Stephen Coonts - Pirate Alley

In the flag spaces aboard Chosin Reservoir, Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington tried not to think about the possibility of the bombs detonating. He already had SEALs on the beach and ships in the harbor. If those bombs exploded, he was going to lose American fighting men … and everyone in that fortress, including Jake Grafton, Toad’s friend and mentor for many years. Toad tried to take his mind off Jake Grafton. Stop worrying about the marines. About the SEALs. About the eight hundred and fifty civilians imprisoned in that fortress. Stop worrying about how their families would feel losing these people. Think about how to win.

Toad knew what Grafton would say, because he knew Jake Grafton. Put all those people out of your mind, Toad. Concentrate on the job in front of you. And with a free and easy mind, go forth and give battle.

* * *

The battle west of town, up the river, was heating up. A cacophony of automatic weapons could be heard, almost a continuous background noise. The pirates and Shabab were shooting it out.

Jake Grafton took Captain Arch Penney’s arm and pulled him to one side. I sidled closer so I could overhear what he said. Eavesdropping is one of my failings.

“The pirates have buried explosives in a trench around this building, Captain. Tons of them. They say they will blow the fort up and kill everyone if the ransom isn’t paid. We need to find the radio receivers and batteries that power the detonators. To do that, we’re going to have to eliminate the guards.”

“Eliminate?”

“We are going to kill them,” Grafton said flatly. “After we do, I want you to get some of your men and carry the bodies down to the beach. There is a sand overhang at the high tide level. Put them alongside it and cave it in, covering them up.”

I could see Penney mulling it.

“What if some of them are only wounded?”

“Finish them off. Think you can do it?”

“They threw some of my wounded men into the ocean to drown. Yes.”

Jake nodded, then turned to me. “Tommy, give me that Ruger.” I had the silenced assassin’s pistol in my hand.

That was Jake Grafton. Make no mistake, he could pull a trigger. One time in Hong Kong I saw him-

Now he glanced at the guards, who were intent on the drama in the plaza in Eyl, about a mile away but plainly visible. Muzzle flashes strobing the darkness, the burning pickup …

I pulled the Kimber from my waistband.

“No,” Grafton said. “No noise yet. Give me the Ruger.”

“No,” I said. My voice came out a croak. “You’re the brains. I’m just a shooter.”

I knew this was coming, so I didn’t freak out on the spot. I didn’t think Mrs. Carmellini’s boy Tommy was going to get much older, but what the heck! I had the silenced Ruger.22 in my hand. The magazine held nine rounds, and I had a spare loaded magazine in my pocket.

I looked at the faces around me, Arch Penney, his wife, the chief steward, and behind them passengers, their faces barely visible in the dim light.

Grafton slapped me on the back, then used his headset to tell E.D. and Travis I was coming out. Heard them Roger the heads-up. In a way, that was comforting. With night scopes on their rifles, those two snipers were almost as deadly after dark as they were during the day.

I stepped outside, walked toward the two gate guards, who were nervously watching the battle in the town. They glanced at me, didn’t pay me much attention.

I put the pistol right behind one man’s ear, pulled the trigger, then shot the other one before the first one hit the ground.

A forty-grain.22 bullet isn’t much of a weapon unless it’s fired into the skull at point-blank range and penetrates the bone into the brain mass. A solid point is best for this kind of work; a hollow point may explode against the skull and not penetrate the brain case. Still, only one bullet may not kill, may merely put the victim in the hospital with a horrible brain injury, making him a vegetable. Eyl didn’t have a hospital, but still. I shot each man again in the head while he lay on the ground.

Then I picked up their assault rifles and the bags that held their extra magazines and hustled back to Grafton, who was standing in the portal to the fortress.

I gave him one rifle and an ammo bag, and he set off up the stairs toward the roof. I followed.

“We have to take out the men in the foxholes,” he said over his shoulder. “The bomb dudes gotta disconnect the radio receivers from the batteries.” On the roof he waved me toward the north side of the big roof, and he ran toward the south side.

The crenellations in the wall around the roof, designed so that cannons could blast away at ships in the roadstead or troops advancing along the beach, gave us excellent fields of fire. We were looking down into the foxholes, which weren’t really foxholes at all, but merely mounds of earth. The guards had been on the outside, so they could look toward the fort and keep people from crawling out the gun portals, but now they were on the inside of the mounds, looking out. Survival instinct, I guess. Down there in the darkness were the muzzle flashes. Nothing was happening in the fort.

They were hard to see at first, but as my eyes became adjusted to the low light leaking from the gun portals I could just make out the guys hunkered down in the first guard position, with their backs to me.

Since I didn’t have an ounce of sporting blood in me, I shot them both in the back as fast as I could pull the trigger. Ducked down and ran to my left, toward the next portal.

These guys were looking around in all directions, trying to figure out what was happening. I popped the first one, but the second guy hosed a bullet my way. Must have gone over my head toward Arabia, because I didn’t hear it smack into the stone. I shot him before he got off a second shot.

Somewhere behind me I heard the boom of the Sako. E.D. or Travis was helping Grafton nail the guards over there. Grafton’s rifle cracked repeatedly.

By the time I got to the third guard position, it was empty. The guys were probably boogying down the hill toward the beach. I got a glimpse of one and sent a bullet after him to speed him on his way.

The easternmost guard position was empty.

Grafton left me on the roof while he went below to get the bomb disposal guys into action. In a minute I saw the three of them working with a shovel below my position, along the wall of the fort, digging around an antenna that disappeared into the earth.

Things were quieting down in Eyl. Every now and then a heavy machine gun aboard Sultan -I saw the muzzle flashes-put a burst into Ragnar’s lair, probably just to keep their heads down.

A couple of sharp cracks reached my ears, different from the reports of AKs or machine guns. Or the Sako. I couldn’t place them.

“E.D., where are you?”

“In the brush up on the hill above the fort.”

“Keep an eye peeled.”

More gunfire. Several RPG explosions. I saw two launchings, the signature flames unmistakable, and heard the warheads detonate. Eight or ten minutes passed, and the battle up the river road quieted down. An ominous silence settled over this corner of Africa.

On my headset I heard the SEALs giving orders. Any pickups coming into town from any direction were to be disabled.

After perhaps ten minutes, Grafton called me on the headset. “Come on down, Tommy.”

He was waiting at the portal with the Mossad bombers.

“It wasn’t AN in that trench,” he told me, his voice tired. “It’s PVV-5A. Tons of it. Looks like they laced it with a little diesel fuel as a booster for the fuses. We found six radio-controlled detonators, each powered by three pickup-truck batteries. That’s all of them, I hope, but who the hell knows? The only way to be sure is to find one of their garage door openers or radio triggers and push the button.”