RW16 - Domino Theory

by Richard Marcinko

  “Ah, you don’t have to lie to me.”

  “It’s not a lie. An exaggeration. But you would be on the list. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Three months, the planning started,” he said. “The timeline was always a bit theoretical, but it’s pretty much followed along as predicted.”

  * * *

  Let’s connect some of the cookie crumbs here:

  Three months ago, India started planning on moving its nukes to a central location. Very soon thereafter, a terrorist organization begins planning an operation that seems intended to strike at that base.

  About as much a coincidence as the marines leaving their posts near the Tiger boats, I’d have to say.

  * * *

  We exchanged some further small talk before I wandered off into the farther recesses of the reception hall. I had suspected that Minister Dharma would be among the guests, and I wasn’t disappointed. There she was, as radiant as ever, standing with a group of foreign dignitaries who looked as if they were preparing offers of marriage.

  I could hear the flutter of hearts breaking as I approached. Minister Dharma kept her gaze locked ninety degrees from me, a sure sign of interest.

  A British foreign service worker whom I knew slightly approached and began making conversation. We talked a bit, giving me a chance to observe the minister without being overly obvious about it.

  * * *

  What does a traitor look like?

  Like everybody else. They usually don’t have horns, or multicolored auras rising over their heads.

  “A man may smile and smile, and be a villain,” said Shakespeare.

  “Not all scumbags smell like puked milk,” says Richard Marcinko.

  * * *

  “Richard, how good to see you here,” said the minister, deigning to notice me standing right in front of her.

  I got the royal treatment — air kisses on both cheeks.

  Naturally I had to return them, sans air.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said after I planted the second wet one.

  “I was a last-minute replacement.”

  “I see. I thought you were on your way back to America.”

  “I’m sticking around for the Games. I’m due for a vacation, and I love sports.”

  A very slight look of displeasure passed over her face — a lone cloud on an otherwise perfect summer day.

  “Maybe we can have lunch sometime,” I said pleasantly.

  “I’d like that,” she said, with just enough eye contact to make it seem as if she meant it.

  “We really didn’t have a chance to get to know each other,” I added. “And that was a shame.”

  “Mmmmm, yes. That was. It would be … interesting.”

  Further flirtations were ended with the arrival of Vina, who curled her hand proprietarily around my arm.

  “There you are, Dick,” she said. “I was afraid I had lost you.”

  Most likely she gave the minister a flash of green eye, for Dharma’s gaze narrowed a bit. I introduced them.

  “Very pleased to meet you,” lied Vina. She turned to me. “Dick, you promised you would dance.”

  “I did.”

  I told Minister Dharma that I would definitely call and find some time for her before going home.

  “Please do,” she said. “Lunch would be most … nutritious.”

  * * *

  While I was finding my rusty way through a fox-trot, Junior and Mongoose were doing their own dance up the line to the Han Li.

  Climbing wet ropes at night with the spray of the sea in your face is more an art than science, especially when the waves rise and the line slackens just enough to tug your stomach.

  There’s a point about halfway up when you think, My God, is this mother ever going to end? Then about three-quarters of the way to the deck you’re sure it’s not going to end. You glance down, even though you realize that’s the absolute last thing you should do, and all you see is a yawning black pit. Letting go is not an option, but your curled fingers can’t take much more, and your thigh muscles — climbing ropes requires a surprising amount of leg action — are ready to implode.

  You keep going. Partly because of pride — you don’t want to fail. Largely because you know if you don’t, you are never going to make it home.

  Mongoose made the rail, took a quick peek at the deck to make sure they were clear, then turned back and waited for Junior to arrive. One thing I’ll say for Junior — I doubt he could have climbed that rope a year before. He had busted his ass getting himself into better shape, adding bulk and a lot more upper body strength, and it paid off that night.

  They went over the rail one at a time, resting in the shadow of the cabin to recoup their breath and strength. The cargo containers they had to inspect were far forward, at the top of a row nearest the bow.

  Getting there wouldn’t be too difficult. There was a run of about twenty yards where they might be visible from the bridge, but otherwise the deck gear and containers gave them pretty good coverage.

  “Ready?” asked Mongoose.

  Junior nodded and began to step away from the bulkhead.

  Just as he did, the forward deck area lit with searchlights.

  * * *

  I’d gotten what I’d come for at the reception, but Vina wanted to stay awhile longer. I had no objection to that, as long as I could fortify myself for the long haul. I deposited her with a group of friends and made my way to another of the portable bars stationed around the large ballroom.

  The British do colonial decadence particularly well. The ambassador’s house was a veritable monument to the lost Age of the Viceroys, with intricately patterned marble tile on the floor and walls, grandiose columns at the side, and crystal chandeliers whose bulbs could have lit half the city. Even though they were all native Indians, the servants were the stoic, stiff upper lip types you see in posh London clubs.

  “Bombay Sapphire,” I told the man working the bar. “Give me an extra helping of rocks. I’m feeling a little warm.”

