by Dick Couch
“I’m here, Roark. Listen, if you can get here, nothing would please me more. If you’re really needed there, then don’t come. My mom will be here day after tomorrow, and Julia Nolan looks in on me daily. It would be wonderful to have you here, and I do miss you. But it’s your call; only you know where you’ll be needed most. If you can’t come or even if you can’t be here when the baby’s born, I know it’s because you’re needed elsewhere, and I can deal with it. I do understand.”
There was a pause before he replied, “God, I love you.” Another pause. “If it’s possible, I’ll be there. I’ll even let your mom boss me around and do what she tells me. If I can’t be there, you’ll know that I’m on a project and I can’t leave—that it’s not where I want to be; it’s where I have to be.”
“I know, Roark, and I know that what you decide will be the right thing for all of us.” All of us, she mused—her, the baby, and those SEALs who depended on him. “And I love you more than words can say.”
They talked for another ten minutes and swapped platoon-family news, but what needed to be said had been said. And yet nothing had changed; it was as they both knew it would be, but that did not make it any easier or less painful. After Roark rang off, Jackie sat in their small Coronado living room, one hand on the cradled receiver and the other resting on her swollen belly. Tears found their way down her cheek, dripping off her chin and falling on the hand that caressed their child.
Roark Engel slipped the Iridium phone back into the cargo pocket of his trousers. He felt equal measures of relief and longing. She had made it clear that it was his call, and she supported whatever he would decide. Still, it was not an easy call. He wanted to be with her and to share in this miraculous journey they were on—this child, their first child. Yet he knew he could not leave unless this potential threat was somehow eliminated. Navy SEALs often find themselves hoping that conditions align themselves such that they are cleared for a mission. More often than not, conditions don’t align and the mission is canceled. For the first time, Roark Engel found himself hoping that this one would get canceled or go down quickly, so he could somehow get home to his wife and unborn child.
He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the Bonhomme Richard’s communications center to see if there was any recent message traffic about Shabal and the threat. He moved with a clear head and a heavy heart. He was not the first Navy SEAL, nor the last, to find his calling in conflict with family responsibilities.
* * *
Another LHD was steaming south at best speed in the South China Sea. Senior Chief Otto Miller and his task unit commander, Todd Crandall, were again with the captain of the Makin Island and gathered over a chart of the coast of Malaysia.
“Sir, we are looking for a private yacht that we know from satellite imagery is somewhere off the coast of Sarawak. It was physically last seen in the Bay of Brunei, anchored several miles from the capital of Bandar. The British consulate there made some inquiries for us, but we really only know that she sailed in two nights ago, apparently coasting in Malay waters. The game here is to track her and, if possible, catch her in international waters and board her.”
“What kind of a craft are we looking for?” Captain McMasters asked.
“A nice one,” Miller replied. “She’s a Westship Tri-Deck 149, with the ability to take a small helo aboard. Her name is the Osrah, which means ‘family’ in Arabic, and she was built in 2002 in Westport, Washington. The out-the-door price was just north of sixteen million. She has a range of twenty-five hundred nautical miles and a cruising speed of eighteen knots. Her top speed is twenty-two, which makes her about as fast as your ship . . . sir.”
“And you think this Christo fellow is aboard.”
“We believe so. Once we pin down her exact location and can get close enough to launch a drone, we think that we can confirm his presence by cell-phone activity. This guy has a lot of money and a lot of interests worldwide. When the owner is not aboard the luxury yacht, there’s minimal cell traffic. When the owner and his party are aboard, that activity goes up dramatically. We don’t necessarily need to decode his transmissions, which would be difficult, as we know he uses some very sophisticated encryption, but we can be pretty certain he’s aboard by the volume of traffic.”
“If this guy is just a Central American drug smuggler, tell me again why it’s so important that we had to break off from our work in the Philippines and have my ship apprehend him at sea?”
Miller began in a soft, professorial tone. There’s a compelling body of evidence that those linked with our friend Christo, aka Mikhail Troikawicz, are planning a 9/11–type event in our country. Christo is not a doer, but he’s a supplier—an arranger, if you will. His main enterprise is the transshipment and smuggling of drugs. Yet his Chechen roots have on occasion led him to aiding and abetting terrorists. On those occasions when he has allowed his organization to support terrorism, it has been to help one Shabal Khanov Kasparian, or Mohammad Abu Shabal, or just Shabal, as he is generally called. Christo is a capitalist—an evil, mercenary, and ruthless drug dealer, but still a capitalist. Shabal is another animal. We don’t know where he is, but there’s every indication that he’s up to something big. Yet we do know where Christo is, or where we think he is. He may or may not know the whereabouts of Shabal or his plans, but it’s our best lead. I, or rather we, very badly want to have a conversation with Shabal.”
The Makin Island’s skipper digested this and slowly nodded his head. “So how do you want to play this?”
