The Delta Solution Read online

  Wolde transmitted: 10 million safely delivered. No casualties. Coming home. Long live the Somali Marines!

  IN THE DARK OF THE INDIAN OCEAN NIGHT, the Mombassa vanished. She carried no running lights and roared away into the endless blackness during the small hours of Tuesday morning.

  The crew of the US guided missile destroyer Chafee watched her leave and immediately dispatched their helicopter bearing the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Revson, and four naval guards to the Mustang.

  By the time they landed on board the tanker, several of Captain Jack Pitman’s senior command team had made their way down from the bridge and released the Mustang’s crew from the recreation room. The visiting US Navy XO assumed a loose command and ordered an immediate roll call, during which it became apparent that two Panamanian orderlies and the ship’s engineering officer, Sam McLean, from Brockton, Massachusetts, were missing.

  No one had seen them since the pirates had boarded the tanker late on Sunday night. But three people remembered hearing two short bursts of gunfire just as the Somali assault team were climbing the rails. It seemed obvious that the missing men had been killed and thrown overboard.

  Lieutenant Commander Revson ordered everyone to take part in searching the ship, but he did not expect the three men to be found. He was right. There were no traces. The Panamanians and Sam McLean were gone, and First Officer Dominic Rayforth was tasked with informing the next of kin.

  Captain Jack Pitman warned that nothing be made public without first consulting the Pentagon, and XO Revson agreed. Indeed, he and the commander of Chafee were under strict orders to conduct a personnel news blackout until further notice. All of the oceangoing executives understood the strong opposition of the American security forces against revealing that another huge ransom had been paid out to the East African outlaws.

  And so, the lines of communication were opened very carefully, first to the office of the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mark Bradfield, and then to the office of General Lancaster. The first part of the message was simple: The Global Mustang had been freed to continue her journey to Japan.

  The second part was cringe-making: An enormous ransom had been paid to the Somali pirates. The third part was absolutely diabolical: $10 million had been paid to a group of gangsters who had murdered the ship’s chief engineering officer.

  There was no way the lid could be kept on that piece of information. Murder tends to be a public business. Nothing can prevent the news from leaking out, and if the authorities are hesitant and the truth comes from a grieving family member, the media is inclined to scream foul—implying a cover-up or a screw-up. Either way everyone looks bad—which is why it’s always better to move fast and release the truth immediately.

  The Global Mustang was freed in the middle of the western end of the Indian Ocean near 3:00 a.m. in the morning, 6:00 p.m. on the East Coast of the United States. The Department of Defense’s press office needed first to inform the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and then SPECWARCOM in Coronado. Two hours later, they issued a general release, angling the announcement to the role played by the US Navy and the close proximity of the destroyer USS Chafee and playing down the ransom payment, the amount of cash involved, and how the money had been delivered.

  The Pentagon’s public relations writers understood that the following morning’s newspapers would have a completely different tone. But they’d done their best to play it down and keep the incident low-key—only one American death, the ransom shared, and the sheer impossibility of negotiating in the face of four bombs, which would have blown the ship to high heaven.

  Nonetheless everyone was prepared for an uproar when the news finally hit the airwaves. And their preparation was well founded. The media went straight for the murder of the ship’s engineering officer. Never mind the gigantic sums of money and the ship’s vast and valuable cargo. It was the death of a Massachusetts-based US citizen that overshadowed all.

  The television news stations jumped on the murder story, sending reporters from their Boston offices to the leafy suburb of Brockton, Massachusetts, to 1472 Honeypot Drive, where a heartbroken Cassie McLean and her two young sons were under siege in their own home, stunned by the death of a beloved husband and father.

  By the time the 10:00 p.m. bulletins aired, the media had fastened on its themes for the night: (1) This was the second US ship to be hijacked for ransom in a very few weeks; and (2) It was the first time the Somali pirates had killed an unarmed merchant seaman. The death of Sam McLean was not comparable to that of Charlie Wyatt in the US aid ship Niagara Falls because that had occurred during a full-blown gunfight in which the American captain Fred Corcoran had indisputably opened fire first.

