by Mack Maloney
“Well, you better start greasing him up,” Batman told him. “Because we got some late-breaking news.”
They showed him Crash’s enigmatic message. Blue on Blue was code for Americans fighting Americans. It usually meant some friendly-fire incident, but this time Nolan and Batman were certain it had to do with the SEALs and their unauthorized activities.
“I’ve been trying to call my guy since this arrived,” Nolan said. “Or at least get a text to him — but they keep coming back as undeliverable.”
Then they briefed Harry what the Blackwater guys had told them about the SEALs, and what they’d discovered about the people on the three yachts found empty and adrift off Bimini on Easter.
“Combine all that with what we told you earlier, and what do you have?” Nolan asked the ONI agent.
Harry listened to it all with his mouth agape. Capable pirates. Rogue SEALs. Atlantis. Reality shows.
“But what you’re saying is these 616 guys are practically mass murderers,” he told them. “It sounds too crazy.”
“That’s because these SEALs are crazy,” Nolan replied. “They’re broke. They’re perpetually just one step away from getting drummed out or court-martialed. They’re hopped up on steroids and God knows what else. Plus, they want to be media stars. That’s a perfect storm for crazy behavior.”
“Besides,” Batman said, “if one guy — an Army major no less — can walk into an administration building and kill thirteen people, then who’s to say five unbalanced individuals can’t kill fifty people? There’s no limit on craziness. And either the Navy has been too dumb or too distracted to notice, but just like Fort Hood, there were red flags all over the place — until it was too late.”
“We’ve got to tell all this to the Kings,” Nolan insisted to Harry. “Who knows what the fuck these 616 guys are doing out there?”
Harry thought about it for several long moments, and then, to his credit, he agreed.
They immediately headed down to the CIC.
* * *
The three kings were there, with their small army of sailors working the large bank of computers.
But there was an air of celebration in the room; Harry and the Whiskey guys noticed it as soon as they walked in. The Kings almost seemed relaxed; their sailors did, too. They were even laughing.
As soon as they spotted Nolan and Batman, one King said, “You guys might want to work up an invoice so we can start processing your fee.”
Nolan and Batman were taken aback; so was Harry.
“What do you mean?” Nolan asked the Kings.
“SEAL Team 616 has just come through,” the King who usually did the talking said. “They’ve just stopped an insurrection on the ballistic sub USS Wyoming. From all reports, these phantom pirates we’ve been looking for were actually crewmembers of this sub. They’d cooked up a scheme to take it over and sell it to terrorists. The SEALs just radioed in their position. They’re about 150 miles south of us and they have the entire situation under control. Rescue vessels are on their way.”
But now, even Harry was skeptical.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked the three officers.
They nodded in unison. “Sure as shit,” one said.
“But how did the 616 know there was even trouble on the sub?” Harry asked them.
The King spokesman said: “They got word of a problem on board through something called Plan 6S-S. They went aboard via their mini-sub and retook control. Apparently the pirates brought some kind of bacterial agent aboard the sub that made a lot of the crew sick, and made it easier for them to gain control — until the SEALs arrived, that is.”
Nolan and Batman rolled their eyes. “This will be hard to believe,” Nolan told the Kings, “but there’s a good chance the SEALs are the perpetrators of all this, that they’re bullshitting you and they’ve hijacked that sub.”
The Three Kings laughed out loud. So did the sailors manning the computers.
“Now, why would you ever say that?” one of the officers asked.
Fighting hard to control his emotions, Batman explained everything they’d just told Harry. Lots of evidence pointed to the 616 as being less than trustworthy. And as the Blackwater guys had told them, they thought the SEALs were capable of anything — even mass murder.
“We just found that missing Russian sub,” Batman told them. “Everyone aboard is dead, killed in the same way as these Muy Capaz pirates we’d dealt with before any of this happened. Whoever did it got aboard that Russian sub somehow, knowing there weren’t any firearms on a training vessel. It was like someone was practicing before they went out and did the real thing. It didn’t make sense to us before, but now it does. These freaking SEALs are off the reservation. They’re now doing the real thing.”
But the Kings were just not hearing it.
“Sorry — but that story is just a bit too incredible,” one said dryly.
That’s when Nolan showed them both of Crash’s messages, the one about the SEALs’ activities and the latest one indicating a blue-on-blue engagement.
“This is my guy telling me the SEALs are dirty, that they’re up to something and something is wrong,” Nolan said. “You must know their mission statements. You must know they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near that ship in Havana, or that LNG carrier, or the Queen of the Seas.”
But still, the Kings were not impressed.
“You said yourself that these SEALs are your rivals,” one said. “You want to be TV stars? You’re into making piles of money? OK — fine, but don’t throw these heroes under the bus just because they beat you to it.”
Nolan and Batman were growing furious. “You think we’re here talking trash about these guys because we want to beat them out of some TV contract?”
