Black Flag

by David Ricciardi

  The chief mate had also heard stories about a recent spate of disappearances. Bermuda Triangle–type theories had emerged about an area of the Indian Ocean with rogue waves that were uniquely dangerous to tankers, but the mate had as much faith in those theories as the ones he’d heard as a child about mermaids and sea monsters.

  He raised the crew radio. “Vessel protection detachment, check in.”

  He repeated the instruction, but the handheld radios were full of static too.

  All eyes in the bridge were upon him as he lowered the handset.

  “Everyone into the citadel. Now.”

  Like a good leader, he said it with a calmness he did not feel.

  Like a safe room in a home, a citadel aboard ship was an armored room from which the crew could radio for help, control the ship, and wait in safety for naval forces to dispatch the pirates. Most citadels were in the superstructure. It was close to the bridge, fresh air, and radio and satellite antennas.

  The chief mate activated the silent alarm next. It would have broadcast a distress signal from the ship’s satellite communications equipment and its radios, indicating a possible pirate incident, except that the communications gear was still a garbled mess—which left the opposite of a silent alarm as his only remaining option. He flipped up a plastic cover and pressed a large red button.

  The general alarm.

  The ship’s massive horn began to sound: seven short blasts, followed by a long one. Everyone within miles could hear it, including the pirates.

  Outside, on the starboard bridge wing, a pirate checked the door handle. It was unlocked.

  “Starboard, green,” he said over his radio.

  The team on the port side did the same with the same result.

  “Port, green.”

  “Execute, execute!” came the order.

  The pirates burst into the bridge.

  Four men were standing in the middle of the room.

  Two of them froze at the sight of the camouflaged gunmen and died where they stood, while a third crewman dove behind a bank of instruments. A pirate put three rounds into the man’s back and made sure that he never got up again.

  The chief mate was standing at the helm, watching a pile of bodies form at his feet.

  “Please don’t harm the others,” he said. “I’ll—”

  He joined the pile.

  Seven seconds after the door opened, the bridge was silent and the smell of gunpowder hung in the air.

  The point man from the port-side team shut off the general alarm.

  “I spotted six crew in here before the breach,” he said. “We only killed four.”

  “Two squirters off the bridge,” the team leader said into his radio headset. “Starboard bridge team coming down.”

  The three pirates hustled through the open doorway after the escaped crewmen. A few seconds later they heard several bursts of gunfire.

  “The two squirters are down,” said another pirate. “We located the citadel—accommodations tower, echo deck, port side.”

  The invaders had killed the six men on watch in the bridge, plus three others who’d made it to the saferoom, but a Suezmax usually sailed with at least twenty crew, plus the vessel protection detachment.

  The pirates coursed through the ship, methodically dispatching the others. Men were shot as they approached the citadel, in the control rooms, and in their berths.

  No quarter was given.

  Not a man was left alive.

  ELEVEN

  JAKE WAS STILL on eastern U.S. time and working on his laptop when Pickens woke up. The big man strolled into the kitchen wearing gym shorts and a double-extra-large T-shirt that was still a size too small. Though he hadn’t played football in twenty-three years, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his two-hundred-forty-pound frame.

  “Do you have mobile phone numbers for the contacts we’ve met?” Jake said.

  “Most of them,” Pickens said as he poured himself a cup of tea. “What’s up?”

  “I want to do some target discovery—maybe use contact chaining or voice intercepts to get us to the pirate leader—basic SIGINT analytics.”

  “‘SIGINT analytics’?” Pickens said derisively.

  Jake stopped typing and looked up.

  “It means ‘signals intelligence.’ Didn’t you intercept Morse code when you were in the OSS? This is the same idea, just for this century . . .”

  Pickens laughed. “Fine, wiseass, but human sources are where the real intel is.”

  He returned from his bedroom a few minutes later holding a sheet of paper with half a dozen phone numbers on it. His mood was decidedly cool as Jake started entering them into the computer.

  “Look, John, I know we need to work our way up, but these street thugs don’t fit the profile of our pirates.”

  “What profile is that?”

  “Funny hats, parrots, maybe a few eye patches.”

  “Peg legs?”

  “Maybe,” said Jake. “I’ll run it by headquarters. In the meantime, we should be looking for skilled operators.”

  “Skilled operators don’t advertise.”

  Jake sent the encrypted request back to headquarters.

  “I agree, but we need to use every resource available. It’s just you and me on this one.”

  “Which is another mystery,” Pickens said as he scratched the stubble on his chin. “I figured Graves would’ve sent a team down here.”

  “Ted doesn’t like to leave a big footprint.”

  “He’s a paranoid sonofabitch, isn’t he?”

  “His view is that with your contacts, and my technical skills, we should be able to find out who’s running the show.”

  “And his ass is less exposed if we end up dead.” Pickens pointed at the laptop. “I need to grab a workout. How long till the nerds get back to you?”

