Pirate Alley: A Novel (11 page)

The sea had abated and was almost calm. The only wind seemed to be relative, from straight ahead, manufactured by the ships moving through dead air.

Toad wondered what Captain Penney was thinking.

*   *   *

Actually Arch Penney was thinking of possible ways to kill Mustafa al-Said. The pirate’s murder of three ship’s officers, the helmsman and the bosun’s mates who manned the LRAD had filled him with anger. Rage. He had never before felt such a bitter emotion. He eyed Mustafa again. The man would kill him without remorse or hesitation. If Arch had a weapon handy he would use it on Mustafa and enjoy every single second.

But he didn’t have such a weapon. Perhaps the gods were looking out for him.

He wondered about his wife, who was in his cabin. He thought about calling her, and looked at the telephone, but decided against it. No use letting this asshole pirate know she was aboard and giving him another weapon to use against him.

He checked his watch. The chief steward had called him on the phone and they had talked about serving dinner to the passengers … and pirates. Mustafa had watched and listened to the conversation but hadn’t said a word.

Penney obsessed about the murdered officers and crew, one of whom, a woman, was raped to death. The three raped women who survived the experience were in the ship’s tiny hospital; the doctor had telephoned him and reported. He tried to clear his mind and focus on the current situation. The dead were dead—his responsibility was to the living.

Penney picked up his binoculars and aimed them at the warship on the port quarter. Amphibious assault ship—all he could see was her running lights, and red lights on the flight deck. The lights of helos and Ospreys flitting across the sky. Destroyer on the starboard side. Both ships were much closer than they had been during the day, but were maintaining their station now. Penney wondered if Mustafa was paying attention.

*   *   *

Peering out the window of the shot-up passenger computer room, Mike Rosen had seen the warships during the afternoon and evening. They were out there, but closer.

He went back to the office and shoved the desk against the door. He had talked to the ship’s steward, the bosun, the doctor, every department head on the list.

He stared at the phone. Should he?

Well, hell, no guts, no glory. He dialed the bridge. Got someone who identified himself as the second officer.

“The captain, please.”

“Who is this?”

“One of your passengers.”

“Kiss my bloody ass, mate.”

“God damn you, shithead! Gimme the captain!”

Silence. The line was still open. Rosen could hear himself breathe. Then a male voice came on. “Captain.”

“Mike Rosen, sir, a passenger. I am in the computer room, and we still have a satellite connection. I’ve been e-mailing my radio station in Denver. Do you have an accurate casualty list?”

“No. I know that there are at least three officers dead, the helmsman, two bosun’s mates and a woman passenger who was raped to death. Someone told me another passenger, a man, was killed, but I don’t know that for a fact. Four or five more have been injured.”

“Is there a message you want to get out to the world?”

“I’m not free to talk.” The voice was lower.

“Our destination?”

“Eyl.”

“Is that in Somalia?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else.”

“We are doing our best to ensure our passengers and crew remain safe.” The connection was severed.

Rosen got on the computer and started typing. He had his lead. The captured cruise ship,
Sultan of the Seas,
with at least seven dead, perhaps eight, was being taken to Eyl, Somalia, by pirates.

*   *   *

Mustafa al-Said decided to feed the passengers at 8:00
P.M.
The crew members who cooked and served were ready, so at the appointed moment the captain used the loudspeaker to send the passengers to dinner, deck by deck. He started low in the ship and worked up.

By then Irene and Suzanne were back in their small stateroom, trying to get the marijuana smoke smell out of their hair.

“I didn’t know that stuff stunk so badly,” Suzanne declared. Actually, she felt pretty good—knew she had a buzz on, and was past caring how she smelled.

“There are a lot of things we don’t know,” Irene said philosophically. She too had inhaled a lot of that smoke and was feeling very mellow.

“I wonder why those men didn’t bring their wives on this cruise.”

“Because they’re gay, you twit.” Irene laughed hugely.

The captain’s announcement ended the conversation. Food would be good. Irene and Suzanne locked their small stateroom and hurried up the ladder to the restaurant on the fifth deck.

