Dangerous Ground: The Team Book Five

by David M. Salkin

  “Nice jammies,” said Ryan O’Conner.

  Pete McCoy, who was oftentimes Jon’s dive buddy on operations, also chimed in. “Even has the little feeties on them.”

  Jon held up a gloved middle finger. Moose smiled and said, “I believe the young sailor has saluted you.”

  CWO Gautreau walked over to Jon and led him to the ADS. The winch had lifted the top half of the silver suit off the bottom, and Layne helped Jon climb into the legs of the behemoth. Jon’s teammates walked over to watch and offer encouragement and insults.

  Hodges, the Marine sniper, watched with trepidation. “Have a fun ride in that quarter-million-dollar suit. Just remember, I can ruin it with a ten-dollar fifty-cal round.”

  “You will do no such thing,” replied Layne dryly as he helped Jon get set up. “I find any bullet holes in my suit, I’ll know where to look, and I’ll send you down there.”

  Jon ignored the comments and remained focused on his preparations. When he was ready for the top to be lowered, he forced a nervous smile and gave a thumbs-up to Moose, who snapped him a salute. The top was lowered slowly, and Jon raised his arms and started maneuvering them into the suit. Once the suit was lowered to its bottom half, Jon’s face could be seen inside the helmet, which had a large viewing pane of thick acrylic. The crew turned on the air supply and sealed the halves together.

  “Test one, two, three,” said Jon.

  “We hear you loud and clear,” said Layne with a smile. The other men on his ADS support team all gave thumbs up to Jon and smiled with excitement. Two of the four had gone down themselves in the suit, and loved the experience more than words could ever express.

  “I hope you took a crap before you got into that thing,” said Ray Jensen. CWO Gautreau flipped him off without even looking at him.

  “Okay team, commence launch sequence,” said the chief.

  The support team began checking and double-checking all of the seals in the suit, as well as the oxygen scrubbing tank and thruster package.

  “Check your graspers,” said the chief. Jon began manipulating the three-fingered “hand” on the suit with his fingers inside. The chief placed an empty mug on the palm of his hand, and Jon picked it up, turned it over, and gently placed it back on his hand.

  “Outstanding,” he said. “You’ll walk the grid we planned, use the thrusters to explore a little, and then tell us when you’re ready to return to the surface. Time to surface from six hundred feet is about seven minutes. We’ll be in constant contact and can see you, observe what you see, and monitor all systems as well as your vitals. Video is rolling, so go make us a cool movie. Any questions? You good to go?”

  “Ready to go, Chief. I’d give you a thumbs-up, but I don’t think my thumb looks quite right.”

  The team walked in front of him so Jon could see them, and they all waved at him. The support team began the winching process and picked him up off the deck in his aluminum suit. They could see Jon’s smile as he went aloft. When the winch moved him out over the water, CWO Gautreau asked him for one last confirmation, and then began lowering him into the foamy sea.

  Jon disappeared slowly into beautiful clear blue water and continued his decent to thirty-five feet. The winch stopped and the support team monitored the computer systems for any leaks. Once satisfied, they began the final decent to the ocean floor six hundred feet below. Mounted cameras showed Jon’s view, as well as his face. He was grinning ear to ear as he watched countless fish glide past him. The water began to get a deeper, darker blue as he descended, and the sea life became less bountiful in number, but larger in size. Giant sea turtles, sharks, and larger fish slowed down to observe this new bright orange creature in their midst, but generally ignored him after a few seconds of inspection.

  Jon’s voice came over the computer monitor, most likely to himself. “My God, it’s gorgeous.”

  “Okay, sonny, enjoy the ride, but when you hit the bottom, I want to see your game face,” said the chief.

  “Aye, aye, chief. But the view—it’s amazing.”

  A twelve-foot tiger shark glided past him, its dark eyeball staring through the glass faceplate of the helmet for a moment before deciding he probably didn’t taste good. Jon’s smile never changed as he whispered a quiet, “Daaaamn . . .”

