Mekong Delta, Vietnam
24 hours later
It was another rainy day in Go Dong.
The monsoon season was here, so it rained most every day. This particular morning, it was coming down in waves.
The weather wasn’t bothering the residents of this small village, located on the lower fringes of the Mekong Delta, near the convergence of two bodies of water. The climate here was never very pleasant, either hot and unbearably humid or besieged by downpours like today. The locals took the bad atmospherics in stride.
The village marketplace was crowded as always. Plastic tarps and tent covers protected the merchandise from the rain. Vegetables, pots of rice, and tong sticks were the most popular items. However, anything from American-made sneakers to small TVs and radios could also be had for the right price. The same with rice wine, Australian whiskey, and even opium-laced cigarettes. One just had to know how to ask.
These exotic items came to the small village by way of the tiny port of Cong Ha, 13 miles to the south. Saigon was more than 100 miles to the north.
Most of the people in the village were wearing long rain ponchos that covered from head to toe. This helped SEAL Team 99 blend right in.
There were six of them. One man was watching each end of the tiny waterlogged village. Two more were sitting on the porch of the village exchange building, an old stucco structure left over from French occupation a half-century before. Two others were lingering on the periphery of the marketplace itself. Each man was covered with an innocuous poncho; each was carrying a small submachine gun beneath.
They were all watching a small woman in her twenties named Li Ky. She was the daughter of a farmer who raised ducks and grew rice down by the Da Thong river two miles south of the village. Li was pretty, and recognizable by the streak of premature gray that ran down the center of her long otherwise jet-black hair.
Li had arrived at the marketplace early. She’d been observed by the SEALs purchasing items that might have seemed typical for a peasant’s daughter: dried fish, some candles, a roll of baling wire. But Li was also buying some unusual items: rice wine, opium blunts, cigarettes, and some decidedly American food, like canned spaghetti and soup. These were considered luxury items in this part of Vietnam, and normally well beyond the means of a simple farm girl.
Li was carrying two canvas bags; in itself this was a tip that her shopping was not typical. Most people in the area could afford only about as much as they could carry with two hands or in a pot on their heads.
Li paid for her last purchase and then climbed on her bicycle and pedaled away. Subtle hand gestures were exchanged among the SEAL team members. They moved out of the village with great stealth, climbed aboard a Toyota truck hidden in the brush nearby, and began following her.
It was raining so hard now the SEALs could barely keep her in sight. Their training told them to stay at least 500 feet behind. Li pedaled for two miles before reaching a rickety bridge that spanned the Da Thong river. A crossroads lay on the other side. Taking a right at the crossroads would lead her back to her family’s hooch. Taking a left would not.
She started across the bridge but paused for a moment halfway across. Was it the weather or a sudden change of heart or just a moment to catch her breath? There was no way to tell. She began pedaling again. When she got to the other side of the bridge, she turned left.
The jungle soon became very thick. So much so, the woman abandoned her bicycle and continued on foot. Likewise the SEALs had to leave their truck and double-time it to catch up to her. When they got her in sight again, they saw she was moving through the jungle with ease—she’d come this way many times before. But the undergrowth was so dense and the road, which was now down to a path, was so craggy, the hard-nosed SEALs were soon having trouble keeping up.
Then the rain stopped. This would have seemed like good news for the SEALs; now they could keep the woman in sight by pure eyeball. But this was Vietnam. Nothing was ever as it appeared here. With the disappearance of the rain, the brutal heat of the Mekong fell on them like a bomb. Uniforms that were a minute before soaked through with water were now soaked through again, with perspiration. Suddenly their weapons felt heavy; their equipment, cumbersome.
The woman was still moving quickly, almost delicately, through the jungle. If she was aware the SEALs were tracking her, she made no indication of it. It went on like this for more than five klicks. By the time the jungle cleared and the woman made her way down to a riverbank, the six SEALs were winded, covered in sweat—and totally lost.
They were still near the Da Thong; it split into dozens of tiny rivulets here. But they were also near the coast. The South China Sea lay beyond. This was not the way the SEALs expected the woman to go.
They still had her in sight, though. She’d crossed a stream by an ancient bamboo bridge. She ran by the rusting wreckage of a U.S. fighter jet shot down here 40 years before and up and over a dune, finally dropping out of sight. The SEALs splashed across the stream, paused just for a moment before the F-105’s wreckage, then ran up the opposite bank. Getting down on their stomachs, they crawled to the crest of the dune.
On the other side was another rivulet and beyond, the vast expanse of the South China Sea. Across the stream was an island, separated from the land by just a few feet of slow-moving water.
But something wasn’t right here—and the SEALs knew it.
The topography in this part of Nam featured the sea, river streams, and heavily jungled islands close to shore. This particular island was about a quarter-mile long, maybe a third of that wide. It was shaped like a finger. The small channel that separated it from the mainland was 20 feet at its widest with the water growing very deep quickly from there. Or at least that’s how it appeared.
The SEALs were able to access a file in their Palm Pilots that held a GPS photo image taken of this area several months before. It showed the beach, the dune, the rivulets—and the island. But the island was significantly smaller a few months ago, and it was significantly farther offshore.
Though there was bright sun now and the heat was coming off the land in sheets, the SEALs took out their low-light infrared (IR) scope. What they saw through their distorted lens looked like a vision of hell. The island appeared as if on fire. So did the sky. But organics give off different heat signatures from the nonliving, and on the shore side of the heavily forested island they were getting a very strange indication.
Something was hidden there. Something huge.
“Just what we were looking for,” the SEAL squad leader told his men.
