The Crisis (36 page)

The SEAL “hooch” was one of the prefabs at the international airport. The Marines had renamed it Camp Rowley, after the private killed at the embassy gate. The SEALs were part of an on-call reaction force, formed since someone had started raiding convoys. They'd gone out twice, but both times too late to do much but police up the dead. Fortunately or not, there hadn't been many. Oberg suspected that was because the skinnies riding shotgun had deserted to join the bandits.

A disturbing trend, but sooner or later they'd catch up to whoever was raiding the shipments. Running a last oil-soaked patch through the bore—it was chromed, but he never left a bore unoiled—he reflected on how nice it would be to pop a few primers on them. With the perfect excuse: they were stealing food from starving people.

Not that he gave a shit. The blade of his Glock grated as he scraped carbon off the bolt face. He pulled the extractor and cleaned it, looking for cracks and wear. Kaulukukui was going on about some gee-whiz dry lube the GrayWolf armorer had given him. Teddy grunted. Usually he was good
for hours arguing about weapons, but right now he was thinking about the Offer.

A friend of his mom's wanted him in on an action picture. The guy was a schmuck and a liar, but who wasn't in LA. He'd sent Teddy the spec script. Silly shit, but it came cheap from a new screenwriter, and with Teddy on board, he could make “an authentic picture of SEALs in action.” Teddy would get a cameo, shared credit, maybe even a point of gross.

Unspoken so far was that the guy expected him to put money in, too.

Oh, he had it. All it'd take was a call to his mom's lawyers. Cavanaugh, Sillinger & Sukkar, the firm she'd banked her A-list earnings with for twenty years. But he'd grown up in that scene. Gone round the world to get away from it. Did he want to go back?

He didn't think so. Still, it might be fun to make a picture. He reassembled the bolt, cleaned the buffer assembly, scrubbed down the locking lugs. Spritzed everything and wiped it dry. He snapped the charging handle in, ran the bolt in, pivoted upper and lower back together. Pushed the takedown pin in and snatched the bolt and snapped the trigger. Good.

Just in time. The speaker outside said, “REACTION TEAM ALFA, REACTION TEAM ALFA, MUSTER ON PAD SIX, ON THE DOUBLE.”

 

SUMO steered the Humvee around two camels fucking in the road, like big tangled sawhorses. Bare-legged kids fished in tide pools. Each time he braked to let a convoy rumble by, the beggars closed in. “Sir! Sir!” they yelled, thrusting their deformities through the windows. “On the eighth day God said, ‘Crap, I forgot' . . . and created Ashaara,” Kaulukukui muttered.

Fat flies echeloned in like attacking Stukas as the team rolled out at the terminal. Two ships were discharging. The little pusher boats were butting another out of the basin. Trucks waited under the discharge chutes of silos. Drifts of chaff and broken rice lay crisscrossed with tire tracks.
Shamal
's engines shook the air with the familiar school-bus rumble, venting an apricot cloudbank that drifted straight up. Teddy and Sumo Man and Arkin and Kowacki, two more Team Eight guys fresh in-country from ops in Yemen—the former, “Barkin' Arkin” or “Bitch Dog,” the latter inevitably christened “Whacker”—humped lumpy duffels and soft-cased weapons up the brow, across the afterdeck, and down into the SEAL prep area. The twenty-by-thirty steel-walled compartment was studded with hydraulic tanks and compressors, its overhead v-indented by the launch ramp for the RHIB.

When he bumped his gear down the ladder the first thing that hit him was the smell. It was rank, raw piss and shit. The second was the heat. Had to be 130, maybe 140, so hot his eyes burned. The black CO, Geller,
was standing in blue coveralls dark with sweat, fists on hips, a chief behind him, watching Kaulukukui and Arkin stow their gear in the aft magazine locker. Since the engines were clamoring a few feet away, Oberg had to shout. “Alleycat, how you doing?” he yelled, tossing a salute. Jesus, he'd almost called the guy Jelly Man, Sumo's nickname for him. “Ever find that machine gun, sir?”

Geller's eyes crimped. “The one you lost overboard?”

“Not
us
, Skipper.
Your
guys. Teddy Oberg, team leader, reporting aboard. You know Sumo. This is Whacker and Bitch Dog. Jesus, what's that stink? Like a sheep's asshole down here.”

