by Peter Nealen
“We’ve got plenty, if you fumble-fucks don’t take forever getting the cases open.” He started for the hatch and the ladder leading up to the top decks. “Get ‘em up top with a quickness.”
***
The “new toys” came in big black storm cases, that were a pain to haul up the steep metal ladderwells to the top decks. That was why Flint was in charge; he stayed up top, watching the oncoming boats with the thermals that he’d taken from Scrap. Let the peons do the heavy lifting.
With a lot of grunting, cursing, and banging as cases smacked against hatchways, railings, and various bits of anatomy, the team got the four sturdy plastic boxes up onto the top deck and started undoing the latches. Flint handed the thermals back to Scrap and went over to the first one that had been opened.
Inside the case was what looked like a standard, commercial, quad-rotor drone. It appeared to have been painted a flat gray, with any lights painted over, until a closer inspection revealed that it had not been built with lights. There was a camera mounted beneath the hump of its central fuselage, and a sophisticated transmission antenna above.
If it differed from the more common commercial drones in that the central fuselage was bigger, protruding fore and aft more than most, especially at a time when drones tended to be getting more and more miniaturized. It also had lines that made it look stealthy, not unlike an F-22 or F-35 fighter.
It was; if a modern stealth aircraft had the radar signature of a sparrow, this thing had the radar signature of a dust mote. And that was even with the extra ten pounds of explosive and ceramic fragmentation stowed inside the hump of the fuselage.
Psycho was pulling the drone out, having already taken the control unit out and laid it on the deck. Flint bent down, snatched the control unit, and powered it up as he stood again. He was going to get the first shot. It was a privilege of being the guy in charge. The alpha.
The control unit looked not unlike an X-box controller, only bigger, with more controls, and with a small but high-definition screen in the center. Flint quickly ran it through its boot-up sequence, the screen clearing and showing him Psycho’s face, only a few inches away. With an ugly grin, he started the rotors.
“Fuck!” Psycho jumped back to avoid getting a digit cut off by the spinning props. Flint just grinned at him.
Applying power, he flew the drone up off the deck and out into the night.
It took some doing to get the feel of the thing. He wasn’t a pilot, and almost lost control of the drone several times. Once he almost overcorrected enough to send it flipping over and into the ocean. Tight-lipped and angry, he slowed down and got down to it. He knew that Psycho and probably a couple of the others were surreptitiously looking at the screen over his shoulder. He had to do this right. It was part of being the Big Dog.
A distant part of him might have understood that the way he was running this team was less than ideal. Good, disciplined forces, professionals, don’t work like the Lord of the Flies model he was following. But he didn’t care. This wasn’t the military, and he’d run his team the way he damned well pleased.
He finally got the drone flying straight and level, about fifty feet off the water, even as the other three dipped down off the platform to join it. The camera had limited night vision capabilities, and he still couldn’t see the targets yet, not from that altitude. But at a closure rate of well over a hundred knots, that should change soon.
There. He almost overshot; the RHIBs were closer than he’d expected. He banked the drone hard to bring it in toward his target, nearly overcorrecting and losing control again. But with some struggling, and some particularly vile curses under his breath, he got the drone lined up and started its dive.
***
Oquendo never heard it coming. The drone’s motors were extremely quiet, and further muffled for stealth. It’s dark, flat coloring made it little more than a silhouette against the sky, and a tiny one, at that. Without night vision, Oquendo couldn’t see enough of the contrast to pick it out. He wasn’t looking at the sky, anyway; he was trying to pick out the Tourmaline-Delta platform from among the various lights of ships and other oil platforms in the Gulf.
The drone dropped out of the night and came to a hover right behind the coxswain. One of the Naval Infantry looked up and yelled. Oquendo turned, just in time to see a dark bulk buzzing faintly, the sound of its rotors still almost drowned out by the rumble of the RHIB’s own motors.
A split-second later, Flint mashed a button on the controller, still most of a nautical mile away, and the drone detonated.
