Operation Sea Ghost

9

Above the Indian Ocean

THE SHIN-1 WAS a flying penthouse.

This was no surprise, considering the airplane’s owner was the Sultan of Oman.

A few years earlier, unhappy that his personal 767 jetliner was restricted to landing at airports, too far from his fleet of battleship-size yachts, the Sultan approached the Japanese military, which sold him two civilian versions of the Shins, making His Highness’s transition from air travel to water travel that much easier when he was in the mood. It turned out the Sultan also had many friends in Hollywood, Emma Simms being his favorite. Whenever she was in his part of the world, he gave her unlimited use of the amphibians for whatever she wanted.

Of course, the Sultan had to travel in style, it was in his genes. That’s why the Shin-1’s interior contained a hot tub, a big-screen TV, a half dozen private sleeping cabins, a deluxe galley, a full-sized bar, even a small disco—all furnished with luxurious leather seats and lambs-fur couches.

Everything but the hot tub was on rollers, though, and moved easily to the front of the plane, freeing up a significant amount of space deep in the cargo hold. This is where Alpha Squad stowed its gear.

Conversely, the plane’s pilots were definitely un-posh. Both were ex-members of the Stormo Incursori, the Italian Air Force’s special operations unit. Among the crème de la crème of the world’s secret operators, the SI had enjoyed a string of anti-terrorist victories around the Mediterranean over the years, few of which were ever publicized.

Nolan had no doubt the Stormos would get Alpha Squad where they had to go. The flying boat had an impressive array of navigation gear, both ground-based and GPS-slaved, plus specialty equipment such as anticollision radar and even an advanced air defense system, just in case someone wanted to take a shot at their ultra-wealthy employer.

Once at their destination, though, the Stormos’ skills would have to be extra sharp. They would have to avoid any local radar networks while Alpha reconned the target area from above—and that would be the easy part.

Landing off Gottabang would be a major challenge. The waters were known to be extremely rough, a nasty side effect of the area’s high tidal forces. It would be like coming down in a typhoon, even though the weather might be perfectly clear. One wrong move, one rogue wave, or the slightest loss of power at the wrong moment, and the big Shin would flip over, come apart, and everyone on board would be killed.

It would only get harder for Alpha once they’d set down and left the Shin-1. There was the question of breathable air at Gottabang. Anything that couldn’t be salvaged from the ships on the breaking beach was burned. Asbestos, PCB pipes, a galaxy of different plastics and carbon-based coatings and wire—all of it went up in flames. But because of Gottabang’s location—it was carved into the side of a mountain—the resulting smoke tended to stick around. This made the local atmosphere highly toxic even for short exposures.

For this reason, the Senegals had brought a box of small oxygen tanks and masks with them from Aden. But the tanks had an endurance of just under an hour, so whatever Alpha Squad was going to do at Gottabang, they’d have to do it in less than sixty minutes.

And there was an additional time constraint: Alpha had to complete their recon of the site while still under the cover of darkness. This was especially important because in an effort to keep its near-slave-labor force from escaping, the people who ran Gottabang employed a small army of thuggish Indian mercenaries, some of them veterans of the brutal wars in Kashmir and Sri Lanka. These people were well armed with armored cars and technicals, and possibly an armed helicopter or two. They had to be avoided at all cost.

Alpha Squad’s mission required a lot of moving parts. If just one of them ran into a snag, it would mean an unsuccessful mission and good-bye to Whiskey’s big payday.

It might get them all killed, too.

* * *

THEY ARRIVED OVER Gottabang just before midnight.

The Shin-1 was flying at 20,000 feet. Once on station, the Stormos throttled down to just 120 knots and started a long, slow circle high above the notorious ship-breaking beach.

Nolan was looking out one of the plane’s many observation blisters via his specially adapted one-eye nightscope. The many fires he saw below made Gottabang look even eerier and more noxious than he’d imagined. It really was like looking down on another planet.

The best for all concerned would be if Nolan was able to spot the missing Pacific Star from this height. That way, Alpha could set down close to it, dispatch a boarding party, pop any pirates they could find and then, ideally, reclaim the Z-box, all in a matter of minutes.

