Chief Knight’s voice crackled across the radio. “Movement on the bow!” he barked. “She’s standing up . . . waving us off. Repeat, waving off!”
The woman was indeed standing. She’d ripped away her gag and screamed something unintelligible at the approaching RHIB. When they kept coming, she held her arms up in a raised X, the universal sign for NO!
“Boats!” Gitlin barked. “Get us out of here!”
The muffled rattle of rifle fire erupted from inside the cabin of the sailboat. Bright flashes illuminated the portholes. The woman at the mast slumped as bullets shredded the deck beneath her.
The woman at the bow screamed, diving over the lifelines.
“Return fire!” Gitlin shouted above the noise. He turned to face aft with the rest of the team as Chief Rose shoved the throttle forward, pointing the RHIB directly at Lucky Strike’s bow.
The woman in the water went under once, then bobbed to the surface. Only the top of her head and her flailing arms were visible in Gitlin’s NVGs. Knight leaned over the side while Gitlin grabbed his rigger’s belt to steady him, as if they’d planned it that way. The RHIB’s pontoons were huge, nearly two feet in diameter, forcing Knight to lean well out over the water in order to grab the woman when they sped past. Top-heavy from the extra fifty pounds of gear, he would have slithered over the slick tube into the drink had Gitlin’s weight not provided a counterbalance.
“Got her!” Knight yelled above the hiss of spray and the roaring motor. Both men fell backward in unison, hauling the sputtering woman over the pontoon and into the chief’s lap, Knight clutching a handful of her hair and the back of her swimsuit.
The two men farthest aft in the RHIB opened up in earnest with their rifles, strafing the side of the sailboat.
A green head peeked around the corner from the cabin hatch, followed by a bright flash. Gitlin had never seen a rocket-propelled grenade coming directly at him, but his instincts said that’s what this was.
“RPG!” he screamed. “Cover! Cover! Cover!”
Rose jerked the RHIB hard to port. They were so close that it wouldn’t have made much difference, but thankfully, the shooter had rushed the trigger under the fusillade of oncoming gunfire. The rocket-propelled grenade hit the waves well to the left, skipping along the surface to explode well in front of the inflatable, throwing up a plume of spray.
When Gitlin looked back, Ridgeway was slumped, chin to his chest, weapon dangling from his single-point sling, arms hanging to the deck.
Chief Knight, ever aware of the men in his charge, pushed the woman away so her back rested against the side of the pontoon. He slid to the back of the speeding RHIB on both knees, lifting Ridgeway’s head. A moment later, he turned and gave Gitlin the harrowed look that all good leaders dread.
“Pirate vessel returning,” Gitlin heard over his radio. “Nineteen knots and accelerating.”
The traffic was followed by the rhythmic thump of the Mk 28 chain gun, firing from Rogue’s foredeck. There hadn’t been time to tell them about the RPG, but they’d obviously seen it. Twenty-five-millimeter high-explosive tracer rounds creased the night air, chewing the fishing skiff into kindling. An instant later a bright flash blossomed up from where the pirate vessel had been. Gitlin and his men jerked their heads away, temporarily blinded in their NVGs.
“Holy shit!” Peavy yelled from his station on the bow of the RHIB. “That’s a hell of an explosion for a twenty-footer.”
“Chief Rose,” Gitlin said, willing his voice to stay calm—and the sailboat not to explode until they’d moved farther away from the RHIB—“put some distance between us and that sailboat!”
Belowdecks on Lucky Strike, Mamat dragged himself forward with his good arm. The other was shot away, the elbow joint exposed in a sickening mess of meat and bone. Both legs had taken rounds. He didn’t know how bad, but the pain was nearly unbearable. He was certain to pass out if he chanced a look at the wounds. The sound of the Navy boat’s departure was a knife to his heart. He cursed himself for his mistake. He’d held off detonating the explosive, waiting for the sailors to tie up alongside in order to inflict maximum damage.
None of the Jemaah Islamiyah planners or their Abu Sayyaf financiers had thought it would be possible to get anywhere near the larger ship. The ammonium nitrate in the fishing vessel had been put in place on the off chance the captain of the USS Rogue had been lax or inexperienced. He turned out to be neither. But the deaths of six sailors in the inflatable would have been a mighty blow to the Great Satan—if Mamat had not been so stupid.
He should never have allowed the boy to tie the woman at the bow. She’d gotten loose at the worst possible time, warning the boarding party. The boy had panicked at his mistake, shooting through the deck at the women and drawing fire from the U.S. vessel. Mamat was struck in both knees early in the gunfight, causing him to topple sideways and drop the push-button detonator that was hardwired to the explosives. Then the foolish boy chanced a shot with the RPG and took an American bullet through the eye for his trouble. He lost the back of his skull in the process. Even as the sailors ran for their lives, rounds continued to punch holes in both the sailboat and Mamat. He must have lost consciousness for a moment because the sound of the boat motor was dying away when he came to.
At last, he was able to drag himself to the detonator and grasp it in a bloody hand. The Navy boat was gone, but it was much too late to change his mind now. Closing his eyes, Mamat bin Ahmad said a final prayer and pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Mamat shuddered, flooded with a heady mixture of relief and shame. Then he shifted his weight, moving the wire under his chest. The movement completed the shorted connection and the cabin vaporized in a ball of orange flame.
29
Special Agent Kelsey Callahan could not recall the moment, but she’d seen photographic evidence that her father had broken down and cried when he dropped her off on her first day of kindergarten.
The elder Callahan was a well-respected heart surgeon at Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula. He was also a champion of strong women—forever pushing his only child to “get out front” and “show them how it’s done.” A burly, buffalo-plaid-wearing Montana man who looked more like a logger or mountain guide when he wasn’t dressed in hospital scrubs, he was also the most overprotective father Kelsey had ever heard of.