by Mack Maloney
* * *
Smash and the electrician quickly headed back to the CAAC, barely able to navigate the darkened passageways. Along the way, the sailor told Smash that to repair the severed cable would take days, and that was under the best conditions. But until then, they could not access any of the power stored in their batteries, nor could they restart the reactor.
This meant the only electricity available to them would have to come from a handful of small diesel generators that were normally used only for short periods of time when the sub was in port. And even with these generators running, everything aboard the sub, from the air circulators to the ballast tank blow mechanisms to the missile launchers, could only draw about one-tenth their normal power.
Smash and the electrician reached the CAAC where the sailor went about starting the auxiliary generators. Then Smash climbed the conning tower ladder to report the bad news to Beaux.
He opened the hatch to find himself in the midst of a gun battle — with a ferocious storm going on around it. Bullet rounds were ricocheting all over the open bridge. Beaux and Ghost were cowering in one corner, their battle suits drenched, trying to return fire, but failing miserably. Their trouble lights had been shot away. The wind was absolutely howling. The rain was coming down in buckets.
Fort Apache … in a hurricane.
That’s what it looked like to Smash.
Clearly 616 was in a fix. The bridge itself was narrow with a lot of thick, bulky cover around it. Like a parapet on a castle wall, it would be almost impossible to get shot up here if one was properly behind cover. But, it was just as impossible to return effective fire, as doing so made the shooter woefully exposed in all directions. Yet whoever was shooting at them, 616 had to defend their position somehow — that’s what their SEAL training told them to do. And the bridge was the only place they could do it from.
Trying his best to be heard above the appalling conditions, Smash yelled his report across to Beaux. The 616 commander was not happy to hear it.
The boat’s main power cable? Blown in half?
Sabotage …
Beaux immediately suspected the submarine’s crewmen were responsible.
He pulled Smash out onto the bridge and gave him his M4.
“Provide counter fire when needed,” Beaux yelled to him before starting to crawl down the hatchway.
Smash stopped him, though. “But, sir,” he yelled over the gale. “Who are we shooting at?”
Beaux just shook his head and said, “I got no idea.”
* * *
Beaux quickly returned to the CAAC, feeling like his whole body was on fire.
Despite the auxiliary generators being turned on, the control room was much darker than before; even the emergency lighting was beginning to fade. Beaux dropped his battle gear and checked himself for any hidden wounds. Finding none, he tried to get his thoughts straight, but was struck with a sudden wave of claustrophobia. The darkened, tilted boat was throwing off his equilibrium, making him dizzy. It took a couple minutes before the unpleasant feeling finally passed.
His body behaving again, he managed to grill the electrician’s mate about the damaged power line. The sailor confirmed what Smash had told him. The cable had been blown in two, cause unknown.
“Was it done on purpose?” Beaux asked him sharply.
But the sailor didn’t reply. He simply put his flu mask back on and returned to his station.
This convinced Beaux the cable had indeed been cut. But all the ailing sailors on the control deck were under guard before the lights went out. None of them could have sabotaged the power line.
This meant someone laid up in the sick bay had to be responsible.
Beaux marched back down the dark passageway to the infirmary and confronted the corpsman a second time. The medic denied anyone had left the sick bay, saying no one was strong enough to. But Beaux brushed his explanations aside and made a pronouncement instead: Until the person who cut the cable came forward, the corpsman was to withhold all medication from every sailor under his care. If that meant some of them died, then so be it.
The corpsman just shrugged on hearing the edict.
“That’s not a problem, sir,” he said. “Because we ran out of medicine a long time ago.”
* * *
Beaux had to see the damaged cable for himself.
With Monkey still guarding the control room, the SEAL commander made his way through the murky passageways, heading aft toward the power locker. It soon became tough going. It was extremely cramped and trying to walk on a tilt made a bad situation worse. The sub’s emergency lighting was of little help, too, being so dull and lifeless. And while Beaux had a flashlight with him, it started to fade about halfway to his goal, forcing him to shut it off.
At one point, it became so dark, he had to get on his hands and knees and feel his way along the slanted passage. His claustrophobia returned, the fear running through him like a knife. In the midst of the anxiety attack, he heard weird noises all around him. People mumbling, whispering, crying softly — and someone walking close by as if with a peg leg. All this on top of the sound of bullets and raindrops hitting the exposed hull. But anytime he stopped and listened closely, the strange noises went away.
It took a long time to reach the electrical room. When he finally arrived, he turned the flashlight back on and discovered the power line really was blown in two — and the destruction was worse than he’d thought.
He knew no sick sailor had done this. Only a trained saboteur could have destroyed the cable, probably using an explosive charge.
That only meant one thing: Someone else was aboard the sub.
* * *
Beaux tried to rush back to the CAAC, but with his flashlight barely working, he was forced to rely on the feeble emergency lights for illumination. They were more hindrance than help.
He became lost almost immediately, crawling through some areas he knew were not part of the sub’s regular passageways. After what seemed like forever, he felt a door in front of him. Hoping it was the portal to the next section, he opened it to discover it was an equipment locker close to the torpedo room. As the door opened wider, he was touched by something warm and wet.
