What the CIA didn’t notice at first, or anyone else at Camp Lemonnier, was that when General Adad landed at Hargeisa Airport, he did more than deliver Qas and another Syrian Electronic Army hacker to Korfa. Adad also dropped off an Iranian-made Hemaseh — “Epic” — drone, which Qas and an engineer had assembled in the hangar after the first group of hostages was flown out of Somalia. Way up in the blue over the Somaliland border, the Epic Drone flew a mile higher than the American UAV. With camera and infrared equipment stolen by Chinese hackers from the US military and a defense contractor, the Iranian drone began to track the movements of the UAV, while capturing the border meeting high up in the sky.
Bahdoon, the Yemeni psychiatrist, drove a jeep to the border. He parked the vehicle and pulled a gas mask over his head and face. He adjusted the straps, made sure the filter cartridge canister was set. He opened the door and stepped out unarmed. He walked by himself toward the border, to where Dante and Fuller stood waiting with steel cases of cash in hand for the trade. A cordon of armed marines backed the Azure Shell negotiators, along with the Coast Guard at sea, Black Hawks a klick behind, and the US drone at five thousand feet.
“Look at this scorpion,” Dante said to Fuller, a bit miffed by the gas mask.
“I see it, stinger and all.”
“Hey, Somali, take the mask off. The air is fine out here to breathe,” Dante shouted.
“Christ, what happened to wearing al Qaeda black pajamas?” Fuller said, eyeing the buttoned-down, khakis-wearing doctor.
Bahdoon waved Dante to cross the border to confer on behalf of the hostages’ release. Using a mobile phone app as a voicebox, he asked, “Do you have all the money this time?”
“Yes. For the dead American SEAL, the Danish captain, and hostages from the Shining Sea,” Dante said, pointing to the suitcases. “The money is all here, two million large.”
“No, no, no. What about the ships?”
“You’re emptying oil as we speak in Berbera. You mined the container ship off Zeila. You killed a sailor and tied him to the propeller. Now you want more money for bad behavior? It’s not going to fucking happen,” Dante said, standing his ground.
Bahdoon didn’t argue the points. He stood where Korfa didn’t dare to stand, near the border, in fear of being shot like his brother or assassinated like his body double. The warlord wasn’t about to take any chances. Bahdoon nodded and ambled back to the jeep. He pressed a number on a mobile phone, summoning a bus to drive the hostages to the border.
Both sides waited for the olive-green bus to arrive. Dante and Chris Fuller waited and watched, when finally the bus pulled around the dusty bend and arrived at the gate.
As the hostages climbed out of the bus, shielding their eyes from the bright sun, which they hadn’t seen in days, one Marine began filming the release. In good faith, Dante stepped over the border and dropped off one case of money. Until he saw the Danish captain and CO Nico Gregorius in a body bag, he wasn’t going to release the other case of money.
A young pirate handler picked up the suitcase and carried it on board the bus, to see if all of the money was there. Five minutes went by when the bus flashed its headlights, signaling that the trade had been accepted. It took another few minutes with no sign of activity in the bus that gave Dante pause. He started to wonder if the final trade would go down at all. Just when he was about to tell Fuller to enact Plan B, a Land Rover drove up behind Bahdoon at the border. For a long, tense moment the Land Rover, too, sat idling.
“Full, what’s going down?” Dante whispered. “Why the gas mask?”
“Psycho warfare?… Or he’s hiding his identity,” Fuller observed.
Dante turned around and stared at Bahdoon, studying his posture, watching his hand motions and gait, his height — five-foot-six at most — weighing around 140 pounds. “Mm-hmm,” Dante agreed with Fuller’s assessment. “Film his ass so we can find out who he is.” The former FBI special agent nodded, and subtly clicked a button on his Satcom signaling the marine to zero in and film the pirates.
Before the marine could target Bahdoon, the man climbed into the jeep and backed away. But Dante was able to film the gas mask pirate doing just that with his smartphone. A pair of Somali pirates stepped out of the Land Rover — they too were wearing gas masks. One led the harried Danish captain at gunpoint toward Dante at the border. The other pirate dragged a body bag out of the vehicle and dumped it on the ground — a clear sign of disrespect. Dante’s neck veins bulged. He was livid. He clenched his fists and bit his lower lip, gnashing his teeth.
A couple of marines took aim at the Somali pirate escorting the captain to the border crossing. Dante held up a fist for the Marines to lower their weapons. The pirate, breathing hard through the gas mask filter, stopped the captain in front of Dante, pointing at the other suitcase of money, the firearm now pressed to the back of the captain’s head.
Fuller took a couple of marines over the border with him to check on the contents of the body bag. A marine unzipped the bag; Fuller stooped over and matched the dead SEAL CO Nico Gregorius with photos of him. He pulled the CO’s dental records, and checked it against the teeth in the corpse’s mouth. They matched. He then scanned Nico’s finger- and palm-prints.
Fuller looked back at Dante and nodded, then wiped a tear leaking from his eye. He and the marines carried the dead CO back across the border. Another marine carried the second suitcase across the border and placed it in front of the jeep. When the contents of the suitcase were inspected inside the Land Rover, the vehicle flashed its headlights, signaling the pirate to release the Danish captain.
With the beat-up captain weak in the legs, Dante put his arm around the Dane and escorted him across the border, handing him off to a couple of marines, who took the Blue Heaven captain into medical care.
Dante snapped a photo of the pirate heading back to the Land Rover, then turned around and crossed the border back to Djibouti.
All that remained of the attacks were the hijacked ships. There, NATO and Centcom would call the shots on how to proceed to defeat or contain the pirate cells in Somaliland. But if it were up to Dante, he would have the CIA drone hovering above bomb the Land Rover right that minute and forget bargaining for the ships or the cargos.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The CIA agents blocked Merk from talking to Dante about grilling the Norwegian sniper Peder Olsen, since Dante was no longer in the military. They insisted that the former SEAL CO could only be used as an intermediary in hostage negotiations. For Merk, they went further and put a call to their FBI counterparts in Washington to keep Merk away from Olsen altogether.
The CIA shafted Merk. He felt the knife stab in his back. He knew something deeper was going on than the typical agency turf war. So he went to the intel fusion center to conduct the interview himself. He called on a favor from an E-9 Marine sergeant major, who led the Norwegian sniper into the dining hall. When Merk arrived, Peder sat on a chair backward, his meaty forearms folded on the backrest. The sniper stared at Merk with a cocky smirk. Noting his sunburn was on the mend, Merk motioned a young, green ONI officer to leave the building. The young naval intel officer said nothing as he exited the door. Merk double bolted the door and strode back to Peder.
“So you are the dolphin trainer I heard about,” Peder said in a testosterone-fueled tone.
Merk stood in front of the Norwegian sniper. “We’re not here to talk about dolphins. My op is classified.”
“I’m not? Then what am I here for?” he asked, grinning a stupid smirk.
Merk stepped over to a table next to Peder and poured a glass of water, saying, “No. You’re here for—” and splashed the water in Peder’s face. He recoiled. Merk grabbed his arm and pulled the Norwegian down, smashing the glass over his head. He kicked a leg off the chair and threw the sniper hard to the floor. Merk pulled Peder’s arm flat, twisting the hand at the wrist, grinding his elbow in Peder’s jaw, pinning his head to the ground. Merk put a knee on Peder’s flattened elbow, freeing his right hand that held a jagged shard of glass and waved it over the mercenary’s eyeball.