The Janson Option (26 page)

12°30' N, 54°0' E
Socotra Airport
Socotra Island, Yemen

F
rom the air, Socotra Island looked like a bombed battleship smoldering on a flat and windless sea. Fog clung to mountain peaks in the middle. Sand-dune shores sprawled into the sea. Ten miles off, as if lurking to deliver coup-de-grace torpedoes, stood the megayacht
Irina
, a strange-looking ship with a conning tower-like superstructure and a backswept ram bow that reminded Jessica Kincaid of a double-edged clip-point saber. Its swimming pools glowed aqua-green.

Catspaw's heavily laden Embraer 650 lined up against the weak southwest monsoon, landed hard, and used most of the ten-thousand-foot runway to shed speed. Yemeni Customs stamped the temporary visas that allowed Titus, Saakin, and his crew to board rigid inflatable tenders beached near the runway. Driven by powerful twin outboards and guarded by Socotran tribesmen armed with AK-47s, the boats roared onto the sea, disappeared in the fog, and homed in thirty minutes later on
Irina
.

The Russian crew was standing by with their bags at an embarkation port. Catspaw's crew boarded. The Russians got into the boats. Kincaid and Billy Titus went to the bridge. Titus conferred with the Russian captain and inspected his log. They shook hands. The Russian joined his crew and the boats headed back to Socotra. As arranged,
Irina
's chief engineer and handpicked assistants remained in the engine room at quadruple their normal salaries.

Billy Titus called for thirty knots and set a course for Eyl, five hundred miles down the Puntland Coast. Jessica Kincaid went below, where the chief engineer was waiting deep in the hold to show her Garik Tannenbaum's submarine.

P
AUL
J
ANSON STOOD
in the open door of General Ddembe's personal Mil Mi-19 Russian-built helicopter five thousand feet above the dull yellow lights of Eyl. He was wearing a parachute, battle pack, rifle, and Panoramic night-vision goggles.

“Thanks for the ride!” he shouted over the roar of the turbines.

“Thanks for the Italian,” the general shouted back. “How will you get out to the yacht?”

“Borrow a boat.” He stepped into the night and free-fell 4,700 feet. As he tore through the air, he steered for the darkest stretch of the beach. When his altimeter read 300 feet, he pulled his ripcord.

A
llegra was awakened by Maxammed's mobile ringtone blaring the Somali music that reminded her of an accordion playing reggae. He and his caller shouted back and forth.

“We have company, Bullet-Hole Lady,” he told Allegra. “Pirates from Xaafuun took a Russian yacht. Let us pray they don't draw Russian patrols. The Russians will kill us all, you included.”

Maxammed scanned the horizon through binoculars but could not see the pirated yacht. He tried to raise the pirates on the open marine channel. No one replied.

“It doesn't matter,” he told her. “I wouldn't answer either until I had my ship in safe water.”

Suddenly, something else, much more urgent, caught his attention down the coast. A fishing boat had appeared from the direction of the Eyl harbor.

To Allegra's eye it was too far away to make out detail, except that it was bigger than the skiffs that ferried khat and food from the beach. But Maxammed recognized it instantly. His face tightened, his lips pressed. He focused the binoculars with swift, jerky motions.

He cursed,
“Wacal,”
which she had figured out was an all-​p
urpose
“Bastard.”

He looked around, eyes popping in rage, saw her, and before she could avert her eyes yelled, “What are you looking at?”

She turned away. Too late. He bounded across the bridge, grabbed her by her bullet-riddled vest, and dragged her to the broken windows. “See! That is Gutaale's boat. Fucking Home Boy.”

She knew by now that ignoring him didn't work. She had to answer. Home Boy was his nemesis. “Is he on it?” she asked.

“No. He wouldn't ride around in that miserable piece of shit. He sent his clansmen to watch me.”

Allegra said, “Maybe we should run it over.”

Maxammed swung his arm and the SAR strapped to his wrist pivoted into his hand, the long barrel pointed at her face. “You think it's a joke.”

“No. If you ran it over, he couldn't watch. And who would come to replace it?”

Maxammed let go of her with a harsh laugh. “Good idea, Bullet-Hole. Maybe I should—Wait! What's that?”

A helicopter was thumping.

“Up!” Maxammed yelled, rousing the sleeping gun boys. “Get everyone. Quick. Helicopter.”

A minute later it appeared, lowering over the land and coming straight at them. The fear on Maxammed's face turned to rage. “It's him.”

