“Methods? On what? Interrogation? Tracking terrorists?”
“Interspecies communication,” Merk said. “We compared notes on dolphin spy-hopping versus man-made CIA Predator drones. Drones that one day be made for the sea to replace Tasi.”
The attaché nodded, pretending he understood, and showed images on a laptop. A grainy infrared video showed a SEAL team boarding the US-flag container ship at 2217 hours. He said: “Toten, the Shining Sea was one of two vessels hijacked yesterday. When the SEALs boarded the ship, they didn’t find any sailors. The bridge, main deck, engine room, and panic room were empty. No crew. Not even the body that spilled the blood during the pirate attack.”
“I read the briefs. Like the captains being off-loaded into the pirate mothership. Does the evidence suggest the pirates transferred the American crew to the Blå Himmel?” Merk asked. “The oil cargo must be richer than the goods stored in those containers, no?”
The naval attaché showed footage from a Predator drone trailing the tanker heading to Somaliland. He explained that they never found the pirate mothership, and went on in detail about the lone escapee, Peder Olsen, the former Norwegian Special Forces sniper turned mercenary. He played a video on his mobile phone of Peder, sunburned, doused with a bucket of water, barely audible, confirming a kill before abandoning ship.
“The spec warrior wasn’t the captain, but a hired gun. He must have killed a big lion and knew it,” Merk said. “Why else abandon the hostages? He lived to fight another day.”
“You read his actions like you know him,” Cuthbert said, tapping the table.
“Gut, SEAL gut.” Merk looked at the naval attaché, asking, “The pirate killed by Peder, who was he?” The attaché shrugged. So Merk turned to Cuthbert: “What list does the CIA and FBI share on the most wanted pirates in Somalia?”
“We have a dossier of three dozen inner-circle pirates from the Horn of Africa,” he replied, “with ten of them operating in the north provinces along the Gulf of Aden.”
“Anyone you know on that list?”
“A pirate named Samatar. His name translates to ‘Doer of Good,’” Cuthbert said.
“Who’s his warlord?”
“No one. Co-warlords. He shared power with his brother, Korfa, in Puntland.”
Merk sat back with a quizzical look, then turned to the attaché: “Has anyone contacted Peder’s family in Norway?”
“Sure. The Norwegian shipowner must have done that,” the attaché sort of answered.
“You might want to inform his family about the pirate he took out. They’re going to need twenty-four hour protection. Then I’d be concerned about why the supertanker is heading to Somaliland closer to the Red Sea instead of Korfa’s home state of Puntland,” Merk said.
“Anything else?” the naval attaché asked.
“What groups are bargaining for ransom demands?”
“Demands? It should be one demand, right?”
“Maybe three ransoms,” Cuthbert interjected, holding up as many fingers.
“Why abandon the American ship? Hostage logistics? Something didn’t go as planned, like Peder killing Samatar?” Merk wondered. “Alan, what’s your story? Why are you here?”
“If you haven’t heard, I got set up in Yemen.”
“By whom?”
“We thought he was a good CIA asset. We vetted his background, his education in the West, his family tree, his business associates. For a Yemen businessman he was clean. Clean, legitimate business. No ties to AQAP or the Islamic State,” he said. “The other night, one of our drones took out a building he told us was a terrorist safe house. But it ended up being a school. Children’s bodies were pulled from the rubble, all videotaped for the world to see.”
“You’re kidding? No terrorist affiliation, but the asset sets you up to fail,” Merk said.
“It happened on the same night you were on the Strait of Hormuz with Lt. Azar,” the naval attaché pointed out, adding, “Really sorry about what happened to Morgan.”
Merk half nodded, his eyes retreated in a pensive stare. “Same night? The night Iranians planted sea-mines. The drones were retasked to Yemen that night, Azar and I knew that. And the CIA doesn’t have any assets in Iran either, do you?”
“Merk, the FBI hostage rescue team is being flown from Cairo to a town in Sudan, across the Somaliland border,” the naval attaché said. “The White House summoned a private contractor to make contact with the pirates and the shipowners in Virginia and Norway.”
