Dark Hunt: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  As Spearing entered the CIC, her eyes had to adjust to the dim room, lit mainly by the glow of computer screens and red lights.

  “Captain on deck,” Lt. Cmdr. Gary Sharpe said loudly enough for everyone in the CIC to know that Spearing had entered the room.

  “Theoretical question for you, Commander,” Spearing said. “Can the HELIOS hit a target moving parallel to the ship?”

  “What kind of target, ma’am?”

  “Let’s say a Kalibr cruise missile traveling at Mach 1?”

  “It’s possible.” He rubbed his bald head, then adjusted the tan belt on his blue coveralls. “The system is designed to hit incoming targets, but I suppose we could do it.”

  “Good. Warm up the HELIOS and standby to fire.”

  “Is there something I should know, ma’am?”

  “Listen up,” Spearing said, commanding everyone’s attention. “We have a possible cruise missile launch scenario from a container ship as it passes us. I need all eyes peeled for missile launch and be ready to shoot them down with the laser. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. It is a credible terrorist attack against the United States. You, in this very room, are the tip of the spear. It’s your job to detect and shoot down these missiles before they can reach their targets. Is that clear?”

  A chorus of “Yes, ma’am” echoed through the CIC.

  Spearing’s heart thundered in her chest and her palms were sweaty. She wiped them on her pants and took several deep breaths. This would be the first true test of her ship, its systems, and its crew, and she hoped like hell that they passed with flying colors. “Watch for message traffic from SOCOM with pictures of the cargo vessel. Once they come in, plug them into the SPY system, and let’s hunt these bastards down.”

  Lt. Kyle Nagy was a proud member of Generation Z. Born in late 1995, the first year of the generation, he’d spent his youth playing computer and video games instead of Little League and basketball. To him, the games were the ultimate hand-eye sport. He could type over one hundred words a minute, had lightning-fast reflexes when palming a video game controller, and could work his way through a newly released video game in less than twenty-four hours.

  All that made him a perfect laser weapons system officer. Nagy oversaw a crew of three who maintained the HELIOS in a constant state of readiness. He was also the man who pulled the trigger. Arrayed in front of his seat were multiple computer touchscreens which allowed him to operate and fire the laser. He reached out and pressed a button on the screen to slide the doghouse back from the HELIOS unit, mounted forward of the antenna cluster on the bridge roof.

  Once the housing had fully retracted, he powered up the laser system and ran through the test functions to ensure it was ready to fire. Everything worked via a handheld control, just like his PlayStation video games.

  The HELIOS laser cannon consisted of three main components mounted on a rotating base. The main fixture was the cannon itself, concentrating six fiber-optic lasers into a single beam; the second component was the radio frequency sensor which provided targeting data; and the third element was the target tracking sensor, allowing the laser to lock onto and track its target through any manner of gyrations. He tested each system to ensure its readiness.

  As Nagy worked, the ship’s 1MC—the shipboard public address system—blared, calling its crew to battle stations.

  It was time for the Little Rock to earn her battle stripes.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Sikorsky S-76D

  Islamorada, Florida

  Ryan Weller glanced around the helicopter’s cabin at the stoic faces of the battle-hardened men. Each carried his choice of long gun and sidearm, and they were giving their gear a final check to ensure the Velcro was snug, the buckles fastened, and their gear pockets were snapped closed so they wouldn’t lose anything on the rope slide down to the ship or during the ensuing battle. Ryan believed the men on board would put up a serious fight.

  His KRISS Vector pointed at the deck and he subconsciously flicked the safety on and off. It was a habit he had developed in the Navy and it helped to calm his nerves, the thundering of his blood, and the adrenaline mainlining through his veins.

