Buck released another burst, answered by return fire below.
Ortiz let out a curse with raw feeling. “Son of a bitch!”
Graves shoved Buhari at Chase. “Watch him.”
He and Caulder joined Buck in suppressing fire from the ladder, their silenced weapons coughing savagely.
Somewhere along the way Buhari had lost his wire-framed glasses. His eyes bulged. The only sound he managed through his gag were grunts of rage and fear. Chase pressed him to his knees and returned to helping Ortiz with the door.
Buck’s reinforcements forced the enemy to withdraw from the ladderway. Attackers resorted to eerie hooting and taunting that could have come from anywhere, considering the ship’s tricky acoustics.
Past the steel door and up the other side was the only way out. “Little help?” Ortiz requested.
Buck kept watch at the ladder while Graves and Caulder returned to the stuck door and pushed Chase out of the way. Straining, the older SEALs widened the opening. The asshole shooting from behind the grating in the cabin apparently decided he didn’t hanker meeting his seventy-two virgins just yet and ran off to a pressing engagement elsewhere.
Sporadic gunshots resumed from the ladder landing. Buckley returned it. Bear checked on Buhari. He didn’t want the guy spilling his guts here, literally, before NSA and the CIA got their hands on him for “advanced” debriefing.
“Put your back into it, Bear,” Caulder encouraged. “Do I have to do everything?”
“Shut up and pull, damn it.”
Chase rejoined the effort. With a final heave, the four big men wrenched the door open. Pouring sweat and shoving their captive ahead of them, the entire team charged through the cabin and up the steel steps toward the main deck. Chase carried the bag of contraband intel from Buhari’s cabin while Caulder hung back with Buddha.
“We’re on the portside aft ladder,” Graves radioed, hoping someone was listening.
Buddha, with his leg stiffening, clawed his way up the last few steps. Graves flung open the hatch and shoved Buhari out onto the deck.
“Going external on the main deck,” Bear reported through his headset.
They weren’t out of danger yet. In darkness and in heart-beating silence, the SEALs in single file, their breathing ragged, staggered toward the gangway that led down to the dock. The strain of the last hour thrummed through their bodies.
Unnoticed by any of them, a group of fighters in the superstructure above scattered into position to trigger an ambush against the escaping SEALs and their HVT. It may have succeeded except for one factor: Fishbait with Echo’s external element had set up a covering force behind a dock crane ashore on the pier. They had purposefully maintained radio and tactical silence to prevent their discovery.
An instant before the enemy shooters would have opened up, Fishbait and his crew unleashed a withering hail of steel that cut down the enemy skulkers like a Nile scythe through ripe wheat. The night went incandescent with light and sound. Muzzles sparkled and tracers clashed to the accompaniment of weapons barking and rattling in a terrible symphony of death. Battle could be beautiful in a ghastly sort of way.
Bear’s men and their prisoner scurried down the gangway and linked up with teammates on the dock. Graves faced the ship and lay on his trigger, spraying the remaining enemy soldiers aboard the Damascus II. Spent cartridge casings clattered around him. Muzzle flashes revealed his face, momentarily betraying how shaken he had been underneath his tough exterior. Death had walked with each of them tonight. Fuck him. They had foiled him again.
Everything went quiet in the immediate aftermath. Bear lifted his head skyward. The night was clear with stars and a sliver of moon rising. From not far away, he heard the thumping of a rapidly approaching helicopter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Abandoned Village, Nigeria
The village in the jungle to which the hostages were transported had apparently been abandoned for quite some time until Boko Haram moved in to reoccupy it. An open fire crackled in the heart of darkness. Smoke curled from the flames, rising out of what had previously been the village square, and dissipated against the vast celestial panorama of stars and sliver of moon. A night bird called from somewhere in the surrounding forest. Another answered.
