Pitbull (SEAL Team Alpha Book 10)

by Zoe Dawson

  They studied the layout of the oil rig, and after a back-and-forth discussion, decided it would be best to approach the rig from the ocean side instead of the shore, climb the hull columns, and break up into smaller teams with four SEALs assaulting the galley where the hostages were being kept, two SEALs to the helipad, and two SEALs to the command center.

  The FBI agent’s phone started to ring, and he grabbed it. “I need to take this. One moment.”

  He moved away from the table as Pitbull’s team members rose in preparation for the assault.

  “Gather your gear. We’ll transport over to Point Loma in one hour.” Fast Lane’s orders started them all moving, pausing as the FBI agent ended his call.

  “Lieutenant Nixon, that was SECNAV. We’ve had a report from NCIS Special Operations. They’re pursuing a member of the NWO, Sean Leary. He and unknown assailants murdered a Marine corporal and stole a large number of military weapons and gear from a warehouse at Camp Pendleton.”

  “What kind of firepower?” Fast Lane asked.

  “Stinger missiles, depth charges, and C4.”

  Fast Lane took a breath and his jaw clenched. “That makes it clear what they have in mind,” he said. “No helicopters are to assault, not with those Stingers in play.”

  The FBI agent nodded. It was clear in his eyes. They had their job cut out for them.

  The FBI had no clue that Navy SEALs thrived on this kind of assault. After all, they were the first forces to deploy to Afghanistan after the attacks when the United States committed to a “global war on terror.”

  Pitbull trailed his teammates down the hall to the cages where they kept their gear. Office of Special Operations. As he unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off, he thought OSO was where Special Agent Makayla Littlestar worked. Truth be told, he hadn’t been able to forget her or their brief encounter. In the miasma of his life, it should have been as easy as breathing. He’d just gotten out of a tangled situation. He’d be smart to leave Agent Littlestar alone.

  But he did wonder if she was involved in Leary’s manhunt. The woman was a hardcore tracker, and if she was on this terrorist’s trail, then he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

  As he grabbed his dive gear, he gave her a mental hoo-yah.

  NCIS Office of Special Operations, San Diego, California

  “It’s like this guy has dropped off the face of the earth,” Chris groused as he leaned back in his chair in disgust.

  Kai looked over at him and smiled. “Chill out, Vargas, He’s a Marine. He knows how to duck authorities. We’ll get a break and find him.”

  “Chris was a former pilot. He doesn’t have the first clue about tracking down a runner,” Mak said, giving him a quick grin. “Isn’t that right, flyboy?”

  He huffed out a laugh and rubbed his hands over his face. They had been at this for hours. “I’m going to get us something to eat. The usual salads?”

  “Yes, please,” Kai and Mak replied in unison.

  Chris laughed. “I’ll leave the tracking to the Shadow Wolf. You sit there and look pretty, Kai.”

  “Screw you, Vargas,” Kai said. She threw a crumpled-up Post-It at him as he passed her desk. As Chris disappeared, Kai sighed and threw another Post-It at Mak. “So, what do you have, she-wolf?”

  “Plenty,” Mak said as she met Kai’s piercing green eyes. “We know several things at this point. Leary doesn’t have a registered vehicle, nor did he rent one under his name. The vehicle he used in the robbery wasn’t stolen. He’s not registered in any hotel or motel under his own name, and he seems to not have any kind of mobile device or bank account registered in his name either.”

  “That’s a lot of negatives.”

  “They still lead us to a conclusion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s got to sleep somewhere. He has to eat. Therefore, he’s being bankrolled, his phone is under someone else’s name or a burner, and he’s probably using someone else’s registered vehicle.”

  “I see. You’re looking for Easton’s compound. Aren’t you?”

  Mak laughed softly. “You aren’t just a pretty face.” She threw the Post-It back at Kai, but she deftly ducked the paper missile. Mak rose and picked up the remote for the widescreen. “Easton has several vehicles registered in his name, including a van, a small box truck, and a sedan.”

