by Dale Brown
They were about to wake up inside a very bad dream.
The fishing boats seemed oblivious as well. Meanwhile, the Whiplash Ospreys hovered some thirty miles to the south, staying just above the waves so they were completely invisible to the minesweeper’s radar. It would take them roughly ten minutes to get to the merchant ship, either to pick up the team or to support it with their chain guns if things got difficult.
Everything in place, thought Turk. Let’s get this show going.
DANNY FLARED AS he hit the deck, then pulled the toggle to release the parachute. In nearly the same motion he grabbed the SCAR rifle out of its Velcroed scabbard on his chest. The rifle was no different than the weapon issued to other U.S. special ops troops, with one exception: its sights interfaced with Danny’s helmet system.
He was on the starboard side of the deck, the high end of the ship, five feet from a door on the superstructure that led to the compartments below. He ran to the door without waiting for the rest of the team; once through, he began descending the stairlike metal ladder to the corridor that would take him to the engine room.
The ship was completely dark. If there was electricity, it wasn’t working here.
“Behind you, Colonel,” said Tony “Two-Fingers” Dalton, coming down the ladder.
“Dead ahead,” said Danny, running to the second ladder, which would take them to a large, presumably empty area immediately forward of the engine compartment. As he started down, he caught himself—there were no steps.
“Stairs are gone,” he told Dalton. Grabbing the side railing, he sidestepped his way down to a crosswalk that ran across the width of the hold. The decking was still there, but so rusted that Danny nearly fell through on his first step. He grabbed hold of the railing there, then decided it would be much easier simply to jump down to the deck below, some eight feet away.
“Catwalk’s gone,” he said, tacking his gun to his vest before going over the side. He dangled off the rail, then let himself drop. He landed badly, rolling over onto his back.
“Coming down,” said Dalton.
Danny scrambled to his feet and stepped out of the way. As Dalton landed—two feet, perfect balance—he started toward the stern end of the compartment, heading for an opening into the rear compartment.
The trooper tapped Danny’s shoulder as he ran. “I’ll take point, sir.” He passed in front of him before Danny could object.
The waterproof hatchway on the bulkhead was wide open. A dim yellow light shone at the far end, beyond the array of engines. A few inches of water lapped across the deck.
Dalton turned left, out of Danny’s view. Another Whiplasher, Baby Joe Morgan, whispered over the radio circuit that he was starting down behind them.
“We’re in the engine room,” Danny told him. “Searching. Nothing obvious yet.”
He had just reached the decrepit boiler when a shout went up nearby. Danny leapt forward, turning the corner, finger on the trigger.
“Las manos en alto!” yelled Dalton, struggling with his Spanish. “Put your hands up. All of you!”
The beam from the flashlight on Dalton’s wrist played over three men sleeping in blankets on a platform built over the machinery.
“Rendirse,” said Dalton, trying to tell them to surrender. “Give up!”
Danny took over. The smart helmet had a language translation program built in, but his Spanish was more than adequate enough to tell them what he wanted them to do.
His rifle didn’t hurt either. By the time Morgan joined them, the three men had been trussed with flex cuffs and were sitting against the hull. To say that they looked confused would be an understatement.
Danny was confused as well. This was the area the analysts thought most likely to be used as the conspirators’ control center. Not only were there no computers or other electronic gear of any type, the three men were wearing Filipino uniform tops. While that didn’t necessarily mean anything—anyone could put a green shirt on over dirty shorts—they certainly didn’t look like tech wizards either.
Disheveled and dispirited soldiers, maybe. They kept asking what was going on, in English as well as Spanish, and one of the men said loudly that the Philippines were allies with America and Danny had better be careful or “our American brothers will keel you when they come.”
“I’m American,” Danny told them. “We’ll sort it all out in a minute. Just do what we say for now and everything will be fine. We’re not going to hurt you, but we’re not taking chances either.”
Danny told Dalton and Morgan to take the prisoners topside, where Grisif, Chris Bulgaria, and Ivan Dillon had already secured the two men who’d been on guard. He headed to join the others in what they believed was the Filipinos’ bunking area near the bow.
“Boston, what’s the situation?”
“Closed door,” said Boston. “I’m going to blow it.”
“Not too much,” warned Danny. “Damned ship’s falling apart. One charge may tear it to pieces.”
He heard the muffled explosion a few seconds later. The rest of the Filipino contingent—which only consisted of a single man—was in the compartment, sleeping peacefully despite the commotion. In fact, he didn’t even react to the boom that took out the door. The reason was obvious as soon as anyone entered the compartment—it smelled like formaldehyde, a result of the burn-off from the homemade still that dominated the center of the compartment.
Roused to semiconsciousness, the man was taken above, to join the other prisoners. Boston and Achmoody began questioning the Filipinos while the rest of the team proceeded to search the ship.
Danny was making his way up into the superstructure when Breanna hailed him from the Cube.
“What’s your situation?” she asked.