It was a ship. A huge container-type ship. Close to 800 feet long, it fit in nicely on the backside of the island. It had been camouflaged so completely that even now, looking at it without their heat goggles, the SEALs could not see it. Somehow, someone had managed to make the huge cargo vessel disappear.
The woman had forded the shallow channel and had disappeared up under the growth the SEALs now knew to be fake.
They waited for five minutes, then scrambled over the dune.
The SEALs were climbing onto the deck of the heavily camouflaged container vessel five minutes later.
The veteran Navy operators were highly trained in taking over offshore targets, such as ships and oil platforms. But this boat was different, and it wasn’t just the size of it that they found daunting. It was the eerieness—they’d just never seen anything like it before. The camouflage was so expertly put in place, they could no longer see the blazing blue sky above them. In fact, it was so dim on the deck, it was as if night had suddenly fallen.
They’d climbed up onto the bridge level and it was truly a weird scene from here. The main deck of the vast ship stretching before them, dozens of railroad car–size containers stacked neatly in rows from bow to stern. The amazingly intricate camouflage roof of branches, vines, and in some cases entire trees serving as a canopy overhead. None of it seemed real.
The six SEALs stayed together, each man with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him. They were not risk takers. They had no idea what might be awaiting them below the decks of the ghost ship. Nor did they know very much about why they’d been sent on this very strange mission. Some very big wigs in Washington wanted to talk to people who might be aboard this vessel—that was just about the extent of it. The problem was, these people could be armed and there was a good chance they might not be in the mood to talk.
The SEALs moved slowly across the bridge level, weapons pointing this way and that. Up ahead, the main hatchway that led into the ship’s aft end bridge house. This was their first goal. But just as they turned toward this hatch, suddenly came the most god-awful groaning sound. It shook the ship for 10 long seconds before fading away. The squad members froze in place.
“What the fuck was that?” one whispered.
“It’s just the ship moving in the water,” the squad leader barked under his breath, but really he had no idea what the noise was. They moved 10 feet forward—and the noise came again. Twice as long and twice as loud. The SEALS froze a second time. The deck was vibrating under their feet.
“Is someone messing with our heads?” one man wondered aloud. “That almost seems like a psy-ops effect.”
No one answered him.
They reached the main hatch and started climbing up to the next level. It was pitch-black in here. Each man lowered his IR goggles, but this just gave the place an even spookier look. The sound of their boots on the ladder seemed extremely loud, this even though the SEALs were experts in stealth. Reaching the first passageway, they heard more strange noises around them: machinery turning on and off; a woman crying. Even the rattling of chains. Yet as soon as the squad leader took two steps into the next passageway, all the noise suddenly stopped. One step forward, the noise started again. Another step, it stopped. The squad froze again.
“This is like a bad ride at Disneyland,” one member said.
They started moving again and finally reached the ship’s bridge. It was empty. They climbed up to the next deck, to the captain’s quarters. It was surprisingly ornate, but it, too, was vacant.
They went back down the ladder, moving very carefully in the dark. They heard the eerie groaning noise again. But this time, no one wanted to stop and wonder what the hell it was. They just kept on moving. Down another series of ladders, they found themselves one level below the cargo deck. Here they stumbled into a cabin that in normal circumstances might have acted as the ship’s bursar office. But the cabin was not filled with file cabinets and adding machines. Rather, it was stuffed with surface combat equipment that looked as sophisticated as any found on the U.S. Navy’s most advanced warships. Air defense radar, high-end communications sets, a huge 3-D combat display. There was at least a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of high-tech gear down here. What was it doing on this very old, very rusty containership?
They went down to the next level. The noises started up all around them again. The clanging of chains became almost deafening. They came upon a very dark, very dour, very dirty mess hall. Its walls were painted black; its portholes had been covered over with tarpaulin also painted black. The ship groaned again. The SEALs stopped in their tracks again; this time they couldn’t help it. The noise was very unnerving.
They slowly moved into the mess hall. One man unlashed his combat light and played it around the darkened room. They were startled to see the Vietnamese woman again. She was sitting at a table at the far end of the room, up in its darkest corner. There was a plate of food in front of her. She was calmly eating a steak.
Sitting next to her were four men, all Caucasian. They looked ghostly in the very dim light. They were looking back at the SEALs without the slightest bit of surprise. The SEAL squad leader pulled out his Palm Pilot. It flashed four pictures for him. They were the service-record mug shots of the four men. A Navy officer named Bingham, an Army colonel named Martinez, an Air Force chopper pilot named Gallant, and another USAF officer, a colonel named Ryder Long.
These were four of the people the SEALs had been sent here to find.
Without lowering his weapon, the SEAL squad leader addressed them: “Gentlemen, it is my duty to inform you that you are wanted for questioning by U.S. military authorities. It is in your best interests to come with us peacefully.”
The men just stared back at him. The Vietnamese woman continued eating her steak.
The SEAL team leader took a step closer; his team did as well. He repeated his message. The men still seemed unfazed.
Then the ship groaned again. The SEALs jumped in unison. The four men almost laughed.
The SEAL squad leader was growing both anxious and angry. He raised his weapon to eye level. His men did as well.
“Look…” he said forcefully. “I’m not in the business of shooting other Americans, but you’ve got to know who we are and why they sent us to get you. If you resist in any way, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Finally one of the men spoke. It was the Navy officer. He said: “Nor can we yours….”
At that moment, the huge hatch leading into the mess slammed shut, sealing them in. Now dark figures began to emerge from the gloom. They were more heavily armed than the SEALs and they, too, had their weapons raised. And there were at least eight of them.
