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  Bloody Piracy!

  The French patrol copters tried hailing the Danish cargo carrier Dolphin, but to no avail.

  When the helicopter reached the Dolphin, it found the vessel still afloat but obviously not under control. Three armed crewmen rappelled down to the ship. One of them lost his footing and fell. Pulling himself to his feet he realized to his horror that the slick substance covering the deck was blood. Walking more carefully now, he and the other French sailors searched high and low but could find no sign of the ship’s crew.

  The cargo of cheap furniture and electronics was intact. There was a large empty space in the hold, as if something had been taken. Also, the ship’s bridge had been stripped of its GPS system, its satellite phones, its fax machine and its weather computer.

  After the men finished their fruitless, dispiriting search they returned to the helicopter and flew back to their ship in dazed silence. The French had been doing anti-pirate duty in these waters for more than a year, and while they’d seen their share of incidents, those incidents were always just hijacking attempts—not willful killings or the intentional sinking of ships.

  In just one night, the pirate problem in the Gulf of Aden had become a lot more dangerous.

  • FORGE BOOKS BY MACK MALONEY •

  The Pirate Hunters

  Operation Caribe (Pirate Hunters 2) coming in 2011

  For a free Pirate Hunters patch,

  visit www.mackmaloney.com.

  The Pirate Hunters

  Mack Maloney

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  New York

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE PIRATE HUNTERS

  Copyright © 2010 by Mack Maloney

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by James Frenkel

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-6521-7

  First Edition: May 2010

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For brave soldiers everywhere

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Jim Frenkel, Dominick Abel, Peter Calandra, Sgt. David Graves, Captain Randy Lynch, Walt Boyne, Phil Motoike, J. L. Brown, Tom Howley, Joe Kelleher, Rod Webber, Doug Bolick, Larry Stone, Sgt. Luke Hartmetz, Brian Malone, “Snake” Jackson, Dmitry and Oleg Gurtovoy, Clancy Miller, Jim Cook, John Daniels, Bill Kellan, Jack Shane, Buzz Summers, Gil Gillis, James Beam, Sgt. Tony Pluger, Gene Smith, Chip Bruynell, Mark Conley, Bob Messia, Seth Lerner, Ed Chapman, George Ebersole, Ron Elkin, Steve Minar, Richard Kennedy, Sr., Robert Buonfiglio, and especially, Doug Newman. Very special thanks to my wife, Doreen.

  • PART ONE •

  Team Whiskey

  1

  Tora Bora

  December 16, 2001

  0700 hours

  THREE SMALL FLAGS flew above Team Whiskey’s base camp.

  One bore the insignia of the New York City Police Department; another, the Fire Department of New York. The third was the American flag. They fluttered in the stiff breeze blowing down from the nearby mountains, their makeshift flagpoles bending but not breaking in the cold Afghani wind.

  Huddled inside a tent nearby was Delta Force Unit 606, code-named Team Whiskey. They were wearing oxygen masks and struggling to keep warm.

  Their tiny camp was situated about 500 feet up the side of Hill 3434A. In the valley below, three T-55 tanks belonging to the Eastern Alliance were lazily firing at al Qaeda positions on the opposite side of the next mountain over. A half-mile to the north, another squad of Delta operators, Team India, was climbing Hill 3438 in a convoy of lime-green Toyota pickups. Two larger trucks carrying more Eastern Alliance fighters trailed behind.

  High above them all, a B-52 Stratofortress circled endlessly, leaving doughnut-ring contrails across the blue winter sky.

  Team Whiskey, one of the most experienced Delta Force units in the Afghanistan theater, was part of the final push in the two-week battle to destroy the nearby al Qaeda stronghold at Tora Bora.

  Yet they remained in place, crowded together in their Black Diamond mountain tent, sucking in oxygen and waiting.

  THEY WERE TYPICAL Delta, tough guys with comic-book names—Twitch, Batman, Crash, Gunner and Snake. They were a tight-knit group, closer than brothers and unrelenting in their dedication to team and country. They’d fought together in Croatia and Kosovo, and in the rout of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan a month earlier. They’d made a dozen forays into Tora Bora in the past two weeks, performing behind-the-lines interdiction raids and guiding in air-support missions.

  But today, the fifteenth day of the battle, they were sitting tight, waiting for a local contact code-named “Real Deal.” His nickname was a little dubious, because like most of the Eastern Alliance fighters, he was a liar, a thief, and had close relatives fighting for the enemy on the other side of the mountain.

  Yet he claimed to have a piece of information so explosive that it would not only win the battle of Tora Bora, but could turn the whole world upside down.

  REAL DEAL ARRIVED at the base camp at 0710 hours. He was of indeterminate age, skinny and perpetually dirty. He squeezed into the tent, taking a seat among the uneasy Delta operators. He reeked of hashish.

