The Aden Effect Read online

  NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

  ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

  Naval Institute Press

  291 Wood Road

  Annapolis, MD 21402

  © 2012 by Claude Berube

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Berube, Claude G.

  The Aden effect : a Connor Stark novel / Claude Berube.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-6125-1110-8 (e-book) 1. Aden, Gulf of—Fiction. 2. Piracy—Fiction. 3. International relations—Fiction. 4. Middle East—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.E7693A66 2012

  813´.6—dc23

  2012020771

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 129 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First printing

  Book design and composition: David Alcorn, Alcorn Publication Design

  FOR KATE

  We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany

  was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in

  Hungary was “illegal.”

  —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.,

  “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

  Contents

  PART I

  PROLOGUE TWENTY-TWO DAYS AGO

  DAY 1

  DAY 2

  DAY 3

  DAY 4

  DAY 5

  DAY 6

  DAY 7

  PART II

  DAY 8

  DAY 9

  DAY 10

  DAY 11

  DAY 12

  PART III

  DAY 12 (cont.)

  DAY 13

  DAY 14

  DAY 15

  DAY 16

  DAY 18

  DAY 19

  DAY 22

  EPILOGUE THREE WEEKS LATER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART I

  PROLOGUE

  TWENTY-TWO DAYS AGO

  Western Indian Ocean, 0215 (GMT)

  The first rocket-propelled grenade hit the supertanker’s bow twenty feet above the waterline. The second hit the superstructure a deck below the bridge. The crew staggered back from their positions, desperate to escape what they knew was coming next, knowing they had nowhere to go.

  The Katya P. was exactly where Faisal’s sources said it would be. His network had told him when the supertanker had transited the Strait of Hormuz, its next port of call, and its course. He had estimated the ship’s speed correctly and saw it over the horizon an hour before dawn during the dark blue hour when the sky and seas were still and the only sound on the water was the gentle hum of his own ship’s engines.

  He ordered the three skiffs manned by six of his Somali pirate-soldiers to be released. Armed with a mix of AK-47s and RPGs, the men were fueled by the kind of courage found only in the effects of the drug khat. They believed they were prepared. They knew they were going to win the day.

  Faisal checked the radar and smiled. The supertanker was on course two-zero-zero on its way to the Cape of Good Hope. This job had become far too easy.

  “What is it, Faisal?” his helmsman asked. “Why are you smiling?”

  “You were just a boy when we started. Do you remember? Only a few years ago the great ships were safe in the Gulf of Aden. Now they fear us.”

  “I remember. We were all young when you recruited us. You promised that we would be the most powerful force in these waters and that we would no longer go hungry. You have kept your word.”

  “Yes. Now it is the great shipping companies who go hungry seeking safer waters. But there are none. See our prey there? He avoids the Gulf of Aden and tries to sail around South Africa. He will fail like the others.”

  The skiffs were away.

  Faisal raised the handheld radio to his mouth. “Go faster and get alongside the ship,” he ordered.

  The skiffs closed quickly on the supertanker, the hum of their motors rising to a crescendo as they chased it down. Through his binoculars Faisal saw that it was riding low and slow, full of oil bound for the great powers. Great white waves rose at the bow as the laden supertanker labored through the ocean, aching to outrace the small boats. The familiar crackling of a ship-to-ship radio confirmed that the ship had seen the pirates and that it was indeed the prey he had waited for.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the oil carrier Katya P. Our position is 10º 20´ 3´´ N and 58º 5´ 10´´ E on course two-zero-zero at fourteen point five knots. We are being approached by pirates and require immediate assistance.”

  “Their captain is desperate,” Faisal said to his helmsman. “Listen to how quickly he says the words. Listen as he gulps air. He cries out, but no one hears except the ocean and us.”

  “We are safe for now, Captain?”

  Faisal was tired of explaining what should have been so apparent to his helmsman after all these years. But he recruited desperate and hungry men, not the most literate or intelligent; and what small intellectual powers they had were slowed by years of khat use. They were his fodder, and there were enough men in Somalia to fill his crew no matter how many losses he incurred.

  “There are two million square miles of our beloved waters and only one American warship,” he said impatiently. “We have time.”

  As the skiffs closed on the Katya P., Faisal heard loud sirens on the tanker and saw the crew scampering to take up antiboarding positions. This was fine. All he could see were water cannons used for repelling boarders. He raised the radio and ordered his skiffs to open fire again. A third RPG struck the Katya P., followed by the familiar staccato of the pirates’ AK-47s. He watched as the tanker’s crew fell one by one while racing toward the superstructure, which no longer afforded them protection. Pirates from two skiffs continued firing at the crew as the third pulled alongside the Katya P. Using an extension ladder and ropes the Somalis deftly made their way up and over the rails.