Team 99 was trapped. That had never happened before.
Their captors were wearing uniforms, special ops uniforms. Black, not camos, like them. Their weapons were M16/15s, the specialized variation of the M16 combat rifle. Their helmets were oversize and came with night-vision goggles already attached. Every guy seemed enormous in size and breadth.
The SEAL squad leader was the first to realize just who these people were.
“Delta Force…” he breathed. The words had trouble coming off his tongue.
Dead silence. No one moved. The SEALs were still holding their guns on the men sitting at the table; the Delta guys had their guns on the SEALs. Blue-on-blue. That’s what they called it when different Americans units wound up firing on each other. But these were always friendly-fire accidents, mistakes made in the heat of combat. This was a little different.
Keeping one eye on the four men at the table, the SEAL squad leader took a closer look at the uniforms on the Delta guys. They were very unusually decorated. Their shoulder patches showed the silhouettes of the New York City Twin Towers backed by the Stars and Stripes, with the acronyms NYPD and FDNY floating on either side. They hardly seemed military-issue. The four men at the table were wearing them, too.
The SEAL squad leader finally started talking: “OK, everyone stay cool. We’re all brothers here.” He glanced at the woman who was still calmly eating her steak dinner. “Or at least most of us are.”
“You can be as cool as you want,” Bingham the Navy officer, told him. “Just turn your asses around and go back to where you came from.”
Some of the Delta guys laughed.
“But we can’t do that,” the SEAL leader said. “They’re expecting us to bring you back.”
Bingham leaned forward, allowing the captain’s bars on his shoulder to glint in the bare light. “What’s your name, son?” he asked the squad leader.
The SEAL stumbled a bit. “Lieutenant Barney. First name Charles, sir….”
“From where, Charlie?”
“Philadelphia, sir….”
Bingham sat back again. “Well, when you get back home, you can grab a cheese steak sandwich on me. OK? Bye….”
“But, sir…we have our orders,” the squad leader told him.
“We have our orders, too,” Bingham said. “Want to know what they are?”
“Sure….”
“That no one knows who we are, or where we are—at all costs.”
As he was saying this, each of the Delta guys took a step forward, tightening the ring around the SEALs.
“You guys are nuts,” the squad leader replied harshly, breaking the protocol. “You really think I think you’ll shoot us?”
“You were going to shoot us,” Bingham reminded him.
The Delta guys came in closer. The SEALs cocked their weapons and the tension ratcheted up another notch. One wrong move now and a lot of the people in the room would be dead.
“We have our orders,” Barney, the squad leader, said again. A bead of sweat was making its way down his nose. His arms and back were soaked with perspiration. He looked at the Delta guy closest to him again. The man wasn’t sweating at all.
“And we have ours,” Bingham repeated, his voice very low. “And you’ve got five seconds, starting now, to lower your weapons. Four seconds…three…”
Each SEAL remained in place. They had to. They were Team 99; there was no way they could back down to these freaks.
“Two…”
The Delta guys flicked on their laser aiming devices. Now each SEAL had a tiny red dot dancing between his eyes.
“One.”
There was a loud pop! An instant later, a great white flash filled the hall. Its light was blinding. An instant after that, the huge door that had been slammed shut behind the SEALs was blown into a million pieces. The flames and smoke were intense, just for a moment. Then, more armed men began streaming into the room. They were not military, or at least they were not in uniforms. They were all wearing flak vests, sunglasses, ball caps, and jeans. They moved with frightening swiftness, taking up positions around the Delta guys.
Just like that, the circumstances inside the mess hall had changed again.
The new arrivals aimed their weapons at the Delta soldiers, who still had their guns trained on the SEALs, who had never taken their guns off the four men sitting at the table. The four looked more than mildly surprised at the sudden appearance of the civilian gunmen.
Finally, someone yelled: “Who the fuck are you guys?”
That’s when one more person walked into the mess hall. He took off his helmet and calmly brushed back his unruly hair.
It was Major Fox of the DSA. A long way from home.
He waved his red ID badge over his head.
“I am from the Defense Security Agency,” he announced to the mystified crowd of soldiers. “Anyone here ever heard of us?”
His question was met with blank stares all round.
“I didn’t think so. OK, all you have to know for now is that I’m in charge here. And as my first order, I want everyone to lower his weapon.”
Fox put his helmet back on and took a paper bag from his pocket.
Then he collapsed into the nearest chair and said: “There’s something very important we’ve all got to talk about.”
Fox was exhausted.
The last time his feet had stayed on the ground was 20 hours ago, back at Andrews, in the middle of a downpour, another of his wife’s peanut butter sandwiches packed inside a tiny brown bag.
From there an aerial odyssey began, carrying him, in the back of a C-17 Globemaster cargo jet, to Luke Air Force Base in Utah, where he was transferred to an S-3 Viking naval bomber, which brought him to Guam, with three aerial refuelings to kill the boredom over the Pacific. From Guam it was a chopper trip over to Oki Jima, for a quick walk around, then back by chopper to Guam, then back on the S-3 for a flight down to the carrier USS Roosevelt. From there, another copter, a bigger one, an elderly Sea Knight, brought him to an isolated island a hundred miles off the eastern coast of Taiwan. It was an old CIA base. Here he met for the first time the small army of gunmen who broke in with him. They were SDS—State Department Security. Usually charged with protecting U.S. officials both at home and abroad, they did side missions as well at the bequest of the NSC. Fox had worked with them before. They were arguably the toughest if least-known special ops force around. From this little island they were all put aboard the ugliest airplane ever built—and now he was here. In Vietnam.