“I have no command center here, no computers, no nothing,” he told her. “We’re searching.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Negative. Six Filipinos. Every one of them was asleep when we landed. Including the people who were supposed to be on watch.”
“Have you questioned them?”
“About to.”
“Don’t forget, you have a Chinese warship nearby.”
“I’m not about to forget that.”
“All right. We’re watching.”
Danny continued into the superstructure. The analysts had guessed it would be in a state of advanced decay, and they were correct. Huge flakes of metal and pieces of broken bulkheads littered Danny’s path as he made his way to the bridge.
The space that had been the bridge was now used only as a lookout area, a fact attested to by a pair of binoculars hanging near the entrance. The navigation and communications gear had been stripped from the ship years before; a handful of wires hung forlornly from the panel, as if longing for their old companions. The ship’s wheel was gone, as were most of the metal panels that had once held other controls. Even some of the boards that made up the deck had been lifted out, probably to be used as fuel by the men stationed here.
Danny saw no reason to test the jigsaw puzzle of rotted wood and rusted metal that formed a scrabblelike walkway across the space. He leaned in far enough to scan the compartment immediately behind the bridge—the bulkhead there had rusted into nothingness—and once assured that it was completely empty, backtracked to continue hunting through the rest of the ship’s superstructure.
“Colonel, we got one of the fishing boats moving,” said Turk from the Tigershark. “It’s moving parallel to the reef, not getting any closer, but I think it’s trying to get a view of what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Turk. Keep an eye on it.”
“Roger that.”
Dalton and Morgan had come up and were working their way through the compartments in the superstructure. Danny decided to go back and see how Boston and Achmoody were getting on with the Filipinos.
WHEN DANNY FREAH had drawn up the plan, he’d predicted that the boarding team would be discovered by the Chinese fishing boats or the minesweeper within thirty se
conds of landing. Things were going much better than that: they’d been on the ship for more than five minutes before the system told Turk that one of the first fishing boats was starting to move.
“Track surface target one,” Turk directed the computer. “Network, scan for communications.”
“Null set,” responded the computer.
It was telling him that the Whiplash network, which was tied into the elint data from the Global Hawk above, was not picking up any transmissions from the fishing boat. There were several possible reasons for this, beginning with the most likely: the fishing boat wasn’t using its radio. But it was also possible that the boat was using an extremely sophisticated low-powered radio too weak and too far from the Global Hawk for the signal to be detected.
The fishing boat was clearly curious. It sailed parallel to the merchant ship, passing the stern, then slowed and turned back in the direction it had come. After passing the beached vessel once more, it made another turn and headed in closer.
“Danny, that fishing boat is taking a real interest,” Turk told Freah. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just monitor it. Let me know if something changes.”
THE FIRST TWO team members to land had carried down what looked like lightweight machine guns with extra high stilts. These were actually fully automated gunbots, called “mechs” by the team, that could be guided by remote control and used for extra firepower. While some were capable of fully autonomous operation—they could be preprogrammed to guard a base perimeter and fire at anything coming toward them—in this case they were controlled by the troopers who carried them, or Danny himself through an override. He checked on both, making sure they could repel any boarders from the fishing boats, then ran up to Boston and the captured Filipinos.
“What do they know?” Danny asked.
“Nothing,” said Boston with disgust. “The guys on duty were drunk and all passed out.”
“Drunk?”
“They cook up some moonshine and that’s how they spend their days.”
“Great.”
“Probably can’t blame them. Nothing to do on this tub but wait for the rust to make it collapse.”
“What about the others?”
“Working on it. They claim to know nothing.”
“We have to get them talking. Our friends out there are taking an interest.”
Danny picked one of the captive Filipinos nearby and squatted down in front of him, asking in Spanish how many people were aboard.
“I can speak English,” said the man. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because we’re looking for people who have stolen computer material and other technology from the U.S.,” said Danny, phrasing the situation as diplomatically as possible. “They’re also helping rebels in Malaysia, which is against a UN resolution. That resolution authorizes me to use force to stop them.”
“And what does that have to do with us?”
“They have a base here,” said Danny.
“Who? Where?”
“They’re technical experts,” said Danny.
“What? We have been here a full month and we are the only ones here.”
“No one else?”
The man gave him a confused look. Before Danny could rephrase the question, Melissa Grisif broke in on the team radio.
“Colonel, I found a hatchway off the forward cargo compartment. You’re going to want to look at this, sir.”
“On my way.” Danny looked over at Achmoody and pointed to the Filipino marine. “Talk to this guy.”
Clambering down the steps to the hold, Danny kept slipping on the wet rails. There were two inches of water where the ladder met the deck planks; by the time he walked back to where Grisif was waiting, the water came nearly to his knees.
“It looks like the kind of hatchway you’d see on a submarine,” she told him, pointing to the round wheel in front of her.
“You try opening it?” Danny asked.
“Yes, but it’s locked in place,” she said. “At first I thought it was welded or rusted, but there’s a little movement when you turn the wheel, and I think it’s hitting a bar or something on the other side.”
