Pirate Alley

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jake Grafton, Arch Penney and four of the Sultan’s officers and supervisors were standing by the portal to the fort when a technical roared out of the brush and screeched to a halt in a shower of gravel. It had come cross-country, avoiding the road. A man swung the machine gun in the bed back and forth, looking for targets, as another man jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran for the entrance. Penney and his officers ran for cover.

Jake propped the AK against the stone that formed the side of the entrance, took careful aim and fired a single shot. The man on the machine gun toppled. The other man slowed. Grafton put a bullet into the dirt at his feet. He stopped dead, his weapon in his hand.

“Drop it!”

He knew enough English to understand that command. The assault rifle fell to the ground.

Penney came over to Grafton’s side. “That’s Mustafa al-Said,” he said. “He led the pirates that captured my ship. He killed my officers. Murdered my passengers.”

Grafton handed Penney the AK. “You do the honors. Get him in here. Don’t kill him. We may need him later.”

Penney walked out with the rifle at his shoulder, aimed. He took a pistol from al-Said, then marched him toward the portal.

Once they were there, Penney handed the pistol to Jake Grafton. Al-Said stood with his hands up. Grafton said to Penney, “Get something to tie him up with.”

“We don’t have anything. Someone will have to watch him every minute.”

Jake Grafton bent over, checked the pistol in the dim light. Then he pointed it at al-Said’s leg and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore into the pirate’s knee; he toppled, screaming.

Grafton walked over to him. At point-blank range he shot him in the other knee.

“He’ll stay put now,” Grafton told Penney. “Get the keys to that truck. We may need it later.” The Sultan’s officers were gawking at him, with their mouths open.

The admiral handed Penney the pistol, then climbed the stairs leading to the roof. He wanted to see the rest of the battle, what there was of it, and radio reception was better up there.

The problem with going down stairs is that your feet arrive before you do. The sound of the shot in that basement was like a cannon going off, but I didn’t notice. The bullet burned my left leg and it folded, which was just as well. By then I was in the process of diving toward the bottom headfirst.

Saw the guy to my left with a pistol trying to get a clean shot at me. I didn’t wait. I got one into him by the time I hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. I rolled right, pistol out, and got him framed in the sights. He was sagging against the wall, staring down at the red spot on his dirty shirt. I wasn’t in the mood for a long-drawn-out dying scene, so I shot him again, then scanned the rest of the room. No people in sight.

The room was big and half-filled with crates stacked floor to ceiling. I scrambled up, cussing at the pain in my leg, and went exploring. There was another room behind this one, just as big, but completely filled with crates and weapons piled here and there. I gave it a cursory glance, then went back to the generator, which was throbbing along. For the first time I realized the room was filthy, with trash that had been piled in there since the Italians left. Rat shit all over the floor. I had been rolling in it. No doubt dozens, maybe hundreds, of generations of rodents had lived out their life cycles here.

My leg wasn’t bleeding too badly, and I could flex it, but it burned like hell. I rubbed the rat shit off my face and hair and spit on the floor, just in case.

Ben and Zahra came down the stairs. They glanced at the dead pirate, then ignored him. They went into the other room with their pistols out and ready. I kicked some of the trash around, looked for odd wires. Some rats scurried out of one pile and ran into another.

The generator had a fuel line gravity-feeding from a huge tank sitting beside it, against an exterior wall, mounted up on some kind of wooden supports. There was a valve on the line. I was looking it over when Zahra came back for me. “Carmellini!”

I went. In addition to the crates in the second room, in one corner were stacks of AKs, hundreds of them. I examined some of the crates while the Mossad agents scanned the others. The writing on the crates was in Cyrillic. A few of the wooden crates were open, so I looked in. The first box I looked at contained belts of machine-gun ammo. So did the second. The third one contained boxes of AK stuff, 7.62 x 39 mm. Hundreds of RPG-7 launchers were stacked like cordwood along one wall, with piles of warheads, and there was box after box of MON-50 mines, Russian claymores. They weighed maybe five pounds each, were packed with hundreds of steel bearings that the explosive propelled out like a shotgun blast. They were deadly as hell within fifty yards, and hit-and-miss out to maybe three hundred. I estimated that at least a hundred of them were piled here.

