Task Force Desperate

by Peter Nealen

  So we sat down with Mike and he gave us Bo, Charlie, and Lee. Bo was a former Ranger, while Charlie and Lee had been Recon. They were all solid professionals, even if Charlie had a tendency to get a bit of an inter-service chip on his shoulder sometimes. The fact that none of us were still in the military, and that many of us had cross-pollinated between the Marine Corps and Army SOF seemed to be a little lost on him sometimes. Lee was the consummate gray man; he rarely said anything at all, and was in fact something of an enigma to his own team. Bo was a solid, soft-spoken, two-hundred fifty pound black guy who’d escaped Detroit by joining the Army.

  That left us with eight, and Mike with seven. We had two maneuver elements and a support element in the rear. It would be enough for a quick in-and-out, but if we got pinned down like we had in Kismayo, we’d be in trouble. Yemen had a standing military, and though the Egyptian and Sudanese advisors had improved Shabaab’s training, the Yemenis would be a step above that. They were also better equipped, and since the takeover in the wake of the Yemeni Revolution a few years back it was a good bet they were going to be sympathetic to the bad guys.

  They also had air defenses, which was going to make getting in under the radar difficult. You could fly into Somalia with impunity, as long as you stayed above RPG range when you went over any cities. Yemen had radar, SAMs, and MiGs. Add in the fact that the target was pretty close to one of the country’s largest and oldest cities, and the likelihood of significant defenses became even higher.

  The more we looked at it, the more it looked like coming in from the sea was going to be our best option. It still wasn’t a good option, given our assets, but a maritime raid stood a better chance of success than trying to fly in to the desert undetected, move overland, make the hit, disengage, and move overland again to the bird, then fly out without getting shot down.

  As we were trying to figure out this particular problem, the Colonel called with another interesting proposition.

  “What do you guys think about going back to Socotra?” he asked.

  There was a chorus of, “Fuck that.”

  “The last time we went there it was a fucking disaster,” Alek said. “There’s no way we’re doing business with those assholes again.”

  “Not talking about doing business with pirates,” Tom replied. “Quite the opposite in fact. If you get lucky, you might even have a chance to put a bullet in one or two of the sons-of-bitches who double-crossed you last time.

  “The Somali pirates have been using Socotra as a refueling point for hijacked shipping for several years now. At any one time, there are usually two or three commercial freighters at anchor there. My sources say that there are five right now. There is one, however, that is of interest to us.”

  He brought several photographs up on screen. They gave several angles on an older container ship, painted blue and green. Its white superstructure bore the name Frontier Rose. One of the pictures was an overhead shot of the ship at anchor near a long concrete pier jutting off a sandy beach.

  “The Frontier Rose was hijacked three months ago. The company that owns it was already in bad shape financially when the ship left port; this run was their last hope of avoiding bankruptcy. Obviously they are in worse straights now. They can’t afford to ransom the hostages, and the captain has already been killed. The pirates are getting more and more irate, but the company simply doesn’t have the money to pay them, and their insurance ran out just before the run started.

  “We have recent video confirmation that the pirates are keeping the crew on the ship, thanks to their latest message to the company demanding payment. They’re in bad shape, but they are alive.

  “Here’s the deal; I’ve been in contact with the company, and they are desperate. They made me an offer. If we can get their people away from the pirates alive, we can have the ship.”

  Several sets of eyebrows went up at that. Eddie blurted, “Is that legal?”

  Larry turned to him. “If this works, we’re going to use that ship as a launch platform for an armed invasion of a sovereign country, for the purpose of assassinating several people, at least one of whom is an actual official of another sovereign country. And you’re worried about whether or not it’s legal for us to get paid for a rescue with a container ship?”

  Eddie thought about it for a second. “You know, you’re right. Forget I said anything.”

  “My first thought would be to say that this idea is kind of jeopardizing the raid,” Jim said. “Another raid to set up for the first one just multiplies the chances of a critical failure. We’d have to run it perfectly. We can’t afford any more losses at this point. And every time we make contact with armed opposition, which this will be, we chance taking losses.”

