A Ryan Weller Box Set Books 1 - 3

by Evan Graver

  Mango squeezed in for a look at the chart, grasping the table for balance as the boat swayed. He waved away the cigarette smoke. “How long until we get to shore?”

  Ryan consulted the captain who pointed to the town of Progreso on the map. The small seaside village sat on the top of the Yucatán Peninsula.

  The old man took the cigarette from his mouth, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, and said, “Cinco horas.”

  Mango frowned, looked at Ryan, who was about to translate, and said, “I got that part.”

  “I’ll keep trying the radio.”

  Ryan helped Mango to a chair bolted to the deck in the rear of the cabin.

  Every fifteen minutes, Ryan called for any DWR vessel to answer him. He was positive a ship would be in the area servicing one of the numerous oil rigs along the Mexican and U.S. coasts.

  At the peak of its circular route, the fishing boat came into radio range of a crew vessel ferrying divers to and from their work site. It answered Ryan’s hail, and the captain asked what he could do for him. Ryan requested the ship call Greg Olsen and let him know he and Mango were safe on the fishing vessel Pescados, on their way to Progreso, Mexico. The crew vessel captain agreed to call Greg.

  Ten minutes later, the radio mounted on the fishing boat’s dash crackled to life. “Dark Water calling Pescados. Dark Water calling Pescados.”

  Ryan snatched the mic off its perch and called back. “Dark Water, this is Sweet T, come back.”

  Mango’s features relaxed into a grin.

  Seconds later, Greg’s voice came over the air. “Where you at, Ryan?”

  Ryan read the coordinates to his friend, who replied, “Hold fast, brother, we’re coming to get you.”

  “Where are you?” Ryan asked, amazed Greg was out looking for them.

  “We’re about an hour away.”

  “Roger, boss. See you in a few. Sweet T, out.”

  Greg had underestimated his arrival time because it was closer to ninety minutes before the big bow and tuna tower of the Hatteras became visible on the horizon. Pescados came to a stop, turning the bow into the waves. Jerry DiMarco pulled Dark Water, its fenders out, alongside Pescados. Greg and Shelly were both in the cockpit, beaming.

  Ryan gave Greg a salute and a grin. Seeing Greg’s mug riding to the rescue seemed like old times, and Ryan was thankful Greg was there.

  Mango wrapped his arms around Pescados’s first mate and Ryan’s necks. Supported between them, he hopped across the gap to the Hatteras. They carried him into the salon and deposited him on the couch.

  Outside, Ryan offered to pay the fishermen for their help.

  The old man waved him off, and said, “No es todos los días que recojemos dos sirenas feas que cuentan esas buenas historias.” It’s not every day I catch two ugly mermaids who tell such good stories. He laughed heartily and glanced at the boy whose face reddened.

  “Shark!” the mate shouted, and everyone burst into laughter.

  This time, the boy joined in.

  The boats quickly separated as Jerry used a touch of bow thruster. Ryan helped bring the fenders on board. For a moment, he stood in the cockpit and watched Pescados head south to work her nets.

  He turned to Greg. They clasped hands and gave each other a one-handed buddy hug.

  “Good to see you, man.”

  “Good to be seen. I thought we’d lost you.”

  Ryan grinned. “You’re not so lucky.”

  “I think I need a cold one. Let’s go in the salon.”

  Mango had hopped over to the fridge and retrieved a cold beer already. He was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island. Ryan cracked open his own bottle of beer and drained it in several quick gulps. He tossed it in the trash and pulled another from the fridge.

  “All right, spill it. What happened,” Greg demanded.

  Mango and Ryan glanced at each other. Mango nodded.

  Ryan took the unspoken signal for him to tell the story. “Radar picked up a ship about seven miles out. Then a RIB boat ambushed us. It was running silenced engines and came out of nowhere. They raked us over with a fifty cal and sank my boat. The RIB captain said he wanted us to suffer and left us in the water. We spent a couple rough nights on the open ocean.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Mango mumbled.

  Shelly sent both men to take showers. When they were back in the salon, she sprayed them down with a liberal dose of aloe ointment to treat their sunburns, then examined Ryan’s skin where the rope had chafed, leaving ugly red marks and blisters.

