Odyssey

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Homer looked off to the corner. “I bet. She was not only smart – she definitely knew right from wrong. And she would never let something like that go on, not without trying to stop it. But, anyway, that’s not actually the worst thing. Not now.”

  Sarah leaned in closer. “Now you can’t do the mission.”

  Homer shook his head. “No. I don’t suppose I can.”

  “It’s like Scylla and Charybdis, isn’t it? Either get eaten by the giant sea monster on one side, or go down in the whirlpool on the other.” She looked up at him. “Homer, I’m sorry. I… I wanted to get proof they were lying to you. That the mission they sold you on was bullshit. But I didn’t want it like this.”

  “It’s okay,” Homer said. “I needed to know.”

  “Maybe. But it’s hardly okay. What the hell do we do now?”

  “Now,” Homer said, rising and going back to the corner, “we do what Odysseus did. We find a way through the straits. And sail for home.” He pulled his vest on and charged his weapon.

  “Now we get the hell out of here.”

  PART THREE

  BURNING ITHACA TO THE GROUND

  “If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.”

  – Navy SEAL Ethos

  Drown-Proofing

  “You said it was impossible,” Sarah hissed.

  “That’s not what I said.”

  Homer saw that, while she was protesting, she was also gearing up, which suited him just fine. In seconds, they were both into their vests, gunbelts on, rifles in hand, Homer’s assault pack on his back.

  “Daddy.”

  He turned to see his daughter looking up at him with wide eyes and trembling lip. Feeling the weight of all his gear on him, and not just the weight of that, he instantly knew why, before she even spoke.

  “Oh, sweetie,” he said, squatting down before her.

  “Are you going to leave us?”

  He wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “No, darling, of course not. Never. Not as long as I live.”

  “Mommy left. She said she’d never leave us, too.”

  “We still don’t know why,” Ben said.

  “It’s okay,” Homer said, as he quickly and quietly got both kids packed up and ready to go. “I know why. And it’s all going to be okay. Now – you guys have got to be very quiet, okay?”

  Isabel smiled and nodded. Ben saluted.

  “Hey, do I look like an officer to you?”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “Homer.” He looked over his shoulder to see Sarah staring down at him. “What’s the plan? How do we get out of here? You go out that door with the two of them in tow, and they’re definitely going to know where you’re not going.”

  “Yeah,” Homer said. “That’s a problem. Team guys are smart. But trust me.”

  “And assuming we do get out – how do we get that plane?”

  He turned to face her. “We’re not taking the plane.”

  “What then? A boat?”

  Homer sighed. “All the boats are under guard. Also, our truck is currently locked up in the basement.”

  “Great.” Sarah shook her head. “It’s impossible. Like you said.”

  Homer shook his head. “That’s not what I said. Well, okay, yes, I said that. But long before that, what I said was: you can’t be afraid to think outside the box…

  “And impossibilities only exist until somebody does them.”

  * * *

  “Thanks, guys,” Homer said, pulling the door shut behind him, nodding meekly, and turning away down the corridor.

  He figured that would buy him half a second.

  If he was lucky.

  He took that first step away, but seeing only his mental map of the positions of the two men in the hall behind him – then pivoted on his heel and came around with his unclipped rifle, swinging it by the barrel, catching the closer man, Street, full across the face, before he could get a hand up or react. The stock of the rifle was skeletonized, but still solid enough. And while it wouldn’t put a guy like this down for the count, Homer was gambling it would stun him long enough to deal with Tony.

  But he was wrong. Already.

  As he dug in and began to charge, he could see Tony shuffling backward, out of disarming range, pistol out, coming up, held expertly with two hands.

  “Homer, you son of a bitch, don’t you make me.”

  Fuck it. Homer gambled again – he charged. This time he was right – Tony didn’t fire. Homer caught him around the waist and they both crashed to the floor. Maybe his old teammate was incapable of gunning him down – but he was clearly prepared to barrel-strike the shit out of him with the pistol. And Homer was instantly reminded that these were not ex-National Guardsmen or civilian scavengers.

