Operation Caribe

PART FIVE





Battle in a Big Hole





30

Blue Moon Bay

FOUR PEOPLE WERE aboard the Blackwater vessel that had been shadowing the Mothership.

They were the same four men who’d walked out of the first briefing for “Operation Caribe,” short-circuiting the company’s involvement in the search for the phantom pirates. Their ship, a fifty-five-foot ex-minesweeper, had been converted into a “research vessel.” Jam-packed with intelligence-gathering equipment, it was highly automated. It took just two men to operate it; the other two men were simply eavesdroppers.

After abruptly leaving the briefing on Bunker Island, the Blackwater crew had no problem finding the Mothership cruising the waters of Blue Moon Bay. It was hard to miss a vessel of its size and design, especially if you knew what you were looking for.

Knowing its shadowy past, they’d stayed close to the super LSD ever since. Though they weren’t involved in Operation Caribe anymore, they’d decided it was in their best interests to keep an eye on those who were. It was the nature of their business to be curious.

The four men were up on the bridge, drinking their morning coffee and meticulously going through a box containing ancient writings of the Knights Hospitallers, when two shadows cut across the chart table in front of them. They looked up to see a pair of figures in odd blue uniforms standing on the bridge with them.

The Blackwater employees were startled. How did they not notice that the men had stolen up on them?

But then they recognized the intruders. One with an eye patch; the other with a mechanical hand.

It was Nolan and Batman.

“You guys?” the Blackwater senior man exclaimed.

“Sorry to crash the party,” Nolan said. “But we need to talk to you.”

The four men were still unnerved that the pirate hunters had been able to get so close to them this easily. They didn’t even know how the pair got on board.

“You want to talk, do you?” the senior man finally said, regaining his composure. “You’ll have to pay up like everyone else.”

His remark was followed by the sound of something hitting the chart table with a thud.

It was a packet of money.

“That’s twenty grand,” Nolan told them. “Consider it a down payment.”

The Blackwater guys were impressed. The senior man made some perfunctory introductions. His men were typical-looking hired guns, mid-thirties, obviously exmilitary special ops, shaved heads, lots of tats. The senior man’s name was Russell.

“So, boys,” he said. “What do you want to know? Who’s banging the Queen? The midnight menu at the White House? Where Bigfoot is hiding?”

“We’d like to know why you backed out of this Caribe operation,” Nolan asked him directly.

The four men suddenly lost their flair. This was not the question they wanted to hear. Russell pushed the $20,000 back to Nolan.

“Don’t want to tell us?” Batman asked.

Russell shook his head.

“On the contrary,” he said. “You don’t need to pay us for that. We’ll tell you for free.”

He pulled out two chairs for Nolan and Batman and told them to sit down.

“Why did we drop out?” Russell said, after a few moments of thought. “It was because of that crazy-ass SEAL team.”

“The 616 guys?” Nolan said.

Russell nodded. “That’s them,” he said. “You know those guys are just barely SEALs, don’t you? They’re more like part-timers or reservists. That’s why their team number is so high, so no one confuses them with the real thing. Their main job is training civilian newbies in port security—this while other SEAL teams are out in the field getting shot at. What does that tell you? The 616 have a rep as being troublemakers—and not the usual drunken bar fight stuff.”

“Like what, then?” Batman asked.

“Like they were suspected just recently of breaking into a bank in Virginia,” he said. “And the cops suspect they’ve knocked off at least a dozen ATMs around Norfolk, but there’s never been any real proof, because they’re too slick. They’ve also been caught with steroids and HGH, the same stuff the ballplayers use, but even though the Navy knew, they did nothing.”

“That’s insane,” Nolan said. “Why didn’t they get drummed out?”

Russell shrugged. “If they were regular Navy, they probably would have. But I guess it’s because every special ops guy is needed these days—the good and the bad. Look at these three crisis situations the U.S. has got going on right now and how thin everybody is spread out. The Navy can’t afford to get rid of guys they’ve spent a couple million dollars each to train. But that’s also why 616 gets all the shit duty, again while the real SEALs are off doing the authentic missions. Those 616 guys are forever doing training exercises, but they never get any real stuff.”

