“Jesus, we could wipe out Somalia,” said the general. “And if they don’t start behaving themselves, we just might fucking well do it. This piracy bullshit has to stop. And if that skid-row government of theirs doesn’t come into line real soon, we’ll knock ’em into line. Crazy bastards.”
It was a frequently expressed opinion that if Lancaster and Bradfield ever got into sole command at the Pentagon, a lot of America’s most irritating foreign problems would vanish. Real fast.
The two men were unfailingly formal in front of the troops, but privately it was Zack and Mark. Right now it was the latter.
“Mark, old buddy,” said the general, “how long before this Blackbeard calls again?”
“’Bout ten minutes.”
“Okay. Let’s get the deal done. And I’ll have Major Blythe work out how to get the trade union’s cash into a bag and air-dropped onto the Niagara Falls. Where’s the nearest major bank?”
“Nairobi. Mary-Ann just checked it out. Barclays is the main bank in the city, and she says the British Embassy here in Washington will help. They still have a lot of clout in Kenya—they work from some colonial palace in Nairobi called the British High Commission.”
“If we opened a place in Kenya called the United States High Commission, there’d be a fucking civil war.”
“I know. But the Brits are real useful for us. They’ll work with Barclays, and we can fly the money right out of Wilson Airport south of Nairobi. It’s not so big as the main international terminal.
“I better go, Zack. But who’s going to organize the Seafarers Union? They need to make some kind of announcement to get the heat off the Pentagon—you know the stuff . . . We are negotiating on behalf of our members, providing the kind of protection they deserve . . .”
“You better do that. Since it’s your money. I’ll have Major Blythe send you a note. But I’ll deal with Simon,” he said referring to US defense secretary Simon Andre. “He can organize the president.”
“Beautiful. I’ll be back as soon as I speak to the pirate.”
Admiral Bradfield arrived back on the fourth floor just in time. Jay Souchak had Ismael Wolde on the line as Mark walked in the door.
“He’s on, sir,” said Jay.
“I’ll pick up at my desk.”
But this was no longer the smooth, confident Admiral Wolde. This was a nervous, irritated pirate who had been waiting too long.
“Okay, 7 million dollars for your ship and crew,” he said. “Give me a straight answer. Otherwise we’re leaving and you will not see your people again . . . You are deliberately holding this up. Probably planning to attack the ship.”
“Steady,” replied Admiral Bradfield. “These things take time. You’re looking at a lot of money, and there are a lot of people involved. But I can say we’re making progress.”
“Progress! What’s progress? You have the money for me, or you don’t.”
“Okay, now listen . . . I told you the US government or military will not negotiate with pirates. That’s never changed and it’s never going to . . .”
“Then you’re wasting my time!” yelled Wolde. “I’m going right back there to execute this Barnwell and Tevez. Then we’ll see who’s running this operation. Do you understand me?”
“You’re not going to execute anyone while you think there’s 7 million bucks awaiting you. Because if you pull that fucking trigger, you’ll get nothing. Do you understand ME?”
Wolde, momentarily shocked at Admiral Bradfield’s change of tone, thought of the cash and said, more calmly, “I understand.”
“Good. Just so we’re on the same page,” said Bradfield. “And now you must pay attention . . . and the first thing is, since the US government will pay nothing, we had to find someone who would.”
“That’s good,” interjected Wolde. “That’s very good.”
“And we have found an organization that will step in with cash. But not your 7 million . . .”
“How much?”
“They’ll go to 5 million. No more. They don’t have any more.”
“Well, who are they?”
“They’re the Seafarers Union. They are a civilian organization, very powerful, and very upset with you and your men.”
“Five million is not enough.”
“Okay. That’s the end of it. I can’t get more. The president won’t allow negotiation. I can get you 5 million bucks for the release, under our terms. But if that’s no good, you go right ahead and shoot the American crew and take the ship. Right after that we’re gonna kick your skinny black ass. And that fucking rat-hole town you live in? We’ll take it off the map. Now fuck off, you fourth-rate little murderer. Enjoy the last month of your asshole life.”
