When next I looked, the antelope had disappeared in the gloom that was obscuring the savanna. The last of the sunlight faded from the top of the storms … and their lightning hearts became brighter, flashing almost continuously. They were also, I realized, drifting our way. There wasn’t much wind, just a zephyr out of the southwest, but it was enough.
I walked down the hill in the darkness, refusing to use the flashlight and trying not to trip over a rock or pebble or incongruity.
I said a few words to the guys, who were playing cards, told them the storms were coming and to batten us down, then got a beer and went to my personal tent. I was the only guy who slept alone, but being the exalted, esteemed leader, I figured I deserved the privilege. I hung every piece of gear I had up off the dirt floor. Tied my boots together and put them on a hook where I could get to them easily. Checked that the M-16 was loaded and handy. When I heard the first faint rumble of thunder, I turned off the propane lamp and crawled under my sheet. Arranged my Kimber 1911 .45 under the pillow and settled down for a good rain.
I like rainy nights. We didn’t get a lot of them in Southern California where I grew up, so they were sort of a treat. A sloppy wet kiss from Mom Nature.
The wind blew hard at first, strong continuous blasts that stretched the tent fabric and made it flap furiously. Thunder crashed and rolled. After a few minutes of that, the first big drops splattered on the tent, then came in a torrent. I pulled my army blanket around me. Snug as a bug.
Went to sleep to the sound of the rain. Was sawing some zees when the buzzing of the satellite phone woke me. The thunder was gone and the rain was just a gentle pattering. I grabbed the flashlight. It was about 5:00 A.M. Water was running through the floor of the tent, even though I had personally ditched around it. Yep, I could hear the damn phone buzzing.
I got my boots down, put them on, stuffed my Kimber into my pocket and went out into the rain, which was down to just a drizzle, almost a mist. Slogged the forty feet through the mud to the com tent.
It was Grafton.
“Tommy, sorry to wake you, but there has been a change in plans.”
CHAPTER TEN
EYL, SOMALIA, NOVEMBER 12
It was a bad night in the fortress. The people imprisoned there were too keyed up to fall asleep easily, yet when they finally became tired enough they had to sleep on a stone floor with their own clothes as blankets and pillows. Due to the amount of garbage that had accumulated from past imprisonments of merchant mariners, the place was infested with rats and mice, which scurried about fearlessly in the dark hunting for food. People screamed, cursed and swatted at them, which merely sent the rodents to entertain a new audience. There were also snakes, hunting the mice, but they were shy and avoided people, if they could.
Already the toilet facilities reeked. There was no privacy, not with all these people trying to use just three holes in the floor. Many people found squatting difficult, especially on a wet, filthy, slick floor amid the miasma of human excrement.
Eight hundred fifty tired, dirty and emotionally exhausted people welcomed the dawn.
Captain Arch Penney, who had only managed two hours’ sleep and spent the rest of the night reliving the murders of his officers and men, went to see his chief steward, who soon had water boiling for tea. The chief had a small army of crewmen carrying water, cooking and trying to scrape up old garbage for removal.
Penney took a cup of tea back to his cubbyhole for his wife, who accepted it gratefully. Marjorie had joined them and was still asleep beside her.
“What’s going to happen to us, Archie?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t stay here very long. The older people are going to get sick. Soon we’ll have people in real medical distress.”
“All I can do is talk to the pirates. I think we are here because they have nowhere else to put us. Still, dead hostages won’t get them any money. I’ll see what I can do.”
In the early light he could see her smile, a wan, tired smile. She squeezed his arm and went back to her tea.
The ship’s doctor was a Nigerian in his early thirties, educated in London. He looked stressed to the max. “I brought the medical supplies I could carry with me, Captain. Left a lot aboard in the dispensary. I am afraid we are going to need everything and then some. I’d like to go back to the ship with some crewmen and bring everything.”
“I’ll talk to the pirates,” Arch Penney promised.
People buttonholed him right and left, some with complaints and some with suggestions. Everyone wanted bedding and blankets and more eating utensils.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the captain said.
But he knew he could do little. Only what the pirates permitted, and the hostages’ comfort was not their concern, he thought. The Somalis he saw through the cannon ports on guard duty outside the fortress were in foxholes watching the sky, waiting.
Waiting for an assault, he suspected.
He went to the entrance of the fortress, which had no door, and told the guards there he wanted to talk to Mustafa al-Said. “Mustafa al-Said,” he repeated, slowly and loudly. “Talk.”
They merely nodded and motioned him back inside.
Through a cannon port Arch glimpsed the sun rising on a shiny sea.
INDIAN OCEAN, NOVEMBER 12
Admiral Toad Tarkington read the messages over his morning coffee. Jake Grafton was in charge of the Sultan hostage “situation,” he read, and smiled grimly. Toad had been Jake’s aide, then executive assistant, for years. If the powers that be had put Grafton in charge, Toad suspected the pirates were in for a rough time.
One of the messages was a personal from Grafton asking him for his recommendations on several questions. Could the hostages be rescued? How would he do it? How would he transport them if the Sultan were inoperable? What resources did he have that he could use, and what did he need? The message also asked for all the reconnaissance Task Force 151 could muster. Grafton wanted to know what was happening in Eyl every hour of every day.
Toad called his staff together. They discussed the problem over breakfast in the flag wardroom.
“Why a rescue?” Flip Haducek wanted to know. “Are the ship owners going to pay the ransom, or not?”
“Two hundred million dollars?” Ops asked. “Are you nuts?”
“The pirates will take less. That’s just their opening position for negotiations. And that ship is worth more than that. Maybe twice that. The insurance company will fall all over themselves taking the cheapest option.”
“So what are the people worth?”
“In this day and age, not much. World is full of people.”
“We should offer the pirates ten bucks and their lives and see what they say.”
Tarkington cut off the chatter. “I don’t know what our government intends. I don’t know what the ship’s owners or insurance company want to do. I don’t know what other governments think or their intentions or willingness to cooperate. Let’s answer the questions we have been asked, and people paid more than we are can worry about all of that. Get your people together and start planning. In the meantime, shut down all unofficial Internet access from this task force. No satellite telephone calls. I want no leaks. None.”
“I think there is a journalist aboard, sir. From France. It’s a woman, I believe.”
“She is now incommunicado. Nothing goes out but official encrypted message traffic. Jump on this recon request ASAP.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Several hours later Toad took the time to read the routine messages, which had been sorted by date-time group and placed on a clipboard. It was then that he learned the Justice Department had decided to try the three Somalis the task force had pulled from the water. The admiral was told to put them on a carrier-on-board delivery plane when able and send them to the States, where they would be indicted and tried for piracy.