“Tasi and Inapo. Female and male. Both I trained for a year in Guam and then Hawaii.”
“It must be beautiful in the Pacific. I’ve never been, just online.”
“And the names of your children? True African names?”
“Akello, the boy. His name means ‘Born After Twins.’ His father was a twin,” she said. “My daughter is named Fathiya. It means ‘Triumph’ in Swahili.”
“What do they like to do?” Merk asked, sat down and swiped on the laptop. Using an eyeball-vein scan he accessed the secure hard drive.
“Akello likes to carve wood. Makes alligator heads from logs, eagles from a large branch, and tribal masks from bark,” Nairobi explained with mist in her eyes; she clearly missed them.
He uploaded satellite images, photographs, topographical maps, and sea-lane charts, then opened a pane of a live shot of the drone patrolling the Somalia coast, hunting for the missing vessels and pirate mothership. By integrating an array of live feeds, maps, and digital pictures, he identified the lagoons, coves, estuaries, valleys, ridges, and mountain landmarks by image, name, land contours, and GPS coordinates. The Dolphin Code program streamed a live split-screen of the micro-dorsalcams worn by both Tasi and Inapo, from their point of view, swimming in tandem along the shallows of the Somali coast.
“And Fathiya? Her name sounds so close to the English word ‘faith,’” Merk noted.
“Fathiya likes to play the piano and sing.”
Merk verified that the dorsalcams were acoustically sensitive to whenever a dolphin echolocated the space ahead, transmitting the biosonar feedback to the laptop, where it transcribed the frequency into an acoustic signal. With another software program developed by a military vendor in San Diego, the wavelengths were translated into a shadowy image, like that captured by ground-penetrating radar. Image quality was not high-definition or detailed, but it gave Merk insight on whether the dolphin was targeting a small fish or a something larger like a tuna, shark, boat hull, or sea-mine.
Merk ran a program that extracted the images the drone captured at night with a high-res infrared camera. It catalogued each subject, while displaying the geocoords with time rolling over in seconds and minutes in the lower right corner. Using the GPS data, Merk directed the systems to head to a specific location to conduct a sea level swim-by for a closer look. The first target was a cluster of ten skiffs scattered on shore. Some were flipped over; others pulled halfway on land; still others were dumped with bows stacked in all directions. It seemed as if the skiffs had been abandoned overnight. With the cluster sitting two-dozen klicks west of the safe house, it would take the dolphins a few hours to reach. Yet, the littoral environment was as a good place to start the search and surveillance mission.
After hiding the outboard motor in a toolshed, and deflating the rubber boat and stowing it in a shallow cave along with food rations, water, and SEAL body armor, Nico opened the rifle case and pulled out a quad of American, Israeli, German, and Russian assault rifles. He handed them to Nairobi, along with boxes of ammunition. She opened a false door behind a wine cabinet and stored the weapons inside, except the AK-47. Nico opened the next barrel-bag and dumped a pile of euros and dollars across the table. Merk took notice; the piles of cash made him uneasy. Merk stared at Nico, but the CO averted his gaze. The SEAL handed over hundreds of thousands of euros and dollars to Nairobi. To be used. To be spent. To buy off the pirates. And to bribe warlords and officials. None of the freewheeling purchases sat well with Merk, since it exposed the CIA to a blind spot to buy intel in a land of spies, thieves, and double agents.
Nico ignored Merk. He used his Greek charm and flair, and engaged Nairobi in jovial talk. He feigned interest when the CIA asset ran through options on the places to hide inland if the pirates or Islamic militants closed on the safe house. She told him where to hide, who to watch for, and which way to escape. The well-rehearsed list made Merk suspicious. He wondered when was the last time a CIA agent sat down with Nairobi, vetted her, and debriefed her face-to-face, despite him connecting with her children stories; they were real, he knew. Taking the cue from Merk’s mood, Nico stepped outside to scope the layout of the safe house for webcams, listening devices, and signs of watchers outside.
While Nico searched the safe house for bugs and spycams, Merk typed a code directing the dolphins to follow the coast west and report back on any hot items along the way. He locked the GPS coordinates of the skiffs and uploaded them into the program, so that when the dolphins came within a klick a signal on the laptop would alert him they were about to arrive.
Nairobi stripped out of her wet clothes. Underneath, she wore a tee shirt with no bra and Body Glove swim shorts, revealing her curvy glutes and long, sinewy thighs. The Kenyan agent changed tack and was all business when she stuffed the euro packs into money belts, stowed a couple of stacks of dollars next to the weapons behind the wine cabinet, taped another stack under the dining room table, and put the rest in a backpack. She stepped behind a blind, stripped out of her wet underclothes, got dressed. She stepped out from behind the blind and slipped into tattered navy blue coveralls, clothing likely taken from a mechanic of a hijacked ship, buttoned it to her breasts, revealing cleavage, and slung the backpack over her shoulder.
Dangling car keys, Nairobi picked up a cooler and headed to the front door, announcing, “I will go to the fishing village west, some forty miles. I can buy intel on the hostages there.”
Nico handed her a Chinese military Satcom; showed her how to use it, saying, “Nai, if you call, keep your observations brief and general. Don’t use names on the open channel.”
“Sure, no names?”
“Good. When you’re done, trade the Satcom to the pirates, so we can triangulate a GPS vector on Korfa’s whereabouts.”
She nodded, stuffed the Satcom in the backpack, picked up a clothes bag, and headed out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Should we trust her?” Nico asked, listening to Nairobi drive away.
“You know her history?” Merk asked. “Her kids were real enough. That wasn’t rehearsed… Triumph, what a great name is Fathiya for a girl.”
“Yeah, Merk. What you asked and what the CIA spooks told me.”
“Let’s look for a means to shadow her. Then move out.”
“I can tell you a dozen reasons why we should stay here tonight.”
“Nico, you answered your question. We don’t know her, despite her children. If she’s a double or is being spied on, the safe house will be visited tonight. My dolphins are at sea. I can’t be separated from them. Not for a day.”
“C’mon, Toten, we just got here.”
“I’m not staying. Don’t trust this house.” Merk opened drawers, sifting through clothes, then rifled through a closet, pulling out scarves and towels to protect against the sun. “We go stealth, blend in. No body armor, no ammo, no guns.”
“Now you’ve gone off the deep end. I’m not moving around the pirate mecca of the world, stripped of firearms. Not going to happen,” he said, picking up the AK-47 assault rifle.
“You know how Nairobi has more muscles than we do. Bet more endurance, too.”
“Toten, is that anyway to talk about our host?”
“Go out and check the perimeter,” Merk said. “Look for trip wires, cams, hidden mics. See if the locals are watching us.”
Nico grimaced, hit the lights, and bolted out the door. Merk glanced at the laptop and held a penlight in his mouth. He examined the ceiling fan and lighting fixtures for snooping devices. He didn’t see any on first pass, then swept wall to wall, checking under lampshades, behind furniture, artwork, and around a bulky TV set. After scouring the kitchen for bugs, Merk noticed Nairobi didn’t own a landline phone. Without a secure line, he wondered how she communicated with her CIA handler, if she did at all. Maybe she hadn’t done that in years. There was one way to confirm Nairobi’s CIA sponsorship, and that was the same with Merk’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, who worked at the CIA’s Clandestine Services unit. But by infiltrating Somalia, there was no way he could risk trying to contact his lover while operating in a dark country, radio dead. And who knew whether she was working in some black operation herself at the time. All he could do was recall running his hands through her long hair the last time, taking a whiff of her scent, and being aroused — thoroughly aroused.