

“Yes, yes,” al-Ghaydah nodded. “They have been gaining experience. They tested two bombs near the U.S. embassy. One nearly killed our own deputy foreign minister.”

“If he is killed with the Americans, then
inshallah
.”

Al-Ghaydah agreed. “
Inshallah
.”

“When is the next attack?”

“Faisal has told them to try again in two days. The ambassador seldom leaves the compound now, so opportunities are few.”

“Then how do they know when to attack?”

“She asks for meetings to express her government's concerns about the oil fields and the pirates.” They both laughed. “Alas, the Foreign Ministry is a very
busy place, and meetings are very difficult to schedule. Tomorrow, she will receive an invitation to the foreign minister's office. She will have to leave the compound to attend this meeting.”

“Allah be praised. I will go to Sana'a to watch this.”

“They will be honored if you join them. What else is required of us, Abdi Mohammed?”

“That is for Faisal to say.”

T
he Seahawk helicopter—Batwing 58—had been hovering for ten minutes when the bridge ordered Bobby Fisk's VBSS team away. Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure teams had operated for years in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, but this would be the first VBSS launched from the
Bennington
during this deployment. Bobby was feeling a range of emotions— excitement and pride to be part of the team, and just a bit nervous too.

Boarding ships in the region to search for illegal cargo was one of the
Bennington
's duties, by authority of a United Nations resolution. Despite the cruiser's time on station, though, it had stopped no ships at all before this one, suspicious or otherwise. The OD had several times spotted a suspicious dhow and asked the captain if he wanted to send the VBSS team out on an RHIB—a rigid-hulled inflatable boat—to conduct an inspection. The CO's responses were as formulaic on the bridge as they were in the wardroom: “Not this time. They don't look suspicious.” In each case, the ship in question had been several miles away. Bobby had concluded that the CO had excellent vision.

The
Bennington
's patrol area was a hundred miles east of Socotra. Radar spotted the first ship of the day as the crew was eating lunch on Slider Tuesday— “sliders” being the well-earned Navy slang for greasy hamburgers. The ship was an old Offshore Supply Vessel (OSV) with a distinctly high forward superstructure and a flat stern section for carrying supplies. Batwing 58, flying at five thousand feet, had observed the ship making wide, slow turns at less than six knots. With Five-Eight's fuel running low, Batwing 57 was rolled out to protect what was expected to be the first boarding of the deployment.

The VBSS team found a compliant target. The suspect OSV's crew of eighteen was huddled at the bow watching the menacing helicopter that hovered broad on the starboard bow, its GAU-16 .50-caliber machine gun trained out toward the ship in order to provide the boarding team overwatch and, if necessary, fire support. Bobby was third over the side and onto the main cargo deck, which was packed with dozens of oil drums. Bobby motioned to two of the team members to check the drums while he went forward with an Arabic-speaking team member, glad that Fifth Fleet—or perhaps more accurately a friend at Fifth Fleet—had issued a directive that an Arabic speaker be present on the boarding team.

Bobby and the translator took each member of the OSV crew aside individually for questioning. No one knew anything about the ship's destination or about the drums of fuel on its deck. After finishing with the last crew member, Bobby checked his watch. Fifth Fleet orders specified a minimum of two hours for each boarding. Only twenty minutes of those two hours remained. He knew the captain would not allow the inspection to go on any longer than the bare minimum required.

Bobby summoned most of his team members aft to coordinate their findings. Half of the fuel drums were full. The ship carried far more food stores than a crew of eighteen could possibly need, even if they stayed at sea for a month. There was no paperwork on the ship. It all looked very suspicious to him. He radioed his findings to the cruiser.

His earpiece came alive. “Hessian, Hessian, Batwing Five-Seven. Be advised of a fast-approaching skiff approximately one-six nautical miles to the east.” Bobby stood by for orders from the
Bennington
. There were only two reasons for the skiff to be heading this way. Either it was a pirate skiff looking for a victim to attack, or—he looked at the oil drums and thought of the food— this was a mother ship, a mobile base of operations that allowed small skiffs to operate hundreds of miles offshore. Air Boss had explained some of the methods the helos could use against suspected pirate skiffs. This was going to be a perfect opportunity to witness them.

But he had heard nothing from the cruiser. The sound of Batwing's rotors faded as it moved east to investigate. Soon the skiff would see the cruiser's silhouette and speed away.

“
Bennington
, Batwing Five-Seven. Skiff has turned south and is moving off at high speed. Requesting permission to pursue and stop.”

The captain's voice rang out almost immediately. “All units are ordered to return to base pursuant to higher directives.”

“Well, sure,” Bobby said to himself. “The damn skiff would be a new boarding and we'd have to start the time clock again. And the captain would have to waste two whole hours more of fuel.” Midway through the final word of the sentence, Bobby realized that his mike was on.
Oh, shit
! He braced for the reaction.

“All units, return immediately. Hessian team leader, report to me on arrival.” Bobby suddenly felt ill. The slider and creamed spinach he'd eaten for lunch were on their way back up. He leaned over the leeward side of the ship and vomited as the OSV's crew laughed. The chief petty officer of the boarding team patted Bobby on the back. “Don't worry about it, sir. Sometimes the sea gives to us, and sometimes we give to the sea. Sometimes it's not pretty either way.”

Faisal could not believe his good fortune. Allah had indeed blessed him and his crew. The stupid Americans had boarded his ship and had seen the fuel drums but had not discovered the weapons hidden in a submerged tethered container. He had spoken only in Arabic to the translator when questioned and feigned ignorance of English as well as of regional pirates. Then he heard them called away and watched the officer vomit. Had the young officer disappointed the father of the ship?
Disappointing one's father can be daunting
, he reflected,
sometimes a life-changing thing
.