by Mack Maloney
But in a split second, Nolan recalled how it was Crash who’d saved Twitch from the rough seas off an Indonesian island after Twitch had just completed his dangerous undercover mission against Zeek the Pirate. It was also Crash who had pulled Twitch out of the hellhole of the Walter Reed Army Hospital, just seconds before Twitch was about to take his own life.
Maybe this was Twitch’s way of finally paying Crash back.
Nolan maneuvered the copter down far enough so Harry and the Senegals could grab Twitch and Crash and drag them into the passenger compartment. Twitch never missed a beat. He continued giving Crash mouth to mouth, even though his colleague’s face was blue and his eyes had rolled back into his head.
Whether his own fragile mental state had finally caused him to snap, or he just refused to give up on a friend who never gave up on him, Twitch never broke the rhythm of blowing into Crash’s mouth, stopping, giving him a series of chest compressions, and then listening for a breath, before starting all over again.
Nolan pulled up off the water and put them in a slow orbit about 200 feet high. He was devastated; they all were. But on his mind at the moment was just giving Twitch a respectful amount of time before signaling the Senegals to gently pull him away and convince him that their friend was really gone.
So Nolan orbited for a minute, during which Twitch did not slow his frantic pace one bit.
Finally, Nolan nodded to the Senegals, who quietly urged Twitch to stop.
But Twitch pushed them away.
Another half-minute went by, Nolan did a few more orbits, and the Senegals tried again.
But again, Twitch resisted—with a little more anger this time.
The Senegals. They immediately tried again—and were startled when Twitch pulled out his service revolver and aimed it at them.
“No fucking way I’m giving up!” he screamed at them.
“It’s over, Twitch!” Nolan yelled back at him.
But Twitch just ignored him and kept up with the heartbreaking resuscitation procedure.
Nolan was at a loss what to do.
He yelled back at Twitch again—gave him a direct order, but again was ignored.
“Your friend is dead!” one of the Senegals finally yelled in Twitch’s ear. “Let him go peacefully.”
That’s when Twitch finally did stop, but only long enough to say, in perfect French, which Nolan had never heard him speak before: “Nous sommes Whiskey. On ne mort pas!”
We are Whiskey. No one dies.
But he was wrong.
Crash was dead.
And it was at that moment that Twitch finally realized it. He just fell away from the body and buried his head in his hands. Harry took off his jacket and used it to cover Crash’s face.
They would never know exactly how Crash drowned, how he got out of the sub’s lock-out chamber, or how the flooded SDV became detached from the Wyoming.
But it didn’t make any difference. At least not to Nolan.
He turned the helicopter sharply and screamed, “Someone’s going to pay for this!”
Then he lined up the SDV mini-sub within his gun sights and opened up with the copter’s twin 50s. The two long streams of bullets tore into the vessel with fiery accuracy, blowing it to pieces.
Then the Sea Shadow appeared in his sights. He opened up on it, too. It took only a five-second burst before the hundred-million-dollar ship blew up, scattering debris for hundreds of feet in all directions.
Then Nolan turned again, this time toward the north, angrily pushing his throttle to full forward.
Behind him, on the horizon, a line of black swirling clouds was growing steadily.
Another storm was coming.
32
Naval Command Center
Norfolk, Virginia
ADMIRAL J.L. BROWN sat in front of the communications console, nervous, mouth dry, barely able to stay still.
He was in a large, spare, windowless office known as the Rubber Room. Located in the basement of the main administration building for the vast NS Norfolk complex, it was the nickname for the base’s blast-proof intelligence bunker. The occupants of the floors above him—the hundreds of officers, sailors and civilians of the Fleet Forces Command—were responsible for watching over all U.S. Navy ships operating between America’s East Coast and the Indian Ocean.
That number included roughly half of the country’s forty-plus nuclear submarines.
And now one of them was missing.
