“Equally, we don’t want to go in heavy-handed and start shooting pirates when it’s not necessary. Our missions need to be chosen with care. But when we go in, we hit hard.
“As Navy SEALs, we are sworn to protect those who cannot protect themselves, so every mission is a mission of mercy, to rescue prisoners, to reclaim ships and property, to protect the innocent.”
“Couldn’t have said it better, Mack. I’m calling a meeting of senior instructors and commanders this evening. And then we go to work. Line up some top-class guys for the Delta Platoon. These goddamned pirates want to fuck about, we’ll show them how to really fuck about.”
NINE THOUSAND MILES FROM CORONADO, the Navy’s P-3C Orion took off from Nairobi’s Wilson Airport right on time, bound for a remote stretch of dark sky high above the Indian Ocean, 0.75 degrees south on the GPS, 52.36 east. Behind the captain and the navigator sat the four navy guards. Between them were five large zip-up mailbags, fluorescent orange in color.
Inside those bags was a total of $5 million, packaged in stacks of fifty $100 bills. There were two hundred of these small, manageable stacks in each of the five bags, the handles lashed together with a wide unbreakable nylon strap.
On each bag, there was a flotation device and a satellite location beam, just in case the drop missed the deck of the Niagara Falls and landed in the water. The state-of-the-art locator, which would begin transmitting as soon as the bags landed, was similar to those carried by all combat SEALs operating behind enemy lines.
Their route took them over land, directly east, straight along the equator from Nairobi to the coast. And almost immediately the light began to fade, even before they reached the ocean, flying fast, making 400 knots away from the sun setting behind them over Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.
By the time they reached the coastline, the inshore waters below were a dull pink color and then, almost immediately, they turned inky dark blue and then black. Out in front, high to starboard, they could already see their own personal badge in the sky, the bright constellation of stars that form Orion’s Belt—their aircraft having been named after the mythological hunter.
The Orion’s computer system was already showing distance to target. Right now it showed 483 miles to the drop zone, and the aircraft was knocking off one mile every nine seconds. Lt. Ray Rossi was opening maritime radio comms on the agreed frequency directly to the bridge of the Niagara Falls. Admiral Wolde had accepted this must be done between Captain Corcoran and the incoming aircraft that was transporting the ransom cash.
Ray Rossi had the connection as the computer ticked off the miles, now down to 420, only sixty-three minutes to the target, not allowing for the drop in speed over the final ten miles.
On the bridge, a tired Captain Corcoran spoke slowly: “Receiving you, Bankers One. We have speedboats ready to proceed to pickup at five minutes’ notice. Both standing by, with Mombassa, one mile off our stern. Over.”
“Roger that, Niagara. We show four hundred miles, ETA 2105 hours. Planning low-level flight drop, no parachutes, fluorescent orange night bags with flotation. We’ll aim for the ship, margin for error no more than one hundred yards. Over.”
“Roger that, Bankers One. We have your approach course two-sevenzero degrees. The wind’s light southwesterly. I’ll turn Niagara Falls into it. You’ll come at us from astern, two-two-five degrees. Over.”
“Roger that, Niagara. We will come in downwind and then swing around the ship on your portside about four miles south. You’ll see us okay. Probably at 2,000 feet and losing height. Over.”
“Roger that, Bankers One. Check in thirty minutes. Over.”
It was completely dark now and the Orion cut through the tropical night, still at her cruising height, crossing the earth’s easterly lines of longitude. They’d been aloft a long time with a very small crew, and two of the guards were shifting the moneybags toward the internal bomb bays under the front fuselage.
The Orion is designed with external sonobuoy launch tubes, but no one was keen to have 5 million bucks in paper money hurtling through the windswept stratosphere outside the aircraft, beyond reach. Lockheed had not, of course, designed the great airborne warhorse of the United States Navy to deliver cash.
