Stephen Coonts - Pirate Alley

“This is our last cruise,” she told Suzanne.

“I know,” her sister said. “I’m ready for a five-star resort that doesn’t move. Wish I was there now.” A tear leaked down Suzanne’s cheek.

Irene wiped it away with a finger. “We’ll get through this, sis,” she said.

They hugged each other fiercely.

* * *

Mohammed Atom heard the announcement and dismissed it. He had a Saudi passport. He would wave that thing in front of these pirates and demand they release him immediately. Ransom! Of all the insults … He was devout, a good Muslim. Ransom, as if he were a slave woman captured in war. He had heard of those days, but they were long past, long past. No one did that stuff anymore.

He certainly didn’t intend to carry all his luggage when he left the ship, but he packed everything. The pirates could come get these suitcases, help him get them to the airport. They certainly weren’t stupid enough to screw with the Saud family, their entourage, their friends.

He was in a foul mood as he carefully folded his clothes and packed them in the suitcases. Really.

* * *

Mike Rosen was typing his last e-mail to his radio station when the captain’s announcement came over the loudspeaker. He jotted it down, quoted it in his e-mail. Passengers and crew were to be removed from the ship, held in the old fortress, two hundred million dollars ransom or else the pirates would let the captives starve. He typed it all as quickly as he could, read it while the pirate in the door watched with a bored expression. Corrected all the typos he saw. Changed a sentence around to improve the syntax.

Then he paused for thought. Decided to describe Sheikh Ragnar, big, fat and dirty, with a lot of missing teeth and a scraggly beard. He had no idea if the beard was a religious thing or if the guy was just too damn cheap and lazy to shave. Maybe he thought the scraggly chin hair gave him a unique look, gave him a leg up with the local trollops. Rosen wrote all this down, because he could and his psyche worked that way, and wondered what else he should say.

He had seen the blood and bits of flesh stuck to this and that on the bridge. He added a paragraph about that in the proper place. These pirates were homicidal-everyone ought to know it.

Added several paragraphs about the captain, who he was, how he looked. Rosen recognized the captain’s wife seated on the bridge, and he wrote about her, about what she must feel watching these pirates force her husband to do their bidding. What she must have felt as she watched them murder passengers.

He was bitter and he wrote as fast as he could pound the keys.

He was still going at it when the pirate in the door said something in Somali and gestured with his rifle. The meaning was unmistakable. Wrap it up.

Rosen did, and clicked the SEND icon. The screen blinked, and the e-mail was launched into cyberspace.

Then he signed out. Found out he had spent another $27.89 on Internet charges. His credit card would be charged.

* * *

The captain’s announcement gave Heinrich Beck a real problem. He had two kilos of cocaine stuffed in an air-circulation vent high in the wall of his stateroom, behind the metal intake screen. After the ransom was paid-Beck knew the pirates would demand one, although he didn’t know how much-would the passengers be put back aboard the ship? Or not?

Two kilos of cocaine, nearly five pounds of the damn stuff, was a serious investment for Herman Stehle. It was not to be lightly abandoned. If Beck could deliver it in Doha, Stehle would pay him a hundred thousand euros. If he didn’t get it there, well, Stehle would be a tough sell on the innocence defense. The risks were high, of course, which was why there was so much money to be made. Usually it was cops and customs inspectors who could ruin him. Or in Doha, an executioner’s sword. Now he was dealing with pirates who might rob or kill him.

And if for any reason he didn’t deliver the stuff, there was good ol’ Herman Stehle, a friend of all mankind.

Optimism was not one of Beck’s virtues. He knew in his bones that if he left the cocaine hidden in the vent, he would never see the ship again. If he took both packages with him, with all the risk that entailed, he would wind up right back in this stateroom in a week or so.

He decided to hedge his bet. Take one package with him and leave one in the vent. He removed a small piece of metal from the heel of his shoe and used it as a screwdriver on the two screws that held the vent screen in place. Pulled out one package, laid it on the bed and replaced the vent screen.

The backpack, he decided. Nearly two and a half pounds of coke was too much for his pocket, and he certainly didn’t have the materials to break it down into smaller packages.

The pirates weren’t in the business of enforcing drug laws. If they caught him with this stuff, he wasn’t going to be prosecuted-they would merely take the coke and laugh in his face. Cocaine was valuable in Africa, too, although the folks in these climes rarely had the money to buy the stuff. They would happily snort it up their noses, though, if he wasn’t very careful.

His decision made, Heinrich Beck packed his backpack. Several sets of underwear, one shirt, toilet articles, his blood pressure pills and his cash. Some socks and one sweater. His toothbrush. All the toilet paper in the bathroom.

That was it. The rest of his stuff he left right where it was. If fate allowed him to return to this room, the coke would still be in the vent. He didn’t care a whit about the extra clothes or shoes or dinner jacket. He pocketed his wallet and passport, opened the door and went out, making sure it locked behind him. A few other people were already in the passageway.

One of them smiled bravely at Beck, who wasn’t the smiling type. He bared his teeth anyway in what he hoped was a friendly manner and settled the backpack on his shoulders.

The helicopter from Langley flew under low clouds, through a cold, rainy, miserable day, across New Jersey and New York Harbor. It settled to the tarmac at a New York heliport, where Mario Tomazic, director of the CIA, and Jake Grafton got out after thanking the crew. The Justice Department had a black Lincoln Town Car waiting. After creeping for a while over glistening wet Manhattan streets, through the usual heavy traffic, the car deposited the two men at the secure entrance to One St. Andrews Plaza, a building adjacent to Foley Square in lower Manhattan, the building that housed the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

An escort was waiting, a handsome young lawyer in a tailored suit. He took them via elevator to a conference room high in the building, where they were met by an assistant U.S. attorney in his fifties. His suit wasn’t tailored and his tie was crooked. He was at least three weeks past his haircut due date.

After the introductions and handshaking, he got right to it. “The attorney for Omar Ali has requested a plea bargain.”

Grafton and Tomazic both remembered Ali, the computer geek for Sheikh Ragnar that Tommy Carmellini and his team had snatched from a building in Mogadishu, Somalia, three weeks ago.

“I thought he was going to plead not guilty and take his chances,” Tomazic said grumpily. His low opinion of the American justice system’s ability to successfully prosecute terrorists-and pirates-was well known in government circles.

Grafton, ever the pragmatist, asked, “What’s he got to bargain with?”

“His attorney says that he has knowledge of a terrorist plan to assassinate the passengers and crew of Sultan of the Seas, ” the government lawyer said.

“The pirates didn’t capture the ship until yesterday. How could he know that?”