Task Force Desperate (22 page)

But we weren’t going to do that. For all we get characterized as soulless mercenaries, getting our kicks and hefty paychecks off of human misery, we really were still the same guys we’d been when we were in uniform. We couldn’t walk away from this. It wasn’t about the pay anymore. We’d find a way.

We’d find a way.

The dhow that floated alongside the
Baxley
was actually in pretty good shape, for what I’d seen of ships and boats in that part of the world. The paint was reasonably fresh, and the engine didn’t smoke all that much. There were Somalis lining the sides, dressed in weird combinations of camouflage uniforms, web gear, and brightly colored, loose clothing, and carrying a smorgasbord of weapons, ranging from ancient bolt-action Mausers and Enfields to AKMs and FALs.

A rickety plank had been set up between the dhow and the bulk carrier that we were supposed to walk down, with our weapons and gear. The fact that we were told it was okay to carry our weapons openly was supposed to be a sign of good faith by Al-Jabarti and his people. I didn’t buy it, and from the gimlet-eyed looks most of my teammates were giving the pirates, I wasn’t the only one.

The plank bowed significantly under each of us, and we went down one at a time, always making sure that the last guy was off before we stepped on. Even so, I wasn’t convinced it was going to last through the whole team. It creaked dangerously, as if the swaying up and down from the swells wasn’t enough.

I was next. I shouldered my kitbag, kept one hand on the grip of my rifle, and started down. Imad was waiting at the foot of the plank to grab my kitbag or me, depending on which was about to overbalance first. But I made it down, half tightrope walking, half running, and stumbled down onto the deck of the dhow.

I swung my kitbag off my shoulder at the last moment, and it took most of the impact. Imad grabbed me by the elbow to help steady me, and I nodded thanks, before hefting the kitbag again, and heading for our little corner of the deck.

There wasn’t a place for us below deck. We had a corner of the deck aft, behind the pilothouse. I supposed it was good enough from a security point of view; they could only come at us from two directions if they wanted to. On the other hand, there was nowhere to go. We were pretty much boxed in if this went south.

I was second to last. Jim was the last guy on, and as he came around the pilothouse, I saw the plank lowered to the deck. I say lowered, but it was really more like dropped. It clattered and bounced on the deck, before being lifted by two laughing Somalis and stowed against the gunwale.

Beneath us, we felt the diesel engines rumble as they spooled up to start moving. Black smoke chugged out of the stern of the dhow, and we started to pull away from the
Baxley
.

The dhow was considerably lighter than the bulk carrier, and as we motored out into the Gulf of Aden, we soon started to feel the relatively light swell a lot more. Good thing I didn’t get seasick. I knew a lot who did…and Rodrigo was looking positively green at the moment… After a few minutes, he got up, went to the stern, leaned over, and emptied his stomach into the dhow’s wake. Several of us chuckled, and he flipped us the bird behind his back, still leaning out over the water.

There wasn’t a lot of chatter as we bobbed across the Gulf. Most of it was because we were all paranoid as hell sitting on a pirate ship off the Somali coast. We mostly sat and watched the water, or our hosts, and kept our weapons close. Except for Rodrigo, of course, as he kept getting up to puke every hour or so.

I didn’t keep my compass out, but I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction. We were heading pretty much due east, toward the Horn. We were on our way.

Chapter 16

T
he trip took three days. Every evening, the dhow would pull in at a beach along the Puntland coast and the pirates would get off to cook dinner. The Somalis had brought a coop of chickens and two goats on the dhow, and regularly slaughtered one or two for fresh meat in the evenings. They kept the leftovers for lunch the next day. We mostly kept to ourselves, though the pirates were friendly enough, and offered to share their food and tea at every meal. We had plenty of backpacker’s meals that we were able to heat up, but usually accepted a little bit of the pirates’ food, to be polite. One thing many of us had learned a long time ago was when you are in a tribal culture, accept hospitality when it’s offered. It’s important to them, and if you reject it, you could be insulting your host, who just might feel the need to avenge the insult with gunfire or explosives.

Mostly it wasn’t bad. It tended to be spicy, and thoroughly cooked. I’ve got to hand it to them, they did know how to cook. Didn’t make them any less a bunch of bandits whom I’d happily shoot in the head if they gave me a reason, but the food was good.

