Payback sts-17

by Keith Douglass

  Murdock broke to the fresh air first. Yes, they were at least a quarter mile west of the suspect tower. They swam on the surface for another quarter mile west, and then Jaybird fired a red flare and one of the air-cushion boats headed toward them. It sent up a furious spray of water as the powerful fans directed a cushion of air directly down on the water, while other fans pushed the craft forward just above the surface of the water. The spray of water was fifty feet long and half that high, which meant the air-cushioned craft were not for slipping up on anyone. They were eighty-eight feet long and forty-three feet on the beam, and could travel over water, desert, or a highway at forty miles an hour.

  The closest one powered down as it neared them and settled into the water. The SEALs used a rope ladder, and climbed up over the blunt bow of the craft and flaked out on the deck. Murdock went to find the driver and use his radio.

  “Is it scrambled?”

  “Afraid not, Commander.”

  “Figures. Tell the captain we’re coming back to his cruiser. Ask him if he has a SATCOM. Let’s move.”

  Fifteen minutes later on board the Vicksburg, the radio room got through to Admiral Kenner in his Virginia office with a military scrambled signal. Murdock had been instructed to report his findings directly to the head of all the SEAL teams.

  “Yes, sir, Admiral. Measurements were about the same, probably on some metric scale, but about forty by fifty feet oblong with a fifteen-foot-high roof slightly domed.”

  “How in hell did anybody get that thing down there, and right under our noses?”

  “Sir, the freighters must have brought it in one piece at a time, and they sunk them and fastened them together, then pumped out the water.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve been considering that, sir. If it is North Korea, they have a big loss of face from when we smashed that invasion attempt last year, and they’d want to get even with us for it. We were wondering why they didn’t just put a submarine offshore and send a few missiles into our cities, but then we discovered they don’t have any missile subs.”

  “Is the structure set up so they could fire missiles from it?” Kenner asked.

  “No, sir, too small.”

  “Does North Korea have missiles capable of hitting our cities from some platform offshore?”

  “They do, Admiral. The Taepo Dong-1 has an extended range of four thousand kilometers with its third stage. They have rockets similar to the SCUD with a three-hundred-kilometer range. The Nodong missile reaches out a thousand kilometers.”

  “So why do they want a facility in close to shore?”

  “Maybe for recon, for intelligence gathering, maybe even as a forward direction control for something coming over the ocean.”

  “Is there any easy way to get into that thing?”

  “No, sir. It’s solid as a rock. We found no indications of windows, doors, openings of any kind.”

  “We could blast it open.”

  “Probably about the only way, which would really mess up whatever they were trying to do down there.”

  “Is there a tie-in with the oil platform?” the admiral asked.

  “My guess is that there must be, but I have no idea what it might be. Perhaps a control station of some kind. Intelligence gathering for sure. That oil rig could hold a dozen antennas to gather all sort of electronic data, phone calls, e-mail, faxes, anything that has an electronic base. The same way we get electronic intel around the world.”

  There were a few moments of silence; then the admiral came back on the air.

  “Thanks, Commander Murdock. Well done. I’ll be reporting immediately to the CNO, the President, the heads of the CIA and FBI. They will work out any continuing action. You and your men are released to return to your normal duties in Coronado. Well done, Commander Murdock. Now, get Captain Roth on that mike.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral. Right away.”

  A chief heard the conversation, and bolted out the door to bring in Commander Roth. He was there in thirty seconds. Murdock waved and left the radio room.

  Murdock found his men in an assembly room where they had cleaned and oiled their weapons, changed out of their wet suits into cammies, and tried to look busy.

  DeWitt caught Murdock at the door and asked him how it went. Murdock gave him a quick rundown. “What’s with the men?” Murdock asked. “The admiral has released us to get back to quarters.”

  “The XO told me we could take the men to the regular mess at 1130. It’s almost that now.”

  The Navy chief who had handled their embarking and landing on the air-cushion landing craft came in the door and walked up to the officers.

