The team conducted a last test of their communications. Every PJ broadcast loud and clear to the others. Weapons were secured, NVGs turned on and off, helmets thumped like footballers. To maintain surprise at the LZ, the night jump would be made without chem lights. Ten minutes out, the signal came from the cockpit to switch to oxygen. The team strapped masks across their noses and mouths, twisted open their bottles. They settled in the seats along the fuselage. Staying on his feet, Wally thumbed the intercom talk button.
“Any questions?” He checked his watch. “Robey’s team is under canopy.”
No one wisecracked about the young LT.
Wally looked over Doc, Quincy, Dow, Mouse, Jamie, all seated along the fuselage. They were laden with weaponry as much as medicine. His gut clutched to think he was commanding a search-and-destroy op, something he’d not done in over ten years. He put hands to his hips and could figure nothing to say. These men were all professionals, capable and committed. They needed no pep talk to do the job. But what if something happened, and later he recalled how he’d stood here silent? What if there were things he should have said, and didn’t?
“Let’s focus, stay cool, and do what we can. One thing I know for sure. We can do a shitload.”
It wasn’t eloquent. It would have to do.
“Anybody want to pray, let’s take a second.”
Wally watched his team’s eyes above their oxygen masks, glad to see everyone’s lowered brows. He left them to it. The green bulbs went out, leaving the cargo bay lit only by the red ready light marking the final minutes before the jump.
“Hoo-ya.”
The team belted out, “Hoo-ya!” maxing the intercom.
Behind Wally, the loadmaster punched a button. The HC-130’s ramp whined, parting from the fuselage at the top. The panel descended until it leveled with the floor, opening the rear of the aircraft to the air. Wally walked closer to the edge, taking handholds against the jiggling floor and whipping wind. Beyond the lowered door, beneath the silhouette of the HC-130’s tail, the night spread spangled and clear. Far below, somewhere on the water three and a half miles down, the Valnea’s pirates ran for home. Hiding somewhere on board, LB watched the sky.
Bathed in red, Wally gave his PJs the thumbs-up to rise and join them.
Chapter 29
On board CMA CGN Valnea
Gulf of Aden
Yusuf and Suleiman spoke to every man on the starboard rail. They handed out cigarettes and talked disparagingly of the American warship tracking them. Yusuf did not know these men well; Suleiman had been in charge of picking them. From each Yusuf collected name, village, subclan, and family. The pirates bowed to him when Suleiman shared the news of extra shares for all from the ransom.
Reaching the bow, four men gathered in the white glow of the steaming light. Yusuf leaned over the rail to look down at the bulbous bow skipping over the sea, carving the great crest that had almost thwarted them four hours ago. The frightened helmsman, the one who’d grabbed Yusuf’s feet to steady him in the skiff, came forward sheepishly. Yusuf shook his hand.
“Mahad sanid.”
The pirate lowered his forehead to touch Yusuf’s knuckles.
All four were grateful for the quiet of the night and the ease of the hijacking, though one of their original number had been shot during the boarding. While they appreciated that man’s sacrifice, he was not of their village. When Suleiman mentioned the added shares, they asked if the dead pirate’s family would also benefit from the bonus. Suleiman asked what they thought about it. They said no.
Yusuf kept his face to the wind. The horizon lay bare, with no trace of land. He wished, only for a moment, his destination was not dark little Qandala but Mogadishu, Jeddah, Aden, some city with lights visible from fifty miles out. He wanted a glow earlier than the sun, something to see and push for, some bit of this night finished. The freighter’s bow heaved forward into blackness, toward more blackness.
Yusuf led Suleiman into the passage along the port rail. In the east, the moon had not yet risen. They stopped to talk with the pirates on guard there, each forty meters apart. Yusuf learned more names and homes. He gave out his last cigarettes.
They strode the rail to speak with the pirate stationed beside the superstructure. Halfway there, from behind, Suleiman asked, “What are you doing?”
Yusuf stopped. “Speak.”
