Tom Clancy's Act of Valor

by Dick Couch

  * * *

  The back room of the long, squalid hut had become a torture chamber. Heeding Christo’s instructions to keep her alive and not call back until she talked, Tommy did what he did best. He tortured the young doctor. Yet in doing so, he was careful to prolong Morales’s life. He had never let Christo down, and he didn’t intend to do so now. He knew the stakes and knew that if he failed, his life was w Sis He orthless. Christo would have him tortured and find someone else to extract what he wanted from Morales.

  The look on Tommy’s face was one of determination laced with frustration. He had slowly increased the pressure on Morales, from slapping her face bloody to burning her flesh with a lit cigar to cutting her and rubbing salt into the wounds. Earlier that day, he had had her gang-raped by the camp sentries; he had applied electric shock to her breasts and genitals. Nothing had worked. Now, Tommy reached into his bag of sick tricks for what he was sure would finally bring her around. He’d only had to go this far with a hostage once before, a tough Costa Rican paramilitary officer, and the man had broken in less than five minutes. This . . . Yankee bitch wouldn’t hold out half that long. He permitted himself a smile; he was going to enjoy this.

  Lisa Morales was chained to a sturdy wood table. The rusty metal dug into her wrists, which were made dark red from both dried and oozing blood. Her hands were splayed out on the table, the tops of them swollen and bruised. She hung from them, with her head just below the tabletop. Her feet, stretched out behind her and tied to ring bolts in the floor, were black and swollen from the stick beatings on her soles. Dozens of large flies buzzed around her, licking at the open wounds. She was naked save for her bloodstained bra and panties, and her face was so swollen from Tommy’s beatings that her mother would be hard-pressed to recognize her. Blood seeped from multiple cuts on her torso and legs. The table and floor about her were slick with blood, urine, and feces. It looked like a scene from the Spanish Inquisition.

  “No mas . . . ” Morales moaned, the words almost unrecognizable as she struggled to form them through swollen lips. Her moans were drowned out by a high-pitched electrical whine.

  “Por favor . . . no . . . por favor,” she moaned, barely audible.

  Tommy stepped in front of Morales holding a power drill with a 1/16th-inch bit and leaned into the drill as it bit down and through Morales’s left hand.

  “Arrrrrrrrrgh . . . ”

  The shriek was not loud, but primal and guttural—a sound more animal than human. Her cries were so shrill and wrenching that Tommy raised up, extracting the drill bit from her hand. Enraged that he had let her cries interrupt the flow of his work, Tommy aimed the drill bit at the top of her right hand and shoved it through. Morales’s legs jerked uncontrollably and her head slammed into the top of the table, her body now in an uncontrollable seizure. The look on Tommy’s face had changed from determination and frustration to pure rage.

  “Speak to me, you bitch! Diga me!”

  From deep inside Morales, some small reservoir of adrenaline gave added strength to her voice, and she emitted a howl that pierced the thin walls of the building, spilling into the still night outside. The terrifying screams that echoed through the camp and the surrounding mangrove transfixed the SEALs, freezing them in place. Even the roving guards paused in their Ssed echoedlazy patrol routes and turned to listen. After a long moment of the unbearable, heart-wrenching cries, Chief Nolan came up on the tac net.

  “Sir, we got to go.”

  “Roger that. Everyone get ready to move, but hold where you are and wait for my command.” Then on his support net, “Whiplash, Blackbeard, over.”

  “Whiplash here, over.” The two SOC-R craft were still nestled against the bank at the bend of the river, tied off on mangrove trees and virtually invisible in the low vegetation.

  “This is Blackbeard. We are about to go hot. How soon can you get to my primary extraction site, priority one, over?”

  “This is Whiplash. We can be at your primary extraction in thirty mikes, maybe a little sooner on priority one, over.”

  Engel did some mental calculations. It did them no good to have Morales, and in all likelihood a small army of pursuers, if they had no extraction platform. Neither did it do them any good for the boats to arrive too soon. This was going to be close, one way or another.

  “Roger, Whiplash. Start making your way here quietly, and stand by to respond at your best speed, over.”

  “Understood, Blackbeard. We are moving toward primary extraction at slow speed, over.”