The ten pounds of Composition B was the equivalent of twenty M67 hand grenades going off at once, all in the same spot. Tightly packed in ceramic ball bearings, it was an enormous, three-hundred-sixty-degree claymore. It went off with a blinding flash, spewing its fragmentation in all directions, to flay already-pulverized flesh from shattered bones, smash metal fittings, and shred the rubber gunwales.
All of the Marines aboard were killed instantly. The RHIB stopped almost dead in the water, as the holes punched in its hull immediately started the boat sinking. With the inflatable hull shredded, it was about as buoyant as any random debris.
The other four boats died the same way, all within the next thirty seconds. Bright flashes were followed by rolling booms that echoed out across the water. Sound travels far over the ocean at night, and heads came up on watch miles away as the sound rippled across the Gulf.
Moments later, all that was left of the second Mexican Naval Infantry assault on the Tourmaline-Delta platform was some debris, oil, blood, and hammered meat floating in the water.
The sharks were already starting to circle. Fortunately for the Mexican Marines, they were already dead.
Chapter 8
The meeting with Erika Dalca at the Ciela International offices was not the end of the night for Brannigan’s Blackhearts. Time was slipping away, and they could sleep when the op was over.
Or when they were dead.
David Aziz was not happy about it. He wasn’t happy about any of this. Deep down, he understood that he’d had a choice; he could have simply refused to come along, even after the dressing-down he’d gotten from Santelli. Especially after that. It chafed, even over a day later. He was still happy that Jenkins had borne the brunt of it.
He also knew that Santelli was right, as much as he might have hated to admit it, even to himself. The whole tattoo thing had been dumb. He still thought the emblem was cool, and it was something that he would know the meaning of, that set him another notch above the spoiled brats he taught at the college, when he wasn’t taking leaves of absence to go play mercenary. But it was still bad OPSEC.
He should have walked away after Burma. That shit-show had nearly gotten them all killed, and had destroyed the good thing he’d had going with Sanda. So far, none of the others had commented on her conspicuous absence when he’d showed up for the little get-together that Jenkins had started. But he’d seen the looks, especially from Wade.
She’d started to withdraw before they’d even gotten out of Burma, and eventually stopped returning his calls altogether. She’d never told him what she was unhappy about, but the one time they’d met up and he’d tried to re-kindle things after they’d gotten back Stateside hadn’t gone well.
“You don’t get it, David,” she’d said. And he didn’t. He hadn’t forced her to go. It had been a job, and he’d counted himself lucky to have pulled off a caper like taking his lover at the time along. She didn’t seem to have found that little coup as impressive as he had; not that he’d been so stupid as to phrase it that way.
What the hell am I still doing this for? He struggled with the Hollis Explorer Rebreather on the bench in front of him. I’m no diver. And these guys don’t really want me around much. Not that he necessarily wanted to be a part of them with all his heart, either. But I’m good enough that I belong here, whether they like it or not.
How much of that was self-delusion was something Aziz would never ask himself.
Pride was pretty much his primary motivator in life, and his association with Brannigan’s Blackhearts was no different.
“Come on, Aziz, it ain’t rocket surgery,” Santelli called. The stout, balding fireplug was standing there with his own rebreather already on his back, his regulator dangling in front of his chin by its retaining strap and oxygen hoses. “Get the damned thing on, we’re wasting time.”
Aziz grimaced as he heaved the rebreather pack up and around and strapped it on. It was still white; they hadn’t had time to paint them, and they probably wouldn’t get the time, either. They’d probably have to ditch the rebreathers while still underwater, hopefully deep enough that they couldn’t be seen easily from the surface, and then free ascend to the platform.
“All right,” Santelli bellowed. “Everybody to the edge of the pool. Start your purge.”
A rebreather didn’t work like a Scuba tank. Running on pure oxygen, it was a closed system, and therefore the diver had to cleanse his lungs of any outside air before daring to go underwater with it. Nitrogen and other trace gases could slowly overtake the oxygen in the system, making the diver suffocate even while breathing deeply. The lime in the rebreather’s scrubber didn’t take nitrogen out, only carbon dioxide.
