Ground Zero

by Don Pendleton

  It was a correct assumption. They jumped feetfirst into the water and touched bottom. The water lapped around their chests. The soft sand yielded and sucked at their feet, and Marina slipped under the water, then came up coughing and choking. Frank looked at her, alarmed and angry at being unable to assist her. He bit down hard on that anger, not wanting to give their captors any excuse to lash out at either of them; the pain of keeping it in made his chest constrict. He heard Carla cry out as she slipped like his own wife; he heard George bellow incoherently, still not clearheaded enough to fully realize what was happening, and he heard Carla cry again. Differently this time, as George took another blow from a pirate with no time or patience to waste.

  As they moved toward the shore, there was more drag on them as the buoyant water receded, but it was easier to keep upright. Once they were on the sand, weariness and shock made them stumble, and they found it hard to keep up with the pace their captors set.

  Two guards per couple, with the skipper who had led the expedition out front, they were led into the trees, where a narrow path had been hacked and then disguised. Twisting upward from the beach, it led to a track where a battered Ford flatbed awaited them. A driver waited patiently at the wheel, with a guard who had an RPG-7 casually propped against his thigh. The skipper said something. His voice, as before, was soft, but there was something in the tone and the manner in which the guard jumped to that confirmed the Fosters’ view of him as head of the group.

  “Back of the truck,” he said simply as he turned to the captives, gesturing to the flatbed. The guards prodded them with rifles as they clambered awkwardly upward. It crossed Marina’s mind that professionals—like the ones she had known since marrying Frank—wouldn’t get that close; then again, the pirates were dealing with tired, hurt and cowed people. They knew it, too.

  “Not far now. Then you rest. We give you something to cover. Then it begins,” the skipper said to them before turning to sit next to the driver.

  He looked back when Marina said, “Why are you bothering to tell us?”

  He shrugged and actually smiled, and she didn’t know if she should take that as an insult about their condition and lack of threat. “You play the game, figure the rules,” he said. “Make it easy for me. Makes you okay, long as you remember that.”

  There was an implied threat that neither of the Fosters wished to consider. George and Carla were too dazed and scared to take that in.

  The drive was long and uncomfortable. The sun rose above them, hot from the moment it cracked the sky, and it reminded Marina how long it had been since the last opportunity to drink something. The road they took was nothing more than a dirt track, a hardened and flattened strip across the bare scrub ground. Finally the truck reached a small village and jolted to a halt. The skipper and the driver jumped out and ran around to the rear of the flatbed, gesturing to the guards to bring the prisoners down as others from the village slowly filtered from their shacks, drawn by the noise.

  The skipper spoke in a few terse sentences, and rags were brought out and placed in front of the two women.

  “Now you can cover up,” the skipper said.

  Carla, who had by now started to recover some of her composure, looked uncertainly at Marina as they both stepped forward and took the rags, tying them around themselves as shifts. Following Marina’s lead, Carla covered her hair.

  “Why didn’t they just let us take some of our own clothes?” she asked, genuinely confused.

  “Because they didn’t want any unnecessary evidence left behind looking out of place,” Marina replied calmly, her gaze fixed on the skipper.

  He grinned at her. “I don’t think it comes to that. Not with your husband.”

  * * *

  HAL BROGNOLA HAD had a bitch of a day. They came in batches. What was that old poem? “April is the cruelest month...” Yeah, and May and June and maybe even July. The whole goddamn year could be like that, he knew. Everyone always had problems, and it seemed like the whole world, including his wife, Helen, came to his door for him to sort them out. Wasn’t he allowed to have problems? Actually, all things considered, he didn’t really have any; that thought made him feel a little better. To be fair, there were days—maybe even a week at a time—when there wasn’t that much landing on his desk and he could relax and draw breath. It was just this thing that the work never seemed to be evenly spaced out over the years. It just seemed to either be drought or downpour.

  His cell phone rang and interrupted his train of thought. As very few people had his number, that could only mean one thing. He stopped where he was, halfway down the Mall with the crisp night air making his breath frost.

  “Sir...Uh-huh...Absolutely. I understand...No, I’m not far at all, sir. I can be with you in less than ten...No, not at all.” A polite laugh that he didn’t really feel, but it wasn’t like it was the big man’s fault this had happened. “You haven’t put a crimp in any plans.”

  Like he could ever afford to make any plans, he thought as he disconnected and turned back toward his office. First stop there, and then the Oval Office.

  Wonder what Striker’s doing right now? he mused silently as he picked up the pace.

  * * *

  “THIS HAPPENED LESS than twenty-four hours ago, sir?” Hal Brognola asked.

  “No more than that. Frank Foster was last in contact that recently. At the least, it’s been—” the President looked at his watch “—four hours since the report of the deserted yacht was received in this office.”

  “How did that come in?” Brognola asked.

  “Usual channels. The vessel encountering the situation was an Indian boat attached to Task Force 150. Called it in like a usual abduction.”

  Brognola snorted. “It isn’t good when we call this ‘usual,’ is it? But I take your point.”

