The Delta Solution

by Patrick Robinson

  “How long before you can deploy?” asked Mark Bradfield.

  “Three weeks,” replied Mack. “I have an excellent group of guys. I’d say we deploy for Djibouti twenty-four days from right now.”

  “Sounds good,” said the general. “I just hope they don’t strike again before that.”

  “If they do, we’ll take ’em next time,” said Mack. “But we will take them. That I promise.”

  There was a smile on the face of General Zack Lancaster as he asked Simon Andre to adjourn the meeting for lunch.

  Before he did so, Andre mentioned, “Since the Brits might help us, I asked their Ambassador, Sir Archie Compton, to join us. He’ll mark our card. Better if someone else comes with us. We might even escape the universal accusation of American bullying.”

  General Lancaster added, “I wouldn’t be too hopeful. The Brits had a shocking decline under that last left-wing government. Also they’re broke. Unsurprisingly.”

  A tall, grey-haired, distinguished-looking man, Sir Archie greeted the Chairman, who briefly outlined the purpose of the discussion. The piracy. The necessity of swift US action before it all got out of hand.

  “Archie, my old buddy,” said the General, “Do you think Great Britain would join us, I mean perhaps a couple of warships, a few SAS men, perhaps a battalion of Royal Marines?”

  “I wonder, gentlemen,” replied the ambassador, “If you remember March 2007, when a boatload of armed Royal Marines, and Navy personnel from the guided-missile frigate HMS Cornwall, were captured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and taken into captivity without firing a shot at their enemy. It was a total disgrace.”

  For a few moments, no one spoke. Then Sir Archie said quietly, “Do you really want them to assist you, against a heavily armed Somali pirates? I may as well ask you.”

  No one said anything.

  “And how about that British couple kidnapped off their yacht by Haradheere pirates?” said Admiral Bradfield. “Right in front of a Royal Navy ship.”

  “Correct,” said Sir Archie. “The crew on board Wave Knight witnessed the action, and did nothing. They stood by, only fifty feet away, while the British couple were transferred to the pirate ship.

  “Gentlemen, there were twenty-five Royal Navy sailors, with access to rifles, sub-machine guns, and pistols in the Wave Knight. And someone ordered them not to open fire!”

  “Unbelievable,” said General Lancaster. “And they scarcely covered themselves in glory in Basra . . . withdrew from the battlefield, in the face of the enemy. And when we finally poured thousands of US troops into the area to reclaim it alongside the Iraqi army, the British Army was not even invited to take part. They suffered a complete humiliation.”

  ADMIRAL CARLOW and Commander Bedford flew back to Coronado that afternoon. They travelled mostly in silence, which made it pretty quiet on the Navy P-3C jet since they were the only passengers. Each of them had a lot on his mind.

  Andy Carlow understood the danger of the forthcoming mission, and he, perhaps more than everyone else who had attended the meetings at the Pentagon, was unnerved by the sheer scale of the pirates’ arsenal.

  He dozed fitfully, and when he jolted awake, he was always thinking the same thing: RPG7s, armor-piercing, tank-busting, antiaircraft guns, big, new, night sights, Jesus Christ! Unthinkable thoughts surged through his mind: What if the guys all got killed? What if Mack died in the action? What if it was the biggest SEAL disaster since June 2005 in the Hindu Bush? There would be a media uproar, and he would undoubtedly get the blame.

  Carlow didn’t give a damn about that. It was only that he would have to live with it. The admiral knew the surviving SEAL from the Hindu Bush, Marcus Luttrell, one of the all-time great SEAL warriors. Carlow knew and admired him, but there was a sadness in Marcus’s eyes that did not go away.

  In the front of Luttrell’s book, Lone Survivor, he wrote: “There is no waking hour when I do not remember them all with the deepest affection and the most profound, heartbreaking sadness.”

  Andy understood that would be his fate as well, if anything happened to the guys. And, let’s face it, under his command, they were headed into the jaws of death against a brilliantly armed enemy.

