by Cindy Dees
After she finished marking the other Tango in the room, she headed for the bridge. Franco let her in. Must be getting near the end of his shift. He’d been up here for nearly six hours. No doubt he’d want coffee. She picked up another burr and the stainless steel pot of brew and headed for the desk in the security office. Three down.
It was an easy matter to brush past the terrorist sitting in the captain’s chair in the center of the bridge and mark him with a transmitter. Four.
And now, on to the briefing.
It was simpler than she ever dreamed it could be. She moved around the room pouring drinks and passing out snacks, and marked every last one of them in under ten minutes. No sign of the woman, though. And damned if Aleesha had the slightest idea how to find the blonde from last night. Kat was supposed to pose as a maid this morning and enter the room they’d seen her disappear into. Kat would try to mark the mysterious twenty-fourth terrorist with a burr.
Aleesha yanked her attention back to the task at hand.
And then it was Michael’s turn. By rights, she ought to mark him, simply because he would likely stay near other hijackers, and in particular Viktor, when the rescue went down. Michael’s location might end up being important at some point. She fussed with the fruit plate while she debated the issue in her head. Problem was, the burrs only showed up as dots on the handheld tracking monitor. There’d be no way for the SEALs to differentiate between Michael and any of the other Tangos. And she had no doubt the SEALs would come aboard with orders to kill every Tango they came across.
Was she willing to take complete responsibility for Michael? If she didn’t mark him, and he turned out to be one of the bad guys, the entire rescue could be blown. Her feelings for the man she’d just spent most of the night making love with warred with her professional judgment. It would be insane not to mark him. It was breaking her heart to have to.
In the absence of a compelling argument one way or another, she followed her instinct. She slipped the last two cards and their remaining burrs into her pocket. She glanced at her watch, startled to see that it was nearly 11:30 a.m. already. She had places to go and things to do.
The rescue plan was gathering momentum and speed. Of course, there was still time to call a halt to the op if something terribly unexpected happened in the next few minutes. She could always put new burrs on the Tangos’ clothes another day. But the Medusas were fast approaching the point of no return. Once the next phase of the op was complete, there’d be no turning back. And it was time to go do it.
Chapter 17
Viktor took one last stroll around the bridge. The pièce de résistance was in place. He smiled to himself. They all believed he planned to rescue the detainees at Guantánamo. What did he care about a bunch of religious fanatics looking to die for their god? He had a bigger goal in mind. A strike at the heart of the very system preventing his homeland from having its independence. The United States itself.
But he couldn’t very well tell that to the American half of his team. They might claim to want to topple the current American regime, but they thought of themselves as patriots. No telling how they’d react to the idea of killing American sailors. Especially when so many of the American team members had been soldiers themselves.
No, no. It was best that he keep the end game entirely to himself. And when he’d gotten word of the snitch in his midst, he was doubly glad he’d played it that way.
He walked over to the radar console. The young Norwegian woman stood there, tense as he approached her. “Show me the American Navy,” he barked at her.
She nodded and increased the range on the radar to paint the American naval task force trailing behind the Grand Adventure. Just as he’d anticipated. There’d been some question about which country would manage the hijacking, but he’d had faith in U.S. persuasion and stubbornness. “Are they still holding position in our five o’clock at twenty-five miles?”
The Norwegian nodded. He could see very well that the U.S. Navy was holding its position, but it was good to test the hostages now and again. Keep them honest.
On the other side of the radar screen, the coastline of a small chain of islands came into view. Insignificant specks of rock, except that they marked the exact spot where he’d have his revenge on the United States.
“You see that island right there? The crescent-shaped one? Sail this ship exactly three miles off the tip of it at a heading of 270 degrees. When you get to this point here,” he stabbed at the radar screen, “you will turn due north and cut forward speed to five knots. Understood?”
The girl looked perplexed but nodded.
She didn’t need to understand. Nobody did but him. Only he, of all his men aboard this ship, knew that there was a deadly string of mines planted under the surface of the ocean a half-dozen miles off the tip of that crescent island. The divers who’d planted the mines were another terrorist cell he ran—they had no connection to the teams aboard the Grand Adventure. The Americans would have to make their strike tonight. The hurricane was due tomorrow.
The course he’d just described to the Norwegian girl would put that line of submerged mines squarely between the Grand Adventure and the carrier task force tailing him so steadily and predictably.
He had utter confidence that the predictable Americans would send a team of commandos in small boats to board the Grand Adventure. And when they hit his underwater gauntlet of death, the last laugh would be his.
When Aleesha walked into the Medusas’ staging room, controlled chaos was the order of the day. The other women were just finishing gathering into bags the same gear they’d come aboard the ship wearing—Kevlar utility vests, radios, knives and MP-5s. They already wore their gray all-terrain body suits under their clothes. For a moment she saw her team as an outsider might see them and had to admit they were an imposing bunch. She sure as heck wouldn’t want to mess with them in a dark alley. Once the rescue got underway, they’d wear their full military gear so the SEALs who came aboard could identify them quickly among all the other women on the ship. That way if one of the Medusas called out an instruction or gave a signal to one of the SEALs, he’d know it for a legitimate military communication.