  “Address?”

  “Ho, it’s not that easy. He’s got a house in San Diego, but the Feds have already been there and found it empty. They’ve long suspected that Easton has a secret compound. I’m going to do what the Feds haven’t been able to do—find that compound, and if Leary is on it, I’m going to arrest him.”

  “Overachiever,” Kai said with a grin. “So, my Navajo friend. How are you going to find his secret hideout?”

  “I suspect that the base is close…probably in a remote area. I’m guessing the small box truck carried those stolen weapons to the compound. There has to be footage of it somewhere.” Mak went back to her desk. “The techs are on the truck, but I’ve been searching leases and purchases of land for the last ten years.”

  Kai sauntered over to Mak’s desk and perched on the edge. “That sounds completely tedious.”

  “It is,” Mak said as her computer worked overtime. Hide and seek isn’t going to work for you, Leary, she thought. Sooner or later they were going to either track down the box truck or find another clue as to where Easton had his very busy hidden base. It was only a matter of time. A Shadow Wolf never missed a sign.

  Naval Base Point Loma, Submarine Squadron 11, San Diego, California

  Pitbull breathed in the salty air as he and his teammates walked the dock to the waiting fast attack sub, USS Avalon.

  “How are things going with Helen?” Dragon asked, his voice low.

  “Same as usual. She keeps making contradictory statements. She doesn’t quite get it that she can’t have me give up my rights and name me as guardian of her children. If you ask me, I might have a case of her being unstable. I just want a relationship with Samantha. I worry about her being with Helen in LA without some calming influence. I don’t know Mark Martin well enough to gauge whether he’s a good stepfather for Samantha. Every time I try to get Helen and Mark to sit down with me, she makes some excuse.”

  “Why do you think she’s stalling?”

  “She probably hasn’t told Mark a thing. She is so worried about anyone seeing her in a bad light, she keeps deflecting and denying. I can’t believe anything she says. Every time I ask about the wedding, I swear the date changes.”

  “What’s all the girl talk,” Max said, slapping Dragon on the back. He turned to look at Max and huffed a laugh.

  Pitbull adopted a falsetto. “We think Saint is dreamy.”

  Dragon giggled and Max said, “You, my friend, are the reason God created the middle finger.”

  “Right back at you,” Pitbull said. Max’s eyes twinkled as he flipped them off. Pitbull wasn’t sure what the guy’s deal was. He was brash and…okay…at times funny. He hadn’t expected to feel a grudging admiration with the way Max let most things just roll off his back. But it was time to do just that, put Helen and Samantha on the back burner. It was time to rock-and-roll.

  “Hey, can anyone join this party?” The sound of Kid Chaos’s voice had them all turning around. He strode down the dock as confident and cocky as ever. Dragon grinned and reached out his hand to shake Kid’s.

  “Returning all my favors, are you? Did you draw the short straw?”

  “Ha!” Kid said. “Dragon, you should know me by now. I always take on the iffy missions. I volunteered. I’m your damn lucky charm, man.”

  “He doesn’t look like no rabbit’s foot to me,” Max said.

  “Ah, what? My wife says I’m cute and cuddly,” Kid said. Everyone laughed.

  “C’mon, Bugs, let’s get going.” Walking to the end of the dock, Pitbull eyed the flat black sub, the hatch open and ready for the SEALs to squeeze inside. He never much liked subs, and he h
ad a hard time understanding how the men who chose to slip silently beneath the waves didn’t go stir crazy in one of the sardine-like structures.

  The eight of them, plus a SEAL explosive ordnance disposal tech from another team and four more EOD guys, would be the main force. The SEAL EOD would assault with them, looking for any explosives along the way to securing the rig. The other four would dive below the platform to neutralize devices set to blow.

  Inside the vessel it was dim, the smell of oil and metal thick in the reprocessed air. Once they all assembled in the ready room, they pulled out the engineering plans of the platform’s understructure to review one more time the climb they would have to make from beneath the cold, stormy waters.

