Battlecraft (2006) (25 page)

WHALER BOAT

INDIAN OCEAN

VICINITY OF 6deg NORTH AND 63deg EAST

NOON LOCAL

MIKE
Assad had heard his grandfather speak of "the anvil of the sun," a place in the Middle East where the heat and fury of the fiery orb slammed down on the earth like a blacksmith's hammer. Mike was sure he was right in the middle of that proverbial anvil. The only advantage he enjoyed was the strong current, and he was able to run the engine at
slow speed
while making excellent headway.

The heat was so intense that taking a breath was like sucking in air from a blast furnace. His exposed hands on the boat's wheel were bumed as dark as prunes and were about as wrinkled. The SEAL, able to tough it out, felt a genuine sympathy for Hildegard Keppler. The blond woman was actually getting sunburned through her light cotton clothing. Her lips were chapped and swollen and she sat on the deck of the cockpit, her wide-brimmed straw hat turned down to cover her face.

"Please, Mike," she said in a weak, hoarse voice. "Water I must have. I die for the thirst."

Mike checked his watch, then went to the locker on the port side. He had a padlock on it that had been in a tin box with the boat's maintenance paperwork. He unlocked it and reached in for one of the plastic bottles of water and a cup. He poured a small amount of water in it, and handed it to her.

Hildegard quickly swallowed it, then held the cup out. "Give me more, Mike. Please. I think dead I will be soon."

Mike sincerely wished he could do more for her. "Sweetheart, we have to make this water last. You won't die from thirst at this rate, but if you drink it all up, you'll sweat it out and there'll be nothing left to sustain you. At least you can replenish your body fluids a litde at a time."

"You are bad like the sheikh!" she said. "If you don't give me water, over into the sea I shall jump." She reached up and grabbed his trousers, pulling herself to her feet. She staggered over to the gunwale. "I prefer to drown than die so slow."

"You won't drown, Hildy," Mike said, applying a bit of crude psychology. "The sharks will eat you before that."

"Ach, mein Gott!"
she cried, sitting back down. "Now horrible fishes to eat me!" She crawled over to the small bit of shade in one comer of the cockpit and began weeping. She sobbed bitterly, her body shaking with the effort.

Mike knew the woman wouldn't last much longer. His conscience bothered him a bit since he had lied outright about her being able to get revenge for her murdered friend Franziska. It would be virtually impossible to prove that Sheikh Omar Jambarah had killed her. Mike's real reason for getting Hildegard to come with him was as an intelligence asset. She undoubtedly had a lot of information regarding the sheikh's operations, ports of calls, visitors, and other subjects that could be fed into the intelligence files.

He glanced at her huddled in the shade. If she got steadily worse, he would give her the rest of the water and sacrifice himself, leaving a note revealing her usefulness to the antiterrorist cause. Maybe that way she could last until a ship turned up. He looked around at the unforgiving environment, then turned to the radio.

"All the ships as sea," he said. "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. I am at six degrees five minutes north and sixty-three degrees twenty minutes east. I say again. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Position six degrees five minutes north and sixty-three degrees twenty minutes east. Over."

He switched off the radio to save the battery, then gave the throttle a little push to get the boat a bit of momentum in the rapid current.

.

DHOW
NIJM ZARK

OFF THE PAKISTANI COAST

30 OCTOBER

0445 HOURS LOCAL

CAPTAIN
Bashar Bashir and his first mate, Bakhtiaar Ghanem, stood at the wheel of the dhow, staring into the light to the east. They had been silently sipping hot tea as the old boat strained against its anchor cable. Ghanem, as usual, was fidgety and cranky. "I hope they are not late."

"Whatever happens will happen because Allah wills it," Bashir said.

"I am not as complacent as you," Ghanem said. 'Things do not always happen through Allah's will. If we are caught by the Pakistani Navy this close to shore, it will be because the people who are to meet us are delayed."

"Either way, it does one no good to worry," Bashir counseled him. He looked upward and raised his voice just enough to be heard by the man standing watch up on the main mast. "Badr! Do you see anything yet?"
"La, Raiyis!"
Badr answered. "Nothing."

