by Tom Clancy
He heard the metallic thunk of a hatch opening. He switched his goggles to NV and turned around. A pair of figures in bio-hazard suits were stepping through the hatch.
“… I told you: I don’t know why,” said one of the men. His voice was muffled inside the hood. “The boss wants another reading, so we’re getting another reading.” He held up a Geiger counter and panned it through the air; it gave off a steady but slow chirping.
“Yeah, well, this place gives me the creeps.”
“Join the club. Come on, let’s get it done.”
They started down the catwalk, circling the space’s outer bulkhead. Fisher waited until they were out of sight, then reached up, grabbed a pipe, and lifted his legs off the deck and hooked them over the pipe. He reached again, this time snagging the edge of a ceiling I-beam with his fingertips. He rolled himself onto his belly with his thighs and chest resting across the conduits.
Below, he heard the clunk of the men’s footsteps on the catwalk.
The chirp of the Geiger counter grew louder.
Fisher drew his pistol. He thumbed the safety off and switched the selector to DART.
In his peripheral vision, through a tangle of pipes, Fisher caught a glimpse of a biohazard suit coming closer. The men appeared at the head of the catwalk and walked beneath Fisher. They stopped at the open grating. “You have any idea what this is all about?” one man asked.
“Just the rumors. Somebody was in a hurry to stop the ship.”
“Well, hell, I’d say they got the job done. No way they’re going to be able to cut that outa there. That gear is fried, but good.”
“Not our problem.” The man passed the Geiger first over the engines and then the grating, then knelt down and checked the fire hose. The chirping remained steady. “I got nothing. Control, this is Peterson.”
“Go ahead, Pete.”
“Second engine room sweep is done. All clear.”
“Good. Come topside. Time for you to rotate out.”
* * *
Once they were gone, Fisher lowered himself back to the deck and slipped feetfirst through the grating. Using the loops in the fire hose as handholds, he lowered himself to the deck, which was ankle-deep in a frothy mix of bilgewater and firefighting foam. The latter had been pumped aboard by the first rescue ship on scene, a Navy destroyer, in hopes of pre-smothering any fires before they had a chance to start. Fire is a ship’s worst enemy, and it was deadlier still aboard a ship carrying hazardous materials.
True to the blueprints, he found the Trego’s twin-diesel engines mounted atop massive dampening springs. Each spring was the size of a fire hydrant and was secured to the deck by bolts as big around as his wrist and as long as his forearm.
As he’d feared, the tightly packed springs made it impossible to wiggle under the engines, so he pulled out his flexi-cam, affixed the telescoping extension, then snaked the lens underneath. He flipped on the cam’s light. The rough metal exterior of the engine casing appeared on the OPSAT’s screen. He started scanning, moving inch by inch.
It took three minutes, but finally the serial number plate came into focus. Fisher steadied the cam and hit the shutter button. He withdrew the cam and tucked it away. He keyed his subdermal, but got only a squelch in return. He looked up. Too much steel overhead.
He climbed back to the catwalk and retraced his steps to the hatch and into the passageway. He keyed his subdermal again. “I’m out. Got the numbers.”
“Good work,” Lambert said. “Change of plans. Go to Extraction Point Bravo.”
Extraction Point Bravo was the designated emergency pickup.
“What’s happened?” Fisher asked.
“We think we know what happened to the rest of the Trego’s crew.”
10
THIRD ECHELON SITUATION ROOM
The satellite feed had been siphoned from a commerical LANDSAT by an NSA picket station, so the angle was heavily oblique and the colors faded, but there was no mistaking the single ship in the middle of the plasma screen.
“The Trego, I presume?” Fisher said.
“The one and only,” Lambert replied. “Two hundred miles off the coast of Virginia the morning before your encounter with her. Okay, go ahead, Grim.”
Sitting at the other end of the conference table, Grimsdottir tapped a few keys on her laptop and the image changed. A second ship, clearly smaller than the Trego, appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. “Now we move ahead thirty minutes. Note the Trego’s wake has disappeared. She’s sitting dead in the water.” She tapped the keyboard again. “Ahead forty-two minutes.”
