by Van Torrey
“What’s your background, Mr. Olyphant, if I may ask?” posed the Captain.
“Well sir, I got a B.A. at the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in assault tactics in the 75th Ranger Regiment.”
“Is that so? My older brother went to West Point and was the C.O. of that outfit before he got his star...Colonel Wesley Ferguson. Know him?”
“Yes sir. He was my regimental commander when I was a First Lieutenant in the 75th. He was the best C.O. I ever had.”
“Don’t butter me up, Olyphant. He got a star and I don’t have my flag... yet. I’ll never forgive him,” he said with laughter. “By the way, the way I heard it, the advanced degree was in nuclear denial.”
“That’s highly classified, sir,” responded Olyphant evenly.
“Yeah, well you’d be surprised how fast the rumor mill runs at the O-6 level and higher,” said Captain Ferguson.
“I asked Admiral Radliff what you two were up to when he called and said to expect you, but he said “don’t ask”, so I won’t. Anyway, what do you two spooks need, and we’ll send you on your way?”
“Just a ride to the cruise ship, sir,” answered Chance Lyon.
“I just sent some very serious looking Delta guys down there a few hours ago and I have F-14’s and an E-2 Hawkeye flying high cover over that disabled cruise ship. My orders are that no one but Americans get on that ship until the Americans killed and wounded are off and the FBI collects what evidence they need. I take it you boys are in the evidence collection business.”
“More or less, sir...just augmenting the FBI,” replied Lyon, self-consciously.
“Right...okay, if you boys get in a jam down there, here’s my sat phone number. Just give me a shout,” replied the Captain with a shade of doubt.
*
With the security of the cruise ship no longer in question the Delta Force operators had been organized by Captain Sizemore into teams of responsibility including security, medical, engineering, and air traffic control to coordinate the arrival and take-off of the multiple helicopters that were ferrying wounded to the USS Reagan for triage and necessary surgery.
Chance Lyon and John Olyphant arrived on one of the Med-Evac choppers and were met by a Delta operator working the logistics of the helicopter landing pad. “Good morning, gentlemen,” said the sergeant who greeted them. “Where may I direct you?”
“We’re here detailed to the FBI as consultants,” shouted Chance over the whine of the helicopter turbine engines. “Is FBI here yet?”
“Not that I know of, sir. Lots of coming and going, so I might not know. You should probably find Captain Sizemore, my C.O.,” he shouted. “He’s probably on the bridge. Sir, if you’re carrying, regs are that you can’t have a round chambered unless you get clearance from the C.O.”
Olyphant gave the sergeant a sharp salute and replied, “Clear, Sergeant - Airborne,” to give the sergeant some assurance that they were militarily aware, as he and Chance set off for the bridge of the Caribbean Star.
Lyon decided to keep it formal initially, as he was sure that Sizemore had his hands full at the moment. A formal introduction, under military protocol would give Sizemore some confidence that he was dealing with professionals who were respectful of his authority.
When Lyon and Olyphant reached the bridge they politely told the security sergeant that they were here on orders to see Captain Sizemore. The sergeant looked at Sizemore, who nodded, and let the two men pass. “Chance Lyon and John Olyphant reporting, sir,” said Chance as he gave a loose salute.
Sizemore returned the salute and reached out to shake hands and made eye contact with the men. “Been expecting you, gentlemen,” he said smiling. “How may we be of help?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” asked Chance.
“Sure,” replied Sizemore. “There’s a small captain’s quarters just off the bridge, we can go there.”
“Is the FBI crew here yet?”
“They’re due in on the next chopper,” replied Sizemore.
“So, what do you have here, Captain?” asked Lyon anxiously.
“Looks to me like a terrorist hit, pure and simple,” replied Sizemore. “At least four explosions under dining tables in the main dining room and a couple of simultaneous charges in the engine room that knocked out the main drive unit and electrical power. Quite a few dead and seriously wounded. The medics are treating the wounded and getting the bad ones back to the Reagan as soon as they can be moved. That’s what we know now.”