  Within a few minutes the pirates had secured the tanker. The captain and what remained of the crew stood on the deck, their hands behind their heads. Four tall Somalis, clad only in ragged shorts, held guns at the ready should any of them be so foolish as to try to escape.

  Faisal’s ship pulled alongside the tanker with the other two skiffs in its wake, their crews cheering their leader and their great victory; two of them fired blindly into the sky in celebration until Faisal ordered them to cease. He boarded and approached the prisoners. Most were much smaller than the Somalis. They were the workhorses of the oceans, these Filipinos, whose labor cost the great shipping companies little. One man among them was white and had the fat waist of a Westerner or a Russian.

  “You are the captain?” Faisal asked.

  “Yes. Captain Ilya Korchenko.” The overweight man’s belly quivered with each breath.

  “Your watch is very nice. Gold?”

  “Here, take it,” Korchenko said, removing his watch and offering it as a token of surrender before it could be taken from him.

  Faisal accepted the watch and examined it closely. “Very nice. This is inscribed. I have not known someone to inscribe their own watch.”

  “It was a gift,” Captain Korchenko said. “From my family.”

  Faisal smiled wolfishly. “I appreciate their gift. I will put it to good use.”

  “I will contact my company to ask for your ransom,” Korchenko said.

  “No. That will not be necessary.”

  “What? But there has always been—”
<
br />   “No ransom this time.” Faisal raised his own Kalashnikov and fired three rounds into the captain’s chest. The other pirates did the same with the remaining crew. Faisal tossed the watch to one of his crewmen.

  “Kick their bodies overboard, Saddiq. And send this watch to our friend in America. Tell him the time is coming when I will need him to act.”

  “Of course, Faisal. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. Do you still have relatives in England?”

  “I do, Faisal. Two cousins in Birmingham. They have many friends.”

  “Birmingham,” he pondered. “Yes, Birmingham is far enough yet also close enough. Are they capable?”

  “One fought in Mogadishu.”

  “That does not tell me he is capable.”

  “For enough money they will do whatever you want.”

  “Good. There is a man in Scotland I wish them to kill. I will pay them and their friends well.”

  “They will do it. What is the man’s name?”

  “Connor Stark.”

  DAY 1

  U.S. Embassy, Sana’a, Yemen 1030 (GMT)

  The air-conditioning wasn’t working—again. It was the fourth time in two weeks, but with the summer solstice weeks behind them she could at least look forward to shorter days ahead. Caroline Jaha Sumner kicked off her shoes and ran her fingers through her short black hair. They came away wet with perspiration. The light blue shirt and white cotton skirt that set off her dark skin were wilted and damp, but at least she could shed her summer-weight jacket, relieved that she had no meetings scheduled with the locals today.

  “Madam Ambassador?” said Lt. Col. Raphael Tyler, drawing her attention away from her discomfort and back to the two men seated in her office. The Marine managed to look stiff and starched even when sitting. “We don’t seem to be making any progress in our efforts to stop the violence. If anything, it’s worse than it was before you arrived two months ago. Two bombings near the embassy and seven attacks by pirates on the oil rigs. If we can’t stop this, the Yemenis are going to run out of oil in four or five years. And then what will happen to this country?”

  Sumner rose and walked over to the bulletproof window, wishing she could open it for a breath of air. The view wasn’t much, but she could see one of the nearby marketplaces. The booths were shuttered at this hour while the shopkeepers were home for lunch, but the street was still crowded with men in long white robes and shrouded women. The bustling street seemed strangely silent viewed from the confines of the fortified, soundproof office.

  Not for the first time C. J. wondered if she had done the right thing in coming here. She had a unique relationship with the administration—with the president—and could have selected other assignments, a subcabinet position at the State Department or a preferred ambassadorship like France. Instead she had chosen a difficult assignment in one of the least stable parts of the world. She brushed away more perspiration and walked back toward her desk, gently sliding her fingers along its polished maple surface. It reminded her of the varnished maple on the back of her mother’s revered cello. She curled her bare toes into the hand-woven silk Persian rug and then sat on the front of the desk rather than returning to her chair behind it.

  She had faced challenges in the Foreign Service, on Capitol Hill, and in the White House, and had overcome all of them. This assignment was not going to be her first failure. Sumner gently twisted the thin gold necklace she had purchased at the suk in Bahrain during the layover on her way to Yemen. The elderly merchant had claimed that she looked like his youngest daughter, like a habesha of Ethiopia or Eritrea. Her large, wide-set brown eyes were fringed with long lashes that seemed even more prominent in contrast to her thin eyebrows, small nose, and wide forehead. Her slim build was due to genetics, but the strict exercise regimen she had maintained since she was a high school field and track athlete would have mitigated any weight she picked up—she had surprised more than one man with the amount of food a slender five-foot-tall woman could consume at a good restaurant. She had smiled gratefully at the merchant who knew how to work a customer and paid half his asking price.

