Note before reading: You might notice NPCs from the East Africa source book that was release in 2018.
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Chapter 3 Mombasa
The Bluenose III dropped her anchor well off of the shore in the harbor. They were in a designated small boat anchorage, and out of the harbor’s traffic lanes. That freed up the valuable dock space to those who could afford it, and for those that needed the space, crews, and or equipment that the harbor’s dock area held. The Bluenose had been met at the mouth of the Mombasa harbor, by the powered whale boat based off the Harbor defense ship FF 1064 USS Lockwood. They didn’t have any cargo to sell or to buy for that matter, and so they had been directed to this location in the crowded harbor. The twin lines of now patched bullet holes had been noted, and the cover story used by the twin commanders. Information was power in this day and age, and just because the uniform said US Navy on the correct side of the jacket. That didn’t mean, that they would not try to make a little money on the side by selling juicy bits of data to third parties.
The sun had set some hours ago, and the two boat partners were having a pair of cold beers on the slowly swaying top deck. Having anything cold in this part of the world was strange. Then again, the only way to keep a crew, was to have some perks. Also, if you wanted the food you were buying to stay fresh. You needed to keep it refrigerated. To do this a small alcohol powered generator was fired up, and it ran the refrigerator. It also runs a few lights spread around the ship for four hours a day. It was not a small expense, but it had a high payoff.
Norwell took a slug of his beer and looked over at Richard. “Okay brain trust. Now what do we do?”
Richard was laying back on the top of the low pilot house. He loved looking at the stars. That was something that he had found out late in life. With so little electric light leaking at night, you really could see a lot of them. The German and Polish skies had been cloud covered most of the time, and then you had the trees to have to look through when it was not cloudy. The less said about the Baltic weather, the better. “We have to get “it” to the right people, just like the information about those pirates we ran into.”
Norwell was getting a little short tempered. He had just wanted to contact the Lockwood, and hand everything over to them. The only thing that stopped him, was the knowledge that he knew that he was not a businessman. He was a sailor, now. “And just who would this mythical person be, Richard?” The sarcasm was dripping off every word he said.
Richard came up off the wood top and swung his tan legs down. He pointed to the long boat coming out of the night with an oil lantern mounted on the bow and stern. It was a local water taxi. He finished his beer, and then he pointed to the lights deeper into the main town of Mombasa. “You know who, and there’s my ride. If you have not heard from me by this time tomorrow? Go with your idea. I will not be in any condition to argue.”
Norwell almost choked on his beer. “Her!!! Are you out of your ever-loving Yankee mind?! Or should I just ask if your life insurance policy is paid up, and am I your beneficiary? She is still mad about that kiss you stole a few months ago.”
Richard had a sly smile on his face. “You might be right, but she did hip throw me afterwards. I think we’re square. I trust her enough to get us to see The Colonel.”
The two friends parted ways with a handshake, and Richard climbed down into the Viking long boat looking craft for the short ride to a dock. From there, it would be a cheap bus ride to where he needed to go. He would keep going over in his head, what he needed and wanted to say. Some things were better than others, but he was sure of one thing. He was going to be kicked in the coconuts before the night was over, but maybe that would be worth it.
Richard was looking up at the sign. The bar was hopping with music and voices were vibrating the very stone of the nearby buildings. There was a line out the door, and Richard had to fight down a smile. He was just glad that he had taken a few hour nap, before he had that beer with his business partner. “I guess everyone does go to Ricks, at least once.”
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It didn’t take Richard long to find who he was looking for. He just needed to find the loudest noise in the place, after the band. As he walked up to a woman with red hair as she slammed down a shot of something clear. When the double shot glass hit the table. She flat footed jumped up and put a snap kick into the chest of a brick house sized man, that had been just a hair slower than her taking the shot. The living wall with legs went flying back and he didn’t get back up that quickly from the beer-soaked floor. The action was met with hoots of laughter and applause from a gathering of people in and out of uniform.
Richard used the opening in the crowd to approach his target. “Hey, Denise. We need to talk.”
The red head’s head snapped up, and eye locked onto the voice. She did not say a word. She just stormed up to Richard, and for the next half minute. He was blocking kicks and punches that should have broken bones being launched from the red headed woman. When she took three steps back to regroup. Now it was Richard’s turn.
