by Cap Daniels
“It’s not even six a.m. yet. How was your night with Christine?”
He huffed. “Nonexistent. She had to stand watch.”
Cricket was definitely getting a tip, even if it wasn’t protocol aboard Captain Stinnett’s boat.
I pulled on my cargo pants and T-shirt. “Let’s grab some breakfast and see if Leo can land on a ship as well as he can land in a hole in the jungle,”
“Just hold on,” Dr. Shadrack interrupted. “I need to take your vitals and recheck your vision before you go.”
I sat on the edge of the gurney and offered him my arm. He wound the blood pressure cuff around my bicep and listened for my pulse.
“One twenty-four over seventy-seven,” he whispered as he made a note in my chart. “Now read me the data plate from the chamber.” He pointed toward a brass plate screwed to the chamber’s panel of controls.
Without looking at the plate, I said, “It’s RSI3200561, Dr. Dexter Rosenblum Shadrack.”
He scribbled something in my chart then turned the clipboard around. “Read this.”
I read the tiny block letters he’d printed on the paper. Your friend, Dr. Richter, earned his watch. I bought mine.
I locked eyes with him, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Be careful out there, Chase. There’s a lot riding on what you’re about to do. Just don’t go too far and end up back in my chamber . . . or in someone else’s.”
I inhaled a long, deep breath and thought about Dr. Richter. He’d not only been my favorite psychology professor at UGA, but he was also the man responsible for recruiting me into the world of covert ops. To me, he would always be so much more than just an American hero—he’d become the father figure I’d so desperately needed after losing my family.
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. I think T.S. Eliot said that, but I think it applies to what we do, as well,” I said. “Don’t you think so, Doctor?”
He shook my hand then squeezed Clark’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on him. If he starts doing things that make sense, get him back here as quickly as possible.”
“Thanks, Doc,” said Clark. “We appreciate what you’ve done for us. You saved our lives . . . especially his.”
“When evil calls, men of honor not only stand to face it, but they rise above it and beat it into whimpering submission,” Dr. Shadrack said.
I searched my memory for the quote. “Did General Patton say that?”
“Nope, it wasn’t Patton. It was Captain Stinnett. He said that about you two last night.”
Clark and I headed for the helipad.
The Huey came thundering over the Gulf of Montijo, making the sound only a Huey can. Leo came to a hover just above the helipad and performed a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn, then gingerly brought the skids to rest on the pad as if he were trying to touch down on fine china.
I punched Clark’s shoulder. “Can you do that?”
“Ha! I could probably hit the helipad, but I doubt the chopper would be usable again.”
Cricket and another deckhand secured the Huey to the deck with heavy chains then welcomed Leo aboard.
Leo knelt beside the skid and ran his hand along the aluminum tube. “You didn’t scratch my skids with your ship, did you?”
“Is that the best you can do, old man?” Cricket said.
The two embraced, then Leo came skipping down the ladder from the helipad. “Cricket is my baby sister’s kid. He did a stint in the navy and then came to work for these folks. He’s a good kid. He’ll probably be in command of this old tub someday.”
As Cricket came down the ladder, I slid a hundred-dollar bill into his palm. “Thanks for your help last night. I appreciate everything you did.”
He grinned. “No problem, sir. Glad I could help.” He glanced at Clark and couldn’t suppress a smirk.
Clark’s eyes grew wide, and he shoved me almost hard enough to send me sprawling to the deck. “You dirty little . . . You put him up to that, didn’t you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was just thanking him for bringing my gear to my cabin.”
“You’ll pay for that one, college boy. You’ll pay.”
“I hate to break up this little party of yours,” Leo said, “but we’ve got work to do. Is there someplace we can talk privately?” He held up his laptop case and raised his eyebrows.
“We can go to my cabin,” I said.
In my cabin, Leo set up the laptop and connected with Ginger, the analyst. When she appeared on the screen, I recognized the background.
“Are you on my boat?” I demanded.
She looked around. “Oh, I guess I am.”
“Who let you aboard?”
Skipper stuck her head into the frame. “Hey, Chase. How are you? Where are you?”
“Skipper, did you seriously just let some strange woman come aboard and set up shop on my boat?”
“You said it was my home, too. And besides, she’s not just some strange woman. Dominic said I should give her whatever she needs.”
“Oh, Dominic said that, did he?”
“Yeah, he did,” she said. “And that’s not all. Do you know what she does? It’s freakin’ amazing. You wouldn’t believe the things she can do with a computer. It’s badass.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, we need to talk with Ginger.”
Ginger rolled back into frame. “Okay, guys. Brief me up. What’s going on down there? You’ve been silent way too long. You’ve got to keep me in the loop. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“We had a little incident,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s one way to describe it,” Clark said. “He got himself blown up, got both of us a case of the bends, and he made me sleep alone last night.”
Ginger bit her lip in an apparent attempt to avoid laughing. “Aw, I’m sorry, Clark. Maybe he’ll snuggle with you when this is all over.”
“No!” insisted Clark. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to . . . oh, forget it.”
I briefed her on the explosion, and she filled us in on what was happening in the Miraflores Locks.
