Wilbur and Orville were making sure their toys were in working order. Sand and dust were the enemies of precision machinery and electronics; in this desert we had plenty of both. The other guys were cleaning weapons and doing routine maintenance on our com gear. When they finished that, there were the usual camp chores.
We gunnies finally knocked off for beer. I had a sore shoulder and tried not to show it. I owed E.D. twelve dollars and Clay eighteen. We didn’t have any money here and would have to settle up later. I wasn’t flustered because I intended to welsh.
“So, E.D., you did this for a living back in the day,” I said. “How many kills did you get with a sniper rifle?”
E.D. was from New Jersey and still had the accent. “None. I wasn’t a sniper.”
“Any long-range shots at Taliban, bomb planters, suiciders…?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t even ask,” Travis Clay said. “I ain’t ever fired a bolt gun at anybody, near, far or in between.”
I contemplated my toes.
“Not even going to bother asking you, Carmellini. I can see it in your face.”
“Three fucking amateurs,” Erectile summed up succinctly.
“Hey,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to be the leader and in charge of morale and all that, “we’re the good guys. Truth, justice and the American way. That’s our edge.”
“Pot, chicks and porno flicks,” E.D. sneered and drained the rest of his beer. He crushed the empty can in his fist and threw it as far downwind as he could. It was still flying through the air when he got his first shot off with his Kimber 1911. Missed. Then the can hit the dirt and he used both hands and kept it skittering along until the slide locked open.
EYL, SOMALIA
Sultan of the Seas crept across the underwater sandbar that the river had formed two miles from the mouth. Once over, the cruise ship moved slowly toward the river mouth. There was a cape to the north that gave the harbor rudimentary shelter and a promontory several hundred feet high to the south, but that was about it. The city sprawled on both sides of the river, which wasn’t much, a trickle of water coming down to the sea from a jagged tear in the caprock. A sandbar essentially choked the river, which had just a small cut to flow through. The fishing boats and pirate skiffs were pulled up on the beaches to the right and left and the sandbar willy-nilly, above the high tide mark.
From the sea the town looked like what it was, a typical third-world tropical shithole made of a few good old buildings and lots of rusted corrugated tin and steel arranged horizontally to provide shelter from the rain and sun and vertically to provide rudimentary privacy.
On the northern cape, Bas Ma, stood the crumbling remains of a colonial fortress built in the era before naval guns fired explosive shells. It was large, low and squat, with dark, gaping gun ports looking out to sea. In places the sand had drifted against the masonry right up to the gun ports.
Most of the fishing boats were on the beaches while their owners and crews went pirating. About a dozen oceangoing freighters and container ships were aground in shallow water north and south of the main channel, right where the pirates put them when they brought them in from the high seas. The crews were ransomed but the ships stayed, abandoned and rusting and looted by the locals, at the mercy of the occasional storm coming in from the sea.
Mustafa al-Said had Captain Arch Penney anchor Sultan off the sandbar at the river’s mouth.
A small boat was pushed down the beach into the surf and came motoring out to the ship. Mustafa told Penney to open the pilot port in the starboard side, and he gave the orders over the handheld. Ten minutes later a large pirate with half his teeth and a scraggly beard walked onto the bridge accompanied by two bodyguards wearing pistol belts and machetes. All three were chewing khat.
Ragnar, for that is who the head dog was, slapped Mustafa on the shoulder and embraced him. They went out on the wing of the bridge and gabbled away excitedly while Arch Penney used binoculars to inspect the various beached ships and look over the town, trying to get a firm grip on himself. Behind him on the deck sat his wife, Marjorie and George from New York.
The pirates had thrown the body of the man Mustafa shot into the sea. The bullet that killed him, Arch had noted, had gouged a serious dent in the bulkhead after it had gone through him. There it was, in the middle of a grotesque little bloodstain. Another one. Arch thought he could smell the blood.
Over on the wing of the bridge Mustafa was issuing orders. Apparently Ragnar didn’t speak English, or if he did, he was keeping quiet about it.
Five minutes passed. Then two pirates marched a passenger into the space and handed Mustafa his passport.
Penney recognized the man: Mike Rosen, from Denver. The talk-show host.
Rosen looked ashen.
“So Meester Ro-sen,” Mustafa said jovially. “You have been sending computer messages to America all the time we try to get this ship to Eyl.”
Rosen said nothing.
Mustafa looked amused. He glanced at the captain, then remarked, “He has given you much publicity, Captain. Your name, your ship, my men, we are famous. All over the world. People see and hear. Television, computers, newspapers, radio—all of it. All because of Ro-sen.”
Rosen tried to control his face.
Mustafa continued. “Meester Ro-sen, you will do one more computer message to your radio station in Deenver. You will tell them you and everyone aboard Sultan are prisoners of Sheikh Ragnar.” Here he gestured grandly at the large happy slob on the wing of the bridge.
“You tell them that Sheikh Ragnar release all of you—everyone—and your ship, if he is paid two hundred millions American dollars. Cash. Old money, not new. If no pay, you all rot in Eyl. You may buy food, but when money runs out, you starve. Two hundred millions American dollars, Meester Ro-sen. Now go, write and send your message.”
Mustafa rattled off something in Somali to the two guards, who hustled Rosen off the bridge.
Mustafa and Ragnar conversed some more. Ragnar walked around, looking at everything, including the two women—especially the two women—and the bloodstains and the various displays and controls on the bridge.
A parade of small boats was coming out to the ship from the beaches. All those boats that Penney thought abandoned—well, here came most of them. Everything that would float. Some were rowed; some had engines; some were towed behind boats with outboards.
Ragnar and Mustafa walked over to where the captain stood. Ragnar spoke and Mustafa translated.
“Sheikh Ragnar says Americans on ships will try to rescue you.”
“Sheikh Ragnar says we take all passengers and crew off this ship.”
“Where are we going?” the captain asked.
Mustafa merely pointed at the fortress on the promontory as he listened to Ragnar’s next pronouncement, given as if Ragnar were one of Mohammed’s other sons.
“Sheikh Ragnar says you may take food from ship. When runs out, you must buy food. He is very generous.”
“Sheikh Ragnar says you tell everyone on ship they must cooperate. Do as they are told. If they do not, they will be instantly shot.”
“Sheikh Ragnar says surrender passports. To get off ship, everyone gives passport. If not, we shoot them.”
“Sheikh Ragnar says, tell everyone.”
Captain Penney reached for the ship’s loudspeaker microphone. He caught his wife’s eyes. She was staring at him. So was Marjorie.