“Hard to know where to begin absorbing all that,” Hayden said. “I guess it’s good that Zuki ended up in prison.”
“Agreed,” Drake said. “But I have to wonder when the Blood King and the Devil are gonna hit us again.”
“There’s no information,” Kinimaka growled. “Nobody has information. Nobody in the world.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Dahl said. “Intel is always out there.”
“I think finding those with the will and courage to pass it on is the key,” Drake said. “These criminal figures have legendary horrific statuses and inspire terrible fear.”
“Also, it’s finding the right person to tell,” Kinimaka said with a wise nod of the head.
Kenzie stared at him. “You make it sound like it’s a child informing on a bully.”
“At some level . . . it is.”
“Let’s bring that up with the Devil the next time we see him.”
“Love to, along with my boot.”
Drake thought it was too early to tell exactly how efficient and how beneficial the new Strike Force teams were and said so.
“Agreed,” Dahl said. “But we have to meet G and his minions. Long term, I don’t go in for all this secrecy shit.”
“He could be anyone,” Kenzie said.
“The Devil,” Luther said.
“The Blood King,” Mai said.
“No, no, just wait.” Hayden spread her arms. “Hold on. You’re forgetting already—President Coburn set this entire network up, the whole arrangement. It was his idea, with my input.”
Drake leaned back, listening. They were seated in an old CIA safe house, or more like a safe room. It had been provided by one of DC’s satellite offices, theirs for as long as they needed it. And, to be fair, if you ignored the dry rot and the cracked windows, the dodgy air conditioning, the peeling walls and more than one bloodstain on the carpet, it wasn’t so bad.
“We have an announcement,” Hayden said suddenly.
Drake swiveled his head toward her. The rest of the room glanced up. The tone in which Hayden had spoken conveyed urgency and a small amount of fear. At first, Drake thought a job had come in but then saw that Hayden’s laptop was shut.
He also saw her grab Kinimaka’s hand.
No way . . .
“You can’t,” Alicia blurted out before anyone could speak. “Our lives are too unpredictable for that.”
“For what?” Hayden looked surprised. “For buying a home together?”
“Oh,” Alicia said. “Oh, that’s all right then.”
“Thanks,” Kinimaka said. “For that heartfelt approval.”
“Wait.” Drake sat forward. “You guys are buying a house? A home? That’s fantastic.” He rose and walked over, hugging both of them with affection.
“Can you get extra rooms?” Alicia wondered. “For when I want to come over?”
“I’d stick with one bedroom,” Mai advised. “Less, if it avoids the Alicia problem.”
“Piss off, Sprite.”
The room was filled with good spirit and heartfelt kindness. Hayden and Kinimaka went on to say they were already looking at homes via the Internet and were hoping to view several in their catchment area in the next few days.
“You know what you want and where you want it?” Dahl asked with surprise. “That’s some fast work.”
“We’re not all aging fuddy duddies who can’t make their minds up,” Drake said.
“Am I older than you?”
Drake said, “Shut ya gob and drink your brew,” in a decidedly Yorkshire accent. The answer to Dahl’s question was unknown.
“I hear only nonsense.” Dahl turned his face away. “Nothing more.”
“We’re happy in a quiet neighborhood,” Hayden said. “And were looking at Florida.”
Drake blinked at that. “I don’t know why,” he said. “But I just assumed you’d be buying local.”
“Why?” Hayden asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kinimaka said. “Florida has the weather, the facilities, the quiet when you want it, the beaches, the ocean, and it’s a hub of transport when we need that. We’re headed down there tomorrow.”
Drake didn’t say much. Truth be told, he was a little surprised. Hayden and Kinimaka had a stormy relationship, at least since he’d known them, and buying a Florida home seemed to have come on a bit suddenly. But he wanted their partnership to flourish. He wished nothing but the best for them and if this is what they wanted . . .
Alicia would be thinking along the same lines but didn’t articulate her thoughts the same way. “Lot of tourists down there,” she said. “Japanese. French. Shit, even British.” She made a face. “It’s a lot to handle.”
Hayden nodded straight at her. “It is.”
And then Drake looked down in surprise. His cellphone was vibrating, a large red symbol flashing in the center of the screen. Around the room, other cells were going off. Hayden was the first to react, whipping out a hand toward her phone and scooping it up.
“What’s the mission?” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
The eyes of the world were watching, or so Drake was told.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a warship, but never forgot how immensely impressive they were. Their helicopter landed with a thud and a bounce. Tireless winds crisscrossed the decks. A hot, bright sun beat down. Drake grabbed his gear, rose and followed Alicia out the door. Together, they jumped down onto the warship’s deck and took a quick scan around.
The USS Bainbridge was an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and the forty-sixth ship of a planned seventy-five-strong class. Sometimes used in the Mediterranean Sea, the Bainbridge had come to the attention of the world once before—when she participated in the operation that rescued the freighter MV Maersk Alabama hijacked by Somali pirates, where crewman retook the ship and the vessel’s master, Captain Phillips, was taken hostage later to be rescued by SEAL snipers using lethal force. She could track over 100 targets simultaneously, carried 100 different types of missile and was also equipped with a remote mining system.
