Pirate Alley

CHAPTER SEVEN

In the false half-light before dawn, Sultan of the Seas lay lifeless on the surface of the ocean, resembling nothing so much as a large dead whale. DIW, the sailors said, “dead in the water.” Her screws were still, and her dim emergency lighting barely outlined her superstructure amid the gloom.

Ospreys with searchlights ablaze picked up the SEALs in the ocean, strung out along the course the ship had traveled. The nearest was almost a thousand yards from where the ship had drifted to a halt. USS Richard Ward, a destroyer with searchlights brilliantly lit, crept among the men being drawn from the sea in horse collars.

“One casualty,” one of the Osprey pilots reported. “First Class Imboden. Dead when we pulled him out.”

A few minutes later another Osprey reported, “Got a Lieutenant Cordova with a gunshot wound in the left calf. It’s bleeding, but the corpsman thinks he’ll make it okay. We’re inbound to the ship now.”

“Roger. Switch to Tower.”

Two mike clicks.

On his monitor in Flag Ops, Admiral Tarkington watched the Osprey settle on the bow and four stretcher bearers run for it. In less than half a minute they were trotting toward the island carrying the stretcher with the man on it wrapped in a blanket.

Dawn began to arrive. Fifteen minutes after the Osprey delivered Lieutenant Cordova, the Sultan was visible on the monitor as a ship, not just a collection of dim lights. She wasn’t moving.

Colonel Max Zakhem delivered the news. “Mr. Cordova never got to the bridge. Bravo Team sabotaged the engine room control panel. One of the pirates started shooting passengers by the pool. Cordova thought any further attempt to gain the bridge would result in a bloodbath of the hostages.”

The admiral merely nodded. Cordova was the man on the spot, and he made the best decision he could when he decided to get off the ship after the engineering control panel was sabotaged. All in all, Cordova and his men accomplished a lot. More than Tarkington expected, actually.

“Draft a sitrep to everyone in the chain of command,” Toad said to his chief of staff, Flip Haducek. “Let me see it before you send it.”

Haducek disappeared to prepare the situation report.

Toad spoke to the flag ops officer, and a few minutes later was handed a radiotelephone. He put it to his ear and keyed the mike. “Sultan of the Seas, this is Chosin Reservoir on Guard, over.” Guard was the international emergency frequency, 121.5 megacycles.

No answer.

Toad tried one more time, got no answer and passed the instrument to Ops. “Call them once a minute.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

He used the Navy Red voice frequency to talk to Richard Ward’s captain.

Five minutes later Ward crept up alongside Sultan, to about a hundred feet, making three knots, just enough to allow Ward to answer her helm. She stopped her engines and drifted to a halt alongside the cruise ship. Her deck was lined with armed marines. High in the superstructure, as high as they could get, snipers lying on their bellies focused their scopes on the pirates they could see. A quarter mile away on both sides Ospreys loaded with marines circled like vultures.

Richard Ward played her searchlights on the deck of Sultan and on her rows of balcony windows. Faces appeared, people came out. A few waved. Most just stood looking.

Mustafa al-Said left the three passengers on the bridge with four of his men. One of them put a rifle to the head of a passenger and led him out onto the wing of the bridge so the crew of Richard Ward could see him. He merely stood there with his hostage.

Mustafa marched Captain Arch Penney aft and down. “The engine room,” he ordered grimly.

In the forward engine room two pirates were watching two engineers assess the damage. A dead pirate lay on the deck. He had bled a good bit before he died, and the red puddle was turning brown. It was also getting sticky where people had stepped in it. Still, no one touched the body.

Ignoring the dead man as best he could, Penney inspected the electrical distribution bus that sent power to the four propeller pods. It was obliterated beyond repair. The diesels were idling, turning generators, but without electrical buses to distribute the power to the engine pods, Sultan was not going anywhere.

“How long will it take to wire around these smashed buses?” Penney asked the chief engineer as he surveyed the damage. “Put power directly to the two aft pods?”

“Five or six hours.” The man shrugged.