“Who did it?” asked Olyphant.
“Well, the Captain, guy named Estevez, who seems straight and has been very cooperative, given the fact that we have basically pirated his ship, thinks this must have been the work of some Korean crew who were on board. He hasn’t been able to find any of them – maybe ten or so - since the event. I’ve got a small security detail working the boat, bow to stern, looking for them but it’s a huge ship and I can only break away a few people. I’ve asked for more help from Gitmo.”
“How about the passengers. Any suspects?”
“The FBI is supposedly working the manifest and doing background checks, and we are working with the crew to get everyone accounted for. One good thing, no one’s going anywhere without us knowing about it,” replied Sizemore. “We’ll get it sorted out.”
“Captain Sizemore, we want to be straight with you who we are and why we’re here,” said Lyon. “Blackie and I are civilian contractors based out of San Diego working directly for Director Wheatley. That’s classified, of course. I’m ex-SEAL and John is a veteran of the 75th Ranger Regiment. It’s possible that during the investigation here, either by your people or the FBI, that some information may come to light that may require some special handling and possible follow-on work, as they say. For example, if you find someone that is a suspect or a person of interest and he won’t talk, we need to talk to them... that’s all.”
“Yeah, my C.O. told me I might have to read between the lines here with you two. No problem on my part, Mr. Lyon. My orders are to see that the wounded get treated, secure the boat internally and externally, rescue the Americans, and be the last American off this boat after our business is done here. That’s simple enough for me.”
“What about comms? This is a big boat.” asked Olyphant.
“Get a couple of radios from my First Sergeant on the bridge. The net here is ‘Cruiser’ and I’m ‘Tiger-one’,” said Sizemore. “You guys be ‘Lyon-one’ and ‘Lyon-two’. When you enter the net authenticate with Charlie-Sierra, the phonetics for the Caribbean Star. My plan is for the FBI lead to be ‘Foxtrot-one’.”
*
By first light, a number of events had occurred to move the operation forward and the investigation along to more clarity. All the seriously wounded had been med-evaced to the Reagan and the other less seriously wounded had been stabilized and were being treated by the ship’s doctor, two doctors who were passengers, plus the Delta Force doctor and his four medics. The dazed and shocked were sent to their cabins for rest and observation.
A member of the Delta Force security detail using night vision goggles had observed two objects floating near the ship. Closer observation revealed that these appeared to be people in life vests. Captain Estevez ordered a lifeboat lowered with two Delta operators on board who reported back to the bridge.
“Tiger-one this is tiger-seven, over.”
“Go ahead, seven.”
“Tiger-one, these guys are both dead. They’ve both been shot.”
“Okay, seven. Put a light stick on each of them and check out another floater about one hundred yards at two-seventy from your position, over.”
Within fifteen minutes it had been established that there were a number of floating bodies in the vicinity of the cruise ship and two additional lifeboats were being lowered to retrieve the bodies and bring them on board.
*
The FBI team sent to the Caribbean Star was led by veteran Special Agent James Searls.
“I was told
by my supervisor that I was to cooperate with you fully, Mr. Lyon, but I can’t see what you can do that my team and I can’t,” was his opening remark. “Besides, you guys don’t even work for the FBI. Who in the hell are you anyway?”
“All I can tell you, Mr. Searls, is that we are civilian consultants employed by the FBI to assist you in this investigation,” was Lyons’s even reply. “We have no intention of getting in your way. I believe you were told if you find a person of interest or a suspect who won’t speak willingly about the situation, you are to let Mr. Olyphant and me speak to that individual privately. That’s all.”
“So what are you two goons going to do, beat the shit out of the guy? You know this isn’t Abu Ghraib or an extraordinary rendition jail in some shithole backwater country. We have rules about that stuff we have to follow now, or I could get prosecuted. Didn’t you get that memo?”