  Mack, too, was alone with his thoughts. The CIA report of the strength of the pirates had interested him but not to the extent it had engaged Admiral Carlow. Mack’s equations involved people because that was his world, being one of a team of people, warriors, who took on other people. Essentially they had the same or similar weapons.

  It was the people, their strength, training, fitness, endurance, skill, courage, and speed that swayed the battle. An English admiral had once told him that victory usually depends on the mind of the commander. Darned thoughtful that. Because it does. The winner is always the guy who outthinks, outfights, and will not give up. The quality of the weapons used is a factor. But not THE factor.

  If there was a principal factor, it was that of the surprise attack, the pure shock of the enemy turning around and coming face to face with a half dozen of my guys, most of them huge men with black camouflage cream on their faces, wearing their green-and-brown bandanas, the drive-on rags, and holding machine guns and shouting.

  Mack had seen the toughest looking Islamic cutthroats quake with fear at the mere sight of Navy SEALs coming through their front door with the aid of a sledgehammer and large hunk of high explosive. The technique is pure intimidation plus speed.

  Sitting up at 30,000 feet flying over the great state of Missouri, Mack told himself over and over: I never saw anyone who could outgun us. The issue is whether our enemy can shoot early enough, fast enough, and straight enough. And I’ve yet to meet that guy. He’s certainly not some fucking tribesman holding a gun that’s too big for his training.

  Someone brought them coffee as they flew over the Rocky Mountains above New Mexico, and they landed at North Island Naval Base, Coronado, late in the afternoon having picked up three hours. Mack went back to the officers’ quarters, ordered a couple of cheeseburgers, and wrote to Anne and Tommy, who were still in Maine and not due to arrive for another month.

  The following morning he rejoined the Delta team practicing with a helicopter over San Diego Bay. This was basically a straight-down and straight-up discipline, being perfected in case the team had to be either dropped in or hauled out of the ocean. Neither option was likely, but it was possible—if, for instance, the pirates managed to blow up a ship and the SEALs had to dive over the side.

  They needed to hone their techniques, and Mack had laid on an ultrapowerful SH-60 Sikorsky Sea Hawk, the twin-gunned workhorse of the US carrier battle groups, to put everyone through their paces. Including him.

  The helicopter is designed for Special Forces operations and can carry an eight-man SEAL team two hundred miles into their ops area. It was kicking up an unbelievable racket, its huge rotors whirring, beating the air, while the Delta team reached up from the water, one at a time, and grabbed the rope ladder, hauling themselves up thirty feet and climbing aboard.

  The insertion drill was more spectacular: The Sea Hawk came in thirty feet above the water at 30 knots, at which point the lead SEAL dropped, holding on to his mask before crashing into the Pacific bay.

  They did it over and over, dropping in and climbing out. The exercise would have killed most people, and even these iron men had to take care, judging the height and speed of the aircraft, because a fifty-foot drop at 50 knots can break your back. Everyone had to take it real steady. These wild men called it “helo-casting,” and they had a sneaky pride that no other branch of the US Navy could do it. No other branch of anyone’s navy could do it. It’s a SEAL thing.

  The other major exercise that week was fast-roping—far more serious than any other insertion technique—because it was more likely to come into play during an attack on a ship held by pirates.

  Every member of Delta Platoon needed to hold the picture in his mind. Because they would almost certainly arrive in the ops area in a Sikorsky CH-5
3D Sea Stallion, the navy’s mighty assault and support helicopter, built to transport up to forty US Marines to the battlefield.

  The skill required to drive these things on and off ships is awe-inspiring. Navy pilots practice for months to perfect their technique. And the toughest call of all is to land combat troops on an enemy ship. The Sea Stallion is equipped with three 12.7-millimeter machine guns with which she can open fire while the insertion is in progress.

  The pilot’s task requires the delicacy of a mine-clearance task force, allied to the guts of a frontline gunner, bringing the helo down, sometimes to the level of a forest of ship masts and antennae, balancing, hovering, praying, trying to stay at ninety feet above the deck while the guys go in.