The engineer straightened and wiped his hands on a waste rag. He never even looked at Mustafa. “We can try, sir. But it’s damaged, as you can see.”

“Do your best, Derek,” Arch Penney said. He faced Mustafa. “Seen enough?”

“So the ship cannot move?”

“That is correct.”

“Perhaps I shoot someone. Will it be able to move then?”

“Not unless you can fix it yourself.”

Mustafa pointed his rifle at one of the engineers and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the man’s neck; bloody tissue sprayed out his back. Down he went, probably dead, beside the body of a pirate. The body twitched, moving as muscles contracted involuntarily, and Arch Penney got a glimpse of the man’s eyes, full of fear. Then they relaxed and focused on infinity. He was dead.

“You have two hours, Captain. Then I start shooting more people. I shoot someone every five minutes until the ship moves.”

The fury welled up in Arch, rose like the tide. The dead man was Jerry Robinson, from New Zealand. He saw Jerry’s wife’s face in his mind’s eye, hysterical.

Arch closed his eyes, tried to control his breathing. When he opened them, he focused on the chief engineer, who was fixated upon Jerry’s corpse. Arch reached for the man and turned him by pulling on his shoulder until he was facing the captain.

“Wire the generators to one pod. Just one. We’ll move on that while you work on the second one.”

The man’s eyes flicked to Mustafa, then back. He nodded.

Arch Penney headed for the ladder leading out of the engineering spaces. Mustafa stood for a second, watching his back, then trailed after him.

Benny and Sarah Cohen stood at the door to their balcony looking at Richard Ward lying there in the gentle sea. Swells were negligible; there was essentially no wind. The gray warship seemed immobile, as if she were fixed to a pier.

Beyond Ward they could see an Osprey circling. Even hear it.

“We could jump,” Benny told his wife. “They would pick us up.”

Sarah held tightly to his arm. They leaned out and looked at the people on the other balconies. Some were talking and pointing. Several were looking down at the water twenty-five feet below. It was a healthy drop. Hit the water wrong and you could break your back. Especially if you were over fifty, and most of them were.

Sarah whispered, “Go if you want, Benny. I’m too old and can’t swim very well.”

Benny pulled her to him. “We stay together,” he said.

They heard a shout. A woman’s voice. A man plummeted toward the sea. He had a full head of gray hair. He went in feet first, then rose and started swimming.

Above them a weapon chattered. As the Cohens watched, bullets began striking around the man. He kept swimming. The bullets impacted all around him, churning the water. He was fifteen feet away from the side of the ship, now twenty …

Then a bullet hit him in the head and they saw a little cloud of red spray. The man ceased swimming and floated facedown. The pirate on the deck above them ceased firing.

On Richard Ward a marine first lieutenant watching through binoculars made an instant decision. “Shoot him,” he snapped at the sniper lying at his feet.

The sniper’s bullet went through the pirate’s chest and he collapsed on the deck. He was several decks above the Cohens, who didn’t see him fall or hear the shot.

The Cohens heard a woman screaming.

“It was that Texas oil dude, Warren Bass,” Benny Cohen said bitterly. He stepped back into the room with Sarah and pulled the French door closed.

When Mustafa al-Said returned to the bridge, prodding Captain Penney along with his gun barrel, he could hear a loud-hailer from the destroyer lying a mere thirty or forty yards away.

“Throw your weapons into the sea and come out on deck with your hands up. If you do, you will not be harmed.” There were men on the bridge in uniforms, one of them holding a loud-hailer. Two men in khaki, two in some blue mottled coveralls. The warship’s bridge was a bit lower than that of the cruise ship, so Mustafa could only see the wing of it.

One of the pirates who obviously understood some English had his gun pointed at the deck and was looking around nervously.

Mustafa cuffed him across the mouth. “Bring one of the civilians. The woman.”

The man did as he was told. Grabbed her and shoved her forward. Mustafa gestured with his head. The woman was shoved out onto the wing of the bridge. She grabbed the rail and sank to her knees.