Miller looked to Lieutenant Commander Crandall, who picked up the narrative. “Sir, once we have a good location of the Osrah, we shadow her at a safe distance while we observe her electronically. Given the priority of this operation, there’s a Global Hawk standing by at Diego Garcia at our disposal. While the drone gets on station, we close in just out of visual and radar range, and get our Mk5 detachment and two of our RHIBs ready to launch from the well deck. If and when the Global Hawk sees a spike in cell-phone traffic, we take the yacht, and we take Christo.”
“And what if the yacht is in Malaysian territorial waters?” Captain McMasters asked.
“If we have anything to say about it, we move on the Osrah whether it’s in Malaysian or international waters, but that call will be made well above my pay grade.”
“Mine, too,” replied McMasters. “Okay, we make all preparations for an interdiction at sea. Let me know when there’s a sighting of the yacht. That’s a pretty big boat, and there are not a lot of islands off the Sarawak coast where it could hide. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
* * *
They had only their operational, desert cammies under their dry suits, but even though the water was in the low 80s, the two SEALs in the rear of the SDV were becoming chilled. Up front, the pilot and his navigator were toasty. This was their element, and they wore half-inch thermals under their dry suits. But for them, the mission would have them underwater for close to ten hours, and by that time, they also would be feeling the effects of the not-so-cold water. Suddenly the music, a superb rendition of Bach’s Suite No. 2 in B Minor by the Münchener Bach-Orchester, stopped and was replaced by the burbly voice of the pilot.
“We are now approaching our destination and will soon be ascending up from our cruise depth. Please pass all drink containers and trash to the center aisle. All seats and tray tables should be in their fully upright and locked position. We ask that you check around your seats for all personal belongings, and remember, stowed baggage may have shifted in transit. We’ve enjoyed being of service. Next time your travel takes you to a foreign land to break things and kill people, we hope you will again book your trip with SDV Team One. Have a nice day.”
Ray closed his book and pushed the remaining pages through the break in the canopy. He glanced at A.J. as he reached for the gear bag that he was sitting on and eased it forward to just under his feet. They felt the SDV begin to slow, then the canopy broke the surface, just enough for the circular GPS antenn
a to ride above the gentle swell.
“Very close but no cigar,” came the navigator’s voice. “We’re about a hundred and twenty meters from the drop point. Give us another few minutes.”
The SDV altered course to port and moved just below the surface at low speed. The pilot then shut down the electric motor, and the little submersible coasted slowly forward. After the continuous hum of the motor behind the music, it was now deathly quiet. It took a while for them to coast to a stop; a wet submersible full of water carries a lot of momentum. When they were dead in the water, they ballasted up to where the top ten inches of the canopy and fiberglass fairing cleared the water. Then two heads surfaced in the front compartment, followed by the two in back. The flat calm was disturbed only by a gentle, southerly swell. They were a mile off the beach, too far to hear any surf. They were also too far offshore to be heard, yet they spoke in whispers.
“We’re within yards of the insertion coordinates,” said the navigator. “Your point on the beach is one-eight-five magnetic.”
“My watch says zero two fifty-five,” offered the pilot. “We’ll give you an hour to get ashore, then we’ll surface and monitor your freq for five minutes every thirty minutes on the hour and the half hour. Our last check will be zero seven hundred, then we bingo for the Michigan.”
“Thanks, guys,” whispered A.J. “Safe trip home.”
“Good luck to you. Kick some ass.”
That was not their mission, but both Ray and A.J. understood. The two recon SEALs now had their gear bags out of the SDV with the flotation bladders inflated to where they were just positively buoyant. They would make their way ashore, towing their gear. They had not swum but a few strokes when, amid a quiet hiss of bubbles, the SDV slipped beneath the surface and drifted slowly to the sandy bottom in twenty feet of water.
“So what do you feel like?” asked the navigator.
“I dunno,” replied the pilot. “I’m a little sleepy, so maybe something lively. Got any Chuck Berry?”
“Man, I got it all—even your grandfather’s music.” Soon they were both tapping a dry-suit boot to the strains of “Johnny Be Good.”
It took the recon duo less than the hour to get to the water’s edge. For five minutes they lay in a foot of water, with a gentle swell carrying them forward a few feet, then back. They listened, and Ray pulled a waterproof night-vision monocular from his kit and carefully swept the beach, the berm, and the backshore area. They heard and saw nothing. Then each eased his M4 from his rifle bag and chambered a round. There was a half moon that would not set for another two hours. It was not a time they would have chosen to cross this beach, but waiting was not an option.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
A.J. scurried across, his gear bag slung across his back and his weapon at the ready. He crossed the berm and found a stand of low beach scrub—not a particularly good place to hide, but it gave him no silhouette. Once Ray joined up, the two began to cut away their dry suits and ready their operational gear for travel. They were light on ammunition; heavy on radios, optics, and chow; and very heavy on water. They pushed through the backshore vegetation for several hundred meters; paused to bury their dry suits, swim masks, fins, and waterproof bags; and then kept going. Neither was comfortable with the footprints that followed them up from the beach, but there was little they could do about it. It was a smuggler’s coast, and they’d simply have to trust that theirs was not the only clandestine beach crossing.