Mark Bradfield, a surface-warfare commander at an unbelievably young age, twenty-nine, had an old-world charm about him when riled, even if he was only faking it. And now he rattled the cradle of the telephone. And he could hear Admiral Wolde yelling . . . NO! NO! Sir, don’t put the phone down. We can work with 5 million.”
He gave it ten more seconds and then spoke again. “Five million is what we’ll pay. Not a dollar more. And we have stringent terms which you must accept.”
Mark was far more worried than he would ever let on about the lives of the crew and the possibility of losing the entire ship and its valuable cargo. Mostly because as the US negotiator, he would undoubtedly get the blame. The politicians would insure that.
“Okay,” said Wolde. “You know my terms. What are yours?”
“First off, I want to speak to Captain Corcoran. For all I know you’ve already shot him. Secondly, understand there’s no way we’ll drop that 5 million bucks on the deck of the Niagara Falls, leaving you with the cash, the ship, and the prisoners, while we sit here in Washington with nothing. Get it?”
“Well, what are you proposing?”
“Subject to my talk with Captain Corcoran, you will order your assault team off the ship and out of the area, save for yourself and two armed guards. There will thus be three of you, armed with machine guns on board, with the American crew held in one place. You still hold all the cards.
“We will send over a military aircraft that will drop on deck a fluorescent bag containing the money, which you will retrieve. And all the while I shall be on an open line to Captain Corcoran. When the money is in your hands, you and your two guards will disembark onto a boat of your own, leaving our crew and our ship unharmed.”
“Sounds reasonable,” replied Wolde.
“However, I should warn you that if you make one unusual move, or harm any member of the crew between now and the drop, you will never get off that ship alive.”
“If you hold to your part of the bargain, there will be no need for anything unpleasant,” said Wolde. “But how do I know you won’t attack my own ship once we clear the area with the money?”
“Mostly because we don’t want to become more unpopular than we already are in East Africa,” replied Admiral Bradfield. “We have no intention of indulging in any senseless killing. Certainly not by publicly bombing a fishing boat or whatever you use. Also, it’s not our money.”
“Okay, you have my word. I have yours,” said Wolde. “I abide by what you say. I am ordering my boat in now to take off my men. We have one captain on board our own boat, and we had twelve in the assault force at the start of the mission. There are two dead, two skiff drivers are not here, and eight men are on board. Captain Corcoran will see five of them leave in the next hour.”
“Put him on,” snapped Admiral Bradfield. “Put him on the line.”
Fred Corcoran was very subdued. “We never had a chance, sir,” he said. “There were too many, all armed with machine guns. And two of them boarded us before we even knew they were there. We tried to fight, but it was hopeless. We had two baseball bats against seven rifles and one heavy machine gun.”
“I’m sure you did all you could,” said the CNO. “And we have arranged for someone to pay the ransom—your union, matter of fact, th
e Seafarers International, looking after your interests.”
“Thanks very much, sir. We’re all getting a little scared right now.”
“Don’t be. I will be talking to you whenever I wish. These bastards smell cash right now, and they’ll do what we tell them. I gave that one a firm talking to.”
“I know you did, sir. He’s a quiverin’ wreck compared to two hours ago.”
“Okay, now they’re taking five men off and keeping two guards with you. When we make the cash drop, they will vacate the Niagara Falls, leaving you and the crew to proceed. I’ve told them if anything goes wrong, they will not get out of this alive. Any of them.”
“And what about the cargo? The aid for the Somalis?”
“Well, we’re not driving that ship into a Somali port where she’ll be surrounded by a different set of pirates. So screw ’em. That cargo goes right back to Diego Garcia under escort. We’ll give it to someone else. And that will seriously piss off the Somali government. They might think we’re soft. But we’re not that fucking soft.”
“Spoken like a Christian,” replied Fred Corcoran in his rich Dublin accent. “Screw ’em.”
