by Dalton Fury
Motion in the water drew Kolt’s gaze down, and he spotted the boat assault force splitting to run up on either side of the Queen Mary’s stern. At just eighty-three feet long, the assault boats were like minnows in the shadow of the mammoth cruise liner.
Kolt couldn’t make out the SEALs on board, but he knew several would be in overwatch, scopes and thermals up, eyes peeled for any terrorists brave enough to shove an AK-47 barrel over the ship’s bulwark. The rest of the SEALs would be stacked behind the pole men, the two SEALs required to raise the pole while a third worried about scoring a positive first-attempt stick of the grappling hooks. Attached to the hooks would be lightweight aluminum caving ladders, which would allow the four boatloads of SEALs to silently climb aboard the hijacked cruise liner within seconds.
Everything was moving fast, giving Kolt little time to process his first mission since Yellow Creek. With aircraft now a difficult option for terrorists to hijack, they’d gone looking for other modes of transportation with far less security. It was no wonder they’d settled on a cruise liner. They were big, slow, filled with innocent people, and sure to capture the blinding lights of the media across the world. And adding to the nightmare, the Queen Mary was on a west–east crossing, coming from Southampton and heading toward New York City. Kolt knew that just as there were standing orders to shoot down hijacked aircraft should they pose a threat to any ground targets, the navy was prepared to sink any ship for the same reason.
Kolt scrunched his shoulders up around his ears and urged the Little Bird on. Waiting grated on his nerves. He didn’t handle the middle ground very well. He wanted things to get going for another reason too. The JSOC commander, Lieutenant General Seth Allen, had done the quite remarkable by deploying both special mission alert squadrons for this mission, one from SEAL Team Six, the other nod going to Delta’s Osage Squadron. While Delta didn’t work in the water nearly as often as the SEALs, they could still get wet without needing water wings.
Delta and the SEALs together. It could work brilliantly, or be a brilliant disaster.
A spray of saltwater snapped Kolt back to the here and now. Scanning the restaurant area again, he detected no sign of the terrorists. Kolt shifted his focus just below to deck ten, where steady but faint lights from the outboard staterooms, the exorbitantly priced Windsor and Buckingham suites, could be seen from behind partially closed drop curtains.
He knew the assaulters would be entering those suites within a few minutes and he worried about what or who might be waiting in ambush. Delta would be clearing the high decks from thirteen down to seven, while the SEALs would be going deeper to the low decks. Marzban and his dirty bombs were expected to be down below, so the SEALs would get the hot mission while Delta drew the short straw of supporting them. Ever since the Osama raid the SEALs had taken insufferable to a whole new level.
CW3 Stew Weeks closed Twister Two-One to a hundred yards immediately aft of the Queen Mary. He slowed the bird to sixty knots to give the lead 47s time to deploy their ninety-foot fast ropes from the tail ramps and front right doors. The lead double-bladed 47 maneuvered over the Sun Deck, rotated counterclockwise ninety degrees, and dropped all three ropes simultaneously. In trail, the second 47 flared nose up over the aft end of deck twelve, mirrored the lead’s rotation, and dropped three ropes on top of the shuffleboard area.
Weeks held Twister Two-One offset until the Delta assaulters were off the fast ropes and the 47s cleared to the east out of the Queen’s deck lighting. The helicopter slid and darted as the pilot kept it in the dark, engaging in an air loiter roughly seventy yards off stern and slightly aft of starboard. Almost immediately the windchill temperature lowered, allowing Kolt to relax his face and focus on the ropers sliding down the nylon ropes at one per second.
Kolt quickly wiped the water beads off his eye pro lenses just as the last ropers from both 47s cleared his field of view. Seconds later, six dark nylon ropes dropped freely to the decks, cueing Kolt to listen for their signal to proceed to their insert point.
“Ropes away, ropes away.”
So far so good; good op.
Immediately, Kolt felt his Little Bird’s nose drop a foot or so, picking up forward air speed. Twister Two-One was following the 47s’ approach route while remaining just off starboard so that they flew directly over the SEALs’ two Mark Vs that were now bobbing midship.
