Jimmy Zim was apparently debating what to do with his superiors back in Washington. The argument was essentially the same one that had taken place earlier. Under no circumstances did the CIA want the missile-launcher combo to escape. On the other hand, the State Department was screaming about the “delicacy” of the North Korean disarmament talks. Not seeing the missile on deck meant it might not be there, and the possibility of Yong Shin Jong being on the ship made everything more complicated.
Not in my opinion, of course. As far as I was concerned, there was no need to take chances: just nuke the ship and North Korea while we were at it. But no one in charge seemed ready to consider that one.
“Okay, this is the story,” said Jimmy Zim, snapping off his phone. “We have a go for military action—our guys this time, not the Russians. We can use two platoons from SEAL Team 2 to stop the ship.”
This is not the normal, assigned operational area for SEAL Team 2 but the op-tempo of combat in the Middle East and the worldwide expansion and franchising of terrorism have made the teams rotate assignments as they come up. I like it. No one is going to miss the action due to bureaucratic bullshit like primary AOs. Thank God. But it’s not something new: when the fun happened in Cuba in the 1960s, SEAL Team 1 came east, and everyone was invited to play when Vietnam broke out. True Team spirit.
But I digress.
“You go with the SEALs,” Jimmy Zim continued. “They get the missile, you get Yong Shin Jong.”
“And we take the fall if something goes wrong?” said Trace.
“What could go wrong?”
“Maybe your information is screwed up.”
“You gave us both leads,” said Jimmy Zim. “Don’t blame the CIA.”
“We can work with SEAL Team 2,” I said.
“That’s not the point, Dick.” Trace had her arms folded, and her lips pressed together in a pout.
Junior grunted from his workstation in the corner. I went and looked over his shoulder, observing what looked like a satellite image of a lone ship in the ocean.
Which was what it was.
“Russian system,” said Junior. “Didn’t think it would be polite to break into ours. Besides, this was easier, though there’s a bit of a trade-off in detail.”
“This is our target?”
“Yeah. Trawler, old fishing vessel.”
The Russian vessel was a basic fishing trawler, roughly twenty-five years old, similar to ships used for cod fishing in the Barents Sea. The blocky bridge superstructure sat just forward of midship; a pair of stacks sat about a third of the way from the stern, between two large boom structures. There was a well below these booms, so large fishing nets could be pulled up from the stern. The booms looked like the lower half of the letter A; their main function was to hold two massive pulleys above the deck that made moving the large fishing nets considerably easier. A narrow deck ran across the top of the boom; there was a radio mast in the center.
A pair of lifeboats sat on raised cradles between the superstructure and the wedge-shaped smokestacks; a crane filled the space between them. Another crane sat above the ship’s forecastle.
“They could have a whole missile in that factory section,” said Doc, studying the photo. “This could be it.”
“Hmmmm,” said Trace. She was still skeptical, but no more than usual. The more we looked at the vessel, the more obvious it was that it wasn’t an ordinary fishing boat.
“They have watches posted here, here, and here.” Junior pointed to four spots around the ship. “There may be more. I think this is an infrared sensor here, but I can’t get enough resolution out of the Russian system to tell. And check this out.”
He slid the mouse cursor to the top of the screen, revealing a menu of tools. They were written in Cyrillic, of course, but thanks to trial and error our intrepid hacker had managed to figure out what most of them meant. He clicked on a tool that placed a magnifying glass on the screen, and selected a small area near the bow. Four or five clicks later, the fuzzy outline of a tarp with a long pencil sticking out the front filled a box on the screen.
“At least a machine gun,” said Junior. “Maybe a cannon. And what do you think this is?”
He clicked away, zooming again on the flying bridge at the top of the superstructure. The image showed a boxy baseball bat on a box or maybe a table.
“Launch kit for an SA-16,” said Doc.
“I think it’s something like that,” said Junior. “But I’ve never seen one.”
I had, and though admittedly the image was on the blurry side, I thought Doc and the kid were right. Boarding the ship by helicopter would not be a simple operation.
