Thomas Prescott Superpack (91 page)

And he left. Probably had to make one last phone call. Make sure nothing had changed. Make sure they still had the green light.

Royal slipped the specially molded plastic earpiece in his left ear, then pulled on his black neoprene mask. He then picked the quarter inch Kevlar vest off the ground and slipped it over his head. The vest doubled as a life preserver and there were two strings at the bottom which, when pulled simultaneously, would inflate the jacket. The vest tripled as an oxygen tank. A flat tank of compressed air was hidden in the back of the jacket, weighing roughly eight pounds. The digital readout on his left shoulder told him the tank was at 98% and held 56 minutes of air.

Royal lifted the hose and attached mouthpiece snaking out from the right shoulder of the vest and stuck it in his mouth. He took a deep inhale of the crisp synthetic air. Delicious. He picked up his mask, which he had spent the last hour making sure did not carry a single blemish, and pulled it on, leaving it snug on his forehead.

Now for the good stuff.

He reached into the small backpack and pulled out a plastic box thirteen inches long, eight wide, and two inches thick. He entered a twelve-digit digital code and the titanium case popped open. He pulled out the seven-inch dive knife, the blade’s silver alloy glistening in the cabin’s white light. Just six months earlier, Royal had used the knife to slit the throat of a North Korean scientist and the blade had glistened in red.

The op hadn’t even had a name, as it was completely unsanctioned, authorized by one of the highest government officials. Three months earlier, there had been an explosion in a hotel in Istanbul, killing 183 and nearly destroying the 17-story structure. The explosive compound used was new, nearly 1000 times more powerful than C-4, and the technology was traced to an underground lab in North Korea. Six had infiltrated the lab, killed the four guards and the fourteen scientists, recovered more than 200 pounds of what was now being called LDX, and transported it back to the States.

Royal forced himself back to the present, pulling his gun from the case. A SIG SG551 semi-automatic. Jenny. Jenny’s magazine held fifteen rounds and Royal clipped a second magazine to his belt, then slipped Jenny into the holster on his right thigh. Finally he picked two small flash grenades, each about the size of a Red Bull can, and slipped them into the specialty designed pockets of the vest.

Royal pulled out his small, eight-inch fins, and pulled them on. Lastly, he pulled on a pair of paper-thin, webbed gloves.

He looked up. Each of them had a different routine, none had taken the same ten steps, but all of them finished within the same minute. The door opened and Fuller strode in. He was dressed identically.

He smiled and said, “Go time.”

The nine men made their way through the narrow confines of the sub. The officers aboard stopped and stared. Royal thought he saw tinges of jealousy in their smiles.

The plan was to exit the submarine through the escape hatch in the forward torpedo room. Once outside of the sub, the SEALs would use ropes and grips that had been prepared to find their way back to the conning tower—a raised, enclosed, observation tower—and to the Zodiac inflatable boat stored there.

Royal made his way to the cramped room, filled with eight unarmed torpedoes. The men lined up single file. One by one, the men pulled their masks down over their face, chomped down on their regulators, laid down in the escape hatch arms and legs crossed, and were shot into the ocean.

Human torpedoes.

At the surface, the Zodiac inflated itself in eight seconds, one less than the nine men who clambered aboard. The Zodiac moved across the water, the low hum of the twin 300-horsepower motors propelling the small boat across the ocean at a speed of forty knots, roughly fifty miles an hour. The USS New Hampshire, with its state of the art radar jamming software, was jamming the
Afrikaans
from three miles away. If the pirates were looking at the radar, the Zodiac wouldn’t so much as make a blip.

The tiny Christmas tree that was the
Afrikaans
slowly began to grow, and when it was the size of a quarter, the motor was cut and the Zodiac fell in with the slow ocean current.

The nine men fell backwards off the Zodiac and the boat deflated.

It would never be seen again.

DECK 7

10:03 p.m.

It was dark, the lights of the ship just barely able to illuminate the water seventy feet below. I leaned over the railing of Deck 7 and peered down at Deck 6. Lacy and Susie were below me, shouting out instructions as the lifeboat was lowered. Berta and Reen were doing precisely the same on the opposite side of the ship. J.J. and another man were acting as sentries, posted at two strategic places on Deck 6. Both had machines guns, as did I, and I instructed them to shoot anything that moved. And wasn’t a hostage. And looked like a pirate.

Speaking of triggers, I looked down at the Uzi held in my right hand. I had shot a machine gun a couple times in Washington with a guy from the force who was a gun nut. We had driven to this remote spot in the woods and unloaded for a couple hours. The thing about machine guns is they’re good if you are up against an army—I mean if General Custer had whipped out a couple machine guns there probably wouldn’t be a hundred mediocre hotdogs stands named after him—but if you are trying to put a couple well placed shots into a pirate’s forehead, they weren’t exactly ideal. What I’m getting at is; I would have preferred a nine-millimeter with a laser scope.

As for Ganju, he said he would take care of the hostages in Pretoria. I wasn’t clear how he planned on taking out six pirates by himself, but he’d simply said, “Not to worry.” And I wasn’t.

And then you had Frank. With Frank’s technological prowess and a thirty second crash course given by Ganju, Frank was the logical choice for the covert mission on Deck 8. It was only a matter of time before the pirates caught on and either started shooting or blowing things up. “Things” being the ship. Frank’s objective was to scramble their brains so they could do neither.

I yelled Lacy’s name and she looked up. She said, “Be careful.”

I winked at her. “Always.”

