Yet after he had typed the messages from Ragnar to the world, Rosen typed what he, Mike Rosen, wanted the world to know about the passengers and crew of Sultan of the Seas. The pirates didn’t care what he wrote. After all, they couldn’t read English. Rosen wondered if they could read any of the earth’s languages. The pirates merely talked back and forth between themselves and watched him type.
He e-mailed physical descriptions of Ragnar and Mustafa al-Said, described what he had been told by various witnesses about the events aboard ship, and editorialized shamelessly, which after all was his shtick at the radio station.
A half-dozen of these cyber essays landed on Jake Grafton’s desk at Langley all in a heap. It was late in the evening in Washington and the admiral was exhausted, but he had another sip of coffee and settled down to read them in the order in which they were sent.
Thirty minutes later, just as he finished that pile, his secretary brought him two more. Man, that Rosen could type!
He was just about finished when his desk phone buzzed and his secretary informed him he had a visitor, Sal Molina. A lawyer from Texas in his former life, Molina was the president’s right-hand man. Or executive assistant. Or chief hatchet man. No one knew Molina’s real title at the White House; perhaps he didn’t have one. Apparently he got paid regularly with taxpayer’s money, and he certainly had the Big Dog’s ear.
Molina looked right and left and parked his butt on the couch.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“For screwing Jurgen Schulz in front of an audience. If you’d told me ahead of time you were going to do it, I’d have paid money to film it. How did you know it was his staff that jerked Tarkington around?”
“I’m psychic.”
“I doubt that. I call it shit-house luck. What if it had been the president’s two favorite butt-boys who had their fingers in the pie?”
“You would have cut their fingers off.”
Molina chuckled. “So how in hell are you gonna get those Sultan people outta there?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
A young aide appeared in the doorway. She had a sheaf of file folders in her hand. “These are just the first ones, sir. They’ll have more later today, they said.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
Jake opened the folders and spread out the contents, which were satellite photos of Eyl, Somalia. They were taken on different days, at different times, at different angles, as the satellites, for there were more than one, swung over the area. The information their sensors obtained was radioed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which used computers to construct these images.
Jake sorted them by date and time as Molina watched.
“You couldn’t have obtained all of this since the president appointed you.”
“No. I ordered this stuff as soon as Tomazic and I got back from New York. Took a while, but the info is beginning to dribble out of the pipe.” Grafton got a magnifying glass from his desk and began scrutinizing selected photos.
“You didn’t know you were going to get this job.”
“Of course not. Still, Omar Ali had something interesting to say, so I thought I had better get started checking it out.”
“You mean about the Shabab murdering everyone?”
“Oh, no. The interesting thing was that he said he knew about the assault on the cruise ship weeks before we snatched him.”
Molina the lawyer was dismissive. “He may have been lying just to get some leverage with the prosecutors. Hell, he had three weeks to offer us something, and he didn’t.”
Jake put down the magnifying glass. “Either the pirates were out there on the ocean randomly cruising around trolling for prospects, or they planned this assault. At least six pirate skiffs-one report says eight-simultaneous assaults on two cruise ships, shooting when threatened … No, this was carefully planned.” He tapped his fingers on the photos. “Ragnar had plenty of time to prepare his defenses, make a plan with a high probability of success. Not just to capture a cruise ship full of people, but a plan to prevent their rescue unless someone paid his price.”
“So they planned it. So?”
“These people aren’t stupid, Sal. The plan to capture the cruise ship is worthless unless they can force someone to pay ransom. The pirates have to plan for the worst. What is the worst thing that could happen, from their point of view?”
Molina’s eyes narrowed. “A military attack to rescue the hostages.”
“Right. They knew that when they contemplated capturing a cruise ship. That was the problem that they had to address and solve.” Grafton stirred the photos around. “We’ll have these gone over by experts tomorrow. I’m just an amateur.”
“So…”
“Sal, you and I and the pirates know we can apply overwhelming military force. Anyone who refuses to surrender immediately will die. Their only defense is the threat to harm the hostages. How? Shoot a few as we come thundering in? Or murder them all if we pull one trigger?”
“So what’s your timetable?”
“We’ll have answers in few days, I hope. A week. Maybe a little longer. What we need is time.”
Molina frowned. “We’re going to have to say something to the press about the ransom demand. The news is all over every network on earth. Got any suggestions?”
“The usual,” Grafton said airily. “We’re consulting with the owners of the ship, the insurance company, the British government … Add anyone you like. And get those aides pounding the phones. Do consult. Make it look good.”
“The press will ask bluntly if we will pay if the Brits won’t.”
Grafton propped his feet on the lower drawer of his desk. “Don’t give me that shit, Sal. Your press guy can dance around a direct question like that for weeks. We’re negotiating. The president is pondering, consulting Congress and the UN, reading tea leaves … whatever. Just don’t commit us to anything until I give the word.”
Molina looked amused. “You’d lie to the press?”
“Everyone else does.”
“That Rosen guy will probably tell us what the pirates’ sword of Damocles is.”
“He’ll tell us what the pirates tell him to say. Be kinda nice to know the true facts before we put people in harm’s way.”
