The weak are attacked by the strong and the weak alike: the former exploiting their advantage, and the latter seizing their best chance. Had Athena sailed in a squadron or larger group, or had she been the size of a destroyer or even a frigate, she probably would have been undisturbed in the Canal and been able to round the Horn of Africa and steam south without incident. But she was small and she was alone.
In the middle of the evening watch, tranquility reigned. At about 2200, Athena was crossing a calm sea with only the slightest swell, steadily putting distance between herself and Somalia, not because she shied from any coast but because her exactly due south course meant that in relative terms Africa pulled to the west. The moon was about to rise, but now the darkness was compromised only by starlight. Port, starboard, and stern lookouts and the bridge watch had night-vision binoculars. For 360-degrees ’round they saw nothing. Not only had the war suppressed maritime traffic, but they were outside the customary sea-lanes.
The one-third of the crew standing Condition III watch felt a pleasant equilibrium.
Physical exercises had been over long enough for everyone to have recovered, they were just past the stimulative jag of the evening meal, and not yet made tired by the hour. The only challenge was that everything seemed to be in perfect order, the sea a uniform block of coal-black yet to be painted by moonlight.
Not surprisingly, the sailors turned inward. Between scannings of the empty sea, the lookouts retreated to their thoughts and desires, and the bridge watch were occupied by the many available distractions. The steady monitoring of instruments is not merely commendable, it is entertaining. Hours pass quickly when monitoring even the smallest changes in depth soundings, course, speed, engine parameters, electrical usage, and radar and GPS plots. At the edge of what had recently been a heavily pirated area, despite EMCON the radar was switched on every ten minutes in short pulses that swept the horizon and then ceased. Awareness of the changing seconds in latitude and longitude (although in regard to longitude Athena was steady as she goes), occasional variations in the sea and air temperature, and the bells every half hour, braid the many strands of time into a river that provides the same satisfaction and pleasure of a real river as it flows.
Thus every officer and rating on Athena’s bridge other than the helmsman (who served as lee helmsman as well) moved in slow procession from instrument to instrument. Some were more closely tied to their stations, and the most mobile was the OOD, the one responsible for everything, who on this watch was Movius, the XO. He took evening watch as much as he could, because he enjoyed it.
A few minutes after five bells—which, as they struck, everyone counted on his fingers so as not to allow confusion in the reading of gauges and displays—the radar operator called out, “Officer of the Deck,” who, a few feet away, turned to him, “radar, surface contact, bearing one eight zero relative. Thirty thousand yards, target angle zero, zero, zero, three vessels line abreast and closing slowly.”
As Movius moved to the radar console, he said, “Size of return?”
“Very small, sir. Boats.”
“Keep the radar up.”
“Aye, sir.”
The radar screen and all its scales and numbers were reflected in Movius’s eyes. “I would say the distance between them,” he estimated, “is about five hundred yards.”
“I concur.”
“Their speed?”
“Thirty-five knots more or less, sir.”
Movius, who knew Athena’s speed, checked it anyway. Thirty knots. He summoned the captain.
In less than a minute, Rensselaer was on the bridge, carrying helmet, body armor, and life jacket, all of which he dumped in a corner. The captain went right to the radar, saying, “I have the con.”
“The captain has the con.”
“When did you hook on to the contact?”
The radar operator looked at the screen. He had marked the contact at first sight. “Less than two minutes ago, sir.”
“Have they broken formation or changed course even slightly during that time?”
“No.”
Rensselaer was silent for a moment. “We can outrun them, of course, but there’s no need. XO, sound general quarters.”
“Aye sir, general quarters.” Movius seized the 1MC mic, activated the klaxon, and said, calmly, “General quarters. All hands man battle stations, assume Condition Zebra. I say again, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Assume Condition Zebra.” The klaxon continued.
The sailors who were sleeping rolled out of their racks with displeasure, some drowsy enough so that they tied their shoes poorly and as they rushed to their stations they heard the clicking of laces feebly lashing the deck. Everyone thought that, although it seemed too early, Athena might have found Sahand. This was the cause of anxiety, as they knew Sahand could easily destroy them. Now, unlike as in the Canal, the sudden call to general quarters was met with much graver determination. Within another two minutes, all battle stations were manned, compartments closed as required, and the ship almost ready for combat as gunners removed tarpaulins and fed ammunition into the breeches of their guns, and weapons officers woke up their controllers and links. It was still pitch-dark, although if one looked where the moon was about to rise one might have seen the slightest hint of an orange line so faint that no one might yet vouch for it.
Staring at the screen as if it were a revelation, the radar operator announced, “Captain, radar. Surface contact. Bearing one, eight, zero, range eleven thousand five hundred yards, speed forty knots, closing.”
