by Peter Nealen
***
Erika Dalca’s apparent lack of hurry notwithstanding, the yacht’s pilot didn’t dawdle. As soon as they were clear of the pier and out into the bay, he was pouring on the throttle. It was a smooth ride, but it wasn’t a slow one. They were heading north, up the coast, twisting between the islands that lined the bays and lagoons along the east Texas coastline. They rounded the point where Ingleside On The Bay sat, ran underneath the Highway 361 bridge, passed Stedman Island, and kept going.
They passed barges, fishing boats, sailing boats, and yachts. The coasts and bayous slid by to either side, the yacht’s wake forming a wide, white vee on the water.
The Blackhearts didn’t talk much on the trip. They were busy, getting their gear ready and changing from civilian clothes into the camouflage fatigues they’d be wearing for the op. They weren’t going to blend in with anything on the platform, but they were better for fighting in than civvies.
The weapons were hauled out, disassembled, and carefully sprayed down with lube and silicone spray. They were going to be spending a good amount of time submerged in salt water, and none of them wanted a rifle to seize up or even start to rust on a CQB mission. Which a platform boarding most definitely was.
Even the ammo got the silicone treatment. It would hopefully help reduce stoppages, as well.
Santelli was going around, checking gear and passing out earplugs. They were going to be in close quarters, with metal walls all around them, and none of their weapons were suppressed. If any of them wanted to hear anything after the op, they were going to have to take precautions, even if it cut down on one of their senses. They’d just have to be extra watchful, and communicate by hand and arm signals where possible.
“Boss,” Gomez called quietly. Gomez had been one of the first ones with his gear ready, and had moved up toward the bow to post up as a lookout. When Brannigan looked up at him, he pointed.
Brannigan followed his finger. They were sliding past a group of barges anchored off the west shore of the long island to their starboard. But Gomez was pointing to a small, densely-overgrown island directly ahead of them.
He nodded to indicate he understood. It had been less than an hour; the yacht had to be doing close to thirty knots. It was possible that the island ahead was just a waypoint, but it certainly looked like it was their destination.
A moment later, he got his confirmation, as Dalca stepped up onto the deck from the pilot house. She’d changed; she was now wearing a no-nonsense coverall, though a bit of gauzy white cloth sticking up out of the collar suggested that she’d just pulled it on over her other clothes. It would probably be quickly shucked and tossed into a locker when this phase was over with.
“Is this our ‘second rendezvous?’” Brannigan asked.
She nodded. “Indeed it is,” she said, glancing over the Blackhearts, taking in the sight of them.
Brannigan saw what she saw. Twelve hard-faced men, of various sizes and builds, dressed in fatigues, rigged for diving, festooned with weapons and ammunition. Pistols were affixed to their gear in various places, and rifles that glistened with protective lubrication were held easily in their gloved hands. All were still and watchful, with the coiled-spring tension about them that often could be seen in men readying themselves for combat.
He saw the appreciative glint in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was she just showing a woman’s appreciation for the warrior, or was she showing a kingpin’s appreciation for their capacity for violence?
He didn’t know her well enough to say. And he wasn’t sure if he wanted to.
She didn’t say anything more as the yacht chugged around toward the north side of the island. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere; the shores to their west and east were abandoned, covered in thick, swampy growth.
As the yacht cleared the north side of the island, they saw a shape lying low in the water, waiting for them.
At first, it looked almost like another yacht, only nearly awash. The hull was dark and dingy, with spots of rust where the dark blue paint had been worn away. The pilothouse barely rose a few feet above the blank, featureless top deck.
“That’s a fucking narco-sub,” Childress said. The gawky-looking man was frowning as he looked at the strange craft. He turned to Brannigan. “I’ve seen pictures of other ones like it.”
