The Signal (The Bugging Out Series Book 8)

by Noah Mann

  “Ban—” Beekman chuckled and looked to me. “I almost called in our departure.”

  Doing so would have been pointless. The airwaves were still choked with the signal which had overpowered every wireless transmission.

  “Let’s just get airborne then, I guess,” he said, and revved the throttles.

  I glanced out the window, to my wife. Lt. Lorenzen was standing behind, waiting to drive her back to town. She raised her hand in a brief, almost bittersweet wave, and I pressed my palm against the glass, returning the gesture as best I could. As the Cessna accelerated and turned off the taxiway I lost sight of her. Beekman swung the plane into a fast ninety-degree turn at the beginning of the runway and firewalled the throttles, wasting no time.

  “We’re on the clock,” the pilot said as the nose rose gently off the ground.

  An hour flight out there, give or take. That was what we had ahead of us. Then, if all went as planned, we would land. On a pitching deck. With an obstacle the size of a house halfway down the runway. Those who’d set out before us, Westin, Hart, and Laws aboard Orville’s fishing boat, would be just an hour or so away from the carrier. Fifteen miles from it. With the sun setting behind it, if the weather was clear, they should be able to see its silhouette by now.

  Meaning they could be seen as well.

  There was some stealth to this operation, but none of us was under any illusion that we were being covert by any stretch of the imagination. The mere act of slamming a multi-ton aircraft onto the ship’s deck would be enough to announce or presence.

  But we had to get there. Had to. There was some reason, some unknown purpose, to the carrier appearing off our coast blasting a jamming signal. And all of us knew that benign explanations for what we’d discovered would be pure fantasy. Nothing good would be found out there. I felt that in my gut.

  “Fletch...”

  It was Schiavo, talking through the intercom as the Cessna climbed into the darkening day.

  “What?”

  “Do you remember?”

  The question was vague. So vague that I knew exactly what she was talking about. I turned halfway around in my seat and looked Schiavo square in the eye.

  “I do,” I said.

  Viper Diamond Nine...

  The call sign for the sub which would unleash nuclear hell at her command, or mine, assuming it still existed. That she was bringing this up hinted to me that she saw using that awesome power to obliterate the carrier, if that became necessary. A hundred and thirty miles out at sea, any effect on Bandon would be almost nonexistent. There was one very large problem with this possible scenario.

  The sub would be as unreachable as someone standing fifty feet away with a walkie talkie. No transmissions were getting anywhere.

  “Job number one when my guys board from the Blue Streak is shutting that signal down,” Schiavo said. “Then we can figure out why the damn thing is there in the first place.”

  I nodded and faced forward again.

  “You guys keeping secrets from me?” Beekman asked over the intercom. “That’s not nice.”

  “You don’t want to know,” I told him.

  “You sound pretty sure about that, Fletch.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?” he pressed.

  Knowledge was power. But it could also be a curse.

  “Because I wish that I didn’t know.”

  Part Two

  The Carrier

  Seven

  There was no protocol for what Beekman was attempting. With light fading in the west, only a thin blue glow on the watery horizon, he had just enough definition in the carrier’s shape to allow some semblance of a normal approach to the flight deck—as normal as one could term what he was doing. There was no training for putting a small civilian aircraft down on the moving deck of the craft which was used to recovering supersonic jets with sophisticated guidance and arresting cables to prevent them from rocketing off the maritime landing strip and into the sea.

  Another issue, though, also troubled me as we approached the massive vessel.

  “Still no sign of the Blue Streak,” I said, glancing back toward Martin and Schiavo.

  We’d crossed more than a hundred miles of open ocean, following the same course that the fishing vessel carrying the remainder of our team would be, but none of us had seen any trace of them. No boat bobbing on the water. No wake tracing the route of their travel.

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Beekman said as he maneuvered the Cessna for as straight an approach as possible. “We ran through several patches of clouds. Any one of those could have masked their position.”

  “But they should be in the area by now,” I said. “If—”

  “If they were able to run at top speed,” Beekman interjected, offering a dose of reality to counter my concern. “If the sea wasn’t rougher than expected. There’s a lot of variables, and I’d be happy to lay them all out for you, but right now I’d really like you to clam up so I can make this happen.”

  He never looked at me as he offered the rebuke. It was deserved, I supposed. Seeing or not seeing the Blue Streak mattered not at all if we weren’t able to make a safe landing.

  “Be ready,” Beekman cautioned us. “I’m going to brake hard as soon as we’re wheels down.”

  My seatbelt was snug already. I braced my AR between my knees and gripped the barrel as I watched the carrier grow larger and larger before us. Beekman was bringing us in opposite of the direction which was normal for carrier operations. Planes would impact hard near the stern end of the angled flight deck, and would be stopped by arresting cables by the time they reached the carrier’s towering island. We, instead, were approaching from the bow, aiming directly for the narrow sliver of flight deck where planes would be catapulted from during launch.

  “Ten seconds,” Beekman told us.

  The Cessna drifted right and left, the dark grey slab which was our runway pitching slightly from side to side, not a terrible amount of motion from bow to stern. Beekman was correcting, slipping to stay lined up with the deck.