Molina sighed. Through the windows one could see the lights of the grounds, very tasteful and decorative, designed to make security airtight. He could hear the faint sounds of classical music emanating from the windowpane vibrators, sounds so faint he couldn’t even follow the music. It was just noise. Molina hated this building. Hermetically sealed off from the outside world and the rest of humanity, the secure spaces reminded him of graves.
“The president says not a dime.”
Grafton waved away that comment with a dismissive flip of his fingers. “If you’re willing, I have a favor to ask,” Grafton continued. “When the sun comes up, how about talking to the secretary of the treasury. I need two hundred million counterfeit dollars, just in case. Make it hundred-dollar bills.”
Molina rolled his eyes.
Grafton pretended not to notice. “We need to keep all our options open until we figure out precisely what Ragnar has planned, what his capabilities are. We may have to buy him off, get the Sultan people out, then go back and liberate the money and whack him. Or we may decide to pay the ransom with counterfeit bills. We’ll make the decision, real or fake, when we know what cards Ragnar is holding.”
Molina’s face now wore its usual expression, eyebrows up, brows knitted, jowls sagging, his lips slightly pursed.
“The Shabab guy, Feiz al-Darraji,” Grafton added. “We’ll have to string him along, too. If we buy off Ragnar, we want the people out, not murdered. We don’t want the Shabab to get homicidal before we are ready.”
“Counterfeiting, now.”
“Ink and paper are cheap. The stuff’s gotta be good enough that it’ll pass for real, yet later we can tell the world the bills are bad and what to
look for. Tell Treasury to get cracking. I need it in three days.”
“Just a thought,” Molina murmured. “If Treasury prints it and the government issues it, the courts may decide it’s real money, even if we put Johnny Depp’s picture on it.”
Jake Grafton snorted. “If I had a fart in me, I’d turn it loose, Sal. We get the hostages home alive, everybody safe and sound, I don’t give a damn what the courts decide five years down the road.”
They talked for another few minutes; then Molina left.
Grafton had had enough. He closed and locked his door, left the photos stacked on his desk, stretched out on his couch and was almost instantly asleep. He had met some pirates back when he was young, and he dreamed about them.
* * *
At seven that morning he made a telephone call to the Israeli embassy. At eight o’clock he entered a breakfast joint for working men and women in a strip mall shopping center in Silver Spring, Maryland. There was an empty booth in the back of the row, and he asked the woman at the register for it. He ordered coffee, eggs, bacon and dry wheat toast. He was sipping his second cup of coffee and waiting on the eggs when a man walked in wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and sat down across from him.
The man’s name was Sascha Meissl; he was the Mossad liaison officer to the CIA. His official title at the embassy was something else; Grafton didn’t know what it was, nor did he care. Meissl was a short, heavyset man with a square jaw and a head of curly, wire-density hair. He and Grafton conferred about once a week, on average. Grafton suspected Meissl had other espionage duties at the embassy, but he never asked and didn’t want to know what they were. The FBI could worry about Mr. Meissl’s extracurricular activities, if any.
After the usual pleasantries, Grafton got right to it. He explained that he had been appointed to be the chief negotiator for the Sultan hostage crisis in Somalia, and wanted whatever help Meissl’s agency could give.
Grafton explained his theory that the pirates must have a deterrent to military attack already in place. “They have planned this for at least a month. And they are not stupid.”
“A bomb,” Meissl said, then watched the waitress approach. He ordered coffee and orange juice and a short stack of pancakes.
When the waitress was gone, Grafton resumed. “I need all the information that you can give me, and I need it yesterday.”
“I thought you might call,” Meissl said with a grin.
“I’m too predictable.”
“We don’t really know anything about Somalia. However, we think one of Hamas’s head bomb makers went to Africa for a working vacation about six weeks ago. He went to Cairo, then disappeared. We think he’s probably in Somalia.”
“Name?”
“God only knows what his parents named him. He goes by the nom de guerre of Al-Gaza. About thirty to thirty-five, technically astute, believes in jihad, has built and exploded bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine. His specialty used to be bus bombs, but he’s branched out into bigger and better things.”
“Could he work with ammonium nitrate? Fertilizer?”
“Sure. Detonators, radio controls, all of it. Rather good at what he does. Not suicidal himself, but he likes to help martyrs start their journey to Paradise. Or wherever in hell they end up.”
The coffee and OJ came. Meissl sipped the juice, then attacked the coffee. The waitress brought Jake’s breakfast and filled his coffee cup. Jake dawdled over the eggs.
“You got any guys who know this dude?”
Meissl nodded.
“I’d like to borrow them, if I could. For a couple of weeks, no more. Give them a free trip to Somalia. If they can spot this guy or whoever their bomber is, lend us some expertise, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Al-Gaza might not be there.”
“Someone there knows explosives. As a rule, pirates don’t have much experience building bombs. The Shabab in those parts doesn’t blow stuff up, either. Just shoots people, rapes women, steals food and fuel and weapons and anything else they can physically move.”
