The Delta Solution (28 page)

“Of course,” replied Najib. “We always have a deal. What’s on your mind?”

“Just a little place on the coast of Somalia,” said Harrison. “It’s called Haradheere.”

“So it is,” said the arms dealer. “I heard about it too. A very nasty little battle, I believe.”

“When did you hear?”

“Sometime yesterday afternoon,” he replied. “The al-Qaeda guys speak of nothing else. They are very shaken.”

“Guess the tribesmen kicked some very major ass,” said Harrison. “I heard there were no survivors.”

“I heard the same. What specifically do you want to know? I’ll tell you everything, but my knowledge is incomplete. Do I still get dinner if it’s not enough for you?”

“Absolutely not,” said Harrison. “Can I have another one of those pastries, while you still appear useful to me?”

“One only,” chuckled Najib. “That might be all I get today.”

“I doubt that, old buddy. And I’ll try not to ask you direct and possibly incriminating questions.”

“Thoughtful. I like that.”

“Okay. I don’t want to know if you sold weapons to Haradheere. But tell me if you’d like and, more importantly, tell me what they have.”

“As you know, my dear Harrison, that little town has all the money in the world. All stolen, all stashed away.”

“So I understand. Were the al-Qaeda guys trying to steal it?”

“Of course. There were fifty tribesmen armed with Kalashnikovs and mortars. They did some damage, but the Haradheere tribesmen were very superior, well led and well equipped.”

“Any idea what they were firing?”

“Of course. I have always been their main weapons dealer, although they get some ammunition from Mogadishu. Certainly I have shipped them probably fifty brand-new Russian PK machine guns, twenty pounds, heavy and very effective—650 rounds per minute.”

“Jesus,” said Harrison. “They planning to start a war or something?”

“Probably not,” said Najib. “But they seem to know precisely how to finish one. Those PKMs have enough of a bang to double as antiaircraft weapons, you know, fix-mounted on a Stepanov tripod, night-sights, anything your little heart desires.”

“You mean they can knock a goddamned aircraft out of the sky?”

“No trouble. The modernized PKM is the finest weapon around at the moment. It plainly made short work of the al-Qaeda rabble.”

“What else does Haradheere have?”

“Well, I have shipped them crates of Kalashnikov’s best,” said Najib. “All brand new. Current models: the RPK-74s, that’s a handheld, light machine gun, seventy-five-round drum magazines, selective fire. Plus the modern AK-47. I visit the factory a couple of times a year.”

“You do? Where is it?”

“City called Izhevsk, way out there in the western Urals, about 650 miles east of Moscow. Mikhail Kalashnikov still lives there.”

“Does he really?”

“Sure. He’s an old friend of mine. I stay with him when I go there. It’s got a lot of arms history. Mikhail designed his AK-47 assault rifle right there.”

“Are these modern weapons vastly superior to the old stuff?”

“In the case of the Russians, yes. They’re always improving, tweaking, redesigning. There’s no comparison. The stuff I ship to Haradheere is the best there is, rifles personally guaranteed by the maker. They also have the most modern mortars and the purest forms of dynamite.”

“Who runs the place?”

“Even I don’t know that. But money is never an issue with them. They want the best and only the best—rifles with polished wooden stocks, precision weapons. And they pay in cash. We send stuff in by helicopter. A Chinook, if necessary. Our men land it ten miles north of the town, and they pay in one-hundred-dollar bills.”

“Does all this make them a particularly dangerous opponent?”

“Absolutely. I guess Sheikh Sharif found that out the hard way.”

“I suppose so,” replied Harrison, thoughtfully. “You’d think a hardtrained army of seasoned al-Qaeda warriors, accustomed to attacking an unsuspecting foe, would have little trouble with African tribal guards.”

“You would. But I’ve been hearing about these Somali pirates. They’re something different. And you’d need to be very careful, if you were to go after them.”

“I’m beginning to realize that, Najib, a lot better than I did at the start of the day.”

“Harrison, I’ll tell you something. There’s an ops center in Haradheere. Kind of a garrison in the center of town. I’m told it has concrete walls three-feet thick. The guards are posted on the top ramparts, in all four corners.

“If it’s attacked from the town, the locals will shoot you down like a dog. If you try to approach it from the north, like al-Qaeda did the other night, they’ll spot you before you get inside the half-mile mark. Even in the pitch dark, the nearest anyone got was about three hundred yards from the north wall. And they’re all dead. You wanna know why?”

“I sure do.”

“Because I sold them the most expensive Russian night binoculars on the market. A crate of fifty. And I arranged for special night-sights to be fitted to all their heavy machine guns and some of the light ones. Latest technology.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I’ll tell you something even more impressive. They have the brand-new Russian RPG7—a rocket propelled grenade—but it really stands for
ruchnoy
, meaning handheld,
protivo-tankovyy
, antitank,
granatomyot
, grenade launcher. It’s reloadable, weighs 15.4 pounds, and fires a gunpowder-boosted missile at 377 feet per second. Leaves a light grey-blue smoke trail. You can’t miss them.”

“Do you have time to get out of the way?”

“You jest, Harrison. When that RPG7 rocket motor kicks in after thirty-three feet, it accelerates to 968 feet per second and sustains flight to 1,640 feet. I’m telling you, it’s the last word in small-rocket technology. It’s got two sets of fins that deploy in flight, big ones to maintain direction, and a smaller front set to make the damn thing rotate.”