Danny bent down to take a look.
“Get some plastic explosive down here,” he told her. “Let’s blow it open.”
7
Over the South China Sea
COWBOY LOCKED ON both targets, then pressed the mike button.
“Basher One, request permission to fire.”
“Do it!” said Greenstreet.
Four seconds later a pair of AMRAAMs dropped from the F-35’s internal bay. The air-to-air semiactive radar missiles launched toward the pair of enemy UAVs, accelerating to a speed of Mach 4.
When they set out, the AMRAAMs used the radar in the F-35 to locate and fly toward their targets. But as they got closer, they switched to their own onboard radars. A few seconds after that happened, the UAVs made sharp turns into the path of the missiles, then disappeared from Cowboy’s screen.
His first thought was that the AMRAAMs had hit them. But in fact they were still several miles from their targets. They’d missed, and failing to find the drones as they maneuvered, blew themselves up a few moments later.
“Basher One—Cap, I lost the contacts,” radioed Cowboy. “Missiles just self-destructed.”
“They must be jamming the radars,” said Colonel Greenstreet.
“No indication.”
Cowboy turned his aircraft north, heading in the direction the UAVs had been going when they disappeared from his radar.
“Basher Two to Whiplash Tigershark.”
“This is Shark. Go ahead, Two.”
“I need some quarterbacking. Just locked up and shot two missiles at the UAVs. The aircraft disappeared from the screens before the missiles got close enough to detonate.”
“Are they jamming you?”
“If they are, we can’t pick it up. I can’t find the UAVs,” Cowboy added. “Can you see them on your screens?”
“Stand by.”
A few moments later Turk came back on line.
“Our tech guys think they’re using a selective jammer to mimic your waves,” said Turk. “I still have the aircraft on the Sabre long-range scan—they’re flying almost perpendicular to your course, forty miles south.”
Turk gave him a heading and then GPS readings that could get Cowboy into the area for an intercept.
“How do I deal with them?”
“Close on them. They can only hit certain wavelengths and they need to be picking up your signal steadily. It might help to keep changing the scan. The technique pumps out something like an echo of your signal. Eventually, they won’t be able to keep up.”
Cowboy wondered when eventually was. He got his answer a few seconds later, as the UAVs popped back onto his screen. They were coming head-on toward him, less than a minute away.
8
The South China Sea, north of Malaysia
TURK STUDIED THE feed from Sabre Three, trying to work out a strategy for Cowboy and Greenstreet.
“See if you can take them north toward the Sabres,” Turk told Cowboy. “Get them closer to the Sabres so if they try that radar trick again I’ll be able to see what’s going on and help. The Sabres need another ten minutes or so to get into the fight.”
“Roger that,” said Cowboy.
“Think of them as MiGs with only cannons left,” added Turk. “They can outturn you, and probably outaccelerate for a small distance. So don’t let them get behind you.”
“We’re trying to climb over them,” said Cowboy.
“Might work. Once they get closer I may be able to see what tactics they’re following. They’re pretty straightforward now.”
“Roger that.”
Turk glanced back at his main screen, looking below at the fishing boat that was moving. A light flashed at its bow.
Another light blinked, this one on the third fishing boat. Then a light on the fifth began to blink.
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That’s weird, thought Turk.
Then he realized what was happening—the little boats were communicating via signal lamps.
And they weren’t just talking among themselves. The minesweeper had begun throwing off her slumber. Smoke poured from the stack and the ship began moving toward the island.
“Colonel Freah, the minesweeper’s moving,” radioed Turk. “The fishing boats are signaling each other with lights.”
“Tell me when he’s within nine miles,” snapped Danny. “That’s the range of his biggest gun.”
“Not going to take too long, Colonel.”
“Noted.”
DANNY FREAH TAPPED the back of his helmet to end the radio call.
“Out of the compartment,” he told the others, fixing the timer on the plastic explosive. “Go!”
He set it for fifteen seconds, then scrambled back to the ladder. He reached the low bulkhead where the others were waiting just as the charge went off.
Though the explosive had been relatively small, the entire ship shook with it. The deck beneath Danny’s legs began to wobble; for a moment he thought it would give way.
“Let’s go,” said Grisif, jumping up. Eddie Guzman, who’d brought the explosives down, followed, leaving Danny temporarily behind.
He caught up to them on the ladder. Water oozed from a fresh crack in the deck ten feet from the landing; it looked as if a giant had tried to fold the ship and given up.
The hatchway had blown open. Wrist lights showing the way, Danny and the others waded over to it. The hatch opened to a space between the compartment bulkhead and the hull; a ladder leading downward sat directly below it.
“I’ll check it out,” said Guzman.
Danny stepped back to give him room, then reached to turn the radio back on. “Turk, what’s with the minesweeper?” he asked.
“Still coming toward you. The fishing boats are moving back,” added the pilot.
Not good, thought Danny. They’re getting out of the line of fire.
9