  He was dressed as they were—or more accurately, they were dressed like him. Each team member wore a mix of Afghani clothing and American-made North Face gear. They didn’t look much different from Real Deal, either. They were all bearded and unkempt, with long hair and faces darkened either by heritage or bronzing cream. This was Whiskey’s way of fitting in.

  In working with Real Deal, the team was going against the conventional wisdom of how to win at Tora Bora. The Eastern Alliance mujahedeen, their ranks so highly touted after beating the Russians back in the 1980s, were actually more looters than soldiers. They fought ineffectively during the day and went home before nightfall, giving back any territory they’d won to the hundreds of al Qaeda fighters trapped inside the notorious ten-square-mile valley, allowing the terrorists to fight on.

  That was the dirty little secret of Tora Bora. Instead of committing conventional forces to the battle, the politicians in Washington had decided to outsource the job to the local Afghani warlords, to avoid taking too many American casualties. But what had worked with the Northern Alliance in sweeping the Taliban from most of Afghanistan a month before was not working here with the Eastern Alliance. The problem was, from the White House on down, everyone was convinced Osama bin Laden was going to fight to the death at Tora Bora, cementing his status as a martyr. So the strategy was to use B-52s to bomb the
crap out of him and then send in the Eastern Alliance and the Delta operators to look for his body. The battle plan was no more complicated than that.

  But Team Whiskey thought otherwise. They believed bin Laden was a coward and would run the first chance he got. So they bought information, not from the warlords and their fighters, but from local civilians—the shopkeepers, taxi drivers, moneychangers and shepherds. People who’d done business with the al Qaeda fighters before the Americans arrived and, due to the porous frontlines, were doing business with some of them still.

  This had led Whiskey to Real Deal. He drove a taxi; his father ran a spice shop. One of his uncles was a shepherd and another uncle a moneychanger, and they all lived in villages within five miles of Tora Bora. No one had an ear to the ground as much as these guys did.

  For $500, Real Deal was going to lead Team Whiskey to a place they’d dubbed Looking Glass. Supposedly it was a secret tunnel that led to a blind canyon that bin Laden and his entourage would use this very morning to make their escape. Looking Glass was located on the side of Hill 3014, an unlikely place as it was far south of the current fighting. But it also made sense. While everyone was concentrating on battles to the north, the al Qaeda leadership would go out the back door to the south.

  In other words, with Real Deal’s help, Team Whiskey was going to do what all the Afghani fighters and other Delta teams could not: They were going to find Osama bin Laden and kill him.

  Before he got away.

  MAJOR PHILLIP “SNAKE” Nolan was Whiskey’s commanding officer. West Point, 82nd Airborne, Green Berets and now Delta, at just thirty-three years old, he’d done so many black ops, he’d lost count. Rugged and smart, with hard eyes and a jaw to match, he was nicknamed for his ability to fly below the radar, stay invisible, and get things done with a minimum of bullshit from above. Conversely, he was so photogenic that when he was a junior officer, the Army had used his image on its recruitment posters, something his team never let him forget. But in many ways, the poster-boy image fit.

  Nolan took off his oxygen mask now and checked the time. It was 0715. He pulled out a small transistor radio.

  According to Real Deal, the signal that bin Laden’s escape was imminent would come in code during his daily radio broadcast to his fighters.

  The radio crackled to life. A voice came on, one they all knew by now. Strangely calm. Clear. Articulate. It was the Sheik himself.

  “Here we go,” Nolan said. “Showtime. . . .”

  “Batman” Bob Graves was Whiskey’s air combat controller. He was a captain in the Air Force, a fighter pilot, well-trained, well-educated, a no-nonsense guy with the slicked-back look of a card shark. A bat had bitten him during basic training, earning him a nickname that would stick forever. Graves’s job within the team was to call in air strikes. He also spoke Pashto and Dari, the languages of the region, as well as Arabic. So when the broadcast started, he translated.

  “Things are not well, my friends . . .” the voice began. “Our world might have been different if our Muslim brothers in other countries had helped us in our time of need, but our prayers have not been answered.”

  “That’s it,” Real Deal said excitedly, tapping his chest in triumph. “ ‘Our prayers have not been answered.’ That is the code phrase. He is escaping today.”

  Nolan eyed the other team members. They all questioned Real Deal’s trustworthiness. His price had gone up twice since they’d first met him, and he seemed stoned pretty much all the time. But at this point, he was the only game in town.

  Nolan flipped open his satellite phone and called their division commanding officer up at Bagram Air Base. He told the DCO what they’d just heard. The DCO already knew what Whiskey was planning. All they needed now was his clearance to move out.

  The superior officer responded in such a booming voice, everyone in the tent could hear him. “I don’t know how you talked me into this, but you’ve got exactly two hours. What you’re doing is so against the grain, I’ve bypassed everyone right on up to CENTCOM itself—and if it doesn’t work out I’m disavowing any knowledge of it, which means you’ll all be looking for new jobs.”

  “What about air support?” Nolan asked him.

  “Just as long as they don’t declare this party over today, there’ll be a Buff in your general area at all times. Tell your air controller his code sign will be Nail 22.”

