The Delta Solution (57 page)

The entire force, once commanded by Commodore Zeppi, regrouped outside their soccer field. Once more they began to advance up the central street toward the garrison.

Chief Charlton had his SEAL team inside the battered walls with an eight-man guard patrol taking up position at the gateway. Commander Bedford came out to meet him and they deployed the troops sparingly while the boss spoke again to RV-1, instructing them to hold the helos for fifteen minutes.

He then returned to the house while six men searched the next-door building, the one that held the offices, ops center, and strong room. By this time Mohammed Salat had been handcuffed along with two of his main henchmen. The three women in the house, one of them Salat’s wife, were being held under lock and key in the basement.

Mack Bedford told the pirate financier that he wanted all cash held in the garrison located because it had been taken illegally following numerous acts of piracy. Salat himself was being transferred immediately, with his executives, to the US interrogation camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

They had discovered a massive vault inside the strong room, and Mack was perfectly happy to blow the sonofabitch in half. But he hoped for an easier way. And for the third time he asked Salat to open it. Salat just shook his head, and Mack Bedford kicked him sharply in the balls to see if that might change his mind.

Salat’s eyes almost popped out of his head and he fell writhing onto the floor, grasping his wedding equipment, which he plainly would not need for some time. Slowly he struggled to his feet, and with a look of utter loathing on his face, he led the American commander to a total of $78 million dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills, neatly packed and stacked in mailbags.

Salat spun the combination lock, the door swung open, and Mack sent four SEALs in to start bringing them outside so they’d be ready for the helicopters. Then he hit his comms receiver and told the guys out on RV-1 to whistle up all four Black Hawks from the carrier right away.

At which point the rag-tag-and-bobtail civilian rabble, still heavily
armed and still numbering well over one hundred, was approaching the rough ground in front of the main entrance to the compound. Again they opened fire, aiming their Kalashnikovs every which way and rushing forward with shouts and taunts.

The SEAL guard patrol ducked back inside and returned fire. The oncoming army hit the ground and then opened up with their heavy machine gun.

“
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL’S HAPPENING NOW?!
” bellowed Mack, who could see none of the action.

Someone yelled back, “It’s Salat’s second army, about a hundred strong! They got us pinned down at the gateway. But they’re not advancing.”

Mack grabbed the phone and told RV-1 to instruct the Black Hawks to come in to the compound from the south, two at a time, in battle mode.

Meanwhile out at the gate there was heavy gunfire, most of it from the tribesmen. The SEALs steadily aimed and fired, more slowly, but more deadly. Essentially the armed citizens of Haradheere were unable to stand up, never mind move forward.

With both sides pinned down, Mack Bedford spoke again to RV-1, ordering them to contact the Black Hawk pilots once more and to ensure they were in full attack mode when they came in, the first two to fly over the beach and land in the compound. Not firing, just making a ton of noise.

For ten more minutes the stalemate at the gate continued because Commander Bedford did not wish to wipe out half the population of the little town. He had what he came for and now he wanted to leave with his prizes intact, with no one much the wiser about who had smashed the Somali Marines.

Everyone heard the helos coming in over the water, but just before they reached the shore, both pilots switched on the heavy warning gear—searchlights, arc lights, and God knows what else. Then they hit the frighteners on the lead helo—two sirens that howled into the night like four police cruisers.

The second Black Hawk, fitted with two loudspeakers right below the fuselage, unleashed Wagner’s
Ride of the Valkyries
at top decibel level. The palm trees swayed. The hot sand blew into a swirling cloud. And more than one hundred Haradheere residents nearly died of fright.

The noise was shattering as the Black Hawks came slowly down toward the garrison, sirens and music blaring. It very nearly drowned out the thunderous noise of the rotors. No one could hear anything above the din, except perhaps Mack Bedford’s laughing as people covered their ears.

Outside, lying in the dust, possibly praying to Allah or some lesser tribal idol, the terrified people of Haradheere cut and ran for their lives, dropping rifles, shoes, and any other encumbrances, and fleeing across the rough ground, running through the fallen warriors for the cover of their homes.

Commander Bedford rushed for the helicopters and signalled for the SEALs to start loading the sacks into the ample space behind the cockpit. The first one took off immediately, stuffed with cash and carrying the two wounded SEALs, and headed straight back to the carrier.

The second one waited for the SEALs to load Salat and his two cohorts, plus two SEAL guards, and then rose into the air and headed back to the
Truman
.

