by Jack Mars
For a moment the Somali stayed upright, the machine pistol continuing its upward trajectory. But the barrel trembled and faltered, and the man collapsed at the foot of the stairs.
Maria felt a pang of… not remorse, but something close to it. She had to remind herself that even if this man hadn’t wanted to shoot to kill, it was only because he wanted to hold her hostage in the hopes of a ransom that would never come.
She vaulted down the stairs, holstering her Glock and snapping up the machine pistol as she stepped over the man’s body. She cleared the exit and, seeing no one, slipped out into the narrow dusty street.
A fusillade of bullets tore at the air and she dropped instinctively, unsure of where they’d come from or how close they’d come to hitting her. She saw a flash of movement at her two o’clock—a dark doorway, the hint of a limb as someone hid behind it. She scrambled to her feet, aiming with the machine pistol. As soon as the man positioned himself for another burst, she fired.
He screamed as bullets tore at his arm and torso. The pirate fell through the doorway, his rifle dropping to the dirt. Maria kicked the gun away and kept moving. He would bleed out in seconds.
Two down, she thought. But hadn’t there been a third pursuer?
“Do not turn around!” a deep accented voice shouted from behind her.
There had been a third—and he had the drop on her, full stop. She had little doubt a rifle was aimed at her back so she did as he said and stayed motionless, staring ahead.
“Drop the gun.” Though his accent was pronounced, this man’s English was good. She imagined he was likely a translator for the pirates’ raids on western vessels.
She tossed the machine pistol to the ground. “Did Hannibal tell you who I am?” she asked him without looking back.
“American government.” The man’s response was a confident one.
Of course the smuggler hadn’t said they were CIA. The Somalis might have known they would never get a ransom that way.
“That’s right,” she agreed. “My father is the Director of National Intelligence.” That part wasn’t a lie at all; it just wasn’t the whole truth. “The only man he answers to is the president. Harming me would be putting yourself and your people in considerable danger. I’m going to turn around now. Okay?”
The pirate did not reply, so Maria glanced back at him. He was young, mid-twenties at best, holding an AK-47 with no stock at an angle that was just awkward enough to suggest he had very little experience using it. Not that a weapon like that required much.
Slowly she turned around until she was facing him.
“You will come with me now,” he demanded.
“Okay. I will. But… your safety lever is up.”
The man frowned at her. “What?”
“The safety lever? On the right side of the gun. Above the trigger. It won’t fire.”
Of course he looked.
Maria drew the Glock in one smooth motion and fired a single shot. The pirate yelped as his body jerked to the right, the bullet penetrating his thigh. He fell in the dirt, but didn’t let go of the rifle. Before Maria could cover the distance between them, he aimed the AK at her face as he snarled at her in pain.
She hadn’t been lying. The safety lever really was in the upper position.
The man yelped again as she kicked the gun out of his hand.
“Put pressure on that,” she told him, gesturing to his leg. “Both hands. Good. Tell your friends that if any of them keep coming after me, they won’t be as fortunate as you.”
She left him there, hurrying through the shantytown and out the opposite side, where a road stretched toward the tall buildings of downtown Mogadishu. On the outskirts she came across a dirt bike leaning against a small boxy home. The bike was layered in dirt and looked like it had been made of spare parts, but it was better than nothing. It took her only seconds to wire it, and by the time a man came screaming out of the house after her, the whining engine was already drowning out his voice.
She tore away down the road, looking for any place to lie low in this hostile city long enough to rendezvous with Reidigger and Zero. She hoped they were okay, because this entire excursion had already been a monumental dead end. The weapon was still out there, and they were no closer to finding it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sheikh Salman appreciated this place. There was a natural beauty to it that was largely unseen in his corner of the world. He stood on the white sand beach with his gaze on the horizon, listening to the surf as it gently rolled in, ebbing and flowing, the perfect metaphor for the cyclical nature in which most things worked.
He found it as amusing as he did strange that he had to resist the urge to kick off his shoes and stand barefoot in the surf, feel the cool water, let the white foam bubble over his old ankles. But a man of his station could hardly be seen doing so, especially not in the company of a half dozen elite members of the Royal Saudi Land Forces.
Masirah Island was, these days, largely a fishing and tourism hub. Located less than ten miles from the eastern coast of Oman, the island—Jazīrat Maṣīrah, in the sheikh’s native tongue of Arabic—was once an industrious place known for traditional shipbuilding. Later the island was used as a military storage facility, first by the British and later by the United States, though nowadays the most interesting denizens of the island were the loggerhead turtles that used it as a nesting ground.
It was admittedly somewhat dangerous to rendezvous here, with the regular patrols of US Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. But the same reason made it ideal; their purpose here would appear innocent enough, and the island itself was of such little note to anyone other than the citizens of its few small towns that it fell far beneath the radar of any naval power.
King Basheer had wanted to personally accompany Salman on this excursion. The former crown prince and recently crowned king was still headstrong and preferred to do things firsthand; he would need to learn how to delegate. Fortunately for him, Salman would be there to offer him tutelage. Instead, Salman had been accompanied by six Saudi commandos, dressed in ordinary garb as not to attract the wrong type of attention, their sidearms concealed and other weapons hidden in bags. Five of them would be exchanged in the trade; one would accompany the sheikh back to Saudi Arabia.