  The trip would take about two and a half hours, with them deploying from a sixty-foot depth a few kilometers from the rig, running silent to minimize any sound for the sophisticated terrorists to detect.

  The engines chugged to life, the rumbling hum loud, thrumming against the bulkheads. On the bridge, the captain would be issuing orders for them to get underway. Sure enough, the signal sounded that they were diving.

  This is what this team was made for, and they worked well together. Easton and his home-grown terrorists wouldn’t know what hit them.

  2

  NCIS Office of Special Operations, San Diego, California

  Mak stirred, the pain in her neck bringing her fully awake. She was still at her desk. The computer dinging must have been what woke her up. She raised her head and blearily looked over at Kai, who was still sleeping, and Chris, who was sprawled over his desk. They had been at this for a while. The exhaustion had caught up with them.

  She blinked several times and shook out her arms and looked at her watch. It was close to ten. Coffee. They needed coffee. She rose and headed for the break room and set the coffeemaker to brewing. She rummaged around inside the fridge and came up with three blueberry yogurts.

  She poured three cups of coffee when it was ready and put the yogurt and spoons on the tray along with the steaming cups and carried everything back to their area. She set one near Kai and touched her back.

  “That better be coffee I’m smelling and not a figment of my imagination,” Kai murmured.

  “It’s black and hot, just like you like it,” Mak said.

  Kai sat upright and gave her a grateful smile. “I don’t care what anyone says about you, Mak. You’re okay.”

  Mak laughed as she put a container of yogurt and a spoon near the cup of coffee. Kai reached for the coffee first and breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction after she took a large gulp. Chris was already stirring when she dropped off his beverage and snack.

  Her computer beeped, and Mak headed over to it, setting the tray down and taking a sip of her own hot coffee. She pulled up a report from the techs and sucked in a breath.

  “I was wrong.”

  She looked up at her colleagues, and they looked back at her with quizzical expressions.

  “About what?” Chris asked, throwing his empty yogurt container into the trash as he approached her desk.

  “The box truck didn’t end up at the compound. It’s parked in a spot at Oceanfront Marina.”

  “Where’s that?” Kai asked.

  “Santa Barbara.”

  USS Avalon, four Kilometers from Moonbeam Horizon, off the Coast of Santa Barbara

  Pitbull, his team, and the EOD guys ran their eyes over the map one more time. The volatile situation could be made even more dire if the terrorists had rigged the oil wells to blow two hundred feet below the rig, spidering out nearly ten thousand feet to the west, east and north. They had no way to know until they were at the site.

  “What are the current conditions, and what does the weather forecast look like?” Fast Lane asked.

  The sailor handling the weather forecasts consulted his notes.

  “We’ve got a Pineapple Express situation, but the atmospheric river is moderate. We’re going to have a fitful ocean with ten-foot swells and thirty- to forty-knot winds.”

  Anyone who lived in California knew what the Pineapple Express represented. It was a narrow band of water vapor that built up over the tropical Pacific around Hawaii and pushed by the ocean’s wind-driven currents toward the western part of the United States and Canada. These sky rivers were unique and well known for dropping a huge amount of moisture in a short period of time.

  The sailor met Pitbull’s eyes and grinned. “A walk in the park for you SEALs, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Well, with that nine-hundred-pound-gorilla on our backs, let’s get to it,” Fast Lane said.

  Max slapped Dodger on the back. “Tag, you’re it.”

  “What?” Dodger asked, shrugging away.

  “The gorilla is on your back. We’ll bounce him back and forth. Makes it easier on LT.”

  Dodger grinned. “What you talking about? LT could carry King Kong without breaking a sweat.” Dodger made monkey noises and scratched his sides as everyone laughed.

  Pitbull shook his head and zipped up his dry suit, fit on his dive mask, and strapped his rebreather around his chest, adjusting for his shoulder holster. Over his suit he donned his carrier vest filled with flashbangs and extra ammunition clips. With their fins clipped to their sides, they headed for the submarine’s escape hatch carrying thirty-pound packs, holding explosives, climbing gear, and essentials.