  The helicopter’s rotors had been spinning as they drove up in the van, and the team had climbed aboard quickly. It turned south into the wind as it took off, then swept northeast, angling directly for the last known position of the Everglades Explorer. Now they were chasing it over the vast blue depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Ryan glanced down at his own kit, making one more pass over it. He listened through his headset as the pilot told them he had the freighter in sight, and that they would be over it in less than five minutes. The men began racking rounds into their weapons. Ryan chambered a round into his rifle and his pistol. He glanced at Emily, who had accompanied them on the flight but would stay in the bird while the rest of them fast-roped down to the ship.

  “Two minutes,” the pilot said.

  Jinks and Scott Gregory slid open the doors, allowing the hurricane-force winds to sweep through the cabin. They kicked out the two-inch-thick ropes, and the men donned their leather gloves and prepared to make the drop.

  “One minute,” the pilot said.

  The crew stood, and Ryan’s eyes met Emily’s. He smiled at her and mouthed, “I love you.” She mouthed it back. He felt a tug at his heart to stay with her and out of harm’s way, but that wasn’t who he was. He needed to be in the thick of the action and take the fight to the bad guys.

  The helicopter suddenly jerked sideways, and the men grabbed whatever they could to stay upright.

  “What the hell was that?” Jinks yelled.

  “Incoming fire,” the pilot responded stoically.

  “Scott, you and Stafford give us cover fire,” Jinks shouted

  The helicopter nosed over and raced for the Explorer again while the men grabbed their firearms and braced themselves against the airframe. Stafford held a HK417 semi-automatic battle rifle and Scott pulled an M60 machine gun from a storage compartment.

  As the helicopter approached the ship, Ryan saw the brass flying out of the M60 as Scott laid down cover fire from the rear seat. Stafford knelt in the open door, his hot brass blowing back to hit Scott. Ryan put his hand out and deflected Stafford’s brass, so it hit the deck instead. He leaned forward and saw two men on the ship’s stern returning fire.

  One of them went down, and the second ducked behind the cover of the radar dome. The M60’s rounds shattered the plastic and sparked off the spinning antenna. Then the antenna broke off and the terrorist’s head snapped back.

  Something else caught his attention: the launch tubes for the missiles were rising from the container.

  “Get us over the ship, now,” Jinks yelled at the pilot.

  The Sikorsky slipped sideways, and the M60 chattered again.

  “Go. Go. Go,” Ryan screamed when the ropes slid over the bridge roof.

  Ryan took his place in the line, and when his turn came, he gripped the rope and wrapped his feet around it, trapping it between his boots. Halfway down, the friction heat came through his gloves and then the helicopter lurched. He kept his eyes on the roof of the freighter’s superstructure and saw the rope swaying. Below, Jinks and the others who were already firing their guns at the terrorists.

  The helicopter lurched again, and Ryan fell the last five feet to the deck, landing hard and feeling the shock through his shins and knees. He rolled to get clear of the rope and flattened himself to the deck to avoid the incoming gunfire. Another man fell beside Ryan, and he screamed as his tibia snapped.

  Rolling again, Ryan saw the helicopter had pulled away from the ship and the two men still on the ropes dropped away, windmilling their hands and feet as they fell ten feet to the unyielding steel deck. Both men landed hard and rolled but seemed to be all right.

  Ryan came to his hands and knees and scrambled backward to the railing around the rear of the superstructure. If he were Sadiq, he would send two teams; on
e up the portside stairs and the other up the starboard to trap the assaulters on the roof. With crossing fields of fire and minimized escape routes, the assaulters would be quickly gunned down.

  He looked over the edge and saw a walkway less than ten feet below. Waving for Scott to join him, the two men eased over the side, holding themselves in place with their hands before dropping to the grating below. Ryan motioned for Scott to go to starboard while he went to port, hopefully flanking their enemy.

  As he spun around the corner away from the safety of the solid steel bulkheads, Ryan shouldered his rifle. Two men were advancing on his position. Both had their guns against their shoulders, but Ryan’s sudden appearance startled them, giving him a split-second advantage. He shot the first terrorist in the chest with multiple rounds. As he fell away, Ryan kept depressing the trigger, striking the second in the face and neck.