By this time, General Lancaster had set in motion the procedures to handle any form of United States disaster on the high seas. He had walked up to the office of the secretary of defense, the fifty-eight-year-old Simon Andre, and informed him of the capture and hijacking of the Niagara Falls.
Andre, a calm, assured man who held a Harvard degree and had written books on naval and military strategy, had been a career diplomat, who, by a series of personal miscalculations, had somehow ended up in the US Embassies of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nairobi, Zagreb, and Beijing. Lancaster once said he’d seen more explosions than Rommel.
But today he was in no mood for heroics. There were a lot of things he found difficult, and one of them was announcing to the public the death of American military personnel. Dead Navy SEALs filled him with horror, and Andre agreed with Zack Lancaster’s view that to attack the Niagara Falls in her present position, in the hands of heavily armed pirates, was tantamount to a suicide mission.
“We’d win in the end,” said General Lancaster. “But in this case winning wouldn’t matter. It’s the death rate, men dying for a few bags of fucking wheat. That’s the issue.”
Simon Andre agreed. And he was delighted with the scheme for the Seafarers International Union to pay $5 million to free their members and reclaim the ship. He had not the slightest interest in where the money came from.
“The important thing is to keep the president out of this,” said Andre. “And that will not be a problem because he will have no interest in discussing anything that makes the United States look like a soft target. He’s got enough problems there without us making it worse.”
“I’m going to suggest a very quiet announcement tomorrow morning early,” said General Lancaster. “Just a short statement to be issued by the Seafarers Union that an unarmed American merchant ship has been attacked and seized by a small group of Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, several hundred miles off the coast of East Africa. No mention of casualties. Just a confirmation that the pirate leader has been in touch with the ship’s owners. And that a ransom sum has been agreed with the Seafarers Union whose interest is to protect their members.”
“Sounds very good,” said Simon Andre. “But I think it needs an optimistic forecast—something like . . . Negotiations are scheduled to conclude today, and the ship, the Niagara Falls, is expected to be on her way within forty-eight hours.”
“Excellent,” said the general. “And I think we should put a rigid ban on further information leaking out. We do not need the goddamned press writing stories about dead merchant navy officers boldly giving up their lives for Africa’s starving millions.”
“In the next half hour, I plan to inform the usual military channels what’s happening,” added the general. “Admiral Bradfield is briefing the navy departments, including SPECWARCOM. I’ll get a briefing into Diego Garcia and Djibouti. And we’d better tell State, plus the CIA, and the National Security Agency. You’ll deal with the White House?”
“I will. And we’ll confer at 0600 before the trade union’s press release.”
“Yes, sir,” said Zack as he left the room. “I’ll have someone draft it this evening. Then our friend the union boss can release it to Reuters, or one of the other news agencies, at 0900 tomorrow.”
The general went straight up to the fourth floor to the navy department, where Mark Bradfield was heavily ensconced with Major Harry Blythe, and Mary-Ann McCormac’s fingers were flying over her computer keyboard, rounding up every last detail on the crew of the Niagara Falls. She had two cell phones on her desk, both tuned to a push-button satellite route to the bridge of the ship. Conversations with Captain Corcoran were mere seconds away at any time of the night.
A third phone next to her keyboard was programmed to the cell phone of Admiral Ismael Wolde, whom Mark Bradfield had decreed could just “keep his black ass waiting” until the US Navy was good and ready.
Major Harry Blythe was through talking to the duty officer at the British Embassy up the hill on Massachusetts Avenue before 2030. He did not explain precisely why the Pentagon wished to enlist the embassy to help with a large transfer of money to Nairobi via Barclays Bank, but the young attaché on the line sensed it was sufficiently important to inform the ambassador right away.
Sir Archie Compton left an embassy dinner and promised Harry he would facilitate the operation immediately. “I’ll have the High Commission in Kenya monitor it. You can pay us right here, which will save you a lot of trouble and a hell of a lot of time.”