By this time, the other two Black Hawks were on their way in and, not having been given further instructions, landed in the courtyard.

With the principal captives and all the money on its way out, Commander Bedford ordered twenty more SEALs to embark the helos and head back to base. At which point he began a general cleanup before the first two Black Hawks were back again.

He brought the two RV-1 guys in and thanked them for their efforts. He then toured the compound until he found the armory and ordered the complete destruction of the place and everything in it. Out in the street he found an SUV with the keys in the ignition and ordered a couple of the guys to take him down to the beach and to bring grenades.

There he found several fishing boats, including the
Mombassa
, which he knew was the name of the mother ship that had attacked the
Queen Beatrix
. There were two other sizeable crafts, which he guessed had been used in pirate operations, and he blew up all three of them.

“Guess these guys can still go fishing,” he muttered, “but not for expensive oil tankers and US cruise ships.”

They drove him back to the compound just as the two Black Hawks showed up again. Mack counted out the rest of the SEALs to ensure that everyone was present and then he ordered the final evacuation. And leaving
behind a scene of impossible destruction and general carnage, he ordered the helos straight back to the carrier.

In just a couple of days Delta Platoon had brought an end to piracy in the southern part of Somalia. No other gangs of brigands would push off from that benighted Haradheere beach to rob, steal, and petrify seafarers and tourists.

Haradheere was finished. And there was a discernable sense of fear and unrest throughout southern Somalia. If Uncle Sam was capable of smashing into an operation as well-financed, well-armed, and well-organized as Salat’s most certainly had been, then Uncle Sam could come blasting into the attack against anyone.

Politically it created a hot potato. Russia immediately declared that any Russian ship, naval or civilian, was perfectly at liberty to strike back against piracy any way it wished. Moscow stated that pirates, when captured, would be transported back to Russia, where they would face life sentences, probably to be served in Siberia.

The Brits were plainly ashamed of themselves and, with equal urgency, proposed a new set of laws concerning British citizens attacked by pirates.

Even Westminster, battered by thirteen years of half-crazed, left-wing doctrine, muscled up under a new and more right-wing government. And in the mother of Parliaments, the squeals of the liberal European Union would no longer be heeded in the matter of piracy.

The Royal Navy was informed that henceforth they must be prepared to attack enemies of the people, precisely as citizens of the UK expected. And fraudulent lawsuits citing the human rights of the international villains of the high seas would be dismissed as derisive.

Uncle Sam had shown the way, and Mack Bedford had taken the lead, ripping a line out of his all-time favorite country-and-western song, Kenny Rogers’s “Coward of the County” . . .
Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man
.

U
NDER THE PERMANENTLY CLASSIFIED RULES OF US MILITARY Black Operations, the Pentagon never released details of the two naval actions off the Maldives and on the Somali mainland. In response to media inquiries, the press office stonewalled with a slightly mischievous bewilderment.

The mystery went on for several weeks, if not months, even when passengers from the
Ocean Princess
regaled their local newspapers with stories of the sensational smash-and-grab raid of the Navy SEALs on that sunlit late afternoon in the One and a Half Degree Channel.

The shipping companies were reluctant to disclose the story of the rescue. Thus nothing was ever confirmed or denied. And every senior naval officer, when questioned, replied in the same monotone, “Sorry. Can’t help. No one’s told me anything about it. Sounds pretty unlikely to me.”

It was a frustrating time for the media, seething with the certain knowledge that something big had broken out but equally certain that no one was ever going to tell them anything official.

And there were no hard clues. The CIA never even prosecuted Peter Kilimo for his alleged role in the Somali pirate operation.

There was not a solid truth upon which to base a major national story. Nothing confirmed. Nothing in writing except for one short official letter from the US Navy. It was a private letter. And would remain private since SEALs are permitted no public recognition of their work. But this letter had a special glory of its own.

The envelope was stamped with the seal of the United States of America and was addressed in big, red letters:

Copyright © 2011 by Patrick Robinson

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robinson, Patrick, 1939–

The Delta solution : an international thriller / Patrick Robinson. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-593-15663-3

(e-book) 1. Pirates—Somalia—Fiction. 2. Hijacking of ships—Fiction.

3. United States. Navy. SEALs—Fiction. 4. Special operations

(Military science)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6068.O1959D45 2011

823’.914—dc22

2010044323

 

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