The Delta Solution (10 page)

On the bridge, Captain Corcoran and Rick Barnwell were prisoners, but they were allowed freedom to walk around and keep an eye on the big machinery. They were guarded by Admiral Wolde and Omar Ali Farah, who sat on the floor with the heavy machine gun. Elmi Ahmed had the rest of the crew pinned down on the lower deck, while he sat at the top of the companionway.

The hours passed very slowly because there was nothing to do except wait for the US airdrop. Wolde spoke frequently to Captain Hassan who still had the
Mombassa
a mile astern. And he once called Mohammed Salat to inform him that terms had been agreed and that an American trade union was paying for the release of the men.

“How much?” asked Salat.

“Five million US dollars,” replied Wolde.

“Excellent,” said Salat. “The stock should increase significantly as soon as I post the news. Did your operation go smoothly?”

“No, sir. The captain opened fire and Bouh Adan was killed. We also
lost Gacal Gueleh during the boarding. Two crew members came at us with baseball bats. I had to shoot one of them.”

“Sounds very bad,” said Salat. “I won’t mention it until you return because we must always protect our businesslike reputation. All of our dealings must be strictly commercial. High finance. Not street fights on the ocean.”

“Yes, sir, I very much agree,” said Wolde. “But I wish you’d tell that to the Americans.”

Back in Washington, managing the news totally preoccupied the principal players in this oceanic crisis. The press release went out on time, 0900, and like so many military press releases quite correctly sought to conceal the facts from the shark-cruising journalists.

The release was of course drafted for minimal drama. And for a half hour in this early part of the media’s working day, no one was especially excited. First of all, the story was happening thousands and thousands of miles away. There were no pictures and zero possibility of getting any. It seemed unlikely there had been death or even the threat of death. Also the Pentagon plainly knew nothing and cared less.

The only person to whom the journalists could speak in the whole of North America was a guy who worked for a trade union, which was about as sexy as a pound of turnips.

It was not until the major shift change in the late afternoon that someone at Fox News tuned in to the possibility of real drama on the high seas. He was a senior editor, chief copy-taster, night news editor, a former foreign correspondent for Fox in Afghanistan, with a hair-trigger instinct for any kind of a break and a vivid imagination.

Ian Brodie was one of Rupert Murdoch’s blue-eyed men, a fellow Aussie. In addition to being as sharp as anyone alive on a news story, Brodie was a gifted writer, capable of stepping beyond the bounds of a regular news report and delivering supple prose in the form of a colorful but understanding essay, always drawing on his depth of firsthand knowledge.

He’d seen the station’s earlier bromide attempt to present the story. And while he was uncertain they weren’t right in their judgment, something told him they were “all over the bloody place on this one.”

Brodie reported for duty early, pulled up the original press release, and nearly hit the ceiling. Every journalistic instinct he had told him this was
major. He stood up and yelled, “
What’s going on with this hijack in the Indian Ocean?
A group of armed Somali pirates somehow boarded and captured an 18,000-ton freighter flying the flag of the United States of America.

“The Pentagon is lying through their teeth; that’s bloody obvious. What’s this ‘
received no report of casualties
’? Jesus, can’t anyone sense they just don’t want to tell us? Otherwise they would have written,
THERE WERE NO FUCKING CASUALTIES
! RIGHT?”

The Fox newsroom went silent. Ian Brodie was not only a revered television reporter and editor, he was a close friend of Murdoch’s. People said their families had been friends for generations back in Melbourne.

And now he was in full cry. “Picture the scene,” he snapped. “These comedians from Somalia, always armed to the teeth, somehow creep up on the freighter. They get alongside and the grappling irons flash through the night air over the rails. The crew hears the clang, but the pirates are up and over, swinging against the hull, the sea rising below them.

“There’s a fight, someone gets shot, the crew surrenders. Right here we’re dealing with terrified men, ruthless cutthroats from a lawless land, men who will kill without mercy. And the US Navy, furious, humiliated, sends for one of the most powerful warships in the world. I betcha she’s steaming in there right now, guns blazing.

“Is there anyone is this room who does not think that is the biggest story of this week? Because if there is, he better get out of here right now and change jobs. Meanwhile, for Christ’s sake get moving. Because if there’s anyone in the other channels with a lick of sense, we’re gonna get the shit knocked out of us on the evening news. Let’s really start to move it.”

Thus Fox jumped into the lead, bombarding the Navy Press Office in the Pentagon and meeting a wall of silence that inflamed their curiosity:
But you must be able to confirm the pirates took the ship by force . . . Were shots fired? You say no casualties, how do you know? Where’s the warship? What’s the name of the captain? Where’s he from? Has his family been informed he’s a prisoner of brutal killers?

The questions rained in. And the press officers kept saying they had no information. They had no contact. And they could not reveal where they had acquired their minimal information.

But it did no good. When Fox News came out with their early evening bulletin, they ran a headline on the screen which read:

It was, in every word, precisely what General Zack Lancaster did not want to hear. Because it announced what no one would dare admit—the United States was bargaining with terrorists.

T
HE RAIN THAT HAD BEEN THREATENING FOR TWO DAYS FINALLY swept in from the southwest, straight off the Pacific Ocean, and it lashed the long beach at Coronado. The wind rose and fell, and the squalls stung the faces of the BUDs class laboring along the tidal mark where the thumping breakers end their everlasting journey.