Richard didn’t throw a punch or kick. He was smarter than that, and he was sober. “Commander, this is important. Killing pirates important.”
Richard knew that there were two things that can get this woman’s attention. One was using her rank, and the other was mentioning that it was about killing pirates. There were a few things in this fallen world, that LCDR Denise Moore like more than the navy and killing pirates. The USS Edwards had developed a reputation of being the best pirate hunter in what was left of the US Navy. Rumor had said that some of the larger pirate groups had put a price on her head. So far, all that had achieved, was more pirates going down to see what was in Davy Jones’s locker.
When she didn’t launch another set of attacks, Richard knew that he had her attention. “Commander, we need to find a quiet place. We have work to do.”
Denise and Richard walked away from the group of bystanders near the game tables. Richard gave a slight wave to the owner of this place standing over by the bar. Rick’s American Café was also known as a place where two parties could make a deal. The pair went upstairs were it was less crowded, less noisy, and more comfortable with thickly cushions booth seating. It took Richard almost an hour to cover most of the details of his last mission. He had the camera with him, but the Bluenose did not have the equipment to develop the exposed film.
Denise rocked back into the booth’s thickly padded black leather back. “Why should I believe you, Richard?”
Richard had expected this. This story was pretty incredible. “Get me an appointment with “The Colonel”, and he can have the film looked at. I have two dead crewmembers and a patched-up boat as proof of the pirate attack. That is on top of what we found.”
Denise did not say anything for a few seconds. She made a thin-lipped look, and then exited the booth. When Richard did not join her quick enough, she half turned. “Well let’s go!”
The pair walked out of the club almost side by side. Richard and Denise could both feel the eyes following them, as they walked towards the exit. Some were wondering if the male had finally broken the Ice Queen. Most of the others? They were wondering what had happened, that would get the party animal to stop and go back to work, before the sun rose.
Denise was on her hand-held radio, as soon as they had put a building corner between them and the building holding the club. They would only walk for about three blocks, before a military HMMWV pulled up to them. Now that there were armed MPs all around them, they were safer. They had been dispatched when Denise had pulled out her radio, and she had started the ball rolling. The two people in civilian clothes got into the open back of the all wheeled drive military truck.
The camouflaged military truck pulled up to one of the four main buildings, which made up the US military command structure in this part of the world. The camera was taken from Richard, as soon as they made it through the sandbag entrance of the main building. The first stop was the security office on the first floor, where Richard was almost stripped searched. The next stop was the fifth floor. Richard had a pair of young privates escorting him from the security room to this floor, and into a briefing room. Denise was the only person in the room, when he stepped in and the door was closed behind him. One part of his mind noted that he thought he heard the lock being thrown. It was not unlike being locked in a cage with a hungry lioness.
Denise was still in her street clothes, when she walked up to Richard. It happened to fast for him to react, but she slammed her knee dead center into his crotch. Richard bent over and tears came instantly to his eyes. Now that he could not see, but still more tears came to his eyes. Soon he was down on the thick carpet, and the words “black belt” came to his mind.
It took more than just a few minutes for Richard to recover enough to pull himself off the floor. Even then, he needed the help of an office chair. While he was recovering, he heard the door open and close twice. He had no idea who or how many people had come in. He was still finding it hard to focus his eyes. After what seemed like hours, he was able to make it into the chair and his eyes started to clear. He was very surprised at who was in the meeting room with him.
Everyone knew about “The Colonel” or Lt Col Thomas, but this was the first time that Richard had been in one of the famous Harvester related meetings in person. Richard had been looking forward to finally meeting The Colonel. That was the surprise, which greeted his still watery eyes.
Richard wiped a last tear from one of his eyes with the back of his off hand. “Well Teddy, I take it you are Colonel Thomas.” There was not much more he could ask, even if his mind was back up to speed.
LTC “Teddy” Thomas gave the other man a sly smile. “Good to see you again, Richard. At least we don’t have to worry about someone listening in on this one.” He passed over the camera and a sealed packet of three rolls of fresh 35mm film. “It would seem that your little side project turned out to be real and not the wild goose chase, I thought it was.”
Richard took the camera and the three pack of new film. “It took more work, and it took a lot longer than I expected. But I think the images speak for themselves.”
