Deep Black

by Sean McFate

  “Not quite,” I said. “There’s a few entrances, here, here, and here.” I pointed to the map. “Take the first available.”

  “We won’t make it,” Boon said.

  He was right. The highway ran along that section of the base. It would be impossible to sneak up there. We’d be spotted for sure.

  “We creep as close as we can get to the northern edge,” I said, “then take the hardball and make a dash.”

  Wildman nodded. Boon looked unconvinced. So was I. It was the least worst option.

  “Mount up,” I said. Wildman took up the fifty-cal in his vehicle. I took ours.

  “Radio check, over,” I said through my headset.

  “Lima Charlie,” replied Wildman, Boon, and my driver in succession.

  “This is starting to be like Mad Max,” Boon grumbled, as we powered up the diesels.

  “Iraq’s a postapocalyptic world,” I said. That was half true; ISIS was trying to destroy the other half.

  We sped through the desert toward the massive base. I looked ahead and saw a berm topped with a barbed wire fence stretching far into the desert. Speicher. “Shots fired!” Boon said. Wildman began shooting his fifty-cal, and I followed the tracers. Six ISIS technicals were coming at us from our one o’clock.

  “Fan out,” I said, and my driver swerved next to Boon. Now two Humvees were facing the ISIS patrol. I unloaded the fifty-cal, and so did Wildman, but we were bouncing so much in the desert we couldn’t target effectively, and neither could they.

  “Hardtop!” Boon yelled. The Humvee bounced hard as we hit the paved road, and tires squealed as an old Toyota Corolla was forced off the edge. Inside, a mother, father, and three young girls stared at us as we passed.

  I waited until the ISIS vehicles were in closer range before I unleashed.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. The fifty sounded like a jackhammer. I fired again. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Bits of metal flew off the nearest ISIS technical, but it didn’t slow. The Hummer jerked as a tractor trailer truck approached us head-on, blowing its horn. We swerved off-road, ruining my shot, but ten seconds later the ISIS pursuers had passed it and I unloaded again. Wildman did the same from his Humvee, battering the road, and together we forced our pursuers to fall back.

  “Faster,” I yelled, pounding the Humvee’s roof above the driver’s head. Speicher’s perimeter fence whizzed by our right, the Humvees redlining at seventy mph.

  Wild ISIS fire raked past us into oncoming traffic. A car’s windshield imploded in machine-gun rounds and the sedan spun out of control, our Humvees narrowly dodging it. The g-force threw me against the rim of the turret.

  “Two klicks out,” Boon said, as a second car’s engine block took direct hits and black smoke billowed from under its hood. A third car steered off the road, but I saw its chassis catch on a rock, ripping its suspension apart at speed.

  “The first entrance is coming up on our right,” I yelled over the slipstream and the hammering of my fifty-cal.

  “Roger,” Boon replied over the headset.

  “Do not take it. Copy?”

  “Copy.”

  “Look for a breach in the wall, two hundred meters past the entrance.”

  The chain-link fence turned to a concrete wall, as the tank ditch disappeared. We sped past the front gate as my fifty-cal started clicking, out of ammo. Faded American and Iraqi flags were painted on the wall, with “Welcome to Camp Speicher” written underneath. Two bewildered Iraqi soldiers stood to watch us pass, then were gunned down by the ISIS technicals.

  “Do you see the hole?”

  “Roger, I see it.”

  “Punch through.”

  Our vehicles fishtailed off the road, and the six ISIS pickups followed. Ahead of us was a three-meter gap in the concrete wall.

  “We are not going to fit!” yelled my driver.

  “We will fit!” I yelled back, bracing myself.

  Boon’s Hummer smashed into the gap, sending up a plume of concrete dust. I ducked as we charged into the cloud, chunks of concrete bouncing off our bulletproof windshield. The hole was a meter wider.

  “Hold your fire!” I yelled as we emerged on the other side and the technical, flying a black ISIS flag, leapt through the hole. “Wildman, hold your fire! Boon, get us out of here!”