  “Hot flash?” said a familiar scolding voice nearby.

  Omar.

  “I didn’t realize they were so desperate for guests,” I said, taking my drink.

  “I was going to say the same to you.”

  “Well, have a nice life,” I told him, starting to make my exit.

  “Rushing off to your latest defeat?”

  I would have thought his accident at the funeral improved his manners, but obviously he needed a refresher. Even so, I would have left that to others had he not added something along the lines of, “Everything you touch goes to shit eventually, old man.”

  As mild-mannered and even tempered as I am, I couldn’t let a remark like that go. I took him by the elbow and gently steered him toward the nearby French doors, which led to a small, private, and thankfully empty, patio.

  Maybe I applied a little pressure to his elbow. The precise details escape me.

  “Don’t screw with me, Marcinko,” he said, with all the ferocity of a pussy cat that’s just been neutered.

  “You’re going to have to work on your manners,” I told him. “You’re at an ambassador’s residence.”

  “At least I’m not a failure.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “Only because I can’t puff myself up like you.”

  “That’s all I do. Puff myself up.”

  “You’re a dismal failure. You’ve been a disaster here. You even screwed up in Kashmir.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t make a dent in that cell,” he said. He didn’t name India for Islam, though it was obvious that’s who he meant. “That madrassa? Pppph.”

  He was trying to spit, but all he did was dribble down his shirt.

  “They’re still active, you know. All sorts of comm traffic in the past twenty-four hours.” Omar smirked. “Your time is over.”

  “What kind of traffic?”

  “Lots o
f traffic.” He got a worried look on his face, realizing finally he’d shot his mouth off when he shouldn’t have. “They’re planning something.”

  “When?”

  “How the hell do I know?”

  I grabbed his elbow again. Or maybe it was a different body part, more strategically located and more sensitive to pressure.

  “God only knows what they’re doing,” he squeaked. “But soon. Soon. Twenty-four hours. Twelve. Everyone’s going on alert. Like I said, you’re washed up. Your time is over.”

  A fundamental principle is never to remain completely passive, but to attack the enemy frontally and from the flanks, even when he is attacking us.

  — MAJOR GENERAL CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, ON WAR, 1831, TR. HOWARD AND PARET

  7

  ( I )

  Junior and Mongoose froze on the side of the ship, unsure what was going on as light flooded over the deck. They had their weapons out and at the ready.

  “I don’t think they saw us,” Mongoose whispered. “The lights are up near the bow. There’s something going on up there.”

  They waited a few minutes, making sure Mongoose was right. Worried that someone would come aft and spot the line and, more specifically, the boat tied to the other end, Mongoose made a tactical decision to cut it.

  “We can always swim to it,” he told Junior.

  Junior nodded. I’m going to guess a bit grimly.

  Reasonably sure that they hadn’t been spotted, they began slinking forward, hugging the bulkhead of the superstructure. They were on the port side of the ship. The hatchways and doors that they could see were all battened down, everything snugged against the sea and what little there was of weather. The air was calm, and the heave of the ocean gentle. The moon, about three-quarters full, peeked between a few high-level clouds. Under other circumstances, it would have been a very pleasant night.

  As they reached the forward corner of the superstructure, they realized that the light was coming from a set of floods that were focused on the forward cargo area. The ship had slowed, its speed gradually falling from the five or six knots it had been making when they boarded to closer to two.

  A lifeboat was tied to its davits about ten yards from the edge of the cabin area. The way the lights were arranged, it was in shadow. Lying flat, Mongoose crawled out two or three feet, twisting around to try to see if there was anyone nearby.

  Nope.

  “I think we can make it to that lifeboat without being seen,” he told Junior, pulling back. “We can climb up on the assembly and get a better look at what’s going on.”

  “They’ll be able to see us from the bridge,” said Junior.

  “If they’re looking at us, sure. Odds are, though, they’re not.”

  “But they might be.”

  “Might be.”

  “I say we run.”

  “Walking makes more sense,” Mongoose told him. “Somebody sees us, we look like crewmen.”

  Junior was dubious. They were dressed in black, wearing dive suits. And they had rucks. It was one thing to pass through a shadow, where they’d more or less blend with the darkness. Out in the light they were going to look as out of place as rottweilers in a cat show.

  But Mongoose was the experienced hand and senior man, so they walked — quickly, nervously in Junior’s case, but walked nonetheless.

  No one saw them, or if they did, didn’t raise an alarm.

  Ships like the Han Li typically sail with a small crew. The ships are designed so that they can be handled with numbers that would have shocked captains and warmed the hearts of owners a generation ago.

  But when Junior climbed up the davit and gazed forward, he counted at least eight men scrambling over the stack of containers near the bow. That represented more than three-quarters of their estimate of the ship’s crew size.

  More of a problem, two of them had assault rifles.

  Chinese army issue QB2-95s, to be exact. The little bullpup jobs with the magazines where the trigger should be.

