Operation Sea Ghost

3

THE TRIP TOOK two hours, a lot of it over choppy water.

Emma was only aware of sounds. The speedboat’s engine, her captors laughing, waves thumping against the bow. Loudest of all was her stylist wailing. At first, the woman tried to hold on to her so tight, her fingernails dug into Emma’s flesh. Finally Emma just pushed her away.

Once they’d reached their destination, the pirates drove the speedboat right up onto a beach. Still blindfolded, Emma was pulled out kicking and screaming, dragged across the hard sand and thrown in the back of a loud, rattling truck that squealed away in a cloud of exhaust. And suddenly she was alone. Her stylist was no longer with her.

The truck rumbled along for about fifteen minutes. Emma heard waves crashing along the way. She was on a coastal road somewhere; she prayed it wasn’t Somalia, the most horrible place in Africa. Just the thought of that made her sick to her stomach.

Eventually the truck stopped and she was hauled out and tied to either a pole or a tree, it was hard to tell. There was a lot of noise around her now: people cursing, fighting, weapons being fired; voices yammering in some strange language, spoken a mile a minute.

Someone eventually tore off her blindfold; her eyes adjusted to the bare light. She was in a clearing surrounded by dense jungle. A campfire was burning at its center. About a dozen wooden shacks were nearby. Three smaller shacks were standing a couple hundred feet away.

There were about thirty pirates in the camp. All were heavily armed and, oddly, many were wearing her sunglasses, even though it was night. This infuriated her. She screamed at them to take them off, but the pirates ignored her. They were so arrogant and dirty; she vowed never to wear any of the sunglasses again.

The pirates had picked the perfect place to hide—even she could see this. The thick forest concealed the camp from the ground, from the sea nearby and almost entirely from the air. She could just barely make out the stars above the overhanging jungle canopy. Their shimmering reminded her of her jewelry box back on the yacht.

The pirates began to build the campfire into a bonfire, adding wood and trash to make the flames go higher. A white female suddenly appeared among them. She was dressed in threadbare coveralls with a kerchief drawn around her nose and mouth, and a fisherman’s hat pulled over her forehead. Only her eyes were visible.

The pirates were ordering her about, making her carry firewood, and kicking her when she did not move fast enough. She was obviously another captive.

When she came close, gathering more wood for the fire, Emma whispered to her: “Do you know who I am?”

The woman barely acknowledged her. “I do,” was her muffled reply. She had a slight British accent. “Everyone does, I suppose.”

“Then don’t worry,” Emma told her. “When people find out I’m missing, they’ll come to rescue me. And they’ll rescue you, too.”

But the woman hissed back to her: “No one comes here to rescue anyone. You better learn that right away. You leave here only when someone pays your way out. I’ve been here two years and I’m still waiting. Others haven’t been so lucky. Some were shot just for taking up too much space.”

But Emma began arguing with her. “These filthy monkeys must know who I am,” she insisted. “They must realize I’m more valuable to them alive than dead.”

“Oh, they know all about you,” the woman replied, pretending to fuss with some scraps of wood. “Too much in fact. They knew you were in the area because you made such a big deal about it. So, they were just waiting to snatch you. You mean millions to them.”

“Well, you see then,” Emma boasted. “If they’re not going to kill me, I have no reason to be afraid, right?”

The woman just shook her head and moved on.

* * *

THE PIRATES SMOKED cigarettes, chewed qat and passed around Emma’s sunglasses. They drank alcohol from old oil cans, and the more they drank, the more boisterous they became. After a while, several began fighting, cutting each other with knives. Others were so drunk they were barely able to walk.

Emma cursed at them the whole time. She demanded to be untied. She demanded water. She demanded they stop wearing her sunglasses. She called them criminals, gangstas—and worse. But the pirates continued to ignore her, preferring instead to watch their bonfire grow. Some even stuffed pieces of cloth in their ears, just so they wouldn’t have to listen to her.

After an hour, another truck arrived. A tall black man in jungle camos climbed out. The other pirates flocked to him, calling him “Captain.”

