The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 31





On board HC-130 Broadway 1

18,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden

Doc, Jamie, and Mouse put their backs to the night, heels on the edge. Wally, Quincy, and Dow faced them.

The red ready light lit the team. Night vision goggles on, O2 masks up, jump containers, rucks, weapons, armor, gloves—nothing of each man was exposed in the seconds before the leap. The feel for each flowed through their hands holding one another in place on the windy open ramp.

Framed by stars, Doc nodded first. The others, Wally too, dipped helmets.

The red bulb extinguished. In Wally’s hands, Doc relaxed. The green go light flicked on. Doc hopped back into nothing.

Wally dove after him.

The HC-130 bolted away. Wally and the team were flung forward by the speed of the plane, hurled into a torrent of wind. Wally spread his limbs, arching his back to control the accelerating fall.

Gaining control of his descent, he counted five electric green figures through the NVGs. The team maneuvered with precision into a wide circle, all facing inward, dropping at the same rate. Five seconds into the jump, at 220 feet per second, the altimeter strapped to Wally’s wrist passed 17,000.

From three and a quarter miles up, the fleeing freighter was easy to spot. The bow light gleamed in Wally’s goggles like an emerald sparkler, and the starlit deck made the Valnea radiant against the darker waters.

In the plummeting circle, big Quincy fell faster, pulling ahead a few meters. Wally and the less bulky others, especially Mouse, lowered their profiles against the rushing air to keep pace. The digital readout on Wally’s wrist clicked off altitude.

The assault team streaked downward in their ring formation, uniforms rippling. In fifty seconds of freefall, they plunged two miles. The cargo ship grew larger by the moment. Wally wanted to say something like, “Here we go,” but no one would hear him over the radio for the roaring wind.

At four thousand feet, the men rotated away from the center to put more space between them. Executing the moves together, each waved and checked the airspace around him. Wally reached back to his container, gripped the pillow handle. Two seconds later, at three thousand feet, he and the PJs threw out their pilot chutes.

Six gray silks unraveled into the rushing air, lines played out at the fantastic rate of their descent. Jamie’s chute blossomed first, plucking him up and away. A split second after, Wally’s canopy filled. The whiplash snatched a gasp from his lungs, stretched his organs, tongue, every muscle downward for a heartbeat. Instantly the plummet slowed, everything snapped into place, and he floated gently down.

Wally grabbed the uncoiled toggles left and right. He found the green images of all five PJs drifting around him. He unclipped one side of the oxygen mask and shut off the oxygen bottle.

Team leader Doc called over the radio, “Sound off. PJ one up.”

Mouse, second in the stack, responded, “PJ two up.”

Wally answered last: “Six up.”

The team guided their chutes into a vertical stack. Wally spiraled to the bottom. The rest stalled and banked until Quincy was in position above and behind Wally, then Jamie, Dow, and Mouse, Doc riding at the top.

They glided down and forward on the southwest wind. Wally’s altimeter read 2,300 feet. They approached the freighter out of the west, gliding at eighteen knots. Still a mile off, the ship plowed from left to right, her phosphorescent wake glowing in the NVGs. Wally figured he had three more airborne minutes to intercept her.

He bored in straight for the starboard beam. His goggles highlighted pirates around the deck. Four spread out along the starboard rail, four at the bow, one on each of the wings. Wally had no line of sight on the stern or port rail. There’d be another three Somalis guarding each, just like LB said.

On the water two miles behind the Valnea, a small craft paired itself to the ship’s speed: Robey, Sandoval, and Fitz in the inflated RAMZ.

High overhead, Doc issued clipped orders to keep the stack in line, maintaining two hundred feet vertical separation between them. “Come left two; speed up four.” Wally latched his focus to the wind, calculating how far and fast he needed to fly.

A half mile out from the ship, another glowing silhouette appeared in the center of the freighter. It popped out of a hatch in the cargo deck, then ducked fast behind cover.

Wally thumbed his PTT.

“Lima Bravo, Lima Bravo. Juggler.”