Years of combat stress had taught Chance to keep his cool, and he waited for that inappropriate remark to pass like a wave in the Coronado surf before responding. “We’re not goons, nor are we here to beat anyone up, Mr. Searls. By the looks of what the Delta guys have found so far, the potential perps are all dead anyway.”
At five-foot-seven or eight Searls reminded Blackie of a banty rooster the way he strutted around and punctuated his conversation with dramatic hand and arm gestures. Every time he made a point to someone he would fold his arms across his chest and rise up and down on his toes as if to say, “I’m the boss, and I have the final say-so...so there!”
Lyon concluded with, “If you have a problem with Mr. Olyphant and me being here, I suggest you discuss the matter with your supervisor. So far we’ve integrated ourselves with the Delta guys, so why don’t we all try to get along and work together to understand this mess and get it cleaned up.”
“Suit yourself,” was Searls’ terse response as he turned away to give some orders to the other FBI personnel who accompanied him.
“What an asshole,” remarked Olyphant under his breath.
Lyon turned to him and said quietly, “Just try to get along, Blackie. Maybe we’ll get our chance. We’re the ones who might not be needed here.”
*
Lee Woo-sok had endured the dirtiest jobs on the cruise ship for months while waiting for his chance for action under the tutelage of Yim. Even though he had been one of the two junior officers working under Yim, life in the bowels of the cruise liner had been only marginally easier for him than the other Korean laborers he supervised. There was an upside to his difficult life on board. He knew every nook and cranny of the big boat, including places after the builders had finished, no one ever visited again. Right now one of those nooks was his hiding place.
When Yim first shared his plan of escape, Lee Woo-sok was terrified at the thought of treading water in the darkness waiting for rescue by people he did not know. When time to escape came after their attack, he feigned an injury and told his friend, the other junior officer reporting to Yim, he was moving slowly and would be along. He was betting on the selfish Yim going ahead without him rather than risking apprehension by going back and searching for him. Since he learned of the plot just two weeks ago from Yim, he had been afraid of the consequences and he decided to take his chances. He stole food from the kitchen and kept it on ice near his remote hiding place. He would use the filthy head reserved for the crew when they were sleeping late at night, washing himself in the sink. He reasoned that once they made port he would slip off the ship unnoticed and hire himself out on a smaller coastal freighter. Intuitively, he knew that Yim’s promises of riches were just another one of his many lies.
*
“Tiger-one, this is Tiger-seven,” came an urgent radio call from one of the Delta operators still combing the sea in a lifeboat around the cruise ship.
“Go seven,” answered Sizemore.
“Sir, we found another floater and this guy is alive. He’s wounded, but alive.”
“Seven, try to get him aboard, break off from the other boats, and head for the port side cargo door. I’ll have a medical team standing by,” was the response from an excited Sizemore.
“Fox-one, Lyon-one, this is Tiger-one. We’ve got a live one in the water. They are bringing him to the port cargo door, out.”
*
A preliminary background check by the FBI in Washington cleared everyone on the passenger manifest and most of the crew. There were four crew-members who had outstanding misdemeanor warrants. These men were interviewed by the FBI team on board but dismissed as having no connected with the bombings.
It was quickly determined the dead men brought aboard shared a common ethnicity. Special Agent Searls and his FBI team confronted Captain Estevez about this dramatic coincidence, as well as the fact that they were the only people from the ship who had made an attempt to escape the terror attack, if that was what it was.
“Captain, these people do not seem to be on any passenger or crew manifest,” remarked Searls. “How do you explain their presence on your ship, and their highly unusual departure? Combined with the fact that they all died in an identical manner has this looking like the smoking gun in this attack.”
Captain Estevez had been shocked and deeply troubled by the findings of the Delta Force operators and, when confronted by the FBI, knew he had little choice but to tell the truth. “The fact is these men were what are known in the cruise industry as “undocumented” or “casual” crew. They are typically common laborers, frequently undocumented persons who are provided by a contractor around the wharves in larger ports, and used for menial work on the ship that unionized workers will not do. In this case these were Koreans who were led by a shadowy Mr. Yim. I did not deal with him. Perhaps my Kitchen Manager can tell you more. I regret that we use these people, but it is common unwritten policy at Cartagena that we do so.”
