“That’s all we’ve got. The ship will veer off course and crash.”
“No go!”
As the pirates huddled together counting, McCullum wondered what had happened to the other members of his crew. The pounding he heard from a lower deck indicated that at least some of them had been locked in one of the lower cabins.
Several pirates grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head toward them. “More! More money!” they shouted.
“That’s all there is. Everything.”
“More money? Where?”
“That’s the whole lot. I promise.”
To the captain’s alarm, their attention now turned to the bedroom door. Several of them were kicking at it and trying to force it open. Another lifted a fire axe that had been affixed to the wall outside the dayroom.
“There’s nothing in there!” the captain shouted. “No money!”
The axe smashed into the door, releasing a shower of sparks.
“I said, there’s nothing in there, dammit. It’s my bedroom. I…sleep. You might find jewelry and watches in the crew’s quarters, one deck down.”
“No.”
“Yes! Go down. Downstairs.”
The pirate pointed at the cabin door. “Open!!!!”
“I can’t.”
The pirate responded with a fist to the captain’s mouth. Another pirate dragged his long knife along his forehead, causing warm blood to drip into his eyes.
“You open or you die!”
He shook his head, which produced a frenzy of kicks and punches from the pirates.
Through the pain he heard Tanya sobbing, “Jake, darling! Jake, oh my God, are you alright?”
He winced at the sound of her voice and quickly shouted back, “Don’t unlock the door. Whatever happens. Don’t! You hear me?”
Someone stabbed him in the back of the neck. The shock caused him to shout in pain. “Bloody…fuck!”
Now he had trouble raising his head. He heard a lock turning, and managed to twist his body sideways to look.
Pirates were rushing through the bedroom door, howling. Seconds later two of them came out pulling Tanya by her strawberry-blond hair.
“God…no!”
Their eyes met, and he saw the panic in hers as the men pawed her skin and ripped away the shorts, T-shirt, and bra she was wearing. One of them cupped her pale white breast and pointed to the little blue heart tattoo she had gotten during their honeymoon.
“No, please…”
He heard the pirates’ shouts and his wife’s pleas for mercy. In her horrible distress he loved her more than ever, and wanted to tell her that this was his fault. He should have been a better captain and a smarter husband. It was his job to protect her. He should never have invited her on what he knew was a dangerous voyage.
If he ever got another chance, he’d make it right.
Please God. Spare her. She’s a good woman. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s never done anyone any harm.
A sharp noise reverberated in the tight metal space. His ears rang. His head hurt. Everything seemed to stop. Ignoring the excruciating pain from the back of his neck, he turned to see where the sound had come from.
Standing in the door were three men-all Middle Eastern-looking, all dressed in black. They held automatic weapons.
Who the bloody fuck are they?
It was the short one in the middle with the blazing black eyes who seemed to be in charge. He shouted at the pirates in a foreign language-Arabic maybe, or Farsi or Urdu.
The pirates cowered and backed against the wall. They let go of McCullum’s terrified, half-naked wife and lifted him into a chair.
“What’s…what’s going on here?” he asked in a daze.
The Middle Eastern man with the dark eyes and short black beard walked over to the wounded captain and addressed him in broken English: “We take over now. We navy.”
“Which navy?” the captain asked, trying to remember which Arab country was nearby. Egypt maybe.
“You safe now. Very safe.”
“Thank you. God bless you. But who are you, exactly?”
Tanya ran to his side and crouched beside him. He held her trembling body.
“If you cooperate, your woman and crew will be free. But we need see cargo first.”
“The cargo? What country did you say you were from?” McCullum asked, relieved.
“Your cargo, yes.”
“Are you Egyptian?” he asked.
The little man smiled. “Egyptian, yes.”
“Then be my guest.”
Chapter One
Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill.
– Danish proverb
Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker of SEAL Team Six looked up at the moon rising over the mud-walled compound, which was roughly two hundred feet in front of him. Then he turned to Davis, the blond-haired comms man to his right, and asked, “Any news?”
“The drone is on its way.”
“How much longer?”
“Ten minutes max.”
“Ten additional minutes?”
“That’s what HQ said.”
The SEAL Team Six assault leader looked down at his watch. It was 2202 hours local time, which meant that they’d been waiting for nearly an hour behind the dry scrub that grew around an outcropping of rocks on a hill in South Yemen.
It was a minor miracle they hadn’t been discovered. They sat smack in the middle of al-Qaeda territory only a dozen miles south of the city of Jaar, which had been seized by the terrorists in March 2011.
The lights of a little Yemeni village sparkled in the distance to his right.
This was supposed to be a simple insert-and-destroy, the target a Sunni mullah named Ahmed, formerly a citizen of the UK and currently a vocal leader of al-Qaeda in South Yemen.
Because of U.S. political considerations the target had to be ID’d first, which involved an elaborate trail of digital connections that began with the SEAL team on the ground and ended in a trailer in the parking lot of CIA headquarters, where an officer from the CIA Directorate of Operations had to peer into a video monitor connected by satellite feed to a camera on the drone and confirm that the image on the screen likely corresponded to the intended target. Then, and only then, could he give the order to Crocker and his team to take out the target.
How was the officer in Langley supposed to establish Mullah Ahmed’s identity with any degree of certainty when he was probably bearded and wore a black turban like all the other al-Qaeda terrorists? Why was the Agency being so careful?
These were questions of DC bureaucratic politics Crocker had learned to avoid, as much as they seemed to want to drive him crazy.
Instead of complaining, which he knew would do no good, he focused on applying his extensive training, experience, expertise, and instincts to the mission at hand.
Surveying the area around him through AN/PVS helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, he confirmed that all the pieces of the op were in place. Ritchie (his explosives expert and breacher) and Mancini (equipment and weapons) were in position outside the back of the compound. They were ready to detonate the explosives that would initiate the assault and cover anybody retreating out the back. Akil (maps and logistics), Davis (communications), and Calvin (the Asian American SEAL sniper he had brought with him) hugged the ground to Crocker’s immediate right.
They were positioned on a hill that looked directly into the front of the compound, which was rectangular and approximately eighty by eighty feet and contained three structures-a main house and two smaller sheds or garages. The second and third stories of the house were visible above the ten-foot-high wall. Low yellow lights shone in some of the windows, creating an eerie effect.
“This is Tango two-five. You guys fall asleep? What’s the good word?” Ritchie’s voice came through the earphones built into Crocker’s helmet.
“We’re still waiting for the order.”
“Manny’s getting hungry. He’s looking at me funny. What’s taking so long?”