Hunt the Scorpion

Chapter Two

Fifty minutes of bouncing around in the sky later, the six SEALs were in their black skin suits, ready to jump. Crocker leaned out the side door of the Knighthawk, trying to locate the MSC Contessa ahead. The light mist that fell dampened his face and hair. That and the cloud cover made visibility problematic, which meant that they had to rely on the helo’s radar.

The pilot kept his eyes focused on two green blips on the screen that appeared practically on top of each other east of the coastal town of Eyl-part of Puntland, the northeast corner of Somalia, which had declared itself an autonomous state in 1998.

When the helicopter got within two miles of the vessels, the pilot spoke into his headset. “Looks like they’ve both anchored off the coast.”

“They’ve stopped moving?”

“Correct.”

“Two vessels?” Crocker asked.

“Yeah, the cargo ship and the launch.”

“At what location?”

“Approximately fifteen miles off the coast. Direction…east.”

“Interesting.”

Crocker could understand the pirates commandeering the ship and anchoring it in friendly waters while they negotiated ransom. That was SOP in such cases. But what was the launch doing there?

The pilot’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “Signal when you’re ready for extraction.”

“Will do. And thanks for the lift.”

“Godspeed.”

The pilot lowered the helo within forty feet of the ocean and flipped a switch, which changed the light inside the starboard door from red to green. Crocker gave his men the signal to go. They pushed out the two Zodiacs and then the men fast-roped down-Ritchie first, followed by Akil, Davis, Mancini, Cal, and Crocker.

Lastly the copilot lowered their equipment-engines, paddles, Drägers and related dive equipment, fuel bladders, watertight weapons bags, telescopic pole with caving ladder attached.

Each three-man squad moved expertly, Davis, Akil, and Crocker in Zodiac 1 and Mancini, Ritchie, and Cal in 2. Each man knew what he was supposed to do: connect the engines and get them started, establish direction, comm. Check gear and weapons.

Within three minutes they had the motors running and were on their way, water slapping the bows, the boats twisting violently from side to side.

Crocker felt the adrenaline slam into his veins-that welcome burst of energy that produced a sense of invincibility. He lived for moments like this.

The warm air and faint scent of rot and tropical flowers reminded him of the times he’d operated in Somalia before. All hair-raising and life-threatening. Each time he left injured or sick. It was a country that had come apart at the seams in the early ’80s and never managed to pull itself back together. An anarchic mess of young gangs and drug lords armed with AKs and rocket-propelled grenades. Somalia seemed many centuries away from the social norms and political stability enjoyed in the U.S. and even other African countries. Much of which, he thought, people back home took for granted as they sat in their easy chairs watching TV.

He’d save that thought for another time.

Now he was trying to locate a dark shape ahead, which was difficult through the clouds, the spray from the bow, and especially the pitching of the Zodiac.

“You see anything?” he shouted at Davis.

“Fuck, no!”

Be a real shame if we can’t even find it.

“There it is!” Akil exclaimed from behind them. “Eleven o’clock.”

Crocker wiped the moisture off the lens of his night-vision goggles and looked again. This time he located a triangular-shaped blotch with a smaller, indistinct form beside it.

“Bingo! Good eyes.”

Akil quickly adjusted the direction of the Zodiac until Davis held up a hand and shouted, “Now we’re on course!”

“Nice work, huh?”

“That’s what you get paid the big money for.”

“Sit back and enjoy the ride!”

The view through Crocker’s NVGs was anything but steady. The rubber duckie climbed up the crest of an oncoming wave, then dropped and slammed hard at the bottom, tossing the contents of his stomach up and down. The swells seemed to be growing bigger, which indicated that they were approaching the coast.

He turned back and spoke to Akil-more like shouted into his ear. “When I give the signal, cut the engines.” They needed to go in undetected.

Akil: “You need me to hold your hand, too?”

“We’ll dive from about a thousand meters.”

“Nice night for a swim.”

“Get an exact bearing.”

“I did that already, boss. What kind of fucking navigator do you think I am?”

“A wiseass one I’ve got to constantly check on.”

“Ha. Ha!”

He’d done hundreds of VBSSs (Visit, Board, Search and Seizure operations) in his career, in the Middle East and Central and South America. He’d also been on dozens of hostage-rescue ops-Christian missionaries in Afghanistan, kidnapped oil company execs in Colombia.