  “Blackbeard, roger, out.” Then on the tac net, “Okay, guys, smooth is fast. Go get her, and call out the security as you see them.”

  Some fourteen miles downriver, Chief Bautista had the order he’d been waiting for and switched to his tactical net.

  “Two Boat, One Boat, we’re moving upriver at idle. Follow me at loose trail. Man-up on all weapons systems, and be ready to put the pedal to the metal. This extraction will most likely be a hot one.”

  “Two Boat, roger.”

  No more words needed to be exchanged between Bautista and Chief Tom Dial, the Two Boat’s captain and coxswain. The two SOC-R craft fired up their engines and eased out from the bank in unison. With the Yanmars purring at a soft growl, they began to work their way upstream toward the extraction site at a reasonably quiet five knots. They all felt it; they were headed for a fight. As Bautista and Dial held their craft in the current, each swick crewman at his individual station checked and rechecked his weapon and ammo supply.

  * * *

  As the two SOC-R craft worked their way upriver, Engel was now completely focused on visual presentation on his screen, shifting back and forth from low-light level color to infrared. The SEALs had all switched on their IR markers so he could track them easily as they advanced on the target building. The sounds now coming from the long low hut were moans punctuated by howls of pa Sy h asin and pure terror.

  The assault element was now on the move in a modified skirmish line, with Chief Nolan walking point and two SEALs to either side, trailing and slightly behind—five silent forms rhythmically sweeping the area in front of them with the barrels of their weapons as they closed on the low silhouette of the main structure. On reaching the side of the building, they flattened against the plank siding with the now plaintive screams urging them forward. Nolan then moved to the van and led the file to the entrance end of the building. The others bunched closely behind him.

  Lieutenant Engel brought the Raven even lower, optically sweeping the area around the SEAL squad. He then saw the roving sentry moving from behind the rear of the building toward the side where the SEALs were queued up by the front entrance. In another few steps, he would be sure to see them.

  “Chief, hold up!” Nolan and the other SEALs froze.

  “Got him?” Engel whispered.

  “Got him,” Weimy echoed.

  As the guard stepped from behind the building, he was caught mid-chest by a .556 round from Weimy’s Mk12. Again, there was only the spit of the rifle and the brief snap from the round’s sonic path. The Tango’s heart exploded from the impact of the round. He dropped to his knees and fell face forward into the mud.

  “Okay, Chief, you’re clear.”

  “Roger that. We’re moving.”

  Nolan moved carefully around the corner of the building, looking over his rifle across the front porch and entryway. The guard, having been alerted by the sonic crack of the last shot, was now on his feet near the door, with his back to Nolan. If he turned, Nolan knew he’d have to shoot him, and that would alert the camp. “Uh, Weimy?” he whispered into his mic.

  “No worries, Chief.” This time it was a head shot and the guard collapsed. Again, another sonic crack parted the silence, this time accompanied by the clatter of an AK-47 falling onto the hut’s wooden porch decking. This may or may not have alerted those in the building or other sentries. Nonetheless, Nolan and his teammates knew they had to act swiftly now. They quickly moved to a stack at the door. A.J. c
arefully tried the knob and, finding that it turned, pushed it carefully open. He led the file inside, unchallenged. They crept silently down a short, dimly lit hallway. As they entered, they flipped up their NODs; there was enough light to work without them. Ray remained at the door as rear security, leaving the others to press on.

  On the rise outside the camp, Engel and Weimy could only watch as the SEALs disappeared into the building. Engel continued his eagle’s-eye survey of the surrounding buildings and Weimy looked for targets. He watched the two roving sentries on the far side of the compound but elected not to kill them. Double kills are sometimes difficult, and until something alerted the camp, he would do nothing to disturb things. For now, they weren’t a threat. The real con S Thand untilcern was that for every sentry they could see, there could be a dozen or more off duty nearby.

