“That is indeed good news, sir,” MacOlson said. “That means the rescue helicopters should be able to get to us sooner.”
The radio crackled, drawing their attention.
“Lieutenant Early, this is Hampton Roads Coast Guard. We have you fivers, ma’am. Can you tell us your location?”
Static followed the transmission for a couple of seconds, followed by more static as another merchant interrupted the channel asking for permission to enter the navigation channel. He was a tanker out of New Iraq heading for the terminals in Norfolk.
“Get the hell off the circuit,” Commodore West mumbled. “Jesus Christ! Don’t they know we have an emergency out there?”
As if hearing him, the Coast Guard returned to the circuit. “All stations this circuit. You will remain clear of channel sixteen until we have authorized you to use it. Backup channel eighteen is open for all users with the exception of Lieutenant Early. Do not acknowledge this restriction. Lieutenant Early, maintain contact this channel.”
Static followed for a few seconds.
“Coast Guard, this is Early.” The popping sound of rapid gunfire garbled her words.
The red telephone rang. Commodore West picked it up. Listening, he turned his back to the others. Tucker moved a couple of steps nearer, trying to hear what was being said. West was issuing a lot of “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs.” Must be Second Fleet again.
“I think we’re east of Fort Story,” the voice on the radio broadcast. “We’re pretty sure we saw the old Cape Henry lighthouse, but it was—” Gunfire interrupted the transmission.
Fort Story was a little-known Army base situated on the point of land where the coast curves west to butt against the more famous tourist-ridden beaches of Virginia Beach. The Cape Henry lighthouse was one of the first built in America, and while it was not operational, the Army still maintained it in pristine shape as a historical monument.
Repeated calls by the Coast Guard failed to re-establish contact with the P-3C pilot.
Commodore West hung up the telephone and looked at Tucker.
“It’s a go. Lieutenant MacOlson, take them out, bear south toward Cape Henry.”
“Sir, we aren’t sure exactly where they’re located and there must be—”
West nodded. “You’re right. We don’t. But we have a general area and we know that it’s got a huge, dark-colored van anchored down on its stern weather deck. Yes, there are at least a hundred commercial ships anchored out there, but the ship you’re looking for has to be within ten to twenty miles of shore, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to see the coastline. That was Second Fleet on the telephone. By the time you hit the channel, Lieutenant, the Coast Guard will have their coastal patrol boat, the USCGC Albacore out there. She’s just returned from evading the storm.” The Commodore put on his raincoat. “The Albacore will try to provide a weather break for you to close the ship. Should make the going a little smoother.”
MacOlson nodded. “How about the other boats tied up here, sir?”
“Why do you think I’m putting on my raincoat? Headquarters is sending some sailors off one of the amphibs to help me watch the lines. Until then, I think me and the First Class can recall enough about ships to keep them safe until the Boatswain Mates off the amphibs arrive.” He looked at the men and the lone woman watching him. “Well? Get going. You can’t very well help anyone standing here watching me.”
Tucker moved quickly, heading toward the stairs.
“One other thing,” Commodore West said.
Everyone stopped and turned toward the Commodore. Tucker noticed a look of sadness cross the man’s face. He knows he is sending us off to die.
“May God go with you.”
Tucker nodded once before turning down the stairs. His two Special Forces allies hurried with him. MacOlson had already disappeared, running to his boat. Behind MacOlson ran the SEAL/EOD sailors who had been in the conference room.
Tucker knew the Surface Warfare officer would already have the team outfitted and in position by the time they hit the deck of the boat.
Commodore West shouted, bringing him up short. St. Cyr and Tibbles-Seagraves stopped alongside him. Bradley was halfway down the stairs and kept on going, not having heard the shout. “Commander, that ship can’t be allowed into the harbor. Keep her out to sea. If all else fails, scuttle her, but don’t let her enter the harbor or close our shores. Navy Intelligence isn’t sure what the weapon is on her stern, but whatever it is, it must be something special if Abu Alhaul has gone through all this trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” Tucker said. He bit his bottom lip for a second. In for a nickel, in for a dime, he thought. “But, they may have a worse-case scenario, Commodore.”
