by Tom Clancy
Ryan looked at his cousin. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Tell me.”
“Clark says we have to be trained to go it alone from time to time. To keep our work compartmentalized for the good of the whole. Something happened. I dealt with it. Now it’s time to move on.” Dom winked at his cousin and slapped him on the shoulder.
“But—”
“No buts.”
Ryan sighed. “Okay.”
16
United Nations Resolution 1874 authorizes member states, in accordance with international law, to inspect cargo in transit to and from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea if a member state determines there are reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains materials related to weapons of mass destruction.
As with all international law, there was much gray area with this resolution, including but not limited to the types of actions that constituted suspicious behavior. And reasonable grounds could mean different things to different nations at different times, and this meant the interdiction of cargo in transit could be applied unequally in different cases.
All that said, the actions of the Emerald Endeavor, a feedermax cargo ship flying the flag of Liberia and traveling in international waters due west of the city of Inchon, were without question highly suspicious, and anyone aware of UN1874 knew that this particular resolution certainly applied to this particular situation.
The Emerald Endeavor’s stated cargo was sugar from Cuba, and it did originate its voyage in Havana six and a half weeks earlier, but since then it had taken a strange route from the Caribbean. And one day out of the port of Batangas in the Philippines, the ship abruptly stopped transmitting its Automatic Identification System. The AIS was required on all maritime traffic of more than 300 tons, the Emerald Endeavor was 2,300 tons, so its failure to broadcast was either the result of a serious mechanical problem or else it was a clear violation of international maritime law.
Further, attempts to raise the ship via radio over the past twenty-four hours had been unsuccessful. It was possible the Emerald Endeavor’s bridge communication system was down, but that would have been a huge problem for the captain, and the vessel steamed along in its shipping lane as if nothing were amiss, passing multiple ports of refuge as it headed north off the coast of South Korea.
Any UN member state had the authority to intercept the ship by UN rules, but not every UN member state had the ability to do so. If it was, indeed, carrying cargo in violation of international sanctions, then the crew might well resist interdiction, either by racing away at full speed or even by using weapons or other means to repel boarders, so a ship inclined to force compliance with UN1874 needed to have two things in sufficient quantities before attempting the interdiction.
Speed and guns.
It was well past midnight now, the Emerald Endeavor was just hours from entering the territorial waters of North Korea south of the port of Haeju, and it must have seemed to the North Korean captain of the ship that he was all but home free, until the moment the large blip on his radar representing a vessel outside the shipping lanes turned and began closing on him at forty-five knots, a speed impossible for a vessel of the size displayed on his screen.
Unless, of course, it was a modern warship.
Soon the captain learned who was after him because his radio did, in fact, work, and a Korean speaker announced, over and over, that the American naval ship USS Freedom planned on enforcing UN Resolution 1874, and the Emerald Endeavor should bring its engines to idle and prepare itself for boarding and inspection.
From then on the captain knew he would not make it to port in Haeju without a confrontation, but he did not acknowledge receipt of the message, and he did not slow.
—
The act of boarding and inspecting the noncompliant 2,300-ton cargo ship in transit fell to two groups of eight American men, all aged between twenty-three and forty. This was not a large number of men for such a daunting task, but this was Echo Platoon of SEAL Team 5, squads Alpha and Bravo, and these guys lived for this shit.
Thirty-seven-year-old Chief Daryl Ricks of Chico, California, was in charge of the eight-man Alpha squad. He and his seven special warfare operators rode in a rigged-hulled inflatable Zodiac boat that closed on the Emerald Endeavor from astern at thirty-eight knots.
Even though the RIB smashed plumes of spray as it bounced along on the black water and its motor roared, so far it had approached undetected because circling above the big cargo ship 350 yards off the RIB’s bow were a pair of big and loud MH-60S Seahawk helicopters. The helos had been at it for a half-hour now, thumping low over the deck of the Emerald Endeavor in figure eights and swooping passes, shining spotlights on the crew on the weather deck and through the windows of the bridge.