“Look at this.”

Ben pried the lid off one of the large boxes.

“PVV-5A,” he said. “Several tons of it, I think.”

“Detonators?”

“In this lot somewhere.” He stood looking around. “Over here are a couple of machine guns.”

I went back to the generator. Started cranking the fuel valve. The engine sputtered. The lights in the basement flickered, and died when the generator did.

The two Israelis already had their flashlights out and on. I hadn’t been smart enough to bring mine. I followed them back up the stairs.

They were pros. They held the flashlights out in their left hands while they scanned them around the lobby of that dump. It was still empty. I talked a bit on my headset with the SEAL team leader, Red One, or as he called himself, Red Leader.

“Check out the north room on the second floor,” he said. I clicked my mike and motioned to Ben. We headed up the staircase, Ben leading with his flashlight.

The second-floor north room was the com center. A modern shortwave set sat on a table. Ben didn’t waste much time—he used his pistol to put three rounds through the main radio. There were radio controls for model airplane rigs and garage door openers, all right, and batteries. Also two dead men. The Israelis looked them over, but they didn’t recognize either of them. They settled in to examine the radio controls, one holding the flashlight while the other scrutinized them.

I checked in with Grafton on the net.

“Grafton, Tommy. Found the radio room. A shortwave set and batteries and RC control units.”

“In the com center?”

“Yes.”

“Ragnar will have the hot one in his pocket. Get it and bring it to me.”

“I’m trying to figure out why they didn’t push the button to blow the fortress when the shooting started.”

“Thought we were Shabab, maybe,” Grafton said. That Grafton! He didn’t sound too interested. Fucking guy had ice cubes for balls. Everyone was still alive, so …

“Red Leader, I’m coming on up,” I said.

Heard some more gunfire above me. “Come on,” he said.

It was a nice early November evening in Washington, not too cold, with almost no wind. The president and his leadership team huddled around a television in the Ops Center in the basement. They sat silently listening to Ricardo—he was using his microphone now, he said—and watching war on television. Real war. In a shitty little place. Mostly the show consisted of random flashes and a cacophony of small-arms fire, overlaid by Ricardo’s fevered descriptions.

In London it was past midnight, and the prime minister and his lieutenants were similarly engaged at 10 Downing Street watching the local Fox network. On another television tuned to the BBC, they had only audio from the satellite telephone of the BBC’s man in Eyl, Rab Bishop. A scrolling legend on the bottom of the screen pleaded technical problems and promised video momentarily.

“All that money for the BBC,” someone remarked, “and this is what we get.”

Both the prime minister and the president had satellite telephone connections with Admiral Tarkington aboard Chosin Reservoir. The admiral had apprised them several hours ago that the action would soon begin, but they had expected that when they read Mike Rosen’s first e-mail.

“Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until the marines were ashore tomorrow before launching this party?” the foreign minister asked the PM.

The prime minister knew little of military affairs, a fact he was willing to admit publicly, and he had learned not to trust generals and admirals, who were, in his opinion, far too quick with victory predictions and clueless about political realities. Today his misgivings over the handling of this crisis grew with every machine-gun blast and Hellfire impact on the screen in front of him. Still, he wasn’t going to call the admiral for reassurance. If he had any to give. Or those ninnies at the White House. The bald fact was the horse had left the gate and was running the race.

He contented himself with the comment, “If anything happens to those Sultan people, there will be bloody hell to pay.”

On the far side of the Atlantic, the president was also examining his hole card. Giving Grafton command of this operation looked smart last week, but if this thing turned into a civilian bloodbath … A congressional investigation was the least that would happen. His handling of the military would be questioned. Foreign affairs … His enemies, of whom he had many, would wave the bloody shirts as proof of his and his administration’s incompetence, which would have incalculable political effects.