  “Noted,” Alek said finally. “Face it, boys, we are so far across the Rubicon we can’t even see the motherfucker anymore. Either we do this, or we pack it in. And I’m not ready to do that yet. Yeah, it’s gonna suck, and the prospect for even worse suckage before we get to go home is pretty fucking high. Oh fucking well.” He looked around at the whole group. “Clear enough?”

  Nobody objected. He was right. We were all too proud to go home now. The mission was there, and we planned on finishing it, or dying in a pile of empty brass. Binary solution set. Win or lose, live or die.

  “I’ve got our standby bird on the way to Socotra right now with boats and amphib gear,” Tom said, when he was sure the byplay was over. “It should meet you there. Logan will make sure nobody fucks with it.” Logan Try was an old hand who was, if anything, meaner than most of the guys on the teams. He tended to be a bit too much of a lone wolf, which was why he wasn’t on a team. He could be trusted to make anyone’s life who tried to steal our shit short and painful, though.

  “How much is this costing us, Tom?” Alek asked quietly.

  “A lot,” Tom admitted. “But we’re good. You worry about operations, Alek, and let me worry about the financial side. I won’t let us go under, I promise. Besides, you pull this off, I’m already figuring out how to leverage it into other opportunities.”

  “All right, Tom, I’ll leave it to you. Unless there’s more info you can give us, we’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re going to get to Socotra in time,” Alek said.

  “I’m sending all updates I’ve got as an attachment,” Tom said. “I’ll let you guys get to it.” The video window winked out.

  “Well, let’s get this shit packed,” I said. “We’ve got a date on Socotra.”

  It took most of six hours to get everything broken down and packed on the DC-3, while still maintaining security. It was getting dark as we finally took off, leaving the 407 behind to follow us by a longer route. The helo didn’t have the range the DC-3 did, and would have to stop to refuel en route. Most of Caleb’s team was riding with the helo to make sure no one decided to hijack it, since they’d be stopping in Somaliland and Puntland on the way to Socotra.

  I sat in the uncomfortable web seat against the fuselage and closed my eyes. It was going to be just over a four hour flight to Socotra, and we’d likely hit the ground running once we got there. We could all use the sleep. I drifted off quickly enough, in spite of the drone of the engines and the ghosts waiting behind my eyelids.

  We landed in the middle of the night, apparently to the ground controller’s great displeasure. Mike had woken us all up about fifteen minutes out, so we’d gotten to watch as the strip lights didn’t come on until we were on final approach. Logan must have had to go wake the guy up. It was one in the morning, after all.

  Paul brought the DC-3 down with a brief chirp of rubber on cement, and hardly a bump, even in the dark. The bird was his baby, and he took great pride in how well he knew her every quirk. If the landing had been even remotely rough, he would have been pissed at himself for days, never mind that it was on an unfamiliar strip in the middle of the night. Like Sam, Paul was a perfectionist.

  We got up and stretched as he taxied the plane over toward the tiny terminal. I’d gotten a look at it
out the side window as we landed, and it really wasn’t much. There was a separate tower, and the terminal itself was a two-story block of a building that squatted next to a large cement pad where airliners could offload their cargo of mostly French tourists. We’d have to go through the terminal, as we were masquerading as similar tourists, in order not to alert the pirates that somebody very scary had just landed. I didn’t know for sure what cover Logan had used for all of our amphib gear, but the bulky kitbags full of armor, ammunition, and weapons might get interesting.

  It turned out to be a little less interesting than I had expected. As we taxied, we slowed to a stop still a fair distance from the terminal, as an ancient diesel truck pulled up to the side door of the aircraft. Logan got out and climbed up into the bed, and then called over to toss him our gear. He’d hold on to it until we cleared Yemeni customs, then we’d link up with him down by the shore, where he’d been getting the boats set up. It seemed workable, so fifteen heavy kitbags got heaved out into the bed of the truck, then Logan climbed back down into the cab and pulled away, still without lights. We continued to taxi toward the terminal.

