Pirate Alley

CHAPTER FOUR

The capture of a cruise ship by Somali pirates was headline news worldwide, or would be when Europe and America woke up. The Pentagon received the Flash message from Task Force 151 so knew of it first. The bald facts went from the Pentagon’s duty officers to the White House night staff and assorted other government agencies within minutes.

Jake Grafton was sound asleep at home when he received a call from the CIA situation room. Half awake, he grunted three or four times as he tried to absorb the story.

“The director wants to meet with you and the other department heads at seven thirty.”

“Fine,” Jake said and hung up.

His wife, Callie, had awakened. The incident would certainly not be a secret long, he knew, so he said, “Task Force 151 reports Somali pirates have captured a cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden. About five hundred passengers and three hundred fifty crewmen.”

Callie came wide awake. “Isn’t Toad Tarkington in command of that task force?”

“Yes.”

Toad had served as Jake’s aide for years when Jake was on active duty in the navy. After Jake retired, Toad went on to various assignments and had obviously impressed his superiors with his competence. Now he was a two-star admiral.

Jake knew Toad had probably had a damn rough day in the Indian Ocean, and, if anything, tomorrow was going to be worse. Every politician from Washington to Doha, Beijing and Tokyo was going to tell Tarkington what he had done wrong. Being second-guessed went with the job. Jake forgot about Toad and began mulling the probable reaction of those same politicians after they stopped grousing and started thinking.

He climbed from the bed and padded into the kitchen, where he fired off the coffeepot. Two in the morning, according to the clock in the microwave. As the coffee was brewing, he turned on the television.

Within sixty seconds Fox News had it. News Flash. He flipped channels. Soon all the cable news networks were giving the story a big play. By the time the coffee was ready, one news channel was airing a photo of the ship, Sultan of the Seas, probably one the producer had just downloaded from the Internet.

Callie came in wearing a robe over her pajamas, and together they watched the idiot tube as they sipped hot coffee. The news organizations didn’t have any more details, just the facts as announced by the Pentagon, so the talking heads began speculating. They wondered how much money the pirates would demand as ransom.

A lot, Jake thought.

“My God,” Callie whispered, “I’m glad we aren’t on that ship. And Amy isn’t.” Amy was their daughter.

Jake finished his coffee. “Well, a lot of people are on that tub, and I guarantee you they all wish they weren’t.”

He headed for the bathroom. Might as well shower, shave, get dressed and go to Langley. Before he went to the seven-thirty meeting he wanted to learn everything he could about the capture, read the follow-up message traffic, and talk to the people at the National Security Agency who monitored telephone and radio traffic in Somalia.

In the shower, thinking about the crew and passengers on Sultan, he muttered, “Hang in there, people,” but no one heard him.

Mustafa al-Said had thirty-two men, three boatloads, aboard Sultan of the Seas. Their main defense against allied warships, airplanes and marines was the passengers and crew that they held captive. The civilians were hostages, pure and simple. If necessary, Mustafa knew he could shoot a handful every hour for a couple of days and still have plenty of people left alive to ransom. Of course, there was a risk. If he started shooting hostages, the enemy commander might decide to attack in order to rescue as many live hostages as possible. Mustafa certainly didn’t want to goad that infidel into pulling a big trigger.

After leaving two men who could actually read a compass to keep a wary eye on the captain and his surviving officers, Mustafa went aft and began assigning topside positions to his men.

Any attack, Mustafa thought, would probably come from the air. Helicopters would hover over the only open area topside, the pool area amidships, which was between the forward and aft superstructures. If attacking helos were allowed to machine-gun the top decks, clearing them of Somali fighters, then they could hover and marines could rappel to the deck. Mustafa was a realist; his men were pirates, not trained soldiers. The people they shot at didn’t shoot back. If more than a handful of marines got aboard, his men would be outfought, killed or captured.

To keep attackers at bay he placed two machine guns forward, half-hidden inside the skin of the ship, with large windows to fire through. He had the men break out the glass. The third machine gun he placed aft, giving it the best possible field of fire. Men with RPG launchers were spotted inside the superstructure, out of sight of any helicopters that might approach, in position to step out and launch grenades when the choppers were in range and flying slowly.

Finally, he sent below for twenty passengers, whom he had tied to deck chairs beside the pool, in plain sight of any helicopter or jet pilot passing by.

While Mustafa was busy with all this, the first woman was raped on the second deck. She was a cook’s helper, twenty-three years old, from Sri Lanka. Three men dragged her to a bunk and took turns raping her while the others held the other three women in the compartment at bay with rifles.