Rensselaer commanded, “Extinguish all navigation lights; raise the telescopic mast.” The sound of the motor raising the mast was heard over that of the engines, the wind, and the sea cleaving off the bows.
“Shall I go to infrared, sir?” Rensselaer was asked by the rating who had executed his last command.
“Affirmative.”
“Infrared.” The rating worked a joystick to turn the elevated camera 180 degrees, and then he increased magnification.
Mid-screen, the dividing line between ocean and sky served to separate shades of black, with the upper half lighter. About an eighth of the way below the line, three white smudges, maintaining separation, were bouncing slightly up and down. They were delineated more sharply on their sides than on their tops, which seemed indistinct, fuzzy. “What you see on top is probably masts, people, or some sort of weapons mounts,” Rensselaer said. “Let’s wait awhile to determine if they were following our lights.”
Athena then went through weapons checks. Every station and every weapon except the Harpoons was queried and checked. The .50-caliber gunners reported their ammunition loads. The radar operator called out the contact’s information every thousand yards less between the Athena and her pursuers. At five thousand yards separation, Rensselaer said to the XO, as well as to everyone within earshot, “They’re following our wake. The bioluminescence we stir up must extend back at least fifty miles. Let’s check that, and make sure it’s not just a coincidence. Helmsman, left standard rudder, steady on course one, four, zero.”
“Left standard rudder, steady on course one, four, zero, aye sir.” Athena turned toward the southeast.
“Increase your rudder to left full, steady on course one, two, five.”
“Increase my rudder to left full, steady on course, aye sir. My rudder is left full, coming to course one, four, zero.”
At just the right moment, Rensselaer ordered, “Rudder amidships.”
“Rudder amidships, aye sir.”
Athena came slowly, smartly to course one four zero, and held. Without maneuver-board calculation, she could only have done so if the order had been given at precisely the right moment, the result of many years’ experience. To the younger members of the crew, it was a mystery that without calculation the course had held absent adjustment.
Rensselaer then ordered Athena’s speed increased to forty-five knots. When the pursuers reached the spot where Athena had turned southeast, they turned as well, and their change of course made clear that they were following the wake.
“Quartermaster,” Rensselaer ordered Buck, “plot a course on the maneuvering board so that we know when to turn due west, out of visual to our pursuers, and proceed to a distance so that we can intersect our present course two thousand yards behind them.”
Buck summarized the command and went to the maneuvering board. Rensselaer told the radar operator to do the same with ARPA, so that the one might be compared to the other. While this was occurring, he got on the 1MC. “This is the captain. All hands. Increased speed may cause you to think we’re running. We’re not. We’re maneuvering. Have your sound talkers ready.”
The sound talkers, a voice-powered telephone system, would not likely be needed, but the suggestion that Athena’s power might be knocked out told the crew that, in fact, they were not running.
The maneuvering board and ARPA solutions were closely identical. Rensselaer, Movius, and Buck checked them over and agreed upon their accuracy. From that point forward, Athena’s speeds and courses were predetermined. She soon made a high-speed turn due west to two seven zero, heeling over—unlike a motorboat—to port. There she changed speeds and made another fast turn, this time to the northeast, four zero, again heeling to port. Neither turn was quite fast enough for the stern to skate. Proceeding at the specified rate, she crossed one four zero perpendicularly and swung to it, now finding herself, as the moon rose, two thousand yards behind the three contacts that were still following the remnant glow of her wake.
The three craft gave no sign that they knew the ship they followed was now following them. “Close to a thousand yards,” Rensselaer ordered. When they had, he said, “Let’s take a look.” He turned around the camera on the telescopic mast so that it faced forward, and as he peered at the screen others on the bridge looked ahead with regular optics. The moon was now bright enough so that all ships were faintly illuminated.
“They’re bouncing up and down a lot, so details seem to disappear, but do you see what I think I see?” Rensselaer asked Movius.
“Something mounted on each bow.”
“Looks like a gun. Kind of thick. Reminds me of a harpoon gun. Thick and stubby. But it’s not. I think I know what it is.”
“What?”
“A Malyutka—what we call a Sagger—wire-guided, anti-tank missile. The Middle East is saturated with them, and there’s no steel on Athena they can’t go right through. Given the ordnance we have on deck and below, that’s a problem if these guys are hostiles—although I don’t see why Somali pirates would want to have such heavy weapons, or, for that matter, tangle with us. But we have to assume that they do.”
He addressed the gunners’ mates and weapons officers. “Lock onto the center boat with the MK-46 and be prepared for them to break formation. Lock one Griffin onto the boat on the port side. Be ready with the MK-46 to slew to the one on the starboard side and be prepared for them to scatter and come about.”
