“Yes, sir, lieutenant,” Lex shouted back, firing off a snappy salute. “Getting my arse out of the way, sir.”
Buckler’s glare, even over a distance of a hundred yards, could have melted a hole through plate steel.
“Eyes on the prize,” Lex confided to Wilberforce. “Mine are. Let yours be, too.”
MOST OF TEAM Thirteen’s bags went into the Turbo Beaver’s freight hold, although two were stowed in the extra cargo space in the floats. The Zodiacs were laid lengthways along the aisle of the cabin, dismantled into their component parts: wooden transoms and thrustboards, aluminium deckplates, deflated neoprene sacs squashed as flat as they could go. Their outboard motors were lodged in the rearmost two seats, belted in place.
“We all set?” said Wilberforce.
Buckler untied the mooring ropes, kick-shoved the plane away from the dock, clambered inside and yanked the door shut. He slid into the seat at the front beside Wilberforce’s. Lex and Albertine occupied the two seats immediately behind. The Team Thirteen shooters filled the remaining four rows.
Lex looked across the aisle at Albertine. She was staring out of the window, gripping the armrests.
“Not a good flyer?” he asked.
“Jumbo jets, no problem,” she replied. “My cousin’s rust-bucket of a seaplane, on the other hand...”
“You think this is bad, you should try taking an internal commercial flight in Russia,” Tartaglione said, leaning forward to talk over her seat headrest. “Those planes are so shit, not even the pilots are sure they’re going to make it to their destination.”
“It would help if they didn’t drink so much vodka while at the controls,” Sampson chipped in. “That’d bring the crash rate right down.”
“Yeah, but it’s a catch-twenty-two. If they didn’t drink, they’d never have the courage to fly.”
“Is this supposed to be helping me?” Albertine asked curtly.
“Just saying things could be a whole lot worse,” said Tartaglione. “Trying to put your mind at ease.”
“Well, thank you, but don’t.”
The engine started up, filling the cabin with noise and vibration.
“Welcome aboard, everyone,” Wilberforce called out. “This is your pilot, wishing you a pleasant trip. Our journey time is approximately one and a half hours, and we’ll be cruising at an altitude of—”
“Cut the crap,” Buckler interrupted. “Just fly.”
Wilberforce glanced round at Lex, who simply gave a nod that said: Eyes on the prize.
“Whatever you say,” said Wilberforce to Buckler. “You’re the boss.”
He let Puddle Jumper continue to drift away from the dock with the propeller turning at a low rate. The river current caught and turned the plane. When its nose was facing downstream, Wilberforce upped the revs and began taxiing along the inlet.
As the inlet widened into an estuary, the going got rougher. The clash between waves surging in from the ocean and the river’s outward flow created a field of spiky whitecaps. Wilberforce eased the throttle forwards, and soon Puddle Jumper was bounding and juddering along, past the inlet’s mouth and out onto the open sea. Everyone in the cabin rocked in their seats. The airframe creaked loudly with every impact of the surf chop, and the wings wobbled disconcertingly. Sea spray spattered the windows. Albertine was intoning words under her breath, and if it wasn’t a prayer to the loa, Lex had no idea what else it could be.
Wilberforce poured on more speed, and the buffeting started to lessen. Puddle Jumper was beginning to skim the waves rather than butting headlong through them. He nudged the yoke back, and all at once the plane was aloft, released from the water’s grasp and up into its proper element.
TWENTY-ONE
CALL SIGNS
ONCE PUDDLE JUMPER had gained cruising altitude and levelled out, Team Thirteen changed out of their civvies into black jumpsuits and Kevlar vests. Small, lightweight VHF comms headsets were distributed and donned. Both Lex and Albertine were given one.
“Piece of cake to use,” Buckler told Albertine. “Channel’s pre-selected. Tap the earpiece to speak. Think of it as glorified Bluetooth.”
“Testing,” said Albertine.
“There you go. Coming through loud and clear. Team Thirteen, sound off.”
“Penetrator,” said Sampson.
“Warmone,” said Morgenstern.
“Jersey Shore,” said Tartaglione.
