For the next several minutes Merk monitored the blinking GPS dots as they moved across a digital map toward the known satellite location of the box carrier Shining Star. It didn’t take long for Merk to deduce that Inapo, who swam ahead tripling his slow speed, appeared fine, and yet something was wrong with Tasi. Knowing daylight would arrive in three hours, Merk had to intervene — Tasi would never make it to the target and back to Ceebaad Island before daybreak.
He closed the laptop, stuffed it in a waterproof backpack, and sprinted to the rubber boat. Merk pushed the craft into the sea, lowered the outboard motor, and started it.
Merk guided the boat down the coast, opening the throttle, ramping up speed.
He saw Lt. Commander Kell Johnston and the SEAL sniper sprint across the island, waving him to stop, calling his name.
Merk slowed the craft and flashed a chemlight sign to Kell that one of the dolphins was down and that he would return soon. The second chemlight sign told Kell to have the SEAL extraction team at Camp Lemonnier on emergency standby.
Chapter Fifty-Two
When night fell on Berbera, Nico Gregorius climbed down from the roof of the oil storage tank. He trailed close behind the guard and, when the armed man turned the corner walking around another tank, Nico snipped a hole in the fence and slithered out.
Like a cat, he moved across the seaside city, staying low, ducking behind trees and bushes and parked vehicles when people strolled on the street or when cars drove by. In the neighborhood across from the oil facility, the CO moved through yards and houses, up one dirty street, and down a junk-strewn alley. He checked the cars — most were locked—of course, he thought. Very few people in northern Somali trusted the pirate scourge.
Then down a side street his luck changed. He found a beat up Russian-made car with the door open and the keys under the seat. He turned on the engine and drove off, noting that half a tank of gas would be enough to get him to Hargeisa. As he turned the corner onto the main road, he flipped on the headlights. Within minutes, Nico followed road signs that led to the Hargeisa-Berbera Highway, an arid stretch of roadway that would take him inland.
After traveling an hour, Nico reached the outskirts of the capital city, where he saw a haze of lights floating over Hargeisa like a halo. He pulled over and turned on his smartphone, to ensure the CIA and ONI could track his movements. He needed to see if there were any updates to the intel he sent earlier in the day. Nico clicked on a video file in the mission cloud, showing Dante Dawson meeting with Korfa.
Notes from the cash-for-hostages ransom negotiation included the geocoords of the fish processing plant in the street market, in the run-down shanty part of the city. The Danish captain had escaped, but was re-apprehended. And that Nairobi hadn’t been seen. The update was a couple of hours old. Nico drove on to the slums.
He entered the deserted alley that ran parallel with the street market, slid out, and walked on foot to the green building, where the hostages had been kept, across the alley from the fish plant. Nico took out an audioscope, unfolded the stock, inserted an earpod in his ear, and aimed the scope at the plant door. Adjusting a knob, he faded down the low alpha wave hum of the freezers and refrigerators and heard male voices speaking the local Somaliland dialect.
Nico eavesdropped not on the contents of the conversation — the CIA would decipher the recording of what they discussed — but to figure out the number of men in the room. What was he up against? Five men? Eight? A dozen? Who else was inside the plant?
He listened and noted four different male voices; perhaps one of them was Korfa. He couldn’t tell. He figured there had to be another pair of guards in or near the room, maybe more if the warlord was inside. The SEAL CO folded the stock, dismantled the audioscope, and slid it in the pack. Nico took out two pistols, holstered them, and then armed an Uzi machine gun and removed the safety latch. He stuffed an extra ammo clip inside his belt.
Nico played with the door handle and found it unlocked. That meant the pirates would use the door for an exit in case Korfa’s facility was raided. He slipped inside and saw, to his surprise, no guard stationed by the door or around the corner in the dimly lit hall. Nico followed the voices to a hidden room. A tall bookcase had been pushed aside on rails. A sliver of light fanned out from the cracks around the wood door and jamb. He put an eye to the crack by the hinge and peeked inside, moving his eyeball around until he saw the tall pirate standing by the wood table, speaking to whom he thought was Korfa.
Nico took a flash grenade from his vest, turned the doorknob ever so gently, and pulled the door back an inch. When he heard a slight creak in the doorjamb, he yanked the door open and tossed the grenade inside the room, turning his back to the door, looking away from the blinding light.
In a star-bright burst, the grenade stunned those inside, temporarily blinding the pirates.
Nico lunged into the room and ducked. Holding his eyes with one hand, the tall pirate sprayed the door with a staccato burst of gunfire with the other. Nico fired the Uzi, clipping the tall pirate in the knees and thighs, dropping him to the floor where he shrieked in pain.
Another guard at the door, who didn’t appear to be blinded by the flash, chopped the Uzi out of Nico’s hands… the guard grabbed him by the vest and whipped out a dagger… Nico pulled out a pistol and fired three shots into Korfa’s chest, blowing him out of the seat… just as the guard plunged the blade in Nico’s other arm.
Hearing footsteps of another pirate behind him, Nico spun the guard around, who took the blow of a cleaver to his neck and shoulder. Pulling the hacked guard down with him to the floor, Nico fired several rounds into the cleaver-wielding pirate. He and the squirming guard hit the floor hard. Nico pushed the corpse off, rolled away, got up on one knee and, through the haze of hot smoke, saw Nairobi sitting on the floor on the other side of the room. As he scrambled toward her, two simultaneous shots burst. One bullet struck Nico in the back above his kidney, dropping him to the floor. The second shot, fired by the injured Nairobi, hit the guard who entered the room behind Nico. That shot pierced the guard’s heart, killing him instantly.
Nico slumped to the floor. Dazed, he tried to gather his senses, bracing against the knifing pain, feeling strength drain from his chest and limbs. He shook his head, pulled out the Satcom, and sent a text message that Korfa was dead and that the CO was going to die with Nairobi. Hearing footsteps thumping down the hall, Nico pressed an emergency code on the Satcom, erasing its disk and wiping data clean off the in-memory chip.
As his focus became blurred, the dying SEAL CO saw the dead Korfa lying across the floor, clutching a pair of sunglasses. To Nico’s surprise, the real warlord Korfa burst into the room, aimed an AK-47 at Nairobi, and shot her dead before she could fire the next volley. Her death broke the bond with her children, who would never get to see her again, or hear her voice, or share her joy and laughter. Akello and Fathiya were motherless and didn’t know it yet.
Korfa kicked the bottom of Nico’s foot. The SEAL CO rolled over, blood streaming from his wound, his eyes rolling back in his forehead — whites. Unable to see the warlord standing over him, he could only listen.
“You shot the wrong Korfa,” the warlord said, picking up the Satcom as Nico died.
Bahdoon entered the room unarmed. He surveyed the firefight. The dead: double agent Nairobi, Korfa Double, and the US SEAL CO, among a half dozen pirates. He asked, “Korfa, what are you going to do with the American body?”