“Center and then to starboard, aye sir.”
“Griffin to port, aye sir.”
“Helmsman, be ready to execute my commands even if they seem counterintuitive.”
“Meaning, sir?”
“Meaning if they don’t seem to make sense.”
“Aye sir.”
The mood on the bridge was tense but excitedly eager. “Mr. Velez, put me on every hailing frequency known to man.”
Rensselaer looked ahead as he spoke into the microphone. “This is the United States ship Athena. Attention three small vessels on course one, four, zero southeast, three degrees, ten minutes, fifty-six seconds north, forty-nine degrees, fifty-four minutes, twenty-seven seconds east. Over.”
No answer. Nothing. The boats continued as before. Rensselaer repeated his message. Then a crackle, and the sound of high-pitched outboards. A panicked voice came in over the sounds, shouting, “Min ayna!”
“What the hell does that mean?” Movius asked.
“It means ‘From where,’” Rensselaer answered.
“You know Arabic?”
“Language elective in graduate school. Be ready.” He clicked on again. “We are behind you, sir.” Saying this gave everyone on Athena’s bridge immense delight. The gunner and the missile officers were locked on target. Nothing happened.
“If they’re pirates,” Movius said, “they’ll break off. They’re not going to try to fight a warship.”
“That’s true,” Rensselaer agreed, “and we can’t take them on without provocation, but stay ready.”
The bridge watch relaxed a bit, expecting to stand down. Suddenly the three boats broke formation, turned, and came at high speed directly at Athena.
“Why are they doing that?” Movius asked no one in particular.
“Nine hundred yards . . . eight hundred . . . seven hundred,” came the count, slowly and steadily. All weapons were now easily in range, but no one had fired. A bright flash came from the center craft. Several voices at once yelled, “Rocket! Dead ahead, bearing zero zero zero!”
“Fire at will,” Rensselaer replied, calmly. Helmsman, steady as she goes.”
“Aye sir, steady as she goes.” Like a huge tracer bullet, the rocket came toward them extremely fast and passed on the starboard side one hundred yards clear.
“They probably were never told that you have to fire a thousand Saggers before you can be accurate,” Rensselaer announced.
The Griffin was away, lighting the decks and superstructure in yellow and white. It seemed to have a mind of its own. Before it found its target, the pounding of the 30mm MK-46 deafened everyone as it spat out twenty-five rounds in thirty seconds. The center craft turned to and lay dead in the water, but the other two kept on. Then the one to port launched its bow-mounted Sagger, and an instant later exploded in a huge fireball. Now lacking guidance, the Sagger jerked up and down, left and right, did a rapid backward roll, and plunged into the sea.
“Head straight for the craft to starboard,” Rensselaer commanded.
The helmsman winced. They could see very clearly the men aboard and the Sagger in the bow. “Gunner’s mate, engage.”
The gunner’s mate hadn’t time to reply as he fired. This time, the starboard craft exploded—not just because of the high-explosive munitions that had struck it, but probably because its large gas tank had been hit.
“Why didn’t they fire?” someone asked.
This was inappropriate at the moment, but Rensselaer answered anyway. “I don’t know. The Sagger is ineffective at ranges less than a thousand yards, but they were probably unaware of that. Who are they?”
They closed on the center craft, the one still afloat, closely enough so that now they heard bullets pinging against Athena’s hull and superstructure. Three or four hit near the bridge, making everyone duck.
“Left fifteen degrees rudder.”
Athena turned broadside to the center skiff, from which, not even one hundred yards to port, half a dozen men were firing AK-47s. “Fire at will,” Rensselaer announced over the 1MC. Six .50-caliber barrels and the port minigun opened up at the same time. In just a few seconds, thousands of rounds shredded the skiff and the men in it. One spread his arms and went overboard backward. Most were hit and simply disappeared below the gunwales, and when the boat was further smashed apart, the bullets made their bodies move as if in seizures. Then all was quiet.
“Hard right rudder. All engines stop.” Athena swung gracefully around. When he wanted to stop the swing, Rensselaer told the helmsman, “Meet her.” The helmsman complied.
If you look at a bright window from an otherwise dark room and then shut your eyes, the image can linger for a long time, fading like an impossibly fast sunset. Much like this, the painful sound of all the guns remained, ghostlike, after they had stopped, and rather than being just the absence of sound, the silence was heavy.
Off the starboard beam, wreckage bobbed in the moonlight—plastic jugs, wood, a body that hadn’t yet sunk. Forward and aft, small fires burned on the oil-calmed surface, weakening into flickers. The waves slowly pushed the wreckage of the center craft toward Athena until it was only a few feet away. The RHIB had launched to check for survivors even though everyone knew there weren’t any. Had there been one, they would have treated him kindly and tried to keep him alive. No one was comfortable about having killed. Quite the opposite. It weighed heavily upon them, especially because the fight had been so unbalanced in their favor.