“Whisper,” said Pearce.
“Big Chief Dirty,” said Buckler. “You, Miz Montase, are Guardian Angel. You’ll be known by no other name when we’re on comms. As for you, Dove, you get White Feather.”
“Don’t I get to choose my own call sign?”
“You get what you’re given.”
“But White Feather? It’s kind of insulting.”
“Don’t read too much into it. It’s purely surname-related.”
“So you say.”
“Take it or leave it, ace.”
“White Feather,” Lex muttered into the headset mike.
Buckler gave a thumbs-up. All comms were functioning.
Puddle Jumper flew on. A trade wind was nudging in from the side, and Wilberforce worked the rudder pedals repeatedly to counteract it and maintain course. Quarter of an hour after takeoff he was contacted by ground control at Manzanilla International, requesting confirmation of aircraft registration and purpose of journey. He responded by saying that he was on a pleasure trip and hadn’t filed a flight plan beforehand since he was flying VFR in low-altitude airways and not intending to cross any national borders.
He listened over his headphones as Manzanilla ground control spoke again. Then he covered the mike with one hand and said to Buckler, “They’re demanding a destination. What should I tell them?”
“Tell them there isn’t one. You’re on a loop, taking sightseers around the coasts of Cuba and Great Inagua then coming home.”
Wilberforce relayed this, got an answer, and shook his head at Buckler. “No dice. They’re getting very pushy; we’re over water, harder to locate if we go down. Which,” he added loudly, for Albertine’s benefit, “we’re not going to.”
“All right,” said Buckler. “Tell them to call this number.” He reeled off a phone number with a US international dialling code and a 202 Washington DC prefix. “When someone picks up, they should quote the following: ‘Priority Delta Seven One Niner.’”
A few minutes later, Manzanilla International was back in touch. Wilberforce could only grin.
“They say thank you for that, not a problem, have a nice flight.”
Puddle Jumper threaded the strait between Cuba and Hispaniola, the Windward Passage, at 5,000 feet. Turbulence was almost constant at this height. The plane sagged and seesawed in the air. Albertine’s knuckles showed grey through her skin as she clung to the armrests, and her mouth was a tight lipless line. Pearce, by contrast, was dozing, and Morgenstern was doing Sudoku puzzles on a Nintendo DS. As for Sampson and Tartaglione, they were busy swapping combat reminiscences. They switched back and forth between tales of conventional ops from their days as regular SEALs and their more recent exploits as Thirteeners, so that one moment they would be discussing a hostage rescue or a night-time antiterrorist raid, the next recalling how they had helped roust a devil-worshipping apocalypse cult who were attempting to summon some nameless nether-being from beyond with a view to unleashing it upon the world. They didn’t appear to discriminate between the two types of mission, as if a band of Mujahideen armed with AK-47s was little different from a winged snake-woman lurking in an abandoned casbah in a southern province of Morocco, as if nobbling a Nicaraguan cocaine baron was on a par with investigating the site of a reported UFO crash in the Peruvian jungle.
Even the strangest things, it seemed, could become mundane if you were exposed to them often enough.
The flow of anecdotes was broken by Wilberforce announcing that GPS now put them within twenty kilometres of Anger Reef. The island should be visible on the horizon s
hortly.
Everyone craned their necks to look. Buckler spotted it first.
“Objective at one o’clock,” he said, and there, amid the jewelled glitter of the ocean, it sat—green and yellow, tiny and lonely, a fleck of dry land in a wilderness of water, like a desert oasis in reverse.
“It’s like God hawked up a loogie and spat,” was Tartaglione’s view.
“Seen bigger pimples,” was Sampson’s.
Wilberforce banked to starboard and commenced descent.
As the island loomed, the reefs surrounding it showed as a ragged pale halo. Clear sea turned milky where it washed over the coral banks.
Lower still, it became possible to distinguish the crescents of beach between the island’s promontories and the scrubby greenery encrusting the shoreline and the lusher, taller greenery growing inland. The remains of manmade structures were visible: a couple of half-collapsed jetties and several huge blocks of concrete which at one time had been the bases for radio masts and radar arrays. The latter put Lex in mind of lost temples to forgotten gods, relics of some ancient civilisation.