Half an hour later the computer showed fewer than two hundred miles left, and now, it seemed, the miles ticked away even faster. The cash was in place, and Lieutenant Rossi opened up communications to the bridge of the Niagara Falls. Simultaneously Aaron Marshall began his descent into the drop zone, coming five degrees south in readiness to bank left for the final approach.
Captain Corcoran came on the line to receive the terse message from the incoming US aircraft: “Bankers One–one-nine-zero miles. Steering course nine-five. ETA twenty-one-hundred and five hours.”
“Roger that, Bankers One. Over.”
The Orion was losing height. Minute by minute it slid down through the sky. With fifteen minutes to go it was at 15,000 feet and descending. Ten minutes from the target, which it would overfly, it was sixty-seven miles west-southwest of the US freighter and flying at under 10,000 feet.
Seven minutes later it was slowing down, only twenty-six miles from the ship, which was now plain on the radar screen. It was flying at only 2,000 feet, and four minutes later the pilots could see the lights of the Niagara Falls, six miles off through their portside cockpit window.
Lieutenant Rossi again opened the Orion’s comms to the bridge. “Suggest you launch speedboats. Bring them in close to the vessel, port and starboard. That’s us six miles off your starboard beam. We’re running up for our one-eighty turn. You’ll see the approach. Descending to one hundred feet for the drop . . . stay on the line, captain.”
Standing right next to the ship’s master, the pirate chief, Admiral Wolde, called the Mombassa and ordered Captain Hassan to send the boats away. Immediately the helmsmen, Hamdan Ougoure and Abadula Sofian, gunned the two skiffs directly at the distant freighter in readiness for the drop.
By now the area was becoming crowded and very noisy. Both the destroyer Roosevelt and the frigate Ingraham had arrived on station and were positioned close in to the captured freighter, lights blazing. On the stern of each warship was a Sikorsky Seahawk, rotors howling, ready to take off. Essentially there was enough US Navy hardware within a couple of hundred yards to conquer a small country—guided missiles, bombs, torpedoes, naval artillery, and machine guns.
The Orion was down to two hundred miles per hour. She was three miles past the ship, and Lieutenant Commander Marshall began the turn. The portside wing dipped as he banked hard left. He held her at 1,000 feet and then descended again, in 220-foot drops.
Rossi’s last message to Captain Corcoran went through: “Coming in now at one hundred feet for the low-level drop. Will aim directly for the deck.”
Inside the cockpit, Marshall held the huge aircraft steady, flying straight at the stern lights of the Niagara Falls. Her four turboprops screamed in the night, as Lieutenant Rossi called back: “Two miles . . . thirty-six seconds . . . twenty seconds . . .”
Marshall could see the outline of the freighter now, and he heard Ray Rossi’s final call. His voice rose to a shout as he ordered: “Okay, we’re right on her . . . NOW! NOW! NOW!”
The bomb bay flashed open and the orange bags fell out, tumbling straight down one hundred feet as the Orion thundered overhead. It was a great shot, but a rising gust on the southwester just caught it, and the five roped bags swooped over the starboard rail and landed in the Indian Ocean only ten feet from the ship’s hull.
Abadula Sofian, his skiff positioned only a hundred yards away, watched the bags tumble from the giant aircraft, and he saw the bags hit the rail and almost slide down the hull of the stationary ship. He could see the bright fluorescent light floating on the surface of the water. He steered his narrow boat right onto the big waterproof bags and rammed a boat hook into the middle of the mass of handles and the nylon rope.
Abadula heaved, and the orange bags gripped. His crewmat
e leaned over to help, and there on the moonlit waters the two Somali pirates hauled aboard their five-million-dollar catch. In the far distance the lights of the Orion were back in view as Lieutenant Commander Marshall made his second 180-degree turn and headed back to Diego Garcia.
Back on the bridge, Admiral Wolde, on his cell phone, ordered his two skiffs to close in on the freighter, where the crew was already fixing nets for the disembarkation. On the other line, Admiral Mark Bradfield in the Pentagon was giving the orders, and he told Wolde to take his two guards and report to the deck. When the two skiffs pulled alongside, all three men were to disembark, using the nets, and proceed directly to the Mombassa.