  Nolan asked, “Will the blocking force be in place when we need them?” This was the most important question.

  “They’re already loaded onto TF-160’s Chinooks,” was the reply. “They should be in place in time.”

  “Will there be enough of them?” Nolan pressed. But the DCO was running out of patience.

  “You said you needed two companies of Marines and that’s what you’re getting,” came the terse reply. “I don’t know how big this pass is that you want them to seal, but they’re on the way. Now get going while I still have my commission—and remember, for this one, you’re on your own. So don’t let the other teams see you.”

  Click.

  End of phone call.

  TORA BORA WAS one of the toughest battlefields Delta Force had ever faced. Nestled in the towering White Mountains close to the Pakistan border, it was a dizzying complex of tunnels and caves, some natural, some built during the war against the Soviets and now taken over by al Qaeda. Thick with weapons bunkers, antiaircraft positions and ammo dumps, it was not far from parts of Pakistan where bin Laden was considered a hero. With peaks as high as 14,000 feet and lots of fir trees, dry creeks and blind canyons, it also had an abundance of places to hide.

  It snowed in Tora Bora every day, usually in the morning. Fortunately these mini-storms rarely lasted more than fifteen minutes, because it was when the sky was clear that the alliance forces felt most secure on the ground. That’s when the doughnut rings could be seen overhead, contrails of big B-52 bombers—the Buffs—constantly circling, their bomb bays full of JDAMs, laser-guided weapons that could be dropped on the head of a dime.

  But whenever the contrails weren’t there, the al Qaeda fighters came out of their holes and started firing huge 122mm Chinese mortars. And if there was one thing bin Laden’s fighters were good at, it was firing mortars.

  They could put a mortar round down your shorts from just about anywhere.

  BOARDING THEIR PAIR of Toyota trucks, Whiskey drove at top speed up the steep face of Hill 3434A.

  Kenny “Twitch” Kapula, the team’s demolition man, was behind the wheel of the first truck. Small and muscular, he was a kanaka, a native Hawaiian. His dark skin and Polynesian features allowed him to blend-in in many parts of the world, a great asset for the team. It made him perfect for extended undercover missions, too, of which he’d done many. A man of few words, he’d been an elementary school teacher before joining the military, which was funny because when it came to combat, he was absolutely cold and ruthless. He had a distinctive head twitch that grew worse the angrier he got, thus his nickname. He also routinely fired off twice as much ammunition as anyone else in the squad during combat. No one could imagine him molding young minds.

  Driving the second Toyota was Huey “Gunner” Lapook, Whiskey’s weapons expert. A product of the Louisiana bayous, at 6’3”, 260, Gunner took up a lot of space. He carried the team’s Striker Street Sweeper, a massive shotgun that fired like an automatic weapon. He was also the squad’s door-kicker. During forced entries, Gunner always went in first.

  It was a tough climb up 3434A and the air grew thin rapidly, which is why the team had been taking in oxygen before they left. They carried no rucksacks, no food, no Kevlar helmets, body armor or heavy clothing. They had to move fast and travel light. Weapons, ammo, their sat phones and their three lucky flags. Just about everything else stayed behind.

  They had to reach the opposite end of Tora Bora quickly, but the higher they drove, the more enemy positions they could see arrayed across the nearby mountains. Dozens of gun emplacements, dugouts and bunkers, some with smoke com
ing out of them, others displaying the telltale flash of weapons fire. In the thinning air, the noise was deafening. So far, at least, no one was shooting in their direction.

  It took thirty minutes, but they finally reached the pass between Hill 3434A and 3433. Real Deal directed them across a ridgeline that served as a bridge all the way over to Hill 3014. It was in a small valley next to this mountain that he claimed Looking Glass could be found.

  They reached a frozen stream that ran down the side of Hill 3013, the next mountain over. Here they found four burned-out al Qaeda T-62 tanks, each victim of a direct hit from a JDAM earlier in the fighting. There was little left of them or their crews; still, it was amazing that bin Laden’s fighters had somehow gotten the four tanks up to such a high elevation.

  Nolan ordered the trucks to stop and called out: “Crash, front and center. . . .”

  Jack “Crash” Stacks was the team’s SEAL sniper. A surfer dude from LA, he was also known as “Nun Killer,” because shortly before making Delta, he’d been involved in a car accident with a minivan full of nuns. Crash was an outstanding marksman. He rated at an astounding 6,800 meters on the Barrett M107 sniper rifle, meaning he could shoot out someone’s eyeball from almost four miles away. He was also the team’s medic.

  Crash was quickly beside Nolan. The team CO pointed to the area below and said, “Take a look.”

  Crash adjusted the high-powered scope on his weapon and scanned the terrain at the bottom of the hill. He saw lots of bomb craters, lots of ice, lots of trees blown apart, but no signs of life.

  “I doubt anything is breathing down there,” he told Nolan. “My guess is the battle passed this place by at least a week ago.”