The Devil's Waters

by David L. Robbins

  LB mounted a ladder to the cargo deck. With Iris’s master key, he unlocked a cargo hatch and lowered himself into the utter blackness below.

  Standing on the top step, he donned his headset, spreading the sat-comm antenna, found his satellite, and reported to Torres what he’d found. Fourteen Somalis, plus their locations, all with AK-47s. He estimated five or six more somewhere in the super-structure, possibly on the bridge or guarding the hostages. She asked if he knew the location of the hostages. He had nothing.

  Torres inquired whether he was undetected. He told her about the pirate he’d taken down, dumping the body overboard. She mentioned her regret and commended him. LB told her to stow it, then added, “Ma’am.”

  He folded the antenna and closed the hatch. Behind his flashlight, he descended six levels to the bottom of the ship. Putting his boots on the hull, he worked his way forward through the maze of pillars and railings.

  Walking in the buttery glow of the flashlight, LB came to the first railcars. He glanced ahead; no light came from the forward cargo bay. He called out to Iris. She answered from high on a catwalk with her own flashlight beam.

  Chapter 25

  Past midnight, young Guleed paced the length of the pilothouse, Kalashnikov at his hip. A pair of gunmen stood at either end of the posts he padded between. A third made coffee, while a fourth stood idly beside the long dashboard.

  Yusuf in the captain’s chair leaned to Suleiman in the other seat.

  “Will you ask Guleed to stop that?”

  “No. He’s nervous. Let him walk.”

  “He’s making me nervous.”

  “Sitting still makes you nervous, cousin.”

  Herded beneath the windshield, the sailors eyed Guleed, who menaced them with his gun at each pass. Or they slumped and slept. Sad Drozdov hunkered in the center of his crew. Yusuf had not installed him again in the captain’s chair. He let the Russian pout, dealing in his own way, like Guleed, with the dragging minutes. Grisha the traitor curled alone at the end of the group. Yusuf would not bother to make this man’s captivity any more miserable than the others. His shipmates would see to that.

  Yusuf imagined arriving in Qandala at first light. As quickly as he could, he’d ferry a hundred armed Darood on board, pay them well, put Suleiman in charge. If this freighter ever saw Somali waters, money would be Yusuf’s last concern.

  He mused for a moment about how to negotiate for a ship like this, wrapped in secrets no government could openly acknowledge. Who would speak for it, who would pay? But there was going to be no ransom for the ship. Without question, Robow and his jihadi guns would be waiting on the beach to take control of it. Yusuf and his Darood would be handed Drozdov and his crew to hold and ransom, but the freighter and its secrets would go with Robow. Ah, well. Even the scraps from this hijacking would be sufficient, if Yusuf survived until morning to receive them.

  These worries gave rise to more, like thorns under Yusuf’s seat. He stood to tug on Suleiman’s khameez.

  “Walk with me.”

  Suleiman lowered his sandals to the deck. He shouldered his weapon.

  Yusuf took Guleed aside. “We’re doing no good sitting behind you. Watch them. Stay calm.”

  “Stop protecting me. What did you see in the cargo hold?”

  “Quruxsami,” Yusuf said. It is beautiful.

  Lifting his gun and a flashlight off the control panel, Yusuf surveyed the dials and radar sweep. The Valnea held at twelve knots, autopilot bearing for Qandala. The seas lay open on all sides save for the American warship steady to the west. The coast waited sixty more miles south.

  Yusuf stepped around the dash to stand in front of the crew and Drozdov. The captain showed him only the black top of his mussed hair. Drozdov would not lift his eyes from his crossed legs.

  “I have grabbed the ears of the tiger, Captain. I cannot hold on. I cannot let go.”

  Drozdov lowered his chin farther—no sympathy for Yusuf’s dilemma. Suleiman guided Yusuf away.

  They left the bridge for the starboard wing. Suleiman’s guard shifted elbows off the rail, displaying his alertness. An arid southerly breeze greeted the cousins. Yusuf tasted the red dust of Somalia. Five more hours until he set his feet on it. The first place he would walk in that dust with the sun climbing over his shoulder would be to the door of Hoodo’s grandfather.

