Stephen Coonts: Pirate Alley

He was at six miles when he saw the ship embedded in the haze. There, one, two, three skiffs on the starboard side. He didn’t see the fourth, but he could only attack them one at a time, so he picked the closest and went for it.

Power back, down to 420, now 400 … speed bleeding off, angle steep because he was diving toward a point well ahead of his target, which was paralleling the ship, moving toward a point perhaps twenty degrees right of his six o’clock.

He raised the nose to establish a ten-degree dive angle, put the pipper short of the boat, slightly left … saw 1,500 feet on the radar altimeter, 1,500 on the pressure altimeter, airspeed down to 350. A touch fast for his taste, but okay.

He would be shooting in three seconds.

* * *

Captain Arch Penney felt the heavy thud of a nearby grenade blast. Idly, he wondered how many grenades the pirates had brought along. Probably enough to murder hundreds of people.

Three minutes.

“Here come the jets.”

Penney risked a look. He saw only one, coming in fast, slanting down. It was coming from about ten degrees left of the bow and crossing over the extended centerline of the ship toward the starboard boats.

Even as he saw the jet, Penney realized it wasn’t going for the skiff nearest the ship, but one half a mile away.

He watched, mesmerized. The fighter came plunging down like a hawk.

The F/A-18 Hornet dipped low, perhaps a thousand feet, and began its pullout. The pirate boat disappeared in a cloud of sea spray as the audible buzz from the jet’s cannon reached him, seconds late.

“There’s a fighter over here, too,” someone called. “Hammered a boat.”

What would the skiff right by the ship do?

“Stick it to those balmy bastards,” another man yelled.

* * *

Mustafa al-Said was so intent on getting more RPGs into the Sultan ’s bridge that he didn’t see the jet fighters at first. One of his men pointed … then he saw them. Saw one of the boats disappear under a hail of cannon shells. The jet was pulling out, climbing and turning for another pass.

Mustafa spun the wheel. The fighter pilot might not take the chance of shooting so close to the ship. Mustafa expertly brought his skiff to within ten feet of the speeding cruise ship. The sea between ship and boat was a river of foam.

The RPG man fired another grenade right into the bridge wing.

* * *

The explosion of the grenade smashed into the officers and sailors huddled on the deck of the bridge. The concussion momentarily stunned Arch Penney. He found himself sprawled on the deck. Blood. Everything was covered with a fine spray of blood. He looked around. Smoke … carnage … a severed arm lay nearby on the deck. Bodies all over. Harry Zopp was coming around, bleeding from the head. He met his gaze.

“Bloody hell,” said Arch Penney. He crawled to the engine controls and moved the handles to ALL STOP.

* * *

“Strike, Sea Wolf One Oh Five. The cruise ship seems to be slowing. There is a pirate skiff alongside.”

“Can you attack it?”

“Too close to the ship.”

But one boat wasn’t. Gerhart steadied up, checked his dive angle and pulled the pipper onto the boat. Closing … now! The radar altimeter deedled, he squeezed the trigger, the gun vibrated, then he was pulling.

He glanced back. Spray obscured the skiff. As it exited the cloud of water, he could see that the boat was losing way, that people were jumping into the sea.

The screws of the Sultan were no longer churning the ocean into foam. She was obviously decelerating. A pirate boat was alongside.

Dieter Gerhart turned back for a closer look.

“Gear, the bastards are climbing aboard.” That was Tom.

Gerhart got a glimpse of men going up the ropes hand over hand, assault rifles on slings on their backs.

Shit!

They had lost. The pirates were aboard! Two more boats were closing from astern. By the time the fighters got into shooting position, those two boats would be too close to the ship.

There wasn’t a damn thing two fighter jocks could do about it.

“Join on me, Tom. We’ll make a low pass, then go home.”

That is what they did. The two jets went over the Sultan just above the top of the radar mast at three hundred knots. Dieter Gerhart got a good look at two men climbing a rope up the ship’s side. He turned to the northeast, began climbing, and keyed his radio.

* * *

As he listened to Sea Wolf lead’s report, Admiral Toad Tarkington smote his thigh.

“Send a Flash message to Washington,” he ordered curtly. “Pirates just captured a cruise ship.”

Admiral Toad Tarkington stared at the flat-screen display. The destroyer, Richard Ward, was about an hour away from Sultan of the Seas. His flagship, Chosin Reservoir, an amphibious assault ship with the majority of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, an MEU, embarked, was two hours away. The ship was at flight quarters; the helicopters were being readied.

But for what?

The MEU, with 2,200 marines, was a fast reaction force that carried its own logistics. It had choppers, landing craft, artillery and armor, plus the ammo and food to sustain itself anywhere it was inserted. One of the marine units was a Force Recon team, the tip of the marine spear, and was specially trained to board ships under hostile fire.

Toad looked around the ops space. Sure enough, the colonel commanding the MEU was behind him, watching the whole evolution. Toad motioned to him.

The marine’s name was Maximus Zakhem, and he didn’t have two pounds of extra fat on him. With square shoulders and a square face, hair in a buzz cut that made it almost invisible on his tanned head, he looked every inch a professional warrior. Some of the naval officers referred to him as the marine from central casting, behind his back, of course. Still, Colonel Zakhem did a hundred push-ups every morning just to get the blood flowing and then worked out on the flight deck with his men. There wasn’t a private or lance corporal in his command in better physical shape. He could even go step for step with the sergeants of Force Recon, who were fifteen to twenty years younger than he was.

The admiral’s chief of staff and his operations officer joined them.

Admiral Tarkington summarized the situation. Since he had been watching for the last hour, Colonel Zakhem had no questions.

“The pirates will probably take the cruise ship south to a Somali port,” Toad said with a sigh, then paused to listen to a call from the bridge of Sultan.

“Pirates are aboard. At least a dozen. They will undoubtedly be upon the bridge, what’s left of it, in seconds.” There followed a burst of gunfire; then the radio went dead.

Colonel Zakhem broke the silence with the remark, “That captain had a tough decision to make. He was trying to save the lives of his passengers and crew. Surrendering was the right thing to do.”

He and the admiral knew the pirates would kill just enough people to horrify and frighten the cruise ship owners, but no more, so they could demand a big ransom and get it. Like politics and prostitution, piracy was all about the money.

“We could intercept them on the way to Somalia,” Toad Tarkington said, musing aloud. “What do you think?”

“Board the ship?”

Toad shrugged. Boarding was only one possibility.

Zakhem took a deep breath. “It could be done, Admiral … if you are willing to accept civilian casualties. A packed cruise ship … my men will have to go after the pirates aggressively and defend themselves.”

Toad stirred uncomfortably in his chair. Over eight hundred civilians. Scenes of slaughter ran through his mind. He listened to the thoughts of his chief of staff, a navy captain, and his operations officer, a commander, but he had already decided.