The Delta Solution (3 page)

In fact, Salat started his career in the United States, having gained his master’s degree in finance at the revered Ross Business School at the University of Michigan. The guy was a Wolverine in the sand dunes, a lawyer’s son from the Puntland Peninsula, and he was in command of the most notorious illegal operation on the planet. He was the Godfather of the Dark Continent.

Salat was wearing a grin as wide as the African equator as he watched
his twelve tribesmen leap aboard the skiffs in readiness for the one-mile dash out to the waiting
Mombassa
. These were the Somali Marines, his favorites, and they always brought home the bacon.

It seemed they had everything in their favor. They knew the ship they were seeking, and there were no visible warships in the area; no signs of that heavily armed but ineffective European Union fleet, which was supposed to offer protection in the shipping lanes.

Indeed, just that morning Salat had received a communication from a Somali mole deep inside the EU that even more laws were being drawn up to protect the human rights of the pirates.

The trembling, liberal heart of the EU was concerned as ever with those brigands who may have suffered an unhappy childhood, deprivation, or poor schooling. And their latest laws were specifically designed to discourage, if not forbid, trigger-happy navy gunners from opening fire on the raiders, even as they held crews and passengers at gunpoint all over the Indian Ocean.

Mohammed Salat loved those guys in Brussels, loved them with all of his heart. And his stock exchange had an ample budget to hire London’s best human rights lawyers, and they were confident they could get the Somali Marines out of trouble, any time, any place.

Life for him was as happy as it could be. He lived in a sixteen-room, walled compound, which included his private mansion, adjacent to his combined office, operations room, and strong room. This in turn adjoined the armory, where all of the ammunition and assault equipment was stored under permanent guard, 24/7. These three heavily constructed buildings occupied the entire north side of the compound.

Salat had full control over all of the millions and millions of dollars in his care. He had married the beautiful Miss Somaliland 2006, who was fifteen years his junior, and the golden couple was guarded day and night by a staff of armed servants, many of them ex–Somali military.

Of course, a man of his intelligence was very aware the roof could fall in on his world any time. If an international shipping company ever became seriously angry, he could quickly find himself shot, bombed, or incarcerated.

But he had made his arrangements. There was an ever-growing Swiss Bank account, an unobtrusive residence on the shores of Lake Como, and access to a private aircraft out of Mogadishu airport.

His friends in the Somali arms business owed Salat so many favors
they had lost count. Their only permanent obligation was to ensure that a private plane was ready at all times to whisk Mohammed and his lovely wife to Nairobi and then to Europe at a moment’s notice.

The pirate crews had started the Yamaha 250s with echoing roars across the water. The departing assault troops were waving, and the helmsmen were revving. On the
Mombassa
, Captain Hassan gave a couple of whoops on the ship’s klaxon to signify the operation was a go.

“
WHOMBA!
” yelled Mohammed Salat. And he clapped his hands in rhythm with the crowd, as they pressed forward down the beach. “
H-E-E-E-E-Y WHOMBA!
”

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES to the east of this joyous gathering on the Somali shore sits the US Naval Base of Diego Garcia, situated right in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The island, a large coral atoll in the Chagos Archipelago, is owned by the British. However, the US Navy leased Diego Garcia from the Crown for many years, and the island stands under two flags: the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. It has a wonderful deepwater harbor and provides regular support for even the biggest American warships, including the 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.

The place is a strategic masterpiece, around 8,000 miles from major US Navy bases on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts—Norfolk, Virginia, and San Diego, California. It is a safe haven for US submarines, with facilities to refuel and service. Its unique location makes Diego Garcia a modern gateway between West and East. Geographically, the base is situated on the Maldive Ridge, almost 1,000 miles off the southern tip of India, and 1,700 nautical miles east of the Somali coastline.

Its remoteness in this vast ocean makes it very nearly impregnable. The seas around it are swept by the most powerful radar systems in the US Navy, and their ever-watchful fighter-bombers hammer their way through azure skies above the sprawling archipelago at all hours.

The entire place is flat—no mountains and no hills. Its perfect naval airfield stands only nine feet above mean sea level. The largest bombers and freighters can land and take off with ease. The forty-mile-long island is an electronic paradise, home to the US Space Tracking and Satellite Surveillance Station. It even boasts an emergency landing facility for the space shuttle.

Diego Garcia, once a bucolic, rural outpost for a couple of thousand Hindu farmers, stands today as a somewhat secretive modern naval and military city. It is unusual for any merchant marine vessels to call here, except for those delivering US aid to stricken communities.

The US is always the first to offer the hand of friendship, always the first to recognize the scale of the problem, always the first to make big, practical decisions to bring in relief, food, shelter, fresh water, medicines, and skilled workers.

Even Somalia, the cause of so much catastrophe, so much self-inflicted heartbreak, counts on the United States for help.

Yet another crop failure, yet more starvation, sickness, and disease, had again caused a weary America, fighting back from its own financial ills, to step up to the plate for Somalia. Which was why the 18,000-ton Mars Class combat storeship
Niagara Falls
, deactivated and under civilian command, had just spent four days on the jetties at Diego Garcia being loaded to the gunwales with aid—food, tents, water, medication, and relief workers hoping to save Somali lives in the north.

It was a big ship, over forty years old and a veteran of many conflicts but capable of transporting 2,600 tons of dry stores plus 1,300 tons refrigerated. Under a full load, her 22,000-horsepower turbines would propel her through the water at a comfortable 12 knots for 10,000 miles before needing to refuel.