“As a matter of pure interest, in case I’m asked,” said Harry, “how does the money actually travel?”
Britain’s ambassador to Washington answered: “Pentagon wires to this embassy’s bank account,” he said. “I’ll give you the address and IBAN. Then we’ll have our local bank here wire to Barclays International on Wall Street. They wire to Barclays downtown Nairobi. It’s a big branch right on Moi Avenue, at Kenyatta.”
“Sir, how could you possibly know that?” asked Harry.
“Family lived there, old boy, my father was High Commissioner during the Mau Mau rising—damned nearly ended up with an assegai stuck in his arse.”
Harry said, “I’m really grateful to you, sir. And, just so you know, when the 5 million comes in, it will be under the name of the Seafarers International Union.”
“Wouldn’t matter to us if it came from the account of the Mothers’ Union,” said Sir Archie. “Just get it in there, and we’ll make sure it’s bagged up, waiting for you in cash in Nairobi within two hours, tomorrow morning . . . Tell your chaps to pick up a couple of ours at the High Commission. They can go to the bank together. No mistakes that way.
“By the way, can you tell me what you want it for? Just for interest. Not starting another bloody war, are you?”
Harry Blythe entirely forgot everyone was sworn to secrecy and instantly decided to regard Sir Archie Compton as a member of the US team. “Sir, we just had an 18,000-ton aid ship boarded and captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean. They’re heavily armed, we got one man dead, and in this case we decided to let the Seafarers Union pay up for their men.”
“That’s sometimes much better,” said Sir Archie. “Rescues often cost more than ransoms. And people do get killed too often. How’re you getting the money out?”
“By air, sir. Military aircraft.”
“Tell ’em to work with our military attaché in the Kenya High Commission. And use the smaller airfield, Wilson that is, out along the Mgathi Way. We used to own the place.”
“Thank you, sir. And will you have someone e-mail the British Embassy’s bank account details to me here at the Pentagon, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
“Chairman, eh?” said the ambassador. “You chaps must be a lot more concerned than you’re letting on. Anything else we can do to help, just call
me on my private line. Give Zack Lancaster my best, will you?”
Harry Blythe had just received a short lesson on why Sir Archie Compton was generally regarded as the best ambassador in the entire British Foreign Service—because he was witty, unassuming, clued-up, wellconnected, and vastly experienced. He’d plucked the truth out of Harry like a ripe plum on a tree. Effortless. Harry never even realized it had happened. Until he put the phone down.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “I shouldn’t have told him all that.”
But the money complication was over, and he had solved it. Right down to the point of collection at Barclays Bank on Moi Avenue in Nairobi.
Nonetheless, Harry was worried about how much he had revealed to the British ambassador. Though he need not have been. Because Sir Archie merely stored the information, understanding it was not necessary for his government to know. It had nothing to do with the Brits, or anyone else.
Meanwhile Admiral Bradfield and Lieutenant Commander Souchak were moving fast on the line to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and operational command in Diego Garcia. It was plainly imperative to move at least two warships into the ops area around the Niagara Falls and have them stand by to blow the pirate ship out of the water if necessary. If the money drop went smoothly, they could then escort Captain Corcoran back to safe harbor in DG.
Right now it was also necessary to have on standby an aircraft capable of flying nonstop into Kenya, a distance of 2,200 nautical miles from Diego Garcia, which would mean a six-hour journey for a P-3C Orion with its 4,000-nautical-mile range. It would also mean refuelling, which the Brits would easily organize at Wilson Airport.
Mark Bradfield was also on the line to Admiral Andy Carlow at SPECWARCOM in Coronado, and the SEAL boss almost visibly groaned when he heard that a large former US Navy vessel had been captured by what he described as “a small force of Somali tribesmen with fucking blowpipes.”
“How the hell did it happen?” he asked Admiral Bradfield.
“Mostly because our ship is a merchantman now and is not armed in any way,” he replied.
The Delta Solution Page 6