Crocker waited until the ship grew bigger in his NVGs, then held up his fist. “Kill it here. Stop!”

Akil cut the engine on Zodiac 1. Ritchie, piloting Zodiac 2 behind them, did the same. As the current tossed them up and down, side to side, the SEALs in both boats quickly donned masks and Drägers, grabbed gear and waterproof weapons bags, then slid into the Indian Ocean.

They swam in order, Akil, Crocker, Mancini, Davis, Cal, Ritchie, all holding on to the five-foot telescopic pole with its attached caving ladder. They moved at the same speed, same depth-approximately twenty feet under the surface-the way they’d been trained when they were part of Green Team, the four-month training course required to get onto an assault team and ST-6.

The water was cool and dark. Visibility was terrible, barely enough to see the luminescent dials on their depth gauges, compasses, and Tudor dive watches. The German Drägers strapped to their chests fed them pure oxygen so no bubbles would escape to the surface to give away their position.

Akil, the primary navigator, focused on his dive compass. Crocker kept time and counted kicks. He knew exactly how many kicks it took to swim one hundred yards. Because they were swimming against the current, they had to kick harder than normal. Thirty minutes, forty, fifty, until Crocker figured they were getting close.

Although visibility was limited, the last thing he wanted to do was surface and be seen. He had planned the dive for four legs, but it was awkward turning and stopping with three men on each side of the pole, maintaining a depth of twenty feet.

They proceeded at a forty-five-degree bearing for six minutes, then Crocker squeezed Akil’s arm, which was the signal to reset their compasses and watches before starting the next leg at seventy-two degrees for twenty-two minutes.

Less than a minute into their fourth leg, Akil stopped abruptly and pointed to the dark shape literally two feet in front of him. He signaled to Crocker, then swam away from the pole to establish their position. Returning, he signaled that they were on the ship’s starboard side, approximately fifteen feet from the stern, which put them beside the ship’s superstructure. Realizing that it would be easier to climb aboard near the cargo bays, Crocker ordered his men to swim another twenty feet along the hull.

They surfaced one at a time, the sky a welcome sight.

Light rain continued to fall as Akil and Crocker raised the telescopic pole with its caving ladder. The others removed their MP5 submachine guns from the waterproof bags-safeties off, straight fingers as always.

After a couple of attempts they managed to hook the pole on a deck railing. Then Crocker signaled to Akil to pull down sharply, which released the caving ladder from the rubber tubing that held it to the pole. The ladder rolled down the side of the hull approximately fifteen feet to the ocean.

Crocker, as lead climber, was the first man up, his MP5-N equipped with a three-inch silencer slung over his shoulder. He placed his weight on each rung carefully because he didn’t know how securely the ladder was hooked. Attached to his web belt was a holster with an MK23 Mod 0.45-caliber pistol, extra ammo, and a climber carabiner with three tubular runners. He made it look effortless. After climbing over the rail he hitched a two-foot tubular nylon runner to it and carabinered that to one of the ladder’s rungs. Now it was secure for the rest of his team.

Then he crouched behind a hatch cover and conducted a quick survey of the ship. All the deck lights were off, except for several around one of the cargo bays near the bow. That bay was open, and the foremost cargo crane seemed to be in use.

Interesting, he thought.

Not one pirate in sight, so he signaled the rest of his team to climb up.

They had already secured their Drägers, masks, fins, and weight belts to the rungs of the ladder below the surface. Now they climbed up quickly and took up preassigned firing positions that gave them a 360-degree security perimeter. Dressed in black suits with camo face paint, they looked like ninjas.

Crocker raised his hand and tapped his head twice, which was the signal to deploy they’d worked out during their abbreviated PLO, or Patrol Leader’s Order-Ritchie, Mancini, and Cal toward the stern and the ship’s superstructure; Crocker and the other two in the direction of the bow, always staying in visual contact with one another.

Seeing someone climb out of the forward cargo bay, Crocker extended his right arm and lowered it. Akil and Davis behind him quickly knelt down out of sight. He pointed to Akil, then placed his hand on his KA-BAR knife.