  The four SEALs in the hut’s short hallway paused to listen. All they could hear were low moans coming from deeper inside the building. The interior walls were a combination of plywood and wallboard. The doors were cheap hollow-core wood. Nolan knew they had to get to Morales quickly, but they couldn’t advance without neutralizing any threat behind them. There were three doors at the end of the hallway. They smoothly set up at the left-hand door—standard room clearance. A.J., Sonny, and Mikey popped through the door and pried it out. Nothing but trash and two soiled mattresses. It was the same for the door on the right. The center door led to a larger room with dirty dishes on card tables and a half dozen rusted metal folding chairs. They cleared it quickly. Another door led to an adjacent room; Morales had to be behind that door. They moved quickly to the door and were about to make an entry when the door and wall in front of them exploded.

  Nolan and the other SEALs dove for the floor as the automatic-weapons fire scythed back and forth, chewing up the wallboard, belt high. All made it safely except Mikey. A round caught him just under the lip of his helmet, snapping his head back. Blood immediately washed his face as he lay inert on his back in front of the door. Chief Nolan, seeing him go down, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the relative safety of the exterior side wall.

  The gunner in the next room was relentless. After a quick magazine change, he again opened up, but this time he was clearly shooting high. Sonny low-crawled to the door, kicked it open, and rolled in a flash-bang grenade. Following the explosion, A.J. dashed through the door in an instant and double-tapped a Tango trying to work the bolt on an AK-47 that had jammed. But it was a small room, more of an anteroom, with yet another door behind it. A.J. and Sonny were now on their own, and both knew they had to keep moving. Stepping over the body, they paused for a fraction of a second. Then A.J. gave the door a strong kick.

  Just before the shooting started, Tommy—having abandoned the drill and donned leather gloves—was about to give Morales yet another vicious backhand. She was now semiconscious and probably wouldn’t feel it, but he really did enjoy hitting women. Yet he knew he had to be careful. Fun was fun, but Christo wanted information, and he couldn’t take the chance of killing her—yet. But just one more backhand would probably be all right. Then the guard in the next room went full automatic with his AK-47. The sound through the thin walls was deafening. There was a brief silence and then more firing. There were two others there in the room to help Tommy with the interrogation. They were both cartel security retainers and stood by passively while he worked on Morales. When the firing started, they reacted much more quickly than Tommy did. Both turned in unison and bolted through the rear entrance. Tommy, not wanting to leave Morales, took up his Glock .45 and turned back to the sound of the shooting. A loud explosion followed by more shots caused him to hesitate, but then he put his eye to a crack in the door to try to see what was happening—at the precise moment A.J. kicked the door in from the other side.

  Stunned, Tommy staggered back and tried to raise his pistol just as Sonny barreled through the door. The two crashed against the opposite wall chest to chest, too close for Sonny to get the barrel of his SAW level, but he Slev. T managed to block Tommy’s gun hand, forcing it up and away. Tommy was bigger than Sonny but not nearly as strong. Locked together, Sonny forced Tommy back against a wall and drew his Sig Sauer 9mm. He rammed the barrel of the automatic under Tommy’s chin, and while he was eyeball to eyeball with the big Chechen, he blew off the top of his head. A.J., having no angle to get off a shot, could only clear the rest of the room and watch.

  “Clear,” A.J. shouted. Then turning to Morales, he keyed his radio. “Hey, Chief, I think we got her.”

  Nolan quickly came back on the net. “Roger that. Ray, get in here. Mikey’s down and I need you with him.”

  Ray raced through the building to where Nolan was tending to Mikey. He was unconscious and making incoherent sounds. But his airway was clear and he had a strong pulse. Mikey was the squad medic by training, but every SEAL is a medic through cross-training. Now those men Mikey had trained would have to try and save him.

  “He’s bleeding but he’s breathing,” Nolan told Ray. “Do what you can to stabilize him and get him ready to travel.” Then he went to find Morales. Ray knew the drill—keep him breathing and keep the blood inside, and there was plenty of blood. He removed Mikey’s helmet and began to apply a pressure bandage.

  An instant later, Nolan was at Morales’s side. She was semiconscious and could only mumble over and over, “Bastante—no mas.”

  Nolan took her face in his hands, none too gently. “Miss Morales. We are Americans, and we are going to get you out of here.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a glimmer of recognition.