But this notion was quickly dismissed when Nolan realized Gottabang’s highly polluted bay was absolutely crammed with ships waiting to be broken, many more than he’d expected. There were so many, it wasn’t possible to concentrate on just one for very long from this height, never mind trying to read the name on its hull. Making a bad situation worse, the wind was blowing the lethal smoke in swirls over both land and water, further obscuring the soon-to-be-broken fleet.

Under these conditions, and the fact that the CIA, even though they’d arranged for the Pacific Star to be used in the botched Z-box operation, never bothered to record its dimensions or any recognizable characteristics, trying to find it from four miles up was virtually impossible.

So Nolan and Alpha had no choice. They would have to set down and look for the missing ship up close.

* * *

NOLAN WENT FORWARD to the Shin’s cockpit and briefed the Stormos.

Gottabang was some distance away from any airport or Indian military bases, so the chance of them being picked up on local radar at the moment was remote. But just to be safe, the Stormos would have to bring the Shin almost straight down to the water’s surface, so as not to show up on the edge of someone’s long-range radar.

With this in mind, the pilots announced that everyone on board should strap in. Then they put the Shin-1 into a long, slow spiral dive, aiming for a point about a mile off Gottabang’s north side. Nolan went back to his observation blister for a moment, his night-vision scope on full power as the big plane fell out of the sky. The closer they got to Earth, the more apparent it became that the waves off the breaking beach were indeed turbulent, again a by-product of the extra-high tides that ran the dying ships up onto the sand for their final disassembling.

Add to this an ink-black night with all the smoke obscuring an otherwise bright three-quarter moon. Nolan swallowed hard. He got nervous anytime he had to fly one of the team’s copters at night. Now he was plunging almost straight down, toward a dark, unruly sea, in a multi-ton airplane, its four propeller engines absolutely screaming in protest.

He finally scrambled back to his high-quality leather seat and strapped in—but he was quickly pressed up against its back cushion, absorbing g-forces like those in a supersonic jet. Only once did he manage to look across the compartment, and that was to see distress on the faces of the Senegals.

Normally very cool customers, if they were concerned, then everyone should be.

It seemed to take forever, but then one of the Stormos yelled over the plane’s intercom: “Preparatevi a dire una preghiera!”

Brace yourself and say a prayer.…

They hit the water a moment later.

It was like going through an airplane crash in slow motion. The giant flying boat bounced once, came down again, bounced a second time, more violently than the first, came down a second time, skidded left, skidded right, bounced again, went nose up, then came down hard for a third time.

But this time, it stayed down.

They careened along the choppy water, still banging around violently, but at least they didn’t go airborne again. The engines were screeching so loud, Nolan couldn’t imagine anyone within a hundred miles not hearing their arrival. But that didn’t matter to him at the moment. He just wanted the big plane to come to a stop.

And it did, finally. Out of nervous habit, the first thing Nolan did, after exhaling, was check his watch.

It was exactly midnight.

“Right on schedule,” he thought.

He looked around the cabin, wondering how all the luxury items had managed to survive landings like that. Everyone gave him a reassuring thumbs-up.

“Les prières ont travaillé!” one of the Senegals said. Rough translation: The prayers worked.…

Now, on to phase two. Alpha had given themselves five minutes to get ready for their recon. They began by aligning their GPS units. Then they would start climbing into their standard armored battle suits.

But first, Gunner went looking for the head.

That’s when things started to go wrong.

* * *

GUNNER HAD MADE his way almost to the front of the huge plane, when he spotted a door with Arabic writing on it. The door was unlocked, so he went in.

But instead of finding the lavatory, he realized he was in one of the plane’s private cabins.

And it was here that he found Emma Simms.

Feet propped up on a chair, iPod earbuds in place, she was calmly painting her fingernails.

She looked up at him nonchalantly, seeming neither concerned nor frightened. Even after the violent touchdown, not one hair was out of place.

Gunner couldn’t believe it.

“Have we landed yet?” she asked him, taking out the earbuds.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared back at her.

