FIVE
Cabrillo’s plan to capture Mohammad Didi was simple. As soon as he and his entourage entered the superstructure, armed teams would surround them with overwhelming force. The surprise alone should ensure the capture went down smooth and easy. Once they had him, they would back away from the pier and make their way out into the open ocean. None of the fishing boats had a chance at catching the disguised freighter, and Juan hadn’t seen any signs the rebels had a helicopter.
He was so confident that he wasn’t bothering to participate. Eddie Seng, who had pretended to be Captain Kwan, would lead the team. Eddie was another CIA veteran, like Cabrillo, and was one of the most proficient fighters on the Oregon. Backing him, as always, would be Franklin Lincoln. The big former SEAL had been on deck when the pirates came aboard, and they had wrongly assumed he was African. Linc was a Detroit native and about the most unflappable man Cabrillo knew.
But as Cabrillo watched the view screen, he saw his plans fly out the window.
The camera was mounted high atop one of the ship’s gantry cranes and had an unobstructed view of the dock. Moments before Didi was to step onto the boarding stairs, he paused, spoke a few words to his followers, and moved aside. Dozens of Somalis raced up the gangplank, shouting and whooping like banshees.
“Chairman!” Mark Murphy cried as the multitude swarmed the ship.
“I see it.”
“What are you going to do?” Giuseppe Farina asked.
“Give me a second.” Juan couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen. He keyed a mic button built into his chair. “Eddie, you copying this?”
“I’m watching it on a monitor down here. Looks like plan A is out. What do you suggest?”
“Stay in the staging area and out of sight until I think of something.”
Mohammad Didi finally started to climb the gangway, but already there were at least a hundred natives aboard the old ship and more were trickling up behind their leader.
Juan thought through and discarded his options. The Oregon and her crew carried enough firepower to kill every last Somali, but that was one option he didn’t even consider. The Corporation was a mercenary outfit, a for-profit security and surveillance company, but there were lines they would never cross. Indiscriminately targeting civilians was something he would never condone. Taking out the guys brandishing AKs wouldn’t weigh on Juan’s conscience too much, but there were women and children mixed with the crowd.
Eric Stone raced into the Operations Center from an entrance at its rear. He was still dressed as Duane Maryweather. “Sorry I’m late. Looks like the party’s bigger than we intended.”
He took his seat at the navigation station, tapping knuckles with Murph. The two were best friends. Stone had never gotten over being a shy, studious high school geek, despite his four years at Annapolis and six in the Navy. He dressed mostly in chinos and button-down shirts, and wore glasses rather than bother with contact lenses.
Murph, on the other hand, cultivated a surfer-punk persona that he couldn’t quite pull off. A certified genius, he had been a weapons designer for the military, which was where he’d met Eric. Both were in their late twenties. Mark usually wore black, and kept his hair a dark shaggy mess. He was in his second month of trying to grow a goatee, and it wasn’t going well.
Polar opposites in so many ways, they still managed to work as one of the best teams on the ship, and they could anticipate Cabrillo as if able to read his mind.
“Depress the—” Cabrillo started.
“—water-suppression cannons,” Murph finished. “Already on it.”
“Don’t fire until I give the order.”
“Righto.”
Juan looked over to Linda Ross. She was the Corporation’s vice president of operations. Another Navy squab, Linda had done stints on an Aegis cruiser and had worked as an assistant to the Joint Chiefs, making her equally skilled at naval combat and staff duties. She had an elfin face, with bright almond eyes and a dash of freckles across her cheeks and nose. Her hair, which changed routinely, was currently strawberry blond and cut in what she called the “Posh.” She also had a high, almost girlish voice that was incongruous with belting out combat orders. But she was as fine an officer as any of her male shipmates.
“Linda,” Cabrillo said, “I want you to monitor Didi. Don’t lose him on the internal cameras, and tell me the minute he enters the hold.”
“You got it.”
“ ’Seppe, are you satisfied that Didi came onto this ship of his own free will?”
“He’s all yours.”
