Fuller pulled up drone photos that showed a pool of blood where the pirate fell on the bow deck. He zoomed in and maneuvered the picture around 360 degrees, looking past the blood for tiny bullet holes in the steel or gunwale. But he didn’t find any. If there were other pirates with Samatar, why wouldn’t Olsen take them down, too? Fuller showed Dante the aerial photo.
Dante studied them and examined the area around the blood, looking for stray bullet holes in the deck. “Maybe Samatar’s bodyguards fired back,” Dante suggested, handing the tablet back to Fuller as he gazed out the window to the other hijacked ship, which was moored in the bay of Zeila. With binoculars, he surveyed the container boxes stacked on the deck of the Shining Sea. He panned the bridge and derricks, but didn’t see a single person on board. Unlike the supertanker, the container ship appeared upright, in deep water, sitting unscathed.
“Pull out—” the copilot said to the pilot, pointing to an ancient stone tower.
Dante and Fuller looked down across the beach to the tower, where they spotted a couple of pirates aiming RPG-7 grenade launchers at the helicopter. The pair stood in the threshold of the broken door, pointing up at the invading Black Hawk, while another pirate, armed with AKM assault rifle, kneeled on the crumbled turret on top of the tower.
The pilot banked the Black Hawk out over the gulf, climbing away. A few stray shots were fired; a RPG grenade scorched the air, rising… soaring… The pilot corkscrewed the Black Hawk down toward the sea, spinning, as the grenade ripped by the tail, barely missing the rear rotor. He swung the helicopter out of the drive and raced over the sea, with Dante and Fuller holding on, laughing at the close call.
“We lost hostages, not our lives,” Dante said to the pilot, clutching his chest. “Damn.”
The pilot flew over the arid land and there, across the vast desert expanse in the heat haze of the horizon, stood Hargeisa, the heart of the runaway region of Somaliland.
Chapter Forty-Six
A dozen miles off the coast of Berbera, Merk rode the stolen skiff out to sea with the navy dolphins swimming alongside, fluking, darting, diving, leaping, hopping over the waves. They raced out in front, crisscrossing the bow.
Merk sent an encrypted message to the USS New York to be extracted by the Black Hawk that had carried him, Nico, and the dolphins to the drop zone off the coast of Somalia days before. He cut the engine and waited in open sea. He scanned 360 degrees to see if any ships, dhows, or skiffs were heading his way. For the next hour things remained calm.
Breaking the stillness of the blue sky was the blurred image of a Black Hawk flying in from the northeast. As it flew closer, Merk took out a chemlight, twisted it with an infrared beacon, and held it so the pilots could identify him as the US navy dolphin trainer.
When the Black Hawk cruised within a half klick of the stolen skiff, it flickered a pulsing blue light under its cargo bay, signaling Merk they spotted him as friendly.
Merk pulled off the Bedouin scarf, stuffed it in the backpack, powered down the laptop, and slid it into a waterproof bag. He pulled off the robe, handed the backpack to Tasi, and she nosed the floating pack to the extraction point. Navy divers jumped out of the hovering helicopter into the sea. The cargo bay opened and lowered a lambskin-lined basket down to the water.
The divers lifted Tasi and the backpack up to the cargo bay. The basket returned, and they loaded Inapo and hoisted the marine mammal back up to the Black Hawk. Merk swam to the divers, who hauled him into the basket and lifted him up. One diver swam over to the skiff and planted a shaped charge on the hull below the waterline. He inserted a remote trigger, then swam over to the basket, where he was the last to be lifted into the Black Hawk.
In less than three minutes, two dolphins and three men were hoisted on board the helicopter with the basket pulled inside the cargo bay and the payload doors closed.
As the Black Hawk hovered in reverse, backing off the skiff, the diver pressed a code into a Satcom and detonated the shaped-charge, which blew a hole in the fiberglass hull. In a spat of smoke the craft took on water and began to list, dipping below the surface as the sea poured in.
As the skiff sank, Merk said, “That’s it. That’s where the pirate mothership disappeared. The Somalis sank it.” He relayed his insight to the navigator, who texted it to the USS New York. Within a minute, the gulf swallowed the boat, leaving no trace of Merk or the navy dolphins ever having been in Somali waters. They were now being flown to Camp Lemmonier, their new forward operating base.
For Nico Gregorius, hiding on the roof of the oil storage tank all day, stuck in the port of Berbera, was a waste of time. He knew he would have to wait several more hours for nightfall before he could move out and go track down Nairobi.
By late afternoon, he received a coded message. He deciphered a text informing him that hostage negotiators were en route to Hargeisa Airport to meet with the Somali warlord Korfa and his pirate lieutenants. While Nico lay in wait listening to the occasional voices and sentry footsteps below to break up the boredom, he ran several options through his head: find a way to exit Somalia or migrate inland to the capital to provide intel or, at a bare minimum, backup for the US hostage negotiating team being flown to Hargeisa.
From past negotiations, Nico understood that dealing with Somali pirates took weeks, even months to conclude. Something unusual was up; he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Chapter Forty-Seven
In the war-torn ghetto of Hargeisa, a food and goods market thrived between rows of shanty structures and abandoned rusty lean-tos. Halfway down the bazaar market of Hargeisa, pitted between food stands, sat a fish-processing warehouse, its wood door painted olive green.
To the rear of the processing space stood a concealed door, which led to an empty storage room. Inside, Korfa sat at a table drinking tea. He stared at Nairobi; her face was battered and her left eye was swollen shut. A pair of bodyguards hovered over her and lifted Nairobi’s limp body to sit upright in the chair. In the dim light, stitches crossed a bloodied eyelid, as tears streamed from her good eye. She fidgeted as if trying to pick up a cigarette that wasn’t on the table.
“Nairobi, want some tea?” Korfa asked in a calm voice.
Trembling, she nodded.
He poured tea, pressed the cup to her lips, allowing her to sip. “My men found this in your safe house,” Korfa said, plopping down stacks of euros and dollars on the table. “This wasn’t there last week when I searched your home. Who are you helping? The CIA?”
She shook her head. “Somali army?” She shook her head once more, and flinched to block another blow to her head, but all Korfa did was pick up the cup and offer her another sip. “Okay. Who?”
“US navy,” she said in a raspy whisper.
“SEALs?”
She nodded.
“How many?”
She raised two fingers.
“Two? That’s it? Not a full SEAL platoon? I find that hard to believe,” he said, coming unglued. He didn’t want to be assassinated like his brother. He stood up, circled behind her.
Terrified, she glanced behind, bracing to be struck again. He put his hand on her shoulder and pressed gently instead, reassuring her that no more harm would come to her as long as she worked for him. She nodded, and broke down sobbing.