Pirate Alley: A Novel (36 page)

I suppose I should have been horrified about what she did to Ragnar, but I wasn’t. If she hadn’t been in that penthouse, I would have shot him. Good-bye, and bang. Can’t say he didn’t deserve it. Hell, all these pirates deserved it. Arch Penney would swear to that. One of the great philosophical issues of our time is why so few people get what they deserve. Good or bad.

Grafton was waiting for me when we walked off the beach. He was standing beside the pickup. The Israelis were not in sight. Grafton’s headset was draped around his neck. He must have had a dozen questions for me and Neidlinger, but he didn’t bother. One of the lessons he had undoubtedly picked up somewhere along the trail was that you can’t testify about things you don’t know about. It was a thing to remember.

“The Shabab will be here in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll stay to meet them. Tommy, you get Ms. Neidlinger up to the fort. Get her some food and a place to lie down.”

“Too bad we can’t gun them and waltz our people out of here.”

“Too many of them, and the planes won’t be here until tomorrow evening. Getting the radio controls to that trench bomb was the best we could do tonight. And eliminate some of the opposition.”

“What about that ship full of fertilizer, the
Susan B. Grant
? If she explodes—”

“She won’t. The SEALs blew a dozen holes in the side of the ship while the battle was going on. The seawater will ruin the fertilizer. Ship’s still there, of course—can’t sink, since she’s already resting on the bottom.”

“What about—”

“No time. Hustle out of here and get that leg looked at.”

I went. Got Nora to march. We got into solid darkness and walked as fast as my leg would allow. The wound was bleeding again. We were climbing the hill when a dozen or so pickups rolled into the plaza, one after another, and braked to a stop. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Grafton wandering over to the first one. I quit watching and climbed on up the hill, steering Nora along.

*   *   *

Yousef el-Din watched as armed men from the pickups behind him piled out and ran for Ragnar’s lair. Others set up a perimeter. Men at the machine guns mounted in the bed of every truck kept their weapons moving as they searched for targets. The vehicle headlights lit up the plaza as if it were a baseball field.

More pickups rolled through the plaza and took the road to the fortress. The bed of each contained eight to ten men, all armed, all hanging on tightly as they bumped and rattled up the dirt road.

Jake Grafton stood watching with professional interest. Any ambushing force could have decimated the column as it drove up. Yousef had a lot to learn, if he lived long enough. On the other hand, he obviously knew more about ground combat than the pirates—he was still alive.

El-Din climbed from the passenger seat of the lead pickup and was instantly surrounded by a small retinue of armed bodyguards. They kept their AKs at the ready.

Grafton stood with his arms folded. El-Din strolled over, in no hurry.

“Your men made short work of these pirates,” Grafton remarked, looking around. One of el-Din’s aides translated.

The bearded terrorist sneered. “Where are your men?”

“Not here. We used drones for this.”

The word “drone” threw the translator.

“Little unmanned airplanes. They carry weapons.” Grafton pointed toward the sky.

“Are they up there now?”

“Of course.”

From his pocket Yousef el-Din produced an object. He displayed it to Grafton, who recognized it. It was a modified garage door opener. Yousef talked, and the translator jumped in without waiting for a pause.

“With this I can set off Ragnar’s bomb around the fortress, and collapse it. The explosion and falling stone will kill everyone inside. My men will kill everyone outside. If the British or Americans attempt to betray us, or fail to pay the money, I will kill all these people, including you.
Allah akbar
.”

Grafton donned his headset, which had been arranged around his neck. He keyed the mike with his belt switch. “Toad, this is Jake.”

“Roger.”

Grafton repeated el-Din’s threat. As they discussed it Grafton heard a shout. He looked up in time to see a body falling from the penthouse balcony. It hit with a dull splat. Then another, and another.

Several of el-Din’s entourage ran over for a look. They came back with the news. Jake didn’t need a translation. Ragnar and his sons were dead. Yousef el-Din’s eyes crinkled, and inside his beard his lips twisted. This was his smile.

He spouted more words, either Arabic or Somali, Jake didn’t know. The translator said, “You come with us. You will talk for us. Any tricks, and you die.”