"I tell you, brother" Ghanem said. "Something has gone wrong with al-Mimkhalif. We have not been called to pick up arms or supplies for them for a long time, eh? Hafez Sabah and that American fellow have dropped out of sight. This bodes ill for us all. Perhaps they are dead. Or worse! Captured!"

"If there had been a serious reversal of their fortunes, we would not have been called to serve them tonight," Bashir said. "You seem to know so much. Have you been speaking with their leaders?"

"Of course not," Ghanem said, "but I am not a stupid man, only an uneducated one. Most of them could be rotting in Pakistani jails this very moment, and if things go wrong today we may well join them."

"I admit that I am not optimistic about the situation," Bashir said. "We were supposed to have warships we could call if we got into trouble. Now nobody has spoken of that for a while. To tell you the truth, I would not be sad about going back to hauling cargo between Alula and Bombay."

"Nor I!" Ghanem exclaimed. "We did not make much money, but we knew we could return home safely unless a storm caught us at sea."

"Ah, well, if al-Mimkhalif is truly destroyed, we will be free of them," Bashir said.

"I told you we should have turned them down when they first approached us with their offer."

"You did no such thing, Bakhtiaar Ghanem!" Bashir said. "You were already making plans to build a big house in Alula when we took on the first job for the mujahideen."

Ghanem shrugged. "Perhaps, but--"

"People on the beach!" Badr, the lookout, called down.

Bashir pulled his ancient telescope off the binnacle and focused it shoreward. He could see some shadowy figures pulling rafts from hiding places in the brush. These were the same floating platforms used to come out to the dhow and pick up cargo, then ferry it back to the beach. They were divided into two groups, each taking one raft and dragging it across the sandy expanse to the water's edge. It took some hard work, but they got the things into the water in about ten minutes, then began muscling them through the gentle surf that lapped in from seaward. As soon as the water was waist deep, everyone jumped aboard and began paddling.

"Sloppy!" Ghanem snorted.

"I agree," Bashir said. 'They are not as good as the men who normally pick up the cargo. This appears to be their first time at the task."

"Ha!" Ghanem laughed. "That means these fellows were the big shots in the camp. They sat on their arses while their underlings came to do the hard work. So this is the first time for them to come out to the
Nijm Zark."

One of the rafts began to broach. As it turned, the riders on it went into a frantic effort of uncoordinated paddling to try to face it back toward the dhow. But the incoming waves, though slow and shallow, were persistent and within only moments, the raft was pushed back to the sand.

Ghanem laughed again, this time with more derision. "Those buffoons could not cross a lake properly."

Bashir grinned and shook his head in amusement. "We may be here for a while."

The leading raft drew alongside the wooden ship and the crew helped the seven men climb over the railing and onto the deck of the
Nijm Zark.
One of them was Kumandan, who looked around. "Where is the captain?"

"Here I am,
ejfendi
," Bashir said, recognizing the man's authority by his well-tailored uniform. "Bashar Bashir at your service, if it pleases you."

"How do you do," Kumandan said. He glanced toward the beach. "What happened to them?"

"They broached,
ejfendi
," Bashir said.

Once again the crew of the second raft pushed their vehicle into the sea, then leaped into it to begin paddling. They bobbed awkwardly, not making much headway as they struggled across the undulating waters.

Kumandan growled in his throat, then turned to Bashir. "If they broach again, we leave them "

"As you command,
ejfendi
" Bashir said with a slight bow.

The raft began to lag and list a bit, but the riders worked hard until it suddenly straightened up and began moving straight toward the dhow. It took them twenty minutes, but they finally reached the old boat. As soon as they were hauled aboard, Kumandan nodded to Bashir. "Sail to Mikhbayi."

Bashir salaamed. "As you order, so I obey,
ejfendi "

.