She ignored his question. Instead she asked him, “Can you bring me a chilled water then?”

“What are you doing here?” Gunner demanded of her again.

She went back to doing her nails. “I decided I wanted to see this Banging Place you girls were going on and on about. It will be good character research. End of story. Now—five ice cubes in that water, please.…”

Gunner called out for Nolan: “Snake—get up here quick!”

The Whiskey CO arrived seconds later—but he couldn’t believe what he saw either.

Even as he stood in the doorway, looking at her in her silk top and tight jeans, all baubles and bling, in full princess mode, his brain refused to process what his good eye was taking in.

“She says she wanted to see Gottabang,” Gunner told him feebly.

Nolan was speechless for ten long seconds.

Then he finally growled at Gunner, “Tell them…”

“Tell who … what?” Gunner replied, confused.

“The pilots,” Nolan said through clenched teeth. “Tell them to take off again and go back.…”

But Gunner asked: “Go back? Go back where?”

He was right. Turning around and leaving now would f*ck up everything. They’d have to return to Yemen, land, refuel, take off, find her yacht somewhere in the Red Sea, land, refuel, take off, fly back to Yemen, land, refuel, take off, then fly all the way back to the west coast of India.

They’d lose at least twenty-four hours screwing around like that. And with this mission, time was of the essence.

When all this became clear, Nolan gave Gunner a look. He got the hint and left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

“Is he still getting my water?” she asked once he’d gone.

Nolan was beyond furious.

“This cannot be,” he told her sternly enunciating every syllable. “You cannot be here. This is a serious mission, for serious money, and…”

She laughed a little, interrupting him. “That depends on what you consider ‘serious money’ home-boy. I made a hundred million last year just on DVD rentals … and I didn’t have to lift a finger.”

Nolan was so livid, he had to fight for his next breath.

“Why are you here?” he managed to ask her. “And spare me the bullshit about seeing one of the worst places in the world.”

She blew on her recently coated fingernail. “OK, how about this then: Maybe I just like helping out the common people.”

“Like those hostages, you mean?” Nolan shot back at her. “For all you know, that ferry sunk on the way back to Aden.”

“I’m sure we would have heard if it sank,” she replied in an annoying sing-songy voice. “And for your information, I believe I gave them all airfare home, too.”

“Well, considering many of them were from the Gulf area anyway, that must have set you back, what? A few hundred bucks?”

“They should be grateful they got out with their lives,” she said, blowing on her nails again. “They were rotting away there until I got kidnapped. If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be with those Somali monkeys.”

Again Nolan had to fight to take a breath. It came slow and hard, but he used it to calm down. Then he started again. “OK, please explain to me why you’re here. The real reason.”

She shrugged again as she applied more polish. “Maybe that whole kidnap thing was kind of a rush. I mean, skydiving? Bungee jumping? Doing meth? Same old stuff gets old pretty quick. And I get bored easily, so I got to keep feeding the monster.”

“So you’re an adrenaline junkie? Is that it?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” she replied. “Swimming with the sharks. Running at Pamplona. Getting kidnapped. Getting rescued. Real stuff gets the heart pumping—and it’s good for the street cred. Plus, it looks great on Twitter.”

She blew on her fingernails again. “Hey, what do you think is in that Z-box thing?” she asked him out of the blue. “I’ll bet it’s porno of Kennedy or someone.”

Nolan still couldn’t believe this was happening. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is going to be?” he asked her sharply.

“They’re just pirates,” she replied. “I read a pirate movie script once. They’re not so scary.”

“These pirates have guns,” he corrected her. “Just like the last ones you saw. And they’re desperate people. If you really thought deeply about this…”

She cut him off. “No one in my business ever ‘thinks deeply’ about anything,” she said. “You should remember that. My world is all surface and bullshit. I do what I want to do—and that’s the way I like it.”

“But you have to realize what we do is real,” he shot back. “You saw it for yourself in that pirate camp. Bullets fly. Explosions go off. Things go zipping through the air and when they hit you they can kill or maim you for life.”

He pointed to his eye patch. “How do you think I got this?”