  Four of them filed into the compartment, closing the watertight door to the small, compact room. Pitbull could see water seeping in by the glow of a pressure light illuminating all the tubes and pumping mechanisms. Unclipping his fins, he fit them over his water boots just as the ocean gushed in, submerging them completely before the escape hatch opened and they floated out through a cloud of air bubbles into the cold and dark Pacific.

  Holding on to the outer casings of the submarine, they rose with the vessel underwater for the next few kilometers to their insertion point, breathing from mouthpieces connected to the MX helium-oxygen breathing system designed specifically for the SEALs’ deep dives.

  “You are good to go in ten,” the submarine’s captain said over a special waveband.

  “Copy that,” Fast Lane responded, the system automatically correcting the Donald Duck speech caused by the helium-oxygen mix they were breathing.

  The sub started to ascend, and Pitbull held tight to his handhold to counteract the pressure of the water around him.

  When the pressure abated, the captain’s voice came over the radio. “We are at thirty-five meters.”

  That was their cue to switch to their regular oxygen rebreathers. Pitbull pulled out the MX’s titanium tube and fit in his rebreather mouthpiece. He let go of the casing and pulled out the combat knife at his ankle. After quick slashes through the ropes that secured two rigid-hull inflatable boats equipped with outboard engines to the sub, he pulled the ripcord to inflate his vest.

  With practiced coordination, he and the team slowly climbed through the water with the deflated RIBs, stopping for up to a minute every few meters to decompress—clear their bloodstream of air bubbles which would otherwise burst and cause blood clots, ruptured veins, or exploding eardrums.

  Pitbull checked his chronometer, measuring the depth against the amount of time spent below water and calculated their decompression stops accordingly.

  Surfacing to ten-foot swells, Pitbull pulled one of the ripcords to the release built-in air valves that automatically inflated the RIB while Mad Max inflated the other boat. As soon as the boats were seaworthy, the team piled their equipment inside.

  Pitbull consulted his GPS tracker and guided the boats toward the skeletal concrete-and-steel structure hidden from view by the undulating waves.

  Out on the water the air was cool. Fog drifted up against the Santa Ynez Mountains, and filtered moonlight sparkled off the ocean. The Channel Islands were lost in the haze.

  He grabbed one of the tow ropes and started swimming over the hard swells. Just another day at the office.

  Oceanfront Marina, Sant
a Barbara, California

  Jumping a chopper to Santa Barbara had a way of waking a girl up. Mak, flanked by Chris, Kai, and one of their other agents, Paige Wilder, crept out of the shadows behind the truck still parked in the spot from the surveillance footage.

  She signaled to her colleagues that she was moving forward. They split off with Mak and Kai going to the driver’s side, Chris to the passenger side, and Paige falling back to watch their rear. With her weapon drawn and her finger alongside the trigger, Mak stayed low as she approached the window.

  There were two men slumped in the front seat. Relaxing her stance, she pulled open the door and saw the blood. She looked across at Chris, who had his fingers on the neck pulse of the passenger side NWO thug. He shook his head and her hopes plummeted. Then the driver groaned.

  “Call an ambulance and crime scene. We need the ME,” she said to Kai, who immediately got on the phone.

  She pulled off her blazer and pressed it to the man’s abdomen. He stirred and opened his eyes.

  His voice was breathy when he said, “Son of a bitch shot me.” He groaned in pain.

  “Who shot you?” Mak asked as he coughed.

  “Fucking Leary.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I thought we were a part of something. Son of a bitch!”

  “Mister? Where is he now?”

  “He’s a paranoid bastard. Don’t owe him anything,” he mumbled. “Don’t owe them anything.” He gestured weakly toward the bay. “Out there. He’s the failsafe. If anyone gets on the rig, he’s going to blow it.”

  “What rig?”

  “Moonbeam Horizon. We took it today with hostages, and we have demands. But there is no loyalty even among us. Bastard shot me!”