The chief enlightened them: the level switch in the contaminated holding tank had failed. The pump had run and run, burning out the motor. Meaning, the heads were shut down. “Until we get that pump swapped out, everybody uses those five-gallon buckets in the corners. Lug 'em topside and dump 'em, but don't wait till they're full or they'll slop all over the ladders. Then we'll really have a mess.”

Geller said, “What's the word, Petty Officer Oberg? What've you heard about this hijacking?”

“Sir, all they told us, pirates took down one of the aid ships. Up the north coast, lookin' for ransom. You and me, we have to get up there and see can we spring 'em. That jibe with what you got?”

Geller said that was about right. A Malaysian chemical tanker had reported being shadowed by speedboats that morning. One had cut in front and thrown objects into the water. Fearing mines, the ship had stopped her engines, whereupon the second boat aimed a burst of machine-gun fire at the bridge. She'd hove to and the pirates had boarded.

The captain had gotten off Inmarsat calls to Ashaara Port Control and the Piracy Reporting Center before the boarders made it to the bridge. JTF immediately tightened security on other ships en route, requesting an S-3 to fly patrols and assigning
Firebolt
to join up two hundred miles out and accompany each incoming delivery to the sea buoy at Ashaara City.
Shamal
was tasked to rescue the hostages.

“We'll talk plan once we get under way. I'm looking at twelve hours transit, so we'll get there about 0200.” Geller stared as if daring him to make another crack.

“We'll work something up, sir.”

“Rescued hostages before?”

“Couple times, sir. Just need to get up there, see the setup. And go over whatever intel you've got, whatever they can shoot to us. Pictures and layout would be nice.”

Geller nodded and went forward. The engines gunned, reversed, fell
back to idle, gunned again. The shrill whistle of “under way” piped over the 1MC.

 

TEDDY had them rig for swim-and-climb, though it was conceivable they could assault from RHIBs, backed by the ship's guns. It was also possible everything would be settled peacefully, but he preferred not to think about that. The engines were vibrating the bulkheads and hazing the air. He sent the team to the mess decks, except for Arkin, whom he left in the space in case the CO called down.

Spaghetti and meatballs and apple pie, shoulder to shoulder with
Shamal
's crew in the tight little mess decks. Whacker was telling about a teammate in Bosnia who'd come across a Serbian truck filled with loot from local villages. A cluster bomb had perforated everybody in the cab. Along with furs and silver, he'd found a small, heavy leather bag filled, when he opened it, with gold. Watches, rings, bracelets, coins, irregular lumps he'd been afraid to examine too closely.

“D'he turn it in?” Kaulukukui asked.

“Who to?”

“I don't know. The Bosnians?”

“They were fucking dead. No names on those teeth. No, he got it out of the country and sold it in Istanbul. Opened a Swiss account.”

“I heard this story before,” Oberg said. “Dateline, Vietnam. Or, no—that George Clooney movie, something about kings—”

“
Three Kings
.”

“Sharpe's Gold,”
a
Shamal
sailor put in. The other guys at the table were throwing in more titles when they looked up and quieted.

“XO?”

“Petty Officer Oberg? Captain'd like you on the bridge.”

Topside sunset was salmon and carmine beyond low mountains. He stared out. Over there was a blank space on the map. The patrols came back with empty eyes and weathered skin. They said there was nothing there, which made him curious. How could a SEAL get himself sent into the Empty Quarter?

Shamal
davened over a slowly undulating sea, throwing up a rooster-tail and a big white bow wave. Geller stood spread-legged at the chart table studying a clipboard. “Obie? Some hard info. Pictures, too, but the resolution sucks. We're not comm heavy. Most of this is CUDIXS and UHF satcom.”

He studied them while the skipper summarized what the comm-oh had boiled out of the message traffic and chatter on the Red Sea airwaves. “They're taking it inside the twelve-mile limit.”

Teddy bent over the chart. Still hours away even at full speed, the scattered islets of the Sawakin Group freckled the coast. Looking closer, he saw most weren't actually islands, but reefs, awash at low tide and submerged at high. “I'd anchor inside this largest shoal,” Geller mused, fingering a horseshoe shape. It resembled an atoll, though Teddy hadn't thought there were any in the Red Sea. “That'd give me a lee against storms, and make it tougher to get in at me.”

“They know we're coming?”

“They've got to figure somebody's on his way.”

“Anything from the shipping company?”