The Trego and the second ship were sitting next to one another.
“Ahead twelve minutes. Zooming in.”
The image flickered, then zoomed in until the two ships filled the screen. In the water between them Fisher could make out what looked like a Zodiac raft.
“The whole operation took twenty-two minutes,” Lambert said. “The Zodiac goes over to the Trego with one man aboard. Nineteen minutes it comes back with nine more men.”
“The Trego’s crew minus one,” Fisher said.
“Right. We’re guessing the intervening time was used to set up the automation system.”
“And to draw straws to see who stays behind. Speaking of which, anything from our prisoner?”
“Still not talking,” Lambert said.
Shortly after the man had woken up handcuffed to a bed in Third Echelon’s medical bay, Redding had begun questioning him. It was another tidbit Fisher didn’t know about Redding: He was in fact a Marine Corps-trained interrogator.
“We’re turning him over to the FBI; let them take a crack at him. Okay, back to the Trego. Here’s what we know: Ten minutes after the Trego’s crew boards the mystery ship, they both get under way and part company, the Trego heading west toward the Atlantic Seaboard, the other ship heading south.”
“Please tell me we know more than that.”
Grimsdottir tapped some more keys. Another satellite image appeared. “Welcome to the harbor at Freeport City, Bahamas. Check the center-right of screen. Behold our mystery ship: the oceangoing yacht Duroc. She’s been anchored there since yesterday. I’m working on the registration.”
Fisher stared at the yacht for a few seconds, then turned to Lambert. “When do I leave?”
* * *
Third Echelon maintained a private airstrip outside Hanover, eight miles northeast of NSA headquarters. It was just past one in the morning when Fisher pulled his car onto to the tarmac beside a Boeing V-22 Osprey.
The Osprey was Third Echelon’s workhorse, used for insertion and extraction missions. Billed as a half-helicopter, half-turboprop aircraft, the Osprey had twin engines, each one mounted on a rotatable nacelle, combining the maneuverability and vertical takeoff capability of a helicopter and the high speed and altitude limits of a standard airplane.
The Osprey’s rotors were already spinning at idle. Through the lighted cockpit window Fisher could see the pilot, Bird, and his copilot, Sandy, going through the preflight. Bird was a typical Southern boy, with an awshucks drawl and a carefree personality to match. Sandy, on the other hand, was all business, one of the first women to break into the typically male-dominated special operations community.
Fisher gathered his duffel bag from the trunk and walked to the rear ramp. He was surprised to see Redding standing at the bottom.
“Didn’t know I was going to have company,” Fisher said.
“I wasn’t getting anywhere with our prisoner, so I thought I’d come keep you out of trouble.”
“Will, getting into trouble is what I do for a living.”
“How nice for you. I’ve got some new gear for you. Come on, we’ve got some air to cover.”
* * *
Once they were airborne and heading south, Redding pulled a black duffel bag from the overhead bin and dropped it on the floor between their seats. Fisher’s standard equipment load-out was maintained in several places, the Osprey one
of them. Fisher assumed that whatever was in this duffel was brand-new.
Redding unzipped it and pulled out a familiar item: Fisher’s tactical suit, a one-piece black coverall fitted with the various pouches, pockets, and harness attachments needed to carry all his equipment. Fisher could see immediately this tac-suit was different.
“First and most important,” Redding said, “you’re familiar with Dragon Skin?”
Fisher was. Originally developed by Pinnacle Armor, Dragon Skin was the world’s first “move when you move” body armor. Lightweight and flexible, Dragon Skin could stop bullets as heavy as an AK-47’s 7.62mm. For years DARPA had been working with Dragon Skin-like composites for special operators, but hadn’t been able to decrease the weight enough to make it feasible.
“DARPA’s figured it out,” Fisher said.
Redding nodded. “Meet the Mark V Tactical Operations Suit, code-named RhinoPlate. Weight, four pounds unloaded; thickness, eight millimeters — about a quarter inch. Outer shell is Kevlar; core material RhinoPlate; inner layer is seventh-generation Gore-tex.”
