by Ian Slater
Two of them were hit as they raced from the sub’s bow along its deck, heading for the narrow, covered walkway that led inshore from the sub’s sail toward the cave. Salvini’s M-60 rounds kept coming, and he cut them down, one man toppling into the water, thrashing about in an agony that ceased with a quick burst from Freeman’s HK, the other one up and running again until the general’s 9mm bullets finished his desperate sprint. Normally, the parabellum rounds he’d just fired had less stopping power, particularly when sprayed at obtuse angles, but the general had fired a tight group of three rounds more or less straight in over the forty-foot range. The other reason the bullets had proved so deadly and weren’t “bee stings,” as Freeman was wont to say, was that — in direct contravention of the Geneva Accords — he’d used HydroShok ammo rather than legal “hard ball.” The frangible head of the HydroShok expanded inside the recipient’s body the nanosecond he was struck.
“Where the hell are our swimmers?” Sal shouted.
“Underwater!” replied Freeman. “Where I’d be with all this crap flying—” His sentence went unfinished as Choir drove the RIB through a dangerously unstable S pattern, which further confounded the enemy’s aim and forced Freeman to grab the roll bar, letting forth a burst of obscenities which only a longshoreman and Aussie Lewis, if he was still alive, could have fully interpreted.
At the moment, however, Aussie Lewis and Dixon were fighting for their lives. They’d seen two dark shapes diving from the sub’s deck, both bearing knives — not the standard K-bar blades or expensive Randalls, but eighteen-inch bayonets that would pass right through a man, with steel to spare. Alarmed, Dixon glanced across at Aussie, who pointed down and drew his hand across his throat, a move that caused Dixon to gulp and swallow a huge bubble from the fierce “wash cycle” churned up by Choir’s effective but bone-busting evasive antics. The Welshman’s “crazy pattern” wake all but covered the moat area with bubbles, which temporarily kept both pairs of divers from each other as well as from their respective surface combatants.
The RIB, careening successfully at first, crisscrossing the moat behind the falls and sub, now came under steady and heavy automated fire from the cave behind the sub. Below, the two pairs of divers engaged, without circling each other or using any of the fancy energy-wasting tricks and turns imagined by some who have never been swimming for their lives. In the sand-stirred undersea world bounded by the falls and the submarine, the soft sound of rubber fins was obliterated by the high whine of the RIB’s engine and the increasing rumble of the sub’s diesel.
Aussie, intending to take the initiative, closed with his opposite number, who kicked hard in a burst of speed, trying to drive home the overreach of his bayonet through Lewis’s chest. Aussie slowed, trading speed for accuracy of impact. The enemy’s first right-handed bayonet thrust was short, a feint that drew in Aussie’s K-bar, which Aussie’s opponent smartly deflected with a smaller blade that had suddenly materialized in his left hand. Aussie, against all logic, released his grip on his parried right hand, gripping the enemy’s knife wrist instead, the enemy diver driving his bayonet in a flurry of effervesced water hard toward Aussie’s chest. Aussie twisted, the bayonet slicing clean through his Draeger’s left-side hose and ricocheting off the Draeger’s chest-mounted housing. Then Aussie kicked once, bringing up his free left hand, thrusting hard, striking the other swimmer’s mask with such force it was knocked away from the man’s face, the expelled air momentarily blinding both him and Aussie. But with his mask still on, Aussie had the better of it. When his opponent turned frantically to retrieve his own mask, Aussie brought his right knee up hard into the man’s scrotum. The man’s mouth agape with the shock of the hit, he involuntarily gulped in seawater, which Lewis knew would drown all discipline and training his opponent might have.
In an intuitive act of survival, Aussie’s opponent rose quickly toward the surface for air. Any breath his lungs might have had in reserve was now depleted, the bubbles rising from his transit to the surface joining those coming from Aussie’s left hand as Lewis grabbed the man’s right leg as it passed in front of him and, with one savage slash of his K-bar’s blue steel, sliced through the man’s neoprene sheath with such fury that it cut to the bone. A cloud of cherry-red blood obscured Aussie’s view before it was quickly diluted to a watermelon pink, through which Aussie glimpsed the tail end of a school of salmon, which he now realized had been all around them and were fleeing — perhaps, Aussie thought, because of approaching sharks. He kicked with all the energy he had, his fins propelling him fast toward the surface, the whine of the RIB engine piercing his eardrums as he crashed into the frenzied body of his opponent at the surface. The wounded man, gulping in the icy, pristine air above the roiling blue, had realized he was no longer able to swim.