Teddy was a HUMINT pro and his face gave nothing away. He just opened a folder, and he pulled out a few still damp photos separated by some thin wax paper. He was starting with a pair of images of the old torpedo boat. They were before and after images of the pirate. He put them in front of Richard. “I will make sure you get the bounty on this kill. Why do you think they didn’t use a torpedo on you after you showed how much firepower you were packing on that little tub of yours? Did you recover any of the crew?”
Richard set his shoulders. “I would bet that they ran out of them, or they were broken before they found us. We think that they lost an engine on the attack run, but they kept pushing in anyway. No, we left the pirates for the sharks. We had other things on our minds, after we put a shell into her hull and got them to go away.”
Before anything else could be said. Denise spoke from her spot holding up the back wall. “Too bad you didn’t capture that Type 025 PTB. She would have been great, on Lake Victoria even without any replacement torpedoes. They could have slapped it on an old rail car and sent it out on the next supply run heading that way. That could give some of those assholes on the lake something to think about.”
Richard could not help but let his feelings show. “I lost two crewmembers! And we took on water and other damage, before we could put her under!” He was not going to say, it was his shooting that blew apart the enemy warship. He was part of a crew. “I would have been just as happy, if they would have left us alone. Then you could have dealt with them, the next time you were out that way on one of your Search and Destroy missions.”
When Richard turned to look back at the light colonel, he noticed that the other man had pulled out other images. They were the ones that he really wanted to talk about. Richard had taken almost 20 of the images. Only six were of the outside, and the rest were taken inside the target from different locations. Richard spent the next few hours going over and back over, everything that had happened and what he had seen. He reinforced, that there were other groups in the area. And they could find the target at any time, or they already had found the prize.
When they were done? Richard was given a ride to the Navy dock and a powered whale boat took him back to where the Bluenose was riding at anchor. He was ordered to return to the building for a noon meeting the next day. He didn’t need to be told that he needed to keep his mouth shut about what he knew.
When he came up over the Transom he was greeted with a shotgun in the face. The duty night shift guard was not sleeping. Before Richard could make it to his outside mounted hammock, Norwell came out of the helms station wiping sleep out of his eyes. Before he could say anything, Richard underhanded tosses him a little velvet bag with drawstrings.
Norwell caught the flying bag, and it made an odd sound when it hit his meaty hand. With a quizzical look, he opened the bag. In the full moon light, he could see a few cut blue, red and clear crystals along with a few small gold coins. Richard had come through with payment on the deal. It was not as much as Norwell had expected, but he was not going to bring something like that up tonight. He would wait until the sun was up, and both of them had food and coffee in their stomachs. To do otherwise was bad form
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It was noon the next day, and Richard was back in the tall office building. He only had been able to get a whole six hours of sleep, before he had to talk to his business partner. Part of it was to remind him that he was still in the US military. The other part was to explain the light purse, he had passed over last night. The gold and gems were the payment for taking out a not minor pirate warship, and a little extra between friends. It was all the payment that they could come up with, with such a short notice, and keep it quiet. The rest of the payment would only be given after the meeting today. This also might lead to another payday, but he was afraid that the “big payday” would not happen until they could get the prize into Mombasa’s harbor.
That was why he was here now. He had no idea if this meeting was in the same room as last night or not. He had been escorted all of the way from the traffic control point into this room, without even stopping for a detailed security check. Every seat in the room had a name plate set out on it or in front of it. Richard’s was on the back row and near the main exit of the room. He thought it was not a bad placement. He was looking it as it was giving him an easy escape path.
The meeting started about five minutes after Richard arrived, he had not even been able to take a sip of his coffee. This limited the number of looks he was getting from the rest of the meeting attendees. He was in uniform… of a sorts. A weather-beaten Navy Captain started the meeting, without much fanfare.
“I would like to think everyone for coming to this briefing on Operation Looking Glass. It is falling under the broader Operation Harvester mission.” He kept talking and an image that Richard knew well was put on the wall. After all, he had been the one to take the image. “We are going to try to recover the Russian built Skoryy class Destroyer Smotryaschy or DD 455. The ship’s name means looking, in Russian. An independent operator just found the vessel on an island east of Socotra and west of Kilmia, called Darsah. It is a 7km long spit of hell on earth.”
