Pirate Alley

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Those people are sick,” Jake Grafton said to Ragnar. “Seven dead of dysentery already, and more will die today and tonight. They need medicine and clean water, and the sickest ones need to be evacuated.”

Grafton sounded like a man ordering a pizza. Didn’t raise his voice, didn’t look nervous or flustered, looked like a man in perfect control of himself and the situation. He looked like a man used to command.

High Noon translated that bit while I glanced around. The woman was still there, sitting in the corner. Obviously American or European, well-endowed, tan, nice set of legs and arms, a face that showed nothing. I suspected she wasn’t having a pleasant time of it. Ragnar had her sitting there to show her off, his trophy, to his men and Grafton and me.

Before Ragnar could reply to Noon’s translation, Grafton started talking again. “Nora Neidlinger”—he gestured at the woman—“was a passenger on that ship. She is an American. I want her released right now.”

Ragnar’s face darkened as he listened. I glanced at Neidlinger, who was wearing the best poker face I had ever seen. I wondered if she was sedated.

The pirate chieftain erupted. Words poured forth, plus much gesturing. He was nervous, couldn’t hold still. He looked at his men as much as he did Grafton, and I realized he was playing to them. He had to hold on to their loyalty no matter what. If he lost it, the gig was over. Nothing was more important than that.

Noon started talking, even though Ragnar didn’t even pause. “Two hundred million American dollars in old bills. Three days from now. Friday. At noon. Or we kill them all. Everyone. Old, young, men, women, sick, healthy, all of them. No medicine. No tricks. No one leaves. Pay the money!”

When he wound down Grafton spoke in the same flat tone he had used before. “I told him I would speak to my government. Perhaps they will authorize more money. Perhaps not. In the meantime, he must show good faith. He must release Ms. Neidlinger and allow medicine, water and food to be brought in by helicopters. They can land on top of the fortress. The sickest people will be evacuated. Two helicopters. Only two.”

“No.”

Grafton found a chair and pulled it around and sat in it. He slouched and crossed his legs. Comfortable. “How do I know that Ragnar will release everyone and the ship after the money is paid?”

“You have my word.”

“How do I know that you have not made a deal with the Shabab to kill them after you get the money?”

“Do you take me for a fool? I know that once the hostages are gone, the Americans and Europeans can attack this town and kill everyone in it. What is to prevent them? Only my doing as promised. My good faith and honor keeps me alive. And all my men. The hostages have not been harmed. When the money is paid they will be released.”

“I have been told the Shabab wishes to betray you.”

“A lie.”

“You cannot spend corpses.”

“Your people will be returned alive.”

“We will not pay for dead people.”

Ragnar’s eyes became cold, hard. “I know about Osama bin Laden. I know your government can kill anywhere. Anyone. I need no threats.”

“The Shabab would like to see you dead.”

This comment went through the group like chain lightning. They snapped at each other, fingered their weapons; Ragnar shouted at one of his sons.

“Two hundred million American dollars,” Grafton said, “but only for all the hostages. Nothing extra for anyone.”

As Noon translated, Grafton walked over to the duffel bag that contained the money. It was still half full. He picked it up, turned it upside down and let the bills cascade onto the floor. He picked up a handful, looked at it, then tossed it down.

“Two hundred times this much,” he said, glancing at Noon, who translated.

Grafton took his seat again and slouched comfortably.

Three more minutes of thrust and parry, but Ragnar kept looking at the bills heaped up on the floor. I knew then he was going to surrender, and so did Grafton.

When the pirates quieted down Grafton returned to the subject of helicopters. More harsh words. Ragnar kept glancing at the money from time to time.

Finally Ragnar nodded. Grafton held out his hand to me for the radio. I pulled it from the backpack without letting my underwear or the Ruger fall on the floor.

He turned the thing on, fiddled with frequencies and volume, then made a call. It was immediately answered.

“This is Grafton.” He explained what he wanted. Two hours, he was told. He apparently knew the person on the other end, and they made a few personal remarks. Grafton closed with, “And I want you to send a message to the powers that be. Tell them Ragnar wants two hundred million and won’t take a penny less.”

“Wilco.”

“Thanks, Toad.”

Grafton put the radio in his shirt pocket, leaned back in the chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Tell him two hours,” he said to Noon, then turned and glanced at Neidlinger. Motioned to her. She rose and came over, stood near him while Ragnar’s face flushed. He was one mean bastard; I could read it in his face.

“I may be able to get you out of here,” he said. “These people want money so badly that—”

“No,” she said softly, looking at him, not Ragnar.

A look of surprise crossed the admiral’s face, then disappeared. “Why?”

“I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.”