“It is time.” The bearded commando that would become Salman’s attaché upon his return, a solemn man with a trimmed black beard named Ali, held a thick pair of long-range binoculars to his eyes. “They have arrived.”
The sheikh merely nodded and followed Ali to the skiff that waited for them on the beach. Two commandos sat in the low-slung bow, then two more on either side of Salman at its center, and finally two in the stern, including Ali, who shoved the skiff off the beach, started the engine, and piloted them two miles off the coast of Masirah Island into the Arabian Sea.
Salman’s sight was not what it was in his youth; he loathed eyeglasses and could not bring himself to even attempt contact lenses, so he was certain the commandos spotted the boats long before he did. But at long last he saw them, first a couple of nebulous shapes but rapidly coming into sharper relief.
One was a noticeably shabby boat, its hull chipped, the paint faded, its railings and fittings on the edge of rusting. It was an open vessel, lacking any sort of cabin; even though the weather here in Oman was a pleasant eighty degrees, he had to imagine that where the Somalis had come from had seen them through some truly frightful weather.
The second vessel, however, was the prize. It was quite a sight to behold, sleek and beautiful, its reflective hull somehow appearing to be a silvery gossamer and the deep blue of the sea at the same time. It was a modern miracle, a work of art; not merely for the aesthetic, Salman knew, but equally so for the treasure it held in its bosom.
A white man stood on the bow of the South Korean ship, square-jawed and sandy-haired. The German had garnered quite a reputation in the last few years, masterful at the art of killing but always true to his word. And true
he had been. Salman had been hesitant to hire him, especially considering the insanely steep price at which he came, but the outcome, obvious before even his poor eyes, was positive.
Ali cut the engine and the Saudis’ skiff slowed, lolling in the water not ten yards from the Somali boat. The sleek Korean vessel bobbed in the water just to the east of them.
“Well done,” Salman told the Somalis in English. The seven men on the ragged boat looked surly, and rightfully so. “You have traveled far and endured much, all while evading capture. That is commendable.”
He was, of course, simply placating them. They had only managed to avoid capture by staying in close enough proximity to the technologically advanced ship, benefiting from its radar invisibility and signal-scrambling defenses.
Even so, they deserved to hear a few kind words before their deaths.
“The money,” one of the Somalis demanded. He held a pistol in one hand, loosely but with a finger on the trigger.
“Of course. My colleague, Krauss, has your payment. He has had it the entire time.” Salman gestured to the German. Each and every Somali face turned toward the man on the bow of the third ship—and in the instant their heads were turned, the Saudi commandos opened fire.
In less than six seconds, the pirate crew was dead, their boat rapidly taking on water. In that same span, Krauss smoothly drew a pistol and fired only two shots, one each through the heads of the two Somalis who had helped him pilot the vessel this far.
Salman had not lied, not technically; for what he was paying Krauss, he could not also pay the Somalis. The German had their payment, already transferred and distributed between several Swiss accounts he held. He had insisted on an upfront payment—likely in an effort to avoid this particular type of scenario from people he deemed potentially untrustworthy.
Krauss pushed the second body over the side and into the Arabian Sea before passively turning back to Salman. “Sheikh. This is, as its creators dubbed it, Glimmer.”
“How banal.” The sheikh could not help but grin. “The weapon is operational?”
“It is.”
“And you know how to operate it?”
“I do.”
The German was a man of few words, and soft ones when he was so inclined, so Salman raised an eyebrow expectantly as an urge to elaborate.
“Posing as security,” Krauss continued at last, “gave me full access to their research facilities under the guise of sweeps and checks. No one questioned my presence or scrutiny.”
“Ali.” The sheikh nodded to the commando at the stern, who carefully piloted the skiff closer to the newly minted vessel—Glimmer, as it supposedly was. As planned, five of the Saudis climbed aboard to join Krauss, only Ali remaining with Salman.
“My men are briefed on the next step. They will tell you where you need to go and what your objective is. En route, I expect you to teach them as much as possible about piloting the ship and using the weapon.”
Krauss merely nodded once.
“Sheikh,” said Ali urgently. He handed the binoculars to Salman and pointed to the horizon. “We are not alone.”
Salman held the heavy binocs to his eyes and squinted. Three shapes, far away, hazy. And quite large, if they were visible at this distance. It seemed the Somalis had not gone completely under the radar as he had hoped.
Yet this was to be expected, and Salman had not been without a plan for this kind of contingency.
“Krauss.” The sheikh handed the binoculars back to Ali. “I will take my leave shortly. But first… grant me a demonstration.”
*
Seaman Evan Crane was excited as he stood on the broad deck of the USS Pierce, a destroyer-class battleship currently churning its way toward the eastern coast of Oman at its top speed of thirty-two knots, or approximately thirty-seven miles per hour. He looked through the telescope again, crouching slightly since the bulky gray scope was attached to a steel swivel riveted directly to the ship’s deck.
“Negative,” he informed command. “No visual yet, sir. Over.”