The Blackhearts, dressed in fatigues from a nearby Army surplus store, London Bridge Trading Company chest rigs, and the Hollis rebreathers, lined the sides of the pool and started their purge.
***
Hancock was most of the way through his own purge, making sure his lungs and his mask were full of pure oxygen, when he noticed that Tanaka seemed to be having trouble.
It didn’t especially surprise him; Tanaka had been a regular infantryman in the Army, and hadn’t ever trained for combat diving, or any other specialized insert method. The train-up and insert into Burma had been his first experiences jumping out of an airplane. He was game, but he wasn’t on the same level of training and experience as the rest of the Blackhearts.
Right at the moment, he seemed to be hyperventilating a little, struggling with the unfamiliar feeling of having a regulator in his teeth and being unable to breathe through his nose. That was something that usually got dealt with in dive school by having the students fill their masks with water and do flutter kicks on the side of the pool.
When breathing through your nose just fills your sinuses with pool water, you learn really quick to breathe through your mouth.
But they didn’t have time for a full dive school, or even a pre-dive course. Tanaka was going to have to keep up as best he could. He’d demonstrated that he had the guts for it with high-altitude jumping, but, if anything, diving involved even more ways to die horribly.
Hancock stopped his purge and pulled his regulator out of his mouth. “Alex, look at me,” he said loudly.
Tanaka turned to meet his eyes through his mask. The man’s eyes were a little wide. Yeah, he’s having trouble.
“It’s pure oxygen, Alex,” Hancock said. “I know it feels like you can’t breathe, but trust me, you can. And you won’t need as much of a breath, either. Just concentrate on in and out, in and out. You’ll get used to the back-pressure soon enough.” One of the hard parts about diving on a rebreather was also the fact that, due to it’s being a closed system, it took more effort to breathe out than it did to breathe in.
Tanaka nodded, and seemed to calm. His chest rose and fell more deeply, as he tried to get used to the altered breathing.
Hancock clapped him on the shoulder and re-inserted his own regulator. Taking a deep breath, he pressed a palm to the top of his mask and blew out hard through his nose, re-starting his purge.
You know, this whole ‘being John’s 2IC’ thing isn’t as bad as I was worried it would be. Sure, he had had to scale back some of his own more adventurous activities; he tended to be an adrenaline junkie, both in and out of combat. In fact, the longer he’d been away from the battlefield, the more extreme his hobbies had gotten. He’d kept it up until just before the Burma job, when Brannigan had dressed him down for risking his neck unnecessarily, and revealed that if the Colonel ever went down, Roger Hancock was going to be his successor.
It had been a shock, and one that he’d slightly resented. He’d retired, just like Santelli and Brannigan—though willingly, unlike Brannigan—and he’d been fine with just being another hired gun, leaving much of the responsibilities that he’d held in the military behind him. Having to put that hat back on hadn’t been all that welcome.
But it had been Brannigan. So, he’d agreed. And now he was finding that it was a good thing.
Being the second in command meant that he had to look after the boys when they were on a mission. Sometimes, it meant looking after them, when he could, in between missions. Hart worried him. He’d known that the man had had some issues with depression and substance abuse since being medically separated after losing his leg. Having found him drooling drunk with Tanaka was a problem.
The fact was, having to keep an eye on the boys helped quell his own restlessness. It gave him an outlet, something to focus on.
He knew that it still wasn’t a cure-all. He knew that his wife and daughters deserved more of his attention. He knew that he’d been running from the “mundanity” of his home life by surfing, skydiving, racing cars, and all the other stuff that he’d been doing. And he was still doing some of it, coming out to jump into gunfights as a mercenary.
But this is different. This is at least serving a purpose.
He put the thoughts aside as he scanned the group. Santelli was already in the pool, his buoyancy compensator inflated enough to keep him on the surface without having to kick too hard, his own regulator in his mouth, his purge complete. Brannigan was beside him, watching the Blackhearts through his own mask.
