The Crisis (37 page)

He tensed as they hit green water, but it was only a tide line, the rich warm water behind the islands streaming out. The sound inside looked even calmer than the sea, and that sea, today, was so calm it set his teeth on edge.

He leaned. The bow wave made a shallow cup, a curve, a lens of clear smooth water. Leaning farther, he peered down into the shallows. Sinuous dark forms wove among coral heads, silhouetted against crystalline sand.

Suddenly he caught his breath. It wasn't shallow, but deep. And those were sharks, dozens of them, big mothers too. A continuous line headed in, others headed out. Several big hammerheads slowly orbited, as if they had nothing on their appointment calendars today.

The shores on either side contracted, then fell away. Dunes and scrubby bushes in their lee and nothing more. A few bits of the Earth were still innocent. Beach like this was going for millions back in Santa Cruz County. His mother owned a lot of it.

The tanker was less lovely. Shoved deep into the sea's pocket by her cargo, her green sides streaked with corrosion like dried tomato paste below the maze of white-painted but rust-stained piping he'd noted in the photo. As they motored closer he checked off a haze above her stack, a dangling boarding ladder, two skinnies aft on deck with AKs. Another sat in a speedboat tethered to the stern by a green nylon line. All three were watching the approaching RHIB.

Chem tankers were always tough. The labyrinth of piping and valves was impossible for the boarding party to figure out. Their empty runs and deep, sealed tanks, stainless or epoxy-lined, could hide all manner of contraband.

The coxswain made a pass, pointing to the ladder. One of the guys on deck nodded violently, pointing at it. Dark, almost unnaturally elongated, in worn short-sleeve button-ups, T-shirts, and ragged shorts. Teddy stood, thinking again about the sharks. “Put us on that boat,” he murmured. “Not on the ladder.”

“On their speedboat?”

“You got it, Driftwood.”

The coxswain cut the outboards. The inflatable drifted the last few feet and jostled into the motorboat. It leaned, then jostled again as Teddy and then Sumo stepped over. The skinny in the boat blinked at Kaulukukui in disbelief.

“Point that thing someplace else, okay?” said Oberg, smiling. He fished a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and held it out. The guy beamed, especially when Teddy added a flashy butane lighter with the NASCAR logo.
“Mahad seeneed, mahad seeneed,”
he said, turning the little race car over and over as if it were a giant ruby.

“Your new butt buddy,” Sumo muttered.

“He'll never replace you.”

“Get the fuck up that ladder.”

“
You
get up it. If you can without breaking the rungs.”

He pulled himself up after Sumo with a definite feeling of stepping into possible shit. When he got to the top he held up the ID holder hanging around his neck on a chain.

As expected, the reception committee barely glanced at it. This was good, not least because it was fake, cooked up on a color printer to read World Food Organization. The deck guards searched them, shook his cane and tried to pull it apart, but found nothing. He leaned on it, faking a limp as they threaded through passageways to the mess.

Nine men glanced up as they entered. They weren't shackled or tied, but their slumped shoulders betrayed their helplessness. As did the ragged ruffians sitting in each corner, rifles on tables and a green stick of qat poking from each ruminating jaw. Teddy had a confab with the tanker captain, who spoke English. He said they were being treated well, no one hurt, though they'd been shoved around. Their own cook was still on duty.

“What do they want, Cap'n?”

“The short answer's money. Suleyman will tell you. A billion dollars in cash.”

Teddy assumed he meant million, not billion. “Will your company pay? They got hijacking insurance?”

“Everybody does, these days. But there may be delays. Negotiation.”

The guy looked so whipped, though, that Teddy whispered, “What's wrong? They fucking with you?”

His Adam's apple bobbed, and he glanced toward a guard. A scowler, Teddy saw. He gave him one back, until the guy looked away. Back to the captain. “Well?”

“They're not treating us badly. But, if the ransom is not paid—they make threats.”

Teddy eyed Scowler again. “Hang tight, Skipper. We'll get you out of this. How many of 'em? You keep a count?”

He didn't answer, but the fingers of his right hand splayed out on the table as if he was working out a cramp. Twice.

One of their escorts came back and said something that ended in “Suleyman,” so Teddy got up and went with him. Kaulukukui stayed, milking everything he could from the hostages.

