The First Casualty

37

Then U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andrews had come up with a proposal involving minimum military or political risk to end piracy in the Malacca Strait, a problem that was a precursor to the troubles off the Somalian coast some years later. A rescued tramp freighter ready for the salvage yard, a month of ingenious retrofitting, and a squad ten Delta Force men under then First Lieutenant Jason Peters.

The nearly weeklong trip to the eastern entrance to the Strait of Malacca provided ample time to learn the singular attributes of the refitted ship. At the single refueling stop, a small corner of the massive port of Klang, Malaysia, the civilian-dressed crew enjoyed shore leave. The country, roughly half Moslem and half Christian, had reached a unique accommodation: Alcohol was forbidden to Moslems while freely available to Christians. If there were Islamic souls aboard the Muriel, they kept their religion to themselves as the crew en masse descended on those sleazy bars that line almost every large commercial harbor in the world. The local beer became a lubricant to tongues as the crew made acquaintance with the easy ladies who inhabit such places. The word changed from rumor to truth overnight: The ship was carrying a small but valuable cargo the exact nature of which was unknown to the crew, so valuable its composition was a deliberately kept secret between shipper and the ship’s owners, who, in turn were unknown. An impartial observer might have wondered if an attack by pirates was being invited. Whether braggadocio or sheer stupidity were to blame, the value of the cargo was firmly established in the bars at well more than $500 million USD.

“You always carry a spare canvas and paint box?” Andrews asked, arms akimbo, as he looked over Jason’s shoulder at the rendition of sky, water, and land. Andrews took a step closer. “Say, that isn’t bad the way you do sunlight on water.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Guess I didn’t expect talent like than in a ground pounder.”

Jason grinned, “You have a discerning eye, Lieutenant.”

Andrews took a deep drag and tossed a cigar butt overboard. “Let’s hope so, Artiste. We may need it.”

And they did in the later hours of that evening. It was two bells into the first watch by the Navy’s arcane timekeeping system, or right at 11:00 by Jason’s wristwatch. He was asleep in a bunk that seemed to never completely dry out, a fact he had accepted as part of naval life.

“Huh?”

In the dim glow of the night light, he could see Andrews’s unmistakable profile. “It’s time, Artiste.”

“Time for what?’

“Time for you snake eaters to earn your keep. Radar has three craft approaching, all from different directions. Classic attack pattern.”

Jason was instantly awake. Slipping his feet into a pair of deck shoes, he stuffed a denim shirt into the dungarees in which he had been sleeping. He had long ago learned the seconds required to fully dress could be the difference between just in time and too late.

Above and around him, members of his squad were silently rolling out of boxlike bunks that looked all too much like stacks of coffins. In the dim red of the combat lighting, the men reminded Jason of imps from hell. At the foot of the companionway leading up to the main deck, each man paused long enough to take a predetermined weapon from a rack: The new Colt M4 carbine with its collapsible stock and PAQ-4 infrared laser designator, some with the bulky new M-203 40-millimeter grenade launcher. The last man to leave the mess hall that also served as bunking area, Jason lifted down the chest containing his M24 Sniper Weapon System that represented the U.S. Army’s return to bolt-action sniper rifles. Because of the weapon’s inability to take the abuse to which most military rifles were subjected, it had been stored not in an open rack, but in a metal container.

He was carefully sliding the Leupold M3A scope into place along the track on the top of the barrel when Andrews appeared at his elbow. “Best get on it, Artiste. That long gun of yours won’t be any help tomorrow morning.”

Jason slowly hand tightened the securing screws. “Won’t be any help tonight, I knock this scope off half a centimeter. At eight hundred yards, that would be a miss of over a foot. I…”

He realized he was talking to the space vacated by the lieutenant. Andrews was already halfway up the stairs.

Jason arrived on deck just in time to witness the last of organized confusion. Though the moonless night was too dark to see more than a few feet, the clink of metal on metal told him Delta Force men had taken pre-assigned positions along both the little ship’s gunwales. Jason’s post was atop the fo’c’sle just aft of the anchor wench.

He set the rifle on its two-legged stand underneath the barrel, uncapped the scope, and took a preliminary peek. Nothing but darkness. He opened the breach and jacked a shell into the chamber. There were four others in the clip, but only the first would really count. Either it struck home or the ambush was exposed. Although he had practiced his part in tonight’s drama, he lacked the self-confidence for which the men of Delta Force were known. A shot over open sights or even the optically confined infrared scopes, yeah, sure. But a precisely placed bullet fired from a heaving ship with a wind that changed direction and velocity by the second? And, of course, there would be no time to correct the scope if the distance were far off that promised by Andrews.

He was spared further insecurity as events unfolded faster than he could follow.

First, a rocket screamed into the air from the bridge where Andrews had supposedly allowed the approaching craft to reach a point on the radar screen precisely 500 meters directly off the bow. Then night disappeared, stabbed by half a dozen high-intensity searchlights. Pinned to the black water like an insect in a viewing box, a steel motorized dhow churned toward the ship. At the bow stood a barefoot and shirtless man holding what Jason guessed was an old AK-74 with stubby under barrel GP-25 grenade launcher.

That would be consistent with what the Delta Force men had been told about the method of pirate attack: A warning shot fired to intimidate the victim vessel into heaving to, stopping, or risking a more damaging second shot.

Jason tried to ignore the yawing motion of his platform, to concentrate only on the man who filled his scope. Time went into slow motion, the fractions of seconds filling minutes as Jason made minute adjustments. Obviously surprised by the sudden light, the pirate at the bow hesitated a second too long.

In what seemed to take forever but actually occupied one or two seconds, Jason centered the crosshairs on the man’s chest. A sure-kill head or heart shot would be pure luck from the swaying deck. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…

Through the scope it seemed the crack of the rifle itself knocked the man over backward, his AK-74 flying into space with a life of its own.

Not that it mattered. Behind him, Jason heard the groan of heavy metal. The much enlarged loading doors of the hold swung open. A Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter rose from the depths, hovering over the deck for a second like a large, malevolent dragonfly. The spotlights seemed to slow its rotors as they spun in and out of darkness.

The chopper rose a few feet above the deck and rotated to face the dhow closest to the ship, the one from which the man with the grenade launcher had threatened. A couple of shots came up from the dhow before there was a whoosh as the Apache released the first of the four Hellfire missiles mounted between its main landing gear. The dhow simply vanished as though struck by a bolt from Olympus to be replaced by a light shower of parts, both mechanical and human, that dimpled the water where she had been.

As if by mutual agreement, the surviving pirates went overboard, several thrashing in the water as they remembered they could not swim. The remaining two pirate ships turned and fled. It took several repeated orders at the top of Andrews’s voice before the ship’s crew stopped shooting those helpless in the water.

“Goddammit,” Andrews raged later. “The whole point was to have survivors, not shoot fish in a barrel.”

Jason looked at him, a question on his face. “I thought the point of the exercise was to rid the strait of pirates.”

“We can’t kill ’em all, but we can sure scare the shit out of them. I want every boy along the strait to hear about the old rust bucket that turned around and bit them in the ass.”

Jason was fascinated. “So, it was your idea to make a fighting vessel out of this old tub?”

“Yep. Not an easy sell to the brass, I admit. But I do have a reputation as a tinkerer. I was in charge of retrofitting this old tub.”

The two were silent as Andrews produced a bottle of amber liquid, and two glasses. He filled each halfway. “Single-malt scotch?”

Jason reached for the one nearest. “I thought spirits were forbidden on U.S. naval vessels.”

Andrews raised his glass in salute and nodded. “For medicinal purposes only. Fortunately, I am a very sick man.”