Grafton thought about that, studied her face for a few seconds, then said, “A better option would be to ride a chopper out of here and leave Ragnar to me. Take your daughter with you.”

“No.” The word came quickly.

Grafton seemed to be searching for words. “Revenge is a wonderful thing,” he said finally, “yet it comes in many varieties. There is something going on here I don’t understand.”

She shrugged. Walked back to the corner and resumed her seat.

Grafton glanced thoughtfully at me, and his mouth made a little O. Then he scrutinized Ragnar and his sons and lieutenants, taking a moment to examine each one, as if committing their faces to memory. He took his time, as if he had all the time in the world. It was Ragnar who got the fidgets.

Grafton wiggled one finger at High Noon. “Tell him I want the American television reporter and photographer released from that prison. As a sign of his good faith, his honor.”

Noon did so. Ragnar nodded once. One of the lieutenants left the room and started down the stairs. When his footsteps had faded, Grafton stood and shook out his trousers. “Mr. Noon, perhaps it would be best if we left before we wear out our welcome with the sheikh. Thank him for his hospitality. When I hear from my government, I will return for another negotiating session.”

Noon made this statement, drawing himself up as he did so. To my relief, Ragnar didn’t object. I got the impression that Grafton didn’t care one way or the other.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs and exited the building, Grafton had my arm. The reporters were out in the square and ready with cameras and lights. “We’ll get to them in a minute,” he said. He wrapped a hand around my arm and gently pulled me for a block or so, then into the doorway of a building so dirty and old that I looked for the sign DR. LIVINGSTON SLEPT HERE. With his mouth only six inches or so from my ear, he told me his plan, and my part in it. The exposition took fifteen minutes. I could feel the panic start way down inside me, well up like hot lava. The hairs on the backs of my arms and hands stood to attention.

I had objections, of course. What if I failed to achieve the results he wanted? What if the pirates killed me?

“They won’t,” he said dismissively.

There are some things about Jake Grafton that I am not skeptical about anymore. He is the coolest, most calculating gambler alive, he will stake everything on his ability to force events to unfold as he wills them, he has ice water in his veins and no nerves at all, and when he strikes, he does so suddenly, violently and ruthlessly, with devastating accuracy and effect. In truth, he is the embodiment of the perfect warrior.

There are days when I think he should forgo clothes and wear a steel suit, complete with helmet, chain-mail gloves, sword and lance. This was one of them.

“Sir Jake,” I muttered as he went into greater detail about my role in his drama.

“What?”

“Nothing. A brain fart. Forget it.”

Ten minutes later we went out into the square. Ricardo was getting set up. His photographer told me the generator would take a few minutes to get enough charge on his batteries to get him back in business.

Grafton wasn’t waiting. He was chatting with Sophia Donatelli and the BBC dude, Rab Bishop. The Brit was pretty buttoned-down, I thought. He wanted to know Grafton’s background, a subject the admiral wasn’t interested in throwing much light on.

In a few minutes, Ricardo was ready to go. As the three cameras focused on him, Grafton spoke easily, as cool as a congressman just reelected by a landslide.

“I have been having discussions with Sheikh Ragnar. The sheikh has agreed to allow two helicopters from Task Force 151 to provide humanitarian aid to the passengers and crew of the Sultan. They should land on the fortress in a little more than an hour. Meanwhile, I shall relay his ransom demands to my superiors, who of course have given them careful consideration, and will do so again. The British and American governments are philosophically opposed to paying ransom to pirates, yet there are humanitarian considerations here that must be weighed carefully. Sometimes public policy must bow to the sanctity of human life. We will know more in a few hours, I hope. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them within the scope of my authority, which, as you may suspect, is very limited.”

I knew Grafton was slick, but he had a talent as a liar that would have done credit to Bernard Madoff. He should have been a politician.

They had questions, and he deflected most of them. They would have to wait.

Then he was done and walked away. I went with him. The press got busy packing up and moving up the hill to photograph the choppers arriving and departing.

The evening was upon us. The ocean to the east was shrouded in darkness.

I was tired, and I realized I wasn’t going to get any sleep. Grafton sat on a piece of a box that had washed up on the beach and talked awhile on his handheld radio. It didn’t have much range, but he was chatting with Toad Tarkington aboard Chosin Reservoir; I doubted if the ship was over ten miles away. Just in case, I suspected the E-2 Hawkeye from the aircraft carrier farther north was overhead to relay the signal, and of course Tarkington probably had an Osprey or two aloft. Plus drones. I wondered if Ragnar realized how tight the net already was.

Ragnar, his two sons, and Mustafa al-Said huddled around a radio set up in a room on the third floor of his building. The radio had come out of a captured ship and could run through the UHF and VHF frequencies that the allied task forces used to communicate. The technician spoke some English, enough to get the drift of remarks, but tonight he was having his problems.

