The Pirate Hunters (24 page)

The pirates on the bridge all breathed a sigh of relief. The worst had passed. They could now proceed with their plan.

The pirates had planned the taking of the
Vidynut
for months. They’d monitored the Indian Navy’s public Web site, where the admirals bragged about their new warship and its sea trials and how the revolutionary vessel would be available for foreign sales someday.

This particular gang of pirates—the Swoomi Clan—had hijacked cargo ships off Africa before and had extracted million-dollar ransoms in return of vessels and crews. It sounded like a lot of money, but after dividing it up among the pirate hierarchy, their clan leaders, the Muslim radicals who
provided them with the weapons and fuel, and the Eastern Europe an cartels that handled the negotiations, there wasn’t a lot left to go around.

That’s when they’d hit on the idea of taking the
Vidynut
, knowing that for the same amount of work, and just a little more travel, they could hold the warship for tens of millions of dollars—with no middlemen looking for a cut.

They had prepared very carefully for the takeover, attending to every detail, right down to how they would get rid of the crew. As a way of making their reputation, part of their plan was to videotape the crew’s execution and then release the tape to the jihadist media, where they knew it would get widespread airplay and garner their gang a lot of respect.

What they hadn’t anticipated was their video camera’s battery pack running out of power. Originally, they were going to execute the crew the night they took over the ship. But with no power for the video, the crew’s death sentence had to be postponed.

But now, with the storm subsiding and the camera’s battery pack charged again, it was time to move to this next step.

“Start bringing them up,” the gang leader told his men as soon as he detected those first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. “We’ll do them five at a time.”

His men responded by pulling back the safeties on their AK-47s.

But the top pirate held up his hand.

“But we won’t waste bullets,” he said. He pulled his razor-sharp machete from his belt. “We’ll cut them to death instead.”

THE SLOWLY RISING
sun continued to burn its way through what remained of the storm clouds, making the new day hot and humid. A thick haze enveloped the surface of the water.

The pirates went to the bottom of the boat and opened the bilge compartment. They dragged out five of the Indian crew-men and tied their hands behind their backs with duct tape. Forced up to the main deck, the terrified sailors found more pirates waiting for them. All were chewing qat and brandishing machetes.

The Indian sailors were pushed to the mid deck next to the superstructure and made to kneel. Their heads were put on the deck railing and held down by the pirates’ feet. There was much chatter among the hijackers as the qat began to take effect. Some of the pirates were sharpening their knives; others were pushing and squabbling with each other as to who would take the first bloody swing.

Finally, the pirates decided that the executioners would be selected based on seniority. The first victim, the sailor who was unlucky enough to be at the end of the group of five, was the ship’s cook. He was wailing uncontrollably; he knew what was coming.

Two pirates readjusted his head on the railing, ripping his shirt back so his executioner would have a better view of his neck. The executioner laid his machete on the man’s nape and cut it slightly, giving him a mark to aim for.

The executioner then let out a growl, raised the razor-sharp knife over his head, and started to bring it down—when the pirate commander screamed from the bridge.

He stopped in mid-swing.

“The camera is in the wrong position!” the leader yelled down to them. “The sunlight is going directly into the lens. We won’t be able to see a thing.”

The pirates moved the small 8mm camera around to a handful of locations, arguing about the best place to film the beheadings. Meanwhile, the five Indian sailors were still being held in place, terrified by what was going on around them.

Finally, all was ready again. The first victim was once again held down. The video camera began rolling. The victim began wailing again. The executioner raised his machete once again—and once again began to swing. But at that moment, the boat was hit by a rogue wave, a leftover from the storm. It was enough to knock the executioner off-balance. The machete came down—but it missed the man’s neck, slicing into his shoulder instead.

The victim let out a horrifying scream as his blood started dripping onto the deck. The other pirates laughed and started taunting the executioner for his bad aim. The assassin spit out
his wad of used qat; it disappeared into the low haze still surrounding the ship. He looked up at his commander, watching it all from the bridge of the ship, and grunted once more in determination.

He raised the machete a third time and now swung it with anger. But again, halfway down, the ship was suddenly slammed by something much stronger than a rogue wave. This time the entire vessel shook from stem to stern, so much that it knocked all the pirates off their feet, the executioner included.

The ship had hit something.

Or more accurately, something had hit the ship.

There was a monstrous screeching noise at the same time as the blow; the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal.

All this occurred simultaneously, and it took a few moments for the pirates to realize what had happened: An old, rusty freighter had come out of nowhere and rammed the Indian warship so violently it had opened up a gaping hole on the aft starboard side.

Before the pirates could react, this ship hit the
Vidynut
again, this time much harder, further opening the gash it had made. This collision was so severe, the
Vidynut
went over at least thirty degrees, almost capsizing.

Several pirates were thrown into the water. Automated warning signals started going off all over the warship as it painfully righted itself. In the confusion, the five Indian sailors marked for execution were able to scramble away.

All in a matter of seconds.

The dumbfounded pirates thought this old freighter had simply struck the warship by accident. But when the freighter plowed into the
Vidynut
a third time, this collision more violent than the first two, they knew it was no accident. This third blow hit them with such force, the snout of the freighter was now stuck in the gash it had created on the side of the warship.

The pirates panicked. None of this was making sense. That’s when they saw four people—an enormous white man and three Africans—aiming a large gun from the mid deck of
the freighter back toward the rear of the
Vidynut
. These men fired this gun as if they were trying to hit the
Vidynut
’s propellers, but the angle was all wrong and the still-choppy seas caused the big gun to widely miss its mark. Its shell instead struck the ship’s stylish exhaust housing, blowing it to pieces.

