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“Valuable cargo?”

  “’Bout $100 million worth.”

  “Is that all? What was it?”

  “Aid. A USAID consignment. Food, medicine, shelters, and a few workers.”

  “Bound for? . . .”

  “Somalia.”

  “Jesus Christ! You mean they hijacked their own stuff?”

  “’Fraid it’s not like that in their country. Everybody’s fighting everybody else. The pirates are independent of their own government, independent of their own nation. They just act on their own. That goddamned Somalia’s completely lawless. Even when we get aid through to them, it just gets stolen by tribal warlords. Hardly anything gets through to where it’s supposed to go.”

  “Then what the hell are we doing sending it there?” snapped Admiral Carlow. “If they don’t steal it on land, they steal it on the high seas. That’s what you’re telling me.”

  Admiral Bradfield had rarely heard the SEAL C-in-C quite so irritated. “Steady, Andy,” he said. “I didn’t send it personally.”

  “No, I know. It just really pisses me off. Not that the government is out spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on hopeless causes. But that we’re not fucking ready. We’re totally unprepared for this kind of attack. A bunch of goddamned savages in a friggin’ canoe somehow seizes a huge modern American freighter while it’s making 15 knots through the water out in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Just as you say, Andy, we simply weren’t ready.”

  “And think how long it would take us to prepare a rescue operation. Just getting my SEALs in there, way offshore, attacking from the surface or from the air, without any specialist training. I mean right here we’re in the fucking Spanish Main, and the truth is we’re just not ready for sixteenth-century piracy.”

  “Look, on this occasion at least, it’s a great deal easier and cheaper for us to pay the ransom and get the ship and crew back . . .”

  “Don’t tell me the White House has agreed to negotiate with pirates?” Admiral Carlow interrupted, “That’s a real first.”

  “No, tell you the truth, we’ve had to be a bit light-footed,” said Mark Bradfield. “And we’re not planning to ask any of our commanders to risk the lives of their men. But how do you feel about sending in SEALs on operations like this?”

  “Badly. Because people would get killed trying to get aboard from the ocean, unless we came in behind heavy rocket attack, and that would almost certainly kill members of the ship’s crew and damage the ship itself.”

  “And that, Andy, puts us right back to square one. Except for that one time when your guys did get on board the captured ship, the Maersk Alabama , then shot the pirates to free up the captain in the lifeboat.”

  “I know, Mark. But that was a bit of a landmark. The guys we were after were not on the main ship. And the ship was unguarded. It was all a bit unusual. And everything was in our favor so long as my guys remembered how to shoot straight.”

  “Well, I called just to keep you in the loop. But we all have to think about this—because no one is more aware than I am that the payment of this ransom shows a serious weakness on our part. Tonight those oceangoing bandits understand that the US will pay up if our backs are to the wall. Yesterday they had no reason to believe that could ever happen . . .”

  “I know, Mark. But you gotta win the fight you’re in. Not the one next week.”

  “Guess so. Let’s both give it some thought. Bear in mind, we can’t send an armed warship to escort every US tanker or freighter in the Middle and Far East. It costs $60,000 a day to keep those suckers out there. But we have to come up with something.”

  AT 0500 THE GUIDED-MISSILE FRIGATE USS Ingraham cleared Diego Garcia about ten miles astern of the 9,000-ton guided-missile destroyer USS Roosevelt. An SH-60 Sikorsky Seahawk helicopter gunship was embarked on board each of them, armed heavily with machine guns and hellfire missiles. The two warships were ordered to make flank speed for 1,200 miles directly to the point on the ocean where the Niagara Falls now wallowed, helpless under the armed control of primitive foreign invaders. It would take them less than forty-eight hours.

  Five hours later, Britain’s High Commission in Nairobi informed Britain’s Washington Embassy the sum of $5 million in cash was awaiting collection by US personnel at the Barclays Bank offices on Moi Avenue.

  Thirty minutes later, a P-3C Orion Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare aircraft came hurtling down the Diego Garcia runway and rocketed up into the clear blue skies above the base, banked hard, and headed due west for the shores of East Africa. At the controls was Lt. Com. Aaron Marshall assisted by his engineer officer and navigator, Lt. Raymond K. Rossi.

