Death Ship

by Joseph Badal

  “You look confused, Grandpa.”

  Bob turned and said, “You’ve got to stop coming up behind me like that. You’ll give me a heart attack.”

  Robbie’s face flushed again. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m just kidding, Robbie.”

  “Oh, okay.” He paused and then said, “You looked like you had a problem.”

  “I need to talk with Uncle Jack at Langley. My phone and the boat’s radios aren’t options.”

  Robbie looked at his grandfather as though he were a two-year-old. “Uncle Jack won’t be in his office; it’s just eight in the morning there. But I’ll bet you could get his cell phone.”

  “That’s just it,” Bob said. “I can’t get a signal with my cell.”

  “What about a sat phone?”

  “That’s a good idea, but I can’t use the bad guys’ phone. It might be monitored by their people.”

  Robbie hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know about that, but why don’t you use the boat’s sat phone?”

  “There’s a sat phone on the Zoe Mou?”

  “Sure. All modern luxury boats have sat phones.”

  “And you know that because . . . ?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

  Bob had never been a technical whiz but he now felt stupid. “Why don’t you bring me the ship’s phone? You can get Uncle Jack on the line for me.”

  Robbie’s face lit up. “Can I tell him about the hijackers?”

  “Robbie, this isn’t a game. It’s deadly serious.”

  The boy blushed and dropped his gaze to the deck. Then he ran over to the pilothouse, talked to Nick, and returned a moment later with a satellite phone.

  “You know how to work it?” Bob asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Good.” Bob gave him Jack Cole’s cell number.

  Robbie turned on the phone, dialed in the country code and number, and waited for an answer. When Cole came on the line, Robbie offered the device to his grandfather.

  Bob didn’t take the phone. “Tell him who’s calling and advise him it’s a matter of extreme urgency.”

  A smile returned to the boy’s face. He did as Bob instructed and then handed over the phone.

  “What’s this about?” Cole asked. “I thought you were on vacation. What’s so urgent?”

  “We’re on a yacht in the Ionian about ten miles from Syracuse, Sicily. A team of armed men apparently hijacked the boat before we boarded it. They must have murdered the original crew and intended to kill us, along with our Greek captain. Two of the hijackers are dead. A third is wounded, but alive.”

  “This isn’t a joke?”

  “Jeez. Since when would I joke about something like this?”

  “Okay. Okay. What were they after?”

  “No clue.”

  “You get anything from the wounded hijacker?”

  “Nothing, except when I doused him with a bucket of water, the first words out of his mouth were in a language that sounded familiar. He lapsed into English after that.”

  “What else?”

  “He and his comrades were armed with AK-47s. They had a satellite telephone and detonators.”

  “Detonators?”

  “That’s right. Which tells me they may be planning to rendezvous with someone who will supply them with explosives.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “One other thing. The hijackers’ sat phone had been used to make two outgoing calls to the same number. The calls were placed exactly twenty-four hours apart. If the calls were status updates placed to a controller, the next call might be scheduled twenty-four hours after the last one. 11:30 p.m. Sicily time.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  Jack Cole had asked him that same question many times over the past forty plus years. And every time he’d answered the question he’d wound up neck-deep in some operation or another. “I’m retired. Ask someone else, Jack.”

  “I just want your opinion.”

  Aw, shit, Bob thought. This is how it always starts. But he had already considered the options, as though he were in charge of a counter-terrorism mission. “I would contact NSA, give them the satellite phone number and the number called and see if they picked up any calls at 11:30 p.m. yesterday and/or the day before. If the National Reconnaissance Office had a satellite over this area, they might have recorded the calls and not analyzed them yet.”

  “What are the numbers?”

  “Hold on a second.”

  Bob said to Robbie, “The hijackers brought aboard a sat phone.” He pointed outside the saloon. “I left it on the table out there. I need the number for the hijackers’ sat phone and the number they called twice.”