The destroyer accelerated away. The aft gun turret went past, then the stern. The wake was boiling white foam.

“You should have surrendered,” Penney said as Mustafa shoved the woman into a corner out of the way, beside the others. “They’ll be back.”

“For everyone’s sake, let us hope not,” Mustafa said and looked at his watch. “One hour and fifty minutes. You will decide who we shoot first.”

The radio loudspeaker was squawking. “Sultan, this is Chosin Reservoir—”

Mustafa al-Said fired a three-shot burst into the loudspeaker. In the profound silence that followed the burst Arch Penney could hear the spent cartridge cases tinkling as they bounced off the steel deck, which was stained with blood and human tissue.

Arch could feel himself slipping gently away, letting go of this reality in favor of another, gentler one. He ground his teeth together, shook his head violently and forced himself back to the here and now.

He had only a thread to hang on to, so he seized it. Somehow, someway, he was going to kill Mustafa al-Said, even if it was the very last thing he did upon this earth.

“Ah, Jake, come in. Come in, please.”

The director, Mario Tomazic, nodded toward a chair, and Jake Grafton dropped into it. Although it was midmorning in Pirate Alley, it was three thirty in the morning in Washington. Only the night shift was left on duty. And the head dogs, who didn’t work shifts.

Tomazic was of medium height, balding, but fit and trim, as befits a modern CEO or senior general. The newspapers said he was one of the leading experts in antiterrorism; Jake had seen nothing from Tomazic to prove or disprove that assertion. He had a nice smile and never raised his voice … and was absolutely ruthless.

“What do you hear from Tarkington?” Grafton asked.

“The Task Force 151 commander? You served with him?”

Jake merely nodded.

“It’s a fuckup. The SEALs stopped the ship. She’s DIW. Then the geniuses at the White House realized that the pirates had over eight hundred hostages, and would probably kill a bunch of them on general principles. They chickened out, got cold feet.”

“So?”

“So the cruise ship is DIW, the task force is on the scene, and the White House doesn’t have the guts to order a boarding.” Tomazic sighed. He hated civilians who meddled. Unfortunately, this was the age of meddlers.

“What does Tarkington propose?”

Tomazic sorted through a pile of messages and passed one to Jake. “You know that he wanted to do a show of force and rappel down marines. They are having a big debate over on Pennsylvania Avenue. I don’t think they’ll tell the admiral to stay away from the cruise ship or allow him to do anything. Those people have never had any experience with combat situations. They are going to have to look at it from every angle, think about political repercussions, get advice. In other words, they’re paralyzed.”

“They liked the SEAL idea,” Grafton remarked.

“Unconventional warfare, commandos, surprise, surgical violence,” Tomazic replied. “They thought it would make great television, sorta like a computer game. Military orgasm: the bad guys all fall down, the good guys win again. Ta-daaa.” Tomazic paused to clear his throat. “They’re idiots.”

Grafton didn’t bother to reply.

“They need more adult supervision over there than they’re getting,” Tomazic added.

A smile tugged at Grafton’s lips.

Mario Tomazic didn’t notice. He said, “The pirates will take the ship and hostages to Eyl. These are apparently Ragnar’s men. I want you to get your people to Eyl and wait for the green light to take out that son of a bitch.”

“Okay.”

“I want one less pirate in the world.”

“We’ll give it a try,” Jake Grafton said, smiling. He liked Tomazic, who could dance between the cow pies with the best of them. Still, after all those years in the army, he knew when to lower his head and charge, and he had the guts to do it. Tough for the bad guys.

Grafton thought about it for a bit, then said, “The government going to pay the ransom?”

“Don’t have a demand yet.”

“Oh, we’ll get one. Pirates are in it for the money.”

“I don’t think the White House savants have thought that far ahead.”

“Oh,” Jake Grafton said. “Well, when they get around to it, the money could be our ticket in. We motor right in with the cash, see the man. That would be Plan B. Plan A would of course be a sniper. Less risk to our guys.”

“What would you need for a sniper hit?”

