Balance of Power

by James W. Huston

  “All set, sir,” said QMC Lee, his chief petty officer.

  “Thanks,” Armstrong said.

  The SEALs and two Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs, wearing their EOD badges, sat quietly on the webbed seats of the Sikorsky CH-53E, a three-engine behemoth of a helicopter. The remainder of the platoon was in the other CH-53E flying equally fast and parallel to Armstrong’s, five hundred feet to the side. The CH-53E could carry more cargo farther than any other helicopter in the Navy or Marine inventory and could refuel in flight. It streaked over the dark blue ocean, less than one hundred feet off the water. Armstrong could smell the JP5 jet fuel from the engines in the humid air pouring into the helicopter through the open hatch.

  The pilots spotted a large ship and leaned forward to see if it was the Pacific Flyer. They thought they had a decent fix on the location of the Flyer from the GPS mark relayed from the F-14, but couldn’t know for sure. They couldn’t approach the ship close enough to check its identity without being seen, but they had no other way of confirming its identity. The helicopters slowed and descended lower as they approached. Armstrong watched out the side window as the ocean grew closer; it looked as if the helicopter was going to smack into the water any second. He couldn’t judge how high they were. The only reference point was the horizon and he had learned a long time ago that the ocean can look the same from five thousand feet as it does from one hundred.

  The helicopter crew chief gave him a two-minute warning. Armstrong ordered his men up, “Check gear!” he shouted.

  The dark helicopters hovered ten feet above the ocean as they drew closer to the target.

  “Two minutes!” the crew chief shouted as he lowered the ramp at the back of the helicopter and waited until it stopped. He then looked at Lieutenant Armstrong, who nodded.

  The Marine captains who had been trained to fly the Sea Stallion in special operations accelerated their helicopters to the maximum speed at sea level of one hundred sixty knots. The helicopters beat their way through the moist air, each with its seven massive blades bending under the weight.

  The pilots strained to see the ship ahead. The pilot in Armstrong’s helicopter could just make out the superstructure of the ship ahead of them. Fortunately, the Flyer had a very distinctive look that made the close-up identification easy. “That’s her!” he exclaimed as he tried to determine the heading. He wanted to approach from the stern, but they were coming in on the Flyer’s bow.

  The pilot climbed to avoid striking the water with his rotors as he banked left to slow his approach. He circled around low on the horizon to head toward the stern of the ship. They were still three miles away and would be seen only by a diligent lookout who knew what he was looking for. The pilot noticed the ship didn’t seem to be moving. Strange. The fastest merchant ship in the world dead in the water. He looked around the horizon for other ships or airplanes. Nothing. He continued in toward the Flyer and gave the signal to the crew chief for the SEALs to get ready. The crew chief shouted, “One minute!”

  Armstrong gave hand signals to his men as they stood and lined up in order. The four lead SEALs attached the ninety-foot specially braided ropes to the bulkhead hard-points above the ramp of the helicopter. They had been carefully coiled so that the first men out had only to kick them and the ropes would easily uncoil to the deck of the ship.

  The pilot hugged the surface and held his speed, flying as low and fast as safety would allow. At one quarter mile he pulled the nose of the helicopter up quickly, using the rotors as a large brake. The helicopter slowed as quickly as it could be slowed as it approached the stern of the ship. The Super Stallion looked like an enormous bug about to crush something smaller as it approached the fantail. Two SEAL snipers hung out of the open door and trained their M14s on the ship, looking for anything moving.

  Armstrong reached for something to hold as the Super Stallion came to a deafening, frightening stop two hundred yards aft and left of the Flyer’s fantail. The snipers scanned the ship quickly but carefully through their scopes. While continuing to look, one of the snipers gave a thumbs-up to the crew chief, who relayed immediately to the pilot, who transmitted via the radio to the other helicopter that it was clear.

  The second Super Stallion charged in, covered by the hovering sniper helicopter, and did a quickstop directly over the fantail of the Flyer. The SEALs kicked the braided ropes onto the deck and fastroped down instantly. When the first half of the SEAL platoon was on the deck, the first helicopter jerked up and pulled away.

