The Delta Solution (29 page)

“Then you would not be advising that we pull back with the formation of Delta Platoon?” asked General Lancaster. “Despite everything we now know of their considerable strength?”

“Pull back? Hell, no. We haven’t even got started yet.”

“How about those heavy machine guns?” asked Andre. “The ones Bob’s man says can be converted to antiaircraft, or those handheld Russian missiles that can blow straight through a battlefield tank. Are you in any way, commander, concerned by those?”

“Negative,” snapped Mack. “The machine guns are big and cumbersome, slow to aim. My guys will blow the brains out of ten pirate gunners before they can find the trigger.”

This brought a smile to the faces of both Admiral Bradfield and General
Lancaster. “Those rockets might be a pain in the ass,” said Zack. “I mean if they got one away as you made your approach. By sea, I mean.”

“Sir,” said Mack, “if they have a heavy guard on duty, we’ll come in underwater. We are the SEALs. And I don’t recall any operation I’ve ever been on when anyone’s found us before we were good and ready to be found.”

“Do I not recall a sneak missile attack on four of our tanks along the Euphrates a year ago?” asked the general. “Several of our top men were killed.”

Mack’s face clouded. “Sir, I was not in command at that stage of the mission,” he said. “But I was there before they fired a second time. And that took them about ten minutes to get the birds away. You have my assurance these pirates will not be given that much leeway.”

“Nonetheless, a captured ship becomes a fortified garrison,” replied General Lancaster. “Hard to get at without loss of life, which we are all trying to avoid.”

“I understand, sir,” replied the SEAL commander. “And I do accept that in certain rare circumstances a ship may be too well guarded for any approach. In which case we’ll come at it by air. Two helos. A big one to land the guys. A gunship to provide intense covering fire.”

“What about those antiaircraft machine guns?” suggested General Lancaster.

“Sir, if we have to switch to the air, we’ll come at them so fast, so hard, and so unexpected, they’ll never know what hit them.”

“Hmm,” said the general. “And if that’s successful, do you intend to switch the attack immediately to Haradheere and complete the mission with a destruction of the pirate garrison?”

“Sir, I don’t just want to kick his sorry ass into the Indian Ocean. I want the heel of my boot rammed across his throat. Just so he understands who he’s fucking with.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs leaned back and smiled. Then he slowly clapped, until all of the others joined in. “I’ve waited a while to hear some real fighting talk on this subject,” said General Lancaster. “Sounded good, commander. Sounded real good.”

“Mack,” said Mark Bradfield, “what do you see as the single biggest problem with operations like these?”

“Distance, sir, always distance. It seems there is a pattern emerging.
Pirates are going for targets farther and farther away from shore. Three years ago, they seemed restricted, never going near a foreign ship outside national waters, maybe a dozen miles off the coast.

“And ships were deliberately staying clear of all inshore waters. At that point, there were two things that could have happened: One, the pirates said, ‘We can’t operate out there, it’s too far, and we’ll have to find a new way to make a living.’ Or two, they said, ‘We’ll have to find a way to operate out in deep water.’

“They took the second option. Which is why the last three significant pirate hits, the Greek tanker, the
Niagara Falls
, and the
Queen Beatrix
were all attacked 800 to 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa. And a good, long way from Diego Garcia.”

“I guess they used the ransom cash to improve their boats,” said Admiral Carlow. “And I do think we need to examine the possibility of leaks. Someone must be tipping them off about certain ships. Because these villains keep showing up in the middle of absolutely nowhere.”

“If you have enough bread, you can buy anything,” said Jimmy Ramshawe. “And these guys are banking millions of dollars at a time. Everyone pays up because it’s a hundred times quicker and cheaper than fighting and arguing. And it seems to me that the most efficient pirate asset is some $75,000-a-year shipping clerk, either here or in Rotterdam or one of the other tanker ports.”

“I’d have to agree,” interjected Mack Bedford. “Which brings us right back to where we were yesterday, and last week, and last month. We need to strike at them, take out the ringleaders, knock down their HQ, take their cash, and humiliate them.

“But most of all, we need to frighten them, and others like them. I know there’s a theory about reasoning and doing deals, but sometimes you need a big stick—that’s what will scare the living daylights out of them and get them to stop what they’re doing, because it’s just not worth it.”

“And you’re confident that can be done?” asked General Lancaster.

“Certainly, sir,” replied Mack. “We can do it. But as I said, our biggest problem is distance. We need to come in and attack as soon as possible. And our main SEAL bases in the area are in Bahrain and Diego Garcia. And they’re 3,000 miles apart. The pirates tend to strike somewhere in the middle of that line. And whether we come in by air or by sea, the operation requires a warship. That’s our problem.”

General Lancaster pondered the subject and then said quietly, “Mack, have you forgotten about Djibouti?”

“No, sir. But that place is always kinda secret. In my game, classified is classified. We don’t even mention where we’re going to our wives. Djibouti? Well, that’s kinda like Casablanca in World War II. We know it’s there, and we understand that God knows what happens there. But we don’t say it.”

General Lancaster chuckled. “Gentlemen, it is inconceivable to me that Delta Platoon will work out of any other base. We have a major presence in Djibouti, right there where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. It’s home to our Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa Command.”

“According to my records,” said Simon Andre, punching the keys of his laptop, “there are 2,000 US troops there, and the area is under the command of the United States Navy—used to be the Middle East Command Post, Second Marine Division. Now it’s the US Naval Expeditionary Base.”

“That’s the place,” replied General Lancaster. “And, somewhat quietly for a change, we seem to have the place sorted out. It now has the only deepwater seaport in the area and an international airport. We share that with civilian airlines, and our camp’s right there, close to the runways. And they’re big enough to land a Boeing 747. It’s a big place now, five hundred acres.”

