The Delta Solution (25 page)

Salat kept this tribal army on permanent standby. He had no doubt it might one day prove extremely useful. Besides, it kept the bloodthirsty warlord Colonel Patrick Zeppi onside at all times.

At this highly combustible East African redoubt, Sheikh Sharif intended to hurl his army. And in making his plans, guided by his desperation for success, he tended to ignore the military history and traditions of his own force, many of whom had come to Somalia to help in the 2006 wars against Ethiopia.

They were accomplished in bomb-making techniques and in the kind of sneak-attack expertise necessary to deliver IEDs of all shapes and sizes, including the big one that just knocked down a stretch of Churchill Avenue in Addis Ababa. They were also skilled in the ideology of martyrdom and the spiritual rewards awaiting suicide bombers.

They understood the strong international links between themselves and ambitious young Muslims in places like Great Britain who yearned to join the fight against the West.

There were four or five members of Sheikh Sharif’s army who had mounted a very successful attack against the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombassa in November 2006, when a car bomb killed fifteen people. They had also been involved, minutes earlier, in the firing of two terrorist missiles at an Israeli-chartered aircraft as it was taking off from Mombassa Airport with 261 passengers on board.

However, the guidance systems may have been faulty because both missiles had missed and then failed to detonate when they hit the ground. In the tried and tested Arab way, they had spent about a zillion hours endlessly reliving that day of mixed fortunes with their new leader, Sheikh Sharif, in Somalia.

A more strategic military leader might have considered that their basic skills were in bombing, assassinating, and blowing up vehicles and buildings, staying as far away from their enemy as possible. They always relied on their more powerful, longer-range weapons, even in hot-firing battles against the Americans and, more often, against the undergunned British with their 5.56-caliber standard rounds.

Al-Qaeda troops were simply not used to being close to their target. Formal warfare was not their game. And their leader was about to commit them to an attack on an occupied armed fortress. However stealthily they made their approach, and however stealthily they launched their attack against an unsuspecting enemy, they still had to take Mohammed Salat’s fortress by force of arms. And that might prove extremely challenging.

Sheikh Sharif’s major decision was whether to attack by day or by night. But first he needed to insert men to conduct reconnaissance, critical to finding out where the treasure was kept. He knew of the existence of the mysterious Mohammed Salat, and he had heard of the Haradheere Stock Exchange. Everyone knew about the massive quantities of cash the pirates had stashed away.

But the geography of the thriving little outback town was unknown to him. He needed his troops to see for themselves. That first afternoon he dispatched three of his commanders into Haradheere with orders to stay unobserved, separate, and watchful. He was certain that the pirates’ stronghold would be more than obvious.

He was correct. The three al-Qaeda operatives walked the final two miles into town, split up, and then located Salat’s garrison inside the first hour. From the outside it was a fairly formidable sight: high grey walls, cast concrete, with obvious guards in two positions on the roof.

This did not faze the al-Qaeda killers. They merely assessed that it would be possible to climb the walls at night with the ladders and slit the throats of the guards. Then, somehow, they would open the gates. Their fifty-strong army would swarm in with their trusted Kalashnikovs, and the garrison would fall to them almost immediately.

And, of course, there were the Russian mortar bombs. Maybe they would fire a barrage into the courtyard beyond the walls to create a massive diversion before the attack on the guard posts. They would certainly make a good report to their leader when they returned to their new base.

However, they had grossly underestimated the sensitivity of the village of Haradheere, which, like most communities with far-reaching secrets to conceal, was ever-alert for intruders. The water boys had been most conspicuous, driving around the town until they located the central pump and then filling seven or eight standard gas cans for each of their two sandblasted SUVs.

They had spoken to no one and then vanished into the semi-desert scrubland to the north of the main building. The three reconnaissance men had been more circumspect, operating far apart, and moving into the shadows to make notes while they assessed the strength of Mohammed Salat’s garrison.