  “Crosswind,” he said.

  He advanced the throttle and steered right, struggling to stay lined up, the carrier seeming to drift away from us.

  “Going around!”

  Beekman pulled back on the yoke and banked hard left, gaining altitude to line up again for another attempt.

  “Fletch...”

  I looked back to Schiavo. She nodded to me, signaling to prepare for failure. I reached into the cargo pocket of my pants, ready to retrieve one of the two marine flares I’d stowed there. We’d agreed when finalizing plans for the flight that if we could not land on the carrier, a marine flare, which would generate bright orange smoke as it burned atop the ocean, would signal the Blue Streak to turn around. Chris Beekman had been privy to this arrangement, but he was no way in agreement with moving toward that decision.

  “Put that away, Fletch,” he said, looking to me as the first flare came out of my pocket. “I mean it.”

  I didn’t contest his directive and slipped the flare back where it had come from. Beekman faced forward again and brought the Cessna back into line with the bow of the carrier, beginning another descent toward landing.

  “We’ll be down in just a minute,” Beekman promised.

  Down had other meanings than what he intended, I knew. But I also avoided sharing that with our pilot.

  Once again, we descended toward the rolling flight deck. And, once again, Beekman maneuvered the Cessna to match the motion of our landing strip. He brought the throttle back as the bow of the carrier pitched upward in a swell, seeming to rise above our position for a moment, making a fiery impact with the steel hull a distinct possibility. But as it had risen, the bow settled again toward the sea, and the deck was positioned just below our flight path.

  “Here we go,” Beekman said.

  There would be no aborted landings this time. As we reached the edge of the flight deck, wheels just a few yards above it, Chris Bee
kman cut the engines and pushed the yoke forward, doing the opposite of what he would on a normal landing. There was no time here to gently flare the airplane and let its gear set softly down upon the landing surface. He had to get the Cessna down as fast as possible, because only then could he face the next challenge.

  Stopping.

  The aircraft was jolted by the impact of its three landing gear wheels slamming in unison onto the flight deck. I was thrown forward, almost impaling my face on the barrel of my AR. Two inches to the right and the weapon which I’d planted between my knees, stock down, would have taken out an eye. Not being able to see might have been a blessing right then, though, as when I recovered and looked up I saw the monolithic black cube almost filling the space past the windshield.

  Beekman mashed the wheel brakes and the Cessna began to skid, sliding across the wet deck as its nose turned to the left. Completely sideways, I looked out the side window and could see nothing but the towering box racing at me. The tires skated, chattering on the flight deck surface as they sought purchase, finally grabbing hold, the welcome screeching sound of rubber rising. Then, with the right wingtip just feet from the towering obstacle, we stopped.

  “Get us tied down!”

  Beekman shouted the directive as he shut the Cessna’s systems down. I climbed out fast with my AR and did a quick covering sweep of the darkening deck that was visible past the huge block. Schiavo and Martin climbed out behind me, both slinging their weapons and retrieving lengths of pre-cut rope from the baggage compartment in a drill we’d practiced in the hours before taking off.

  “Right wing is too close,” Schiavo said as the deck rolled gently beneath us, the aircraft shifting a few inches in various directions with each motion of the ship.

  “Tie the left side first,” Beekman said as he hopped out.

  Martin had a rope already cinched to the left main landing gear strut and was feeding it through a tie-down recessed in the deck. Beekman assisted him as Schiavo hustled with the same connection on the right-side strut, pulling her rope taut as the Cessna slid toward her, the just-finished right side tie-downs keeping it from knocking her down. The wingtip was now just inches from the black cube.

  “Get it done!” Beekman urged.

  I was close enough to assist Schiavo, but my job was simple—covering everyone until the plane was secure. Ahead of me, rising from the right, or starboard, side of the carrier, the island seemed to be the logical place where any threat would materialize. Large steel doors were set into its base, each closed, and above them, on several levels, balconies protruded from the structure. Any one of them could be a sniper’s nest where an attacker could pop up at any moment.

  None did, though, as the plane was finally tied fully down behind me. Schiavo and Martin grabbed our small backpacks and approached, each armed with an M4. The AK, which had been Martin’s preferred long gun for so long, had been traded in in the name of ammunition standardization. The three of us could share magazines if necessary.

  Beekman was on his own with his 12 gauge, though. That didn’t mean he would be left wanting for ammo. The fifty-round bandolier he retrieved from the baggage compartment and slung across his chest made that quite clear.

  “You good with this?” Schiavo asked the pilot.

  Beekman walked to where we stood near the corner of the cube and nodded.

  “Two rounds from your shotty if something’s gone south,” she reminded him, the signal pre-arranged.

  Whether we would be able to hear it from below the flight deck was an open question.

  “Just get back here so we can get off this thing,” Beekman said, looking up at the eerily dark and silent island. “I don’t have a good feeling about any of this.”

  Schiavo turned to us as Beekman backed away, taking a position near the tail of the Cessna.

  “Let’s go,” Martin said.