Wilberforce turned into the wind to facilitate a smoother landing. Puddle Jumper swooped towards the ocean, flaps lowered. The floats touched down once, and again, and then the Turbo Beaver was rumbling and bucking across the water. It eventually levelled, then sank slightly forwards as it came to a dead stop.
The plane had set down a few hundred metres from the coral barrier, and at this angle it became apparent just how low-lying Anger Reef was. The island was a thin green line above the water, even its loftiest palm trees no higher than a two-storey building. If, as climatologists predicted, sea levels were set to rise, they would only have to go up by a metre or so for Anger Reef to be swamped from end to end, its scant acreage completely inundated.
Wilberforce was first out of the door. He had rigged up an anchor from a length of rope and a piece of iron rebar hammered into a hook shape; he tossed it overboard into the crystalline water and watched it snag on the seabed some twenty feet below. Puddle Jumper was already drifting, a victim of current and wind, but once the anchor line went taut the plane stayed put, penduluming gently from side to side on the end of its tether.
Then came the task of reassembling the Zodiacs—inflating the air chambers, installing the transoms, thrustboards and deckplates, lodging the outboards onto the sterns. All while balancing on the Turbo Beaver’s floats, which made the process more protracted and precarious than it would normally have been. A leatherback turtle came nosing up to the seaplane to check out what was going on. Deeper in the water, sinister slim silhouettes circled: barracuda. The nearby reefs formed a perfect hunting ground for the predators, with huge shoals of small fry milling about, ready to be picked off. Lex watched the big silvery fish glide by. They were unhurried, confident in their top-of-the-food-chain status. At one time, he had felt like that himself—untouchable, a force of nature, dead-eyed, inhuman. He did not welcome the idea of a return to that state of mind. It had served him well as a wetwork specialist, but that was another time, another self, another world. He preferred who he was now, by far. This mission might require him to draw on his old skill set, but not, he hoped, he prayed, on his old persona. He wasn’t going back there again, not if he could possibly avoid it.
The Zodiacs were ready. Team Thirteen transferred their bags, and themselves, into the boats.
Albertine gave Wilberforce a parting hug and stepped smartly off the plane. As Lex made to follow her, Wilberforce stopped him.
“Take care of my cousin, man.”
“Of course, Wilb.”
“I mean it. We fight like cat and dog, her and me, but we’re family. And take care of yourself, too.”
“Always. See you after.”
The first Zodiac chugged away from Puddle Jumper with Lex, Albertine, Morgenstern and Pearce on board. Pearce was at the helm, gripping the outboard’s tiller arm.
Buckler’s Zodiac set off after Pearce’s. When it caught up, the two boats accelerated away in tandem.
Looking back, Lex watched Puddle Jumper and its pilot recede into the distance. He couldn’t help envying his friend. Wilberforce got to sit in his plane twiddling his thumbs, while the rest of them...
Well, whatever the rest of them had to face in the coming hours, it was unlikely there would be much thumb twiddling involved.
TWENTY-TWO
ISLANDFALL
“WHISPER, THIS IS Big Chief Dirty.” Buckler, on the comms. “We’ll skim the coral. Go for flank speed and ship the outboard at the last second. Momentum should do the rest. Copy?”
“Copy,” said Pearce.
“Everyone, you might want to hold on to something,” Buckler said. “This could get bumpy.”
There was nylon safety rope strung along the Zodiac’s gunwales. Lex twisted a loop around his wrist and motioned Albertine to do likewise.
Pearce gunned the motor to maximum, and the Zodiac’s bow lifted, hydroplaning. Ahead, the sea seethed across the coral. Lex estimated a clearance of six to nine inches. It was going to be tight.
The instant they hit the strip of boiling white, Pearce canted the outboard forwards so that the propeller sprang clear of the water, and twisted the throttle down to zero. The Zodiac scudded forwards, rudderless. Lex glimpsed coral fronds and spars rushing by below, branching extrusions and brain-like lumps, all colours, all textures. So fragile-looking, yet it could ground the boat and tear it to shreds.