  When Paul finally brought the plane to a stop, the door opened again, and we climbed down, notably unarmed, and clad in the closest we’d been able to scrape together to summer tourist clothes, which wasn’t much. We were still wearing mostly khaki tactical pants, hiking boots, and short-sleeved shirts, plus there was no disguising the fact that fifteen fairly large, fit men, most with beards, had just landed on the island. There was a noticeable lack of women or older men, and we all had to work to tone down the “fuck off” meat-eater vibe that we tended to wear like a second skin.

  The inside of the terminal was a single big, open room, filled with black plastic chairs, and punctuated by several square support columns. A long reception desk sat along the back wall, along with a customs checkpoint, and that was where we headed, with our 3-day go-bags slung over our shoulders, hoping they wouldn’t appear overly tactical to the customs goons. Our excuse was that we were there to do some serious hiking in the inland mountains. It might be believable.

  There were half a dozen airport police scattered around the terminal, most looking like they’d just been rousted out from a nap. They didn’t look too concerned about us, in fact they looked mostly concerned about getting done and going back to sleep. Perfect.

  Alek led the way, presenting his passport and his bag for inspection. The blue-uniformed policeman shuffled through the bag disinterestedly, found the bribe that had been placed carefully just for him to find, and waved him through. The rest of us followed, the same ritual being repeated without fanfare or fuss. I don’t think they even noticed that half of our packs were made by Kelty, or if they did, they didn’t know what it meant.

  We met Logan with the same truck in the mostly empty parking lot behind the terminal, and climbed into the back. He ground the rickety thing into gear, and we started rattling down the main road out of the airport.

  It was surprising how normal everything appeared. There weren’t any armed patrols, in fact there was no sign of the pirates we’d run into up in Hadibu. The gas station just outside the airport had its lights on, and was apparently open for business. There wasn’t really any traffic, which wasn’t all that surprising given the hour, but it felt strangely calm, as though none of the hell that was going on around the Gulf of Aden had any effect here. It was an illusion, one that we would shatter soon, but it was eerie, all the same.

  We trundled down the road, which was in really good shape, better than some of the roads back in the States, as a matter of fact. There weren’t a lot of lights lit on Socotra at night, and the clouds had started to roll in off the Arabian Sea, so there wasn’t much starlight, either. The hills loomed on our right, their dark bulk more felt than seen, outside of the cone of light from our headlights. Nobody talked much.

  After a while, Logan pulled the truck off the road, and we bounced along a rough dirt track in the dark, until the ground ahead suddenly disappeared from the headlights. Then he stopped the truck, killed the lights, and shut off the engine. When he got out of the cab, he simply said, “We’re here,” and started walking away.

  We jumped out, hauling out our kitbags with us, and started after him. It quickly became apparent that the ground had disappeared because we were parked on the edge of a steep bank that sloped sharply down toward the shore. It was going to be rough climbing with our kit, but Logan already had a path picked out, and was marking it with small chemlights as he descended. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t as bad as it initially looked.

  At the bottom, the waves lapped against the shore and the three Zodiac rubber boats that were mostly set up just above the waterline. The engines weren’t hooked up yet, but they were on the beach, along with five storm cases full of gear.

  “Holy shit, Logan, you didn’t haul all this crap down here by yourself did you?” Larry asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” was the gruff reply. “So what?”

  “Just…damn.” There had to be the better part of a ton of gear down there on the beach, and Logan had humped it solo down that embankment. The guy gets a little…single-minded, sometimes.

  Glancing at my watch, instinctively shielding the Indiglo with my hand, I saw that it was about 0230. We had about three hours or so before first light. That was going to make it unlikely that we’d manage to take the ship tonight. We still had too much setup to do. We got to it.