Several guerrilla terrorists loitered around the fire, smoking home-rolled cigarettes or chewing khat, a mild opiate. They were garbed out in military-style cammie trousers or khaki shorts, either boots or sandals made of cow or elephant hide, and a variety of shirts ranging from safari wear to T-shirts or short African tunics. Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara with his trademark black beret adorned some of the T-shirts; fifty years ago Fidel Castro had sent him to Africa to foment a communist revolution. All the men were armed, but most had stacked rifles at a baobab tree growing alone in the middle of the town square and marketplace.
The hour was late. Rip Taggart lay curled on the bare earthen floor of the holding cell hut where he tried to sleep and regain strength from the pounding his torso had suffered during his capture. It was a useless effort. His eyes remained wide. He listened to the sounds from outside—low talking, the occasional rattle of weapons or gear, some laughter, footsteps shuffling—and tried to catalogue the size of the force and where the various individuals might be sleeping or stationed as guards or sentries.
Nick the whiny PR man with the shoulders of a quarterback and the courage of the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz had finally settled down after Rip had had enough of him and threatened to knock his dick in the dirt. Terry McAlwain moved as far from Nick in the tiny hut as he could get on the male side of the rebar enclosures. His African driver Hakeem followed. Leaning on each other, the pair snored gently in unison.
In their cage on the other side of the split cell, Na’omi and her five girls seemed to have settled down for the night.
Taggart was thinking about Bear Graves and Caulder, Buck and Buddha and Fishbait. The team. Brothers never left brothers behind—except Taggart was no longer a brother. He doubted any of them even knew he had been captured. And even if the Command knew, why should it commit resources to rescue a rogue operator from the past?
He became aware that he wasn’t the only one awake in the hut. Ambient moonlight illuminated Na’omi’s pensive face at the bungalow’s only window. He hadn’t heard her move away from her sleeping girls, she had accomplished it so silently.
“What are you looking at?” he asked her in a guarded tone.
“I’m counting the guards,” she replied in the same guarded manner.
“There’s five guards,” Rip told her. “And maybe fifteen shooters.”
“You’re finally sober,” she noticed.
“Unless you’ve got a flask of moonshine stashed somewhere.”
Na’omi ignored the comment. “I heard them talking,” she volunteered. “They’re afraid of you. When their leader comes, he’ll kill you.”
“Yeah? Well, shit happens.”
She eased over to the rebar nearest him. She nodded in the direction of her sleeping girls.
“Do you know what Boko Haram does to girls?” she said. “They’ll sell them as slaves, and they’ll be raped by their so-called husbands, forced into motherhood before they can even be children themselves.”
Her voice edged thin and sharp with sadness.
“The worst part is, their own families will shun them if they’re ever free again. They’ll be turned away as outcasts. They won’t ever be able to go home again. Can you imagine what that must feel like?”
Rip could easily imagine not ever being able to go home again. “Like I said, shit happens. And there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”
Rip lay unmoving on the floor, not looking at her. She knelt at the bars nearest him and swallowed her pride. Her voice changed, exposing vulnerability for the first time since Rip encountered her at the school.
“Please, mister?” she pleaded. “They don’t have much, my girls, but I can put something together. We can pay yo
u. You work for money, don’t you?”
There had been a time when he hadn’t, when what he did was for God and country and Mom’s apple pie and all that bullshit.
One of the girls materialized next to Na’omi and knelt with her by the bars. A shaft of moonlight through cracks in the wall caught her tiny dark face in profile. Rip recognized the little one Na’omi called Esther.
“Mister?” Esther sounded teary-eyed, panicked. “It’s true what you said, isn’t it?”
Yeah. It was true. There was nothing anyone could do. He hunched deeper inside himself. He didn’t need this shit. Nick whining and whimpering, and now a flock of weeping girls and a mean-tempered bitch herding them.
“Bertina—that’s my sister,” Esther said, struggling not to choke up. “Bertina doesn’t know how to feed my bird. If I’m not there, who will feed him?”
Rip had had enough. “You put her up to this,” he accused Na’omi.
Esther persisted. “The seeds are in the tin under my bed. Will you tell her that?”
“One of us will,” Na’omi promised gently and wrapped her arms around the little girl. Rip felt the teacher glaring at him.
