Quinn checked his watch, then said to Finnorn and the others, “You guys get that gun mounted on the bridge. Show starts in two hours and five minutes. While you are going that way, throw those corpses over the side.”
Rosen stopped forking food. “Corpses?”
“We had uninvited guests. They are on their way to Paradise. Or Hell. Allah will figure it out.”
As the light faded completely, I switched to night-vision goggles. I had everyone located, I hoped. There were the six pickups, all in the plaza, all illuminated by the evening fire. No women or children around, just men, and all armed. They were roasting something in the fire … If there was a pickup on the far side of the building, I couldn’t see it from my vantage point.
The generator was running again, powering lights in every room. I got glimpses of people in the penthouse, two visible on the second floor … a couple guys on the balcony with rifles, walking around looking things over.
I could see two machine guns mounted on the roof. They were the belt-fed 7.62 mm Russian models that were in all the pickups. These two must have been carried up from the weapons horde in the basement.
When the night was as dark as the inside of a black cat, I pointed out my route to E.D., who wasn’t talkative. “Don’t shoot unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you do shoot, don’t miss.”
He grunted.
My leg had stiffened up. Oh, man, that thing was sore.
I crawled forward.
Aboard Chosin Reservoir, Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington was watching the action unfold on computer screens. Real-time video and infrared presentations from three drones over Eyl played on monitors. SEALs were in the water and approaching the Eyl beaches. Marines were landing on the beaches above and below the town in armored personnel carriers. They had some light artillery and plenty of machine guns with them. Three Ospreys carrying SEALs were orbiting high over the Eyl airport. They would parachute into the airport and help Tommy Carmellini’s snatch team secure the place after the CIA operatives had taken out as many of the defenders as possible. Carmellini’s team would attack at the airport at the same time SEALs crawling onto the beach assaulted Ragnar’s old lair, the move that would open the ball. Thirty minutes prior to the assault, F/A-18s and F-35s would launch from the aircraft carrier seventy-five miles offshore; they would be overhead with plenty of ordnance, should it become necessary.
The whole plan was overkilclass="underline" the naval intelligence professionals thought the Shabab around Eyl had at the most 150 men, and probably less after last night’s battle. Tarkington was hitting the place with enough firepower to destroy a division. Simply, he could not be certain that Grafton and his Mossad colleagues had managed to disarm the detonators for the trench bomb. He needed to hit the Shabab with overwhelming force, take them down within seconds, and make any resistance impossible. Tarkington was trying to save lives—the hostages in the fort and the marines and SEALs.
He had had several satellite conversations during the day with his boss, the fleet commander, the Pentagon and the White House. All offered advice, no one issued orders. It was a military miracle, Toad thought. Yet there are two sides to the total responsibility coin: Screw this up and you alone take the fall.
“Swarm them,” he told Sal Molina at the White House this evening, “and we’ll have minimum casualties. Piddle around and it’s going to be a mess.”
“Why don’t you just blow up Ragnar’s building with missiles?” the president had asked. “Obliterate it.”
“That was the original plan, sir, but Admiral Grafton is being held hostage in there. So I’ve changed the plan.”
“I see,” the president said thoughtfully. What he meant was, his hands were clean. If Grafton or any of our guys get killed, I’ll give them a medal. Spend an hour in the East Room in front of cameras holding hands with the widows.
Politics. It was enough to gag a maggot.
Toad wasn’t betting everything on the initial assault. He had every destroyer in Task Force 151 in a trail formation, one behind the other, ready to steam just off the beach and shell any target. He had every marine in the MEU on alert to go ashore as fast as helicopters and Ospreys could get them there. He had airborne ordnance from the aircraft carrier USS United States that could be delivered in a continuous stream as fast as the carrier’s crew could work the flight deck and rearm the planes. Finally, all the destroyers and both cruisers had targets selected for their Harpoon missiles.
Tarkington had enough military power at his command to wipe this corner of Africa off the map. If anything happened to the hostages, he intended to use it. He had told all his superiors that, and none of them said no.
Yet, if anything happened to the hostages, he and Grafton had lost.
Tarkington didn’t intend to lose.
Just now he watched a small green spot moving on an infrared image captured by a drone over Eyl. There were plenty of other green spots, some of them moving, but the computer techs said this one was Tommy Carmellini crawling for Ragnar’s lair. Jake Grafton was in there.
Toad tried to see the telltale traces of SEALs crawling up onto the beach. Nothing. Since they were wearing wet suits, which were indeed wet, their forms should be colder than the sand still warm from the sun. As the water dried, the cold signature would disappear. As the heat of the men’s bodies slowly exceeded the temperature of the cooling sand, they would again become visible in infrared. But not yet.
Tarkington hoped the Shabab didn’t have night-vision or infrared technology. He and Grafton had made this plan assuming that they didn’t. Watching Carmellini creep along, Toad crossed his fingers.
“Thirty minutes, Admiral. Battlestar”—the United States—“is launching aircraft.”
“Thank you.” Toad arose from his chair and went to the head. There wouldn’t be time later.
Yousef el-Din had spent most of the afternoon and evening in conversation via shortwave with his colleagues in southern Somalia, who of course knew his plans quite well. They informed him about media coverage of the Sultan hostage incident, and the fact that the two hundred million in cash was on its way to the task force via air. That fact had been splashed across every newscast in the world.
Ragnar’s shortwave radio was in shambles, so the Shabab had transported theirs from West Eyl to the lair and lugged it to the penthouse, where the reception would be better due to the height, and the fact that, unlike East Eyl, the beach town didn’t sit in a river valley surrounded by rimrock hills.
When he wasn’t chattering to his colleagues, Yousef el-Din prayed on his regular schedule. He normally prayed five times a day, unless he was in combat.
Yousef was deeply devout. He knew that he and his men would need Allah’s help after they had the money and killed the hostages. Still, the Shabab’s friends all over the Muslim world would grow in prestige and power, and Allah be praised, the final battle between good and evil would be one giant step closer.
Yousef did not think he would survive the wrath of the allied task force. To go to Paradise as a martyr, with the blood of infidels on his hands, after having fought Allah’s war against the nonbelievers … well, it was heady stuff for Yousef el-Din. He could feel the Prophet’s spiritual presence, giving him strength for the days ahead.
When he finished praying, he thought again about the money. Two truckloads of currency. He would have his men hide it in the desert, at a place known to his Shabab colleagues in the south. If he didn’t live, they would find it and use it to fund jihad.
Allah akbar.