  These were team guys. Tier-1.

  And they had not only been trained in CQD, they probably still practiced it every night, sparring with guys as good as themselves. Instantly, Homer found himself in an ugly street fight – not just for his life, but for his kids’ lives. And any thoughts he’d had about incapacitating this man without hurting him were out the window.

  He had erred, badly.

  CQD frowns on wrestling matches – if you can’t control a subject, you’re supposed to break contact, create enough distance to get a weapon out, then go straight back to Plan A: using lethal force. That’s exactly what Tony did – harassing Homer with a flurry of barrel strikes at his face, which he mostly managed to parry with his hands, then rolling clear.

  But Homer also knew that’s what he’d do, so he stayed right with him, following and closing again, then grabbing his wrist with both hands and popping him in the face with his own gun. That bought him the second he needed to slither around behind him on the floor and get an elbow locked around his throat, choking him out. Now he just had to hope the man lost consciousness before he was able to reach around and shoot Homer in the face.

  But as he sat there with his legs splayed out and Tony struggling in his lap, he looked up to see: Street, climbing back to his feet, shaking his head – and slapping at his side arm.

  And Homer knew he was about to get shot in the face.

  Street not only couldn’t miss at this range, but he wouldn’t be in any danger of hitting Tony. And Homer knew something else: this man wouldn’t hesitate one second before killing him.

  Street’s weapon cleared leather as he passed the billet door.

  Which opened again, Sarah behind it, Homer’s silenced SIG in her hand. Pivoting left, she shot Street twice in the back of the head. The big man crumpled to the deck. She lowered the weapon toward the man bucking in Homer’s lap.

  “No,” he said.

  She held her fire.

  Tony lost consciousness, slumping in Homer’s arms.

  * * *

  “How long before he wakes up and gets free?” Sarah asked.

  “About two minutes,” Homer answered, hustling the kids down the hall in front of them. Sarah had helped him dump both bodies inside the room, after mopping up the bloodstains with Street’s own shirt, then tied Tony’s arms with his belt, securing him to the bedpost. “If we’re lucky.”

  “Not a great start,” Sarah said, stealing looks in all directions.

  “You just killed a Team Six SEAL,” Homer said.

  “Guess not too many people have managed that.”

  Homer shook his head, before sticking it around a corner to check the hallway beyond. “Not many. But my point is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever done that and lived.”

  Shit, Sarah thought, swallowing a big ball of something. She had a strong sense that Homer was taking them every possible back way – but the building still wasn’t deserted, and they passed a handful of people. If they were wondering what the hell Homer was doing all tooled up, but with his kids in tow, they kept the questions to themselves. They did get a few quizz
ical looks.

  Soon, but not soon enough, they were at what appeared to be a fire exit, which Homer checked, then hustled them through. Outside, they entered some foliage, which concealed them. Mercifully, the light was failing, the sun starting to get low. But Sarah also knew that meant the mission would be launching soon.

  Homer led them through a few hundred meters of forest, then sat the kids down at the base of a tree, and turned to Sarah.

  “This next part’s not going to be so easy.”

  “Great.”

  “And I can’t do it without your help.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “But – we are not going to kill anyone this time.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Homer reached to her waist – and he took his SIG back.

  * * *

  He got into position twenty seconds before Sarah went.

  It had taken a little convincing to get her on board with this plan. She said she was prepared to serve as a distraction, but had imagined it would be something Hollywood, like strutting out onto the pier and flirting with the guards.

  Which wouldn’t have worked for a second.

  But this plan just might.

  From where he was, Homer saw her break from the treeline, picking up speed and running flat out for one of the Mk Vs, not the one closest to the Stiletto, but two boats down. Both guards instantly clocked her, the one at the end of the pier raising his rifle and tracking her motion.

