Tom Clancy's Act of Valor

by Dick Couch

  “Well, how do I look?” he asked one of his intelligence specialists.

  “To be honest, Senior, like you’re trolling for boy toys in Venice.”

  This brought a frown, immediately followed by a chuckle. “Then I guess I’m good to go,” he said, and he made his way up to the flight deck.

  * * *

  Jackie Engel was in the middle of organized chaos, surrounded by boxes, wrapping paper, and “neutral” baby things—toddler toys and support items that were non-gender-specific. She was sitting in the recliner of her small living room, and the space was crowded with close to a dozen other women. Her mother had arrived the day before, and she and Julia Nolan had organized a surprise, impromptu shower. There were several other SEAL wives, two of her friends from work, and three neighbors. All was gaiety and laughter. When the phone rang, her mother rose quickly with an, “I’ll get it, dear,” and stepped down the hall to take the call on a wireless handset.

  “Hello.”

  After a short pause, “Hello, Mom, is that you?”

  “Roark?”

  “It’s me, Mom. Sounds like you’re having a party there. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Roark, how nice to hear your voice. No, no—we’re just having a little shower for Jackie. Where are you?” She was the mother of a Navy wife; she could ask those questions.

  “I’m on deployment,” he replied, allowing just a trace of humor in his voice, “over there or over here, depending on your prospective. Hey, I’m really glad you’re there with Jackie. I know it means a lot to her, and it sure means a lot to me. Thanks for making the trip out.”

  “Roark, I’m only too happy to be here, and Coronado is such a delightful sa d1emplace. And there’s snow on the ground in Indianapolis. This is much nicer. Now, I know you didn’t call to talk to me. Let me get herself. Take care of yourself, Roark. Jackie misses you—we all miss you.”

  “Thanks, Mom, thanks for everything.”

  Moments later, “Roark?”

  “Hi, hon. Just calling to check in, and I hear you are having a party.”

  “Oh, Mom, Julia, and some of the girls sprang a surprise shower on me. We’re having fun, and we got some great things for the kid.”

  “Catcher’s mitts and hockey skates, right?”

  “Maybe. They work for girls, too, you know.”

  “I know, I know. Listen, all the guys here are doing just fine. Update me on the families, will you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jackie replied, organizing her thoughts. “Everybody here is A-okay . . . We all get together fairly frequently, and you’d be proud how the wives and girlfriends are all supporting one another . . .”

  “So . . . no problems?” Roark probed.

  “Nothing we can’t handle. Tell Diego that Anna’s mom is finally having that hip replacement that she’s been putting off for so long. Anna’s taking their son and flying to Jacksonville for two weeks to see her through the surgery and the beginning of her recovery. Oh, and Sonny’s older daughter, Becky, took a nasty spill playing soccer. Carla took her to the Balboa ER, but the docs cleared her. She has a shiner, and she’s bragging about how the other girl looks worse. She’s one tough kid, just like her dad.”

  “I hear that,” Roark replied.

  There was a moment of silence as Roark thought about how to phrase what he was about to say. “Hey, hon, I just wanted to check on the families and to hear the sound of your voice, but I also needed to let you know that this project I’m working on seems to be a little bigger than I’d first thought. It looks like I’ll have to stay with it. I’d rather be shot at than to tell you this, but it doesn’t look good for me being back there anytime soon. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s as it stands right now.”

  “Oh, Roark, I am disappointed, yet . . . yet I do understand, believe me, I do.”

  “But, hey, the good news is that once we finish up with this, there’s a good chance I can get back for a few days.”

  “That would be great. But,” she replied, trying for some levity, “are you sure you’re not just trying to duck my mom? She’s very sensitive about those things, you know.”

  That got std"hose thia chuckle. “I’d brave your mother and any other mortal danger to be with you right now. And you tell her for me that I am really glad that she can be there with you. Tell me, how are you and the little one doing? Are you feeling well?”

  “We are both doing just fine. We just want you to take good care of yourself.”

  “No sweat, hon,” he assured her. “But listen, I have to run for now. So I’ll let you get back to the ladies and the Chippendales and whatever else you may have going on there.”