He tried the flashlight one more time and in its weak glow, he found a body hanging inside the equipment locker, held in place with electrical wire, not three feet away.
Beaux collapsed against the far wall and immediately vomited. He remained there, flashlight off, for a long time. Only when he regained his composure did he turn the failing flashlight back on and direct it back at the bloody body. That’s when he realized it was Elvis.
His throat had been slashed and he had multiple stab wounds in his chest. Most disturbing, his other ear had been cut from his head and stuffed deep into his mouth.
* * *
Beaux scrambled all the way back to the CAAC, tripping and injuring himself many times. When he finally reached the control room, the only SEAL there was Monkey. Ghost and Smash were still up top.
Monkey was startled to see him. Beaux was in a full-blown panic, not the usual state of affairs for the 616 commander.
“What the hell is it now?” Monkey asked him.
But Beaux could barely talk. Monkey made him sit down and only then was he able to croak: “They’re inside the boat. Someone is inside the boat.…”
Monkey immediately checked the clip in his assault rifle. “I gotta go get Elvis then,” he said, starting to run off.
“No!” Beaux yelled, stopping him in his tracks. “Go up top with the others. I’ll take care of things down here.”
Monkey thought the order was puzzling, but he complied. Once he had gone, Beaux’s fear slowly turned to anger. His perfect plan was coming apart at the seams and he needed someone to blame. He scanned the control room, his eyes falling on the young ensign, the last officer remaining on deck.
Beaux took out his .45 automatic, staggered over to the junior officer and put the muzzle against his head.
“Open the secu
rity safe and get me the missile launch keys and codebook, now,” he told him.
The ensign hesitated just for a moment … so Beaux pulled the trigger, shooting him through the temple. The young officer crumpled to the deck.
Then waving his gun in front of him, Beaux looked at the rest of the shocked sailors and said, “Who’s next?”
34
NS Norfolk
0200 hours
It had been twelve hours since Admiral Brown had spoken to Commander Beaux.
Except for trips to the head, Brown had not moved from his seat in the Rubber Room, praying for the phone to ring again.
In the meantime, despite a lot of bad weather, a growing fleet of search planes was scouring the Atlantic and the Caribbean looking for the Wyoming. So, too, was every available U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ship. But so far, there were no results.
Brown had even arranged to have some spy satellites drawn away from other missions to join in the search, but again, he knew what they were up against. U.S. subs were so quiet, they were almost impossible to detect while underway. And the experts in the Rubber Room were convinced the Wyoming was underway.
What Fleet Forces Command faced now was waiting for whatever supplies the sub still had on board to run out, forcing the hijackers to reveal themselves. But that could still take days, even a week or more. And in his previous phone call Beaux had indicated that whatever was going to happen, was not going to take that long.
Everyone with a need to know had been briefed on the Wyoming problem, right up to the White House. But this was just one more crisis on the President’s plate. There were still dangerous situations ongoing in North Korea, in Iran and on the India-Pakistan border, all of them involving rogue elements trying to get control of nuclear weapons. When word of the Wyoming’s seizure reached the White House Situation Room, only one definitive question came back: Is this connected to the other three crises? Brown had to reply that no, he didn’t believe so. So the White House basically replied: “Keep us apprised, but solve it on your own. We’ve got our hands full already.”
After that, an idea was floated around the Rubber Room that maybe the best way out of the dilemma was to quietly agree to the hijackers’ demands. Pay them the money, get the sub and the crew back, then deal with the fallout later. After all, that’s how the majority of Somali hijackings were resolved.
As time dragged on, opposition to this idea became less and less.
* * *
The Rubber Room had already gone through numerous pots of coffee and two deliveries of food that no one bothered to eat. It was now 2 A.M. and, resigned to a long stay, Brown was about to request some cots be brought to the basement office when his phone rang.
The caller ID indicated it was coming in on Narrowband IP.
It was Beaux.
The FBI men started their recorders. The other experts gathered around, pens and paper at the ready. The room became absolutely quiet.
Brown answered the phone.
Beaux’s opening comment was: “I thought we had a deal, Admiral…”
Brown was thrown for a moment. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he replied.
“I told you what would happen if you sent any special ops teams against us,” Beaux said. “That was the agreement.”
But Brown really didn’t know what Beaux was talking about. He looked at the gang of experts and shrugged. They all shrugged back. The Navy had no idea where the sub was. How could they send any special ops units against them?
“I assure you, Commander,” Brown said, “we have not dispatched any special operations forces anywhere. How could we? We don’t know where you are.”
“I don’t believe you, Admiral,” Beaux shot back. “One of my men has been killed already, someone set off a bomb inside the boat, and we’re in the middle of a God damned firefight outside. These aren’t freaking ghosts doing these things. So you must know where we are!”
The people in the Rubber Room were more confused than ever. A SEAL had been killed? A bomb had gone off on the sub? Gun battles outside? Where the hell were these guys?
