1
Lieutenant Ed DeWitt kept one eye on the radar screen in the sleek cabin of the Pegasus as it slammed through the azure Caribbean Sea at thirty knots. He could just make out the trace of the pirate cruiser slashing through the water five miles ahead of them. The boatmen had done nothing illegal yet, but the Navy spotter in an aircraft high overhead had been shadowing the power cruiser for two hours and had called in the Pegasus for assistance. The same boat had been chased before by the plane, but it had become hidden and then lost in a maze of small inlets, narrow waterways, and tangled growth on an uninhabited stretch of the southern coast of Puerto Rico east of Punta Petrona. Now the spotter kept DeWitt up to date through his ear speaker on his Motorola personal-commo radio.
“Yes, I’d say the pirates are definitely aiming at that sailboat,” the spotter went on. “The target is about five miles ahead of the pirate, but he’s dead on course to overtake her shortly. Our hope was that you could charge up there and intercept the pirates before they hit the sail ship. But not a chance. I didn’t call you in soon enough.”
“We can kick this boat up to forty-five knots. Wouldn’t that be enough to cut him off?” DeWitt asked. He watched his seven-man team in the slender Navy powerboat.
“Negative. He’s got too much lead on you. My fault. We protect these sail craft whenever we can, but this bastard pirate came out of that damn fog bank and surprised everybody. We didn’t think he was out hunting today.” The spotter’s voice came through showing his frustration. The Navy coxswain at the controls of the Pegasus heard the exchange on his Motorola and nodded.
“Watch and wait,” DeWitt told his Bravo Squad of Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, home-based in Coronado, California. His squad was on special duty with the Coast Guard and the Navy to cut down on the pirating of small vessels in the Caribbean area.
The Pegasus is the Navy version of a “cigar” boat, eighty-two feet long and only seventeen feet wide. Officially it’s the Pegasus Class MKV (SOC/PBF). It was designed specifically to insert and withdraw Navy SEALs from unfriendly territory. Eight of the boats went into service in 1997, with twenty more added to the fleet in 1999. It’s powered by two 12V 396 TE94 diesels that turn out 4,500 horsepower.
DeWitt checked his men. All were ready. They had specific instructions to do as little harm as possible to the pirates, and were ordered not to use the Bull Pup exploding 20mm rounds on the pirates unless they had to, if it turned into a running gun battle.
Three minutes later the Motorola spoke again. “Yes, yes, we have the pirate ship within hailing distance of the sailing vessel. You can’t get there in time,” the spotter in the Navy plane said with a touch of guilt.
On board the charging powerboat, Sancho waved at the man steering the forty-two-foot sailboat only thirty feet away. Then he angled in closer and from twenty feet pointed to his best shot, Hernando, who blasted ten rounds from a Colt Commando on full automatic. The man at the yacht’s wheel didn’t even have time to look up as the sound of the shots and the 5.56mm lead messengers jolted into his body at the same time. He screamed once; then another round caught him in the throat and angled upward into his brain, dumping him on the deck, where he sprawled in sudden death.
Sancho eased his forty-foot powerboat up to the sailboat. Two of his men tied the crafts together, and at once six men leaped on board the pleasure craft. Each of the Puerto Rican pirates carried a submachine gun. Two had Ingrams, two had Beretta 3’s, and the rest CZ Model 25’s from Czechoslovakia.
A man rushed up from the cabin. He yelled at the first gunman he saw, and was rewarded with four rounds of parabellums to his chest. The shooter stripped out the dead man’s wallet from his shorts, and pulled off rings and his watch. Three pirates stormed below. They found four women and two more men in the saloon.
The pirate’s submachine guns stuttered out instant death as all three men fired. They killed two of the women where they sat. One of the men tried to charge forward, but was stopped in mid-stride when six rounds hit his chest and shoulders and two more punched deadly holes in his brain.
One blond woman in a bikini still held a drink in her hand where she sat on a couch. She looked up in terror as Sancho walked up to her and fondled her breasts. “Hey, pretty lady, I really hate to do this, but you know, it just got to be done.” He smiled at her and winked, then shot her once in the heart. Sancho laughed. “Hey, dead lady, I lied.”
The men belowdeck split up. One took wallets, rings, and jewelry from the women. Another one darted into the rear cabin, found the safe, and blew it open with a small controlled charge. He then quickly looted everything of value in the safe.
In the small forward cabin the boat’s navigation equipment, radios, depth gauges, and other instruments were stripped off the fittings, and rushed to the pirate ship.
Sancho stood by the wheel of his powerboat, Ingram in hand, watching the men work, and checking his watch.
“Sixty seconds,” he bellowed into the silence of the sea. “You have one minute to finish. Quickly now. The damn Navy plane is getting interested again. We need to race out of here.”
Sancho heard another controlled explosion. Good, they had found the second safe. There was always one hidden, but he and his men had seen plans of most of the yachts and he knew where to look. Moments later men began jumping back on board the motor launch. “All on board,” one of the pirates, wearing a bandanna over his head, called.
Sancho motioned for them to untie the sailboat, and then he counted his men. Everyone had returned. He took a small black case from his pocket and gunned the launch away from the sailboat. He opened the lid on the case and pushed one red button; then when they were a hundred yards from the sailboat, he pushed the second red button. A blast echoed across the water, splinters flew over the Marylue, and smoke gushed from two blown-out portholes. A moment later fire billowed up the stairwell and the ship began listing to port.
Sancho grinned, turned the launch toward shore, and pushed the throttles forward all the way. Now it would be a race between him and whoever the Navy and Coast Guard tried to throw at him this time. He laughed softly, fingering the scar tissue across his right cheek. Sometimes he enjoyed the chase as much as he did the attack. He coaxed one more knot of speed out of the big engines belowdeck and charged across the water.
The Pegasus had been slamming through the waves at its full forty-five-knot speed, making the SEALs hang on to keep from being bounded overboard as the long craft skipped from one wave top to the next.
DeWitt pulled down his mike from where it rested out of the way against his floppy hat brim. “These guys work as quick as expert car strippers. Everyone with a specific job to get done fast. We play it by ear when we get there.”
Two minutes later the radios came on. “The pirates have pushed away from the sailboat,” the spotter said. “The sails are down and she’s drifting; now she’s showing smoke and starting to list to port. The pirate ship is gunning for land.”
“Moving as fast as we can,” DeWitt said.
Two minutes later, the Pegasus nosed up to the dangerously listing sailboat. Her port rail was almost in the water. DeWitt had used his binoculars and seen one dead man on the deck. The man had slid almost into the water. The moment the Navy craft touched the sailboat they lashed both craft together. DeWitt pointed to Mahanani and Fernandez.
“You two, on board with me, the rest hold here. Get ready to cut loose the second you think this sailboat is going down.”
They jumped onto the slanted deck and hurried to the steps going down to the cabin. Inside, they paused.