“Well, we have to consider where the ‘trash’ is coming from,” another King said. “You admit you got a lot of this information from the Blackwater representatives, the same people who walked out of the initial briefing for this problem, correct? Don’t you think that it might be in their interest to mislead you? They’re your rivals, too. So why would you choose to believe them over — well, us, let’s say?”
Nolan and Batman were enraged by now, but neither would back down.
“What about my guy’s text messages?” Nolan challenged them. “Why would he want to mislead us?”
The officer shrugged. “I understand he used to be a SEAL, and wanted to be one again. Maybe he was just softening the blow, before telling you he was leaving your little club.”
Nolan felt his fists clench. “So — you’re saying we’re the liars?”
The officer smiled in the most self-important way. “No — I’m saying you’re civilians. And frankly, I’d expect just about anything from you. Especially with your track record.”
Batman almost went over the console at him. Nolan and Harry held him back.
“Look, it’s over,” the main King said. “We’re right and you’re wrong. The Wyoming was the target. The SEALs have restored order. Work up your bill and get it to me.”
Nolan and Batman still weren’t hearing it.
“You don’t even know where this Plan 6S-S order came from,” Nolan told them. “Did you send it? Someone at NS Norfolk? Fleet Command? The White House? Who?”
“I don’t know,” the top King replied mockingly. “But you see, I don’t have to know. I just care about results.”
“Let us see these communications then,” Batman said. “The ones between you and the SEALs.”
The King just laughed at him. “You’re not cleared for that,” he said. “And in fact, as of this moment, because your contract is up, you’re not even cleared to be on this ship. So, please leave before I call our security detail.”
Nolan and Batman were boiling. It was such a frustrating situation, both were beyond words. But they didn’t move. So as promised, the Kings called the ship’s security detail. Four armed Marines showed up.
That’s when Harry stepped in.
&n
bsp; “There’s no need for this,” he said, waving the security detail away. “I’ll escort them off the ship.”
* * *
Nolan and Batman flew back to the Dustboat, feeling sullen and beaten.
They met Gunner and Twitch up on the bridge and briefed them on the bad turn of events. Twitch was especially livid. He immediately took Nolan’s sat phone and tried to get a message to Crash, but with no success.
They were all veterans of the military; they’d all come up against the sometimes imperceptibly stupid, thick-headed behavior of the top brass. Their shared experience at Tora Bora was a perfect example.
They knew that frequently, higher-ups in the military went to any lengths to get the outcome they desired, despite a world of evidence to the contrary. Call it hubris, or stupidity, or both, it was a dangerous inclination when people’s lives were involved.
But this? This bordered on criminal insanity.
They steered the Dustboat past the bow of the Mothership just in time to see Agent Harry arrive at his safe spot up on the bow. He looked as exasperated as they felt.
They watched each other as the Dustboat motored past. Harry could only give them a frustrated shrug — he felt their pain. The bad news for him was, he had no choice but to stay aboard the ship of fools.
At the same time, Gunner was poring over a map of the waters south of Blue Moon Bay. Because Crash’s last text had come across a satellite phone, the rough coordinates of where it was sent were hidden in the message details. From this, Gunner discovered that if the information was correct, the commandeered sub was really only twenty miles away from them, and not the 150 miles the SEALs reported to the Mothership. Whiskey viewed this as more evidence of deception on the part of the 616.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” Batman said, holding his head in his hands. “Those Mothership assholes are so twisted up in their own little world, it will be a disaster before they realize how wrong they are.”
Then Nolan’s sat phone started buzzing again. It startled them all, especially Twitch, who was holding it at the time. The buzzing indicated a text message was coming in. It was from Crash. His last.
Twitch punched up the message screen as the rest gathered round.
The message contained only three hurriedly typed, misspelled words: “Srry. Im drwnig.”
Twitch was shocked. “Does that mean: ‘Sorry — I’m drowning?’ ” he asked.
But no sooner were those words out of his mouth when there was a brilliant white flash — followed by a tremendous explosion.
The blast was so powerful, everyone on the bridge was thrown to the deck. The Dustboat was hurled back twenty feet and came close to capsizing.
Struggling to regain his footing, Nolan looked out the port side window to see the huge Mothership engulfed in smoke and flames.
“What the fuck…” he cried.
It didn’t seem real — and for a moment, Nolan wondered if he was having another Shanghai flashback.
Twitch even screamed, “Is this happening?”
But Nolan blinked twice and realized it was real.
Horrible — but real.
They’d been inside the ship’s CIC not five minutes before.
The others got to their feet. They, too, were shaking and disbelieving. It was as if an entire magazine of bombs and ammunition had blown up aboard the Mothership. Except the undercover vessel was not a warship. It didn’t have any munitions on board.
So what happened?
Just then, one of the Senegals cried out: “Torpille!”
He was pointing south and, for a second, they could all see the churning telltale bubble trail of a torpedo streaking northward.
It was moving so fast, though, that no sooner had the Senegal shouted his warning that the torpedo detonated under the already blazing Mothership, causing a second incredible explosion.
