True Devotion

by Dee Henderson

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  Three

  * * *

  The arrival of the Coast Guard helicopter overhead was heralded by a bright searchlight that turned the night into day. The rotor wash created a ministorm of flying water around them. Kelly was no longer responding to any attempt to wake her and the boy was barely breathing. Joe watched as a Coast Guard swimmer dropped from fifteen feet into the swells.

  The swimmer had just reached them when two Zodiacs appeared from different directions into the circle of light. Boomer and Cougar sliced into the water beside him. “Take the boy!”

  As soon as he was handed off, Joe turned his full attention to Kelly, getting her hands out of the water and onto his shoulders. With his hands cradling the back of her neck, he lifted her head higher from the water. In the bright light he could see what he had only suspected before—her eyes were swollen closed, her lips were bleeding, her skin had turned translucent with the cold, and blood vessels were showing starkly blue through her skin. The sight was terrifying.

  A stretcher was lowered from the hovering helicopter. Wolf and Cougar worked with the Coast Guard swimmer to get the boy secured in it. The guardsman clipped onto the line and went up with the stretcher. As soon as the Coast Guard chopper had them aboard, its nose dropped and the helicopter took off toward the coast at full throttle.

  A second helicopter came in immediately after it. A secure line came down. Boomer grabbed it, quickly forming a buddy harness and keeping it steady as Joe secured the harness around himself and Kelly. The waves were buffeting her, sending her slamming into him and then yanking her back. There was no way to stop the added bruises being inflicted just by the attempts to help her. He flung out his hand to block her head as the line whipped around. This was one of the most dangerous points in a rescue. The pilot was fighting to keep a hover.

  “It’s locked,” Wolf yelled as the metal locking ring clicked. Joe immediately waved, and the winch began to lift them from the water. He had rappelled out of and been lifted into one of these Navy helicopters numerous times before, but never with such precious cargo.

  The wind spun them around as they rose. Joe ducked his head in close to Kelly’s, trying to shield her face from the stinging spray.

  He was pulled inside by two Navy corpsmen. They lowered Kelly into a waiting stretcher and smothered her in a thermal blanket. They immediately turned their focus to how she was breathing.

  “Take us to Sharp,” the doctor ordered over the intercom.

  “No way! She’s going to North Island.” Sharp was good, but it was civilian and Joe wanted Kelly someplace where Nick’s reputation would make a difference. The second helicopter was Navy, not Coast Guard, and could divert to Naval Air Station North Island where it had originated from with one word from the doctor.

  “She’s a civilian.”

  “She’s a SEAL dependent. She’s going to North Island.” If the corpsman weren’t in his way, Joe might have made his point with more than words.

  A slap on the back paused him midargument. “Bear, quit your growling. Craig Scott is waiting for us on the pad at Sharp.”

  Joe turned to see Lincoln in the copilot seat. His boss bore the handle of a legendary president because he delivered that same kind of leadership. The fact he had come out to help with the rescue said a lot, as did the name Craig Scott. The doctor had been one of those who helped put Joe’s shoulder back together. Joe swallowed his protests. His boss nodded. “Let’s beat that coastie to Sharp,” Lincoln ordered the pilot.

  Joe settled down beside the door as he watched the doctor and the corpsmen work, ignoring the towel thrust into his hand and the blanket pushed on him.

  He hadn’t gotten there in time.

  He watched Kelly’s face during the short flight, watched the doctor swear under his breath at the vital sign readings he was getting, and had to live with the reality he had not been in time. She was so pale she looked dead. Joe had seen that pallor before, on her husband’s face, right before Nick died.

  Three Years Earlier

  Loose nukes.

  They were called loose rather than lost because there was hope they could be recovered before someone had to admit that a rogue nation or terrorist group had managed to purchase one. They were leaking out of the former republics of the Soviet Union like they were kept in a sieve. Lately, the SEALs had been chasing them all over the world.