Brannigan turned to Dalca, a tightness growing in his gut. He’d known that they were going to be operating somewhat on the dark side for this; hell, they already had in Dubai. And he knew that the hostages on that GOPLAT needed their help. But he knew too much about the narcos down in Mexico, and to see that their new ally apparently had dealings with them…
“There are other things besides drugs that need smuggling,” Dalca said airily. “Some of my people picked this up when a deal went bad between the traffickers and their contacts on this side of the line. There was a shootout; when it was over, only one of the contacts was still alive, so my people swooped in and took the whole thing off their hands.” She looked at Brannigan levelly. “We took the sub, and dumped the drugs. I’ve had a successful enterprise for this long without getting on the cartels’ radar, and I have no intention of changing that anytime soon. So, you can relax. Yes, it was a narco sub. But I didn’t sell the drugs aboard it, and given the time constraints you are under, I hardly think that beggars can afford to be choosers. Don’t you, John?”
He had to admit that she had a point. Time was short, and a submarine was probably their best bet to get close enough without the terrorists detecting them and sending them the way of the Mexican Marines. It just felt wrong, somehow, getting into a narco sub.
And do you think that Dmitri’s Russians had any qualms about getting into the drug trade? Or human trafficking, for that matter?
“If you look forward,” Dalca continued, “You’ll see that there’s a hatch. We’ve done a few modifications, so that the entire cargo hold can be used as a lock. You can exit out that way. You’ll never need to surface until you get where you’re going.”
All eyes turned to her. Brannigan watched her with a frown. She seemed completely unconcerned with their scrutiny, but the fact that she had apparently divined their target didn’t escape any of them. And they knew that none of them had told her.
“Just what did Hector tell you?” Brannigan asked quietly.
“Very little,” she said, stepping closer to him. “But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Terrorists kill hundreds, maybe thousands of people, on both sides of the border. Other terrorists kidnap a number of VIPs in Matamoros, and seize an oil platform. Not many hours later, a group of what can only be some kind of special operations soldiers shows up, looking for ‘discreet’ transport to Matamoros.” She was standing very close now, looking up into his eyes. “What else could you be doing, except trying to go liberate the Tourmaline-Delta platform? Hmm? I’m not an idiot.”
She suddenly lifted up on her tip-toes and kissed Brannigan on the cheek. “Good luck,” she said quietly. “Now, you’d better get moving.”
Brannigan wasn’t going to argue, especially not when he was getting looks and raised eyebrows from Hancock, Curtis, and Flanagan. Santelli was pointedly ignoring the little interplay, but he knew that the squat, pudgy Italian was going to have some pithy remarks about it later.
As for him, he didn’t know what was going on with this gal. And he couldn’t afford the time or the mental energy to think about it.
“You heard the lady,” he said, hefting his M6. “Let’s go.”
The yacht’s young crewman, who had hauled in the gangplank, was now lowering it to the deck of the submarine, as the pilot brought the boat in close. Once it touched, the pilot backed water slightly, then held the yacht steady, apparently by engine power alone. The guy was good.
Brannigan led the way down the gangplank, which swayed alarmingly as the yacht and the sub both rocked on the gentle waves of Dunham Bay. He had to step carefully to keep from getting dumped in the drink.
The hatch opened easily; it looked like a rusty hunk of junk, but had clearly been carefully oiled and greased. Below, the former cargo hold was a dark pit in the hull. A rickety-looking aluminum ladder had been welded to the inside of the hatchway, leading down into the darkness.
Brannigan shone his rifle light down into the hold. Moisture and greenish algae glinted back at him. The smell coming from the hold wasn’t especially pleasant, either. But he didn’t see any white powder down there, or smell any strong chemicals, so it seemed unlikely that they’d get high riding in a compartment that had been used for transporting large quantities of cocaine and heroin.
The same young crewman who had deployed the gangplank was now following him down it to the sub. “I will be piloting the sub,” he said. He was light-skinned and light-haired, but he spoke with a decided Mexican accent. He had a chart in his hand.
Brannigan looked from the chart to the young man. “You know where we’re going?” he asked.
“How close to the platform do you need to be?” the crewman asked, pointing to the marked location of the Tourmaline-Delta GOPLAT.
