The Tears of Dark Water (26 page)

A sailor approached Captain Masters and said: “The VBSS team is ready, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Richards,” Masters replied. He looked at Derrick and opened the door to the bridge wing. “I’ll show you the way.”

The tropical air hit Derrick like a blast from a furnace. It felt like summer in Baghdad, but with ninety percent humidity. He put on his sunglasses and followed Masters down the long staircase, trying not to touch the railings—the metal was hot enough to burn the skin. A group of sailors was standing around the RHIB, their faces flushed and their coveralls drenched with sweat. They straightened up when they saw Masters. One of them—a young man with a crewcut—stepped forward.

“Agent Derrick,” Masters said, “this is Lieutenant Prescott, the commander of our Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure team. What’s the word, Lieutenant?”

“Captain,” Prescott said, “we wired a kill switch and a surplus odometer to the engine. She’ll go dead in the water after a mile and a half.”

Masters looked pleased. “Very good. I’ll let you show Agent Derrick the ropes.” He shook Derrick’s hand. “Good luck out there.”

When the captain departed, Derrick stepped aboard the RHIB with Prescott. The lieutenant made quick work of the tutorial, showing him the control panel, the start switch and throttle, a pair of binoculars in a pouch, and the location of the gas tank in case Ibrahim asked to confirm its contents.

“I’ll come with you when they lower the boat,” he said, handing Derrick a personal flotation device. “That way you won’t have to worry about the cables. We’ll leave the ladder in place for you to use when you bring back the dinghy. The seas are pretty calm this afternoon. There’s a meter-high swell coming from the northeast, but it shouldn’t bother you much.”

Derrick donned the PFD and sat down on the gunwale of the boat in the shadow of the large cantilever davit, hoping to escape the sun. His expectations were dashed. The humidity made the shade irrelevant. He wiped perspiration from his brow and checked his watch—it was 16:02.
Thirteen minutes to game time
, he thought, closing his eyes and breathing steadily to maximize the flow of oxygen to his brain. A memory came to him then—Brent Frazier in a lecture room at the FBI Academy delivering the most poignant lesson of Derrick’s training.

There comes a point in every negotiation when you wonder whether it’s all going to blow up in your face. You’re exhausted from sleeplessness. Your hands are shaking from too much caffeine. The on-scene commander is harassing you for taking too much time. The hostage taker is telling you he’s going to pull the trigger. And all you want to do is scream at the heavens and pummel yourself for taking such a shitty job. I promise you it will happen. Your faith in the process will be tested. But if you’re feeling the heat, then so is the other guy. It’s your job to cool things down, buy the guy a beer—so to speak—and convince him that you both want the same thing. The way out of the burning house is through human connection. If you can convince him to trust you, he’ll come along when you show him the exit.

The thought of beer gave Derrick an idea. He looked at the VBSS team languishing in the heat and asked Prescott: “I know it’s last minute, but is there any chance you can get me two dozen bottles of soda in a cooler before I go? Coke, Pepsi, it doesn’t matter.”

The lieutenant gave Derrick a look that said:
Are you kidding me?
But, like a good junior officer, he took the radio off his belt and passed along the request. Five minutes later, a sailor appeared with a Styrofoam container full of Pepsi and crushed ice. Derrick rewarded the deliveryman with a soda and passed out bottles to Prescott and his team. They looked at him in surprise, but he waved off their thanks. “We sent you out here to sweat,” he said. “The least we can do is keep you hydrated.”

In time, the
Gettysburg
slowed to a crawl. Prescott’s radio squawked and Captain Masters said: “Ibrahim is in the cockpit of the sailboat. The launch is a go.”

Prescott motioned to his team. “Let’s get this boat in the water.”

The deployment happened so rapidly that Derrick barely had time to process it before waves were slapping against the hull. He spread his legs and bent his knees, absorbing the rolling motion of the swell. At Prescott’s command, he grabbed the foot ladder the VBSS team tossed over the side and held the boat in place while the lieutenant unhooked the davit cables and started the engine.