The team freq scratched, then cleared.

“Juggler, Lima Bravo. Right on time. Where are you?”

At a thousand feet altitude, Wally and the team would be visible only if someone knew exactly where to look and tracked them blacking out stars.

“Off the starboard beam, fifteen hundred feet out, one thousand altitude.”

LB’s green image raised hands. “Nothing.”

“Good. You secure?”

“Ready.”

“Winds on deck?”

“Five to eight headwind.”

“I’ll cross over your position in about thirty seconds. I’ll bank left and come up from behind.”

“Is there a guard on the wing?”

“Yeah.”

Wally worked the right toggle to counter a crossbreeze. Altitude was down to 750 feet. In ten more seconds he would cross over the Valnea’s starboard side. This close, the deep hum of her engine and the slicing bow matched the buzz of the radio’s silence. Between his dangling boots, Wally lined up the image of a crouching LB.

LB said, “Do what you gotta do. All of you.”

“Roger that. Look straight up.”

“Nothing.”

“Over you now.”

“I can smell Quincy.”

The big PJ answered. “Bite me, LB.”

“Come get me outta here and I will.”

Doc spoke. “Clear the line.”

Wally stepped back in. “Roger. LB, monitor.”

“Will do. Good luck, boys.”

Wally’s canopy kicked him left, tugged on a gust eddied by the great ship passing beneath him. He adjusted, staying on course across the freighter’s midsection. His altimeter read six hundred feet. Wally subtracted ninety feet; the LZ stood at the top of the superstructure, nine stories above the water.

The NVGs gave Wally his first clean look at the Somali on the port wing. The pirate faced into the headwind, elbows on the rail. The pirate looked thin, with arms and shoulders typical of an underfed villager in Africa. His blouse ruffled around him; a scarf covered his head. Wally was glad for the glimmering image of the man, just an amplified light signature, no memorable features.

He cleared Valnea below and flew another hundred meters past her port beam. Behind him, the freighter kept pushing ahead at twelve knots.

“Doc.”

“Go.”

“Ready?”

“Get ’em, Wally.”

Wally hauled on his left toggle. The ram chute responded, banking him counterclockwise. On the left harness strap across his chest, he unclipped the Stevens lanyard. This would stop his reserve chute from deploying when he landed, because he was going to hit the LZ without his main canopy. Last, Wally flicked off the safety on his M4.

Completing the turn, he shortened the distance to the Valnea. A hundred yards out and two hundred yards up, Wally braked to let the freighter slide completely by. The NVGs highlighted the guards on the port rail just as LB described, with one exception: below the superstructure, where LB claimed he’d taken out a Somali, there now stood two green figures.

Wally had thirty more seconds under canopy before he either landed on the ship or splashed. The pirate on the port wing made no movement to show he was aware of Wally hanging in space, circling in behind him.

The ship was now four hundred feet below. Wally put on speed, zooming down from behind, chasing her. Accelerating, he bled more altitude. The freighter whipped up a five-knot head-wind as LB had predicted, mingling with the ten-knot crosswind out of the southwest. Diesel exhaust and a wave of heat rising from the smokestack washed across Wally’s glide path, fouling and stirring the air. The freighter ran away from him at twelve knots. Wally worked the chute’s airfoil for all the velocity and lift he could squeeze from it, holding his line behind the freighter.

He had only moments left. Quincy, two hundred feet above him, was lining up on the same track. The Somali in Wally’s goggles kept his focus forward.

Wally drifted down, coming level with the belching smokestack. Without warning, hot exhaust smacked his chute, sheering him left, away from his target.

With no time to spare, he yanked hard on the right toggle, correcting so quickly the chute stalled. The violent maneuver bucked him outside the wing’s railing, over the dark water. The approach was going wrong. Twenty feet out and ten feet above the wing, Wally was close enough now to shoot the guard but couldn’t spare his hands from the toggles; he might manage to take out the Somali just before slamming into the side of the ship—not an option. His nerves spiked. Wally clamped his teeth, stuck with the plan, and fought the chute in its final seconds.