  Behind them sat a special four-man navy guard, all qualified air crew, who would accompany them in two vehicles provided by the British High Commission for the round-trip from Wilson Airfield to the bank and back. The guards all carried M-4 light machine guns. Any one of them could fly the aircraft in an emergency.

  Lieutenant Commander Marshall swiftly took the big Orion to its 30,000-feet cruising altitude and set her speed for 400 knots per hour. Lieutenant Rossi sat next to him in the co-pilot’s chair. They would land in Nairobi at 1600 hours, and the two officers would be guests of the British High Commission overnight, with an ETD of 1800 hours the following evening.

  The guards would remain with the aircraft and supervise the refuelling. There was no way the US Navy was going to air-drop that cash onto the deck of Niagara Falls before the American warships were in place, port and starboard. They were scheduled to arrive shortly before 2100.

  General Lancaster and Admiral Bradfield caucused at 0600 as planned on the navy department’s fourth floor. Lieutenant Commander Souchak, who had assumed a loose command, had been there all night, twice speaking to Captain Corcoran, both times conscious that Wolde was very happy to cooperate.

  Thanks to the swift intervention of Sir Archie Compton, the finance was all in place. There was a report from DG that the Orion was scheduled to land in Nairobi in two hours, and the two warships had been steaming west for several hours.

  The press release had been prepared and would be automatically e-mailed to Reuters from the Pentagon on behalf of the Seafarers Union, signed by the union boss himself. All future media inquiries were to be directed to the Seafarers’ HQ out in Camp Springs. General Lancaster had a suspicion this would lead to pure chaos on an unprepared union switchboard.

  But neither of the military chiefs cared about that. Chaos was good in situations like this when a smoke screen, not clarity, was the objective, and Mark Bradfield observed, “Well, they’re making a very easy quartermillion for this. Might as well make ’em earn it.”

  Almost 7,000 miles away, the Niagara Falls was beginning to roll on the rising swell of the Indian Ocean. Without her forward propulsion, this was an unusual, exaggerated motion, and several of the crew were feeling decidedly ill. However the engines were still running and the generators were active as she pitched and yawed in the outer limits of the Somali current.

  On the bridge, Captain Corcoran and Rick Barnwell were prisoners, but they were allowed freedom to walk around and keep an eye on the big machinery. They were guarded by Admiral Wolde and Omar Ali Farah, who sat on the floor with the heavy machine gun. Elmi Ahmed had the rest of the crew pinned down on the lower deck, while he sat at the top of the companionway.

  The hours passed very slowly because there was nothing to do except wait for the US airdrop. Wolde spoke frequently to Captain Hassan who still had the Mombassa a mile astern. And he once called Mohammed Salat to inform him that terms had been agreed and that an American trade union was paying for the release of the men.

  “How much?” asked Salat.

  “Five million US dollars,” replied Wolde.

  “Excellent,” said Salat. “The stock should increase significantly as soon as I post the news. Did your operation go smoothly?”

  “No, sir. The captain opened fire and Bouh Adan was killed. We also lost Gacal Gueleh during the b
oarding. Two crew members came at us with baseball bats. I had to shoot one of them.”

  “Sounds very bad,” said Salat. “I won’t mention it until you return because we must always protect our businesslike reputation. All of our dealings must be strictly commercial. High finance. Not street fights on the ocean.”

  “Yes, sir, I very much agree,” said Wolde. “But I wish you’d tell that to the Americans.”

  Back in Washington, managing the news totally preoccupied the principal players in this oceanic crisis. The press release went out on time, 0900, and like so many military press releases quite correctly sought to conceal the facts from the shark-cruising journalists.

  The release was of course drafted for minimal drama. And for a half hour in this early part of the media’s working day, no one was especially excited. First of all, the story was happening thousands and thousands of miles away. There were no pictures and zero possibility of getting any. It seemed unlikely there had been death or even the threat of death. Also the Pentagon plainly knew nothing and cared less.

