The chief pilot brought up the final twenty seconds of drone footage. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but Cabrillo made a gesture behind his back to play it a third time. Then a fourth. Finally, on the fifth viewing, just seconds before the wave smashed the UAV into the sea, Juan shouted, “Stop!” He studied the screen shot. “Advance slowly.” The picture turned choppy as it ran. “Stop! What do you see?”
Adams saw the big car carrier at a ninety-degree angle as it was quickly filling the camera lens’s angle. There was barely any wake at her stern and no frothing water at the bows, which meant she wasn’t moving very quickly, but that was something they already knew. Again, he couldn’t see what had so piqued the Chairman’s interest. No one else on duty seemed to see anything either because the crew remained silent.
As if sensing the collective confusion, Juan said, “Look about five feet up from her waterline. Does anyone else see a faint white line?” His question was greeted with a chorus of assents. “Any thoughts on what it is?”
This question was greeted by silence. Finally, it was Gomez Adams who figured out what the Chairman had understood immediately. He leapt from his seat. “I’ll have the bird warmed up by the time you’re ready.”
“People,” Juan said, “that isn’t a car hauler. It’s a floating dry dock. That white band is a line of salt rime from the last time she was under ballast.” He keyed on the shipwide intercom. “This is Cabrillo. Battle stations. Battle stations. We’ve found the at-sea base of operations for the Chinese stealth ship. Linc, Eddie, and MacD to report to the chopper pad in full combat gear. We’re going in black.” He issued several other orders and then followed the pilot out of the op center. Max was on his way to relieve his post in command of the ship.
Juan ran to his cabin, yelling for crewmen to make way as he hurried by. Any remnants of his deep exhaustion had fallen away. He switched prosthetics to what he termed his “combat leg.” This was a veritable Swiss Army knife of weaponry. It had a built-in.44 caliber single-shot gun that fired out of his heel, and a place to secrete a Kel-Tec.380 pistol, a small amount of explosives, and a knife. Next, he drew on a black tactical uniform, made of a flame-resistant cloth, and black combat boots. He kept his personal weapons in an old safe that had once sat in a station of a long-defunct southwestern railroad. He spun the dials to open it, and ignored the stacks of currency and gold coins he kept in case of emergencies. They used to have a nice cache of diamonds, but the market had been right to convert those into cash.
The bottom of the safe was a virtual armory. He slipped into a combat vest and rammed a new FN Five- seveN into the holster. He clipped on a tear gas grenade as well as two flashbangs. His main weapon for this op was a Kriss Arms Super V. It was the most compact submachine gun ever built and resembled something out of science fiction, with its stubby foregrip and skeletal butt stock. Its revolutionary design allowed it to chamber the massive.45 caliber ACP round and gave the shooter unparalleled control over a notoriously difficult bullet to fire on automatic. Normally fed with a standard thirteen-round Glock magazine, Juan’s was fitted with a thirty-round extender. He slipped spare magazines into the appropriate pockets.
Had this been an extended mission he would have carried weapons of the same caliber in case he needed more rounds for the Super V, but this was going to be a quick-and-dirty takedown, not a protracted gun battle. The combat harness was already fitted with a throwing knife, garrote wire, a med kit, and a radio, so all he had left to take was a black ski mask and he was ready to go.
He threw open his cabin door and almost knocked Maurice to the deck. As it was, he had to steady the old Englishman to keep him from dropping his silver tray. “You pad around as silent as a cat,” Cabrillo admonished.
“Sorry, Captain. I was just about to knock. I brought you some sustenance.”
Juan was about to tell him that he wasn’t hungry, but suddenly he was famished. “I don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“Take it and go,” Maurice said, pulling the domed cover off the tray. Inside was a steaming burrito, the perfect food to walk and eat. “Shredded beef and pork, and very, very mild.”
Juan grabbed the burrito and put the bottle of electrolyte-infused sports drink into the thigh pocket of his pants. He took off at a jog, calling over his shoulder before taking a monstrous bite, “You’re a good man, no matter what anyone says about you.”
“They actually say I’m a great man,” Maurice called back.
The
Juan nodded back.
MacD took the last rear seat while Cabrillo swung into the cockpit next to Gomez. The aircraft shook like an unbalanced washing machine as the rotors whipped faster and faster. The noise died somewhat when the two open doors were closed. Juan put on a set of earphones, Adams threw a thumbs-up to the deck worker to pull the restraining chalks that prevented the helicopter from sliding across the deck in rougher seas, and the MD 520N lurched into the sky.
That initial launch was the highest altitude they reached for the entire flight. Gomez kept them at wave-top height, though now he had peripheral vision to keep from being battered by a crossing wave like the one that took out the UAV. They were so low that the rotor kicked up spume that the windshield wipers could barely clear.
“How we looking, Max?” Cabrillo radioed.
“Looking good. There’s not much traffic out here right now. I can’t see anything within twenty miles of your target unless there’s some small fisherman in her lee.”
“Okay.”
They flew hard for the sun as it continued to radiate over the skyline. True darkness in this part of the world was at least a half hour away. There was no need to talk about a plan. These men had fought and bled together enough to have an almost telepathic connection with one another. While MacD was the newest team member, he’d more than earned the trust of his teammates.
Gomez had swung them south so they would approach the ship from the rear, its blind spot. And with a shocking suddenness, the dot on the horizon blossomed into the ugly, truncated stern of the car carrier/dry dock, if Cabrillo’s theory was correct. If not, they were about to perform an inadvertent act of piracy on the high seas.
The chopper stayed low until the last possible second. The ship’s stern completely filled their field of vision. Juan studied the rear car ramp. It sure looked legitimate, and the white band he thought was salt was much less convincing in person. He felt a tickle of doubt.
It wasn’t too late to abort the mission.
He pulled down his ski mask.
He stayed with his intuition and said nothing as Adams heaved the chopper over the boxy fantail, its skids clearing the rail by inches. He raced up the length of the ship and threw the helo into a hover just feet from the back of the antennae-studded pilothouse. The men opened their doors and jumped to the deck. No sooner were they clear than Gomez reversed course and quickly sank back over the rear of the ship, where he would await word for extraction.
Juan led the team over the railing that protected the path out to the ship’s stubby flying bridges. He could see inside the bridge. There was a helmsman at a traditional ship’s wheel. An officer and another crewman were heading out to investigate the thunder of the helicopter’s rotors. All the men were Chinese. The officer finally noticed the armed men rushing toward the pilothouse and shouted to his companion. Cabrillo opened fire, deliberately shooting over the men’s heads. The bridge door’s glass inset disintegrated, and heavy slugs ricocheted off the ceiling and peppered the far wall.
MacD dove through the opening, shoulder-rolling up to his knees, and kept his weapon trained on the officer. Eddie came next. He covered the helmsman. Cabrillo was the third man, while Linc remained outside covering their rear.
The third crewman had bolted. Everyone was shouting — the ship’s crew in fear and the Corporation team telling them to drop flat.
Juan went after the third man who had fled the bridge via an open stairwell at the back of the room. Cabrillo made it down a couple of steps before someone started firing up at him. At least one bullet hit his artificial leg with a kick like a mule. He quickly climbed back out of the shooter’s line of sight and sent a flashbang tumbling down to the next deck. He turned away and covered his ears, and still the effects were almost paralyzing.
