Operation Caribe

28

Aboard the Sea Shadow

IT WAS PROBABLY the most unusual mission Crash had even been asked to do.

It all started when Commander Beaux came to him shortly after Crash had sent the text to Nolan.

The ex-SEAL was in his bunk, trying to get some rest. The only sleep he’d had in the past forty-eight hours was the nap on the beach prior to the Queen of the Seas mission. He’d been running on pure adrenaline the rest of the time.

Beaux said he was looking for volunteers. The Sea Shadow was back at the small, remote, unnamed cay, hidden under the strangler figs in the island’s deep inlet. But it would be leaving again soon for a more populated island nearby called Turnip Cay.

Turnip Cay, as Commander Beaux described it, was an entirely unexceptional place. A few thousand people. A few hotels. A small airport—and, of course, lots of sport fishing businesses. It was just like many of the hundreds of small islands found throughout the Bahamas.

Except it had one thing a lot of them didn’t.

It had a FedEx box. A very unusual one.

And 616 had to send something that absolutely, positively had to get there overnight.

Could Crash handle it?

* * *

HE WENT ALONG with it, of course.

The package was going to Admiral J.L. Brown up in Naval Station Norfolk. Inside was a CD containing all the video footage Crash had shot in the past forty-eight hours. Commander Beaux said it was crucial the CD reach the admiral by noon later that day.

For security reasons, e-mailing or text messaging it was out of the question; sending it FedEx was the only other way 616 could think of. But it wasn’t like they could just tie up the Sea Shadow at some fishing dock and arrange a pickup.

So Crash’s covert mission was to bring the package ashore, walk into Turnip’s main village and send it to Admiral Brown, who just happened to be in charge of all naval security systems at NS Norfolk, which meant for all of U.S. Navy Fleet Forces Command.

If Crash made it there before midnight, the package would be on the last plane out, and would be on the admiral’s desk by lunchtime tomorrow.

* * *

THE MISSION, SUCH as it was, took less than thirty minutes.

It was 3:30 A.M. when Crash left. He was back in the same clothes he’d worn for the Queen of the Seas mission. The Sea Shadow sailed to a point about a quarter mile off Turnip Cay’s isolated north side. Crash jumped into their rubber life raft and paddled to shore as the Sea Shadow headed for deeper water. He double-timed it to town and dropped the pre-marked, pre-addressed package into the special FedEx overnight box at precisely ten minutes to four. Then, as part of a smaller mission, he went into the twenty-four-hour drugstore nearby and bought a dozen blank CDs for downloading further footage from the video camera. He raced back to the beach, paddled back out and waited until the Sea Shadow came along and picked him up again.

It all went like clockwork.

Until Crash got back aboard the stealth ship—and he knew immediately that something had changed.

* * *

AS SOON AS he crawled in through the bottom hatch, Crash could feel a different vibe. The rest of 616 were rushing around the Sea Shadow. Equipment was beeping; combat weapons and battle suits were being laid out. The vessel was picking up speed fast.

Crash deflated the rubber raft and then joined the team up on the control deck. The SEALs were in crisis mode. None of the usual laughing and good-natured joking. Ghost and Monkey were piloting the ship, while Beaux, Smash and Elvis were poring over a document laid out on the control room’s lighted map table. They all looked supremely serious.

“What happened?” Crash asked them.

They turned as one; for a moment, it was almost as if they were surprised to see him.

“The package?” Beaux asked him.

“All set and on its way,” Crash told him.

“And were you able to buy the blank CDs?”

Crash took out the pack of compact discs and laid them on the map table. Then he asked again: “What’s happened?”

“Some very serious shit,” Beaux finally said.

Crash became excited. “Is it what we’ve been waiting for?” he asked. “The phantom pirates?”

Beaux looked especially grim. He didn’t answer at first, glancing at the other 616 members instead.

So Crash asked again. “Are we on them? Do we know where they are?”

Finally, Beaux replied: “Yes—we sure do.”



Aboard the USS Wyoming

U.S. NAVY COMMANDER Micas Shepherd felt a chill coming on.

He sneezed, and his eyes began watering. He felt his forehead—it seemed warm. And now, suddenly, his nose started to run.

This was not good.

He checked his watch. “Just twelve more hours,” he thought aloud. “Then you can stay in bed for a week.”

Shepherd was commanding officer of the USS Wyoming, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, one of the largest in the world. The Wyoming carried twenty-two Trident II missiles, each with eight independently targeted nuclear warheads within. This meant the Wyoming carried more than 700 times the destructive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This awesome power was in the hands of the sub’s 155-man crew, 15 officers and 140 sailors, and was always their number one priority.

That is, when they didn’t have the flu.