This man had a copy of People magazine and showed it around to the delight of the other pirates. Emma caught a glimpse of it: July 7, 2011. Her face was on the cover.

The captain walked over to her. He smelled awful and she told him so. He had a digital camera and began to take her picture. She tried to look away, tried to hide her face, but the man grabbed her hair and made her pose. When she spat in his face, he raised his hand to strike her, but stopped.

“You can’t hurt me!” she screamed at him. “I’m worth too much!”

The man wiped the saliva from his face and glared at her, but then he turned and went back to the bonfire. Emma mocked him as he retreated. Even in this precarious situation, she felt in control, invulnerable and above it all.

Then the woman in the kerchief passed by her again, carrying more wood for the fire.

“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” she whispered to Emma. “If you just shut your mouth, they might get so drunk, they’ll forget about you for a while.”

Emma laughed. “I’m not making it that easy for them. Why should I? They’re animals. And like I said, they won’t dare kill me. So I have nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, but you do,” the woman warned her. “And instead of insulting them, you should be praying very hard. Because what they’re planning for you will be worse than dying.”

Emma laughed at her. “Nothing is worse than dying,” she said.

Clearly Emma wasn’t catching on, so the woman pointed to a pair of pirates sitting close to the raging fire. They were holding a steel rod over the flames. It was nearly white hot.

“They are going to use that on you,” the woman told her starkly. “To brand you—understand? Mark you up like a blooming pig or a cow. That makes you their property. And after that happens, they’ll rape you. Sodomize you. All of them, and more than once. And God be with you, because while you might survive, you will never be the same.…”

But Emma simply refused to believe the woman. She challenged her: “How do you know all this? Maybe you’re just crazy.”

“‘How do I know?’” the woman spit back at her. “Let me show you…”

The woman pulled down her kerchief to reveal horrific burn marks all over her face. Strange symbols and inverted numbers were permanently branded into her cheeks and forehead. Then she lifted her shirt to expose her chest, which was covered with horrendous cuts and bruises; on her stomach was what looked like a crude cesarean-section scar.

Then the woman said to Emma: “I know all this because at one time, I was just like you.”

Then the woman ambled away.

* * *

FOR THE NEXT ten minutes, Emma fought very hard to keep her composure.

But the woman’s words would not stop echoing in her ears and the sight of those scars was burned into her retinas. Emma’s face was beautiful, and that beauty was her life. Even if she did get out of this somehow, what good would it be, if she were made ugly? If she was scarred? She began to panic. She began fighting against the ropes. Her spirit was abandoning her; her aura was draining away. Fear was taking over.

The gang’s leader walked over to her again; this time his eyes were red and glassy. He motioned to the pirates closest to the fire. They retrieved the hot branding iron and brought it to him. All the pirates gathered around Emma now. Some were drunkenly poking her breasts with the tips of their assault rifles.

She screamed; she tried to kick them. But the pirates just laughed at her.

“Rich American bitch,” the captain sneered in thick English. “Think you own everything? Think you own the world?”

He raised the branding iron to her face. The heat was so intense, it melted away her mascara.

“We are going to give you something now,” he told her, his breath putrid. “Something to make sure you remember us forever.”

Emma fought and screamed and kicked, but it was all to the pirates’ amusement. And after a short while, she could scream no longer, fight no longer. She could do nothing more but shut her eyes tight and wait for the pain …

But the pain never came.

Just as the hot iron was about to sear her cheek, a mighty explosion rocked the compound from one end to the other. Emma opened her eyes to see the gang leader and the half dozen pirates closest to him had been vaporized, leaving only a bloody pink mist behind. Many more pirates lay broken and bleeding on the ground around her. Emma couldn’t believe it. More than a dozen bad guys had just been killed, yet she was untouched. Just like in her movies.

An instant later, one of the wooden shacks blew up, filling the camp with smoke and flames. This explosion was so violent, it knocked the remaining pirates to the ground. Then another shack blew up. Then another, and another.

Emma’s vision became partially obscured by the dust and smoke, but she could see some pirates getting to their feet and stumbling about. Others ran in panic. One man was covered in blood from his head to his feet. Another was on fire and disappeared screaming into the woods.