  “I think I need a few Band-Aids,” he remarked.

  Shelly brought out a first aid kit.

  Greg asked, “Did you see the mothership?”

  “Just on radar,” Mango responded. “According to the AIS, it’s La Carranza Garza.”

  Greg sat with his arms crossed and his brakes locked. The Hatteras rolled very little as she motored toward the coast of Mexico. “I’ll call Muriel and see if she can get some satellite time. We might be able to pick up the AIS signal.”

  “You can get us satellite time?” Mango asked incredulously.

  “We use satellites quite a bit at DWR,” Shelly said.

  “If he can’t get it, Landis might be able to,” Ryan added.

  “I’ll make the call,” Greg said. He rolled to a cabinet and removed a satellite phone.

  “Hey, can I use that before you do?” Mango asked. “I’d like to call Jennifer.”

  “No problem.” Greg set the phone down beside Mango. “We have plenty of time. We can’t do anything until we refuel in Progreso. You guys are lucky the fishing boat picked you up. We used a software program to predict where you might be, and we were way off.”

  Mango looked surprised. “We thought we were going south and west.”

  “That’s what we thought, too. The storms must have pushed you faster. Plus, the fishing boat tracked north and east.”

  Ryan grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed to the cockpit.

  Shelly called after him, “Don’t forget to call Emily. She’s really worried.”

  Ryan half-turned, one hand on the hatch knob. “Get the satellite time and then I’ll call her.” He’d found a pack of cigarettes in his go-bag, that Greg had retrieved from his office before leaving, and wanted to smoke one in the cockpit.

  Back inside, Ryan listened to Greg talk to Landis. DWR couldn’t get any satellite time. Landis promised to call back when he had a time slot.

  Greg laid the phone beside Ryan. “Call your girlfriend.”

  Ryan took the phone to his usual cabin and sat on his bunk. After dialing Emily’s number, he put the phone to his ear.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Commander Harry Dagnal packed his lip full of chewing tobacco as his copilot, Lieutenant Kelly Benton, spooled up the three turboshaft jet engines on the MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter. Dagnal spat into an empty water bottle and put the cap back on. He glanced over his right shoulder at his crew chief, Mac Sissler, who gave him a thumbs-up. Benton released the rotor brake and the bird’s seven giant rotor blades began to spin through their seventy-nine-foot arc. The dark green helicopter shuddered and swayed and lurched as the blades swept faster and faster, beating the air into submission, until they bent slightly upward to form a shallow cone. The largest helicopter in the U.S. military’s arsenal overcame its own inertia and slipped gracefully upward, like a giant insect spewing three long trails of black smoke.

  Dagnal, commanding officer of Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14 (HM-14), was leading a training detachment from their home base at Norfolk Naval Air Station to Naval Support Activity Panama City. He’d received a telephone call from Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic, informing him of a special operation Dagnal was to perform. Dagnal ordered his favorite aircraft, 555, readied and chose his copilot.

  As he and Benton had helped prep the aircraft for flight, they watched maintenance crewmen scramble over the bird, servicing and inspecting the airframe. Dagna
l had admired the kids who kept the ancient helicopters airborne. They were a bunch of enlisted airmen, the lowest rank in the service, ensuring he could fly. An adage had come to him and he’d smiled as he’d recited it to Benton, “Takes a high school diploma to fix ’em, a college degree to fly ’em, and a PhD to build ’em.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the bird was in the air, flashing over the slate-gray waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Dagnal spit into his bottle again and checked the GPS coordinates written on his kneeboard against the GPS screen displaying their position, destination, and arrival time.

  Benton had the autopilot on and was scanning the gauges and instruments before looking out the front windshield into the darkness. The bug-like lenses of the night vision goggles made her head look funny in the wash of green light from Dagnal’s own NVGs.