Those few pirates who weren’t in complete shock tried firing at the men on the freighter. They had anticipated some kind of a rescue attempt might be made on the Indian ship, but had been expecting helicopters or mighty naval ships from the United States or somewhere. It just did not compute that an old rusty ship like this would carry such a powerful gun.

The men on the freighter ignored the pirates’ gunfire and loaded the gun again. They aimed it crudely, once more using nothing but raw muscle-power to move it farther down the deck, and fired again. But as before, the rolling seas and the bad angle prevented an accurate shot on the propellers. Their second shell took off the
Vidynut
’s entire main deck stern section with a massive explosion.

And seconds later, a fire broke out on the next deck below.

NOLAN WAS WATCHING
all this while dangling from the top of the DUS-7’s forward starboard cargo mast.

“I knew aiming that damn thing would be a problem,” he thought, swinging around to get a better view of Gunner and three of the Senegals as they struggled to move the two-ton artillery piece even farther down the deck. “It will be impossible to hit the propellers now.”

He looked over at Crash, who was hanging from the next cargo mast over.

“Stay cool!” he yelled over to him. “Wait for my signal.”

“You got it!” Crash yelled back.

Just how they made it here, and how they found the
Vidynut
in the middle of the vast ocean, in the middle of the massive storm, with not even the basic search coordinates, was almost inexplicable. Nolan was hardly a religious man, or a superstitious one. But after what had happened in the past few hours, he was considering becoming a little bit of both.

They had spent a good part of the night caught in the middle of the typhoon. Not just high seas, not just waves crashing against the freighter’s battered hull: The decks were lit up by so many lightning flashes, the interior of the ship was bright as daytime. The winds had howled like a chorus of banshees. More times than anyone could count, the ship almost went over. They lost their GPS system and the radio. When both of the ship’s water pumps burnt out from overuse, the crew thought they’d met their end. Even the Senegals, with thousands of years of seafaring excellence in their DNA, grew nervous.

At the height of the gale, Crash and Gunner, remembering their experience on the ground in Indonesia, fled to the ship’s galley and hastily made good-luck onion bags for every member of the crew. They insisted everyone wear them around their necks, and no one turned them down. They also tacked onion bags all over the engine room, and spread sugar all over the bridge.

At first, none of the mumbo jumbo appeared to do any good. The ship was lifted out of the water several times by waves that seemed impossibly high. The lightning grew even fiercer and more frequent. The wind took off their communications mast and even lifted their anchor chain, blowing it right off the deck.

Then, at one point, all four of the cargo masts began glowing with the most fantastic light—as if the lightning that had hit them had also inhabited them. It was frightening and fascinating.

St. Elmo’s Fire . . .

That’s what the Senegals began shouting. Nolan had never seen anything like it. None of them had. At one point, it was so bright it seemed as if the entire ship was about to burst into flames.

But then a gigantic wave hit the
Dustboat
head on and washed right over them. And when they emerged from the other side of the deluge, the mysterious light was gone. They soldiered on from that point, holding on tight, their onion bags swinging around their necks, and gradually the storm went away.

And when the sun came up, not knowing where they were, or even what direction they were going, what did they see through the haze, not a mile away?

The
Vidynut.
Still heading west.

Nolan had never experienced anything like it.

But miracle, good luck, or whatever, it meant their “simple” plan to recover the Indian warship had also gone up in smoke. Because by using their long-range night-vision scopes, they could see the executions of the Indian sailors were about to take place on the deck of the warship. They could actually see the machetes glistening in the early-morning sun.

To the team’s credit, there was no discussion about it. No thoughts of payment versus humanity. On Nolan’s orders, the Senegals went to full double power, and in the only way they could think of disrupting what was sure to be a bloody slaughter, they T-boned the
Vidynut
going a full forty-two knots, knocking it back nearly twenty feet.

This collision, and the second, even more violent one, probably would have been enough. It was not part of any plan to get stuck in the side of the warship. But that’s what happened when they hit the
Vidynut
the third time, melding them together like a pair of unlikely Siamese twins. Try as they might, the Senegals on the bridge just could not get the two ships to separate.

This forced Gunner to move the big gun quickly to the stern, to try to get a shot at the
Vidynut
’s propellers, the one remaining component from their original plan that might work. But again, the firing angle was all wrong—and as a result, they’d taken out the ship’s exhaust stack and a large portion of the stern main deck. And they’d also started a fire. This on a ship they were supposed to be recovering intact.

But they couldn’t think about that now. The real question was, what to do next?

The rules had changed. The warship’s crew was still alive, or at least some of them were. Whiskey had to save them. But
how
could they get over to the warship to do this? There was no way they could use ladders or gangplanks. And it was too long of a jump from where the
Dustboat
had lodged itself in
the
Vidynut.
Plus, trying to use the unarmed helicopter, either to drop them on the ship or to actually land on it somewhere, would be too dangerous. This left only one way to board it: swinging over by a rope.

That’s why Nolan was up on the cargo mast.

One way the team had tried to stay in shape during their dash from Yemen to Indonesia was shimmying up and down the DUS-7’s cargo masts, a throwback to their old Delta obstacle-course days. So hanging from the top of the forty-foot-tall mast was not foreign to them. But swinging from one ship to another? That would be different.

Nolan was dressed in his black camouflage suit and had his M4 slung over his shoulder. He was carrying a bag of hand grenades: some flash, some frags. He also had a large knife given to him by the Senegals.

Crash was similarly dressed and equipped, though he still had a bandage around his head. Nolan yelled over to him: “Are you ready?”

Crash yelled back: “Absolutely!”

Their ropes were attached to the tops of portside cargo masts. They had knots on the ends for them to hold on to. They would have to jump off the starboard mast, swing over the deck of DUS-7, past the portside mast, back up into the air, then let go and land on the Indian warship. Even during the most extensive Delta Force training, Nolan had never done anything like this.