Now where we started getting a little perturbed was when we didn’t turn south when we motored past the Horn. We kept going east, toward Socotra Island.

The island was technically a part of Yemen. It also was not where we wanted to go. But when Alek and Imad remonstrated with the crew, they got smiling reassurances that everything was all right, and that Mr. Al-Jabarti wanted to talk to us, face to face. Since he was on Socotra, that was where we were going.

The island loomed, mountainous and rocky, out of the Arabian Sea. Clouds had gathered on the peaks of the central mountains, and inland was obscured by hazy sheets of rain. The dhow made its way along the northern coast, giving us views of white sand beaches, looming red sandstone outcroppings, palm trees, and other, weirder plants. Imad explained that Socotra had been isolated for so long that a lot of the plant life there wasn’t found anywhere else in the world.

Rodrigo expressed his lack of interest by barfing up his breakfast, while dolphins leapt alongside the dhow and chattered at him.

About five hundred meters offshore, the dhow slowed, the engine noise diminishing to a dull putter. I had been half-sitting, half-lying against my gear, and when I heard the engines slow, I looked up, to see two skiffs roaring across the waves to meet us. Up on the shore lay a town that looked almost medieval, except of course for the power lines and various trucks, cars, and SUVs. Blocky buildings ranged from white plaster to dark limestone blocks. I saw two relatively short minarets. “Anybody know what town that is?” I asked.

“Hadibu,” Imad replied, from where he was sitting on his own kitbag. “I asked. It’s the largest town on the island, with about nine thousand people. Apparently, our host likes to stay at a hotel just outside of town.”

“Joy,” I replied, levering myself to my feet. “So I suppose that this is the welcoming committee? Or should we be locking and loading right now?”

“I’m already at Condition One,” Bob said. “Aren’t you?”

I glared at him. “Figure of speech, dumbass.” That got a petulant glare from Bob, and chuckles from Jim and Larry. Alek wasn’t paying attention to any of us, instead watching over the side at the approaching small boats.

“So what are the rules for carrying weapons on Yemeni territory?” Bob asked.

Larry snorted. Jim looked over at Bob and raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to visit a pirate,” Larry said. “What do you think?”

“It’s not like we gave a damn for Djiboutian gun laws, now is it?” Tim said.

“But this is going to be broad daylight, in a place that isn’t imploding,” Bob protested. “How do we know we won’t get picked up by the authorities if we’re packing rifles?”

“We won’t take rifles,” Alek said, still watching the skiffs. “They’ll search us for weapons before we go in to see him, anyway. Pistols only.”

“Won’t they take those, if they search us?” Bob asked.

“Of course they will,” Jim replied. “But I don’t feel like being unarmed around a bunch of pirates any longer than necessary. Do you?”

“Not all of us are going ashore, anyway,” Alek said. “The guys staying back will keep watch on the weapons and gear, while Danny, Larry, Jeff, and I talk to Al-Jabarti.”

Rodrigo groaned. I‘d guess he wasn‘t too thrilled about having to stay on the pitching dhow and be seasick some more. Still, nobody questioned the cautious approach. Nobody needed to.

The two skiffs pulled alongside the dhow, and our hosts threw over a couple of rope ladders, probably the same ones they used to board ships they were aiming at hijacking. No, I didn’t have much in the way of charitable thoughts for these clowns, no matter how friendly they were. Three million dollars were making them friendly, not any natural inclination to be neighborly. I knew what scum suckers like these had done, both at sea and in ports in Kenya.

Alek led the way, unwilling even now to not be the first one into harm’s way. It didn’t matter that we were already in harm’s way, even on the dhow. We were all dressed pretty much the same, in various iterations of khaki trousers and short-sleeved tan shirts. We carried our pistols openly, mostly in drop holsters, and our backups less openly. Several of these backups would doubtless be confiscated before we got near Al-Jabarti, but we were sneaky bastards, and had a few other tricks up our sleeves that they shouldn’t know about.

