Operation Caribe

36

IT WAS NOW four in the morning.

The storm was still raging outside the sub. Inside, it was still dark and full of weird noises and ghosts. Or at least that’s what Commander Beaux believed.

He was sick. He was vomiting. His neck was swollen, and his chest felt like an anvil was pressing on it. His skin had even turned a shade of blue—all symptoms of the H1N1-like virus sweeping the sub.

After last talking to NS Norfolk, he’d spent an hour close to the CAAC, in what was once the captain’s cabin, ostensibly reading over the Trident launch book, the document he’d killed the young ensign to get. He was so ill, though, he could barely think straight. He had no idea what was happening up top, and he just didn’t have the guts to go back below and cut down the body of his old friend, Elvis.

His grand dream was slipping away—and being replaced by a nightmare. What he’d hoped would be a smooth, clean operation had turned into a nonstop gun battle with a bunch of phantoms on the outside, and maybe something even worse on the inside.

The sailors still on duty on the control deck were useless at this point. Beaux could see them from his doorway and they were just as sick as he, if not worse. They’d stayed at their stations only because the last remaining petty officer alive told them to, so as not to risk getting anyone else killed by 616.

But clearly, it was all for show.

* * *

IT WAS ONLY that he wanted to get out of the foul smelling control area that Beaux finally managed to reload his M4, put on his flak jacket and head back up to the open bridge.

He could barely climb the conning tower ladder without stopping on every other rung; this is how weak he’d become. When he finally reached the top, he stopped, took a deep breath, and then pushed the outside hatch open.

He was greeted by the combined roar of the violent storm and the fusillades of bullets flying overhead. Ghost, Smash and now Monkey were up here, still pinned down, still firing only sporadically and still hitting absolutely nothing in the dark. They looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disgust—like someone who’d run from a battle and then for some reason decided to return.

Beaux took advantage of a lull in the gunfire to climb out of the hatch and crawl over to where the others were huddled. They looked just as disheartened—and just as sick—as he.

Another spray of tracer fire went over their heads, causing all four to hug the cold, wet, tilted deck. Each man cursed the exasperating situation. This was not the norm for them. They’d been in battle now for more than two hours, and they still had no idea who they were fighting against.

Their mysterious enemy was some kind of special ops unit—that much was obvious. But were they other SEALs? That would present the ultimate horror show for Beaux and company. They’d never been popular within the tight-knit SEAL community; to have fellow SEALs sent to take them out would be impossible to bear.

The gunfire eventually died down long enough for them to talk.

“How’s Elvis doing?” Monkey asked Beaux. “Have you checked on him lately?”

“Elvis is dead,” the 616 commander replied starkly, at last revealing what he had seen below. “I found him an hour ago. Whoever blew up the power cable gutted him down near the torpedo room.”

The other SEALs looked back Beaux in disbelief.

“Why the f*ck didn’t you tell us?” Ghost yelled at him.

“Why would I?” Beaux shot back. “Do you feel better now that you know?”

More gunfire went overhead. Then they were quiet for a long time.

Finally Smash mumbled: “We shouldn’t have torpedoed those ships, man. That’s when it all started to go wrong.”

“And we shouldn’t have killed the captain,” Monkey added.

“We shouldn’t have killed anyone,” Ghost declared harshly. “That’s what brought us all this bad karma.”

Another barrage of tracer fire went over their heads.

“I know it looks bad,” Beaux told them. “But I believe we can still come out on top in this thing.”

The others glared at him, incredulous.

“Really? How so?” Ghost asked snidely.

Beaux pulled an envelope from his pocket. Within he showed them four keys and the step-by-step procedures for launching the Trident missiles, including the final launch codes.

“I’m very close to knowing how to do it all,” Beaux said. “And I mean, really doing it. It’s easier than you think.”

“You’re not serious?” Ghost challenged him. “You always said us doing a launch would just be a threat, nothing more.”

“Well, now it’s gone from ‘threat’ to ‘bargaining chip,’ ” Beaux replied, trying to catch his breath. “I told that to Norfolk. And now we have a tool that we can use to get out of this mess.”

“But why?” Ghost asked, growing angry. “Haven’t we done enough?”

Beaux just shook his head. “Look, we launch one missile,” he explained. “It goes into the sea or someplace. At least they’ll know we’re serious. They’ll call off these SOF guys, we get out with our lives, and I’m convinced, still do some kind of movie deal.”

“But you don’t know where a missile will go if we launch it from here,” Ghost snapped back. “I’m no expert, but to just fire one randomly—there’s no way you can tell where it will come down, is there? Especially with the boat already sitting cockeyed?”

Beaux began to reply, but was suddenly interrupted by a noise louder than the screaming storm and the roar of gunfire.

It was mechanical. A whirring sound. Getting louder.

A helicopter?

In a hurricane?

It appeared an instant later. Coming out of a flash of lightning, it was an OH-6 gunship.

