The Delta Solution Read online

  The contact being used by the CIA agents had, however, ascertained the name of the account from which the payment had come: Haradheere Ocean Enterprises, c/o East African National Bank, Eastleigh, Nairobi. Fat lot of good that did anyone, except the word Haradheere. Pirate Central, Somalia.

  Bart Merritt sent an e-mail to Bob Birmingham informing him that he was well on the way to locating the spy in Athena shipping who was tipping off the Somali Marines. He requested the name on the bank account in Westchester County that had accepted $20,000 in cash the previous day from a source in Nairobi, Kenya.

  It took ninety minutes. Birmingham never even acknowledged the e-mail. But an unsigned reply landed in Bart’s laptop: Mrs. Marlene Kilimo, PO Box 4833, Bronxville, New York.

  At precisely 6:30 p.m. that evening, Peter Kilimo was arrested at his home by two officers from the Bronxville Police Department. He was immediately charged with conspiracy, actively assisting known criminal gangs in acts of robbery on the high seas, and warned that he could be implicated in the murder of engineering officer Sam McLean of Brockton, Massachusetts, who had been shot dead on the US-owned LNG tanker Global Mustang.

  Wearing handcuffs, Peter Kilimo was led to a police cruiser, blue lights flashing, and driven to the local police precinct, where he was transferred to an unmarked car and driven on to Manhattan. His last stop was the FBI’s New York headquarters at the gigantic Federal Plaza Building, adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge.

  They entered by a side door and went immediately to the twenty-sixth floor, where two officers from the NYPD were waiting with three FBI special agents and two field officers from the CIA, including Bart Merritt.

  This was no ordinary arrest; the case of Peter Kilimo would have the most severe ramifications, not to mention overtones of counterterrorism and counterintelligence. One of the FBI men was a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The CIA was leading the investigation and had requested partnership with the FBI in the event that anyone was arrested for involvement with the Somali Marines.

  Peter Kilimo had never been this afraid in his entire life. His wife, Marlene, was left sobbing at the door as they marched her husband away. With considerable presence of mind, she had called Jerry Jackson at his home and tried to explain what had happened. She had no idea where Peter had been taken and left it to Jerry to trace him.

  This was a two-minute exercise since he had the cell phone number of Bart Merritt, who had conducted the original inquiries at the Athena offices. For the record, Jerry did not believe that Peter Kilimo could possibly have done anything wrong, and he told Bart that he would be sending the Athena corporate lawyer to FBI headquarters immediately.

  The lawyer, who lived on the Upper East Side, took a half hour to get there, and they held the questioning in abeyance until he arrived. But as soon as he had been briefed, they threw the book at Peter Kilimo, demanding answers, demanding confessions, and above all demanding to know the name of his contact in the pirates’ lair.

  For an amateur, Peter Kilimo found his nerve very quickly. He pointed out that he was a Somali by birth, like his father before him. And that although he had become a US citizen, he had close family ties to the old country. There were ancient real-estate deals that had been concluded and he was owed a share of the money. He had not informed the IRS of the transactions and for that he was sorry.

  But that did not make him an accessory to murder or a member of a notorious network of international pirates. And no, he was not a mole in the Athena offices supplying information to men who went out and held oceangoing ships for ransom.

  Bart Merritt did not believe him. He could not remove from his mind the new phone number for Livanos. Someone who knew it had passed it on to the pirates. And that someone was the same person who had blown the information about the tanker Queen Beatrix.

  Bart was certain that given time he could punch holes straight through Kilimo’s story. But right now it was two o’clock in the morning, and there was not much punching left for him to do. The FBI guys were, in any event, wary of the potential charges. Even if Kilimo was guilty as hell, what had he really done? He’d offered the precise whereabouts of a few, massive oceangoing ships to someone who apparently valued the information.

  Was this a criminal offense? Well, it might have been but the FBI team thought a good lawyer could blast the case apart. The position and direction of long-distance freighters and tankers on the world’s oceans was surely knowledge anyone could have. And whatever had happened most definitely took place in international waters.