Juan keyed the microphone again. “Eddie, Linc, meet me down in the Magic Shop, double time.”
Juan slipped a portable radio into a pocket and fitted headphones over his ears so he could stay on the communications grid. As he ran from the room, he asked over his shoulder for Hali Kasim to patch him in to Kevin Nixon, the head magician of the Magic Shop. Launching himself down teak-paneled stairwells rather than wait for one of the elevators, Cabrillo told the former Hollywood makeup artist what he had in mind. After that, he got in touch with Max Hanley and gave him his orders. Max grumbled about what Juan wanted to do, knowing it would make for a maintenance headache for his engineers later on, but he admitted it was a good idea.
Cabrillo reached the Magic Shop on Eddie and Linc’s heels. The room looked like a cross between a salon and a storage shed. There was a makeup counter and mirror along one wall, while the rest of the space was given over to racks of clothing, special effects gear, and all manner of props.
The two gundogs, as Max called them, wore black combat uniforms festooned with pouches for extra ammunition, combat knives, and other gear. They also carried Barrett REC7 assault rifles, a possible successor to the M16 family of weapons.
“Lose the hardware,” Cabrillo said brusquely.
Kevin bustled into the Magic Shop from one of the large store-rooms where he kept disguises. In his arms were garments called dishdashas, the long nightshirt-type clothes commonly worn in this part of the world. The cotton had once been white but had been artfully stained to appear old and worn out. He gave one to each man, and they shrugged them over their clothes. Linc looked like he was stuffed into a sausage casing, but the shirt covered everything but his combat boots.
Nixon also gave them headscarves, and as they started winding them around their skulls he applied makeup to darken Eddie’s and Juan’s skin. A perfectionist, Kevin detested doing anything slipshod, but Cabrillo’s impatience radiated off of him in waves.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Juan said. “People see what they expect to see. That’s the number one rule in disguise.”
Linda’s voice came over Juan’s microphone. “Didi is about two minutes from the main hold.”
“Too soon. We’re not ready. Is there anyone on the bridge?”
“A couple of kids are playing with the ship’s wheel.”
“Hit the foghorn and pipe it down to the hold through the speakers.”
“Why?”
“Trust me,” was all Juan said.
The horn bellowed across the mangrove swamp, startling birds to flight and sending the mongrel camp dogs cowering with their tails tucked between their legs. Inside the corridor where Mohammad Didi and his retainers were walking toward their prize, the sound was a physical assault on the senses. Clamping their hands to their heads did little to mitigate the effect.
“Good call,” Linda told the Chairman. “Didi has stopped to send one of his men back to the wheelhouse. Those kids are in for it when he gets there.”
“What’s going on everywhere else?”
“The horn hasn’t stopped people from looting. I see two women carrying the mattresses out of the captain’s cabin. Another pair are taking those hideous clown pictures. And don’t ask me why he’s bothering, but a guy is working on pulling up the toilet.”
“A throne by any other name,” Juan quipped.
Kevin had finished with their makeup by the time Didi’s lieut
enant arrived on the bridge and cuffed the two boys behind the ears. Linda disengaged the horn when the pirate reached for the controls, though he looked at the panel oddly because he hadn’t actually hit any button. He shrugged and hurried back to be with the warlord.
An armorer had arrived in the Magic Shop and handed over three Kalashnikov AK-47s. The weapons looked as battle worn as the ones the pirates carried, but like every facet of the Oregon this was a ruse. These rifles were in perfect working order. He also gave them filter masks that they tucked into the pockets of their dishdashas.
“You got us down here,” Linc said, “and got your boys looking like a couple of imitation homeys, but I don’t know the plan.”
“We couldn’t waltz up to Didi dressed like a bunch of ninjas with so many armed rebels roaming the ship. We need to get close to him without raising an alarm.”
“Hence the mufti,” Eddie surmised.
“In all the excitement,” Juan explained, “we’ll blend in and wait for our moment.”