Cuthbert elbowed Merk, saying, “Your former SEAL CO Dawson in Coronado and his partner, retired Delta Force commando Christian Fuller, are the private negotiators.”
“Dante Dawson? The last I heard he retired.”
“Affirmative. From the navy, not from action,” the attaché said. “His new co is called Azure Shell.”
Alan Cuthbert nodded in deep thought. He ran his finger round and round the table surface, eyeing the grain of the wood, looked up and said, “Is there a link? … A link between what you stumbled on in the strait and my asset setting me up in Yemen?”
Merk nodded: “There has to be.”
Chapter Fifteen
WHEN THE CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter landed late that afternoon on the stern deck of the USS New York, the XO greeted Merk and escorted him to the Combat Direction Center, or CDC.
Merk refused to go. He wanted to stay behind to watch the NMMP veterinary team unload Tasi and Inapo, take them down on the elevator, and transfer them from the stretchers into inflatable holding pens in three-foot-deep salt water draped by tall safety nets.
Merk trusted few Navy personnel and fewer subcontractors with the care of his dolphins; he was especially protective of the Pacific bottlenose dolphins from Guam. Prior to a mission, he wanted their stress levels reduced. That included indoor air quality being particulate free; that loud noises wouldn’t disturb, startle, or harm them; and that they wouldn’t be exposed to passive pressure from nosy, camera-clicking ensigns or become amusement for small crowds.
What concerned Merk about new naval vessels? They tend to carry heavy metals in the air in the form of dust and filings on the floors, walls, ceilings, and vents, if the rooms, corridors, and stairwells weren’t fine-cleaned before launch. He followed Tasi and Inapo down into the dank industrial storage hangar of the ship. As soon as the hardboxes rolled off the lift, the odor of hydraulic fluid permeated the air. The hairs on the back of Merk’s neck stood up and his skin grafts started to itch, reminding him of the sense of danger he felt the night an oil-slick fire burned in the harbor off mainland China in the Taiwan Strait.
Merk surveyed the below deck chamber. To the rear, he saw the source of the acrid smell. In the backlit hangar, the silhouette of the ship’s other Sea Stallion sat idle with a battery of mechanics working on the main rotor. He strode toward the helicopter and noticed hydraulic fluid dripping in a puddle next to an open gangbox. Parts, tools, and hoses were strewn across a plastic sheet on the floor. Covers and couplings from the rotor were piled on carts, as engineers inspected the rotor blades. Merk knew it would be hours before they finished the repair and reassembled the helicopter to fly. He figured the floor would be washed down with ammonia cleaner—an abrasive odor that he didn’t want the dolphins exposed to. And with the mission details still undefined, Tasi and Inapo could be holed up in the bowel of the ship for days, depending if and when the Black Lit op would be launched or the order to abort was called.
Not willing to wait on a request going through the chain of command, from the cargo deck up to the USS New York’s commander, to move the dolphins to a new temporary location, Merk sought out the cargo master, who was busy scanning barcodes with a handheld device. The young officer took inventory of the NMMP supplies before they were moved by forklift to a storage bay. The cargo master, a lanky marine with a Southern drawl, gave Merk a once-over look and continued to scan the boxes and coolers of fresh fish, as if Merk weren’t there.
“How long is the chopper
repair going to take?” Merk asked.
“Well, fuck me, bud, looks like you got one helluva request,” the cargo master said with a shitless smirk. “Let me see if the mechanics can’t speed things up. You know, salt air triples maintenance time on helos and such.”
Merk began to speak when a mechanic dropped a lug wrench in a loud clang, startling Tasi to thrash about. The sight of the stressed dolphin rippled through Merk. He clenched his fists, cleared his throat, and growled, “You wouldn’t let your mates sleep down here with the hydraulic piss leaking on the floor, would you?”
The cargo master scanned the last box, waved the forklift operator to store the supplies, then locked Merk in a stare. “You, your flippers are on board my ship. We have one bird down and I’m running a tight schedule with the combat cargo master. He’s not navy blue like you and me. He’s an ornery leatherneck planning to send the Marine Expeditionary Unit into Somalia …”
Merk folded his arms and listened. He recalled tolerant thoughts of how he held it all in when his alcoholic navy father used to erupt like a volcano in a drunken rage. He thought about the autistic teenager who helped map out the sounds of dolphins with music and math. And he thought about holding his girlfriend’s hand as he looked in her black pearl eyes.
