The Aden Effect (39 page)

“Get the message to Fifth Fleet,” he ordered. “Air Boss, I need to know if we can recover Five-Eight or if they need to land on Hadiboh. I'll contact the RSO and advise him of the situation and then contact the Yemeni Navy. WEPS, get back to the CIC and resume TAO duties. I want you to find out what the helo we saw is doing. I'll be here on the bridge with Ensign Fisk. I want some eyes out on deck for small boats, and I mean
really
small boats. I saw only one of the RHIBs when we landed. Where's the other one, Bobby?”

“Hadiboh, sir.”

“Good. Contact them. Have them round up as many civilian medical personnel as they can get on the boat. Let's get help for this crew.”

“Aye, sir.” Bobby grabbed a radio on his way to the bridge wing.

Stark took the handheld-radio from his go-bag. “RSO, what's the situation on the island, over?” Nothing but static. “Golzari, respond, over.” Static. Stark knew that a professional like Golzari wouldn't have turned off his handheld for any reason unless he was involved in an attack. With the situation going to hell here, Stark's responsibility was to the ship; he had to trust Golzari to take care of whatever was happening in Hadiboh.

Golzari ducked his head and charged up the hill. The other team was coming up on his left. Eleven of the twelve seconds he had estimated remained.

He had never been the fastest runner at the federal law enforcement training facility in Georgia, but he was the quietest. Someone there once called him the Panther because he could move so silently. It was another trick he had learned from his father's former Savak bodyguards. It didn't matter if you were fast as long as they didn't know you were coming.

Nine seconds now.

Golzari blocked out the sound of the suppressing fire, shutting down unnecessary sensory input to his brain so he could focus on the target. He saw no one as he ran. Asha and the others kept themselves out of sight.

Six seconds.

When the bodyguards taught him how to be a sharpshooter they instructed him to remain calm, to use long, slow breaths, and to fire on the exhale. A racing heart would cause the body to move slightly and throw off the shooter's aim. Almost to the SUV now, he forced himself to breathe evenly.

Three seconds.

He and his father and the bodyguards had returned to Iran in secret once after the Revolution to visit a dying relative. They disguised themselves as simple merchants and took a dhow across the Persian Gulf from Jebel Ali. The Iranian town they visited was no larger than Hadiboh, but it did have a Revolutionary Guard post. On the final night of their three-night visit, he and the bodyguards came across a local teenager beaten bloody by Islamic radicals, who continued to kick him and spit on him as Golzari and his guards approached. There was no one else in the alley. The radicals told Golzari and the bodyguards to move along, that they were dealing with this homosexual teen as he should be dealt with. Instead, the bodyguards shot the radicals at close range, then picked up the teenager and helped him on his way. Golzari understood that if his family had stayed in Iran, he might also have been a victim of this Islamic extremism because of his similar sexual orientation. At that moment he had reached a decision that changed his life. Those who tried to force fundamentalist Islam on the population must be stopped, and those too weak to fight against them must be protected. The Somali pirates, just like those Iranians, were brutal, murderous bullies. And they would be stopped. And of course he thought of Robert—always of Robert.

As he reached the hilltop, all his senses switched to full receive mode—vision, hearing, touch, smell—every bit of information he could gather was important.

Two of the Somalis popped their heads above the SUV. Golzari came around the left side of the vehicle, raised both weapons, and fired eight rounds, felling the two before they could respond.

The only man standing was Asha himself, who raised his hands to show that he had no weapon. Apparently he had left the fighting to the others. Golzari pounced on him and swung the butt of his pistol across Asha's forehead. Asha tried to throw a punch, but Golzari deflected it with one arm as he brought the butt down again, closer this time to the center of Asha's head. The unmistakable crack of a skull being split echoed in the air. Asha fell, helpless but still conscious.

The mercs had closed in behind him now. Golzari holstered one pistol and reached into his pocket for his digital voice recorder. He spoke to Asha in Arabic. “Did you kill John Dunner?”

Asha said nothing.

“Abdi Mohammed Asha, listen to me carefully,” Golzari said, pointing his pistol at Asha's temple. “Answer me truthfully and live. Did you kill John Dunner in Antioch, Maine?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I have an agreement.”

“An agreement with who?”

“I am to return to Somalia and take control,” Asha said.

“Who is the agreement with?” Golzari said, shaking his prisoner.

Asha grinned. “There was an American. A very powerful American. I never met him.”

“That's not good enough. Who
did
you meet? Who did you work with?”

A mile away, a party of Chinese observers had watched the entire battle and shipboard explosion unfold through high-powered binoculars. Mr. Hu, wearing his usual black pants and a pastel green shirt, ordered his men to deal with the situation, then got into a black Land Rover and was driven away from the scene.