On the bridge wing an even more elongated Ashaaran in sun-faded Castro cap and beach shorts patterned with ferns and frogs had his big rubber-thonged feet up on the pelorus stand. Horrible lesions puffed raw-hamburger ankles. It looked to Teddy like the beginning stages of elephantiasis. He showed his ID again. The guy said something to the guards and shoved a folding chair over with the other foot.

Teddy sat, squinting in the glare off the silver silk of the sound. From forward came the jangle of canned music, the falsetto wail of one of the androgynous male singers Ashaarans loved. They tried various languages to no avail. Teddy shook out a Marlboro. They lit up, leaned back, and regarded each other.

The pirate chief produced a calculator. Teddy blinked. Sure enough, the display read 1,000,000,000.

Did this dude know how much a billion was? Just for shits 'n' grins, Teddy punched in 10,000 and handed it back. The guy tilted it this way and that before getting an insulted look. He shook his head and pointed his finger gun-fashion. “Pan, pan, pan,” he said. “Pan, pan, pan, pan pan pan.
Tue, muerte, geeri
.”

“Subtle, but I get you,” Teddy told him. “Stay with the sticker price, huh?”

1,000,000,000.

100,000, he punched in. The guy took it back and added zeros.

1,000,000,000.

“We're done, Driftwood,” he said, keeping his tone light. “Hope whatever you got on your leg spreads to your cock.”

“Danyo?”
the guy said, making a drinking motion. Teddy hesitated, then decided he was ahead of the game. Time to fold and head home with his winnings. He shook his head and got up. Held up the cane. “Shall I jam this up your ass, Captain Kidd?”

“Captain,” the guy said, grinning. “Captain Keed.
Khayr, nabagelyo
.” He held out a limp hand, which Teddy avoiding looking at while he shook it. “Pan, pan pan,” were his last words as Teddy retreated toward the ladder, keeping that salesman's smile pasted wide until he turned away.

. . .

HE collected Sumo from the messroom and gestured to the guards that they wanted to leave. They seemed cool with that. He told the ship's skipper they'd be in touch and not to worry or try anything stupid, but if he heard firing, get his men down on deck. He got an anxious smile in return, and a slightly firmer handshake than on the bridge.

Out into the open air again, across the deck, over the rail. He let himself down the ladder and waved the boat in.

Not the RHIB, but the speedboat. The guy in it was still nursing his cigarette. He grinned and hauled in on the painter, bringing the bow up so they could step down into it. Teddy dropped the cane first, then followed it, stepping cautiously, as if his leg hurt.

The RHIB was making its approach. He judged its closing rate, then looked back up at the deck. The guards were still there, but they weren't visible over the swell of the hull.

He took another pack from his shirt and held it out.

Kaulukukui's big hand closed around the man's mouth at the same moment Oberg reached for his ID case. The next moment the Hawaiian had the guard's head under water and Teddy had sawed halfway through the nylon painter with the three-inch blade of his Cold Steel push knife, hidden in the concealed pocket of the badge case. When it parted he threw a bowline in it and leaped across to the RHIB as it coasted in. Kaulukukui let his guy snatch one breath, then zip-tied him and gagged him with the sling from a first aid kit.

They left him hooked thrashing on the boarding ladder as the RHIB peeled away, bowline fast to the towing cleat on the stern. The pirates on the tanker waved a cheerful farewell.

Until they saw the painter come taut and their motorboat following it out into the sound. Yelling followed but the only shot went so far wild Teddy didn't even see it hit the water. “Totally,” Kaulukukui said, racking the boat guard's AK, which he'd kept. Teddy covered his ears as he emptied the magazine at an inquisitive dorsal fin. “They got hostages, great. Now they're
our
hostages.”

“Think you nicked him. You see those others? Waiting down deep?”

“Fucking ay. Place is Shark Heaven.”

“Shark Hell, they try to swim for it.” Teddy stretched, looking back to where the tanker rode at anchor, centerpiece of an idyllic vista of beach and sky. He leaned to spit into the dark water.

“
Now
, let's negotiate.”