“They’ve put up a temporary dam at the north end of the locks just in case the upstream gates are rigged, but the Pearl is still on the bottom. She’s stuck in the intermediate gates and listing. There seems to be minimal effort to float her. The Chinese are blocking all local efforts and demanding that only a Chinese salvage team can recover her. No one wants to piss off the Chinese down there, so the canal is essentially closed until the salvors arrive. I have my doubts that they’re coming, but that’s beside the point.”
“That’s exactly what I’d expect them to do,” I said. “How about Diablo? Have you heard anything from him?”
“No. And I won’t hear anything from him until you get him off that ship. He can’t risk sending any outbound signals because there’s enough monitoring equipment to hear a mouse sneeze. You’ve got to get him out of there.”
I closed my eyes and sent my brain into overdrive. “Ginger, can you get me a schematic of the Pearl and the most recent high-def satellite imagery?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m sending it now.”
“Do you have any idea where Diablo will be when we get aboard?”
“Hey, hang on,” ordered Leo. “You’re not going aboard that boat while she’s sitting on the bottom. There’ll be armed security all over that thing. You wouldn’t be able to get near it even if you were invisible.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” I said. “Invisibility is overrated.”
“Hello? Remember me?” came Ginger’s voice. “The Pearl is all over the news up here. The whole world is watching. Unless something more dramatic than one of the world’s biggest freighters sinking in the Panama Canal happens, you guys are going to be getting a ton of unwanted attention. Whatever you do, keep it off the evening news. We don’t need an international incident stamped on our foreheads.”
<
br /> “You got it, Ginger. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah. Get that cute little devil out of there alive for me, okay?”
“We will. I promise.” I reached to disconnect the feed.
“Wait,” Ginger said. “There’s one more thing I need to know. How much can I tell Elizabeth and Penny?”
“Those are two vastly different questions. Skipper, eh, Elizabeth doesn’t have a clearance, but she knows what we do. Use your best judgment there. Penny is a different story. She doesn’t have a clearance either, but she doesn’t really know what we do. I mean, she knows we do some secret squirrel stuff, but she’s never asked, and I’ve never volunteered.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “Be careful, guys. And no more explosions, please.”
Leo pressed a key, disconnecting the feed, and detailed schematics of the Pearl replaced Ginger’s face.
I used the mouse to scroll around, exploring every inch of the ship. “I’m not seeing any spaces that have the kind of room they’d need to set up a sophisticated electronic monitoring operation. All of the interior spaces big enough for something like that contain engines and machinery. That’s no environment for a listening lab.”
I switched to the satellite imagery and zoomed in as closely as possible. The resolution was astonishing, but no matter how much I scanned the ship, I couldn’t figure out where they would’ve set up shop.
“She probably sent infrared as well,” mumbled Leo.
I scrolled through the shots and watched the screen light up with a message sent from Heaven . . . or perhaps more appropriately, sent from the devil.
“Bingo!” I said.
Leo and Clark leaned in.
“That little devil really is something, ain’t he?”
“Yes, Leo. He sure is.”
Glowing like a beacon in the night was a strip of infrared reflective tape shaped into a bullseye on top of one of the containers in the center of the deck. Barely visible antennas jutted out from the four corners of the top of the container, and the entire box glowed a few degrees warmer than the rest.
“We could’ve searched that ship for days and never found that container,” said Clark.
“You’re right, but thanks to Diablo, we don’t have to. All we have to do is get on board, find him, and get him out of there alive.”
“Oh, sure, that sounds like a piece of cake,” he said. “How do you propose we pull that off?”
I brought the visible satellite imagery back up and continued zooming and scanning the ship for any possible means of ingress.
“There.” I poked my finger against the screen.
Clark leaned in closer. “What is that?”
I zoomed in as far as the software would allow. “It’s Rapunzel.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Leo. It’s a knotted rope. Diablo built you a stairway to Hell.”
“How long has it been since you’ve flown a sling load, Leo?” I asked.
“What do you have in mind?” His eyes were wide with excitement.
“It’ll take over twelve hours to get there on this ship,” I said, “but your big, beautiful Huey can get us there in under two hours.”
Clark’s crooked smile showed his instant approval of my crazy plan. “We’ll rig the boat. You brief the captain.”
22
Air Assault, Baby
“It sounds like a trap to me, son, but it’s your op. I’m sure Leo can put you right down their stovepipe if that’s what you want,” said Captain Stinnett.
“Even if it is a trap, it’s a way onto that boat,” I said. “We’re not easy to kill even if we’re unlucky enough to get captured.”
He raised a coffee cup to his lips and took a long swallow. “It ain’t the worst plan I’ve ever heard, and I’ve known better plans that got shot all to hell, so I’ll just wish you Godspeed. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds fast to me.”
I shook his hand and thanked him for the hospitality. “Send us a bill for the gas.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be getting a bill. Doctors and ships like this one don’t come cheap. Good luck, kid. I hope to see you again someday.”
“Something tells me this won’t be the last time our paths cross, Captain Stinnett.”
I left the bridge and found Leo, Clark, Cricket, and three deckhands standing beside our RHIB on the aft deck. They were all looking up and shaking their heads.