“No more than two thousand meters,” Brannigan said. Especially with the experience level of a few of the Blackhearts, much more than that would tax their endurance underwater. And they still had to fight once they came up. “The closer you can get me, the better. Is there a way to communicate between the control room and the hold?”
“There is an intercom,” the young man said. “I will update you when we are close.” Without another word, he headed for the short pilothouse, pried open another hatch, and disappeared inside. A moment later, a faint rumble through the hull announced that he’d started the sub’s engines.
Brannigan ushered the rest of the Blackhearts off the gangplank and down into the hold-turned-lock. He’d be the last one inside, because, as was his wont, he was going to be the first one out.
John Brannigan had always led from the front where possible, and leading the Blackhearts had made it a necessity, if only due to their numbers. It was what made men willing and even eager to follow him. It was also an element of leadership that he had long felt was dying out.
Finally, he clambered down the ladder, pulling the hatch closed over his head and dogging it. A few moments later, he felt the deck heave slightly as the sub lurched into motion.
They were on their way.
Chapter 10
The rocking and swaying eased as the sounds of rushing water against the hull closed in overhead. They were submerging as the sub moved away from the island and toward deeper water.
A few minutes later, as the hull started to creak and pop under the mounting water pressure, most of the Blackhearts looked around in the hold, dark except for Santelli’s and Brannigan’s weapon lights, as if wondering if this was really such a good idea. It wasn’t as if the narco sub was the product of a professional shipyard. It appeared to have been built by simply welding a pressure hull around a speedboat.
It wasn’t confidence-inducing. Nor was the slapdash way the whole thing had been laid on, with a helmsman they didn’t know, and had never seen before about an hour previously.
There wasn’t much conversation. The men were absorbed in their own thoughts, mostly sitting on the deck, against the dark, rusty wall, lit only by one or two weapon lights, staring at nothing as they either tried to let their minds go blank, shutting out the fear and nervousness of impending action—or even the fear of being in an ad-hoc sort of submersible, that might decide to start leaking at any moment, with a helmsman who was an unknown quantity.
Curtis leaned over to Flanagan and said something. But the taller man only answered with a monosyllable, his eyes closed, and Curtis subsided.
Time seemed to slow down as the trip proceeded. The only sounds were the thrumming of the engines through the hull, and the faint swish of water outside, except when someone shifted positions. They weren’t actually too worried about the bad guys having sonar, but for some reason they all seemed to feel that quiet was called for.
The sounds changed, and a faint rocking began to be felt. Eyes opened, and the men looked up, fingers tightening slightly on weapons.
But soon they were moving again, the rocking fading away, and the hull creaked and popped again as the pressure changed.
“Tac peek?” Jenkins wondered, in a whisper.
“Must have been,” Hancock replied, in the same tone.
“Unless the helmsman got off, and we’re heading for the bottom,” Wade said, with a bleak half-smile.
Curtis shot him a glare, but the big man was unaffected. Brannigan got the dark humor. The thought had occurred to him, too.
Time resumed its crawl. There was no impact, and while the hull continued to make its odd noises, the creaking had stabilized, suggesting that they’d reached a set depth. So, Wade’s surmise hadn’t been accurate. They weren’t being “consigned to the briny deep.”
At least, not yet.
The sound of the engines slowed, and they felt a faint push as the sub decelerated. A moment later, a waterproof box bolted to the bulkhead aft lit up, and the young crewman’s voice called out. “We are here. Are you ready?”
It sounded deafeningly loud in the hold after the quiet. More than one of the Blackhearts flinched a little at the noise; if there was anyone out there listening, they’d just made enough noise to be heard almost to Corpus Christi.
“Lower the volume,” Brannigan said quietly, after he’d found the push to talk switch. “And tell us where ‘here’ is.”
There was a pause. When the helmsman’s voice came back, it was noticeably quieter. “We are one and a half kilometers north of the platform,” he said. “The platform itself is due south, bearing one eighty magnetic.”