Yet some of the pirates had survived the mysterious blasts unscathed. They were shoving aside their horribly wounded comrades and scrambling toward the trucks, determined to flee the camp. But three of them began staggering toward Emma. And this time they weren’t carrying branding irons, but long, razor-sharp knives.

In the middle of all this came an amazing sight: A helicopter appeared out of the darkness, flying below the jungle canopy. Its guns were firing. It was shooting missiles—these were causing the explosions. Streams of phosphorous bullets were flying in every direction, hitting pirates all around Emma, but leaving her untouched.

This helicopter disappeared and another larger one came into view overhead. Armed men were hanging out of its doorways, firing weapons at the pirates below.

This copter, with its engines screaming, slammed down for a sudden, violent landing. The armed men jumped out and began firing on the pirates at close range. These men were wearing huge battle helmets equipped with weird goggles and heavy blue battle suits. They looked like aliens from a bad sci-fi movie.

Some of the pirates tried to surrender, but the attackers weren’t taking prisoners. Other pirates tried to fight back, but to no avail. They were firing directly at the attackers, but their bullets seemed to be bouncing off them. The attackers were staggered by the gunfire, but it was not slowing them down. They moved through the camp like automatons, mowing down the pirates one by one.

Another explosion went off; a missile had hit the camp’s ammunition shack, causing the most powerful blast of all. More streams of gunfire went by Emma; they looked like fireworks all going off at once. With each fusillade, though, the bullets seemed to get closer to her.

And then, the three pirates she’d spotted before emerged from the smoke and confusion. Wild eyed and screaming, each one was bleeding horribly from various parts of his body. But they still had their knives with them and they were still coming toward her.

These men didn’t care about ransoms anymore. They were going to kill her, Emma could see it in their eyes. They were even pushing and shoving each other for the opportunity to stab her first.

But just as the first pirate raised his knife to slit her throat … he suddenly stopped, looked directly into her eyes, then fell away, a bullet hole in his skull.

The instant this happened, a soldier literally fell out of the sky and landed right in front of her. He put himself between Emma and the two remaining pirates and shot them both dead, just like that.

Then he cut her ropes, causing her to fall into his arms.

She looked up at him and said: “Who the hell are you?”

The man took off his battle helmet to reveal a handsome face marred only by a patch over his left eye.

He said, “Snake Nolan. At your service…”

Emma looked him up and down, especially studying his bright blue combat suit.

Then she said, “Well, ‘Snake’ … that’s a very ugly uniform.…”

* * *

TEAM WHISKEY HAD little time to prepare for the rescue mission.

They’d just returned to their headquarters at the Port of Aden after an extended gig in the Caribbean when they got the news: Somali pirates had snatched the American actress Emma Simms from her mega-yacht and would undoubtedly be holding her for a huge ransom.

Horn of Africa politics being what they were, no armed force, military or private, had ever attacked the Somali pirates in their homeland. But this was different. These particular pirates were believed part of the Shaka Clan, and the Shakas had well-known links to al Qaeda in Africa. In fact there was a good chance the Shakas had done the kidnapping on the terrorists’ orders.

Having snatched the big time movie star, the gang was sitting atop a two-fold bonanza: They might get tens of millions of dollars in ransom money and generate an avalanche of publicity for the jihadist cause. But for that very reason—that such an incident would generate so much attention worldwide, meaning so many fingers could soon be in the pie—the situation might become drawn out forever, during which time anything could happen.

So, before the political or diplomatic wheels could even start turning, a consortium of movie studios had come up with a ten-million-dollar reward, payable to anyone who retrieved Simms unharmed.

Whiskey took the job.

* * *

THEIR OFFICIAL NAME was Ocean Security Services, Inc. They’d been in the business of fighting pirates for less than a year. Their core group was made up of Delta Force veterans—call sign Task Force Whiskey—who’d fought together throughout the 1990s and right up to the invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11. In fact, Whiskey had been pursuing Osama bin Laden himself, had him in their gun sights at Tora Bora when they were inexplicably ordered by the top dogs at the Defense Department to back off. Whiskey refused. It was a brave but tragic decision, because in addition to getting two of them seriously wounded, disobeying those direct orders got them bounced from the military, and their CO, Snake Nolan, jailed for several years and banned from ever stepping foot inside the U.S. again.