Under the watchful eye of a pirate with half his teeth missing and the other half stained a putrid yellow-brown, the bar at the restaurant entrance was doing a land-office business. They were serving the drinks free. Anything you wanted, they mixed and poured, then you grabbed it and made room for the next thirsty person behind you.

With a Cosmo in each hand, the two sisters sat at a table that already had a man and a woman at it.

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Twila and Harold. We’re from Arkansas.”

When the introductions were over, the diners began comparing experiences. The Arkansas couple had had a long, boring afternoon. The Arkansas lady’s nose twitched. She had caught a good whiff of the marijuana smell on the sisters. “My heavens, what is that smell?”

“It was coming out of our air-conditioning,” Irene explained. “Terrible stuff.”

“Well, with pirates and all, what can you do?”

Eventually the conversation turned to what might come next.

“These pirates just want money,” Suzanne said. “Someone will bail us out and we’ll all go home.”

“Who?”

“The cruise company or the government or something. The pirates can’t keep us forever. And why would they want to?”

“I am worried about what happens when we get to wherever we are going,” the lady from Little Rock said. “Are we going to stay aboard ship, be taken ashore … what?”

“How much food and water is on this ship?” the husband wanted to know. “How long before the sewage tanks fill up and the commodes stop working? How long can they keep the generators going?”

Neither of the sisters had thought for a minute about those questions, and now they looked at each other and considered.

“We’re in a hell of a pickle,” Irene said.

Suzanne nodded soberly.

“Well, who
is
going to bail us out?” Irene demanded. “Pay the ransom? I don’t have any money and my kids don’t. Any pirate who thinks he is getting money from me or any of my relatives is wasting his time.”

Suzanne went off to get refills for herself and Irene. The Arkansas couple were sticking to soft drinks, the poor bastards.

“Oh, it will all work out,” the Little Rock lady said when Suzanne got back with the booze. “Harold here worked for Walmart for a lot of years, and he always said everything works out in the end, didn’t you, Harold?”

“Yes,” Harold agreed. “There were days at Walmart—”

“But who is going to pay ransom for us?” Harold’s mate, Twila, asked, interrupting her spouse. She then answered the question herself. “Why, our neighbors at the church. Our congregation always sticks together. Or the government. The people in Washington can always print more money and give the pirates some.”

“I guess so,” Suzanne said pensively, glancing at the pirate standing in the door with his AK-47 pointed negligently in the diners’ direction.

“I don’t see why not,” Irene declared. “They ship money in heaps to every dictator on the planet. Might as well send some to Somalia and spring us. Boy, am I going to be mad if they don’t!”

The waiters brought plates heaping with good things, so they all became too busy to talk.

With her mouth full, the Little Rock lady asked the key question. “Do you think the cruise ship company will give us a refund? After all, pirates?”

“Pirates are going to make their marketing more difficult,” Irene said, forking chicken. “Even a partial refund would be good PR.”

“Walmart always worried about good PR,” Harold remarked. “Even a discount on another cruise would be welcome. We always wanted to go to South America. No pirates there.”

“Except in Venezuela. That screwball dictator, what’s-his-name.”

“Chavez. Like the ravine.”

“We’ll skip Venezuela,” Harold said flatly. “Carnival in Rio would be nice.”

“Nice,” Suzanne agreed and finished her third Cosmo.

CHAPTER
SIX

I
NDIAN
O
CEAN,
N
OVEMBER
10

When Angel Cordova glimpsed the lights of the
Sultan of the Seas,
the SEALs had been in their boats for an hour. It was 3:00
A.M.
They were only twenty-five miles off the coast of Africa, sixty miles north of Eyl.

The idling engine on Cordova’s boat didn’t interfere with his ability to hear the handheld radio on the earpiece he wore under his black, waterproof head covering.

“
Sultan
in sight,” he reported.

“She’s steering one-nine-three and steady at ten knots.”

“Roger. Everyone copy?”

“Two, aye.”

“Three, aye.”

“Four, aye.”

Cordova had his boats spread out about two miles apart, so they covered six miles of ocean. At Cordova’s order, the coxswains revved the engines and they began the run-in to intercept the oncoming cruise ship.