  Robbie ran outside the saloon, grabbed the hijackers’ sat phone, and returned. He fiddled with it and then recited both numbers to Bob, who passed them on to Cole.

  “What number should I reach you at?”

  “Aw, jeez,” Bob muttered under his breath. “Hold on a second, Jack.” Bob crooked a finger at Robbie and beckoned him over. He handed the Zoe Mou’s sat phone to Robbie. “What’s the number on this phone?”

  Robbie pulled it up, gave it to Bob, who relayed it to Cole.

  “What else do you suggest?” Cole asked.

  “I’d drop in a Special Ops team with counter-terrorism experience—DELTA or DEVGRU—and set up a command post on the 6th Fleet’s flagship, so the Vice Admiral in charge of the fleet would be available in case an important decision had to be made, like committing heavy weapons.”

  “Jeez, Bob,” Cole said. “Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “You asked my opinion, Jack. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. The owner of the boat, a guy named Nick Vangelos, hired a contract crew of three from a company named SVT Crews. They were supposed to move the boat from Tunis to Syracuse. I have a photograph of three men who were probably the original crew. The three men who took over the boat more than likely murdered them.” After a beat, Bob added, “Maybe this isn’t the only boat that was hijacked. Ask SVT if they had any other crews deployed to this area.”

  “The Pentagon will have to be consulted before a command post can be set up on a 6th Fleet ship. The politicians at the Joint Chiefs of Staff will have to ask the Secretary of Defense for permission. And he’ll have to call the Commander-in-Chief, who will dither and delay. Nothing will happen.”

  “So, send in an Operation Lone Wolf team and skip the Navy ship-bound command post. Put them on the boat we’re on. I’ll talk to the owner. You can charter the yacht out of your clandestine fund.”

  “Oh, that would look really good to the auditors. Yacht chartered in the Ionian for former CIA executive.”

  “Whoa, just a minute. I will not be part of any mission you mount here. You can charter the boat after we’re dropped off in Syracuse.”

  Cole didn’t immediately respond. Bob waited.

  “I wish you were back on the team,” Cole finally said.

  “If wishes were dollars, I’d be rich.”

  “See what you can get out of the hijacker.”

  “Jack, I think we should change the nomenclature.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Terrorist, not hijacker. The second I found those detonators things changed.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Jack Cole called Tanya Serkovic, the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. Tanya had worked for Bob Danforth and was promoted after Bob retired. They had worked on the Operation Icon investigation and the dismantling of the OPEC-sponsored terrorist effort to destroy major oil pipeline systems in the United States, among others, and were responsible for taking down the Iranian maniac, Ali Reza Naimzadeh, almost four years earlier.

  Serkovic had just had her fiftieth birthday. After her promotion, she had discarded her loose-fitting, matronly dresses, and replaced them with suits. One thing that hadn’t changed about Tanya was the fire that burned inside her. She had thick, shoulder
-length black hair—now sprinkled with gray—and exotic Slavic features, with a trace of Asian blood that showed in the shape of her mesmerizing, almond-shaped, violet-colored eyes. An expert in Eastern European languages, and also fluent in Greek and Italian, she’d witnessed the genocide committed by the Serbs against her people—the Rom—as well as against the Bosnians and Croats, fought with the Bosnian resistance, and fled to the United States when Serb hit-squads were sent to assassinate her. Although she didn’t have Bob Danforth’s field experience, she was tough, intelligent, and courageous.

  Serkovic took the long walk from her office to the DCI’s office. An electric chill seemed to have attacked the back of her head and run down her spine. Something was afoot.

  Cole’s assistant announced Serkovic and told her it was okay to go into the DCI’s office.

  Serkovic knocked on Cole’s door and then entered the spacious room. Her boss stood with his back to her and appeared to look outside at something beyond the CIA compound.

  “How’re things, Tanya?” Cole asked without turning around.