Golzari grabbed Asha's shirt collar and lifted him to his feet, already planning the best way to get the Somali back to Washington to extract more information from him. As Golzari turned toward the security personnel to issue recovery orders, Asha's head exploded, spraying the agent's face with blood, pieces of bone, and brain matter.

“Down, down, down,” one of the mercs screamed.

Golzari released Asha's body and dropped to the ground, trying to determine if any of the blood was his own.

“Sniper,” Golzari realized. “Where is he? Did anyone get a make?”

“I've got him,” one of the security personnel called out. “He's about three hundred yards to the west and just got in an SUV heading back over the hill.”

Back to Chinatown
, thought Golzari.

“Bridge, TAO.”

“Go ahead,” Stark said.

“Inbound ship and slow-moving aircraft that we're still trying to identify. Coming in from zero-one-zero degrees.”

Stark looked at the navigational chart. “Air Boss, where was that cluster of ships?”

“Right here. It would be coming from zero-one-zero.”

“Bobby, are our SM-2s ready?”

“Sir, we're empty.”

“What do you mean we're empty?”

“We don't have any missiles. No SM-2s. No Tomahawks. No Harpoons. When Fifth Fleet disapproved us for Persian Gulf escort duty with the carrier, they had us transfer all our missiles to other ships.”

“That's just great,” Stark said. Then, thinking quickly, “Boss, does Five-Eight have the same number of Hellfires as Five-Seven?”

“Same load. I made sure of it.”

“Does Five-Eight have enough fuel to intercept that aircraft?”

“They're still twenty minutes out, but they can push it to twelve. It'll burn more of their fuel and they'll be riding fumes, but I think they can do it—at least before I can get Five-Seven fueled back up.”

“Direct them to intercept that aircraft. I'm pretty sure it's the helo we saw spinning up on the OSV's deck. I want Five-Eight to see if there are small boats ahead of it as well. The night I went in the water I heard a helo, and it wasn't one of ours. I couldn't figure out how they were running remote-controlled boats when no other ships were in sight, but it makes sense if they were running them from a helo.”

Golzari and the others returned to the operations site carrying the wounded Highland security officer. “Gunny, SitRep,” he said, suddenly tired as the adrenaline that had pushed him up the hill toward Asha left his system.

“All accounted for. Our teams are still in position in the buildings,” said the gruff Marine.

“Ambassador, Abdi Mohammed Asha was there. He's dead.”

“He was going to attack our operation?” she said. “Thank-you isn't enough.”

“That isn't all of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Asha confirmed that he killed John Dunner and said an American was involved, too.”

“Who?”

“He died before I could find out,” said Golzari. “Right now, though, we have to find out what happened on the
Bennington
and figure out how to get our people out of here.”

Golzari turned on his handheld radio, checked his watch, and looked in the direction of the ship. Wispy smoke was still trickling from the wardroom portholes.

“DATT, RSO.” No response. Maddox and Sumner waited anxiously for Stark to respond.

“DATT, RSO,” Golzari repeated.

He tried one more time. “DATT, RSO.”

“RSO, CO. Message heard. Out.” It was Stark's voice. He did not respond as the defense attaché. He responded as the ship's commanding officer.

What the hell is going on out there?
Golzari tried to piece together the little bits of information he had. The “local dignitaries” carried by one of the ship's RHIBs had been allowed to board even though he had told the officer on the bridge to turn them back. There had been an explosion on the ship. Asha had placed a small force on a nearby hilltop, almost certainly as part of an attack on the humanitarian operation. The Chinese seemed to be involved. And now this cryptic message from Stark. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.

“What is it?” C. J. asked. “Do you know what's going on?”

“It's worse than I thought, ma'am. Commander Stark has apparently taken command of the
Bennington
. He would do that only if the command and senior staff were unable to perform their duties. By his message, he's informing us that that has happened, and that things are so serious that he doesn't want to violate any op-sec—operational security—over an open radio. He also doesn't want us asking more questions at this point. The entire command structure of the ship must have been taken out in the explosion. This is getting more and more serious.”

“How much more serious could it be?” Bill Maddox asked.

“Mr. Maddox, if you and your senior staff were suddenly gone, would your organization be in a position to respond quickly to a new crisis?”

Maddox and Sumner finally grasped the gravity of the situation. The
Bennington
had been effectively decapitated. It was now both far more vulnerable to another attack and completely unable to protect the people ashore. Only a few untried Yemeni Navy ships stood between them and whatever was coming next.

“Bobby, I want open comms with the TAO at all times from here—no phone, understood?”

“Understood, sir. Five-Eight is now ten miles out and reporting fifteen minutes left of fuel.”