The Socotra Incident

by Richard Fox

  “Okay, the guy ain’t going anywhere,” Natalie said.

  “Stand by, Natalie. We’re—”

  An e-mail popped up on Tony’s screen.

  “Thirty-six million!”

  “Irene.”

  A clatter of keys later, Irene smiled. Their offer of $37 million came across the screen.

  “Two seconds to spare.” Irene touched her arm with a finger, withdrew it quickly, and blew on it as if she’d touched something hot.

  “You know we only had to beat him by one dollar, not a million,” Shannon said.

  “Two seconds! I panicked,” Irene said.

  “The guy’s cell phone is ringing? What do I do now?” Natalie said.

  The Mossad man lay face down on the bed, his hands bound over the small of his back with a silk tie. His ankles were tied together and pulled into the air. A pair of belts connected his bound extremities, and another tie was wrapped around his head and stuffed into his mouth like a gag. Summers working on her uncle’s ranch had taught her how to hog-tie animals big and small. She’d never thought that skill would ever be useful outside of a barn, but here she was.

  Natalie bent over and looked the Mossad man in his terrified eyes. Blood seeped from a cut on his forehead where he’d collided with the wall.

  “I’m taking this,” Natalie said as she brandished the man’s wallet in front of his face. He mumbled something through his gag.

  She looked the man in the eye again.

  “I take no pleasure in this,” she said and tugged the man’s pants down past his thighs, exposing his bare buttocks.

  Natalie left her room with her carry-on in tow, the man’s wallet in hand, and in her pocketbook all the cash she’d found squirreled away in his suitcase. Shannon insisted the mess look like a robbery gone wrong. High-end call girls had a tendency to rip off their Johns, and that’s exactly what it would look like when hotel security arrived to investigate the anonymous tip that would come after Natalie was out of danger.

  She felt her limbs go leaden as the adrenaline high melted away. An ache in her elbow and a sprained toe from the inexpertly placed kick to his groin caressed her with a promise of lasting pain.

  She pushed the call button to the elevator with cracked nails and trembling fingers.

  The last time she’d come down from an adrenaline high like this she’d been in Iraq with Ritter. The embarrassment of losing control resurfaced, and her face flushed.

  “Come on,” she said as she pushed the button again. She took the cash and credit cards from the wallet and tossed the leather billfold into the trash can adjacent to the elevator doors.

  “Congratulations, Natalie. You just bought a cruise missile,” Shannon said.

  The doors opened with a ding, and Natalie stepped inside. She turned around, waiting for the door to the man’s room to burst open and for him to run out with the gun she knew she’d missed during the search of his room.

  The doors closed without incident. Natalie pressed a hand to her face and took a ragged breath.

  Devereaux’s SEALs would assault the Opongsan from Ospreys, which was the cherry on the top of Ritter’s otherwise-miserable day. He and Mike stood at the end of a line of SEALs, ready to quickly rope from the rear hatch of the Osprey to the deck of the Opongsan.

  Ritter shifted the weight of the body armor, ammo pouches, and the SCAR battle rifle attached to his chest. He and Mike wore the same gear as the rest of the SEALs, no matter how unfamiliar they were with it. As part of the Caliban Program, they fought dressed as their enemy to blend in with their surroundings; the attire was rarely more than civilian clothes and a pistol. The same principle applied here.

  He looked out the open side hatch and saw wave tops undulating in the moonlight, the smell of salty air betraying just how low to the deck the pilots were flying. The team medic had plenty of Dramamine, and Ritter’s pride had hit its limit during the long flight from Italy.

  The sea vanished as the Osprey banked hard and climbed into the air. Ritter’s arm shot out and steadied himself against the maneuver that tilted the aircraft almost on its side. The rest of the operators and Mike hardly flinched.

  The SEALs were eerily silent during the entire flight from the Reagan to the Opongsan. They’d seethed with a tense energy the whole trip, like racehorses at the gate.

  A red light spun to life over the aft hatch, and the Osprey leveled out. The hatch whined open with painful slowness.