Akil nodded, then ran in a crouch along the centerline bulkhead to the forecastle bulkhead. Crocker, meanwhile, took two steps to his right. Past the forward mast, he saw a man in black standing with his back to him on the forecastle deck. He watched him push a button that lowered the crane into the cargo bay. A few seconds later the man punched another button and the crane rose, bearing a fifty-gallon orange barrel with a triangular yellow deadly-materials symbol on its side.

The question that flashed through Crocker’s mind was Why were pirates unloading sensitive nuclear material from a ship?

That’s when he realized that the man operating the crane looked too well dressed to be a pirate. And when he turned sideways, Crocker saw that he was somewhat light skinned and had a close-cropped beard.

The SEAL team leader watched Akil spring from the foredeck and grab the man from behind. His left hand covered the man’s mouth while his right dragged the blade of the KA-BAR across his neck.

Textbook, Crocker thought, until Akil let go and the slumping man slipped off the wet bulkhead and pitched forward into the open cargo bay.

Mistake!

Shouts and exclamations echoed out of the bay, then someone started firing up at Akil, who hid behind the foremast. Sparks were flying everywhere from bullets ricocheting off metal as weapons discharged.

“We’ve been compromised. Let’s go!” Crocker shouted.

He and Davis followed the path Akil had taken forward. Halfway there, he heard an engine start up on the port side of the Contessa. Detouring left, away from the bulkhead to the port rail, he caught a glimpse of the launch.

It wasn’t a funky pirate vessel, but rather a clean, military-type fast attack boat painted gray. No markings, no name. Seventy to eighty feet long, armed with deck-mounted.50-caliber guns fore and aft.

“Watch out!” Davis shouted.

Seeing a bearded man on the deck aiming an AK-47 at him, Crocker jumped back and ducked behind a ventilator. He was joined by Davis, who reported seeing orange barrels stacked along the bow of the launch.

“How many?” Crocker asked.

“Half a dozen.”

“Pirates, my ass.”

An explosion went off near the top of the Contessa’s superstructure, where Ritchie, Cal, and Mancini had deployed. It pushed Crocker and Davis into a round metal ventilator and sent shards of glass and hot metal flying through the air, smacking the deck and mast. Crocker felt something embed itself into his left forearm, more painful than disabling.

I’ll deal with it later, he thought.

Men shouted at one another from the boat below while others continued to fire from near the bow of the Contessa toward where he and Davis hid on the deck. The shouting sounded more like Persian than Arabic.

Iranians? he asked himself.

It made sense. The Iranians needed parts and nuclear fuel for their atomic weapons development program. And they’d been hit by a series of UN embargoes that made it almost impossible for them to import uranium legally.

So they’d hired pirates to hijack a vessel transporting the things they needed.

Kind of clever.

“We’ve gotta stop that launch!” Crocker shouted as bullets smashed into the metal in front of them.

“What about Akil?”

A teammate in a firefight was always a priority. “We’re going to save his ass first.”

Not only was Akil pinned down near the Contessa’s foremast, but pirates firing automatic weapons had climbed out of the cargo bay and were attacking him from two sides.

On Crocker’s hand signal, he and Davis moved to the bulkhead at the center of the deck. From a position twenty feet forward, they fired their MP5s and caught two pirates by surprise-one in the chest, another raked from his knees to his sternum.

Akil took out a third with his 9-millimeter handgun. All those years of daily live-fire practice had paid off.

The foremost deck became quiet.

“Dammit to hell,” Akil groaned, holding up his right hand. “I got stung!”

“Where?”

“Back of my hand.”

Although it was a bitch to see in the minimal light, Crocker did the best he could, feeling through warm blood along the palm to the knuckles and fingers, ascertaining the extent of the damage.

Akil gritted his teeth. “What the fuck…”

Crocker said, “Appears to be a gash. Not serious. You’re one lucky motherfucker.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

He turned to Davis. “Give him something to cry into while I wrap this baby up.”

Opening the emergency medical kit he wore on his back, Crocker first wiped away the blood, then sprayed the wound with disinfectant. Next he wrapped the whole hand in a bandage that he secured with tape.

All the time he was aware that the launch was getting away.

With the wounded man providing cover with his automatic pistol held in his left hand, Crocker and Davis took the grenades Akil was carrying and got into position to toss them at the target, which was approximately forty feet off the Contessa’s port side and slightly in front.