B
EFORE Ghedi the flat plain stretches to the horizon, boiling in the heat. A hundred-foot-high dust devil staggers amid dead thornbushes, over gravel pans and salt flats and toppled termite mounds. Above him snaps the green-and-black banner. He raises the binoculars, stolen from a Canadian unit laagered along the Tanagra by a new volunteer.

There they are. Low huts, the same drab as the rocks and the dust. Tethered camels. And here and there between him and the roadblock, the occasional vehicle, plumes of dust, but mainly the distant specks of men at desultory work. Flashes of sun on polished metal. Shovels? Bayonets? Fresh razor wire?

In two weeks the Waleeli have advanced a hundred miles up the coast. Behind them lies Malakat, a skirmish at the Tanagra Delta, and brushes with nomads and village militias that ended with peacemaking and more recruits. The sea lies over the dunes on his right flank, but he hasn't seen it yet. Every moment's occupied sorting out disputes, allocating ammunition and food, arranging repairs, praising and calming the disparate elements of his quarrelsome forces.

Now, at last, they face battle. No more raiding convoys, trading long-distance shots with nomads on camels, managing skirmishes that are more like preludes to parley. Every day brings in more men from the west and north. He's halted here, though, facing the forces gathered at the roadblock.

Someone's decided to stop him. But Ghedi hasn't attacked. Not yet. For four days he's halted here, while both forces slowly grow in size, scout the hills, and prepare.

He lifts his head, watching the dust devil. Noting another on the horizon.
A dimness in the sky. He closes his eyes and tastes the wind. It streams and cracks the bullet-tattered banner. It blows from behind them, from his right hand.

Is this the day?

A small group waits for his attention. Juulheed's out scouting in the Fiat. Instead Hasheer stands with the new arrivals. Ghedi insists on meeting each man who joins. This is dangerous—the enemy could try to kill him, and some still whisper Hasheer's not to be trusted—but he relies now as much on the awe simple men feel at his presence, as on his bodyguards and their pat-downs.

He lowers the binoculars and beckons to a tribesman who stares in admiration. Face shining, the man advances, bowing to the dusty ground.

 

AFTER greeting the morning's volunteers he retreats to his command tent as the heat increases. The tent came from a medical-aid camp near the Asmaran border. Foreign-made, it's cool inside, made of a stretchy fabric he's never seen before. He checks with his radio man.

A rumble and the snap of stones under massive tires. One of the Gelhirs' huge Fiat armored cars. The crews are still Gelhir and the cars have spearheaded the advance north. Unfortunately they fired their last cannon ammunition the week before and now are only good for carrying troops, but the enemy can't know that. Juulheed, with his mad genius for weapons, has festooned clusters of RPG launchers off the turrets. They still have plenty of RPGs, plenty of green plastic Chinese grenades. The Americans haven't intercepted all their shipments. When Juulheed swings down Ghedi wraps him in a hug. His cheek bulges. Where has he found fresh qat? No one else has any. Ghedi pounds his back, glad to see the tall crazy man. “We've got to talk,” his deputy says rapidly. “We went all the way around, out to the pass, then in to the road. Reinforcements. Guns.”

“Tanks?”

“Didn't see any, and those we captured say they haven't either.” His eyes flick to the new men. “Where are these from?”

“Out near Malaishu. There are many coming from the Western Mountains now.” Ghedi doesn't write well and can't multiply, but he retains numbers and never forgets a man once he's met him. “We have two thousand men and forty vehicles. What's your count on the other side?”

He has troops from all the southern clans and many northerners as well, though on paper they owe allegiance to Assad. Most of his men are young, eager for fighting. He and Juulheed have tried to train them, but there's a limit. They thirst to win glory, and it's God who gives them
strength, not training. Anyway, there's not much to know other than to race ahead and kill as many of the enemy as you can.

But this time he's facing an entrenched enemy, twice, maybe three times his strength. They have artillery too. He strokes his new beard. Is this the day? He's worried about fuel. Worried about his right flank; there was a probe last night. “Let me talk to these you captured,” he says abruptly.

“One we had to kill. The other's here.” Juulheed barks an order, and his men unload a limp burden from the Fiat.

The staggering prisoner has obviously already been questioned. His ragged trousers are bloody, face beaten to meat with rifle butts. “Give him water,” Ghedi snaps. “And some of that goat cheese. Who mistreated this Muslim brother?”