Operation Caribe (10 page)

At first, what they saw was not very promising. The islands of the Sunset Chain looked practically deserted. Lots of oceanfront, lots of beaches, a few villages here and there—but nothing that would qualify as a hideout for a bunch of cutthroat pirates.

But then they flew over an island located about a mile off the northeastern edge of the archipelago, away from the others. Surrounded by thick reefs and rocky beaches, it was appropriately named Craggy Two Cay for the river that ran through it, cutting it in half. And though it was covered with heavy jungle and almost impossible to approach safely from any side by sea, the XFLIR almost immediately started picking up clusters of heat sources on it.

“We might have a bingo,” Nolan declared.

He checked the flight computer’s map and saw that this speck of land barely registered on the grid. There
were
a lot of boat wrecks on the reefs and rocks around it, however, some marked, some not. This alone ensured most vessels would avoid the place.

Nolan zoomed in as far as the XFLIR would go and started picking up individual heat sources. There were about three dozen in all, human figures moving about, as well as some livestock. He also saw fires burning, probably in barrels, and other unusual heat sources. Most important, though, he was getting a reading on a boat that had just pulled up to the beach near the camp. This was most likely the same boat that had carried the two pirates to the
Georgia June.
Its engine was still throwing off heat.

Nolan reported all this to those on board.

“Gotta be the place,” Batman said. “So hang on.”

*   *   *

IT TOOK THE copter just three minutes to spiral down to wave-top level.

They were soon flying off the eastern edge of Craggy Two Cay. From here, the team members used their standard night-vision goggles to peer through the sea mist and into the island’s jungle beyond.

The encampment they saw was not quite what they’d been expecting. Again, they knew the pirate gang had access to a lot of money. And though it seemed to go through their hands like water, they always had the ability to make more. But this place looked more like a city dump than a hideout. Shanty shacks were surrounded by mounds of trash and debris with empty and smashed liquor bottles everywhere. Piles of broken and rusted outboard motor parts covered the small beach that led from the camp to the river. Pigs were running free everywhere.

“Some Somalis live better than this,” Crash said.

Nolan and Batman were sweating badly now inside their flight suits in the heavy, 80-degree night air. Crash and Gunner, on the other hand, were cool and comfortable.

But not for long.

The copter came to a hover just off the island’s east-facing reef. The dividing river ran through this reef, past the pirates’ camp, and then on to the other side of the island. Called a “bight,” this was not unusual topography for the Bahamas. And it would be key for what happened next.

“Ready back there?” Nolan yelled over his shoulder to Crash and Gunner.

He heard two “Rogers,” in reply.

With that, both men jumped out, hitting the water with a great splash.

Nolan waited until he received a thumbs up from them, then gave Batman the signal to go. The copter roared straight up, soon disappearing back into the night.

Crash and Gunner swam the hundred yards in through the channel. Their intent was to observe the pirates’ hideout, SEAL-style. The mild current was going with them, so they soon reached a point about twenty-five feet off the camp’s river shoreline. With their faces blackened and their eyes aided by waterproofed night-vision goggles, they started the recon.

What they saw was more of the same: lots of junk, lots of garbage, lots of engine parts and debris. There were fifteen shacks in all, arranged in a rough semicircle around a huge bonfire. Everywhere around the shacks the ground sparkled because there was so much glass from so many smashed liquor bottles. Amid all this refuse stood a tree holding a satellite dish used for receiving TV and radio broadcasts.

Crash and Gunner counted more than thirty gunmen around the camp. These had to be the hardcore pirates, Captain Black’s senior men, the ones privileged enough to actually live, eat and breathe within sight of their bloodthirsty leader. Some were gathered near the bonfire, apparently gambling. A few were fighting each other with knives and fists. The rest were drinking by the river’s edge, not far from where Crash and Gunner were quietly treading water.

The Whiskey members could see no signs of security, no lookouts, no sentries around the camp—which was good. But there was also a lot of firepower in evidence. Most dangerous were a pair of .50-caliber chain guns, one set up at each end of the camp. These nasty weapons were connected to ammo drums containing hundreds of rounds. It was obvious they were put in place to fire at any boats approaching from either end of the bight. But set up on tripods, they could just as easily be trained upward and used against a threat from above.