She looked him up and down for a few moments.

Then she said: “I’m guessing in your business you have to make a lot of deals? Come to terms with unsavory people?”

“What’s your point?”

“OK then,” she said, dropping the whole wealthy Valley Girl affectation. “You asked what the catch was? Well, here it is. I may be queen of the ball now, but I have three coke-sniffing whores nipping at my heels back in LA. One of them went to Afghanistan last month and was lucky enough to be there when they bombed her air base. Another one just bought her sixth AIDS baby. The third got grazed by a bullet in a shoot-out at a hip-hop club last week. And then, some a*shole told People magazine that I was the little damsel in distress while those Somali apes had me tied up, after I wanted to tell them I fought back.

“There’s a script making the rounds about a female CIA agent from the future who kicks ass. I want that script, but I also want a lot of money to do it. Which means I’ll do anything to make those two things happen, and going on a real CIA mission will ace it for me.

“Now, you got to use my yacht. And now you’re using my seaplanes. You’re getting to use my people, and anything else that goes along with my name. So in return for all that, I get to go with you to this Banging Beach place. And you’re going to take pictures of me there, helping you out on this mission thing, whatever you’re doing. And if you say no, then I’ll tell my pilots to turn around—in both planes. Or did you forget they serve at my pleasure, not yours.”

Nolan was frozen to the spot, stunned by her arrogance.

“You realize that this isn’t a movie, don’t you?” he said. “This is real life. Can you understand that?”

She looked up at him and smiled. “Listen, my very dopey one-eyed friend. When you’re in my business, everything is a movie…”

She painted one more fingernail, then said: “So … is that guy coming back with my water or not?”

Nolan just shook his head.

“What a bitch…” he said.

* * *

NOLAN RETREATED TO the rear of the plane and explained the situation to Gunner and the Senegals. They already knew Emma Simms had stowed aboard. But now she was demanding to go with them to Gottabang and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The Africans were more astonished that she’d somehow made it through the harrowing descent and landing without making a peep.

“Elle est probablement tres médicamenteux,” one of them said. “She is probably heavily medicated.…”

“I’ll have what she’s taking then,” Gunner commented.

They agreed they had to think of a way to dissuade her from coming with them. The mission was going to be dangerous enough as it was. Having her along could turn it into a disaster.

But it was a short discussion. In all their years of special ops work, they’d never faced a situation like this. She held all the cards. It was her airplane, her pilots.

So, they were stuck with her.

She finally emerged from the cabin, designer jeans, silk blouse and thousand-dollar sneakers—everything she’d been wearing before, including her bling. She was also carrying a digital camera.

Nolan, Gunner and the Senegals were putting on their battle-wear when she appeared. Big helmets, flak jackets, elbow and knee pads, combat boots, ammo belt, trouble light and weapons.

She didn’t say a word to them. She just looked at Nolan, expecting him to wait on her. He threw a rucksack in front of her. Inside was an extra battle suit.

“Hurry up,” Nolan told her. “We’re on a timetable.”

She took one look at the bulky combat gear and said: “I’m not wearing this stuff.”

“You are untrained, unarmed and unwelcome,” Nolan shot back at her. “There’s no way you’re going out there with us unless you’re protected to the max. End of discussion.”

She stalked off—not back to her cabin, but up to the flight deck. A heated conversation ensued, half English, half Italian, between her and the Stormos. Nolan guessed she believed the pilots were her only allies and needed their support. But the Stormos told her quite clearly only one of two things could happen: either she wore the armored suit to Gottabang or she stayed on board with them. If she refused either, they would simply turn around, take off and fly away on their own call as commanders of the airplane. Then no one would go.

She was wearing the mother of all pouts when she emerged from the flight deck. Nolan’s spirits lifted a little. Maybe an assault on her fashion sense was all they needed.

He was praying that she’d lock herself back inside her cabin—and allow them to proceed unencumbered. But no such luck. She stomped her way back up to the team and reluctantly started putting on the battle suit.

Nolan and Gunner groaned in unison. Even the Senegals were shaking their heads.

Nolan rubbed his tired eye. “What the hell have we gotten into?” he thought aloud.

