Two Navy SEAL helicopters skimmed the waves, approaching the freighter from its stern. The lead helo broke right and hovered just off the ship’s starboard side, its door gun aimed at the bridge. The other helo hovered above the stern, six SEALs fast-roped to the deck. The choppers switched places and another six SEALs hit the deck. Within seconds they were inside the ship.
“Down! Get down! On your knees!” the SEALs shouted as they stalked the decks, catching crewmembers by surprise. “Hands where I can see them.”
Men kneeled, hands up. A crewman did not move fast enough and the SEAL slammed his rifle butt into his head, knocking him unconscious. The first SEAL stepped over him as a second flex-cuffed his wrist to a pipe.
“The rest of you, move to the wardroom. NOW!”
The crewmembers shuffled down the passageway, a SEAL at their backs. The remainder of the team continued, Mk 18 carbines’ muzzles pointing the way.
Within minutes of landing, they came to the ship’s bridge.
“Locked hatch. Shotgun!”
A SEAL came forward, carrying a Mossberg 500 shotgun.
“Fire in the hole!” The shotgun blew out the door’s lock and the SEALs flooded onto the bridge.
“Get down! Down now!” the SEALs shouted, but the crew shouted back in a foreign language.
The SEALs raised their carbines. “On your knees! Face on the floor!” But the crew refused.
One man reached behind a console, and a SEAL put a round through his right leg. The man fell. The crew attacked. One seized a fire extinguisher and smashed it into the back of a SEAL’s helmeted head, sending the SEAL to the floor. Another pulled a knife and lunged at the closest SEAL, but the SEAL caught the flash of steel in his side vision, pivoted sideways, and swatted the knife out of the assailant’s hand. Simultaneously, he kicked the man in the groin, lifting him off his feet. In seconds, the bridge crew was writhing on the deck, clasping body parts as the SEALs stood over them and took control of the ship.
“Bridge secure,” the SEAL leader panted through his headset, then turned to the bridge crew. “Where’s the captain?”
The crew remained silent.
“Where’s the captain!” the SEAL shouted, grabbing the most frightened crewmember by the shirt and throwing him against an instrument console. The man blubbered and pointed to an old man slumped against the wall. He wore nothing to distinguish himself as the captain: no uniform, skipper’s hat, not even binoculars around his neck. He could have been the ship’s steward.
The SEAL approached him. “Are you the captain?”
The old man looked away, ignoring him.
“Why did you not answer our radio hails?”
Silence.
“What was your last port of call? What is your destination?”
The old man ignored him.
“Where is the ship’s manifest?”
The old man finally looked at the SEAL and shrugged, as if he did not speak English. English is the lingua franca of the international merchant marine.
“Bunch of fucking pirates,” the SEAL leader said, flex-cuffing the old man to the bridge.
“Tear this place apart,” the leader commanded. “Get me some intel.” The SEALs began ripping the bridge apart.
“Engine room secure,” the SEAL radio squawked. “We finished our search. Negative on the hold. No nuclear contraband here. No isotope readings.”
“What’s in the hold?” the team leader asked.
“Cigarettes and sheep pelts. Tons of them. Smells like road kill.”
“Hidden compartments?”
“Negative. We tapped the bulkheads. Nothing. The ship is clean. Repeat, the Ranga is not our ship.”
Another false lead, the SEAL leader thought, as he leaned against the freighter’s radar console and took off his helmet, exhausted. This was the fifth ship they had searched in two days, and their fifth miss. Our mystery freighter is still out there, he thought. Somewhere.
“Copy all,” the SEAL team leader said. “Abort mission. Team Alpha, prepare for evac.” He left the captain flex-cuffed to the bridge.
“Eureka!” Lewis shouted. “I know where our ship is!”
The conference room fell silent, as did the people watching via secure satellite feed. Seconds ago, everyone was arguing about possible trajectories of the mystery freighter. Time was running short.
“I know where our ship is,” she repeated.
“What do you mean, you know where our ship is?” Colonel Brooks said, contempt in his voice. From his point of view, she was the least valuable person in the room. In his twenty-five years of service, he didn’t have much use for inexperience, females, or contractors. She was all three.
“Do tell,” a voice broke in from one of the satellite conference rooms. It was the admiral coordinating the search.
“I believe our ship changed its name to the Eleutheria. Last estimated position was here.” She took the laser pointer from Brooks’s hand and highlighted a patch of sea south of Oman. “By this time, they could be here.” The laser dot circled a wider swath of ocean off Yemen, big but searchable.
“How do you know this?” the colonel barked.
“I read the stars.”
The colonel was about to say something, when the admiral interrupted. “We can’t afford to let any leads go. Ms. . . .”
“Lewis. Just call me Lewis.”
“Lewis, we’ve had two hundred of our best analysts puzzling over this since yesterday and getting nowhere. What makes you so confident?”
She explained how she found the disgruntled sailor’s Twitter account, and his entries about the Eleutheria, Gwadar, the suspicious cargo, and the U.S. Navy incident, which she confirmed in the logs. What convinced her was the photograph, and how the constellations, date, time, and location were all consistent with their mystery freighter.
“Good job,” the admiral said. “Colonel Brooks, you got a live one there.” She gave a slight smirk to Brooks, knowing it would boil him. It did.
“Ops, what assets do we have in that vicinity?”
“Uh,” came a voice from another satellite conference room, “not much, sir. We deployed everything farther north by northeast. We can FRAGO them, but they won’t make it in time.”
“Who else is out there?”
“CTF-151,” another voice said. Combined Task Force 151 was a multinational naval task force with the mission to hunt down pirates off Somalia, just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. “They’re within range, and have enough ships to cover the area.”
The room fell silent as the admiral considered it. Retasking a CTF was no easy thing. It was a diplomatic challenge as much as a military one, and would require the White House, State Department, and others. Not only would it be a bureaucratic mess, but it increased chances of a media leak, especially if some of the countries in the multinational force didn’t quite share America’s priorities.
Gawd, the admiral thought. It would be the biggest news story of the year. Yet to not engage CTF-151 would risk the nukes falling into the hands of terrorists. He could never allow that to happen on his watch.
“Request a FRAGO mission for CTF-151 immediately, and do not wait for approval from higher. Send it directly to them, with the coordinates of the search box. Tell them it’s terrorists related, but say nothing about the nuclear weapons.”
“Yes sir,” said Brooks.
“And get me a line to the White House. I expect there will be questions.”