“Aim for the stern,” Crocker said. “We don’t want to damage the barrels up front. Might be yellowcake.”

“Okay, boss.”

On the count of three they stood together and threw. Once, twice, three times in succession.

Seeing the Americans, the guy manning the.50-cal on the launch’s deck opened up. Whack-a, whack-a, whack-a… Fortunately his aim sucked, and Crocker and Davis had time to crouch behind the foremast. Hot, angry rounds glanced off the metal around them. Then a series of six explosions ripped into the air and lit up the night sky.

The.50-cal paused for a few seconds, then started firing again.

A seventh blast stopped it altogether.

“What was that?” Davis asked.

Crocker hazarded a look. It appeared that one of the grenades had hit a barrel of extra fuel, because flames were rising from the attack boat’s stern. Seeing dark figures scurrying around the deck, he leveled his MP5 and started firing. Then another blast lit up the deck, throwing a burning man into the ocean.

The concussion was strong enough to kick Crocker and Davis back, too. By the time Crocker righted himself enough to steal another look, the launch’s stern was almost completely engulfed in flames. If they reached the dozen barrels of what could be yellowcake along the bow, it could set off an explosion that would be the equivalent of a dirty bomb, releasing dangerous radiation that, depending on the wind’s direction, could kill many thousands of people.

Crocker turned to Davis and shouted, “Cover me. I’m going down.”

“Where?”

“Into the water. After the launch.”

“But-”

Before Davis could get the rest of his words out, Crocker handed him his weapon, flung off his pack, and was diving off the Contessa’s port rail.

He sliced into the water, came up to take a quick breath and establish direction, then started swimming underwater using the combat swimmer stroke he’d been taught in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) and had practiced with his team once a week when not deployed. He’d progressed thirty-five feet when his lungs felt like they were going to explode. Crocker knew that the carbon dioxide receptors in his brain were telling him it was time to exhale because he had too much CO₂ in his system. So he breathed out a little, releasing some of the air in his lungs.

This enabled him to swim the last ten feet or so without too much discomfort. Coming up near the launch’s stern, he breathed in the smoke-filled air but held back a cough. Immediately he was confronted with another challenge-the fire made it too hot to board at the stern. So he dove under the boat’s hull and, following the stem, where the two planes of the hull had been welded together, surfaced near the bow.

The boat was moving slowly, at 1.5 knots, so boarding was relatively easy. He simply grabbed the anchor port and pulled himself up to the windlass and deck, where he crouched with the rain pelting his back and head.

On closer inspection the launch reminded him of an old navy PT boat or a British motor torpedo boat-light and simple, with a displacement-type hull and a small superstructure pitched toward the stern.

No one had spotted him so far. In fact he didn’t see anyone, except for a badly burned man he stepped over as he headed for the wheelhouse. Much of it had been destroyed-the windshield completely shattered and many of the gauges in the console cracked.

Crocker pulled back the throttle to idle, then looked for the switch to cut the engine.

The rain picked up, propelled by strong gusts of wind. He wasn’t sure if these conditions would extinguish the flames or fan them. It all depended on whether the fire was oil based, which was something he had no time to determine.

His immediate concern was the barrels along the bow. He had descended three steps into the cabin in search of a fire extinguisher when he ran into two men starting up, then saw a third, shorter man behind them. All three had soot-covered faces. One was holding his right arm, which appeared to be injured near the shoulder. A piece of bone protruded.

The man behind them had fierce eyes, deep set like a falcon’s.

When the man to Crocker’s right reached for something in his belt, Crocker reared his right leg back and kicked him hard in the face. Then, brandishing his KA-BAR knife, he threw himself at the group. Teeth sank into his arm.

Fucking savage!

The pain didn’t stop him from grappling with arms and legs on the wet floor and slashing his knife blindly in the dark; it only added to his determination. Less than a minute later two men lay bleeding to death, grunting. Crocker couldn’t find the third one. Possibly he’d escaped up the stairs.

The cabin was a smoke-filled mess, disgusting-smelling. The fire from above had started to burn through the deck in the forecastle bunks. It was only a matter of minutes before the flames would reach the fuel tank and the whole damn boat would explode. He did the only thing he could think of, which was to reset the vessel’s engine and turn the wheel so it was headed away from the Contessa.