  But he held his fire.

  Homer breathed. Sarah was a female – and, following Homer’s instruction, unarmed. That was just enough to keep her alive. He watched and waited as she covered the length of the dock, leapt onto the deck of the boat at its stern, and kept going, disappearing into the wheelhouse.

  The guard on the pier lowered his weapon, turned around, and gave the one in the wheelhouse of the Stiletto a What the fuck? look – getting a Beats the fuck out of me look in response. The first one shook his head, walked down the pier, and boarded the Mk V, weapon raised.

  “Hey,” he shouted at Sarah’s back. “Asshole.”

  Homer pulled himself silently up out of the water.

  * * *

  Sarah acted like she was trying to figure out the controls of the craft for the ten seconds or so it took the guard to reach her.

  Then she put her hands up slowly and offered no resistance, feeling the man’s breath on her neck as he jerked her arms behind her back and cinched up a pair of flex-cuffs around both wrists – tighter than necessary. Tight enough that she knew circulation was going to become a problem pretty quickly.

  Never showing himself to her, he gripped the cuffs firmly with one hand, spun her around, and shoved her forward, frog-marching her off the boat and down the pier. But they only made it a few steps before he yanked her to a stop again. Looking up, Sarah could see why: no one was standing in the wheelhouse of the spaceship-looking boat now.

  But she only had one second to consider this.

  Because the man holding her whipped her around 180 degrees, threw her face-down onto the wooden pier, and then put his boot into the small of her back, pinning her in place. As uncomfortable as the cuffs were, this was worse. She couldn’t see, but somehow sensed his rifle was back up to his shoulder, aimed over her splayed legs. From the grinding of the boot, she also guessed he was traversing it from side to side. And he didn’t shout, but just spoke quietly into his radio.

  “French. Talk to me.”

  From her position flat on the deck, cheek pressed down, and facing backward, Sarah could see but not hear Homer rise up from the edge of the pier, coming out of the water like a kraken, or alien, perfectly smooth and silent, rivulets of lake water rolling down his face. And then she heard, but didn’t see, Homer take down the man standing on her back – incapacitating him and lowering him to the deck.

  Without, evidently, killing anyone.

  * * *

  By the time she came back with Ben and Isabel, the latter clutching her stuffed bear, Homer had both men secured at ankles and wrists, arms behind them, and dragged out onto the prow of the Stiletto. As he pulled both of their radios clear and tossed them, one of the lolling men said, “Too late, asshole, I already called it in.”

  Homer figured that could either be true or not be true, but either way he wasn’t going to take time to respond. He just picked the man up by belt and collar – and tossed him out past the prow of the boat, as far into the water as he could manage.

  “Hey – what happened to not killing anyone?”

  He looked over his shoulder to see Sarah, armed again, with the two wide-eyed children in tow. As he picked up the other hogtied man, he said, “Don’t worry, they’re trained for this – drown-proofing. They’ll be fine.” He gave the second man the heave-ho. “But it’ll take them a while to bob their way back to shore.” He straightened up, moved astern, and patted the kids on their heads. “Wait here. Watch them.”

  “Where are you going now?”

  Instead of shouting over his shoulder, Homer switched to his radio as he ran back over the smooth hull of the Stiletto, jumped down on the dock, and turned right toward the RHIBs, pulling his sheath knife as he did. “I need to disable the other boats. Most of the vessels moored here are faster than this one.”

  “Then why the hell are we taking this one?”

  “Because the RHIBs don’t have the range to reach the Kennedy. And the Mk Vs will be too easy to track with radar, as well as spot from the air with a UAV.”

  Homer was gambling, burning time with this plan, but he needed to do it right. A clean getaway would be great, but he couldn’t count on one. And they needed to not be pursued.