“Jesus!” Batman yelled, as they all fell to the deck again. “It’s those asshole SEALs — they’re sinking the fucking thing!”
Just before the second torpedo hit the Mothership, they all saw a lone figure leap from the front of the vessel into the water.
He was a very lucky man, whoever he was, because after the second torpedo exploded, the Mothership broke into two burning pieces and went down immediately. The twin blasts had been so violent, there was no way anyone left on board could have survived.
The team was still reeling from the second torpedo strike when another Senegal cried out, “Une autre torpille!”
He was right: A third torpedo was churning up the water south of them. It went past the fire and wreckage left from the Mothership and hit under the Blackwater vessel nearby, blowing it high into the air.
This blast also rocked the Dustboat, but everyone was holding on tight by now. Nolan and Twitch scrambled off the bridge, down to the rear deck and, spotting the lone survivor of the Mothership blast, threw him a life preserver and a rope. Now, as they pulled the survivor in, a fourth torpedo hit the Blackwater boat, just as it was coming back to the surface from the first hit. It disappeared in a geyser of flames and steam.
Nolan and Twitch pulled the oil-covered figure up from the water, only to discover it was Agent Harry. He was bleeding and his clothes were in threads, and he was screaming, “Get off this ship! Get off!”
But Team Whiskey had already sprung into action. Batman had quick-started Bad Dawg One and Gunner had started Bad Dawg Two. They were throwing in everything they could carry: weapons, laptops and sat phones, and screaming for Nolan and Twitch to hurry up to the helipads.
Carrying Harry between them, Nolan and Twitch ran past the first helicopter just as Batman and Gunner, in the front seats, and three of the Senegals, in the back with a lot of their hastily grabbed equipment, were strapping in. Batman hit the throttles and the copter took off like a rocket.
Nolan reached the second copter moments later. He and Twitch pushed Harry into the back with the two other Senegals and then climbed in behind the controls. They didn’t even bother to strap in. Nolan immediately pulled up on the main control, and they went straight up, the engine screaming in protest.
Not two seconds later, a torpedo hit the Dustboat broadside.
Their little ship, their home and base for their many missions, disappeared in a cloud of fire and debris, sinking without a trace.
* * *
The two helicopters circled the debris pools of both the Mothership and the Blackwater vessel, but there were no survivors.
The ships had been hit by torpedoes designed to sink aircraft carriers and other major warships. They had utterly destroyed the two vessels, as well as the Dustboat.
Harry was close to a state of shock, though. He was screaming, “I knew that fucking ship was cursed — I just knew it!”
Nolan signaled one of the Senegals to get the ONI agent to calm down, which the man did by clamping his huge hand on Harry’s shoulder in a firm but friendly manner.
“You are safe,” the Senegal said in his deep, broken-English baritone. “We are all safe.”
And Harry did calm down — for about two seconds. Then he began screaming over the copter’s engine noise and directly into Nolan’s ear, “But now we’re the only ones left who know what’s going on. And we’ve got no idea where that sub is going!”
But Nolan began immediately shaking his head.
“That’s not the case,” he yelled back to him. “We know exactly where it’s going.”
31
The two copters split up.
Flying Bad Dawg One, Batman pushed the throttles to full power and headed north.
Nolan turned south.
They had the rough coordinates of Crash’s text messages. Plus, Nolan knew the range of a U.S. Navy MK-48 torpedo was about twenty miles. Because of the warm, clear water of Blue Moon Bay, traces of the bubble trails caused by the five torpedoes were still visible.
“Follow those freaking things,” Harry told Nolan, yelling from the backseat again. “They’re like jet contrails
. They’ll point us to where those torpedoes came from.”
And that’s what they did.
“Crash is a SEAL,” Nolan kept saying as they streaked southward, trying to give himself and the others on board some hope where none really existed. “He knows how to swim, how to maintain himself until help arrives.”
“But he also knows how to type,” Twitch said grimly.
The top speed of the OH-6 was 170 mph. Within a minute of leaving the devastation of Blue Moon Bay, Nolan had the copter booted up to more than 200 mph, causing the engine to absolutely scream in protest. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting to the spot where Crash was last heard from and finding him.
* * *
It took just five minutes to travel the twenty miles to the end of the fading bubble trails.
The sub was long gone, of course, but Harry spotted something about one mile to the east.
“Right there,” he yelled in Nolan’s ear, pointing over his shoulder.
And there it was. The abandoned Sea Shadow. It was listing heavily to starboard and emitting a thin trail of smoke. It was the first time Nolan had seen it without its shrink-wrap covering. But it was unmistakably the famous stealth boat.
They continued south for about a half-mile when they saw something else. Also listing heavily and riding atop the waves, it was the SEALs’ mini-sub.
And about a half-mile south of that, they finally saw him. He was facedown, his bright blue battle suit sticking out from the greenish-white Caribbean waters.
It was Crash.
“God damn,” Nolan whispered as he dove toward the floating body.