He turned back and spoke to Akil—more like shouted into his ear. “When I give the signal, cut the engines.” They needed to go in undetected.
Akil: “You need me to hold your hand, too?”
“We’ll dive from about a thousand meters.”
“Nice night for a swim.”
“Get an exact bearing.”
“I did that already, boss. What kind of fucking navigator do you think I am?”
“A wiseass one I’ve got to constantly check on.”
“Ha. Ha!”
He’d done hundreds of VBSSs (Visit, Board, Search and Seizure operations) in his career, in the Middle East and Central and South America. He’d also been on dozens of hostage-rescue ops—Christian missionaries in Afghanistan, kidnapped oil company execs in Colombia.
Crocker waited until the ship grew bigger in his NVGs, then held up his fist. “Kill it here. Stop!”
Akil cut the engine on Zodiac 1. Ritchie, piloting Zodiac 2 behind them, did the same. As the current tossed them up and down, side to side, the SEALs in both boats quickly donned masks and Drägers, grabbed gear and waterproof weapons bags, then slid into the Indian Ocean.
They swam in order, Akil, Crocker, Mancini, Davis, Cal, Ritchie, all holding on to the five-foot telescopic pole with its attached caving ladder. They moved at the same speed, same depth—approximately twenty feet under the surface—the way they’d been trained when they were part of Green Team, the four-month training course required to get onto an assault team and ST-6.
The water was cool and dark. Visibility was terrible, barely enough to see the luminescent dials on their depth gauges, compasses, and Tudor dive watches. The German Drägers strapped to their chests fed them pure oxygen so no bubbles would escape to the surface to give away their position.
Akil, the primary navigator, focused on his dive compass. Crocker kept time and counted kicks. He knew exactly how many kicks it took to swim one hundred yards. Because they were swimming against the current, they had to kick harder than normal. Thirty minutes, forty, fifty, until Crocker figured they were getting close.
Although visibility was limited, the last thing he wanted to do was surface and be seen. He had planned the dive for four legs, but it was awkward turning and stopping with three men on each side of the pole, maintaining a depth of twenty feet.
They proceeded at a forty-five-degree bearing for six minutes, then Crocker squeezed Akil’s arm, which was the signal to reset their compasses and watches before starting the next leg at seventy-two degrees for twenty-two minutes.
Less than a minute into their fourth leg, Akil stopped abruptly and pointed to the dark shape literally two feet in front of him. He signaled to Crocker, then swam away from the pole to establish their position. Returning, he signaled that they were on the ship’s starboard side, approximately fifteen feet from the stern, which put them beside the ship’s superstructure. Realizing that it would be easier to climb aboard near the cargo bays, Crocker ordered his men to swim another twenty feet along the hull.
They surfaced one at a time, the sky a welcome sight.
Light rain continued to fall as Akil and Crocker raised the telescopic pole with its caving ladder. The others removed their MP5 submachine guns from the waterproof bags—safeties off, straight fingers as always.
After a couple of attempts they managed to hook the pole on a deck railing. Then Crocker signaled to Akil to pull down sharply, which released the caving ladder from the rubber tubing that held it to the pole. The ladder rolled down the side of the hull approximately fifteen feet to the ocean.
Crocker, as lead climber, was the first man up, his MP5-N equipped with a three-inch silencer slung over his shoulder. He placed his weight on each rung carefully because he didn’t know how securely the ladder was hooked. Attached to his web belt was a holster with an MK23 Mod 0 .45-caliber pistol, extra ammo, and a climber carabiner with three tubular runners. He made it look effortless. After climbing over the rail he hitched a two-foot tubular nylon runner to it and carabinered that to one of the ladder’s rungs. Now it was secure for the rest of his team.
Then he crouched behind a hatch cover and conducted a quick survey of the ship. All the deck lights were off, except for several around one of the cargo bays near the bow. That bay was open, and the foremost cargo crane seemed to be in use.
Interesting, he thought.
Not one pirate in sight, so he signaled the rest of his team to climb up.
They had already secured their Drägers, masks, fins, and weight belts to the rungs of the ladder below the surface. Now they climbed up quickly and took up preassigned firing positions that gave them a 360-degree security perimeter. Dressed in black suits with camo face paint, they looked like ninjas.