“Esther. Her name is Esther,” Na’omi said. “She’s a Christian. Some of the others are Muslim. But neither God nor Allah will save them—”
Rip struggled to shut her voice out of his head.
Na’omi repeated her declaration for emphasis. “Neither God nor Allah—unless we try.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Virginia Beach
The returning C-17 touched wheels down at NAS Oceana just before dawn. The team trekked immediately to the Command for debriefing. The mission was considered a success in that it had seized Ebo Buhari, the courier who knew, or should know, where Rip was being held. Spooks from the CIA had been on hand in Africa to immediately relieve Senior Chief Graves of the prisoner and trundle him off to some unknown destination for interrogation. That had been a mistake, in Bear’s estimation. Buhari was more apt to talk if kept under the team’s control where Bear could turn up the heat on him.
The Commander’s debriefing concluded just as sunrise limned the horizon. Bear, Caulder, and Ortiz with his injured knee adjourned to breakfast at the Gulfstream Diner on the waterfront for their usual post-mission ritual. They claimed their customary table at the wide window overlooking the entrance to the bay. It was off-season at the run-down little beach town on the outskirts of Virginia Beach. Only a few boats plied the waters of the bay this early.
The three SEALs had gone by the Cage Room to shower and change before one of the other SEALs with a vehicle on-base drove them to the diner. Bear and Buddha wore their usual causal blue jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. Caulder as always went unorthodox—psychedelic beach shorts, an old sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped out, a faded red headband, and, of course, a pair of Birkies. Bear slathered butter thick on his pancakes and poured on strawberry syrup. Caulder liked plain old maple laced with blueberries and a fried egg. Ortiz settled for orange marmalade.
Bear and Caulder continued a disagreement that had started in Africa over whether they should interrogate Buhari before turning him over to the CIA. Caulder took the position that that was against protocol. He won out.
“It was a judgment call,” Bear insisted, chewing and glaring out the window toward the bay.
“A bad one,” Caulder countered. “The risk-reward ratio was way off.”
“The reward was … on the ship the guy might have told us where Rip was. But now he’s had time to clam up.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.”
“And you decide what’s right and wrong. That’s what you do, right?”
“I do a lot of things.”
“Do you want to save Rip or don’t you?”
Caulder took his time adding more blueberries to his pancakes. Ortiz stayed out of it.
“All right,” Caulder said. “You can ask that question once. But what I’m starting to wonder—and, Buddha, tell me if I’m way off here—is maybe you want to save Rip too much.”
Fury bubbled beneath the skin of Bear’s lean face. “I asked that man to be the godfather to my daughter. Remember that? You were there.”
He pointed a stiff finger at Ortiz. “So were you.”
Ortiz drew a deep breath. “Bear?”
“You better believe it’s fucking personal,” Bear interrupted, scorching Caulder with a look. “It’s as personal as it get.”
He rose abruptly and dropped a couple of bucks on the table.
“Must be nice,” he said to Caulder. “Not feeling anything, for anybody.”
He stomped out of the diner without looking back while Caulder eyed their attractive waitress. “I’m feeling something right now,” he said and winked at the waitress when she refilled their coffee cups. What do you know? She was blonde.
He finally noticed that Ortiz had not rendered an opinion on the disagreement. “You’re real quiet over there, Buddha,” he said, then turned on his mischievous grin. “Then I would be too if I had to go home and face Jackie. Makes this ship mission look like playing piñata.”
Ortiz remained somber, reflective. “This is some deep shit for Bear, you know that, right? Right?”
“Yeah, I do. But he pushed too hard on the op and we missed the initiative. Got behind the eight ball. That can’t happen again.”
Ortiz conceded. “It better not.”
They both rose to leave. “And just so you know, Alex. I’m the jefe in my family, okay?”
Caulder chuckled. “Sure you are.”
“I don’t believe it when I say it either,” Ortiz said. He laughed and bumped fists with Caulder.