As it happened, the SEALs had no intention of using helicopters. They planned a seaborne assault, launched from the USS Greenville, an attack submarine that had been on maneuvers off the coast of Korea near the DMZ and was at that moment hurrying to get into position to intercept the trawler.
SEAL Team 2 is the unit that yours truly served with in Vietnam. (And if you haven’t read the story in Rogue Warrior, hie thee to the local bookstore or library and do so. Now, grasshopper!) I’ll just mention again for the record that the unit continues to uphold the finest warrior traditions in the military. Today’s SpecWar fighters are a breed apart, highly trained professionals who are the best in the world at what they do. A lot of them give me the aw-shucks routine when I meet them today, telling me how proud they are to meet me and all that BS; I can honestly say that I’m the one who’s impressed. These young bucks have a lot of ability and are true professionals in every sense of the word. I’m proud to say I once served in the same unit they do.
The USS Greenville is a Los Angeles-class warship that has been modified to operate the Advanced SEAL Delivery System, or ASDS. The ASDS is a piece of metal shaped like an obese, rectangular torpedo. It does exactly what its name says it does: deliver SEALs, generally to dangerous places near shore. Why a submarine equipped with gear like that would be near North Korea—shucks, I have no idea.
The plan here was simple: the Greenville would locate the trawler, then move into position nearby. It would surface out of sight during the night. The SEAL team would board high-speed rubber raiding craft, approach the target under the cover of darkness, get aboard, and take things from there.
While we were invited along, there was one caveat in the plan. SEALs wait for no man. Or men. Or women. Certainly not us. So if we wanted to be part of the party—and remember, it was supposed to be our party—we had to get out to the SEALs and their submarine, the Greenville, posthaste.
Our island was about 350 miles from the sub, too far for a helicopter without refueling. Jimmy Zim got us in touch with an air farcer who promised an MC-130 to pick us up at Niigata, the airport on the Japanese island of Honshu opposite Sado. From there, we would fly to South Korea, where another helicopter—this one belonging to the U.S. Navy—would take us out to the submarine. The schedule was going to be tight; we’d have maybe five minutes leeway to find the submarine or miss the adventure. In that case, we’d have to go back to Korea, refuel, and join the show in progress, missing all the fun.
The MC-130 is an excellent aircraft, a version of the venerable C-130 Hercules outfitted for spec warfare and flown by specially trained air farcers who coat their balls in bronze and take their aircraft into places where aircraft are not supposed to go, depositing warriors where they’re least expected. Most of this depositing is done via parachute—which gave me an idea.
“If we have to go all the way to Korea to grab a helicopter, we may not make it back in time,” I told Doc, who was helping Jimmy Zim with the arrangements. “Why don’t we just use the plane.”
“You finally figured out a way to walk on water, skipper?”
“No, but I can fall into it pretty well. We’ll parachute and aim for the sub. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find if they’re on the surface.”
“Like hell it won’t,” said Doc.
“Yo, Dick, screw all that,” said Shotgun
, who was standing nearby and stuffing his face with some sort of Japanese egg roll. “Why don’t we just, like, parachute onto the ship. KISS.”
Trace smirked, but Shotgun wasn’t getting homo on us. He was referring to one of the main precepts of special operations—keep it simple, stupid. But only Shotgun would think a night jump onto a ship is simple. True, the ship is more of a target than you’d think; even if it’s not all lit up—and we didn’t expect this one to be—it sticks out like a sore dick with even minimal international nav lights. But seeing what you want to hit and actually hitting it can be two different things.
It would be easier than parachuting to the submarine, though.
To make sure the creeps in the trawler didn’t see us, we planned the mission so the MC-130 would fly in a straight line nearby just before drop time. We also mapped a flight profile that would make the aircraft look as if it were a commercial flight—and would keep it above fifteen thousand feet, the ceiling of the Russian antiaircraft weapon we’d spotted. We’d jump a bit over five miles south of the ship, and swoop—you may call it parasailing if you prefer to be more accurate—onto our target, guided not only by guts and instinct but GPS units with big-ass, glow-in-the-dark faces that strapped onto our arms.