Shepherd was very anxious to get back to his home port at King’s Bay, Georgia. The Wyoming had been out for almost a hundred days, on an extended cruise that had taken them first to the Arctic Circle, then down to the South Atlantic, and finally through the Caribbean.

Crew members had begun to get sick about a week before. A flu went through the boat like wildfire; this was not H1N1, but judging from the symptoms, something very similar. The boat’s medical personnel were overwhelmed to the point that the sub had to make an unscheduled stop at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—of all places—to offload 113 sick people: 106 sailors and seven officers. Forty-two men stayed onboard, the bare minimum needed to get the sub back to King’s Bay. But a lot of them were feeling ill as well.

That’s why Shepherd was fully expecting a Navy medical emergency team would be standing by once they arrived home. There was even a good chance the entire crew would have to be quarantined upon arrival.

At present, they were about sixty miles off Miami, skirting the sea lane between Florida and the Bahamas. They were sailing just below the surface, as the sub could move faster that way.

If all went well, they were just a half-day from reaching King’s Bay.

* * *

AFTER GETTING A couple aspirins from sick bay, Shepherd retired to his cabin to start writing his mission reports. He was not a minute into this when his personal communications suite started beeping. A text message was coming in on the sub’s Very Low Frequency band. This was surprising because the Wyoming was one of a handful of Navy subs equipped with a new, highly classified communications system called Narrowband IP, which allowed submerged submarines to communicate with Navy Systems Command, the Pentagon, the White House, or with just about anyone else, simply by punching in a coded number and typing out an e-mail.

For security reasons, U.S. nuclear submarines rarely spoke to anyone while out on patrol. Usually the first communication between a sub and its home base would come an hour before its scheduled arrival and would involve information like tide checks and how many tugs the boat would require to safely come into harbor.

Shepherd was sure, though, that this incoming message was about the ship’s medical situation; he knew it was important to keep the whole flu thing quiet, which was probably why the communiqué was coming in on the old but secure VLF network.

He punched in his communication code and turned the engage key to establish the connection. But instead of seeing a sequence of security codes that proceeded any classified communication, he saw instead a one-line message: “Enacting Plan 6S-S Drill.”

“What the hell is Plan 6S-S?” Shepherd thought aloud.

He reached for his operations codebook and rapidly flipped through the pages, and there it was, in a recent addendum: Plan 6S-S.

If a U.S. Navy submarine should experience or be suspected of experiencing a hostile takeover, such as a mutiny or any other kind of anomalous situation, under Plan 6S-S, a SEAL team will attempt to board the vessel in question and restore order. In cases when Plan 6S-S is a training exercise, the captain will be made aware of such an exercise in advance. But for security reasons, he may not use any communications systems to check the authenticity of the drill until the SEAL team arrives on station.

Because the command was written in typically opaque Navy-speak, Shepherd had to read it three times before he understood it.

And slowly, it began to make sense. During a recent overhaul, two of the Wyoming’s missile tubes had been remade into lockout chambers for just such an exercise. These chambers worked on the same principle as an airlock on a spaceship. The SEALs would attach their mini-sub to the top of the chamber, which would then be flooded with water. Donning scuba gear, the SEALs would enter the flooded chamber, close the top hatch and make their way to the bottom. The water would then be pumped out, allowing them to come aboard. To leave the sub, the procedure was reversed. It could even be done while the sub was underway, as long as it was going no faster than ten knots.

It was simple enough, Shepherd thought. Someone wanted to make sure these SEAL entry ports worked. What else could it be? But why order this exercise now? he wondered. With two-thirds of his crew flat on their backs at Gitmo and many of those still on board, including him, feeling sick?

He couldn’t imagine a worse time to do it.

“I just hope these SEALs had their flu shots,” he thought.



Aboard the Sea Shadow

THEY WERE GOING full throttle.

At fifty knots, the Sea Shadow was rocking so violently waves were splashing off both sides of the windscreen of its forward-facing bridge.

Crash felt like he was on some kind of elaborate amusement park ride—he had to hold on to something at all times so he wouldn’t fall over. But he imagined this was how the police felt when chasing a stolen car.

He never took his eyes off the document spread out on the map table; the one that Beaux was studying when he told him they were finally on the trail of the phantom pirates.

He knew it would be strictly verboten to ask where the document came from, who sent it and why. But he could tell the document had been printed out on yellow paper—and yellow was always a sign of high priority in the special ops world. Crash was also sure the ship’s onboard Level 3 secure computer, the place where any classified messages would come from, had generated it.

But what did it say, exactly?

Commander Beaux had slid over to the control panel to check some navigation points in this mad dash; Ghost was actually driving the ship. Crash tried to hold his tongue, taking in all the drama and wondering how it would end.

But when Beaux finally returned to the map table, he summoned the gumption to ask him more questions.