  The death of Sam McLean, however, had changed everything. The black Robin Hoods of the Indian Ocean were a lot blacker now, prepared to shoot down unarmed men in cold blood, their only motive being money. Ruthless, tribal, armed robbers killing Americans was not acceptable to the general public. Fanned by the media, the mood had become plain: The Somali killers had to be stopped. And what precisely were the government and the military planning to do about it?

  On that very first day there were newspaper editorials criticizing the US Navy. And they were mostly written by journalists who knew nothing of the procedures required to retake a captured ship that had been turned into an “armed enemy stronghold.”

  The DOD press office did its best to hit back. Admiral Hudson, a former carrier battle group commanding officer, was brought in to elaborate on the difficulties of retaking a captured vessel when the brigands were heavily armed and there were hostages and explosives in the hands of desperadoes who would stop at nothing.

  With great care Admiral Hudson pointed out the lethal nature of the propane gas cargo. He pointed out the necessity for an attack platform from which US Special Forces could work—a warship in close proximity, from which assault boats or helicopters can be launched. Guided missiles were of course out of the question because just one of them might have blown the Mustang to smithereens.

  “There’s only two ways to board and retake a captured ship,” insisted the admiral, “one, from the sea, and two, from the air. If the pirates are guarding the ship with even light machine guns, we could expect to lose perhaps half of our force just trying to climb aboard.

  “Bringing a helicopter to within thirty feet of the deck in order to get the guys in is fraught with peril in the face of sustained fire from a heavy Russian machine gun, which the pirates did have. And they always have rocket grenades, which are capable of knocking a helicopter straight out of the sky.”

  For excitement, none of this compared even remotely with: SENATORS TO QUESTION US NAVY BRASS ON ‘CRASS FAILURE TO ACT’ IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY. Never mind that the nearest US warship, the Chaffee, steaming at flank speed, was almost a day away from the datum when the initial assault on the Mustang had taken place.

  The one thing the Pentagon chiefs could not be seen to do was indulge in arguments with journalists. They had issued an answer for their conduct, and there was a ton of information, mostly involving the Delta Platoon, which would not be released under any circumstances.

  Even the press release had done considerable damage, alerting the entire East African coastline to the achievement of the Somali Marines. Every hostile pirate crew in the area now knew there was a fishing boat stacked to the gunwales with $100 bills, and even if they could not attack and grab it, they could sure as hell copy it and make their own assault on the next big tanker that came steaming through their turbulent waters.

  But when there’s been a murder, there needs to be an official announcement. The press release was unavoidable, but that did not stop Admiral Mark Bradfield and General Lancaster from being absolutely hopping mad about the way the military was being portrayed in the media.

  The issue was and always had been speed, the US Navy’s ability to steam out to the problem and tackle it with a level of ruthlessness that would make any pirate’s e
yes water.

  In Commander Bedford they had the right man for that. But even he could not easily solve the problem of the speed required to establish an attack platform hundreds of miles from anywhere and then crash into battle, guns blazing.

  There was nothing the navy could do to prevent commercial corporations from paying off the pirates in order to reclaim their property. But when the right time came, the Pentagon understood that it would need to hit as hard and fast as anything it had ever done.

  General Lancaster crashed his fist down on his enormous desk and snapped, “Mark, do you get the feeling everyone is against us? The public, the media, the pirates, the shipowners, insurers?”

  “Well, they are,” said the admiral. “All they want is peace and quiet. And their profits restored. They’re not emotionally geared up for a battle or for the bloodshed and death that goes with it.”

  “No,” added Zack Lancaster. “And they do not know or care that by paying off these bandits, it will just continue on and on until world trade in that area grinds to a standstill, and a lot of people end up getting killed.”

  “Not to mention that the media will want to close down the powerless US Navy.”