Kolt uncrossed his ankles and looked down between his Multicam Salomon assault boots. Clearing the ship’s wake, the lead Mark V peeled off, separating them from the hijacked vessel before picking up a bearing for the twenty-seven-mile run back to the mother ship, the afloat forward staging base conventionally known as the USS Ponce. Kolt knew the SEALs would have already negotiated the ladders as skillfully as triple-canopy jungle monkeys and would be moving toward the main stairwells to descend to the lower decks.
Lead boat crew, good hook, good board.
Kolt leaned forward slightly, testing the tension on his monkey strap, and spotted the second Mark V still positioned next to the ship. He knew the driver was holding the boat as close as he could, essentially attaching his Mark V like a blood-sucking leech to the ship’s hull at the waterline to provide the SEALs a stable base to climb.
First hook attempt must have failed.
“You seasick yet, boss?” Slapshot asked over their dedicated frequency.
Kolt leaned back to look through the cabin and toward Slapshot. He flipped him the bird for a couple of seconds and then keyed his mike. “In case you missed my last, that was a big fuck you.”
“Roger, I’m stopping by the Regatta Bar as soon as we get on board,” Slapshot said.
“Might be crowded. Frogmen already boarded,” Kolt said as he reached behind him to control his monkey strap snap link, found the opening lever, and gave it a slight nudge to ensure it would open quickly.
“That will be my first hotwash comment then,” Slapshot said.
Twister Two-One accelerated toward the bridge, the highest point on the Queen’s bow, and the quickest point of entry for Roscoe to bite into a terrorist’s hairless ankle or bony forearm.
Chief Weeks slowed and banked slightly left, slipped cyclic slightly to lateral shift another few feet forward to center his customers over the fast rope point, then flared and settled to hover six or seven feet above the bridge.
“Ropes, ropes, ropes,” Weeks transmitted.
Pleased with the spot, Kolt turned to see the SEAL push the coiled heavy nylon rope off the pod, allowing the twenty-five-footer to drop to the bridge wing. Kolt thumbed his snap link, releasing his tether to the Little Bird, and reached for the rope to follow the SEAL down. Standard stuff for seasoned operators like Kolt. Even though nobody kept tabs on an operator’s fast rope inserts, say, like the number of HALO free falls or his long obstacle course time, for Kolt this one had to be somewhere around a thousand or two.
But this insert just didn’t feel right. Kolt sensed the MH-6M was sliding left, not keeping pace with the Queen Mary’s forward speed.
With both gloved hands gorilla-gripping the nylon rope, Kolt hesitated. He looked down. His instincts were spot-on. His landing point wasn’t fouled, just gone, and he was staring at the small whitecaps on the right tip of the bow illuminated by the distant moon.
Shit!
Kolt wasn’t sure if the SEAL had successfully dropped or if he had slipped off the end of the rope and fallen into the sea. But he did know a drifting Little Bird over a moving ship was fairly common. Weeks would make the fine adjustments and get them back over the correct insert point. No drama. Kolt held what he had.
“Twister’s Lame Duck, Lame Duck!” Weeks calmly transmitted.
Kolt froze. What the hell?
Without further warning the MH-6M jerked nose down, wobbled out of balance, and went into an uncontrollable right-hand yaw.
Blade strike? Antenna? High-tension wire?
Now that wasn’t common. Kolt figured Weeks lost drive in the tail rotor from either a blade strike–induce
d break in the drive train or a Murphy-like mechanical failure. Either way, or anything different altogether, any barracks mechanic could tell you it was absolutely fucked-up shit.
Kolt thought to reach for his snap link, debating whether or not to hook back in. Or, just slide down the rope and safely into the water. Put distance between him and the problem, let the HIT save his ass, pop a pin flare, and get picked up later. Before he could decide, Kolt heard a hard metallic snap and yanked his neck to investigate. The tail rotor had snapped off the main cabin and was falling toward the ocean.
Kolt knew now the safest place to be was inside with the pilots, as far away from the six spinning blades on the main rotor as possible. Second to that, the open cabin just behind the pilots’ seats and near the auxiliary fuel tank offered the best protection, and the best chance of surviving the impending crash impact.
Kolt also knew Chief Weeks didn’t have many emergency-procedure options when the crash sequence began. He knew he would be concentrating on keeping it “wings level” as they spun downward to the drink from about fifty feet above the choppy sea.
“Fuck!”
