by Peter Nealen
Van Husten frowned, as he sat back down, and motioned Alek to take a seat on his bunk. “This have something to do with that dustup in Djibouti earlier?”
“What do you know about it?” I asked.
“Just that there was some shooting and explosions by the airport,” he replied. “The skipper of the Varant heard some of it, and saw the smoke from the docks.”
“In answer to your question,” Alek continued, “yes. There was an attack on the US base at Camp Lemonier. Hostages were taken, and we’ve been hired to help find them.”
The Captain’s face was grave. “How many?”
“However many survived,” Alek said starkly.
Van Husten sighed heavily, and looked at his hands. “What are you planning?”
“When we make contact with Caleb’s team, we’ll shuttle them out here on the helo,” Alek explained. “There won’t be as many, but I need my team with me, and Caleb’s got support for this job anyway. Then the rest of us will go ashore, using the boats we brought with us. After that, you go on your way.”
“We’ll move in closer to the shore,” Van Husten said, his eyes on the bulkhead, thinking. “That’ll save you some time getting in.” He flipped open his calendar. “I think if I explain matters to Corporate, we can loiter for about five more days offshore, in case you guys need a support platform, or even someplace to lift the hostages to. Longer, if we develop ‘engine trouble.’”
Alek shook his head. “You’re more than enough of a target out here as it is, Bryan. Once we’re ashore, move out and finish your run.”
Van Husten looked at us levelly. “They’re Americans, aren’t they? The hostages, I mean.”
I nodded. “Some of them, yes.”
“I may be a fat old freighter skipper,” he said, “but I’m still an American, and a vet. I may not have done some of the high-speed stuff you guys did when you were in, but I took the oath, same as you. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to some, but it still means something to me. We’ll be here.”
For a moment, Alek and I looked at him, and then traded glances. I shrugged. I couldn’t fault the man for his stance. In fact, I liked him even better than before. It was risky, and he was potentially putting himself and his crew in a lot of hot water, especially if they did get hit by pirates while running racetracks off the African coastline, but he had a determined set to his mouth that told both of us he wasn’t backing down. Fair enough. It might even work out to have a sea borne platform to bring the hostages to, after getting them away from the terrorists.
“I’d try harder to talk you out of it,” Alek said, “but I can see I’d be wasting my breath, and we’ve got a lot of prep work to do. So, I’ll settle for telling you you’re a damn fool, but you’re my kind of damn fool. Thanks.”
“Least I can do,” Van Husten replied, as they stood up, and shook hands again. “Good hunting.”
Chapter 2
I could hear the low, purring roar of our Bell 407 before I could see it. Even with my Night Vision Goggles, or NVGs, I only picked it up out of the equally dark sky and sea by the static discharge off the rotor blades and the heat off the engines. We couldn’t afford the fancy new PSQ-20 Enhanced Night Vision Goggles, so we’d gone with older PVS-14s with thermal attachments. Sam was flying dark, and low, which meant he had been doing a little hunting on the way out. Or at least scouting. Too bad the pirates usually headed inshore after dark.
I flashed my Surefire at the bird three times, and got the forward running light twice in reply. I flashed one more, as he buzzed past the port side of the ship, before swinging around to line up with the stern.
As the bird came in, flaring gently, I clambered up on to the forward edge of the pad, and held up the Surefire to guide him in. Sam brought the helo to a hover, as I waved him slightly to port, then brought him down, only having to make minor adjustments as he came in. It was a calm night, with little wind. Even the swell was minimal.
Once the skids were on the deck, Sam cut the engines and the rotors slowly whirred to a stop. Colton and Bob came up onto the pad with me, to help lash down the bird, while the doors opened, and the most morose motherfuckers you ever saw got out.
Matt, Fig, Jorge, Salomon, and Drew were our replacements on the Lynch. It was entirely possible, if the Captain had his way, that the rest of Caleb’s team would also come out to the ship to run support, but for now, these were the guys stuck with maritime security, while the rest of us got to go terrorist hunting. Sucked to be them.