“What are the details, sir?” he asked him. “Am I cleared to know?”

Beaux went back to reading the document.

“It’s called Plan 6S-S,” he finally explained. “They just installed it in our advanced SEALs training. It’s part of what we call the TFW package.”

“ ‘TFW?’ ”

“Unofficially, TFW means ‘threat from within,’ ” Beaux said. “It was written after that a*shole went crazy down at Fort Hood and shot all those people. It’s part of the new regs to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. In regard to us, if a Navy ship has been a victim of hostile takeover, or some kind of incident, someone has to go aboard and take it back. And that someone usually means SEALs.”

Crash felt his eyes go wide. “Are you saying these phantom pirates have taken over a Navy ship, sir? As an inside job?”

Commander Beaux nodded grimly. “In this case, Plan 6S-S means a submarine. We don’t have many more details than that, which probably means, yes, something is happening aboard a sub and even the captain doesn’t know about it. Is it a mutiny? Or an insurrection? My guess, it’s the pirates. But whatever it is, we’ve got to go aboard and find out.”

“So, this sub is close by?”

“That’s where we got lucky,” Beaux said. “It’s only thirty miles from us. The USS Wyoming. Returning to its base in King’s Bay in Georgia after a three-month patrol. We’re heading for an intercept point right now, as you can tell, at full speed. And when we reach it, we’ll have to be ready to go onboard even as the sub is underway.”

Now, for the first time, Beaux actually looked at Crash directly.

“But when we do, you’ve got to stay behind,” he said.

Crash was crushed.

“You have to understand why,” Beaux went on. “We’ve drilled this thing many times over. Getting into a submerged moving sub has to go like clockwork. And it’s very dangerous, especially at night. And technically, you’re still a civilian. I just can’t have that hanging over my head if you got hurt, or worse.”

Crash grew angry. “If this was the case,” he said, “then why didn’t you just leave me on Turnip Cay?”

Beaux just shrugged. “We needed those blank CDs,” he replied simply.

Crash tried to hold his temper. But he wasn’t going down without a fight.

“With all due respect, sir,” he said, “I think I’ve proved myself with you these last two days. I’ve matched you step for step. Plus, like I said before, I haven’t exactly been sitting on my thumbs in my years since Delta. In fact, not two months ago, we recovered an Indian Navy warship that had fallen into the hands of pirates. So I actually have some experience in the real thing. I certainly won’t be a liability. And it sounds like you’ll need all the help you can get.”

There was a long silence in the control room.

“At the very least, let me run the camera,” Crash implored Beaux.

Another long silence. Elvis and Monkey were hovering over the control panels. Ghost was still driving the ship. Smash was pulling out their combat gear. But suddenly they were all looking at Beaux, wondering what he was going to say next.

Then Ghost spoke up. “If he stays behind, sir, all he’ll be able to do is tell Higher Authority what we were doing leading up to this point.”

Beaux glanced around at the rest of the team. He had a very troubled look; so did the others. Obviously, this was a real dilemma for them.

Crash took a step closer to Beaux and said, “I have to go, sir. This stuff is in my blood. And believe me, I don’t want to be the guy left behind to give testimony if something goes wrong.”

Beaux thought about it a few seconds.

Then he turned to Smash and said: “OK—get him a suit.”

* * *

THE CHASE TO catch the Wyoming went on for another twenty minutes. Not more than a dozen words were spoken among the 616 team members in that time. Crash had never seen a special ops team so determined, so single-minded. It was as if they were communicating with each other telepathically, talking with their eyes, their hands, via body language. These guys just never ceased to impress him.

At Beaux’s request, Crash had the video cam out again and was documenting the effort to overtake the sub. More than once, though, while looking through the lens, he felt like an interloper spying on a very exclusive club. The men of the 616 were all on the same wavelength—and he was on the outside looking in.

Crash was able to read a training spec explaining how the SEALs would gain entry into the Wyoming using the sub’s lockout chamber. It was a procedure Crash had done in training before—but in those cases, the sub was always stationary. The Wyoming was obviously underway, and Team 616’s attempts to get inside it while in motion would be like hopping onto a moving freight train.

And even if they were able to maneuver near one of the sub’s lockout chambers, the real question was, would they be able to hook on to it? This could happen only if someone inside the sub went through the entry procedures as well, allowing the SEALs aboard. If that happened, then at least they’d know that part of the sub was still in friendly hands.

But what if they were locked out?

That would mean, if Beaux was right, the phantom pirates would be in control of a massively powerful weapon.

* * *

CRASH KEPT ONE eye on the ship’s Level 3 secure computer, waiting for it to explode back to life at any moment. But the Sea Shadow received no further messages concerning the situation aboard the Wyoming. No communiqués at all from Naval Fleet Command, the Mothership or any of the civilian three-letter agencies.