Batman shrugged. “Well, even the dumbest guy in medical school winds up working someplace.”

“Right,” Russell agreed. “And I guess to the Navy’s credit, they thought that by putting all the bad apples in one group, they wouldn’t infect the rest of the SEAL community.”

“But they wound up creating a monster,” Batman said.

“Exactly,” Russell agreed. “But there’s more, stuff the Navy doesn’t know about. We discovered that the small bank in Virginia that 616 broke into actually had its computer security systems compromised. Not so these guys could steal anything, but we believe they used it to hack into the U.S. Fleet Forces Command’s central mainframe so they could track Navy ships all over the world.”

“But why would they need that information?” Nolan asked.

“Who knows?” Russell replied. “Maybe they were planning on selling it, like the Walker family did back in the 1970s. In fact, we think they’ve been breaking into that same bank regularly. Somehow they learned they could hack into Fleet Command, and God knows how many other places, from this little bank’s little computer. Sounds strange, but it worked for them.”

“But this is really bizarre behavior,” Batman said. “What’s the point of it all?”

Russell opened a laptop nearby and typed in a few commands. The screen soon flashed a series of surveillance photos. One showed a line of brand-new Chevy Corvettes parked together in a parking lot. They were all the same color, all the same style. They even had similar license plates—STEAM1 through STEAM5.

“For starters, this is what they drive,” Russell said.

Another series of photos came up. They showed a line of five expensive beachfront houses.

“This is where they live,” he continued.

Then more photos showed the 616 team members, in Navy dress-downs, going in and out of casinos in Atlantic City. “And this is what they do in their spare time,” he said.

“Busy boys,” Nolan said.

“With expensive tastes,” Batman added.

“That’s only half of it,” one of the other Blackwater guys said.

“What’s the other half, then?” Nolan asked.

The four Blackwater guys exchanged worried looks. “Might as well tell them now,” one said to Russell. “They’ll find out eventually.”

Russell shrugged and called up more photos. They showed the 616 team, now in civilian clothes, going into a building that didn’t look like it was anywhere near their home base in Norfolk, Virginia.

“That’s a TV production studio in Los Angeles,” Russell explained. “These guys have been hot and heavy for months trying to get someone to do a reality show about them. That’s why you never see them without a video camera. They were bugging these LA production people to the point where one producer told them, go off and do something that will be worth selling. Until then, leave us alone. They make those Jersey Shore punks seem bashful by comparison.”

“A reality TV show?” Batman said. “Now that’s really nuts.”

“Well, it gets nuttier,” Russell replied. “At that first briefing in the bunker, do you remember how gun-shy the CIA was about saying where the chatter came from on this phantom pirate thing?”

Nolan and Batman nodded.

“Well, that’s because we believe it didn’t originate from the usual sources,” Russell told them. “We believe it got picked up by an illegal NSA domestic eavesdrop program—in Los Angeles. Our sources are pretty sure it came from a conversation between the LA cops and a Hollywood producer who’d been caught with a suitcase full of cocaine and who was trying to get a pass by flipping on someone.”

Nolan pointed to the picture of the SEALs going into the production house in LA.

“Are you saying?” he asked.

The Blackwater guys nodded.

“Same producer, same production company,” Russell confirmed. “Those a*sholes in 616 were promising him a twelve-episode package showing how they could pull off the most spectacular anti-terrorism stunt in the world. A real-live ship hijacking along the East Coast. This was something they were going to do themselves, videotape it all, and sell it to this guy as a ‘teachable moment.’ The thing is, the NSA unit that picked it up couldn’t put two and two together, because they shouldn’t have been listening in on the LA cops in the first place. They had no idea who the producer was talking about because he never mentioned the 616 guys by name because the cops never gave him the deal. So, that night the producer hangs himself in his cell, and whatever he knows goes with him. Now, it’s not like the NSA can ask the cops what’s what without causing a national security scandal. But they still heard East Coast, big hijacking about to happen and so on, and so they put it out there and the CIA filled in the blank by leaping to the conclusion that it was pirates. But we’re sure that producer was talking about the 616 and, I suppose, in a way, if they did something like this, they would be pirates.”