The pirates had been told to leave the women alone, but. They were young, ignorant, illiterate, and bucked with life. They had guns and no one else did. They were going to be rich. Here was opportunity and no one to tell them no. After all, fucking an infidel couldn’t be a sin. Didn’t the Prophet, may He rest in peace, say to kill all infidels?

At first the woman fought. One blow broke her jaw, and she ceased her struggles. Just for good measure, the pirate whacked her with the butt of his gun on the side of her head, caving in an eye socket. She lay comatose as the man ripped off her clothes and opened his trousers. The sight of her naked body and the excitement of the morning had done their work. He spread her legs and jabbed his erect penis in as his mates laughed heartily.

When they had all had their turn, they left, slamming the door behind them.

USS Richard Ward was the first warship to obtain a visual sighting on Sultan of the Seas. An E-2 was a hundred miles away and had the ships on radar, so their symbols appeared on the computer-driven tactical displays of every ship in the task force, including the flagship, Chosin Reservoir.

Sultan was proceeding south at nineteen knots, which Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington thought was probably her normal cruising speed. If she held this speed, she would make the harbor at Eyl, Somalia, roughly at dawn tomorrow. If she was going to Eyl. Toad certainly didn’t know.

The weather was gorgeous, with just a high, thin cirrus layer diffusing the direct rays of the sun. Visibility was thirty or forty miles; wind out of the northwest off the Arabian Peninsula at five knots, a dry wind. Even the swells of the morning had dissipated until the ocean was a gentle, undulating mirror reflecting the sky.

His staff was sorting though the message traffic from his superiors and dashing off replies. They handed him clipboards full of this stuff, which he quickly scanned and handed back.

Washington wanted the impossible: the Sultan recaptured without the loss of a single civilian life.

The marine Force Reconnaissance team had taken down pirates aboard several merchant ships before, a bulk carrier and a container ship. Both had small crews. The Force Recon team knocked out topside opposition, boarded, then fought their way through the ship, killing any pirates who didn’t surrender. Most of them did.

Yet today the captured ship contained eight hundred and fifty people, literally people in every compartment, under the control of three boatloads of pirates, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty, all armed, headed for a safe harbor where they would anchor and demand ransom. Don’t pay, they kill people. Board, they kill people. Pay the money and you get everyone back alive. They’ll even give you back your ship. Then, since that went so wonderfully well and the pirates all got filthy rich, they’ll recruit hundreds more pirates, buy more boats and weapons, and motor out into Pirate Alley or the great wide ocean to capture more ships and crews and passengers to hold for ransom, all over again.

The fact that the pirates had a safe harbor to operate from and go back to was the crux of the problem, but one that wouldn’t get solved today or tomorrow, so Toad didn’t waste any time thinking about it. “Above my pay grade,” he once told his chief of staff, Flip Haducek, who was expounding on the wisdom of wiping out pirate nests.

A real-time television picture of Sultan appeared on the monitor above the tac display. The camera was on one of the helos.

As Toad studied it, Flip Haducek and Colonel Zakhem joined him.

“Washington wants to approve any plan of action you decide on,” Haducek said. He wiggled the message board in his hand.

“Gentlemen,” Toad said flatly, “my preferred course is an overwhelming show of force. Steam alongside with armed marines lining the rails of this ship and the Ward, helos and Ospreys overhead, fighters zipping past at masthead height. That is what I intend to do. When we’ve given them a good look, marines will rappel down and take the ship. They’ll be letting it all hang out. Still, it could work.”

Zakhem nodded his concurrence. The pirates could shoot the marines on the ropes, of course. It would take guts to go down those ropes. His marines had plenty.

“But if it doesn’t work, if they start machine-gunning captives or shooting marines, we need another plan,” the admiral continued. “I am not willing to watch those bastards sail away on the ocean blue with eight hundred and fifty captives to ransom at their leisure.”

“A clandestine boarding by SEALs tonight,” Colonel Zakhem said. He pointed to the monitor. “Those lines dangling over the side. Those are on the grappling hooks the pirates used to board. They are still there.”

Toad stared. The lines were difficult to see on the monitor. “We need real photos, of both sides of the ship. Blow-ups. Flip?”

“Aye aye, sir.” He picked up a telephone. The photos had already been taken and were being processed, he was told.

“SEALs,” the admiral whispered, staring at the thin lines on the monitor.

“If it were dark enough, a few determined men in wet suits might be able to climb those lines or their own and get aboard unnoticed,” Zakhem mused. “After all, the pirates did it. Who knows, if SEALs get aboard, the pirates can surrender or die.”