  They were standing on top of the middle row of containers, gazing forward toward the bow. The rest of the men were setting down large metal planks over the forward row of the containers. It looked … strange.

  I don’t know how long it took Mongoose and Junior to figure out what was going on. Mongoose climbed up a ways behind Junior, and he claims he realized what was up the second he saw it. Junior, who tends to be somewhat more modest, said they watched the proceedings for a good five minutes, and it was only when they opened one of the containers behind the platform created by the planks that they could guess what was up.

  “They’re going to fly the helicopters off the ship,” he told Mongoose. “Holy shit.”

  The smart thing to do, at that point, was to use their satellite phone and call the Indian navy. Taking pictures of what was going on also made a hell of a lot of sense.

  They did both.

  But boys being boys, they didn’t stop there.

  * * *

  By that time, I’d hustled Vina from the reception and was on my way out to meet Shotgun at the installation where the warheads were being stockpiled. I’d sent him over to keep watch from the highway just to the south where he could see the entrance that was to be assaulted according to the India for Islam plan.

  When I’d sent him that afternoon, I thought it was only a long-shot precaution. Now I realized from Omar’s remark about the increase in radio traffic that something big was brewing.

  More ominous was the content of some of the intercepted messages, which I had Shunt access for me using the sign-ins I’d purloined from Special Squadron Zero.

  “They only encrypted one message,” Shunt told me when I checked in. “It was a PK encryption, not too hard to break. I have the text, but I’m not sure what it means.”

  “Tell me.”

  “100210.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Complete.”

  “It’s a date,” I said.

  “It’s tomorrow,” said Shunt.

  “No. It’s today,” I said. “You’re a day behind.”

  I had my sat phone out to call Doc for more backup when it lit with an incoming call from Junior.

  “Dick, this is Matt.”

  “Yeah, I got that, Junior. What’s up?”

  “The Chinese have the helicopters. They’re on the ship.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Damn sure.”

  “Get pictures and get out of there.”

  “Listen, they’re going to fly them off the ship.”

  “What?”

  “No shit, Dad. They’re pulling them out of the containers as I speak. Damn.”

  “All right, listen. Take pictures. Then I want you — ”

  “I called the number you gave me for the admiral. I can’t get a response.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “We think some of the guys aboard are PLA,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Chinese People Liberation Army. “They have army issue weapons, and — ”

  “I’m sure you’re right. Listen to me. Get your butts out of there. We didn’t sign up to get involved in any war.”

  We didn’t sign up for any of this, as a matter of fact. Pro bono work for the U.S. of A. is one thing; working for free for the Indians or anyone else is quite another.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said, get your butt off of that ship.” My tone was a few decibels louder than the one you use to tell your teenager he can’t borrow the car Friday night to go out drinking. “Leave the boat. Now.”

  “Sorry, we’re having transmission troubles. I gotta go.”

  The line clicked.

  * * *

  Transmission troubles, my war-bruised butt.

  * * *

  Let’s join the boys, shall we?

  “That rig over there looks like a pump,” Mongoose told Junior, probably a few seconds after he hung up. “I’ll bet they’re going to use it to fuel the helos.”

&nb
sp; “We could blow it up.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. But I can’t see the gas tank from here.”

  “We could if we could cross the deck somehow,” said Junior, “and get up along the starboard side.”

  “Let me think about that.”

  The deck area immediately in front of them was covered by a light from above the bridge. The middle of the ship was also fairly well lit, not to mention visible from both the bridge and the top of the containers. The guards had their backs to them, but it was a long way across. Mongoose decided that the easiest and safest way to the other side of the ship was to go belowdecks.

  “Only one of us should go,” he told Junior, clearly meaning that he should be the one.

  “All right.” Junior started to climb down.

  “No, no, I’m going to go.”

  “Screw that, I’m faster.”

  “I’m a better shot.”

  “Bullshit on that.”

  Actually, Junior is the better shot.

  “When was the last time you shot on a ship?” asked Mongoose. “You gotta adjust for the swell. I’m doing it.”

  “We’ll both go,” said Junior finally.

  They went back to the superstructure, once again walking quickly across the lit area. By now they were probably feeling invulnerable. You slip in and out of the lion’s den often enough, and you start to think you’re invisible and maybe even invincible. Adrenaline gets the better of you. Your heart is pumping and your head starts swelling with blood. It’s a super amphetamine rush, without the drugs.

  One of the unsung benefits of SEAL training is the very lessons in how to keep that rush under control. Being brave is important, surely, but being able to use your head prudently in battle is critical. And just because people aren’t firing at you in any given instant doesn’t mean you’re not right in the middle of a shit storm.

  There were three doors on the port side of the superstructure. Mongoose reasoned that the forward one, which sat roughly under the bridge area, would be the one most likely to be used by any crewmen detailed to go out on the deck. So he went to door number two.

  It opened on a passage that ran along the side of the superstructure area. The corridor was narrow. The interior lights were low, but obviously anyone seeing them would know in an instant that they didn’t belong. Both had their submachine guns ready.