Once Drake’s boots hit the gray steel deck of the warship, he immediately checked their surroundings. Off to starboard, a fair distance across the water was the object of their mission: a hijacked ocean liner.
“Come with me,” a voice told them.
Drake saw a uniformed man standing to their left, waiting for the last of them to alight from the noisy helicopter.
“What’s the current situation?” Hayden asked, ducking under the rotor wash, her tight flak jacket tugged by the stiff wind.
“It will be explained below,” the sailor said. “When all teams have arrived and assembled.”
Drake knew they weren’t the only Strike Force team on site. In fact, two others were already here. It promised an interesting dynamic. He wasn’t too worried though, partly because he believed the Strike Force teams consisted of the best of the best.
Drake fell into line, following Hayden, Kinimaka and Alicia across the deck to a narrow door. Inside, the ship was as gray and austere as the outside which he remembered from the last time he’d stepped foot on one of these ocean-going monsters. Gray surfaces reflected gray surfaces, above and below. They were hurried down a set of steps and then shown into a room.
Drake spread out along the back wall with his team. A tall, white-haired man was standing behind a desk, holding a tablet computer in his right hand. To left and right the room was filled with what could only be Special Forces men, judging by the garb and the weaponry they carried.
“I didn’t think there would be so many of you,” the white-haired man began as the last person in, Luther, closed the door behind him. “But here goes . . .”
Drake stood quietly, listening closely to every word. The man introduced himself as Rear Admiral Robert Ryder and proceeded to give them a clipped, informative rundown of their mission.
“The ocean liner, Le Rabot, was hijacked eight hours ago by pirat
es, possibly out of Somalia. Le Rabot is Ponent class, an icebreaking mega-yacht, built by the French to cater for the moderately wealthy and upward. She has a speed of eighteen knots, is 430 feet long and fifty-nine feet wide. A gross tonnage of ten thousand. Six decks. Ninety-eight cabins. Ninety crew. And 200 passengers when full. She has her own fleet of Zodiacs for passenger trips, the usual lifeboats and so on. She is a fully functioning cruise ship currently embarked on her twelfth voyage.”
“Is this a regular journey?” someone close to the front asked.
Ryder gave the man a deep frown before continuing. “She normally plies the same old route, Seychelles to Madagascar or Sri Lanka. As you know the Somalian threat has diminished in recent years, largely due to a CIA crackdown after the Captain Phillips episode, so we’re not entirely sure what we’re up against with this new threat. Now, as for the current status . . .”
Ryder tapped the screen of his tablet. A digital display appeared on the monitor behind him.
“They have taken 180 hostages total, including crew. Half the passengers are fifty plus. It should be said that most possess above-average means, and a few are ultra-wealthy. Included in the 180 are forty children, as close as we can guess from the manifests.”
“Eyes inside the ship?” a man asked.
“None. We don’t know how many pirates there are, nor the extent of their firepower. We don’t know the condition of any of the passengers.”
“Eyes above?”
“Choppers are up there and haven’t been fired on. High-level drones are active. Hostages appear not to be allowed outside and the pirates rarely venture out.”
Ryder went quiet and stared for a moment at the table, as if evaluating his next words.
Dahl was the first to speak up. “Is that it?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Ryder said.
Drake nodded, exchanging a quick, knowing glance with Hayden. Of course, it had to be. There was another Strike Force team here.
“We received a ransom demand an hour ago,” Ryder said. “One hundred and fifty million to release 170 hostages. The remaining ten will stay with the pirates.”
Kenzie frowned. “And idea why?”
“We assume the ten are extremely wealthy individuals, able to raise far more than one million each. We assume the pirates will want to negotiate their release separately and at leisure.”
“So they want to take these ten poor souls to a Somalian shithole?” a man asked. “No fucking way.”
Ryder nodded. “We’re moving this conversation to the command center, where we hoping to come up with a plan. I wanted you to have all the information from the get-go.”
Drake guessed there was more to come and didn’t have to wait long.
“First,” Ryder said slowly. “I have to tell you that the man that made the demands is the leader of the infamous Somalian pirate gang known as the Sea Rats.”
“I thought they went bang in ’06,” a man said, “when the CIA and SEALs took a huge dump on the pirating trade.”
“I don’t know the details,” Ryder said. “Others we are trying to talk to might be able to shed more light. But I believe the Sea Rats diversified, like all these criminal enterprises do. There isn’t much in Africa the Sea Rats aren’t known for, but they started out as the most ruthless of all the Somalian pirates.”
“Can’t have been allowed out much in recent years,” Luther muttered.
“First known excursion since 2013.”
Following a few more intense questions the entire gathering was moved, headed not for the command center which the admiral deemed too small, but to the larger mess area. Drake followed the others into a white-painted room containing several rows of wooden tables and chairs. It felt better, being out of the stuffy room and into a more open space. Several more officers were waiting, standing at the head of the room.
“Captain Meacham,” Ryder introduced a short, stiff-looking man with jet black hair and an excess of energy. As long as Drake watched him he never stopped fiddling, moving his head or walking to and fro. But he knew what he was talking about.
