Operation Caribe

23

Ten miles off Miami Beach

THE PERSIAN BREEZE was bound for New Jersey.

The mid-size LNG carrier had 20,000 cubic yards of natural gas onboard. Loaded in Yemen, the LNG was due at a holding facility in Logan, New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia, in two days. At the moment, the ship was on schedule.

Though it was registered in Panama and licensed in Liberia, the Persian Breeze was actually owned by a Yemeni businessman. Its crew was comprised mostly of Iranians, but they all had fake visas that showed them to be Lebanese or Egyptian. They’d avoided any interference from NATO or American Navy ships during their trip to the U.S. East Coast, which was good, because the Persian Breeze was carrying more than just natural gas.

It was now 1100 hours and the captain, having finished his late-morning meal, came up on the bridge. He checked the ship’s course and scanned the long-range weather console. They would be moving through some rainsqualls for the next hour, but then they were promised calm seas and good weather up the Florida coast and all the way to New Jersey. The captain was hoping they would arrive in Logan sometime the following evening.

Returning to his quarters, he called for his first mate. The man arrived, and together they unpacked a sea bag the captain had secured under his bunk.

Inside was more than 100 pounds of pure, uncut morphine.

At present it was in the form of boulder-size blocks, brown and sticky. The blocks were the result of the first refining process from the poppy fields in Afghanistan. Cooked down to morphine, the opiate became highly transportable. Once the morphine reached New Jersey, an illicit lab in Camden would further refine it, eventually turning it into pure heroin. When this heroin hit the streets—after being cut with plain powdered sugar—it would be worth close to $100 million. For the trouble of moving the illegal cache to New Jersey, the captain and his crew would split $2 million.

Their task now was to break the blocks into one-pound bricks, then package the bricks in plastic wrapping and label them.

As this process began, the captain and the first mate smoked some hashish. Their scale was a simple bathroom scale—there was so much morphine in the shipment, weighing it was just a formality. After weighing a brick, the first mate would wrap it in bright red cellophane. Then their last job was to assign each brick a number.

It was so easy they could do it stoned.

* * *

THE WEIGHING AND packaging took about an hour.

By the end of it, they were able to produce and package a total of 105 bricks.

The plan now was to secret the bricks in the ship’s NGC wash box. NGC stood for natural gas cleansing, a procedure performed every time an LNG carrier unloaded its cargo. The wash box, where the tools used for the cleaning were kept, was probably the dirtiest place on any LNG carrier. Usually covered with metal filings and gooey wax, it was the perfect spot to hide the morphine.

The packaging complete, the captain and first mate celebrated by drinking a cup of Syrah wine. The captain had just drained his and was pouring them a refill when he looked up to see a shadow cast against his cabin door. Someone was approaching, which made the captain angry, because he had standing orders that no one could disturb him during this phase of the smuggling operation.

He was about to yell something to the wayward crewman when the first mate grabbed his wrist and pointed to the porthole right above the captain’s head.

A person dressed entirely in black, wearing goggles and battle helmet, was looking in on them. Another figure appeared in a second porthole as well; he was similarly dressed in black.

“What’s going on here?” the captain cried out. These were definitely not his crewmen.

The next thing they knew, the cabin door flew wide open and both the captain and the first mate were looking into the barrels of two M4 assault rifles.

The shadow on his cabin door turned out to be a man in full combat array, soaking wet from top to bottom and holding a huge weapon.

“What is this?” the captain demanded. “Who are you?”

But the captain immediately knew the answer when he saw the patch on the man’s shoulder. It showed a U.S. flag and an eagle sitting atop an anchor.

The captain’s heart sank. “Navy SEALs?” he gasped.

“That’s right,” the man with the gun said. “Now hit the deck, both of you.”

Crash was the third man into the captain’s cabin after Commander Beaux and Ghost. Monkey and Smash were outside, looking in the portholes and making sure none of the other crew interfered. Once again, Crash was working the video camera.

He couldn’t believe they were actually on the LNG ship. They had come up in back of it during one of the rainsqualls, invisible on radar and to the naked eye as well. Exiting the Sea Shadow by the top hatch, they hooked on to the tanker’s rear railing and climbed up even as the rain soaked them. Then they quickly skirted the bridge and found the captain’s cabin.

Commander Beaux had suspected the LNG carrier as being up to no good after carefully going over every ship transiting through the trouble zone. But though Beaux’s intuition appeared to be correct, the Iranians were apparently up to something other than pulling off a massive sea hijacking. Still, it had been another seamless operation by the 616.

Beaux now went through the stack of morphine bricks, breaking off a piece and placing it on his tongue.

“Figures,” he said, his image and words being picked up by the video camera. “These mooks think it’s easy cash taking this junk into our country. They’re giving the Mexican and Chinese cartels a run for their money”

What happened next Crash found very interesting. Had this been a Whiskey operation, he could see anything happening to this ship, from the crew being beaten, to the ship being sunk. That’s just how things went with Whiskey.

But Crash was sure Commander Beaux knew better. Such things would only interfere with their main mission of finding the phantom pirates before disaster hit. So in Crash’s eyes, Beaux did the most professional thing he could do.

He asked Crash to follow him as he picked up with ease the 100-pound bag containing the morphine bricks. Beaux carried it out of the cabin and out onto the deck, where Monkey and Smash were now holding the rest of the crew. Crash set up the video shot, and with a mighty heave, Beaux tossed the bag over the side. At least $100 million in dope now belonged to the sea.

Then they returned to the cabin and, camera still running, Commander Beaux picked the captain up off the deck.

“You’re a very lucky man,” Beaux growled at him. “I could have you and your men locked up for the rest of your lives. But there are more important things happening right now—so I’ll just leave you at the mercy of the people you were supposed to deliver that junk to.”

At that point, Commander Beaux had the rest of 616 search the ship for weapons. They found a few handguns and some ammunition, which also went over the side. Then he and the SEAL team ran back to the ship’s stern, intent on leaving the way they came.

They went down the access rope one at a time. Commander Beaux and Crash brought up the rear, covering their egress. Waiting their turn to climb back down to the Sea Shadow, Commander Beaux asked Crash: “So, how does it feel being a ghost?”

“Feels good,” Crash replied truthfully. “They say you can’t go home again. But I’ve just done that—or at least temporarily.”

“Why temporarily?” Beaux asked him.

“Because I’m an old man by your standards,” Crash replied. “Plus, I was drummed out of the military to the point where they won’t even let my ex-CO step foot on U.S. soil again. There’s no way the Navy would let me back in.”

Beaux slapped him on the back.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “I admire what you guys have done in this sea security business. Give me details on how you pulled off your missions, and when this is over, I’ll put in a good word for you to get back in to the SEALs.”

Crash nearly fell off the railing to the water below.

“Really?” he asked.

Beaux nodded. “Really.”