Even in the thin light the helicopter gleamed. It was Allen Adler's gold Sikorsky. Home Boy Gutaale had come back.

Maxammed's phone rang.

“Who is this?” asked Maxammed, though it could only be Home Boy.

“Gutaale here, my brother Maxammed. May God be with you.”

“What do you want?”

“I am coming aboard to visit you.”

“No. Stay off or we'll shoot you down.”

“We must talk.”

“Talk on the phone.”

“Others may be listening.”

“I don't care. Say what you will.”

Home Boy said, “The situation in Mogadishu has changed. I will be the vice president of Somalia.”

“I heard. So what?”

“Your friend the Italian is dead.”

“He was never my friend.”

“But he wanted to help you.”

“It doesn't matter. I didn't need his help. And I don't need yours.”

“Ah, but you do, my brother. The woman's husband is dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Killed at Villa Somalia. By the Italian's terrorists. Who will pay your ransom?”

“The insurance for the yacht. I don't need ransom for her, I need her to hold off attack. You told me yourself. The money will come from the yacht.”

“The situation has changed. There is a better way. Let me come aboard.”

“What better way?”

“We let her go. We are heroes.”

“Go to hell, Home Boy. You've come to take the glory. You would be a hero. I would be a fool and poor.”

“It would be so much better for all of us. You will be rewarded.”

From the corner of his eye Maxammed saw that while he had been watching the helicopter hovering in one direction, Gutaale's boat had drawn very near from the other. He covered the phone and shouted, “Farole!”

Farole had already come to the bridge.

“Fire on that boat.”

Farole ran on deck, followed by the boys. They opened up with their AKs. The guns thundered. Bullets splashed in the water and broke windows in the wheelhouse. The boat veered away. Then a heavy rifle boomed. The rail-thin Farole screamed, grabbed his head, and fell to the deck, arms and legs splayed like sticks.

Maxammed gaped, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. Allegra backed up behind the steering console and reached inside her vest for Adolfo's gun, certain he would lash out at her. But instead of exploding in screams and curses, the tall pirate turned a slow circle and cast a bitter eye on the beach, the fleeing fishing boat, and the seaward horizon, where the hijacked Russian yacht had suddenly risen tall and sharp, curling an immense white wave from its bow.

He broke the connection with Home Boy's helicopter and telephoned his men on the beach. His voice rang with cold fury. But his words were measured, a call to battle. “Gutaale attacks. Launch the boats. Every man to the yacht before he steals our ransom.”

J
essica Kincaid was watching
Tarantula
on
Irina
's radar—monitoring the pirated yacht's slow progress back and forth along the coast and taking note of a helicopter and a fishing boat approaching, then disappearing—when suddenly the screen sparkled with a dozen new targets. Muttering “Fuck” under her breath, she grabbed binoculars and scoped the water between the yacht and the beach. “Fuck,” she said again.

The radar had not lied. A dozen skiffs were racing from the beach.

Irina
quickly halved the distance and Kincaid saw that the skiffs were packed with fighters. What the hell had spooked the pirates?
Irina
's sudden presence? Or the helicopter? Now, for whatever reason, instead of plucking Allegra from a skeleton crew, they would have to slip her past a hundred men.

Billy Titus tapped her shoulder. “One's coming our way.”

She had been watching it angle toward the Russian yacht from farther up the coast. The binoculars revealed a single Arab at the helm, red-checked kaffiyeh fluttering in the skiff's slipstream. “Slow down,” she said. “Turn so he can board from our offshore side.”

“Who is it?”

“Who else?”

She went below with a couple of sailors, opened the hydraulic hatch that sealed the giant boat launch and retrieval bay. The stiffening wind pushed a cool wet morning mist past the air conditioning. The skiff cut across the yacht's backswept bow. Janson throttled back and nosed expertly into the port and caught the winch line she tossed him.

“Glad to see you. CNN wasn't clear on the details.”

“Isse killed a bunch of poor bodyguards. I gave the Italian to AMISOM. Turns out he was our old friend Yousef.”

Kincaid was not all that surprised. “We wondered where he went.”

“Helms got killed.”

“That made CNN. Can't say I'm heartbroken.”

“You and Doug Case. He's doing wheelies—how's the submarine?”

“It won't set any speed records.”

But Janson was in high optimism mode. “They won't be chasing us underwater.”

“Except every pirate in Puntland is waiting for us.”