  He leaped over the bodies, exchanging magazines as he did so, and ran down the steps to the main deck. Ryan kept running toward the cargo container. The missile launch tubes pointed straight in the air. Ahead, two men knelt by the container with guns to their shoulders, firing at him. Diving to the deck behind the Number Three hatch cover, he wiggled his way forward, trying to avoid the bullets that chattered off the steel and ricocheted away in loud whines as he tried to get into position to return fire.

  Suddenly, the missiles launched in a deafening roar, ejecting from their vertical launch tubes amidst a cloud of white smoke.

  Ryan’s head rang as the four rockets raced skyward.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  USS Little Rock

  Florida Straits

  Before joining the Navy, the largest body of water Petty Officer Second Class Wayne Carter had ever seen was Wilson Lake, a nine-thousand-acre reservoir formed by damming the Saline River. He’d grown up in the tiny town of Bunker Hill, Kansas, with a population of ninety-five. Now he was an operations specialist for the SPY-6 radar, the most advanced radar system in the U.S. Navy.

  As Carter sat before the radar display, a sense of urgency filled him. He tuned the knobs and rattled the keyboard to wring the most out of the state-of-the-art electronics so he could find the general cargo vessel Everglades Explorer. He zoomed out of the concentrated screen and connected with the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye carrying the Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, radar dome. The AWACS allowed Carter to see over the horizon with his ship’s radar. He could link the SPY-6 to any fighter jets, AWACS, and helicopters in the immediate vicinity to give him a three-dimensional radar picture of the battlefield.

  Suddenly, the screen before him lit up with a missile launch warning. The radar pinpointed the launch site as being five miles away and began tracking all four missiles, showing them as tiny blinking dots on the screen.

  “We have missile launch!” Carter screamed. “I repeat, we have missile launch.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Capt. Michelle Spearing heard the missile launch warning blare over the 1MC and leaped from her seat. She grabbed a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon, but she couldn’t see the launch point or the smoke trails of the Kalibr missiles. Once they jettisoned from their vertical launch system, their thrust-vectoring boosters would align them on their proper flight paths, then the main engines would take over as the missiles followed the terrain to their targets.

  “Fire the HELIOS,” she commanded.

  Ensign Davis relayed her instructions to the CIC and, a moment later, Lt. Kyle Nagy used his joystick controls to center the HELIOS crosshairs on the nearest Club-K as it skimmed above the water’s surface. The target tracking sensor made minute adjustments to compensate for the variations in the missile’s flight path and the pitch and roll of the ship.

  Nagy lightly tapped the X button with his thumb and fired the laser. Through the black-and-white image on his screen, Nagy watched as the laser burned a hole through the missile’s outer casing and exploded the missile in midair.

  Cheers erupted from the crew members and Nagy expected the Top Gun soundtrack to start playing. Instead of celebrating with his shipmates, he spun the HELIOS and aimed it at the next rapidly fleeing missile. He had no targeting solution. The remaining missiles would soon be out of range, even if he dialed the laser all the way up to three hundred kilowatts and froze every system on the Little Rock as the HELIOS commandeered their electricity to fire.

  “Shooting solution, Nagy,” Lt. Cmdr. Sharpe barked.

  “We have none, sir.” Nagy put the controller on the desk and adjusted his glasses. He swiveled to look at the red-faced officer, who had the phone that connected him to the bridge pressed to his ear. “They’re out of range.”

  Sharpe relayed the report to Capt. Spearing. He slammed the handset down on its cradle. “Intercept solution with the launch vessel, now!”

  A few seconds later, Nagy heard a female OS call out that she was transmitting a new route to the navigator.

  On the bridge, Ens. Davis said to the captain, “We have the solution, ma’am.”

  “Get us there now, full speed,” Spearing barked. She had the binoculars glued to her face, still trying to locate the missiles, but all that was left to see were wispy lines of contrail smoke. The ship’s twin Rolls Royce gas turbines spooled up, spinning the impellers of the attached waterjet propulsion system. The 378-foot ship had a top speed of twenty-two miles per hour, and Spearing wanted every ounce of speed she could get to intercept the vessel that had just launched cruise missiles against her country.