  “I wonder if poor Mack Bedford realizes the level of responsibility he has right now,” said General Lancaster. “Because right now he’s just about our last hope. We need a victory, and we need a big one. How soon does Delta Platoon leave for the Middle East?”

  COMMANDER BEDFORD’S pack-down was a major deployment of troops and supplies. The SEALs never travel light, and for this they travelled heavy. When any US Special Forces platoon moves its operational base to a foreign country, they take everything with them. When they leave, it’s as if they have left forever.

  Aside from each man’s gear, which includes clothes, uniforms, training gear, wetsuits, flippers, personal weapons, camouflage cream, battle harness, and sundry boots and jackets, the SEALs load every conceivable requirement on board the aircraft. They travel as if they were setting up camp in a desert, bereft of everything.

  Each man carried his own light machine gun and combat knife. But they loaded the heavy machine guns, boxes and boxes of ammunition, and separate boxes for the magazines that went with their 9-millimeter Sig Sauer automatic pistols. Of course there could be equipment for them at the other end of the journey, but they assumed nothing. Which meant they loaded two dozen grappling irons with long, knotted ropes in case they needed to scale the hull of a ship.

  That was only two fewer than second battalion rangers used to fight their way up to the heights of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day. But the SEALs, in common with Great Britain’s SAS, leave nothing to chance.

  There were boxes of welder’s gloves in case the whole platoon needed to fast-rope from a helo down to the deck of a captured ship. It was likely that any US Navy assault helo carrying SEALs into combat would be amply supplied with heavy ropes for the landing. But it was not certain. And that meant Delta Platoon took their own. Just in case.

  They loaded cases of hand grenades, RPGs, missiles that could be fired from handheld launchers. They also loaded long-range sniper rifles, binoculars, long-range night-glasses, boxes of GPS systems, compasses, charts, rulers, pens and pencils, callipers, and laptop computers.

  They took dynamite, det cord, detonators, four boxes of electrical wiring, batteries, and sundry electronics. Not to mention screwdrivers, pliers, tape, and fuses. They loaded tents, camouflaged sleeping bags, and about a half ton of medical supplies, especially Ibuprofen, bandages, morphine, and malaria and dysentery tablets. Wherever SEALs were deployed, they assumed it was a Third World tropical swamp, and they could not afford to get sick.

  The four SEAL medics, who were part of the assault team, also packed supplies for battlefield operations in case any of the guys got seriously hurt, and time was running out. These included canisters of oxygen and anesthetics, plus supplies for blood transfusions, the vials of blood corresponding to each man’s blood type.

  The US Navy, perhaps above all other fighting forces in the world, understands that if you send a man into the gravest possible danger, you owe him every chance of help that you can provide.

  It was 2030 hours in San Diego when the aircraft was finally loaded. The SEALs were driven back to Coronado for dinner. After that, they sat around and watched television, and, typical on the eve of a deployment, nerves were beginning to tighten.

  Even PO2 Barney Wilkes, the wisecracking Tar Heel from the salt marshes of North Carolina, was quiet. Chief Cody Sharp from North Dakota was subdued. He’d been officially appointed Commander Bedford’s personal bodyguard. But there was something unusual about this mission, whenever it started. Every one of these seasoned veterans of Baghdad and Afghanistan knew they would end up attacking a ship, which had been commandeered by heavily armed pirates.

  The chances of getting hit by gunfire during the mission were high in Cody’s opinion. All they could do was obey their combat rules, remember their training, and trust in the iron-clad reputation of their nearlegendary commanding officer.

  At three minutes after midnight, Commander Mackenzie Bedford himself walked into the SEAL team’s recreation room and said sharply, “Okay, guys. This is it. We’re going.”

  CAPTAIN HASSAN RAN the Mombassa hard through the night, heading due west, with eleven hundred fathoms below the keel. He kept two watchkeepers on duty at all times, and they used their Russian night-glasses to check the sweep of the radar. The Mombassa carried no running lights.