Even in high optimism mode, Janson was still the Machine. “I saw their boats. We have to find a way to keep 'em busy.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, in order to discover how many hostages were still alive and where they were held, Janson and Kincaid sent their “pirates” to visit
Tarantula
in a skiff bearing gifts of Afghan opium and Indian marijuana. Saakin's men returned to
Irina
with fresh green khat leaves and news that Allegra was the only surviving hostage and was being held on the bridge.

The bad news was they had counted no fewer than sixty and possibly many more pirates in Maxammed's crew. Part two of the wary checking-each-other-out ritual entailed a return visit from
Tarantula
pirates, who were awed by the exotic
Irina,
and presumably reported to Maxammed it would be easy to hijack it from such a small crew.

The southwest wind blew harder all day and by nightfall kicked the sea up into long rollers. The hull lock that housed
Irina
's submarine was centered in the bottom of the ship, so they didn't feel the full effect of the subsurface swells until Kincaid lowered the boat out of the lock and drove out from under the ship. Then it felt like they were lurching up and down a mountain on a dirt-track lumber road.

“All yours, Cap. Thanks for getting us here.”

Kincaid slid away from the joystick and Billy Titus took over. Neither she nor Janson liked putting the civilian in danger, but unlike the little sea scooter they had tried the first time, there was no way to let the submarine drift and then call it back by remote control. Mooring alongside the yacht was not an option. Even if it didn't make a racket banging against
Tarantula
's hull in the heavy seas, the six-person sub was thirty feet long, big enough to be spotted by a pirate glancing over the side.

Titus examined his sonar and depth finder and confirmed that the battery and compressed air tanks were good, then asked, “The water is two hundred feet deep here. We'll get a smoother ride if I take her down under the waves.”

“Be our guest.”

He descended to fifty feet and the boat settled down. In near silence, they headed to the coast at five knots on a course charted to intercept
Tarantula
as she moved parallel to the beach at three knots.

The controls were simple, and it was not the first recreational submarine that the yacht cabin had piloted, although, he freely admitted, it was by far the most technologically advanced. Twenty minutes after he took the controls, they surfaced, doused all interior lights, and opened the hatch. Kincaid climbed out. Janson passed up packs and weapons.

Tarantula
was visible as a long, dim loom against the sky. A faint glow at the back end of the ship marked where dozens of pirates were smoking cigarettes, opium, and marijuana as they stood watch over their boats being towed, and guarded the boarding ladders at the low stern. Another glow marked the bridge high atop the superstructure.

Kincaid leaned into the hatch. On deck, she could see what Titus couldn't and she talked the captain alongside the moving bow of the yacht. Janson whirled a grappling hook muffled with rubber, caught a hold on his first throw, and quickly climbed the thirty feet of knotted line. Kincaid followed him up to the foredeck and coiled the line up after her. Janson double-clicked a two-way radio, signaling Titus. Titus closed the hatch, bore off three hundred feet, and paced the yacht.

The five-place Bell Ranger was in the same position where they had last seen it on the foredeck helipad. Janson wedged a block of C-4 explosive between the strut and fuselage. Kincaid passed him a detonator and a timer preset for ten minutes. Sweeping the route with their night goggles, they headed aft and up deck after deck toward the bridge. One deck below the bridge, they split up, paused on either side of the outside stairs, and counted down the minutes, waiting for the C-4 to detonate.

A
LLEGRA HEARD
the helicopter coming back. Across the bridge, Maxammed snapped awake. He threw off his blanket and jumped up from the deck, pulling his short-handled rifle into his hand and shouting, “Farole! Farole!” until he remembered that Farole had been killed that morning.

Others came running.

“Helicopter.”

“There!”

The Sikorsky was aiming bright landing lights straight down from the dark. Maxammed's phone rang.

“It is Home Boy again, hoping we can come to an accommodation, my brother. As vice president I can do so much for you. May I please come aboard so we can talk?”

“Come!” said Maxammed. “But only you. No fighters.”

“I'm all alone in my machine except for the pilots.”

What a lie, thought Maxammed. “Alone,” except for his militia attacking in more helicopters and boats.

“Land,” he said. “I'll meet you there.”

To his fighters he said, “Stay here. Watch her.”

Allegra went back to the aft window and watched the helicopter wobble down from the sky and land in a pool of light of its own making. The door opened, steps were lowered, and a big man stepped down, his red beard blowing in the rotor wash.

He waved as Maxammed hurried up, escorted by gun-toting pirates.

An explosion behind Allegra lit the sky red with a loud boom. She whirled to see the helicopter on the front of the ship swallowed in a pillar of fire.