  The intel on this one said it was heading to Hong Kong, buyer unknown. While the Middle East rogue nations prowling the black market were frequently in the press spotlight, the countries in East Asia wanting to add a nuclear weapon to their arsenal were just as numerous. North Korea had been willing to risk a nationwide famine to divert resources to build one. South Vietnam might be a democracy, but it felt threatened. And Taiwan . . .

  Joe had been on the ground during that tense 1996 missile exchange as China flexed its muscles in an exercise to intimidate Taiwan. The U.S. had responded by sending a carrier into the Taiwan straits. Taiwan needed protection more than it needed words. Israel had achieved that kind of sway by becoming a nuclear power, albeit an undeclared one. Taiwan was moving more and more toward that same frightening posture.

  But this reality was different; Taiwan acquiring the weapon would lead to war. China already had them, and they would never allow the breakaway province to acquire one. It was in the United States’ interest to stop this transfer by any means needed.

  The water was icy around Joe, dark, for they had lucked into a night of the month with barely a sliver of moon. It was disorienting not to have light reflecting off the surface of the water above to provide a sense of up and down in the murky blackness. Joe followed the gleaming fluorescent numbers on the attack board GPS, relying on technology to replace his senses. The mission had begun.

  Odessa, Ukraine, known as the Pearl of the Black Sea, was an eastern European city trying to assimilate to Western commerce while still bearing the government bureaucracy of the past. The seaport authority had expanded the oil terminal with reservoirs for storage of both light and crude oil products. The passenger terminal now had six major berths for luxury liners. A new cold storage facility had been built.

  It was an active port, with three break walls creating seven thousand meters of protected waters, and that activity could hide a lot of unwelcome commerce. Smugglers willing to part with some cash could find ways around the rules that “any cargo may be stored with the exception of ecologically harmful, poisonous, or explosive ones.” Joe didn’t imagine the port authority would be too pleased to learn they had outside help to enforce that mandate.

  Cougar had jokingly asked how the seaport authorities would classify a nuclear warhead since it was a clear violation of all three exceptions—it was definitely explosive, poisonous, and ecologically harmful. It was a good thing they were going to recover it before anyone knew it was around, or some Ukrainian bureaucrat would have to change his forms.

  Joe had found the humor a useful indication that Golf Platoon was ready for the mission. Like most missions, it was dangerous, deadly, and now—his platoon had taken the assignment in stride and dug into the planning. Six hours after getting paged, they had been on a C-130 transport plane bound for Italy.

  The numbers wavered as he came to a stop, the numbers reading coordinates decided upon during the planning session. A glance at his watch showed they had arrived within the expected margin of time. He let his body drift, getting a better sense of the current.

  Boomer, who had gotten engaged two months before, managed to get a fast call in to cancel dinner with his fiancée the next evening as they packed and headed for their ride, using the tried but true “training exercise, I’m sorry” wording.

  Joe couldn’t blame the man. Not many engagements, let alone marriages, survived the transition to the reality of a SEAL’s life. It was a glamorous life until the inconvenience of deployments began to rub the wrong way, the required silence rankled, the danger created fear. Boomer and Chri
sti might make it—Joe hoped they did—but they were fighting long odds. He had seen too many SEAL marriages get in trouble and fail despite all the best intentions.

  Nick and Kelly made it work. Joe wondered briefly how they did it. He had been friends with Nick for four years, watched them together, and knew they had something special. Kelly adapted, maybe that was the secret. Neither the pages that interrupted life nor the danger of her husband’s job appeared to ruffle her. She didn’t particularly like the injuries from training, but she understood the sweat-now-or-bleed-later reality. Kelly understood the job, and that was unique.

  The clock on the attack board gleamed 0212 hours. The wait was over. They never moved on the hour or at any other predictable time—it was a rookie mistake.

