Black Flag Read online

  Berkley titles by David Ricciardi

  WARNING LIGHT

  ROGUE STRIKE

  BLACK FLAG

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by David Ricciardi

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ricciardi, David, author.

  Title: Black flag / David Ricciardi.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020. | Series: A Jake Keller thriller

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020001650 (print) | LCCN 2020001651 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781984804662 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984804686 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Spy stories. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.I275 B58 2020 (print) | LCC PS3618.I275 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001650

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001651

  First Edition: May 2020

  Cover art by Pete Garceau

  Cover design by SlobodanMiljevic / iStock / Getty Images Plus

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Berkley Titles by David Ricciardi

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Character List

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation

  About the Author

  To Henry and Claudia, my inspiration for the second half.

  In the era of square-rigged sailing ships, a black flag was flown by pirates to warn other vessels that an attack was imminent, but mercy would be shown if the crew surrendered without a fight. However, if the target refused to comply, the pirates would then hoist a red flag. The “bloody flag,” as it was known, was a signal that no mercy would be shown and no quarter would be given.

  CHARACTER LIST

  Badeed (“Shark Food”), Hawiye clan warlord

  Cawar (“One Eye”), largest arms dealer in Africa, Isaaq clan

  Clap, CIA Special Activities Center, Ground Branch team leader

  Peter Clements, CIA, associate deputy director, intelligence

  Farida, director of the Hawiye clinic

  Gadhka Cas (“Red Beard”), boss of the Bakaara Market

  Ted Graves, CIA Special Activities Center, chief

  Jake Keller, CIA Special Activities Center, paramilitary operations officer

  Masaska (“Snake”), disfigured Darood enforcer

  Nacay (“Detestable”), son of Yaxaas

  John Pickens, CIA, operations officer

  Robleh, Hawiye clan elder, owner of Caafi water company

  Athena Romanos, Greek shipowner (daughter)

  Giánnis Romanos, Greek shipowner (father)

  Steve, major, U.S. Army Special Forces

  Saahid and Mahad, in INTERPOL’s Global Maritime Piracy Database

  Yaxaas (“Crocodile”), Darood clan warlord

  PROLOGUE

  IT WAS A bad week for peace on earth.

  Born the scion of a Greek shipping dynasty, the young man was said to have seawater running through his veins, but he cared not for the wheeling and dealing of the ind
ustry or the megayachts and private jets that came with it. His relationship with his family was strong, but its enormous wealth brought him neither pride nor shame—it simply did not define his existence. When he graduated from high school and the time came for him to choose between college and the family business, he decided instead—as he would for the rest of his life—to chart his own course.

  The young man ventured 1,400 miles northwest, to the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, where he found work as an ordinary seaman at a competing line. He signed on under an alias—eager to prove to himself that he had earned his position—and was soon scraping paint, cleaning heads, and scrubbing decks. He worked hard, learned quickly, and moved rapidly through the ranks on everything from 150-foot tramp freighters to 1,200-foot oil tankers. Soon there wasn’t a crewman’s job aboard any ship, anywhere, that he couldn’t handle.

  So he left the industry.

  But he wasn’t finished.

  He was just getting started.

  The young man moved to Belgium and attended maritime college, where he spent four years studying navigation, load handling, and engineering before returning to the sea as a ship’s officer.

  Strikingly handsome, with a square jaw and wavy dark hair, his resemblance to his father grew as he aged until, by his late twenties, even strangers would comment on the similarity. Once he’d attained the rank of ship’s master, he resumed using the family name. No one he’d served with would dispute that he knew his ships and the sea as well as anyone who’d ever commanded a merchant vessel.

  In short order he was hired by the largest shipping company in the world to drive supertankers across the seas, taking 1,400-foot-long behemoths through storms that would frighten a statue and across oceans so vast that the crew would often go days without sighting another ship.

  But as the years passed and the ships became more automated, the crews became smaller and satellite telemetry made him feel less like a master and commander and more like a bus driver. By the time he was in his late thirties, he’d moved back to his family’s shipping line, where he could once again manage the voyage and not simply optimize fuel consumption based on computer models and satellite predictions of weather and current.

  * * *

  —

  WITH ASIA TO his north and Africa to his south, Captain Romanos was at the helm of the 860-foot M/V Lindos as it steamed east through the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Aden.

  Sixty feet wide and with walls of glass, the oil tanker’s bridge offered a spectacular 360-degree view of the world as the sun fell through scattered clouds and disappeared below the horizon. The ship’s officers watched the sky and sea meld into blackness, interrupted only by the stars above and their reflections on the water below. Though they’d seen it happen a thousand times before, its mystical beauty never failed to reinforce their calling to the sea.

  It was five past midnight when the captain prepared to retire to his stateroom and turn the bridge over to his second-in-command. Romanos was halfway to the door when the navigator spoke up.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” he said, mostly to himself.

  The captain stopped short.

  The navigator and most of the other officers had come with him from the larger shipping company where they’d worked together for nearly a decade. They’d become like brothers, spending more time with one another than they did with their own families, and they’d learned to trust one another’s judgment and anticipate one another’s thoughts. Together they’d survived typhoons, been boarded by unfriendly navies, and had more barroom fistfights than anyone could count.

  As far as the captain was concerned, the navigator had seen everything.

  Romanos turned around.