  “So you see why it would not be advisable to use the task force or to try to depute a Coast Guard vessel. Not given the delicacy and balance of the situation,” the President said, leaning over his desk and fixing Brognola with an intense stare.

  “Oh, yeah, I see it, sir. Need to know as restricted as possible, with location and extraction—with prejudice if necessary—an immediate priority.”

  “Can you put Striker on this?” the President murmured.

  “As a matter of fact, yeah, I can.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two days had passed. Marina knew that because she had been able to see outside the shack when their food had been brought to them. They were in a building that was little more than one room made out of corrugated iron sheeting, with a bowl and half a plastic fuel barrel chopped across the middle as a latrine. There was no light inside, and the only ventilation was supplied by the corrosion holes in the sheeting. The roof was made of the same sheeting as the walls, and in the middle of the day the heat was intense, stifling and bearing down on them like a lead weight. A molten lead weight.

  The water and food they had been given was more than adequate, but was not enough to compensate for the discomfort and nausea engendered by the heat and dark. They were rank with sweat and dirt. Although there was nothing for them to be tethered to, the pirates had taken the precaution of shackling them by the wrists and ankles, with a chain running between the wrist and ankle shackles to further hobble them. George’s wounds had been crudely dressed when they were first shut up, but in the heat and dirt the dressing had quickly become grubby, and the conditions had not helped him return to full awareness. Carla whimpered and sniveled, even after all the time that had passed. Marina had forced herself to concentrate, to keep count. Frank could not see the doorway from where he half sat, half lay, and Marina was determined that at least one of them should keep track.

  Was it really just the two days? Time didn’t so much pass as drag as if it had a weight as leaden as the heat attached to it. Carla had gone to pieces already, and Ge
orge’s condition seemed to be deteriorating at a rapid pace. She and Frank had said very little to each other. Partly that was about conserving their energies, but she was aware that they could give nothing away about who he was. They were currently just rich tourists who had fallen prey to the region. If the truth were known...

  Her reverie was broken by the door to the shack screeching open on rusty hinges.

  “Time to move. This place stinks. You go somewhere better, more air and more light. Maybe look at stupid man’s head again, patch him up some more. Get up.”

  Marina and Frank struggled to their feet. Carla and George weren’t doing so well, and the skipper clicked an order, gesturing urgently. Two men came in, helped them roughly to their feet and dragged them out. Frank and Marina followed in their wake, emerging blinking into the daylight. The Ford flatbed was waiting for them.

  “Where are we going?” Marina asked. Her voice was cracked and harsh; she hardly recognized it. The skipper gave her a ladle of water.

  “Don’t matter to you—you not know where it is anyway. Point is, farther away and closer to our warlord. You worth a lot of cash, you know that?”

  “All Americans or Europeans are, aren’t they?” Marina croaked.

  The skipper smiled. There was something in his eyes that made her stomach turn. “’Course they are. Some more than others. Why you so stupid as to take vacation in Gulf of Aden?” he asked, changing tack suddenly.

  “I don’t think we’d realized that we’d come that far down,” she said. Even so, a flicker of doubt crossed her mind and she glanced nervously at her husband—quickly, but enough for the skipper to notice. Frank seemed oblivious, and although she was reassured that she hadn’t been taken for a patsy by her own husband, she could have kicked herself for arousing the skipper’s suspicions.

  “You know, we used to fish the waters here, then the Malawi and the Kenyan come and screw us over. Lot of fish, but we don’t get near them. So we get guns and we blow the bastards out of the water. Then we realize we can do the same to those who carry cargo. Cargo worth more than fish, mostly. But people...they the best cargo of all. And like all cargo, some bits make more money than others.”

  It was the longest speech they’d heard the skipper make, and it was the longest they’d get. With a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he issued orders to his men that saw them loaded up into the back of the flatbed. More rapid orders, and a woman came forward—Marina hadn’t noticed her before—and tended to the dressing on George’s head before stepping off the flatbed and moving out of sight.

  The skipper barked a few orders and banged his hand on the side of the truck to signal its departure.

  “Good luck, lady,” he yelled over the noise of the engine as the truck jerked and began to move off. There was something about the way he left his voice dangling that suggested “you’ll need it” was an unspoken coda to his farewell.

  * * *

  “STRIKER, I NEED you. The country needs you. Hell, the President needs you.”

  Bolan took the cell away from his ear and looked at it, a bemused and sardonic smile on his face. He shook his head and put it back to his ear.

  “Hal, it’s not like you to be so melodramatic. You don’t have to present a hard sell to me.”

  “No hard sell. I’m not kidding you—this comes directly from the Oval Office. He had me in there himself.”

  “It’s going to be one of those, is it?” Bolan queried.

  “It might be. Meet me in an hour and I’ll fill you in. And give Jack a shout to put him on standby, would you? I’ll fill you in when I see you.”

  By the time an hour had elapsed, Mack Bolan was waiting in the crisp morning air, watching for the big Fed to approach. As usual, he waited until Brognola passed him and then fell in beside him. Here in the heart of Wonderland it was unlikely that either of them would be followed, but caution was never wasted.

  “So tell me about it,” Bolan began without preamble.