  Reaching for the rope at his waist, Joe tugged the buddy line to signal Nick. They floated to the surface, sixty meters outside the original and oldest break wall at the Odessa port. In the dark of a moonless night—black wet suits, faces painted, weapons secure at their backs—they were barely visible to each other only meters apart.

  No orders were needed. Every member of the eight-man squad knew the mission inside and out. They were heading to the container terminal, a joint Ukraine-American venture just south of the lighthouse and the connecting jetty. The warhead was being smuggled by rail to the harbor, where it was to be loaded aboard a grain transport ship stopping here and then bound for Hong Kong.

  The water was cold and its surface marred by a film of diesel fuel left by the numerous ships coming through the port. The air smelled dank, the tons of cargo and oil and the crush of a city built to the shoreline combining to replace fresh air with the smell of an industrial world. It was enough to make Joe’s eyes water and his nose burn.

  This mission was the type SEALs liked best. Simple. Silently slip into port, locate the cargo, move it to their own secure transport, then take it out to sea. Having the blueprints for the American-designed cargo area had helped them decide where to strike. They considered hitting the train on its way to the harbor, but that would put them too far away from the water, which every SEAL considers his safe home. Hitting the ship once it put to sea was very attractive, and Joe had tasked the second eight-man squad of the platoon to be prepared to do just that if necessary. But it was here, in Odessa, where the real prize lay. The smugglers.

  One of them had to know the identity of the man arranging these sales. The intelligence community wanted him identified, desperately. He’d been nicknamed Raider as years passed and his handiwork frustrated the military time and again. He had the habit of swiping military hardware from supposedly secure sites.

  He was a thief; it was that simple. One who had graduated from shoulder-fired missiles back in the days of Afghanistan to the big leagues—nuclear components and now warheads. At times Joe thought it was almost like a game with him. Until they stopped him, missions like this one were going to continue.

  The fact Raider focused on military weapons . . . He was stealing them at the behest of others, but his buyers’ lists were elusive. The variety of items stolen and the years it had been happening had the intelligence community searching for an arms dealer who was filling out his portfolio with stolen goods for sale, but that link had never appeared. These weapons were stolen to fill specific requests. And that suggested the weapons would be used as soon as they were delivered.

  Given the years spent searching for a name without anyone coming close to identifying him, the man was probably in the loop somewhere, reviewing the intel on himself. He had stayed hidden too long for that to be accidental or simply good luck. Capturing one of the smugglers was high on the mission priorities—right after “secure the warhead” and “don’t get killed.”

  Joe searched the north side of the break wall while Nick searched the south. Clear. Nick nodded, slipped off the buddy line, and disappeared below the water’s surface. He reappeared eight minutes later at the end of the break wall, visible in Joe’s NVGs—night vision goggles. Nick left the water, weapon in hand, to disappear among the rocks.

  What made stealth was patience. Joe waited. Nick had to check out the jetty before they made the move into the port waters.

  The all-clear signal came by infrared light.

  Cougar and Boomer appeared beside him in the water. A silent touch to each man’s shoulder and they dropped below the surface as one. Wearing Draegar LAR V rebreather units to suppress bubbles marking their passage, they swam fifteen feet below the surface, following the GPS past the break wall to the first container cargo berth. The U.S.-registered St. Juanita had berthed there late in the afternoon. The three of them surfaced in the shadow of its hull at 0223 hours local time. Anyone moving around would be less than alert; 0300 was the body’s natural lowest point. Nick slipped back into the water and crossed from the break wall to join them.

  The change from water to land warfare took only moments. They were the front line four. Their task was straightforward—enter the cargo area and secure the warhead. If possible, they would capture one of the smugglers. Once Joe signaled success, the second wave of four SEALs would come in behind them and secure the transport area.

  A crew from the Special Boat Unit was idling at sea. They had a forty-two-foot Fountain high-speed boat, with its one-thousand-horsepower engines, waiting for word to come in and pick up the cargo. Snatch the warhead and get out of Dodge. It generally worked like a charm.