* * *
BROWN WAS FLEET Forces Command’s top security officer. In his early sixties, with the look of a college English professor, he was charged with making sure all the ships under NS Norfolk’s control stayed safe while at sea and were protected whenever they were in port.
Arriving at work shortly after 0900 hours, Brown learned there’d been a disturbance on the submarine USS Wyoming. The first report said a sailor on board had either gone berserk or had tried to lead some kind of insurrection. Brown knew the Wyoming had made an unscheduled stop at Gitmo Bay the day before to offload about two-thirds of its crew due to extreme medical issues. At first he was sure this trouble report was related to the sub’s unusual situation and had nothing to do with the ongoing, highly classified Operation Caribe.
The good news, though, learned in a follow-up report, was that the unpleasantness aboard the Wyoming had been quelled almost immediately. This was thanks to the quick intervention of a SEAL team that had gained entry to the sub by enacting a new, still obscure security drill known as Plan 6S-S.
Even Brown had to go to his operations codebook to see what Plan 6S-S was all about. But at that moment, he was grateful that it had worked. And he was confident that the Navy could keep the whole incident under wraps until the inevitable follow-up investigation.
In fact, the first call Brown made after hearing about the SEAL team’s heroics was to the Navy Personnel Office at the Pentagon, asking how fast he could propose the SEALs for some kind of commendation.
But then, shortly before noon, Brown received an unexpected FedEx package. Inside, he found some disturbing video footage, apparently shot by the same SEAL team that had boarded the Wyoming. It showed them doing things in connection with Operation Caribe that they simply had no business doing. Boarding a Russian container ship in Havana Harbor. Intercepting a Yemeni LNG carrier off the coast of Florida. Surreptitiously going aboard the gigantic cruise liner, the Queen of the Seas.
At the end of the footage was a message, typed on a piece of yellow classified action paper that read: “Now you know what we can do.”
That’s when Admiral Brown realized something might still be wrong aboard the USS Wyoming.
* * *
NS NORFOLK HAD been trying to establish communications with the Wyoming most of the morning. But other than that one brief message, sent by the SEAL team stating that the problem had been resolved, there had been nothing else.
Then, at exactly noon, a communiqué from the sub arrived via a VLF text message. It asked if Admiral Brown wanted to speak to the SEAL team leader by sat phone. A reply message was quickly sent to the sub confirming Brown was standing by and providing the number of his personal secure phone.
That’s why Brown was now in the Rubber Room. He was anxiously awaiting the call from the sub.
It came at 1400 hours. Brown was amazed the communication line was so clear. He knew he was talking over the Wyoming’s new Narrowband IP phone system, but it sounded like he was talking to someone in the next room.
The caller identified himself as Seal Team 616 leader, Commander Dogg Beaux. He explained that he was speaking from the Wyoming’s CAAC, the control and attack center, and transmitting with help from the sub’s communication specialist.
Brown bluntly asked the condition of the submarine.
“Everything is fine, sir,” was Beaux’s reply. His voice was calm, polite. “No problems at all.”
“Are you able to continue to King’s Bay?” Brown asked him.
“We are,”
came the reply.
Brown was immediately relieved. “It’s probably best not to discuss the ‘internal situation’ until then, is it?” he asked.
But there was no reply to this.
“When do you expect to arrive in King’s Bay?” Brown went on.
There was a short silence. Then Commander Beaux spoke again: “We will arrive after a few requests of ours are met.”
Brown chuckled loud enough to be heard over the phone. It was common practice when one branch of the Navy did a favor for another, that an exchange of something such as ice cream was obligatory.
“How much Rocky Road do you and your men want?” Brown asked, hoping it was that simple.
But there was another brief silence.
Then Commander Beaux replied, “About a hundred million dollars worth should do it.”
* * *
THE CONVERSATION FOR the next five minutes was one-sided and bizarre.