The MH-60S helicopters had two functions this morning. The first was to make a lot of noise and flash a lot of lights in order to cover for the approach of the RIB at the ship’s stern. And the other was to deposit the eight men of Bravo squad on the ship’s deck as soon as Chief Ricks called for them.
The practice of hitting a ship at sea was called an “underway boarding operation,” and it was about as good as it got for a Navy SEAL. Every one of these men had not only trained for events just like this, but had also dreamt of such events, prayed for them.
Their plan was straightforward. Alpha would use a grappling pole to board at the stern, and they would climb to the weather deck, then move in two four-man leapfrogging teams to the stairs of the superstructure. They would climb to the bridge while Bravo fast-roped from the helo to the bow, distracting those watching from the bridge deck and using a stack of containers as cover. This would put sixteen men on the ship, quickly and at multiple ingression points. “Bottom up” Alpha would go for the wheelhouse, and “top down” Bravo would go for the engine room. From here both teams could detain and isolate the crew from the cargo. When that was accomplished they would begin their own quick inspection of the cargo holds while Marines from the Freedom came over to help with the search.
If any hint of contraband was found a real inspection would take place after the ship had been towed to port in Inchon.
All sixteen Navy SEALs were armed with Colt M4A1 carbines outfitted with SOPMODs, special operations peculiar modification accessory kits, essentially allowing each operator to customize his weapons platform to his preference and mission.
Ricks’s carbine was gadget-rich; it wore a flashlight and a thermal optic and an infrared illuminator and a suppressor and a foregrip, certainly not all the bells and whistles available with the SOPMOD, but an impressive array nonetheless. Other guys in the squad had grenade launchers and lasers and variable scopes latched onto their weapons, but the rifles themselves all fired the same 5.56 round, and any operator could pick up and employ any one of his teammates’ guns in a firefight if it came down to it.
They wore night-vision goggles on their foreheads and black balaclava masks with the image of a white jawbone on their lower portion, fortifying the men with a particularly terrifying appearance.
At two hundred yards Ricks looked through the thermal scope of his rifle, scanning the aft decks. While he did so he spoke into his headset, yelling over the noise of the engine behind him. “Bravo actual, Alpha actual! Two mikes!”
In his headset he heard Special Warfare Operator (One) Marty “Bones” Hackworth reply from up in an MH-60S flying over the cargo ship, his own transmission delivered in a yell. “Roger that, Chief! We’re prepping ropes now!”
And then Ricks heard the man next to him in the boat, speaking with a noticeable Dutch accent. “They know we’re coming, Chief.”
Ricks knew Hendriks was right, and he knew this was a problem, but he just said, “Well, let’s hope they’re cool about it.”
Hendriks replied, “I still don’t see why we didn’t just board covertly, take advan
tage of total surprise. Hell, we’ve been telling them we’re on the way for the past four hours.”
Ricks did not take his eye out of his thermal scope. “Rules and shit, Hendriks. We had to give them an opportunity to let us board.”
“We’re giving them an opportunity to shoot back.”
Ricks wasn’t going to argue. Hendriks liked to bitch, and normally that was okay, because if rounds did fly, Chief Ricks knew the big Dutchman with the heart of a lion would do more than his share. Ricks let him mumble and grumble a little, because it didn’t affect his job, and sometimes it was pretty damn funny.
But not now. “Stow it, Hendriks.”
“Yes, Chief.”
A special warfare operator called Greaser sat in the rear next to the Navy ensign steering the RIB. Greaser was a breaching specialist, but his job right now was to deploy the telescopic carbon-fiber “hook on pole,” from which hung a Fibrelight II assault ladder, a double-rung polyester ladder reinforced with carbon-fiber poles that could take the weight of three operators laden for combat simultaneously.
Greaser extended the pole to six meters in length, just high enough to reach the railing at the stern of the Emerald Endeavor, and he lifted it, along with the ladder attached to it, and waited for the RIB to get into position.