West passed them as he hit the stairs. The three men hurriedly followed. “Yeap, worse case it could be a nuclear weapon — a real one. Then it won’t matter whether it explodes at sea or ashore; it’s going to create a lot of death and destruction, which is why, when you take control, keep it out there, away from here.”
* * *
Senior Chief Leary stood behind the helm, his AK-47 propped across the top of it. “We’re steering two-nine-zero,” he said, tapping the compass in front of him.
He turned. At first dismissing the noise that sounded like a bouncing metal ball as his fingers drumming the compass.
Kelly saw it first. “Grenade,” he said in a voice moist with the blood trickling in his throat. A string of red flowed down the right side of his lips as he raised his hand and pointed toward the hatch on the starboard side of the bridge.
Without thinking about it, Early dashed from where she had been standing near the forward bulkhead. With one hand, she scooped up the still-rolling grenade, and in one smooth underhand softball-like pitch tossed it back toward the open hatchway just as the ship rolled slowly to the port side. The hatch door swung inward, bouncing off the dead man’s head as the grenade sailed through the opening, barely missing the edge of the loose hatch by an inch. The explosion blew out the windows directly in front of the hatchway. The concussion sent her reeling backward, tripping over Kelly’s feet. Her head felt like it was blowing up inside her skull, and when she landed against the port bulkhead, she was surprised to see the Senior Chief lying beside her.
He looked at her and said something, but the words were muffled and she didn’t understand. She shook her head.
The Senior Chief pushed himself up and hurried across the back of the bridge to the open hatchway, reached down, and jerked the body away. Then, while dust and debris continued to settle, he exposed himself for a moment to reach out and slam the hatch shut. He reached up and shoved the lever down and around. The explosion had buckled a latch, causing the lever to stop halfway around. The top of the hatch sealed against its facings, but the explosion had curled the bottom half of the stout metal door up, leaving an opening about two feet across. Big enough for someone to crawl through; big enough for another grenade to be tossed; and too small for an accurate return pitch.
Early twisted her jaws back and forth, feeling the pop of air as the pressure in her ears equalized. She pulled herself up and to the front, but kept her position to the left side of the bridge.
“We need to turn it away from the coast,” Kelly said, his words straining through pain.
Lieutenant Early looked at the wounded man. It had been five minutes since the Coast Guard had announced their imminent arrival, but imminent in the military services was directly related to the readiness of the unit being committed. In this weather, she doubted they had a ship large enough and close enough to be here soon. A fresh spot of blood appeared on Kelly’s right leg where a piece of shrapnel had hit him. It didn’t look too serious. But then, it wasn’t her wound.
Kelly pulled himself back up into a sitting position. Blood ran out of his left ear, dripping onto the shoulder of his wounded side.
Lieutenant Early and Senior Chief Leary hurriedly moved the wounded copilot around to the port side of the helm console, putting th
e controls of the ship between the copilot and the damaged hatch, which pinged repeatedly as the terrorists renewed firing. Bullets entered the bridge through the buckled bottom half of the hatch. Most went out the broken windows, a few ricocheted inside the bridge, luckily missing them. The three huddled around the console until the firing died.
“Is there some way we can disable the helm? Stop the ship’s movement? We need to do something so if they do—” Early stopped in mid sentence. If the terrorists regained control of the bridge, it meant the three of them were dead.
Kelly coughed. “There should be an automatic pilot that can be turned on; but once it’s turned off, who ever is at the helm can turn the ship wherever he wants it to go.”
Early faced the truth of their situation. They were outnumbered, and it was only a matter of time before they were overrun or killed.
“How about we turn it on—”
A grenade sailed through the opening. Early and Leary saw it at the same time. Both dived behind the console as the grenade exploded. Automatic gunfire from the attackers filled the opening.