A new image, which was not one that Richard had taken was displayed. “What do we know of her? She was built between 1949 and 1953. We had thought that all of the ships of this class were pulled out of service by the end of 1984. Some of them were put back into service as the war dragged on. She had been originally reported in the Baltic being made ready for combat, and she was moved to the Black sea. From there, we know that she started to cover supply convoys going to Maputo and other points unknown. We had thought that the South Africans got her with the nuk strikes on 10 Dec 1997. She has not been seen again, until yesterday.”
An officer in a navy uniform with a lot of gold, stepped into the briefing with both feet. “Why are we wanting to recover this old tin can?”
A voice interrupted the navy officer, which came from a speaker mounted on the center most desk. Richard had no idea who might be on that speaker, but it would seem that everyone else recognized LTG Harris’s voice without any introduction. “For two reasons. We don’t want anyone else to have it, and as the attack on the refinery showed us. We have a wide scope of threats to have to deal with. The Patriots can cover air and missile attacks, while we have missiles for them. But Mombasa harbor is too big, for just the damaged Lockwood to cover all the area and avenues of approach. We have to keep a second major asset in harbor to cover the other half of the damn thing. And then we had to use a third asset, like the Valley Forge in case something happened to the other two. When we were short on fuel? That was a workable solution, for the problem. Now that we have the fuel flowing again, it limits us. If we can recover and repair her hull and key systems? She will cover the sea and any sub surface issues, at least long enough for a more capable unit to be activated.”
With the smack down laid on the senior navy officer by the most senior officer in this theater, the meeting went on. Teddy had to fight down a smile and took over from the Navy captain. “Plus, your navy types know how hard it is to come up with replacement 5inch rounds. We can reload them, and cast new warheads, but the local made fuses are crap. This destroyer has four 130mm guns, and the main magazine looks to be full or almost full. And I can get more of those type of rounds…….from other sources faster than we can get replacement 5 inchers.”
Colonel Thomas didn’t have to cover about what some pirates might do with that amount of firepower or ask about what would happen if the French recovered it. Most of the people in this room could connect those dots and come up with a good idea of what would happen. At a minimum, it would cause an increase in the numbers and firepower of the escorts needed for any ships going to South Africa, RDF, or back to the States. At the end of the meeting, tasks were broken out. The kicker had been the last image in the briefing before the question slide. It was of the bow of the pirate torpedo boat. The twin torpedo tubes were clearly visible on what remained of the vessel. It was a statement image pure and simple.
When Richard was about to leave the room, Teddy passed over a black plastic film tube with a soft under-hand toss. Richard just gave it a slight shake, and he could feel and hear the movement inside. He knew that it was over half full of cut diamonds. He could have gotten more uncut stones, but they were not worth as much. Richard and his business partner had some big bills to pay. The Bluenose had not been cheap to have built or to keep manned. Two stones would go to each of the dead crewmembers next of kin. The rest would be put to very good uses.
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This was going to be one of the largest Harvester missions launched this year. In less than an hour, an Albatross float plane would be taking off with 10 armed men from 1st Battalion, 3rd Group. Another 15 troopers were from 3rd Battalion were assigned to the mission. They would be going out on the Bluenose. Richard needed to quickly get back, so that he could make sure his boat was ready for the short notice high value charter. Both teams were the duty units in the local area for supporting Harvester missions, and on call for short notice very high value missions that might come up from a number of different sources that were not conventional.
As soon as the group for 3rd Bat were loaded on the Bluenose. It would be making a run north at her best speed. If things were found to be………complicated by the team from 1st Bat. More troops would be brought out and dropped by parachute for added support. The parachute drop was not considered to be a good idea. Hitting an area that was only 2.2km wide, on its widest point, was not something you should plan to work.
The heavy firepower would be coming from 30th Marine RGT. They would be taking the Alexander Bonnyman. She would be carrying 4 of the AAVP9s, 2 LAV-25s, 4 gun trucks out of the ready reserve, and 200 jarheads. The salvage tug Solstar would be doing the heavy pulling, and the Forrest Sherman class DD 950 Richard S. Edwards would be the escort and mission commander for the whole mission. They would be leaving in no more than three days, after the Bluenose.
All of this was a major muscle movement for AFRICOM, and it could not be kept quiet for long. There were only two things that could be kept quiet. One was where the action was going to be taking place, and the second was the target they were going after. The Grumman Albatross and the Bluenose left the area spot on time. The flying boat would reach the target area and return to Mombasa, before the Bluenose was out of sight of the harbor.
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