Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  “You think?”

  “Just execute. Quit bitching. Want me to toss your pistol? Your knife? You make a wrong move and I will definitely cap your ass.”

  The helicopters were closing in. The blades chopping less than a mile away. Mad at himself for letting his emotions get in the way of execution, Harwood shifted gears. He said to Weathers, “Okay, you lead. I’ll follow. Then we’ll see if Stone makes it in time.”

  “Fuck that,” Stone said. “I’m lead.”

  Stone took the bait and low crawled around the berm. Harwood leveled his rifle at the three men, who were breaking their huddle. The man in the watch cap turned and walked back into the building. The two security men split, one walking in the opposite direction and the other walking directly at them.

  Fifty meters wasn’t a lot of distance to cover. Stone was in the water, moving silently toward the boat. They had no reason to believe it would still be operational, but it was the best option available at the moment. The boat ride alone would be thirty minutes to cover the ten miles they needed.

  Harwood slid down behind the berm. The guard’s boots crunched on the dusty shale just on the other side of the berm. He tapped Weathers, pointed at himself, dragged his finger across his throat, and then pointed at Weathers, and wiggled his fingers. Weathers nodded.

  Harwood soundlessly extracted his knife from its sheath affixed to his outer tactical vest. He carefully locked the blade in place. Weathers watched him and then looked toward the water. The footfalls stopped on the other side of the berm, maybe five meters away. Harwood took deep, steady breaths. He was a sniper, true, but hand-to-hand combat was a Ranger skill that he had mastered. He cuffed the knife along his right forearm, blade facing out.

  The man spoke in Russian, a language Harwood did not speak or understand. The tone of the man’s voice was not rushed or excited. A spot report, maybe: Nothing to see here so far, but there’s this berm.

  In his periphery, Harwood saw Stone reach the Zodiac and slip over the edge. They were checked in place by the guard. As soon as he thought he might need to initiate the action, the guard stepped around the berm on the side nearest to Harwood, but he must have seen Weathers’s prone body first, because he lifted his pistol and shouted, “Stop!”

  The voice was guttural and harsh. The man stepped past Harwood, who was pressed into the side of the berm, some tall grass covering him. Focused on Weathers, the guard closed on the former marine.

  Harwood sprang from his concealed position and simultaneously slipped his left arm around the guard’s neck while slamming his fist into the man’s right wrist, causing the pistol to tumble out of his grip. With the threat of a position-revealing shot minimized, Harwood jammed the knife into the man’s larynx, then raked it toward him, using his positional leverage to pull the knife through the neck muscles and carotid artery. Blood sprayed across his sleeve as the man’s head lolled to the side. Harwood lowered the guard’s limp body onto the hardpan behind the berm. He nodded at Weathers, who returned the nod, as if to say,”Good job.” Weathers was slithering toward the ledge that dropped into the harbor when Harwood took the man’s radio from his shirt pocket.

  “Polozheniye del?”

  Harwood heard the question but didn’t understand the words. He imagined it was a quick status check. Of course he couldn’t be certain. Either way, they had less than a minute or two before the other guard became suspicious. Weathers was in the water and gliding toward the Zodiac. The guard was bleeding out. Harwood looked across the port and saw the partner guard stop walking and look back in his direction.

  “Polozheniye del?”

  No option. He slid his SR-25 rifle quietly up the berm and laid the crosshairs on the man’s chest. The guard at his feet was not wearing any body armor. He would take the chance that his partner was also without protection. Harwood’s mind cycled with the mission, the shooting of the three targets and then the little girl. But here, he had a bona fide Russian in his crosshairs. The Russians had been America’s enemy for many years, decades even. Russia had invaded Crimea where they presently were attempting to escape a tightening noose of military and police. Solid with the morality of the shot, Harwood squeezed the trigger. For a moment he wondered if he had missed, which really wasn’t possible at this distance, maybe two hundred yards. The man stood there, looked at his chest, looked back up at Harwood, fell to his knees, and then slumped forward face-first onto the concrete.

  Harwood disassembled his rifle, stuffed it in his rucksack, then low crawled to the lip of the bulkhead. He found the hand rungs the others must have used and lowered himself into the water, which was cool at first. His adrenaline though kept him warm enough to make the fifty-meter swim rapidly. He didn’t believe he was as quiet as the marine and Navy SEAL, but he did his best.