“If Didi decides to open the drums of ammonium nitrate and discovers they’re filled with seawater, he’s going to sense a trap and hightail it off the Oregon.”
“Why do you think I’m rushing, big man? Kevin?”
Nixon stepped back and looked at his handiwork. He rummaged in a desk drawer and handed Juan and Eddie aviator-style sunglasses. Their skin tone was right, but without latex appliances there wasn’t much he could do about their features. Given enough time, he could make either of them a twin of Didi, but the addition of the shades made him satisfied. He gave a nod, and was going to pronounce his work complete, but Juan was already leading the others out of the room.
“Linda, where is Didi now?” Cabrillo asked over the radio.
“They’re just outside the hold. There are probably twelve men with him. All of them are armed to the teeth. Speaking of which, our pirate leader, Hakeem, is grinning ear to ear.”
“I bet he is,” Juan replied. “But not for long.”
He led Linc and Eddie to an unmarked door on one of the Oregon ’s elegant corridors. He opened a peephole on a two-way mirror, and when he saw the room beyond was dark he swung open the door and the three men stepped through. A pull on an overhead fixture revealed they were in a utility closet, with a mop sink, buckets, and shelves loaded with cleaning supplies. This was one of the many secret passages between the Oregon’s two sections.
It was only when Juan put his hand on the knob to open the door to the public part of the ship that he thought about the fact he was potentially entering a combat situation. A jolt of adrenaline hit him like a narcotic. The old feelings were there—fear, anxiety, and a dose of excitement, too—but the more times he faced danger, the longer it took to quell those feelings and empty his mind of distraction.
This was the moment none of the Corporation operators ever discussed or acknowledged in any way. He could imagine Linc’s and Eddie’s horror if he turned to them and asked if they were as scared as he was. This was the essence of any good soldier, the ability to admit he is afraid while having the discipline to channel it into something useful in combat.
Juan didn’t pause. He pushed open the door and stepped into the public part of the ship. Two Somali women hustled by carrying rolled-up carpet they must have pulled from one of the cabins. They didn’t give Cabrillo’s party a second glance.
The three men rushed aft until they found a stairwell leading them deeper into the freighter. There was an armed guard stationed at the foot of the stairs, and when Juan tried to pass he grabbed for his arm, saying something in Somali that Cabrillo didn’t understand.
“I need to speak with Lord Didi,” Juan said in Arabic, hoping the man knew the language.
“No. He is not to be disturbed,” the guard replied haltingly.
“Have it your way,” Juan muttered in English, and coldcocked the man with a haymaker that lifted the slightly built Somali off his feet.
Cabrillo shook out his wrist while Linc and Eddie dragged the guard under the metal scissor stairs.
“Make sure we don’t forget that guy when this is over,” Juan said, and started off toward the hold. According to Linda Ross, Mohammad Didi had been in there for three minutes so far and was still inspecting the trucks.
“What’s his mood?”
“Like a kid in a candy store.”
“Okay, I think it’s time. Tell Max to start pumping out the smoke and to get ready on those water cannons. Remember, I want people getting off, not rushing aboard to grab anything else.”
“Roger.”
Perhaps the Oregon’s single greatest hidden feature was the fact she wasn’t powered by traditional marine diesels. Instead, she employed something called magnetohydrodynamics. Magnets cooled by liquid helium stripped free electrons out of the seawater and gave the ship a near-limitless supply of electricity. This was used to power four jet pumps that shot water through a pair of directional drive tubes deep in the hull. The revolutionary propulsion system could move her eleven thousand tons through the waves at unimaginable speeds. But to maintain the illusion that she was a derelict vessel, she had smudge generators that could belch smoke from her stack to simulate poorly maintained engines.
It was this smoke that Max was redirecting into the ventilation system in the parts of the ship the Somali pirates thought they controlled.
Approaching the open door to the number three cargo hold, Juan noted soot boiling out of the ventilation grilles set into the low ceiling. It would take no more than fifteen minutes to fill the ship with the noxious gas. They could hear voices echoing from inside the hold.