It took a few extra minutes for her to get dressed. Of course, nothing fit to her liking. Everything was just too big for her, too tight, too heavy.

Even after she was in the battle suit, she couldn’t stop complaining.

“I can’t go anywhere in this thing,” she said, her voice muffled by the helmet’s mouth plate. “It’s like a suit of armor.”

“No kidding,” Nolan replied, angrily fastening it a few places in the back that she couldn’t reach.

When she was done, Gunner and the Senegals looked her up and down—then put their hands to their mouths to stop from laughing. They couldn’t help it. All encompassing helmet, thick black visor, oxygen mask. Full torso body armor with shoulder pads, elbow pads and highly armored gloves. Kevlar bottoms with padding on the knees and ankles. Thick armored “ski boots.”

She looked like a kid wearing a RoboCop costume.

“I will confiscate any camera that takes a picture of me besides mine!” she bellowed from behind the mask.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nolan said, pushing her to the rear of the plane. “No one here cares that much about you.”

* * *

TIED DOWN AT the back of the cargo bay was Alpha Squad’s next mode of transport: the RIB.

Standing for Rigid-hull Inflatable Boat, it was a combination rubber raft and speedboat designed by the British Special Air Service, the famous SAS. Jet-black and almost impossible to see at night, Whiskey had been lugging one around since they’d gone into the pirate-busting business. Now they would get to use it.

Upon inflating the RIB, they would slip out of the back of the flying boat’s large rear hatch and dip into Gottabang Bay. Then, after one last check of their equipment, the search for the Pacific Star would begin in earnest.

The Stormos kept the Shin-1’s big engines turning, just in case a quick getaway was needed. But the RIB inflated with no problems, and its powerful near-silent engine came to life right away. The squad and Emma Simms climbed in, and finally, they were off.

Gunner piloted the boat. Nolan and the five Senegals sat around the edges with Emma Simms smack in the middle. Body armor or not, the arrangement guaranteed that if the RIB was fired on, someone else would catch the bullet before her.

They were soon moving in and out of the traffic jam of ships clogging Gottabang Bay. They had to act like detectives now, looking for one vessel among many. Though some of the ships had had their names scraped from their hulls, the remaining silhouettes were fairly easy to read via the team’s night-vision scopes. Many of the ships also appeared devoid of crew. Very few had any lights burning—and all of them looked like they were barely able to stay afloat.

Nolan was trying to look in every direction at once, but there was a lot to take in. The only clue they had besides the missing ship’s name, which the pirates might have changed anyway, was that the Pacific Star was a combination cargo ship and fishing boat. But in this floating graveyard, where virtually every ship looked the same, that wasn’t much to go on.

The RIB was highly maneuverable and Gunner knew how to put it through its paces. Through all the swishing and shushing, though, Nolan could hear Emma Simms loudly complaining under her helmet that she was going to fall out, that they were going to capsize, or they were going to hit something and she would sink to the bottom, so heavy was her armored body suit. But everyone in the squad just ignored her.

The waterborne search took almost thirty minutes, weaving around the ghostly fleet of ships, checking their hull conditions and trying to decipher their scraped-off names. In the end it all proved fruitless. None of the vessels was named Pacific Star, and none of them fit the barebones description the CIA had given them.

This meant on to Plan B. Alpha Squad would have to go ashore and look for evidence of the phantom ship there.

* * *

THEY APPROACHED THE beach slowly, not wanting to kick up any kind of visible wake.

Though it was the dead of night, a lot of noise was coming from the shore: The idling engines of heavy cutting machines, soon to be made ready for their morning work. Static and foreign voices blasting from radios up in the workers’ shantytowns. The continuous baying of an unseen foghorn. There was so much smoke coming from the beach fires, it had settled on the shoreline like a toxic blanket. Nolan ordered everyone to connect their oxygen masks. Where they were going next, the air was not breathable.