  “That depends on how hard it is to access the local phone company’s records.”

  * * *

  —

  IT TOOK NINETY minutes.

  Pickens was still lifting weights in the basement when the data came back.

  A regional network exploitation team working with the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations group had delivered exactly what Jake requested. He cross-referenced the mobile phone records against the dates of recent pirate attacks and discovered that each phone had been onshore and actively used during the attacks. He did the same with the commonly called numbers for each of the phones and arrived at the same conclusion.

  Not a single man they’d met with was involved in the pirate attacks.

  Jake stared blankly at the screen, hoping for a pattern to emerge from the data.

  And then he started typing.

  Furiously.

  TWELVE

  KITADRA.

  Dameer had mentioned the small coastal town moments before Pickens had knocked him out of his sandals. While the drugged-up, would-be kidnapper’s word wasn’t worth much, the coastal town loomed large in piracy lore, having been the original, and the most successful, pirate haven throughout the first generation of piracy. If street thugs were still talking about it like a city of gold, it was probably worth checking out. Pickens had arranged a meeting to get a read on the current situation.

  Kitadra was two hours north, and Jake kept the accelerator close to the floor as they drove through Mogadishu. The narrow city streets were packed with a mishmash of two-, three-, and four-wheeled vehicles, all vying for the same space at the same time.

  Right-of-way was decided by testosterone and kinetic energy.

  The driving changed once they left the city and headed north on the “highway,” two lanes of broken pavement surrounded by acres of sand and an occasional stand of bent gum trees. They passed petroleum tankers, water trucks, and freight haulers. Cars and trucks coming from the opp
osite direction thought nothing of forcing other vehicles to the shoulder to complete a pass without slowing down.

  The international media often wrote about the low value ascribed to human life in Somalia, and it was hard to fully comprehend, but a couple hours on the road proved it with mathematical precision. Lives were risked for the most insignificant advantage. Vehicle-to-vehicle gunfire was common. Burned-out wrecks littered the roadside.

  Hell is nothing to fear when you’re already there.

  Occasionally a group of vehicles would pass by at high speed. In the middle was usually an armored Land Cruiser or Range Rover with tinted windows. Two pickup trucks full of gunmen seemed to be the standard escort for a warlord or a high government official—from the average Somali’s point of view, the difference was negligible.

  The nation was facing its third famine in two decades. Starvation and illness ravaged the population despite foreign assistance that ran over $1 billion per year. Most of the aid was food, some of it was cash, and maybe 10 percent of it actually made it to the people in need. The rest was diverted to pay for armored SUVs and pickup trucks full of gunmen.

  The warlords and government officials called it a tax.

  The people called it extortion.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS NO “Welcome to Kitadra” sign at the edge of town, just sand and scrub, a few palm trees, and a dozen dilapidated homes. No bigger than ten-by-fifteen-foot rooms, the shanties had discarded cardboard covering holes in tin roofs, woven mats hanging over doorways, and rain barrels as their only source of water. With earth-moving equipment scarce and expensive, the residents had built their homes on the flattest land available, leaving them strewn about at odd angles and distances.

  Jake and Pickens arrived two hours early for their meeting to scout the area and assess security. Jake unbuckled his seat belt so it would be easier to reach the Glock 19 pistol holstered inside his waistband and the curved karambit knife sheathed under his shirt. Pickens did the same, although he could have concealed a machine gun without most people noticing.

  The standard of living seemed to improve as they reached the center of town. A busy market square held twenty or thirty people haggling over prices for clothing and food. Across the street was an elegant mosque with whitewashed walls and a robin’s egg blue roof made from handmade tiles. Up a side street was a large building with a light green roof and fake shutters painted onto its cream-colored walls.

  “That’s the Exchange,” said Pickens, pointing at the cream-colored building. “It was pirate central during the first go-around. The locals contributed anything that could be used in an attack: money, weapons, boats, themselves. It was all valued and assigned a share of any payout. Probably ten percent of the deals hit, and ransom payments took a long time to negotiate and collect, but those that paid out, paid big. Some investors made a hundred times their original investment.”

  “Like venture capital for criminals,” Jake said.

  He kept driving. They passed more homes and a few commercial buildings until they reached the outskirts of town.

  “Call it,” Jake said.

  “We should be safe as long as we lay low.”

  “Works for me.”

  Jake pulled a U-turn across the road, forcing two cars in the oncoming lane to slam on their brakes and swerve around him.

  “You’re assimilating nicely,” said Pickens. He checked his watch. The drive through town had taken all of five minutes. “We’ve still got two hours. Let’s grab some lunch.”

  The sedan attracted a few glances but little more as they crept down a dusty side street that dead-ended at a wide sand beach. As far as the eye could see, the ocean was calm and the sky was clear as the sun continued its remorseless assault.