  I led off, heading away from the cubic structure now, skirting the edge of the ship closest to the island. There was no way we could know if any of the doors in the superstructure would be unsecured, and no way to know where they led once we were inside if they were. I wasn’t even sure if they were technically doors or ‘hatches’. None of us knew much of anything about a modern carrier, and those few in Bandon who had some Navy experience, including Clay Genesee, had been able to offer little guidance. Getting lost in some internal maze was not how we needed to start this mission, and so it had been decided before we ever took off that our way to the levels below would be the same as the large cables we could see snaking across the flight deck from the cube.

  We’d be taking the forward elevator down.

  Not exactly, but we would be utilizing the structure that supported it. The massive lift that had once moved aircraft between the hangar and flight decks was in the down position, allowing the thick bundle of conduit to dive into that space below. We would simply follow those by going over the side, into the open elevator well, sliding down a length of rope.

  Simply...

  “I’ll tie it off,” Martin said, slinging his rifle once more as Schiavo and I each took a knee and covered the areas where threats could emerge—the wide flight deck and the dark, open hangar deck below. “Done.”

  One end of the sturdy rope we’d brought with us was looped solidly through a nearby tie-down. Schiavo tested it with her full body weight, then nodded to me. I had volunteered to be first as we planned our approach to the mission, and now it was time to make good on that. I took the rope and drew the slack up so that I could loop it twice through a carabiner attached to my tactical belt. It was the simplest rappelling method that we could employ that still had a modicum of safety built in. I was no expert at the technique, but I had used it before.

  Though I’d never done so on a pitching supercarrier in the middle of the ocean with a darkened space below to greet me.

  “See you below,” I said and stepped toward the edge of the elevator well.

  “Be down in a minute,” Schiavo said.

  I slung my AR and put my weight on the rope, drawing the slack end behind me as I leaned into the open well. With a slight push off I dropped away, sliding down toward the darkness.

  Eight

  An expert I was not. The landing I made on the lowered elevator proved that. My boots slipped out from under me and I slid just as the ship rolled to the right. The edge of the elevator before me in the waning light was just that—an edge. The edge. Beyond it was the Pacific Ocean.

  And I was heading right for it.

  I groped at the rope that had slipped from my grip, but it was pulling fast through the carabiner, as fast as I was sliding toward a very wet oblivion. I scrambled for hand and footholds as the end of the rope whipped out of the carabiner and swung away, out of reach.

  “Fletch!”

  Martin’s shout from above meant they could see what had happened. I’d thought my end might have been almost anonymous in the encroaching night, just a splash and a slack rope to indicate I’d gone overboard. My friends witnessing my death didn’t make the possibility any more attractive, and I grabbed at the slick surface, jamming a finger into a tie-down and stopping my slide as I heard, and felt, bones in the digit break.

  I fought to quell the scream that wanted to come, and used my handhold, and the opposite roll of the ship now beginning, to get myself up and back on track, dashing to some semblance of cover past the inner edge of the elevator.

  The hangar deck was as massive as it was dark. Just a hint of ambient dusk filtered in through the elevator wells and smaller openings to the outside. Enough that I was able to bring my weapon up one handed and scan the empty expanse of shifting shadows before me. The injured finger, bent at an unnatural angle, was on my off hand, thankfully. Unfortunately, it was my ring finger, and the swelling that had already begin was pressing painfully all around the wedding band I wore.

  “Fletch...”

  It was Schiavo. She’d come down as soon as I’d regained my footing. It was immediately apparent to her,
with my one-handed hold on my AR, that something was wrong.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  I showed her my left hand. Even in the din I could see her eyes bug.

  “Fletch, you could lose that finger. The circulation is cut off.”

  “I know,” I said, Martin sliding down the rope just behind her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as he quickly approached.

  He eyed my finger as Schiavo fished a small multitool from her vest, adjusting it so that its jaws were exposed.

  “Wire cutters?” I asked, doubtful.

  “It’s the best we have,” she said, looking to Martin. “Cover us.”

  He moved to a low steel barrier, about waist high, and took a knee, scanning the near blackness that spread out before us.

  “We’ve gotta get that ring off,” Schiavo said.

  “I know.”

  She took my hand gently in hers and turned it, placing the cutters in her other hand in position, clamping the tip if the sharpened jaws down on the ring where it arced over the top of my finger.

  “Aaahhh,” I reacted, as quietly as I could, the cutter head pressing just enough into the damaged flesh to bring on a jolt of pain.

  “Not even gonna count,” Schiavo said.

  And, true to her word, she circled the cutter with both of her hands and bore down, squeezing the jaws together and severing the ring, no one, two, three to ease into the action. The pain approached excruciating, but I swallowed the scream I wanted to let out.

  “Almost done,” Schiavo assured me.

  “Just get it off,” I urged her.

  She gripped the severed ends of the ring with her fingers and spread the soft metal apart until the entire band was a twisted remnant of what it had been.

  “Elaine’s gonna love the job I did on this,” she said, dropping what was left of the ring into one of the cargo pockets in my pants.