Commander Beaux did all the talking. He explained, calmly and rationally, that the Wyoming was in his hands temporarily and that he and his men had seized it to prove a point: A U.S. Navy nuclear sub could be hijacked by real pirates with just a little know-how and the right equipment. Beaux said his team was looking at the situation as an opportunity, a “teachable moment”—a way the Navy could learn how to prevent a real submarine hijacking. And their payment for providing this service would be $100 million, plus full immunity from prosecution, as well as exclusive rights to any TV or movie deals resulting from their actions. Beaux insisted the price was a bargain. In return, his team would give back the sub, release the crew and tell Naval Command exactly how they did it. At that point, they would become private contractors for the Navy, to which Beaux added that he knew how the Navy had no problem hiring ex-special ops guys these days.
But then Beaux went on to tell Brown that all of the sub’s defensive systems were operating, and he claimed he would be able to see and hear everything Naval Command did regarding the situation. He said he could detect any U.S. Navy search aircraft that might be dispatched to look for them. He also stated that, while he considered playing a little cat and mouse with the Navy all part of the exercise, if he discovered any special ops teams were activated, or called back to deal with him, he would have to escalate the matter.
With all this in mind, he suggested the admiral promptly reach a decision on his demands.
Brown was stunned. Despite all the bullshit and blather, the fact was the Wyoming had been taken over and was being held for ransom, no different from what the Somali pirates were doing a half a world away.
So the threat of a pirate action off the U.S. East Coast had been real, he thought. It’s just that the phantom pirates were some of the Navy’s own.
Brown was not alone in the Rubber Room. There were a dozen people with him, doing their best to stay quiet and undetected. They were from NCIS, the JAG’s office and the FBI. Most notable for their absence was anyone from ONI.
The two FBI men had been rushed up from Operation Caribe’s Land Mission office in Miami in anticipation of the hijackers getting in touch with NS Norfolk. Upon arriving, they’d told Brown that three ships connected to Operation Caribe had been torpedoed that morning in the Bahamas and that the hijacking of the Wyoming was most likely a related event. This only ratcheted up the tension in the Rubber Room.
The FBI agents were experts in hostage negotiations, and all during Brown’s conversation with Commander Beaux, they kept slipping him notes containing messages such as Keep him talking. Keep him on the line. Get him to talk about his family.
And, of course, the entire exchange was being recorded and piped through a speaker phone. All this so everyone in the Rubber Room could do their best to measure the gravity of the situation and listen for any clues that might resolve it.
Noises detected in the background on Beaux’s side of the conversation were key. The voices of the crew, what machinery was running and what was not. These things could tell a lot about conditions aboard the sub.
After listening in for a few minutes and hearing a lot of background clatter in between Beaux’s sound bites, one naval officer scribbled a note to Brown that read: “The sub is definitely submerged and underway.”
To which Brown scribbled back that, despite Beaux’s warning, every available antisubmarine asset on the East Coast should start looking for the Wyoming immediately.
But everyone in the Rubber Room also knew finding the sub would be a tall order. The U.S. Navy had spent billions of dollars over the years making its nuclear submarines super quiet. Specialized rubber gaskets separated every one of the millions of nuts and bolts aboard every sub. Every moving part within every machine on board was coated with top-secret sound-damping sealants, rendering them silent. Every member of the crew wore special sneakers. Hundreds of sensors inside and outside the boat’s hull made sure everything on the sub stayed quiet. U.S. subs were designed to fool the anti-submarine forces of Russia and China at the very least. They were built so well that even U.S. forces would have a hard time locating one. A U.S. sub on the loose could hide just about anywhere in the millions of square miles of ocean and, because it was nuclear powered, it could stay under water for weeks or even months at a time, if necessary.
But, as Brown finally said to Beaux: “You know we’ll find you eventually. Your supplies are already low, you’ll need food at some point and you’ll have to surface. What happens then?”