He felt like a man on a runaway horse, with no control whatever, just trying to keep from being thrown.

The president glared at Sal Molina, who had lobbied hard for Grafton.

As machine guns chattered and muzzle flashes strobed on the television screen and that nincompoop Ricardo had oral sex with his microphone, the president dug a packet of cigarettes from a drawer and lit one. Blew smoke at the NO SMOKING sign. Mouthed a dirty word but didn’t say it.

The SEALs were certainly thorough clearing Ragnar’s lair. I counted five bodies as I climbed the stairs. Passed a troop of women and kids going down the stairs. I knew from the net that the SEALs had found them upstairs in the living quarters below the penthouse and were sending them down. Eight women, eleven kids, three being carried. I saw no blood. Just scared helpless people.

The penthouse was a helluva mess. The four SEALs were standing around looking for someone to shoot while Nora Neidlinger sat on the floor, working in near darkness cutting rope. Fifty dollar bills and C-notes were scattered everywhere.

“One alive, these other two are dead,” the SEAL team leader reported.

“Got a flashlight?” I asked.

He gave me his.

“Have you searched them?”

He handed me a small RC control unit with three little arms and a red button. “Ragnar had it on him. No battery. The battery was in the other pocket.” He gave me the battery and I pocketed it. Stuck the controller in my other pocket. It just fit.

I took a look at the pirate still alive. Ragnar! He was trying to talk. Had stuff covering his feet and hands, and one eye didn’t focus. Concussion. No weapons in sight. The SEALs had confiscated them.

“Thanks,” I told the SEAL guy. “I’ll take it from here.”

They turned and trooped off.

I squatted by Nora. She hadn’t said a word. Just sawed that dull knife on the rope.

“Wanna go get a beer?” I asked.

“No.”

“What are you going to do with the rope?”

“Tie him up.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

I took out my Marine Corps fighting knife with the seven-inch blade and handed it to her butt first. “This is sharper.”

She quickly finished cutting the rope into the lengths she wanted. She pulled all the trash and debris off him, then tied a rope around each of Ragnar’s wrists and ankles. Then she tied the other end to any heavy thing in reach. Worked on those knots. Got them good and tight.

I went into the bathroom. The water wasn’t working, naturally, since the electricity was no longer powering the water pump, but there was water in the toilet. I used a gourd I found in the kitchen to scoop out some.

Went back and poured it on Ragnar’s face. He started coming around.

“Why don’t you just kill him?” I asked. “I won’t tattle.”

“You can leave now,” she said. She was watching Ragnar. She didn’t even glance at me. She was holding that Ka-Bar with both hands.

“If you want, I’ll do it for you.”

No response. I put the flashlight on the floor and went.

Nora Neidlinger made sure Ragnar was trussed up good. The ropes holding his arms were tight, the knots snugged down. In fact, his hands were beginning to turn white from lack of blood.

She had tied one ankle to a fallen ceiling beam and one to a heavy chair. She used hundred dollar bills to gag him. Wadded them up and stuffed them in his mouth, and tied them in place with a piece of his shirt. Made sure he could still breathe. He was good to go.

Unfortunately he was still groggy from the concussion. She went into the bathroom and got more water from the toilet. She dribbled it on his face until his eyes flipped open.

“Hey there, asshole.”

He seemed to become fully conscious. Looked around, tried to talk, struggled against the ropes.

“Try harder,” she said and showed him the knife. Then she cut off his trousers. Rubbed his cock with her hand, waited for a response. Oh yes. She got a death grip and pulled it straight.

Ragnar bucked like a man possessed. “Have you ever been raped?” she asked conversationally, as if getting raped were equivalent to getting a parking ticket.

“Have you any idea what it’s like? You ignorant raghead devil worshippers rape women, kinda like breeding a dog. You pour acid on their faces, beat them, sometimes to death, and it’s just a ho-hum thing. Can’t wait to get to Paradise so you can butt-fuck little boys. Isn’t that what that pedophile Mohammed promised?”