Jake repeated that to Toad Tarkington, then added, “I’m turning this headset off to save the battery. I’ll call you tomorrow to find out when you are ready to deliver the money.”

“Fine.”

*   *   *

As the pickups came up the hill toward the fortress, I put my weapons in my backpack and set it inside where it was hard to see. Thank heavens someone had dragged off the bodies of the sentries I’d killed. No doubt there were small bloodstains, but who would know? Or care?

Here they came, a couple dozen of Allah’s finest. Ahmad the Awful spouted gibberish at Captain Penney as I listened on my headset to Grafton talking to Admiral Tarkington.

I heard Grafton say el-Din was making him a prisoner. So they were kidnapping the negotiator!

One of the pickups was backing toward the entryway. It stopped twenty feet or so away, and the man at the machine gun pointed it at us, scowled fiercely and wiggled the barrel. If the trench bomb went off while he was sitting there he was going to join the ranks of the recently departed. Maybe he didn’t know that.

The three network reporters were trying to get an interview, but the head dog wasn’t having any of it. Maybe he didn’t speak English. He smacked a light with his rifle barrel, breaking it, and pointed toward the fort. The message was unmistakable. Get inside!

The media people obeyed with a lot of wasted motion. Generators died and lights were extinguished.

I keyed my headset. “Red Control, this is Tommy. Can you track Grafton with the drones?”

“We should be able to do that.”

“Wilbur, Orville?”

“We’ll try, Tommy.”

“Everybody, I’m going to turn off the headset to save the batteries. I’ll call before dawn for a report.”

“Roger.”

I switched the thing off, passed behind Captain Penney as I retrieved my backpack and headed for the stairs to the roof. I needed a few hours’ sleep. I wondered if I would get any.

*   *   *

Julie Penney escorted Nora Neidlinger to where Suzanne and Irene were trying to sleep, after the battle sounds died away. Marjorie was there, too. The women made a fuss over Nora, whose clothes were still damp.

“We must find her something dry to wear.”

As they did that, Suzanne got right to it. “How are you, Nora? Are you okay?”

In the gloom, it was impossible to read her face. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”

When her daughter was led in a few minutes later, Nora grabbed her and held on tightly.

Someone asked, “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I’m not hungry. Honestly.”

“Pirate adventures are a good way to lose weight,” Irene remarked.

“Two more days,” Julie told the women. “Arch talked to the negotiator, a Mr. Grafton. The money is coming. Just two more days and we’ll be free.”

When Nora finally lay down and closed her eyes, she tried to get some perspective on her life and her recent adventures. She often did that in the moments before sleep overcame her, but tonight the emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She needed to surpress them, try to wall them off. She certainly didn’t want to think about the details of the torture of Ragnar, which had been a catharsis, a break.

I’ve broken with my past life,
she thought.
From here until the end it’s a new adventure.

That thought allowed her to relax, and she slept as the dawn turned into day and the first rays of the sun sneaked through the gun ports into the fortress.

*   *   *

Jake Grafton was also lying down, trying to relax enough to sleep. He was in some ramshackle dirt-floored building a couple of miles up the river from the beach town, Eyl proper. East Eyl. Eyl Beach. Eyl by the Sea, the jewel of Somalia.

Around him he could hear men farting and snoring and coughing, and the groaning strain of the cots on which they lay.

He was acutely aware of the Walther in the ankle holster. They didn’t search him, merely took his com unit and headset. Told him where to lie down. He had obeyed.

Of course, the act of pulling that pistol from its holster would get him shot immediately. He had no intention of doing so. Not anytime soon, anyway.

He lay there listening to the night sounds and wondered if Yousef el-Din’s pocket radio controller would indeed trigger the trench bomb. He and the Israelis thought they had disabled all the detonators and antennas … But! Maybe they missed one. Or two. Maybe it wouldn’t be a really big bang, but a little one. Maybe there would be no bang at all. If Yousef pressed the button and nothing happened, he was going to be very surprised. Also very unhappy. Disappointed, too.

Maybe …

Jake Grafton was still going over the maybes when he drifted off.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

W
ASHINGTON,
D.C
.