  “What do we have on the SPY, Ensign?” Spearing asked the officer of the watch when the ship was on its new course and speed.

  Davis picked up the phone again. This time, OS2 Wayne Carter replied that the other missiles were traveling south, and all indicators pointed toward impacts in Cuba.

  “Where?” Spearing asked when Davis gave her the news.

  “Their best guess is Havana or Guantanamo Bay, ma’am.”

  Spearing ran to the control panel and snatched up the satellite phone. She rang the number for the Fourth Fleet headquarters in Jacksonville. When the duty officer answered, Spearing demanded to speak to Admiral Billings, but he replied curtly that the admiral was in a meeting.

  “You best get your ass into his office, mister, because we just had a rogue cruise missile launch in the Florida Straits. I need to talk to the admiral—now. Do you read me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A moment later, Billings came on the line. “We received a flash alert from Space Command about the missile launch.”

  “We shot down one of the missiles with the HELIOS, but we were unable to stop the other three.”

  “Outstanding work, Captain. There will be a full debrief later, but right now I have to get back to my meeting.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Spearing hung up and stared out the window. Her hands tightened on the console as the warship rushed through the choppy seas on a direct intercept with the Everglades Explorer.

  Chapter Fifty

  Everglades Explorer

  Florida Straits

  The sound of an explosion somewhere over the northern horizon seemed to draw everyone’s attention.

  “What the hell was that?” Ryan muttered from his position behind the hatch cover.

  Had the missile reached its target? They were too far from Port Everglades for him to hear the explosion.

  More gunfire cut his thoughts short. The two men at the cargo container were firing again. He could swivel around and crawl back toward the superstructure, but there were men engaged in battle there. “Jinks, sitrep,” he said into his bone mic.

  “I’ve got two men down, one with a broken leg and another with a gunshot wound. We’re pinned on the catwalk behind the bridge and Stafford can’t engage with his sniper rifle because there’s someone near the bow keeping our heads down.”

  Ryan rolled onto his side and assessed the situation. The terrorists had his assault force pinned down, and men needed medical attention. He was staring at the blue s
ea rolling past as the bullets whizzed overhead. He contemplated throwing a grenade, but it could potentially detonate the massive bomb they were riding on. The smell of diesel fuel was heavy in the air, and while he knew that diesel ignited at 125 degrees, he also knew anything could happen. “Mr. Murphy has come to play.”

  “Damn right he has,” Jinks replied.

  If they didn’t get this situation under control soon, the terrorists could blow the ship and they’d have to continue this fight in the afterlife.

  The helicopter suddenly came alongside the Explorer. He shook his head as he saw the blonde hair of the gunwoman whipping around in the breeze. Emily had the M60 out and was laying suppressive fire. He doubted she’d make much of a difference. It was hard for an untrained operator to shoot from a moving aircraft and hit a target, and between the pitch and roll of the chopper, the wind deflection of the bullets, the drop of gravity, and the speed of the two moving objects, it was even harder.

  Even with all these factors, her bullets were forcing the attacking terrorists to take cover and to stop firing at him. He didn’t have a fix on their position or where Emily’s rounds were striking, but he needed to move. He waved toward the bow where the shooter was hiding, and she concentrated her shots there.

  Jinks said over the radio, “The guy on the bow is dead. Our guys are headed to the engine room. The bridge controls are jammed.”

  Jumping up, Ryan put his submachine gun to his shoulder and advanced on the two shooters near the container. He shot the first one in the chest and head, then swung his gun to the right and took out the second man with another double tap of bullets to the skull.

  As he approached the container, Scott said, “I’m coming up on your right.”

  “Copy that,” Ryan said, and the two men moved to the container’s open door. Scott took the lead and clicked on his gun-mounted flashlight as he stepped through the door. He shot a man sitting at the console, then stopped to examine the screens.