Nolan had to stop them right there. “Wait a minute—so you’re saying these guys are out there, doing all this crazy shit—for a reality show?”

The Blackwater guys all nodded.

“But it gets even worse,” Russell said. “The coked-out producer probably would have made the deal right away, except 616 had competition. The producer thought he had an even better story to tell.”

“Who was their competition?” Nolan asked.

The Blackwater guys all laughed. Then Russell looked directly at Nolan and Batman and said, “You.”

“Us?”

“Yeah—you. They thought it would be a better idea to do a reality show on you guys. Beating the pirates at their own game, swashbuckling, and all that crap. How the 616 knew you would be invited to this Operation Caribe party—who knows? Or maybe they didn’t and it came as a complete shock to them when they saw you sitting there. If so, the Navy spooks sending your guy with them must have really blown their minds. Has he even sent you a postcard yet?”

That’s when Nolan gave the Blackwater guys the short version of what Crash had texted them about the 616’s activities in the past thirty-six hours. The cargo ship in Havana, the LNG carrier, the Queen of the Seas. It was the same speech they’d just given Agent Harry.

“Well, don’t you see?” Russell said after hearing it all. “The 616 guys must have figured it out, so they set out to do all the things you guys have done, because in their eyes, they can do them better. I mean, you said they’ve gone aboard a cargo ship, like you guys did with that first job you had. They went aboard an LNG tanker—like you guys just did. They even went aboard a cruise liner—like you guys did. They’re out to impress anybody who’ll listen by one-upping you.”

Nolan shook his head. “This is just too f*cked up,” he said.

“Hey, it’s a f*cked-up world,” Russell replied. “If it wasn’t, no one at this table would be employed. But like everything else, it comes down to money. All these 616 guys are heavily in debt. That’s really what’s been driving this behavior. They live this lifestyle like they’re celebrities, but they don’t have celebrity money. They see all the weird shit on TV—some broad making a couple million bucks for popping out eight kids—and they think, we can do better shit than that. We’re real heroes. But they also have empty bank accounts. That’s probably why they got that ghost-boat: to enhance their hero image.”

“Their what boat?” Nolan asked.

“Their stealth boat,” Russell said. “Didn’t you know about that? It’s that monster Lockheed built for the Navy about twenty years ago. It might look cool, but truth is, it’s just a demonstration model, and up until a little while ago, the Navy couldn’t even give it away. When the 616 agreed to take it over and try to make it useful, it allowed them to go just about anywhere they wanted without anyone spotting them. God knows what they’ve been up to in it, but we do know they’ve been going in and out of the Bahamas a lot in the past couple months. On ‘exercises.’ ”

Russell took a swig of his cold coffee. “Look, I don’t have to tell you about our street cred. Our reputation, good or bad, truth or fiction, speaks for itself. But frankly, we were afraid of these guys. You’d never know it by looking at them, with the uniforms and all the esprit de corps bullshit. But from what we found out on the down-low, they’re some unstable, dangerous and desperate people. I mean—consider these nuts who try to get on these reality shows. Now imagine some broke, pumped-up SEALs trying to do the same thing? No, thanks—we wanted no part of them. And that’s why we dropped out of this Caribe thing. We felt they were capable of doing anything, none of it good.”

“If that’s the case, then why have you been keeping such close tabs on them?” Batman asked.

The four Blackwater guys looked mortified.

“Well, there’s a reason for that, too,” Russell said. “But we’re not proud of it.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Nolan told him.

Russell just shrugged. “We heard through the grapevine that if that LA production company passed on the SEALs, and if they couldn’t get you guys on the phone…”

“Go on,” Batman urged him.

“Then we were their third choice,” the guy replied. “This ship. The four of us. Spies At Sea. Twelve episodes up front—with a nice piece of the gross on the back end.”

Russell downloaded his 616 surveillance photos to a thumb drive and gave it to Nolan, along with a name he wrote on a piece of paper.

“You got someone fielding offers for you, right?” he asked. “Ask if they ever got a call from the Highlight Corporation in LA. That’s the production house we’ve been talking about. Someone named Dr. Robert turned them on to you guys, and recommended you highly. If your answering service has been ignoring that call, then the pieces will all fall together for you. We guarantee it.”