“The Sea Rats,” he said, “are led by a man known only by the name Salene. Before he became a pirate, Salene was an African warlord, one of the bad ones. He committed daily atrocities and was pretty high on the watchlist. Then, around 2004, he got into the pirating business. He took a back seat, training others to do the dirty work which, we believe, was the main reason he switched careers in the first place. So Salene became this leader in Puntland, this kingpin. Around him the drugs and guns and slave trade flows. He’s in every dirty little venture from kidnapping to starting wars. And he’s surrounded himself with a big fucking army.”
Dahl looked up. “Sounds like our kind of thing.”
Meacham nodded at a nearby monitor. A picture flashed up, taken from a high-level drone and digitally enhanced. “This is his lair.”
Drake stared, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. They were looking at a high hill with a gentle slope. From base to peak, the hill was covered by a random, crazy assortment of shacks, all with corrugated roofs and walls. There wasn’t a patch of grass or earth to be seen.
“Shit,” Kinimaka said. “There must be hundreds.”
Drake focused on the part of the picture where an arrow had been drawn.
“We think this is Salene’s HQ, his base of operations. As you can see, from above at least, it’s nothing more than a random series of shacks built on a gentle slope. And it’s surrounded by more shacks, and more shacks. That’s an entire town sitting down there on the slope of that hill.”
“It’s not impenetrable,” Dahl muttered.
“Good to hear it,” Meacham said, shuffling papers. “Now, let’s work this out.”
*
Later, Strike Force One found themselves alone, waiting for a decision to be made by the overall operations commander. It was a little out of left field for them. They weren’t used to letting others make the decisions.
Alicia, in particular, was fuming. “One bloody mission,” she said. “One bloody mission I was in charge and it all turned out beautifully. We found the treasures, caught the bad bitch, killed a shit ton of ninjas. I can’t believe this.”
Hayden was studying her warily. “Are you saying you assumed you’d be team leader again for this mission?”
Alicia looked confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Drake hid a grin. He’d known for a long time that it would be hard to wrest the leadership back from the Englishwoman. He imagined it’d be easier to find a bank manager on a Sunday.
In addition, he also knew that it was her logical next step. Alicia, like everyone else, needed to develop. Hell, maybe they should all take turns with the leadership.
“I seem to remember you squawking in protest,” Kenzie said, “when Drake and Mai made you take charge.”
Alicia turned on the Israeli. “First, I don’t squawk. Not even in bed when Drakey wants to play one of his weird games. Second, nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to. Which you should know.”
Drake’s eyes were half shut from wincing, so he managed to avoid any odd stares cast his way. “This shouldn’t be an issue,” he said.
Hayden nodded. “It won’t be. Team practically runs itself.”
Drake noticed that Dahl had placed a careful hand on Kenzie’s right shoulder. He couldn’t tell if it was to restrain the Israeli or comfort her. Either way, it was clear the two were attracted and that the Swede was holding back because his marriage break-up was still fresh, and Kenzie was reluctant because she still mourned Dallas. Drake thought he knew how Dahl was feeling. A small amount of time was healthy but every day you resisted the momentum of life was a day that killed you just a little.
Life had to move on. Live life or stay stagnant forever. The decay would soon set in if you stopped moving forward, but it was always going to be difficult for the two of them.
In their own ways, they were both half mad.
/> Drake grinned to himself and then shook it off as Hayden got the call from the captain, listened for a while, then hung up.
“It’s gonna be a rough one,” she said.
Drake couldn’t help but smile when Dahl grinned across the room at him.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Indian Ocean is the third largest and the warmest in the world, its floor divided by spreading ridges. Drake knew these facts, and more, as he contemplated its rolling black expanse under a dark, starlit sky.
“You ready for this?” Luther asked him.
He wasn’t, but nodded. “Can’t wait.”
“You think the plan’s sound?”
Under normal circumstances Luther wouldn’t have asked, but this time, an outsider had come up with the plan. They had merely contributed to it. It was an unusual situation for the Strike Force team.
“The situation calls for a two-pronged attack,” Drake said. “One from the land, one from the sea. It was us that decided to go in at the deep end.”
Luther eyed the waters. “Good analogy.”
Mai, standing beside Luther, looked up from the air tank she’d been fiddling with. “Actually, I’m surprised both you and Alicia spoke up so quickly. I don’t take you for acting like passengers, all passive and scared.”
Alicia coughed and waved a hand. “Sprite, are you kidding me? If you think you and Drake are gonna sneak off on your own on another little mission, forget it. Last time was bad enough.”
“But Drake and I volunteered to infiltrate the ocean liner.” Mai screwed her face up in mock concentration. “Does that make Luther and Alicia our bodyguards? Are you going to watch our backs?”
“Only body I’m guarding is Drake’s,” Alicia bit back, her eyes narrowed. “With prejudice. From you.”
Mai turned to Luther. “And you?”
The big American stared hard at the ocean. “Thought you might want me along for the company. Starting to realize I made a mistake.”
The Sea Rats Page 3