  “Everything’s fine, sir.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s about to change.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Bob Danforth just called from a boat in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Sicily. He thinks there’s a terrorist plot in the works.”

  “What’s he doing in the Ionian?”

  “Vacationing,” Cole said as he turned around and went to the chair behind his desk. He sat down and pointed at one of the two guest chairs. Tanya sat.

  “I trust Bob’s instincts. But you know as well as I do, the Commander-in-Chief is not . . . inclined to take action, until he has no choice.”

  “So we’re about to initiate action under the radar.”

  Cole smiled. “There’s a lot I like about you, Tanya. But your most endearing and valuable skill is your ability to read my mind. You understand we’ll be flapping in the wind if the media discovers what we’re up to. This will be under the Lone Wolf Department.”

  Serkovic nodded. “It won’t be the first time.”

  “Yeah, but if they find out, it might be the last.”

  She shrugged. “Then I’ll write a book about corruption in D.C.” She chuckled. “I’ve already got the title: Cowards and Traitors in High Places.”

  Cole laughed and handed her a sheet of paper with the information Bob Danforth had provided. “Contact Bob on the second sat phone number there. He might have thought of something else since I talked with him. By the way, I called the director over at NSA and asked him to see if they picked up any calls initiated with the hijackers’ sat phone. I asked him to have his people to coordinate with you.”

  Serkovic stood and turned to leave the office. Cole stopped her.

  “Tanya, Bob won’t want to get involved in this anymore than he already is. He made a sacred vow to Liz that his days of intrigue and field work were over. That would be a . . . a shame. We could use his experience and expertise. Especially since he’s on the ground where the action has already started. You should think about how you might get him to help us out.”

  Serkovic nodded and left the office. On her way back to her department, she experienced a momentary shudder of self-contempt. She’d just figured out how she would suck Bob deeper into whatever was going on in the Ionian.

  CHAPTER 16

  As a U.S. Army Brigadier General assigned to DELTA Force at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Michael Danforth spent more time than he liked in operations planning at the expense of participating in field operations. Being forty-five years old, DELTA Command felt he was too old and too valuable a resource to put at risk in the field. The fact that he was now in Afghanistan was an anomaly. But he had traveled there to get first-hand information about DELTA Force operations in the region, the effectiveness of U.S. tactics, and the local attitudes among Afghanis about American combat troops no longer being stationed in their country. He and his team were about to visit a village situated smack in the middle of Taliban country.

  Michael and a seven-man DELTA Force team took off from a clandestine air strip in Poland in a Boeing C-17 transport plane loaded with pallets of materiel, weapons, ammunition, and supplies intended for the Afghani Army. They landed at 2 a.m. at an Afghani Army special operations base in Helmand Province.

  Shortly after deplaning, Michael and his team were briefed by the Afghani Army Base Commander, his DELTA Force advisor, and the DELTA Force intel officer. An hour before dawn, Michael, his seven men, and a half-dozen Afghani Army Rangers would load into four Humvees and move toward the first village on their tour, Sultanmaneh, twenty miles from Pakistan. Sultanmaneh was large by Afghani standards, with one thousand occupants and two hundred dwellings spread over ninety acres of land on a high plateau bordered by rolling hills on three sides and a steep, rocky cliff face on the east. The village was quartered into nearly equal sections by serpentine dirt roads that bisected it north to south, and east to west. The village square was almost in the exact center of the community. The roads ran approximately a half mile from the square to the outside edges of the village.

  The team would be heavily armed, with M2 .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the roofs of the vehicles. There were also M240B machine guns mounted on swing arms positioned on the back of the Humvees. Each man would carry an enhanced M4 rifle—a shortened M16 carbine, an M9 Beretta pistol, and two M67 grenades. Each Humvee would have an M249, or Squad Automatic Weapon, a Mossberg 500 shotgun, and a Milkor Mk14 40mm Grenade Launcher.