One of the things they never mention in movies and online games where guys parachute out of airplanes in the middle of the night is that it is F’in’ cold. And “F” doesn’t stand for freezing. The temperature in the back of the aircraft was bad enough; once we went out it would be below zero. As we waited for the plane to hit its last way marker, everyone on the team was moving around to try to stay warm.
Except Shotgun. He was eating Twinkies.
“Way marker reached,” said the crewman assigned to shepherd us out the plane. “You have five minutes.”
We checked our gear and got ready to jump. Besides thermal undies, we were equipped with jumpsuits, balaclavas, and some Nomex gloves Doc had “found” while we waited for the air farce to get its aircraft over to us. The oxygen—you go out at twenty-eight thousand feet, you need oxygen—had come courtesy of a jump school at the airport.
Courtesy might be too strong a word, as they had charged us twice the usual rental. Something in Mongoose’s shifty eyes must have given him away as a poor risk to return them.
We made sure our watches were synched, the radios in our helmets were working, and the GPS units calibrated. We were ready. All we needed was word from the SEALs to proceed.
But the SEAL communications channel was uncomfortably silent.
“Maybe they don’t want to invite us to their picnic after all,” said Doc. “I don’t think I’d’ve wanted any civilians screwing me up, even if they were you.”
“Who says I’m a civilian?”
“Uncle Sam.”
The thought had crossed my mind. But SEALs tend to be blunt—if they thought we were going to screw them up, they probably would have just said so.
“Maybe Mr. Murphy kicked them in the balls,” suggested Sean. “Maybe they aren’t going to make it.”
“SEALs find a way,” said Mongoose. He snapped it out angrily.
“Hey, I ain’t putting them down,” said Sean. “They’re only human.”
“No they’re not,” said Shotgun.
“Watch it, blankethugger,” said Mongoose.
Shotgun started laughing. He put his hand on Mongoose’s shoulder. “Relax, little brother.”
“Fuck your little brother shit.”
There’s nothing like love and kisses in the air between team members before a mission. But they were only blowing off some excess testosterone before hitting the silk.
“I say we go out and the hell with them,” said Trace. “We’ll take the ship ourselves if we have to. There’s six of us, for Christsake.”
Trace’s math was off. Yes, there were six shooters from Red Cell—Trace, Sean, Shotgun, Mongoose, myself, Doc—jumping despite a balky knee, I might add. But you can never forget the inestimable Mr. Murphy. Murph is along whatever you do, whatever lengths you go to to keep him from getting an invitation.
He was with the SEALs as well. In fact, he was having a hell of a time with them, goat-fucking their communications system so badly that they couldn’t communicate with each other. Nor could they talk to their sub—or us, for that matter.
I didn’t know that was the problem at the time, of course. As far as I was concerned, Trace was right—we could take the ship ourselves if we had to.
The rest of the team looked at me. I looked at my watch.
0100 hours on the dot. H hour.
“Let’s go,” I said.
[ I ]
BLACK IS BLACK, but there is no black blacker than the ocean on a moonless night.
The chute gave me a good tug as it deployed, punching me in the family planning region hard enough to make me focus very intently on what I was doing. All things considered, though, it was better than the alternative. The altimeter on my left wrist told me I was falling at sixteen feet a second, about as perfect as you’d want. I had a good chute, and I was even heading in the right direction, as verified by the GPS.
One by one, the others checked in. Now that we were on our way, idle chatter dropped off. Even Shotgun was quiet.
I was only about a mile away from the ship as I fell through eight thousand feet. I could see it a bit to my left, a yellowish jag of lights bobbing into the murky ink. I tacked into a spiral to get closer to the bow of the ship, where I intended on landing.
“Something moving on the water near the ship,” said Trace over the radio. “Away from it—northwest.”
“Where?” I asked her. “Show me on the GPS.”