Then he ran to the bow and tried to push the orange barrels overboard. This required using his bloody knife to cut through the ropes that secured them, then angling one at a time against the low railing, pushing the top enough to wedge an empty ammo box he found on the deck under it, then lifting the barrel from the bottom until it flipped over the railing into the ocean.

It was hard work, but the hundreds of thousands of squats and dead lifts he’d done in the gym helped.

With the muscles in his arms and upper body burning, Crocker dove into the water and swam back to the Contessa. He was reminded of the summer nights he’d spent with his brother, sneaking into the neighborhood pool, fireflies creating magic around them. The sea was dark and turbulent, pulling him in one direction, then another. Instead of calling to Davis to throw him a line, he swam to the starboard side and came up the caving ladder, which was still in place.

Wiping ocean scum from his face, he noticed that a small fire was burning on the ship’s bridge, lending the radar mast and funnel an eerie red-orange glow.

Davis called from behind him, “Boss, you okay?”

“Good. And you?”

“Fine.”

“Where’s the rest of the team?”

“They’re all inside.”

“Where?” he asked, trying to catch his breath.

“Mancini’s trying to extinguish the fire and get the bridge in order.”

He recovered his MP5 and reloaded as they talked. “Has anyone seen the captain?”

“Don’t know. It’s real ugly in there.”

“How come?”

“The pirates hacked up some of the crew. At least one man is still alive but badly injured.”

“Get on the horn. Tell the folks on the Vinson to send a medical team and a helicopter to take us out of here. We’re also going to need a salvage team and some divers. There are six barrels of some kind of sensitive nuclear material sitting on the bottom of the ocean at eleven o’clock off the Contessa’s bow.”

“A medical team, a rescue helicopter, and a salvage crew. You got it.”

“Then meet me inside.”

He hurried to the superstructure and climbed the steps two at a time, his MP5 at his side. On the first deck he ran into Ritchie standing over three pirates bound with TUFF-TIES at their wrists and ankles.

“Where are the rest?” he asked.

“At least two of them are holding the captain and his wife hostage.”

“Where?”

“In the captain’s dayroom, two decks up.”

“Show me.”

Ritchie led the way up the narrow steps. On the next deck they ran into Mancini, whose face was black with soot.

Crocker asked, “What have we got?”

“Five crew dead, another two injured, two survivors.”

“How bad are the injured?”

“One’s barely alive; had his head bashed in. The other’s got a bullet wound. They’re both in the hallway one deck up.”

“Cal?”

“He’s with Akil.”

“Where?”

“Outside the captain’s quarters. That’s where some pirates are holding the captain and his wife.”

“Show me!”

One more flight up, Crocker stopped to examine one of the ship’s officers, who had been shot. A bullet had entered his lower back and appeared to have fractured the right side of his pelvis. His breathing was normal and his pulse steady, so Crocker smeared QuikClot around the entry and exit points, then wrapped them tightly with a bandage and gave the officer 800 milligrams of Extra Strength Tylenol.

“Swallow these. You’ll be fine. Medevac is on its way.”

On the next deck, Ritchie led him down a narrow hallway where they found Akil standing outside a door marked DANGEROUS SPACE, TEST AIR BEFORE ENTRY.

“What’s that mean?”

“Unclear.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Two armed pirates, possibly three, claim to be holding hostages.”

“Have you spoken to the hostages?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know if they’re alive?”

“That’s correct.”

“Have you tried talking to the pirates?” Crocker asked Akil, who spoke both Arabic and Urdu, which is close to Persian.

“They only speak some local Somali dialect. Some of the words are similar. I understood enough to know they’re threatening to kill the captain and his wife and blow up the ship.”

“Where’s Cal?”

“He’s with one of the crew members on the deck above, looking for access through the ceiling.”

“Where?”

Akil pointed over his head. “The chart room, I believe, behind the wheelhouse, upstairs.”

“Okay.” Crocker turned to Ritchie.

“Boss, I can breach through this sucker if you want me to.”

“Can you do that without killing everyone inside?”

“Since I don’t know the position of the hostages, there’s no guarantee.”