  “Raphael,” she said to the defense attaché. The subtle flattening of the Marine’s lips was the only sign of his displeasure with the informality she had insisted on using since she assumed her post. “I think we need to look at the whole picture again.”

  “Colonel, may I?” asked Bill Maddox.

  “Go ahead,” Sumner cut in before the Marine officer could respond. Bill was an old friend, and she trusted him to be both objective and supportive.

  “Madam Ambassador, we’re in for some real challenges in the next few months.”

  “‘We,’ Bill? Or your company?”

  “‘We’ as in all of us. You. My company. Our government. Even our military.”

  She swung her dark, well-toned legs against the desk, her toes brushing across the rug.

  Maddox continued. “Maddox International has been hired only to build the oil rigs, and even that has been tougher than expected because of all the attacks on our supply ships. If the Yemenis don’t think we can finish the job, they may award the rights to extract the oil to someone else—someone who may not act in the best interest of the United States.”

  “Bill, when you started arming yourselves a couple of years ago, you should have thought about the consequences—about the way the Yemenis would view it.”

  “It was my legal right to develop a maritime security firm that would look out for my company’s people, platforms, and materials.”

  “And defense contractors did so well in Iraq with the local populations during the war,” she sighed. “I saw the report, Bill. Your security force’s attack on the dhows last year is one of the reasons the Yemenis won’t talk to me now.”

  “My ships defend our people and our investments because the U.S. Navy isn’t here to do it. The captain of my ship did exactly what he should have done, and as he had done several times before. The pirates approached our oil platforms and started firing at our people. We chased them off, and when the pirates decided to fight, our ship responded in self-defense.”

  “Perhaps I could interject something here,” said the Marine colonel, his eyes coming to rest on C. J. after following the verbal exchange like an observer at a tennis match. “Mr. Maddox is right, ma’am. Central Command has determined that private interests are now on their own to defend themselves for the immediate future. We don’t have the soldiers available to do it. And with our recent naval cat-and-mouse games with Iran and North Korea, we don’t have the ships or aircraft to patrol this area either. Since the administration decided to reassign all the assets of Combined Task Force 151—the unit that used to combat piracy here—the companies that do business here are SOL. Our primary mission now, ma’am, is to diplomatically engage with the Yemenis to secure continued rights to the oil fields south of Socotra before someone else does.”

  “I know that,” she said patiently. “But part of that is convincing them that we can do the job whatever happens. What if something goes wrong? Or already has gone wrong. What if yesterday’s earthquake had affected the offshore wells Maddox International has already dug, Bill? I know we need the oil. But even if we get the rights to pump it, we still have to secure the platforms.”

  “That’s why we need the Yemenis to work with us to secure those waters,” Maddox said.

  “Reaching out to the Yemeni government hasn’t worked, gentlemen. They still won’t meet with me. I need a way in.” She paused for a moment to think and seemed to come to a conclusion. “Raphael, would you please excuse us? I think Bill and I need to discuss a few things.”

  The Marine rose and left the office without saying a word.

  “He’s right about one thing, Bill.”

  “Only one thing, Madam Ambassador?”

  “No one else is in here, Bill. Please drop the ‘madam ambassador.’ ‘C. J.’ is fine. It’s not like we haven’t worked together before.”

  “That was
more than a decade ago, C. J. And it didn’t exactly go well, remember?”

  She let his comment slide by. “Bill, the fact is, Washington won’t do much to help us. Yemen is just one more place that never gets covered by the nightly news. We’re on our own, but we can do some good here. It’s why I came.”

  “Maybe, we can do our job better when we don’t make the news,” he said.

  She swung her dangling legs against the front of the desk. “So far, we’re not doing the job at all. I’ve tried everything, used every trick I learned on the Hill. And I’ve gotten nowhere. The one advantage we used to have here isn’t currently at my disposal.” She stared at him, half-hoping he wouldn’t answer.

  “Connor Stark will not return here, C. J.”

  “Maybe not willingly,” she fired back with a determined look that Bill Maddox recognized all too well. “I need the agreement, and that means talking to the right people. I read my predecessor’s reports. I don’t know what the secret to Connor’s success here was, but I know he negotiated all the agreements you had with the Yemenis. Can’t you ask him to come back?”

  “It’s not that I can’t. It’s that I won’t,” Bill replied turning his back on the ambassador. “He and I agreed that he would set up the maritime security forces for my company and then he was out of here. Once our first oil platform was completed, he was done. And that was before you came on the scene, C. J. There’s no way he’d come back if he knew you were here.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We need him, Bill.”

  “C. J., leave it alone and find another way.”

  She paused, contemplating the few remaining options open to her. “Too bad,” she finally said. “My mission—this mission—takes priority. Thanks, Bill, we’re done here. You know your way out of the building,” she said dismissively as she reached for the phone.

  When the person on the other end picked up, she didn’t even bother with a greeting.