  Armstrong’s helo rushed in and stopped over the fantail. The SEALs already on deck were covering every possible approach point with their automatic weapons.

  Lieutenant Armstrong was the first to leap out of the helicopter and slide down the fastrope to the deck. He landed on his feet and ran away from the rope. He stopped next to the port bulkhead that formed the side of the enormous open area along the entire ship to the bridge. He unholstered his automatic pistol and provided security as the others slid out of the back of the 53 down the fastrope to the deck in less than ten seconds. When the last one was out, the crew chief threw out two large bags, which thudded heavily onto the deck. The helicopter pulled up, banked hard left, and dashed to a quarter mile away, where it hovered with the two SEAL snipers hanging out, their weapons still pointed at the ship. The air was suddenly still. The SEALs crouched around the perimeter of the flat deck and listened.

  They spread out, encircling the area with their backs toward each other, looking for any signs of life or danger. They looked quickly over the side of the ship for boats escaping but saw none. Each SEAL wore a small voice-activated Motorola throat mike. Their black helmets had headphones built in. Everyone kept their voices down and mouths shut unless they had something important to say. Armstrong called for a radio check. They answered in order by their pre-briefed number, by seniority, from one to fourteen plus the two Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs, fifteen and sixteen. The entire check took less than ten seconds.

  Armstrong looked at each of his men and waited for an all-clear signal. He ran up to Lee, on the port side toward the bridge. “What’ve we got?” he asked, as he knelt next to him.

  “We got nothing. There’s no sounds, no movement, no engine noise, nothing. If I was guessing, I’d say this baby’s abandoned.”

  Armstrong shook his head. “You don’t go to all that trouble just to abandon a ship like this. I think they’re waiting for us.” He checked his H&K SOF offensive handgun, a .45-caliber weapon designed specifically for Special Forces. It had a mean-looking silencer and a compact laser-aiming module in front of the trigger guard. He had hollow-point bullets for maximizing stopping power and minimizing the risk of hitting a hostage behind a terrorist. “Plan Alpha, Lee. Command and control stay on the fantail, everybody else to the bridge. Right now. Let’s go!”

  “Aye, sir,” Lee said, acknowledging his complete understanding and looking to see that all the others had heard Lieutenant Armstrong. They gave him thumbs-up. He had been working with Armstrong for three years and knew him to be a natural leader and someone with incredible instincts. He always seemed to know when to charge and when to sit and wait in the mud for two days. Lee checked the safety on his silenced H&K SD3 9mm submachine gun and pointed to the two petty officers who had been preassigned to wait on the fantail. They nodded their understanding and picked their positions for best vision of their area. The other fourteen lined up on the port and starboard sides, their weapons ready, thumbs on safeties. Armstrong waited for three seconds, then motioned for the point man to lead the team. They began a quick run toward the bow of the ship. Everyone stayed in a line and maintained their fields of fire.

  The point man crouched to keep from presenting too large a target. He had been trained to always assume someone can see you and wants to shoot you; move like there are crosshairs on you all the time. Every time. He stopped in front of a large hatch that appeared to lead to the bridge. It was closed tight, but not locked. He breathed quickly and steadily
as he considered his options. If the door was booby-trapped, they’d be cooked. He signaled those with him to spread out along the steel bulkhead in front of and behind the hatch, as he felt the handle. He felt no vibration, no unusual resistance, and no springs. He moved the handle up slowly, feeling every slight movement for something unusual. The handle swung smoothly to the top and the hatch popped open as if pushed. He stepped back and waited. The hatch swung freely but no one came out. He stuck his head around and back, then around again. He could feel the cold air rushing out of the air-conditioned spaces. He quickly assessed the scene. “All secure. Two dead unknowns. No weapons.”