  “All three radars are full of static,” said the navigator. “Lost the GPS too.”

  “Radio?” said the captain, nodding toward the single-sideband.

  The communications officer turned up the volume.

  “Nothing but noise. Same with the VHF.”

  The captain looked at the chief engineer. “It could be electrical interference, but—”

  The doors on both sides of the bridge burst open.

  Six men in black and gray uniforms stormed in, three on each side, with rifles snugged in tight against their shoulders.

  For as long as anyone could remember, ships’ crews had been instructed to cooperate when boarded. They would be threatened, they might even be abused, but their value as hostages decreased by 100 percent if they were dead. It had been the same with the airlines. Pilots had been told to appease hijackers because most were looking only to make political statements or maybe catch a ride to a forbidden destination. More often than not, all of the hostages were released safe and sound.

  Cooperate and live. It had worked for most of modern history.

  But piracy was experiencing its 9/11 moment.

  The captain faced the gunman closest to him. The tall man’s blue eyes locked on like a hawk tracking its prey, but the captain stared right back.

  “What do you—”

  The pirate fired three rounds into his heart.

  Captain Romanos was dead before he hit the ground.

  * * *

  —

  TWO DAYS LATER, and a thousand miles to the north, a security guard met three trucks covered in dust from their long journey through the desert. The guard escorted the small convoy through the seaport’s high-security gate to a darkened warehouse and parked outside by the door while the trucks drove inside.

  A lieutenant colonel from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards stepped down from the lead vehicle and began issuing orders to the forklift operator who’d been collecting overtime for the past four hours, waiting for the trucks to arrive. The lift operator had just finished unloading a dozen crates of rifles and rocket-propelled grenades from the first truck and was on his way to the second truck when two soldiers grabbed the warehouse’s metal doors and slid them shut in the security guard’s face.

  Four soldiers climbed into the truck bed. Though it was midsummer in the Persian Gulf, the men shivered as they raised the plastic case by its handles. Roughly the size of a footlocker, the case wasn’t heavy, but the men moved it slowly and deliberately as they lowered it from the truck and placed it inside a slightly larger wooden crate.

  Another soldier packed the empty space with blocks of dry ice and placed the wooden lid on top. A bead of sweat formed on his brow as the colonel handed him a hammer and a dozen nails. The soldier had seen the biohazard symbols painted on the plastic container and had no desire to disturb whatever was inside, but the colonel’s stare was unyielding. The soldier carefully aligned the hammer and tapped each nail into place with the minimum amount of force required to complete the task.

  An hour after they’d arrived, the three trucks emerged from the warehouse and were escorted back to the main gate by the guard who’d been waiting outside. The entire operation had been shrouded in secrecy, from the civilian trucks to the late hour, and the guard’s name had been deleted from the roster—with explicit instructions from his supervisor to forget everything he’d seen.

  The guard turned in the keys for his pickup and went to the employee locker room to change out of his uniform. He sat on a worn wooden bench and rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day and his shift was finally over. But he still had a phone call to make before his work was finished.

  ONE

  SIX MONTHS LATER . . .

  JAKE KELLER FELT the blade of the machete against his throat.

  The Somalis had gotten the jump on them.

  “We’re with the United Nations,” Jake said in English. “We’re here to help.”

  “You want to help? You give us money,” said Dameer. The nickname meant “donkey,” and he bared his teeth as he burst out laughing. His henchmen laughed too, as if he’d said the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
<
br />   Dameer slammed his fist down on the table and the laughter stopped. His eyes were bulging and bloodshot.

  “Pay us!”

  He folded his arms across his chest while two of his cohorts brandished AK-47s. They were even more doped up than their leader.

  “We just want to talk,” Jake said calmly. He’d been in worse spots before.

  The Middle East, Europe, North Africa. Trouble had followed Jake like a hungry dog for the last two years—ever since he’d gone into the field for CIA.

  “No money, no talk,” said Dameer.

  Jake could smell the rancid breath of the man holding the knife to his throat.

  “Maybe we take you hostage,” Dameer said. “Then UN pay us!”

  He put his hands on the table. He was missing two fingers on his left hand. They looked as if they’d been cauterized with a rusty piece of iron. Punishment for something, no doubt.

  “We’ll pay for protection,” said Pickens. “We just need to know who we’re paying.”

  Dameer glared at him. Though Pickens was black, he looked nothing like the wiry Somalis. He’d been an outside linebacker at Northwestern University before joining the Agency. Beads of sweat glistened on his thick biceps and shaved head. He was built like an oak tree.

  “Money, now!” Dameer shouted, slamming his fist against the table.

  Pickens retrieved four fifty-dollar bills from his pocket and placed them on the table. Each one was a month’s wages for an honest Somali.

  But there wasn’t an honest Somali in sight.

  Dameer scooped up the cash and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “More money, gaal.” It meant “infidel” in Somali, but the locals used it for any foreigner.

  “There will be a lot of money,” Jake said, “once we talk to your boss.”

  “You pay me,” said Dameer. “Then you go to Kitadra.”

  It was the pirate capital of the world.

  With no prospects on land, young Somali men with nothing to lose had taken to the sea to kidnap their way to riches, but aggressive countermeasures by ships’ crews and the world’s navies ensured that by 2015, the era of the Somali pirates was dead.