Encrypted Top Secret Flash messages were launched into the ether at the speed of light from desks in Washington, Langley and the Indian Ocean, and at most of the military commands in between, and other encrypted Flash messages came zipping back, again at the speed of light.

Toad Tarkington received an avalanche of demands to be told in exquisite detail all that had happened in Eyl to date and what was going to happen in the future. Was or was not the trench bomb safe? Tarkington was given orders to report on the state of health of the
Sultan
prisoners, the status of the television news teams and the status and circumstances of any civilian casualties caused by the U.S. military or anyone else.

For his part, Toad informed the bureaucrats that Jake Grafton, the American envoy, was the prisoner of Yousef el-Din, the local Shabab banana, and that Ragnar was dead.

Toad and Grafton had a plan, of course, that they had made and massaged since the president appointed Grafton, and Toad undertook to state to the powers that be that the plan didn’t require any participation from Grafton.

Then he turned the whole message mess over to his chief of staff, who could draft answers and kiss ass at the speed of light whenever required.

*   *   *

In Washington the president took another smoke break with Sal Molina. “Whaddaya think?” the elected one asked after that first blessed drag of cigarette smoke.

“You know Grafton,” Molina said. He stretched out his feet as far as they would go and jammed his hands in his trouser pockets. “Ragnar got his lesson, and now it’s the Shabab’s turn. The thing about Grafton: Anything can go wrong, and if it does, he has probably prepared for that eventuality.”

The president spun his chair so he could look out the window at the floodlit Washington Monument rising like a giant phallic symbol against the black night sky.

“This military adventure won’t go over very well in Europe. They call us unprincipled cowboys now; if there are any significant casualties, they’ll call us worse.”

“The Shabab did the pirates. God only knows how many of those bastards they slaughtered, but
we didn’t do it.
”

“Grafton’s a genius.”

“Maybe the queen will knight him.”

“I just have this suspicion,” the president mused, “an inkling perhaps, just an itch between my shoulder blades, that this whole thing is out of control. It’s like a televised debate, with the cameras on and the swine reporter grinning like a moron on crack, and you just know the son of a bitch is going to ask you an unexpected question that will make you look like a friggin’ idiot in front of everyone on the planet. That’s the feeling. I got it big-time. This whole pirate gig is going to turn out badly.”

“Grafton is the best—”

The president smacked the table with one hand. “Homicidal Muslims, grinding poverty in Africa, people starving by the millions, polluted oceans, vicious pirates—this isn’t Johnny Depp swaggering in front of a camera wearing more eye shadow than a whorehouse full of sluts. This is real as a heart attack. That Grafton … he can certainly smash things. That’s the easy part.
I
have to pick up the pieces.”

Sal Molina sighed. After twenty-five years in politics, he thought most politicians had the courage of mice, present company included. They were constantly congratulating themselves on having the fortitude to take political risks, when the worst that could happen was losing some votes. Molina tried to recall just what the president had done about poverty and starvation in Africa, vicious pirates and polluted oceans. Maybe he made a speech or two. Tut tut.

All the guts inside the Beltway wouldn’t be enough for a Vienna sausage,
Molina thought savagely.

*   *   *

I woke up with the sun in my eyes. I got up, went to the eastern edge of the roof and pissed through a gun port as the warm desert wind pushed on my back and the sun warmed my face. One of the guards eyed me, thought about shooting me and apparently changed his mind. Everyone has to piss, even infidels. He settled for a rude gesture.

Ahh, morning in fabulous Eyl. With any luck, this would be my last one. Tomorrow morning I’d either be dead or someplace else.

I turned on my headset. Not a lot of battery left, but maybe enough.

“Red Control, Tommy. Where is Grafton?”

“Good morning, Tommy. All indications are he’s in a hut in West Eyl. We’ve counted over two hundred armed men in that vicinity.”

“Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

I went downstairs and found Arch Penney, who was conferring with his crew, trying to figure out how to feed eight hundred fifty people and not poison them. It was a tough problem. My personal contribution was to refuse to eat anything. Fasting wouldn’t give me the trots, although the water might. I had to drink it anyway.