Tanaka was calming down. Hart was sitting stiffly, his prosthetic jutting out over the pool. Hancock glanced at the replacement leg, thinking briefly that they were going to have to treat it much the same way they were going to have to treat their rifles. Hart’s prosthetic was mostly aluminum and carbon fiber, but sea salt and corrosion could still bind it up at the worst possible time.
Jenkins appeared calm; he should, he’d been a SEAL. The water should be second-nature to him. Hancock knew that that wasn’t necessarily always the case; a lot of the SEAL teams, like a lot of Recon units, had spent a lot more time in land-locked Afghanistan than at sea in recent years. But Jenkins appeared to be all right.
It’s just his attitude I wonder about.
Wade seemed to be struggling a little with the back-pressure. The big man had been a Ranger. He wasn’t nearly as amphibious as the predominately Recon background made much of the rest of the team. But he wasn’t freaking out, so that was good.
Childress was next to Wade, and was finishing his own purge; he must have done the same thing for Wade that Hancock had just done for Tanaka; dropped his regulator to coach him through. The thought of Childress’ coaching almost made Hancock crack a smile; the younger man could only be described as “blunt.” His lack of tact had gotten him into trouble more than once in the Marine Corps.
Gomez was as silent and still as ever. Hancock had seen the Recon Jack tattooed on the inside of Gomez’ arm; he didn’t worry much about him. Except to occasionally wonder just what all was going on behind those deep-set, black eyes.
Flanagan, Bianco, and Curtis were just sitting there, waiting, their purges complete, eyes on Santelli. All three men had been Recon Marines, and knew what they were about.
Hancock was momentarily glad that they were on oxygen. As amusing as it could be, the constant bickering between the Curtis and Flanagan occasionally got tiresome. It seemed to get that way to Flanagan sometimes, too. Curtis, however, never seemed to run out of energy.
Santelli had his hand up in the “OK” sign, and was looking at Tanaka. Hancock nudged the other man, and pointed toward Santelli. Tanaka started a little as he figured it out, then nodded and held up the same sign.
Santelli went down the line, checkin
g with each man, and getting the same sign. Good. Everybody seemed to be doing all right, which hopefully meant no bad purges or malfunctions in the rebreathers. There were dozens of ways that closed-circuit diving could go wrong, even more than open-circuit.
He waited a few more minutes. Some diving-related illnesses could take some time to manifest. When nobody started vomiting into their regulator or doing the “funky chicken,” he was apparently satisfied, and held up two fingers. With regulators in, they may as well already be underwater, which meant that hand and arm signals would have to do for communications.
At that signal, the Blackhearts came off the wall, careful to avoid hitting the rebreathers on the edge, and sank into the water.
Hancock kept a close eye on Tanaka. Learning to take that first breath underwater could be a bit harrowing for some people. The former infantryman seemed to get a hitch in his breathing for a moment, but then relaxed a little and gave Hancock an “OK” sign. He wasn’t comfortable, but he was making do.
The water is the great equalizer. He looked around, focusing a little more on the “Common Air Breathers” in their midst. Aziz was looking a little twitchy; fortunately, they weren’t on compressed air, so the risks of getting the bends if one of them shot to the surface were minimal. Of course, there were other potential problems, like going too deep and getting Oxygen Toxicity…
Aziz didn’t shoot for the surface, but as Hancock neared him, he could see something close to panic in the other man’s eyes. Aziz wasn’t made for the water. Frankly, Hancock didn’t know exactly what Aziz was made for, aside from stroking his own ego.
He didn’t like the guy, but he was detached enough to know that Aziz had, despite his attitude, put himself way out in the line of fire more than once. He’d gone into Khadarkh City on his own, to lay the groundwork for the diversion that had gotten the rest of the team into the Citadel. That had taken balls.
Then he’d basically sat most of the fight in the Citadel out, though only after he saved Flanagan’s and Curtis’ butts by blowing up an AMX-10 with an RPG. The man was hardly consistent, and Hancock realized that that was the main reason he didn’t like him. For all his own wild nature, Hancock was a man of constancy. You either had balls or you didn’t. In that way, he knew he was a lot like Santelli, if perhaps slightly more given to nuance. Santelli was a blunt instrument in many ways.