  Nick went up the ladder to the terminal first, taking point. He disappeared and they waited. A single click over the headset signaled it was clear.

  Joe went up next with Cougar behind him. A concrete ledge about two feet wide ran along the edge of the pier, and they dropped over it to the walkway. As the satellite photos and blueprints had shown, the walkway was designed for forklifts carrying wide cargo loads. Joe darted across to the cover provided by massive cable spools stacked side by side. Having destroyed enough of the stuff during his demolition forays with Boomer, Joe instantly recognized the thick cable as power line. The St. Juanita must have been off-loading the spools.

  A glance to his left confirmed Cougar was secure. Joe clicked his microphone and Boomer appeared a moment later. Two clicks and Nick appeared as a glowing silhouette on the NVGs, a good hundred meters down the walkway. The black thermal tape across the back of his wet suit glowed like a beacon, a visual reminder that he was a friendly. They each wore unique tape patterns to make it instantly apparent who was where in the dead of night. The guys on the team didn’t give him a choice; he was double-striped. It was one of the banns of being the lieutenant.

  They headed into the cargo terminal proper, where massive metal containers in all colors, some big enough to hold a luxury car, were stacked in rows waiting to be moved by forklift and crane. The area felt claustrophobic despite how big the terminal was—over a quarter of a million square meters in size, dwarfing several football fields—but there would be no need to search its expanse. Cargo arriving by rail within the last eight hours eliminated the guesswork. For the smugglers to bring the warhead in, keep it concealed, and move it to a ship the size of the grain transport, they only had one option. Berth three.

  Nick held up his hand in warning and they instantly, silently, dispersed. Joe watched from the shadows of a container carrying Russian truck brake bearings as a dockworker moved past his location, head down, trying to use a flashlight to read a page on a clipboard.

  The sound of the man’s footsteps faded. A click over the microphone and they were moving again.

  When Nick gestured forty seconds later, it was to indicate they were on target. Joe moved forward to join him while Cougar and Boomer disappeared into the darkness to either side.

  Nick had taken up a perch beside a stacked column of steel girders. They were at the foot of the rail yard, and two locomotives, boxcars attached, were on the tracks before them.

  Joe settled beside Nick, next to what had once been an oil drum and was now a catchall for broken pallet wood, providing good concealment. The metal of
the drum was cold to Joe’s touch, the sea air creating a sheen of moisture on its surface.

  He had to marvel at the intel. Even the boxcar numbers were right. Missions never went as planned, and intel was always wrong. For once the axioms they lived by were proving wrong. The warhead had arrived, right on schedule.

  Joe turned his attention toward the water. The enormous docking berth three was empty. It would be dawn before the grain transport ship arrived; it was still outside the Black Sea. There had been concern the smugglers would be able to get a ship here early and have it waiting, for the warhead was vulnerable when it stopped moving. But it turned out not to be that easy to find ships able to carry such cargo with legitimate reasons to be in both Odessa and Hong Kong. The smugglers were playing it cautious. But they didn’t know they had a mole passing on their travel arrangements.

  “There.”

  The word was a whisper over his headset from Nick.

  Someone had just stepped down from between the third and fourth railcar. A second and then a third man appeared, and over the distance there was the sound of men laughing as one slapped another on the back. They were all armed. Joe studied their movements, trying to identify the leader.

  Two more men appeared. Joe immediately picked up the way one man turned up his coat collar and pushed his hands into his pockets—he didn’t seem to be enjoying the cold air. “Shift change.”

  Nick nodded. “Five tangos here. Who else?”

  Tangos—terrorists—and the smugglers were certainly that. The SEALs had come prepared to handle four times that many, but to do it silently meant taking each step with care. Joe touched his mike. “Cougar, sneak and peek. The rail station house.” There was smoke coming from the stovepipe of the small building. There might be a couple more still inside, trying to ward off the chill of the night.