  “Yes sir,” he yelled, as the ground behind us erupted in automatic gunfire and RPGs tore through the ISIS vehicles as they came through the breach. The technical with the black flag exploded, a direct hit from an antitank rocket. The following vehicle’s tires were shredded by bullets, followed by its cab. An RPG hit the third technical, flipping it and exploding. The next vehicle swerved to avoid it. A fifty-cal sniper round blew a hole through the windshield and out the back, killing the driver. Machine-gun fire perforated the Toyota a second later. The fifth technical was raked by precision gunfire: driver’s head, tires, engine block, gunners. I saw a militant leap from his vehicle, sprinting for cover, but a sniper put him down. The last technical turned sharply to escape, but it was far too late; a crew-served machine gun tore it to bits.

  Silence.

  The ambush was over as quickly as it had begun. Only smoke, the sound of flames, and the smell of gunpowder remained.

  “Pull over, Boon,” I said.

  He did. We were on the edge of the kill zone, but nothing was moving. No survivors. I looked at the buildings around us, but they were empty, as silent as the rest of the world. Then silhouettes emerged from the landscape. Snipers on the roofs, machine-gun teams in windows, RPG gunners around corners. Twenty in all, weapons pointing at us, a big burly son of a bitch with a shaved head walking point.

  “You told me you’d be coming in hot,” Bear said, “but goddamn!”

  Chapter 44

  Two Navy SEAL helicopters skimmed the waves, approaching the freighter from its stern. The lead helo broke right and hovered just off the ship’s starboard side, its door gun aimed at the bridge. The other helo hovered above the stern, six SEALs fast-roped to the deck. The choppers switched places and another six SEALs hit the deck. Within seconds they were inside the ship.

  “Down! Get down! On your knees!” the SEALs shouted as they stalked the decks, catching crewmembers by surprise. “Hands where I can see them.”

  Men kneeled, hands up. A crewman did not move fast enough and the SEAL slammed his rifle butt into his head, knocking him unconscious. The first SEAL stepped over him as a second flex-cuffed his wrist to a pipe.

  “The rest of you, move to the wardroom. NOW!”

  The crewmembers shuffled down the passageway, a SEAL at their backs. The remainder of the team continued, Mk 18 carbines’ muzzles pointing the way.

  Within minutes of landing, they came to the ship’s bridge.

  “Locked hatch. Shotgun!”

  A SEAL came forward, carrying a Mossberg 500 shotgun.

  “Fire in the hole!” The shotgun blew out the door’s lock and the SEALs flooded onto the bridge.

  “Get down! Down now!” the SEALs shouted, but the crew shouted back in a foreign language.

  The SEALs raised their carbines. “On your knees! Face on the floor!” But the crew refused.

  One man reached behind a console, and a SEAL put a round through his right leg. The man fell. The crew attacked. One seized a fire extinguisher and smashed it into the back of a SEAL’s helmeted head, sending the SEAL to the floor. Another pulled a knife and lunged at the closest SEAL, but the SEAL caught the flash of steel in his side vision, pivoted sideways, and swatted the knife out of the assailant’s hand. Simultaneously, he kicked the man in the groin, lifting him off his feet. In seconds, the bridge crew was writhing on the deck, clasping body parts as the SEALs stood over them and took control of the ship.

  “Bridge secure,” the SEAL leader panted through his headset, then turned to the bridge crew. “Where’s the captain?”

  The crew remained silent.

  “Where’s the captain!” the SEAL shouted, grab
bing the most frightened crewmember by the shirt and throwing him against an instrument console. The man blubbered and pointed to an old man slumped against the wall. He wore nothing to distinguish himself as the captain: no uniform, skipper’s hat, not even binoculars around his neck. He could have been the ship’s steward.

  The SEAL approached him. “Are you the captain?”

  The old man looked away, ignoring him.

  “Why did you not answer our radio hails?”

  Silence.

  “What was your last port of call? What is your destination?”

  The old man ignored him.

  “Where is the ship’s manifest?”

  The old man finally looked at the SEAL and shrugged, as if he did not speak English. English is the lingua franca of the international merchant marine.

  “Bunch of fucking pirates,” the SEAL leader said, flex-cuffing the old man to the bridge.