“A drone over the city twenty-four/seven. Without a spotter on the ground, a drone would be the next best thing. A sniper will need a good setup location and some lead time, the more the better. And he’ll have to have an escape route. However, a sniper can only shoot when he has a target. A sniper isn’t going to get a shipload of people out of there if the money isn’t paid, either.”

Tomazic eyed Grafton under his shaggy eyebrows. “So we have two problems.”

“One relatively easy to solve, the other less so,” Grafton replied.

The director sighed. “If we pay the ransom, presumably the pirates will release the ship, crew and passengers,” he said. “It’s good business. On the other hand, if the ransom is not going to be paid, we have to go forward as if it will be and rescue those people before the pirates realize what is going down.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Okay. Get the sniper thing going and give me a plan for rescuing the people if the politicians refuse to pay.”

“Is that even a possibility?”

“They’ll make the decision that they think will do them the most good politically. Whatever that is. They always do.”

“Plans are just paper,” Jake said. “We’ll have to see how the cards fall.” He shrugged.

“Just as long as the cards fall our way,” Tomazic retorted dryly. Like Grafton, he didn’t believe in fair play. Stacking the deck was not only legal in the intelligence business, it was the only way to play the game.

“Do you really think the White House will give you a green light for a sniper hit?”

“I’ll get one eventually,” Tomazic said grimly. “After the ship’s passengers and crew are ransomed, released or whatever, those people downtown are going to have an epiphany. They are going to want us to do something to solve the pirate problem in that corner of the world, or at least make it go away for a while, and they are going to want it done yesterday. When they come to Jesus, I want you and your men ready.”

Half a world away from Washington, Toad Tarkington was as frustrated as a man can get. Sultan of the Seas lay a mile away from his flagship, drifting on the glassy sea. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Surrounding her were gray warships, sprinkled here and there, moving slowly to conserve fuel and yet remain under control. Helicopters and Ospreys droned back and forth overhead, watching and filming and staying far enough away from Sultan to present no threat. Miles above an E-2 circled, watching every ship and plane within a two-hundred-mile radius.

If he wanted them, carrier jets were armed and ready on the flight deck of an American carrier coming south from the Persian Gulf. They could be overhead within an hour. With every minute that passed, the carrier closed the range.

Sometimes in the night when he was trying to sleep, Toad thought about the irony of keeping all these ships at sea, the sailors on watch, the airplanes flying, all to prevent pirates from grabbing an occasional merchant ship and demanding some money, a pittance really, compared to the cost of preventing the piracy in the first place. Maybe most crime is like that: It costs more to deter bank robbery and catch and punish bank robbers than they could ever steal. Yet we try to deter bank robbery and catch and punish the evildoers nonetheless.

Toad wasn’t thinking about the irony now. He was sitting in his chair on the flag bridge listening to reports and reading messages from Washington, his fleet commander, and his theater commander. Messages poured in, and staffers read them and passed the ones they thought he should see on to him for perusal. Orders, advice, reminders, more orders, suggestions and general bullshit. Toad was used to it. He had been reading navy messages since he graduated from the Naval Academy, back before the glaciers melted and man discovered toilet paper. Back when there were iron men in wooden ships. Or wooden men in iron ships. Something like that, Toad knew. He was an old fart; all these youngsters standing around busily looking at the Sultan and trying to be respectful while thinking of ways to solve this military problem just reminded him of it.

The fact that the problem was insoluble right now didn’t compute. Gotta work this thing, get it unscrewed, come up with a solution, make it happen. That’s what we’re here for. Dammit, people, this is the U. S. Navy we’re talking about.

He decided to write another message to Washington. Reached for a pad of paper and took his pen from his shirt pocket and started in.

When he finished, he motioned to his chief of staff, Flip. “Washington be damned. This is what we are going to do.” He handed the captain the draft message.

Haducek scanned it. “But, Admiral, they already told you not to do this.”

“No, they told me to do the SEAL thing instead. So I did. Now I’m going with my plan.”