  When Jon’s heavy boots hit the bottom, he went to work. His training task required him to walk a one-hundred-foot perfect square pattern, following the compass built into the arm of his suit. His helmet lights provided illumination in the darkness of the six-hundred-foot ocean. Although he could feel the cold inside the suit, he was comfortable. More than anything, he was just excited to be down at si hundred feet, alone with nature while breathing normal air at surface pressure. It was nothing short of amazing. When he finished his square walk, he was back where he started, to the satisfaction of CWO Gautreau who was watching from above.

  “Excellent. Now take a flight. Fifty feet and back, see how it maneuvers,” said the chief’s voice inside his helmet.

  The thrusters on his jet pack made him feel like an astronaut as he flew through the water column as graceful as a fish. Although tethered to the ship via light wire cables on his helmet, he felt total freedom in the ocean depths. “Skipper, this suit is amazing. Let’s go find a couple of nukes!”

  “Slow down, Mr. Cousteau,” replied the chief. “Time for you to practice picking up objects. Go find some large rocks to pick up and move around. Let’s see how easy it’s going to be for you to open up a rusty airplane and connect a few large nuclear weapons to cables for removal.”

  The team watched in silence as their friend amazed them from six hundred feet.

  “He makes it look easy,” said Ripper quietly to Moose.

  “We ever had an easy mission?” replied Moose.

  Ripper just looked at him blankly.

  Moose nodded. “Exactly.”

  Chapter 9

  Kampong Aht, Brunei

  Mohammed Awad and Hamdi Fazil, having made all of the arrangements through Abdul Ali, the minister of the interior, arrived at Tarap with thirty of their most dependable men. Once in Tarap, the group got into several small riverboats and followed the meandering brown river south.

  The region was extremely remote, with only the river to guide them. Kampongs, small hamlets or villages, would appear for a brief moment as their tiny armada passed by, and then they would see no sign of human life for another thirty or forty minutes. The air was thick with humidity and insects, and rainstorms could be seen in the distance. Giant birds floated in silence over the canopy of the jungle. It was breathtakingly beautiful as well as terrifying.

  Hazrol, their Bruneian guide, drove the lead boat. Seven boats followed him, two crammed with weapons, ammunition, supplies, lumber, and construction tools. When they reached a small kampong called Aht, located within the Labi Forest Reserve, they pulled their boats to the muddy bank and began unloading. The Labi Reserve was a large national park of sorts, although very few people ever visited the remote location. Aht had existed for a few hundred years and was allowed to remain after the area had been deemed “protected” by the government. The villagers still wore tribal loincloths and not much else. They lived in small huts up on stilts above the river and lived on fish and whatever they could hunt and forage, the same way their ancestors had done for generations. Their entire society was an extended family that married outside their own village once a year, the only time they ever wandered more than a kilometer from where they were born.

  Hazrol walked through the muddy water and waved up at the locals with a big smile, which was returned. The village was built on stilts over the water and jungle, with the small thatched huts connected to each other by a series of plank bridges. The children stood behind the legs of their parents as they watched the strangers get off of their boats and climb up to their village. The small wooden planks that acted as pedestrian bridges ac
ross the brown water below were narrow, and it suddenly became very crowded. Behind the village, the land slowly rose toward small hills and drier terrain that would make a good place to train future warriors of Islam.

  Hazrol was eventually taken to the village chief, a man wearing a loincloth and headband of leather and feathers. A long necklace hung from his bony shoulders. He smiled, showing missing teeth among the brown remaining ones. Whatever leaf the villagers liked to chew, it didn’t bode well for their teeth.

  Hazrol and the man spoke for quite a while, as Mohammed and Hamdi supervised the unloading of the boats. All of the men were soaked with sweat. The group wore over-the-knee shorts and light tunics, sandals, and head coverings called songkoks, and carried AK-47s. Their ethnicities were mixed, having been brought in from Malaysia, the Philippines, and even Syria and Iraq. They had all come for one purpose—to spread their vision of Islam.