Sultan
looked as if she would pass between Boats One and Two. Cordova had less than a mile to go westward; Boat Two a mile eastward. Three and Four were farther inshore, and they would have to hurry or the ship would be past them before they could intercept.

The boat rocked and skipped over the swells, with Cordova and his five men hunkered down to keep the center of gravity as low as possible.

Two miles ahead of the
Sultan,
Cordova’s coxswain, who knew his business, turned to parallel the cruise ship. He throttled back to let the big ship overtake him. He placed the boat so it would be on
Sultan
’s port side. As the speed bled off, the boat began to rock more violently in the swells. The men held on to ropes, just in case.

Using his night-vision goggles, Cordova could see Boat Two maneuvering closer.

Angel Cordova was scared, and he tried not to think about it. His stomach felt as if it were doing flip-flops. All that training, years of it, the running, swimming, brutal cross-country, obstacle and confidence-building courses, survival and weapons training, cold, mud, hunger, exhaustion … all of it came down to this, a real combat mission. He was worried he would blow it, would screw up the mission and lose his men, who trusted him implicitly.

When he had briefed the mission he had watched their faces. Trust. Confidence. He remembered those looks now, and his stomach revolted and he heaved his dinner over the edge of the boat. The other men pretended they didn’t see that. When the mission was over, back aboard ship, then they would rib him. Not now. He was the officer in charge, and their lives were in his hands.

Would they even be able to intercept? Get aboard?

The ship was bigger, overtaking at about five knots. Angel Cordova could see every light.

Jesus, it was a big ship! Hell, every ship was big when viewed from this angle, on the surface of the sea as it came steaming along.

Slowly … then the bow was there, passing. Cordova could see lights in the lounges and dining rooms, the staterooms, all lit up like a big city hotel.

He could hear the wash of the bow wave, feel it as the boat approached its edge with the engine roaring and the coxswain taking the waves at an angle to keep from overturning.

Here came the ship’s side. Wet and dark and slimy. It was so close he could almost reach it. He scanned the well-lit rails above him, looking for people. Not a head did he see.

“Grappling hooks,” he shouted into his radio mike, which was against his lips.

“Hooks … now!”

Three hooks shot upward. Two of them seemed to catch. Angel Cordova grabbed one, tugged hard and felt the resistance.

He paused for just a second to check the weapons and backpack full of explosives and ammo, then timed the rise and fall of the boat. As the boat came up, he grabbed a handful of rope—it was wet, but there were knots—and began climbing hand over hand with his feet braced against the side of the ship.

Another man was also on a rope. More ropes went up, and two more men came scrambling.

Cordova reached the deck edge and looked around. No one there. This was a lifeboat sponson; the large boats hung from davits over his head. Lights on the bulkheads.

He hooked a heel over a rail, then crawled over. He unslung his weapon, a silenced submachine gun, and lay there for just a second looking around. He was on his feet against the bulkhead, behind a boat davit, when his men came over the rail. One, two, three and four. Got ’em.

“Alpha Team is aboard port side.”

“Bravo is aboard starboard side.”

Silence.

“Charlie is maybe five minutes out.”

“Delta is ten out, but I don’t know if I can intercept.”

“Roger.”

One U.S. Navy sailor quickly unhooked the grappling hooks and dropped them over the side while his mates went forward and aft, checking the doors. They were open, as they always were in good weather. The black-clad men went through the doors with their weapons in their hands.

*   *   *

Aboard
Chosin Reservoir,
Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington was watching marines in assault gear man three V-22 Ospreys on the flight deck. Each of the giant twin-rotor transports could carry eight combat-ready marines. Toad was still transferring them to the destroyer. Several were snipers who could shoot pirates if they began executing passengers on deck.

Tarkington was worried. The pirates still held the aces, the hostages. Toad had given Lieutenant Cordova permission to shoot anyone he had to, but good sense had to be exercised. Toad didn’t intend to give the pirates the chance to slaughter hostages. Everything depended on keeping the pirates confused and off balance. Speed. It had to happen fast.