“… That means I have to coordinate supplies, food, weapons, and ammo with the CCM and his assistant for hundreds of action-starved marines. You land here out of the blue, waste no time demanding the red carpet for your diva dolphins,” he said, jabbing a finger in Merk’s chest.
Merk snatched the cargo master’s hand, twisted it over, and pulled him in close, saying in measured anger, “I’ve had a bad fucking week. My friend died. My dolphins came out of combat. I lost my laptop in the drink. Now, where are you going to store my fins?”
Grimacing in pain, the cargo master yelped, “Ouch. Shit … okay, okay. Back up to the flight deck they go.”
“Roger that?” Merk squeezed harder, applying more pressure.
“Oh, yow, yes … roger that.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE PETTY OFFICER guided Merk through half of the 684-foot-long USS New York toward the CDC, the communications nerve center located under the antenna tower of the ship, where he would join a meeting in progress. Merk pulled the petty officer aside to call the XO to get permission to visit the Norwegian sniper Peder Olsen in sickbay before entering the CDC.
With permission granted, a nurse led Merk into the room.
Peder Olsen was deep in slumber; there were gauze bandages wrapped around second-degree burns, with cortisone cream covering blisters on his face, forehead, and neck. Merk recognized the lowest level of a burn ward and remembered his days aboard a ship recovering from one skin graft procedure after another. Olsen had an IV drip with heart and brain monitoring wires strung across his torso and head like computer cables that seemed to be more for show than anything else for the strapping mercenary.
Merk stepped around the other side of the bed and examined Peder’s right hand. It was swollen and burnt red by the sun. The ring finger on the same hand, where Norwegians wear their wedding bands, showed a redder sunburned ring around the finger where the band had sat wedged for years. Merk suspected Peder had removed his wedding band prior to boarding the Blå Himmel for the high-risk assignment of being the ship’s hired gun. What he didn’t know was whether the Norwegian was a mercenary, or something more, such as an informant or an embedded asset gathering intel for NATO or Norway’s Special Forces.
“When was he awake last?” Merk asked the nurse.
“Nine hours ago,” she said, reading the patient’s chart on a tablet.
“When he’s up, inform the XO. I need to speak to him.” Merk exited the room.
* * *
IN THE CDC, Merk stood to the rear alongside a technician and surveyed those seated around a conference table: Naval engineers, a weapons officer, an ONI officer, a communications officer, the commander, the XO, and a tired SEAL CO Nico Gregorius, who reclined in a seat with a knee resting on the edge of the table. Nico scratched his day-old stubble.
On the wall, banks of flat- and curved-screen monitors and computer terminals kept the ship’s twenty-eight officer crew up to date on shipping activity in the gulf, live shots from Predator drones, and the latest news on the pirates, Somalia, and the owners of the hijacked ships. A wall screen replayed the night-vision video the SEALs captured of the passing vessels. Seeing that Merk was in the CDC, a technician played the clip of the SEALs and a platoon of marines boarding the US container ghost ship, Shining Sea.
The infrared video revealed little about the pirates or the missing crew. Other than a pool of blood from one of the wounded or slain crewmen, there was little to go on. The pirates either aborted the hijacking of the ship or followed through to abandon the vessel in the first place.
Merk wondered: Was it a logistical mistake that caused the pirates to leave the Shining Sea early? Or did they do it as part of a master plan?
What was unique about the double hijackings: The pirates successfully seized two ships on the same day in the same shipping lane. They escalated violence at the start of boarding both vessels. Perhaps more under the radar, the Somali pirates returned to the heavily internationally patrolled Gulf of Aden to target the ships, after expanding their territory into the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya. But did they have help?
The high-echelon targets were always oil and gas and its wealthy owners, from Arab nations and royal families, to the Western oil conglomerates that serviced them. Why did the pirates hijack the container ship? Merk wondered. The commander motioned him to speak.