  “Sirs, the captain tells me that you’re released and to arrange for the CH-46 to transport you back to Coronado. The bird will be ready to board at 1300. That way we all get to go to chow.”

  “Thanks, Chief. We’ll be on the fantail at 1300.”

  NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE

  Coronado, California

  By 1430 the SEALs had stowed their equipment. Jaybird had taken the lights back to Team Supply, and Murdock and DeWitt had eyed the training schedule.

  “Let’s do the O course for time,” DeWitt said. “I’m trying to cut down my personal best.”

  Murdock studied the schedule again, then nodded. “Everyone but Bradford. I don’t want him tearing anything loose.”

  “Right, he can keep the time tally.”

  The Coronado O course, O short for obstacle, was said by some to be the toughest in the country. Murdock had cursed and praised it depending on his exhaustion factor. It had the usual walls and logs and jumps, and several with nearly impossible challenges.

  Each man was timed going through, with the average about six minutes. The all-time verified record was a little over four minutes. DeWitt warmed them up with a two-mile run in the sand down the beach toward the Navy communication towers. They had ten minutes to cool out, then Jaybird led off.

  “Want to get through the course before all you guys with your sweaty hands get everything out there all slippery wet,” he said. The men hooted him down, some with envy. Jaybird had one of the fastest times in the platoon for the O course. Today’s times were not for publication. Bradford would tell each man his time, but not record it.

  Mahanani sat quietly as he waited for his turn on the devices. Usually he was good at them, but he didn’t know how he would do today. The casino/mule situation still bugged him. How in hell had he been so stupid as to get into debt gambling? Okay, he admitted that he had a problem with gambling, but he could kick it — if he could get out of his current situation without getting killed and without getting kicked out of the Navy. He’d heard about one Marine who got a dishonorable discharge and reduction in rate because of his gambling. The Marine had finally sold his car and started robbing his friends where they lived out at Camp Pendleton just to have enough money to gamble with. So it could happen.

  He had to come up with a plan. It all depended on whether or not the casino owners and operators knew about the drug running. If they knew about it, he was in deep shit. If they didn’t, there was a chance he could turn in Martillo, and Harley, and maybe get the stateside connection busted in San Ysidro. Maybe. All he had to do was figure out how to do it and when. The sooner the better. Each time he ran the border with half to three quarters of a million dollars worth of cocaine, he was risking his neck and prison time. Wouldn’t that go over big with the family!

  Mahanani stared at the sand. If he had forty-five kilos in the car, and a kilo went for fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, that meant one load could be worth up to nine hundred thousand dollars. He shook his head. He couldn’t even imagine what that kind of money was. They must have a massive distribution system if they moved that much coke every week or so. Maybe it was in a huge pipeline that funneled it back East and to the South. He shivered. He was in about a mile over his head. How in hell… He knew how. Now what did he do about getting out?

  The whole idea of drug money repulsed him. He
could just imagine the hundreds of thousands of addicts who were cheating and lying and stealing to feed their habit. He wouldn’t touch that money. Not even if he had a guaranteed way he could hijack his load and turn in the druggers at the same time. No way. Not a chance. He just wanted out clean and with his Buick and no damned debt to the casino.

  As he waited his turn on the O course, he tried out various scenarios. He could go straight to the president of the tribe, the head of the casino, and tell them what Harley and Martillo had done to him. Sure, and if they were in on it, he’d be just another nameless corpse found half buried somewhere out in the dry hills of the East County backcountry.

  Maybe he could call in an anonymous tip to the narc squad at the San Diego Police Department. He could tell them where the garage in San Ysidro was and how Harley and Martillo got their mules. No, then the cops would set up a watch and raid the place when they thought a mule was coming in. If he had to keep running, it might be him. That was out. If he was going to get it done, he’d have to contact the cops, tell them when he was making a run, and then let them raid the place just as he arrived with the cargo. They would have to give him immunity from any prosecution for turning in the place. At the same time they would have to arrest Martillo and Harley. No way. Then he’d have to testify. Oh, yeah, and then he’d have to quit the SEALs because he’d have to go into the witness protection program and get shipped off to Idaho or Montana or Georgia. Not a chance.

