with her hair, trying to manually curl her eyelashes, pinching her cheeks for color and trimming her fingernails by biting off the tips.
She’d asked him not once, not twice, but three times if he knew whether any paparazzi would be waiting for her once they arrived on the yacht. He’d replied each time with a simple, “I don’t know,” to which she responded with a pout.
So, half the time Nolan was wishing he’d stayed instead of Batman; the other half, he was wishing she’d been the one they’d left behind.
By contrast, the four ex-hostages riding in the back couldn’t have been more grateful. Two were Swiss nationals, one was Indian, the other Austrian. They were marine biologists snatched from their research boat by the Shaka pirates four months ago. Several times during the flight, each one had reached forward and patted Nolan on the back, thanking him for getting them released from their little hell.
Emma Simms never noticed. She was more interested in her cuticles.
* * *
NOLAN FINALLY LOCATED the mega-yacht sailing about 180 miles off the northeast tip of Somalia. The vessel had all its lights on and had been sending out radio signals to the copters for the past hour.
Both the OH-6 and the big Bell went into a loose orbit around the vessel. It had two helipads: a large one at its stern and a smaller one on its bow. Nolan let the Bell land first, using the larger stern pad. He watched as members of the yacht crew swarmed toward the Bell, helping the hostages out and guiding them below.
Nolan then set down on the bow, his fuel reserves running out just as he hit the pad. He disengaged the engine and was heartened to see other members of the yacht’s crew were standing by, ready to pump his copter full of gas for the return flight to retrieve Batman.
Once his primaries were shut off, he told his passengers they could open the doors and get out. Again, each hostage in the back took the time to awkwardly hug Nolan, endlessly thanking him for their rescue.
Emma Simms did no such thing.
She simply opened the door and got out without a word.
4
Somalia
CHIEF BOL BADA had seen it all: The pirates tying up the young white woman. The beginning of her torture. The sudden attack from the sky. The slaughter of the Shakas.
Bada was the leader of the Ekita Clan, a family of two hundred who lived on a piece of land bordering what used to be the Shaka base.
The Ekita despised the Shaka, but like many Somalis of the countryside, and especially those who lived near the sea, they had few traditions of war or conflict. They were nothing like the pirates. Whenever the Shaka came to this place to do their evil deeds, the Ekita melted into the jungle and waited for them to leave. Sometimes it took a few hours, sometimes days. Sometimes, the Ekita had to stay in hiding for weeks.
This time, with the other members of his clan safely hidden away, Chief Bada had slipped down close to the Shaka base, as he’d done many times before, to keep an eye on the pirates until they left.
But this night, he’d seen something incredible.
For once, someone had actually attacked the Shakas on their home turf. The men in helicopters, falling out of the sky, dressed like monsters—they had overrun the Shaka, who could do little to stop them. The pirates shot at their attackers, but with no result because the strange warriors seemed unaffected by bullets—that was the amazing thing. They looked like Americans, the people from the sky. But bullets did not hurt them? Bada knew America was highly advanced. But had they reached the point where bullets did not harm their soldiers?
All this would have made a great story to tell the family around the campfire, but a new twist had been added. One of these strange warriors had fallen right into Bada’s arms. His comrades had left him behind for some reason, and he’d been shot, in the back, and he’d collapsed into the same bush where Bada had been hiding.
His assailants were riding in a caravan of pickup trucks that appeared off in the distance just before this man had been shot. Someone in the caravan had fired at the lone soldier, and then all the pick-up trucks had raced toward the burning compound.
Chief Bada wanted no part of these new people. They were not Shaka pirates; they were their