“What’s its full range?”

“Well, it will travel two-thirds of a mile, but it’s only lethal up to a thousand feet. It has two types of missile, one designed to blow people up, one designed to knock out battlefield tanks, that’s a HEAT missile: high-explosive anti-tank. But my professional code prevents me from telling you how many the Haradheere pirates have.”

“Bullshit. How many? Or no dessert tonight.”

“Forty-eight.”

“Christ!”

“So there you have it. You want to attack these characters, go for it. But count me out.”

“I never actually counted you in, fat boy,” said Harrison, laughing.

Big Najib laughed, sampling another pastry with extra honey dip. “I’m looking forward to dinner,” he confirmed.

HARRISON DARROW’S next e-mail report was presented to Bob Birmingham at the CIA’s Langley headquarters. He read it with mounting worry—accompanied by visions of American Special Forces being put to the sword by these supersonic tribesmen with their state-of-the-art weaponry and early-warning systems.

Harrison was not a man to exaggerate, and he had unearthed a lot of information. Nonetheless Bob had never before heard of an al-Qaeda battalion being totally wiped out, even by a Western force. The list of weapons in the Haradheere arsenal was chilling, and once more the CIA chief opened up the line to Admiral Carlow.

“Look, Andy,” said Bob, “it’s my obvious duty to inform the brotherhood: Bradfield, Lancaster, Andre, and Ramshawe at NSA. Because everyone’s especially jumpy right now about Navy SEALs getting killed. I have to tell you, if they think the odds are heavily stacked against us, they’ll call off the formation of Delta Platoon today.”

“Are you planning a conference?”

“It’ll happen. And you have to be there, Andy. And you better bring the Delta CO with you. He may not want to charge the Russian guns because it might be like the friggin’ Light Brigade at Balaclava.”

ADMIRAL CARLOW, in company with Commander Mack Bedford, touched down at Andrews Air Force Base twenty-four hours later after a five-hour flight from Coronado. The US Marine helicopter awaited them, and they were flown directly to the Pentagon, where they were escorted immediately to the third-floor office of Secretary of Defense Simon Andre.

General Lancaster was there talking to Admiral Mark Bradfield, and Captain Jimmy Ramshawe was staring at some high satellite shots of the
area around the East African town of Haradheere, in which Salat’s heavyweight garrison could only just be picked out.

“Is that the most desolate-looking place you’ve ever seen?” said Simon Andre.

“Hell, no,” said Jimmy. “There’s places in Australia that make Haradheere look like Fifth Avenue. About 3,000 miles’ worth, tell you the truth.”

Bob Birmingham was the last to arrive from the CIA headquarters, eight miles up the parkway. Simon Andre led everyone into his conference room.

He began the meeting briskly. “Gentlemen, he said, “I think we all know why we are here, and we have all read Bob’s memorandum listing the kind of modern arsenal they have in this pirates’ lair. And we now know what a crushing defeat they inflicted on a small al-Qaeda army.

“I suppose one’s natural instinct might be to take the darned place off the map. But I regret to say, that’s not possible. There’d be lawyers swarming all over it if we did, claiming the pirates were unarmed, innocent, never been in trouble before, and deserving of damages big enough to pay the national debt.

“Not to mention that the unspeakable European Union is on the pirates’ side, yammering on about their human rights. A big bomb in the middle of the town is not an option these days. Because it might bankrupt the insurance companies—and us.”

Everyone nodded in assent, with obvious reluctance

“Gentlemen,” said Secretary Andre, “we made our plans quite recently. And if I might remind you, it was to wait until the pirates were on board a US ship and then send in a specialist SEAL team to recapture the vessel, knock the hell out of the pirates, and very possibly smash their stronghold in Haradheere.

“Because that course of action had the overwhelming advantage of catching them in the act, rescuing our citizens, saving lives, and making darned sure nothing else happened in the future. We all know we may have to do it again, and perhaps even again. We also know that that way we must win. Because we’ll demand a US courtroom, produce terrified American witnesses to speak against a crime against the United States, and the European court can shove their human rights in the place where the sun does not shine.”

Having spent a cloistered, intellectual, and scholarly life, Simon Andre was about four decades late with that particular cliché, and no one laughed, which was a fair measure of the serious nature of the meeting.

The drastic leftward swing of modern justice, leading to madness like letting lethal terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay, had unnerved the US armed forces and the security organizations. At the great, polished mahogany table sat perhaps the most concerned people in America.

“Since Commander Bedford will lead our troops into action,” said Andre, “perhaps he might outline for us the readiness of the SEALs to move forward and what he now feels should happen in light of this new intelligence.”

Mack Bedford frowned. “I have to admit,” he said, “the strength of the pirate arsenal is a shock. And while I don’t intend for any of my guys to get in the way of their fire, this illustrates the standard procedure for all SEAL attacks—the element of surprise, massive intimidation, and the advantage of showing up where we have no right to be. That’s what wins out in the end.”

Mack paused before adding, “Gentlemen, if I’ve got two men standing behind a pirate leader, with both barrels aimed at the back of his skull, it doesn’t much matter if he’s carrying an atom bomb. There’s no chance he’ll have time to let the thing explode. And that applies to every other weapon.

“We’re not infantry. We don’t stand fast and slug it out—although we would if we had to. Our game is the sudden devastating arrival, specifically designed to frighten and if necessary to kill whoever doesn’t immediately surrender.”