Nolan picked up the pack of money.

“You sure you don’t want to be paid for this?” he asked. “You certainly straightened us out.”

Russell waved away the offer.

“We look at it this way,” he said. “These 616 guys are buffoons, juice-heads, and obsessed with being celebrities. But they’re still SEALs. They can kill you with a paperclip, slice your heart open with a fingernail, all that crap. That’s what makes them so dangerous. And I’m sure if they want to make you disappear, no one would ever find you. We’re tough. But we’re not that tough.”

Nolan suddenly looked over at Batman. It was like a light had gone off over his head. Nolan was sure they were thinking the same thing.

“You do seem to have some pretty extensive intelligence on these 616 guys,” Nolan said.

Russell nodded. “Like I said, we’ve been tracking them day by day. Phone records, credit card receipts. Travel records. Considering the circumstances, we thought it best to keep a close eye on them.”

“Any idea what they were doing last Easter Sunday?” Nolan asked.

Russell was mystified by the question, but began a search of his records.

It took a while, but finally he could report only one thing: As far as their surveillance was concerned, no one in SEAL Team 616 could be accounted for on that day.

* * *

THE DUSTBOAT ARRIVED just as Nolan and Batman were leaving the Blackwater ship.

The coastal freighter was traveling so fast as it entered Blue Moon Bay, its bow was completely out of the water and its stern was almost getting caught in its own wake. It looked like an old-fashioned PT boat, bouncing hard across the waves, except it was much bigger and not nearly as streamlined. There was a definite sense of urgency in the way the ship was moving.

Nolan and Batman banged in, shut down the helicopter, then hurried down to the galley. Twitch and Gunner were already here, firing up the team’s main computer. Nolan and Batman quickly briefed them on what the Blackwater guys had told them. Then Nolan asked Twitch to call up the old BABE file. He wanted to know if it ever included any personal information about the people who were reported missing on Easter Sunday. Of all the cases the travel agencies presented to Whiskey, the Easter Sunday disappearances were the oddest because, in addition to Charles Black denying the Muy Capaz had any involvement in them, there was absolutely no evidence or any clues as to what really happened to the people on those three empty yachts. Not even signs of a scuffle or missing items, as had been the case in the other pirate attacks. If anything, the disappearances that day had always looked too clean.

But there was nothing along those lines in the BABE file. So Twitch began scouring Google for news stories on the people who disappeared that Easter morning. It took some time and some fancy Internet wrangling, but finally, Twitch found an old newspaper story identifying the person who’d been on the Mary C, the first empty boat the Palm Beach marine deputies found that day.

His name was Cyril Bragger. He was a Swiss national, well known, at least in high financial circles, as an expert in helping people maintain hidden Swiss bank accounts. Further Googling found an item about him in a Zurich newspaper. It said Bragger was on an extended vacation in the Bahamas, supposedly working on a book about the lost city of Atlantis. Oddly, a work associate was quoted as saying interest in Atlantis had been a sudden passion for Bragger. “This Atlantis stuff was news to us,” the man remarked, indicating that Bragger suddenly left on his vacation, never to return.

This might not have seemed so unusual if the second victim hadn’t also been involved in international finance.

His name, also found on Google, was Karl Reuss; he’d been aboard the second yacht, the Rosalie. He was as rich as Bragger, but much more shady. Reuss ran a one-man financial consulting firm with extensive ties to the former East Germany. But even more telling, it was rumored that he’d been linked to middlemen facilitating ransom payments for Somali pirates.

The search became really interesting when Twitch surfaced information on the third man who’d disappeared that day, the person who had been aboard the sailboat, the Pretty Penny. Again, according to the Internet, he was an American named Walter Choatefellow. His job? Security analyst for a company with extensive contacts inside the U.S. military. His biggest claim to fame? Selling the U.S. Navy a study on the psychological ramifications on military personnel in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre. Choatefellow had told the Navy it was inevitable that there would be more incidents like Fort Hood, that some would probably take place aboard Navy ships, and that the Navy had better be prepared when they happened. Shortly before his disappearance, Choatefellow had sold the Navy a classified program called Plan 6S-S that promised to do just that.