  A SEAL with a sniper rifle stood at the starboard side of the hatch, scanning the deck of the Opongsan as it came into view through his scope. A SEAL built like a fire truck stood next to him; a rope as thick as Ritter’s wrists was coiled in his arms and attached to a hook in the roof of the Osprey. He threw the rope into the night air, coiled his arms and legs around it, and slid away.

  Ritter’s heart pounded so hard that he swore his gear rattled as his turn approached. Just hold on for dear life and let gravity do the work, he thought. He’d trained for this kind of air assault for most of a day…three years ago at the Fort Campbell air-assault course.

  Mike, right in front of him, slid down the rope like he’d practiced the maneuver every time he got out of bed.

  The rope swung back toward Ritter, and he reached for it with both hands. His gloved fingers wrapped around the rope, and he clenched it for all he was worth. As he pulled the rope toward him and stepped forward to snake his legs around the rope, the Osprey rocked with a sudden burst of turbulence.

  A bolt of terror coursed through Ritter’s body as the Osprey jerked away from beneath his feet and he swung into the darkness. He twirled around the rope, the heat friction burning through his gloves. He saw nothing but darkness and running lights from the Osprey whirling around him as voices yelled from the radio at his ear.

  He got one leg coiled around the rope and slammed his other boot on top of the rope to lock him in place. He looked down and saw nothing but water beneath him and the ship ten feet from the dangling end of the rope.

  He looked up at the Osprey and the SEAL with the sniper rifle waving at him frantically. What was he supposed to do? Climb up the rope with an extra fifty pounds of gear in gravity’s favor?

  Forearms trembled against the rope, and Ritter wasn’t sure whether exhaustion or adrenaline was causing the tremors.

  The loose end of the rope crept closer to the ship. A SEAL reached over the railing and hauled the rope onto the deck. Ritter loosened his grip and slid down very slowly. His body rebelled at the idea of abandoning the little safety the rope offered. He looked up again at the SEAL in the Osprey, who had his hands on the latch holding the rope to the aircraft.

  The son of a bitch was about to release the rope and drop him to the deck.

  Ritter’s grip lessened, and his decent accelerated. Heat burned against his thighs and boot as he slid against the rope. His feet slammed into the deck, and he lost his grip. The rest of his body crashed against the rusty steel with the grace of a sack of potatoes. He looked down at his body and found his leg still entwined with the rope; then he saw the rope’s hook fall past the deck on its way into the ocean.

  Ritter tried to kick his way free from the rope as the slack length uncoiled and hissed over the railing to follow the hook on its journey to the ocean’s depths.

  The boot slammed down on the rope just as it went taut against Ritter leg. His savior reached down and separated Ritter from the weighted line. The loose rope slithered over the deck, a kraken’s tentacle that wouldn’t claim anyone this day.

  The SEAL, the fire truck who’d been the first down the rope and had saved Ritter, grabbed Ritter’s vest with both hands and hauled Ritter to his feet. A hand, the size of a dinner plate, smacked against Ritter’s helmet.

  “You okay?” the SEAL yelled over the sound of the retreating Osprey.

  Ritter nodded as he reset his helmet. The SEAL yanked him forward and half pulled, half guided him toward an open hatch. The ship was silent but for the crash of waves against the hull as SEAL
s swarmed over the deck. The plan was for half the assault force to take the bridge; the rest to secure the engine room, seemed to be proceeding without opposition.

  Ritter stepped into the hatchway and found Mike and a SEAL setting up a satellite radio. The communications man looked up at Ritter.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?” Ritter answered.

  Mike shook his head and grabbed the intercom box dummy corded to Ritter’s chest rig. A flip of a switch later, and static burst into Ritter’s ears.

  “Why isn’t Spook One answering me?” Devereaux asked through the radio.

  Ritter keyed his mike.

  “This is Spook One.” His call sign for the mission was as apt as it was unoriginal.

  “Bridge is secure—one prisoner. No other contact. I need you in the hold right fucking now,” Devereux said.

  One prisoner? This ship should have been full of armed Somali pirates eager to protect the biggest prize they’d ever heard of.

  Ritter keyed his mike.

  “Spook One, en route.” He looked at Mike. “You go to the bridge. I’ll be there soonest,” he said.

