“That puts our count at over thirty in total,” Drake said.
“Wow, a Yorkshireman who can count,” Dahl said. “The proverbial unicorn.”
“Torsty,” Alicia said before Drake could retort. “You sound frustrated.”
That was enough to send the Swede into a low rant which was cut off, presumably because the Bainbridge’s officers were present.
“How long will you two be?” Alicia asked seriously. “Sun’s coming up.”
“Twenty,” Drake said.
“Fifteen,” Mai said.
“Ten,” Drake said. “Maybe twelve.”
Mai could be heard sighing across the comms.
“Best get a move on,” Luther said. “Guards are more active tonight.”
“Not as handsy though,” Alicia said. “Luckily for them.”
“Pigswill’s calmed down?” Mai asked.
“He’s not here. I’m hoping he’s died from his own stench.”
“Right, heading back now,” Drake said.
He put his head down and made his cautious way back through the ventilation ducts toward the restaurant. He was disappointed. Tonight’s efforts had yielded practically nothing new except the fact that they were up against an almost overwhelming number of pirates if you counted the hostages into the equation. Plus, there were some hostages he hadn’t even seen yet. The ship’s captain and his officers up on the bridge. He’d heard conversation between the pirates he’d come across but understood very little of it. When they’d spoken English, it had been to curse or make some nasty comment. He’d heard the name Salene mentioned and Puntland. He’d heard only a few snatches of legible conversation from about ten different pirates.
The fat cats will earn us our dues.
Sick of waiting around . . . I want to shoot them every time I look at them . . . but the end will be good to watch . . .
They have no idea what’s coming. But the fat cats haven’t been properly identified yet either.
I want to see their faces when . . . you know . . . when it happens.
All that flesh is a waste if it’s not used. Kobe should let us have them, or at least take them with us.
I’d like that, brother. Let’s ask Kobe.
You have your mind set on one?
Not really. We have time to inspect the goods.
Drake, like Alicia, wanted to drop down on them right then with a ton of muscle, firepower and true northern grit. But he held off for the good of the mission. The many outweighed the few here.
It seemed a man named Kobe was leading the pirates aboard the ship.
Drake had yet to see him.
Ten minutes later, he was nearing the restaurant. Drake had to pass right over it to reach his exit vent. Careful not to make the slightest sound, he crossed the wide space, pausing twice to check the situation below.
The sun was indeed rising to the east, already casting crimson bolts of crimson light across the waters. It was a red hue, not yet a fiery ball, but still it turned the rolling waters blood-red before his eyes, conveying a terrible sign or premonition. Drake shrugged the image off, preferring not to see it that way.
It was just the sunrise. It happened every day.
The restaurant itself appeared to be in the same state as last night. The guards were active, already prodding people with their guns and kicking others. Drake realized he was a little late. It would be far harder to sneak back now.
He paused, watching.
From this vantage point he saw Mai crouched and waiting. If they saw her, she’d find it hard to explain herself, but she was well hidden between two loungers. One of the pirates had his back to her. Mai silently squeezed out of hiding and draped herself across the furniture so that when he turned a minute later everything appeared normal. The pirate did do a double-take though.
Drake heard the approach of more pirates. If they followed the same routine as yesterday the guards would be busy shaking down most of the older generation for at least the next half hour.
Drake took his chance.
Swiftly he traversed the rest of the shaft, dropped out of the vent, and screwed it back in place. Then he crept to the end of the passageway and gauged the activity in the restaurant. It wasn’t good for the over-fifties, but it was clear for him.
Within seconds he was back among the hostages, close to Luther and Alicia and eight other people. It was easy enough to blend in.
The night had yielded only questions. It would be tough to decide which route to take next.
Which raised the question: Who, here, would make that decision?
CHAPTER NINE
Dahl stood inside the control room of the USS Bainbridge, surrounded by officers and Special Forces soldiers. The debate on how to hit Salene in his Puntland HQ as hard and fast as possible had been going on for hours, but still they remained at a stalemate. The hill, covered with its carpet of corrugated roofing and potential civilians, was as good a cover as the African kingpin needed. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would have several escape routes under that reflective shield. There was no doubt he would have hundreds of men around him, booby traps, and some kind of CCTV. There was conjecture that he might also have hostages. There was argument as to whether or not he believed the Americans would come for him.
“We’re all agreed,” Hayden said patiently, covering ground they’d already traveled. “That Salene and his operation on the mainland must be shut down. A full-frontal method of attack is out of the question. That only leaves stealth, which is our forte. Do you want to know how we’d do it?”
The other Strike Force team present—Strike Force Four—raised their collective eyebrows, studying Hayden. Their team leader—an American named Garfield—nodded with clear interest.
“Two options,” Hayden said. “We attack the slope’s blind side or drop in from the air. I’m favoring the air for now.”
Dahl was pleased. “I like that.”
“You would.” Kinimaka shook his head at the Swede. “It’s the most dangerous option we could try.”
Garfield was studying them. “You’re talking about a HALO jump. Right into that tin shack town?”
