Tom Clancy's Act of Valor

by Dick Couch

  “On me, Banditos,” Engel called over the tac net, and the five SEALs took a position on a line abreast with Engel, facing the cantina. “Tom, you have us?”

  “Negative. You must be behind a building.”

  Engel took a portable laser and pointed it skyward, moving it in small circles. The motion created an IR shaft of light marking his position.

  “Now?”

  “We got you, Blackbeard. Stay tight there unless you call out your move.”

  “Roger that, Tom, and you are cleared hot.”

  At that instant, three of the locals burst from the front door of the cantina and were immediately taken under fire by both the Mk48 and the Mk46. All three went down before they had gotten ten yards from the door, dead or mortally wounded. Then came the Filipinos, and it became an IR shooting gallery. They moved with good tactical discipline, but they were blind and had no cover. The SEALs all had LA-5 IR target lasers on their weapons. Through their NODs, it was just a matter of putting the green dot on the Tango and pressing the trigger. Two squirters bolted from the rear door and were picked up by the sniper on the top of the freight hauler. Then suddenly it became very quiet. That silence was quickly broken by the fast-approaching Knighthawks. They came in fast and low, tail-walking across the beach as they bled off airspeed and altitude. First one, then the other, touched down for but an instant and disgorged their SEAL fire teams. The two fire teams took up positions north and west of the cantina.

  “Blackbeard, Tomcat, this is Rat Pack. We are in place, over.”

  “This is Blackbeard and roger that. Welcome to the party, Rat Pack. We are going in by the front door. Three of us inside, two flankers, and one holding at the door. How copy, over?” Engel was now as much concerned with friendly fire as he was with clearing this last building. He listened as his Team One SEALs acknowledged. One of the Tomcat support-by-fire positions hurriedly moved so as to bring the cantina under a better field of fire.

  “Banditos moving,” Engel called.

  “Banditos moving,” the other two squads acknowledged.

  Sonny and his SAW flanked left, and Weimy went to the right. A.J. led Nolan, Ray, and Engel to the door. The new dawn continued to grow in the east, but the cantina was now dark, with the front door half open. They were flattened at the front door frame, A.J. and Engel on one side, Ray and Nolan on the other. Engel nodded to Ray and Nolan, and all three pulled a flash-bang grenade from their vests and jerked out the pin.

  “Three, two, one,” Engel quietly counted, and all three tossed their grenades inside.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  A.J., as always, was first in, crossing right to left—then Nolan, left to right. Engel came straight in. Ray, the radioman, would hold security at the door. From behind the bar, a man with an old M79 40mm grenade launcher popped up. He could hear nothing but ringing in his ears from the flash-bangs and saw almost nothing but spots—almost. He did see enough to catch the outline of a form in the door against the coming dawn. He pointed and fired, and a fraction of a second later, the same man was double-tapped by Chief Nolan. A lone Filipino fled out the rear door. Ray fired twice, hitting him once, but it was a through-and-through shot. The man kept running.

  Outside, there were a great number of SEALs looking for a diminishing number of targets. The man carrying Ray’s bullet ran like a man with a hot poker in his side, which, in effect, he had. He took but three strides before being cut down by tracers from both the support-by-fire positions and the blocking force.

  Atop one of the trailer homes, a man with an RPG raised up and fired. With a loud WHOOSH, the rocket sailed over Sonny’s head and exploded in a fireball just behind the cantina. The gunner immediately became a magnet for tracer rounds. He was dead before he could take the launcher from his shoulder. Then muzzle flashes appeared from the windows of both trailers, and for ten full seconds, the two mobile homes were shredded by automatic weapons fire and rocked by grenade hits. There was no more fire from the trailers. The silence that followed was cut by Nolan’s voice on the tactical net.

  “Man down! I got a man down! Get me a medic in here!”

  The Team One platoon officer immediately stepped in. “Rat Pack, this is Tomcat. Hold your position. My element will be assaulting the target building from the southeast. Tomcat moving, break, Blackbeard, what is your status, over.”

  It was Nolan again. “Blackbeard actual is down. Get your medic here A-S-A-P!”