“Sir, you can’t—”

“Yes, by God, I can! There are eight hundred and fifty unarmed civilians on that ship whose lives are being threatened by homicidal pirates. I’m the officer on the scene. Yes, by God, I can!”

Tarkington took a deep breath. When he resumed speaking, his voice was again normal. “Get that typed up. Get the ships in position. We go when everyone is ready. Ten minutes before we go, you send that message. Got it?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Mike Rosen left the e-communications center and headed for the buffet at noon. There had been no announcement, but he was hungry—and why not? He passed two pirates on the way. They were standing near the elevators chewing khat and cradling their weapons, looking worried. Perhaps the earlier SEAL assault had unnerved them. The ship was obviously not moving, not getting closer to Eyl and safety, and they must be worried about that, too.

Rosen could see the surface of the ocean through a window in the lounge area as he walked through it. The sea was flat as a plate, with gray naval vessels moving slowly along. Beyond them was the sea’s rim, a perfectly straight line. A high, white overcast threw a soft light that made every detail stand out.

There was indeed food, food straight from the coolers. Nothing hot. Still, the toasters worked, and there was plenty of jam. Coffee was a score. The stewards had trouble keeping the big urns full because the passengers were draining it out so quickly. Rosen had to stand in line to get a cup. At least it was hot and strong.

The passengers were subdued, more withdrawn, plainly worried. Some of them had been roped to the lounge chairs during the SEAL attack, and they were badly frightened. Watching that pirate murder two passengers right before their eyes had shaken them to the core. They might not live through this disaster. Tragedy. Death was right there, waiting …

Those who spoke did so in whispers, with glances at the pirates huddled together near the door. There were no smiles, no nervous laughs. The SEAL attack was the main item of conversation. Everyone knew a tidbit, no one knew the whole story. They speculated endlessly over what the attack meant and what it had achieved.

What would this day bring? The dead man and woman by the pool—a woman from Germany and a man from Florida. Slaughtered. Thinking about danger, worrying about something that might or might not happen, well, we all did that every day as we wandered through life. The spouse, the job, the kids, the doctors, the lawyers, the damned stock market … But to see people ripped apart by bullets right in front of your eyes, to see real people instantly turned into blood and guts and brains and half-digested food—that was a trauma that nothing in your life up to that moment had prepared you for. It changed you. You would never again be the same. Life would never have the same feel it once did. The world would be scarier. More dangerous.

Rosen could see the stress in his fellow passengers’ faces. No doubt they could see it in his. He asked questions in the serving line and got answers, though several of the people tried to pretend they weren’t talking to him.

He also saw the stress in the pirates, who were obviously shaken, probably by the SEAL assault. The Americans and their allies were fierce warriors; men lying on deck in pools of their own blood with their throats slashed apart proved that point. Rosen wondered if cultural shock had anything to do with the pirates’ mood. This morning they looked like children caught playing hooky. More to the point, Rosen wondered if any of this lot would actually murder a passenger. Their body language said no. The AK-47s were no longer pointed at anyone. None of them laughed or swaggered. It was something to think about.

Carrying his two pieces of toast and his full coffee cup, Rosen joined Sarah and Benny Cohen at a table for six. Benny was toying with his food with his fork, glancing at the pirate in the doorway occasionally.

Sarah said hello. Before long she was telling him about the man who had jumped, Warren Bass. About the bullets churning the water and the spray of blood.

“His wife didn’t jump. Just him.”

“Maybe she was going to jump and chickened out,” Rosen ventured. “The high board always scared me.”

“Maybe he told her it was every man for himself and leaped.”

“Now, Benny, you don’t know that. Don’t be unkind.”

“Maybe,” Benny Cohen repeated, scrutinizing Rosen.

“You know I can’t swim very well,” Sarah said.

Her husband covered her hand with his.

“We wouldn’t have made it, Benny,” she said.