Dahl tried not to smile. “Almost. HAHO works better..”
“If the jump don’t kill you, the landing might. If you get lucky with the landing, they’ll hear you, or see you. I can count a hundred ways to die.”
“Same shit, different day,” Dahl said. “We face worse odds every time we pull on our boots.”
Rear Admiral Ryder narrowed his eyes at Hayden. “You’re serious?”
“Yes, we’ve pulled it off successfully before. But Garfield does have a point. We need to discuss the details.”
“Do that,” Ryder said brusquely. “Come back to me the moment you’re decided on a course of action.”
“I want to assault the Rabot,” Garfield said.
“Until our colleagues can figure something out,” Kinimaka said. “That’s a last ditch scenario.”
Garfield stared from Hayden to Kinimaka and to Dahl. “Who the hell’s in charge here?”
“Well, we all like to take charge a little bit,” Dahl said to help inflame the scenario as best he could.
“I am,” Hayden said forcefully. “But, by now, we’ve undertaken enough missions together to know how each other think and act. You see, Dahl here is already figuring out the best height and place from where to jump. Kinimaka is resigning himself to the peril involved in attempting a high altitude, high opening assault and I’m still waiting to hear anything pertinent escape your mouth, Captain.”
Garfield’s face tightened. “If you’re insistent on attacking the Salene guy we should look at the slope’s backside too.”
“Nicely put,” Dahl said. “I think that’s already been mentioned.”
“Stop measuring it, boys,” Kenzie said with a sigh. “For years, I’ve dealt with leaders and captains and boys who think they’re in charge. It’s the same old thing. Whose tackle is the biggest. Well, the law
of averages says they’re not gonna be that big, so can we skip that part and get on with the plan?”
Dahl blinked at her as if trying to think of something to say. Garfield, to his credit, looked a little embarrassed. Hayden asked one of the officers to pull up images of the hill in question, only this time they studied its rear rather than the shanty town covering its face.
“It’s been razed,” Garfield said. “Not an ounce of growth.”
Dahl stared at the bare earth. The backside of the slope itself was sharply inclined. It would take a strong man some considerable effort to ascend it fast. And, of course, the lack of cover spoke volumes.
“The back has been razed so that it’s easier to guard,” Kenzie said. “Salene must have eyes on it too.”
“He’d be stupid not to.” Molokai spoke up for the first time. “There is but one option here and we all know it.”
“What Intel do we have?” Garfield had already been appraised of the latest batch of information but asked anyway. Dahl knew exactly what he was doing. Gaining a little more time so that he could run all of the potential scenarios through his head once more. It was classic team-leader behavior.
“There are ninety separate shacks as far as we can tell,” an officer said from his position perched on the edge of a desk. “Salene’s HQ is at least eight shacks wide and four deep. There are cars hidden under some of the corrugated roofs—or vehicles of some sort. From other similar set ups we’ve uncovered, we know at least some of the roofs will conceal roads, a fast way down the hillside that only Salene and his men know about. At the foot of the slope is a well-used dirt track that leads straight to a large docking area and then the bay. You could put a couple of sizeable ships in there. The guards we’ve seen through the satellite feed are armed with AKs or equivalent and stick to the pattern of pirates we’ve seen before. Ergo, they smoke, talk shit to one another and bitch about their job. They play cards. They pack drugs. We’ve seen no obvious civilian activity.”
“Signs of hostages?” Kenzie asked.
“None.”
“We can’t wait for Salene to make the first move,” Dahl said. “We have to hit him before he knows what’s coming.”
“You’re right,” Garfield acquiesced. “If Salene openly kills a hostage aboard that ship, he’ll know we’re on our way. But for now . . . we have the element of surprise.”
“We hit hard and fast,” Dahl said. “And we hit now.”
“Where are we with the negotiations?” Kinimaka asked.
The first officer answered that one. “The money’s already raised. I’m told that one of the problems here is that there are precedents. Somalian pirates—and Salene’s own crew—used the same ruse years ago. And they succeeded with it, but on a far smaller scale. They only took eight hostages in total and two back to Puntland. But all the hostages were returned in good health, although considerably traumatized.”
Hayden chewed her lip. Dahl watched the various elements in the room warm up to his idea. Kenzie was close by.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” the Swede asked her.
“Ready to go,” Kenzie answered.
“You know I don’t mean that. We haven’t had much time to speak since the funeral. I’ve respected your privacy, your grief, but I don’t want you to think I don’t care.”
“You want to talk to me about Dallas?”
Dahl didn’t want that, but he would do so. “Is that what you want?”
“I feel responsible.”
Dahl pulled her to a corner of the room. “None of it is your fault. The Tsugarai killed him. Dallas could have left our team at any time. But he stayed with us for more than one mission.”
“He stayed for me.”
“You don’t know that. He never said anything.”
“Neither have you.”
Dahl stared at her. She was right. He’d known her a lot longer than Dallas did, and he’d never expressed anything emotional toward her. At least, he didn’t remember doing that. Some of the time he’d spent with Kenzie had been a little inebriated.