  “Tear this place apart,” the leader commanded. “Get me some intel.” The SEALs began ripping the bridge apart.

  “Engine room secure,” the SEAL radio squawked. “We finished our search. Negative on the hold. No nuclear contraband here. No isotope readings.”

  “What’s in the hold?” the team leader asked.

  “Cigarettes and sheep pelts. Tons of them. Smells like road kill.”

  “Hidden compartments?”

  “Negative. We tapped the bulkheads. Nothing. The ship is clean. Repeat, the Ranga is not our ship.”

  Another false lead, the SEAL leader thought, as he leaned against the freighter’s radar console and took off his helmet, exhausted. This was the fifth ship they had searched in two days, and their fifth miss. Our mystery freighter is still out there, he thought. Somewhere.

  “Copy all,” the SEAL team leader said. “Abort mission. Team Alpha, prepare for evac.” He left the captain flex-cuffed to the bridge.

  “Eureka!” Lewis shouted. “I know where our ship is!”

  The conference room fell silent, as did the people watching via secure satellite feed. Seconds ago, everyone was arguing about possible trajectories of the mystery freighter. Time was running short.

  “I know where our ship is,” she repeated.

  “What do you mean, you know where our ship is?” Colonel Brooks said, contempt in his voice. From his point of view, she was the least valuable person in the room. In his twenty-five years of service, he didn’t have much use for inexperience, females, or contractors. She was all three.

  “Do tell,” a voice broke in from one of the satellite conference rooms. It was the admiral coordinating the search.

  “I believe our ship changed its name to the Eleutheria. Last estimated position was here.” She took the laser pointer from Brooks’s hand and highlighted a patch of sea south of Oman. “By this time, they could be here.” The laser dot circled a wider swath of ocean off Yemen, big but searchable.

  “How do you know this?” the colonel barked.

  “I read the stars.”

  The colonel was about to say something, when the admiral interrupted. “We can’t afford to let any leads go. Ms. . . .”

  “Lewis. Just call me Lewis.”

  “Lewis, we’ve had two hundred of our best analysts puzzling over this since yesterday and getting nowhere. What makes you so confident?”

  She explained how she found the disgruntled sailor’s Twitter account, and his entries about the Eleutheria, Gwadar, the suspicious cargo, and the U.S. Navy incident, which she confirmed in the logs. What convinced her was the photograph, and how the constellations, date, time, and location were all consistent with their mystery freighter.

  “Good job,” the admiral said. “Colonel Brooks, you got a live one there.” She gave a slight smirk to Brooks, knowing it would boil him. It did.

  “Ops, what assets do we have in that vicinity?”

  “Uh,” came a voice from another satellite conference room, “not much, sir. We deployed everything farther north by northeast. We can FRAGO them, but they won’t make it in time.”

  “Who else is out there?”

  “CTF-151,” another voice said. Combined Task Force 151 was a multinational naval task force with the mission to hunt down pirates off Somalia, just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. “They’re within range, and have enough ships to cover the area.”

  The room fell silent as the admiral considered it. Retasking a CTF was no easy thing. It was a diplomatic challenge as much as a military one, and would require the White House, State Department, and others. Not only would it be a bureaucratic mess, but it increased chances of a media leak, especially if some of the countries in the multinational force didn’t quite share America’s priorities.

  Gawd, the admiral thought. It would be the biggest news story of the year. Yet to not engage CTF-151 would risk the nukes falling into the hands of terrorists. He could never allow that to happen on his watch.

  “Request a FRAGO mission for CTF-151 immediately, and do not wait for approval from higher. Send it directly to them, with the coordinates of the search box. Tell them it’s terrorists related, but say nothing about the nuclear weapons.”

  “Yes sir,” said Brooks.

  “And get me a line to the White House. I expect there will be questions.”

  Chapter 45

  Bear’s compound inside Speicher was a fortress of steel shipping containers stacked three high. It was reached by a narrow alley with heaped tires on each side, and the gate was a deuce-and-a-half military truck with an iron wall ratcheted to its outfacing side. In the center was a two-story building and a small warehouse used as a garage. All in all, it was a comfy little hole, and I told Bear that as soon as we arrived.