“She’s all yours,” Prescott said when the cables were clear. “Take my radio. You might need it.”

Derrick accepted the unit and watched the lieutenant clamber up the ladder and disappear over the side. Then he went to the helm and throttled up to half-power, angling the RHIB away from the
Gettysburg
. The boat gained speed gracefully, skimming over the surface of the waves. He brought the boat around the cruiser’s stern and headed out across the water toward the
Renaissance
.

He was unprepared for the nostalgia he felt being on a powerboat again. It had been fifteen years since his grandfather sold his Bayliner and retired to his home in McLean, a mariner no more. Yet the memories Derrick had made on the water with Megan and Grandpa Chuck were some of the most important in his life. It was on the Potomac that he had come to terms with the deaths of his father and brother. It was on the Chesapeake that he had made the decision not to condemn the world but to change it—to save people from their own hands.

When he reached the midpoint between the cruiser and the sailboat, he switched off the engine and allowed the RHIB to bob on the swells. He took out the binoculars and saw a young American in a tank top and board shorts—Quentin Parker—and a thin Somali in a red T-shirt and khaki shorts—Ibrahim—unfold and inflate a compact dinghy. They deployed stairs from the sailboat’s transom and set the small craft afloat, attaching an outboard motor. Then Ibrahim jumped into the dinghy, started the engine, and guided it toward the RHIB.

Derrick watched in astonishment as the pirate’s face came into view. Ibrahim had the boyish features of a late adolescent, yet his dark eyes carried a wizened light. He pulled the dinghy up to the RHIB and leapt across the gap with the surefootedness of a panther, lashing the boats together. Then, suddenly, he was at Derrick’s side wearing a toothy grin.

“You are not an old man,” he said, giving Derrick a penetrating look.

“And you have all of your teeth,” the negotiator replied.

Ibrahim sat down nonchalantly. “This is a nice boat,” he said, dragging his fingers in the water.

Derrick opened the Styrofoam container and held out a Pepsi. “Are you thirsty?”

The pirate looked at the bottle in disbelief. “That is for me?”

Derrick nodded, taking a soda for himself. “The rest are for the hostages and your men.”

Ibrahim twisted off the lid and took a tentative sip, then downed half the bottle. “I am curious, Paul. Why did you read the Quran? You are not a Muslim.”

Derrick took a swig of soda, struck by the surrealism of the moment.
I’m sitting with a pirate four miles from Somalia and a few hundred feet from SEAL snipers who are watching us through their scopes. Am I really having this conversation?
He collected his thoughts and gave Ibrahim the only answer that made sense.

“I’m an American. I was in New York on September 11. I wanted to know if the men who took down the towers in the name of Allah were pretenders or true believers.”

Ibrahim narrowed his eyes. “What did you decide?”

Derrick spoke with great care. “They’re parasites. They cloak themselves in religion to empower themselves, but they don’t represent the essence of Islam any more than the Inquisitors and Crusaders represented the essence of Christianity.”

Ibrahim was silent for a while, staring at the sea. When he spoke again, Derrick recognized his words as a quote from the Quran: “
And they have been commanded no more than this: to worship God with genuine devotion; to incline toward truth; to establish prayer; and to practice charity. This is religion right and straight
.”

Derrick gave voice to the obvious irony. “If that’s true, then why are we here?”

“This is an unholy business,” Ibrahim admitted. “But we do what we have to do.”

Derrick allowed the contradiction to pass. It was a moment for détente, not disagreement. “What will you do with the money?” he asked.

Ibrahim turned reflective. “I will leave this life behind.”

“And your men?”

Ibrahim hesitated. “I think they will, too.” He searched Derrick’s face. “When the deal is done, we will let the Captain and Timaha go. That is the truth.”

Timaha?
Derrick wondered but didn’t ask. He tilted his head inquisitively. “How can I be sure?”

