Phantom

by Ted Bell

“Go!” Hawke said simply.

  Stony’s four-man demolition SEAL team suddenly executed a backflip off the bow rail, splashing down simultaneously. From his height, he could see four trails of bubbles streaming upward as he watched them disappear into the deep. Stony and Hawke both knew they were sending these men into grave danger.

  This dive would take them very near the world-record scuba free-diving depth of 330 meters or 1,083 feet. The SEALs were wearing ADS (atmospheric diving suits) and breathing a mixture of hydrox and nitrogen trimix because of the very high ambient pressure they would encounter. A thousand feet below the yacht’s hull they would find Perseus and his six satellites and destroy them. Hawke looked at his watch. How long would it take to descend to the black towers, rig the charges, set the timers, and return as rapidly as possible to the surface?

  And did he have that long?

  The patrol boat at the other end of the dock suddenly looked a very long distance away. There were four U.S. Navy sharpshooters aboard that ship who’d been exchanging sporadic fire with snipers in windows of random buildings rising above the top of the enclosing wall. There were two men manning the twin .50-caliber Browning heavy machine guns on both the bow and the stern. Both teams of gunners were laying down heavy suppression fire at the gate. It was the only thing holding the howling horde in check.

  The Iranian boat’s twin engines were cranked up, waiting for the attack team’s imminent return from Cygnus. But Hawke was distinctly uncomfortable. It all seemed far too easy. Blow Perseus to hell, disembark, make a mad dash down the pier, board the vessel, weigh anchor, and get the hell out of here. None of this jibed with his prior experience of spec-ops warfare.

  No. When it seemed too easy, it usually was, and you could be sure a bloody firestorm was waiting for you just around the—

  The first mortar round rose into the night sky. He heard the report of the round leaving the tube behind the wall. And then another and another round was lobbed over the wall in the direction of the Iranian patrol boat where four brave men stood between life and death for their comrades.

  He grabbed his combat radio, turned toward the hijacked patrol boat, and shouted “Incoming!” He saw two of the four sailors who’d remained aboard the patrol boat dive into the water a nanosecond before the mortar rounds hit the vessel. The two valiant men firing the Browning .50s remained at their battle stations on the bow and died there. One of the incoming mortar rounds must have found the petrol tanks because the vessel simply disintegrated, the shock wave of the explosion preceding an eruption into a pillar of flame and smoke.

  The mortars were the signal. Instantly, the massed jihadists at the gate had the sign they’d been waiting for. Having eliminated the enemy’s only means of escape, they came streaming en masse out through the narrow tunnel. Stony’s snipers aboard Cygnus fired as rapidly as they could, their high-powered scopes enabling them to kill the forefront of the first wave. Corpses were stacked in front of the gate as the main force emerged, screaming and howling like the hyenas and jackals they were.

  A bloodthirsty mob was pounding down the central dock, headed for the pier at the end where Cygnus was moored. Hawke saw that many of them were carrying long makeshift boarding ladders, roughly fashioned of wood and lashed together with leather. He was already taking fire. He heard a few rounds pinging off the bulkhead above his head, but the enemy forces weren’t close enough yet to make their ancient AK-47s effective.

  Hawke got on the combat radio to Stony, each word punctuated by a squeeze of his trigger as he picked off the nearest targets.

  “Haul aboard the landward grapnel lines, Stony, then join me up on the bridge. High ground. We can direct the defense from here. Rig every one of the grapnel lines on the seaward side of the vessel. We might need them.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Where are Stokely and Brock?”

  “They remained down on the dock. First line of defense, Brock told me.”

  “What!”

  “Aye, they’ve taken up a defensive firing position behind some stacked steel barrels. They’ve both got M-60 heavy machine guns. Chopping ’em up pretty good, sir.”

  “Damn it! Get them aboard immediately. That’s suicide. They’ll be overrun by this mob in seconds, hacked to pieces with bayonets and scimitars. Have you still got a grapnel line down?”

  “All aboard save one.”