At no time did they raise a genuine suspicion among the tribesmen, except when one of them walked right around the building. On the west wall, he went past the home of Admiral Ismael Wolde, who was sipping a beer in the forecourt beneath the questionable shade of a banana tree.

Wolde was alert, and he noted only that he had never seen the man in his life, which was a rare phenomenon in Haradheere, where there were no strangers. The pirate chief decided the guy could have been visiting anyone, and he watched the man disappear around the north corner. He thought no more about it until another ten minutes had passed, and the man showed up again, still examining the walls, and apparently on another circuit of the bastion where Salat kept the cash.

Wolde stood up and shouldered his AK-47. Then he walked a half
block south to the home of Commodore Elmi Ahmed. Ismael asked him to bring his rifle because the two of them were going for a little stroll.

Together they walked up to the Salat stronghold and along the western wall, looking for the stranger. They stared along the north wall, and Ahmed waved to one of the guards. But there was no sign of the intruder, who could have been on the other two sides, out of their viewpoint.

“We should go back the other way,” said Wolde. But then Elmi spotted a single figure walking away to the north across the scrubland. And, perhaps a half mile further on, there were two others. Far away, on the dusty horizon, Elmi could also see a parked vehicle, too far away to identify.

“Now, who are those people?” asked Wolde. “And what are they doing out there? There’s not a building for miles.”

“Perhaps just passing through, seeing the sights,” suggested Elmi.

“Perhaps,” replied Wolde, “but I think when we find a stranger walking in and out of town, examining the walls of our garrison with millions and millions of dollars inside, we should issue a military alert. At least inform the guards.”

“I agree with that,” said Elmi. They walked back to the main gate and whacked the door with a rifle butt, twice and then three times, the code for entry. The door was opened by Elmi’s cousin, a huge black tribesman named Yanni who had accompanied them on a couple of missions.

He saluted both men and welcomed them with an enormous smile. Sensing the concerned look worn by Ismael Wolde, the local hero, he took them straight to the ops center, where they found the garrison CO discussing the appearance of the water boys and the number of gallons they had taken without saying a word to anyone. Yanni’s boss had estimated fifteen cans, each holding four-and-a-half gallons, standard Russian military issue. That was almost seventy gallons.

He saluted the senior-ranking Somali Marine and listened carefully to his observations. At the conclusion of Wolde’s informal report, he said, “Sir, seventy gallons may mean a group of forty to sixty people. It is possible the jackals of al-Qaeda may be preparing an attack.

“I see no reason to go out there and alert them to our strength. But tonight I will double the guard on the north wall. Every gun in the garrison will be primed. And I will inform Mr. Salat of my decisions. If you approve, of course.”

“Excellent,” replied Wolde. “It may be nothing. But the coincidences are
there. And I think Mr. Salat should alert Colonel Zeppi because he’ll make sure the whole town is aware of possible danger.”

Thus it was that two very different fighting forces, stationed 9,000 miles apart, had effectively declared war on tiny Haradheere. One of them would attack that night. The other was starting the fourth day of intensive training in the massive sprawl of the 5,000-acre San Diego Naval Base.

The Delta Platoon had, so far, been in a submarine dry dock for the duration. Commander Bedford had located a sub up on the blocks, secured port and starboard by three one-foot-thick holding beams, set at right angles to the ship, stopping her from toppling sideways one way or the other. The beams were approximately thirty feet off the floor of the dock, and all day, every day, the personnel of Delta Force, including Mack himself, hurled their grappling irons up and over those beams.

Attached were knotted ropes, which provided easy footholds but made them heavier. Mack’s maestros slowly became world experts in the deadly cunning and stealth required to toss those grapplers over a given target with minimum noise and zero chance of missing. Also, every member of the platoon could scoot up those ropes and straddle the beams without missing a beat. That was the easy part.

That morning they were leaving the three-hundred-acre submarine area and going out to sea, taking off in Zodiacs from one of San Diego’s vast line of thirteen warship piers and tracking a guided missile destroyer out and under the bridge and then around the North Island Navy Air Station. Many of Mack’s men found this especially agreeable since throughout their working lives they had been made to run around it. Seven miles.