When Wolde asked the admiral if he was permitted to have a word with his helmsman just to check the bags were actually full of money, he was given a curt but unexpected answer.
“No,” snapped America’s chief naval officer. “But I do have a couple of words for you personally. One’s ‘fuck’ and the other’s ‘you.’ Now get off our ship, and consider yourself damn lucky we don’t blow that tin-can fishing boat of yours clean out of the water with all of you on board.”
Ismael’s grasp of colloquial English was not bad but by no means perfect. Even so, he definitely understood Admiral Bradfield’s drift, and, secretly, he did consider himself lucky to be getting out of there alive.
“Sir, I have kept my word to you. No one has been harmed since we first spoke. The Niagara Falls is returned to you as it was when we found it.”
“That’s the only reason you’re still breathing,” gritted Admiral Bradfield, ungraciously.
“Then I bid you good-bye, sir,” replied Ismael Wolde.
“For your sake, I hope I do not come across you again,” rasped Mark Bradfield down the line from Washington, with an equally ungracious flourish.
The three pirates stepped over the rails, tossed down their weapons, and climbed down the nets into the skiffs. With a roar from the Yamahas, the raiders took off with their booty, speeding back to the Mombassa.
As they left, Ismael Wolde was on the line to Mohammed Salat with the shortest message: Mission accomplished. Somali Marines coming home with 5 million dollars. Arrive Haradheere midnight tomorrow.
When the same message flashed up on the bulletin board in the stock exchange, you could hear the roar in Nairobi. The village elders smiled as their stocks in the operation doubled in value, and the hospital would get its new X-ray machine.
It was almost 10:30 p.m., and the crowds on the dark streets thronged in and out of the bars. The SUVs roared around the town, horns blaring. Anyone who did not understand that the Somali Marines had triumphed must have been sleeping very soundly.
MEANWHILE ADMIRAL BRADFIELD ordered Captain Corcoran to turn the ship around and head back to Diego Garcia. And even as he did so, Lt. Com. Jay Souchak came in with a signal flashed through from the USS Roosevelt, via the Indian Ocean Command Center: Fishing boat Mombassa stands less than one mile off our port quarter. Have our orders changed? Do you want us to sink it now?
Mark Bradfield, who knew Roosevelt’s commander extremely well, wondered for a split second if this was a joke. If it was, it was typical of Commander Bill Taylor. But he decided it wasn’t and said to Jay Souchak, “Negative to both.”
“Bit of a waste, sir, dropping 5 mill on the ocean floor,” replied his XO.
“Bit of a drag, Jay, when tomorrow’s newspapers right here in the US come out with a headline that reads:
US GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYER BLASTS
INNOCENT FISHERMAN IN INDIAN OCEAN—
MANY DEAD—PRESIDENT AGHAST. ORDERS
NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING
Jay Souchak laughed. Unlike the dispatch team in the Orion, Mark Bradfield’s cutting wit rarely missed its target. And while he was concerned at the way any US aggression would be treated by the media, he was a great deal more concerned about the real issue: Had the US government, for the first time, negotiated with terrorists?
Fox News would not take no for an answer. And the rest of the media was apt to follow, more slowly, but become more sure-footed in their suspicion that the Pentagon had paid up. Mark Bradfield knew his press office had to put out a statement announcing that the Niagara Falls had been recaptured and the pirates had vanished.
He also knew the tigers in the Fox newsroom would immediately ask whether the US freighter had been reclaimed by force or negotiation. If the latter, was a ransom paid? He called for Jay to contact the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This, he decided, was too big an issue.
General Lancaster was even more concerned. “This is bigger than just a military decision, Mark,” he said. “Because there are political overtones which will not go away. Many people believe we should never pay off pirates because it just encourages them to strike again, as they always do.”