Matt was short and skinny, tough as nails, and just radiating a combination of depressed and pissed as he got off the helo. He was pulling his heavy kitbag off the bird as I came up to him and clapped him on his shoulder. “How was the flight?”
He glared at me halfheartedly. “I’ve been on one bird or another for the last forty-eight hours. I don’t want to even think about flying for at least another twenty-four.” He gave the bag another yank, and it finally cleared the lip of the hatch, and dropped to the pad with a thud. The engines had finally spun down, so it was relatively quiet, except for the thrum of the ship’s engines.
I helped him haul the kitbag, which was about big enough to haul a dead body (okay, a small one), to the edge of the pad, then he went back to the bird to retrieve his rifle. The other three, along with Colton and Bob, followed along, lugging their gear behind them.
“Alek wants to get you guys settled in berthing, then let you get some sleep before changing over,” I explained. “But it’s not going to be a long nap, because we’ve got to get ready to insert tonight. Had Caleb gotten very far on getting transpo for us before you guys lifted?”
Matt shook his head. “He had a couple of possibilities he was going to run down, mostly Land Rovers or HiLuxes, but he’s not going to be able to do much until morning. He wanted me to assure you guys that he’ll be at link-up on time.” He shrugged. “As for down-time, we got a lot of sleep on the bird out here. We’ll stash our kit, then do changeover. Maybe if there’s less security noticeable after you guys go ashore, the pirates might try something.” He sounded hopeful. I chuckled, and led the way.
The helipad was an after-market addition to the Lynch, and had been built onto the bow. That meant we had the entire length of the ship to carry their gear, mostly between cargo containers. That was fun. Several times we had to stop and put the bags down, sweating our asses off in the wet tropical heat. Finally, we got them to the superstructure, then had to squeeze, pull, and push them through the hatches, and up one ladder well, then through more hatches, until we got to berthing. Our berthing was semi-controlled chaos, as most of us were prepping gear to go ashore for an indeterminate period, so everybody’s bunk was a gear bomb.
There was a chorus of mock rejoicing and insincere commiserating, mostly of the “sucks to be you guys” variety. Jim and Hank came over and helped us cram the bulging kitbags into a corner, where they’d be out of the way for the time being, then Alek came in, apparently having heard the commotion.
“Excellent, the sacrificial lambs are here,” he boomed. “I know you guys are probably tired, but we’re on a tight schedule. We need you to change over with the guys on duty, so we can finish prepping and get ashore before the sun comes up.” There were muted groans from Fig and Salomon, but Jorge just punched Fig on the arm, hefted his short-barrel SA58, and started toward the hatch.
“Where do you want us, Alek?” Matt asked.
“Two forward, two aft, right now,” Alek replied. “Rodrigo, Larry, Nick, and Tim are up on watch right now. You guys are going to have to work out how you’re going to rotate; sorry to say it, but it’s gonna suck any way you look at it.”
Matt shrugged. “Two up, three down. Gonna be more lookouts than sentries, for a while, anyway. If Caleb and the rest of the boys come out here, it’ll ease up. Hey, suckage is part of the job, right? If we wanted easy, we’d have gone to work at civilian jobs.”
“What civilian jobs?” Jim growled. “Ain’t much of that action going around these
days.” Jim was the oldest member of Praetorian Security, except for maybe the Colonel. Like the Colonel, he was retired, having left Special Forces after twenty-one years. He and Alek knew each other from crossing paths a couple of times in Afghanistan and Libya. When he had found himself unable to support his wife and daughter in the civilian world, and on a meager military pension, he had come to Alek, and joined our little mercenary start-up.
“And on that little point of light and happiness, I’m going to go hope for a few pirates to shoot in the face,” Matt said, as he left the compartment.
I was already finished packing, so I slung my ruck over my shoulders, grabbed my kit and rifle, and followed Alek down to the deck. We worked our way around to the stern, where we had somewhat disrupted the regulated safety features of the ship.
The Lynch was a bulk carrier, and subject to the laundry list of safety regulations (that seemed to get longer every year) for such ships under the US flag. Many of these regulations concerned the stowage, readiness, and deployment of the lifeboats. Most of them carried hefty fines for violating them, i.e., doing anything with the lifeboats aside from getting in them and launching them (by the federally-approved launching checklist, of course).
