“We’ll improvise. Maybe go to Plan B. We’ll see.”
“Why don’t we just defend the fortress and hit the pirates and Shabab with air strikes from the carrier?”
Grafton shot me a sharp glance. “I considered that. I thought too many Somali civilians would probably get zapped, which would be politically incorrect. In this day and age you must win militarily and politically. I learned that in Vietnam 101.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Go up to the fortress and stay inside or on the roof until the fireworks start.”
I addressed Noon. “You got any pearls of wisdom or suggestions?” I figured an MI-6 agent who had spent the last ten years in this shithole might have more insight than Grafton or I did.
“The pirates and holy warriors have let you and Mr. Grafton walk around unmolested because they think you will make them rich. If disabused of that notion, they will kill you without a qualm. It will simply be business as usual with Ragnar. The Shabab fanatics will kill you for the fun of it.’’
I slapped the car door, and Noon drove off. Another little cloud of dust. I held my breath until it settled, then walked back up the hill.
I was worried. If I had known more about Grafton’s plan, I would have been petrified. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sheikh Ragnar found out about the Rosen e-mail less than three hours after Rosen hit the SEND icon on his computer. The pirates and the Shabab had shortwave radio setups: the Shabab used theirs to communicate with fellow Islamic terrorists, and the pirates monitored international merchant ship traffic and the activities of the international antipiracy naval task force in Pirate Alley and the Indian Ocean.
The pirates’ allies got on the radio first with the news, which was headline stuff in America, Europe and Asia. Ragnar, his sons and his most trusted captains, including Mustafa al-Said, conferred in the penthouse of his lair. Al-Said pointed out that Rosen was a captive aboard Sultan, incommunicado. “What could he know?” he asked rhetorically.
Ragnar instinctively knew that the truth of the e-mail was not the issue. The only question that mattered was how it would be received by the local Shabab leaders, whom he assumed already had it or would get it within minutes. Would Yousef el-Din discount the e-mail as a Western provocation initiated by the infidel Americans, or would he suspect the statements might accurately predict the reaction of the pirates to Shabab treachery?
Ragnar was acutely aware that el-Din, a homicidal paranoid sociopath, would shoot first and think later. He began issuing orders to call his men to arms.
As Ragnar suspected, el-Din and his lieutenants didn’t even consider the possibility that the e-mail was a fraud. They heard about it from al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, where the news of Rosen’s e-mail was on television and the Internet. The Shabab indeed intended to betray the pirates, take the ransom money and kill all the hostages, so if the pirates learned of their plans, of course they would react violently. The only question in el-Din’s mind was whether he could strike before the pirates were ready to defend themselves. The holy warriors awoke their troops, who grabbed weapons and ammo and ran to their armed pickup trucks.
“The Shabab is on the move in Eyl West,” the drone controller reported to the Flag Ops Center aboard Chosin Reservoir. Everyone on the net heard the report in their headsets.
“They’re excited in Eyl East,” the drone operator reported less than a minute later. “Manning pickups, warming them up, armed men running to get aboard.” I was wearing a headset and recognized Wilbur’s voice.
I was standing with Jake Grafton, High Noon and the two Mossad agents Grafton had brought with him, Zahra and Ben, just inside the entrance to the fortress. Two emergency lanterns provided a little light, though not much. The Israelis were eyeing an Arab in decent, though rumpled, clothes who had had the ill luck to walk up on the group of strangers. The expression on his face was wondrous to behold as the fact sank in these two might be Mossad agents, or at least Israelis. Or perhaps it was just his conscience. He walked quickly away back into the gloom of the interior. The Israelis glanced at one another. I heard one say, “Mohammed Atom.”
A pickup with a machine gun in the bed, a technical, came racing up the hill just as Wilbur announced on the net, “Lots of action in Eyl West. Armed men running everywhere.” As I watched, a man got out of the passenger side of the pickup and conferred with the guards, who sent runners to pass the word to all the men in foxholes around the fortress.
Then the guy got back into the pickup and it roared off down the hill, its unmuffled exhaust rattling through the building as it faded.
When it was gone, I turned around, but the two Mossad agents had disappeared. “Who is Mohammed Atom?” I asked Grafton.
“An agent for Iranian interests throughout the Arab world. I think the guys would like to have a chat with him.”
The television news teams were flaked out in a shack a hundred yards or so south of Ragnar’s building, a shack with an old shirt for a door, candles for lights and a privy out back. The owner, a woman, was all smiles when they arrived, directed there by High Noon, who apparently knew everyone in town.
Sophia Donatelli got the best bed in the house, an old mattress suspended on ropes through a wooden frame. She inspected it while the BBC reporter, Rab Bishop, and Ricardo from Fox chattered away on their satellite telephones to their producers in England and America. Donatelli had seen worse accommodations, when she was just getting started in the business, and had thought that bug-infested beds and dirt floors were well behind her. She decided to sleep with her clothes on, as did everyone else. The ringing of a satellite telephone brought them awake about 3:00 A.M., which meant it was midnight in London and 7:00 P.M. in New York. While Rab Bishop was listening to someone tell him of the Rosen e-mail, they heard truck engines start, men running and shouting, and saw pickup headlights spear the night.
Ricardo grabbed his satellite phone and was the first to charge out of the shack. The rest of the crews were right behind him. They paused in front of the shack to watch. The sound of a distant machine-gun burst was quite audible and made the men boarding the pickups pause to listen.
“Whatever is happening, we’ll have a devil of a time broadcasting it,” Rab Bishop remarked. “Still, I suppose we can try. Let’s get the generators going so we can datalink to the satellite.”
Ricardo ran toward Ragnar’s building. He was within feet of the door when he met a pirate coming out. The man had an AK at high port and was on a dead run. When he saw Ricardo with his satellite phone glued to his head, talking a blue streak, he halted.
He gestured once, back toward the south, and when Ricardo didn’t instantly obey, triggered a burst right by the reporter’s ear.
No fool, Ricardo turned and ran. Talking all the way, breathlessly. Literally a running commentary. His producer in the States put the conversation on the network. Within minutes, millions of people were listening to Ricardo’s voice. The audience grew exponentially. All over America, people stopped what they were doing to watch Fox and listen to Ricardo.
The SEALs came out of the ocean silently, almost invisibly. They were in black wet suits, had black balaclavas on their heads and wore night-vision goggles. They crawled up onto the beach and scanned the empty Eyl town square and Ragnar’s building with the night sights on their rifles.
Four pickups with machine guns surrounded Ragnar’s lair. Other pickups roared up the river road toward Eyl West. Sounds of gunfire and muzzle flashes came from that direction.