  “Downtime getting to you, Striker? I wouldn’t have thought you’d be too pleased at having time off curtailed.”

  “If the Man calls you personally, then it’s important.”

  “Not at first glance. You know all about the piracy that’s been going on off the coast of Somalia.” Brognola knew that the Executioner had undertaken several missions in the area.

  “That’s an understatement. Been there, done that. It’s been going on for about a decade, and it started with a fishing war. There’s more money in cargo ships than fish, though, and the fishermen who’d armed themselves realized that quick enough. We’ve got Coast Guard and naval personnel in the two task forces—150 and 151—and although the UN has a line on it, the Chinese, the Indians and the Russians have gone beyond that and hit back. So the pirates have started to look at people. Kenyan resorts and cruisers in smaller yachts have been the preferred targets. Official government policies have been hard-line—don’t kowtow and don’t pay and don’t negotiate. But most of the captured get freed somehow. There’s a lot of ransom changing hands and a lot of coldhearted bastards who are making a killing as middlemen.”

  “That just about sums it up. We have a situation. Four people—two couples—were taken from a yacht twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago. Civilians, tourists...word came in, and the Man called me.”

  “For four ordinary people? What’s the catch?”

  “One of the couples is Frank and Marina Foster, from D.C. Frank works for the State Department as an analyst. His specialty is economic forecasting for the movement of arms across emergent economies. To do this he has a lot of intel pass through his hands that could make him a valuable commodity.”

  “What’s his security clearance?” Bolan queried, puzzled that a snatch could be effected so simply given the nature of Foster’s position.

  “Too high for him to be allowed out there, for a start.” Brognola sighed. “Even closer to home or in a safer region he should have had cover. Someone’s ass will be in a sling over this.”

  “So it should,” the soldier agreed. “But that doesn’t affect the current circumstance or help Foster and his wife.”

  “Exactly. Which is where you come in.”

  “A quick, clean extraction. Jack will like this. Do we have a location? Have we even heard from the captors?”

  “Negative on both. We’re still on hold. Problem is that until we do, we don’t know who’s got them, what they want and if they’re aware of what they’ve got. Because that’s a real game changer.”

  “Where were they taken and what are the trends for piracy in that region?”

  “I’ll get Bear to put it together and download ASAP,” Brognola replied. “I’ll also get him to break down the groups in the region. Best bets are that they’re from the Hobyo region. The Galmudug regime in the area is against the Islamist insurgents, and we’re hoping that this means that our boys are just opportunists. Most of them are used by the Galmudug just to keep the Islamist warlords at bay.”

  “If the warlords are making any kind of headway, then they’ll either convert their enemies, or else the pirates will pay obeisance so they can fleece the warlords. Now, that’s a hell of a dangerous game for them, but if the captives get caught in the middle...”

  “That’s why we need to move quickly. You’ll travel troop transport routes on the first flight out. Your cover is that you’re part of a new Coast Guard detail that’s already out there with 151, and you were delayed by recuperation. That should answer any awkward questions. Jack can get out there separately. By the time you’re there, Bear should have the intel you need to find a trail...if we haven’t heard from the pirates by then.” “Bear” was Aaron Kurtzman, head of Stony Man Farm’s cyber team.

  “It’ll be a bonus if you have, but since when have I liked it easy?”

  * * *

  MARINA FOSTER WAS
certain that she had passed out for at least some of the journey. The oppressive sun that bore down from overhead seemed to jump in the sky between the moments she blinked. She was dimly aware of the others. Frank was silent, and she was sure that, like her, he was trying to conserve energy and maybe get some rest before they reached their destination and whatever lay ahead. She could hear George moaning softly. It was regular, and she was certain that his head wound would begin to fester unless they stopped soon. It was a good bet that he had a concussion, too, and the longer that went untreated the more concern it would cause. Carla was whimpering, quietly and almost nonstop. Marina was torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to slap her and make her shut up. The journey and the lack of water were starting to get under her skin.

  Hours later, the truck approached a small gathering of tents and ramshackle huts, surrounded by jeeps and trucks. Half a dozen men appeared atop the rocks that were littered around the oasis; three more emerged from behind the dwellings to cover the truck as it entered the enclave formed by the vehicles and tents. All the men carried either AK-47s or RPG-7s, the pirate’s weapon of choice as they were easily obtainable from Yemen or Mogadishu. It was a simple task for a hawala dealer to pay the deposit and then have the weapons driven to an arranged point, where the pirates would pay the balance.

  The flatbed drew up, and the men relaxed as they recognized the driver and guards on the back of the flatbed. They had been expected, as was obvious from the way in which they were greeted. The captives were unloaded and carried—at this moment all four were incapable of walking unaided until food, rest and water had been given—into one of the tents.

  Their arrival caused an air of celebration to filter through the camp. While a few were deputed to stand guard on the new arrivals, most of the men in the camp ate and drank, laughing and joking as the day grew into night and fires were lit against the bitter desert cold. The majority of the men in camp were Muslim, but the cold and hard lives had caused them to turn a blind eye to the use of spirits to warm the blood.