Fronted and financed by the marine transportation giant, Kilos Shipping, Whiskey’s anti-pirate services had been a huge success, defeating brigand gangs from Indonesia, China, Africa and the Caribbean, and getting well paid for it. But when the ten-million-dollar offer came in, they just couldn’t say no.

Because of the time crunch, their plan had to be simple. Find the Shakas’ compound, lay down a surgical barrage of Hellfire missiles, then land a ground force and roll up the pirates before they knew what hit them.

If everything went right, they would rescue Simms and any other hostages the gang was holding, and then fly directly to the movie’s star’s mega-yacht, which, its engines repaired, had reversed course and was now back in the Gulf of Aden, speeding south.

And everything did go just about how they planned. Whiskey first found the gang’s pair of speedboats pulled up on a beach near Kushu, the Shakas’ home village. Then they’d used their OH-6 attack copter’s night-vision capabilities to find the hideout and blow it apart as intended. Utilizing some new body armor they’d agreed to test for a private arms manufacturer, their modest ground force had killed most of the pirates and scattered those few who remained, without getting so much as a scratch. Simms was free and now it was time to get the hell out.

But then, suddenly, they had a problem.

* * *

THE TEAM’S XO, Batman Bob Graves, had piloted Whiskey’s attack copter on the mission. After firing a half dozen Hellfire missiles into the heart of the pirates’ compound, he’d swung around to the trio of smaller buildings located nearby. The team believed more hostages were being held here.

Batman landed the OH-6 and, after shooting the locks off the doors of the three small buildings, indeed found more hostages. Counting Simms’s stylist, there were thirteen in all.

Whiskey had guessed that, at the most, they’d find ten hostages here, Simms included. The rescue force itself was comprised of ten raiders—and that was the problem. There was only room on their two copters for twenty-two people maximum, pilots included.

But now they had twenty-three.

* * *

ONCE ALL FIRING had ceased at the compound, the team’s ground force made its way over to the hostages’ location. The second copter landed; it was a Bell X-1 the team had borrowed, along with its pilot, from the Kilos security force. Batman had the hostages ready and waiting to go. He started hustling them onto the Bell as quickly as possible. When the copter was at its limit, he tried to stuff the rest into the much smaller OH-6 attack copter, leaving room only for the pilot. But no matter how they worked it, they still had one person too many.

Only three people in the rescue force could fly a rotary craft: Batman, Snake Nolan and the pilot of the Bell copter. Batman huddled with Nolan and made a suggestion: “You fly the gunship. Take the queen of the universe and four other people with you. Everyone else can go on the Bell.”

“You mean you’re staying behind?” Nolan asked him.

Batman nodded. “It’s no big deal. Just drop everyone off, get some gas and come back. I’ll stay in the area and I’ll have my GPS locator on full power and my sat-phone, too.”

Nolan started to protest. Leaving someone behind did seem to be the only solution. But that didn’t mean Batman had to be the one.

“Why are you assuming I shouldn’t be the one to stay behind?” Nolan asked him. “Because I only have one eye?”

Batman held up his left hand. It was a metal claw prosthesis; he’d lost his real hand in the team’s action against a band of Indonesian pirates. “And I shouldn’t be, because I’m a one-armed paperhanger?” he replied.

The impasse lasted just a few seconds.

“You’re the leader of the pack, man,” Batman told him. “You need to be there to deliver that piece of ass back to her handlers, so we can collect immediately. I’ll be okay; I need a nap anyway.”

It was a bullshit explanation, but they had no time to waste. If anyone could survive out here without getting into trouble, it was Batman.

So Nolan tapped him twice on the shoulder and said, “It will take about an hour to get to that yacht and then an hour to get back here. Add in twenty minutes to tank up, and that means we’re looking at some time just before sunup. So, go hide somewhere and we’ll be back ASAP. Capeesh?”

Batman gave him a mock salute.