“JTF's trying to get in touch. Owner's Malaysian, flag's Panamanian, charterer's Danish, crew's Russian and Filipino.”

“The usual. Uh, you said it was a chemical tanker?”

“Correct.
Tahia
. But not
chemical
chemicals. Just cooking oil. Still flammable, though, I guess.”

Teddy adjusted his balls, checking out the photos. They were grainy and didn't show much. Standard tanker layout: deck house aft, no booms, lots of piping on a long foredeck.

“Word is we gotta bounce these guys hard,” Geller told him. “There's hundreds of fishermen along this coast who'll turn pirate if they see they can get away with it. Guns aren't hard to get. Nip this hard and it'll save trouble down the line.”

“No problem,” Teddy said. “We'll put 'em down.”

Geller got that funny look again. “I think they meant take them into custody and free the hostages.”

“I only got four dudes, Skipper. We gotta work close on this. If I call for thirty rounds from that twenty-five-mil of yours, I gotta have 'em right away. No fucking around asking for clearance.”

Geller shook his head. “Can't promise, Petty Officer. Not till we get some kind of ROE. See, we'll be inside territorial waters, but we won't have host country authorization.”

“This ship's under contract to the UN. Doesn't that give us the right to—”

“Not necessarily.”

“I can't do business without you behind me,” Teddy warned him. “Simple as that, Skipper. Can't put my guys in without you having our backs.”

“I'll draft the message,” Geller said at last.

 

HE had the guys set up for a night assault, just in case. But after dark Geller called him back. Things might not be that hasty. The pirates had contacted the Danish, who'd passed their demands to the contractor,
Dampskibselskabet Kiersted. They were responsible, since it was the crew, not the ship or cargo, that was being held for ransom.

They did get a list. Nine men, most of the names Filipino, as Geller had said. Those who weren't sounded Russian and one might be Scandinavian.

He stood topside aft watching the dark sea rocket by under stars like lit gunpowder. Then went below and turned in, figuring Geller would call if anything changed. Berthing was three bunks high, hot, and noisy, but he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

 

TEDDY came awake sweating, realizing instantly the ship wasn't at full speed anymore. 0605. He rolled out and pulled on his BDUs from the night before, quick-laced his boots, and pounded up the ladder to the main deck.

He emerged into incandescent morning.
Shamal
rolled in a leisurely manner two miles off a low islet of blinding sand dotted with bushes and fringed with lime Jell-O reef and whipped-cream surf. He paced, inhaling baking bread, hot metal, grease, garbage left too long in the heat. The hum of the diesels cored every piece of metal. A vagrant wind sucked exhaust up from the waterline discharges. Past the aft deck house three smokers looked at him inquiringly. The stern gates worked with a tinny clunk. The islet lay like a barrier between them and the upperworks of another ship. How had it gotten in there? Then he remembered the chart. The entrance wasn't visible, but probably would be soon.

He should see Geller, find out what was happening. But no one had shaken him awake, so he lingered, sniffing the salt breeze gratefully after the shit house stink below. Listening to the surf boom on the strand. The sky was flawless as if just created.

A morning like this, plus a chance of trading supersonic metal with desperate pirates. Did he really want to give this up for pool parties and casting meetings?

In the pilothouse Geller snored in his leather chair. The XO was there too. “Ready to head over?” he asked as soon as he saw Teddy.

“Over where? That ship?”

“Not in uniform. Didn't you bring civvies?”

“No, Lieutenant. Didn't know we'd have liberty call.”

The exec told him to watch his mouth, and find something to wear that wouldn't give away he was military. The pirates had agreed to let two witnesses board, to prove their investments were still alive.

Teddy didn't like the idea of going unarmed. On the other hand, he could scout out where the hostages were being kept, how best to board, maybe even count the bad guys. “All right,” he said. “Anybody got a cane?”

. . .

THE RHIB purred across water so clear it was black. Kaulukukui wouldn't look at him. Sumo was bitter, but to hell with him, Teddy thought, holding tight as the inflatable's blunt bow headed for the surf line. The aluminum cane, from sick bay stores, lay between them. The radio crackled. Sandy shores slid apart like stubbly shaved labia to reveal an inlet. Not his fault no one aboard had a shirt that fit the Hawaiian's bulging chest. He felt strange in Geller's black pants and flowing white shirt, himself. Too warm for it, but he'd added a Nautica jacket for concealment.