Captain Arch Penney stood on the bridge of his drifting vessel trying to get his thoughts together. There was an armed pirate on each wing, and Mustafa al-Said walked back and forth, looking at everything, listening to every report on the intercom, every conversation on the handhelds. All that remained of the carnage on the bridge was the bloodstains, and the three hostages seated against the aft bulkhead, out of the way. Two men and a woman.

The woman was about sixty, Penney thought, Canadian or American. Her name was Marjorie Andregg. She was one tough female. Hadn’t complained or cried or even whimpered, hadn’t asked to use the restroom, which was right off the bridge, unlike the man seated beside her. He had been in the restroom twice and had still managed to pee his pants. He was shaking now, kept his hands in front of his face. The captain didn’t know his name. Penney wondered if he was going to do something really stupid, like jump up and run.

The other man was obviously nervous. His name was George Something, from New York, if Penney remembered correctly, perhaps a worn fifty-five or a well-preserved sixty-five. Somewhere in there. George’s eyes swept the bridge like a flashlight, checking on the pirates, watching Mustafa, even glancing occasionally at Penney with a beseeching look. Penney tried to ignore him—and resented the man for his silent pleadings. Bastard!

An hour after they came up from the engine room, forty-five minutes before Mustafa’s announced murder deadline, Mustafa left the bridge, whispered to the men on the wing, then went out.

Penney had little to do except try to figure out what was coming and how to handle it. He figured Mustafa would return with more hostages … and at the designated time shoot one. Or two. Or three.

Penney wondered why he believed Mustafa’s threats. Had the man achieved that much of a psychological advantage?

Yes. Watching Mustafa murder Jerry Robinson in the engine room had made Penney a believer. The man would kill as casually as breathing.

Thirty-five minutes left.

The woman wanted to go to the restroom. Penney nodded and pointed. She rose and took three steps to the door, opened it and went in. Closed it behind her.

Penney used his binoculars to examine the ships in the vicinity. Then he put the binoculars down and looked at the pirates, who were lounging negligently against the railings. One of them was looking at him, the other was looking at the surface of the sea.

Thirty-four minutes.

Thirty-three.

Thirty-two.

Marjorie Andregg came out of the restroom. She looked around, then walked over to him.

“What are we going to do?” she asked softly, so only Arch Penney could hear her.

“I don’t know.”

“Why are we stopped? Not moving?”

“Engines sabotaged.”

“Those commandos?”

“Yes.”

One of the pirates shouted at her, gesturing with his rifle barrel.

“Better sit back down,” Penney said.

“We only have to die once, Captain,” she said and sat back down beside the men.

Arch Penney stared at her. When he finally looked again at the clock, he saw he had only twenty-nine minutes until Mustafa’s deadline. He reached for the handset that gave him a direct line to the aft engine room, then put it back on the cradle. They were working as quickly as they could. Why waste thirty seconds of their time merely to settle my nerves?

Twenty-two minutes before the deadline, Mustafa returned. He had a woman with him. Julie Penney.

The captain felt the blood draining from his face. He had to put a hand on a control panel to steady himself.

Mustafa said nothing. He told Julie to sit beside the other three hostages, then strolled toward the far wing of the bridge.

Arch and his wife stared at each other. The man with his face in his hands was sobbing.

The moment was broken when Marjorie Andregg squeezed Julie’s arm.

Toad Tarkington watched Ospreys ferry more marines to Richard Ward. The marines ran aboard, eight of them to a plane; the loaded Osprey lifted off, flew for about two minutes to the destroyer and hovered over the stern. There the marines ran from the stern of the plane and cleared the area as their transport lifted off to go get another load and another Osprey made its approach.

The warships were about two miles from Sultan. Chosin Reservoir was heading into the wind, and the destroyer was backing down so the wind came over the fantail. The ships were gradually getting farther apart, but when the transfer was complete, both ships would head for their rendezvous with Sultan.

Toad looked at Sultan through his binoculars. The pirates had to be watching this evolution and wondering what it meant. They didn’t have many options because their ship was DIW, thanks to Lieutenant Angel Cordova.

Four minutes.