  “Roger that, Blackbeard. Tomcat, out.”

  The eight SEALs of the Team One support squad made their way through the village on a skirmish line, moving quickly. Four converged on the cantina, while the other four moved to clear the two shot-up trailers. The platoon officer and his combat medic made straight for the front door of the cantina. Inside, headlamp beams cut through the smoke to converge on a man lying on his back on the floor. It was Roark Engel. He was breathing shallowly, but he was not moving. With Nolan at his side, the medic began cutting the straps to his combat vest and body armor. Then they began cutting away his clothing, looking for wounds. There were none. The medic shrugged as he took a pencil flashlight and lifted one of Engel’s eyelids. This got a reaction. The lieutenant jerked his head away from the offending light and tried to sit up.

  “Whoa, easy there, sir,” said the medic. “You can talk, but don’t move. How are you feeling?”

  Engel’s voice was scratchy but audible. “Like someone’s sitting on my chest.” He saw Nolan hovering {olaont>

  nearby with more than concern on his face. “Have you been sitting on my chest again, Chief?” Nolan sat back on his heels, the relief visible. “Hey,” Engel continued, “I think I can move, okay?” Nolan and the medic helped him to a sitting position, but he clutched at them as his head began to spin.

  “Easy there, sir,” said the medic. “Something knocked you on your ass. We’re just not sure what it was.”

  “I think it was this.” Dropping to one knee beside them, A.J. was gingerly holding a 40mm grenade round, sans the propellant charge, in his thumb and forefinger.

  “Take that fucking thing outside,” Nolan ordered. “Now!”

  A.J. grinned but left with the grenade, still holding it carefully.

  “Who . . . What was it?” Engel asked, still confused.

  “That dead Tango behind the bar,” Nolan explained, “center-punched you with a forty mike-mike round when you stepped inside. It takes about fifteen feet for that round to arm itself coming out of the tube. You were only about ten feet away.”

  “Lucky me,” Engel managed. Then to the Team One platoon officer, “We secure?”

  “We are, and your communicator has called us in secure. My guys are conducting a cordon and search of the area right now. And there are some FBI agents and Homeland Security people inbound from the Bonnie Dick. This place will soon be crawling with civilians.”

  Engel considered this and nodded, still not thinking too clearly. Then he jerked his head around, “Anybody hurt?”

  “Just you, Boss,” Nolan replied, looking at the bruise that was now beginning to form on Engel’s chest. “Just you.” He was trying to make light of what had just happened, but when he had turned and found his platoon officer unconscious on the cantina floor, his heart had leapt into his throat. “And sir, don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “Help me up, will you?”

  They pulled him to his feet. His gear was still on the floor, and his assault uniform was in rags, but he still clutched his M4. Soon helicopters began to arrive with inspectors, analysts, and intelligence professionals. In the growing light, they inspected, photographed, and tagged the ceramic-ball vests. Explosive ordnance technicians watched as an FBI forensic specialist individually bagged them. Outside in the growing daylight, Roark Engel walked around the cantina flanked by Chief Nolan and A.J. Three steps from the front door, one of the Filipinos was facedown in the rocky soil with a bullet in his brain. He was wearing one of the explosive vests, his hand motionless on the activation lanya
rd.

  “C’mon, Boss. Let’s get you to the helo and back aboard the Bonnie Dick for a {ck< width= good going-over by the ship’s doctor.”

  With the Bonhomme Richard closing on the island, it was but a fifteen-minute Knighthawk ride from the village to the ship. The platoon from SEAL Team One stayed behind to provide security for the investigators, while the Bandito squad was lifted out. Lieutenant Engel said he was fine, but Chief Nolan insisted he first go to sick bay and get himself checked out. He was still in his sliced-and-diced assault uniform when he arrived at the Bonnie Dick’s sick bay. He looked like a tramp in a train yard. Ray had radioed ahead that his officer would need some attention, and a doctor and a corpsman were standing by. The medical officer, a full commander, wasn’t happy when Nolan declined to leave while the doctor examined Engel.