  There were additional private homes by the beach, but they were modern and multi-story, with late-model cars and trucks parked in their driveways. On the right, surrounded by dozens of banana trees, was an outdoor restaurant. Parked outside were several tricked-out SUVs and an old pickup truck with no windshield and three mounted machine guns, one for the front seat passenger and two on pintles in the back. A group of men was standing nearby chewing qat and talking among themselves. A few had rifles slung over their shoulders.

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘recon by fire’?” asked Pickens.

  “That’s not exactly laying low. I’m the only white man within a hundred miles.”

  “That’s some racist shit right there,” Pickens said with a grin, “but I’m going to let it slide this one time. Let’s do this . . .”

  Jake wondered if that was really such a good idea, but the big man was already out of the car and past the armed men on his way into the restaurant.

  Jake cursed, press-checked his pistol, and did the same.

  The beachfront café was a collection of simple tables with a dirt floor and a palm-frond roof, but the air smelled of roasted goat and stewed camel meat—expensive delicacies in the famine-wrought country.

  Jake sat facing the road and Pickens watched the rear as a waiter approached their table. Pickens ordered in English.

  “What you want, gaal?” the waiter asked Jake.

  Jake ordered the baasto. It was a popular dish and a window into Somalia’s past—pasta from the Italian occupation seasoned with spices from the Silk Road era.

  “Not baasto. Why you here?” the waiter asked, choosing not to tiptoe around the issue of Jake’s race.

  “We’re with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,” said Pickens, and they had the credentials to prove it, although the UNHCR staff might be surprised to learn it.

  The waiter walked away.

  “I think he likes you,” said Pickens.

  “He raises a good point,” Jake said. “Why are we here, exactly?”

  Pickens leaned across the table. “There’s money here, Jake. A lot of it. The market square was packed with people buying actual food in a country that’s starving, this restaurant is almost full, and some of those SUVs outside would cost $100,000 back in the States. That’s more than most Somali families will earn in a lifetime. There’s only one way people can earn that kind of cash in this country, especially in a small coastal town. We’re getting close.”

  The food took forever to come out, which was odd because it appeared to be precooked, in large bowls, within plain sight of the table. Other parties arrived and were quickly served. The waiter passed by Jake and Pickens several times but said nothing. The restaurant filled up and became noisy.

  “The waiter is setting us up,” Jake said.

  “We’ve still got ninety minutes to kill before the meet.”

  “Let’s spend it somewhere else.”

  The two Americans slipped out of the restaurant and returned to their car. Pickens took the wheel and drove through town, constantly checking his mirrors for a tail. A handful of people were walking to and from the market with pushcarts and baskets, but the two Americans were clean. They soon found themselves in front of the cream-colored building with the green roof. It was empty.

  “Let’s check it out,” said Jake.

  Pickens frowned.

  “C’mon, John. Maybe you’re right about Kitadra. Consider this background for our investigation.”

  “All right,” said Pickens, “but just for the record, this is going to end poorly.”

  THIRTEEN

  THEY PARKED NEXT to a rusty car that looked as if it hadn’t moved in decades.

  Jake stepped out of the Daihatsu hatchback. He was deeply tanned, and wearing long pants and a long-sleeve shirt, but everyone on the street was staring at the white man before his first foot hit the ground.

  Like many buildings in tropical Somalia, the cream-colored Exchange had no windows or doors, just a wide entrance in front and window-sized openings on the other three walls. The interior was a single open
room, maybe fifty feet by thirty feet, with a dusting of windblown sand over its tile floor and a raised dais on the far side. Affixed to the walls were relics from past pirate missions. The provenance of each had been inscribed on the wall next to it, but the Somali script was faded and illegible.

  Pickens walked between a ship’s bell and a porthole window with a bullet hole in it, while Jake wandered to the back and stepped onto the dais. There were two window-sized openings on the far wall. Hung above them was a weather-beaten ladder that was missing a leg. The soft wood had been bleached white by years of exposure to salt spray and the sun.

  Jake wondered how many pirates had climbed its rungs over the years and how many seafarers had died because of it. Though the building had the feel of a museum, Somali pirates had killed and tortured countless men, funded criminal and terrorist organizations, and perpetuated the civil war that had destroyed their country.

  Jake was curious, but he wasn’t an admirer.

  “Hey, Pick, can you read this?” he said.

  The inscription under the ladder was in better condition than the others. The big man joined Jake on the dais and grimaced.

  “It’s something about the building being a gift of Allah’s will, the broken ladder, and a lion.”

  “No offense,” Jake said, “but I think you might need to go back to language training.”

  “I don’t know the dialect,” Pickens protested with a laugh. “Let’s head back to town and see what shakes loose.”

  Jake looked to the street. “Whatever it is, it’s about to start shaking.”

  A Mitsubishi SUV with two-tone paint and a cracked windshield skidded to a halt in front of the building. Four men climbed out. They were dressed in frayed pants, faded shirts, and well-worn sandals. One wore a safari jacket and a pair of knockoff Ray-Bans. All were brandishing weapons.