Task Force Desperate (46 page)

“I think we’d all like to go home,” he replied finally. “But at the same time, most of us have been doing runs on the
Rose
for six years. We’re not ready to just abandon her out here, even if we don’t have a controlling interest in her anymore. And, we still have the cargo to either deliver or return to the client. I’d rather deliver it. Call it professional pride. So I guess the question is, what do you have in mind for her?”

“We do intend to see that you guys get home,” Alek said carefully. “We do, however, need you to do us a favor, and make a little detour along the way.”

“I was afraid of that,” Summers said. “What kind of detour are we talking about?”

“Not one that is going to put you in any more risk than you already are,” Alek assured him. “Just up by the Yemeni coast for a day, and then back out to sea.”

“I’m not sure that qualifies as ‘no more risk than we are in right now,’” Summers replied. “That’s still well within the pirates’ operating radius, and it’s the opposite direction to our destination.”

“Where is your destination, anyway?” Eddie asked.

“Mumbai,” Summers answered. “Which is kind of a long way from Yemen.”

“As for the detour,” Alek explained, “you’re already three months behind schedule. A couple more days won’t change much. And you aren’t going to have to worry about the pirates. You have my word on that.”

“Are you guaranteeing our security, then?” Summers asked. “Because it sounds like you have some other errand in Yemen that I probably shouldn’t ask about.”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t,” Alek agreed. “But yes, we are guaranteeing your security. There will be no fewer than five of my shooters on board at any one time, from now until you hit port, and we decide what to do after that. Any pirate so much as looks cross-eyed at this ship, and they’ll regret it.”

Summers pursed his lips, looking down at the deck, as he thought it over. Finally, he looked up and said, “I’ll have to talk it over with the rest of the boys. That all right?”

Alek nodded sagely. “That’s fine. Make sure you’re all on the same page.”

Summers nodded vaguely, his mind obviously elsewhere, and just kind of walked away, heading aft toward the crew spaces.

“Bit of a gamble, isn’t it?” Eddie asked.

“Only way to go,” Alek replied. “Because I’m no fucking pirate, and neither are you.”

“Which way do you think he’ll jump?” Mike asked quietly, watching Summers as he walked toward the superstructure.

“I don’t know,” Alek admitted. “He could sink this whole op, but I had to give him the option. The alternative was to hold him and his crew at gunpoint, and I’m not comfortable with that.”

“I don’t think any of us are,” I said. “Like Eddie said, though, it’s a hell of a gamble. We’ve come this far, just to put the entire operation in the hands of somebody who has no idea what the fuck is going on.”

“He has some idea,” Mike said. “If he’s been held by pirates for three months, he’s got to have some idea.”

“Some people are just oblivious to anything that happens outside their little bubble, Mike,” I replied. “Even after getting slapped in the nuts with reality.”

“None of which matters now,” Alek said. “The decision’s been made, and we’re just going to have to hope that Summers makes the call our way. Otherwise, we’ve just got another maritime security op to run. In the meantime, let’s assume that the crew is going to turn our way, and get back to planning this abortion.”

It didn’t actually take that long for Summers to get back to us with the crew’s answer. They weren’t thrilled by the idea of going deeper into pirate waters, but as long as we had shooters aboard the entire time, they would follow the course we set. I think they also figured that since our company was going to be their new employer, at least if they wanted to stay aboard the
Frontier Rose
, they shouldn’t try to refuse.

So we turned toward Puntland, where we’d pick up Caleb and his boys. Then on to Yemen.

Chapter 32

W
e were floating about a mile off the coast of Puntland. Dawn was spreading across the sky, but the
Frontier
Rose
was all but alone on the waters of the Gulf. The barren hulk of the Puntland shore was little more than a dark shadow limned with the faint white foam of the surf. Somewhere on that shore, Caleb’s short team was waiting with their gear for our boats to come in and get them. The timing and the light were far from ideal, but we didn’t have a lot of choice, if we were going to get to Yemen in time.

But before we launched, we had one more task to finish. We still had the three pirates we’d captured during the boarding down in the bow. We couldn’t take them with us, we sure as hell weren’t going to turn them over to their buddies on Socotra, and none of us, except maybe Charlie or Bob, was exactly comfortable with just shooting them in the back of the head. Everyone I’d killed, and I’d killed a few people over the years, had been a clear threat. Not kneeling, bound and gagged, waiting for the bullet. I’m a warrior, not a butcher.