  None of the boats was fully assembled; we had to finish inflating them and install the deck plates. The outboard motors had to be unpacked, fitted to the boats, and secured, then fueled, primed, and tested. All of our kit had to be brought out and checked. By the time everything was ready, it was almost dawn.

  “Were you able to get eyes on the target?” Mike asked Logan, as we all sat down either on the storm cases, the boat gunwales, or rocks.

  “No,” was the answer. It wasn’t surprising, considering that the weird bastard had spent however many hours hauling three boats and all their assorted gear down a rocky slope, instead of leaving it in the truck and waiting for us to get there to help out.

  “We’re going to have to do some kind of reconnaissance,” I said. “The Colonel’s information is as up-to-date as he can make it, but it’s still old. We need eyes on before we try to board.”

  “Well, anybody bring shorts?” Eddie asked with a laugh. “We can be tourists running around in a boat, skin diving.”

  Without a word, Logan got up and hiked back up the bank toward the truck. We all kind of looked at each other, not sure what to make of this. When he came back down, he had a small overnight bag over his shoulder, which he tossed on the ground in the middle of the loose circle we had going.

  “The Colonel thought they might be useful,” was all he said. Bob went over and opened up the bag. Inside were several sets of tropical shirts, shorts, and sandals; just the sort of thing tourists would be wearing in a place like Socotra.

  “Leave it to the old man to think of shit we didn’t even think to ask about,” Bo said. To Bo, Tom was always “the old man,” since the two of them had served together in the Army, many years past.

  “I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll take Jim and Lee.” I tossed each of them a pair of shorts and sandals that might fit, and pulled out a loose white short-sleeved shirt and pair of board shorts that looked like I could get into. Without much fanfare, we started peeling out of our khakis and t-shirts for the tourist gear. “I’ll need binoculars and at least one camera, plus a cascade bag for weapons. Pistols only; if we need rifles, we’re fucked anyway, and the mission is blown.” I stopped talking to pull my t-shirt over my head. I got a good whiff of myself as I did, and damn near gagged. I couldn’t remember the last time any of us had had a shower. At least playing tourist out on the ocean for most of the day would give us a chance to rinse off, even if it was with salt water.

  “It’s still about eleven klicks to the target area,” Alek said. “That’s within range of the icoms
. I don’t want you taking tactical radios if we can avoid it. Keep comms up the whole time; if we’ve got to come after you, I want to know immediately.”

  “Not my first rodeo, Alek,” I reminded him. “We’ll be up.”

  He clapped a huge hand on my shoulder. “Not trying to armchair quarterback, here, brother. Just can’t afford for this to go sideways.”

  I returned his shoulder-thump. “We’ll get it done, brother.” I rolled my trousers and shirt up and lay them on top of my hiking boots, next to my kitbag. I pulled my .45 out, checked the mag, and slipped it and two spares into a small waterproof bag, which was then clipped securely into the inside of the boat, next to Jim’s Kimber and Lee’s SIG. Lee already had the radio and the binos, and Jim was putting a digital camera in a waterproof case that would still let us use it.

  On a thought, I grabbed my fins and a pair of Chuck Taylors out of the amphib gear, and clipped them in the boat, along with a mask and snorkel. They might come in handy. Jim saw me do it, and as soon as he was finished with the camera and had it installed in another waterproof bag, he did the same. As I clipped mine in, I saw that Lee had beaten me to the idea.

  With our gear checked and loaded, we heaved the boat down the beach and into the water.

  Chapter 31

  It was almost possible to momentarily forget just how serious a situation we were in, as we started leisurely motoring our way along the Socotra coastline. As the sun climbed in the sky and cleared the broken clouds that had gathered over the island’s central peaks, we seemed to be a world away from the fire and bloodshed that had consumed our lives for weeks now.

  The water was crystal clear, and we could look down and see schools of fish darting past. A pod of dolphins skimmed alongside the boat for a couple of kilometers, leaping clear out of the water on more than one occasion. We could almost relax and enjoy ourselves a little, especially since that was what we were supposed to be appearing to do anyway.