  The only person to whom the journalists could speak in the whole of North America was a guy who worked for a trade union, which was about as sexy as a pound of turnips.

  It was not until the major shift change in the late afternoon that someone at Fox News tuned in to the possibility of real drama on the high seas. He was a senior editor, chief copy-taster, night news editor, a former foreign correspondent for Fox in Afghanistan, with a hair-trigger instinct for any kind of a break and a vivid imagination.

  Ian Brodie was one of Rupert Murdoch’s blue-eyed men, a fellow Aussie. In addition to being as sharp as anyone alive on a news story, Brodie was a gifted writer, capable of stepping beyond the bounds of a regular news report and delivering supple prose in the form of a colorful but understanding essay, always drawing on his depth of firsthand knowledge.

  He’d seen the station’s earlier bromide attempt to present the story. And while he was uncertain they weren’t right in their judgment, something told him they were “all over the bloody place on this one.”

  Brodie reported for duty early, pulled up the original press release, and nearly hit the ceiling. Every journalistic instinct he had told him this was major. He stood up and yelled, “What’s going on with this hijack in the Indian Ocean? A group of armed Somali pirates somehow boarded and captured an 18,000-ton freighter flying the flag of the United States of America.

  “The Pentagon is lying through their teeth; that’s bloody obvious. What’s this ‘received no report of casualties’? Jesus, can’t anyone sense they just don’t want to tell us? Otherwise they would have written, THERE WERE NO FUCKING CASUALTIES! RIGHT?”

  The Fox newsroom went silent. Ian Brodie was not only a revered television reporter and editor, he was a close friend of Murdoch’s. People said their families had been friends for generations back in Melbourne.

  And now he was in full cry. “Picture the scene,” he snapped. “These comedians from Somalia, always armed to the teeth, somehow creep up on the freighter. They get alongside and the grappling irons flash through the night air over the rails. The crew hears the clang, but the pirates are up and over, swinging against the hull, the sea rising below them.

  “There’s a fight, someone gets shot, the crew surrenders. Right here we’re dealing with terrified men, ruthless cutthroats from a lawless land, men who will kill without mercy. And the US Navy, furious, humiliated, sends for one of the most powerful warships in the world. I betcha she’s steaming in there right now, guns blazing.

  “Is there anyone is this room who does not think that is the biggest story of this week? Because if there is, he better get out of here right now and change jobs. Meanwhile, for Christ’s sake get moving. Because if there’s anyone in the other channels with a lick of sense, we’re gonna get the shit knocked out of us on the evening news. Let’s really start to move it.”

  Thus Fox jumped into the lead, bombarding the Navy Press Office in the Pentagon and meeting a wall of silence that inflamed their curiosity: But you must be able to confirm the pirates took the ship by force . . . Were shots fired? You say no casualties, how do you know? Where’s the warship? What’s the name of the captain? Where’s he from? Has his family been informed he’s a prisoner of brutal killers?

  The questions rained in. And the press officers kept saying they had no information. They had no contact. And they could not reveal where they had acquired their minimal information.

  But it did no good. When Fox News came out with their early evening bulletin, they ran a headline on the screen which read:

  GUN BATTLE AT SEA

  US FREIGHTER SURRENDERS

  TO ARMED PIRATE GANG

  It was, in every word, precisely what General Zack Lancaster did not want to hear. Because it announced what no one would dare admit—the United States was bargaining with terrorists.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE RAIN THAT HAD BEEN THREATENING FOR TWO DAYS FINALLY swept in from the southwest, straight off the Pacific Ocean, and it lashed the long beach at Coronado. The wind rose and fell, and the squalls stung the faces of the BUDs class laboring along the tidal mark where the thumping breakers end their everlasting journey.

  There were 162 men assigned, all of them wearing their canvas shorts, socks, and boots, the smart ones seeking out that narrow strip where the sand has hardened from an outgoing tide and is no longer being washed by the foamy water.

  Running this beach is an art form. Too high up, the loose sand impedes every stride, doubling a man’s energy output. Too near the water, boots hit unstable, shifting sand, and a man ends up splashing instead of running, a half ton of wet sand stuck to each boot.