  “Hey, Mahanani, you got water in your ears?”

  He stood up, vaguely aware that it was the second or third time that Bradford had called him to take his turn on the O course. He’d attack each part of the course as if it were Martillo himself. Martillo was Spanish for “hammer.” He’d looked it up after the first run.

  When he was through with the course, Bradford gave him his time. It was a full thirty seconds under his personal best on the big hairy O course.

  Murdock cut the men loose about four that afternoon and told them to stay loose. Something could break on this sea-dome thing at any time. It was payday, so Mahanani stopped by the administration office for the team and signed for his paycheck. Most of the men had the cash sent directly to their banks electronically. But he’d never had a bank account. He liked to feel the cash in his hand. In his one-bedroom apartment in Coronado he stared at the cash. He could buy a lot of chips with that at one of the other casinos. They wouldn’t know him, and there were four or five more Indian casinos less than twenty miles away.

  For a moment he could see the cards turning over. Hear the shouts of glee from the slots when someone won. It stirred him as little else did these days. But he squashed it in a second. He put most of the cash away and some in his billfold. Then he made supper. He was a good cook, and he ate well. It would give him something to do.

  The rest of the evening he didn’t watch TV. He kept his pen busy on a pad of paper working on one plan after another to get out from under the Hammer and his damned mule operation. By eleven o’clock he had nothing that would work. He stacked the sheets of paper and saved them. He’d dig into it the next night, and the next, until he figured out a way to turn in the smuggling operation and to nail Harley and the Hammer and not get himself killed, jailed, or thrown out of the SEALs.

  8

  San Francisco, California

  Harry Towner sat in his eighth-floor office and watched his secretary come in, close the door, and snap on the lock. She had on a tight sweater and a short skirt, and had put her hair high on her head the way he liked it. She was twenty-three. He was thirty-seven and feeling it.

  “You said you had some dictation, Mr. Towner?” she asked, walking toward him, swaying her hips, and smiling. She had neither pen nor pad.

  Harry grinned. “We’ve got to stop doing this, kitten,” he said, rolling out his executive chair so she could sit in his lap. She did, and turned her face to be kissed. Harry kissed her. She reached out and turned over the framed picture of Harry’s wife and three kids that stood on his desk.

  She slipped out of the sweater, and Harry grinned seeing that she wore nothing under it. He reached out and kissed her firm young breasts and licked the nipples. Then Harry’s head snapped up. He thought he saw a flash somewhere out in the bay. A few seconds later the sound of an explosion pounded through the windows. He frowned.

  Harry never saw what killed him. The missile came almost straight down, and its 434 pounds of high explosives hit the roof of his building just over his head. It penetrated through two stories before it detonated, turning the eight-story Towner Building into a one-story pile of rubble and killing twenty-seven people.

  Jonas Sanchez had sat in his twelve-foot boat all morning on San Francisco Bay near a shoal where he had caught fish before. It was ten A.M., and so far he hadn’t even had a nibble. He was seventy-three, on Social Security, and had enough cash in the bank so he could do just about what he wanted to. This morning it was fishing. Fridays and Tuesdays it was bowling in a seniors’ league. He watched the line closely. The fish here were tricky. They might be any kind that came in with the morning tide.

  He was about to lift his line, with seven hooks on it baited with dead anchovies, when he heard something to the north. A second later a tremendous roar shattered the peaceful morning and a quarter of a mile away a huge geyser of water jolted upward where some kind of a bomb must have exploded. Jonas forgot his line, dropped his pole in the bottom of the boat, and jerked the starter on his motor. Five seconds later he was churning across the bay toward the landing ramp on the western bank where he had left his car and boat trailer. As he raced across the water, he saw more explosions in San Francisco just to the north. What in hell was going on? Somebody starting another war? He’d had his fill of wars and killing. He just wanted to fish and bowl.