  He stabbed two air cells on the first RHIB, which he figured would slow it down from its normal top speed of 65 knots to below the Stiletto’s of 60, then moved over and gave the second one the same treatment. Then he sheathed the knife and reversed course, heading toward the Mk Vs.

  Those were going to be harder.

  Getting in the wheelhouse of the first, he pulled the key from the ignition and tossed it in the drink. Then he went back to the open stern, hauled open the engine compartment, stuck his torso down it, drew his knife again, and cut a fuel line. It wouldn’t take long to repair this, but it might give them the head start they needed. He hauled himself back out again, up into the fading light, replaced the panel, and crossed directly to the next boat over, jumping from one gunwale over open water to the next.

  But as he did, he heard a voice from beneath his feet.

  It was one of the sentries, down in the water. On one of his bounces up from the river bottom, breaching the surface for a gulp of air, slowly bobbing closer to land, he managed both to see Homer and to say: “Told you. Asshole.”

  Homer looked over his shoulder, back up onto shore.

  Two trucks, with armed men hanging off them, were roaring down the road from the center of the Annex.

  Crap.

  Warning Shots

  The stealth boat, the M80 Stiletto, blasted away from the docks like a sleek aquatic bat out of Navy SEAL hell – but a bizarrely quiet one. Water sprayed up in great arcing torrents across the dock, all the way to the shore itself, as Homer wound the humming engines up to full power, Sarah crouching inside the main cabin behind the wheelhouse with the two kids, cradling her rifle, praying she wasn’t going to have to use it.

  Because out back, over the tops of piles of supplies, and then beyond a big inflatable boat stored behind that, and finally over the rear wet dock, receding in the distance and fading light, she could just see SEALs spilling out of their truck and onto the pier, weapons up. But the Stiletto wasn’t taking fire.

  Yet.

  Sarah and the kids were sharing the cramped main cabin with piled-up boxes and bags – supplies for DEVGRU’s mission, she guessed. She shouted forward, to Homer in the wheelhouse.

  “Hey, isn’t all this crap going to slow us down?”

  “A little bit,” he shouted back. “But hopefully it�
��ll also slow down them running their mission…” His voice dropped too low to be heard as he added, “And help us survive ours.”

  * * *

  Homer checked their course, speed, heading, fuel, and the status of the boat’s engines and other systems – as well as he could. This craft clearly had some advanced systems aboard, including the capability to launch its own drones, and he’d never had the chance to pilot one before.

  Then again, it was a boat, and he was a sailor. Also, it was a riverine craft, and he was a SEAL. He could make it go.

  The question was whether he’d bought them enough time to keep his fellow SEALs from making any of the other boats go. In his original plan, they’d get away without being seen. That was obviously a bust. In the end, he hadn’t had time to properly disable the second Mk V. Now, as he took them around the curving shore of the lake and onto the inland waterway that led out to sea, and blessed open water, he could only pray they’d try the disabled one first.

  As the waterway curved, curved again, then finally opened up onto the ocean, spreading out wide in the gathering dusk, he started daring to hope. Maybe they’d gotten away clean. Maybe the others wouldn’t even pursue.

  And then Homer remembered the value of wishful thinking. Faith was well and good. But as the man said: Hope is not a strategy. Especially when your opponents are team guys.

  And he heard them before he saw him – not the engines of the Mk V, but the onboard loudspeaker. “Fucking power down and heave to, or we WILL fire on you.”

  Then he saw it, blasting out of the waterway behind them at something close to its top speed, which was over 65 knots. The Stiletto’s theoretical max speed was 60, but they weren’t achieving that. And Homer quickly calculated they’d be caught in two or three minutes.

  Man, that happened fast.

  But fast was what these guys did.

  He also figured they wouldn’t fire on them. They needed this boat, and they needed its contents – not just the supplies, but Homer himself. No, they’d simply overtake the Stiletto.

  And then they’d board it.

  VBSS – visit, board, search, and seize. A classic SEAL tasking. And another one they were very, very good at.