At the door, an armed pirate stuck a rifle in the boy’s chest; the boy flashed a hand-sign.
Inside the cool stone and clay house, another pair of guards aimed AK-47 assault rifles at the boy. A third guard, standing in front of a Chinese dragon curtain, waved the child to enter the living room. The Yemeni boy took a seat on a straw mat and waited. He listened to the strange dialect of an African mother, her wide hips wrapped in a dark blue tunic, cradling her baby a few feet from a sinewy black man. He wore a sleeveless shirt that revealed the slight bulge of an oddly shaped hump on his left shoulder blade. Was the mass a fatty deposit? A birth defect? A cancerous growth? Or was it a battle-wound that didn’t heal properly?
With an angular face and leopard-like eyes, the man lounged in a wicker chair. He heard the mother’s pleas, the trembling of her voice as a pet snake slithered up his arm and across the buffalo hump to his good shoulder. He kept an eye on an HD TV on the wall with the screen showing nothing but static. The link to a satellite feed was broken. He pressed a remote, shutting off the TV.
Korfa, the warlord of the Dharoor Valley Clan, was pirate number one in Puntland. He was the micro-loan officer to the poor, the sheriff, the enforcer, the buyer of foreign spies and government officials. To the locals of Bosaso he was known as the “Ferryman” for transporting hundreds of Somali refugees across the gulf to Yemen year after year. And when the civil war broke out in Yemen, he ferried some Houthi tribesmen and Yemeni terrorists and their families back to Puntland.
“How am I going to take care of my baby here in Somalia?” the mother asked, while her baby clawed at her breast to feed on milk. Korfa nodded at the mother, staring at her plump, milk-swollen breasts. She pulled open the tunic, revealing a sand-dollar-size nipple the baby clutched and suckled. As the baby fed, the warlord felt the warm surge of blood fill his groin, fattening his cock against his thigh on its way to a hard erection, when hushed Arabic words were exchanged at the door.
A bodyguard stepped to Korfa telling him in Puntland code that the Sheikh’s men had arrived from Somaliland. Korfa signaled the visitors to wait. He took out a pair of mirrored sunglasses, stared at the mother, saying in Somali tongue: “You will be safe with my son and my sister. Remember they are refugees from the valley, like you. When the UN or Red Cross ask you about my boy and sister, what will you tell them?”
The mother held her baby tight, replying, “They are refugees of war and famine.”
“Say that and nothing more, and your voyage will be smooth.” Korfa stood up, handed her pictures of his son and sister. He motioned a guard, who picked up a backpack of food and handed it to the mother, then escorted her outside.
Korfa looked over at the Yemeni boy. He saw a tear stream down his face. The warlord put the snake on the floor. The boy jumped backed and hid behind a guard, who bent over and picked up the snake. Scared of the viper, the boy stepped back and bumped into a pair of AQAP recruits, who had entered the villa casing the rooms for cameras and weapons. Once the room was cleared, Yemeni General Mustafa walked inside. He was second in charge of Somaliland.
General “Muse,” as insiders knew him, reigned over the clerics, who preached Islamic Sharia Law, and managed his AQAP soldiers, who enforced its moral codes and gender limits.
Korfa gave General Mustafa a hard look, signaling with his eyes that he would need a moment with the boy. He eyed the child, asking in Arabic, “Why the long face?”
The Yemeni boy, now shaking, intimidated by the presence of the general and his AQAP henchmen, gulped, “We captured the whale …”
“Good. Then the tanker is heading to port. … Why the long face?”
“When Samatar took the captain to the skiffs, a sniper shot him.”
“Dead? Sama dead?” Korfa erupted and grabbed the boy by his skinny shoulders. “You say my brother Samatar is dead? My own flesh and blood?” Korfa bellowed in rising anger. He belted out a catcall to the ceiling, as if he could see God’s angry face from the unseen the sky. “Did Sama’s men stand like statues and watch him die? Did they catch the assassin?”
The boy froze unable to answer.
“Good God, what the fuck?” Korfa snatched a Kalashnikov from his bodyguard, swung it around and smashed a vase and glass bookcase with its butt. He ripped the shelf frame off the wall, smashing pots and pictures, stepped on the glass with his bare feet and whipped the assault rifle into the TV, shattering the flat screen in a crack of smoke. Shocked, bristling at the news, Korfa turned around, the veins in his temples throbbed with a rapid beating heart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw AQAP soldiers chatting like birds in small talk.