To Aussie’s astonishment, he and his opponent were no more than twenty feet away from an enormous floating log, which Lewis quickly realized was the midget sub. His vision impaired by the turmoil created by the other man’s panic, Aussie grabbed at a black orb that was his opponent’s head, stabbing it repeatedly with his K-bar. Aussie’s enemy, meanwhile, charged with fear and adrenaline, was like a writhing swordfish and still dangerous. So instead of going for his heart, as ancient Greek warriors had — and would have been his preference — Aussie did it the most effective if messy way — puncturing him wherever contact could be made. He dragged his opponent under and stabbed him repeatedly, until the man’s body went limp. Exhausted, Aussie then released him, the only sound he could hear, apart from the falls, being the rapid fire of machine guns.
He’d seen a dozen or so men casting off lines from stakes that had been driven into crevices along the rock shelf in front of the cave and here and there in a crushed-shell beach just east of the rock ledge. But he couldn’t contact the RIB. He looked around for Dixon, but all he could see was the sub moving out, and beyond it, on the rocky ledge in front of the cave, a pile of discarded cardboard boxes, large sheets of torn paper, plastic wrap and assorted rubbish littering the beach, the paper alternately billowing and collapsing from phantom breezes that seemed to be coming out of the cave.
Freeman, Sal, and Choir had returned to the islet, ignobly but sensibly taking cover behind the small, jagged six-foot-long, five-foot-high rock wall. The guano that had remained undisturbed atop the wall now rose like chalk dust as the sub’s defenders—“About fourteen of ’em,” Sal told Freeman — continued to rake the rock with light and heavy machine-gun fire.
“Where the—” began Sal, his words drowned out by such an enfilade of heavy caliber and light machine-gun fire that the salt air above the small islet sang with the discordant noise of ricocheting rounds which, had it not been for the small rock wall, would have literally chopped the general and his two compatriots to pieces.
“You see Dixon or Aussie?” It was Choir, his Welsh accent always more pronounced in the taut, crackling air of a firefight.
“I don’t like this,” said Sal, in one of his more memorable understatements. “I don’t like it at all.”
Choir, crawling along on his belly, ignominiously peeked an inch or two around the end of the rock wall. “Shite! The sub’s moving.”
“Goddammit, Sal!” bellowed Freeman, pointing to the lashed-down hump of equipment in the RIB, which slapped noisily and annoyingly against the protected sea side of the islet. “Gimme that AT!”
“Won’t stop it with that, General!” Sal said as he passed the one-shot, self-contained antitank launcher Freeman had eschewed using earlier from the islet because it would have been a wasted shot, given the impediment to his line of sight formed by the falls. He’d also known that had he tried a blind shot, the Swedish-built rocket would have exploded in transit the second its warhead struck the water wall. But now the sub’s fifty-foot-long forward section from sail to bow was nosing out beyond the edge of the waterfall.
“Got that AT round ready?” Freeman shouted, answering Salvini’s skepticism about being able to hit anything worthwhile,
given the impediment of the sub. “Countdown from ten to fire!” he told Salvini and Choir.
“Ten to fire,” confirmed Sal, ready to heave up the stripped-down but still substantial M-60, the terrorists’ fire increasing, as if they had divined Freeman’s intentions. The general, his left side hugging the western edge of the islet’s rock wall, was ready to swing the AT-4 launcher around as Choir and Sal prepared, at great risk, to lay down covering fire, the enemy’s enfilade whacking loudly into the islet’s protective rock wall and surrounding water, other rounds whistling ominously overhead.
“Ten,” Freeman began, “nine, eight, seven — son of a — hold it!”
Sal, crouched, poised to come up with the M-60 firing before its folded bi-pod even had time to rest on the top of the islet’s protective wall, gave a snort of suppressed laughter. Despite the precariousness of their situation, the sub nosing out from its cliff-bottom berth behind the waterfall, and despite the worrisome fact that none of the three had seen any sign of Aussie or Dixon since the two divers had disappeared under the fall, the fact that in the middle of this murderous encounter Freeman should be so conditioned by modern technology that he stopped his countdown because his cell phone’s vibration had put him off his count struck Sal as singularly hilarious. Yet part of the reason Freeman answered the cell so promptly was that it was obviously working now, the atmospherics having improved sufficiently for communication to be reestablished.