“Stats?”
“Good against shrapnel at twelve feet; rifle rounds at fifteen; pistol and shotgun at eight feet. The Gore-Tex is tested to maintain core body temperatures down to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit with the hood up, and as high as one hundred ten. You could go from Alaska to the Sahara and stay relatively comfortable.”
“The color’s different.”
“Good eye. New camouflage. The outer layer of the Kevlar is treated with a polymer fiber similar to the coating on stealth aircraft: matte-black, slightly rough to the touch for maximum light absorption. I won’t bore you with the physics, but the micro-roughened exterior partially defuses light. Basically, about thirty percent of whatever photons strike the surface gets trapped — if for only a split second — but enough to diffuse them. Bottom line: You stand still in a shadow, you’re virtually part of the shadow.”
“And the pouches and harness points? Everything’s moved. It looks… lumpy.”
“Disruptive patterning. We’ve resized and rearranged them to break up your form.”
Mother Nature abhors straight lines. In low-light conditions the human eye tends to seek out movement, color difference, and geometric form. Of the three, movement was the easiest to address: stand still. Color difference was also easy: Black gives the eye little to draw from the background. Form, however, was problematic. The human body is a unique collection of angles and lines easily discernible to the human eye. By rearranging the pouches to various spots on the suit, the familiar outline of the body becomes fuzzy.
Fisher took the suit from Redding and examined it. He nodded. “I like it. One question.”
“What?”
“Where do I put my car keys?”
* * *
“Okay, one more item,” Redding said. “An add-on to the SC-20. Again, I’ll spare you the technical stuff. We’ve nicknamed it Cottonball.” He handed Fisher two items: what looked like a standard shotgun shell, and a spiked soft rubber ball roughly the size of marble. “The basic firing mechanism is the same as the sticky shocker and ring airfoil, but with a big difference. Once it’s out of the barrel, the sabot breakes away, leaving only the Cottonball. When it strikes a hard object, an inner pod of aerosol tranquilizer is released. The cloud radius is three feet. Anyone inside that will be unconscious in three or four seconds.”
“Impressive. Duration?”
“For a hundred-eighty-pound man, a waist-up strike will give you about twenty minutes.”
“Accuracy?”
“Plus or minus six inches over fifty feet.”
Bird’s voice came over the intercom: “Hey, boys, incoming transmission for you.”
Fisher tapped his subdermal. “Go ahead,” Fisher said.
Lambert’s voice: “Your target’s gone mobile, Fisher. The Duroc just lifted anchor; she’s steaming northeast out of Freeport City harbor.”
“Destination?”
“Working on it, but we’ve confirmed she took on provisions the day before, including fuel.”
“Probably not a day trip, then. So we either wait for her to put in somewhere, or intercept her under way.”
On headphones, Redding said, “Uh, Colonel, we’ve got a full load-out onboard. I was thinking…”
“Skipjack?”
“Skipjack.”
Fisher groaned. “Ah, man, I hate the Skipjack.”
11
“Seven minutes to target,” Fisher heard Bird say in his subdermal. “Descending to five thousand.”
“Roger. Give me the ramp, Bird.”
“Ramp descending.”
With a mechanical groan, a gap appeared along the curved upper lip of the ramp, revealing a slice of dark night sky. Fisher felt a slight vacuum sensation as the pressure equalized. After a few seconds, the ramp was down level with the deck. Through the opening Fisher could see nothing but a carpet of black water and the distant twinkling lights of the Bahamian mainland.
“Ramp down and locked,” Bird called.
At the bulkhead control panel, Redding checked the gauges and nodded confirmation.
“Surface conditions?” Fisher asked.
“Sea state one, low chop. Winds five to seven knots from the northeast.”
“Give me a two-minute warning.”
“Will do.”
Redding’s voice came over his earpiece: “So, tell me again, Sam: Why do you hate this thing?”
The “thing” in question was a covert insertion vehicle known as a Skipjack. Essentially a one-man IKS (Inflatable Kayak, Small) equipped with a silent electric motor, the Skipjack was enclosed in a bullet-shaped shell of reinforced fiberglass designed to make the IKS aerodynamic, allowing it to be launched from aircraft and skip along the surface at sixty knots before the shell peeled away from the IKS and sank to the bottom.