  Everyone wanted to go home to bed. Bart Merritt was becoming the most unpopular man in the vast Manhattan building. Only he, brooding at the interrogation table, was looking to the future. He glared at Kilimo, wondering what the hell the Athena “mole” was planning next.

  Merritt had asked him a dozen times if he had offered any further information to the Somalis regarding the sailing of major freighters and tankers. But Kilimo had merely shaken his head and conferred with his lawyer, who insisted there was no evidence that his client had ever given anyone any information about anything, never mind pirates.

  In the lawyer’s opinion, it was nothing short of bullying to continue holding Mr. Kilimo. The questioning so far had not uncovered anything. The lawyer formally asked that Mr. Merritt desist.

  Bart was uncertain who was actually winning the contest but knew it was not him. With immense reluctance, he agreed that the questioning should be postponed for the night, and that the NYPD would proceed with further investigation the next day.

  Before he left, the CIA agent warned everyone: “These pirate operations are becoming extremely dangerous, and they are being masterminded by a very shrewd operator. The pirate leadership has access to information. And that information is coming from New York as well as Washington. I just hope the time does not come when we all look very stupid—when the next assault occurs and people get killed.

  “I recommend that we undertake a very careful investigation of the main ships sailing under the auspices of Athena Shipping. Because I think Mr. Kilimo may very well have supplied the data for yet another pirate attack. Time alone will show whether I am right or wrong.”

  The gathering broke up in an atmosphere of latent suspicion, unproven facts, and overwhelming speculation. Peter Kilimo was driven home in a police cruiser. But there was nothing definite against his name. Yet.

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, Mohammed Salat called in his senior marine commanders, Wolde, Ahmed, and Hassan. He outlined the new intelligence he had received and pulled up an ocean chart on his desktop computer, pointing to the layout of the Maldives and in particular the wide and turbulent waters of the One and a Half Degree Channel.

  Captain Hassan offered an explanation for the roughness of the waters—citing the flow of the Indian Ocean currents that surged across the central reaches but then swirled, collided, and split into riptides when the main flow of the water hit the long, uneven group of mid-ocean atolls.

  They were really just vast sandbank mountains rising from the ocean floor. “But it can be very rough in there,” he added. “Not ideal for boarding a ship moving at 12 knots.”

  Admiral Wolde was concentrating more on the size of the Ocean Princess, staring at the stern deck, which looked high and somewhat old-fashioned. There was, however, an obvious pair of private decks directly below, under cover, and Captain Hassan thought these might be exclusive to a couple of the very expensive royal suites.

  There was ample room to hurl the grappling hooks straight through the openings to these decks, and they were positioned quite low on the hull, certainly not as high as the rails on the Global Mustang.

  “We’d need to be very careful boarding,” said Wolde. “Probably timing the throw on the rising wave.”

  “That’s how the old gun-decks worked in the eighteenth century,” said Captain Hassan. “The British always fired their first salvo on the rising wave. And then another as it subsided.”

  “That must be our aim,”
said Wolde. “We hurl the grapplers at the top of the wave and then hang on to the lines. We’d need leather gloves for this, even though we can have the skiffs making zero relative speed against the hull.”

  “I’m seeing the pictures,” said Hassan, “and I think Ismael and his guys can board the ship. My biggest problem is the distance. It’s more than 1,200 miles from here to the Maldives. That’s way beyond any distance we’ve ever taken the Mombassa. It’s 450 miles further offshore than any previous pirate attack.

  “And we can’t run at top speed all the way. If we did we’d be there in a little over three days. But I wouldn’t want to push her that hard. We’d run at maybe 15 knots and that would take us over four days. Three days on station, and four back. It’s all too long, Mr. Salat. Much too long.”

  “Precisely what worries you the most?” asked Salat.