He flew the last ten feet forward as fast as the chute could carry him. A southwest gust gave him one last jolt of lift. The canopy loomed above the rail. The pirate tilted back his head to catch the sudden dark whoosh above him. Instead of sneaking up on the guard from behind, Wally by accident and fortune swooped in from the side. His boot had a clean shot at the pirate’s temple.

He cocked his leg to time the kick. The canopy swept him down and in, fast. Wally flared the chute, hitting the brakes. The tip of his boot struck dead in the center of the pirate’s head scarf. The man was bowled over, buckling to a heap on the deck.

Wally sailed over the flattened pirate, reaching back for the handle of the main chute cutaway. He yanked out the pillow grip. Instantly, the long lines separated from the container, the toggles beside his shoulders sprang away. Wally dropped the last few feet to the floor, spreading his legs to straddle the pirate, a final flourish. Behind him, the freed canopy, snared on the breeze, blew across the wing’s rail, tumbling into what he hoped was enough darkness.

Wally slung the M4 into his hands. Bending at the waist, he shoved the suppressed muzzle into the dazed pirate’s chest and punched two rounds through the heart. The Somali spasmed as if shocked, then lay still.

Wally stood above the body, pausing to read his own reaction. He’d known this kill was coming and could not predict what would come after. A shaking hand, bile in his throat, dry mouth—he needed to adjust and continue. He wanted to feel nothing, and that was what he got. He sensed only luck and the wind.

“Okay,” he whispered as if to someone else. “Here we go.”

He thumbed the talk button on his vest. “LZ secure. Five?”

Quincy answered, “Five. Go.”

“Watch out for turbulence from the smokestack. Come in wide.”

“Roger.”

“One, you copy?”

From the top of the stack, Doc said, “PJ one. Roger.”

The dimly lit wheelhouse stayed dark. Wally’s NVGs showed the green heads and shoulders of two men standing in the middle of the wide room, another pacing between them.

Wally ditched the empty container. He folded the night-vision goggles onto his helmet to get a fuller view of Quincy coming in. The big PJ drifted out of the blackness, invisible until the final ten feet. He nudged his gray chute left, giving the ship’s chimney a wide berth to slide in without a whisper. Quincy touched boots down in the center of the wing, then dropped to his knees. Before the wind could drag his canopy back into the air and him with it over the rail, Wally gathered in the lines to collapse it. Quincy unclipped his harnesses, dumping the container. He thrust his weapon at the wheelhouse door while Wally finished securing the silk.

Wally took a knee beside him, M4 up and ready, infrared sight on. He clicked the NVGs down over his eyes.

Quincy cocked his brow at the dead pirate. “I f*cking saw you kick him in the head. Nice.”

“Go help Jamie.”

“Mouse owes me fifty.”

“Fifty?”

“He bet against it. I couldn’t get him to lay out the cheerleader’s phone number.”

“Go.”

Wally would discuss that lack of faith with Mouse later, maybe over the Ping-Pong table.

He scooted out of the way to make room. Quincy moved to help the next jumper in line. Descending, Jamie had trouble negotiating the crossbreeze and the headwind together while dodging the smokestack, leaving himself too little altitude closing in on the wing.

The radio buzzed. “I’m gonna miss it.”

Wally could not turn to watch or help; his weapon had to stay trained on the wheelhouse.

Quincy stayed calm. “Brake left. Left. More.”

“Too late.”

“Stick out your arm. Now.”

A scuffle sounded at Wally’s back, a grunt in his earpiece. “Jesus,” Jamie heaved, “you’re strong.”

Moments after, Jamie crouched next to Wally, gun to his cheek, breathing hard.

Dow drifted down next. Judging by the lack of radio chatter, he landed without a problem. One by one the PJs hit the LZ, and Quincy collapsed their chutes. Each shed his container and med ruck. They took positions on the wing, suppressed barrels in a row at the dark wheelhouse. Dow defended the approach from the staircase. Once Doc was down, Quincy rolled all the chutes in their lines to stash them in a corner.