M
AXAMMED KNEW INSTANTLY
it was a trick. He had intended to kill Home Boy, who was so foolish to come alone. Now he had even more reason.

“Good-bye, Vice President.”

His SAR bucked in his hand.

Home Boy Gutaale tumbled off the stairs with a look of such total astonishment on his face that Maxammed realized just as quickly that he was wrong. Home Boy had not blown up the helicopter. Home Boy had come to make a deal and he could not believe that Maxammed had shot him. Which meant that whoever had blown up the helicopter was trying to take his last hostage.

He ran for the bridge screaming for his fighters.

J
ANSON AND
K
INCAID
burst onto the bridge from opposite doors, Janson from the starboard wing, Kincaid the port, and held fire until each had a clear view of the other. It was a huge space, nearly a hundred feet long and as wide as the ship, and Allegra Helms was nowhere to be seen. They ducked low so as not to be silhouetted against the burning helicopter, and worked their way aft, firing their sound-suppressed weapons at gunmen who leaped in the firelight. They looked for Allegra behind the instrument consoles and the couches and chairs the pirates had hauled up from the cabins.

Suddenly Janson saw her wedged deep into a back corner, ducking from the lines of fire.
“Tsk!”

“I see her,” whispered Kincaid. “I'll get her.”

Maxammed vaulted through the broken windows at the back of the bridge. Before Kincaid could take a step, the pirate scooped Allegra Helms under one arm and pressed a cut-down SAR to her neck. He peered into the firelight and Janson could not tell whether Maxammed could actually see them, just sensed their presence, or had merely guessed that they would be there.

“Tsk!”
said Kincaid in Janson's earpiece.

“Tsk?”

“She has a gun,” Kincaid whispered. “God, I hope she'll use it. Here we go.” Kincaid jumped to her feet, deliberately silhouetting her body against the helicopter burning on the bow.

Maxammed saw her and whirled his SAR at her, firing instantly.

Kincaid hit the deck and rolled.

Janson aimed his bullpup. But despite Kincaid's brave, near-​s
uicidal
run, he could not see a shot that wouldn't kill Allegra.

The tiny pistol in Allegra's hand made a sound like popping firewood.

Maxammed stood up straight. He lifted one hand and tried to wipe the blood trickling down his forehead into his eyes. With his other the tall Somali wheeled the SAR toward Allegra.

For one millisecond, a tenth of a heartbeat, Janson saw a space sliver open between their heads. It was an impossible shot, but the best he would get. He fired once. The pirate and his hostage tumbled backward. Blood and bone flew from Maxammed's skull. The SAR clattered to the deck. And to Janson's immense relief, Allegra rolled away.

Kincaid covered the distance in a flash, took the gun, and got a firm grip on Allegra's arm. “Nice shot, hon. We're outta here.”

Janson keyed his two-way. Titus answered immediately. Janson said, “Starboard, midships. We'll be there in a sec.”

Janson slung Allegra over his shoulder. Kincaid led with her MTAR, clearing the way.

A
S
I
RINA
RACED
from the Somali coast, bound for the Seychelles, Jessica Kincaid took Allegra Helms to a gigantic bathroom decorated with crystal chandeliers and platinum water taps. “Figured you would really want a bath, and I found a bunch of clothes that might fit you.”

“Thank you,” Allegra said, and Kincaid could not tell for the life of her whether she was relatively all right or on the edge of cracking up.

“Just so you know, when you're in the bath and later when you're sleeping, Janson and I will be on the other side of that door and we will shoot anyone who would hurt you. In other words, you're safe.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
as they sunned by one of the swimming pools, Janson was amazed how psychically unscathed Allegra Helms seemed to be. Kincaid concurred. “Tough lady.”

But only moments later, Allegra's eyes filled and she began to cry, apologizing the whole while and protesting, “I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm just so relieved.”

Kincaid tried to comfort her. She looked helplessly at Janson. Janson put an arm around Allegra and pointed at Billy Titus, who had just come down from the bridge. Kincaid took Captain Billy aside.

“Why don't you take over, handsome? I'll bet you're better at this than we are.”

“I can cover until we get her to her husband.”

“She's a widow.”

“I didn't realize that.”

“She doesn't know it yet. We can't figure out how to break the news to her.”

“Am
I
supposed to tell her?”

“You told me you liked her. Right? Put your arm around her and hang on tight.”

Kincaid grinned at Janson, who was watching, and handed Billy Titus Allegra's little Titan pistol, which she had cleaned. “Hang on to this, too, in case you meet her folks.”