The pirates also had an open-sided shack filled with AK-47s hanging on racks for easy access. A similar structure next to this armory was full of weapons still in their packing crates. Gunner figured these were arms the pirates had for sale.

There were also stacks of rifles and shotguns set up next to shacks, and many others scattered haphazardly on the ground.

“There must be five weapons for every guy here,” Gunner said to Crash.

“At least,” Crash replied.

Most important, the camp was built close to the edge of the jungle. There were dozens of places in the shadows of the flora where gunmen could hide during an attack.

“This will have to be an exercise in drawing fire,” Gunner said. “We’ll have to tease them out if we want to get them all.”

“Roger that,” Crash replied.

Gunner took a lot of pictures with the team’s waterproof digital camera and then they both resumed swimming down the bight. When they reached the far side of the island, the team’s copter was waiting for them.

As soon as the pair climbed in, Nolan asked, “Well, what’s the 411?”

Gunner replied, “
Muy desorganizada.”

Then Crash added, “But still
muy
dangerous.”

9

The next night

NOLAN WAS AT the controls of
Bad Dawg Two
.

It was just before midnight. Not twenty-four hours after Gunner and Crash had completed their recon of Craggy Two Cay, Whiskey was on its way back, this time in force.

They were flying low, just above the wave tops, coming from the north. Batman was off Nolan’s left wing in
Bad Dawg One;
Crash was with him, manning one of the door guns. Gunner and Twitch were riding with Nolan, their M4s hooked up to extended belts of ammunition. Some of the photos Gunner had taken of the pirates’ secret camp were taped to Nolan’s flight panel. He’d studied them closely and knew the numbers they told: more than thirty hardcore pirates were probably at the camp, along with two big chain guns and a lot of assault rifles. The advantage, six to one in the pirates’ favor, didn’t bother Nolan. Back when they attacked the base of Zeek the Pirate in Indonesia, Whiskey had been outnumbered almost
eight
-to-one, and had still come out on top.

It was the target’s makeup that troubled him. The Muy Capaz camp was so cluttered, it offered dozens of concealed places from which the pirates could fire. This meant Whiskey had no choice but to come in low, destroy the two big chain guns first, then draw the pirates’ fire and take out anyone who fell in their sights. Nolan was well aware how dangerous this would be. One round in the wrong place, like in his engine, or his skull, and the show would be over, just like that.

So in planning the mission, the team had to come up with a few tricks, things to knock the pirates off kilter before they came in so low and exposed.

Gunner suggested building a stinkpot, a weapon designed hundreds of years ago. A concoction of saltpeter, limestone and a spice called asafetida, plus lots of dead fish, it was packed in a container drenched with kerosene and lit by a fuse. When detonated, it created such a stench, it could cause waves of debilitating nausea almost immediately.

A stinkpot was now tied to Nolan’s right side strut. Made to Gunner’s specifications, it was contained in a fifty-gallon milk can they’d requisitioned from the
Georgia June
. If they could drop the stinkpot at the beginning of the attack, Whiskey was hoping many of the enemy gunmen would be too busy vomiting to fight.

But this was not their only psy-ops weapon.
Bad Dawg One
was equipped with an external loudspeaker. Typically employed for crowd dispersal or talking to hostage-takers, the loudspeaker was connected to an MP3 player in the copter’s cockpit that could play any recording at earsplitting volume.

To this end, Crash had made an MP3 loop featuring a mélange of unsettling sounds: people screaming; wounded and dying animals; horns blowing, drums beating. It was a primal cacophony, like a soundtrack for a war movie. Whiskey hoped this, too, would add to the pirates’ confusion.

Batman had chipped in by making several dozen flash bombs, using soda cans as his weapons jackets. Filled with phosphorus and aviation gas, they would not only make an ear splitting noise when they exploded, they would produce a flash of light so bright it would blind anyone nearby.

