by Mack Maloney
Batman shrugged. “Well, even the dumbest guy in medical school winds up working someplace.”
“Right,” Russell agreed. “And I guess to the Navy’s credit, they thought that by putting all the bad apples in one group, they wouldn’t infect the rest of the SEAL community.”
“But they wound up creating a monster,” Batman said.
“Exactly,” Russell agreed. “But there’s more, stuff the Navy doesn’t know about. We discovered that the small bank in Virginia that 616 broke into actually had its computer security systems compromised. Not so these guys could steal anything, but we believe they used it to hack into the U.S. Fleet Forces Command’s central mainframe so they could track Navy ships all over the world.”
“But why would they need that information?” Nolan asked.
“Who knows?” Russell replied. “Maybe they were planning on selling it, like the Walker family did back in the 1970s. In fact, we think they’ve been breaking into that same bank regularly. Somehow they learned they could hack into Fleet Command, and God knows how many other places, from this little bank’s little computer. Sounds strange, but it worked for them.”
“But this is really bizarre behavior,” Batman said. “What’s the point of it all?”
Russell opened a laptop nearby and typed in a few commands. The screen soon flashed a series of surveillance photos. One showed a line of brand-new Chevy Corvettes parked together in a parking lot. They were all the same color, all the same style. They even had similar license plates — STEAM1 through STEAM5.
“For starters, this is what they drive,” Russell said.
Another series of photos came up. They showed a line of five expensive beachfront houses.
“This is where they live,” he continued.
Then more photos showed the 616 team members, in Navy dress-downs, going in and out of casinos in Atlantic City. “And this is what they do in their spare time,” he said.
“Busy boys,” Nolan said.
“With expensive tastes,” Batman added.
“That’s only half of it,” one of the other Blackwater guys said.
“What’s the other half, then?” Nolan asked.
The four Blackwater guys exchanged worried looks. “Might as well tell them now,” one said to Russell. “They’ll find out eventually.”
Russell shrugged and called up more photos. They showed the 616 team, now in civilian clothes, going into a building that didn’t look like it was anywhere near their home base in Norfolk, Virginia.
“That’s a TV production studio in Los Angeles,” Russell explained. “These guys have been hot and heavy for months trying to get someone to do a reality show about them. That’s why you never see them without a video camera. They were bugging these LA production people to the point where one producer told them, go off and do something that will be worth selling. Until then, leave us alone. They make those Jersey Shore punks seem bashful by comparison.”
“A reality TV show?” Batman said. “Now that’s really nuts.”
“Well, it gets nuttier,” Russell replied. “At that first briefing in the bunker, do you remember how gun-shy the CIA was about saying where the chatter came from on this phantom pirate thing?”
Nolan and Batman nodded.
“Well, that’s because we believe it didn’t originate from the usual sources,” Russell told them. “We believe it got picked up by an illegal NSA domestic eavesdrop program — in Los Angeles. Our sources are pretty sure it came from a conversation between the LA cops and a Hollywood producer who’d been caught with a suitcase full of cocaine and who was trying to get a pass by flipping on someone.”
Nolan pointed to the picture of the SEALs going into the production house in LA.
“Are you saying?” he asked.
The Blackwater guys nodded.
“Same producer, same production company,” Russell confirmed. “Those assholes in 616 were promising him a twelve-episode package showing how they could pull off the most spectacular anti-terrorism stunt in the world. A real-live ship hijacking along the East Coast. This was something they were going to do themselves, videotape it all, and sell it to this guy as a ‘teachable moment.’ The thing is, the NSA unit that picked it up couldn’t put two and two together, because they shouldn’t have been listening in on the LA cops in the first place. They had no idea who the producer was talking about because he never mentioned the 616 guys by name because the cops never gave him the deal. So, that night the producer hangs himself in his cell, and whatever he knows goes with him. Now, it’s not like the NSA can ask the cops what’s what without causing a national security scandal. But they still heard East Coast, big hijacking about to happen and so on, and so they put it out there and the CIA filled in the blank by leaping to the conclusion that it was pirates. But we’re sure that producer was talking about the 616 and, I suppose, in a way, if they did something like this, they would be pirates.”