Toad wasn’t so optimistic. The pirates would want a shit-pot full of money for all those people, and he suspected they would fight like hell to get it. On the other hand, four or five SEALs sneaking through the ship slitting throats and tossing pirates overboard might convince the remainder they were in over their heads. Might. Or might not.

“Colonel, you and Flip scare up some SEALs and bring me a plan.”

The two officers left without a word.

Toad sat staring at the monitor and tac display until his ops officer approached him.

“We’ve rescued three pirates, sir. There was a fourth, but he had a twenty millimeter round through his abdomen and died five minutes after we pulled him out.”

“What do they say?”

“They are from Eyl, Somalia. Their warlord is a guy named Ragnar.”

Ops had prepared a message for Tarkington’s signature. He read it through carefully. There was a brief description of the Sultan, projected time of arrival off the Horn of Africa, intel from the rescued pirates, projected time of arrival at Eyl, the first suitable pirate port, and so on.

He thought if the pirates intended to cross the bar into Eyl, they would wait for dawn. They were seamen, certainly, but Sultan was not a fishing boat or pirate scow. Tod signed the message.

He picked up his binoculars and focused them on Sultan. Tarkington made a face. Then he began cursing, silently. Ah me.

Toad wondered what was going on aboard that ship.

Whatever it was, the pirates had the initiative. Toad wanted it back. He wanted to force his will upon the pirates, force them to do what he wanted, which was surrender. His primary goal was to make the pirate captain realize he had no other options.

“Every marine aboard is to be topside and on the sponsons with a rifle. We’ll make it plain—they can surrender or die.”

He glanced at his staff. “Flip, send another Flash message to Washington, Fifth Fleet, everyone on the list. Let’s do this as an Unless Otherwise Directed. Tell them Plan A and Plan B. We will go as soon as we get the marines transferred to the Ward, and our ships in position. Make that two hours from now. Draft that and let me see the draft.”

Haducek looked at his watch. “It’s 1130, sir. May we aim for 1430 instead?”

“Okay. Put that in the message, 1430 local time.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Captain Haducek strode away.

The other members of the staff discussed what had to be done and began making it happen. After another brief discussion with Colonel Zakhem, Toad personally briefed the captain of Chosin Reservoir. While they were talking, a first-class yeoman brought Toad a draft of the message dictated by Haducek. Unless Otherwise Directed, UNODIR, this is what I intend to do and when I intend to do it. Left unsaid but implicit was, If you don’t want me to do it, say so. Put yourself on record. Or let me proceed on my initiative and my responsibility.

Toad corrected one word, signed the form and handed it back.

When he and the Reservoir’s captain were finished, Toad called the captain of Richard Ward on a secure voice channel.

On the Reservoir’s flight deck, marines in battle dress were lining up to board Ospreys and helicopters. Colonel Max Zakhem didn’t believe in fooling around. Neither did Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington.

Toad climbed out of his chair and went to the head. He had needed to go for an hour.

Most of the women aboard the ship were at least twice the age of the pirates, who wanted something younger. Juicier. Fortunately there were several dozen good candidates in the crew quarters. In twos and threes, they went below and assaulted some women. One of the women screamed so loudly they strangled her, and they left another bleeding badly.

Captain Arch Penney got the news via telephone on the bridge. He turned to Mustafa al-Said, who was strutting back and forth, keeping his eye on the airplanes and helicopters that buzzed about at least a mile away from the ship.

“Your men are raping the women. I thought you said they wouldn’t do that.”

Mustafa’s concern showed in his face. His boss, Ragnar, had told him in no uncertain terms that he and his men must leave the women strictly alone. “We will ask for ransom, and they will demand to speak to the passengers and crew. If they report they have been raped or tortured or abused, we risk our political position.” Ragnar well knew that his lair of Eyl was only safe because the allied governments had refused, so far, to attack it. He didn’t want to give allied decision-makers a reason to change their minds.

Ragnar had been very explicit. “We want money. Not blood. Not revenge or terror or sex or any of that nonpaying shit. Money. Money we can spend. Don’t fuck this up, Mustafa.” Those were not his exact words, of course, but close enough. “Your men can wait until they are back in Eyl, then they can have all the women they can stand. If they have money, the women of Somalia will line up to fuck them.”

Mustafa left his two pirates who could read a compass in charge on the bridge and went below. He didn’t really care what the infidels thought of rape or his men; he cared greatly about pleasing Ragnar, who had a nasty habit of killing people who displeased him. People who thought they had a tough boss had no idea what a really tough boss looked like.

Radio talk-show host Mike Rosen had been using the Internet computers in the computer room just off the ship’s library when the pirates boarded the ship. He heard the shooting and the captain’s announcement. Pirates had taken the ship.