Beaux started coughing, and didn’t stop for ten long seconds. This was noted by the hostage experts. Finally, he spoke again. “I’ll be honest with you, Admiral. Before all this started I would never have fired these nuclear missiles — at my own country or anyone else’s. But I can’t guarantee that anymore.”
Brown said, “But to do that, you need the launch codes.”
Beaux replied, short of breath, “I have the codes and the launch keys—and the weapons officer’s firing mechanism. And after some persuasion, I managed to convince one of the crew members to show me how it all works.”
There was another long coughing spell. A FBI man put a note in front of Brown. It read: “He’s sick. Probably the flu.”
Beaux recovered and went on: “Now, let’s stop playing games. In an effort to hurry this thing up, we might be willing to adjust our demands. We can come down to fifty million dollars for our fee, and we’d be willing to split any profits from any TV broadcast or movie production with a charity, possibly for the families of people killed in unfortunate sinkings earlier. But we still insist on total immunity from prosecution.”
Another FBI agent passed a note to Brown. “He’s bending. Keep him talking.”
But then those in the Rubber Room heard a loud noise coming from the other end of the phone. Something had just happened aboard the sub.
Beaux’s tone changed instantly. “If you say there are no Special Forces guys around us, what the fuck do you think that was?”
More sounds in the background. Gunfire — and explosions.
Then Beaux said, “Back these guys off, Admiral! I’ll fire these goddamn missiles and maybe I’ll start shooting sailors, too. Call off your special ops guys or else!”
And with that, Beaux hung up.
Brown just looked around the room at a dozen stunned, bewildered faces.
“Who the hell are they fighting?” one of the FBI men asked. “And where?”
At that moment, one of Brown’s aides came into the room. He had a freshly burned DVD in hand.
“You should see this, sir,” he said. “Everyone here should.”
He fed the DVD into one of the computers, and they were soon looking at aerial footage taken above the unmistakably clear waters of the Caribbean.
“We just got this from our drone unit,” the aide explained. “It was shot yesterday. It shows a special ops team working on Operation Caribe recovering the body of one of their members. Apparently Team 616 killed this guy before they took over the Wyoming.”
The footage, cloudy, shaky, and in black and white, showed a small helicopter diving down to the surface of the water to pick up what appeared to be a drowning victim. The helicopter then fired on two vessels nearby, identified in the video footage as “Abandoned by hijacking suspects.” Then the video ended.
“What special ops team are we talking about?” Brown asked the aide.
“They’re private contractors,” the man replied. “Those Team Whiskey guys? You know, the whole ex-Delta Tora Bora thing?”
Brown felt his heart sink to the floor. He knew all about Team Whiskey from his contacts in ONI.
“Those guys are crazy,” he moaned. “They’ve been off the reservation for years and were only called back because we were all so shorthanded on this Caribe thing. But they’re like the freaking Band of Brothers. If these SEALs killed one of them, they’ll be relentless in getting their revenge.”
“So these Whiskey guys probably know where the SEALs are?…” one of the FBI men asked.
Brown nodded grimly. “They must. But believe me, from what I know about them, they’re not going to call and tell us. If one of them has been whacked, they’ll want their own pound of flesh, no matter what.”
The FBI man said, “Are you saying that wherever the hell they are, this Whiskey unit would risk a nuke launch just to get payback?”
Brown thought for a long momen
t, worry lines creasing his face.
Finally he said, “We’d be crazy to bet against it.”
PART SIX
The End of Whiskey Justice
35
Team Whiskey knew the SEALs would come to Big Hole Cay.
It was the final piece of the puzzle. The last bit of mystery to fall in place.
The SEAL team’s perplexing behavior in the last few months all made sense now. Sneaking in and out of the Bahamas, cruising these strange waters in the dead of night. All the planning, the subterfuge, the machinations. The murders. All of it, just to make this weird little island the center of their universe.
Their plan was simple. They’d stalked then hijacked the Wyoming, and instead of hiding in the ocean where they knew they would eventually have to surface and be spotted, they found this place and hid it here, among the outer islands of the Abaco Bahamas, where no one would ever think to look for it.
Except Whiskey.
* * *
The team was here long before the sub arrived — and in that time they’d come up with a plan of their own.
It wouldn’t be easy. There would be hurdles. Their sat phones were fading, a combination of weak batteries and the massive oncoming storm. No one in the team had slept or eaten in almost two days, meaning they were all running on pure adrenaline. And their copters were so low on fuel, they barely had thirty minutes flying time left between them. Maybe just enough to go for help, but not much more.
But that was OK — Whiskey didn’t want any help. It would have taken hours to get anyone to believe their story anyway, and they had no desire to wend their way through the bureaucratic minefield of U.S. military intelligence. They’d just gone through that bullshit exercise with The Three Kings. They weren’t about to make that mistake again.
No, this one they wanted to do themselves. On this little island, out in the middle of nowhere. With their limited resources, no sleep, in the middle of a hurricane.
They wanted to do it this way because, if their plan worked, they’d be able to spring a trap that even the uber-devious 616 would find impossible to get out of.
