The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 26





On board HC-130 Broadway 1

6,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden

On the whiteboard, Wally drew new stick figures. Three on the stern, four at the bow, four more along the starboard rail, three on port. Across the torso of each he marked a slash for a Kalashnikov.

Doc gathered the men. Again Wally addressed them without the team intercom.

“I just got off the horn with the PRCC. LB checked in. Here’s his recon on the targets around the main deck. Everyone’s got an AK.”

Jamie pointed at the gap on the port rail beside the super-structure.

“No one there.”

Wally tapped a fingertip on the blank space, imagining what had happened there.

“LB neutralized him. He says he wasn’t seen.”

The engine drone in the back of the aircraft covered any mumbles from the team. Torres hadn’t relayed LB’s situation, nor had she indicated she knew anything about it. LB must have been left with no choice. Wally set the board aside, put elbows on his knees, and waited.

He had no doubt that the PJs could pull off this mission. The team had all the jump and combat skills needed. A Reaper was going to blow the freighter out from under them if they didn’t secure the ship fast enough—that was surely motivation. But to take life—for most of them, to return to killing after rejecting it; for Jamie and Dow, to do it for the first time—after years of training and missions, going all out to find every way to reach a threatened and isolated life, then save it. This had been Wally’s chief concern. With all their bravado, these men might yet hesitate to kill.

The news that LB had done so ahead of them sent a wave through the team. Wally watched as what he hoped for happened. The men blinked, looked down and inward. Slowly, each raised his eyes to nod curtly at Wally, accepting the job laid out for them. The PJs took from LB’s kill the full realization that this mission would spill blood, and it gave them the license to do so themselves.

With no more words, the unit dispersed. They spread out across the HC-130’s cargo deck, lying with heads on their jump containers or rucks. Doc moved among them, talking with each, cementing their resolve.

Wally slouched in a mesh seat along the fuselage. With sixty minutes to the target, he stuffed in earplugs and shut his eyes.

What if the pirates figured out one of their men was missing on the port rail? Would they think he was off in a corner getting high on qaat? That he’d fallen overboard by accident? That there was an enemy on board? What would be the pirates’ alert level when Wally and the PJs touched down?

Wally had no way to know any of this. Everything lay ahead. He sank back into his honed instincts. He had clear orders. Ready, trusted men around him. He needed only one more thing. The green jump light.