General Mustafa, a man of mixed Egyptian and Yemeni blood, giving him bronze skin with Egyptian features, frowned at the boy, and then looked at Korfa: “Where are the Syrian satellite phones I gave you?”
The general was oblivious of his soldiers’ disrespect behind him.
“Gave me? I bought them from you, like I did the skiffs outside on the lorries,” Korfa replied, anger strained his face. He pointed at the boy—“This Yemeni is my runner. As for the Satcoms, they’re up in the mountains. If spies or Americans try to triangulate where I stand, all they’ll find are goats and a booby trap. Boom!” He bellowed, spreading his arms in a blast arc. Korfa stepped around the boy and drilled a cold stare at the soldiers. “What are you hyenas chatting about? My brother, Sama, is dead.”
The soldier shrugged, staring not in Korfa’s eyes, but at his shoulder hump. Korfa saw that as a second slight from an AQAP field grunt. Korfa drilled another stare into the soldier, who averted his eyes. Korfa put his arm around the boy, and said, “Call the mothership and tell the crew to bring the captain to port.” The Yemeni boy nodded and dashed out of the villa. Korfa turned to General Mustafa: “What would you do if you lost your right arm to a sniper?”
General Mustafa wondered where the question was leading. “I’d hunt the beast down and behead him, filming his death live on a jihadi website.” The general took out a smartphone and showed Korfa the video of dead children being carried out of the ruins of a school in Yemen.
“Who has seen this?” Korfa asked, pointing at the video in the general’s palm.
“The world. It’s on Twitter, YouTube, everywhere …”
“Who is the man? Who is the genius behind luring America to attack a school?”
“A propaganda doctor, named Bahdoon,” the general said.
“Send him to Somaliland to meet the hostages,” Korfa said, turning his attention back to the soldier. He stepped past the general and eyed the soldier, saying, “The sniper who killed my brother … I will hunt him down, his friends, his family, his children, pets, cousins, professors, and kill them all. If the bastard is still alive, I’ll smoke him out of a tree stump like termites.”
With that, Korfa shoved the AQAP soldier outside. In the shock of daylight the field grunt turned around and became confused by Korfa’s rage. He gripped a pistol. But Korfa grabbed his hand, and clamped onto the firearm, removing it from his grip. Korfa tossed the pistol to one of his Somali guards, who now numbered a dozen. “Who do you work for? Somali government? … Kenya?”
“No, no. I work for General Adad in Syria. … Let go of my hand,” he said, as a stack of pamphlets slipped out of his tunic onto the ground. Korfa kicked the pamphlets aside and saw the dead, bearded, Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi holding an assault rifle.
“You’re lying. You’re not al Qaeda, you’re the Caliphate ISIS. You’re here to recruit my people to Islamic jihad?” the warlord groused. General Mustafa and Korfa’s bodyguards formed a circle around the pirate chief and the ISIS spy as they faced off. “Muse, why didn’t you vet this scorpion? He will kill my people, plant his black Islamic flag in my land, then kill you,” Korfa said. He pulled out a pistol, snatched the soldier’s hand and, with eyes burning in hot embers, he clucked his tongue mimicking the sound of a gunshot. The spy flinched. Korfa pushed him to the ground, tearing open his tunic that revealed his
bare chest. The spy wasn’t wearing a wire, but he did have a concealed dagger inside the waistband and a tattoo on his biceps of a “Z” made of rifles.
Korfa turned to the general, saying, “Vermin like him are not welcome in Somalia.” Then he shot the spy in the chest and listened to the air wheeze out of the man’s lungs. His last breath for life filled the air.
The pirate warlord stepped on the pamphlets of Zarqawi, grinding them in the dirt.
Chapter Thirteen
FROM THE HELICOPTER flight deck of the USS New York LPD-21—a San Antonio-class amphibious assault ship built with twenty-four tons of recycled steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers that fell on 9/11—SEAL Commanding Officer Nick “Nico” Gregorius, a stocky Greek-American with thick black hair, checked equipment, weapons, supplies, diving gear, trimix gas tanks, rebreathers, and ammunition prior to loading on board the UH-60 Black Hawk.