  “Y’know,” Nolan said while the doctor checked him, “that was a pretty stupid thing to do, stepping in front of the forty mike-mike grenade just to keep it from traveling the arming distance. Not one of your better moves, Boss.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Now, if you had just stepped a little to one side, Ray could have taken that round. Course, he was farther away, and it might have had time to arm itself.”

  “Might have,” Engel replied.

  “How’s he doing, Doc?”

  The physician ignored Nolan and kept prodding at Engel. Then he again listened with his stethoscope for several minutes.

  “No permanent damage,” he finally announced, “but we’ll give you a chest X-ray just to be sure. It’s like you were in a head-on collision at moderate speed and the air bag deployed. Your vest and body armor sufficiently disbursed the force of the round or it might have cracked your sternum, perhaps with fatal results. But it was the chest plate in your body armor that made the difference—that and the grenade not going off. That bruising on your chest will probably become more pronounced, and you’ll have some discomfort, but I think you’ll be fine. You’re a lucky man, Lieutenant.”

  “Tell me about it, sir.”

  “You want something for the pain? Or something to help get you to sleep?”

  “I think I’ll be okay, sir. We’ve been up awhile, so I’ll have no problem going to sleep.”

  “Well then,” the doctor offered, “I’d tell you to take it easy, but I’d probably just be wasting my breath.”

  Engel grinned. “I’ll do what I can to get some rest, Doctor, and thank you.”

  When they reached the SEAL compartment belowdecks, the Banditos were overhauling their equipment. It was standard SEAL procedure: equipment first. Once they had their gear and weapons cleaned and set up, they would eat, shower, and then maybe get some sleep. Engel quickly pulled o {ckld tn a fresh set of cammies and began to disassemble his M4 to prepare it for cleaning. Out of curiosity, he found his combat vest and took out the chest plate. There was a shallow indentation in the ceramic armor, but it was otherwise intact. It was advised that a plate be replaced after it received a strike, but he pushed it back into its carrier on his armor. It was a lucky plate.

  After cleaning his rifle and reloading his magazines, he took his radio from his vest and set it on the charging bank. Then he laid down on his bunk for just a minute to rest before finishing up with his gear. He was looking forward to a shower and some hot chow. And that’s the last thing he remembered until Chief Nolan shook him awake.

  “Wha—what is it, Chief?” He came awake quickly and would have bolted upright but for the pain in his chest. It was excruciating.

  “Easy, sir. Maybe you ought to sit up slowly.” And he did.

  With his feet on the deck, he managed to take a full breath. The pain was still there but manageable. Engel looked around and saw that his boots were off and that his combat gear was set up and staged on a folding chair at the foot of his bunk. He frowned at his own inattention; a SEAL was supposed to take care of his own gear. Nolan again, he suspected, although it could have been any one of them.

  “How long have I been down?”

  “About six hours. They want us up in the TOC. Something’s come up.”

  He stood and found the pain in his chest a little more bearable. “I got time for a shower?”

  “I think they want us now, Boss. The master chief from the intel shop just left. Seems there may be a follow-on operation in the offing.”

  “The fun never stops, does it?” With some discomfort, he sat back on his bunk and began to lace on his boots. Then he noticed a donut and a steaming cup of black coffee on a chair beside his bunk.

  “Pretend you’re in the Navy and have some coffee, Boss. It’ll do you good.”

  He did, and as the warm liquid surged down into his chest and stomach, it did indeed feel good.

  The little TOC off the Bonhomme Richard’s large CIC was once again crowded. There was the ship’s intelligence officer; the man from the NSA, who seemed very nervous; and Lieutenant Susan Lyons. She greeted Roark Engel and Dave Nolan warmly.

  “Thanks for coming up here so quickly, and I never did get the chance to thank you for getting Dr. Lisa Morales out of that hellhole in Costa Rica. And she asked me to again thank you.”

  “How is she doing?” Engel asked.

  “Quite well, actually. She’s come a long way, but as you know, there was a { th"0" widlot of physical and psychological damage. She’s getting help with both. I’ll tell her you were asking about her. Now, the reason for this meeting is a follow-up to the operation on Cedros Island. There’s good news and there’s bad news.”