Rosen was no hero, but he was a journalist, and he knew that he was sitting in the middle of the biggest story he had ever covered. Maybe as big as 9/11. He logged off the Internet and grabbed his computer bag, which held his laptop, and retreated into the office just off the computer room. It wasn’t much, just a desk and chair, a computer and monitor, and a telephone. The computer on the desk was an old Dell, just like the ones in the computer room for the passengers to use. Rosen carefully closed the door and turned on the computer. His hands were shaking as he logged on to the Internet.

Voilà! It still worked. He was on. He was busy typing out a flash to the radio station in Denver when an automatic weapon burst went off outside the door.

Rosen grabbed his computer bag, slid the chair back and crawled under the desk.

More bursts from the computer room outside the door. And laughter.

When the blasts had finally subsided, maybe fifteen bursts, he estimated, he wasn’t really counting, the door flew open. He didn’t see it; he heard it. Another burst of rifle fire, this time so loud he cringed. Bits and pieces of the computer rained down on the carpet.

Then the door slammed shut.

Rosen waited a good five minutes, then went to the door and, as quietly as he could, opened it a crack. All he could see was remnants of the computers that had been lined up on one credenza facing the wall. The entire dozen were shot to shit.

Rosen carefully closed the door and examined the knob. It had a lock button. He pushed it.

He thoughtfully unpacked his laptop, raked the shards of the old monitor and keyboard off the desk and began setting up. The cord from the Internet connection to the late computer was intact, so he plugged it into his MacBook. Automatically he dug into his bag for the power supply and plugged that in to ensure his battery didn’t run down.

Then he tried to log on again to the Internet. Holy damn, it worked.

But what was he going to report? He didn’t know beans about what was going on.

He began searching the desk. Pulled out a board that acted as a writing extension, and there he found taped in place a list of the ship’s offices and phone numbers.

Might as well, he thought. He examined the telephone. It was intact. He picked a number, the ship’s head steward, and dialed.

“Yes.”

“How many people are dead? How many injured?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“I’m a spy for SMERSH, you moron. Now answer the question.”

“At least four dead on the bridge. Two passengers were shot before the pirates boarded; one of those has died. The other is in the infirmary. One woman was apparently raped to death.”

“That’s seven dead and one wounded.”

“There’s more wounded.”

“How many more?”

“Listen, you bloody American twit. Tying up the ship’s telephone lines to satisfy idle curiosity is wasting my time. Bugger off!” The phone went dead.

Rosen called the ship’s infirmary, a small space with three beds and one doctor.

A man answered.

“This is the second officer,” Rosen said firmly. “What do you have down there?”

“Four raped women. The men who carried them in weren’t shot, thank God.”

“Injuries?”

“One had a crushed eye socket. Two had all the usual damage of a gang rape. The fourth woman is dead.”

“Passengers or crew?”

“Crew.”

“Names.”

The male voice gave them to him.

“How many dead?”

“At least eight that I know of. Six crew, two passengers. There may be more. Probably are.”

“Thank you,” Rosen said and hung up abruptly.

He whistled absentmindedly to himself as he consulted the telephone list.

He called the aft dining room.

“Third officer.” He decided to give himself a demotion. “What’s your situation?”

“Fuckin’ pirates are gobbling everything in sight.”

“Any casualties up there?”

“Who the fuck are you, mate? You ain’t the bloody third.”

“Thanks for all your help. I’ll call you back in a while.”

He tried the radio room. No answer. Ship’s cruise director. A cultured female voice.

“Hello, this is Mike Rosen. I’m one of your passengers. Do you know how many pirates are aboard?”

“We have everything under control, Mr. Rosen. Please hang up and leave this line for crew to use. We’ll tell you all we can when the pirates allow us to again use the PA system.” He could tell that she was frightened.

“I really appreciate that. But do you or anyone there have any idea how many pirates are aboard?”

The woman took a deep breath and whispered, “One of the pool barmen said he thought about three dozen climbed aboard, but he didn’t get an accurate count. They’re swarming all over.”

“I see.”

“I have one in the passageway outside my office, strolling up and down, looking rather fierce. Please stay in your stateroom, obey the public address announcements.”

“You bet. Thanks for your help.”

He called the engine control room.

“What’s our speed and heading?”

“Eighteen knots, heading one-eight-zero.” Rosen couldn’t place the accent.

“What’s our destination?”

“Hell, maybe.”

“They haven’t told you?”

“No one ever tells me shit. You’ll get there when the rest of us do, shipmate, then you’ll know. Now bugger off.” He hung up on Rosen. Australian, the reporter decided.

Rosen thought for a minute, then called the engine room again. The Aussie answered after two rings.