The boatswain’s mate master-of-arms stood over the weapons cache confirming the inventory with a handheld scanner. He directed the crew to load the supplies into the cargo bay.
A landing signal officer, holding a pair of glowing batons in one hand, lifted the visor shield of his helmet and approached CO Gregorius. He showed him an instant message and pointed to the stairwell door behind him that went down into the ship’s storage area. The CO nodded and headed into the ship—that was the leading edge of the US Navy’s Assault Ready Group for mobile and rapid deployment missions in the littoral space.
The USS New York carried a crew of 365 sailors and 700 battle-ready marines from the Marine Expeditionary Unit. The ship was more than ready to combat pirates in a clash. Called to duty from the Persian Gulf after the Blå Himmel was seized, the USS New York picked up two SEAL platoons stationed at Point Alpha Base and cruised into the Gulf of Aden.
It launched one of two Predator drones to track, monitor, and survey the American-flag vessel Shining Sea.
The captain’s executive officer, or XO, greeted Nico Gregorius in the below deck hangar. He informed him that he was being led to sickbay. They meandered down a flight of stairs, through the mess hall, to the amidships medical office. The XO flashed his ID badge and took the SEAL inside the room that held the sunburned, fatigued sniper Peder Olsen.
CO Gregorius checked the snoring Norwegian’s med charts and EKG monitor. He turned to the XO. “What do you want me to do?”
“The order came from the top, commander,” said the XO, reading an IM on a tablet. “It states you’re to awaken the patient with whatever means necessary to learn what he saw.”
The CO gave the XO an are-you-fucking-kidding-me look, as he pried open one of Peder’s swollen eyelids. Under the puffy slit, he saw the pupil was dilated. “I need the coldest water you have on board this vessel. Cold, but not too clean.”
“We got some house gray water below deck,” the XO said and ordered it over the radio: “Send a mechanic to the desal filter room and bring up a cold, cold bucket to sickbay.”
“Gray water, clean enough for laundry, I like it,” the CO noted, checking Peder’s pulse.
Five minutes later, the construction mechanic arrived in navy blue coveralls carrying the bucket of water. Gregorius examined Peder’s sun-blistered face. He unhooked a monitor, raised the arm with the IV drip, and then tapped the mechanic’s elbow, prodding him to dump the water on the sniper. Cold water splashed all over Peder’s head and chest, pouring onto the bed, soaking the sheets and mattress, running and dripping onto the floor.
Jolted awake, Peder sprang up shaking his head. He came to, brushing the water off his lap. CO Gregorius put his hand on Peder’s soaked head, saying, “Norseman, you are on board the USS New York. You jumped off the Blue Heaven. Do you hear me, you blond puke?”
Peder managed to squint one eye open. He spat, pursed his lips, and mouthed, “Jaaa.”
The SEAL CO worked Peder on a line of questioning that established where he was when the pirates seized the supertanker; how they hijacked it trailing in the blind spot; how the AIS navigation system had been hacked; and how he suspected the pirates used the mothership as a decoy. Peder then admitted that he shot the lead pirate before jumping ship.
Chapter Fourteen
IN THE COCOON of silence beneath the surface of a large holding pen, Merk Toten curled his body into a ball, resting his knees on his chest. He felt his kneecaps touch his skin.
Expelling breaths through a snorkel, Merk feathered the water with the swim fins to keep neutral buoyancy. He watched the chalk-blue haze in front of him, sensing a dolphin spying on him. The unseen biologic system pulsed him with its sonar clicks. In a blink of an eye, the dolphin defined Merk’s shape, his heart rate, the density of his sinews and bones, the health of his organs, and the remaining air in his lungs. Unsure from which point the dolphin would attack, Merk panned the blue bowl—when the snout of the dolphin soared overhead.
The moment he tracked Tasi, the torpedo-shape of Inapo sliced behind him, grazing Merk with his pectoral fin. The gentle bump at high speed spun Merk into a barrel roll. Tumbling backward like a top, he let go of his knees, stretched out his legs, and unfolded his body to arrest the spinning motion. But in doing so, he was vulnerable to being hit by Tasi.
Merk turned around, crossed his arms, and blocked a heavy blow with her snout. The force of Tasi spearing him, the combat diver, jarred the snorkel out of his mouth. With the dive mask knocked cockeyed, salt water flooded his eyes, temporarily blinding him. Inapo swung over, butted Merk back down, snatched the dislodged snorkel, and swam it to the surface, separating the breathing apparatus from the diver.