  Engel noticed that the intel commander and the NSA man deferred to her, so she was definitely something more than a Navy lieutenant or a Navy intelligence officer. Engel guessed CIA or Homeland Security, with strong liaison connections to one or the other. Both Engel and Nolan assumed the lieutenant cover was just a means to allow her to blend in with the ship’s company and move about a little easier.

  “The good news is that we now have a dozen of those explosive vests and at least eight of those who were slated to enter the U.S. on a mission of terror. There were five men and three women that we’ve positively IDed. The bad news is that we can’t account for the other vests or the terrorists. Or Shabal for that matter. And since all of those on Cedros were killed in the fighting, we have no one to interrogate. One of the women was still alive after the shooting, but she’s since died of her wounds.” She unintentionally made it sound like an accusation.

  “Well, between all the grenades and the rockets and the automatic-weapons fire coming our way,” Nolan said evenly, “I guess we just got carried away.”

  If she perceived some censure in Nolan’s comment, she didn’t let on, and continued. “The follow-on search teams did find a few cell phones, a satellite phone, and an iPad computer. Isaac here,” indicating the NSA man, “and his people are examining them for anything that might give us a clue to where the other vests and the terrorists might be.”

  For his part, the National Security Agency man appeared restless. He seemed fixated on his Apple laptop while absentmindedly twirling a pencil in a rolling manner across his fingers, pointer to pinkie and back again.

  “We’re working on it,” he mumbled, “but what they brought us from the island was pretty beat up. The computer had a bullet hole in it and most of the cell phones had been drenched in blood. Do you know just how corrosive human blood is?”

  Nolan started to say something, but Engel placed a hand on his shoulder. “So where does that leave us?”

  “We’ve confirmed that the Tupolev landed at the airport at Isla de Cedros Aeropuerto,” Lyons continued, “which was no small thing to get that plane onto a five-thousand-foot strip. The ‘passengers’ were taken away in open pickup trucks, and the plane immediately left. There is daily air service to Guerrero Negro, and we’re checking their bookings as we speak. And there are small craft that routinely cross the channel between Cedros and Baja. It’s safe to say that the other vests and the other terrorists, and probably Shabal as wel
l, have made the crossing. We can only assume that they are headed north for the border. So the Bonhomme Richard is now steaming north to the Baja-U.S. border. But this will do us no good unless we can pinpoint where they are and where they plan to cross.”

  “So,” Nolan said, “we stand by to stand by and wait for something {foro s to break.”

  Lyons shrugged. “Unless you have a better idea. We’ve alerted all our border contacts to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, but we’ve stopped just short of a terrorist alert. At this time, it would serve no purpose. We have, however, let the Mexican authorities know that there may be terrorists attempting a border crossing, but we’ve given no details on just how serious this threat is. They’ve moved one of their tier-one special- operations units to the border where they are on standby. If it comes to mounting another operation on Mexican soil, either they will be working with you or you will be working with them. The State Department and Homeland Security are working out the liaison details.”

  “You mean,” Engel said evenly, “that we might be working side-by-side with, or even under the tactical control of, these Mexican SPECOPs types?”

  “That’s right, the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE—Mexican special forces. I’ve been led to believe they’re very good. Maybe not as good as you SEALs, but we’re south of the border here. It’s their turf, so it’s their game. The Cedros Island venture was a one-time, offshore thing. Maybe if you hadn’t, well . . .”

  “Yeah, we know,” Nolan interjected, “if we hadn’t killed so many people and broken so much stuff.”

  “Look,” Lyons replied, with a measure of anger in her voice, “it is what it is. They are cooperating, but there are limits to that cooperation. And we’re the beggars here; the terrorists are targeting us, not them. It took a lot of log rolling to allow you to go onto Cedros. Now we want to put an armed military unit on their mainland—even a small team, which is what you will have to go in with. So we have boundaries. Their special-operations people are supposed to have good capabilities. They operate against cartel security, which is every bit as nasty as the Taliban. So there it is; we do it this way or sit back on our side of the border and wait for them. If Isaac and his people can find them, then we have a target. If not, then we’ll have to wait for a break and watch the border smuggling routes.