  Suleiman led the way down the outside steps. Yusuf followed his cousin’s Kalashnikov, poked ahead as they rounded each dark corner. At each turn, they did not know if they might see some commando or flash of gunfire.

  Reaching the deck, the two stood shoulder to shoulder at the starboard rail. Across the dark water glowed the running lights of the warship. Would the raid come by sea or helicopter?

  Suleiman wondered the same, because he asked, “Will we kill the hostages?”

  “You’re the one who reads signs. You tell me.”

  To choose his words, Suleiman pulled back his lips, gold teeth without sparkle. “This ship, the moment you told me, I hated it.” He wrapped a hand over the steel rail, reading the pulse in it. “We are part of it. We will not choose. We will do what this ship demands.”

  Yusuf bent over the rail. They stood at the spot where the big guard had been shot by Guleed and tossed overboard. Yusuf pondered a bullet in the brain and the plummet. What awaited afterward? In his youth, Islam had taught Yusuf one afterlife, the Christians in England another. War in his native land had left him believing that nothing lay beyond the bullet. Wealth and piracy had caused him to stop thinking of heaven altogether. The machinations of Sheikh Robow and Iris Cherlina had brought him back around. What followed death?

  Over the moonless water, Yusuf cast his thoughts to his time in England. He recalled the strong British faith, not just in themselves as a people and in their rights to justice for their living bodies but also for their souls. They built churches on every corner to give each man his chance at redemption, to repent his faults and transgressions and so enter heaven. Yusuf wished to believe in that way, that after this ship he might live correctly and be forgiven, awarded paradise. This was better than Suleiman’s reading of telltales, his Somali belief in the unchangeable.

  Suleiman led the way to the stern. He let his weapon dangle across his chest, did not scan the sea. For the first time since stepping on board the Valnea, he appeared calm, resolved.

  On the stern they spent time with the guards there, three of Suleiman’s best, all alert men. Below, Suleiman’s skiff trailed the freighter, bounding on the white wake, still strung by rope ladders. The other two skiffs bounced alongside. Yusuf tugged on one ladder’s grappling hook. He ought to snip the lines, cut all temptation to sneak away. He told the men on the stern they would get extra shares of the ransom. They bowed to him as their chief.

  Suleiman raised an eyebrow and asked, “Waad walantahay?” Are you crazy? Suleiman asked if Deg Deg and the rest would get the same.

  Yusuf answered, “Yes.” He bit his tongue to stop from saying, Take it all.

  Chapter 26

  On board HC-130 Broadway 1

  6,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden

  On the whiteboard, Wally drew new stick figures. Three on the stern, four at the bow, four more along the starboard rail, three on port. Across the torso of each he marked a slash for a Kalashnikov.

  Doc gathered the men. Again Wally addressed them without the team intercom.

  “I just got off the horn with the PRCC. LB checked in. Here’s his recon on the targets around the main deck. Everyone’s got an AK.”

  Jamie pointed at the gap on the port rail beside the super-structure.

  “No one there.”

  Wally tapped a fingertip on the blank space, imagining what had happened there.

  “LB neutralized him. He says he wasn’t seen.”

  The engine drone in the back of the aircraft covered any mumbles from the team. Torres hadn’t relayed LB’s situation, nor had she indicated she knew anything about it. LB must have been left with no
choice. Wally set the board aside, put elbows on his knees, and waited.

  He had no doubt that the PJs could pull off this mission. The team had all the jump and combat skills needed. A Reaper was going to blow the freighter out from under them if they didn’t secure the ship fast enough—that was surely motivation. But to take life—for most of them, to return to killing after rejecting it; for Jamie and Dow, to do it for the first time—after years of training and missions, going all out to find every way to reach a threatened and isolated life, then save it. This had been Wally’s chief concern. With all their bravado, these men might yet hesitate to kill.