The Zodiac closed the last fifty yards quickly, then came along on the starboard side at the rear of the cargo ship. Greaser attached the pole hook to the railing high above, then looked down at a small computer monitor at the pole’s base. It showed the view from the tiny fish-eye camera at the top of the hook, and through it he could see no one on the deck aft of the superstructure who might cause trouble for the men climbing the Fibrelight.
“Hook on and secure!”
“Go!” shouted Ricks, and one by one the eight men of Alpha squad began climbing the twenty feet up to the deck.
Parnell was first, then Elizondo and Jones. When they were up and over the railing they covered for the next three; Takenaka, Chief Ricks, and Hendriks. Finally Stovall and then Greaser brought up the rear.
Parnell fortified the pole hook with a carabineer locking system that kept it in place, the RIB below spun away and shot back into the darkness, and the eight men broke into their two fire teams and split up, heading toward the two staircases of the superstructure. Ricks led three men to the port side, and Takenaka led three more to the starboard stairs.
Eighty yards forward of their position, four fast ropes slapped onto the deck and black-clad operators with skull-face balaclavas began sliding down to the Emerald Endeavor.
“Chief, I’ve got movement.”
Ricks dropped to a knee on the metal landing between the main deck and the second deck, and he scanned forward, looking for any indication of the movement Greaser called out. Just fifty feet ahead of him, two men stood at the railing, looking forward at the bow. He could only see their backs at first, and he observed them as they watched the helicopter lift high into the air and peel away.
Ricks knew these men had overwatch on the SEALs of Bravo squad as they came up the main deck toward the superstructure. He needed to be certain neither man was armed.
One of the men turned a little to the side as he lifted his Kalashnikov rifle. Its stock was folded closed, but Ricks could see a magazine in the weapon. The man pointed it toward the deck in front of him, and held it away from his body awkwardly.
In the span of two heartbeats Chief Ricks knew the man was no soldier, and he was unsure of what he was doing, but he was a threat to the men on the deck below nonetheless.
Ricks thumbed off the safety of his M4 and fired two lightning-quick semiautomatic rounds. Both struck the man in the back of his head. Through his thermal Ricks saw the black-hot signature of exploding brain matter, and then the silhouette dropped to the deck.
The second man in his scope did not appear to be armed, but Ricks saw the AK had fallen right in front of him. The man looked down to it, and the moment he did so a short burst of suppressed fire came from the chief’s right.
Greaser dropped the man within the weapon’s reach with a trio of bullets into the back, center mass, and a second later the four-man fire team once again began climbing the stairs.
—
A minute later Ricks, Greaser, and Jones were in the dark but expansive bridge of the Emerald Endeavor. Elizondo was outside with Alpha’s other fire team, they had detained eight men who all appeared to be Malaysian or perhaps Indonesian, and they were in the process of zip-tying their wrists and arms behind their backs.
Bravo team was belowdecks now, ferreting out crew members and securing them with ties.
But Chief Ricks and the two men with him still had work to do. In front of them were two senior crewmen—again, Ricks thought they might be Filipino or Malaysian—and one North Korean captain. The two crewmen were compliant, they stood with their back to the helm and their hands high, but the gray-haired captain was shouting wildly and swinging a rigging knife with a four-inch blade back and forth, waving it at the armed men in the skull masks in front of him.
Ricks had given the order to hold fire unless absolutely necessary. He knew they needed the captain’s help to quickly inspect the cargo. Using the few Korean words he had learned he said, “Nuo!”—Lie down!—over and over, holding his carbine at the ready with one hand while making a downward gesture with his gloved left hand.
Ricks’s attempt at breaching the vast cultural divide here on the bridge was getting nowhere. Out of desperation he pulled down his mask, smiled and said, “Anneyong”—Hello—because it was just about the only nice thing he’d learned to say in the language. Still, he kept the muzzle of his Colt M4 directed at the man’s chest.