  “Get on the radio. Have them grab that damn line and haul them aboard as fast as you can. Give them covering fire while they’re exposed coming up the side of the hull.”

  “Roger, it’s happening as we speak.”

  Hawke saw Brock and Stoke safely hauled aboard and shouted, “Here those bastards with the ladders come, Stony. I’ve wanted to say this since I was six years old: Repel boarders!”

  The jihadist warriors, AK-47s in their hands and curved Arabian knives clenched in their teeth, began to position the ladders against the hull and started scrambling up like jabbering monkeys. Hawke’s men waited, then shoved the ladders away from the rail and sent them tumbling back down into the midst of the howling mob or splashing into the water on the far side of the pier. But ladders were going up the entire length of the hull, faster than Hawke’s men could shove them away. The fire was murderous and Hawke knew he was taking unacceptable casualties.

  “Divers still down?” Stony asked, joining Hawke as they both poured fire into the masses of warriors climbing the ladders. Far too many were getting aboard. And more were still streaming through the gate. This battle was going one-sided fast, Hawke realized. A strategic retreat was called for and the patrol boat for their escape wasn’t exactly seaworthy at the moment. It was nonexistent.

  “Where the hell’s my UDT squad?”

  “No sign of them, Stony,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “They’ve been down there twenty minutes. We need to get the hell off this damn boat. Now.”

  “Good God, Alex, you’ve been hit!”

  “Somebody got lucky. A round penetrated my body armor beneath my arm. Nothing vital, I assure you, despite the fountain of blood.”

  “I’ll get a corpsman up here immediately.”

  “No. There are men below who need attention far more than I do. Somebody can stitch me up when the seriously wounded have been attended to. Now, enough of that; what is our situation?”

  “I’m afraid the bastards have got us trapped, sir. We’re already vastly outmanned and outgunned and our escape plan just went up in smoke at the far end of the pier.”

  “That was Plan A,” Hawke said, grimacing in pain and mowing down a tightly bunched group of black-turbaned fighters trying to sneak aft from the bow and flank them on the starboard side. “It’s time for Plan B.”

  “Ah, good. But tell me what the hell is Plan B again?”

  “Plan B is steaming at flank speed up the channel right now. Look behind you.”

  A strange ship was approaching at a high rate of speed. It looked like no waterborne craft Stony had ever seen before. Her flat-angled planes were matte black, austere, and her sharp prow looked like the blade of a battle axe.

  “Good God, what the hell is that thing? Looks like a floating stealth bomber.”

  “She’s called Nighthawke. She’s the tender to Blackhawke, built in Italy at the Wally yard. Fifty feet of armor-plated gunship to the rescue. She’s been circling offshore. I ordered her in when the patrol boat was taken out. Wait—got you, you little raghead—that’s why I ordered the grapnel lines moved to the seaward side. We’re getting the hell off this empty bucket. I want an orderly retreat from the port side over to the starboard side, Stony. Not all at once, nothing perceptible from the shore. Make them think we’re still defending the port side until the last possible moment. I’ve ordered Nighthawke to pull along our starboard side to receive us as we come down the grapnel lines.”

  “I like this plan.”

  “Nighthaw
ke’s got enough firepower to discourage anyone from trying to follow us in those pirate scows.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Stony said with a wide grin. He saw the Nighthawke’s twin Browning .50-caliber barrels protruding from a ring-mounted armored turret swivel 180 degrees on the foredeck and start spitting lead at enemy fighters threatening to ascend to higher decks from the stern of the big white yacht. Another gunner, operating a similar turret on the stern, opened fire. The loud chatter of the two big guns gave rise to Hawke’s hopes that the main body of his force might actually survive. At least three of his Red Team members fighting off the boarders had not been so lucky in the brutal firefight. Many more were injured and needed immediate medical attention.

  Stony said, “I’ll go below and give the order to move to starboard now. Post a rear guard to fire and scramble, from as many positions as possible, to give the illusion of a larger force to disguise the retreat.” Hawke looked at him, thinking fast.