She sighed. The bastard didn’t understand a word. Even if she could have spoken Somali, he wouldn’t understand. It was like talking to some slimy thing that lived in a sewer and came out when it was hungry to rape women and eat kids.

“Going to cut this off,” Nora told him. She made the first incision. Blood spurted.

“You won’t need this anymore,” she said. “You are all done screwing. Finished.”

Every muscle in Ragnar was taut, and his stomach was arched toward the ceiling. He was moaning through the gag.

“You should have known us back in the day,” she said, just talking. “Back in Cherry Hills. My husband wanted me to be the perfect little piece of arm candy.” Nora showed him his member, then tossed it through the door onto the balcony.

“He told me my boobs were too small so I had to get fake tits. Stay trim, look good for him. He was a car guy, seven dealerships, all kinds of brands, and gave money to every civic organization in town, all the charities. We went to every dinner, every function, got photographed for the society pages a hundred times. There I was, the perfect little wife, all dolled up in designer duds to show off my fake tits, smiling at everyone. And every evening the son of a bitch was fucking the babysitter when he took her home.”

She worked as she talked. “Her parents finally caught on, of course. She was sixteen and in love, love, love, going to marry him and be on his arm instead of me. She wrote all this in her diary, and her mother snooped and found it. Mothers do that, you know. Snoop.”

Jesus, the bastard could bleed, even though the ropes were tight.

“Statutory rape, of course, due to the age difference, and the fact it started when she was fourteen. It was pay big money or go to prison, so the bastard bought his way out of it. The parents wanted money. They really didn’t give a damn about the daughter, as long as he paid them four million dollars. They sold her. You see that, don’t you? Isn’t that what you ragheads do—buy children to fuck?

“My husband could have probably made a better deal if he had gone to them up front,” Nora mused aloud, “and said, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars if you’ll let me fuck your daughter on the sly for the next three years.’ A bang a month. Sometimes two. Call it fifty fucks in three years. A million bucks for fifty fucks.” She giggled. “They would have gone for that.”

Sweat was pouring off Ragnar’s face. Blood was seeping out his mouth around the gag. The shit had bitten his tongue. Idly, she wondered if he had bitten it off.

“One day the bank called the house to verify a check while he was making the rounds of the dealerships. I went to the bank and took a look. Can you believe it? The idiot wrote it on a joint account. Four million bucks. That was a damn big pop for us. I had the locks changed on the house that afternoon and filed for a divorce two days later.

“He tried to keep it all hushed up, but I fought to get the money back, so it became a huge stink.”

She stared down into Ragnar’s eyes, which still tracked.

“You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you? It’s too bad, really. But even if you spoke English, you wouldn’t have understood. Men seldom do. And you don’t strike me as the empathetic type.

“I’ll bet you were a pretty good pirate. My husband was, Honest John, but the divorce and publicity cost him the dealerships. They even threw him out of the country club. He became an alcoholic. Pickled himself, and his liver gave out last year. That’s the way it goes, I guess. You wear out your turn, then it’s someone else’s.”

Nora wandered around the room, touching this and that, paused to wipe the blood off her hands and arms on a blanket in the bedroom, then went into the living room and sat in a chair with her back to Ragnar. Amazingly, she spotted her purse in the rubble of the main room, right where Ragnar had tossed it several days ago.

She got it, rooted in it, found some cigarettes and lit one. It tasted delicious. She sat looking into the night as she smoked it. Above her, through the holes in the ceiling, she could see stars. Heard the desert wind whisper through the holes.

I stood in the doorway of Ragnar’s lair listening to what remained of the battle between the Shabab and the pirates. An occasional distant automatic weapons burst, then long moments of silence. An occasional explosion, no doubt from an RPG. Someone was cleaning up, executing the last of their enemies. Burbles of conversation on the tactical net in my ear. The SEALs were still on the beach, drones were overhead, the controllers were reporting on the battle. It was a bit like listening to a baseball game without the crowd-noise background or commercials.

