The Pirate Hunters (22 page)

“Their top special operations unit is called MARCOs,” Conley replied. “Basically Indian Marine commandos. But most of them were deployed to the Kashmir a few weeks ago, and it would take at least two days for them to get their shit together to even attempt a rescue. By that time, the pirates will be almost halfway to Somalia and out of range of their helicopters. The MARCOs are not exactly a rapid-reaction force, I guess.”

“Makes you wonder if the pirates knew that before they started this operation,” Batman opined. “Maybe they’ve been doing their homework—the scary little bastards.”

Nolan drained his coffee and poured another.

“OK, but don’t the Indians have an aircraft carrier?” he asked Conley. “Get the commandos to the carrier, launch them from the carrier to the hijacked ship. Simple.”

“Again, a good idea,” Conley said. “Trouble is, their carrier, the
Viraat
, is currently in Japan on a goodwill cruise, which is what it does about ninety percent of the time.”

“Not exactly taming the Mighty Main, are they?” Gunner said.

Conley held up his finger and listened for a moment to his contact on the other end of the phone. Then he said: “Well, I guess it wasn’t like some of them weren’t trying. We just heard a force of Indian Army soldiers training on the Maldives when all this happened jumped on their helicopter and took off after the ship, thinking they could get it back. Trouble was, they weren’t trained for these things. They were just regular troops, with no experience in seaborne ops. They took off, got lost, ran out of gas and crashed into the ocean probably fifty miles short of their goal. All thirty-five of them drowned. They would have been national heroes if they had managed to pull it off. But . . . listen, rescue missions and such? We’re actually beyond all that now.”

“What do you mean?” Nolan asked.

Before Conley could answer, his laptop started beeping.

“Good, finally,” he said. “I’ll let my friend tell you directly.”

He opened the laptop and went to the Skype Web page. He pushed a few keys, then set the laptop on the mess hall table in front of the team. They were soon looking at a live video image of Conley’s contact in Mumbai.

His name was Nigel Scott. He was a middle-aged Englishman, balding but dapper. He was sitting in an office overlooking Mumbai Harbor, smoking a cigarette and drinking what they assumed was coffee. He seemed a bit ruffled, as if he hadn’t slept in a while.

“Give them the 411, will you, Scotty?’ Conley asked him, opening up the audio connection. “Explain the difference between a rescue mission and a recovery operation.”

Scott lit one cigarette off another.

“I’ll put it to you bluntly, gents,” he began, his face filling the laptop’s screen. “The way the Indians are looking at this thing now, that ship’s crew is as good as dead. There are several reasons for this. First, the four guys the pirates killed in Male weren’t just shot, they were butchered, horribly, with machetes. When the Indian government contacted some ex-FBI profilers about this, the profilers told the Indians these pirates are so vicious, there’s no way they’ll let the hostages survive. The pirates want to ransom the boat and are prepared to wait as long as it takes—days, weeks, months. But they don’t want to deal with the hostages, caring for them, feeding them and so on. They’re just an unwanted complication. The ship itself is the real prize.

“As proof of this, the Indians discovered that someone on the ship managed to surreptitiously open a communications link on the main control panel—so Mumbai can hear a lot of what the pirates are saying on the bridge. And what they’ve heard confirms that the profilers were right: The pirates were talking about how they’re going to kill the crew whether a deal is made or not.”

“Sounds like these guys have taken a page from Turk’s
book,” Batman observed. “Why bother with the human baggage?”

“Now, the pirates contacted the Indians early on by sat phone,” Scott went on. “And the Indians, of course, told them they don’t deal with terrorists, which is what everyone says at the beginning of these things. The pirates pretended to be pissed off, threatened to kill the hostages, but again, it makes no difference because the people eavesdropping on them know they’re going to execute the crew no matter what—probably sooner rather than later—and there’s really nothing the Indians can do about it.”

“So what does all this mean?” Nolan asked him.

Scott let out a long stream of smoke. “Well, to put it bluntly, it means the Indians want to concentrate on just getting their ship back.”

“Man, that’s fucking cold,” Batman said.

“Well, welcome to the real world,” Scott said. “But they’re just being practical. And they want to protect their investment.”