Doc settled next to Wally. He, like all the PJs, stole a look at the pirate’s corpse.

Doc asked, “You okay?”

“Mouse bet against me.”

“Dow did, too.”

“Did you bet?”

“No. I got mouths to feed in Vegas. But I would’ve bet on you.”

Wally didn’t delude himself. These were LB’s guys, no one questioned that. But Quincy had bet on him. And Doc would have. That was something.

He folded the NVGs over his eyes to read his watch: 0112 hours. The team was on the LZ, on schedule. Wally gestured to the catwalk running behind the bridge.

“Stay low. Go.”

Doc waggled a hand for Mouse to follow to the starboard wing. The pair stooped and disappeared around the corner, beneath the smokestack.

Quincy, Jamie, and Dow flanked Wally, M4s fixed on the pilothouse door. The night breeze mixed with low throbbing hums out of the radar array rotating above the bridge. Wally crept to the white pilothouse wall. He pressed his back under a window.

Oh-one-fourteen hours.

The radio clicked. “Juggler, Doc.”

“Go.”

“Starboard wing secure.”

“Roger. Assault positions. On my mark.”

Wally let seconds pass to test if the pirates were still oblivious. Slowly, he lifted his head above the bottom of the window.

Inside the control room, the glowing radar and computer screens were more than enough to light up Wally’s NVGs with the green figures of humans. Two armed pirates stood at opposite ends of the wide bridge. Another paced between them, plainly nervous, weapon at his hip, finger on the trigger. Two more leaned against the long dashboard. Gathered on the floor below the main wind-shield, huddled against each other, sat the two dozen hostages.

Wally whispered into the mike at his lips. “Doc, hold.”

“What’s up?”

“The hostages are in the control room. There’s five guards with AKs.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Gimme a sec.”

“Holding.”

Wally tamped down a spur of anger with himself at not preparing for this possibility, that the hostages would be front and center for the firefight. He’d been ordered not to consider them his prime directive, so had left them out when planning the raid, focusing only on regaining control of the ship. Now, faced with twenty-four helpless men menaced by armed pirates, Wally knelt at the brink of the actual and inevitable body count, the blood on the floor General Madson had barely mentioned.

What could he have done differently? Even if he’d planned for the hostages to be right where they were, he still had to assault the control room. He had less than an hour to do it. There wasn’t time for both a hostage negotiation and a siege.

Wally dropped below the window, sliding down the wall. He lifted the NVGs from his eyes.

“Doc.”

“Go.”

“I got orders.”

“I know.”

“What do you think?”

Doc paused before answering. “I think we got orders.”

The gun barrels of Quincy, Jamie, and Dow dipped while Wally sat in front of them. All three PJs, men he admired, shrugged behind their weapons. Orders.

“Doc, how much med supply we got?”

“Not enough if it goes bad.”

“Damn it.”

“What next?”

“We press the mission. Check your door. See if it’s locked.”

Keeping his arm out of sight, Wally twisted the higher of the two watertight chocks. He waited to be sure the motion was unseen, then rotated the lower chock. With both seals undone, he put pressure on the door handle. It moved. Wally stopped before it clicked.

“Port door unlocked.”

Doc responded, “Starboard unlocked.”

“Flashbangs, on my mark.”

Quincy scurried next to Wally, flashbang in hand. Dow and Jamie, the team’s youngest and best shooters, readied to be the first ones in. Both lowered NVGs over their eyes to see through the smoke after the blinding light of the grenades, and to read the infrared targeting beams off their M4 scopes.

Wally reached for the door handle. “Break break!” The radio sizzled. “Break, break! Juggler, hold!”

Wally dropped his hand. “Go, LB.”

“Don’t do it, Wally. Don’t do it.”

Beside Wally, big Quincy laid a hand over his arm, making LB’s radio plea physical.

“I don’t have a lot of time, LB.”