  “Listen to you! You are my one and only Chippendale. Never forget that.”

  They traded I-love-you’s and shared another laugh, then she returned to the girls.

  “That was Roark,” she announced, feeling the need to comment, “checking up on me. He says hello to all of you and to thank you for the wonderful gifts. He and I both appreciate this so very much. Now, who needs another cup of tea?”

  She continued to be the picture of graciousness and good humor to most in the room, but her happy facade did not get past Julia Nolan or her mother.

  * * *

  It was shortly after dawn when the Makin Island slowed to a barely discernable three knots and began to ballast down. The process of venting some fifteen thousand tons of seawater into the well deck of the ship took close to an hour. The RHIBs motored out ready to run. Once clear of the mother ship’s stern gate, the Mark Vs took another ten minutes to hinge into place and secure their radar and communications masts. During this time, the Osrah was able to gain another thirty miles on them, but that was about to change. There was a light chop on the surface with a wind out of the south, so the four-boat flotilla was able to make best speed across the water. With a twenty-five-knot speed advantage, they could overtake the yacht in just under four hours. The Makin Island, after dewatering her well deck, took up the pursuit at her best speed of twenty-two knots. Three hours after the two Mark Vs and the two RHIBs had sortied, the two MH-60Ss lifted off and followed their waterborne brothers.

  Lieutenant Commander Crandall stood alongside the SWCC officer in charge. As task unit commander, he was in charge of the overall operation, but the swick officer, also a SEAL, would coordinate the approach. It would be impossible to achieve total surprise, but they would do what they could to delay the detection of their approach. Both the Mark Vs and the RHIBs carried good radars, but they were turned off. There was the very real possibility that the Osrah had the ability to detect surface-search radars in the area. Some of the larger yachts were so equipped as an antipiracy measure. The boats relied on a data link from the Global Hawk for a bearing and distance to their target. When they were ten miles from the Osrah, just below the visual horizon, the swick OIC signaled his coxswains to fall in astern of him, so the four boats continued at high speed in a file. Cruising yachts, and indeed many warships, had their radars mounted on masts forward of their exhaust stacks. This gave them an unobstructed radar picture in their direction of travel but sometimes left them a blind spot sa bd indeed directly astern, or, in Navy speak, in their baffles. And since there were no other craft in the area and it was a clear day, the helmsman on the yacht, or bridge crew if there were two of them, might not be paying close attention to the radar. At eight miles out, the SWCC boats were joined by the Knighthawks, flying in a loose combat spread at six thousand feet and slowing to match the speed of the flotilla.

  On the Osrah, Christo was enjoying a light breakfast of fruit and yogurt, fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, and black coffee. He was at his desk in the yacht’s spacious solarium, dressed comfortably in white cotton slacks, a turquoise long-sleeve pullover, and sandals. His long hair was pulled into a ponytail out of his way. He wore no jewelry but for a gold Rolex President and a gold baht chain. His role in arranging for the shipment of cocaine and assisting the little Russian bomb-vest maker with
his wares was over. Now that what was about to happen was soon approaching, he wanted to be as far away from America—North, Central, or South—as possible. His wife and daughter, along with his mother-in-law and a small contingent of extended family, were in Rome. They were being guarded by a handpicked security detachment. There would be far-reaching repercussions for what Shabal had planned, and should any blowback reach him, he wanted his family somewhere safe and well away from him. He did not expect to be linked to Shabal’s plans, but regarding issues of family, one could not be too careful. Plus, he had work to do, and the yacht was one of his better offices.

  While Shabal planned his attack, Christo had been planning how to capitalize on it. He had mobilized as much cash as he dared, something on the order of $300 million. He had carefully analyzed what would take place if Shabal succeeded—the companies that would plummet in value and those that would rise in value. Using intermediaries and discreet brokerage firms around the globe, he had bet on chaos in the U.S. and European economies. As a result, he found himself shorting airline and entertainment stocks and going long on energy and U.S. defense stocks. Of all his holdings, he thought grimly, the U.S. defense stocks would fare the best.