For the past four months—maybe more than that now, he’d lost track—the USS Pierce had done little but regular patrols in the Indian Ocean, sometimes north to the Arabian Sea. They were not looking for anything in particular, and to Crane it even seemed as if the exercise was for little more purpose than putting the might of the US Navy on display.
But now was different. Now they were chasing pirates. Actual, honest-to-goodness Somali pirates.
Three ships did seem a bit like overkill to him—all of which were armed with Harpoon missiles, anti-submarine rockets, anti-aircraft weaponry, essentially enough firepower on any single one of them to take out a small city, all of it powered by the Aegis Combat System. The Pierce was the largest of the three ships at one hundred fifty-five meters long, but not by much; their two companion ships, the USS Coolidge and USS Cleveland, were just shy of one hundred fifty meters bow to stern, trailing at a short distance of only a few hundred meters to the north and south of the Pierce as it headed east through the Indian Ocean.
Just yesterday, the three US destroyers had been deployed to chase down pirates. All of them, all the manpower and firepower, to find and pursue one Somali pirate ship. It seemed strange, but he wasn’t in a position to question it and wouldn’t even if he was. He couldn’t wait to tell his buddies back home about this—and he had no doubts that between then and now, the one pirate ship would become a fleet, and their slow chug across an ocean would become a thrilling chase in his retelling.
On a ship this large, crewed by just over six hundred souls, it wasn’t uncommon for not everyone to be clued into what they were doing when (or if) they had a specific goal in sight. And the speed at which they were suddenly deployed yesterday made it all the more difficult, having had little time to brief the entire crew properly.
Crane knew only two things: that they were chasing pirates, and that those pirates had stolen a boat from the Pacific Ocean. Other details were foggy and based largely on hearsay around the ship; Crane had heard tell from other sailors that the pirates had taken the ship’s crew hostage and were trying to ransom them back to their government. An ensign in the mess hall claimed their bounty was a military ship stolen from South Korea. And the buzz around the flight deck was the rather bold assertion that the pilfered ship held a North Korean weapon aboard it.
Whatever the case might be, they were chasing pirates, and twenty-three-year-old Seaman Evan Crane thought that was very cool.
His job on this mission was simple enough—painfully so. He stood on deck, waiting for orders from command when line of sight was needed and confirmed visual. That was it. Still, it was much better than bumming around the base at Diego Garcia, the tiny island just south of the equator in the Indian Ocean. Time grew painfully boring when he was on rotation there; the nearest civilization to the island was the Maldives, or Sri Lanka, nearly a thousand miles to the northeast.
Even crouching in front of a telescope intermittently while being barked at through a radio was preferable to the excruciating monotony of Camp Justice. Besides, when they finally caught up, Evan Crane would be the first to actually lay eyes on the pirates, albeit through the lens of a scope.
“Seaman.” The radio crackled with the unnecessarily stern voice of his CO on the bridge. “Confirm visual? Over.”
Evan Crane gritted his teeth. They’d tracked the pirate ship this far on sheer luck, a visual confirmation from a drone flyover that the USS Coolidge had piloted too far out to sea. The drone’s connection had been lost and it crashed into the ocean—but not before catching a glimpse of the boat they were after, a tiny thing with only seven or eight men aboard. From there they had managed to get a radar ping on it, or so his CO had claimed, but they must have lost it because they hadn’t updated the position of four miles out, north by northwest.
So Crane rubbed his eyes and checked again. He scanned carefully, aware that a boat that small and at that distance could easily be construed as the crest of a
wave or a gull flying low over the water.
Was that something? He caught just a glimpse of a shape that could have been a boat, but it was hazy with the miles between them and the floaters in his own eyes. He rubbed his palm against them, seeing colors dance behind his eyelids, and looked again.
He scanned left and right carefully, a single degree at a time, seeking confirmation on the shape he had thought he’d saw.
A flash of blue engulfed his vision, bright as a flashbulb going off in his eye. Bright enough to hurt.
“Aah!” He leapt back and cried out, his hand flying to his eyes. But in the same instant he cried out—no, in the instant before that—a jarring explosion rumbled over the deck, up through his body, shaking him to the core.
Crane staggered, one hand over both eyes, feeling heat from somewhere, disoriented, certain he’d been blinded. Panic wrung its claws in his abdomen, churning his insides. At last he dared to look out of his left eye, keeping his hand clamped over the injured right.
He fell to his knees at what he saw.
Where the USS Coolidge had been only moments ago was a fireball, a still-spreading conflagration of exploded missiles, torpedoes, and warheads. The blast looked as if it was moving in slow motion, rolling upward. If there was anything left of the ship itself it was invisible under fire and thick smoke and swirling water.
That’s impossible.
The Coolidge was simply gone, in an instant. That blue flash had annihilated it. Nothing was that fast. They had the most sophisticated combat system in the world; no missile or torpedo could just slip past it and cause that sort of damage.
Only one thing was certain: the probability of anyone surviving was zero.
Only then was Crane aware of the ringing in his ears, backed by the vague sound of panicked shouts, screams of alarm, of terror. Boots pounded on the deck as Crane sat there on his knees.