  The SEAL with the radio pointed down the stairway for Ritter’s benefit.

  Ritter sped down the stairs, the SCAR ready in his hands. All the lights in the ship were on, doors open and swaying with the motion of the ship. Spent bullet casings rolled across the deck like roaches scurrying for cover.

  He scooped up one of the brass casings; it was for a 7.62mm bullet, larger than the 5.56mm rounds the SCARs fired. The casing held the faint smell of cordite; it had been fired in the past few hours. A smear of stained blood ran against the side of a door guarded by a SEAL who pointed the way for Ritter.

  The smell hit him first: the heavy iron of spilled blood and the unmistakable smell of human feces.

  Devereux was inside the hold, his hands on his hips, as he stared at two bodies chained to the ceiling. The SEAL commander stepped aside and held out a hand to present the corpses to Ritter.

  Both the dead were Somalis; emaciated bodies dangled from the chains wrapped around their wrists. Strips of skin, as wide as a knuckle, cut from their collarbones to their waists dangled in the air, bloody ribbons swaying above the pools of blood beneath each body. Ribs, lungs, and raw muscle glistened from the open results of the vivisection.

  They’d been slowly tortured with no intention of letting them survive the experience.

  “That’s…unexpected,” Ritter said.

  “‘Unexpected’? Lots of that going around. I thought we were here to get some shit head, not wander around a Rob Zombie movie set.” Devereux nudged one of the hanging bodies with the butt of his rifle. It swung with a clatter of chain links, chin wobbling against its chest.

  “Any sign of the package?” Ritter asked.

  Fitz rapped his fingers against the double-wide hatch in the center of the hold. “Only place we haven’t checked is right here.” The handle was chained shut; a dead bolt lock, the size of Ritter’s palm, was in the center of the links.

  Fitz hefted a bolt cutter and maneuvered the blades onto the lock.

  “You have an explanation for this?” Devereux asked.

  “Someone beat us here,” Ritter said.

  “And who is that ‘someone’?”

  “Someone who shouldn’t have had a problem getting past that door,” Ritter said.

  The shorn lock fell to the deck with a clang, and another SEAL pulled the chains from the door. They opened it to expose a liver of darkness into the room; and Fitz, the bomb tech, slid a camera lens, the width of a straw, into the opening.

  A green-scale night vision picture of the interior flashed onto a handheld screen; a bulky object lay inside, indistinct. Fitz took a device that looked like a laser pointer and ran the tip along the opening; a green light on the device remained lit.

  “No trip wires,” Fitz said and opened the door, the hinges creaking until it thumbed against the wall.

  They’d found a bomb, but not the nuke that was supposed to be onboard.

  Stacks of rods wrapped in wax paper filled the room; brightly colored wires led into blasting caps sticking from the gray putty in the rods and from bricks labeled wabox.

  Wires led into a green plastic box in the center of the explosives; three green lights on the box were lit, and a forth light lay dormant.

  “Well, ain’t this some shit?” Fitz said. He lifted a hard case, the size of his forearm, and pulled a metal probe from it.

  “Fitz,” Devereux growled.

  “Let’s see what we’re dealing with, sir,” Fitz said as he pierced the wax paper around one of the tubes.

  “Recall the birds. I’m aborting the mission,” Devereux said into the mike over his lips. “You got a problem with that?” he asked Ritter.

  Ritter shook his head. If the nuke wasn’t here, then where was it?

  “Ahura detector says it’s pure TNT. These are commercial-grade explosives, not the homemade stuff we normally see, sir,” Fitz said as he consulted the readout on the device.

  “Can you disarm it?” Ritter asked.

  “I’m not going to touch the control box without an x-ray, and we left that on the Reagan. Who knows what kind of anti-tamper triggers they’ve got in there,” Fitz said.

  “Spook One, Two needs you on the bridge,” said a voice on his radio.

  “Ten minutes until extraction,” Devereaux said.

  Ritter nodded and left the hold.

  He found Mike in the galley, sitting across the table from a Somali man with hands bound behind his back with zip ties. The right half of the Somali’s face was a mass of welts, his right eye swollen shut; blood stained the front of his shirt from a split lip that had barely scabbed over.

