The Delta Solution (36 page)

When they had boarded the
Niagara Falls
, the metallic clatter had basically cost the ship’s first mate his life. Wolde had shot him, and he understood the ramifications. Stealth was the key, and the absence of metal clashing with metal would help.

But at fifteen minutes before noon on that Sunday morning, there was still no sign of the
Mustang
, and Captain Hassan decided to move further east. He would run at flank speed for a half hour, just in case the LNG tanker had cut the corner and begun to beat southeast a couple of hours early.

At 12:30 the
Mombassa
was still south of the second parallel, but there was no sign of the
Mustang
anywhere to its north. And the radar was set to twenty-five miles. Admiral Wolde debated calling home base and maybe checking with Mr. Salat’s source. But Elmi Ahmed advised against it because if the
Mustang
suddenly showed, they’d look jumpy and unprofessional.

At 1:00 p.m. the
Global Mustang
hit the screen. It was a big paint, bright and sharp. No chance that it was weather or a small fishing boat or even a medium-sized freighter. This was one of the ocean’s giants.

“It’s gotta be her,” breathed Ismael. “She’s heading southeast and she’s going fast.”

“She would be,” grumbled Elmi, who would probably be the first man up the hull of the great ship, right next to Wolde.

“We’ll stay well south of her,” said Hassan. “But we can’t let her get away. We’d never catch her.”

Once more they headed east, running miles out of sight but somehow in tandem with their target.

“You planning to close in on her during daylight hours?” asked Admiral Wolde.

“No, sir,” said Hassan. “There isn’t any point. We have a much better chance of staying invisible in the dark. And this is a hell of a good radar.”

All through the afternoon they ran fast along the horizon from the
Mustang
. One of the Filipino watchkeepers on the bridge saw the pirate ship far away to the south, but he never gave it a thought. The sheer size of his tanker inevitably induced a feeling of mild contempt among its crew.

When darkness finally fell, before 7:30, the
Mustang
became an even more splendid sight. Her deck lights went on and floodlit the four massive golden orbs that shaped her almost nine-hundred-foot profile. She was cutting through the night waters glowing golden bright, a Liberace jewel of the deep, hauling a near-priceless cargo directly to the Orient.

Captain Hassan changed course shortly before 9:00 p.m. He was still moving east and still had the throttles open, in order to lay up with the
Mustang
. But the
Mombassa
had come fifteen degrees north to zeroseven-five, and she was running dark, with her red-and-green navigation lights switched off.

Captain Hassan understood he could not catch up and overtake the
Mustang
. The most he could do was drive the
Mombassa
directly into her wake and follow her dead astern. He’d then let the skiffs flash over the last two miles at 30 knots and move in port and starboard, right below the aft rails, for the boarding.

It was a little after 10:00 p.m., and he had the
Mombassa
running absolutely flat out, close to 22 knots. His biggest problem was the
Mustang
’s speed. The huge tanker made 530 yards every minute, so if they stopped for four minutes to launch the skiffs, get aboard, and take off, the
Mustang
would be a mile and a quarter farther away.

That made every second count. Because even the
Mustang
’s idle bridge crew might notice that she was being hotly pursued by a couple of speedboats making 30 knots in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Captain Hassan understood this was a very vulnerable part of their mission. If someone sounded the alarm, the stern deck would be swarming with sailors, and they might be armed. Also there would be zero chance of hurling the grappling irons without having them thrown right back, probably killing someone.

The
Mombassa
was shuddering with the demands being made on her engines, and at 10:23 p.m. the captain suddenly throttled right back and shouted, “
STAND BY TO LAUNCH!
”

Immediately the two drivers, Abadula Sofian and Hamdan Ougoure, climbed into the already loaded skiffs, one on the portside, one on starboard. The four juniors began to lower away, with Wolde and Ahmed hanging on to the painters attached to the bows of the skiffs, playing out the two lines that slipped though their hands.

By the time the assault boats splashed down in the water, the
Mombassa
was stopped. Both Yamaha engines on the skiffs, finely tuned by the mechanics on the Haradheere beach, fired first go. For the moment, Wolde and Ahmed made them fast on the stern fishing-net cleats, and everyone climbed over the gunwales, their gleaming AK-47s slung over their backs.

