Operation Sea Ghost

5

Gulf of Aden

REFUELING WHISKEY’S ATTACK copter took just fifteen minutes. This was lightning quick for the yacht crew, who were not practiced in the art of quick aircraft turnarounds.

In the time the copter was getting serviced, Nolan had a chance to down two amphetamine pills and reset his weapons. Then he took off again, got a bearing via his rudimentary navigation system, turned west and hit the throttles. The mission to retrieve Batman had begun.

Gunner and Twitch were with him. They were the other half remaining of Team Whiskey. Gunner LaPook was a giant of a man from Cajun Country in Louisiana. He was the team’s door breaker; whenever Whiskey assaulted a fortified position, Gunner went in first. His weapon of choice was the Streetsweeper, essentially a machine gun that fired shotgun shells. He was a tall, beefy individual and fierce looking. All tats and muscles, he looked like a WWE wrestler.

Twitch was a Kanaka, a native Hawaiian, and he was as diminutive as Gunner was tall. His nondescript Asian features, as well as a talent for languages, were a great advantage for the team, as he was able to go undercover just about anywhere in the world and blend in. He was a little off kilter, though; “edgy” was a polite description. He’d lost his leg during Whiskey’s ill-fated pursuit of bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. Just as Batman wore a prosthesis on his left arm, Twitch wore one for his right leg.

Both Gunner and Twitch were still wearing their experimental body armor, as was Nolan. It had worked well in their assault against the Shaka camp; though both Gunner and Twitch had been hit by pirate bullets, deep bruises were the only result.

Indeed, the mission earlier that night had gone off extremely well. The hostages had been freed, no one on the rescue force had been seriously hurt, the equipment had made it through unscathed and the world had one less pirate gang to worry about.

But now, as they were roaring back to retrieve Batman, Nolan was not getting a signal from his colleague’s GPS locator. Even worse, Batman was not answering his sat-phone, even though Gunner was punching the number repeatedly.

They knew this part of the Somali coast was infested with pirate gangs, criminal clans and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups. Had their wayward associate really been able to avoid all of these dangerous sorts? Had Whiskey been too caught up in their victory earlier not to think clearly about leaving Batman behind? What kind of hot water could he have gotten into?

“Or maybe it’s just like he said,” Twitch said dryly. “Maybe he’s just taking a nap.”

* * *

THE SUN WAS barely up when Nolan spotted the coastline of Somalia again.

They’d hit a fog bank about ten miles out and it stayed thick right up to landfall. Nolan was doing his best to get them to the same spot where the rescue mission had taken place. They were hoping that Batman was still in the area and, on hearing the copter, would send up some kind of signal so they could swoop in and pick him up.

But Nolan was prepared for the worst.

“Lock and load,” he told Gunner and Twitch. Twitch checked his M4 assault rifle, stringing out its extended ammo belt. Gunner did the same with his massive Streetsweeper. Nolan reached down and pushed an oversized ammo clip in his own M4. Experience told them they had to be ready for anything.

So it was with great surprise that when they broke out of the fog and zoomed in on the nearby beach, what they saw was not a murderous gang of gunmen ready to shoot them down, but a lone figure in a bright blue battle suit—doing jumping jacks.

It was such a surprising sight, Nolan yanked the copter into a sudden, violent turn. Flying parallel to the beach a moment later, he was looking down through the lingering mist at this person: blue suit, rock star hair, and prosthetic hand at the end of the left arm.

There was no doubt about it: it was Batman.

But what the hell was he doing? Nolan had known Batman for more than twenty years. He’d never seen him as much as eat an apple, never mind do calisthenics.

Nolan turned the copter again just as Batman broke from his jumping jacks and started running wind sprints up and down the beach. Again, his colleagues were shocked.

“Is this a trick?” Gunner asked. “Some way to get us to land and ambush us?”

Nolan had half expected to be picking up Batman’s bullet-ridden or hacked-up body. But this?

Batman had stopped his wind sprints and was now doing a handstand—on his one good hand.

“My guess is he got hit on the head and went nuts,” Twitch said as they came in for a landing.

“Whatever it is,” Nolan yelled back, putting the copter down with a thump, “just grab him and let’s get out of here.”

But Batman had spotted them by this time and was actually hand-hopping over to the copter. Then when he was about twenty feet away, he did a tremendous backflip, soaring some fifteen feet into the air before landing squarely on his feet.

“He’s f*cking crazy!” Nolan yelled to Gunner and Twitch. “Grab him!” They were out of the copter in an instant, tackling Batman just as he was breaking into another round of jumping jacks. They dragged him to the aircraft and threw him inside just as Nolan engaged the controls and prepared to take off again.

Throughout it all, Batman was laughing hysterically.

“What the f*ck is the matter with you?” Nolan yelled back at him.

But Batman never stopped laughing. “Besides feeling great you mean?” he replied. “And clean? And warm? And one with the earth, and the sky and…”

Nolan looked him over for a moment. He knew Batman loved smoking marijuana. But though his skin seemed slightly singed, at the moment Nolan could not see any of the telltale red-eye side effects usually associated with getting high.

His friend just looked, well … different.

“Let me fly this goddamn thing,” Batman yelled up to Nolan, trying to climb over the seat as Gunner and Twitch fought to keep him in the back. “C’mon! Let me bring us back in class.…”

Nolan just shook his head, pulled up on the copter’s collective and took off.

“Strap him down,” he told Gunner and Twitch. “And sit on him if you have to. If not, he might jump out and try to fly back on his own.”