  Ritter raised an eyebrow at Mike.

  “He was beat up when we found him. Got his name, but I don’t speak much more Somali. Says he speaks Arabic,” Mike said. His voice, rarely heard, was a low rasp.

  “When did you pick up the Somali?”

  “October, ninety-three.” Mike stood up, and Ritter took his place at the table.

  The Somali had his chin against his chest, his face ticked from the savage beating.

  “Where is it?” Ritter said in Arabic.

  The Somali looked up with his good eye.

  “I don’t know,” the Somali said. “An Arab came aboard to look at it two days ago; then Ilyas and Guleed took it away. Guleed came back with more men from our clan to hold the ship, said we’d be rich once we sold it, then we’d use the money to turn this ship into a base.”

  “Does Guleed know where Ilyas took it? Where is he?”

  “Guleed knew but wouldn’t tell us. The Pinoy took Guleed and killed everyone else.”

  “Pinoys? You mean Filipinos? What happened to the rest of the crew?”

  “One minute everything is fine. We’re chewing khat and listening to football on the radio. The next, the ship is crawling with them. No helicopter like when you got here. No speedboats. Nothing, like those damn ninjas in the movies.”

  The Somali groaned and leaned forward. A burp escaped his mouth.

  “Maybe not Filipinos. I don’t know their language; they had a black Kenyan with them to translate. Kenyan said they were chosun, joseon, or something like that.”

  Ritter nodded along with the Somali’s words. He knew chosun; it was an old term for Korea. The North Koreans had beat them to the ship, and if they had Guleed, then they knew where the bomb was.

  “Tell me about the Arab. What did he look like? Where was he from?” Ritter asked.

  The Somali cringed, and Ritter heard something burble deep in the Somali’s stomach.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Ritter looked at Mike and made a cross symbol on the back of his hand, signaling for a medic. Mike nodded and spoke into his mike.

  “Damn Pinoys made me swallow a lot of water and a pill. Said it was a tracker. They told me to steer the ship east until the ship was three hundred kilometers
away from the coast. Then I could get in a lifeboat and get away. If I didn’t, then they’d blow the ship early,” the Somali said. He groaned and rocked from side to side.

  The satellite phone in Ritter’s shoulder pocket vibrated. No doubt it was Shannon wanting an update.

  “I’ll have a medic look at you,” Ritter said.

  He left the galley and the suffering Somali to Mike’s supervision. The SEAL team medic bustled past Ritter as he made his way to the deck. He pulled the satellite phone out and was about to answer the call when an agonizing scream came from the galley.

  Ritter ran back and saw the Somali on the galley tabletop, writhing and screaming.

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?” the medic yelled.

  The medic got the Somali rolled onto his back.

  The Somali’s stomach expanded like a balloon. The three Americans backed away from the screeching Somali as he rocked from side to side, his stomach inflated to the point he looked like he was about to give birth.

  Then the Somali exploded.

  Blood and guts splattered across the galley. Mike and the medic took the brunt of the blast, which sent them to the floor, covered in viscera. A horrific smell burned Ritter’s nasal passages, and he stumbled into the room and pulled the other two out by the carry handles on the backs of their vests.

  Mike, the entire front of his body covered in red ruin, wiped his face and spat out a glob or red and black goo.

  “You okay?” Ritter asked.

  The medic stood up and tried to shake his gear clean.

  “Okay? You call this okay?” the medic asked.

  The sound of boots pounding against metal heralded Devereaux’s arrival.

  “Birds will be here in two minutes and—the fuck happened here?” Devereaux said.

  Ritter ran his sleeve over his face; it came away bloody.

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m positive he exploded,” Ritter said into the satellite phone. He was in the SEALs’ shower area on the Reagan, sitting on a wooden bench after the most urgent shower in his entire life.

  They’d left the Opongsan ten minutes before the explosives in the hold had erupted and broken the Opongsan in half. Officially, the mission would be reported as a dry hole, target not found. Unofficially, Ritter’s life had become a lot more difficult.