Chapter Thirty
Virginia Beach
Caulder dropped Ricky Ortiz off at his modest but comfortable dwelling in the Cedar Creek subdivision not far from the Main Gate to NAS Oceana and SEAL Command after the blonde waitress from the diner drove him home to pick up his red-and-purple Bronco. Buddha turned and watched Caulder drive away until he turned the corner down the block. There was this thing between Caulder and Bear, a clash in their personalities and priorities, that had not seemed serious until after Afghanistan.
“Momma! I’m home!” Ricky called out as he went inside and closed the door behind him.
Getting shot at one day and then attempting the next to meld back into family life that seemed to go on as always during an absence proved a schizophrenic challenge for any operative. Ricky heard the hum of air conditioning and the pings, hoots, and other sound effects of a video game in progress. He hobbled into the living room where Ricky Jr. hunkered over his personal computer before he set out for school. The boy continued to play without looking up.
“You get past that thing, the monster with the—?” Ortiz attempted.
“Yep.”
“Cool. Mom home?”
“Think she went out.” He still hadn’t looked up. “We have career day at school tomorrow. Everybody’s dad is going to be there.”
It seemed an accusation spoken quietly. It wasn’t fair to the kid. Ricky felt guilty, but they had been through all this before. “We can’t talk about what I do, buddy. You know that. Maybe next year?”
After he gave up the SEAL Teams and started working for GSS.
“Yeah. Sure,” R.J. mumbled, like he didn’t really believe it. He kept playing his game.
Once the family found out about Ricky’s injury, they would all be on him to quit. Especially Jackie, who would grill him on what happened even though she knew he couldn’t talk about it.
“Know where Mom keeps the Advil?” he asked his son, trying to make a connection here.
“Bathroom, maybe?”
Ortiz sighed and gave up. He limped down the hallway past family photos lining the wall. He heard unexpected voices when he passed Anabel’s closed door. He paused to listen, then tried the knob. Locked. How was that for irony, the team’s breacher having to knock on his own daughter’
s door? The voices inside hushed.
“Don’t be a brat, R.J.,” Anabel’s voice scolded.
“It’s Papa, Anabel. Open up, sweetie.”
He felt her panic, even through the door. “Come back later,” she said.
“I just got home. I want to see you.”
Anabel cracked the door and poked her head out.
“How you doing?” Rick inquired suspiciously.
“Homework. I mean, fine.”
Ortiz pushed on the door, revealing Anabel’s boyfriend sitting on the edge of the bed looking guilty. Justin was on the scrawny side, with a tuft of brown hair and wearing a contrite expression. He stood up and wriggled his finger in a tentative greeting.
That did it. This house had rules, even if Ortiz wasn’t always home to enforce them. He snatched Justin by the ear and perp-walked the teenager down the hallway to the front door. Mortified, Anabel trotted along after them. R.J. kept at his monster-on-the-loose game as though unaware of any commotion.
“We weren’t doing anything,” Anabel protested.
“I want you to know, Mr. Ortiz, I respect your daughter as a woman.” It was difficult for a fellow to retain poise while being escorted out by his ear.
“Christ!” Ortiz snapped, short on patience. “Come back in ten years, okay?
He shoved the boy outside on the stoop and slammed the door in his face.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Anabel cried out.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Working, okay?”
She pivoted in a huff and stormed down the hallway to her room, hurling indignation back over her shoulder. “God, I hate you. You’re ruining everything.”
Her door slammed. Ortiz stood alone in the hall. His son was busy playing games, his daughter sulking in her room, and his wife working. The house seemed suddenly vacant. Hadn’t the Ortiz family once lived here?
Chapter Thirty-One
Virginia Beach
Like Ortiz and the other members of his team, Bear Graves found himself transported out of combat and back into the workaday world of normal folks. But his thoughts remained stuck on that cursed ship, Damascus II. After his ritual breakfast with Caulder and Ortiz at the Gulfstream Diner, he had returned to SEAL Command where, as mission leader, he spent the night in further debriefings with representatives from branches of government ranging from the CIA and NSA to the Pentagon and the Department of Defense.
Six Page 11