“Then we better stick to our guns, Zack,” replied Admiral Bradfield. “A ransom was paid by the Seafarers Union, which was concerned for the lives of its members. I think we can admit we assisted them in their efforts, but the decision to pay a small ransom to free the men was theirs alone. We did not consider it appropriate to discourage them.”
“Perfect,” said General Lancaster. “Make sure the release refers all future inquiries to the union.”
“Okay, boss,” said Mark Bradfield. “Meanwhile we need to get a plan. Because, trust me, these bastards are going to come calling for another 5 million bucks sometime in the not-too-distant future.”
“I know they are,” replied the general. “The trouble is, our specialist fighting force, DEVGRU, has received almost no training to attack a moving ship from the ocean, not one that’s been captured. Their instinct is always to save as many hostages as possible and then blow the bastard out of the water. We gotta get smaller. And get modern.”
“Leave it to me,” said Mark Bradfield. “I’ll talk to Carlow in the morning. But we can’t go on like this, always getting caught with out pants down every time a group of tribesmen decides one of our freighters is a soft touch.”
“And don’t forget the land, Mark. We may have to go ashore and knock the shit out of one of these pirate towns. That’s what I like about Carlow’s SEALs. They can operate anywhere.”
WHEN THE PENTAGON’S PRESS RELEASE went out the following morning, it was written in undramatic terms. By the evening editions of the newspapers, the story had slipped off the front pages and down the playlist for the news channels. And that’s where it would stay, growing less significant by the day, until the name and address of the late first mate, Charlie Wyatt, was released.
The media and the public had lost interest. And the real seething curiosity now switched to Capitol Hill. Because there, in both houses of Congress, there was genuine concern about the USA’s involvement in the payment of ransoms to pirate gangs off the coast of Somalia.
The successful action of the SEALs in freeing the captain of the Maersk Alabama had undoubtedly made matters worse—not because they had been obliged to blow the heads off three pirates but because they had demonstrated that fierce professional aggression against heavily armed amateurs paid off.
There were already rumblings in Washington that the US should cease to soft-pedal the growing problem and get in there and rescue any American vessel that was captured. Most senators were only marginally up to speed on the subject, and they were entirely ignorant about the iron hand of control exercised by the international insurance corporations.
The brokers understood there was an ever-present threat that even the pirates could sue for compensation if one of their number was shot dead. There were lawyers lined up to sue any national government that sent in armed troops that subsequently opened fire. Legal compensation could run into the millions of dollars, and law firms were making it abundantly clear they had no qualms about representing families of bereaved pirates.
And while insurers were happy to cover the costs of stolen cargoes, the cargoes were rarely lost, because all the cards were stacked in favor of paying out the ransom.
No one likes a standoff with an insurance company. Least of all shipowners who, despite everything, understood their premiums would rocket upward if the US military started blowing away the tribesmen.
However, the US government remains the most powerful force in the world. All Congress needed was a law that banned foreign nationals from suing the US military in US courts for actions that take place either on the high seas or on foreign soil where the troops were protecting American interests.
And there were Republican senators and representatives all over the country who were about to demand this kind of law be enacted. These same politicians were also demanding that the US never negotiate with pirates, or foreign governments that harbored them, and never pay out ransom money to terrorists or pirates, whatever the circumstances.
But the sands were shifting. The demand from both the legislators and a riled American public was that not only should the new law be passed, but that the Special Forces go in, every time, and protect American citizens and property.
A groundswell of public opinion and congressional outrage had an energy all of its own. And the worst fears of Admiral Andy Carlow and Commander Mack Bedford were about to be realized. With a posse of journalists waiting outside the US Navy base in Diego Garcia, it had become impossible to withhold the name of Charlie Wyatt any longer. The navy press office was under siege, and the New York Post came out with an editorial that demanded: Who the hell does the Pentagon think it is? Deliberately withholding from the public the name of a brave American merchant navy officer who died at the hands of Somali tribesmen while trying to defend his ship and his crewmates? What God-given right does the US Navy have to hide his identity?
The two-column headline above the editorial read:
The Delta Solution Page 9