The destroyer, by special request, would be travelling slowly, and throughout its journey to the open sea, Mack’s SEALs would be alongside in the high-powered rubber inflatables, throwing the grapplers and trying to become expert at hooking the climbing ropes onto a moving target.

Within a few days, they would head into open water, where it was rougher and much more difficult to land the grapplers over the rails of a moving ship. It was hard enough swinging out of the Zodiac against the warship’s hull, just a few inches above the waterline. But it was another matter when the ship was moving.

However, if they were to become proficient at boarding a ship going 12 knots, they needed to practice every hour available to them. And there
would be no variation from every page of SEAL ethos they had ever learned:
We train and train and train, until nothing can withstand our onslaught on a chosen target
.

In the four decades since the SEALs had been inaugurated, you could count on the fingers of one hand how many times this approach had failed. And Mack’s boys were good. They bore no resemblance to ordinary men.

They had their setbacks, mostly due to misjudgments and overconfidence, especially when moving at high speed. Guys did fall into the ocean, a few from high up the ship’s hull. But there were highly trained US Naval personnel waiting in small boats to haul them out, ensuring they never strayed or were swept into the surging wake above the ship’s huge propellers.

On one occasion Mack himself dived at the grappling rope, missed, slid down, and miraculously grabbed the end of the line as he crashed right under the water with full pack and rifle. Next thing anyone saw was the sight of Mack scrambling out of the Pacific Ocean without missing a beat and hauling himself up the rope, all the way to the rails next to the destroyer’s helo pad on the stern.

It was an outrageous display of strength, born of error but sustained with granite discipline and a will of steel. No one laughed, but a few shook their heads in disbelief that anyone could possibly make such a recovery. And as if to remind them of what was expected, the half-frozen Mack refused to change into dry clothes for the rest of the day.

“Battlefield conditions at all times,” he said. “I don’t guess the fucking pirates are going to provide us with fresh underwear if we screw it up,” he told them. “We’re training to kick some very serious ass. Never forget that, and behave accordingly.”

Everyone in the group he called “my guys” would have walked through fire for Mack Bedford. Thereafter no one took the opportunity to change clothes after a ducking. If the boss could stand it, they all could.

When the platoon finally went into combat, they would almost certainly go in wearing their frogmen suits. But the commander preferred to train in “cammies” and boots, which made it appreciably more difficult, especially in the ocean. The objective was always the same: that training should make combat seem easier.

The only member of the group consistently in his frog gear and big
flippers was Petty Officer Barney Wilkes, the world-class swimmer, who acted as permanent swim-buddy to any member of the squad who fell in, instantly going over the side to stay with the SEAL until he was pulled out by the navy staff.

Barney missed some rope time in the beginning because he was always in the ocean. Navy SEAL philosophy—no man is ever left alone—was observed even in classified training sessions. If a man went over the side or fell off the hull of a ship, he would be joined immediately by the top swimmer in the group.

Day after day they went at it, learning the techniques, hurling the grapplers, clinging, climbing, boarding. And as they trained, the clumsiness vanished and the teamwork became flawless. Mack’s guys could approach, hurl, climb, and board approximately four times faster than they could on the first day. Helmsmen hardly needed to slow the boats. Those hooks were up and over in the split second that the target was close enough.

No one hesitated. They were out and climbing before the Zodiacs were in prime position. In the beginning there was a tirade of yelling, cursing, laughing, and falling, with guys swinging on the sides of ships, trying to balance. Not any more. Now the training hits were carried out immaculately, in silence, with the SEALs up and climbing aboard with lightning speed.

Any boat sentry would have to be looking straight at them to detect the SEAL invasion, and in that case the sentry would most certainly be shot with a silenced rifle, probably by the Tar Heel Barney, who was always the last man to leave the attack boat, whichever team he was in.