ACV
BATTLECRAFT

INDIAN OCEAN

VICINITY OF 6deg NORTH AND 63deg EAST

1400 HOURS LOCAL

THE
collective mood aboard the ACV was one of irritability. There had been a couple of flare-ups between the two assault sections involving Bruno Puglisi and Dave Leibowitz versus Joe Miskoski and Guy Devereaux. It involved some inadvertent bumping when they were changing places between topside and the cabin. Puglisi gave Devereaux a hard shove with a snarl of warning, setting off a spontaneous clash. The situation didn't have a chance to escalate into a brawl, however, because Senior Chief Buford Dawkins and Chief Matt Gunnarson each grabbed their respective men by the collars and pulled them apart with threats of throwing them to the sharks. Lieutenant Bill Brannigan jumped up and locked some heels, delivering an ass-chewing that seemed hot enough to scorch the paint off the overhead and bulkheads. Everything quickly settled down, though Puglisi muttered under his breath for the next quarter of an hour before finally becoming quiet.

Now they were back into the routine, moving at
one-third
speed as Veronica Rivers monitored her scopes. Brannigan checked the fuel gauges and began to ponder about radioing back to the
Dan Daly
for instructions. There was a choice of returning for more fuel or meeting with the combat-support ship attached to the local carrier battle group. After deciding to let a couple of hours drift by before making inquiries, he settled back into his chair and stared out the windshield at the wet nothingness that lay before them.

"I've got a reading, sir," Veronica announced. "It seems to indicate a small craft moving on a heading of zero-niner-zero. Really slow."

"Roger," Brannigan said wearily. "Set an interception course, Lieutenant. Then give it to Watkins."

"Aye, sir," Veronica replied. A couple of beats passed, then she announced, "Change course to one-six-seven."

"Change course to one-six-seven," Watkins repeated. "Aye, ma'am."

The speed remained the same as they moved toward the dot on the scope. Twenty minutes passed, then a smudge appeared on the horizon. As they drew closer, the target shimmered into view. Senior Chief Dawkins, standing topside with his binoculars, shouted, "It's a whaler boat!"

"A whaler boat?" Brannigan said. "The damn thing either belongs in a harbor or to a nearby ship."

"There is no indication of other vessels in the immediate area, sir," Veronica informed him.

Bobby Lee Atkins, standing just behind the skipper, grinned. "I've heard of people getting lost, but this guy's got to be the lostest son of a bitch in the world. I bet he couldn't find his ass with both hands."

Brannigan had just reached for his microphone to raise the stranger when a static-filled broadcast came over the speaker. The voice was distorted by a weak transmitter as it said, "Unknown ship. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. I am just off your port bow. Over."

"We've spotted you," Brannigan said. "Are you alone?"

The voice began breaking up. "I have one
other... with... we're... in...
shape--" Then the signal faded out altogether.

'The guy must not have paid his electric bill," Brannigan said. 'Take us over there, Watkins."

Doc Bradley came forward with his medical kit. 'Those folks may be in bad shape"

"Yeah Brannigan agreed. "Or this could be some kind of trick."

Now Jim Cruiser joined them. "I've heard of suicide bombers going to the extreme, but I doubt if someone would send one out on the open ocean in a whaler."

"Maybe not" Brannigan said. "But get your men out there and put Puglisi to the front with the SAW."

"Aye, sir!" Jim replied.

Within short moments the First Assault Section was on the port side of the ACV, ready for whatever might happen. As Watkins maneuvered alongside, Puglisi aimed the SAW at the man behind the wheel. "Put your hands up, you mujahideen motherfucker!"

"Hey, there's a woman on board with him," Connie Concord said.

"And quite comely," Chad Murchison remarked. "Though rather sunburned."

Jim Cruiser ordered Garth Redhawk and Amie Bemardi into the whaler to help the two people up onto the
Battlecraft's
bow. The woman was weak and could barely stand, but the man was able to get aboard without help. He was heavily bearded and wore one of the pakol caps the SEALs had learned to hate from their experiences on their first mission together in Afghanistan. The SEALs also did not fail to notice the man's uniform.

Brannigan came out on the bow, and approached the mujahideen, looking closer at him. "Who the hell are you?"

The man's eyes opened wide as he stared into Brannigan's face. Then he looked at the others in the First Assault Section. Suddenly he snapped to attention and saluted.

"Sir!" he said sharply. "Petty Officer Second Class Mike Assad reporting for duty!"

Chapter 18.