That being said, there weren’t any federal inspectors out here in the Gulf of Aden. We had in fact taken the lifeboats out of their cradles, and stacked them on the fantail. The cradles were now taken up with some of our special cargo.
The military calls the Zodiac F470 the Combat Rubber Raiding Craft. We always just called it the Zodiac, or Zode. We had two of them, with compact outboards, now loaded on the lifeboat cradles. I looked at them skeptically. The cradles were designed to effectively drop the boats straight off the fantail and into the water. I did not want to make that ride, especially not with weapon and ruck, and I said as much.
“We’ll drop the boats first, then follow by ladder,” Alek explained, as he snap-linked his ruck to the lines on the inside of the boat. “Believe me, I have no more interest than you in dropping twenty feet in a Zode.”
Together, we continued to prep the boats, checking broaching lines, deck plates, sked tubes, and inflation valves. We made sure the fuel bladders were secured, the fuel lines unhindered, and the safety lines on the engines themselves were secured. Then we added extra safeties for the engines. None of us wanted to get dropped twenty, twenty-five nautical miles out at sea, just to have to paddle in. Add to that the fact that a lost engine was going to come out of the responsible boat team’s pay, and there was plenty of incentive to make damned good and sure that the outboards stayed attached when the boats hit the water.
The rest of the team gathered on the fantail with their gear as we worked, staging their stuff and setting to work to help out. Soon enough all the rucks were loaded and secured, the engines had been checked, and we were getting our on-person gear set and checked. Cammies, flotation, weapons, ammo, comm, fins, and survival kits all had to be double-checked.
Everyone was quiet. It wasn’t nervousness, not really. We had all been through some scary shit, lived to tell about it, and buried more than a few who hadn’t. We were past nervousness, at least mostly. No, this was simply a time of mental preparation for whatever shitstorm we were about to wade into. Some called it “getting your game-face on.” I never called it much of anything. I just went through it, and went to work.
Alek brought everybody together after final checks; we had a time hack, and got set. We swung the lifeboat cradles out over the water, and dropped the boats, Larry and Rodrigo going in right after them. In a lot of ways, it was pretty much the same as a helocast, just jumping off a ship’s deck that was twenty feet above the water, rather than a helicopter’s ramp.
The rest of the team followed, two-by-two. I was in the third pair, and stepped to the edge, holding on to the muzzle of my rifle with one hand, and my fins with the other. Taking a long step, I plummeted off the deck and into the darkness.
I hit the water feet-first and reasonably vertical. I arrowed down into the warm brine, slowed, and kicked to the surface. I didn’t waste any time getting my fins on and kicking out for the boat. Sure, the water was nice and warm, but the Gulf of Aden is home to quite a population of sharks. I’d seen plenty from the ship while on watch, and now I couldn’t see anything underwater, which did make me a little anxious to get out. Yeah, I know, not nervous about going into enemy territory, but nervous about sharks. Go figure.
It was an easy thirty-meter swim to the boat, where Larry already had the engine in the water, and was yanking on the pull cord. It caught and rumbled to life as I caught hold of the handholds on the side of the gunwale, and pulled myself aboard. Jim was already on the starboard gunwale, pulling his fins off and clipping them to his UDT vest. Once I got a leg slung over, I pulled myself the rest of the way in and followed suit.
If any of this is sounding familiar to you current and former amphibious types, that’s because, well, it should. We deliberately got the same model Zodiac as the CRRC, and used all the same procedures, for one reason: it was easy. Most of us had already trained on the Zodes while we were in, so it made it simpler to just use as close to the same equipment and procedures. Why fix what ain’t broke?
It took only a few minutes for the rest of the team to board the boats, and get situated. I moved up to the bow, along with Jim. I don’t know if Jim was bothered by having to be a one-man, but I was. I didn’t bother to bitch about it, but I settled in for an uncomfortable ride, as Nick settled himself behind me, half on my back.