Aleesha leaned over Isabella’s shoulder, peering at a readout on a laptop sitting beside the intel analyst. She noticed her teammate was wearing the radio Aleesha had stolen from Michael, its pink earpiece in her left ear.
“They saying anything interesting?”
“Not yet. Give it a few minutes, eh?” Isabella fiddled with the laptop computer.
Aleesha glanced down at what the intel analyst was working on. A program to overlay the radio signals from the twenty-two microburrs on top of a schematic of the ship. It wasn’t three dimensional, but it was a darn sight better than nothing. Fortunately, the hand-held units each of the Medusas had in their utility vests would give a 3-D image up to a range of a hundred feet or so.
Isabella asked, “Who did you miss?”
“The woman…” She hesitated and then answered candidly, “And Michael. I was worried the SEALs would kill him out of hand if he were marked.”
Isabella threw a penetrating look over her shoulder. Finally the intel analyst murmured, “Your call.”
Aleesha sagged in relief. They might not understand why she felt so strongly about Michael’s allegiances, but her teammates trusted her judgment. God bless them.
“Better suit up,” Isabella said.
Right. It was almost time for the big show. Aleesha stripped to her skivvies and donned her sea-land suit. She doubted she’d need its wet suit function today, but it was comfortable, durable and gave her an unrestricted range of movement. The suits even helped control bleeding if one of them got shot or otherwise injured. Over the top of the suit, she pulled on a pair of pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She tucked the suit’s hood inside her shirt for now. They needed to hide their distinctive outfits until they reached the kids’ adventure area so whoever was manning the security cameras wouldn’t spot them
and send up an alarm too quickly.
The mood in the room was calm and focused. They knew what they had to do, and it was well within their capabilities. All in all, she had a good gut feel about today. And it was always nice not to be going against grandmama’s voodoo intuitions.
Vanessa came over to Aleesha. “Sync your watch to mine. I got a time hack off the SEALs about an hour ago.”
Aleesha nodded and set her watch forward to the next new minute with the second hand at twelve o’clock.
Vanessa counted quietly, “Thirty-two past eleven in five…four…three…two…one…hack.”
Aleesha mashed the start button on her watch exactly as Vanessa called the hack. In this business, a second or two either way could mean the difference between life and death.
“Ammo check,” Vanessa ordered everyone.
Aleesha checked the clip in her MP-5. Full. Two spare clips—both full—in the left-front pocket of her utility vest, ready at hand. Four more clips in her utility belt. And she sincerely hoped she didn’t need any of them. In addition, as the team’s demolitions specialist, she carried det cord, detonators and C-4 in two-pound miniblocks around her waist. And then, of course, she carried the usual contingent of grenades, wire cutters, mirrors and other doodads that might come in useful in a pinch.
“Everyone ready?” Vanessa asked. “All clear on the plan?”
The plan was pretty simple. A group of maids was going to stage a major argument with some of the kitchen staff. It would involve a lot of screaming in several languages and should momentarily draw the attention of whoever was manning the security cameras. Meanwhile, the Medusas were going to burst in on the kids’ adventure area, take down the guards fast and hard, then move the children out. Isabella would stay here with the camera monitors and guide them to whichever one of the hidey-holes had no terrorists along the route. And if there were terrorists between the kids and all the hidey-holes, she’d send them on the route with the fewest Tangos and they’d clear it as they went.
The Medusas left the room over the next several minutes singly and in pairs. They made their way through the ship by different routes, all arriving in the middle of Deck 4, where the kids’area was located, at roughly the same time. Vanessa and Misty would take the front door. Aleesha, Karen and Kat would take the fire exits.
One last time check. Forty seconds until 11:40. The ruckus in the Safari Lounge should have just broken out. She slowed down slightly and reached the doors just as her second hand swept up to the top of her watch. Time to rock and roll.
Jack pulled the yellow rubber rain slicker more tightly about him as the launch bay door opened and salt spray battered him. The seas were kicking up fifteen-foot waves in front of a freshening breeze compliments of Hurricane Evangeline. Not ideal conditions to make a twenty-five-mile run in fast boats, but then, SEALs weren’t paid to operate under perfect conditions. They earned their stripes on days like this.
He heard the team leaders behind him barking out the final equipment checks and lining their guys up to board the boats. Five sleek, black speedboats rested in their sliding launch ramps, quiet now, but ready to devour the waves before them.
Static sounded in his ear, and he pressed his hand against the earpiece to hear better over the noise of the ship’s diesel engines. Isabella Torres’s voice announced crisply, “Medusas in motion. Proceeding to Task Alpha.”
“Roger,” he transmitted back. “We are a go.”
He looked up at the men behind him and stuck his right forefinger up in the air. He twirled it several times over his head and then pointed at the open launch bay. Forty SEALs moved as one, leaping into place on the boats as crewmen converged from both sides to release the vessels and shove them into the frothing surf.