  News that a heavy ransom had been paid to free the Global Mustang had been transmitted worldwide. In the opinion of Ismael Wolde, there were probably a half dozen pirate ships out there searching for them, anxious to bully their way into a piece of the action.

  No one, of course, in his right mind would dream of taking on the Somali Marines, not if he had any idea how heavily armed and skilled the warriors were on board the Mombassa. And the twenty men who had a better idea than most were lying dead on the ocean floor, close to the blasted Somali Star.

  One of the night duty guards was Elmi Ahmed. He sat in the cockpit with Captain Hassan, his two loaded grenade launchers resting three feet from his right hand. If the boss called, “Action stations!” Elmi was approximately twelve seconds from depositing any intruder on the ocean floor. Unsurprisingly, he never missed with that launcher, which was, like all of their gear, state-of-the-art.

  By dawn, still running at flank speed, they were eighty miles from the last known position of the Global Mustang and her warship escort. The engines were humming sweetly, and Captain Hassan had posted ETA Haradheere at 6:00 p.m. the following day, which meant another thirty-six hours of hard running.

  They had plenty of fuel but were light on food. The roast goat had almost run out before they hit the Mustang, and they were down to a couple of large cans of ham and some moderately stale flatbread. They had plenty of fruit juice, but in the general panic to get clear of the tanker, no one had thought to raid the heavily stocked galley and storeroom.

  Fortunately the cans of ham were industrial size, and Omar Ali Farah, who would have been the cook had there been a stove, estimated there was sufficient meat for four sandwiches for each man on the return journey.

  Hungry pirates are inclined to sulk, something to do with risking your life and still feeling like a pauper despite 10 million bucks lying on the floor. Everyone was sitting around on deck midway through the burning hot afternoon wishing there was a spare ham sandwich and paying not the slightest attention to anything except their boredom.

  However they all snapped to it when the captain suddenly shouted: GIVE ME SOME POSIDENT—THAT SHIP OUT THERE ’BOUT SIX MILES OFF OUR STARBOARD BOW!

  Hands fumbled for the glasses and keen eyes focused on a sizeable fishing boat way out on the horizon—

  She’s a dragger . . .

  Twice the size of the Mombassa . . .

  Coming toward but she’s not as fast as we are . . .

  She might be—can’t tell if she’
s running hard or just cruising . . .

  Ismael Wolde spoke next. “Men,” he said, “with this cash cargo on board, we cannot take any chances. Can’t let that ship anywhere near us. She’s not official, is she? Coast guard or Indian Navy?”

  “No sign of that,” called Hassan. “She’s not even flying a flag and she’s dark green in color. If she was official she’d be grey with national markings all over the place.”

  “Well, whatever she is, she just changed course as if she wants to cross our bow. But she may not be fast enough. I’m not seeing an increase in her speed.” Abadula Sofian, a former Haradheere fisherman, loved the maritime aspect of his pirate job. And instantly he called again, “She’s raising some kind of a flag—can’t see what it is, but it’s white on black.”

  “Looks like she’s closing but not gaining,” said Hassan. “ELMI! Stand by. The rest of you go to ACTION STATIONS!”

  “You want me to sink her?” asked the missile director.

  “I do,” replied Captain Hassan.

  “So do I,” added Wolde. “And be darn quick about it.”

  “I can hit her twice at one hundred yards,” replied Elmi.

  “Don’t miss,” said Ismael. “Let’s slow down a bit to let her catch up.”

  “Don’t let her get one inch closer than that hundred yards,” yelled the captain. “Because she might have missiles as well. I don’t want to get sunk.”

  Elmi Ahmed carried his two launchers out from the cockpit and set up two of his four tripods on the starboard side. He screwed the launchers on and studied the range finders, focusing on the oncoming fishing boat, which was now two miles away off their starboard quarter and gaining.

  These were ultramodern launchers, complete with telescopic crosshairs. Elmi, who had fought for the Somali government in the backstreets of Mogadishu with primitive, twenty-five-year-old RPGs, would find it almost impossible to miss with them.