It sounded like he knew his stuff, at least. Provided he was telling the truth.
“Good copy,” Brannigan said. “We’ll start our purge. When I break squelch on this intercom again, it means we are ready, and you can start to flood the hold.”
“Okay,” was the reply.
Brannigan turned. The Blackhearts were getting up, fitting their masks to their faces and tightening the straps on their regulators. They were pros, all of them. They knew what had to happen. And none of them wanted to still be sucking air when the hold started to fill with water.
He followed suit, clamping the regulator in his mouth and tightening the straps before opening the valve and starting to purge the system. Once he was done, he checked that he had everything else; the retention on his pistol was tight, his rifle sling was cranked down so that the weapon wouldn’t flap against his body as he swam, and shouldn’t catch on the hatchway as he went through it. The others were conducting their own checks.
Once he got “Okay” signals from all twelve of the others, he pushed the PTT on the intercom. For a long moment, he thought that it hadn’t been heard. There was no response. But then water started to pour into the hold from valves against the bulkhead, and he realized that the helmsman simply hadn’t bothered to answer otherwise.
The water flowed in relatively quickly, and in moments they were up to their waists. Brannigan had a sudden, nightmarish question pop into his head. Did he bring us up to twenty feet first? If he hadn’t, they could very well all be dead soon. Oxygen toxicity wasn’t an instant killer, but they wouldn’t last long, especially once the convulsions started.
He kept an eye on the other Blackhearts, watching for the telltale twitching or altered behavior. None of them seemed to be acting abnormally, and they were steady. He would have breathed out a sigh if he hadn’t been on a rebreather.
The hold finally filled all the way, and, pulling his fins on, he reached up and undogged the hatch.
Light flooded into the hold; the water was clear, and it was nearing midday. That could end up being a problem. They might very well be spotted on approach, if the terrorists were keeping an eye out. But time was pressing; they couldn’t afford to wait until nightfall. The hostages probably didn’t hav
e that much time.
They haven’t threatened the hostages in any of their videos. In fact, that jackass crowing over killing those Mexican Marines never even mentioned them. As if he didn’t already have enough worries about the job, that thought gave Brannigan a new sense of foreboding. One that he had to ignore, as he swam up over the sub.
A quick look revealed that they were probably about fifteen feet down; either they’d gotten lucky, or the helmsman hadn’t wanted to take chances. Minor excursions below twenty feet on pure oxygen weren’t necessarily game-stoppers, but they sharply limited the time on oxygen that the divers could afford.
He hovered in the water, adjusting his buoyancy compensator to make sure he was neutral, neither floating nor sinking, as the rest of the team swam up out of the sub’s hatch. Jenkins had the nav board and the “Budweiser line,” a one-inch rope with clevises studding it at regular intervals. It was a good way to keep the team together and make sure nobody got lost.
One by one, the Blackhearts clipped into the Budweiser line. Brannigan stationed himself right behind Jenkins, who was already looking for the one-eighty bearing. Brannigan kept watching as the rest checked their buddy lines, and then tapped Jenkins. When the former SEAL turned his mask back to look at him, he gave him an “Okay.”
It was time to go.
Jenkins put his head down, bracing the nav board between his forearms, and started kicking out. Slowly, the rest of the team followed.
It had been a long time since Brannigan had been underwater, and he soon found that his shins were screaming in pain as they kicked out. He had to ignore it. Jenkins wasn’t towing the rest; they were all kicking strongly, if only to keep the rebreathers working smoothly, absorbing enough oxygen into their tissues to keep the positive pressure of the closed system from overwhelming their lungs. The Budweiser line was slack, for the most part.
After about a klick though, the line started to tighten slightly. Brannigan half-turned, looking back, to see that Hart was having a hard time keeping up. He realized that the man’s prosthetic might be giving him a hard time; he knew of amputees who could run faster than ever with prosthetics, but he’d never heard of how they performed while finning.