  Stone had the Zodiac on idle as Weathers pulled Harwood into the boat.

  “Go,” Harwood said.

  The Hind helicopter flew low and fast over them, banked, rose into the air, and started scanning the port area.

  “No way we outrun that thing,” Weathers said.

  Stone kept the motor on idle and used his hand to pull them around the backside of the center concrete pier, providing them cover and concealment from the searching aircraft. They would almost certainly notice the two dead guards, Harwood thought. On cue, the aircraft lowered and landed near the far guard that Harwood had shot.

  “Now’s our best shot,” Harwood said. “We either stay here and fight them with all their radios and calls they’ll be making, or we slip out and try to get outside their immediate search arc.”

  Stone nodded, gunned the engine, which was drowned by the whirring rotor blades, and they shot into the open water. Stone kept the Zodiac near the protection of the pier until they reached its end.

  They were in open water with ten miles to go.

  “Go submersible!” Harwood shouted.

  “Too soon,” Stone replied.

  The Hind helicopter lifted into the air, turned its nose toward them, and let loose a volley of rockets that whooshed overhead, leaving smoky trails. Wildly inaccurate, the rockets were the least of Harwood’s worries. The Hind E could spit out high-volume 23 mm machine-gun rounds and deadly accurate tank-busting guided missiles, either of which would be lethal to their team. He didn’t care if the team did another mission, but he did care about living to fight another day.

  “Everybody lay down and activate the submersible, Stone,” Harwood said. Stone’s bearded face was set in rock, staring back at him. His hair whipped wildly in the wind as he kept his hand on the till of the high-tech engine. Harwood retrieved his pistol and said, “Solve a lot of my anger issues right now, asshole. I’m in charge. Do it.”

  “Come on, man, just take us down,” Weathers said.

  Stone smirked, pressed a button, and said, “Better get down.”

  A thin bullet-proof Plexiglas canopy began sliding from the titanium cockpit of the Zodiac. Jet wings expanded out from the pontoons, like an F-14 Tomcat. The nose of the Zodiac pivoted downward, catching water and pulling the Zodiac underwater. Harwood and Weathers were lying with their heads toward the bow while Stone’s feet were near their heads. The cockpit sealed with rubberized receptors along the bow of the vessel, preventing leaks as the experimental watercraft lowered into the water. The engine was contained within the airtight lock that Zodiac had designed in competition to win a Navy contract for shallow water submersibles.

  Machine-gun rounds plinked off the protective shield above them and more rockets sprayed wildly. The ninety-horsepower engine pushed them deeper into the water until they were completely submerged.

  Stone pressed some buttons on the cockpit console that Harwood assumed were navigation aids. Through the canopy, he saw the bubbling trails of machine-gun rounds burrowing through the water. The Zodiac was now like a coffin, sliding soundlessly through the water. There had been some discussion about using a Mark VIII SEAL Delivery Vehicle for the mission, but given the discreet and amb
iguous nature of the mission, whoever was in charge had opted to experiment with the Zodiac Sea Diver.

  They plowed through the murky sea, reliant upon navigational devices that looked a bit like avionics. A radar pinged, showing potential obstructions or obstacles that might hinder navigation. After a few minutes of silence, the men looked at one another. The bullets had stopped for the moment. There was no evidence of enemy fire boring through the water. Harwood held his thoughts in his mind as if he were holding his breath beneath the water. The canopy was less than a foot from his face. Weathers lay next to him with Stone’s boots in between them. Each of them was probably thinking the same thing: I hope we make it.

  The Zodiac shuddered as it bore through the water. The cockpit and wings helped make the boat more aerodynamic, but still the designers had work to do on the vessel, Harwood thought. After twenty minutes powering through the water at twenty knots, twenty less than above water max cruising speed of forty, Harwood said, “I’m showing us two minutes behind pickup time.”

  “Excuse the fuck out of me, Reaper, but I tried to keep us up above as long as possible to maintain speed,” Stone said.

  “I get that, but you didn’t see the helicopter coming at us. I did. Now drop the attitude and let’s figure out how to make up the time.”

  “How much time we got to link up?” Weathers asked.

