Stephen Coonts: Pirate Alley

“We’ll intercept the liner,” Tarkington said, his mind made up. “Try to intimidate the pirates with a show of force. Ops, get the task force on a course to intercept. Have Richard Ward close and stay out of rifle shot off their beam while we get more ships there. In the meantime, I want a helo over the ship continuously. They are to stay out of range of RPGs and machine guns.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“We’ve lost a chopper off the Ward. Launch a couple from this ship to search for survivors and take photos. I want shots of that cruise ship from every possible angle.”

“Sir, how about picking up pirates from the ocean?”

“Anybody they can find,” the admiral said. “I’d like some prisoners to interrogate to see if we can find out just what we’re up against.”

He addressed his next sentence to the chief of staff. “Send a message to the strike group commander.” This was the admiral aboard the carrier three hundred miles northeast. “I would appreciate it if he would bring his force to rendezvous with all possible speed, if his operational commitments will allow it. We could certainly use an E-2 as soon as possible.” The E-2 Hawkeye carried a huge radar dish on its back and could act as an eye in the sky, relaying messages and data-linking contacts.

He eyed Zakhem. “We’ll use all your marines. Transfer as many as practicable to Richard Ward. I want them lining the decks of both ships, armed, in helmets, apparently ready to shoot if even one of those sons takes a pot shot. Actual shooting will be done by snipers, on officers’ orders. Force Recon marines will be overhead in choppers and Ospreys, ready to rappel down. I want to put the fear of God in these people, show them overwhelming military force. Saddle up your troops and brief them.”

“Yes, sir,” Zakhem said. “With your permission, sir, I want to be in an Osprey, ready to go down the rope if we get to board.”

Toad paused. Zakhem might be needed later to lead his entire command. Allowing him to go into combat was a calculated risk. Still, Max Zakhem was no headquarters paper-pusher. He had fought in three wars and had the scars to prove it. In an opposed boarding of a cruise liner packed with noncombatants his experience and judgment might prove invaluable.

The admiral smiled grimly. “Of course, Colonel.”

The colonel and Toad’s two staffers hustled away, leaving him to stare at the tactical situation display. Time was on his side. He had plenty of time to marshal his troops and make an overwhelming show of force. That tactic, he thought, had an excellent chance of success with little downside. Although the pirates could murder a few people to prove they meant business, killing passengers wouldn’t make the navy and marines go away. Regardless of what they did, the pirates had to be made to realize they couldn’t win.

And if the show of force didn’t work, he could try to put a SEAL team aboard. If everything failed, hell, maybe the politicians would elect to pay the money the pirates would demand.

* * *

Mustafa al-Said walked confidently through the passageway that led to the bridge. He knew exactly where this passageway led because he had carefully studied the deck plan for this ship. Someone had downloaded it from the Internet several weeks ago.

Two men accompanied him. They held their AKs at hip level, ready to fire. The people sitting on the deck against the bulkhead pulled in their feet and looked at the three Somalis curiously.

The door to the bridge was sprung. No doubt from the RPG.

Mustafa gestured, and his men forced it open. Mustafa walked through into a scene from a slaughterhouse. He had seen shot-up bridges before and expected it.

The captain was the man in uniform with four stripes on his tabs, bloody, trying to stand erect near the steering station. An arm and a disemboweled body lay on the floor, and a bloody mist had turned everything pink. Even the captain’s uniform. One sailor, the helmsman, sat on the deck beside the steering station, bleeding from a leg wound. Two other sailors appeared uninjured. They were trying to staunch the flow of blood from another injured officer.

Mustafa could see the captain was unarmed. They all were. His two men spread out to cover them with their weapons anyway.

Mustafa walked out to the port wing of the bridge and looked aft. Men were climbing from a skiff up ropes attached to grappling hooks. There were only two men left in the skiff. They secured a rope to a machine gun on a tripod, and the men on deck hauled it up. The last rope went around a box of ammo. When gun and ammo were aboard, the last two men on the skiff abandoned it and began climbing hand over hand up the ropes.

Mustafa walked across the bridge to the other side, ignoring the dead and wounded men lying there. He merely walked around them without a glance.

On the starboard side was another skiff, with only three men in it tying up boxes of RPG launchers and ammo. Mustafa’s empty skiff was drifting about a hundred yards from the ship. He waited until the men in the skiff alongside were climbing the ropes and the skiff was drifting away before he turned and came back toward the center of the bridge.

“Captain Penney?”

“Yes.”

“Get your ship under way. All ahead one third.” Mustafa had a thick accent, but Penney was used to heavy accents and had no trouble understanding him. He reached for the engine controls and advanced them.

“Set course one-eight-zero.”

Penney glanced at the helmsman. “Medium rate of turn starboard. Steady up one-eight-zero.” Without getting up from the floor, the sailor used one hand to turn the indicator knob. The engines responded. It took perhaps ten seconds for the screws to bite and the ship’s head to begin swinging.

“You are going to talk to the crew and passengers on the ship’s loudspeakers,” Mustafa said, eyeing Penney. He held out a piece of paper. It had been folded into quarters and was damp. “You will say what is on the paper. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Penney unfolded the paper and began reading. The words were all in caps and legible, although the sentences appeared to be written by someone who wasn’t familiar with English syntax.

When Penney didn’t immediately respond, Mustafa pointed his rifle at the helmsman and pulled the trigger. One shot. In the head. The man’s head literally exploded.

Mustafa nudged Penney with the barrel of the rifle. “You steer. And talk.”

The dead helmsman was an Englishman from the Midlands who had been going to sea on merchant ships since he was eighteen. Now he was dead, at the age of thirty-nine. His name was Harry Hamm.

Mustafa nudged Penney again.

Looking at his dead and injured bridge team, the captain was past caring. “Shoot and be damned,” he said.

Mustafa spoke into his ear. “I kill you. I kill all them. All. I don’t care. Four boats of my men dead. In the sea. We live between life and death. For us, this only way. I kill as many as I want. Even you. You want to see them die? I shoot those two over there if you want. You want? We put you in water with my men, for the fish.”

Arch Penney watched the compass heading come slowly around. When it read due south, he zeroed out the rate indicator. He didn’t lead it enough. The compass settled on 185. Without conscious thought, he used a very slow turn rate to bring her back to 180.

Two more gunmen came in, and Mustafa gestured at the corpses. Without a word, the men picked them up, carried them to the side of the bridge, and threw them over. When the dead were gone, they picked up the wounded and threw them into the sea.

“No,” one of the bridge team screamed. They shot him in the stomach and threw him over, too.