Kolt didn’t know who shouted, but it summed up his feelings nicely. Fighting the centrifugal force created by the spinning, now tailless MH-6M, Kolt struggled to push off the rope and reach for the edge of the cabin. Kolt gripped the sheet metal with his right hand, releasing his left-hand death grip from the rope, and, half launching, half pulling, he managed to get his upper torso inside. Lying on his back, his legs still hanging out the starboard side, Kolt reached out for whatever hard points he could find. As he braced for impact, his eyes rolled to the top of his goggles. Kolt blinked twice.
Slapshot?
A moment later, the MH-6M smacked into the frigid waters upside down, the rotor blades slapping the water, reducing their speed significantly. Kolt slammed into the roof area of the helo, his body armor saving him from severe blunt trauma. He took in a heavy whiff of engine oil and JP8 as ice water gushed into the doorless bubble cockpit and cabin.
Kolt knew the pilots’ shoulder harness reels would lock on impact and that they would free themselves. Assuming they were conscious, their extensive training and basic mission qualification standards ensured that much. But, just as instinctively, Kolt figured he was screwed.
He remembered his pool workup and Slapshot’s adolescent scare tactics about some bullshit called the gasp reflex. Something about the average schmuck can hold his breath for 103 seconds in room-temperature air, but maxes out at about 12 seconds of air when immersed in cold water. The gasp reflex was involuntary, Slapshot explained, and didn’t give two shits how badass you thought you were.
The HEED!
Kolt held his breath as the MH-6M held him entombed and dragged him below the choppy water. But forgetting to close his mouth, either from the hard slam against his chicken plate or simple shock, he took in a gulp of seawater. He tried to spit it out but, already submerged, he had no choice but to close his mouth tight and fight the urge to panic.
He reached for his HEED, stoked to find it on the first try, but fumbled to turn the white rubber mouthpiece toward his face. He jammed it in his mouth, closed his lips tight around it, and purged the regulator and most of the water in his mouth. Kolt coughed, having not cleared all the salt water, and struggled to remain calm.
When submerged at night, without reference points and unable to see, Kolt knew the key to survival was actually counterintuitive. Swimming out of the crashed helo was the last thing he should do, as the arm strokes and kicks were more likely to hang his kit up on some unseen hazard. If that happened, he would suck his HEED empty trying to free himself. Once he was out of air, seawater would rush into his lungs, shallow water blackout would be rapid, and he would simply drown, sinking to the ocean floor with the wreckage. Really, Kolt certainly knew, no different from Yellow Creek.
Kolt did his best to stay calm, but with only two to five minutes of air, and a sinking helicopter, he needed to move fast. He used basic hand-over-hand and controlled pulls, working his way free of the wreckage by feel. Once he cleared the fuselage he knew his body’s natural buoyancy would right him head up and point him to the surface. With the HIT horse collar, even better.
But Kolt had swallowed too much seawater and struggled to juggle air from the HEED and the water in his lungs. Feeling with his hands, he found the outer edge of the submerged cabin, and felt the weight of the wreckage pull his hands downward. He let go to prevent himself from being dragged to the ocean floor and pushed off from an unseen hard point with his right assault boot.
Unable to see, even with his goggles still in place, the front end of Kolt’s Ops-Core brain bucket bumped into something blocking his escape route.
The surprise startled him, knocking the HEED from his mouth. Kolt reached out with his right hand to assess the obstacle while he ran the length of the dummy cord to secure his HEED and reinserted the mouthpiece. Again, he pressed the top of the air bottle to purge the regulator. Again, he coughed deeply, fighting the natural urge to spit out the mouthpiece.
A human!
Kolt quickly grabbed the upper body of the person in front of him. He ran his hands along the edges, determining the body was actually upside down and unconscious. Or quite possibly even dead.
Kolt wasn’t exactly sure if the guy on the opposite pod was the SEAL or his troop sergeant, Slapshot. He ran his hands up to the human’s waist, and felt around the open water for a monkey strap. The operator’s buoyancy and horse collar activation were working against the downward-sinking movement of the MH-6M. He followed the taut line to the snap link with his left hand, thumbed it open, and felt the lanyard yank upward, signaling the operator’s horse collar was pulling him to the surface.
Fuck!