My watch said it was a little after 4:00 A.M. I was almost tired enough to sleep standing up, even with the nicked leg. The bleeding had stopped. Slowed, anyway. Smarted a good bit. I needed to get a bandage on it.

The shards of war were scattered all over. Burned-out pickups, bodies, pieces of bodies, crap from the face of the building, glass all over, spent cartridges … Even with the breeze, I could smell cooked meat. A couple of women were examining the bodies. Maybe looking for their men. Or sons. Nora Neidlinger was upstairs carving on Sheikh Ragnar, the terror of the Somali coast.

Here came the television people with flashlights, picking their way through the trash, absolutely certain no one would ever want to shoot them. Poor deluded fools. Cameramen, reporters, engineers toting gear … Donatelli looked tired and a little the worse for wear. One-star accommodations can wear you down. Still cute, though.

The group came toward me and obviously intended to enter the building. I stopped them. “Don’t go in there. Off-limits to the press.”

“That’s the best vantage point for filming,” Ricardo explained, pointing upward toward the penthouse. “Great background. Anyway, we want to interview Ragnar. He’s still in there, isn’t he?”

“I am not his press secretary. He has other people for that. But I doubt if he wants to talk to you. Beat it.”

That got them.

“Who are you, anyway?” the BBC man demanded.

“Nancy Pelosi. How do you like my disguise? No one is supposed to know I’m here.”

“Don’t you understand? We’re the press! The whole world wants to know what is happening.”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re the pope’s eldest son. Take your act and git. Go interview a corpse.” I waved the Kimber around.

They went, carrying their gear, threading their way through the remnants of the pickups and bodies and pieces of everything, some of it bloody. They hiked off toward the fortress. If they knew about the trench bomb, they were the pride of their networks. I doubted if they did. Ricardo hadn’t impressed me as that kind of guy.

I was sitting in the doorway with my back to the pillar watching the sky brighten to the east when the drone controller announced that apparently the Shabab had won and were boarding pickups. They would be here in short order, he said. I looked at my watch. Almost 5:30 A.M.

I hiked back up the stairs to collect Nora Neidlinger. Met the two Mossad guys coming down. Each of them was carrying a couple of those Communist claymores. Souvenirs.

I found Nora sitting in a chair in the main room calmly smoking a cigarette. She had bloodstains to her elbows and on the front of her blouse. Lots of blood. The remains of Sheikh Ragnar were there on the floor, still trussed up. I tried not to look.

“Come on. Some bad guys are coming and we gotta get you outta here.”

She was in no hurry.

“I mean now. Unless you want to let the holy warriors rape you to death.”

She picked up her purse, stood and headed for the stairway. She didn’t even glance at Ragnar.

“I’ll need my knife.”

She jerked her head back toward the chair and kept going. I found the knife on the floor. Used a wad of currency to wipe as much of the blood and gore off the knife as possible—taking care not to look at Ragnar—put it in its sheath, threw the bloody money on the floor and followed her down the stairs.

Jake Grafton was waiting when I came out of the building. He had one of the pickups. Ben and his buddy were sitting in the bed, one on either side of Mohammed Atom, whose wrists were held together with a plastic tie. Grafton took a look at Nora and then at me. Didn’t ask any questions.

“Get her in the surf,” he said. “Wash her off.”

I took her elbow and walked her toward the ocean. We passed a couple of SEALs lying on the beach. They were wearing those black wet suits and were difficult to see until I almost stepped on them. If Nora saw the SEALs, she paid no attention. We passed them by, walked into the water to our knees. It was warm, wet and black, with rollers flopping on the beach and running back into the sea.

She handed me her purse, then took off her blouse and began handwashing it in saltwater. Dark as it was, I couldn’t see any blood. She scrubbed her hands and arms and shoulders slowly, as if she were washing up after a tennis workout. She was calm. Dead calm. I was worried about her. Wondered if she’d crack.