Insertion is often the diciest part of any mission, especially an airdrop of any kind. Most enemy radar stations, while immediately suspicious of low-flying unidentified aircraft, don’t push the panic button until the target dramatically slows down and/or drops from radar for thirty seconds or more, which could, for example, indicate troops fast-roping from a helicopter.
The Osprey, traveling at 125 knots, could drop off radar without reducing speed, eject the Skipjack, and climb back to altitude within twenty seconds. To radar operators that appeared as nothing more than an inexperienced Cessna pilot who’d lost some altitude before correcting.
There were few things Fisher feared, and none of them involved work. His problem with the Skipjack was the seemingly endless twenty or thirty seconds after it was disgorged from the plane. Being strapped like a piece of luggage inside the IKS and unable to control his fate went against his every instinct.
“I don’t hate it,” Fisher replied. “It’s just not my favorite ride.”
“Sam, can you hear me?” Lambert’s voice.
“Go ahead.”
“The FBI’s on to the Duroc. They’ve got a team landing in Freeport City in twenty minutes. The Bahamian Navy’s got a boat waiting for them.”
“How much time do I have?”
“They’ll probably intercept within seventy minutes. You need to get aboard, get some answers, and get out before then. Remember, you don’t exist—”
“—and we’re not doing this. I know. I’ll be in touch.”
Fisher climbed into the Skipjack, which was locked to the deck by four ratchet straps, and strapped himself in.
Bird called, “Descending through five hundred feet. Target on radar. One minute to drop.”
Fisher felt the Osprey bank again as Bird bled off altitude. The drone of the engines changed pitch. Strapped into the IKS with the Skipjack’s shell around him, Fisher could only see the outside world through a small Plexiglas view port.
“Where’s my target?” he asked.
“We’re coming in astern and close to shore. When you hit the water, they’ll be a mile off your port bow. Current head
ing, three-two-zero; speed, eight knots. We’re passing through two hundred feet. Hold tight. Go on green.”
“Roger, go on green,” Fisher replied.
Redding knelt beside the Skipjack, patted Fisher once on the shoulder, then sealed Skipjack’s roof over his head. The Osprey’s engines went to half volume.
“Eighty feet,” Bird called. “Ten seconds.”
The Osprey began trembling as its own prop wash reacted with the ocean’s surface. Through the port Fisher could see mist swirling around the end of the ramp.
“Five seconds.”
Above Fisher’s head, the bulb turned yellow.
Then green.
In his peripheral vision he saw Redding pull the master release toggle. Fisher felt himself sliding forward.
* * *
Hitting the water was like being rear-ended at a stop-light. He knew it was coming, was braced for it, but still the impact took his breath away. He was thrown forward against the harness as the Skipjack’s airspeed went from 125 knots to 80 knots in the space of two seconds. A wave crashed into the view port; then he felt the nose rise a few feet as the Skipjack’s aerodyamics took over.
He glanced down. Beside his knee, a rudimentary gauge built into the shell gave him a LED speed readout: 60 knots… 55… 48… 42… He peered through the view port. True to Bird’s call, a half mile off his port bow he could see the Duroc’s white mast light.
37… 33… 25…
Fisher reached forward and grasped the shell-release lever. He gave it a hard jerk, a full twist, then tucked his head between his knees. The sound of of the shell separation was dinstinct: like a massive piece of sheet metal being rattled as the wind tore away the two halves.
The truth was, he’d lied to Redding. He did hate the Skipjack, and for a very good reason. As with the Goshawk, the Skipjack had started out as a DARPA project. A friend of Fisher’s from his Navy days, Jon Goodin, had volunteered to test-drive the prototype. On the first run, the Skipjack’s shell had failed to separate properly and one of its edges caught Goodin in the head. He survived, but the impact neatly scalped him, from his forehead to the base of his skull. To this day, Goodin looked as though someone had taken a cheese grater to his forehead.
