I needed to get out of here. I got up, put the binocs in my backpack and wandered along the wall, looking at the guards and brush and considering possibilities.
In midmorning two guards came for Jake. He hadn’t eaten, nor had he been given any water. He was hungry and thirsty, but tried to ignore it.
His captors put him in a pickup, and away they went driving fast toward the beach. Roared into the plaza and screeched to a stop in front of Ragnar’s lair. Grafton saw that the plaza had been cleaned up, somewhat. The remnants of two pickups were still there, but the less-damaged ones had been removed, no doubt to be mined for parts, and the bodies carried off.
A group of hard cases with AKs watched Grafton get out of the bed of the pickup, and watched his two escorts take him inside.
Although he didn’t know it, Yousef el-Din had had a group working for hours cleaning up most of the mess in the penthouse. They disposed of broken glass and rubble and trash by the simple expedient of tossing it off the balcony and out the windows on the south side of the building, none of which had any glass left.
Jake was prodded up the stairs, all of them, to the penthouse. The roof looked as if it would cave in if even a mild breeze arose, but most of the rubble was gone. The bodies of the Ragnars, father and sons, were somewhere below under all that debris.
Yousef was waiting in the penthouse, seated on a carpet with his legs folded, looking every inch like an Arab slave trader waiting to haggle. Standing beside him was Geoff Noon, High Noon himself, still wearing that filthy old white linen sport coat with a bottle of gin in the side pocket. The pocket on the other side was empty, so he looked unbalanced. He glanced at Grafton but showed no sign of recognition. Also standing there was a white man of medium height, trim, wearing slacks and a short-sleeve pullover shirt with a polo pony on the left breast. He was obviously the cleanest man in the room.
“I’m Mike Rosen,” he said to Grafton, extending a hand.
Grafton shook and pronounced his name.
“Yousef wants to talk about money,” Noon said.
“Okay.”
“When and how it will be delivered.”
“Tell him that two helicopters will arrive at noon tomorrow. Each will have money suspended on a pallet below it. The choppers will put the pallets in the plaza, then fly over to the fort and land on the roof.”
Noon chattered a while, then listened as Yousef talked; then they went back and forth. Grafton put his hands in his pockets and inspected the holes in the roof. Those Hellfires had done a job.
Finally Noon asked, “Why pallets under the helicopters?”
“Two hundred million dollars in currency weighs over two tons. That is a ton for each chopper. In this heat, that is a safe load.”
More jabber.
Grafton interrupted. “Of course, after the money is paid we will want to transport all the people in the fortress out of here. We will use helicopters, take about a dozen people at a time. It will obviously take the rest of the day to fly eight hundred and fifty folks out to the ship. As each helicopter is loaded and takes off, another one will land on the roof.”
Yousef listened impassively to this statement.
Grafton continued, “I suspect that Yousef and his followers will wish to take the money and leave immediately. If they try any treachery, we will of course kill every single one of them and take the money back or destroy it.”
Yousef’s face darkened as he listened to Noon, and he rose swiftly to his feet. He had a pistol in a holster on his belt, and his hand went to the butt.
“We are Muslims of the Shabab,” he said, according to Noon. “Not liars and thieves and blasphemers and sinners, like the pirates were. They are dead, gone. The Shabab will not be insulted.” The men standing around listening made appreciative noises upon hearing this. They were Allah’s chosen. “You will do as you have said. If you try to betray our agreement in any way, all the hostages will die. Every last one. They will be shot and bombed until every single one of them is but crushed bone and bloodstains on the stone.”
He pulled a radio control device from his pocket and tossed it on the carpet on which he had been sitting.
Jake Grafton didn’t seem impressed. “We’ll want the Sultan, too,” he said. “A team of sailors will arrive tomorrow by boat after the money is paid. They will go aboard, start the engines, raise the anchor and sail her away.”
Yousef wanted more money. Grafton stood his ground. He had made a deal with Ragnar. There was no more money.
“Two hundred million for the people, another hundred million for the ship,” Noon reported.
After thinking it over, taking his time, Grafton said, “We will sell him the ship for a hundred million. We will give him a hundred million for the people and he can keep the ship. Maybe start up a cruise ship line. Eyl to Rome, via Suez and Athens.”
It was an argument for show. Yousef played to his followers, with much back-and-forth with them that wasn’t translated.
After a while Yousef caved. “Two hundred million, and you can have the people and the ship.”
Grafton merely nodded. He looked a question at Noon. “You taking Rosen back to the ship?”
Noon nodded.
Grafton turned toward Rosen and said, “Put it on the Internet.” He turned on his headset, arranged it on his head and had a short conversation with Admiral Tarkington. Then he turned it off to save the battery.
Yousef issued orders, and Grafton’s escorts led him to the stairs and down. They ended up in a room on the third floor. Still some trash about. Grafton looked out the shattered window and the one that still had glass, then sat down. He paid no attention to the guards.
High Noon accompanied Mike Rosen back to the ship. They waded out from the beach and managed to heave themselves into the boat without tipping it over, and the boatman started the little one-cylinder engine. Away they putted.
When they were back aboard the Sultan of the Seas and climbing stairs to the e-com center, Rosen asked, “What happened to Ragnar?”
“He is no longer with us.”
“And the rest of the pirates?”
“The same, I am afraid. Yousef el-Din and his men did their level best to kill them all. Oh, no doubt a few of them are hiding in the brush, but only a few.”
“That e-mail I sent?”
“Oh, yes. It stimulated them vigorously.”
“And whose idea was it to send that?”
Noon grinned and didn’t answer.
When Rosen’s computer was online, over a hundred e-mails vomited forth.
“We will send the Shabab’s communiqué first,” Noon said, “then the substance of the conversation between Yousef el-Din and Mr. Grafton.” He extracted a grimy sheet of paper from a pocket. “Send them to your radio station. Your colleagues will, I assume, put them on the Net where the world can read them.”
He handed the paper to Rosen, who spread it out on the desk and read it carefully. It merely stated unequivocally that unless the two hundred million dollars was paid by noon tomorrow Eyl time, the Shabab would kill all the prisoners. A couple of sentences of boilerplate followed, exhorting the faithful to jihad.
“Apparently Allah’s soldiers have inherited the pirates’ business,” Rosen muttered.
“Their assets and their debts,” Noon said, uncorking his gin bottle. “Start typing.”
It was close to noon when I heard trucks coming up the hill toward the fort. A man would have had to be deaf not to hear them, since none of them had a working muffler. Sounded like a NASCAR race.