All the tactical transmissions among the ships and SEALs and planes were encrypted. About the only plain-language transmissions he could intercept were aircraft control freqs in use around the ship, and were quite useless to him, most of the time. Other than the fact that certain aircraft were airborne, and how many, a nonexpert listening to this stuff heard most of it as useless tidbits, and numbers could easily be over- or understated to confuse eavesdropping baddies.

However, tonight the technician had found and was listening to Jake Grafton’s plain-language discussion with Toad Tarkington. Grafton told the admiral afloat that he wanted two helos, all the clean water they could carry, soap, medicine for intestinal problems and a doctor. He wanted the choppers to land on the roof of the fortress, off-load their supplies and evacuate sick people. The technician translated as much of that as he could for Ragnar and his men.

Then Grafton got into the amount of money Ragnar wanted. Toad read Grafton snippets of messages that, he said, were pouring out of Washington. After fifteen minutes, Ragnar learned that Grafton had the authority to agree to pay two hundred million in cash to Ragnar, but the money wouldn’t arrive aboard ship until the following day. Toad recommended a delivery Friday morning, after Grafton had agreed on the amount and the method of transport of the prisoners after they were released.

What Ragnar didn’t know, of course, was that all this was merely good theater. Still, he and his men discussed the conversation they had overheard, and were pleased. They had won. The allies were going to cave. They were going to be filthy rich.

Two miles inland, at the headquarters of the Shabab in the village beside the river, Yousef el-Din was also listening.

He and his lieutenants made their plans. If Ragnar and his pirates were dead when the two hundred million arrived, they could collect it in their place and use it to fund jihad. The irony of using infidel money to buy weapons from infidels to kill infidels was delicious to contemplate.

Of course, the Shabab would kill all the prisoners. “God’s curse be upon the infidels,” says the holy Koran. “Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous.”

This triumph would be the ultimate terror strike against the Great Satan. The power of the Shabab would be on display for all the world to see. America and her allies would react violently, of course, and that bloodletting would unite the faithful worldwide in the ultimate jihad, the final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.

Since they fought God’s battles, the warriors of the true faith would win, once and for all. Their reward in Paradise would be great indeed. The Koran promised endless virgins to deflower and boys to bugger, prospects that appealed mightily to Yousef el-Din, who did his best to anticipate his reward right here on earth.

Yousef el-Din and his lieutenants could scarcely contain themselves.

Allah akbar!

After a while Jake Grafton and High Noon strolled into Ragnar’s building to see the man. No doubt they were going to negotiate some more on how much ransom the good guys were going to pay. I was sure Grafton would be a super-hard sell yet eventually capitulate, filling Ragnar’s hard little heart with greedy hope … but, of course, I now knew that Grafton intended to pay nothing, nada, zip point zilch more than the million he had already laid on Ragnar.

Knowing Grafton, I suspected he would also figure out a way to get most of that million back. No doubt he planned a tiny role for me in that repossession.

I sat on a handy rock and surveyed Ragnar’s building. The Italians built it, I knew, back when this was Italian Somalia. Balconies faced the sea, but the other three sides had only windows. The walls had the usual decorations, little ledges and cornices. I estimated the distance between them. Yes, the building could be free-climbed.

The windows were bright with electric lights. Obviously the building had a generator. As far as I could see, it was the only one in town. Everyone else had candles and lanterns to keep the night away, so the town was much darker than one would see in Europe or the Americas.

I sat watching the crowd as the evening deepened. One of the television reporters was busy chattering into the cameras as the portable lights illuminated the scene. The other two reporters were already up at the fortress. Hordes of local kids stood behind the reporter, mugging for the cameras. The technician running the diesel generators was passing out candy bars to the kids. He tried to make the goodies last, but soon he was out and the kids abandoned him to his noisy machine.

A few entrepreneurs had set up grills and were selling food. I wasn’t tempted. The locals ate the stuff with their fingers. I didn’t see a single Somali woman in the crowd. Lots of kids, men with AKs and unarmed men just wandering around, but no women. Every now and then one of the kids or men would relieve themselves in the sand. Or on the plaza.

A bonfire burned in the plaza. The flickering light made the scene look like something out of Dante.

The hot wind blew gently off the desert, and waves flopped on the beach. By all appearances, it was just another night in Somalia.

Up on the point I could see some light leaking out the gun ports of the old fortress. Eight hundred fifty people hunkered in there …

I stood up, dusted off my fanny and hoisted my backpack, and walked across the plaza toward the road that would take me up the hill. I wanted to be there when the helos arrived.