So Alek had come up with a solution that might seem a little dubious in some circles, those inhabited by people who weren’t out in the middle of nowhere, operating on not a shoestring but a thread, surrounded by people we could only assume were enemies.

They were lined up against the rail with their flex-cuffs cut off, but still covered by blank-faced men with rifles. One wrong move, and they would be dead, and they knew it. They looked at Alek, who just pointed over the side. “Jump,” he said.

I’m sure they understood, but they acted like they didn’t. Their fear was palpable. It should have been. There were plenty of sharks in the Gulf of Aden.

“I said jump, motherfuckers,” Alek said. “Hope you assholes know how to swim, ‘cause it’s a bit of a distance to shore.”

They still huddled against the rail. They were going to make us do this the hard way. “Fuck this,” Charlie snarled suddenly, and stepped forward. He wrenched one of the pirates around by his shoulder. He then grabbed the pirate by the back of his neck and the waistband of his shorts, and heaved him overboard. “Get the fuck off!”

The pirate yelled as he went over, his arms and legs flailing. He hit the water with a splash and came up spluttering. His buddies were yelling too, and tried to back away from Charlie, but he wasn’t having any of it, and they quickly followed their fellow pirate into the ocean. They tried paddling toward the ship, calling out for help, but were met with rifle muzzles, and soon started moving away. They kept looking back toward the ship as though they thought we’d relent and let them back on board. No such luck. You make your living by theft, extortion, and murder, you get no sympathy from me. They could swim, or drown. It was on them now. As the
Frontier Rose
powered away, it began to dawn on them.

Once we were well away from the floating pirates, Mike, Eddie, Chris, and Marcus launched two of the Zodiacs off the stern, and headed in toward the shore. The rest of us got back to preparing for the mission ahead.

Only a few hours later, Tom was back on the satellite link with more intel.

“We’ve got a location for the meeting, and something of a timetable,” he said. “You’re gonna love this. The location is the old parliamentary building for the Federation of South Arabia. It’s close to shore, but it’s big.” He clicked an overhead photo up on the screen. He wasn’t kidding. The building was only a little over a kilometer from the shore, but it was a massive, two story rectangle with a central courtyard. It would be hell to try to clear that with fifteen shooters, especially considering the fact we were expecting heavy resistance. The bad guys were sure to bring a lot of security.

“The good news is, according to the message traffic we’ve been intercepting, they’re not expecting much trouble. Somebody going by Al Dhi’b has talked some shit about what you guys were able to pull off in Djibouti and near Baardheere, but Al-Khalidi has thrown Kismayo back in his face, and is telling him there’s nothing to worry about. It does sound like most of them figure they’re on friendly ground, that there’s no way anybody is coming for them. They’re not even worried about Reapers anymore, since Lemonier is out of the picture.

“Short version, while there will be extensive ground security, you shouldn’t expect much in the way of hardened defenses, and I’d be very surprised if they have IEDs out. They think they’re safe. If there’s anybody they’re really worried about at the moment, it’s each other.

“We don’t have a lot of specifics, but it sounds like there are leaders of several different groups attending, at least two of which have been at each other’s throats within the last year. I can’t give you names, or even kunyahs; the concerns have all be voiced by security people talking in codes, but there is a chance that there might be some bad blood floating around that you might be able to take advantage of.

“As for the timing, you’ve got exactly forty hours from right now before the meeting starts. It sounds like there are already security personnel for at least one of the attendees on site, but you might be able to infiltrate overnight and lay low until the meeting.”

I looked at the imagery and frowned. “I’m not seeing much in the way of good hide sites in that,” I said. “Definitely not for any length of time with hostile security forces actively patrolling.”

“Can you feed us any sort of detailed intel on strength and armament of the security?” Alek asked.

“Sorry,” Tom admitted. “Most of what we’re getting is SIGINT that my hacker gnomes are picking up, and then it’s only bits and pieces. I’m afraid the picture’s still a little incomplete. I’m dumping everything we’ve got to you, so you can see the raw information, such as it is.”