  When he spoke, Harwood could smell his stale breath. The confines were claustrophobic. Maybe SEALs and marines were used to this, but it wasn’t Harwood’s jam.

  “Thirty-two minutes,” Harwood said. “And we need to be at that point.” He pointed at the radar screen that had a destination icon blinking in green. As he was pointing at the radar, an icon appeared on the top of the screen.

  “Bogie,” Stone said.

  “Maybe, maybe not. As long as we’re under water, we’re fine,” Harwood said.

  “Got to get up and make up that two minutes. This is all about precision,” Weathers said.

  After the altercation in the sniper hide site, the leadership dynamic had changed. Stone and Weathers were deferring to Harwood, which was how he wanted it. He waited a few minutes and watched the icon on the radar.

  “Okay, surface. Keep the canopy down. That will help with speed. Haul ass toward linkup and be prepared to go back under,” Harwood said.

  Stone pressed a button that elevated the nose of the Zodiac, pointing it upward and providing lift. The raft shot from the water, went airborne, and splashed down with a thud. The canopy cover remained in place. Stone opened the throttle and they skimmed along the sea’s surface. They were twenty miles away from the shoreline now, in supposed international waters, but Harwood knew that meant little to the Russian Federation that had invaded and seized the Crimean Peninsula.

  “Status of radar?”

  “Bogey still headed toward us. Gaining,” Stone said.

  “Speed?”

  “Forty knots. Pegged wide open,” Stone replied.

  A common threat had if not bonded them at least focused them on the task at hand: survival.

  “I’m showing we’re thirty seconds off,” Harwood said.

  “That’s too much,” Weathers said.

  “Going as fast as I can,” Stone defended. “Another bogey. Six o’clock,” Stone said.

  The radar showed a blip on the screen in front of them and behind them. Harwood hoped that one of them was useful. Without warning, a second icon appeared next to the original one approaching from the south.

  “Three bogies,” Stone said.

  “One bogey, two friendlies,” Harwood said.

  “Not sure about that. Different image. Should be seeing something indicating friendly. Getting no squawk code.”

  The squawk code was an aircraft’s signal as to whether it was friend or foe. All aircraft identified themselves, typically, so that they could warn off potential threats.

  Lights flickered to their front. The canopy shield had a milky film on it from the constant spray of the sea.

  “Link up in one minute,” Harwood said. “Lower canopy.”

  “We’ll lose speed,” Stone replied.

  “We need to see everything for this phase,” Harwood replied.

  “Roger that,” Weathers seconded.

  Stone pushed a button. The canopy retracted. The wind and water blew in with force. Harwood, Stone, and Weathers slipped on their night-vision goggles.

  “There it is,” Harwood said. With the canopy out of the way, Harwood saw the Night Stalker Task Force 160th MH-47 special operations Chinook aircraft. It banked upon spotting them, pivoted in the air, and then began chopping away at fifteen knots as it lowered its ramp. The Zodiac gained on the helicopter, aiming at the gaping cargo bay, illuminated only by two infrared lights blinking on either side.

  Stone shot the Zodiac up the ramp. They flew into the back of the helicopter, the engine sparking off the metal ramp. Stone had decelerated enough so that they didn’t crash into the cockpit. The ramp slammed shut and the MH-47 nosed over and gained its max speed of nearly 200 mph.

  The crew chief was dressed in an olive Nomex jumpsuit and wearing a space-age helmet and face shield. Two crewmen manned machine guns out the port and starboard hatches. The interior was pitch black, save the starlight seeping in through the porthole windows. Harwood knelt and held on to the Zodiac as the crew chief strapped them in and attached the straps to the floor of the aircraft D-ring with snap hooks.

  “Two Hinds bearing down on us!” the crew chief shouted.

  “How long to destination?” Stone asked.

  “You do your shit. We’ll do ours,” the crew chief responded. “We have Apache escort.”

  Harwood did the math. The Hind could fly about 180 mph. The Chinook was faster at nearly 200 mph. The key was gaining enough distance to outrun the missiles the Hind could fire from miles away. And the Apache helicopter would not be able to keep up. Its max speed was about twenty miles below that of the Chinook, more in keeping with the Hind.

  “Missile!” the crew chief shouted.