“It might be Jensen,” said Choir, hoping the NR-1B was en route.
That the news wasn’t good from Jensen’s end was evidenced by Freeman cursing above the sound of the terrorists’ fire and the increasing bass of the midget sub’s diesel engine. “The goddamned NR-1B’s kaput!” he yelled.
“The only thing that might be available,” Jensen had told him, “is the patrol craft,” adding, “What’s all that noise?”
“A damned firefight!” Freeman bellowed, his voice whipped away by gusts that were turning the previously calm blue bay into a spindrift-veined caldron. “We’ve found the goddamned midget sub — only it’s not such a midget after all. Better send your patrol boat, send anything you’ve got — fast as you can, Admiral!” With that, Freeman gave Jensen the GPS coordinates on his cell.
“Sub’s coming through the falls, General,” Sal warned. “Bow at eleven o’clock.”
It told Freeman, still holding the AT launcher, that the bow had now moved away from its earlier two o’clock berth position to a point a hundred yards left of the islet. Which in turn told him that if he didn’t fire soon, the sub would be through, past the falls, and heading unhindered out to sea. And that the protected space behind the islet’s six-foot-high wall would then be exposed to unhindered lateral fire from the sub at virtually point-blank range.
Freeman shouldered the launcher. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …” A vicious gust punched the islet, combining with the ferocious backblast of the rocket motor as the cone-shaped 84mm warhead shot out from its fiberglass tube at sixty-four miles an hour.
Metal whacked metal, the sub’s progress so inhibited by the buckled steel basket around its prop that Freeman estimated its speed at no more than a knot. With its steering likewise affected, it was crabbing toward the eastern sandbank of a twenty-foot-wide exit channel. Choir, reading the situation as clearly as Freeman and Sal, was already in the RIB, the three warriors anticipating the consternation in the sub and preferring to take their chances in the RIB as a fast, mobile target rather than remaining on the islet. Freeman’s shot disabling the sub, ironically, had also exposed the islet as a target, should any of the terrorists mount the midget sub’s sail to pay back the Americans for their audacity.
“Where the hell’s Aussie and Dixon?” called Sal as Choir gunned the RIB, calling on all its horsepower.
“I see Dixon,” yelled Choir. “He’s stuck on that sea stack over there.” Choir indicated a stubby, Dumpster-sized, starfish-cluttered sea stack fifty yards west of them. The SEAL diver, having clung to the sea side of the stack, had now inched his way farther around it. While it didn’t afford any flat areas upon which he might rest, it was nevertheless scabrous enough with crustaceans that he had no difficulty hanging on to it out of the sub’s line of fire.
Heading for him, the RIB began taking fire from a dozen or so of the hooded terrorists who positioned themselves along the “dock”—a crescent of crushed shell and sand to the left of the cave. Inaccurate though it was, given the fast-moving RIB, neither Freeman, Sal, nor Choir had much more success at hitting their terrorist targets once they’d “looped” Dixon aboard. One second they were firing from atop a four-foot chop, the next they were shooting on the downslide, the loud, crackling firefight coming from both sides unable to exact any serious punishment. Then Aussie, having successfully sought the turbulence of the waterfall-sea interface to hide in, saw the sail of the midget, which had appeared much larger from the water, coming alive with men wearing black balaclavas and overalls.
Like soldier ants erupting from their hive, half a dozen of the terrorists were already on deck, another cramped four remaining in the sail. Two of the latter, Aussie could see, were a machine gunner and his feeder. Of the other duo, one was obviously what U.S. military attachés around the world colloquially called the TIC — terrorist in charge — his authority evident as he directed a work party hurriedly toward the stern. The other man held an AK-47.