  The two-inch-thick rope is always brand-new, so it’s still rough for the SEALs’ braking system. It’s hooked on to the helicopter hoist bracket, and one by one they grab the rope and dive out of the door, virtually freefalling for sixty feet before clamping a powerful grip on the rough surface of the rope, slowing down, and hopefully coming to a halt just before their boots hit the deck.

  This is something no one dares to misjudge because you can kill yourself coming in from such a height. And then the danger isn’t over. Right above the man who just landed is another SEAL hurtling down the rope with the same fifty-pound weight on his back. And he too is desperately trying to slow down. Each man on the insertion needs to leap clear of the rope instantly to avoid being crushed by several tons of solid SEAL coming in fast.

  To watch a SEAL team undergo this training is to watch clockwork, mostly without the slightest hitch. But that’s what practice does, and it proves one thing: The definition of professionalism is the total elimination of mistakes. It has nothing to do with money.

  And the speed with which they accomplish these insertions is breathtaking, split seconds rather than minutes. By the third day of helicopter practice, the Delta Platoon commander was putting thirty men on the deck of a ship in under a minute.

  Then they practiced landing on a high roof, just to concentrate on precision and heighten the danger if anyone misjudged it. Then Mack split his force and put a dozen men in a destroyer playing the role of pirates, scattered around the warship, as the US helo came in toward them.

  He needed to assess the element of surprise, the degree of panic each man experienced when the big guys came swarming down the rope with another US Navy gunship spraying the area with machine gun fire, swooping in from port or starboard, covering the SEALs at all times.

  The brutal toughness of the attack was outstanding, but the speed was amazing. Mack Bedford would fight with a sensational advantage, and as he always had known, it wasn’t the quality of the weapons and backup that would win the day; it was the brilliance and courage of the men who carried them into battle.

  It was a very tough week’s work, and Mack gave his exhausted men the weekend off to recover. They’d had their first two accidents, a broken ankle on the fast-roping to the stern deck of the destroyer. And then one man had dropped out too early on the helocasting, too high and too fast, and knocked himself cold on impact with the water. They hauled him out very swiftly, but he needed hospital treatment, and navy doctors were still assessing whether he should deploy to Djibouti with the rest of them. The SEAL with the broken ankle was out of the game for six weeks.

  Admiral Carlow came out to watch the action twice that week, but his main preoccupation was with the Djibouti transfer. SEALs traditionally live separately from other troops, principally because they are under a strict code of classification. Everything they do is top secret. From the moment they arrive in Coronado, they operate under a code that forbids them from speaking to any journalist or member of the media.

  If news of their arrival in North Africa ever reached Haradheere, their mission would be shockingly compromised, and it was Andy Carlow’s task to insure the platoon was quartered in a separate area from the other 2,000 US troops. Certainly well away from the French Foreign Legion’s Thirteenth Half-Brigade.

  When the Americans first arrived in the opening years of the new century, the place was a complete wreck. The swimming pool had been used as a garbage dump, the buildings were uninhabitable, the water supply was suspect. Sanitation hardly existed. The US forces had to live in the Mount Whitney command ship for more than a year. They parked it outside the harbor, which needed dredging so badly there were places where a Zodiac could run aground.

  With incredible speed the US military rebuilt the place, laying down concrete walkways and building apartment blocks for their personnel. They even cleaned out and then restored the swimming pool. Special ops teams were there often but rarely one as significant as the Delta Platoon.

  It took hours of organization but within ten days of deployment the arrangements had been made. And with the exception of the base commanding officer, no one even knew they were coming. They would live in a separate block and train apart from the rest. Their new HQ was exactly twenty-four miles from Somalia’s northwest border but over six hundred miles, across the desert and mountains of Ethiopia, to Haradheere.

  MEANWHILE IN THE PIRATES’ LAIR there was considerable damage. The al-Qaeda assault troops may have perished, but they’d left their mark. An enormous amount of ammunition, thousands of rounds, had been fired into the scrubland. The newly promoted brigadier Patrick Zeppi needed ammunition boxes for his men, and a cache of dynamite had been soaked through when the guards had put out a fire caused by Sheikh Sharif’s opening mortar attack.

