Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

They appeared as barely visible specks—particles of black debris in the blue-white froth of the storm-tossed surf. There was a lot of flotsam in the water, most of it washed into the sea by the floods that resulted from the torrential rain of Hurricane Lenny, but unlike most of the litter, these black shapes moved under their own power.

Swimming was the wrong word for what they were doing. The six neoprene-clad men were engaged in a life or death struggle with the relentlessly turbulent surf. They were all strong swimmers—strong men—but these were extraordinary conditions that taxed their individual abilities to the limit. One man won his freedom, and turned to help the nearest of his comrades. These two helped the next, and in short order, all six were on the beach, above the reach of even the largest breakers. Though exhausted from the epic battle against nature, none of the men showed the least sign of fatigue. They organized into a wedge formation behind the point man and made for the relative cover of the nearby tree line. Their footprints would be gone by morning, and there was little chance of anyone happening upon the marks in the sand before they were erased by the driving rain. No one was foolish enough to be out here in the middle of the storm. No one but these six.

And one other.

A red light flashed out from the trees, went dark, then flashed again. This signal kept repeating, the intervals random and irregular, like a train-crossing signal with a stutter, until the point man spotted it. He flashed a return signal with his red-hooded Mini-MagLite and adjusted course, homing in on the flashing light. As he neared the margin of the beach, a stout form, also clad in black neoprene, stepped out to greet them.

“You find the strangest things on the beach after a big blow,” he said in a booming voice. He had been waiting here for more than an hour, and he knew that there was no one around to overhear their exchange. As the men gathered around, he lowered his tone just a little, but still had to yell to be heard over the lashing rain. “Any problems?”

“Problems?” the leader of the six-man element replied. “You mean aside from the kind of problems that come with having to swim a mile-and-a-half through open water on the edge of a hurricane? Whose brilliant idea was this, anyway?”

The seventh man regarded the leader with patient but critical eyes. “The mission was handed down from the DO, but using the storm to cover our movements was my brilliant idea.” He emphasized the last three words, but he did not mean it as an admission of culpability. Operators—he knew their preferred term was shooters—tended to whine a lot about little details at the beginning of a mission. The complaints were usually just a way of working out the jitters. That was fine with him, but they needed to know that he was not going to be a very sympathetic listener. There was work to do.

“Officially, we are Action Team Storm, and my designation is Storm God. That was not my brilliant idea, in case you’re wondering. I’d rather you just call me ‘Papa.’ Everyone does.” Papa allowed a moment for the shooters to introduce themselves with their preferred operational callsigns. There was Driver, the leader; Rodent, the demolitions man; Van Gogh, the designated marksman who along with his spotter, Loco, formed a sniper team; Mutant, the team medic; and Billy Boy, who ran communications.

“The objective is a small compound right up there.” Papa pointed to a spot on the bluff, high above them, but it was too dark to see any manmade structures. “It’s about a five klick walk to get there.”

The shooters knew all this, but their initial briefing had been presented by an agency analyst, down from Langley, who despite being familiar with satellite photos of the facility, had no real world experience with the target. Papa produced a laminated satellite map and shone his red light onto it. He kept it tilted so that the rain would run off. “Concrete construction to withstand the weather, but there’s been a lot of erosion over the years. The place was originally supposed to be a resort hotel, but it’s been repurposed for special research.”

“Special research?” Driver asked. “I don’t like the sound of that. Can you be a little more specific?”

“Actually, I can’t.” The question was a valid one, but Papa did not care for Driver’s tone. Sometimes, the gripes were nerves, but sometimes they revealed a deep-seated resentment of the way military special operations were routinely co-opted by civilian intelligence agencies. That most definitely was not okay with Papa. “All I can say is that the research being conducted in the facility poses no immediate danger to us, but does have strategic threat potential.”