Nolan had to stop them right there. “Wait a minute — so you’re saying these guys are out there, doing all this crazy shit — for a reality show?”
The Blackwater guys all nodded.
“But it gets even worse,” Russell said. “The coked-out producer probably would have made the deal right away, except 616 had competition. The producer thought he had an even better story to tell.”
“Who was their competition?” Nolan asked.
The Blackwater guys all laughed. Then Russell looked directly at Nolan and Batman and said, “You.”
“Us?”
“Yeah — you. They thought it would be a better idea to do a reality show on you guys. Beating the pirates at their own game, swashbuckling, and all that crap. How the 616 knew you would be invited to this Operation Caribe party — who knows? Or maybe they didn’t and it came as a complete shock to them when they saw you sitting there. If so, the Navy spooks sending your guy with them must have really blown their minds. Has he even sent you a postcard yet?”
That’s when Nolan gave the Blackwater guys the short version of what Crash had texted them about the 616’s activities in the past thirty-six hours. The cargo ship in Havana, the LNG carrier, the Queen of the Seas. It was the same speech they’d just given Agent Harry.
“Well, don’t you see?” Russell said after hearing it all. “The 616 guys must have figured it out, so they set out to do all the things you guys have done, because in their eyes, they can do them better. I mean, you said they’ve gone aboard a cargo ship, like you guys did with that first job you had. They went aboard an LNG tanker — like you guys just did. They even went aboard a cruise liner — like you guys did. They’re out to impress anybody who’ll listen by one-upping you.”
Nolan shook his head. “This is just too fucked up,” he said.
“Hey, it’s a fucked-up world,” Russell replied. “If it wasn’t, no one at this table would be employed. But like everything else, it comes down to money. All these 616 guys are heavily in debt. That’s really what’s been driving this behavior. They live this lifestyle like they’re celebrities, but they don’t have celebrity money. They see all the weird shit on TV — some broad making a couple million bucks for popping out eight kids — and they think, we can do better shit than that. We’re real heroes. But they also have empty bank accounts. That’s probably why they got that ghost-boat: to enhance their hero image.”
“Their what boat?” Nolan asked.
“Their stealth boat,” Russell said. “Didn’t you know about that? It’s that monster Lockheed built for the Navy about twenty years ago. It might look cool, but truth is, it’s just a demonstration model, and up until a little while ago, the Navy couldn’t even give it away. When the 616 agreed to take it over and try to make it useful, it allowed them to go just about anywhere they wanted without anyone spotting them. God knows what they’ve been up to in it, but we do know they’ve been going in and out of the Bahamas a lot in the past couple months. On ‘exercises.’ ”
Russell took a swig of his cold coffee. “Look, I
don’t have to tell you about our street cred. Our reputation, good or bad, truth or fiction, speaks for itself. But frankly, we were afraid of these guys. You’d never know it by looking at them, with the uniforms and all the esprit de corps bullshit. But from what we found out on the down-low, they’re some unstable, dangerous and desperate people. I mean — consider these nuts who try to get on these reality shows. Now imagine some broke, pumped-up SEALs trying to do the same thing? No, thanks — we wanted no part of them. And that’s why we dropped out of this Caribe thing. We felt they were capable of doing anything, none of it good.”
“If that’s the case, then why have you been keeping such close tabs on them?” Batman asked.
The four Blackwater guys looked mortified.
“Well, there’s a reason for that, too,” Russell said. “But we’re not proud of it.”
“Your secret is safe with us,” Nolan told him.
Russell just shrugged. “We heard through the grapevine that if that LA production company passed on the SEALs, and if they couldn’t get you guys on the phone…”
“Go on,” Batman urged him.
“Then we were their third choice,” the guy replied. “This ship. The four of us. Spies At Sea. Twelve episodes up front — with a nice piece of the gross on the back end.”
