Well, we gotta do something with them, Toad thought, but we’re so far behind the eight-ball it’s pathetic.
He said a common, crude word, and turned to the next message.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jake Grafton soon found himself awash in information from Sultan of the Seas. The pirates had Mike Rosen pounding out e-mails to his radio station, and the folks there immediately put them on the wire services as news. Grafton got it about the same time as the cable news shows, which was within minutes after Rosen clicked on the SEND icon.
Rosen could have put everything in one giant e-mail, but he didn’t bother. When he had filled up a page or so, he sent it and began another missive.
Mike was handicapped by the fact he was being held aboard ship and his shipmates were all ashore, except for a couple of guys in the engine room keeping the diesel running that turned the generator that provided a minimum power level to the ship—and to the e-com center and server. He was putting anything that Ragnar wanted the world to know in the e-mails, such as the amount of ransom it would take to buy the kidnapped passengers and crew out of hock, the names and nationalities of the people Ragnar held, how wonderfully they were being treated and vague threats of what might happen to them if the ransom demands weren’t met. The hostages were, Ragnar said through Mustafa, under Ragnar’s protection, secure from the terrorists and unwashed savage hordes that roamed the northern Somali coast. Without the benevolent protection of Sheikh Ragnar … well, the reader was left to consult his fevered imagination for the answer to that contingency.
Yet after he had typed the messages from Ragnar to the world, Rosen typed what he, Mike Rosen, wanted the world to know about the passengers and crew of Sultan of the Seas. The pirates didn’t care what he wrote. After all, they couldn’t read English. Rosen wondered if they could read any of the earth’s languages. The pirates merely talked back and forth between themselves and watched him type.
He e-mailed physical descriptions of Ragnar and Mustafa al-Said, described what he had been told by various witnesses about the events aboard ship, and editorialized shamelessly, which after all was his shtick at the radio station.
A half-dozen of these cyber essays landed on Jake Grafton’s desk at Langley all in a heap. It was late in the evening in Washington and the admiral was exhausted, but he had another sip of coffee and settled down to read them in the order in which they were sent.
Thirty minutes later, just as he finished that pile, his secretary brought him two more. Man, that Rosen could type!
He was just about finished when his desk phone buzzed and his secretary informed him he had a visitor, Sal Molina. A lawyer from Texas in his former life, Molina was the president’s right-hand man. Or executive assistant. Or chief hatchet man. No one knew Molina’s real title at the White House; perhaps he didn’t have one. Apparently he got paid regularly with taxpayer’s money, and he certainly had the Big Dog’s ear.
Molina looked right and left and parked his butt on the couch.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“For screwing Jurgen Schulz in front of an audience. If you’d told me ahead of time you were going to do it, I’d have paid money to film it. How did you know it was his staff that jerked Tarkington around?”
“I’m psychic.”
“I doubt that. I call it shit-house luck. What if it had been the president’s two favorite butt-boys who had their fingers in the pie?”
“You would have cut their fingers off.”
Molina chuckled. “So how in hell are you gonna get those Sultan people outta there?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
A young aide appeared in the doorway. She had a sheaf of file folders in her hand. “These are just the first ones, sir. They’ll have more later today, they said.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
Jake opened the folders and spread out the contents, which were satellite photos of Eyl, Somalia. They were taken on different days, at different times, at different angles, as the satellites, for there were more than one, swung over the area. The information their sensors obtained was radioed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which used computers to construct these images.
Jake sorted them by date and time as Molina watched.
“You couldn’t have obtained all of this since the president appointed you.”
“No. I ordered this stuff as soon as Tomazic and I got back from New York. Took a while, but the info is beginning to dribble out of the pipe.” Grafton got a magnifying glass from his desk and began scrutinizing selected photos.
“You didn’t know you were going to get this job.”
“Of course not. Still, Omar Ali had something interesting to say, so I thought I had better get started checking it out.”
“You mean about the Shabab murdering everyone?”
“Oh, no. The interesting thing was that he said he knew about the assault on the cruise ship weeks before we snatched him.”
Molina the lawyer was dismissive. “He may have been lying just to get some leverage with the prosecutors. Hell, he had three weeks to offer us something, and he didn’t.”
Jake put down the magnifying glass. “Either the pirates were out there on the ocean randomly cruising around trolling for prospects, or they planned this assault. At least six pirate skiffs—one report says eight—simultaneous assaults on two cruise ships, shooting when threatened … No, this was carefully planned.” He tapped his fingers on the photos. “Ragnar had plenty of time to prepare his defenses, make a plan with a high probability of success. Not just to capture a cruise ship full of people, but a plan to prevent their rescue unless someone paid his price.”
“So they planned it. So?”
“These people aren’t stupid, Sal. The plan to capture the cruise ship is worthless unless they can force someone to pay ransom. The pirates have to plan for the worst. What is the worst thing that could happen, from their point of view?”
Molina’s eyes narrowed. “A military attack to rescue the hostages.”
“Right. They knew that when they contemplated capturing a cruise ship. That was the problem that they had to address and solve.” Grafton stirred the photos around. “We’ll have these gone over by experts tomorrow. I’m just an amateur.”
“So…”
“Sal, you and I and the pirates know we can apply overwhelming military force. Anyone who refuses to surrender immediately will die. Their only defense is the threat to harm the hostages. How? Shoot a few as we come thundering in? Or murder them all if we pull one trigger?”
“So what’s your timetable?”
“We’ll have answers in few days, I hope. A week. Maybe a little longer. What we need is time.”
Molina frowned. “We’re going to have to say something to the press about the ransom demand. The news is all over every network on earth. Got any suggestions?”
“The usual,” Grafton said airily. “We’re consulting with the owners of the ship, the insurance company, the British government … Add anyone you like. And get those aides pounding the phones. Do consult. Make it look good.”
“The press will ask bluntly if we will pay if the Brits won’t.”
Grafton propped his feet on the lower drawer of his desk. “Don’t give me that shit, Sal. Your press guy can dance around a direct question like that for weeks. We’re negotiating. The president is pondering, consulting Congress and the UN, reading tea leaves … whatever. Just don’t commit us to anything until I give the word.”