“
Give full measure when you measure, and weigh with an even balance
,” Ibrahim replied. “I swear on the name of Allah that I will do it.”

“I give you my word as well,” Derrick said, breaking the cardinal rule of negotiation never to lie except to save a life. “Put the hostages on the deck of the sailboat so we can see they are unharmed, and we will let you go. Just promise me one thing.”

“Yes?” the pirate asked without hint of mistrust.

“Take the money and make an honest life.”

Ibrahim’s eyes turned into a mirror revealing Derrick’s guilt. “
Inshallah
,” he said sincerely, “I will do as you say.”

Vanessa

Nairobi, Kenya

November 14, 2011

The Land Rover raced through the logjam of traffic in Nairobi’s business district, careening around buses and delivery trucks, threading through cars and motorcycles, and making a general menace of itself. Tony Flint was at the wheel, laying on the horn and muttering curses; Mary Patterson was in the passenger seat, clutching the center armrest with white knuckles; and Vanessa was in the backseat, holding on to the door handle like a vise and struggling with all her might not to scream obscenities at Flint for wrecking every last vestige of her carefully assembled calm.

After an effortless morning at the bank and the country club, it was inevitable that something would go wrong. The problem had been as prosaic as a defective battery in the radio controller that Flint needed to guide the package to the sailboat. Unfortunately, the controller was from Britain and required a battery that no electronics dealer in Nairobi had heard of. After striking out with the locals, Flint had made a flurry of phone calls to London, begging, pleading, and cajoling the manufacturer for a solution. Eventually, he had talked to the engineer who designed the unit and learned that another battery could be used in its place. Again, however, the technocrats in Nairobi had professed ignorance. All except one—an eccentric young man who ran a used electronics store in Kahawa North.

Unfortunately, Kahawa was on the opposite side of Nairobi from Wilson Airport. In a city like Paris or Washington, D.C., that had a beltway around the urban core, this would not have been a problem. In Nairobi, however, all of the highways converged in the city center. They were already seven minutes late to the airport and they still had ten minutes to go—assuming Flint wasn’t shading the truth and didn’t kill them on the way. Vanessa closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was on a roller coaster.
We’re going to get there
, she told herself.
He does this all the time.

But her apprehension wasn’t limited to the car ride. She was about to take a leap of faith that would shock everyone—Flint, the Navy, Paul Derrick, even Daniel. She didn’t know if it had ever been done before, but that wasn’t her concern. Ever since she had stepped on the plane to Africa, she had been swept up in a whirlwind of fear and freedom. Her routine with its emotional shelter and physical shackles felt like a memory from a past life.
They’re waiting for me
, she thought.
Daniel and Quentin. I’m not going to let them down
.

When they reached the airport, they took the speed bump with a bone-jarring thud and skidded to a halt outside a nondescript aircraft hangar. A large man with a shaved head opened the hatch and retrieved the package—a watertight crate swaddled in plastic wrap and secured by buckled straps that anchored the parachute and guidance system. Inside the crate were two briefcases stuffed with $10,000 bundles, along with a cash-counting machine.

Flint jumped out and opened Vanessa’s door for her, escorting her into the hangar, where a red and white turboprop airplane was waiting for them. “This is Ruan Steyn,” he said, gesturing toward the man carrying the package. “He’s one of the best bush pilots in Africa. He’s never missed a drop.”

Steyn gave Vanessa a smile that looked more like a leer. He carried the package to the rear door of the airplane, where a stocky Kenyan loaded it onboard.

Flint shook hands with the Kenyan, then faced Vanessa. “After we take off, Charles will drive you back to Muthaiga. I’ll call you on the sat phone as soon as the package is on the sailboat.”

Vanessa shook her head. “I’m coming with you,” she said.

Flint gawked at her in incomprehension. “What are you talking about?”

“I want to see you do it,” she replied stubbornly, daring him to refuse.