It unleashed a wild burst from its .50-caliber machine guns. The barrage sailed harmlessly over the tilted bridge, but the copter was flying so slow, it was obvious the people inside wanted the SEALs to see who they were.

The pilot was clearly visible. Hokey blue uniform. Rock star haircut. Huge oversized battle helmet, and designer sunglasses even though it was night. He was looking right at them. And the copter itself looked like a souped-up hot rod with a rotor and weapons attached.

The SEALs had seen it all before—that was the problem.

“I don’t f*cking believe this!” Ghost yelled over the storm. “Is that those pricks from Team Whiskey?”

“But they’re supposed to be dead,” Monkey yelled back. “All of them!”

Beaux watched the copter disappear back into the storm. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “They really are ghosts.…”

They’d all thought that Whiskey had gone to the bottom of Blue Moon Bay along with the Navy’s undercover ship and the Blackwater vessel. But they’d been wrong. Somehow, the private special ops team had escaped the carnage … and managed to find 616 here.

That’s when a noise like an explosion went off inside Beaux’s head. It hurt his ears, it had been so loud, so violent. Suddenly, it all made terrible sense to him. NS Norfolk really didn’t know where they were or who was shooting at them—because Team Whiskey had not told them. And Whiskey hadn’t been sent here by anybody—they’d figured it all out on their own. Had they been in the employ of the Navy, they would have called in help once they’d found the sub. They would have surrounded the island with Navy ships. They would have had fighter-bombers loaded with precision-guided weapons circling overhead. They would have half the 82nd Airborne landed on the island by now.

But they’d done none of that.

Why?

Because they were here for a different reason. They weren’t here to take the sub back.

They were here to avenge the death of their guy named Crash …

And that was very bad news for the 616.

Beaux just collapsed to the wet and oily deck. For the first time in the whole episode, he was actually, truly frightened for his life.

“Man, we really f*cked up,” he murmured. “Not killing all those guys for good was a big mistake.”

Now it was starting to dawn on the other SEALs, too, what was really going on here.

Whiskey had played them perfectly. They’d kept them occupied up on the bridge for the past two hours because not to fight back from here meant not to fight at all, and that just wasn’t in their genes. But while the 616 had been up here, doing a “more balls than brains” routine, Whiskey had been working its dark magic around and below them.

The ghost on board. The sabotage. Blocking the channel. Killing Elvis.

“God damn, I’d rather have Delta Force coming after us than these a*sholes!” Ghost cried out. “They’re never going to let us out of here alive, because we whacked their bud!”

The copter reappeared at that moment, this time from the opposite direction. It spit more .50-caliber rounds all over the bridge. The bullets didn’t hit anyone, but the SEALs were caught in a tsunami of tiny shrapnel. It was like getting hit with a spray of thumbtacks. Suddenly they were all cut on their hands and faces.

“He’s right!” Monkey yelled. “They’re not trying to kill us! They’re just trying to wound us!”

“These guys are bastards,” Ghost said, toying with a white handkerchief in his back pocket. “Cruel—but smart bastards…”

Monkey panicked. He pushed himself away from the others, suddenly stood up and began desperately searching for some way off the sub. Beaux jumped up and threw him back to the deck, hoping the Whiskey gunship wouldn’t see them.

The OH-6 was gone, swallowed up again by the storm. But Beaux saw two disturbing things nevertheless. First, the Rastafarian was still on the deck and still welding. Between the storm, the darkness and the bullets flying everywhere, Beaux still could not tell what the hell he was doing. And as soon as the two armed guards in dashikis spotted him looking down on them, they raised their weapons and began firing.

At that moment, Beaux spun around and caught a glimpse of the front of the sub. He was shocked to see, illuminated by another flash of lightning, a gang of people in the shallow water near the lake’s shore, running through a culvert—and suddenly disappearing.

This vision lasted only an instant, and in the crackling light, it was hard to make it out clearly. But Beaux was sure that at least some of the people he saw were Wyoming crewmen.

“Jesus—they’re escaping!” he yelled, ducking just as the gunship came out of nowhere and covered them with another storm of razor-sharp shrapnel.

“Now I know how King Kong felt!” Monkey yelled, his hands and face horribly cut and bloody.

Beaux pulled Smash over to him.

“Get below!” he screamed at him. “See what the f*ck is going on—but come right back!”

Smash didn’t argue. He scrambled over to the hatchway and was soon sliding down the ladder. He was glad to get out of the gun battle and out from the storm, but he was not looking forward to walking the dark passageways knowing at least one Whiskey infiltrator was probably still aboard the sub.

Once back down on the control deck, he did a quick scan of the CAAC. The sailors here were all so sick, he couldn’t imagine any of them going anywhere.

So, he slowly made his way down the dark, debris-strewn passageways expecting someone to stab him in the heart at him at any moment.

He arrived at the sick bay unscathed, though, but he was in for a shock.

The infirmary was empty.

“What the f*ck?” he whispered. “They’re all gone?”