“OK, so the crew is gone,” Nolan said. “So what? All the Indians have to do is pay a ransom to get the ship back. I’m sure they’ve got an extra hundred million sitting around—it’s not like they’re spending it on slum dog urban renewal.”

“Yes, but there’s a point everyone is missing,” Scott said. “You see, NATO and others who are trying to stop the Somali pirates are scared to death of setting a precedent of pirates hijacking military ships and then getting paid huge ransoms to give them back. That would be an escalation of this whole Somali pirate thing that no one even wants to contemplate.”

“So?” Nolan asked.

“So, with the Indian crew dead,” Scott said, “as soon as that ship reaches Somali waters, NATO is going to sink it. And they’ve already told the Indians this. Simple as that. When it happens, I’m not sure what kind of spin the Indians will put on it. Maybe they’ll just stay with the ‘hull broke and it sank’ story. But once that ship reaches the pirates’ home waters, it’s as good as gone.”

“So, again, what do they want us for?” Nolan asked him.

Scott almost seemed amused by the question. “Well, they want their ship back—
before
NATO sinks it. And that’s where you guys come in. They know the handful of you just greased almost a hundred monkeys in Indonesia. More importantly, they also know you rescued the
Global Warrior
without firing more than a dozen shots. Word gets around about these things, and so they look at you as experts in both beating overwhelming odds and keeping the gunplay to a minimum when necessary. Bottom line: they’d like the ship back, intact, without using excessive force.”

Nolan needed a few moments to let all that sink in. They all did.

“That must be some ship,” Batman said, breaking the silence.

“It’s a bit of a national treasure,” Scott said, again somewhat amused. “Home-designed, home-built, and all that. Computers run everything. It practically sails itself. Can engage multiple threats. Packed to the gills with firepower. And eventually they want to sell them around the world. So it’s very valuable to them. And they’d rather not see it sink. Or get too mussed up, if you chaps are able to get it back.”

“Easy for them to say,” Nolan told him.

Scott wearily lit another cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Well, again, they’re being realists. They know it’s much easier to recover a ship if there are no hostages on board to worry about. . . .”

He let his voice trail off.

Nolan said, “But still, it doesn’t answer the question: Why are we their first option? How do they know we didn’t just get lucky in Indonesia, or aboard the
Global Warrior
?”

Again, Scott was brutally frank. “Well, you’re not
exactly
the first option. Blackwater—or whatever they are calling themselves these days—already turned the Indians down on this one.”

“Blackwater turned them down?” Nolan said to Batman. “That tells you something.”

Batman asked, “What? That they’re getting fat and lazy?”

“No,” Nolan replied. “It tells you they don’t take on jobs they know they can’t do.”

He looked around the mess table. With the scotch and steaks gone, the team had returned to looking beat up and worn out. Crash was like a mummy, wrapped in a mile of bandages as a result of his fight in the water at Pirate Island. Twitch still had that 1,000-yard stare in his eyes. Gunner looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Even the usually animated Batman was dragging ass.

“Can we really do this?” Nolan asked them gravely. “So soon after the Zeek thing? I mean, personally, I can hardly think straight.”

“That’s probably the scotch,” Batman told him. “But it might be a moot point anyway.”

He turned back to Scott on the screen. “I hope they realize it will be a major effort just for us to catch up to this ship. We could chase them across the entire Indian Ocean and still not make it.”

“The Indians are aware of that,” Scott said. “But if you do, and you figure out a way to get the job done, it could be a big payday for you.”

Nolan thought for a few more moments. He asked Gunner, “What’s our supply situation—I know it’s not good.”

Gunner read from a list. “We’re very low on 50-caliber ammo; we’re very low on M4 ammo. The copter’s gun pod is completely empty, and its gas tanks are almost dry. We’re OK on ship fuel at the moment, both diesel and turbine. But we’ll burn most of it out if we decide to really put the pedal to the metal and start chasing this ship.”

Nolan turned to Conley. “Can Kilos help us out?”

Conley nodded. “You guys were there when we needed you,” he said.