After Holworthy was back and reported no survivors, Rensselaer was called to the starboard side amidships. The XO followed. A body, floating half submerged, was bumping gently against the side as if wanting to come aboard. “That’s no Somali,” Rensselaer said.
“How do you know?” Movius wondered.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a fat Somali. And that would explain the Arabic.”
“Shall we fish him out?”
“I suppose we’ll have to see if there’s anything on him. Don’t take him on board. If we do, we’ll have to have a burial. Just see if there’s anything in the way of intelligence.”
They didn’t take him on board, but raised him with boat hooks just enough out of the water so they could go through his pockets. Then they lowered him back into the sea, and perhaps because air had been expelled from his lungs when he was raised, he sank gently and disappeared.
His documents were in Arabic. Rensselaer held them and read slowly.
“I had no idea you knew Arabic,” Movius said.
“I can’t order in a restaurant or ask how old someone is, but I can translate diplomatic documents and political speeches. It’s been a while.
“This guy is Ahmad bin al Walid Mussalam. These are passes and ID from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant: that is, ISIS, Daish. His nom de guerre is Saif-al-Maghreb, Sword of the Maghreb. He’s probably Moroccan.” Rensselaer opened some folded papers. “Here it is. He’s a company commander in the Jaish Abnaa’ul Khalifa, the Army of . . . something . . . of the Caliphate. They weren’t pirates at all. We’ll have to dry this stuff out and send in a scan as soon as we’re in an EMCON break. What’s in the pouch?”
Movius opened a small but thick pouch, and removed a packet of wet, U.S. hundred-dollar bills.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. It’s five inches thick.”
“Okay. When it dries, you, I, and two others will count it, write an affidavit, seal it up, and I’ll put it in the safe. It’s a prize of war, so it belongs to the Treasury. I feel like John Paul Jones. My guess is that we’ve got anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand dollars. Maybe if we get back home in one piece we’ll get a bonus. I’ve never dealt with this kind of thing, although in Iraq, in ninety-one, a lot of guys did, and not by the book. You can bank on that. They did.”
*
They set out again, due south. Rather than following the coast of Africa south-southwest, they were aiming for a position equidistant from any of the port cities on the continent and on Madagascar and various other, smaller, islands, where the Sahand might take on fuel.
Not until morning were all the guns cleaned, the magazines reloaded, the logs and reports filled out, the money counted—$37,400—and regular watches resumed. Everyone had been up for a long time, and some would have to stay up until the afternoon watch. Rensselaer summoned the whole crew yet again. As they all were awake, it was an opportunity not to interrupt anyone’s sleep.
The sea was almost calm. A light breeze was enough to have a cooling effect in sunshine that had yet to intensify into the punishing glare of midday. “You did well,” he said. “You did very well. No heroics, which is good: no wounded, no dead . . . among us. But let me remind you that the two engagements we’ve fought so far have been with far inferior enemies. Yes, they could have killed any number of us, or possibly have sunk the ship, but that wasn’t likely.
“If we catch the Sahand it’ll be different. We’ll be the outmatched inferiors. It’s one thing to go into a fight with all the advantages on your side, another if the enemy has them. To put it bluntly, if we catch the Sahand and you want to live, we’ll have to do far better than our best.
“That said, I’d like to apologize to you for at times skipping the forms of address during last night’s battle. It was only because of the urgency.”
This left the crew rather stunned. Josephson, who hadn’t yet learned to be cautious, spoke up, his question amplified for all to hear. “Captain, sir, is that a joke, sir?”
They were stock-still as Rensselaer hesitated before he answered. “No, although I suppose it could have been. But, no. The form of commands is very important not only in making sure that they’re properly given and properly understood, but to emphasize day in and day out that the highest ranks are not dictators but subject to the same system and restraints that all must obey. In civilian life outside that system, we’re all equal, so it’s important as we work to know that we have a part almost as if in a play.
“If I’m the king in the play and you’re soldiers, you know damn well that in real life I’m not a king and you’re not my subjects. Necessity puts us on this stage and in the end only courage and efficiency gives us real rank. Offstage, we’re Americans, equals, which is why when onstage we must play our parts ceremoniously—so as to be able to effect the division and not forget that it doesn’t extend to life in general. That’s what I meant.”
Slightly east of and parallel to her previous course, Athena moved south as the forenoon watch began more quietly than usual while so many of the crew slept after the quick battle. Their dreams were likely not as peaceful as the sea, which was greenish blue, rolling with increasing swell, and sparkling in a rising wind.