I suppose I should have been horrified about what she did to Ragnar, but I wasn’t. If she hadn’t been in that penthouse, I would have shot him. Good-bye, and bang. Can’t say he didn’t deserve it. Hell, all these pirates deserved it. Arch Penney would swear to that. One of the great philosophical issues of our time is why so few people get what they deserve. Good or bad.

Grafton was waiting for me when we walked off the beach. He was standing beside the pickup. The Israelis were not in sight. Grafton’s headset was draped around his neck. He must have had a dozen questions for me and Neidlinger, but he didn’t bother. One of the lessons he had undoubtedly picked up somewhere along the trail was that you can’t testify about things you don’t know about. It was a thing to remember.

“The Shabab will be here in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll stay to meet them. Tommy, you get Ms. Neidlinger up to the fort. Get her some food and a place to lie down.”

“Too bad we can’t gun them and waltz our people out of here.”

“Too many of them, and the planes won’t be here until tomorrow evening. Getting the radio controls to that trench bomb was the best we could do tonight. And eliminate some of the opposition.”

“What about that ship full of fertilizer, the Susan B. Grant? If she explodes—”

“She won’t. The SEALs blew a dozen holes in the side of the ship while the battle was going on. The seawater will ruin the fertilizer. Ship’s still there, of course—can’t sink, since she’s already resting on the bottom.”

“What about—”

“No time. Hustle out of here and get that leg looked at.”

I went. Got Nora to march. We got into solid darkness and walked as fast as my leg would allow. The wound was bleeding again. We were climbing the hill when a dozen or so pickups rolled into the plaza, one after another, and braked to a stop. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Grafton wandering over to the first one. I quit watching and climbed on up the hill, steering Nora along.

Yousef el-Din watched as armed men from the pickups behind him piled out and ran for Ragnar’s lair. Others set up a perimeter. Men at the machine guns mounted in the bed of every truck kept their weapons moving as they searched for targets. The vehicle headlights lit up the plaza as if it were a baseball field.

More pickups rolled through the plaza and took the road to the fortress. The bed of each contained eight to ten men, all armed, all hanging on tightly as they bumped and rattled up the dirt road.

Jake Grafton stood watching with professional interest. Any ambushing force could have decimated the column as it drove up. Yousef had a lot to learn, if he lived long enough. On the other hand, he obviously knew more about ground combat than the pirates—he was still alive.

El-Din climbed from the passenger seat of the lead pickup and was instantly surrounded by a small retinue of armed bodyguards. They kept their AKs at the ready.

Grafton stood with his arms folded. El-Din strolled over, in no hurry.

“Your men made short work of these pirates,” Grafton remarked, looking around. One of el-Din’s aides translated.

The bearded terrorist sneered. “Where are your men?”

“Not here. We used drones for this.”

The word “drone” threw the translator.

“Little unmanned airplanes. They carry weapons.” Grafton pointed toward the sky.

“Are they up there now?”

“Of course.”

From his pocket Yousef el-Din produced an object. He displayed it to Grafton, who recognized it. It was a modified garage door opener. Yousef talked, and the translator jumped in without waiting for a pause.

“With this I can set off Ragnar’s bomb around the fortress, and collapse it. The explosion and falling stone will kill everyone inside. My men will kill everyone outside. If the British or Americans attempt to betray us, or fail to pay the money, I will kill all these people, including you. Allah akbar.”

Grafton donned his headset, which had been arranged around his neck. He keyed the mike with his belt switch. “Toad, this is Jake.”

“Roger.”

Grafton repeated el-Din’s threat. As they discussed it Grafton heard a shout. He looked up in time to see a body falling from the penthouse balcony. It hit with a dull splat. Then another, and another.

Several of el-Din’s entourage ran over for a look. They came back with the news. Jake didn’t need a translation. Ragnar and his sons were dead. Yousef el-Din’s eyes crinkled, and inside his beard his lips twisted. This was his smile.

He spouted more words, either Arabic or Somali, Jake didn’t know. The translator said, “You come with us. You will talk for us. Any tricks, and you die.”