Above, the muted sound of footsteps strode across the floating metal dock.
Tasi, the navy dolphin with a shark bite scar on the back blade of her dorsal fin, breached the surface, tossing the snorkel onto the dock. The snorkel spat out a rill of water as it landed at the feet of a naval attaché in white uniform, wetting his patent leather shoes. Behind him stood CIA agent Alan Cuthbert, dressed in camouflage army fatigues.
Merk took an elevator ride up to the surface with Inapo. Cupping his hand on the dolphin’s beak, he let go as they soared out of the cove. Merk twisted his body a quarter turn, landing his butt on the dock. He rolled backward and sprang to his feet, dripping wet in front of the naval attaché.
Out of uniform, Merk wasn’t obligated to salute the higher-ranking officer. Instead, he extended his wet hand and shook the attaché in a firm grip. Alan Cuthbert looked on in disbelief, eyeing the water running down the ridges and striations of the burn scar that covered the left side of Merk’s body. “Am I fired, heading back to San Diego?”
“Negative, Lt. Toten. You’re hired, going to Somalia,” said the naval attaché, looking over at Tasi and Inapo spying on their conversation.
“Really, sir?” Merk said, shocked to hear it after failing to save the life of Lt. Morgan Azar in the Strait of Hormuz. “Excuse me, sir.” Merk turned to Tasi and Inapo, who floated—waiting for the next command. He signaled his fingers in pinchers to go “eat.”
The dolphins swam across the cove, hidden behind a tall sand-colored blind that kept the marine mammal holding pens away from prying eyes in the Persian Gulf. Tasi and Inapo fluked to a female animal handler. She dangled fish in a bucket. The dolphins breached and struck their bodies in a loud midair slap. They bounced apart and splashed into the cove. Tasi and Inapo resurfaced in front of the handler, clearing their blowholes in jets of mist.
“Finesse and force,” Merk said, pointing to the dolphins. “Tasi the female is all brains, very cunning. The male, Inapo, is loaded with testosterone like a bull.”
“I can see that. Tasi and Inapo … they are the Guam-bred systems, aren’t they?” The naval attaché took a towel from an animal handler and gave it to Merk to wipe off. “Toten, Special Ops Command has a new assignment for the MMS. It’s Black Lit.”
Merk understood the code words for “blacks ops in the littoral environment”—“Black Lit”—as more than classified. The
mission would be clandestine in nature as opposed to covert action. That meant the op would conceal the sponsor, in that case the US Navy, instead of merely concealing the mission. In the former, the president would have zero knowledge that it existed, since it was off the books in the black budget. In the latter, the profile of a covert mission was grounded in an intel briefing with the executive-in-chief, often with Congressional oversight. Merk became curious as to why he was called to participate in a Black Lit operation.
“Where can we talk?” Alan Cuthbert asked.
The naval attaché looked around, not sure where to talk to in utmost secrecy. Merk pointed to a naval salvage ship on the other side of the blind, and said, “I was told the ship has a dive chamber on board. It seats eight. The stainless steel doors and walls dampen all outside noise. Close to soundproof.”
“Pure oxygen, I’ll take it,” the attaché said, leading Merk to the chamber.
Stationed in an annex of the US Navy Base in Asu Bahrain, northwest of the Qatar peninsula, the Navy Marine Mammal Program’s half-dozen dolphins were on loan to train and guard naval ships stationed in the Persian Gulf.
Merk toweled off and slipped on a “Go Navy” tee shirt. He led the naval attaché and Alan Cuthbert into the high-pressured hyperbaric diver chambers, or HBOTs. Sent overseas from one of six Norfolk, Virginia, rapid dive units, the HBOT was the ideal place to talk in private.
Once inside the cramped quarters, which had chairs, a wood table, and a bench, the chamber operator with a saturation technician closed the steel door and locked it shut. Merk hadn’t seen Alan Cuthbert since they worked together in ferreting out an al Qaeda infiltrator in Hawaii a few years back.
The naval attaché picked up on the familiarity between the men, and asked, “Merk, how did you guys know each other?”
“It was a discussion about methods.”
Cuthbert looked at Merk and then at the attaché, but said nothing.
Dolphin Drone Page 5