“You’re nervous. I haven’t seen you like this.”
Yusuf wished he’d kept a last cigarette for himself. Lighting it would settle him.
“Perhaps. I don’t like so much unexplained. The woman, the cargo, Robow, Iran, all of it. And I don’t like waiting. If they’re coming, I want them here. Let’s fight.”
Suleiman nodded in the dimness. The older cousin took a grip on Yusuf’s arm firmly, to anchor him.
“I have little to tell you. Except this. If you are going to be frightened, do it privately.”
Suleiman turned away to have Yusuf follow.
At the superstructure, no pirate stood along the port rail. A cigarette stub and matches littered the deck. Suleiman walked alone to the stern, then returned with no information about the guard who should be posted here.
“What do you think?” Yusuf asked.
Suleiman’s gold teeth clenched before speaking. “This is Farah’s post. I know him. I’ve fished with him. This is strange.”
“Is he off somewhere sleeping?”
“Not this one.”
The two poked around, turning up nothing. If Suleiman was wrong, if the man had wandered off, then he’d gone far from his station. Had he sneaked up on the cargo deck to curl up out of sight?
Suleiman continued to poke in the shadows. Yusuf stopped at another cigarette butt lying beside the stairs.
Was Farah the fisherman napping somewhere up the stairs, on one of the landings? Was he inside the superstructure, tucked into some crewman’s cot?
Yusuf set his foot on the bottom step, to climb and search after him.
A stain, like rust, blemished the tread before Yusuf’s next stride. Odd. Drozdov kept an immaculate ship.
Yusuf dipped a finger to it. The blot had dried. It was not corrosion. Rust would not drip. Yusuf backed away to peer beneath the steps.
“Come here.”
Suleiman hurried over. He scratched a nail through the dark mark under the stairs, then tasted it.
“Blood.”
Both took Kalashnikovs in hand. Instinctively, the way they had done as younger men, the cousins put themselves back-to-back.
Yusuf whispered, “What does this mean?”
“Quiet.”
Suleiman tuned his senses to the night. Yusuf could not silence himself enough to hear or see beyond what he conjured out of the blood. An enemy was on the ship. Where? How many? When did they board? How?
“Quiet,” Suleiman repeated.
Yusuf took hold of his breathing.
Over his shoulder, Suleiman muttered, “It might have been a quarrel. Among the men. Farah was a gambler.”
“Who did this? Why didn’t someone hear it?”
Suleiman pivoted to face Yusuf. “Listen to me carefully.”
“Yes.”
“I know you rely on me. And I would repay that reliance with my life. But you’re making it very difficult. I am not confident right now. Do you understand? ”
Yusuf pulled his eyes from his kinsman’s slim face. Out to the sea, into the steel passageway left and right, the dotted dark sky, even below his feet into the hold, in every direction lay the threat of an enemy. Who had spilled this blood? A pirate, a commando? What could Yusuf do? Raise an alarm? Run around the ship shouting a warning, about what? If raiders were here, he had no idea where they were; he might run into their guns yelling the alarm. Then what could the pirates do—fight phantoms? How could the commandos have gotten on board? No one had seen a boat, helicopter, plane. If Farah had been killed over a debt, it could be dealt with better in Qandala than here and now. Above, six stories tall, t
he white superstructure remained silent. On top, inside the bridge, Guleed and his gunners held the hostages. Not a sound or flash had come from up there, no battle to free them. The great ship continued to plow at twelve knots toward the coast and sunrise.
What was going on?
Yusuf had one course open to him. He turned again to lay his back to Suleiman’s back, and aimed his weapon into the dark.
Chapter 30
On board CMA CGN Valnea
Gulf of Aden
LB lit the face of his watch. “Oh–two hundred hours. Ten minutes.”
Iris Cherlina lifted her head from his shoulder. “Are you going up?”
“Yeah.”
She stood with him in the flashlight glow. After not seeing her in the dark for twenty minutes, only listening to her breathe and feeling the easy weight of her head against his ear, her long arm beside his, LB had lost track of how appealing Iris Cherlina was, and how unsettling.