This told Crash the security on this thing was as tight as anything he’d ever experienced. One stray word, one errant message, any misstep at all, could spell disaster. The lid had to stay screwed on here, at least until the SEALs could determine if they could get into the sub, and if so, find out what the hell was going on.

This meant they were facing a blind entry—going into potentially hostile territory with little or no idea what lay behind the first door, or in this case, the first hatch. From that Crash had to wonder: What would a gunfight be like aboard a moving nuclear sub, one that was carrying twenty-two massive nuclear missiles? There were so many ins and outs and places to hide on a boat like the Wyoming. Cabins, storage spaces, crew areas, ladder wells, weapons rooms, vents; the missile tubes themselves.

Gunplay under those conditions would be the equivalent of the worst urban fighting imaginable, shrunk down many times in size, where one stray bullet could destroy the sub and potentially detonate some of its massive weapons—and blow up half the Atlantic seaboard.

No wonder the 616 guys were being so quiet, Crash thought.

They were probably saying their prayers.

* * *

“ABOUT ONE MINUTE to visual contact,” Elvis announced, bent over the Sea Shadow’s control panel. “If that sub is where we think it is, we should see its scopes pretty soon.”

The six of them were now dressed in both scuba gear and battle gear. Because they would be in the lockout chamber less than two minutes, they carried small air reservoirs attached to their belts, not the usual, full-size scuba tanks. They also wore diving masks and gloves but no flippers or wet suits. Instead, they were in camo fatigues, boots and helmets. The 616 guys also had their M4 weapons, flash grenades and a sidearm, all packed in waterproof casings. There was no weapon aboard for Crash, but that was OK with him. He had his knife—and in the environment they might be entering, fighting an unknown enemy among a forest of 800-kiloton nuclear missiles, a sharp blade might prove to be the best weapon of all.

They got a visual read on the Wyoming just when Ghost said they would. Using their night vision equipment, they saw it was traveling due north, barely twenty feet underwater. Its speed was down to ten knots, possibly because it was entering an area off the Florida coast with a lot of sea traffic. This speed was key, though, as it was within the range of the SDV mini-sub, meaning a hookup while underway was at least theoretically possible.

It would still be the equivalent of an aerial refueling, though—the mini-sub’s speed would have to perfectly match the sub’s speed, and they would have to pray the sub didn’t change course, even a little, while they were hooking on.

* * *

WITHIN TWO MINUTES, Ghost had brought the Sea Shadow up alongside the sub, steering on a course parallel to it and matching its speed.

They were able to see it through their night scopes, but just barely. Still, it looked like a gigantic sea serpent plowing through the thick blue water. And it was huge!

Now came the tricky part.

Ghost booted the Sea Shadow’s speed back up to fifty knots. Meanwhile the main hatch on the SDV mini-sub, dangling between the vessel’s two hulls, was opened and the vessel made ready for deployment.

According to Beaux, Plan 6S-S called for a full complement of SEALs. This meant the entire 616 team would go on board, along with Crash. To do this, they would have to climb into the mini sub while the Sea Shadow was on autopilot and then disconnect from it.

Ghost drove the stealth vessel to a point about five miles ahead of the sub, and then dramatically reduced its speed to barely five knots. He put the ship on autopilot, and they all went out the bottom hatches and hastily piled into the SDV mini-sub. The mini-sub quickly unhooked from the Sea Shadow, leaving the empty stealth ship to drift, its ultimate fate unknown. But considering the circumstances, at the moment that was not important.

The mini-sub slipped beneath the waves, and now they waited until the huge sub caught up to them. Once they saw it coming, Ghost steered the SDV down toward the great, gray hull, and keeping pace, eased into a position parallel to its starboard side lockout chamber.

Then, with the skill of a fighter pilot, he steered the SDV to the left, trying to get positioned above the reconstructed access tube. It took a few tries, and a lot of finesse, but he finally attained the desired position and came down on top of the submarine’s starboard side lockout chamber. Almost immediately, their connection light blinked on.

They’d done it! They were hooked to the sub.

Not a second later, they could hear the rush of water filling the empty missile tube. The water pressure equalizer light came on inside the mini-sub connection collar and started flashing red. Once it turned green, it would mean the pressure inside the lockout chamber was at a point where the SEALs could safely open the married hatch and enter the chamber.

But then what? The SEALs weren’t sure.

And neither was Crash. Obviously, someone inside the sub knew they had hooked on. And someone had started the water filling the lockout chamber.

So, was this someone trying to help them get onboard? Or was it an enemy ready to kill the rescue team before it set one foot onto the sub?

Either way, Crash thought, someone on the other end knew they were coming.