  Dorothy Johnson had just strapped her one-year-old daughter Marci in the rear seat of her car, and took the purse off her shoulder as she opened the driver’s-side door ready to get into her two-year-old Volvo sedan. She was late for a dental appointment, but she would tell them that she was the customer, they were the sellers. She’d spent enough hours waiting in that same dentist’s office. Let them wait ten minutes, wouldn’t hurt them. She’d still probably have to wait when she got there, and then one of the nurses would complain about having to watch Marci while Dorothy had her crown fitted.

  Dorothy heard nothing as the pavement in front of her car shattered into a million pieces and a thundering explosion ripped through the quiet street. Hundreds of the shards of rock and blacktop slammed toward her with tornadolike force as a missile struck ten feet ahead of her car on Filbert Street. The blast shattered twelve cars, blew out windows for ten blocks around, and killed Dorothy and Marci Johnson outright, along with ten more people.

  From 0814 to 0822, nine missiles fell on San Francisco or in the bay. Those in the bay caused no damage. Six struck various parts of the city, and the death toll would not be known for several days as rubble and debris would have to be cleared away.

  In City Hall, the mayor screamed at his police chief. The chief was trying to get the Presidio. The few military at the Presidio were calling Washington.

  The news wire services and TV networks had the story at 0829. One of TV-8’s crews was on a story when a missile hit less than half a mile away. The station sent the network a warning, and had a special report on the air seven minutes after the last missile hit.

  The news alerted the military. The closest military airfield to San Francisco is Lemoore Naval Air Station south of Fresno. The large Alameda Naval Air Station across the bay from San Francisco had been closed for some time.

  Military telephone and radio messages slashed back and forth, and twelve minutes after the first news report on national TV, six F-18 fighter/bombers lifted off the long runway at Lemoore Naval Air Station. They angled for San Francisco with orders to hunt for any invaders, any submarines prowling coastal waters, and any platforms that could fire the relatively small missiles. The F-18’s blasted up to Ma
ch 1.8, and were traveling at a little better than 1,200 mph at twenty thousand feet. It took them only fifteen minutes to drop down and flash over San Francisco. They were combat-loaded with 570 20mm rounds for their Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon, along with seventeen thousand pounds of missiles, free-fall bombs, and cluster bombs.

  The pilots talked to each other. “This is Hunter Leader. I see five blast points, two fires which are being worked, and a general traffic jam. Hunter Four, Five, and Six, take a south course and check out everything along the coast out twenty miles and down to Los Angeles. The rest of us will patrol to the north same distances. Remember to look for long dark shadows near shore. There could be enemy submarines, so watch for them as well. Go. Over.”

  The six planes did graceful banks, and half went in each direction. The aircraft maintained their speed and worked the area at twenty miles a minute, or a mile every three seconds.

  “Hunter Leader, this is Hunter Four. I have a freighter, maybe four hundred feet long, moving north about twenty miles off the coast about opposite Santa Cruz thirty or forty miles south of San Francisco. Nothing on the ship looks unusual. I’ll slow down for another pass and see what else I can see.”

  “Roger that, Four. Anybody else have any prospects?”

  “Hunter Leader, This is Six. I have a medium-sized oil tanker loading somewhere off Oxnard and Port Hueneme. Not much of a candidate for a shooter. Over.”

  “Roger, Three. Copy.”

  “Hunter Leader. This is Four. That freighter is flying a Panamanian Flag and there’s some activity on deck, but nothing frantic. My guess she’s making about twenty knots on a generally north course. Over.”

  “Hunter Leader. There has to be something out here. From the looks of the blast sites, those had to be fairly small, short-range missiles, say up to three hundred miles. Hunter Leader to Homeplate. Should we extend our search out to three hundred miles? Over.”