And he was very tired.
And very hungry.
So Fox unwrapped his wife’s sandwich and finally took a monstrous bite. It was strange: Despite his initial command, no one had lowered his weapon. But upon seeing him take that first bite of his sandwich, it was like a spell was broken. All rifles went down a notch. Another bite, as Fox was ravenous, and people seemed to relax a little more. Bite three, weapons were lowered all the way to the deck. Bite four, and the sandwich was gone—and everyone was breathing normally again. Fox laughed. His wife did make a great Skippy sandwich.
Of course, it was the SEALs who began squawking first. Squad Leader Barney took two giant steps forward and lined himself up in front of Fox.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he began, still with a sweaty nose and upper lip. “But I believe my orders supersede yours….”
Fox took a long swig from his field canteen, stood up, and stretched. Then he addressed the SEAL.
“You want to make trouble here, Mr. Barney?”
“No, sir….”
“Then why are you standing in front of me?”
Barney cleared his throat and said again: “I believe my orders supersede yours, sir.”
“You do? Well, I have two words for you, Mister Barney….”
“Sir?”
“‘General Rushton.’”
Barney began to respond but stopped himself. He and Fox inhabited the same underworld of Washington and spies. Barney knew who General Rushton was. He was the man who’d sent Team 99 on this mission. But even though they were out here doing his bidding, Barney would never utter his name lightly. That would be sinful. In fact, few people would speak his name unless they were authorized to do so.
“And, Mr. Barney, General Rushton says you and your men now belong to me,” Fox went on, each word hitting Barney like a body blow. “Capeesh?”
To his credit, Barney handled it with grace. He knew when he was being outjuiced. He saluted sharply and said: “Capeesh, sir…yes, sir….” Then he took two giant steps backward and returned to his original position.
Fox scanned the rest of the room, palms up, arms outstretched, as if to say, Anyone else want to bitch to me? There were no takers.
“OK then,” he said. “Let’s get jiggy with this thing.”
He directed the SDS men to arrange the mess tables into a semicircle. All the SEALs, all the Delta guys, and most of the SDS guards sat down. The four men sitting in the back didn’t move, though. Neither did Ky Li. They remained where they were.
Fox had a laptop that could project images onto the wall. Even against the black paint, these pictures were crisp and clear. There was no need to douse the lights in the mess; it was already dark as a dungeon. Fox activated his remote and put up the first image.
It showed a typical B-2 Stealth bomber.
“I don’t have to tell anyone what this is,” he began.
He showed a second image. It was of a B-2F spy bomber. It looked a little bigger, a little newer. The image had the word CLASSIFIED stamped across it.
“This is just another version of the B-2, except it’s a spy plane and, as you can see, highly classified,” Fox went on. “They call it a B-2F.”
His next graphic was a satellite image of Oki Jima, the secret base off Guam.
“That B-2F took off from here on a ‘routine’ flight just over twenty-four hours ago. A training mission was how it was logged. This plane is now missing.”
He let that information sink in a moment, then put up the next image. It showed a sat photo of the Bangtang Channel, with its three tiny islands.
“The aircraft’s last known position was on a refueling track above these three specks, north of the Philippines’ big island of Luzon. For those of you who flunked geography, that’s about 1000 miles east of here. Communications were lost with the B-2 soon after it hooked up for the refueling. The KC-10 Extender never came back, either. Because they were flying the mission mostly in radio silence, it took a while to determine that both were missing.”
The next image showed a close-up of the Bangtang Channel.
“These are the islands of Calayan, Fuggu and Dalu Pree. If the B-2 went down, in one piece or not, over dry land, it is probably on one of these postage stamps. If not, it’s under the water nearby. But the Navy has had two subs combing the channel’s seabed for the past twelve hours or so. They’ve found nothing so far.”
Next image. A split screen showing both the B-2 spy bomber and the KC-10 refueler in better days.
“Higher Authority has no idea what happened to either of these planes,” Fox went on. “An accident of some kind? A midair collision? No one knows. However, it is very important that these planes are found and the fate of their crews determined quickly. That goes especially for the B-2, for a variety of reasons but mostly because it’s an advanced model that’s not suppose to exist.
“The problem is, no one in that part of the world knows what’s going on—and it has to stay that way. I’m talking specifically about the Philippine government. Don’t get me wrong. They are still allies of our country—or at least they were this morning. But the current Filipino administration and especially the national police add up to a security nightmare. Nothing can be kept a secret for more than two hours inside the presidential palace, and the national cops just cannot be trusted. They’ll have every mook within five thousand miles looking in on us if they find out. So, any search and rescue has to be done not just quickly, but very quietly.”
Fox paused a moment. He wished he had another sandwich.
“Now how we all wound up here like this is a moot point,” he began again. “But it’s also serendipity. Look around. Can you see what we’ve got here? Delta, SEALs, SDS guys, plus two pilots, a ship’s captain. We all know our business. But more importantly, we are now the closest special ops force of any kind to the crash zone. We can be on the job in a matter of hours. It will take another team at least a day to get up to speed.”
He let those words hang in the air for a moment. He’d been on some screwy missions before, but this one was already the screwiest.
Finally someone in the mess said: “So?”
“So,” Fox replied. “The President’s men want us—all of us—to go find those two planes.”
At 46, Ryder Long was nearly the elder statesman of this group.
He was sitting next to the girl eating the steak, but at the moment he was craving a peanut butter sandwich. He suspected most of the people in the mess hall were.