  Every morning is bad for a BUDs class. This one was awful. The rain was belting down, the wind was warm but strong, every few minutes rising to a peak that turned raindrops into shards of glass. But there was no complaining, no audible sounds of men having second thoughts about this test of physical stamina.

  The run was four miles: two out, two back to the starting point. This was the first week, and the objective was eight-minute miles. There was, as ever, a pack of maybe a dozen good runners out in front, with a pack of perhaps forty right behind them, struggling, breathless, trying to come to terms with the insane level of fitness required of them.

  Alongside the class bounded their proctor, a SEAL commander of massive presence, and he was running the third mile as if he’d just started, springing along the beach some ten yards wide of the second pack, watching for the guys who betrayed the critical signs, the ones that signalled they were not putting out. Not giving it everything.

  Instructor Mack needed to sort these characters out real fast because they were wasting his precious time, and worse, they were getting in the way of the true iron man who wanted to become a United States Navy SEAL so badly nothing else on this earth mattered.

  Mack ran the tough, deep, sandy course with an easy stride. He’d attained wild-animal strength and fitness on this very stretch when he was only twenty-three, and he’d never lost it. Of all the striving men on the beach, only he understood what was required—total mental dominance and lung-busting effort. Sets a man so far apart he might be accepted one day into the most elite fighting force in the world.

  Above the rain squalls, his words rang out as he pounded the sand: COME ON, YOU GUYS . . . LET ME SEE SOMETHING . . . I WANT YOU TO DIG . . . DIG DEEPER THAN YOU EVER DID BEFORE . . . FIND SOME MORE FOR ME . . . NOW RUN! RUN! RUN! YOU THERE, FRETHEIM! YOU WANT TO STAY IN THIS CLASS? YOU BETTER START PUTTING OUT . . . NOW HIT IT! LET’S GO! GO! GO!

  They were into the last mile and the going seemed to grow tougher as the rain soaked the sand and made it cling even more. Mack Bedford kept shouting, sometimes encouraging, sometimes berating. Six guys had already quit and could be seen walking away over the dunes toward the veranda, where they would place their helmets in that poignant lonely line before ringing the brass bell that hung from a beam, departing Coronado.

 
The rest floundered on, soaked through, most of them likely to fail the target time of thirty-two minutes for the four miles. Some would make it because of a God-given talent to run; others would make it because they would rather die than fail. And some, who had no real talent for hard distance running, would get there on sheer willpower, overcoming the pain, refusing to give in, no matter what.

  These were guys Mack Bedford needed to locate. These were the United States Navy SEAL commanders of the future. They were men like him, men whose physical and mental boundaries reached so far away they were over the goddamned horizon. You don’t need to be an Olympic runner to become a SEAL, but you need to believe you could be if the chips were down.

  More importantly, every BUDs student needs to care profoundly about attaining objectives. Because if it’s not a matter of life and death in each man’s own mind, he may as well get himself a one-way ticket out of this terrible place.

  Mack Bedford always ran the last three-quarters of a mile out in front of the pack so he would be waiting as the class battered its way up the home stretch. For these last three minutes, he always switched on his digital radio and ran to a track of “Night Train.” Because he liked the beat, the hard, fast drumming that caused his boots to hit the sand faster and faster, carrying him clear of the pack. The way he liked it.

  No matter how young his class, no matter how inexperienced and essentially unfit they were, Mack Bedford needed to be better, faster, stronger, the iron man of the training camp. It was not even difficult. But he still needed to prove it. Every day.

  Mack ran on, hard, all the way to the line, opening up a fifty-yard gap between himself and his leading BUDs class group. At the end, he stared back down the beach and touched a button to switch off the music. The radio came on automatically.

  News bulletin: An 18,000-ton US freighter has been boarded and captured by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean after a ferocious gunfight on board the vessel. The battle took place hundreds of miles off the coast of East Africa. The United States Navy is believed to be deep into negotiations with the pirates. It is the first time the Pentagon has ever bargained with terrorists, which suggests a very serious situation.