Mustafa al-Said put down his binoculars and walked back into the covered portion of the bridge. He had the butt of his AK braced against his hip, the muzzle pointed at the overhead, his hand wrapped around the handle and his finger on the trigger. Arch Penney could see that finger, see that the assault rifle would go off with the slightest squeeze of that trigger.

Mustafa turned toward him and made a show of looking at the clock on the bulkhead, a clock that had somehow survived the RPG attack and all the shooting. He strolled back until he was in front of Penney, who was standing in front of the unmanned helm.

“Which one?” he asked.

Penney stared at him without expression. He hoped. Actually the revulsion he felt was plain to see, and Mustafa saw it.

The pirate snarled, “You think, he will not shoot. He is not serious person. He is reasonable. You think that, do you not?”

Mustafa’s fetid breath washed over Penney, who thought the smell was caused by rotten teeth. Mustafa’s body odor was undoubtedly due to the fact he never bathed. “No. I think you are a bloody raving murderous asshole,” the captain said evenly.

“Call engine room,” Mustafa said.

Arch picked up the direct line handset. He could hear it ringing. Finally someone answered. Harry Wooten. “Captain here. How much longer?”

Mustafa put the rifle barrel under Penney’s chin and took the handset from him. “Two minutes,” he said. “In two minutes I shoot someone on the bridge.”

Arch could hear Harry Wooten’s strident voice. “It will take at least another thirty minutes. I promise you—”

“Two minutes. I let you listen.” He dropped the handset, which fell to the length of its cord, an inch or so above the deck.

“Which one?” he asked Arch Penney.

“Me.”

“Ah, you think I would not. Your officers can drive the ship. I do not need you.”

“Shoot and be damned.”

Mustafa glanced at the clock, took a few steps toward the bridge wing, leisurely, just strolling, then turned back. He stood there with that rifle pointed up, glancing occasionally at the clock.

The second hand swept up toward twelve. The man seated against the wall was moaning gently now, almost mindlessly. Penney wondered if he even realized he was making the noise.

Mustafa pointed the gun at Penney.

The captain closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, forced himself to exhale, relax. As Marjorie said, everyone has to die once. But only once.

He was standing there, his hands at his side, his eyes closed, when he heard the shot. He opened his eyes.

The man who had been moaning and sobbing was lying on his side with his eyes frozen, a smear of blood on his chest. His heart must have stopped instantly.

Mustafa picked up the handset. “Did you hear?”

He paused, then said, “In thirty minutes I shoot another one. Work quick, or I start shooting one every five minutes.”

Mustafa al-Said walked to the wing of the bridge and looked again at Chosin Reservoir and the Ospreys flying back and forth to a destroyer. Several more Ospreys were overhead, several thousand feet up. Two more destroyers … a helicopter.

He could feel the situation slipping out of his control. With the ship moving toward Eyl, which was only a couple of hours away, there was little the Americans could do to stop him. But here, dead in the water, drifting, the Americans had more options. Mustafa didn’t know exactly what they were, but he felt the threat—and he was worried.

His men were pirates, not soldiers. They wanted money and were willing to risk their lives to get it. But they weren’t willing to die for nothing. That was a hard fact. If pressed … well, if pressed hard, Mustafa didn’t know what they would do. Surrender, he suspected. A man could always go pirating another day.

They had already seen what the Americans could do. The pirate killed by a sniper after he shot a swimming passenger had been an object lesson. Mustafa wondered if any of his men could be induced to kill another passenger.

He stuffed another wad of khat in his mouth. The khat would keep his fingers from shaking.

Admiral Toad Tarkington believed the pirates would surrender rather than drown or be shot. He was acting upon that belief.

Toad, his chief of staff, Captain Haducek, and his ops officer had a plan, and they were busy telling everyone their part in it. People who jumped would be pulled into rafts. Anyone armed would be shot.

The pirates couldn’t fight it out. Shooting hostages would do no good. They would be in a real corner.

“Have the captains check out their loud-hailers,” Toad reminded Flip Haducek. “I want Somali speakers on those things.”