Technically Ryder was a colonel in the USAF Reserves, but that was just a formality. He’d spent the last 20 years flying secret aircraft for people like Boeing and Northrup while doing the occasional black op for the Pentagon. It was not just a good life; it was a great one. Then came September 11th—and that’s when everything changed. Returning from a job assignment in Boston, his wife was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center towers. No last second phone calls, no chance to say good-bye. In an instant, his world turned upside down.
Weeks of black hell followed, caused by crushing sadness, whiskey anger, and the psychic need for closure that he knew would never come. Holed up in a crappy Las Vegas motel, he was one breath away from eating his gun.
But then his telephone rang. Salvation was on the other end. Like the others in Bobby Murphy’s mystery unit, he’d been given the opportunity to hit back at the people responsible for what happened that day. Like everyone else, he jumped at the chance. That’s what they’d been doing in the Persian Gulf the day the carrier Lincoln was attacked. That’s why their unit patch showed the silhouette of the Twin Towers. No matter what else happened in that crazy part of the world—the war in Iraq, the death or capture of the top mutts of Al Qaeda—the unit had the job of hunting down every last mook connected with 9/11 and whacking him.
Or at least that was the case until about a month ago.
Sitting to his right was the Navy officer Wayne Bingham. Everyone called him Captain Bingo. He was nearly as old as Ryder, with a graying beard and enormous eyeglasses. Bingo had a dry wit about him, a window to his street smarts. He’d commanded cruisers, destroyers, and even some small secret ships during his Navy career. These days he was the captain of this, the unit’s spy ship, the Ocean Voyager. He’d shown great skill in the six weeks the team secretly operated in and out of the Persian Gulf.
Sitting next to Bingo was Ron Gallant, the Air Force Special Operations chopper pilot. It had been his partner, Red Curry, who’d crashed his beefed-up Blackhawk aboard the Lincoln, the tide-turning act that led to the successful defense of the carrier. Gallant looked exactly like Clark Kent right down to the specs. He was a sort of brilliant muscle man who was also a great helo driver.
Next to him was the Delta CO, Martinez. Those were his guys who’d so expertly got the drop on the Team 99 SEALs. But he didn’t even look in the game at this point. Martinez had been the most emotionally damaged from the events in the Persian Gulf, and especially during the battle of Hormuz. Just why was a long story. The short version was this: the terrorists who hijacked the planes meant to be used against the Lincoln had been under surveillance by Martinez’s guys earlier on the morning of the attack. In fact, one Delta guy trailed each pair of hijackers, thinking they were on their way to hijack American planes in Europe. That’s why there was a Delta guy on each of the hijacked planes when they took off that fateful morning. But at the time, no one ever dreamed the hijackers would use Arab airlines filled with Arab citizens in their bid to sink the carrier.
Had Martinez ordered his men to take down the mooks before they ever got on those airplanes, the nightmarish events later in the day might have been avoided. Hundreds would still be alive; there was no question about that. So now Martinez was faced with a life of “If only.” If only he’d stopped the hijackers before they got on those planes. If only he’d listened to some of the others, who’d advocated shooting the hijackers as soon as they’d been spotted at the airport.
If only…
Never very talkative anyway, the Delta officer with the Latino movie star looks had barely spoken a word since the events in Hormuz. He’d withdrawn, become vacant. A victim of combat stress.
Despite their show of bravura, Ryder, Bingo, and Gallant were in almost as bad shape as Martinez. This last month had not been a pleasant one, floating around out on the sea, living on rationed food and water. No money, no cigarettes, no beer. They were trying to get back to the states, quietly. But the unexpected and very impromptu rescue mission in Singapore had kicked the shit out of that plan. And them…
With all this in mind, and after listening to Fox describe the highly unusual circumstances as to why he was here, Ryder raised his hand like a kid in school. Fox finally saw him, waving from the back of the room.
“Yes, a question?”
Ryder stood up and half-shouted: “What does this have to do with us, Major? Personally, I’d rather be arrested….”
Laughter went through the room. Fox indicated that everyone could relax; then he walked to the back of the hall and casually took a seat across from the four rogue officers. He produced a fresh pack of Marlboros and offered them around. By time he got the pack back, it was empty.
As the four men and the Vietnamese girl lit up, Fox remembered the bio on Ryder. Test pilot. Black ops veteran. Did some time inside the military’s top-secret Nevada Special Weapons Testing Range, the place known in the biz as War Heaven. That gave them at least one thing in common.
“I understand you’ve been to ‘the desert’?” Fox asked him, his voice low, using the unofficial name for the ultra-high-tech weapons range. “What did you think of the place?”
“It was like a bad episode of The X-Files,” Ryder replied.
Fox chuckled. “Exactly….” War Heaven specialized in advanced psychological warfare training as well.
He pulled out a small loose-leaf binder. Inside were the notes Ozzi had taken down at Gitmo. Fox had read them over many times in the past 48 hours. He could almost recite them by heart.
He looked up at the four men and then just told them bluntly: “Unlike Lt. Barney and his friends, I know who you people are. And I know what you’ve been up to out here. I know about the food poisoning. I know about the bank you bombed. I know what you did over Hormuz.”
Ryder, Gallant, and Bingo shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Only Martinez remained still.
“Now, I came out here for a reason,” Fox went on. “But it’s probably not the reason you think. I don’t expect you to answer any questions that might compromise national security. What you were all doing to a month ago…well, by some people’s clocks, that’s already ancient history. It is by mine. What we have to talk about is this thing that’s happening right now, just a few hundred miles away.”
But the four men just weren’t interested. Especially Ryder.