  In reserve, two Black Hawk UH-60M gunships would hover ten minutes away from the village. They were not expected to be called upon, but the Army took no chances when a general officer was in the field.

  The sun peeked over a small hill to the east of Sultanmaneh and backlit it as the team crested a rise and got their first view of the village. The main dirt road into Sultanmaneh dipped across a ravine and then rose one hundred yards, where it leveled off for another one hundred yards until it entered the west side of the village. Stone structures sat cheek by jowl against the road at the village entrance. The village was built on a slight upward slope that ran about a mile to the foothills on its east side. The road meandered through the village, effectively splitting the town in half. There was also a dirt track that circled the village. A forty-foot-high minaret next to a mosque was located beside the village square.

  The op plan was to drive straight through town, west to east, and meet the Sultanmaneh mayor and town elders. The lead Humvee, carrying the Afghani Army Ranger team leader, one DELTA trooper, and two Afghani Rangers, drove down the steeply sloped road that crossed a ravine.

  In the front passenger seat of the second vehicle, Michael’s early warning system had vibrated from his first sight of the town. Something seemed off. His Humvee followed the lead vehicle down the slope toward the ravine when he realized what it was that bothered him. In the briefing provided by the DELTA intel officer early that morning, they had learned Sultanmaneh’s economy was based almost exclusively upon sheep herding and carpet weaving. But Michael hadn’t seen a single sheep during the team’s approach to the village. No shepherd boys. No livestock guardian dogs. In fact, there was no one on the road into the village and no one at the village entrance.

  Michael keyed his headset mic and spoke into the comnet. “This is Red Dog One. Change of plans. Do not, I repeat, do not enter the village as planned. Red Dog Two, circle around to the north and block the road there into the village. Red Dog Three will stay here and watch the west entrance directly in front of us. Four will circle around to the south and block the south entrance. One will follow Four and will then continue to the east side by the cliff face and enter the village from there. On my command, we will all move into the village. Units two and four, put one man on the ground fifty yards out in front of your vehicle.”

  While one of the Afghani Rangers in the back of Michael’s Humvee got behind the .50 caliber machine gun on the vehicle’s roof, Michael’s Afghani driver frow
ned at him. “What is happening, General?”

  “I’m playing a hunch.”

  “A hunch? What is this . . . hunch?”

  “Keep your eyes and ears open.”

  Michael’s Humvee, with one DELTA trooper and two Afghani Rangers, including the driver, passed Red Dog Four as it peeled off at the south entrance to the village. After a minute, Red Dog One curled around to the village’s east entrance and stopped.

  “Red Dog One to Red Dogs Two and Four, are your scouts out?” When the teams reported back in the affirmative, Michael answered, “Go in nice and easy.” Michael then ordered his driver to pull out. “Keep it under twenty miles an hour. Everyone watch the roofs.”

  The DELTA man on the ground fifty yards in front of the Red Dog Two Humvee, with the Afghani Ranger Team Leader on board, moved from the north and approached a turn in the road that bent sharply to the right about a quarter mile into the village. He peered around the curve, quickly backed up, and raised his arm to signal the Humvee behind him to stop. He keyed his comnet mic and whispered, “One pickup with mounted .50 caliber machine gun parked eighty yards from my position. Eight armed men on the ground and in the truck.”

  Michael used the Humvee’s radio to alert the Black Hawk gunships. “You boys want to join us here?” he said. “Our diplomatic mission appears to have become an ambush.”

  “We hear you loud and clear, Red Dog One. ETA is ten minutes.”

  Michael ordered his driver to reverse direction just as the DELTA scout from Red Dog Four, on the south side of the village, came on the comnet and warned of a truck parked in the road on his side. So much for diplomacy and east/west relations, Michael thought. “Two and Four, back out of the village to the perimeter road.”

  Michael’s Red Dog One Humvee, still backing up, was thirty yards short of the east edge of the village when the DELTA trooper in the back shouted, “Vehicle on our six!”