  “Give me your gun and ammo first. Shooting with two hands is better than one. With any luck, I’ll see you on board Nighthawke. Tell your men to scramble. Down the lines, then just drop to the tender’s deck, head for the nearest open hatchway, and get the hell below.”

  “What about my four divers?”

  “Don’t worry, Stony. We’re not leaving without them.”

  Dead and wounded were being lowered in makeshift slings down to the decks of Nighthawke and swiftly carried below to receive medical attention. The armored tender’s heavy firepower, fore and aft, was keeping the enemy down, covering the rapid escape as Blue Team and Red Team rappelled down the starboard hull of Cygnus, most just dropping the last ten feet to her deck and scrambling for cover, before returning fire at the suicidal Iranian fighters who appeared at the rail, raining fire down from high above.

  Hawke was the last man to leave Cygnus.

  Stoke was standing below on the foredeck hatch cover, watching his descent, waiting anxiously to receive him, having seen the bloody chest wound Hawke had received covering the retreat of the bloodied combatants. Hawke only had the use of his left arm to descend. The pain was merciless. When Hawke was halfway down, Stoke saw his head slump forward. Then he lost his grip. He dropped the last thirty feet into Stoke’s arms. Stoke caught the one-hundred-eighty-pound man, staggered a step, but held on, cradling Hawke against his own massive chest. He looked at his friend’s face, a pale grey, his body weak with blood loss.

  “You okay, boss? You don’t look so good . . .”

  Hawke managed a forced smile and a ragged reply.

  “Stoke. What have I always told you about pain?”

  “Pain is just weakness leaving your body.”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, I know, boss. Just another pretty little scar to add to your collection.”

  Stoke hurried his wounded comrade under the cover of the steel-roofed wheelhouse. “Corpsman!” he shouted and a navy medic came running to attend to Hawke’s injuries. He examined him quickly and expertly.

  “Shoulder wound, sir,” the young corpsman said. “And clean flesh. No bone, no arteries. The round passed straight through. I’ll stitch him up and he’ll be on the mend straightaway.”

  Ten minutes later, Hawke was resting quietly in the sick bay, his entire chest strapped with surgical tape and his right arm in a sling. His color was coming back and Stoke could see in his eyes that there was one hell of a lot of fight left in him. He was down, but he wouldn’t be down long. Weakness was leaving his body.

  Hawke looked up at the starboard rail above him and saw that the enemy had abandoned the field of battle, at least for now. He immediately headed for the stern, looking for the four SEAL demolition divers. Nighthawke had a wide, teak-decked boarding platform protruding from beneath her stern. It was raised and lowered hydraulically and could lift anything from the four heavily armed Jet Skis that were stowed just forward of the platform to four navy divers kitted up in very heavy dive suits and equipment.

  Just as Hawke reached the stern rail, the first head popped up out of the water. The diver raised his clenched fist in victory when he saw Hawke, and any fear Alex had had for these brave men or their mission vanished.

  “Stoke! Brock! Come back here and help me haul these guys aboard. You may have noticed I only have one arm, otherwise I’d do it myself.”

  A second black helmeted head appeared on the surface, then a third and a fourth. Seeing Hawke lowering the platform beneath the sloppy surface of the water, they swam for it. The first diver had already whipped off his helmet and was sitting on the platform, his legs awash, talking excitedly to Hawke, Brock, and Stokely Jones.

  “You guys didn’t tell us we were blowing up the Emerald City!” Lieutenant Ryan White said, rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is that place, anyway? Freaking lightning crackling around inside this big tower and, at one point while I was finishing rigging the charge at the base of the central tower, lighting started racing faster and faster in circles around the six towers on the perimeter. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen! I thought we were about to get our asses fried!”

  “Tell them about the music, Lieutenant,” a diver said.

  “Oh, yeah. All the towers started broadcasting this weird music,” Ryan White said. “I thought I had narcosis, but the other guys could hear it, too. It was making us sick, so we shut down our acoustics.”