“What do you have on scope and timing with the MMS pod?” Merk asked.
“You’ll be airborne with your marine mammal systems at 2100 hours zulu. We use the cover of night to drop you inside the twelve mile international line off the coast of Somalia, with geocoords that are equidistant between the provinces of Somaliland and Puntland,” the commander said. “Nico will ride with you, conducting his own inland recon. He’ll provide cover for you and the MM systems.”
Merk checked the red-eyed SEAL CO, saying, “Nico, you got the stamina for this?”
“No worries. I sleep one hemisphere of the brain at a time, like your fins.”
The navy personnel erupted with laughter.
Grinning, Merk nodded in approval, liking the CO’s knowledge of dolphin neurobiology.
“You’ve come a long way, Toten, from your hellish survey last week. The scope of the clandestine op is in here,” the commander said, sliding a black folder stamped “Top Secret” across the table. “After you commit the details to memory, the XO will relieve you of the brief. This op doesn’t exist. Not when you get captured. Not when you return. It has no code name.”
“Fine. I’m a phantom,” Merk said, glancing around the room. “Why the Somali pirates? Why now? Why are we getting involved in an FBI procedure?”
“We got word. Somali pirates had help,” the commander began to explain. “AQAP and the Syrian Electronic Army, maybe others. We wonder if the attacks on the two ships were ordered by the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran or by the Houthi rebels they sponsor in Yemen. The mullahs might seek revenge for your mission that blew up their mine-laying operation in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Revenge is not my cup of tea,” Merk said. “Iran has all the motivation it needs to undermine the US. Like them, we’re all birds in a cage, following orders, honoring hierarchy.”
Chapter Seventeen
IN A GROUND floor conference room at CIA Headquarters, the CIA director, a graying, athletic man with a politician’s suave looks, nodded while handing over a blue border folder meant for the State Department, marked “Top Secret.” “The Azure Shell team will be a day late to negotiate with the pirates,” the CIA director told the deputy DO. “Does the FBI know that?”
“You’re supposed to be at the White House PDB in an hour,” the deputy DO said.
“I canceled t
hat BS fest. I’ve been called back here on a couple of fronts,” the CIA director said. “Let’s go to the Seventh Floor.”
* * *
ON THE SEVENTH Floor of Langley, down the hall from his corner office and private kitchen, the CIA director broke off a videoconference with the head of MI6, Britain’s foreign counterterrorism division. A disagreement erupted over what was happening in tracking the movement of tribesmen and the Syrian Electronic Army personnel in the Empty Quarter Desert, the growing unrest in Jaar, and other onetime al Qaeda stronghold cities in southern Yemen.
The poor arid country, led by a fragile government and an even weaker economy—oil exports account for ninety percent of Yemen’s GDP—had to defend hundreds of miles of oil pipelines against saboteurs. Two main pipelines ran from the southwest corner of the Empty Quarter in the Massila oilfield to ports along the Gulf of Aden, with a third pipeline running west to the Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea.
The argument with the intelligence ally was enough to send the CIA director bolting out of the conference room and head down to the Sixth Floor Ops Center. There he huddled with his deputies, including the head of the CIA’s ultra-secret Special Activities Division, SAD, an ex-navy SEAL from SEAL Team Six, and senior analysts from the CIA’s Information Operations Center Analysis Group—IOC/AG. Surrounded by wall screens, a pair of desktops, tablets, a plasma TV, fed with an array of real-time surveillance devices pulled from a global network of military, spies, informants, and high-tech eavesdropping devices, the director let his eyes absorb intel on the two red-hot fronts: the reigniting ISIS-inflamed civil war in Syria, Iraq, and pan North Africa, and the resurgence of AQAP in Yemen.
On one wall screen, a microcam, snaked inside a pole of a tent in the Syrian desert near the Iraqi border, captured a female North Korean missile engineer, Kim Dong-Sun, seated with four Syrian Army generals and a fellow North Korean scientist. They discussed the blueprint design of a missile launch site through an interpreter. The talks were going down live.
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