“You’ve got hostages in there. You can’t raid the bridge.”

“This isn’t your mission. You stay secure. We don’t have any choice.”

“You do. Listen to me. There’s another way.”

Leaning close, Quincy nodded.

Doc cut in. “Give him a chance.”

“Okay. Tell me, fast.”

“Even if you take the bridge, you might not hold it. There’s fifteen more targets out here on the ship. They got AKs and a bunch of rocket grenades. If they try to take the bridge back, they might do it. They might not, but either way it’ll be bloody. You’re holed up on exposed high ground with twenty-four civilians, or however many you’ll have left. They’re gonna panic. A lot more of ’em are gonna die. You’re outgunned and outnumbered.”

From the other wing, Jamie spoke for the first time. “Let’s cut the pirates’ numbers down first.”

LB said, “That’s what I’m thinking. Juggler.”

“Go.”

“I know where they all are. I know the ship. If we take down the targets around the deck first, the ones in the wheelhouse might give up without a fight. Look, I can guess at your orders. Believe me, I know we have to take this ship back. But we gotta try to do it without sacrificing the hostages. I think we can.”

Wally checked the time: 0117.

Quincy, Jamie, and Doc waited to charge into the bridge on his order. On the opposite wing, Dow and Mouse crouched, ready.

If they stuck to the plan, they’d have control of the bridge in under a minute, plus the likelihood of several dead and wounded hostages. They’d deal next with the casualties. Before he could clear the rest of the ship, Wally would have to leave three men behind to deal with the wounded and defend the bridge. That left only three plus LB to go after the remaining fifteen Somalis. And he couldn’t call off the Predator, that ticking bomb, until the ship was secure.

What if the pirates below heard the battle for the bridge? The team’s weapons were suppressed, but AK-47s would make a ruckus. If the guards and their guns and RPGs decided to retake the bridge, the mission would become a siege, like LB said, with a countdown to a missile.

In LB’s plan, they might save a lot more lives. But could they really clear the freighter first, then negotiate with the five Somalis inside the control room, all in under fifty-three minutes? What if the pirates started killing off hostages? What if the deadline got too close? At that point, whatever was left of the team would have to assault the bridge anyway.

“All right, everyone. Listen up.”

Wally crawled away from the pilothouse wall. He stood just enough to peer over the rail to the main deck six stories below. The two figures there stood back-to-back along the port rail.

“Doc.”

“Go.”

“Look down to the main deck. How many targets you see?”

“One.”

“All right. LB, you copy?”

“Go.”

“We’re going to do both plans. Dow and Mouse stay on the starboard wing. Quincy and Doc hold on the port wing. Jamie and me link up with LB at the foot of the starboard stairs. The three of us will neutralize the pirates on the main deck. Once it’s secure, we come back up here, either to negotiate with the pirates inside the bridge or to press the assault. We’ll make that call when we get to it. If things go south on the main deck, or we run out of time, Doc leads the assault on the pilothouse. Questions?”

Quincy, Jamie, and Doc shook their heads. “Juggler.”

“Go, LB.”

“Who handles the target at the bottom of the starboard stairs?”

Jamie spoke again. “I will.”

LB replied. “Roger.”

Wally pointed at Jamie. The young PJ looked back through night goggles and fell in behind him. Quincy put his back to the rail, weapon leveled at the bridge door. Dow took position guarding the stairwell.

Wally led Jamie over the catwalk behind the bridge. A soiled, sooty warmth from the smokestack grazed his cheeks. Reaching the starboard wing, Wally patted Dow and Mouse on the shoulders.

Dow said, “Good hunting.”

Mouse added, “Fast hunting.”

Wally put Jamie in the lead descending the first of the six staircases. His watch read 0121. Forty-nine minutes.

Jamie led with his gun barrel down the metal stairs, pausing at every corner, close-quarters technique. Wally let the young PJ set the pace, and watched their tail.

Out on the gulf, a shimmering key of silver lay on the ripples, the first touch of the rising quarter moon.