“How’s it coming?” I asked, then turned to see what everyone was looking at.
Leo spoke up. “Well, we can do it, but not without putting the boat back in the water. I’ll blow those antennas to hell and back if I try to pluck it off the deck. How much does it weigh?”
“I don’t know.” I turned to Clark, hoping he might have a good guess.
“We’ve got an automated scale on the crane,” Cricket said. “I’ll pick it up and tell you exactly what it weighs.”
Two crewmen rigged the boat for lifting, and she was hovering above the deck in less than two minutes.
“Thirty-two thirteen!” Cricket yelled down to the deck.
Clark and I immediately turned to Leo.
He winked. “No problem.”
“Load our gear and put her in the water,” I said. “I’m going to see the doc one last time before we go. I’ll meet you on the stern.”
I wound through the halls of the ship until I found sick bay.
“Doc, I want to thank you again for all you did for us. We owe you one.”
He stood from his desk. “Don’t mention it. Just go save the world or something.”
“Will do,” I said, “but I need to ask you something before I go.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Is it going to kill me to get back in the water for, say an hour, at maybe twenty feet?”
“No, of course not. In a few weeks, you’ll be fine to get back in the water. There’s no evidence that one case of decompression sickness makes a diver more prone to getting bent again.”
I frowned. “No, I don’t mean in a few weeks. I mean in a couple hours.”
He pulled off his glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed his knuckles into his eyelids. “Chase, as a DMO, I can’t tell you it’s okay to get back in the water anytime soon, but I understand what you’re doing, and it’s up to you whether you think it’s worth the risk. Your body has been through a lot of trauma over the last few days. You’re not at full strength, and you’re about to subject yourself to an unpredictable and potentially dangerous environment. I have to recommend against it, but I know you’re going to do it anyway, so just be careful and stay as shallow as you can. And for God’s sake, keep the bottom time short. An hour is a long time for your body at any depth right now.”
“I thought you’d say something like that. Thanks again, Dr. Shadrack. You’re a lifesaver . . . literally.”
I made it back to the deck and found Cricket almost ready to drop our boat back into the water. “Can you put a couple men in the boat to rig it for the lift, and then have somebody pick them up?”
“Sure. No problem. I’ve got a Force Recon Marine and a former combat diver. They’d love to get involved in whatever this is.”
“Thanks, Cricket. I appreciate it.”
“Say, before you go . . . Was your buddy trying to hook up with the quartermaster last night?”
I laughed. “Yeah, something like that. But I needed him well rested.”
“That’s cold, man . . . really cold.”
I chuckled in acknowledgment, knowing Clark would return the favor at his earliest convenience.
I headed to the helipad where I found Clark and Leo already on board and waiting for me. Cricket attached a sling load rig to the belly hook and removed the chains holding the Huey to the ship. He then backed away and gave the universal signal for engine start. The Huey’s jet engine whistled to life, and soon the rotors were turning overhead. Cricket turned to the bridge where Captain Stinnett flashed a series of lights, letting Cricket know we were clear for takeo
ff. He gave the hand signal and saluted as we lifted off. I looked into the cockpit and saw Leo returning the salute. Clark was on the controls.
We circled the ship and came to a hover over the RHIB. As we descended toward the water, the rotor wash blew the boat from beneath the helicopter. If we couldn’t get the sling rig close enough to allow the two men to make the connections, our mission would be over before it ever got started.
I was lying facedown with my head and shoulders outside the chopper and watching the action below. One of the men in the boat went to the helm, started the engine, and signaled that he was going to motor into the wind. I relayed the information and Clark responded, “Roger.”
As the RHIB picked up speed, Clark maneuvered the Huey to follow and slowly overtake the boat. The revised plan was working. As the sling rig swung into position above the boat, the first crewman reached up with a discharge pole and touched the hook dangling overhead. A shower of static electric sparks flew from the hook, and the crewman made the first connection of the rear straps and shackles. In seconds, he had the forward straps connected and secured. He then gave the signal to climb, taking the slack out of the sling rig. Inch by inch, Clark climbed the Huey until the hull of the boat was barely touching the water. The crewman shut down the engine and offered a crisp salute, which I returned, then both men rolled backward out of the boat and into the water. A plume of orange smoke rose from between the two crewmen, and a recovery boat piloted by Cricket approached from astern.
I watched our RHIB leave the surface of the ocean and begin to spin beneath us. Water trailed from the hull, leaving a misty white tail behind. The boat finally found equilibrium and stopped spinning as we continued to climb and pick up speed.
Through my headset, I heard Leo say, “Tell us if you see it start to oscillate. We’re going to continue picking up speed until it misbehaves, and then we’ll back off, but we need to make up all the time we can.”
“Roger.” I kept my eye on the boat, but it never oscillated. It trailed beneath and slightly behind us.
“One-ten. How’s she look, Chase?”
“Solid,” I said.
We headed east out over the Pacific and toward Bahia de Panama with our beloved boat along for the ride. I strapped into one of the net seats and slept until Clark emptied a canteen of water on my face.