  Armstrong listened. When he heard “all clear” from the bridge he approached the steel door that led to the radio room and turned the handle gently. He felt resistance; then he felt the handle give way. He jumped back waiting for an explosion. Nothing happened and the door closed again. He tried the door again and the handle turned easily. He spoke softly into his microphone. “I’m going in. Lee, come in right behind me. I’m going right; you clear behind me. Roach, Davidson,” he said glancing at them, “come in straight behind us. Three, right; four, left. Ready?” They nodded. They’d practiced this maneuver a hundred times. Armstrong tried to ignore the pulsating heartbeat in his hands and his neck. He threw the door open and ran into the radio room, scanning its length in less than a second. He went down on one knee and held his handgun in front of him. He looked around the room, puzzled. No one was there. “Stay here!” He turned. “Coming out!” he yelled as he rushed to the bridge. There was a body handcuffed to the wheel of the ship and another slumped next to him, handcuffed to a navigation table. Both had been shot in the head. He lowered his handgun as the rest of the SEALs entered the bridge and saw what he saw.

  “Where are the hijackers?” Armstrong asked loudly of no one in particular as he looked out the bridge windows at every part of the ship that was visible.

  Armstrong pointed to a suspicious-looking device on the deck. “What the hell is that?” he asked Prager, the EOD tech who had augmented the platoon, who slung his weapon and knelt down to examine the device. Prager was a twin pin—a SEAL and an EOD tech. He set his laptop computer next to the device and began scanning through his data for something similar. The screen filled with images of bombs, triggers, and wiring diagrams as Prager scrolled down and selected images deftly.

  Prager looked up with a puzzled look on his face. “Never seen anything like it. Might be able to disarm it.” He turned back to the device and said, “No obvious timer, no obvious access door, no way to tell what’s inside.” He felt it gingerly. “Arming switch is on the bottom. Final activation magnetic. If it’s C4, one of these would blow the whole bridge off the ship.”

  Lieutenant Armstrong nodded grimly as he considered the options, growing impatient as he checked his watch. “Can you disarm it or not?”

  “I’m not supposed to do this under field conditions. But it’s your call, Lieutenant.”

  “Do it,” Armstrong ordered. “Everyone clear the area.”

  “I’ll need to drill a small hole and use a probe.” Prager shrugged. “It’s the arming mechanism that matters. There just aren’t that many to choose from.” He looked at Armstrong, then at some of the modern arming devices listed on his CD-ROM. “Let me give it a try.”

  “Nothing stupid,” Armstrong said. “No heroics…”

  “No heroes here,” Prager said enthusiastically as he took out a small electric drill the size of a dentist’s instrument. Prager knew using the drill was the quickest way to disarm the bomb if all went well. If he miscalculated, it was also the fastest way to detonate it.

  Armstrong went outside and told Lee, “We’ve got to check the rest of the ship. How many crew were we looking for?”

  “Twenty-six,” Lee replied. “And maybe two Indonesians.”

  “Get on the PA,” Armstrong said. “Announce that the U.S. Navy is here, and we’re going to be abandoning ship. Tell them we’re coming to find them, and if they can help us by yelling or any the hell other way, start now.” He looked around for BM2 Roach. “Start lowering the lifeboats. We’re going to need them all.” Armstrong turned to another SEAL. “Contact Golf November and tell them we’re aboard the ship and it’s booby-trapped. Tell them we’re going to check the rest of the ship for the crew, and then we’ll abandon ship. We’ll be off in”—he checked his watch quickly, suddenly feeling the time pressure of the explosives on the bridge—“ten minutes.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” he said.

  “And give them a posit from your GPS,” Armstrong added, referring to their handheld Global Positioning System receiver that gave them an exact readout of their latitude and longitude.

  “Yes, sir,” the SEAL replied.

  Armstrong addressed the other SEALs. “We’ll go find the rest of the crew. Be careful. There may be more surprises. There may still be some sleepers aboard—looking to do the suicide thing. Give ’em the opportunity if they’re looking for it. Otherwise, we’re gonna get off this ship before this little present they left us”—he glanced to the deck—“goes bang.” He looked at his watch. “We have no idea how long we have. Could be seconds, or hours. We’re going to be on this ship exactly ten more minutes. After that, I want everybody over the side. And I mean over the side. Don’t walk aft and do it the easy way; jump off and swim away if you’re not off by then.” To Lee,

  “Get the motors going on the boats. We’ll need to get a hundred yards away as soon as we’re in them. I don’t want ’em pulled down if this thing starts to blow.” He ordered another SEAL to override the fire doors within the ship to avoid being trapped. He paused to think. No one spoke. “Let’s go,” he said quietly and headed toward the door.