“Capeesh,” he said.

* * *

BATMAN WATCHED THE copters go over the horizon, disappearing among the stars to the east.

He studied his GPS locator and hoped he knew how to work the thing manually. It took him a few moments to override the commands previously programmed into the device. Finally, it began to behave.

He cleared the memory and then reactivated it. He zeroed in on his own position, then hit the enter button. A faint green light began blinking on the command screen. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Next, he checked his sat-phone. The charge was at three-quarters, which was plenty for the next few hours.

Now, all he had to do was wait someplace safe.

He walked back to the burning pirate camp, knowing it was best if he stayed deep in the bush. He checked his watch and rechecked the time line. It was close to 0300 hours. If Nolan was right, it would be just before dawn when they came back to retrieve him.

Making his way around the bodies of the pirates, he could see no suitable war souvenirs worth taking from the dead.

“Mooks,” Batman murmured, strolling around the smoldering camp. “Small time clip artists…”

He reached into his ammo pocket. Among some 50-caliber shells he found what he was looking for: a partially smoked marijuana cigarette.

He lit it off a piece of burning wood and drew in deeply.

“Breakfast of Champions,” he said.

A moment later, four bullets hit him in the back.…

* * *

NOLAN WAS ABOUT thirty minutes into the flight when he realized he’d made a huge mistake.

True, he could fly the attack copter. He’d done it many times since the team had come together. But he was also at a disadvantage because he didn’t have use of his left eye. This led to depth perception problems, especially at night, issues that were somewhat rectified by a specially built night-vision scope attached to his battle helmet and placed in front of his good eye.

But he still couldn’t relax, not even for one moment. During this dark flight over water, navigating by both the stars and dead reckoning, constantly looking for the mega-yacht and listening for the radio signal it was supposed to be sending out, all while checking his dwindling fuel supply, he caught himself thinking maybe he was the one who should have been left behind. In this case, two eyes were definitely better than one.

His very famous passenger was not helping the situation. In fact, she was making it worse just by her presence.

Emma Simms was sitting right next to him, strapped into the copilot’s seat. She hadn’t stopped fidgeting since they’d taken off, which was distracting him. Even worse, like a little kid, she kept asking Nolan, over and over: “Are we there yet?”

When she wasn’t bugging him on their ETA, she’d spent the time contemplating her reflection in the copter’s side window, fussing with her hair, trying to manually curl her eyelashes, pinching her cheeks for color and trimming her fingernails by biting off the tips.

She’d asked him not once, not twice, but three times if he knew whether any paparazzi would be waiting for her once they arrived on the yacht. He’d replied each time with a simple, “I don’t know,” to which she responded with a pout.

So, half the time Nolan was wishing he’d stayed instead of Batman; the other half, he was wishing she’d been the one they’d left behind.

By contrast, the four ex-hostages riding in the back couldn’t have been more grateful. Two were Swiss nationals, one was Indian, the other Austrian. They were marine biologists snatched from their research boat by the Shaka pirates four months ago. Several times during the flight, each one had reached forward and patted Nolan on the back, thanking him for getting them released from their little hell.

Emma Simms never noticed. She was more interested in her cuticles.

* * *

NOLAN FINALLY LOCATED the mega-yacht sailing about 180 miles off the northeast tip of Somalia. The vessel had all its lights on and had been sending out radio signals to the copters for the past hour.

Both the OH-6 and the big Bell went into a loose orbit around the vessel. It had two helipads: a large one at its stern and a smaller one on its bow. Nolan let the Bell land first, using the larger stern pad. He watched as members of the yacht crew swarmed toward the Bell, helping the hostages out and guiding them below.

Nolan then set down on the bow, his fuel reserves running out just as he hit the pad. He disengaged the engine and was heartened to see other members of the yacht’s crew were standing by, ready to pump his copter full of gas for the return flight to retrieve Batman.

Once his primaries were shut off, he told his passengers they could open the doors and get out. Again, each hostage in the back took the time to awkwardly hug Nolan, endlessly thanking him for their rescue.

Emma Simms did no such thing.

She simply opened the door and got out without a word.