Kolt felt the hard bite on his right forearm, the sharp teeth easily penetrating the polyurethane dry suit and puncturing his skin.
Roscoe!
The bomb dog didn’t loosen the bite, and began to shake his head rapidly from side to side, threatening to tear Kolt’s arm off at the elbow joint. Kolt thumbed the snap link gate open and unhooked it from the helo O-ring. Immediately Kolt felt the snap link pull up and out of his hand, confirming the SEAL was free and ascending to the surface.
With Roscoe still working the bite, thrashing back and forth as if he had the lungs of an alligator and wasn’t thirty feet under the ocean surface, Kolt suddenly recalled a glimmer of Slapshot just before impact. He reached toward the left edge of the outer pod and moved his hand back and forth, searching for Slapshot’s safety line. He would be inverted now, like the SEAL was, but still tethered close enough to the outer pod for Kolt to know for sure.
Nothing but space.
Kolt reached for Roscoe’s neck with his left hand and ran his thumb up to the dog’s right ear. He pinched hard, giving Roscoe something else to think about. Feeling the bite pressure release, Kolt yanked his right forearm free and reached for Roscoe’s snap link. He couldn’t find it initially as he ran his hands along the outer pod, and was forced to expand his search area. Just as he touched it with his right hand, one of Roscoe’s front paws slashed downward, pulling Kolt’s eye protection off his face and leaving a long scratch on Kolt’s right cheek. The cold salt water flooded his eyes just as a second paw slash knocked the HEED from his mouth.
Screw the dog, I need to get to the surface, or drown in this lonely ocean.
Kolt thought he had decided. Leave the dog and save himself. But his conscience grabbed him, reminding him that Roscoe wasn’t just a stray mutt in the Hindu Kush. Or, maybe God’s hand was working. Kolt knew that, even before 9/11, working dogs had proven to be must-have assets on target. Not everyone was a PETA extremist, but nobody could argue that their nose wasn’t a combat multiplier or that they didn’t take years to train. Kolt knew they had saved the lives of countless operators, either from sniffing out IEDs or taking down scumbags like the Chechen Black Widows at the Sochi Games.
Aw shit! I can’t lea
ve Roscoe.
Kolt put both hands on Roscoe’s snap link and unhooked it easily. He held on to the snap link as he found his HEED again and reinserted it.
Fuck me. Empty!
Kolt pulled on the inverted outer pod above his head, and felt himself moving free of the still-descending Little Bird. Out of breath and feeling the early effects of shallow water blackout, he knew he needed to get to the surface immediately. Sure, he knew drowning was actually peaceful, once you reached your limits. Kolt certainly knew his, but the panic before the peace was a mankind equalizer.
Kolt pulled stroke with both hands and frog-kicked, thankful for the horse collar and no longer worried about the cold water that had entered his neck area or the rash. Two more long pulls and Kolt’s helmeted head popped out of the water, with Roscoe surfacing a moment later. The silence from inside the sinking helo was interrupted immediately by the rotor blades of a hovering MH-6M, most definitely Twister Two-Two.
Just as Kolt raised his hand to wave at the hovering Little Bird, a white beam of light from an operator’s rifle illuminated Kolt, Roscoe, and the immediate area. Kolt noticed several objects floating nearby. Kolt wasn’t surprised to see an obvious pilot seat cushion, and what looked like a pilot’s map board that is usually strapped to the thigh, but the third item floating nearby was oddly out of place. He tried to focus on it, squinting into the rotor wash of the hovering Twister Two-Two and fighting the bright white light.
He rubbed the salt water out of his eyes.
A fucking doggie toy!
TWO
USS Ponce, Atlantic Ocean
Son of a bitch! Delta commander Jeremy Webber did his best to count his blessings, but found them few and far between. The joint training mission to assault a large ship at sea was a bust as far as Delta was concerned, but at least the men had all been plucked from the water alive and in relatively good shape.
Webber drew in a deep breath and did his best to compose himself as he walked with SEAL commander Hank Yost from the planning bay up to the main hangar deck of the USS Ponce. They knew the MH-6M Little Birds would be landing on the flight deck soon, signaling the soggy return of the rescued men. Webber gave way to his navy peer, letting him navigate the galleys and the shortcuts through a string of heavy watertight doors, before they reached the main hangar deck.