Stephen Coonts - Pirate Alley

* * *

“The Shabab is on the move in Eyl West,” the drone controller reported to the Flag Ops Center aboard Chosin Reservoir . Everyone on the net heard the report in their headsets.

“They’re excited in Eyl East,” the drone operator reported less than a minute later. “Manning pickups, warming them up, armed men running to get aboard.” I was wearing a headset and recognized Wilbur’s voice.

I was standing with Jake Grafton, High Noon and the two Mossad agents Grafton had brought with him, Zahra and Ben, just inside the entrance to the fortress. Two emergency lanterns provided a little light, though not much. The Israelis were eyeing an Arab in decent, though rumpled, clothes who had had the ill luck to walk up on the group of strangers. The expression on his face was wondrous to behold as the fact sank in these two might be Mossad agents, or at least Israelis. Or perhaps it was just his conscience. He walked quickly away back into the gloom of the interior. The Israelis glanced at one another. I heard one say, “Mohammed Atom.”

A pickup with a machine gun in the bed, a technical, came racing up the hill just as Wilbur announced on the net, “Lots of action in Eyl West. Armed men running everywhere.” As I watched, a man got out of the passenger side of the pickup and conferred with the guards, who sent runners to pass the word to all the men in foxholes around the fortress.

Then the guy got back into the pickup and it roared off down the hill, its unmuffled exhaust rattling through the building as it faded.

When it was gone, I turned around, but the two Mossad agents had disappeared. “Who is Mohammed Atom?” I asked Grafton.

“An agent for Iranian interests throughout the Arab world. I think the guys would like to have a chat with him.”

* * *

The television news teams were flaked out in a shack a hundred yards or so south of Ragnar’s building, a shack with an old shirt for a door, candles for lights and a privy out back. The owner, a woman, was all smiles when they arrived, directed there by High Noon, who apparently knew everyone in town.

Sophia Donatelli got the best bed in the house, an old mattress suspended on ropes through a wooden frame. She inspected it while the BBC reporter, Rab Bishop, and Ricardo from Fox chattered away on their satellite telephones to their producers in England and America. Donatelli had seen worse accommodations, when she was just getting started in the business, and had thought that bug-infested beds and dirt floors were well behind her. She decided to sleep with her clothes on, as did everyone else. The ringing of a satellite telephone brought them awake about 3:00 A.M., which meant it was midnight in London and 7:00 P.M. in New York. While Rab Bishop was listening to someone tell him of the Rosen e-mail, they heard truck engines start, men running and shouting, and saw pickup headlights spear the night.

Ricardo grabbed his satellite phone and was the first to charge out of the shack. The rest of the crews were right behind him. They paused in front of the shack to watch. The sound of a distant machine-gun burst was quite audible and made the men boarding the pickups pause to listen.

“Whatever is happening, we’ll have a devil of a time broadcasting it,” Rab Bishop remarked. “Still, I suppose we can try. Let’s get the generators going so we can datalink to the satellite.”

Ricardo ran toward Ragnar’s building. He was within feet of the door when he met a pirate coming out. The man had an AK at high port and was on a dead run. When he saw Ricardo with his satellite phone glued to his head, talking a blue streak, he halted.

He gestured once, back toward the south, and when Ricardo didn’t instantly obey, triggered a burst right by the reporter’s ear.

No fool, Ricardo turned and ran. Talking all the way, breathlessly. Literally a running commentary. His producer in the States put the conversation on the network. Within minutes, millions of people were listening to Ricardo’s voice. The audience grew exponentially. All over America, people stopped what they were doing to watch Fox and listen to Ricardo.

* * *

The SEALs came out of the ocean silently, almost invisibly. They were in black wet suits, had black balaclavas on their heads and wore night-vision goggles. They crawled up onto the beach and scanned the empty Eyl town square and Ragnar’s building with the night sights on their rifles.

Four pickups with machine guns surrounded Ragnar’s lair. Other pickups roared up the river road toward Eyl West. Sounds of gunfire and muzzle flashes came from that direction.

The SEAL team leader, Chief Petty Officer Al Dunn, scanned the dark city with his night-vision binoculars. He saw men moving from house to house, carrying weapons. No women. No kids. Just armed men. He counted … and quit when he reached a dozen.

Dunn keyed the mike on his headset. “Blue Leader from Red Leader. Let’s be ready with suppressing fire on those people in town when I give the word.”

“Roger, Red Leader.”

Aboard the Sultan, Bullet Bob Quinn settled in behind his.50-caliber sniper rifle. He could see people through his night-vision scope. His spotter, just beside him, would call his targets. Under the Rules of Engagement, he could only shoot people who had weapons. He relied upon his spotter to confirm the weapons.

Settling in a good shooting position with the rifle on a solid rest, loaded, Bullet Bob stared through his scope and watched the crosshairs move as the ship he was on rose on the ocean swells. The crosshairs moved regularly in a predictable, slow, sinuous dance.

The last of the pickups headed west on the river road, each crammed with armed men, some with RPG-7 launchers and bags of warheads, some with AKs, leaving only the four around Ragnar’s building.

Through his night sniper scope, Quinn studied the four machine-gun emplacements on Ragnar’s roof. He could see people moving around, standing up, looking here and there, carrying ammo belts.

Each gun was surrounded by a little wall of sandbags, making a nice little fortification for protection from small-arms fire. Nothing else. Still, since they were six stories above ground level, the machine-gun crews had positions that commanded the square and town.

Quinn took stock of his breathing and heart rate. Normal, he decided. He took several deep breaths, then willed himself into a shooter’s calm.

* * *

Aboard Chosin Reservoir Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington checked to see where his drones were, then the fighters from the carrier. They were airborne and in about five minutes would be at the Initial Point, where they would hold until needed. If they were needed. Their ability to hold was finite. Fuel was always a consideration. Tankers were in the air, but they could merely top off tanks, not keep a strike force airborne indefinitely.

The MEU was not ready to storm Eyl. Tomorrow it would be, but not tonight. Tomorrow marines would come ashore in armored personnel carriers to the north and south of town. They would land on the beaches and get ready to roll into Eyl. They could kill every pirate and holy warrior in the place, rescue the hostages and be out of there in a couple of hours. Tomorrow.

Grafton’s objective tonight was the radio controls for the bomb in the trenches around the fortress. The SEALs would neutralize the explosive potential of the cargo of the freighter grounded near it. If the trench bomb or shipload of fertilizer exploded, there would be no Sultan passengers or crew alive to rescue.

Jake Grafton wanted, if possible, to let the pirates and Shabab kill each other while he disabled the trench bomb. Every pirate and holy warrior who got launched for Paradise tonight was one less the marines and SEALs would have to face.