Prior to leaving the Shin, Nolan told one of the Senegals that if Alpha had to go to the beach, he should pretend to stay behind to watch the RIB—and that he would try to make Emma Simms stay behind with him. But as soon as they made it to shore, she was the first to jump from the boat, ruining the plan. She had her camera out and was demanding someone take pictures of her. When no one would, she stormed off, marching up the beach alone, in full view of anyone who might be looking in their direction.

Nolan ran after her, practically tackling her and pulling her back into the shadows. “This place is lousy with people who won’t mind shooting any of us—and not with a camera,” he told her sternly. “Why can’t you just stay with the goddamn boat?”

She waved him off. “Because I got this goddamn suit on,” she snapped back at him. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

He kept hold of her arm, though. “If you move more than two feet away from me,” he told her, “I’ll shoot you myself.”

Hiding the RIB in some shore vegetation, by this time the rest of the squad had caught up to them. Nolan told them to check their weapons and their breathing masks. Then they began their search of the grimy beach.

They made their way slowly at first, moving carefully among the heaps of cut steel and burning trash. The beach reminded Nolan of a battlefield that war had passed by. The carcasses of dozens of ships lay tossed about as if discarded by some giant hand. Some were in pieces; others had yet to be broken. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. There were also hundreds of tools scattered about—sledgehammers, huge hacksaws, acetylene torches. Apparently once quitting time arrived, all of Gottabang’s 20,000 workers just dropped whatever they were using at the moment and walked away.

All this clutter, plus the smoke and the night, made moving around the beach slow and difficult. Nolan soon realized they had to split up. Two Senegals would search the water’s edge along the southern part of the beach. Two more would take the northern end. Gunner and the fifth Senegal would take the midsection. Being stuck with Emma Simms, Nolan would search the area closest to where the RIB was hidden.

He was hoping this would be the safest part of the mile-long beach to check. Because it was far from the cutting yards and the workers’ shantytowns, it seemed the place where they were least likely to run into Gottabang’s security thugs.

Once the squad dispersed, Nolan and Emma Simms set out, staying close to one another but not talking, which was fine with him. They passed dozens of pools of discarded fuel, oil and bloody-red lubricants. The beach was so polluted, the sand was luminescent green in some parts, so soaked through it was with toxic chemicals. Sky-high piles of insulation and mountains of ship’s wall paneling soon surrounded them. Random jagged pieces of metal, lit by countless fires, big and small, were everywhere.

They reached an area jam-packed with giant pieces of broken ships. Bows, sterns, midsections. Some were cut neatly in sections, others were torn and jagged as if they’d been blown apart. It was like walking through a city where the streets contained block upon block of nightmarish buildings. These pieces towered over their heads, blotting out the night sky as effectively as the ever-present cloud of toxic smoke.

They moved along like this for nearly a half hour, Nolan checking for a ship name on every stern they came to. Every few minutes he would feel his sat-phone click twice, the signal from the other search teams checking in. But nothing beyond those two clicks meant they had no good news.

One part of Nolan was actually hoping they wouldn’t find the remains of the ship on the beach. It was pretzel logic, but if the ship was not here, then that meant it was still out there, somewhere. If it had been broken already, then the contents and the pirates would be scattered by now.

Besides, if they didn’t find evidence of the missing vessel here, they could leave quickly, dump Emma Simms, and resume the search somewhere else.

* * *

NOLAN WAS CERTAIN the recon mission was a bust when he returned to the water’s edge and saw the other search parties all heading in his direction.

Each group reported the same thing: not even the barest clue of the Pacific Star had been found.

So much for Plan B.

Now they had to return to the RIB and get out of there. But when Nolan turned around to tell this to Emma Simms, she was nowhere to be seen.

“Where the f*ck did she go?” he bellowed through his oxygen mask.

They fanned out immediately and began looking for her.

All kinds of thoughts were going through Nolan’s mind now, not the least of which was that she could still get them all killed. But then after running about 100 feet back into the canyon of broken ships, he suddenly found her.

She was standing at the back of a severed stern they’d missed somehow, looking at the name painted below the intact railing.

She saw him coming and simply pointed up.

Nolan adjusted his nightscope and read the name.

Pacific Star …

She handed him her camera.

“Make sure you get my good side,” she said.