Early and Leary stood, their AK-47s pointed toward the hatch, expecting any moment for the terrorists to burst through.
“Looks as if that idea is dead, Lieutenant,” Leary said, catching her eye and nodding toward the other end of the console where the smooth metal casing housing the automatic pilot had been replaced by a mangle of aluminum, sparking wires, and smoke.
The radio on the bulkhead rode over the noise of the fight. “Lieutenant Early, this is Commodore West. Help is on the way. Hold out, shipmates. Give us thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes! Christ! We’ll be lucky to hold out another five.”
* * *
West waited for nearly a minute before he moved the handset away from his head and clipped it back on his belt.
Sailors rushed along the side of the low-profile dark Mark V Special Operations Craft docked at the end of the inboard pier. They had singled up all lines, and exhaust from the two K50S waterjets that drove this boat like a low-flying aircraft quickly flew away with the winds. Standing outside the covered portion of the small eighty-two-foot craft were Tucker, St. Cyr, and Tibbles-Seagraves. The three stared at the Commodore, who walked to the edge of the pier and shook his head.
“No reply! No answer!” West shouted, unclipping his radio and holding up for a moment. “May be too late.”
“Let go all lines!” MacOlson shouted through a bullhorn.
West covered his ears.
Tucker bit his lower lip as he nodded at the four-striper. It meant either Early and those with her in the bridge of this ship — and they weren’t even sure what it looked like or where it was… Were they dead or too busy to answer? All they had to go on was that Early said they could see the Cape Henry lighthouse, which was located on a spit of land inside Fort Story. The fact that it would be a few hours before the weather would allow helicopters to be airborne also narrowed down their options if they got out there and ran into more than the three of them balanced with five enlisted SEAL/EODs could handle. So close to American shores and yet so far from additional support, all thanks to Mother Nature.
Tucker was glad the Commodore had decided to make this an eight-person team instead of the usual four-person. Even so, the eight of them had never worked together. They were going out cold turkey with no idea of the odds against them or what they were facing. Somewhere behind them, a lot of intelligence officers were stuck in traffic after a warm night’s sleep.
SEAL Team Four at the Dam Neck, Virginia, training facility was being assembled. The Air Force had some Special Forces helicopters, commonly referred to as Pave Low, at Langley anxiously waiting for the weather to change so they could pick up SEAL Team Four. Until then, it was this hodgepodge SEAL team that was heading into battle. Tucker would be surprised if they all lived through it. He glanced down into the crew compartment where they would ride. Sam Bradley leaned forward at the end of the seat row and did something inside the black medical kit she had braced between her legs. Nine of them going aboard, since Sam had inserted herself into what could be a one-way mission. Tucker made a mental vow that the next time he was wounded he would have the nurse sign a limited length of authority agreement.
MacOlson’s head stuck outside the compartment. “Come on, Commander. Better get inside!”
Tucker, St. Cyr, and Tibbles-Seagraves ducked as they stepped down into the small staging compartment of the Mark V. A row of seats along both sides of the bulkheads provided the small comfort to the SEALs who rode these high-speed boats into harm’s way. The Mark V was never meant to be a long-range craft. It wasn’t even built to allow those assigned duty to it to sleep on board, though many did. They brought their own sleeping gear and, like sailors, submariners, and aircrewmen through the years, discovered that sleep was hidden in all the strange places of a warship and warplane. All it took was warfighter ingenuity and an ability to ignore fear, discomfort, danger, and the smells and sounds of others in close quarters.
Tucker swung into the seat beside Sam. “You okay?” he asked.
“And why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, in a voice loud enough to ride over the mixed sounds of the waterjet engines and the storm.
Tucker pulled his carbine from the rack behind him. He checked the chamber, the magazine, and the safety before clipping it back into its storage area. The boat ceased backing.
The sound of the engines decreased for a moment, then increased steadily in volume until the boat moved forward, slowly at first and then quickly picking up speed. As it gathered speed, the effects of the waves beating into the closed waterway they traveled increased in intensity. The small boat heaved upward for a moment before slamming back down on the ocean. The moment of weightlessness between when the upward movement stopped and the downward fall began caused Tucker’s stomach to drag upward each time as they fell the couple of feet to the surface. That was all he needed — to become seasick.