Still, Fox went on: “Look, we obviously have a big security problem here. And if it isn’t attended to quickly, it’s gonna unravel and then all hell breaks loose, guaranteed. It’s a situation where the insertion of veteran special ops people is vital.”
“But if you arrest us first,” Ryder told him, “you have to fly us right home. We couldn’t get involved in this little sideshow of yours if we were in custody, right?”
Fox did not reply. Unlike the SEALs, he wasn’t here to arrest Ryder or any of the other members of the secret unit. Just the opposite.
“Let me show you something,” he said. He pointed back to the laptop map still projecting on the wall, indicating the larger landmass of Luzon, just south of the three islands. “Much of the uninhabited real estate north of Manila is controlled by Abu Sabas, a new Philippine chapter of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s guys have been pumping money, intelligence, and know-how into this part of the world for the past several years. And it’s been getting results. Now here’s where it might become a little more interesting for you.”
Remote click to the next image. It was a photograph of a very ugly jihad terrorist. Pop eye, scarred face, bad teeth, and crooked turban.
Ryder, Bingham, and Gallant sat straight up in their seats. Only Martinez remained as he was. A picture of this man was probably the only thing that could have got their attention like this.
The picture was of Sheikh Abdul al-Ahari Kazeel. He was not only one of the top planners of 9/11; he was the chief architect of the attack on the Lincoln, as well. He was also one of the last big Al Qaeda types the mystery unit had been seeking to whack.
“I understand this guy is a friend of yours,” Fox said to them dryly.
“He’s the number-one mook we want pushing up daises, if that’s what you mean,” Gallant replied.
“Did you know they’re calling him a ‘superterrorist’ these days?” Fox went on.
“Who is?” Ryder wanted to know.
Fox shrugged. “Time? Newsweek? The Washington Post? CNN….”
“He fucks up the Lincoln attack,” Gallant said testily. “He fucks up in Singapore. And they christen him a ‘superterrorist’?”
“The world’s first superterrorist,” Fox added casually. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“That’s what the kids call ‘failing up,’” Bingham said in disgust. “The guy’s a mass murderer and what happens? They turn him into a celebrity.”
Fox almost smiled. “Well, now that I’ve caught your attention,” he said. “I have another news flash for you. The CIA says Kazeel arrived in the Philippines forty-eight hours ago. And they think he might have been near the crash zone shortly before the B-2 went down. Maybe it’s a coincidence; maybe it’s not.”
All four men were sitting up straight now, even Martinez. It sounded corny, but Fox was cleverly making them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
“Interested now?” Fox asked them.
Gallant power-puffed his Marlboro and crushed it out on the table. “We might be,” he said.
“Well, let me sweeten the pot just a bit more,” Fox went on. “Off-the-record, I appreciate what you guys did, in Singapore, at Hormuz, and before. If I had had the chance, I would have been right there with you.”
He nodded back toward the SEALs. “But obviously, some people aren’t such big fans of yours. The guy who sent those fish heads after you, especially. He’d like to see you in jail—or worse. Now, he happens to be my boss, too. So when this B-2 thing came up, I convinced him to send me out here, carrying an offer for you.
“This is both a search and a rescue mission. I want to find those planes and their crews and the reason they went down. Trouble is, these Abu Sabas characters can be very tough customers if you catch them on a bad day. Bottom line: You guys are good at rescues. You know how to get your hands dirty. And obviously, you know how to keep your mouths shut. Help us out here and maybe you find your guy Kazeel in the bargain.”
The four men stared back at him. There would be a lot of satisfaction in catching Kazeel. Many in the mystery team held him directly responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. Wheels were turning now….
“But what about when it’s over?” Gallant finally asked him. “What about us getting back to the states in one piece?”
Fox was a bit more careful here. “When it’s over,” he said, “we can see about getting you all back home again—with no questions asked.”
“All of us?” Ryder asked him. “Bingo’s crew? And our guys you already have in custody?”
“I’ll give you my word that I’ll do my best,” Fox replied sincerely. “But I’ll tell you this: If we turn up aces on this B-2 thing, it will go a long way in convincing my boss to give you a pass.”
A few moments of silence went by. Finally Bingham just mumbled, “That’s all we really want. To get home, without someone trying to send us to Leavenworth.”
Fox smiled wearily. “That’s just what I needed to hear. In fact, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in the past two days.”
But then he checked his notes again and saw there was one more item he had to discuss. He turned to Ryder and Gallant, the two pilots. “I’ve got to make sure of just one more thing—and it will sound strange,” he said.
“Stranger than all this?” Ryder asked him.
“Maybe,” Fox replied. “I’ve been led to believe you two guys can fly just about anything with wings; is that true?”
Ryder and Gallant just nodded.
Fox then asked: “Would that include a seaplane?”
Minutes later, Ryder, Gallant, and Fox climbed up to the deck of the creaking spy ship and headed for the bow.
The air tasted fresh; the ocean sounds were close by. It was Ryder’s first time up from below in a while and he couldn’t stop taking in deep breaths. Even the unbearable heat seemed soothing somehow.
They had to maneuver themselves around the web of steel cable and lashing bars that kept the dozens of railroad car-size containers in place. Walking around the loading deck had never been a favorite of Ryder’s; there were many things on which to crack a kneecap up here. He wasn’t big on ships anyway. He was an Air Force guy and felt if you’re not flying, your boots should be firmly on the ground. Even now, in the relatively shallow water, he could feel the deck rolling beneath his feet.
About halfway to the bow, they came upon a container whose front doors were wide open. A six-foot piece of something was sticking out between them. It was as heavily camouflaged as the green ceiling above covered with nets and pieces of fauna. Ryder and Gallant tried to steer Fox away from the container, but there was nothing doing there. The DSA officer practically ran up to it.