  The news that LB had done so ahead of them sent a wave through the team. Wally watched as what he hoped for happened. The men blinked, looked down and inward. Slowly, each raised his eyes to nod curtly at Wally, accepting the job laid out for them. The PJs took from LB’s kill the full realization that this mission would spill blood, and it gave them the license to do so themselves.

  With no more words, the unit dispersed. They spread out across the HC-130’s cargo deck, lying with heads on their jump containers or rucks. Doc moved among them, talking with each, cementing their resolve.

  Wally slouched in a mesh seat along the fuselage. With sixty minutes to the target, he stuffed in earplugs and shut his eyes.

  What if the pirates figured out one of their men was missing on the port rail? Would they think he was off in a corner getting high on qaat? That he’d fallen overboard by accident? That there was an enemy on board? What would be the pirates’ alert level when Wally and the PJs touched down?

  Wally had no way to know any of this. Everything lay ahead. He sank back into his honed instincts. He had clear orders. Ready, trusted men around him. He needed only one more thing. The green jump light.

  Chapter 27

  On board CMA CGN Valnea

  Gulf of Aden

  Iris Cherlina lit her way down the ladders, four stories. When she arrived beside LB, she squeezed his arm.

  “Did you get everything you needed?”

  “Most of it.”

  Iris sniffed, curling her nostrils. She washed her light over LB. Brown crust discolored his nails and the creases of his right hand. Iris backed away to play the beam across his smeared camo pants and shoulders.

  “More blood?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Whatever happened, I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is your team still coming?”

  LB checked his watch. “Forty more minutes. I couldn’t find the hostages.”

  “They could be anywhere. The mess room, rec hall, any of the offices, up on the bridge. A dozen places. You didn’t have time.”

  All along he’d believed the bridge was the most likely spot. He would have done it that way. Guard the nerve center of the ship and the hostages at the same time. LB couldn’t be sure, so did not make that suggestion when he spoke to Torres. Besides, Wally had made it clear: the hostages weren’t a priority. The powers behind this ship wanted her back or sunk. They were prepared for a body count in return.

  LB clicked off his flashlight. “Cut yours off. Let’s sit.”

  Iris Cherlina did not douse her light. “I’m tired of the dark.”

  “We’re safer in the dark.”

  Iris moved closer, folded her long legs near him. She flicked off her flashlight. Blackness swept in. The drumming in the ship seemed to swell.

  Iris Cherlina said, “Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “Your team. You almost dropped your radio when you found out they were coming to get you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Okay. You’re a scientist. View this like one.”

  LB clicked on his flashlight and handed it to her. He stood to loosen his BDU belt. Iris Cherlina followed his movements with the light and a surprised look.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  LB tugged down his waistband just enough to show Iris Cherlina the pair of green footprints tattooed on his buttocks.

  “I…um…” She searched for words. “I’m speechless.”

  LB hoisted his pants, redid his belt, and sat. He took back the flashlight to cut it off.

  “It’s the Jolly Green Giant’s feet. Jolly, that’s the nickname for a helicopter. Every PJ and CRO gets that tattoo.”

  “Lovely.”

  “You don’t get it. I mean every PJ and CRO gets that tattoo. And there’s one rule for all of us. You never, ever put yourself in a position to jeopardize another PJ. Right now, that’s me. Wally’s not going to let me live this down.”

  “But it’s not your fault.”

  LB laughed loudly enough to make echoes. He reeled himself in. “You have no idea how little that’s going to matter.”

  “Wally is the one I heard you call Juggler.”

  “I’ve known him a long time.”

  “Tell me about Wally.”

  “I met him fifteen years ago when he was a cadet at the academy. Kid was the best jumper at the school—he ran the student jump competition team. I was a lieutenant in the Rangers then. We were tasked to the academy one summer for a month of high-altitude jump training. Cadet First Class Wally Bloom was our instructor. Thirty, forty jumps, every one dead on. Time came to move on, but I kept thinking about how damn good he was. So I put in a request for him to jumpmaster a special-ops mission my team was making into Honduras. The commandant approved it. We jumped on O2 from eighteen thousand, stuck the LZ. I left Wally behind with a guard for a couple days. We went into the jungle, did whatever, and came back for him. We all walked out at night to a covert airfield in the bush. A blacked-out plane picked us up. We dropped him off at the academy.”