“Ready?” Juan asked. Linc and Eddie nodded.
They rushed into the hold, Juan screaming, “Fire! Fire!”
Didi and his dozen-strong entourage looked over from where they were examining one of the heavy-duty pickups. “What’s all this?”
“There is a fire. Smoke,” Juan said, knowing he spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent that must sound strange to the Somali. “It is coming from everywhere.”
Didi glanced at the drums of ammonium nitrate. Juan wasn’t sure if he was thinking about taking them before flames engulfed the ship or if he was concerned they could detonate. They could smell the smoke now in the unventilated hold. A pall of it hung near the entry door. Juan looked over at Hakeem. The pirate sensed he was being studied and looked back. He had no idea what was going on behind the sunglasses Cabrillo wore, and would have drawn his pistol and fired if he knew the depths of hatred Juan had for pirates.
Linda’s voice came over the headset hidden under his turban. “Just so you know the women and young children are making for the gangplank, but not many of the soldiers seemed concerned.”
“Have you seen the flames yourself?” asked Mohammad Didi.
“Er, no, sir.”
A wary look flashed behind the strongman’s eyes. “I do not know you. What is your name?”
“Farouq, sir.”
“Where are you from?”
Juan couldn’t believe it. There was a potential fire raging on the ship, Didi had seen the smoke, and he wanted a life history.
“Sir, there isn’t time.”
“Oh, all right. Let’s see what has you so spooked. Someone probably just burned food in the galley.”
Juan motioned for Eddie to lead them back down the corridor to the stairwell. Didi walked slowly and stayed in the middle of his group, despite Juan’s urging him to rush. Eddie looked back just before stepping over the coaming of a watertight door. Cabrillo nodded.
The instant Mohammad Didi, preceded by Juan and Linc, stepped over the threshold, a steel panel concealed in the ceiling came down under hydraulic force. It happened so fast that the men trapped on the other side didn’t have time to react. One second the path was open and the next a metal barrier barred them from leaving the corridor.
The trapdoor had cut the number of guards in half, but it was still too many to take on in such close quarters.
“What’s going on
?” Didi asked no one in particular.
Hakeem remembered Malik’s and Aziz’s wild story about the mess hall being empty. He looked around with superstitious dread. There was something not right with this ship, and his heightened desire to get off had nothing to do with the possibility of a fire.
Two pirates tried unsuccessfully to lift the slab of steel, while their comrades pounded on the metal from the other side. The smoke was growing thicker.
“Leave them,” Didi shouted, also feeling that things were not what they seemed.
He led the charge up the stairs, not noticing that the guard he had posted earlier wasn’t there. What started as a fast walk turned into a jog and then an outright sprint.
This guy has the instincts of a rat, Juan thought. He slowed his pace so he could talk to the op center without attracting attention. “Linda, are you tracking us?”
“I’ve got you.”
“I can’t grab Didi with all these guards. When we break out onto the deck I want you to hit us. Got it?”
“Got it.”
They climbed up past the corridor with the nearest secret entrance and emerged on the main deck by the gangplank. The moment they set foot outside the superstructure and into the burning sun, a lance of water from a fire-suppression cannon hit Didi square in the chest. The blast sent him back into his men, dropping three of them. Linc wrapped his big arms around two who had managed to stay on their feet and crashed their heads together with a dull knock. Had he wanted to, he could have cracked their skulls, but he was satisfied when they dropped to the deck.
Hakeem ignored the torrent sloshing across his feet and stared at Juan in disbelief. The gush of seawater had scoured the makeup from his face and torn away the sunglasses to reveal his piercing blue eyes. His shout of alarm rose above the wail of women doused by the blast. He was swinging his AK to his hip when Juan slammed into him with his shoulder, driving the pirate into the ship’s rail. The impact was enough to curl the pirate’s finger around the trigger.
A juddering blast of autofire ripped from the gun. Fortunately, it passed harmlessly over the heads of the milling women and children, but it turned what had been an orderly exodus into a stampede and caught the attention of other armed men.
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