Jake repeated that to Toad Tarkington, then added, “I’m turning this headset off to save the battery. I’ll call you tomorrow to find out when you are ready to deliver the money.”

“Fine.”

As the pickups came up the hill toward the fortress, I put my weapons in my backpack and set it inside where it was hard to see. Thank heavens someone had dragged off the bodies of the sentries I’d killed. No doubt there were small bloodstains, but who would know? Or care?

Here they came, a couple dozen of Allah’s finest. Ahmad the Awful spouted gibberish at Captain Penney as I listened on my headset to Grafton talking to Admiral Tarkington.

I heard Grafton say el-Din was making him a prisoner. So they were kidnapping the negotiator!

One of the pickups was backing toward the entryway. It stopped twenty feet or so away, and the man at the machine gun pointed it at us, scowled fiercely and wiggled the barrel. If the trench bomb went off while he was sitting there he was going to join the ranks of the recently departed. Maybe he didn’t know that.

The three network reporters were trying to get an interview, but the head dog wasn’t having any of it. Maybe he didn’t speak English. He smacked a light with his rifle barrel, breaking it, and pointed toward the fort. The message was unmistakable. Get inside!

The media people obeyed with a lot of wasted motion. Generators died and lights were extinguished.

I keyed my headset. “Red Control, this is Tommy. Can you track Grafton with the drones?”

“We should be able to do that.”

“Wilbur, Orville?”

“We’ll try, Tommy.”

“Everybody, I’m going to turn off the headset to save the batteries. I’ll call before dawn for a report.”

“Roger.”

I switched the thing off, passed behind Captain Penney as I retrieved my backpack and headed for the stairs to the roof. I needed a few hours’ sleep. I wondered if I would get any.

Julie Penney escorted Nora Neidlinger to where Suzanne and Irene were trying to sleep, after the battle sounds died away. Marjorie was there, too. The women made a fuss over Nora, whose clothes were still damp.

“We must find her something dry to wear.”

As they did that, Suzanne got right to it. “How are you, Nora? Are you okay?”

In the gloom, it was impossible to read her face. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”

When her daughter was led in a few minutes later, Nora grabbed her and held on tightly.

Someone asked, “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I’m not hungry. Honestly.”

“Pirate adventures are a good way to lose weight,” Irene remarked.

“Two more days,” Julie told the women. “Arch talked to the negotiator, a Mr. Grafton. The money is coming. Just two more days and we’ll be free.”

When Nora finally lay down and closed her eyes, she tried to get some perspective on her life and her recent adventures. She often did that in the moments before sleep overcame her, but tonight the emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She needed to surpress them, try to wall them off. She certainly didn’t want to think about the details of the torture of Ragnar, which had been a catharsis, a break.

I’ve broken with my past life, she thought. From here until the end it’s a new adventure.

That thought allowed her to relax, and she slept as the dawn turned into day and the first rays of the sun sneaked through the gun ports into the fortress.

Jake Grafton was also lying down, trying to relax enough to sleep. He was in some ramshackle dirt-floored building a couple of miles up the river from the beach town, Eyl proper. East Eyl. Eyl Beach. Eyl by the Sea, the jewel of Somalia.

Around him he could hear men farting and snoring and coughing, and the groaning strain of the cots on which they lay.

He was acutely aware of the Walther in the ankle holster. They didn’t search him, merely took his com unit and headset. Told him where to lie down. He had obeyed.

Of course, the act of pulling that pistol from its holster would get him shot immediately. He had no intention of doing so. Not anytime soon, anyway.

He lay there listening to the night sounds and wondered if Yousef el-Din’s pocket radio controller would indeed trigger the trench bomb. He and the Israelis thought they had disabled all the detonators and antennas … But! Maybe they missed one. Or two. Maybe it wouldn’t be a really big bang, but a little one. Maybe there would be no bang at all. If Yousef pressed the button and nothing happened, he was going to be very surprised. Also very unhappy. Disappointed, too.

Maybe …

Jake Grafton was still going over the maybes when he drifted off.