“I mean, do you have one of your ‘special ships’ nearby?” Nolan asked him. “The ones that carry your ‘special cargoes?’ ”

Conley checked his BlackBerry. After a few moments he replied, “It so happens that answer is yes. And we also have a heavy-lift copter available for delivery. But remember, it will be potluck. We just never know what’s available.”

“So are you interested or not?” Scott asked them. “The Indians are going nuts waiting for an answer.”

Again, Nolan looked at the team gathered around the table. The unknown was if they were in any shape to take on another mission so soon.

Finally Nolan asked Scott the big question. “If we do this, and do it right, how much are we talking about?”

Scott didn’t hesitate. “If you get the ship back—and, of course, recover the bodies of the crew, if possible—the Indians will give you two million dollars cash. No questions asked.”

Batman whistled. “That’s some serious fucking coin.”

Even Twitch was paying attention now. They all were.

Crash mumbled through his bandages. “Beats going back to the mall.”

Nolan massaged his tired temples. The whole thing was so weird and unexpected, a big decision that had come at him right out of the blue.

“Let’s take a vote,” Batman suggested.

Nolan knew it was the only thing to do. He couldn’t deny the team a chance to make such a huge sum of money, even if they didn’t have any idea how they were going to pull it off.

Finally he said to them, “You’ve heard it all. You got the facts. So, for a two-million-dollar split, raise your hand if you want to try to save this boat.”

Everyone around the table immediately raised his hand. Even the Senegals standing nearby voted yes.

Nolan rubbed his weary head again, but finally raised his own hand.

“It’s unanimous, I guess,” he said to Scott. “Tell them we’ll take the gig.”

There was some high-fiving and grunts of approval around the table, except from Twitch, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Now I know how an undertaker feels,” he said.

THE KILOS HELICOPTER
arrived just before midnight.

It was an S-64 heavy lifter, a civilian version of the U.S. Army’s CH-54 Skycrane. Pimped for night flying and sea duty, it had been built especially for the shadowy shipping company to move large pieces of contraband between vessels at sea under cover of darkness. A huge crate shrink-wrapped in black plastic hung from its cargo sling.

On the bow of the DUS-7, flashlights in hand, Nolan and Batman guided it in. The ship was 100 miles west of the Maldives and just ninety miles behind the hijacked Indian warship. A combination of the small freighter’s great speed and the captured warship’s low cruising rate of fifteen knots had closed the gap between them significantly.

Conley had flown on to Mumbai, taking the Kilos chef with him, but not before talking to his contacts inside the U.S. intelligence community. His sources told him the U.S. was watching the commandeered ship via spy planes and drones. He also learned that, while the U.S. could understand India’s desire to have a private company to retake the ship before it reached Somali waters, the Pentagon was less than happy to learn that private enterprise was a group of ex-Delta Force guys who had a major beef with Uncle Sam. When Conley told that to the team, they knew it was official: They were now foreign mercenaries.

The big copter approached the ship gingerly. It took some maneuvering, but finally the S-64 was able to rest its load on top of the freighter’s hold hatch. Nolan and Batman hastily unhooked the wires and, with a wave to the pilot, sent the aircraft on its way.

They contemplated the delivered object for a moment. It was much bigger than they had expected; they only really needed two kinds of ammunition. But they had no idea what the shipping company had sent, except that the captain of the container ship had said he hoped they’d find it “helpful.”

Batman patted the side of the tightly wrapped crate.

“I wonder what’s underneath all that,” he said. “A couple
tons
of ammo, maybe?”

“Let’s find out,” Nolan replied.

It took them five minutes just to cut the plastic wrap off the cargo. Then they had to pull apart the crate itself, which took another ten minutes. When it was open, both men were stunned at what they found inside.

“You’ve got to be
fucking
kidding me,” was Batman’s response.

It wasn’t a crateful of ammunition or even more machine guns. It was an M102 field gun, an artillery piece that at one time was the mainstay of the U.S. Army’s infantry forces. It was a powerful weapon, big and bold on two wheels, weighing almost two tons, and capable of firing high-explosive shells up to seven miles. But what the hell were they going to do with it?

“Jesus Christ,” Nolan said. “We needed ammo for our pop guns, and they send us an atomic cannon.”