He peeled away the camo to find something metallic beneath. Metallic—and yellow. He pulled back another clump of palm fronds and discovered that what he was looking at was the tail of a helicopter. A very, very yellow helicopter.
The Sing-One News helicopter.
“So it was you guys,” Fox said, as if he’d finally become convinced of the team’s alleged exploits. “Damn, I’m impressed.”
“We can’t answer any questions about that, either, Major,” Gallant quickly told him, pushing his Metropolis-issue glasses back up on his nose not once but twice in the course of the sentence.
“And I’m not asking you any,” Fox said. He really was impressed. Again, it was his business to know the bible on every U.S. special operations group in existence, both past and present. They were all good, and indeed, they were all special. But he didn’t know of one who could have pulled off what the supersecret team did at the Tonka Tower, never mind over Hormuz.
Fox ran his hand along the length of the hidden helicopter. “Or maybe I could ask just a few?” he quickly amended himself.
Ryder and Gallant began to walk away. “I know how you did the rescue mission!” Fox called after them. “The whole world does. It was on TV. But my question is, Why did you do it? How did you know it was going to happen? What gave you the wherewithal to get the chopper and arrive there so quickly?”
But the two pilots never replied. They just kept on walking.
When Fox reached the bow, Ryder and Gallant were hanging over the front railing, mouths agog.
This was pretty much the reaction Fox had been expecting.
“Well?” he asked them dryly. “What do you think of her?”
Floating on the calm sea about two hundred feet off the bow was one of the ugliest airplanes Ryder had ever seen. It looked about a mile long and a mile wide. In reality it was roughly the size of a 727 airliner. It had a high wing sitting atop its fuselage. Its cockpit windows looked like a pair of yellow eyes staring out from the plane’s long, bulbous black nose. It had four huge engines, arrayed across the wing, with a small pontoon at each end. The tail sat unnaturally high, not unlike that of a C-5 Galaxy.
Ryder heard himself groan. This was no seaplane. It was a boat—a flying boat.
“This is the pooch you were asking us about?” he said to Fox.
“‘Pooch’?” Fox replied with feigned insult. “Colonel, this airplane features the best in Japanese engineering and manufacturing. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been flying these things for more than fifteen years. It’s also just about the only flying boat operating today. It can fly almost anywhere in the Pacific, get to islands that have no runways, pick up people who are sick or whose ships are sinking. Hundreds owe their lives to this aircraft.”
Ryder just shook his head. “And this is how we’re going where we’re going?”
Fox nodded.
“And you expect us to fly it?”
“Can you?” Fox asked them.
Ryder and Gallant contemplated the huge aerial boat again. There was an old saying in aeronautics: If it looks good, it flies good. But the reverse was also true. Just looking at the airplane, Ryder knew it would be a bitch to fly.
“Fifteen years old, you say?” he asked Fox. “Does it have flight computers onboard? Pilot assistance? Fly-by-wire, things like that?”
“You bet,” was the reply. “The guys who flew it here tell me it handles like a dream.”
Ryder and Gallant just looked at each other. The guys who flew it here?
“If they loved it so much, where are they now?” Ryder asked Fox looking around. “And why can’t they be the drivers?”
Fox readjusted his wraparound sunglasses. “Number one, even though they are on the CIA’s payroll, they don’t have the security clearances that you guys do,” he said. “Number two, they have an idea where we are going…and, well, they wanted no part of it. So they’re on their way up to Saigon as we speak.”
Sure enough, Ryder and Gallant could see a small motor launch north of them, two people onboard, waving furiously but moving away from them as fast as they could. In the movies, this was the part where one of the men on the boat would yell out: “So long, suckers!”
“So you really were counting on us to get everyone out of here in this thing?” Ryder asked him. “That was a leap of faith.”
“Your friends in Gitmo assured us you could do it,” Fox told him. “So did your service résumé.”
Ryder threw his expended cigarette over the side. He could fly anything; he knew that. Ditto for Gallant. Though he was a chopper pilot, he knew his way around big planes, too. But this monster?
“You say this thing is Japanese military?” he asked Fox.
The man nodded. “Self-Defense Forces, right. It’s called a ‘Kai.’”
The plane was unmarked—or more accurately, the huge red ball of the Japanese national insignia had been painted over, hastily.
“If this belongs to the Japanese Navy, what are you guys doing with it?”
Without missing a beat, Fox replied: “We stole it….”
Ryder and Gallant looked at each other again and did a simultaneous eye roll. “Stole it?” Ryder asked.
“Well, it’s a game we play,” Fox said, as if these things were routine. “They know we’ve got it. They’re just not trying too hard to find it.”
It took just 10 minutes to get the composite team loaded aboard the enormous Kai flying boat.
The eight Delta guys sat up front, just behind the crew compartment. The half-dozen Team 99 SEALs, still sulking, were huddled at the opposite end of the compartment. In between were the State Department Security guards, 10 in all, yet to be seen without their sunglasses. These guys were as top-secret as the DSA itself. Tough and very, very quiet. Facing straight ahead, they resembled automatons.
Ryder and Gallant settled into the pilots’ seats. Fox hadn’t misled them here at least; the control panel was highly automated, just the way they liked it. There were extensive microprocessing assist units and everything was indeed fly-by-wire. This meant tiny computers actually flew the airplane by responding to the movements of the pilots on the controls and not through cables or wires. The flight panel looked as good as anything found inside a modern airliner.