Digging even deeper, Twitch discovered that the three boats in question that day were not only all leased—not so unusual in the Bahamas—but had a connection, another thing the local authorities had missed. According to the leasing companies’ records, the three luxury boats were all in the same small port on North Bimini Island the day before they were found empty. Happening that day in that tiny port was a scuba tour of the Stairs of Atlantis, supposedly the remains of the mythical lost city, and how they were connected to UFO activity in the Bahamas. The event had attracted hundreds of UFO fans.

And after one more pass at the yacht leasing companies’ records, Twitch came up with a fourth name of someone whose leased boat had been in that same small Bimini port that day: John Beaux. The CO of the 616 SEAL team.

It was great detective work by the Twitchman. But what did it all mean?

Twitch said: “I think that while all these fanatics were touring the Atlantis Stairway thing, these three characters were meeting with Beaux. What better way to cover up something underhanded than to hide yourself among a gang of crazy UFO people?

“I think Beaux met with these people on the yachts, conspired with them on some huge hijacking scheme, maybe even of a Navy ship, and how best to get a ransom for it. But when Beaux got what he needed from them, he and his men made them disappear, along with whoever was traveling with them, knowing the Muy Capaz would be blamed. It was a good plan—until the marine deputies got involved. So the SEALs had to kill them, too. Then, when they found out we’d been hired to go after the Muy Capaz, they couldn’t take the chance that the Muy would talk to us before we iced them—so they took them out just minutes before we arrived. That’s why that guy Charles Black didn’t have any idea as to who killed him and his men or why.”

Batman almost started laughing at the end of the explanation. “It sounds like the worst spy movie ever,” he said.

Nolan agreed, then added: “But it must be true. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. It also means those nuts killed those Russian sailors, and that they just couldn’t resist lopping off their ears for trophies—that old Viet Cong thing. These guys are not only celebrity hounds, they’re freaking serial killers.”

Gunner exclaimed: “Serial killers. Steroids. Hollywood. Money. Pirates. All you need is five chicks living in a house punching each other and you’ve got a hit show.”

“Yeah,” Batman said. “The only problem is, our buddy Crash is caught in the middle of it.”

Nolan felt his sat phone buzzing again.

He took it out and flipped it open.

It was a text message from Crash.

All it said was “blu on blu.”

* * *

AGENT HARRY WAS on the bridge of the Mothership, waiting for yet another long intelligence report, when he heard the strange noise again.

This time, he looked to the west and saw the Whiskey helicopter coming toward him. In seconds, it reached the ship and slammed down on its bow again.

Harry was out of the bridge and down the stairs quickly. He met Nolan and Batman walking toward him.

“You guys have got to stop doing that,” he scolded them.

But they ignored his complaint.

“Were you able to find out what those SEALs have been up to since they left here?” Nolan asked him gravely.

“I’ve been trying to do nothing but since we spoke,” Harry replied. “But I’m finding it just about impossible to do because of the strict security protocol involved here. I know they’ve been sending in coded position reports like they’re supposed to, but what missions they’re actually doing, there’s no easy way for me to find out. And I’ve been reluctant to talk to The Three Kings about it, because with the state things are in, with this pirate thing deadline approaching and zero workable intelligence on the what and where, for me to go talk trash about the SEALs now would screw the pooch with extreme prejudice.”

“Well, you better start greasing him up,” Batman told him. “Because we got some late-breaking news.”

They showed him Crash’s enigmatic message. Blue on Blue was code for Americans fighting Americans. It usually meant some friendly-fire incident, but this time Nolan and Batman were certain it had to do with the SEALs and their unauthorized activities.

“I’ve been trying to call my guy since this arrived,” Nolan said. “Or at least get a text to him—but they keep coming back as undeliverable.”

Then they briefed Harry what the Blackwater guys had told them about the SEALs, and what they’d discovered about the people on the three yachts found empty and adrift off Bimini on Easter.

“Combine all that with what we told you earlier, and what do you have?” Nolan asked the ONI agent.