Russell downloaded his 616 surveillance photos to a thumb drive and gave it to Nolan, along with a name he wrote on a piece of paper.
“You got someone fielding offers for you, right?” he asked. “Ask if they ever got a call from the Highlight Corporation in LA. That’s the production house we’ve been talking about. Someone named Dr. Robert turned them on to you guys, and recommended you highly. If your answering service has been ignoring that call, then the pieces will all fall together for you. We guarantee it.”
Nolan picked up the pack of money.
“You sure you don’t want to be paid for this?” he asked. “You certainly straightened us out.”
Russell waved away the offer.
“We look at it this way,” he said. “These 616 guys are buffoons, juice-heads, and obsessed with being celebrities. But they’re still SEALs. They can kill you with a paperclip, slice your heart open with a fingernail, all that crap. That’s what makes them so dangerous. And I’m sure if they want to make you disappear, no one would ever find you. We’re tough. But we’re not that tough.”
Nolan suddenly looked over at Batman. It was like a light had gone off over his head. Nolan was sure they were thinking the same thing.
“You do seem to have some pretty extensive intelligence on these 616 guys,” Nolan said.
Russell nodded. “Like I said, we’ve been tracking them day by day. Phone records, credit card receipts. Travel records. Considering the circumstances, we thought it best to keep a close eye on them.”
“Any idea what they were doing last Easter Sunday?” Nolan asked.
Russell was mystified by the question, but began a search of his records.
It took a while, but finally he could report only one thing: As far as their surveillance was concerned, no one in SEAL Team 616 could be accounted for on that day.
* * *
The Dustboat arrived just as Nolan and Batman were leaving the Blackwater ship.
The coastal freighter was traveling so fast as it entered Blue Moon Bay, its bow was completely out of the water and its stern was almost getting caught in its own wake. It looked like an old-fashioned PT boat, bouncing hard across the waves, except it was much bigger and not nearly as streamlined. There was a definite sense of urgency in the way the ship was moving.
Nolan and Batman banged in, shut down the helicopter, then hurried down to the galley. Twitch and Gunner were already here, firing up the team’s main computer. Nolan and Batman quickly briefed them on what the Blackwater guys had told them. Then Nolan asked Twitch to call up the old BABE file. He wanted to know if it ever included any personal information about the people who were reported missing on Easter Sunday. Of all the cases the travel agencies presented to Whiskey, the Easter Sunday disappearances were the oddest because, in addition to Charles Black denying the Muy Capaz had any involvement in them, there was absolutely no evidence or any clues as to what really happened to the people on those three empty yachts. Not even signs of a scuffle or missing items, as had been the case in the other pirate attacks. If anything, the disappearances that day had always looked too clean.
But there was nothing along those lines in the BABE file. So Twitch began scouring Google for news stories on the people who disappeared that Easter morning. It took some time and some fancy Internet wrangling, but finally, Twitch found an old newspaper story identifying the person who’d been on the Mary C, the first empty boat the Palm Beach marine deputies found that day.
His name was Cyril Bragger. He was a Swiss national, well known, at least in high financial circles, as an expert in helping people maintain hidden Swiss bank accounts. Further Googling found an item about him in a Zurich newspaper. It said Bragger was on an extended vacation in the Bahamas, supposedly working on a book about the lost city of Atlantis. Oddly, a work associate was quoted as saying interest in Atlantis had been a sudden passion for Bragger. “This Atlantis stuff was news to us,” the man remarked, indicating that Bragger suddenly left on his vacation, never to return.
This might not have seemed so unusual if the second victim hadn’t also been involved in international finance.
His name, also found on Google, was Karl Reuss; he’d been aboard the second yacht, the Rosalie. He was as rich as Bragger, but much more shady. Reuss ran a one-man financial consulting firm with extensive ties to the former East Germany. But even more telling, it was rumored that he’d been linked to middlemen facilitating ransom payments for Somali pirates.