  The men, a devout group, watched the topless female villagers with wild eyes. As hot as they were, they wouldn’t even take off their own shirts. To have women parading around naked was outrageous, but quite exciting.

  Hazrol and the chief stood up after their chat, and the chief began shouting to his people. From every hut came the villagers to the voice of their chief. They were a quiet group, smiling and holding hands with their older children as they walked along the path of plank bridges. When the entire village was assembled along the planks in front of the chief’s hut, the crowd numbered about forty people of every age. They were all slender and brown, with long black hair. A beautiful woman combed her young son’s hair with her fingers, getting his long black hair out of his big brown eyes. It was like a peaceful scene from a National Geographic photo.

  Hazrol bowed to the chief and walked to Mohammed. “This is everyone.”

  “You’re sure? No one off hunting? This is all of them?”

  Hazrol spoke briefly to the chief and nodded to Mohammed. “They’re all back from the morning hunting and fishing. It’s time to prepare the afternoon meal.”

  Mohammed gave an order to his men, who jogged up to the group along the wooden planks and raised their weapons. The villagers had never seen an AK-47 before and none of them even attempted to run. They smiled at the visitors, most of them holding hands with their families. As the roar of machine gun fire sent birds into the air, the villagers dropped like stones into the brown water below, where they would become part of the food chain. Blood and human tissue showered the sun-bleached planks as the water turned red.

  When the assault rifles stopped firing, Hamdi stepped forward and pulled his Makarov pistol. He checked each body, and shot any survivors he found in the head before kicking them into the river below. A baby began crying from beneath its mother, and Hamdi pulled it from her dead body. He pointed his Makarov at the infant and realized his magazine was spent. Rather than reload, he simply threw the baby into the brown river below, where it quickly disappeared beneath the current.

  Mohammed shook hands with Hazrol. “You’ve done well. This will make an ideal location, and we can build training facilities in the higher ground.”

  Hazrol bowed. “The village is yours.”

  Chapter 10

  Langley

  CIA desk chief Darren Davis thought for a long time before he made the call. Cascaes said he was out. He and Julia had retired from the Company and disappeared. Darren had respected their privacy and left them alone, but this was different. In a world where the popular motto was “trust no one,” an old friend like Cascaes was invaluable. Chris Cascaes had been the original leader of the team going back a few years and several missions. After a career with the SEALs and then with CIA, Chris had been lucky enough to fall in love. He was burnt out, and Julia had been his salvation. The two of them had quit together and taken off for parts unknown months ago. Darren stared at the phone for another moment, then picked it up and dialed.

  It rang several times and Darren closed his eyes and got ready to hang up when Chris answered his phone and said hello.

  “Hey. I was trying to decide if I’d leave voice mail or not.”

  “I was trying to decide if I’d pick up or not.”

  There was only a split second of silence, but it was palpable and awkward. Darren said, “I wouldn’t bother unless I thought you’d want to know.”

  Chris held his breath on his end of the phone, wondering which one of his old friends was dead. “Everyone okay?” he asked cautiously.

  “Health-wise, yeah. The team’s off training and everyone is good. Different kind of problem.”

  “You know I’m out. Like, out-out. I’m done, Darren.”

  “I know. Like I said, different kind of problem.”

  There was another pause.

  “I have a civilian phone these days,” said Chris.

  “Yeah, I know. Where are you?”

  “Key West. Just got back from St. Lucia. I have to tell you, retired life has been pretty damn fantastic. Thanks for the combat pay. If we keep having this much fun, I may have to actually get a real job.”

  “Key West is a small place. I can find you easy enough. SOCOM has an airstrip there at their base. I’ll be down in a few hours and walk to a little bar I know and give you a call. You free for a drink?”