Harry listened to it all with his mouth agape. Capable pirates. Rogue SEALs. Atlantis. Reality shows.

“But what you’re saying is these 616 guys are practically mass murderers,” he told them. “It sounds too crazy.”

“That’s because these SEALs are crazy,” Nolan replied. “They’re broke. They’re perpetually just one step away from getting drummed out or court-martialed. They’re hopped up on steroids and God knows what else. Plus, they want to be media stars. That’s a perfect storm for crazy behavior.”

“Besides,” Batman said, “if one guy—an Army major no less—can walk into an administration building and kill thirteen people, then who’s to say five unbalanced individuals can’t kill fifty people? There’s no limit on craziness. And either the Navy has been too dumb or too distracted to notice, but just like Fort Hood, there were red flags all over the place—until it was too late.”

“We’ve got to tell all this to the Kings,” Nolan insisted to Harry. “Who knows what the f*ck these 616 guys are doing out there?”

Harry thought about it for several long moments, and then, to his credit, he agreed.

They immediately headed down to the CIC.

* * *

THE THREE KINGS were there, with their small army of sailors working the large bank of computers.

But there was an air of celebration in the room; Harry and the Whiskey guys noticed it as soon as they walked in. The Kings almost seemed relaxed; their sailors did, too. They were even laughing.

As soon as they spotted Nolan and Batman, one King said, “You guys might want to work up an invoice so we can start processing your fee.”

Nolan and Batman were taken aback; so was Harry.

“What do you mean?” Nolan asked the Kings.

“SEAL Team 616 has just come through,” the King who usually did the talking said. “They’ve just stopped an insurrection on the ballistic sub USS Wyoming. From all reports, these phantom pirates we’ve been looking for were actually crewmembers of this sub. They’d cooked up a scheme to take it over and sell it to terrorists. The SEALs just radioed in their position. They’re about 150 miles south of us and they have the entire situation under control. Rescue vessels are on their way.”

But now, even Harry was skeptical.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked the three officers.

They nodded in unison. “Sure as shit,” one said.

“But how did the 616 know there was even trouble on the sub?” Harry asked them.

The King spokesman said: “They got word of a problem on board through something called Plan 6S-S. They went aboard via their mini-sub and retook control. Apparently the pirates brought some kind of bacterial agent aboard the sub that made a lot of the crew sick, and made it easier for them to gain control—until the SEALs arrived, that is.”

Nolan and Batman rolled their eyes. “This will be hard to believe,” Nolan told the Kings, “but there’s a good chance the SEALs are the perpetrators of all this, that they’re bullshitting you and they’ve hijacked that sub.”

The Three Kings laughed out loud. So did the sailors manning the computers.

“Now, why would you ever say that?” one of the officers asked.

Fighting hard to control his emotions, Batman explained everything they’d just told Harry. Lots of evidence pointed to the 616 as being less than trustworthy. And as the Blackwater guys had told them, they thought the SEALs were capable of anything—even mass murder.

“We just found that missing Russian sub,” Batman told them. “Everyone aboard is dead, killed in the same way as these Muy Capaz pirates we’d dealt with before any of this happened. Whoever did it got aboard that Russian sub somehow, knowing there weren’t any firearms on a training vessel. It was like someone was practicing before they went out and did the real thing. It didn’t make sense to us before, but now it does. These freaking SEALs are off the reservation. They’re now doing the real thing.”

But the Kings were just not hearing it.

“Sorry—but that story is just a bit too incredible,” one said dryly.

That’s when Nolan showed them both of Crash’s messages, the one about the SEALs’ activities and the latest one indicating a blue-on-blue engagement.

“This is my guy telling me the SEALs are dirty, that they’re up to something and something is wrong,” Nolan said. “You must know their mission statements. You must know they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near that ship in Havana, or that LNG carrier, or the Queen of the Seas.”

But still, the Kings were not impressed.

“You said yourself that these SEALs are your rivals,” one said. “You want to be TV stars? You’re into making piles of money? OK—fine, but don’t throw these heroes under the bus just because they beat you to it.”

Nolan and Batman were growing furious. “You think we’re here talking trash about these guys because we want to beat them out of some TV contract?”