“Can you get a decent sized warship in there?” asked Captain Ramshawe.

“Hell, yes,” said Mark Bradfield. “When we first took over, we ran it off
Mount Whitney
, that command ship down in Norfolk. She weighs 20,000 tons full-load, and she’s more than six hundred feet long, bigger than a destroyer. We can get into Djibouti with damn near anything.”

“Where did we get the place?” asked Jimmy.

“From the French and the Djibouti government,” said Simon Andre. “Right after 9/11, President Bush wanted a secret ops center in the Middle East, and he pulled off a deal with the French military to share their old Foreign Legion base, Camp Lemonier.”

“Did the French own the country before?” asked Captain Ramshawe.

“Oh, sure,” said Andre. “It used to be French Somaliland. Anyway, for all intents and purposes it’s American now. And it’s a strategic masterpiece, stands right between Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west, and Somalia to the southeast. Right across the water is Yemen. And we have very good relations with the Djibouti government. Can’t beat that.”

“Can’t beat that,” agreed General Lancaster. “Mack, will that make life any easier for you?”

“Certainly. If we’re trying to get out to a ship from Bahrain, well, this would knock off more than 1,000 miles from the journey, minimum. That’s important time. Probably critical.”

Andre stared down at his map. “Closer to 1,200, Mack.”

“That’s even more important,” replied the SEAL commander. “The trick is to be trained and ready to go—at a minute’s notice. And I’m sure we can achieve that. Just need someone to start the engines and get us moving.”

“I can arrange standard procedures in the seaport,” said CNO Bradfield. “We want the entire SEAL inventory ready to load and leave. Boats and equipment. Pack down and gone. Also I think we’ll keep a couple of destroyers offshore. The goddamned pirates are staging major hits every month or so. We just need to regard the whole area as a war zone and act accordingly.”

“How long before you can deploy?” asked Mark Bradfield.

“Three weeks,” replied Mack. “I have an excellent group of guys. I’d say we deploy for Djibouti twenty-four days from right now.”

“Sounds good,” said the general. “I just hope they don’t strike again before that.”

“If they do, we’ll take ’em next time,” said Mack. “But we will take them. That I promise.”

There was a smile on the face of General Zack Lancaster as he asked Simon Andre to adjourn the meeting for lunch.

Before he did so, Andre mentioned, “Since the Brits might help us, I asked their Ambassador, Sir Archie Compton, to join us. He’ll mark our card. Better if someone else comes with us. We might even escape the universal accusation of American bullying.”

General Lancaster added, “I wouldn’t be too hopeful. The Brits had a shocking decline under that last left-wing government. Also they’re broke. Unsurprisingly.”

A tall, grey-haired, distinguished-looking man, Sir Archie greeted the Chairman, who briefly outlined the purpose of the discussion. The piracy. The necessity of swift US action before it all got out of hand.

“Archie, my old buddy,” said the General, “Do you think Great Britain would join us, I mean perhaps a couple of warships, a few SAS men, perhaps a battalion of Royal Marines?”

“I wonder, gentlemen,” replied the ambassador, “If you remember March 2007, when a boatload of armed Royal Marines, and Navy personnel from the guided-missile frigate
HMS Cornwall
, were captured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and taken into captivity without firing a shot at their enemy. It was a total disgrace.”

For a few moments, no one spoke. Then Sir Archie said quietly, “Do you really want
them
to assist you, against a heavily armed Somali pirates? I may as well ask you.”

No one said anything.

“And how about that British couple kidnapped off their yacht by Haradheere pirates?” said Admiral Bradfield. “Right in front of a Royal Navy ship.”

“Correct,” said Sir Archie. “The crew on board
Wave Knight
witnessed the action, and did nothing. They stood by, only fifty feet away, while the British couple were transferred to the pirate ship.

“Gentlemen, there were twenty-five Royal Navy sailors, with access to rifles, sub-machine guns, and pistols in the
Wave Knight
. And someone ordered them not to open fire!”

“Unbelievable,” said General Lancaster. “And they scarcely covered themselves in glory in Basra . . . withdrew from the battlefield, in the face of the enemy. And when we finally poured thousands of US troops into the area to reclaim it alongside the Iraqi army, the British Army was not even invited to take part. They suffered a complete humiliation.”

ADMIRAL CARLOW and Commander Bedford flew back to Coronado that afternoon. They travelled mostly in silence, which made it pretty quiet on the Navy P-3C jet since they were the only passengers. Each of them had a lot on his mind.

Andy Carlow understood the danger of the forthcoming mission, and he, perhaps more than everyone else who had attended the meetings at the Pentagon, was unnerved by the sheer scale of the pirates’ arsenal.

He dozed fitfully, and when he jolted awake, he was always thinking the same thing:
RPG7s, armor-piercing, tank-busting, antiaircraft guns, big, new, night sights, Jesus Christ!
Unthinkable thoughts surged through his mind:
What if the guys all got killed? What if Mack died in the action? What if it was the biggest SEAL disaster since June 2005 in the Hindu
Bush? There would be a media uproar, and he would undoubtedly get the blame.

Carlow didn’t give a damn about that. It was only that he would have to live with it. The admiral knew the surviving SEAL from the Hindu Bush, Marcus Luttrell, one of the all-time great SEAL warriors. Carlow knew and admired him, but there was a sadness in Marcus’s eyes that did not go away.

In the front of Luttrell’s book,
Lone Survivor
, he wrote: “There is no waking hour when I do not remember them all with the deepest affection and the most profound, heartbreaking sadness.”

Andy understood that would be his fate as well, if anything happened to the guys. And, let’s face it, under his command, they were headed into the jaws of death against a brilliantly armed enemy.