Mason nodded also, though he was slower and more reluctant to respond than Olsen. ‘Sorry Ellen,’ he said. ‘I guess it’s just the pressure getting to us.’
Abrams looked around the table. ‘We’re all under pressure,’ she said. ‘I understand that. But unfortunately, that’s the job, and we’ve brought it on ourselves. The American people expect a decision, they expect us to act, and we will sit here and work things out until a decision is reached. Do I make myself clear?’
There was a murmuring of acceptance around the huge conference table, and Abrams nodded. ‘Good. Now, my own gut instinct is to move in immediately, as soon as all our pieces are in position – which won’t be until tomorrow morning. So you’ve got until then to convince me,’ she said, eyeing Mason and Richards. ‘If you think diplomacy and negotiation is the answer, fine. But you need to lay out exactly what you propose, and how you intend to achieve it.’
Mason nodded his head and smiled. ‘No problem. We can do that.’
‘I have a question,’ Richards asked. ‘Given that the Fu Yu Shan is a Chinese ship, and that most of the crew are Chinese, when are we thinking of telling President Tsang Feng about all this?’
Richards didn’t know what the answer would be, but he did know that the mere thought of the Chinese would muddy the waters yet further. They couldn’t take the risk of upsetting their partner, and yet if a combined rescue operation was to be launched, it would take weeks, if not months, to set up and organize.
By which time, it wouldn’t matter what was discovered there.
‘The situation is delicate,’ Abrams responded, ‘but I have already spoken to President Tsang, and he is happy to allow our forces to take the lead on this, given our proven track record in direct action raids. He is asking to send personnel from the PLA Special Operations Command to liaise with DEVGRU in Singapore, and JSOC is currently working out the details.’
Pete Olsen nodded his head, glad to be able to stop Richards’ troublemaking in its tracks. ‘DEVGRU’s squadron commander actually thinks it might be a good idea to have liaison officers there, as the PLA spec ops people have had some recent experience on anti-piracy missions and know that area better than we do.’
Ah well, Richards thought, shrugging his shoulders at Mason, it was worth a shot.
Still, there were still plenty of other things they could use to delay and obfuscate the –
Just then the secure telephone rang on the table in front of the president.
She picked it up immediately and kept her composure as she listened to the person at the other end of the line, all eyes on her.
‘Thank you,’ she said after a time. ‘I will be in touch shortly.’
She replaced the receiver and looked down the table at the members of her security council.
‘Looks like the timetable’s been moved up,’ she said. ‘The Asset has just reported activity at the pirate base. It looks like they’re getting ready to move the hostages.’
Oh shit, Richards thought helplessly as he looked across the table at Mason.
‘General,’ Abrams said, turning to Olsen, ‘I authorize the rescue mission to go ahead, effective immediately.’
Olsen grinned. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said as he picked up his own phone. ‘Get me General Cooper at JSOC,’ he barked down the line. He waited impatiently for several moments as he waited for the JSOC commander to be located. ‘Miley,’ he said eventually, ‘it’s General Olsen. We have the green light for the hostage rescue operation. Mission is a go. I repeat – mission is a go.’
Richards slumped back into his chair and sighed. It was possible that all was not lost; perhaps enough time had already passed for it not to matter anyway?
And he and his colleagues would have to be very unlucky for someone to be able to work out what had really happened, and why the Fu Yu Shan had been hijacked in the first place.
Richards felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, and pulled it out, reading the text message.
Yes. His secretary had information about the Asset.
Richards excused himself from the conference room, and fled down the corridors of the West Wing to make his call, and learn everything that she had found out.
The day’s training finally over and done with, Treyborne’s detailed briefing now also out of the way, Jake Navarone sat in front of the secure laptop computer in the squad’s recently commandeered recreation room.
‘Hi!’ he said happily, connected via the internet to his family’s home computer back in Tampa, Florida.
‘Hey Jake!’ his father replied, a huge smile over his weathered face. ‘How you doin’, son? And where the hell are you? Oh, I forgot, you can’t tell me, right? Secret stuff I bet, wow, my little Jake the secret agent man!’ Ernesto Navarone broke off his diatribe and turned behind him, yelling out, ‘Celia! Girls! Get down here, we got Jake on the phone from Mars or someplace! Come on!’
Behind his dad, Jake could see feet coming hurriedly down the stairs; the large pair belonging to his mom, the next two pairs those of his sisters.
Jake Navarone wasn’t married; nor did he have a steady girlfriend. The fact was, he just didn’t think it was fair. The life of a commando in SEAL Team Six wasn’t that of a married man, or that of a father. Not a good one, anyway. And his family had been so good to him, he only wanted the best for his own wife and children when he was eventually ready to settle down. Which, the way he felt now – charged up and excited about the mission ahead, filled with the fear-tipped thrill of adrenalin – probably wouldn’t be any time soon.
But he kept in constant touch with his parents and kid sisters, at least as much as operational security allowed. They kept him grounded in reality, and his head screwed on right.