  “It sounds exciting.”

  “Yeah, Wally loved it. He wanted to do more missions, and I said sure. He missed fifteen weeks of classes. The commandant put out the word that so long as he did the work, he was excused from class. The kid read a lot of textbooks by flashlight in the back of an HC-130. He was gone so much, he got himself kicked off the jump team.”

  Iris elbowed LB. “No. You got him kicked off the jump team.”

  “Probably.”

  In the dark, Iris nudged closer. LB did not slide away but let the pressure of her shoulder lie against his.

  “Did he join the PJs because you did?”

  “Yep. Even became a Ranger like I did. With one big difference. When I decided to become a PJ, I was a captain and quit my commission. Wally wanted to stay an officer. Now he’s made captain and I’m a first sergeant.”

  “So you compete with each other.”

  “Nah.”

  In the darkness, facing an uncertain hour racing closer, with the warmth of a woman leaning against him, LB saw little use in posturing.

  “Yeah.”

  Iris slouched more of her weight against LB, as if in reward for his candor.

  “You said there was one rule for every PJ. But that’s not true. There’s two rules, aren’t there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That others may live. I saw it on your sleeve.”

  “Yeah.”

  “LB, tell me something.”

  “Sure.”

  “You said you were a captain once. You quit to become a PJ. Why did you do that? What made you change?”

  In the dark, he brushed a hand over his bristle haircut. “You don’t want to know what it’s like, taking a man’s life. If you got anything going on at all, family, friends, job, you figure the next guy does, too. I spent a lot of years killing some bad dudes in some hard-to-reach places. At first it was simple, duty and country, you know? But after a while, I started thinking of the life I’d just stopped, the whole life. Was there a gal somewhere who hoped to change him? Was there a kid waiting for his old man to come home and play catch? It goes on and on while you’re washing blood off a knife or crossing a name off a list or writing a report. I’d had enough of killing long before I quit. The
n the PJs came my way.”

  “And you jumped to the rescue.”

  LB wanted to chuckle at Iris’s pun but could not. In the humming dark, memories crept up on him like jackals in those many jungles. Surprising Iris, LB switched on the flashlight for no reason but to chase them off.

  Chapter 28

  On board HC-130 Broadway 1

  12,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden

  Sixty minutes from the drop, the HC-130 went black. A pair of green bulbs cast the only light over the PJs to preserve their night vision.

  Thirty minutes out, Wally ordered them to don chutes. The navigator came down from the flight deck to brief him and Doc on the drop zone and his DKAV release point calculation.

  Winds aloft had been measured at up to twelve thousand feet. Averages had been taken on the direction and velocity of the winds at four different altitudes, coming out to eighteen knots at 210°. The HC-130 would climb the last six thousand feet ten minutes from the target and take a final measurement. Since the LZ was a moving platform, Valnea’s speed and direction had been factored in, as well.

  The navigator spread a map for Wally and Doc. In the emerald glow of the cargo bay, he set a finger to an X drawn over the Gulf of Aden, forty-four miles north of the Somali coast. This was where the freighter, if it did not deviate, would be when the PJs popped their canopies. Another mark a quarter mile down-range showed where the LZ would be when the jumpers landed.

  The navigator ticked the release point 2,800 meters ahead of the ship, heading 215°. Doc and Wally checked his figures and agreed.

  The navigator folded the map to return to the cockpit. He shook hands, shouting, “Good luck. O2 in fifteen.” The plane would soon be climbing to jump altitude, where the team and flight crew would switch to oxygen.

  Wally strapped into his own chute. Doc conducted his jump-master inspection, tugging on every container’s belts and buckles, confirming the route and security of all lines. When he was done, Wally checked Doc’s rig.