“Why don’t you just shut down the engines?”

“You again! There are two nigger pirates down here, and they are primed to kill somebody. If the engines stop, they’ll kill the whole bleedin’ lot of us. The bastards don’t speak a word of English, yet they made that wonderfully clear. Marvelous communicators they are, regular MPs. Don’t call this number again.” He hung up.

Mustafa al-Said didn’t waste time. He asked direct questions and pressed until he found the three that had raped the crew women. They were on the fourth deck, at the head of the ladder leading to the crew’s quarters below, along with two other pirates. Mustafa picked one man, the nearest, shoved the AK into his chest and gave him a burst. Blood spewed out his back. With his heart shot to pieces and a severed backbone, the pirate was dead before he hit the carpeted deck.

Mustafa used the butt of the weapon on the side of the head of one of the guilty men. The other jerked his head back as the rifle butt swung and caught his nose, breaking it, smearing it across his face. Rich red blood poured from his nose.

Mustafa backed off and looked at the four men standing there.

“You were told what to do and what not to do. Touch another woman and I kill you and your family back in Eyl. Everyone.”

The injured men and the other two standing there looked properly cowed. Without Mustafa al-Said they would be starving in Eyl, a fact of which they were well aware.

“Throw this piece of dog dung over the side.” Mustafa gestured with his rifle barrel at the man on the deck with no chest, then turned and headed back to the bridge.

Mike Rosen figured he had enough information to write a story. He got into his onboard account, addressed an e-mail to the news director at his radio station in Denver, 850 KOA, and began typing.

Halfway through he wondered how much fuel the ship had aboard. Enough to reach the next port, certainly, but precisely how much? What was the range of the ship with her current fuel load?

He called the engine room one more time.

“What’s our range with existing fuel, at this sp—”

“Bugger yourself, you balmy bastard.” Bang. The phone went dead.

A dried-up source, Rosen reflected. Sources do that occasionally. He went back to typing. He had met the captain the other night, Arch Penney, so he described him, handsome and competent and all that, and checked the name of the cruise line on the stationery in the desk to ensure he got it right. He even found the length and displacement of Sultan and salted that in.

Hell of a good story, he thought as he maneuvered the little arrow over the SEND icon and launched his e-mail into cyberspace, via the satellite.

Of course, the cruise line would put the cost of the e-mail on his bill, but he could and would deduct it from his income taxes. Fuck Warren Buffett.

The night news lady at KOA Denver had seen the news of the Sultan’s capture, and knew Mike Rosen was aboard, so when she saw she had an e-mail from him she opened it immediately.

Three dozen pirates, a woman raped to death, three others injured by rapists, eight people believed dead … This was hot. Very very hot. The news director passed the e-mail to the on-air host, who read it into the microphone verbatim. She also sent it to the wire service. Then, with two keystrokes, she posted the e-mail on the radio station’s Web site.

Fifteen seconds after the e-mail hit the Web site, a lady from Littleton who couldn’t sleep started reading the story. A minute later she sent it to seventy-six friends. After five minutes, the e-mail had circled the earth twice and was being read by over five thousand people in thirty-two countries.

Ten minutes after Rosen’s e-mail arrived in Denver, the contents were on the cable news networks. MSNBC fretted that it was a hoax. A talking head on CNN read it without comment. Fox had the host read the e-mail on camera and ran the text across the bottom of the screen for deaf viewers or viewers with the audio turned off.

The Pentagon had heard all about Rosen’s e-mail, the casualties and the rapes by the time Admiral Toad Tarkington’s UNODIR message arrived. The duty officer conferred with the White House staff, who called senior government officials all over town, waking them up. The president had spent the evening in a critical meeting with his political advisers and had a full day scheduled for tomorrow with a foreign head of state, so the decision was made not to wake him. After all, the cruise ship was British and would still be captured in the morning. The Joint Chiefs were advised by the Pentagon staff, but in this age of political wars in shitty little places, American politicians ran military operations; all the military professionals did was obey orders and advise. Advise when asked.

The staff of the national security adviser, conferring by telephone, decided to respond to Admiral Tarkington’s UNODIR Flash message. They all had fine educations and were politically committed to this administration and its goals, and none of them had ever spent a day in uniform in their lives. Since SEAL Team Six whacked bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs were hot commodities, military rock stars who fought for civilization against evil Islamic devil-worshippers. SEAL warriors could accomplish anything, or so the staffers believed, to the greater glory of the administration with the guts to unleash them. Task Force 151 was ordered to attempt a SEAL team takedown of the pirates aboard Sultan of the Seas.

In effect, Admiral Tarkington’s operational plan was turned upside down.