“All right,” Alek said. “We’ll look it over. Thanks, Tom.”

“I’ll be sending regular updates as I get them,” the Colonel said, and signed off.

In the end, it was going to come down to adaptability. We couldn’t get a lot of on-the-ground information until we were actually on the ground. We’d have to roll with the punches once we were ashore.

There wasn’t a lot of room on the ship for rehearsals. It was a small ship to begin with, and its full hold left pretty much the crew quarters, narrow passages along the rails, and the bow. With the bow now once again occupied with the Zodiacs, since Caleb and his boys came aboard, that left the main deck and the crew quarters. We did a lot of tabletop talk-throughs.

We had a lot to take into consideration. There was a lot of open ground to cover on the movement from the beach. There was also a major, four-lane highway, followed by a wall, followed by more open ground before we even got to the target building. The only way to approach that was under cover of darkness; and if the bad guys had thermals, that might not even be enough. In the old days, we could count on the muj not even having so much as 1
^st
Gen night vision, but especially with the increased backing they’d been getting from the Chinese, those days were over. We had to consider all kinds of nasty possibilities now.

We did, however, have two more of the small Aeroseekers that Logan had brought. They wouldn’t necessarily level the playing field, but they’d give us a bit of a better picture, once we were on the ground.

So we planned, wargamed, planned some more, prepped our kit, and waited for darkness.

There was a Yemeni patrol boat watching us.

It had been lurking around the entrance to the wide bay that led into the port of Aden, and for some reason decided to come out and take a look at the
Frontier Rose
. We tried to keep a low profile, and generally stay out of sight. I was a little concerned about the Zodiacs, but we’d thrown tarps over all three of them, so they weren’t obvious at least. Caleb and his boys were visible, with weapons, but armed maritime security contractors weren’t a strange sight in the Gulf of Aden anymore. Now, if they’d seen twenty of us on a ship the size of the
Rose
, that might have raised some eyebrows. As it was, they just seemed to be doing some sort of show of force, to demonstrate who owned these waters.

It was also getting uncomfortably close to launch time, and these clowns were still off the ship’s starboard bow, posturing.

We couldn’t do anything to chase them off, either. Doing so would mean instant compromise. We’d have to scrub the entire mission and run. Al-Khalidi would have his meeting, and kill more people. Colton, Tim, Rodrigo, and Danny would have died for nothing.

So we watched and waited, staying below decks as they finally pulled alongside and their commander gestured and yelled that he was coming aboard. Alek went up to meet him, leaving his rifle below, and carrying what we hoped would be enough cash to cover the bribe the Yemeni captain was going to be demanding.

As we waited, listening to the clang of the gangplank running between the patrol boat and the rail, the sat phone started to buzz. Larry scooped it up and tossed it to me. I unfolded the antenna and brought it to my ear. “Talk to me, Tom.”

“We just picked up a fragment of a transmission confirming that Al-Khalidi is on site,” the Colonel told me. “They’re still waiting on one from Dubai; it sounds like the Emir might have some idea of who made his nephew disappear. It wouldn’t surprise me if Al-Khalidi is using Ali’s unknown fate to manipulate the Emir. It’s another big cash cow for his operations if he gets the Emir of Dubai on board.”

“As if he didn’t already have enough backers,” I growled. “At any rate, we’re stuck at the moment. We’ve got a Yemeni patrol boat looking for its protection money.”

“Dammit,” Tom said. “You should have enough cash to get rid of them without too much trouble, but if they see the hardware you gents have, the op could be blown.”

“Teach your granddad to suck eggs, Tom,” I said. “We’re staying out of sight, and the boats are covered. We know the risks.”

There was a pause, and I could almost see the flash in those icy blue eyes of his. The Colonel didn’t care to be snapped at, even by the guy on the ground, but he was also wise enough to know when to back off. He’d railed against TOC commandos when he’d been in uniform; he couldn’t very well start being one now. “All right,” he said finally. There was a stiff, clipped tone to his voice. He was pissed, but not letting it out. “I’ll let you guys handle it. You’re the guys on the ground. Just don’t get too eager. I don’t want to be informing any more families that more of you guys aren’t coming back.”