  “Good thing,” Hawke said, knowing they’d all dodged a deadly bullet.

  Stokely helped the third diver out of the water. He got to his feet and removed his helmet. The diver looked at Ryan White and said, “Lieutenant, I’m sorry I had to shut my combat radio down. I started hearing this very weird music in my earpiece. Made me crazy. Something like narcosis, you know? Did you guys hear it, too?”

  “Hell, yeah, we all heard it. Next thing I knew I was tugging at my regulator, trying to rip it loose. Just before I blacked out, I turned the volume down and got my head straight again. What the hell was that all about?”

  “Perseus was attempting to save himself by convincing you four men to commit suicide,” Hawke said.

  “Perseus? Who the hell is he?”

  “The computer you just rigged.”

  “Wait—that’s—those black glass towers—are a computer?”

  “It’s a long story,” Hawke said. “More than a computer, really. An empire of the mind. How long did you set your detonation timers for, Lieutenant White? We need to be getting out of here before they start lobbing mortar shells at us.”

  Ryan White looked at his dive watch and then back at the water off Nighthawke’s stern.

  “Right about . . . now, Commander Hawke,” he said.

  A shock wave rocked the boat from below just as seven mushroomlike mounds of foaming white water appeared on the surface. They expanded to about five feet in diameter and then dissipated, leaving no trace of the catastrophic destruction that had just occurred below. Hawke couldn’t even imagine how much high-explosive Semtex it took to create even a ripple a thousand feet above the ocean floor.

  Hawke stared at the undulating surface of the black water, thinking about the staggering implications of what he had just done. More important, he was wondering if he had the right to do it.

  Had he even done the right thing?

  All the giant leaps forward in scientific achievement, the unimaginable medical advances, reverse aging, a cure for famine, or even a—

  To hell with it.

  He realized he would never really know. Maybe someday mankind could produce something like Perseus. A superintelligent machine, but one that could be kept in check. One with hardwired incapacity for doing harm, or evil. A force that was only capable of doing good, solving insoluble problems, making the world a better, safer place.

  But Perseus had not been that machine.

  Ironically, Perseus’s true value, and Professor Waldo Cohen’s enormous contribution to
the evolution of science, would be that Cohen had somehow strayed down the wrong path.

  And that, Hawke knew in his heart, might ultimately make the right road far, far easier to follow in the future.

  He turned to the man he could always lean upon.

  “Stoke, it’s finished. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Great. Leave Iran without even getting to taste the caviar. Story of my life.”

  Hawke looked at Brock with undisguised admiration.

  “Harry?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “You and I have never been close.”

  “Right. Because you hate me.”

  “Right. But I feel a bit differently about you now. After all you did back there. A lot of men would have died without you and your M-60.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “I’d like you to join me and Stokely. Leave CIA, sign a contract with Red Banner. Pays a lot better, Harry. Less paperwork in the mercenary business than inside the Beltway.”

  “Really? So—that means you, what, you like me now?”

  “I didn’t say that, Harry. I paid you a far greater compliment.”

  “Lemme think about it awhile.”

  “Take as long as you want.”

  “I’m in.”

  “Yeah!” Stoke said, wrapping his massive arms around Harry and bouncing him up and down like a ragdoll. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  Lines were heaved aboard, throttles were engaged, and Nighthawke moved swiftly out into the channel.

  The Trojan Horse had left the barn.

  Fifty-six

  Strait of Hormuz

  The sky was remarkably clear under a lantern moon.

  “Mosquitoes,” Stoke, looking over his shoulder, said to Harry Brock. “Look at ’em swarm. Gotta be fifty of ’em at least.”

  Harry’d come out on the stern deck for a smoke. He’d been the first to hear the snarling outboard motorboats, a vast flotilla of them, racing across the flat black sea to converge on Nighthawke’s stern. They were pirate scows, some of them forty feet in length, the longboats Somali pirates used to board and capture defenseless behemoths off the coast of Africa. Harry once tried to explain to Stoke that the reason the tankers didn’t have armed crews had to do with the insurance.