  On the rise across the estuary, Engel and Weimy heard the shooting and saw the flash-bang, but there was little they could do. At the first burst of gunfire, Engel radioed Whiplash and requested they come at top speed. Both he and Weimy were on the tactical net, so they both knew that the team had Morales and that Mikey had been shot—neither knew how bad. Engel had been here before: There’s a fight, he has men down, and he’s tethered to his radios. But he knows Nolan and the others can do the job, and though he’s anxious to know what’s going on, he also knows Nolan will tell him when he’s able. All he could do now was to focus on the Raven presentation and look for threats. Then the two men bolted from the back door of the long hut.

  “I got two squirters,” Weimy said on the net.

  “Take ’em,” Nolan confirmed immediately.

  Weimy sent a round between the shoulder blades of the first man, just missing his heart but collapsing a lung. He staggered on a few steps before a second round, two inches left of the first, severed his spinal cord, pitching him face forward to the ground. The second Tango made it to a beefy, extended-cab pickup truck and slipped behind the wheel. Before he could close the door or start the engine, Weimy took him through the rear window of the cab with a head shot, painting the inside of the windshield with bone fragments and brain tissue.

  Inside, Nolan snatched a curtain from the wall and covered Morales’s bruised and battered body. She was bleeding from cuts and burns all over her torso and limbs, as well as from her nose and mouth. He took a scarf from his neck, wet it, and dabbed Morales’s dry, cracked lips. She was now weeping softly. “Okay, listen closely—this is important. What is your mother’s maiden name?”

  “R-Rosales,” she whispered.

  “What street did you grow up on?” She gave him a puzzled look. “Please, what street did you live on when you were a little girl?”

  “Hot Springs.”

  “Good girl.” He keyed his mic. “Boss, we have her and a positive ID, stand by.” Then he went over to where Ray was tending to Mikey. “How’s he doing?”

  “Hard to tell, but I’ve slowed the bleeding. No way to tell how bad it is, but it’s not good. We need to get him help.” Ray had his head swathed in bandages. Mikey looked like a mummy.

  Nolan again keyed his mic. “Okay, Boss, Mikey is down with a head wound—looks serious. We’re getting him and the package ready to move.”

  “Roger, cop
y. Put a rush on it—we got company.”

  “Say again.”

  “I said we have company. There are two trucks inbound from the west on the main road. They appear to be loaded with Tangos. Get out of there, Chief. You’ve got five minutes at best.”

  “Christ, the fun never stops.”

  On the rise outside the camp, Engel could do nothing but watch on his computer screen as the quick-reaction force, a crew-cab pickup with eight or ten men in back and a Ford Explorer loaded with men, made their way down the access road toward the compound.

  “Whiplash, this is Blackbeard, over.”

  “This is Whiplash, over.”

  “Whiplash, we have a QRF inbound, and I have wounded. How far out are you, over?”

  “Blackbeard, I’m fifteen mikes from the primary. How many pax, over?”

  “Six effectives, two wounded. Plan for a hot extraction, over.”

  “Blackbeard, I copy six effectives and two wounded for a total of eight pax, and a hot extract, over.”

  “Good copy, Whiplash. Blackbeard, out.”

  * * *

  “Two Boat,” Bautista said on their tac net, “you copy that?”

  “Roger that, One,” Dial replied. “I’m right behind you.”

  Ricardo Bautista had been a Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman since their small, tight-knit community was officially formed in 2000—back when he was a second-class petty officer and still new to the Special Boat Teams. He knew that as leader of a two-boat SOC-R element, it would all be on him. A hot extraction meant that his SEAL brothers would be running for their lives and that he and his boats’ gunners could mean the difference between getting them out safely and watching them perish. He had to stay cool, yet his excitement was palpable. Ten years of ground wars in the Middle East and Southwest Asia in landlocked places like Afghanistan generated few combat opportunities for his fellow swicks and their highly capable watercraft. Now, for better or for worse, they were in the mix.

  The two SOC-Rs came up on step and leapt forward as Bautista and Dial slammed their respective throttles forward and the crafts’ twin 440 Yanmar Diesels responded at full power, thrusting each boat forward at their redline speed of forty-plus knots. It was showtime, and Bautista was both in charge and on the spot. The mission would succeed or fail, and men would be saved or would die, based on his decisions over the next few minutes. He had a good crew; he knew that—he’d trained them. But they were green. For most of them, this would be their first combat engagement.