Free The Delta Solution by Patrick Robinson Page B

which would mean a six-hour journey for a P-3C Orion with its 4,000-nautical-mile range. It would also mean refuelling, which the Brits would easily organize at Wilson Airport.

    Mark Bradfield was also on the line to Admiral Andy Carlow at SPECWARCOM in Coronado, and the SEAL boss almost visibly groaned when he heard that a large former US Navy vessel had been captured by what he described as “a small force of Somali tribesmen with fucking blowpipes.”
    “How the hell did it happen?” he asked Admiral Bradfield.
    “Mostly because our ship is a merchantman now and is not armed in any way,” he replied.
    “Valuable cargo?”
    “’Bout $100 million worth.”
    “Is that all? What was it?”
    “Aid. A USAID consignment. Food, medicine, shelters, and a few workers.”
    “Bound for? . . .”
    “Somalia.”
    “Jesus Christ! You mean they hijacked their own stuff?”
    “’Fraid it’s not like that in their country. Everybody’s fighting everybody else. The pirates are independent of their own government, independent of their own nation. They just act on their own. That goddamned Somalia’s completely lawless. Even when we get aid through to them, it just gets stolen by tribal warlords. Hardly anything gets through to where it’s supposed to go.”
    “Then what the hell are we doing sending it there?” snapped Admiral Carlow. “If they don’t steal it on land, they steal it on the high seas. That’s what you’re telling me.”
    Admiral Bradfield had rarely heard the SEAL C-in-C quite so irritated. “Steady, Andy,” he said. “I didn’t send it personally.”
    “No, I know. It just really pisses me off. Not that the government is out spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on hopeless causes. But that we’re not fucking ready. We’re totally unprepared for this kind of attack. A bunch of goddamned savages in a friggin’ canoe somehow seizes a huge modern American freighter while it’s making 15 knots through the water out in the middle of the ocean.”
    “Just as you say, Andy, we simply weren’t ready.”
    “And think how long it would take us to prepare a rescue operation. Just getting my SEALs in there, way offshore, attacking from the surface
or from the air, without any specialist training. I mean right here we’re in the fucking Spanish Main, and the truth is we’re just not ready for sixteenth-century piracy.”
    “Look, on this occasion at least, it’s a great deal easier and cheaper for us to pay the ransom and get the ship and crew back . . .”
    “Don’t tell me the White House has agreed to negotiate with pirates?” Admiral Carlow interrupted, “That’s a real first.”
    “No, tell you the truth, we’ve had to be a bit light-footed,” said Mark Bradfield. “And we’re not planning to ask any of our commanders to risk the lives of their men. But how do you feel about sending in SEALs on operations like this?”
    “Badly. Because people would get killed trying to get aboard from the ocean, unless we came in behind heavy rocket attack, and that would almost certainly kill members of the ship’s crew and damage the ship itself.”
    “And that, Andy, puts us right back to square one. Except for that one time when your guys did get on board the captured ship, the Maersk Alabama , then shot the pirates to free up the captain in the lifeboat.”
    “I know, Mark. But that was a bit of a landmark. The guys we were after were not on the main ship. And the ship was unguarded. It was all a bit unusual. And everything was in our favor so long as my guys remembered how to shoot straight.”
    “Well, I called just to keep you in the loop. But we all have to think about this—because no one is more aware than I am that the payment of this ransom shows a serious weakness on our part. Tonight those oceangoing bandits understand that the US will pay up if our backs are to the wall. Yesterday they had no reason to believe that could ever happen . . .”
    “I know, Mark. But