“Yessir.”

“We may have casualties,” Toad told his staff. “Passengers may jump into the water; we must be ready to rescue them. Innocent people may get shot. I know all that. Still, I think the benefit of rescuing these people and thwarting the pirates is worth the casualties, which we will do our very best to minimize. I want Recon marines to rappel onto that ship as soon as the pirates surrender. They are to check below deck for casualties and evacuate any wounded they find. Kill anyone who offers resistance.”

“Sir, Ward has its marines aboard.”

“Very good. Load up the Recon guys and let’s get this show under way.”

Colonel Zakhem had marines in helmets lining the flight deck walkways. Several platoons waited on deck behind the island for the flight deck to clear.

Watching the ships, Ospreys and helicopters through binoculars, Mustafa al-Said realized that the Americans were up to something, and whatever it was, it was going to happen soon.

He couldn’t shoot it out with the Americans. He couldn’t run. His only option was to threaten the hostages. He had serious misgivings, but no other options, so that is what he decided to do.

He gave terse orders. His men were to herd the passengers up on deck and line them up against the rails. They were to hide behind them, and shoot them if he gave the order.

Mustafa didn’t think it would work. He knew his men. Oh, they were perfectly willing to kill people, but they weren’t willing to die to win victory. After the hostages were dead, what then? The Americans would slaughter the pirates, and they all knew it. Still, maybe the Americans would chicken out. Maybe they didn’t have the stomach for blood.

He used the ship’s loudspeaker system to give the orders in Somali. In seconds he could hear shouts and screams and the sound of running feet.

This would work or it wouldn’t.

Mustafa had a man on the bridge take the two women out on the wing of the bridge and stand behind them. He grabbed the captain and led him to the other wing of the bridge. Jammed his rifle in his back.

USS Chosin Reservoir was a mile away from Sultan, making two knots, when a yeoman ran up to Toad on the flag bridge and handed him a message. Richard Ward was approaching the cruise ship from the other direction, which was bow on to her. Marines with rifles were all over the weather decks.

Toad took a deep breath, exhaled and glanced at the message. From Washington.

“Reference your message”—there was a date-time group—“notifying us of your plan to confront the pirates. Permission denied. Risks to noncombatants judged to be too great. Do not allow any of your vessels to approach within two miles of Sultan without permission from this headquarters. All flights to remain clear by at least two thousand yards.”

Toad Tarkington wadded up the message with one hand.

“Sir, lookouts report civilians are lining the rail of the cruise ship. Some pirates with weapons behind them.”

He could just ignore the order and proceed as if he never got it.

Even as he weighed it, he knew he wasn’t going to ignore a direct order from the National Command Authority. Wanted to … knew his plan would work …

God damn!

Haducek was standing beside him. “Tell the captain to veer off. Tell Ward to do the same. Tell them to take up station five miles on either flank of the cruise ship.”

“Jesus, Admiral. What—?”

Toad handed him the wadded-up message. “Just do it, Flip. Have the marines stand down.”

Mustafa heard the ringing of the engine room telephone as he watched the amphibious assault ship turn away and accelerate. Captain Penney heard it, too.

Penney wrenched himself from al-Said’s grasp and walked over to the phone. He grabbed it. “Captain.”

“Port aft pod has power. Use the bridge controls.”

“Thank you.”

Penney went to the power control station, advanced the power lever for the port aft engine, made sure the turn-rate controller was centered so he could see how much he would have to turn the engine to make the ship go straight. He felt the screw bite. Almost imperceptibly, but he felt it. Saw the RPM needle come off the peg.

“Sultan is under way, sir.”

Toad bit his lip. Even with the ship under way, his show of force would have worked.

He took off his baseball cap and crushed it with his left hand. The flag lieutenant was standing a little distance away. Toad glanced at him. “I believe I’ll have a cup of coffee, Mr. Snodgrass.”

“Yes, sir.”

Afterward Snodgrass told his fellow officers, “You should have seen the old man. Ice water in his veins.”