The captain continued swinging the knife around, and his panic remained.
“Nuo,” Ricks said again, imploring the man to lie down, but he could see it in the man’s eyes. He wasn’t going to lie down. He was psyching himself up for something.
Ricks kept his calm countenance going, but into his mike he said, “He takes two steps our way and we drop him.”
“Roger that,” came the call back from Greaser and Jones.
The captain took two steps, but backward, not forward, then he brought the rigging knife over his throat.
Ricks shouted, “Aniyo! Aniyo!” No! No!
The little gray-haired man screamed, then dragged the shiny blade across his throat. Blood appeared instantly, along with the gurgling sound of the breach of his airway.
Ricks watched in fascinated horror as the captain finished his deep cut, then he seemed to look down at the spurting blood coming from him.
“Fuck!” shouted Greaser, just behind Ricks, and he started to move forward.
“Stand fast,” shouted the chief. “Wait for him to—”
The knife fell from the captain’s hands and he crumpled back onto the deck between the helm and the pilot chair.
“Secure that blade!” Chief Ricks ordered now, and Greaser leapt forward, kicked the knife out of reach, and then he pinned the wounded captain down to the deck. He rolled him over and pulled out a zip tie from his load-bearing vest to tie the captain’s wrists.
Ricks turned to the medic of the squad, SO3 Joseph Jones. “Joe-Joe, do what you can for him.” Ricks said this even though he knew without a blood transfusion and surgery the captain didn’t have a prayer, and the chances of those happening here were zero.
The captain died quickly—even though the medic slid a tube into the wound to keep an airway going, there was no way to stop the blood loss in time to save the small man. Ricks stood over him the entire time, but his attention was split between the activity at his feet on the deck and the constant updates on his radio.
Bravo and fire team two of Alpha had rounded up the twelve surviving crew members on board. All of them had been searched and zipped, and put on the main deck just forward of the superstructure. They
were all guarded by SEALs.
Jones covered the dead captain’s body with a body bag out of his pack.
Greaser stood next to Ricks and looked down at the dead man. “Chief, I’m going to go way out on a limb and say we’ve got ourselves some contraband on this ship.”
“Ya think?” Ricks replied. He called Takenaka, the radio man of the squad, and told him to get on the horn with the Freedom and tell them the ship was secure.
Hendriks, Elizondo, Parnell, and Stovall joined the others on the bridge, and they looked down at the body under the green plastic bag.
“You had to smoke him?” Hendriks asked.
Greaser answered for his chief. “He smoked himself. Slit his own fuckin’ throat.”
“Holy shit. Why’d he do that?”
Ricks answered matter-of-factly, “Because he didn’t want to defect to the evil West, and slitting his own throat was better than going back home. For his failure he would have fared even worse there.”
Parnell said, “There ain’t a lot worse than gagging on your own blood.”
Ricks looked up at Parnell, then at the rest of his men. “I read a thing a few months back. A DPRK major was suspected of giving intel to the South Koreans. He probably didn’t do it, but he was suspected. The government took him out and executed him.”
The men waited for the punch line. They were all pretty sure it wasn’t going to be funny.
Ricks said, “With a goddamned flamethrower. They tossed that poor son of a bitch into a dirt pit and barbecued his ass. Took their time with it, too.”
“Jesus Christ,” mumbled Stovall.
Ricks said, “On interdictions in these waters, we are engaging a uniquely motivated enemy. They are desperate men with their backs to the wall.”
Ricks fingered his skull-face balaclava and raised his Colt rifle. “We think we’re a bunch of terrifying motherfuckers, but don’t forget. We don’t scare anybody out here. They’ve seen worse.”
—
Two dozen Marines stationed on the USS Freedom arrived on the Emerald Endeavor within twenty minutes. Ricks figured these kids—their average age was about twenty—wished they’d had the chance to be involved in the raid, the shooting and scooting. In comparison, going through the cargo holds and containers of the big ship would be dull work, but at least it got them off the other boat for a few hours.