“Ransom, of course. Money, money, money. Bahdoon, you handle psy warfare. I will demand twice the ransom for the treachery the Americans committed in trying to assassinate me,” Korfa said, bristling in anger.
The guards lifted Nico’s lifeless body and slumped it in a chair. Korfa put his arm around the dead SEAL and posed for a digital picture, which Bahdoon captured on a smartphone and would then upload on a social media platform to go viral.
“This reminds me of the TV crews last week in Jaar. The show I put on with the dead children on TV was fantastic,” Bahdoon said with dark glee. “We’ll blame ISIS. The US lost the propaganda war with the drone strike. Now they’ll lose the psy war before the attack.”
“Bahdoon, remember I’m the Ferryman, not a butcher. So how are you leaving Somalia?”
“My Indian passport is waiting for me in Paris, along with an airline ticket,” he said.
“I’m heading out through Nigeria and from there as an oil trader,” Korfa said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Merk sped the rubber boat tight to the dark mangrove-clad coast of Sacadadiin Island. He eyed the digital map on the laptop screen showing Inapo closing on the hijacked ship, while Tasi had just cleared the southwestern point of the island.
Swimming at fifteen knots, Inapo breached the black water, the dorsalcam capturing the broad stern of the vessel. As the dolphin approached the Shining Star, the starboard side came into view, the multicolored container boxes stacked skyward like child’s blocks. At that point, Merk made the decision to go with only one MM system conducting reconnaissance that night. What he needed to do beside fish Tasi out of the gulf was figure out why she became belabored while swimming to the target.
When the rubber boat approached within one hundred meters of Tasi, the dolphin splashed furiously. The dorsalcam view bounced around — choppy shots of the sea, the island edge, a rotating night sky. Merk cut the engine and glided over. Her dorsal fin sank below.
In full view of the Shining Star, forming a towering silhouette against the low lying horizon of Zeila bay, Merk took the chance of being spotted. He grabbed a flashlight and circled the beam around the water, looking for any sign of Tasi — foam on the surface where she thrashed about, a disturbance of air bubbles ejected from her blowhole. Some clue, but found nothing.
“Jesus Christ. C’mon, c’mon, Tasi… Where are you?…?” he muttered, frantic.
Merk moved the flashlight back and forth across the surface, and then reached for the sonar-whistle. He grasped it and, about to lower it in the water, felt a thump under the rubber boat. He looked around, and Tasi floated upside-down out from under the bow. Merk tethered a rescue line to his ankle and dove in the water. He swam to Tasi, rolled the stunned dolphin over, and began to pound her side hard, stunning her to wake up. He blew a powerful breath into her blowhole, causing her to eject water and then pinch several breaths. The dolphin came to, opening an eye, glancing around, yet she was dazed and weak.
“Tasi, I’m going to lift you up. But you need to help by jumping in the boat.” With that Merk pulled the rubber boat over, pulled the slack out of the line, holding the now short cord in his mouth, and hoisted the mammal up. Tasi fluked hard, rising up where Merk pushed her into the rubber boat. Exhausted, he hung on to the side. When his strength returned, he pulled himself into the rubber boat, sprawled flat on his back next to Tasi. He wiped water out of his face and howled like a wolf with victory.
Merk rolled the tarp over her, sliced a hole for the dorsal fin to stick through, and then headed back to Ceebaad Island, letting Inapo conduct the survey of the ship’s hull alone.
At the stern of the Shining Star, Inapo broke the surface, cleared his blowhole, and dove underwater. The navy dolphin swam to inspect the vessel’s props. The massive propellers were intact, but with a lone haunting scar. A crewman from the hijacked ship had been tied to a massive blade. His hands floated gently in the current; his hair flowing upward like strands of sea-grass; his face and body bloated. A corpse to serve as a warning sign for the US Navy.
Inapo shot a burst of sonar clicks from his melon into the chest of the victim to confirm the heart was not beating. The dolphin detected no pulse, no sign of life. Inapo swam around the starboard side, panning the long hull. He found a metallic object floating beneath the surface.
Swimming by the object, the dolphin dove to the seafloor and came up under the sphere with a hard metal shell of a sea-mine. Inapo clicked the object, as the dorsalcam captured the contact spikes. The sonar feedback told the dolphin that the mine was armed. Relaying the intel back to Merk via the Dolphin Code, Inapo swam around the ship to locate more mines.
The low-scrabbled topography of Ceebaad Island came into view. Merk opened the throttle racing the rubber boat with Tasi to the far side of the island. As the boat turned the corner, Kell Johnston and the SEAL sniper flagged Merk over. He swerved the craft around the north end of the island, shut off the engine, and glided to shore. Merk lifted the tarp and noticed Tasi was low on energy. He rolled the heavy creature over the side into the water.
Tasi drifted away. She peeked her head above the surface waiting for Merk to give instructions. He flashed the sign to stay at rest. Merk told the SEAL sniper to bring the cooler over so he could feed the dolphin, while he and Kell tracked the progress of Inapo surveying the Shining Sea. Unsure how to feed the mammal, the sniper held up a mackerel and looked at Merk for guidance.
“You know how to aim a firearm and squeeze the trigger, don’t you?” Merk said.
“Sure I do,” the SEAL sniper said, gingerly lowering the fish to Tasi’s mouth. The dolphin reached up and snatched the mackerel out of the sniper’s hand, grazing his fingers with her conical shaped teeth. Startled, the sniper stumbled backward and fell in the water.
“Toten, what’s wrong with your animal?” Kell asked.
“Don’t know. But I can’t have a liability out there with daybreak coming,” Merk said, carrying the laptop over to a storage area and placing it on another cooler of food. He typed in commands on the color-coded keyboard, opening a split-screen that showed a live shot of the dorsalcam with Inapo looping under and around a third sea-mine. The other half of the screen showed images the system had caught earlier. Merk opened the clip of the dead crewman bound to the propeller; the first sea-mine off the starboard side; and a second mine near the bow.
“We have a murder,” Kell said, pointing at Inapo poking the corpse’s head.
“The pirates wouldn’t mine the harbor if they wanted to keep the cargo,” Merk said, carrying the laptop to the stone beach. He placed it on a rock, turned up the volume so he could hear an alert ping in case Inapo tried to contact him. He waded into the shallows and dove underwater, swimming out to Tasi.
For the next ten minutes, Merk and Tasi gently swam together, mirroring one another. They played, splashed, and frolicked; all the while he examined her from beak to tail. He felt for wounds, scrapes, gashes and sores under the belly, the most sensitive part of a dolphin’s skin, but found nothing. He ran his palms down her sides, but again didn’t find any wounds, scars, cuts, scrapes, or bruises. He eyed the dolphin; she stared back at him.
Merk wasn’t any closer to figuring out what was wrong with the MM system. Did she suffer from a virus or illness? Did the back-to-back-to-back missions exhaust her? He sloshed out of the water with Kell asking, “You find anything?”