They had nearly made it to the other side when something snagged on the hull and all at once the Zodiac was sent spinning, pivoting violently round and round and slewing across the sea at the same time. The boat yawed and the bow started to rise alarmingly, catching the air like a kite. The Zodiac was in peril of capsizing and pitching its occupants out.
Almost instinctively, Lex loosened his hand from the safety rope and lunged forwards, hurling himself into the front of the boat. The sudden shift brought the bow back down flat with a thump. The rate of spin slowed, allowing Pearce to reinsert the propeller and regain control. A burst of reverse thrust halted the boat in its tracks.
“Everyone all right?” Buckler asked as his Zodiac drew alongside.
“Still afloat,” said Morgenstern. “No damage to any of the main chambers as far as I can see. Think we may have lost a speed skag, though.”
Speed skags were narrow tubes running lengthwise along the underside of the hull, aiding stability.
“We can manage without,” Morgenstern went on. “It’s just going to be a little less smooth of a ride. But props to the English guy. That was some quick thinking there. If it wasn’t for him, we’d all be swimming right now.”
Pearce touched an index finger to his forehead, then pointed it at Lex.
Albertine shot him a look of gratitude, which was heartfelt.
“Onward,” said Buckler.
His Zodiac zoomed off, and the other trailed in its wake.
The seabed shelved upwards, an incline of ribbed sand dotted with clumps of softly waving turtle grass. Within metres of the shore, Buckler ordered Pearce to hold back.
“We’ll put ashore first, establish a perimeter. You come in when I give the okay.”
Buckler rammed the Zodiac up onto the beach, and before it had even stopped moving Sampson and Tartaglione were out and sprinting left and right through the shallows. Each was carrying a CAR-15 carbine, fitted with an underslung M-203 grenade launcher. At the promontories the two SEALs turned inland and performed a converging sweep along the top of the beach, meeting each other midway.
“Jersey Shore, clear.”
“Penetrator, clear.”
Buckler waved to Pearce, who engaged the idling motor and beached the Zodiac prow-first as his CO had done. He and Morgenstern piled out and started unloading bags. Buckler was already doing the same.
“I’d love to say that’s the worst part over,” Lex remarked to Albertine, “but it undoubtedly isn’t.”
Team Thirteen lugged the duffel bags u
p to the vegetation line, where marram grass, inkberry and sea lavender grew in shaggy clumps. Undoing the zips, they produced a fine array of ordnance: more CAR-15s, M-60 machine guns, Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine pistols and MK23 semiautomatics, and plenty of ammo. In addition there were KA-BAR fighting knives, hand grenades, flashbangs, and socks of C-4 explosive. The guns and explosives were shared out among the SEALs, holstered, sheathed, clipped to webbing belts and bandoliers, until the five of them were festooned with weaponry. Lex, armed with only his SIG Sauer, felt underdressed for the occasion, like someone who had turned up in jeans for a black tie party.
But that wasn’t all. From out of one of the bags came phials of clear liquid, with crucifixes etched onto the glass. Flashlights fitted with what appeared to be ultraviolet bulbs. Stubby wooden stakes. Silver pendants in the shape of ankhs and other arcane sigils, which the Thirteeners hung around their necks. A tub containing some kind of herby-smelling unguent, which they smeared on their faces like insect repellent. Assorted amulets and talismans—clay, wood, metal—which they strapped to their wrists and arms.
“What are you staring at?” Tartaglione demanded.
“You,” said Lex, “and all your weirdo bling.”
Tartaglione shook his head wonderingly. “Anyone would think you’d never seen guys tooling themselves up with mystical protection before.”
Sampson smirked. “I swear, the ignorance of some people...”
“True dat.”
“Tartag?”
“Yeah?”
“What have I said about using phrases like ‘true dat’?”
“You said I should always use them.”
“I said the exact opposite.”
“But we have this whole two-tone, brother-from-another-mother thing going on between us, don’t we?”
“We do,” said Sampson. “But you take it too far.”
“Aw man, you know I’m just a white guy who wants to be black.”
“And that’s a one-way street right there.”
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