While the TIC continued to instruct his minions aft via what Aussie guessed must be a throat mike, two of the six soldier ants opened up with Kalashnikovs, the sound augmenting the tarpaper-ripping noise of the sail’s heavy.50 caliber machine gun, whose fan-shaped sweep of fire moved unhurriedly but with relentless intensity through a seventy-to-ninety degree arc, from the RIB that had picked up Dixon across to the interface of the waterfall and the open sea. It was as if the TIC had anticipated that the remaining American diver — Aussie — possibly wounded, would seek the camouflage of the falls, perhaps using its noise as a cover in the event that he was so badly hurt he could not silence his pain.
Freeman, unable to see Aussie Lewis, nevertheless refused to risk losing the RIB in looking for him. He knew Aussie would have made the same decision — no point going after one man when it was critical that the RIB, by using the sea stack and islet as protection, could continue to harass the sub to buy time until Jensen’s patrol craft and/or aircraft could arrive. And should the sub, despite the violent cavitation of its shaft, somehow manage to get to deep water and dive, Freeman knew it was imperative that he, Choir, Sal, and now Dixon mark its position for the massive antisub attack that would be launched. In any event, even if it managed to maintain a knot — or more, should the soldier ants repair the prop’s basket — the four Americans seriously doubted that the sub would get beyond the main channel.
Freeman, Choir, and Salvini also understood that despite their RIB’s maneuverability and firepower, now that they’d expended the AT-4 launcher, their collective small arms fire would be no match for the sub. Though a midget, it nevertheless dwarfed and outgunned them with the big.50 mounted on the sail.
Aussie, his strength waning as he trod water in the sunlit mist of the falls, also understood the necessity of the RIB biding its time, now using the protection of what would afterward be known as “Dixon’s sea stack.” Aussie further understood something his four companions couldn’t because their line of sight was obscured by the waterfall’s mist and the islet east of them: A work party of four of the black-clad submariners was already busy with monkey wrenches, a man with a sledgehammer standing by. The four men were obviously trying to unscrew the four bolts that held the prop’s protective basket in place, one of the two starboard bolts already undone. If they managed to remove and jettison the protective basket in time, the prop’s shaft, free of the warped basket, could surge to full power. Then the sub, even at six or eight knots, would be out and crash diving in minutes.
Aussie knew that even if the general had reestablished con
tact with Admiral Jensen, and COMSUBPAC-GRU-9 had dispatched the cavalry, it was highly doubtful they’d detect the midget, because the sub was sheathed entirely in a kind of sound-absorbing anechoic tile he’d never seen before, the tiles so barnacle-free that Aussie guessed they must be virtually brand new and impermeable to antisub sonar. Added to this was the one great advantage the diesel-electric subs had over the nuclear super subs, such as Captain Rorke’s late Virginia-class Utah: The old-fashioned diesel electrics were able to shut down completely, able to sit somewhere on the vast ocean bottom in absolute silence, while the nukes, for all their noise-dampening independently suspended compartment technology, could never be totally noise-free because of the necessity of keeping the reactor’s cooling pump going at all times, the giveaway heartbeat, however faint, of every nuclear navy.
Aussie intuitively flinched as another long burst of the sub’s heavy caliber machine gun raked Dixon’s sea stack, the.50 rounds zinging off the basalt rock, sending beehive-humming fragments of starfish and crustaceans into the air. Perhaps, Aussie thought, if he could muster enough energy to dive and swim to the sub, coming in on its eastern flank, where the terrorists were least likely to expect an attack, he could toss two or three of his HE and flash-bang grenades and take out the.50, allowing the RIB to speed in and unload all the ordnance it had on the work party.
As if his comrades two hundred yards off to the west behind the sea stack had the same intent in mind, Sal, Dixon, and Freeman — Choir steering the RIB as it darted out from behind the stack — opened fire. Sal was on the bow-mounted M-60, Dixon feeding its belt, and the general was firing his MP5. Thin, high plumes of water were leaping up about the sub’s stern from the fusilade. One of the terrorists’ four-man work party dropped away from the prop’s basket, his body spurting blood as gulls screeched in alarm and expectation above the sub, whose sail seemed to explode in an outrage of return fire that sent the RIB in a tight U-turn back behind the stack. What gave Aussie pause for thought was the extraordinary bravery of the work party — only one of the remaining three flinching under the RIB’s attack. Even so, there was no pause in their work, none of them deigning to turn around, the only visible sign of their concern being the increased activity around the basket, their remarkable concentration projecting an air of contempt for the nuisance Americans.