“Alright, then, look…Check your watches. Give me five minutes. If you don’t hear me shoot off a couple of rounds, that means I’m going in through the ceiling. You guys create as much of a diversion as you can, starting now. Shout, pound on the door like you’re trying to break through.”

“Copy, boss.”

The bridge, one flight up, was hot and thick with smoke. He found Mancini, Cal, and a Filipino crew member in a little room behind the wheelhouse. Mancini was using a screwdriver to remove a metal panel in the wall.

“What you got?”

“Access, hopefully.”

When the panel was pulled aside, Crocker saw an opening to an aluminum vent that looked too small to squeeze through. Mancini quickly enlarged it, removing a metal flange, then carefully cutting around the vent with his knife to expose its full width, roughly four feet in diameter.

Crocker looked down at his Suunto watch. Four minutes exactly.

Mancini stuck his head inside and illuminated the space with a small flashlight.

The crewman whispered, “See where the vent makes a sharp turn? Right after that, the first opening should be directly above the dayroom.”

“That’s where they are?”

“The captain and pirates. Correct.”

Crocker tapped Cal on the shoulder and whispered, “Follow me.”

Navigating through the vent with their MP5s would be too awkward, so they took their handguns instead. Each man carried a smoke grenade and an extra magazine of ammo.

Crocker had to squeeze his shoulders together to get through. The bend at the bottom was tight, but after he twisted past, it was only five feet to a rectangular vent cover.

He stopped and pointed. Cal nodded.

The vent, which was approximately three and a half feet by one and a half, presented another challenge-namely, the noise they would create by trying to remove it.

He waited and listened, with Cal behind him. No discernible sound from the room below, just muffled pounding in the distance and the low hum of the ship’s engine.

Crocker indicated that he was going to cross to the other side of the vent and wanted Cal to position himself where he was now. Cal nodded. Assuming a catcher’s crouch, he turned sideways and reached his leg across. Then, lying on his stomach, he peered through the opening.

All he saw was a pair of bare feet that looked to belong to a woman, the legs of a chair, and a blood-covered shirt on the floor.

He took a series of deep breaths, knowing he had one chance to dislodge the metal vent opening before attracting the pirates’ attention and getting them all killed. Checking his watch and seeing that he was within ten seconds of his five-minute limit, he pulled himself up into a crouch, readied his pistol, signaled to Cal, then sprang sideways onto the aluminum vent. His weight immediately dislodged one side, causing his right leg and arm to slide through the ceiling. But his entire left side and torso were stuck. So he twisted his shoulder and reached with his right hand, grabbing the edge of the hanging vent cover with his fingers and pulling it free.

When it came away, he had nothing to hold on to and fell, hitting the floor awkwardly so that his right leg slipped out from under him. The impact stunned him.

He heard shouting and pulled himself up onto his right elbow. Saw the woman tied to the chair, another man bound and gagged, lying on a bed.

He wasn’t in the dayroom. It was the captain’s cabin.

Two pirates rushed through the door and charged. One of them held a machete.

Crocker didn’t have his weapon. It had dislodged from his hand and was pinned under his left shoulder. He turned to grab it, and as he did he looked directly up into the pirate’s face and saw the machete.

There was nothing he could do but shield himself with his right arm and hope he didn’t lose it. He heard four pops in succession and watched the top of the pirate’s head explode.

Cal!

The pirate crumpled midscream and fell on top of Crocker, who remained focused on the blade of the machete. He managed to twist away to avoid it. Blood and brain matter sprayed everywhere.

The other pirate screamed and reached for his pistol. Crocker saw his sneakered foot out of the corner of his right eye. Pushing the other man off him, he grabbed the foot and yanked it with all his might.

As the second pirate tumbled, Cal quickly finished him off with a head shot from his 9-millimeter.

No time to catch their breath. The two SEALs freed the prisoners and carried them down to the main deck. The captain slipped in and out of consciousness. His wife kept sobbing and talking to herself, something about church steps and the smell of orchids.

Twenty minutes later they were helping them and the injured crew members onto a medevac helicopter. And then they were all off into the inky night, the burning vessel getting smaller behind them.

Crocker turned to Akil and asked, “How’s your hand?”

“The bleeding has stopped. I’ll be fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He looked at the bite mark on his wrist and sighed.

It hadn’t been pretty, but they had prevailed.