  “Four things. Food, water, fuel, and then the biggest worry: We’d be vulnerable for such a long time, running hard trying to get home, knowing that a US warship could catch us easily and sink us out of pure revenge. I just don’t think the Mombassa is man enough for the job.”

  “I agree,” said Wolde. “We could pull this off. But not in the Mombassa. I doubt we’d get home alive.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Salat, “are you saying we ought not to try this, or are you saying we need a different attack boat?”

  “Second option,” said Wolde. “Different attack boat.”

  “Gimme the stats,” said Salat.

  “She’ll want to be at least sixty-five feet long, 2,500 tons, twin-shafted, fast, maybe up to 35 knots max, running real easy at 25. Big gas tanks, range around 3,500 miles. Spare tanks.”

  “What kind of a boat—fishing vessel, motor yacht?

  “I’m not sure a fishing boat would be fast enough for a project like this,” said Captain Hassan. “I wanna say a motor yacht, something with a real good engine. But I don’t know where we’re going to get one.”

  “I’ll get one,” replied Salat.

  “From where? We have nothing like that,” said Hassan.

  “I’m going to charter one,” said Salat.

  “You’re gonna what?!”

  “Charter one,” repeated Salat. “Hire a big motor yacht for a month.”

  “What? To rob and then ransom a luxury US cruise ship?” Wolde was incredulous.

  “Sure.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Hassan.

  “I’ve got the money, and in my experience you can buy anything if you want it badly enough,” said Salat. “The Ocean Princess does not even leave Mombassa for another two days. And it doesn’t reach the channel for another twelve days after that. We need to be out there to meet her. That gives me at least a week to get us a good boat and bring it here.”

  “But where are we going to get it?” asked Wolde. “There’s not a boat like that in the entire country.”

  “I don’t know where I’ll get it—but I will get it,” said Salat. “You can count on that.”

  “If you get it, we’ll take the Ocean Princess,” said Wolde. “You can count on that.”

  COMMANDER BEDFORD made the Delta Platoon’s opening day in Djibouti a full study session—maps and charts, a familiarizing process for every one of the SEALs, and quality time taken to understand and digest exactly where they all were on the map and exactly where they were going.

  Each man was issued personal charts, hand-marked by the SPECWARCOM cartographers, drawing in the theater of operations, the big square in which the four patrolling US warships were already on standby. Rolling in from the southeast was the carrier Harry S. Truman. In addition to its normal complement of eighty fighter/bombers and Black Hawks, the flattop carried two extra helicopters, one of them a Sikorsky Sea Stallion, assault troop delivery.

  The next two days were spent once more practicing parachute operations. They were accomplished at the first phase of their arrival in the ops area, the ocean drop from high altitude, and then the pickup by navy crews.

  The second phase, which might require them to perform a HALO drop, the 26,000-foot free fall, and low opening for a ground landing was their least practiced area of expertise. And Commander Bedford was happy that there was ample opportunity in Djibouti to spend time honing this.

  They were all expert parachutists and they could land in the ocean in their sleep. But Mack and the service chiefs at the Pentagon wanted this Haradheere garrison taken out. And the Delta boss could see no alternative but to land by air along the beach from the garrison itself and attack from the ground with helicopter cover.

  That would mean a carrier coming inshore with a complement of Black Hawks. It would be a big, costly operation, but the top brass, Lancaster, Bradfield, and Andre, wanted it dealt with. And if that’s what it would take, so be it. That was all that mattered. Just get it done, he was told. And that’s exactly what he was doing.

  Mack Bedford was more than pleased with his team. Their marksmanship was impeccable; they were trained to the minute either for an ocean, ground, or air attack. Either way they were geared to take a moving or stationary target, no matter how big or well-armed their enemy was.

  For now all they could do was train on the Djibouti base, perfect their freefall parachuting, and retain their sensational fitness. Other than that, there was nothing more to do except wait for the pirates to strike again.