  The flight was routine, and at the appointed hour, the U.S.S. Independence, one of the Navy’s new littoral combat ships, came into view. She was stationed out of Pensacola, Florida, for rapid deployment into the Caribbean Basin, and for the new crop of rotor-head students to practice their ship-based launch and landing qualifications. Dagnal took the controls and guided the helicopter over the rear deck of the LCS. A yellow-vested landing signal officer used wands to direct him over the rear of the ship and down to the deck. As soon as the wheels touched the nonskid deck, purple-shirted crewmen connected a fuel hose to the side of the helicopter and stood under the buffering rotor wash, waiting for the tanks to fill. Meanwhile, a dark group of figures huddled against the ship’s superstructure, silent warriors whose sole job was to break stuff, kill people, and blow things up. Dagnal watched them through the green glow of his bug eyes. He wondered what dangers lurked in the Gulf of Mexico that he needed to facilitate the delivery of these men.

  Benton motioned to the fuel gauges, and Dagnal signaled the purple shirts to shut off the tap. They retracted their hose, and Dagnal gave the go-ahead for the SEALs to board. Six heavily armed men carried a black rubber Zodiac raiding craft into the rear of the helicopter. Sissler helped strap it to the deck while the LSO held his arms straight out from his side and then lifted them up over his head. He repeated the gesture until Dagnal had his helicopter ten feet off the deck. The LSO held his right arm straight out from his side and repeatedly brought his left arm up over his head. Dagnal slipped the helicopter left, over the port side of the ship, felt the slight drop from the change in air pressure, and then the helo was lifting again. He added power, dipped the nose, and roared down the length of the ship.

  The SEAL team leader hopped into the jump seat between the pilot and copilot seats and handed a set of coordinates to Dagnal. The pilot glanced at them before passing them to Benton. She punched them into the GPS unit, and it zoomed into an empty blue spot off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.

  Dagnal let out a whistle as he adjusted course and speed. “What’s going on out there?” he asked, looking over his shoulder into piercing blue eyes.

  “Gunrunners.”

  Dagnal nodded. It was more of an answer than he’d expected. When he looked back, Sissler was in the jump seat. “Got a few hours to relax, Chief.”

  Sissler pointed at the fuel gauges. “We don’t have enough juice to get there and back.”

  “Independence is steaming out to meet us halfway on the return trip.”

  “Hope that crate doesn’t break down,” Sissler muttered. He, like most of the fleet, knew about the gremlins plaguing the newest class of ships, everything from cracked hulls to engine failures. It wasn’t uncommon for the Navy to tow Independence back to port.

  Benton glanced at the CO sharply. Dagnal knew she disapproved of the enlisted ranks making disparaging comments about the chain of command and the Navy as a whole. She was a ring knocker, a graduate of Annapolis Naval Academy, an ardent proponent for the rigid strictures of service. Those who didn’t conform were subject to counseling.

  Dagnal looked back at Sissler and shook his head. Sissler clamped his mouth shut, made a motion of locking it with a key, then tucked the imaginary key into his pocket.

  Benton glanced at Dagnal, shook her helmet-clad head, and rolled her eyes behind the NVGs. Dagnal squirmed in his seat to get more comfortable. She would have to deal with his lax attitude toward his crew. It was what endeared them to him.

  They settled into an easy silence made familiar from hundreds of hours flying together. Dagnal got up to relieve himself and saw the SEALs slumped in various positions, asleep, reading paperbacks, studying files. He finished and turned back to the scene. The team leader, who had handed him his coordinates, stood five feet away, a hand braced against the roof. He stared at Dagnal and held up his left wrist, so his watch was visible. Dagnal glanced to the GPS screen and then flashed the time remaining with his fingers. The SEAL nodded and sat back down. Dagnal felt unnerved by the icy stare. He climbed back into his pilot’s seat, thinking about how comfortable the seat was compared to what those guys were about to do.

  The beeping of the GPS unit interrupted Dagnal’s constant sweep of gauges, window, and mirrors. He yawned and keyed the mic on the helicopter’s intercommunications system. “Ten minutes out.”

  “Copy,” both Sissler and the SEAL replied.

  According to his orders, Dagnal knew their target would flash a light. He kept his eyes peeled for the signal. A glance into the mirror, focused on the cabin, showed the SEALs had their gear lashed to the inside of the small boat and they were sitting on its sides, ready for action. Out of the corner of his eye, Dagnal saw the wink of white light.

