SEAL Team Six Hunt the Scorpion(6)
“If you watch carefully you might be able to see a pelican taking a crap.”
“Just get us close. We’ll be fine.”
“You planning to fast-rope onto the deck?”
“No, I’d rather take the bastards by surprise,” Crocker answered.
“How far away you want us to drop you?”
“You’ll need to approach lights-out. Drop us about a mile behind the stern so we can’t be seen.”
The lead pilot nodded. “We can do that.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Chapter Two
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
—George Santayana
Fifty minutes of bouncing around in the sky later, the six SEALs were in their black skin suits, ready to jump. Crocker leaned out the side door of the Knighthawk, trying to locate the MSC Contessa ahead. The light mist that fell dampened his face and hair. That and the cloud cover made visibility problematic, which meant that they had to rely on the helo’s radar.
The pilot kept his eyes focused on two green blips on the screen that appeared practically on top of each other east of the coastal town of Eyl—part of Puntland, the northeast corner of Somalia, which had declared itself an autonomous state in 1998.
When the helicopter got within two miles of the vessels, the pilot spoke into his headset. “Looks like they’ve both anchored off the coast.”
“They’ve stopped moving?”
“Correct.”
“Two vessels?” Crocker asked.
“Yeah, the cargo ship and the launch.”
“At what location?”
“Approximately fifteen miles off the coast. Direction…east.”
“Interesting.”
Crocker could understand the pirates commandeering the ship and anchoring it in friendly waters while they negotiated ransom. That was SOP in such cases. But what was the launch doing there?
The pilot’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “Signal when you’re ready for extraction.”
“Will do. And thanks for the lift.”
“Godspeed.”
The pilot lowered the helo within forty feet of the ocean and flipped a switch, which changed the light inside the starboard door from red to green. Crocker gave his men the signal to go. They pushed out the two Zodiacs and then the men fast-roped down—Ritchie first, followed by Akil, Davis, Mancini, Cal, and Crocker.
Lastly the copilot lowered their equipment—engines, paddles, Drägers and related dive equipment, fuel bladders, watertight weapons bags, telescopic pole with caving ladder attached.
Each three-man squad moved expertly, Davis, Akil, and Crocker in Zodiac 1 and Mancini, Ritchie, and Cal in 2. Each man knew what he was supposed to do: connect the engines and get them started, establish direction, comm. Check gear and weapons.
Within three minutes they had the motors running and were on their way, water slapping the bows, the boats twisting violently from side to side.
Crocker felt the adrenaline slam into his veins—that welcome burst of energy that produced a sense of invincibility. He lived for moments like this.
The warm air and faint scent of rot and tropical flowers reminded him of the times he’d operated in Somalia before. All hair-raising and life-threatening. Each time he left injured or sick. It was a country that had come apart at the seams in the early ’80s and never managed to pull itself back together. An anarchic mess of young gangs and drug lords armed with AKs and rocket-propelled grenades. Somalia seemed many centuries away from the social norms and political stability enjoyed in the U.S. and even other African countries. Much of which, he thought, people back home took for granted as they sat in their easy chairs watching TV.
He’d save that thought for another time.
Now he was trying to locate a dark shape ahead, which was difficult through the clouds, the spray from the bow, and especially the pitching of the Zodiac.
“You see anything?” he shouted at Davis.
“Fuck, no!”
Be a real shame if we can’t even find it.
“There it is!” Akil exclaimed from behind them. “Eleven o’clock.”
Crocker wiped the moisture off the lens of his night-vision goggles and looked again. This time he located a triangular-shaped blotch with a smaller, indistinct form beside it.
“Bingo! Good eyes.”
Akil quickly adjusted the direction of the Zodiac until Davis held up a hand and shouted, “Now we’re on course!”
“Nice work, huh?”
“That’s what you get paid the big money for.”
“Sit back and enjoy the ride!”
The view through Crocker’s NVGs was anything but steady. The rubber duckie climbed up the crest of an oncoming wave, then dropped and slammed hard at the bottom, tossing the contents of his stomach up and down. The swells seemed to be growing bigger, which indicated that they were approaching the coast.