I followed Alek, while Danny and Larry stayed topside, watching both the pirates down in the skiffs as well as the ones on the dhow. We weren’t being particularly friendly, and a few acted hurt, but fuck ‘em. The ladder wasn’t terribly well kept up. The nylon rope rails were fraying and salt encrusted, jabbing my hands with splinters of stiff, fibrous nylon. The rungs were almost worse. I thought they were aluminum, but they were so crusted with salt and corrosion it was hard to tell. My boots wanted to slide off each rung as I put my weight on it, so I had to go down very carefully.

Alek had moved to the bow of the skiff, which was tinier than I’d imagined. We had spoken up on deck about trying to get all four of us on one, but with the three pirates on the lead skiff and the four on the other, that didn’t look likely. Just one more thing to make us uncomfortable and paranoid; we were being split two-by-two, and outnumbered on all fronts. Damn, I hated this situation.

I joined Alek in the bow, sitting on a plastic jug, and trying to get as low as possible. The skiff wasn’t the best quality, either, and on the waves it felt like it would be awfully easy to get tossed overboard. Alek was actually sitting on the bottom of the boat, wedged against one of the narrow board seats, still managing to have his hand near his pistol, even in that awkward position. I tried to get stable as the skiff pulled away from the dhow, and Danny and Larry climbed carefully down to the second boat. Danny clambered down more quickly and nimbly than I did, while Larry descended slowly and stiffly, reminding me of nothing so much as a bear trying to climb a ladder.

Just as soon as both Danny and Larry were in the boat, the coxswain gunned the outboard, and we started racing over the waves toward the shore. It was a bumpy ride; if the outboard had had a little bit more muscle to it, it might have been really miserable. As it was, it was just uncomfortable.

The surf was minimal, tiny one-to-two foot waves, but the boat had just enough speed on it that spray was soaking me in the bow as the coxswain drove us as hard as his sputtering outboard could go toward the beach. The beach itself was a mix of sand and rocks, with the town looming up just beyond it.

Both boats ran aground just shy of the beach itself. Apparently the slope was very shallow, going out a fair distance, which would explain why the dhow stayed out at sea, while the skiffs came to get us. Alek and I clambered overboard, splashing into ankle-deep water, and started going ashore, where two HiLuxes waited for us, surrounded by armed Arabs and Somalis. I was momentarily thankful that I had a titanium dive knife strapped to my ankle above my boot, instead of one of my better steel ones, as we waded up onto the beach. Strange, the things that go through your head sometimes.

One man, standing next to the cab of the front truck, walked forward to meet us. He was tall and thin, and while he was darker than most Arabs, he wasn’t obviously Somali, either. He was dressed in what I was starting to think was a uniform in this part of the world; loose tan slacks, sandals, and a loose, untucked beige shirt. Unlike his fellows at the rear truck, he wasn’t carrying a rifle, but there was an old Browning HiPower shoved in the front of his pants, with the shirt pulled up under the grip. He might have thought it was intimidating, but I just imagined him going for his gun and blowing his nuts off. Why do gang-bangers and pirates always think the same stupid shit makes them look tough?

The man walked forward to greet us, with the same polite smile on his face, holding out his hand. Alek shook it, and then he went around to the rest of us. “Welcome to Socotra,” he said, in only slightly accented English. “Mr. Al-Jabarti is looking forward to meeting you, and sent me to escort you to him. My name is Ibrahim. Come with me.” He waved us along, and started back toward the trucks.

We followed without comment, but kept our spacing, hands near our guns, and eyes always moving. Granted, it seemed like a pretty elaborate scheme for a trap; if they’d wanted to kill us, they could easily have done it as soon as we were on their dhow. But, as we had all been reminded so many times on deployment with the military, through spray-painted warnings on concrete Texas barriers, complacency kills.

We ignored the passenger of the second truck, who was waving for a couple of us to get in the back, and all piled into the bed of the first HiLux. The guy in the second was getting frustrated, and leaned out of the window to harangue us in Somali. I turned the glare on him, and after a moment he shut up and pulled himself back inside the cab. Alek nodded to me silently. I’ve been told that while I’m by no means the biggest guy on the team, that’s a close race between Alek and Larry, I can be the scariest. I take that to be a compliment.

The driver of our truck slammed it into gear, and we took off from the beach, bumping and caroming off of bits of coral and rock the size of softballs. The driver was trying to take off like a bat out of hell, but it wasn’t working all that well, with coral, sand, and rock spraying out from under the tires. They finally bit, and we were on our way.