“Soon,” he said, hoping to carve out some time for them.
“Not during the HAHO jump,” Kenzie said with a small smile.
Garfield interrupted their conversation, raising his voice to address the entire room. “You do that jump you’re crashing into all-out war,” he said. “Pitched battle from the moment you land. It’s a dance with death.”
“It’ll be worse if Salene proves to have unwelcome plans for those hostages.”
“Why should he? He’s proven trustworthy before.”
“I really think ‘trustworthy’ is the wrong word,” Hayden said with distaste, “and he hasn’t staged a seizure in over five years. He earns a lucrative payday from his other business dealings; extremely lucrative. And there are more than thirty pirates on that ship. He would need, at the most, ten to keep everyone in check.”
“Drake didn’t scout the entire ship,” Garfield stated.
“Which is worse. That leaves the bridge and four decks that are unaccounted for. We don’t know Salene’s intentions which, in my opinion, aren’t what they seem.”
“Still.” Garfield indicated the still picture on the screen that showed a slope covered with tin houses.
“Jumping into hell.” Dahl shrugged. “That’s what we do.”
“We’re soldiers,” Hayden said simply.
“I agree, but what happens to the hostages?” Garfield asked. “Whatever success we have against Salene . . . he could then order any potential scenario.”
Hayden paused and Dahl saw the conflict in her eyes. Garfield was right. No matter how hard and fast they hit the shacks, Salene would have enough time to call his men aboard that ship.
“Then Drake needs to find that lair,” Kinimaka said. “We have to know more about what’s going on.”
Hayden nodded reluctantly and asked for a comms device which she keyed on immediately. “Drake,” she said. “This just got a while lot harder.”
CHAPTER TEN
The pirates were at it again, cuffing sixty-year-old men and forcing women who walked on crutches to stand whilst their belongings were searched. It was an ongoing investigation and it was incredibly thorough. Drake wondered if they were running each person’s data through some kind of computer and that was why it was taking so long. Didn’t matter how much firepower these pirates had, they could only have a limited amount of tech support and Salene himself didn’t have a lot of scope for powerful mainframes underneath all that corrugated sheeting.
By 11:00 a.m. the pirates appeared to have exhausted their supply of people over fifty. Food and water were dumped onto a big central table. The passengers rose slowly to make their way over, nobody wanting to be the only person there. The pirates looked over the offerings first, grabbing anything they liked the look of before letting the passengers crowd in for the remains.
After they’d eaten the meagre offerings, the passengers either settled back or started walking around the restaurant. A few enterprising souls had checked with the pirates if it would be okay to map out a circuitous route for those that wanted to stay active. The pirates, always conscious of the value of their cargo, had agreed. Drake and the others joined them, primarily because it was easier to talk face to face and also that, twice, their route shielded them from the view of the pirates.
“No lair,” Drake said when they got a free minute together. “Mai, it’s yours and Luther’s turn tonight.”
“I wouldn’t fit in the vent,” Luther said, eyeing Drake. “We’re not all pocket-sized soldiers like you English guys.”
Drake grunted. “Hey, I was brought up on the perfect diet of bacon, eggs and fried bread. There’s nothing small about me.”
Luther sniffed. “I guess it must be the muscle then.”
“Well, Mai ain’t following Drakey down any shaft,” Alicia put in. “I had enough of you two playing nice together on the last mission.”
“Right.” Drake sighed. “I guess i
t’s Alicia and me again.”
“Did you miss any junctions?” Mai asked with a frown. “There has to be something you didn’t explore last time.”
“I guess.” Drake frowned. “A couple of minor offshoots along the way. Those will be my goal tonight.”
“Tensions are rising inside here,” Luther said. “We may not have another night.”
Ahead, their resident guard of three pirates was looking agitated. Drake was close to one of them and heard the words: “Shit, it is Badru and Tabia.”
Drake glanced across to two newcomers swaggering into the restaurant. They were tall and had long, greasy hair that swept across their shoulders. Their faces were sheened with sweat, carved with the rigors of a hard, mean life. They carried their AKs over their shoulders and held knives down by their sides.
In front of Drake, a man and a woman stopped so abruptly that he almost collided with them.
“What is it?” Drake saw the fear on the woman’s face.
“When they first cap . . . captured us, these two men took two women away. We haven’t seen them since.”
Drake remained straight-faced and studied the newcomers. He’d seen them lounging in the cinema last night. They hadn’t looked overly suspicious at the time and he’d seen no sign of anyone else.
Badru and Tabia ignored their fellow pirates and strode among the passengers. The one on the right reached out and grabbed a woman’s face, holding her chin between his thumb and fingers as he turned it left and right.
“Leave her alone!” The man sitting next to her, a boyfriend or husband, struggled to his feet.
“Badru!” a pirate exclaimed in protest.
Badru ignored him, stepped across the woman and jammed the butt of his knife into the man’s nose. There was a crunch, and blood exploded. The man fell back down, crying out.
Badru returned to the woman, his mouth stretched into a wide, evil grin. “Definitely you,” he growled softly.
The Sea Rats Page 6