The junior pirates went first, then Kifle Zenawi, followed by Omar Ali Farah, Ibrahim Yacin, and Abdul Mesfin. Ismael Wolde and Elmi Ahmed, each carrying taped bundles of dynamite, were the last to jump down into separate boats.

Everything else was loaded, the hand grenades, the grappling irons already lashed to the knotted ropes, the brass-rung ladders, the heavy machine gun, and, in case of dire emergency, the launcher for the RPG7 missiles, which were stored in a wooden box, one in each boat.

Captain Hassan, expertly trained by the Somali Marines missile director, Elmi Ahmed, had the other launcher on board the
Mombassa
, plus four missiles. On the word of command over the phone from Admiral Wolde, he would slam one of them straight into the
Mustang
’s high bridge and hope to hell it didn’t blow up half the world.

Wolde thought it could be done without penetrating the stern holding dome, but Hassan better be as accurate as any missile man had ever been.
This last move was one of desperation and would not be implemented unless something shocking had occurred—either the assault team was suddenly in a life-or-death situation or was about to go over the side into the water.

With the engines chugging slowly, but out of gear, Hassan raced to the stern and released both skiffs, throwing the lines skillfully inboard, as the two small boats backed away and then roared forward, their bows arching upward and quickly flattening out as the Yamahas settled into a highspeed mode.

The launch of the skiffs had taken only two and a half minutes, which put the
Mustang
two miles ahead, plus only three-quarters of a mile. The pirates would close the gap at the rate of 10 knots an hour in about seventeen minutes.

The megawatt illumination of the LNG tanker cast its brightness all over the place. What should have been a fast approach over black water suddenly felt as though they were flying over a Hollywood film set. The skiffs and their crews were actually casting shadows on the water as they raced in.

There was no escape. Everything around the tanker was in a light field. Wolde and his teams were like prisoners under the Nazi lights, trying to make the wire in
Stalag 17.
The scene lacked only Billy Wilder standing on the bow with a bullhorn.

Ismael Wolde had never been so scared. The whine of the motors was so loud in the night, and the floodlighting so penetrating, he was counting the seconds, preparing to tell Abadula to peel away left, back into the dark.

There was only one place on the entire ocean surface where there was shadow. And that was hard against the hull of the tanker, where the light could not reach. Whether or not they could make it to that doubtful haven without being spotted was, in Ismael’s opinion, about ten-to-one against.

In truth, Wolde had no concept of life on these ships, the impersonal nature of the men who sailed them from so high up, one hundred feet above the water. Whatever else, this remoteness from the sailors’ traditional element instilled in them all a complete loss of intimacy with the sea.

Modern-day tanker men had practically nothing in common with any mariners from other ages. Because these ocean giants give the impression
of being shore-bound. Because they need almost no seamanship while in transit between ports. Somewhere down below the decks, there are humming caves propelling her forward, providing every possible requirement for power. There is a permanent emptiness about the gigantic main deck. Hardly anyone ever goes out there.

The crew, like its sea-borne home, performs automatic duties. There are cooks, mostly foreign, laundrymen, and cleaners, and the ship follows a predictable pattern, which scarcely varies on the bridge. The gigantic bulk of the gas carrier slows everything down. Her solidity on the waves removes the feeling of possible danger. Ships like a fully laden
Global Mustang
can smash their way forward, however bad the sea. They can shove aside the very worst that nature hurls at her, and hardly anyone even notices she has done so.

Driving through the tropical night above the unfathomably deep waters of the Indian Ocean accentuates a crew’s indifference to its element. They can play table tennis, watch movies in the ship’s cinema, watch television, play cards, send e-mail.

Up on the bridge, the watchkeepers chat and sip coffee, checking the radar screen every hour. Nothing happens for hours, days, weeks on end. There is only the impression of unassailable steadiness.

The thought that the
Global Mustang
was a minute away from a murderous, multimillion dollar, life-threatening pirate attack was nothing less than outlandish—as if the White House butler were about to kick the president straight in the ass.