She tapped fingertips, uncomfortable. “I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“How will they do it, do you think? The attack. Your friend.”
“Wally.”
“How will he do it?”
“He’ll bring them in on the port wing.”
Iris Cherlina screwed up her face, disbelieving. “There’s not much room.”
“Not much choice. They can’t land on the cargo deck—too open, too many obstacles. The bow’s out because of that light on the mast. They could try on top of the bridge, but there’s radar arrays and the smokestack up there. Lots to get hung up on. Plus it’s visible from all sides. That leaves the wings.”
“Can they do it? Honestly?”
“Like I told you, Wally Bloom under a parachute is a rat; he can squeeze in anywhere. Trust me, he’s scared the crap out of me more than once following him in.”
“There’ll be guards on the wings.”
“My guys have guns, too.”
Iris Cherlina covered her mouth behind both hands. “I didn’t imagine this.”
LB had to get climbing. He needed to be on deck, plugged into the team radio frequency and ready when Wally touched down.
“It ain’t your fault. Like you said, you’re a scientist. You’re doing your job. The pirates brought this on themselves.”
Iris Cherlina reached for his sleeve. “How long? The attack—how long will it take before your team gets control of the ship?”
LB shrugged. She slid her fingers to the back of his hand. He said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe down here.”
“How long?”
LB played the raid out in his head. Hit the LZ, stash the chutes, take assault positions, attack the bridge. Wally would have the whole team with him. With surprise on their side, if they could keep it, and some luck, that could take thirty to ninety seconds. Even after they got control of the wheelhouse, fourteen more pirates were still posted around the main deck. If the Somalis counterattacked and the bridge became a stronghold, the battle could get nasty fast. The pirates had plenty of guns and RPGs. Killing wouldn’t dissuade them; they’d shown that already. Wally couldn’t just sit with his back to the wall and let the pirates pummel him. He’d have to go on the offensive somehow. And what about the hostages? Still a wild card.
“I dunno,” LB said. “I haven’t got enough info.”
“Can you guess?”
LB wanted to ease Iris Cherlina’s fear. He made up an answer. “An hour ought to do it.”
“Thank you. Then what?”
“Iris, you okay?”
“Please. Then what?”
“There’s an American warship nearby. I suppose they’ll come alongside and take over.”
“How close are they?”
“Five miles.”
“Good.”
“Listen. You don’t fret about any of this. My guys can handle it. They’ll come loaded for bear. I’ll be up there to help. You stay below. Same deal as before. Don’t come out of hiding until you see me come back for you.”
Iris smiled bravely. The wind seemed back in her sails. LB checked his watch: six minutes to zero hour.
“Go.” She touched the bloodstain across his shoulder. “Be safe, Gus.”
LB paused long enough to suppress the urge to do something foolish like kiss her. He swung the flashlight around, headed to the first ladder.
Chapter 31
On board HC-130 Broadway 1
18,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden
Doc, Jamie, and Mouse put their backs to the night, heels on the edge. Wally, Quincy, and Dow faced them.
The red ready light lit the team. Night vision goggles on, O2 masks up, jump containers, rucks, weapons, armor, gloves—nothing of each man was exposed in the seconds before the leap. The feel for each flowed through their hands holding one another in place on the windy open ramp.
Framed by stars, Doc nodded first. The others, Wally too, dipped helmets.
The red bulb extinguished. In Wally’s hands, Doc relaxed. The green go light flicked on. Doc hopped back into nothing.
Wally dove after him.
The HC-130 bolted away. Wally and the team were flung forward by the speed of the plane, hurled into a torrent of wind. Wally spread his limbs, arching his back to control the accelerating fall.
Gaining control of his descent, he counted five electric green figures through the NVGs. The team maneuvered with precision into a wide circle, all facing inward, dropping at the same rate. Five seconds into the jump, at 220 feet per second, the altimeter strapped to Wally’s wrist passed 17,000.