  “Of course. A drink. Can I bring Julia?”

  “Sure. See you in a few.”

  ***

  Four hours later, Chris got a text from Darren Davis. See you at the Half Shell for a beer and an oyster. Outside table.

  Chris and Julia walked hand in hand to the busy restaurant, a favorite of tourists and locals alike. It was easy to spot Darren—he was the only guy in slacks and a dress shirt, although the tie had been unknotted and was hanging from his now-open collar. Darren stood when Chris and Julia walked in, and the smiles were genuine. They exchanged hugs and back slaps, and sat at the outdoor table under the large yellow awning. It was over eighty degrees, and the sun was beating down on the Keys like it did most days.

  Julia slid her sunglasses up into her long dark hair. Her big brown eyes twinkled in the sunlight. Chris pulled his sunglasses off and hung them from his polo shirt. They were both wearing shorts and looked a lot more relaxed than their former CIA boss. The waitress came by, grabbed their order, and left.

  “So what was so important that you took your private jet to come visit us in Key West?” asked Chris.

  Darren glanced around and leaned forward, speaking in a quiet voice. “Wallace Holstrum’s been set up. I’m a hundred percent sure of it.”

  Chris glanced at Julia and looked puzzled. “By whom? How?”

  “Not sure of the ‘who’ yet, but the FBI has him under house arrest for downloading kiddie porn. They raided his house in a large-scale bust.”

  “What?” Chris said it so loud it was almost a shout. “What the fuck, man?”

  They all went silent as the waitress returned with their drinks. They gave her polite smiles and waited for her to leave.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up,” said Darren, taking a long drink from his cold beer and wiping his sweaty face with the back of his hand.

  “I don’t know Darren as well as you two do, but doesn’t everyone inside think it’s a setup?” asked Julia.

  “Everyone I know agrees it isn’t legit, but the FBI won’t back off. DHS came in and made him take a leave of absence while they do a full investigation. Back channels say it may have been a Chinese hack, but we don’t know yet. In the meantime, it gets Wallace out of his office and disrupts everything inside the Company, which helps everyone except us.”

  “Wow,” was all Chris could muster.

  “Yeah. Wow,” replied Darren.

  Julia took Chris’s hand and held it tightly. “So what does this have to do with Chris or me?” she asked.

  Darren stared at the table, took another long drink, and then exhaled slowly. “There are very fe
w people in the world I trust completely. You two make the short list, and you’re outside the Company, which may be a good thing in this case.”

  Chris sat back and looked at Julia, then Darren. “We’re out, Darren. I told you that on the phone.”

  “I’m going to share something that’s so highly classified, I may have to arrest myself,” said Darren quietly.

  Chris and Julia both leaned in closer just as the waitress came back with their oysters. They all leaned back and smiled, and the second she was gone, leaned back in.

  “We’ve been following a case closely that didn’t lead where we thought it would. It would normally go to the FBI at this point, but in this case, it can’t. In fact, I’m not sure where it can go. We have a huge problem, Chris. A political nightmare. The problem is, while it should be the FBI’s case, they wouldn’t do anything other than tip off the perpetrator and make it go away.”

  “I’m not following you,” said Chris quietly.

  “There’s a chance, and I’m hoping I’m wrong, that it wasn’t the Chinese that fucked Wallace. What if it’s our own people? The FBI director and the White House are very tight, not like Holstrum. The president keeps Wallace because he’s great at his job, not because he likes him. The secretary of state and Director Gallo are also very tight. Hell, they dine together and Gallo plays golf with the secretary’s husband.”

  “I still don’t follow you, Darren.”

  “Yeah,” said Julia. “You need to start at the beginning. Director Holstrum gets arrested for allegedly downloading kiddie porn because someone wants him out of the way. I understand that. But what other investigation are you talking about?”

  “Top secret,” whispered Darren.

  “Understood,” said Chris quietly.

  Darren looked at Julia, and she nodded.