  It surprised him to see a sportfisher with a massive aluminum tuna tower. In the brief glimpse he had of the boat, he saw a light blue hull under a white cabin. Dagnal flew past the sportfisher and turned into the wind. He came to a hover a hundred yards away from the boat and signaled Sissler, who motioned for the SEALs to exit his aircraft.

  The boat went first, sliding down the ramp into the water five feet below. Then the men, dressed in scuba diving dry suits, jumped into the frothing waves. Sissler spoke over the ICS, letting Dagnal know their cargo was clear. Dagnal added power. The windshield wipers tried to keep the windscreen clear of the water whipped up by the rotor wash. The big helicopter lumbered higher, and as he gained altitude, Dagnal dipped the nose and raced toward the Independence. Behind him, he saw the sportfisher’s exterior spotlights were on to collect her packages. The tuna tower was dancing back and forth as the boat rocked in the waves. Dagnal shut off the wipers and mentally saluted the brave men on the tiny boat and wished them Godspeed in their mission.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Rotor wash lashed Dark Water’s spray curtains as the big helicopter came alongside and disgorged its deadly load. Greg kept just enough throttle on to keep the bow pointed into the three-foot waves. Ryan hustled down the tuna tower’s ladder to the bridge. A blast of rotor wash tore at his clothing. He saw the rubber raiding craft fall from the helicopter and then six men leaped into the frothing water. The pilot wasted no time hanging around to see if everyone was all right. He added power, gained altitude, and raced away.

  The fishing boat idled up to the smaller craft. Jerry had a gaff out and hooked the Zodiac’s bow line. All six SEALs were clinging to the lifeline running around the rubber craft. Ryan and Jerry helped the men clamber onto Dark Water. Then they all pulled the small boat into the cockpit of the Hatteras. They trooped into the cabin and Ryan’s split lips curved into a grin as he shook the hand of Lieutenant Larry Grove. “Welcome aboard, sir. Glad you could make it.”

  “You can’t stay out of trouble, even in the civilian world,” Larry said.

  Still grinning, Ryan said, “It’s been an interesting adventure.”

  Greg and Ryan had worked with Larry on several operations before the veteran SEAL team leader transferred to the secretive Naval Special Warfare Development Group, more commonly known as DEVGRU, formerly SEAL Team Six. He was a tall, lean man with a broad smile, blond hair, and ice blue eyes. He’d earned the nickname Iceman. Not
only did he look like Val Kilmer’s character in Top Gun, but he was cool under pressure.

  Ryan had called Landis from Mexico and requested Larry’s help. Fortune smiled upon them, and the Navy granted their request to allow their shooters to work a dark op.

  “This is Senior Chief Roland Jenkins. He works with me at Dam Neck.” Dam Neck Naval Base, just south of Virginia Beach, Virginia, was home to DEVGRU.

  “Good to meet you, Senior Chief,” Ryan said, accepting the man’s outstretched hand.

  “Call me Jinks, we’re not on Navy time.”

  Larry ran through the rest of the team roster: Andy Vodden, Steve Kellogg, Michael Paddington, and Tyron Kimber.

  “You guys get cleaned up and we’ll unpack the gear,” Ryan told the men.

  Out in the cockpit, Ryan unwrapped the waterproof package in the rubber raider. The first thing he found was a spare leg for Mango. He opened the cabin door and tossed the rig to his partner. “Here, make yourself useful.”

  Mango managed to grin, catch the leg, and shoot Ryan the bird all at the same time.

  The package contained silenced Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, pistols, body armor, load-bearing vests, ropes, a collapsible aluminum pole with a hook on one end, and a rolled-up rope ladder. Mango helped Ryan distribute the black combat uniforms, balaclavas, helmets with night vision goggles, and boots also in the loadout.

  The men checked their individual gear and weapons before testing them off the rear of Dark Water. Back in the salon, Ryan attached a laptop to the forty-two-inch LED television mounted on the salon’s forward bulkhead.