  They dried out the high explosives, but the veteran Elmi Ahmed was not certain whether the TNT could be relied upon in the future. This was considered an unacceptable risk. Also there was damage to the concrete courtyard, and windows had been blown out.

  The building materials were ordered and came up by truck from Mogadishu. The ammunition and dynamite could only be acquired on a fast track from one source—Najib Saleh in faraway Yemen. As always he assured them that he could deliver Russian ammunition, machine-gun belts, and magazines. The dynamite was no problem.

  He’d fly it down to the coast by helicopter—usual time, usual place—but subject of course to a $25,000 surcharge for the extra work required for the fast track. Otherwise there would be a two-month lead time. Mohammed Salat understood he was being hosed down financially, but he had no other options. His garrison needed to be at 100 percent efficiency at all times. Because no one knew when the next attack would come.

  Three days later, as darkness fell over the long, sandy coastline, the garrison’s 4 × 4 truck growled through the streets of Haradheere and set off along an ancient cart track, north across the sand dunes. It was a dreadful road, with deep holes and ruts all the way. There were ancient tribal records in Mogadishu suggesting that Egypt’s legendary Queen Hatshepsut had travelled in these parts 1,500 years before Christ, which may have been the last time they’d fixed the road.

  The truck driver was accompanied by four armed guards and behind them were two more SUVs, one with six guards and the other transporting Mohammed Salat and his personal bodyguard. The back of the truck also contained a pile of firewood, logs, and three old, wooden doors blown off in the battle. There were also axes and a can of gasoline for two bonfires, the traditional pirate landing lights for Najib Saleh’s incoming shipments.

  The journey was only ten miles but it was slow, and it seemed like a hundred miles as they bumped and jolted their way over one of the most desolate areas in Africa. It was a few miles inland, well out of sight-range of passing ships. It was actually out of sight-range of everyone. Salat believed no one since the Egyptian queen could possibly have found reason to visit.

  It took them an hour, and Salat order the two bonfires to be lit, thirty yards apart. His guards sprinkled the firewood with gasoline and tossed a burning torch onto each pile. Five minutes later, with the flames shooting skyward, they smashed the three doors in half and added them to the blaze. At which point there was nothing to do except wait.

  Najib’s deliveries w
ere always on time. This was something of a miracle since his cargo travelled over a difficult route with constant refuelling. He owned an old Russian Kamov-Helix assault helicopter, which flew at around 150 knots. And into this unusual freighter he loaded his cargoes of arms from his heavily guarded warehouse on the edge of the Yemen desert.

  The helo still carried the single red star of the Soviet Navy on its tail and had proved reliable on a hundred different journeys. For this trip south from Yemen, the pilot flew across the Gulf of Aden and landed to refuel in the Somali coastal airport of Dabar.

  The next leg of the trip was the least popular among Najib’s pilots because it took them due south from Dabar, across the frontier of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, with its somewhat belligerent air force and its fifty fighter jets. They were fairly relaxed about a Russian Navy helicopter heading south toward Somalia, 24,000 feet above their land. But when roused to action, they would not be above shooting it down.

  Najib’s Kamov clattered its way very fast and very high before coming in to land at the Ethiopian desert airport of Welwel, at which point the danger passed. Because the one commodity the locals really liked was money, and Hajib’s corporate gold American Express card, paying for hundreds of gallons of jet fuel, was very attractive.

  It was another two hundred miles from Welwel down to Galcao, and from there a straight 160-mile run to the drop-off point, still with sufficient gas to make it back to Galcao. Altogether it was a long haul, around 1,000 miles from Yemen, and, with the four refuelling stops, took the biggest part of twelve hours.

  The Yemeni pilot spotted the twin bonfires blazing in the dunes with a half hour to spare on his ETA. It was a clear night and the Kamov dropped swiftly to 1,000 feet for a low-level approach, slowed, and put down on the soft sand.

  He waited a minute and then cut the engine. This was the best part of the trip because Salat’s guards took over the unloading of the ammunition and cases of TNT. Also they always brought out warm roast goat made into sandwiches with Somali flatbread and hot sauce. There was also a case of chilled fruit juices, bags of cashew nuts, and hot coffee.