“I intend to get this done way before that,” was Beaux’s enigmatic reply. “So, let’s all profit from this situation. Because if we go down that negative path and draw this thing out, the circumstances could be dire.”
The experts were now silently pleading with Brown to keep Beaux on the line. But Beaux was too smart for that.
“Can you define ‘dire’ for me, commander?” Brown asked him. “Are you thinking of harming the crew, things of that nature?”
Beaux never lost his cool. “The only difference between this sub and the majority of the Navy’s other ballistic boats,” he said, “is that we only have twenty-two Trident missiles on board and the rest have twenty-four.”
With that, Beaux ended the conversation.
But not necessarily the transmission.
Aboard the Wyoming
“ARE YOU SURE they can still hear us?” Beaux whispered to the sub’s communications specialist.
“I’m sure they can,” the sailor replied quietly. He pointed to the switch on his communications console that showed the Narrowband IP’s phone line to NS Norfolk was still open.
Beaux said to the sailor: “Stand by.”
There were about twenty other crewmen crowded on the sub’s control deck. Each was at his station or watching over someone performing their duties. Another twenty or so sailors were being held in the passageway nearby. All of them were under the eye of a SEAL holding a gun.
Just as they had been during Beaux’s phone conversation, the two sailors who were working the sub’s steering yokes nearby were verbally counting out their depth numbers: “We are at nine hundred feet and holding steady…”
The helmsman was calling out his numbers: “Seventeen knots, true…”
The electrical officer was checking his equipment and announcing minor fluctuations in power. Sonar men were calling out contacts: “Range—three miles off port.” The electronic warfare officer was keeping track of his equipment, as was the weapons officer. In effect, more than a half-dozen conversations were going on at once, the normal chatter of a submarine making its way through the ocean depths.
Through it all, Beaux remained seated at the communications suite. He had a prepared script in front of him.
It contained all the talking points he’d wanted to get across to NS Norfolk: The sub was under his control. This was a teachable moment. The payment demand. The circumstances of escalation. The blanket immunity and the worldwide TV and movie rights.
He put a check mark next to all these things.
Unchecked, though, was
a section that began with: “If you doubt our resolve, look for three holes in Blue Moon Bay.”
Beaux scratched out the comment. “Better I left that unsaid,” he whispered to himself.
Beneath it was another section left unchecked. It read, “We regret the loss of Commander Shepherd.”
He crossed out that section, too, as well as one that read, “We regret the loss of the torpedo officer.”
He looked at his watch. The Narrowband IP phone line had been open without any direct communication from him for about a minute. He decided that was enough. He nodded to the communications specialist, who reached over and flipped the switch, finally ending the transmission.
Ghost was standing nearby, M4 assault rifle in hand. Beaux looked up at him and nodded.
Ghost yelled, “All quiet!”
Every sailor at his station immediately stopped what he was doing. Some slumped forward in their seats. Others simply collapsed.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Beaux said, not bothering to look up from his notes. “Your group performance was worthy of an Oscar.”
Beaux then said to Elvis, “Check around up top, will you? We haven’t done that in a while.”
Elvis walked past the sub’s periscope and out of the control room altogether. He climbed the ladder up through the sub’s massive conning tower to the bridge above. He stopped before he reached the main hatch, though. What was the last depth reading that had been called out? Nine hundred feet below the surface? And what had the helmsmen said was their speed? Seventeen knots?
Elvis smiled and finally opened the main hatch. Not a drop of water came in on him.
He poked his head outside—and felt only the warm breeze on his face.
What he saw was not the rolling waves of the Atlantic, but many overhanging branches belonging to dozens of strangler fig trees. And around him were the waters of a large rectangular lake, much of it hidden from view by these same dangling tree branches, suggesting a thick Louisiana bayou. The underside of the sub was resting on the lake’s smooth, muddy bottom. The lake water covered the remainder of the hull to a point about five feet up to the conning tower, and again, the overhanging strangler fig branches hid the rest.