They weren’t going to be much use to those airdales on board that rogue freighter if they drowned before they got there. Then, as if reading his mind, the pounding of the water against the Mark V dropped in intensity as if a curtain had fallen across a gripping seat-edge act. What Tucker knew was that the real event was yet to come.
MacOlson crawled down from his seat in the small bridge of the boat and, balancing himself with his hands, worked his way back to where Tucker sat. “Commander,” he said over the noise of the waterjets and storm. “Coast Guard Cutter Albacore will rendezvous with us in five minutes. They’re going to take the seaward track and let us sail in their lee side. This should reduce the wave action on our Mark V.”
Tucker acknowledged MacOlson, who grinned, leaned down, and said, “Ain’t life grand for a sailor at sea?” Then he turned and worked his way back to the bridge area, where sailors occupied four of the five seats in the small compartment.
The door leading to the bridge area remained open.
“What’s he doing?” Sam asked, leaning over to Tucker so he could hear her. She pointed through the door to the petty officer who was sitting in the center of the bridge compartment, each hand on a long rod that seemed to grow from the floor.
As they watched, the sailor moved the rods slightly back and forth.
“That’s the helmsman,” Tucker said, leaning over so his lips brushed her ear. “Those things he’s holding are the things that drive the two waterjets. The Mark V doesn’t have a rudder, propellers, or shafts like a normal boat or ship. He pushes and pulls those waterjets to control the direction we’re going.” Tucker leaned back and looked through the hatch at the bridge, then leaned toward Sam. “I think he also controls the speed of the craft, but I’m not sure how.”
MacOlson stuck his head through the open door. “We’ve got a visual on the Coast Guard cutter. Should be a little smoother ride in a moment. And by the way,” he continued. “They’ve narrowed down the freighter we are after to five that are in the area.”
*
* *
“If we abandon the bridge, we’re giving control to them.”
“Right, Maureen, but right now, it doesn’t look like much of a bridge.”
“We’ve got two problems,” the Senior Chief added, the words running together nervously.
If he was nervous, Early figured she had better be also. “We’re not only going to have to go back out the way we came in, but we’re going to have to carry Lieutenant Kelly also.”
His voice was garbled. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. Early leaned around the destroyed helm and saw that the Senior Chief was peering around the edge of the hole in the bottom of the hatch. A shadow crossed in front of the light in the passageway. Leary jumped back, stuck the barrel of his automatic weapon through the hole, and fired a burst. A short cry of pain abruptly cut off told her the Senior Chief’s fire had been accurate.
“Outside, we’re sitting ducks,” Early said.
“We’ve been lucky so far,” Kelly mumbled.
“If they throw any more grenades into here, we could be dead meat,” the Senior Chief said. He looked down at the copilot. “And, your body can’t afford much more luck, Lieutenant.”
Movement on the couple of monitors still working above the forward bridge windows caught Early’s attention. Four smoldered from the damage caused by the grenades and bullets. The fifth had an erratic white line riding up a dark screen only to reappear at the bottom and start its upward journey again. On the only one working, she saw two men standing at the van on the aft deck, doing something to it.
Then firing came through the damaged door again, causing her to hunker down near Kelly. Seconds later, the gunfire slackened, then suddenly stopped altogether. She used the pause to crawl to the port hatch where they had attacked the bridge. Pushing herself off the deck, keeping her back against the rear bulkhead, Early stood up. She held the AK-47 at an angle so she could fire at whatever she found on the other side. Early reached up and swung the lever down fast, pushing the hatch outward. The heavy metal hatch swung out until it hit the safety lines. The ship rolled slowly to starboard at the same time. The hatch bounced off the safety lines, curving inward to slam off the facings a couple of times before stopping in the closed position. Early reached up and pulled the lever back down.
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