  “We could bunk up in Baiji with the oil works,” he said, “but I like to fuck with ISIS. They know not to mess with us here. You look like shit, by the way.”

  “Go have sex with yourself,” I said, jumping down from the Humvee.

  “Speaking of which, I have a surprise for you.”

  He pointed toward the warehouse, which was clearly the living quarters. “I hope it’s a cold beer,” I said.

  “Even better,” Bear said with a sadistic smile, as Kylah came walking out of the darkness on the other side of the door. She sparkled in the midday light, her red hair radiant. Did I mention she knew how to walk? Kylah knew how to walk.

  “Dr. Locke,” she said, putting the sexy into it, as Bear looked on with a grin. She grabbed my cheek, patted it, then walked past me to Boon. They were already kissing, Kylah clearly putting on a show for the lads, by the time I turned around.

  “Holy shit,” Bear laughed.

  “She chose the right man,” I said, and I meant it.

  “Oy! Get a room, you birds!” Wildman yelled. “Nobody wants to see your rumpy pumpy.”

  “Sorry about that,” Bear said, still laughing as we walked toward the warehouse. “I was in Erbil when you called, and I just assumed you’d want to see her.”

  “Oh, I do,” I said. “Wildman is the best piece of ass I’ve seen since I left.”

  “I don’t know. What about the pregnant girl?”

  I had forgotten about Marhaz. When I looked back, Farhan was helping her down from the Humvee. She had her hand on her belly and a queasy look on her face.

  “Oh shite,” Kylah said, pulling away from Boon. “You didn’t tell me you had an eight-month-pregnant woman as cargo.”

  She rushed over to help Marhaz out of the vehicle. The Humvee’s door was narrow, and Farhan was in the way. It was a terrible maternity wagon.

  “How do you feel?” Kylah asked Marhaz, who nodded, then winced in pain.

  “Strong,” she said, without her past conviction.

  Kylah took her pulse. “A bit fast,” she said. “I need to check your blood pressure. When was the last time the baby moved?”

  “Hours,” Marhaz said. It looked like the only word she could muster.

  “Careful now, habibti,” Farhan said, as he helped her along.

  “You need
to lie down,” Kylah said, leading them toward the warehouse. “Have you been drinking water?”

  Marhaz shook her head no.

  “I thought you were a doctor,” Kylah said to Boon as they passed him, but he didn’t respond. Did I mention that Kylah knew how to walk? And load an AK-47? And hopefully deliver a baby.

  “Your surprise is better than mine,” Bear said, as he watched them disappear. He took out a cigar. It was a cheap one. Smoking a cigar at the end of a mission was an Army tradition since the days when the corps was winning the Wild West, but some guys never got the details right.

  “No thanks,” I said, when he offered. I went to my ruck and took out my portable humidor. I only had two quality cigars left, and I felt a pang of regret as I took out the Cohiba Siglo IV. I didn’t have any idea where or when I’d get another as good, as I offered my last to Bear.

  “I usually only smoke after the mission’s done,” I said, biting off one end and starting to toast the other end so I’d get an even burn, “but for you, Bear . . .”

  I didn’t need to say any more. This wasn’t the life either of us really wanted, that much was clear.

  “I miss the boys, Locke,” Bear said, already puffing away while I continued working the end of mine with the lighter. “I miss the professionalism. Half the guys I hire out here are American vets who couldn’t adjust back home. Good guys, but damaged goods. Short tempers. Too happy about the killing. Some wake up at night, screaming, still hearing the gunfire.”

  I breathed deep. There’s nothing like the first hit off a quality cigar. “Heroes nonetheless,” I said. “It’s not their fault our country pissed away their lives.”

  “Touché,” Bear said.

  I knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking about the list: the dead friends we’d shared since our time in the army. Was he, like me, thinking about Jimmy Miles, or did he have someone special he’d lost? Or was it the length of the list that got to him, the fact that, if Bear was anything like me, he still wasn’t sure what the sacrifices of those good men were for?

  “I hope you’re not going too far with the pregnant girl,” Bear said.