His mother’s grinning face pushed past his father’s into the video camera. ‘Hey Jake!’ she said, ‘How’s it going? How you doing?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You looking after yourself? You eating right?’ She leaned closer to the screen, examining him from a thousand miles away. ‘You look a little skinny.’
‘Leave him be, Celia,’ Ernesto said, pulling his wife onto his lap and letting Jodie and Bobbi get past.
‘Jake!’ they screamed as one, excited to see him as always. Navarone felt his heart warm, and he smiled. He could be anywhere in the world, preparing for any kind of mission, but the feeling he got when he called home was always the same.
The sisters were twins and were just ten years old, an eighteen year gap between them and Navarone; a big enough gap for people to wonder if there’d been a mistake of some kind. But his parents refused to use terms like ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’, believing that anything so perfect could only have been a blessing for their family.
Navarone had an older brother too, a great guy just two years older who had his own small office supplies business up in New York and a young family of his own. In fact, Brandon Navarone’s two boys weren’t much younger than the twins.
‘Where are you, Jake?’ asked Jodie.
Bobbi shook her head and tutted at her sister. ‘He can’t tell you that,’ she said impatiently, before a smile played across her lips. ‘If he did, he’d have to kill you. Isn’t that right, Jake?’
Sitting on a broken canvas chair in a bland concrete rec room on a Singapore naval base, Navarone nevertheless felt he was back at home, right back with his family.
‘Well, I don’t know about killing anybody,’ he said with a grin, ‘but I might have to – ’
Navarone felt a vibration against his waist and looked down at the pager on his belt. But before he had a chance to read the message, the door to the rec room burst open and Tim Collins, a young Team Six shooter from Tallahassee, shouted over to him, excitement across his eager face.
‘We’re on!’ Collins shouted across to Navarone. ‘Come on!’
Watching the man as he raced off down the corridor, Navarone turned back to his family. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to call back some other time.’ He was already rising from his chair, hand reaching out
to disconnect the call, and he reflected again that this is why he wasn’t married.
‘I’ve got to go to work.’
From his vantage point across the river, Cole had seen enough to distinguish the regular daily routine of the pirate hideout. And what he had been witnessing over the past few hours was decidedly out of character for the previously quiet little cavern.
Men had been racing around all over the place, checking nets here, weapons there; and more men were arriving too, presumably other pirates from Liang Kebangkitan who had been getting some R&R away from the base.
Cole had identified the man he believed to be Arief Suprapto, and could listen in to the man’s screamed orders through the parabolic mike which rested next to him, nestled in the undergrowth. The words meant nothing to him unfortunately, as they were spoken in an unintelligible Indonesian dialect; but he was feeding the data directly back to JSOC, and perhaps they would be able to decipher it.
President Abrams and General Olsen had decided to link Cole up directly with Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, commander of US Joint Special Operations Command, and Cole had been impressed by their common sense. All too often, politicians and military bigwigs tried their best to get themselves inserted too deeply into special ops missions, with the result that decisions were delayed, information was not passed on, and – ultimately – the wrong people often got killed as a result. But in direct contact with JSOC, Cole would be able to help guide in any team that was sent.
He had described the situation to Cooper over the secure sat-phone he’d taken from Wong’s warehouse – defenses were being shored up, and the hostages had been moved back on board the Fu Yu Shan.
Cole realized that Suprapto must have gotten wind that something was happening, and wondered how he knew. Was there a leak in the White House? The Pentagon? If China knew, was there a leak on their end? Or else had Suprapto found out about Wong Xiang back in Jakarta, and was merely taking precautions just in case?
He didn’t know, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter either; all that mattered was that the situation was changing, and things would have to happen fast on the American side if they were to have any hope of resolving the situation.
Cole suspected he knew the reason for moving the hostages back aboard the cargo ship – if the hideout was attacked, Suprapto would set sail with the boat and threaten to sink it and kill the crew unless the assault force withdrew.
Cole had reported all of this back to JSOC, and had been pleasantly surprised by the speed of the response; not a full hour had passed before Cooper was back informing Cole that the mission had been given the presidential green light.
Cooper wanted Cole to remain in position and help guide the team in. Apparently there would be a squad from DEVGRU, Cole’s own old unit, who would insert on inflatable boats up the riverine channel the same way Cole had. Once close enough they would swim underwater and enter the docks, several of their number gaining access to the ship through the steel hull, from where they would secure the hostages and re-take the hijacked vessel.
At a certain point after this initial action, other team members would emerge from the cave’s waters and take out the pirates and secure the hideout.
The Night Stalkers were still en route, but due to the limited time frame it had been decided to launch the rescue without air support. The location of the hideout precluded close naval support too, and there was no way that the Ranger battalion was going to be on-site in time.
Cole had been amazed, but impressed; air, naval and ground support was always nice, but it was the icing on the cake. The warriors of SEAL Team Six were trained to do things without support of any kind, and were good enough to succeed without it, too. But normally, politicians were wary of sending in men without backup, just in case things went wrong and there were congressional hearings to deal with as a result.
But, he remembered, Ellen Abrams was one tough bitch; if she wanted DEVGRU to go in now, then that’s what would happen.
Cole just hoped he would be able to help.