The men straddled the oversize saddle horns rising up out of the centers of their seats, gripping the padded posts with their thighs. Particularly in seas like these, the horns would help keep the men from getting tossed overboard as they pounded across the ocean. The good news was the run would only take a little more than half an hour. The fast boats could do twenty-five miles in less time than that, but not with the high seas today. No matter. The plan had been adjusted to account for the extra running time.
The fast boat engines roared to life. Crewmen attached to the SEAL teams and those brought aboard the tender ship to support this mission traded hand signals with the SEALs, and the launching locks were released. The boats slipped down the ramps and into the ocean, peeling into wide arcs as their propellers dug into the water and shot them forward.
All the teams reported in tersely on the operational frequency, the same one the Medusas were transmitting on today.
Jack made a single brief transmission to them all. “Good hunting.”
And then the long wait began.
An infinitesimal nod from Karen, and Aleesha and Kat stepped in front of their Marine teammate, who pulled bolt cutters from inside her pants and quickly chopped through the chains holding one of the doors shut. There were two hundred security cameras onboard, and the odds of this camera being up on the screen in the security office were slim with the cat fight upstairs in full swing. Not zero chance, of course, but slim. Hence the body shield by Kat and Aleesha. But the risk that they’d be seen was acceptably low.
“I’m through.”
There was no need for Aleesha or Kat to say anything in response. They all knew what to do next. Had practiced it a hundred times. They’d spent months in the schoolhouse, bursting into rooms full of simulated innocents and Tangos and neutralizing the threats without harming the hostages. They’d done it over and over until they never missed, never misidentified a friend or foe.
Aleesha followed Kat through the door, pulling out the MP-5 from under her shirt as they went. Kat stepped to the right and Aleesha took the center field of fire. A thunk behind her indicated that Karen had dropped the bolt cutters just inside the door and would now be peeling off to her left and brandishing an MP-5, as well. The three of them stood at ninety-degree angles to Vanessa and Misty, assuring that they wouldn’t hit each other in the cross fire. A maneuver like this was all about controlling the fields of fire—where the bullets flew.
The two guards on this side of the room turned in surprise, their weapons coming up to the ready. It was odd how slowly they seemed to move. Or maybe it was just that Aleesha was operating in overdrive. Based on the hijackers’angles of approach, it was Karen and Kat who double tapped the triggers of their weapons and dropped both men with neat shots to the forehead and heart.
Aleesha couldn’t help it. She took a moment to check and see who they’d killed. Two of the Americans she didn’t know personally. Dammit all if relief didn’t flood her gut. Uh-oh. But she had no more time to think, for Vanessa was calling out, “Report!”
She called to her boss across the room, “All clear. Two down and confirmed neutralized.” Given that neither guy had the top third of their head anymore, it was a pretty good bet they were both out of the fight for good.
Vanessa responded, “All clear here.”
Aleesha leaped for the corner and the nearest of the two security cameras, reaching into her right vest pocket as she went. She pulled out a small can of black spray paint and shot it at the camera lens, blacking it out completely. She turned to check on her teammates, and across the room Karen was done spray painting the second camera. The hijackers were now blind in this room.
No doubt it would get reported to Viktor as soon as it was discovered, and he’d send someone to check on the cameras—and the kids—immediately. And that meant the Medusas had to have all the children out of here before those terrorists arrived.
One of the orange shirts recognized her in the chaos of screaming children that was just now registering in her ears. “What’s going on, Aleesha?”
“We’re rescuing you. We need you guys to get the kids quiet and standing in three lines. Immediately.”
Her eyes like saucers, the girl nodded and ran over to her colleagu
es. While they corralled the kids, the Medusas grabbed the bodies of the guards and dragged them over to a storeroom and stuffed them inside. Aleesha snatched the AK-47s the men had been carrying and grabbed two of the radios, as well. It took her precious seconds to unthread the wires through the dead men’s clothes, but being able to eavesdrop on the terrorists’ chatter was worth it. There. The second radio was free. She hauled the gear outside with her.
The kids had figured out this was a rescue and were doing their level best to cooperate. They were already standing in lines, albeit practically jumping up and down in their nervousness, frantic to go.
Aleesha passed one of the radios to Vanessa and stuffed the other one in her pouch. No time to put it on just yet. In a few minutes. She spoke into the charged silence, “Any of you staffers have any experience handling guns?”
Two of the young women raised their hands. She passed each of them an AK-47. “The safeties are off. Just aim them and pull the trigger. Use short, half-second bursts. Ta-da-da. Ta-da-da. You’ll get about thirty shots that way. Got it?”
Both young women nodded. Aleesha popped the clips out of the other two weapons and pocketed the ammunition, discarding the weapons themselves. No sense leaving extra firepower lying around for the bad guys.
Vanessa gave a hand signal to Aleesha to move out. Vanessa and Kat would stay in the kids’ area to respond to the Tangos who would be heading down here soon. Karen would take the rear and guard the kids’ retreat while Aleesha led the way, blacking out cameras as she went. And Misty would head the other direction, spray painting random security cameras all over the ship to act as a false trail away from where Aleesha was leading the children. Isabella would be plenty busy tracking all their movements over the next few minutes. The good news was the microburrs on the terrorists’ clothes actually made that kind of multitasking possible.