Admiral Wolde and his men reached the shadow of the hull without anyone on the
Global Mustang
having the remotest idea they were there. Abadula and Hamdan were in direct phone contact as they steered left and right out of the wake and made their way to separate sides of the ship’s stern. Both helmsmen cut their engines back, trying to fix zero relative speed to the monster they had almost grabbed.

However the sheer bulk of the
Mustang
had caused her bow wave to roll almost her entire length, and the skiffs were riding up and then down six to eight feet, almost being sucked into the steel hull plates.

Wolde and Elmi Ahmed, on different sides of the ship, stared up and gasped. The hull towered above them. It may have been no more than thirty feet to that stern rail, but when the skiffs rode down on the wave, it looked like two hundred feet.

Wolde grabbed his helmsman’s open phone line and snapped to Hamdan in the other boat, “Can Elmi throw the grappler on the rise?”

“He thinks he can,” replied Hamdan. “And he’s ready to go if you are.”

“Ready,” said Wolde. “Let’s go right now. One grappler either side. I don’t want the damned things clattering around everywhere. Tell him to meet me up there.”

And with that, he began to whirl the big, heavily taped hook on the end of the knotted rope. One, two, three times he completed a full circle, and the sound of the rope sang on the light wind. On the fourth swing he let go, and in the searing lights of the great ship, the exposed tips of the hook glinted as the grappler flew upward about twenty degrees off the perpendicular. Wolde thought it might not reach, but somehow it snaked over the rail, landing with a clump but no clatter.

On the other side, Elmi hurled and missed. The grappler hit the top of the rail and fell back down the side of the hull and into the sea. Elmi cursed and began to haul it out; meanwhile, on the starboard side, Wolde grabbed the knotted rope and swung out over the side of the skiff and onto the side of the ship.

Ramming the soft soles of his combat boots onto the large knot in the rope, he pushed hard, pulling upward with his arms, covering around two feet at a time. It was a gruelling climb, but Ismael was built like a whipthin mountaineer. He carried not one ounce of excess weight, and he made it thirty-three feet to the top, exhausted but safe.

He dropped a much lighter rope and hook down to the skiff, and Omar Ali fixed two rope ladders onto it for the admiral to pull up.

Ismael was halfway through the exercise when Elmi tried again, but his rope was soaking wet and much heavier, and this time it never reached the rail. It hit the side of the ship, hard. In the night silence even Wolde heard it, and he was all of 150 feet away on the far side.

Instinct told him that Elmi was in trouble, but his commander’s brain told him that before he did anything else, he needed to get his two rope ladders fixed and dropped down to the skiff. He hooked them both over the rails, grabbed his Kalashnikov, and then rushed the width of the huge ship to the portside to help Elmi. At which point one of the lower doors to the upper-works came open and flooded the area with light.

Two crewmen, both Panamanians, walked out and looked around quizzically. At precisely that moment, Elmi tried again and, with a supreme
effort, flung his grappler up and over the rails. It landed with a thump, right at the feet of the first crewman, who almost had a heart attack as he jumped clear of the three-pronged hook. He yelled loudly once, but not again because Admiral Wolde shot him dead at point-blank range, then swung his rifle left and shot the other man as well.

By now the heavily armed Kifle Zenawi and Ibrahim Yacin were up the rope ladders and over the rail onto the starboard side of the stern deck. Elmi Ahmed had hauled his grappler tight and was on his way up the rope, climbing fast.

Wolde rushed over and shut the door to the upper-works too late. Another door opened and a uniformed engineering officer stepped onto the deck, spotted Wolde lurking in the shadows, and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

Kifle Zenawi gunned him down in cold blood. Ahmed clambered over the rail in time to see the uproar, but he stuck to his task, dropped down his hook and line, and hauled the starboard-side rope ladders up and fixed them firmly, same as Wolde’s.

This allowed the teenage pirates, two on either side, to climb aboard, then Omar Ali and Abdul Mesfin with the heavy machine gun on his back. With all ten members of his assault force on board, Wolde opted for housekeeping before the main attack, and he ordered his troops to clear the three bodies and throw them off the stern of the ship.