  CHAPTER 7

  Harwood stared across the barren conference room at Hinojosa. They stood on opposite sides of a gray metal table with two chairs. The fluorescent lights dangled from the ceiling on weak chains. Hinojosa was dressed in a black jumpsuit with her hair yanked back in a ponytail. Harwood was still wearing his sweaty mission attire of black polypropylene shirt, black cargo pants, and muddy outer tactical vest. He poked a finger at Hinojosa.

  “Forget for a minute that we were nearly knocked out of the sky,” he said. “I understand this team is expendable. But I’m not killing women and children. We go after valid targets! Authorized targets! Not kids!”

  Hinojosa nodded. They had narrowly escaped the Hind rockets, but the Night Stalker pilots were the best. Spitting chaff and flying at max throttle they had dodged the Russian military. He had been surprised they had not scrambled jets, but with the Turkish military patrolling the skies, perhaps the Russians had played it safe.

  “The president was clear. The families of the terrorists.” Hinojosa crossed her arms.

  “So where does it stop? Execute the ninety-five-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair? The newborn baby? Eliminate all the terrorist seed from the earth? Is that the thinking? That it’s some kind of DNA thing?”

  “Vick, stop it,” Hinojosa said. She placed her palm out as if she were stopping traffic. “There is some moral ambiguity here, I know.”

  “Some? This entire mission is bullshit.” His gaze never wavered from Hinojosa.

  “And there’s a new threat,” she said. She slid a document across the table. Stamped on the top and bottom were the words: Top Secret/NOFORN. Top Secret was one of the highest classifications, while NOFORN meant that no foreign governments or personnel were authorized to view the information.

  He read the short summary.

  START/MALIK SULTAN CAPTURE AT DULLES AIRPORT REVEALS CONNECTIVITY TO PERZA FAMILY IN IRAN AND THE DAOUD SYRIAN WEAPONS CARTEL IN DAMASCUS. SUL
TAN FAMILY HAS OPERATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND IS CONNECTED TO RUSSIA. DAOUD PROVIDES WEAPONS. PERZA PROVIDES FINANCING. SAMUELSON IMPLICATED AS FOURTH SNIPER. WITH SULTAN CAPTURED AND SAMUELSON CONFIRMED DEAD, PERZA AND DAOUD REMAIN AT LARGE. CHATTER INDICATES A FOLLOW-UP TARGET. INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS PRESENTLY ARE REVIEWING INTELLIGENCE THAT INDICATES THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER AND WIFE, THE VICE PRESIDENT’S FAMILY, AND THE FAMILY OF THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MAY BE AT RISK. DEFENSE COMMUNITY TAKING APPROPRIATE SECURITY MEASURES. WE BELIEVE THAT THESE ASYMMETRIC ATTACKS ARE INTENDED TO NOT ONLY CREATE FEAR AND HAVOC, BUT ALSO TO IMPACT THE CHAIN OF COMMAND DECISION-MAKING ABILITY AS THE ADMINISTRATION FACES KEY DECISIONS ON IRAN, NORTH KOREA, SYRIA, AND RUSSIA. LIST OF VICTIMS KILLED IN AMBUSH ATTACHED IN SEPARATE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT./STOP

  “Samuelson shouldn’t be mentioned in this report,” Harwood said. “It’s like all that unmasking bullshit from a couple years ago. When we show he’s not involved, then the entire intelligence community will have egg on its face.”

  “The evidence is pretty strong against Samuelson, but we’ll get back to that,” Hinojosa said. “Have a seat.”

  They sat, and she retrieved another document from her folder. Metal chairs scraped against the concrete floor. The air was musty and dank.

  Harwood looked at the piece of paper. It had twenty-two names on it. He recognized a few simply because they were well publicized. He had no friends or comrades on this list. They were twelve family members of high-level government officials. Not to be unsympathetic, but he had seen these lists before and felt more emotion than he was feeling now. That was because he had friends and battle buddies killed by improvised explosive devices, sniper rounds, and artillery. This was a heinous act, but then again, it was just another casualty list in an ongoing war. Still, twelve family members and ten law enforcement officers. As if the LEOs around the country hadn’t been through enough targeting from radicals. None of it sat well with Harwood.