“Well, we have to consider where the ‘trash’ is coming from,” another King said. “You admit you got a lot of this information from the Blackwater representatives, the same people who walked out of the initial briefing for this problem, correct? Don’t you think that it might be in their interest to mislead you? They’re your rivals, too. So why would you choose to believe them over—well, us, let’s say?”

Nolan and Batman were enraged by now, but neither would back down.

“What about my guy’s text messages?” Nolan challenged them. “Why would he want to mislead us?”

The officer shrugged. “I understand he used to be a SEAL, and wanted to be one again. Maybe he was just softening the blow, before telling you he was leaving your little club.”

Nolan felt his fists clench. “So—you’re saying we’re the liars?”

The officer smiled in the most self-important way. “No—I’m saying you’re civilians. And frankly, I’d expect just about anything from you. Especially with your track record.”

Batman almost went over the console at him. Nolan and Harry held him back.

“Look, it’s over,” the main King said. “We’re right and you’re wrong. The Wyoming was the target. The SEALs have restored order. Work up your bill and get it to me.”

Nolan and Batman still weren’t hearing it.

“You don’t even know where this Plan 6S-S order came from,” Nolan told them. “Did you send it? Someone at NS Norfolk? Fleet Command? The White House? Who?”

“I don’t know,” the top King replied mockingly. “But you see, I don’t have to know. I just care about results.”

“Let us see these communications then,” Batman said. “The ones between you and the SEALs.”

The King just laughed at him. “You’re not cleared for that,” he said. “And in fact, as of this moment, because your contract is up, you’re not even cleared to be on this ship. So, please leave before I call our security detail.”

Nolan and Batman were boiling. It was such a frustrating situation, both were beyond words. But they didn’t move. So as promised, the Kings called the ship’s security detail. Four armed Marines showed up.

That’s when Harry stepped in.

“There’s no need for this,” he said, waving the security detail away. “I’ll escort them off the ship.”

* * *

NOLAN AND BATMAN flew back to the Dustboat, feeling sullen and beaten.

They met Gunner and Twitch up on the bridge and briefed them on the bad turn of events. Twitch was especially livid. He immediately took Nolan’s sat phone and tried to get a message to Crash, but with no success.

They were all veterans of the military; they’d all come up against the sometimes imperceptibly stupid, thick-headed behavior of the top brass. Their shared experience at Tora Bora was a perfect example.

They knew that frequently, higher-ups in the military went to any lengths to get the outcome they desired, despite a world of evidence to the contrary. Call it hubris, or stupidity, or both, it was a dangerous inclination when people’s lives were involved.

But this? This bordered on criminal insanity.

They steered the Dustboat past the bow of the Mothership just in time to see Agent Harry arrive at his safe spot up on the bow. He looked as exasperated as they felt.

They watched each other as the Dustboat motored past. Harry could only give them a frustrated shrug—he felt their pain. The bad news for him was, he had no choice but to stay aboard the ship of fools.

At the same time, Gunner was poring over a map of the waters south of Blue Moon Bay. Because Crash’s last text had come across a satellite phone, the rough coordinates of where it was sent were hidden in the message details. From this, Gunner discovered that if the information was correct, the commandeered sub was really only twenty miles away from them, and not the 150 miles the SEALs reported to the Mothership. Whiskey viewed this as more evidence of deception on the part of the 616.

“What the f*ck are we going to do?” Batman said, holding his head in his hands. “Those Mothership a*sholes are so twisted up in their own little world, it will be a disaster before they realize how wrong they are.”

Then Nolan’s sat phone started buzzing again. It startled them all, especially Twitch, who was holding it at the time. The buzzing indicated a text message was coming in. It was from Crash. His last.

Twitch punched up the message screen as the rest gathered round.

The message contained only three hurriedly typed, misspelled words: “Srry. Im drwnig.”

Twitch was shocked. “Does that mean: ‘Sorry—I’m drowning?’ ” he asked.

But no sooner were those words out of his mouth when there was a brilliant white flash—followed by a tremendous explosion.

The blast was so powerful, everyone on the bridge was thrown to the deck. The Dustboat was hurled back twenty feet and came close to capsizing.