Our GPS units had integrated wireless transmitters, making it possible for team members to track one another. The units had small cursors that could be used as pointers during transmission, showing direction or, in this case, where something was. (Gamin sells a civilian model nearly as powerful as the ones we used for a fraction of the price, so if you’re planning on doing a night jump to take out a ship this weekend, check them out.)
Even with the GPS pointer, I couldn’t see the boat. The location made me doubt it was part of the SEAL assault—they had briefed an approach from the south, and they were going in the wrong direction.
“Listen up,” I told the others over the radio. “Looks like we have a motorboat trying to get away. Trace and I will check it out. The rest of you proceed as planned.”
The chorus of “copy that”s was interrupted by a series of flashes that silhouetted the ship. The SEALS had arrived, right on schedule.
THE OFFICIAL AFTER-ACTION report presented an executive summary of the action: the SEALs came, they saw, they kicked butt; same old, same old. Casualty count: good guys 0, bad guys 13 dead, no wounded.
The actual play-by-play was a hair more complicated, and I’m proud to say that my guys held up their end.
The submarine surfaced ahead of and parallel to the ship, which was moving at roughly twelve knots, your typical merchant vessel not-getting-too-crazy-with-the-fuel speed. The SEALs quickly launched and boarded their rubber rafts, revved their outboards, and went off in pursuit of their prey. There are a number of different methods for hostile boarding of a cargo ship under way; all entail enough bruises and general aggravation to make you one ornery son of a bitch by the time you get aboard.21
Consider first of all the fact that those rubber rafts are not built for comfort. You can get them up to forty knots, maybe even higher, but you feel every shock in every bone of your body as the craft smacks against the waves. They do have their pluses—the craft are very hard to see at night, since they and their occupants are low to the water and as black as black can be. Because of the typical ambient and not-so-ambient sounds aboard ship, they’re also relatively hard to hear. Your basic merchant ship—hell, any ship—has a fairly loud engine, and then there’s the water and all manner of other noisy distractions to render even large outboards virtually silent.
But ge
tting back to my point. The real bumps and bruises come with the boarding itself. The method of choice involves telescoping poles that can be hooked on to the ship and unfolded into a primitive caving ladder. The contraptions are made of titanium; while light for what they do, they still weigh a ton when you’re holding them up in the open sea. SEALs also use line firing guns—they look like mortars—that shoot lines over the railing. The problem is that the lines can easily go right through without catching. Using the telescoping rod/ladder in a boat moving twenty or so knots is like trying to hold up an extension ladder on the freeway while sitting on your car roof, but my feeling is it’s much more reliable. Some things haven’t changed much in forty-some years—although in this case I’ll bet a lot of guys wish they had.
The SEALs weren’t dealing with a warship, but the vessel was definitely of a hostile sort and had a full watch mounted—there was that gun at the bow and the antiaircraft missile up near the bridge. The invaders were getting real-time intelligence thanks to a small unmanned plane circling above the area. A direct data link—unlike the radios, this one was working—showed them where all the watch hands were. That helped cut down on the pucker factor as they climbed up the narrow ladder to the deck. The SEALs’ image was crisper than the satellite view Junior had hacked for me earlier: not only did it show that the weapon up front—still tarped—had the barrel of a 12.7mm DShK—but it was sharp enough to show them how many of the men on watch were bald (two out of six).
That’s one big difference between the SEALs today and what us “experienced” guys did back in the day: when I was their age, we had to guess about where the blind spots would be on the trawler; the young bloods’ eye in the sky let them leave the guessing to the enemy. Their technology doesn’t make them better SEALs—excuse me for sounding egotistical—because a SEAL is a SEAL is a SEAL, then, now, and forever. I might even argue that not having that intelligence gave those of us back in the day a certain advantage—we had to be naturally more flexible, an important asset when dealing with Mr. Murphy. But the pictures helped these young bloods narrow Mr. Murphy’s all-important window of opportunity, making them, even in my prejudiced opinion, more efficient than we were.
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