I held the machine gun out in front of me and started up the walkway. The Bridge was located at the foremost tip of the ship, and I hoped it was far enough away from the action that the pirates hadn’t heard any of the gunshots. The acoustics of the show lounge were designed to keep sounds in, but essentially the odds of the pirates taking notice were about the same as a neighbor three houses down overhearing a domestic dispute. Then you had the radios. In the three days I’d observed the pirates, I’d only seen them use the radios a handful of times, and I had yet to hear the squawk of Little Wayne’s radio, which was attached to my hip. But they could easily have switched channels if they suspected their communications had been compromised.

That being said, I still felt I had the element of surprise in my corner. But let’s just say that when Roy’s tiger clamped onto his neck, he was probably more shocked than I’d be if I walked into a trap.

I neared the door to Salon Musa. From my previous stay—which felt like a month earlier, but in actuality was just over a day and half—I knew there was a walkway inside that ultimately led to the Bridge. I’d seen the door. But the odds of the door being unlocked were slim. That meant my best bet was to stay outside and try the door that led directly to the Bridge. There was also the possibility of climbing out on the glass dome of the Bridge and shooting my way in. I’d penciled this in as
last resort.

I stayed in the shadows just outside the reaches of the lights. I could see the slanting glass dome that designated the front of the ship. I inched closer. The white noise of the vessel and the ocean, a low hum under a gentle splashing, was the only sound. If Lacy or Susie were still shouting commands, they were either carried away by the soft wind or simply too far away to be heard. I hoped they had at least one of the lifeboats already in the water. I couldn’t risk waiting too much longer, but I wanted my sister and the other hostages to have a head start before the shooting began.

The lights of the Bridge came into view. Sharp and white. The dome glowed white against the blackness of the night. I bypassed the door to the radio room. I peered through the small window. No one. I thought about darting in real quick and trying to relay a message, but I knew this was foolish. The hostages aboard the
Afrikaans
weren’t a secret. I’m sure the entire world was following every second of the story. If they only knew what was really going on.

I took three more steps. I could see the door to the Bridge. Two more steps. I could see into the room through the small window. Metallic controls and gadgets. No pirates. But then again, they wouldn’t be standing near the controls. Would they? One more step. Keeping my head down, I reached out my left hand and grasped the doorknob. Ever so slowly I turned it. The door was unlocked. I pulled back my hand.

Just then the radio squawked, followed by frantic African. I didn’t understand the words, but I didn’t have to. The jig was up.

I had to go.

Now.

I turned the knob on the door, ripped it open, and burst into the room. My finger itched the
trigger of the Uzi. In the center of the room sat a metal chair. It was covered in droplets of dried blood. This is where Rikki had sat. I was too late. I let out a deep exhale. But the room was empty. At least I thought it was. There was someone in the Captain’s chair. Baxter.

He was on his back, sawing logs.

“Dude,” I said.

I flicked him and he woke up. He smiled at me and started licking my hand. On the table next to him was a laptop. The screensaver was on and I hit the mouse pad. The screen refreshed.

There was a large red missile on screen. I read the blurb underneath.

An ATMIP, Russian made Aviation Thermobaric Missile of Increased Power is the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the world and openly referred to as “The Father of all Missiles.” The missile which does its destruction by shockwave and extremely high temperatures has a blast radius of a half mile and will kill everything within two. Laser guided or beacon guided, it has an operational range of 2000 miles, is capable of supersonic speed, and is delivered by a portable VLT, Vertical Launch Tube.

“Fuck.”

Baxter started barking. I looked at him, then turned and looked out the large glass dome. The Warlord was glaring at me through the glass, his automatic rifle pointed directly at me. I grabbed Baxter and dove to the floor as the sound of gunfire erupted. The dome shattered, sending a couple thousand pounds of glass raining down on me. As I covered my head, a hundred bees stung me as the small shards of glass embedded in my skin

The gunfire ceased. There was a thump as the Warlord jumped down, then the crunch of glass as he walked over to me. Something sharp pinched the side of my neck and I knew this wasn’t glass, but the tip of the Warlord’s machete.

I slowly opened my eyes.

The Warlord was holding a radio in his right hand. He lifted it to his lips and began speaking. There was no mistaking it was the same voice I’d heard just seconds earlier.

Only one word was spoken. Only one word need be.

“
Gotcha.”

PRETORIA

10:07 p.m.

“Gotcha,” came the voice through the radio held in the pirate’s left hand. In his right hand, the pirate held a pistol. The pistol was pressed to Thapa’s forehead.

After the explosion, Thapa had scrambled to his feet. As had all two hundred of the hostages in the room. It was chaos. Thapa tried to locate the two pirates across the way through the scattering of people. Then he saw one of them. Huddled against the door, pulling his radio up.

Thapa clamored up onto the closest table and unloaded three shots across the room. The pirate slumped against the wall, the radio crashing to the soft carpet floor. Thapa’s gunshots silenced the hostages and Thapa scanned the large room for the second pirate. He saw him nowhere.

Thapa heard a loud crash and the double doors burst open. The doors were covered in orange goop, a combination of the yellow cake and blood. The goop dripped down the sides of the door to the floor. Through the doors, Thapa could see the wreckage left by the grenade. The table the cake had been sitting on had been turned to confetti, as had three of the pirates. But somehow the pirate with the red bandanna had survived, the red bandanna clinging to what was left of his head. His face was almost gone and his right arm was a nub, but he was alive. He was covered in the same orange goo. He stood in the doorway, wobbling, trying to remain on his feet. His tongue dangled from his mouth and he emitted a ghastly noise. A whimpering.

He didn’t appear to be much of a threat. Thapa pointed his gun at the man’s forehead and was set to put the man out of his misery, when the table beneath Thapa was heaved upwards. The other pirate had crawled from the opposite door, darting from table to table underneath the cover of the many hostages. When Thapa had turned his attention to the zombie-pirate at the door, the other pirate had made his move, crawling under the table Thapa was standing on, then heaved it upwards.