  The radioman ran to Armstrong’s side. “Sir, it’s the 53,” he said. “They’ve spotted three fast movers. Three cigarette boats heading west, about ten miles from here. They’re asking if they should go check them out.”

  Armstrong shook his head quickly. “No, they’ll need to maintain their thirty-second orbit to come get us. Tell them to relay the position to the E-2.”

  The radioman nodded and relayed the OIC’s message.

  Armstrong led his men down the ladders into the interior of the ship. No sounds at all. No one calling or yelling. He ran down the passageway checking each hatch. He found another body handcuffed to a pipe fitting, slumped over a table, one bullet hole in the side of the head, with an identical bomb on the deck at his feet. Armstrong’s face turned red with rage. He checked the body to see if it was booby-trapped. It wasn’t.

  They ran on, down the ladders and decks, dreading each turn. They finally turned another corner on a dead run. It was the same thing. Crewman, shot once in the head, handcuffed to the bulkhead, a bomb at his feet.

  They ran faster and faster, one location to another, as Armstrong tried to find every crewman, without having to backtrack. Another one. Dead.

  “Let’s get outta here!” Armstrong yelled, suddenly fearing the corpses had been placed just to get them into the bowels of the ship in time for the bombs to explode. “Everyone to the fantail.”

  Armstrong turned and headed that way. As he did, his feet were jarred off the deck for an instant by a huge explosion. It started with a deep boom and then a pounding crack as the sound wave made its way directly into his face in one tenth of a second.

  Armstrong spoke into his throat mike. “Talk to me, Lee, what the hell was that?”

  Lee’s voice came through strained and full of static. “Prager, sir! He must have dicked it up!”

  “Shit!” Armstrong yelled as he ran back the way he had come, the other two SEALs following, having heard the same conversation.

  “Did he try and clip a wire?” he asked, looking around for other mines as he ran.

  “Don’t know, sir!”

  A thought suddenly hit Armstrong. “How do we know he dicked it up? How do we know that wasn’t just the first one to go off on a timer?”

  “I gues
s we don’t, sir!” Lee said, realizing the implications.

  “Everybody out! Everybody out!” Armstrong shouted into his throat mike. “Muster on the fantail! Roach, get on the radio to the 53. Emergency extraction! Emergency extraction!”

  Armstrong continued to run with his offensive handgun in his hand, but it was utterly useless. Armstrong’s mind raced. “Davidson! Get to the fantail. Set up the SPIE rig. Roach, tell the 53 we’re going to extract on the SPIE rig.

  “Listen up!” Armstrong said with forced coolness as he climbed a ladder toward the open deck. “I want everyone hooked onto the SPIE rig in thirty seconds. Drop whatever you’re doing and head to the fantail now!”

  All the SEALs immediately ran toward the fantail.

  The two CH-53s raced from the horizon toward the ship. The fourteen SEALs and the remaining EOD tech gathered on the fantail and looked around, each unconsciously counting the number of SEALs missing as the seconds passed.

  Armstrong was the last to arrive. He watched the CH-53E Super Stallion tear toward them, less than half a mile away. All the other SEALs were hooked up to the SPIE rigs. “Prager buy it?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Yes, sir.” Lee unhooked himself from the SPIE rig and ran back to Armstrong. “Take a look at this,” he said, handing Armstrong something. Armstrong looked around, assessed the situation and checked for the helicopter, then took what Lee was offering. It was a Polaroid photograph.

  “What’s this?” Armstrong asked.

  “Looks like a picture taken on the bridge. I picked it up off the binnacle before the bridge blew. I think they wanted us to find it.”

  Armstrong studied the picture of a crewman with the silencer of an automatic weapon pressed against his ear. Electronically superimposed on the photograph was the date and time of one hour ago.

  Armstrong handed it back frowning, “What kind of weapon is that?”

  “Can’t tell for sure, but it looks like it might be a Chinese Type 64. I’m prepared to bet that’s the captain. I think they took him with them.”