6
Jake Navarone slipped into the slow-moving, warm waters of the riverine channel which cut through the small island; the unnamed island which held the pirates, the hostages, and the Fu Yu Shan.
Tag Johnson deflated the boat and swam down to secure it underwater, marking the spot which a small electronic buoy in case they needed to return to it later.
Navarone and Johnson and ten more men submerged themselves and swam for the cavern entrance, using Draeger rebreathable tanks which recirculated the air and therefore didn’t leave any bubbles.
Another troop would be approaching from the other side, and another was infiltrating overland. A fourth element, an ad-hoc group made up of men from the normal three troops and led by Ike Treyborne, was stationed on the opposite bank to provide reconnaissance and covering fire, plus reinforcements if needed. It was planned that Treyborne and whoever had been providing on-site intel would link up, but Navarone didn’t know whether that had happened or not; he had his own tasks to concern himself with.
The water was dark and murky, but Navarone didn’t have to see further than his low-light compass to know where he was going, and the twelve men of Red Squadron’s Bravo Troop made steady progress towards the cave.
He couldn’t put his finger on why, but Arief Suprapto had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. And as a man who always trusted his instincts, he decided to act sooner rather than later.
He had put the crew back on board the Fu Yu Shan as a precautionary measure, knowing that Chinese or US forces would be extremely unlikely to attack the vessel with hostages onboard, and was prepared to make sail in the vessel at a moment’s notice. The engines were up and running, it was fully fuelled, and crewed by his own men.
But he still wasn’t happy, and got on his radio to Panggabean, asking for Captain Yang Yaobang to be brought to him immediately.
And then he went to make sure that his beloved Liang Dao Ming was ready and waiting for him.
Cole waited patiently in the thick, dense underbrush, his eyes never leaving the pirate cave across the river from him.
The Fu Yu Shan hadn’t set sail, but the engines were on, and it looked like it had a full complement of crew members. Cole was feeding information back to JSOC on a regular basis, who in turn were briefing the SEAL squadron in real-time. He had already described the dispositions and armaments of the pirate gang, and knew his hidden cameras were also providing much needed information.
He checked his watch – 0150, just minutes before all hell would break loose.
He was expecting the command and control SEAL troop to be here any second, ready to set up shop and provide fire support for the assault elements. He would hand over all of his equipment, and let them run the show.
He’d done enough.
But then he saw a man being dragged off the Fu Yu Shan, and brought to the pirate he’d previously identified as probably being Arief Suprapto, who stood on the dockside.
And then he watched in disbelief as first the hostage, and then Suprapto himself, were lowered down into another vessel, hidden in the water between the dock pilings. Cole zoomed his night-vision binoculars in as far as they would go, and confirmed his fears.
It was a mini-submarine.
How the hell had he missed it?
In an instant, he considered his options – notify JSOC and let them make the decision; wait for the SEAL troop to arrive and explain the situation to its commander, and let them handle it; or option number three.
As the mini-sub’s hatches were closed and it sank beneath the calm waters of the cavern, Cole decided in a heartbeat on option three.
Jump in the river and follow the damn thing himself.
‘Where in the hell is he?’ Ike Treyborne asked as his group came across the site that had been used by the recon operative. All of his things seemed to still be there, but no sign of the man himself.
Maybe he’d heard them coming and had decided to make hi
mself scarce? Maybe he didn’t want to be identified, even by DEVGRU?
But then Treyborne’s earpiece cackled to life, his direct line to JSOC. ‘Our asset has identified a small submersible leaving the dock,’ came the voice of Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, ‘possibly containing one hostage and Arief Suprapto, the pirate leader.’
Damn! Treyborne wondered how he’d known they were coming.
‘He’s pursuing the submersible himself, so as not to interfere with the planned operation,’ Cooper advised him. ‘You are therefore to continue as planned.’
‘Yes sir,’ Treyborne said as he looked at his watch, checking down the line to verify that his men had strung themselves out in proper formation. It was 0159, and his SEALs had their weapons trained on the pirate hideout. Next to them, two liaison officers from China’s Special Operations Command scanned the opposite bank and reported back to their own commander, who had based himself at Sembawang.
Treyborne wished the unknown agent luck with the submarine, but he had his own job to do.
And there was just one minute left until it began.
Cole had managed to strap on his SCUBA gear and was in hot pursuit of the mini-sub as it accelerated slowly away down the channel towards the river-mouth and the open water beyond.
The vehicle was easy to follow, the pilot using lights to illuminate the dark waters ahead. Cole wondered what the SEAL troop coming this way up the river would think.
Cole swam as quickly as he could; the sub was going slowly for now, Suprapto being careful in the narrow channel, but as soon as it left the mouth of the river and entered the open water, it would be able to disappear instantly.
Cole recognized the model as a Triton two-man submersible, primarily designed for use by the owners of luxurious super-yachts. The two adjacent seats were entirely exposed by a large Plexiglas bubble, situated in a bright yellow horse-shoe. It had a top speed of only three knots, but that would be more than enough to lose a lone swimmer if it opened up.
WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 15
