Through his headset he heard, “Zero Alpha, this is White Shark One. The target is not responding. Engage! Engage!”
The Blackhawk pilot swooped down and hovered over the forward deck of the Gang at forty meters. A patchwork of orange, rusty-white, and dark-blue shipping containers bobbed and swayed below.
“Ready!” Akil shouted.
“Ready!”
On a hand signal from Akil the copilot disengaged the hatch, whereupon Akil threw the braided-nylon 1.7-inch-diameter fast rope out, located a container to land on, and went down first, expertly and fast. Crocker felt a burst of pride. The other SEALs followed in designated order, ten feet apart. Crocker went last, using his hands and feet to hold the rope and slide down smoothly. Once on deck, he scanned 360 degrees through the AN/PVS-17 scope.
No greeting party or targets in sight. The ship itself looked old and tired. The foremast was literally coming apart and listed to one side. Some of the shoe-fit latches on the hatch covers didn’t close properly, and the bridge tower front was pitted with rust.
Move and cover.
He signaled Akil and Jenks to wait while he, Tré, Pauly, and Sam took the bridge. They slipped past a dozen forty-foot containers, the rubber composition soles of their Merrell boots muffling the sound. Entering the tower, they climbed five levels of metal steps to the bridge. Crocker tried the metal door, but it was locked.
He banged on it and called out, “We’re U.S. Navy working with the Singapore Maritime Police. We’re here to inspect your ship.”
“Door no work!” came the answer.
“Either you open this door or we blow it in.”
“Door no work!”
He signaled to the breacher, Sam, to apply the charges-strips of C-4-then shouted through the door, “Tell all your crew members to stand back!”
As Sam readied the strips and detonators someone unlatched the door from within and let it slowly creak open. Confronting them was a skinny Asian man in black pajama pants and an old white T-shirt with a defiant look on his face. He was holding a.38 revolver in his right hand, currently aimed at the floor but alarming nonetheless.
“Drop the weapon!” Crocker ordered, his HK aimed dead center on the man’s chest, his left hand gesturing down to the metal floor.
The man, who appeared to be in his late forties, grunted disgustedly and lowered the pistol to his side. Crocker noticed he was wearing flip-flops.
“Are you the captain of this vessel?” he asked, stepping forward with his weapon still pointing at the man’s chest.
The Asian man shrugged.
“Sir, are you the captain?”
This time the man stuck out his chin and growled, “Cap-tain.”
“You speak English? What’s your name?”
The man sneered something in a foreign language. Beyond him, Crocker saw Tré, Pauly, and Sam checking a group of crew members huddled near the ship’s command console. Sam shook his head, indicating that they weren’t armed.
Simultaneously, he heard Han over the radio: “Zero Alpha, White Shark One here. What’s the situation onboard?”
“Stand by, White Shark. Situation developing. Over.”
Crocker never took his eyes off the captain. He said, “I’m going to ask you one more time to drop the pistol. Then my men and I are going to inspect the ship.”
The captain didn’t respond. Crocker was trying to decide whether he should shoot him in the leg, smack him with the butt of his HK, or forcibly remove the pistol from his hand. In the last-minute lead-up to the op, this contingency hadn’t been discussed.
He stepped forward until they were within three feet of each other. Suddenly the captain lifted the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. Blam! Blood and brain matter splattered across the bridge wall and floor as the captain’s knees gave way and his body folded.
The gunshot reverberating in Crocker’s ears, cordite cleaving to the inside of his nostrils, he stepped over the body and stood next to Tré, who was facing five frightened-looking crew members. Pauly and Sam peeled away to inspect the rest of the tower.
“Who’s the next in command?” Crocker asked.
The tallest of the men, with a wisp of dark beard on his chin, held up his index finger and said, “My name…Lu. First officer.”
“You speak English,” Crocker responded. “Good.” He pointed to the body bleeding out behind him. “First, I want him covered. Then I want to see your cargo manifest.”
According to the manifest, the Cong Son Gang was transporting rice from Hamhung, North Korea, to Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. The only other cargo was two small containers of “bicycle parts.” Remembering that Bandar Abbas was a port city in Iran and that Iran was one of North Korea’s few trading partners, Crocker radioed Captain Han of the SMP to board the ship and lead the inspection.
That’s when Pauly and Sam returned, holding a dark-haired man by the collar of his dirty white shirt.
“Who’s he?” Crocker asked.
“Banasheh Nasari, according to his ID,” Pauly said. “We found him hiding in the mess.”
It was a Persian name, which made sense, since the ship was headed to Iran and Jeri had said the Iranians might be behind the larger conspiracy. Nasari was a man of about fifty with a high forehead, black-framed glasses, and a sly, somewhat intellectual appearance.
“Do you speak English?”
He looked back at Crocker with dead eyes.
“Who are you working for? Why are you on this ship?”
No answer again.
Akil tried addressing him in Persian and then Arabic. Nasari didn’t respond to either. Not that it really mattered to Crocker, who had decided that even if Nasari offered information, he couldn’t be trusted.
Once Captain Han boarded, the SEALs descended to the cargo deck and stood guard as Lu and other crew members opened the large deck containers one by one. Han’s men slit open some of the 22.6-kilo (50-pound) bags of rice and crawled through the containers. Satisfied that they were filled only with rice, the group climbed down the metal galley ladder to the hold.
The smaller twenty-foot containers in holds 1, 2, and 3 did in fact hold rubber bicycle seats and pedals. According to First Mate Lu, so did the containers in forward holds 4, 5, and 6. But the door to the forward hold area was double-padlocked shut, and he claimed not to have a key.
“I bet this asshole has it,” Akil said, nodding toward Nasari.
“Do you?” Crocker asked.
Again no answer, just a blank stare.
Instead of searching the ship for the keys, one of the policemen on Captain Han’s team produced a Rotorazer saw with a carbonized blade that cut through the locks like they were butter. Then he swung open the first container and sliced through a thick black plastic lining. Stacked inside were metal barrels packed with a white crystalline substance.
Han put some on the tip of his tongue, tasted it, and spit it out. “Crystal meth,” he announced.
Behind the barrels they found a wooden crate. Stacked inside it were rows of shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills.
Lu claimed he hadn’t known they were there, and Nasari didn’t change his expression even when Crocker got in his face and asked, “You knew nothing about this either, did you?”
The SEALs escorted the bills back to Singapore harbor, where they guarded them until U.S. Treasury officials arrived and took possession. Crocker later learned that they were counterfeit, amounted to nearly $1 million, and fit the same 2HK1 profile as the bills seized in Vegas.
Even though Nasari claimed diplomatic immunity and had to be released, it wasn’t a bad day’s work.
Chapter Ten
The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
– John Milton
James Dawkins sat in the chilly underground workroom in the company of three male assistants and confronted the task in front of him. Basically he was being asked to miniaturize and calibrate the inertial guidance system that would fit directly under the warhead of a newly developed Unha-3 rocket. According to the mockups and schematics he’d seen, the Unha-3 was a three-stage 110-foot rocket that weighed about eighty-five metric tons.