They ran down a checklist. Ryder recited from a document crudely translated from Japanese, as Gallant tried to pick out the corresponding control system. They started the engines; the four huge turboprops coughed to life in sequence, like clockwork. They were big, noisy, powerful, with tons of horsepower in each. And yet the torque barely rocked the flying boat as it floated in the calm inlet water.
Fox took up the seat behind Ryder and Gallant. Martinez was installed in a jump seat located on the far edge of the cockpit, silently looking on.
It took about twenty minutes to check and recheck everything. Finally they were ready for takeoff. The people in the back sat stoically. Fox, however, wasn’t so calm. Convincing Higher Authority that including the rogue team was a good idea had taken some doing. It was only the passion displayed by Ozzi after he spoke with the Gitmo Four that gave Fox the gumption to even suggest it to General Rushton and the NSC. In the end they agreed only because not doing so would have wasted precious time. That clock was still ticking, and Fox knew with each passing moment their window of opportunity was getting smaller.
Finally Ryder just looked over at Gallant, who gave him a mock thumbs-up. Could a jet test pilot and a special ops chopper driver really get the huge flying tub into the air?
They would soon find out.
Bingo and most of the remaining occupants were now on the bow of the huge hidden containership. Only here was there a respite from the heavy camouflaged top; about two dozen people were crowded on the deck now, including the Vietnamese woman, Ky Li.
They watched as the flying boat’s four huge engines whipped themselves into a frenzy, gaining more power by the second. The air around the ship seemed to be vibrating, so powerful were the propellers, just 200 feet away.
At last the Kai started moving. The calm waters of the small bay suddenly began to roll. Pushed by the strong props, the big plane did a 180-degree turn, its huge snout for a moment turned right at the front of the secret boat. Many on the ship’s deck waved as the airplane bobbed on by.
Flying boats had gone out of style, at least in U.S. forces, just about the time Captain Bingham was graduating kindergarten. He’d never seen one this big before. As it slowly gained speed, plowing through the waves first like a yacht and then like a speedboat, it seemed too large to get into the air, never mind having to rise up from the water to do so. Its takeoff run could stretch on to infinity, though, Bingham thought, and indeed, the plane was now skimming very fast along the inlet’s surface. There came another huge roar from the airplane—it was now about a quarter-mile away from the ship. The water around it began spraying up fiercely. The engines roared again. More water, more spray. One last scream from the engines and the huge airplane leaped into the air.
A spontaneous cheer rose from those on the ship. The Kai went up grudgingly, though. At just 50 feet or so, it began a wide shaky turn, its engines now crying and billowing smoke. For one frightening moment it appeared to be in trouble.
But it climbed a little more and then leveled off. It was also heading right for the ship again. More cheers, more waving. Another roar from the engines. The big plane was coming on full guns—but it was not climbing anymore; in fact, it had dipped a little. The noise of those four engines, a moment before so powerful, now became frightening as the plane seemed way too low to clear the top of the ship. Everyone on the deck stopped waving and started ducking. The big Kai went over the Ocean Voyager a second later. It clipped the main antenna off the top of the ship’s forward mast, sending a rain of parts down past the camouflage canopy and onto those below.
“Jesuzz!” Bingham cried. “Those bozos are trying to kill us!”
The plane somehow cleared the rest of the ship and finally got a little more air under its ass. Flying it was obviously a work in progress for Ryder and Gallant, but at last it began to gain significant altitude. It managed to wag its wings back at those on the ship before taking another long slow turn, this one to the east.
That’s when a separate hatch on the deck popped open and a handful of people climbed out. They mixed freely with Bingham’s crew. They were a ragged lot. Uncut hair, overgrown goatees, tarnished earrings, thread bare Hawaiian shirts. All were in their early twenties; they looked like a bunch of hip Wall Street investment bankers who’d been shipwrecked for a month or so.
In reality, these were the Spooks, the contingent of computer geniuses that had run the eavesdropping devices aboard the Ocean Voyager during its short heyday. They weren’t CIA and resented any suggestion that they were. They were, in fact, employees of the National Security Agency, the NSA, America’s biggest and probably by size its most secret spy works.
The Head Spook was a guy named Gil Bates. He was just 20 years old. He’d been a key figure in the events leading up to Hormuz—and a controversial one. Not only had he been in charge of the ship’s high-tech listening station (still buried at the bottom of the boat); he’d also fathered the plan to attack downtown Abu Dhabi in broad daylight, an act that killed more than a thousand innocent civilians. In many ways, his heart should have been weighed down just as much as Martinez’s. But Bates had had a reprieve: he was the one who cracked the terrorists’ code at the last possible moment, just before the Lincoln was attacked. It was only by his warning, carried to the carrier by Red Curry in his crash landing, that the big carrier had been saved.
Incredibly though, despite all the special ops activity on the boat in the past two hours, no one—not the State Department guards, not the SEALs, not Fox himself—ever asked about the NSA Spooks. And no one onboard the ship was about to volunteer the information.
After all, they had to keep some things secret.
The Spooks had to allow their eyes to adjust to the sunlight. They didn’t come up from the bottom of the boat too often, and today was now an intensely bright day.
“Anyone mention us?” Bates asked Bingham as the Navy captain lit a cigarette for him.
Bingham just shook his head. “All clear as far as I’m concerned.”
But Bates had already started back down the hatch, heading to the bottom of the ship again. His eyes were starting to hurt.
“That’s good,” he said over his shoulder. “Though I’d prefer it if they thought we were all dead.”
Bingham watched the flying boat disappear over the horizon.
“You never know,” he said. “We might still get that wish.”