At 0700 they were some five miles inland. They had crossed the coast midway between Bosaso and the Horn and were making their way through a region known as the Guban, or scrub land. They contacted the SDV crew, thanked them again for their good work, and watched dawn steal across the barren wasteland that was northern Somalia. Then they turned 90 degrees from their southerly course; made another half-mile, carefully covering their tracks; and went to ground in a copse of scrub that afforded them some concealment and shade. They were carrying close to seventy pounds each, but that would get easier to manage as they depleted their water. It was a long day, and they slept most of it, but they knew the night ahead was going to be a long one.
It was their intention to be in a hide site of the mysterious landing coordinates before dawn of the following day. This was doable but not easy; it meant humping their load for close to eighteen miles. Neither had had any physical activity for close to two weeks, save the run for their lives in Costa Rica and a few days of shipboard physical training. And they had just hopscotched their way halfway around the world. It was not that they were out of shape, but they had not prepared for this trek—other than that they were Navy SEALs and when it was time to hump, they would simply just do it. At sundown they took a magnetic azimuth and set off at a steady pace. Periodically they paused for a drink, an energy bar, and a GPS fix. Otherwise, they kept moving. Neither felt the need to talk nor remind themselves of the SEAL motto, “The only easy day was yesterday.” It was simply a matter of converting desert in front of them to desert behind them—no more and certainly no less.
They made it to the landing-site coordinates with thirty minutes to spare and quickly found what they were looking for—a good hide site. There was a shallow rise just north of what appeared to be a dirt road that ran straight through a dry valley wash below—almost due east and west. The ground looked as flat and smooth as the Bonneville Salt Flats. They found a crag just below a series of rock outcrops that allowed them to see out without being seen from below. And with the sun moving left to right of their position, there was little chance of a reflection from the lenses of their surveillance equipment. Once they had stowed their equipment well into the recess of the crag, and had a ghillie blanket set in place to break up any outline made by their person or gear, A.J. rigged their AN/PSC-5 satellite radio. With the PSC-5 in place, mated to the keyboard of a small Toughbook computer, they quickly established a secure, real-time voice link with the task unit embarked on the Makin Island and Roark Engel on the Bonhomme Richard. The latest generation of encrypted Iridium satellite phones had almost done away with the need for a man-pack portable satellite radio—almost. The Iridium could not handle imagery and data transmission. The PSC-5 was bulky but still needed.
Once finished with the housekeeping chores, Ray took the first watch while A.J. curled up on his poncho liner and was soon asleep. It was all done but the waiting; they were well hidden and no more than two hundred yards from the target GPS coordinates.
There was nothing the first day, or that night—not that they expected anything at night. The two recon SEALs fell into a routine of sleeping, eating, and communicating, even though there was nothing to report. That first afternoon, the temperature climbed to 105 degrees in their shady, rocky hideout, and they moved little in deference to the heat. They drank into their precious supply of water in proscribed amounts at prescribed intervals.
“Y’know, A.J.,” Ray offered during a mid-afternoon watch change, “We’ve spent about a gazillion dollars on drones that can do what we’re doing out here. Think about it. We could be in some air-conditioned space on some cushy Air Force base, sitting in a padded swivel, drinking an Arnold Palmer, and watching an LED screen. We could see everything we can see right now. And then when we’re not on duty, we could be out on the golf course. Air Force bases are all about nice golf courses.”
“You got a point,” replied A.J. as he settled in behind a tripod-mounted pair of Zeiss 20x60 mm image-stabilized binoculars. He adjusted them to his eyes, but they would not be needed unless there was activity. “But there’s no substitute for eyes on. And a drone can’t see eye level like we can. By seeing it from here on the ground, we can determine intent and purpose by observing movement, procedures, interactions, and the handling of equipment. A drone can’t do that stuff. And besides, there are Russian ships on piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden. Their radars would pick up any drone activity.”
“So then,” Ray reasoned, “we ought to be paid a gazillion dollars for doing t
his, since the drones can’t.”
A.J. started to respond, thought better of it, and turned to survey the vacant sandlot below. “When did you last call in?”
“Fourteen hundred, right on schedule. No new word for us.”
They maintained their vigil into the night, swapping the Zeiss binoculars for a set of Pulsar Edge GS2 2.7x50 night-vision binos with an IR capability. They were only just a little better than their helmet-mounted NODs, but with the advantage of convenience and magnification. Yet nothing moved that first day and night.
Dawn broke, and Ray and A.J. switched their night gear out for their day equipment and maintained their watch. But miles away, much was happening.
* * *
The two Russian pilots sat in the cockpit of their ancient Albatross aircraft, waiting.
It had been a long flight from the Ukraine, punctuated by multiple refueling stops. The relic they were flying had a cruising range of barely a thousand miles and had to stop at every godforsaken airfield in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, or wherever they happened to be. On this job, each time they stopped for fuel they had to check in with Shabal.