I adjusted my NVGs, pushing them a little higher so that I could look up past the rim of my FAST helmet, and see. There wasn’t much to see, granted. The coast was still over the horizon, and there wasn’t much shipping around here, a sign of how far things had fallen. Before what the pundits were calling the Greater Depression had started, there would have been a steady stream of ships coming and going through the Gulf of Aden, going to and from the Suez Canal. Now there was only a trickle.
We skimmed the swells, while Jim and I bounced off the gunwale with every jolt. That’s why being the one-man in a Zode sucks. Unless the water is glass-calm, you just get hammered. Stomach, ribs, nuts, everything. When it’s an over-the-horizon run, you can count on plenty of pain for a long time.
After what felt like an eternity, though, I started to be able to see the coast. It took me a second to clear my head of the fuzz brought on by over three hours of darkness and thumping, and I took a better look. We were closer than I’d thought, maybe two thousand meters. There wasn’t a lot of high ground on the Djibouti coast, apparently. There were some lights to the east; that would be Loyada, the town built around the border crossing between Djibouti and Somaliland, if town you could call it. The imagery looked pretty sparse. We could see the glow over the horizon to the west from Djibouti City itself, but we weren’t going there just yet.
Larry throttled back, and we slowed further, the bow of the boat sinking down to water-level. Just off the port side, Rodrigo’s boat did the same. We started re-situating ourselves on the gunwales, as Jim and I sat up and started putting our fins back on.
As much as I did not relish getting back in the dark water full of tiger and bull sharks, I was one of if not the best swimmer on the team. Jim was also up there, which some found surprising, since he’d been a Green Beanie rather than Recon or SEAL. He’s also built like a brick shithouse, and at first glance everybody figures he’d sink like a rock. All that notwithstanding, he beats me on timed fins half the time.
Once we were set, we both gave Larry the OK, and rolled backward into the water. Larry had put the engine into reverse, so that we weren’t in danger of getting run over while we got our shit together in the water.
Jim and I swam to within an arm’s length of each other, then lined up with the shore and started kicking out. We weren’t as stealthy as we might like; we were kicking up quite a bit of bioluminescence. I tried not to think about being a glow-in-the-dark shark lure for pretty much the whole seven hu
ndred meter swim to the shore.
There was no surf zone; the beach was just there. Jim and I drifted in until we could crouch on the bottom, with our heads just above the surface, and scan the beach. I pulled the waterproof bag from around my neck and pulled out my NVGs.
We were just to the southeast of an inlet, or maybe the mouth of an intermittent river. The beach itself appeared sandy and empty. The hinterland looked to be peppered with acacia trees and leafy scrub bushes. And there was something else. As I scanned, I saw several vehicles under one particularly tall and wide acacia, glowing with heat but showing no lights. It looked like three SUVs and what I thought was probably a 3-ton cargo truck. I tapped Jim, and pointed, barely pulling my hand above the surface of the water. Even as I did, a light glimmered from the bed of the cargo truck.
It was IR; I couldn’t see it with my unaided eye. It flashed three times. That would be Caleb. I reached up and triggered the illuminator on the NVGs twice, and got a single flash in reply. The support team was on site, and had the beach secure. The two of us came up out of the water and moved toward the trucks. Jim slid his Mk 17 out of a waterproof sleeve as he cleared the water, while I just drained the water from the barrel of my M1A. I had treated my rifle to hold off rust for a long, long time.
We walked in a low crouch, weapons at the low ready, staying close together, as we moved up the beach to the trucks. The recognition signal had been correct, but none of us were alive from a lack of paranoia. I relaxed a little when I saw Caleb’s unmistakable huge head next to the 3-ton.
“How’s the water?” he whispered, as we came up and took a knee next to the front driver’s side tire.
“Nice and warm,” I replied. “We good here?”
“Yeah, nobody around, and the Foreign Legion guys are concentrating on the area around the airport right now. We need to get moving, though.” He checked his watch, sheltering the Indiglo between his body and the truck. “Sun’s up in about two hours, and we’ve got to get those boats hidden.”