The search became really interesting when Twitch surfaced information on the third man who’d disappeared that day, the person who had been aboard the sailboat, the Pretty Penny. Again, according to the Internet, he was an American named Walter Choatefellow. His job? Security analyst for a company with extensive contacts inside the U.S. military. His biggest claim to fame? Selling the U.S. Navy a study on the psychological ramifications on military personnel in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre. Choatefellow had told the Navy it was inevitable that there would be more incidents like Fort Hood, that some would probably take place aboard Navy ships, and that the Navy had better be prepared when they happened. Shortly before his disappearance, Choatefellow had sold the Navy a classified program called Plan 6S-S that promised to do just that.
Digging even deeper, Twitch discovered that the three boats in question that day were not only all leased — not so unusual in the Bahamas — but had a connection, another thing the local authorities had missed. According to the leasing companies’ records, the three luxury boats were all in the same small port on North Bimini Island the day before they were found empty. Happening that day in that tiny port was a scuba tour of the Stairs of Atlantis, supposedly the remains of the mythical lost city, and how they were connected to UFO activity in the Bahamas. The event had attracted hundreds of UFO fans.
And after one more pass at the yacht leasing companies’ records, Twitch came up with a fourth name of someone whose leased boat had been in that same small Bimini port that day: John Beaux. The CO of the 616 SEAL team.
It was great detective work by the Twitchman. But what did it all mean?
Twitch said: “I think that while all these fanatics were touring the Atlantis Stairway thing, these three characters were meeting with Beaux. What better way to cover up something underhanded than to hide yourself among a gang of crazy UFO people?
“I think Beaux met with these people on the yachts, conspired with them on some huge hijacking scheme, maybe even of a Navy ship, and how best to get a ransom for it. But when Beaux got what he needed from them, he and his men made them disappear, along with whoever was traveling with them, knowing the Muy Capaz would be blamed. It was a good plan — until the marine deputies got involve
d. So the SEALs had to kill them, too. Then, when they found out we’d been hired to go after the Muy Capaz, they couldn’t take the chance that the Muy would talk to us before we iced them — so they took them out just minutes before we arrived. That’s why that guy Charles Black didn’t have any idea as to who killed him and his men or why.”
Batman almost started laughing at the end of the explanation. “It sounds like the worst spy movie ever,” he said.
Nolan agreed, then added: “But it must be true. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. It also means those nuts killed those Russian sailors, and that they just couldn’t resist lopping off their ears for trophies — that old Viet Cong thing. These guys are not only celebrity hounds, they’re freaking serial killers.”
Gunner exclaimed: “Serial killers. Steroids. Hollywood. Money. Pirates. All you need is five chicks living in a house punching each other and you’ve got a hit show.”
“Yeah,” Batman said. “The only problem is, our buddy Crash is caught in the middle of it.”
Nolan felt his sat phone buzzing again.
He took it out and flipped it open.
It was a text message from Crash.
All it said was “blu on blu.”
* * *
Agent Harry was on the bridge of the Mothership, waiting for yet another long intelligence report, when he heard the strange noise again.
This time, he looked to the west and saw the Whiskey helicopter coming toward him. In seconds, it reached the ship and slammed down on its bow again.
Harry was out of the bridge and down the stairs quickly. He met Nolan and Batman walking toward him.
“You guys have got to stop doing that,” he scolded them.
But they ignored his complaint.
“Were you able to find out what those SEALs have been up to since they left here?” Nolan asked him gravely.
“I’ve been trying to do nothing but since we spoke,” Harry replied. “But I’m finding it just about impossible to do because of the strict security protocol involved here. I know they’ve been sending in coded position reports like they’re supposed to, but what missions they’re actually doing, there’s no easy way for me to find out. And I’ve been reluctant to talk to The Three Kings about it, because with the state things are in, with this pirate thing deadline approaching and zero workable intelligence on the what and where, for me to go talk trash about the SEALs now would screw the pooch with extreme prejudice.”