  TOM AND MIRANDA CARLOW boarded the Ocean Princess early in the evening and settled into their fabulous suite on the Promenade Deck. The ship was due to sail on the tide at 0100 the following morning, and that first evening Andy Carlow’s parents had been invited to dine with the captain, Hugh MacColl, a lifelong seaman from Cape Cod.

  After dinner, Miranda retired to bed but the admiral went out onto their small private deck and took with him a brandy and ginger ale, a sailor’s drink he had learned from the Royal Navy during an official visit to the Faslane submarine base in Scotland, soon after receiving his first command.

  He drank in the atmosphere of the jetties and soaked up the general buzz of a ship scheduled to leave. It wasn’t much different from the departure of a US warship—except a bit sloppier with ropes and lines all over the place. And there was a lot more yelling as various African shore-hands went missing or showed up late or in the wrong place.

  But the basic procedure was the same: lines cast off, signals from the foredeck and stern, the wash of the giant engines as she eased away from dry land. And finally the short blast on the ship’s horn as the Ocean Princess pulled out into the harbor and set a course southeast down the channel and out into the broad waters of the Indian Ocean.

  SITTING IN HIS REGULAR SPOT in the middle of the Old City of Sana, the capital of Yemen, was the secretive Middle Eastern arms dealer Najib Saleh. For the third time that day he was talking on the phone to Mohammed Salat and this time the news was agreeable to both of them.

  “She’s lying at anchor in the harbor on Socotra Island,” he said. “The owners are Saudis. They only use her a couple of times a year. I’m empowered to charter but I never have.”

  “What the hell’s she doing in Socotra?” asked Mohammed. “I thought that place was prehistoric.”

  “Twenty years ago you might have been right,” laughed Najib. “Not anymore.”

  The island to which the hefty Yemeni referred was about 80 miles long and located 240 miles off the Arabian Peninsula but only 160 miles off the Horn of Africa. It is probably the most remote, unspoiled place in all the world, the largest island in the ancient Land of Sheba.

  Socotra has a small native population and is a place of unspoiled natural beauty, unchanged since the Middle Ages. In recent years, however, the march of civilization has been encroaching. There are paved roads, one hotel, an airport, and a harbor located four miles from the main town of Hadibo.

  The president of Yemen has a beautiful residence there, as do two Saudi princes. The boat that Hajib was discussing was a powerful seventy-foot oceangoing motor yacht that belonged to one of the princes.
<
br />   “Is she fast enough?” asked Mohammed.

  “Hell, yes. She makes 35 knots if you ask her. Big range, too. She’ll go more than 3,000 miles and after that she has a 1,000-gallon spare tank.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Desert Shark. She’s painted white and sails under a Saudi flag. She’s just been fully serviced. The prince won’t be back for three months.”

  “How come he trusts you to guard his boat?”

  “I don’t guard it. I charter it if anyone is rich enough.”

  “You ever been to Socotra?”

  “Are you crazy?” laughed Najib. “I only leave the casbah to go to Russia and Riyadh. The prince and I do a lot of business.”

  “How long?”

  “A month.”

  “How much?”

  “Normally a boat like this would cost you $300,000—$10,000 a day in the Indian Ocean. She’ll carry fourteen people easily. I’ll let you have her for $200,000—cash, payable on delivery.”

  Salat had not the slightest doubt that the Saudi prince would not see a dollar of that money. And in his mind, there was only one question: “How do I get her?”

  “No problem, old friend,” replied Najib. “I’ll have her delivered to Haradheere. By sea, she can bring that merchandise you ordered.”

  “I need it now.”

  “She’ll leave tonight.”

  “Who pays the freight?”

  “I’ll cover the journey to Haradheere. You fly my guys back. Three of them.”

  “Done,” said Mohammed with a self-satisfied smile on his face.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE DESERT SHARK, CRUISING AT 30 KNOTS THROUGH CALM SEAS, took exactly one day to run down the six-hundred-mile coastline of Somalia and sound her horn off the village of Haradheere.