  His desk was a spartan place of work, with several multiline telephones and a neat but well-ordered stack of file folders. The only thing seemingly out of place was a Newton’s Cradle. This suspended rack of steel balls was normally viewed as a senior executive’s play toy. It had come with the boat and was normally a device that would be ill-served on a pleasure craft. But this version of the Westship 149 had a sophisticated, gyro-stabilization system that took nearly all the roll and most of the pitch out of the motion of the yacht. It was an extremely stable craft. Several feet below the waterline on the Osrah, gimbaled fins extended from the hull, which sensed certain hull movements and gave immediate correction. That the Newton’s Cradle could smoothly transmit action and reaction in almost any weather was a tribute to the Osrah’s stabilizers.

  This morning, as the sun climbed into the sky, Christo was at his desk and his ten-person crew was about their duties. His captain was on the bridge with his helmsman. The yacht was on autopilot, and the two were performing routine maintenance checks, most of them with the help of the engineer, who was presently at his station in the engine room. There were two women on board whose duties involved cooking and cleaning. They both had supermodel good looks and, when necessary, could dress in skimpy bikinis and drape themselves conspicuously on the bo ssly twow or the afterdeck when entering or leaving port, thus portraying the Osrah as the vessel of a rich playboy. But they were only for show; Christo was a family man, monogamous, and he insisted on the same from those who worked around him. Many men of wealth paid for lewd conduct; Christo paid, and paid well, for the absence of it. The other five members of his crew were dedicated to security—a security chief and four others. At this point in time, two of them were close by in their own craft, a six-meter RHIB that raced over the sea, keeping station on the Osrah. Every few days, Christo’s security-detail chief asked that the yacht’s tender be put in the water for testing and crew training—and also as an antipiracy measure. One member of the security team had had the night watch and was below, sound asleep; the other was in the small crew’s galley having breakfast. It was the security chief, a former Spetsnaz major, who first noticed the fast-closing lead Mark V and what seemed to be several small craft in its wake. He studied them for a moment, then raced to the pilothouse to get a pair of binoculars. From the pilothouse wing, he studied them for a long moment, then stepped back inside, pausing to speak to the Osrah’s captain.

  “We are being followed and may soon be boarded. Make all preparations to resist a boarding, and send someone to wake Dmitri and notify Mikhail.” He didn’t wait for an answer but headed aft to the solarium. Christo glanced up with some irritation at his hurried entrance.

  “What is it, Vladimir?”

  “Sir, we are being followed and overtaken by several military small craft.”

  “Pirates? Here?”

  “I don’t think they are pirates. If I had to guess, they are an American special boat unit. And they are coming very fast.”

  Christo considered this a moment. “Very well. Has the captain been notified?”

  “Yes, sir, he has.”

  “And how soon will they overtake us?”

  “Quickly, sir. Five minutes, maybe less.”

  Christo frowned, as if this were but a minor annoyance. “Any chance we can repel them?”

  “No, sir. There are at least three boats, and they are heavily gunned.”

  “Very well.” He sighed. “These are your instructions: Delay them as long as you can, however you can. I have matters to attend to here.”

  Vladimir was immediately on his handheld Motorola radio. He was no sooner out the door than Christo began feeding documents into the shredder and deleting files from the laptop computer on his desk.

  * * *

  “Think they know we’re here?” Crandall shouted over the engine’s roar.

  His Mark V detachment (Det) OIC was studying the Osrah through a pair of stabilized binoculars. “There’s no way to be sure, but I don’t think so. They have a tender in the water, and it seems to be keeping station on the yacht. But it can’t be too much longer before they see us. I recommend we go to a combat spread.”

  Crandall nodded. “Make it happen.”

  The Det OIC spoke a few words into his lip mic, and the four boats broke from their line-astern formation. Immediately, the two Mark Vs accelerated up to their top speed and to headings that would have them flanking the yacht, a hundred yards to either side. The two RHIBs continued along the wake of the Osrah, now on side-by-side and on parallel courses that would bring them up to the port and starboard quarters of the big yacht. Above, the two Knighthawks moved into position to support the waterborne assault.