These were all good ideas. But in planning the attack, the team sensed they needed one more thing, something almost cosmically unsettling. Twitch had pointed out that back in the old pirate days, the most powerful weapon the brigands had was their flag—the skull and crossbones. When the pirates would come up on a ship, sometimes all they had to do was run up their Jolly Roger and the victim would simply give up. Fear could be a powerful weapon in battle. But what would instill such fear in these particular modern-day pirates?

Twitch made figuring that out his personal mission.

Their preparations for battle had taken the team most of the day. But as the sun went down and they began suiting up for the attack, one important question remained: what if, after hitting them with the stink bomb, the psy-ops recording, the flash grenades and Twitch’s secret weapon, the pirates wanted to give up?

The thought had crossed Nolan’s mind more than once during the day. Back in Indonesia, Whiskey had trapped dozens of Zeek’s men on a sandbar and mowed them down with a fusillade of .50-caliber machine gun fire. It was distasteful, but in the end, necessary. Zeek’s men were murderers, rapists, and sadists. The
Muy Capaz
were no different. Besides, eliminating them was what Whiskey was being paid to do.

So before they took off, Nolan had told the team: “Remember what Mr. Jobo said. ‘Gloves off.’ Those are his words. Those are our specs. So, that’s what we gotta do.”

*   *   *

THE DAY HAD passed in surreal fashion for the pirates on Craggy Two Cay.

The four brigands who’d gone out on a “flying raid” two nights before had not returned. And while it was not too unusual for gang members to simply give up the pirate life and vanish, it
was
odd that four would jump ship together. What’s more, no one had been able to get in touch with Colonel Cat. Had his plane crashed two nights ago? The pirates had heard nothing on their shortwave radios about any aircraft crashes on the islands. Had their colleagues been caught by the authorities, then? No one knew—and that was making everyone feel uneasy.

On the other hand, the deal that Doggie and Jacks had made the night before with the men from Africa had the potential to change Muy Capaz’s financial situation forever. If they could line up enough drug and weapons dealers and start a pipeline flowing, they would make so much money, they could spend scads of it in Badtown for weeks at a time and still have plenty left over.

So, it had been a day of yin and yang. Still, the pirates had spent it as they usually did: sleeping, gambling, fighting with each other, drinking and doing drugs. The only defensive action Black took was to post a half dozen men down on the east beach of the cay, near the mouth of the bight that split the island in two, something he did in times of heightened security at the camp.

The job of these six men was simple. They were to report anything unusual coming their way from the ocean side, the likeliest route for any attack on the hidden camp.

And something odd
did
arrive around midnight.

Not from the sea, but from the air.

*   *   *

ONE MOMENT, THE six pirates on the beach were passing a bottle of rum and only casually checking the horizon.

The next moment, hellfire fell upon them.

The noise came first—and it was incredibly loud. People screaming, animalistic wails of agony, people shouting over radio static. It was suddenly all around them. Then the night lit up with incredibly bright explosions, dozens filling the sky.

Then came the helicopters. The pirates weren’t sure of the number, but it sounded like hundreds of them. Two streaked close past them; they looked dark and menacing, loaded down with bombs and guns. But there was another thing: The emblems on their fuselages were unmistakable: the red-white-and-blue insignia, with the star in the middle?

These were Americans. U.S. military gunships sent here to attack them. Between all the noise and the flashes of light, it was as if the 82nd Airborne itself was suddenly descending on Craggy Two Cay.

The six pirates on the beach were instantly terrified. They’d never run into anything like this before.

They had no desire to take on the helicopters. None of them even shot back. Instead, they dropped their weapons and ran into the jungle, heading at top speed back to their encampment.

*   *   *

NOLAN’S WAS THE first copter to arrive over the hidden pirate base. Flying very low, he slowed down just enough for Gunner to light the stinkpot’s fuse and kick the malodorous weapon out the copter door; then they streaked away. The bomb landed with a splat right in the middle of the camp’s huge bonfire. It exploded instantly, hurling its contents over a wide area.