Struggling to regain his footing, Nolan looked out the port side window to see the huge Mothership engulfed in smoke and flames.

“What the f*ck…” he cried.

It didn’t seem real—and for a moment, Nolan wondered if he was having another Shanghai flashback.

Twitch even screamed, “Is this happening?”

But Nolan blinked twice and realized it was real.

Horrible—but real.

They’d been inside the ship’s CIC not five minutes before.

The others got to their feet. They, too, were shaking and disbelieving. It was as if an entire magazine of bombs and ammunition had blown up aboard the Mothership. Except the undercover vessel was not a warship. It didn’t have any munitions on board.

So what happened?

Just then, one of the Senegals cried out: “Torpille!”

He was pointing south and, for a second, they could all see the churning telltale bubble trail of a torpedo streaking northward.

It was moving so fast, though, that no sooner had the Senegal shouted his warning that the torpedo detonated under the already blazing Mothership, causing a second incredible explosion.

“Jesus!” Batman yelled, as they all fell to the deck again. “It’s those a*shole SEALs—they’re sinking the f*cking thing!”

Just before the second torpedo hit the Mothership, they all saw a lone figure leap from the front of the vessel into the water.

He was a very lucky man, whoever he was, because after the second torpedo exploded, the Mothership broke into two burning pieces and went down immediately. The twin blasts had been so violent, there was no way anyone left on board could have survived.

The team was still reeling from the second torpedo strike when another Senegal cried out, “Une autre torpille!”

He was right: A third torpedo was churning up the water south of them. It went past the fire and wreckage left from the Mothership and hit under the Blackwater vessel nearby, blowing it high into the air.

This blast also rocked the Dustboat, but everyone was holding on tight by now. Nolan and Twitch scrambled off the bridge, down to the rear deck and, spotting the lone survivor of the Mothership blast, threw him a life preserver and a rope. Now, as they pulled the survivor in, a fourth torpedo hit the Blackwater boat, just as it was coming back to the surface from the first hit. It disappeared in a geyser of flames and steam.

Nolan and Twitch pulled the oil-covered figure up from the water, only to discover it was Agent Harry. He was bleeding and his clothes were in threads, and he was screaming, “Get off this ship! Get off!”

But Team Whiskey had already sprung into action. Batman had quick-started Bad Dawg One and Gunner had started Bad Dawg Two. They were throwing in everything they could carry: weapons, laptops and sat phones, and screaming for Nolan and Twitch to hurry up to the helipads.

Carrying Harry between them, Nolan and Twitch ran past the first helicopter just as Batman and Gunner, in the front seats, and three of the Senegals, in the back with a lot of their hastily grabbed equipment, were strapping in. Batman hit the throttles and the copter took off like a rocket.

Nolan reached the second copter moments later. He and Twitch pushed Harry into the back with the two other Senegals and then climbed in behind the controls. They didn’t even bother to strap in. Nolan immediately pulled up on the main control, and they went straight up, the engine screaming in protest.

Not two seconds later, a torpedo hit the Dustboat broadside.

Their little ship, their home and base for their many missions, disappeared in a cloud of fire and debris, sinking without a trace.

* * *

THE TWO HELICOPTERS circled the debris pools of both the Mothership and the Blackwater vessel, but there were no survivors.

The ships had been hit by torpedoes designed to sink aircraft carriers and other major warships. They had utterly destroyed the two vessels, as well as the Dustboat.

Harry was close to a state of shock, though. He was screaming, “I knew that f*cking ship was cursed—I just knew it!”

Nolan signaled one of the Senegals to get the ONI agent to calm down, which the man did by clamping his huge hand on Harry’s shoulder in a firm but friendly manner.

“You are safe,” the Senegal said in his deep, broken-English baritone. “We are all safe.”

And Harry did calm down—for about two seconds. Then he began screaming over the copter’s engine noise and directly into Nolan’s ear, “But now we’re the only ones left who know what’s going on. And we’ve got no idea where that sub is going!”

But Nolan began immediately shaking his head.

“That’s not the case,” he yelled back to him. “We know exactly where it’s going.”