  According to the plan, the two Mark Vs were to stand off to either side of the Osrah, hail her, and order her to stop for boarding. The RHIBs would then move up to a close-in support position near the stern sheets. One helo would serve as a platform for the SEAL sniper overwatch while the other would touch down on the Osrah’s helo platform to insert the initial fire team. The helo deck would save them from the exposure and danger of a fast-rope boarding. After depositing the first team of boarders, the first helo would then take up the overwatch while the second helo inserted the second fire team. The yacht and Christo were being surrounded; it was now only a matter of time and the level of force involved.

  * * *

  Vladimir was standing on the main afterdeck of the yacht, watching the four boats flank and close in on the Osrah. He and his four Spetsnaz commandos could at best only conduct a holding action, and Vladimir knew this. He sent the tender and his two men off on a heading of 45 degrees to port from that of the Osrah. The tender had twin 250 horsepower Mercury outboards; it was fast but not quite as fast as the Mark V. It quickly began to put distance between itself and the Osrah, and one of the Mark Vs followed, which was what Vladimir had in mind. One less boat for him to deal with.

  The Russian security chief now knew they were American boats and correctly assumed they would soon be boarded by Navy SEALs. The only issue was how long he could delay that boarding before things got nasty. He was a security consultant, not a criminal, and he would honor his employer’s wishes—up to a point. Then Mikhail, the youngest of his security team, stepped out topside onto the helo deck, brandishing an AK-47. It was a mistake—and a fatal one.

  The pilot of the lead helo was a skillful one. He had closed on the Osrah carefully, keeping his Knighthawk between the sun and the yacht. He was, in effect, coming out of the sun. With the noise of the yacht’s engines and the distraction of the closing surface craft, he was able to crab down a thousand feet and to a position some 150 yards on the starboard beam of the Osrah. The SEAL sniper in the port door of the helo had a clear field of fire, and his Winmag 300 dialed in for the range and altitude.


  “I have a Tango armed with an AK on the helo deck, and a shot,” the sniper calmly reported on the tactical net.

  It was Crandall’s call, and he made it quickly. “Take him.”

  The sniper elected a head shot, which was not easy from a moving helo to that small of a target in a moving boat. But again, the Osrah was a highly stabilized yacht, and the helo pilot was very good. The big 190-grain, boat-tailed, special-purpose round went through Mikhail’s head like it was passing through a melon and buried itself into the reinforced helo-pad decking. Mikhail collapsed to the deck like a wet rag. A red-gray cloud of blood and brain tissue hung in the air over him for but an instant, then was snatched away by the wind.

  Well off to port and now north of the main sea chase, the trailing Mark V was slowly closing on the Osrah’s tender. At the beginning, the two security men felt they could outrun their pursuer. They knew they were making something close to sixty miles per hour, but the sleek gray shape gradually closed the distance. Now it was nearly off their beam and working its way closer.

  “What do you think?” the Russian at the helm yelled to his companion.

  “We can’t outrun them, but maybe I can slow them down a little.”

  With that he took his Kalashnikov and sprayed a long burst at the speeding Mark V. He could see waterspouts between the two vessels, and he knew at least a few of his rounds had hit their pursuer. It was his last conscious thought.

  On the Mark V, the port-side .50-caliber swick gunner did not have to request permission to fire; the gunman on the tender had just done that for him. He saw the muzzle flashes from the AK-47, and even felt a round ping off his gun’s armored fairing. Then he pressed the butterfly trigger of the big machine gun. He swept the little RHIB bow to stern and back again, shredding the spray tubes, the two outboards, and the two men. Several rounds ripped into the onboard fuel tanks that were under pressure, creating an atomized cloud of gasoline vapor and liquid. A tracer round did the rest. The RHIB mushroomed into a fireball, as only a gasoline-powered watercraft at high speed can. The Mark V slowed and circled once, then twice. There was nothing but burning debris on the water, a few charred life jackets, and no sign of life. The Mark V OIC, a senior chief petty officer, marked the debris field with eight-digit GPS coordinates on his Garmin navigation system and headed back toward the Osrah at maximum RPMs—back to the fight, if there was to be more of a fight. They could return to the site of burned wreckage later if necessary.