“Just following orders...just like the Nazis, right Captain Estevez?” sneered Special Agent Searls. Estevez stiffened, but did not respond.
The FBI investigators turned the initially defensive Kitchen Manager into blubbering mush in a few moments after beginning their interrogation. It was quickly determined that out of the total number of Koreans aboard, two were missing. The others, save for one, having been pulled lifeless from the waters adjacent to the ship. This gave the Delta operators something to go on as they expanded their search of the boat using electronic tools.
The Delta Force operators were much more than simply brutal warriors. Their mission also required them to be stealthy and cunning in confronting an enemy who frequently was unwilling to affect a direct confrontation. When a search of the obvious spaces in the ship failed to turn up any suspicious persons, the Delta team turned to technology to assist them.
The places to search were now the less obvious places. With help from the Second Officer and the Engineering Officer, plus the detailed engineering drawings of the ship, the Delta team, was now able to apply more of their resources to the search task. They fanned out all over the large vessel and began to use listening devices and infrared thermal sensors to enhance their search for the missing Koreans, as the other had been found wounded in the water.
Lee Woo-sok was not an educated man, but the time he had spent with Yim after their dangerous escape from North Korea had sharpened his street smarts and fine-tuned his senses to danger. Although he had no idea of the fate that had befallen his fellow countrymen, he sensed that he might be the last man standing.
Now, two days after the explosions had ripped through the ship, he became aware of the focus that had shifted to him. In his spider hole in a crawl space behind one of the dry food lockers off the ship’s kitchen he could hear the muffled voices of men, the heavy footsteps of boots, and the high pitched whirring of an electric drill. As the hours went by these sounds came closer to the spaces around him.
One of the Delta operators, working with a buddy and one of the ship’s engineering staff using an ultrasonic probe, noticed a change in the waveform reflected back from a scan of the floor w
here he was standing, and radioed to Sizemore. “Tiger-one, this is Tiger-twelve; I have an anomaly in section fourteen-Charlie. I’m going to use an infrared probe for a closer look.”
Ten minutes later the same Delta operator radioed a follow-up message to Sizemore. “Tiger-one, we have an IR signal where there shouldn’t be one. Think we may have something, sir.”
In fifteen minutes a collection of Delta operators, FBI agents, and ship’s engineering crew had isolated the area from the engineering plans and had pulled a thoroughly frightened Korean from his hiding space, taking him to an area of the ship that had become the central command area for the Delta Force operators and their FBI counterparts.
“Other than being slightly dehydrated and having to desperately to pee, I think the guy is basically okay to interrogate,” advised one of the doctors who had given the Korean captive a cursory examination. “I took a DNA swab from him and checked his vitals. Other than his BP being pretty high, he’s good to go,” the doctor concluded.
*
Up to this point Lyon and Olyphant had little to keep them occupied. Chance was being careful not to overstep his mandate and impede the progress of the FBI forensic investigators or the Delta people’s searching activities. The less contact they had with Searls the better, he thought. But Chance’s mind was not idle and he decided to look through the passenger manifest to see if anything jumped off the page. To say he was shaken by what he saw ten minutes into the activity would be an understatement.
There couldn’t be two! Thought Chance. Then a chill went up his back as he wondered about her safety status.
Chance immediately sought out the ship’s purser and explained one of the passengers might be a close relative. He asked if the purser could check her status and see if there, indeed, was a connection. By now the purser was aware of the serious men who had come aboard immediately after the incident and was only too happy to comply with Lyon’s request. “I can tell you, sir, that this passenger is still aboard,” he said cryptically. That meant only that she was not among the dead or those who had been evacuated to the Reagan. There were still many other passengers on board who had been less severely injured, but still suffering from injury, shock, or both.