From three and a quarter miles up, the fleeing freighter was easy to spot. The bow light gleamed in Wally’s goggles like an emerald sparkler, and the starlit deck made the Valnea radiant against the darker waters.
In the plummeting circle, big Quincy fell faster, pulling ahead a few meters. Wally and the less bulky others, especially Mouse, lowered their profiles against the rushing air to keep pace. The digital readout on Wally’s wrist clicked off altitude.
The assault team streaked downward in their ring formation, uniforms rippling. In fifty seconds of freefall, they plunged two miles. The cargo ship grew larger by the moment. Wally wanted to say something like, “Here we go,” but no one would hear him over the radio for the roaring wind.
At four thousand feet, the men rotated away from the center to put more space between them. Executing the moves together, each waved and checked the airspace around him. Wally reached back to his container, gripped the pillow handle. Two seconds later, at three thousand feet, he and the PJs threw out their pilot chutes.
Six gray silks unraveled into the rushing air, lines played out at the fantastic rate of their descent. Jamie’s chute blossomed first, plucking him up and away. A split second after, Wally’s canopy filled. The whiplash snatched a gasp from his lungs, stretched his organs, tongue, every muscle downward for a heartbeat. Instantly the plummet slowed, everything snapped into place, and he floated gently down.
Wally grabbed the uncoiled toggles left and right. He found the green images of all five PJs drifting around him. He unclipped one side of the oxygen mask and shut off the oxygen bottle.
Team leader Doc called over the radio, “Sound off. PJ one up.”
Mouse, second in the stack, responded, “PJ two up.”
Wally answered last: “Six up.”
The team guided their chutes into a vertical stack. Wally spiraled to the bottom. The rest stalled and banked until Quincy was in position above and behind Wally, then Jamie, Dow, and Mouse, Doc riding at the top.
They glided down and forward on the southwest wind. Wally’s altimeter read 2,300 feet. They approached the freighter out of the west, gliding at eighteen knots. Still a mile off, the ship plowed from left to right, her phosphorescent wake glowing in the NVGs. Wally figured he had three more airborne minutes to intercept her.
He bored in straight for the starboard beam. His goggles highlighted pirates around the deck. Four spread out along the starboard rail, four a
t the bow, one on each of the wings. Wally had no line of sight on the stern or port rail. There’d be another three Somalis guarding each, just like LB said.
On the water two miles behind the Valnea, a small craft paired itself to the ship’s speed: Robey, Sandoval, and Fitz in the inflated RAMZ.
High overhead, Doc issued clipped orders to keep the stack in line, maintaining two hundred feet vertical separation between them. “Come left two; speed up four.” Wally latched his focus to the wind, calculating how far and fast he needed to fly.
A half mile out from the ship, another glowing silhouette appeared in the center of the freighter. It popped out of a hatch in the cargo deck, then ducked fast behind cover.
Wally thumbed his PTT.
“Lima Bravo, Lima Bravo. Juggler.”
The team freq scratched, then cleared.
“Juggler, Lima Bravo. Right on time. Where are you?”
At a thousand feet altitude, Wally and the team would be visible only if someone knew exactly where to look and tracked them blacking out stars.
“Off the starboard beam, fifteen hundred feet out, one thousand altitude.”
LB’s green image raised hands. “Nothing.”
“Good. You secure?”
“Ready.”
“Winds on deck?”
“Five to eight headwind.”
“I’ll cross over your position in about thirty seconds. I’ll bank left and come up from behind.”
“Is there a guard on the wing?”
“Yeah.”
Wally worked the right toggle to counter a crossbreeze. Altitude was down to 750 feet. In ten more seconds he would cross over the Valnea’s starboard side. This close, the deep hum of her engine and the slicing bow matched the buzz of the radio’s silence. Between his dangling boots, Wally lined up the image of a crouching LB.
LB said, “Do what you gotta do. All of you.”
“Roger that. Look straight up.”
“Nothing.”
“Over you now.”
The Devil's Waters Page 23