“I’ll talk to Tel Aviv. If these guys find our man, we don’t want him walking away.”
“Something can probably be arranged,” Jake said dryly. His eyes crinkled and the corners of his lips turned up slightly. That was his smile. Sascha Meissl smiled back, showing his teeth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EYL, SOMALIA
The fortified lair of Sheikh Ragnar, the big banana of piracy, Somalia-style, was an old hotel right on the waterfront in Eyl. Six stories high, from the upper story it had a fine view of the harbor created by the two small promontories. Ragnar had knocked down superfluous walls on the top story to create a penthouse. His men were on the floors below, and he had four machine guns mounted on the roof, one on each corner, just in case.
From time to time Ragnar glanced at the captured cruise ship anchored in the river’s channel and permitted himself a smile. Ragnar was not his real name. He wasn’t a sheikh either; he was a vicious, amoral sewer rat who shot first and asked questions later. With his greed, sewer smarts, violent disposition and respect for nothing, Ragnar had what it takes to succeed as a pirate.
So far he had done very well at the trade. The ransoming of Sultan of the Seas and her passengers and crew would be the capstone on his career. He intended to retire and live like a pasha on his ill-gotten millions. He would have all the good food, liquor, women and drugs he could possibly want to eat, drink, screw or snuff up his nose-yet, in truth, Ragnar had that now. Still, like humans everywhere, he wanted more.
More.
He wondered if there were any attractive women in the fortress. Might not a new one be a delicacy in bed tonight? Young, white, with dark hair and shaved legs and big, luscious tits. Ragnar liked big tits and tight, wet pussies with a triangle of curly dark pubic hair. White skin made the dark pubic hair vivid, irresistible. He would ask Mustafa.
FORTY MILES SOUTH OF EYL, SOMALIA
I lay there in the dirt/sand mix of Africa trying to get comfortable. I was on my stomach, with my head resting in the crook of my arm, trying to ignore the hot sun slowly baking me and the itch that had developed on my right ankle. I didn’t think the ants had gotten that far, not yet, anyway, but no doubt if I lay here long enough they would. Ants that would disassemble me piece by tiny piece and carry me away to Ant City to feed the little ones. I was in no mood to be recycled just yet.
It was quiet. Peaceful. Like everyone else on the planet was dead and I was the only one left alive, listening …
As I lay there I thought about many things. How Mrs. Carmellini’s only boy, Tommy, wound up in the African dirt. She wanted me to be a professional something, work in a nice office, marry a nice girl, have 2.5 kids and invite her to visit for the Christmas holidays. I even got a law degree along the way. However, certain character flaws reared their ugly heads and the CIA latched on to me … so there went the nice wife, the kids, and Mom’s Christmas vacation.
An ant crawled up onto my hand. I decided to risk it. I squashed the little bastard with my other hand, moving as little as possible.
I started out in the Company as a burglar and wish I could have stayed at it. Gadgets, bugs and safecracking were my Company specialties, although in the last two years Grafton has sent me to every military and Company school he could think of to teach me tradecraft and unarmed combat. Armed combat, too. I knew how to recruit and run agents, set up drops and lie convincingly. I also knew how to jump out of a plane, kill people with knives, garroting wire and high explosives, could tear down, repair, clean and shoot any weapon in any military arsenal, and could even swim fairly well, although the SEALs refused to certify my swimming skills. Said I wasn’t proficient enough.
I didn’t care: I didn’t want to be a SEAL. What I got out of SEAL training was an abiding loathing of water-I limit myself to showers and an occasional glass of water between meals.
Another school he ran me through that I didn’t do great at was Marine Corps sniping school. Oh
, I could shoot fairly well, but I refused to get with the program and commune with blood-sucking insects and lizards, become one with the dirt and sweat, which is what marines are all about. Lying motionless under a bush for days at a time, pissing and shitting in an adult diaper, just to pot someone if he or she happened by was a skill set that I decided I could probably do without. Grafton knew the marines also sent me home without a graduation certificate, although he pretended he didn’t.
The irony of all that training and my current predicament almost brought a smile to my face. Almost.
If worst came to worst, I planned on getting a job at Starbucks and to hell with all of it. At Christmas maybe I’d send Grafton a card, maybe I wouldn’t. I could send Mom a fruitcake.
I was getting really relaxed, itches and all, when I heard the faintest sound of an engine. A gasoline engine. I listened and tried to stay totally relaxed.
After a bit I realized there were two of them, some ways off. I only heard the sounds when the engines revved or topped a little rise.
I knew what they were. Technicals, which were Jap pickups with a machine gun mounted on a swivel in the bed. They were the tanks, jeeps, supply vehicles, scout cars, VIP transport and mobile antiaircraft units of both the pirates and the Islamic fundamentalist rebels hereabouts, the Shabab, the holy warriors who had been trying to take over the country for the last seventeen years. The Shabab wasn’t doing so hot right now, what with the famine in the southern half of the country and the universal opprobrium in which they were held, here and everywhere else. Three million people were in the various stages of starvation and the Shabab refused to allow international aid. Anything delivered anyway they stole.
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