There were 162 men assigned, all of them wearing their canvas shorts, socks, and boots, the smart ones seeking out that narrow strip where the sand has hardened from an outgoing tide and is no longer being washed by the foamy water.

Running this beach is an art form. Too high up, the loose sand impedes every stride, doubling a man’s energy output. Too near the water, boots hit unstable, shifting sand, and a man ends up splashing instead of running, a half ton of wet sand stuck to each boot.

Every morning is bad for a BUDs class. This one was awful. The rain was belting down, the wind was warm but strong, every few minutes rising to a peak that turned raindrops into shards of glass. But there was no complaining, no audible sounds of men having second thoughts about this test of physical stamina.

The run was four miles: two out, two back to the starting point. This was the first week, and the objective was eight-minute miles. There was, as ever, a pack of maybe a dozen good runners out in front, with a pack of perhaps forty right behind them, struggling, breathless, trying to come to terms with the insane level of fitness required of them.

Alongside the class bounded their proctor, a SEAL commander of massive presence, and he was running the third mile as if he’d just started, springing along the beach some ten yards wide of the second pack, watching for the guys who betrayed the critical signs, the ones that signalled they were not putting out. Not giving it
everything
.

Instructor Mack needed to sort these characters out real fast because they were wasting his precious time, and worse, they were getting in the way of the true iron man who wanted to become a United States Navy SEAL so badly nothing else on this earth mattered.

Mack ran the tough, deep, sandy course with an easy stride. He’d attained wild-animal strength and fitness on this very stretch when he was only twenty-three, and he’d never lost it. Of all the striving men on the beach, only he understood what was required—total mental dominance and lung-busting effort. Sets a man so far apart he might be accepted one day into the most elite fighting force in the world.

Above the rain squalls, his words rang out as he pounded the sand:
COME ON, YOU GUYS . . . LET ME SEE SOMETHING . . . I WANT YOU TO DIG . . . DIG DEEPER THAN YOU EVER DID BEFORE . . . FIND SOME MORE FOR ME . . . NOW RUN! RUN! RUN! YOU THERE, FRETHEIM! YOU WANT TO STAY IN THIS CLASS? YOU BETTER START PUTTING OUT . . . NOW HIT IT! LET’S GO! GO! GO!

They were into the last mile and the going seemed to grow tougher as the rain soaked the sand and made it cling even more. Mack Bedford kept shouting, sometimes encouraging, sometimes berating. Six guys had already quit and could be seen walking away over the dunes toward the veranda, where they would place their helmets in that poignant lonely line before ringing the brass bell that hung from a beam, departing Coronado.

The rest floundered on, soaked through, most of them likely to fail the target time of thirty-two minutes for the four miles. Some would make it because of a God-given talent to run; others would make it because they would rather die than fail. And some, who had no real talent for hard distance
running, would get there on sheer willpower, overcoming the pain, refusing to give in, no matter what.

These were guys Mack Bedford needed to locate. These were the United States Navy SEAL commanders of the future. They were men like him, men whose physical and mental boundaries reached so far away they were over the goddamned horizon. You don’t need to be an Olympic runner to become a SEAL, but you need to believe you could be if the chips were down.

More importantly, every BUDs student needs to care profoundly about attaining objectives. Because if it’s not a matter of life and death in each man’s own mind, he may as well get himself a one-way ticket out of this terrible place.

Mack Bedford always ran the last three-quarters of a mile out in front of the pack so he would be waiting as the class battered its way up the home stretch. For these last three minutes, he always switched on his digital radio and ran to a track of “Night Train.” Because he liked the beat, the hard, fast drumming that caused his boots to hit the sand faster and faster, carrying him clear of the pack. The way he liked it.

No matter how young his class, no matter how inexperienced and essentially unfit they were, Mack Bedford needed to be better, faster, stronger, the iron man of the training camp. It was not even difficult. But he still needed to prove it. Every day.

Mack ran on, hard, all the way to the line, opening up a fifty-yard gap between himself and his leading BUDs class group. At the end, he stared back down the beach and touched a button to switch off the music. The radio came on automatically.

Mack Bedford frowned but switched off the radio because he had more pressing business, like three more men quitting and informing his junior instructors they were DOR—dropping out on request.

Mack faced the leading group and thanked them for their efforts, giving
them immediate permission to rest. The following bunch of fifteen, the hard-driving runners-up, arrived next. Mack said nothing. But he stood glowering at the third group, half-dead with exhaustion, fighting their way across the sand fifty yards back.

There were four young men among the twenty who Mack suspected were not “putting out,” men who were quite good runners and could, perhaps, have gone faster but lacked resolution. Worse yet, one of the four was a very tough young officer and an extremely popular guy.

Mack Bedford bellowed at them, watching their eyes, watching the way some heads went down. “
You see that group up the beach resting?
” he yelled. “
Those guys are winners. And they’re being rewarded for trying their guts out! You guys are LOSERS! Hear me? GODDAMNED LOSERS!
”

No one spoke. “
GET WET AND SANDY!
” bawled Mack. “
AND DO IT FAST—FOR A CHANGE!
”

The shattered group of twenty BUDs hopefuls responded, “
HOO-YAH! Instructor Mack.
”

They headed for the breakers, buffeting their way into the freezing Pacific, out through the first crash of the waves and into the second. At least, nineteen of them did. The young officer quit unconditionally, requesting permission to drop out and leave.