She was probably the most capable of the US aid ships, fully equipped with freight elevators and on-deck cranes. She took her orders from the heart of Washington, DC, from deep inside the spectacular Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, headquarters of USAID.

This building is one of the most majestic landmarks in DC, set beneath a domed rotunda with an eight-story foyer. The building is an everlasting symbol of America’s massive generosity to its neighbors near and far, allocating billions of dollars annually for global food programs under the direct guidance of the US secretary of state.

Millions of underprivileged people all over the world have reason to thank the kind and thoughtful administrators of the US aid programs. And yet, the tide of evil that so often emanates from the profound envy of the Islamic Middle East recognizes no good in anything that comes from the West.

And in Room 609, near the top of the towering edifice of that entrance
foyer in the Reagan Building, lurked a mole—a thirty-two-year-old USEDUCATED Somali named Yusuf Kalahri, a computer programmer by trade. Kalahri was on the payroll of Mohammed Salat.

His task was one-dimensional: to report the global positions, directions, and destinations of the big US aid ships as they carried out their missions of mercy around the world. This applied even when those ships were steaming toward the shores of Yusuf’s homeland, trying to help those who could no longer help themselves.

The
Niagara Falls
was carrying a multimillion-dollar cargo to thousands of destitute, still virtually homeless people in Somalia’s north. The enormous resources of the US Navy had been seconded to load her, on specific instructions from the Pentagon, via the secretaries of defense and state.

She was unarmed and bound for Mogadishu with its improved harbor facilities. But whether or not her priceless food and aid cargo ever completed the 500-mile land journey north was essentially in the hands of the gods. African gods, that is, which too often come in the form of tribal warlords, men whose grasp of normal decency hovers permanently around the zero mark.

The US aid, currently in the huge cargo holds of the
Niagara Falls
, might or might not be stolen directly off the potholed, sandy highways of this lawless land. US government officials, who are inclined to treat tribal cutthroats as if they are mild-mannered midwestern bank managers, felt, in this case, that an armed naval escort would not be required since the supply ship was on a mission of mercy, trying to help Somalia itself.

Right now she steamed west-northwest in waters 10,000 feet deep under the command of her veteran master, Captain Fred Corcoran. Fully laden,
Niagara Falls
was making around 12 knots, holding a course of three-zero-eight under clear skies and calm ocean waters. The temperature hovered near 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Every air conditioner on board was running hard as they headed up to the equator.

Since Diego Garcia stands just north of the seven-degree southern line of latitude, and Mogadishu almost directly on the two-degree northern line, the big freighter moved three degrees closer every day to the hottest temperatures on earth.

Captain Corcoran barely left the bridge and stood between his first and second mates, Charlie Wyatt and Rick Barnwell, who constantly scanned the enormous horizons for signs of maritime activity.

For forty years, Captain Corcoran had plied the world’s oceans, mostly the South Pacific and Indian Ocean cargo routes, normally taking the Red Sea-Suez-Mediterranean journey back to Europe. After a ten-year spell driving tankers, he was one of the acknowledged experts on the Indian Ocean and was growing more wary by the month of the dangers of piracy.

Reluctantly he had acquiesced to the US recommendation that no formal naval escort was required since the Somalis were unlikely to hijack a massive cargo bound for their own starving people, entirely free of charge.

Fred Corcoran was not entirely certain about that. And after his second request had been discouraged, he fired off an e-mail to the Ronald Reagan Building confirming he understood the executive point of view, and that he hoped a cruising naval warship might be close enough to come to his rescue if rescue was needed.

Without telling a soul, he had acquired an M-4 rifle—a light machine gun—and, with the kind of dexterity that comes with a lifetime spent on oceangoing ships, he smuggled it on board expressly against the advice and authority of about 10,000 European Union and US protocols and bylaws.

He stowed it in a locker on the bridge, fully loaded with a new magazine. There was no way any bunch of half-naked savages was going to take his ship without feeling a few volleys of hot lead. Fred Corcoran was a big, redheaded fellow, with an Irish temper to match his size, and he was ready to defend his vessel at all times.

Right now the
Niagara Falls
was close to 750 miles west of Diego Garcia on a hot, dry morning, with more than 1,500 fathoms beneath the keel. So far they had seen a couple of fishing boats, probably from the Inner Islands, which guard the northern approaches to the Seychelles.

But Captain Corcoran’s course would take him through lonely waters, running a couple of hundred miles northeast of the main Seychelles shallows, and then taking a straight shot across the deep Indian Ocean basin, and picking up the north-running Somali current that swirls up the Kenyan coast to Mogadishu.

They were in peaceful waters right now, more than nine hundred miles southeast of Mogadishu, and although pirate attacks out here were almost unknown a couple of years earlier, the much better financing and solid success rate of the Somali operations had made the area dangerous.

The American first and second mates, Charlie Wyatt and Rick Barnwell, while lacking the rearmament skills of their leader, were nonetheless
aware of the inherent danger in these waters and had a couple of baseball bats tucked away on the bridge.

They were both ex—US Navy petty officers who had seen combat in the second Gulf War and could be relied upon to come out swinging if the chips were really down. But pirate gangs generally came in heavy-handed, usually with a twelve-strong boarding party, all armed.

However, Charlie Wyatt in particular believed that if the skipper opened fire first, and he and Rick stood by on the ship’s rail to repel boarders with the Louisville Sluggers, someone was going to find it real tough to board the
Niagara Falls
.