Against All Enemies

for, in practical terms, “Who the hell are you?”

A chill spiked up Moore’s spine. “Lieutenant, we’re getting an ALPHA-ALPHA on the starboard side. We’re being challenged!”

Kayani charged across the pilothouse to the starboard wing, and Moore hustled up behind him. How many times had they already been challenged? They were in Pakistan territorial waters; what were Pakistan’s rules of engagement?

A flare burst overhead, peeling back the night and drawing deep shadows across the decks of both patrol boats. Moore looked across the sea and saw it, a thousand meters out, rising up out of the waves, a nightmare with imposing black sail and dull black decks fully awash as she breached, her bow pointed at them. The commander had brought the sub to the surface to challenge them, then had fired the flare to visually confirm his target.

Kayani lifted the pair of binoculars dangling around his neck and zoomed in. “It’s the Shushhuk! She’s one of ours. She’s supposed to be back at the pier!”

Moore’s chest tightened. What the hell was a Pakistan Navy submarine doing in his rendezvous zone?

He craned his head to the Agray, where he assumed that by now the Taliban prisoner was on deck. According to the plan, Adam was wearing a black jumpsuit and turban, and his wrists were bound. His escorts were supposed to be two heavily armed MARCOS, or marine commandos, of the Indian Navy. Moore spun back to face the submarine—

And then, suddenly, he saw it — a line of phosphorescence bubbling up in the water and streaking past their stern, heading toward the Agray.

He pointed. “TORPEDO!”

In the next breath, Moore came up behind Kayani, shoved him over the side, then jumped himself as the torpedo struck the Agray in a horrific explosion whose thundering and flashing was as surreal as it was shockingly close. A blast wave of debris pinged off the Quwwat’s hull and rained down to strike the water in dozens of splashes.

Moore’s eyes widened as the steaming, hissing sea came up at them, heated now by all the white-hot shards of hull and deck and torpedo that continued to blast off the Agray. As he hit the water, narrowly missing a jagged piece of steel, a ball of flames set off the Agray’s GRAIL surface-to-air missiles and both clusters of ASW rockets on her fo’c’sle.

Moore sank below the waves, his shoes colliding with something below. He swam back to the surface and jerked his head around, searching for the lieutenant. There he was, just out of reach.

Suddenly, three of the Agray’s ASW rockets blew up into the Silkworm missile housings aboard the Quwwat. The resulting detonations boomed so loudly and brightly that Moore reflexively ducked back under the water for cover. He swam toward the lieutenant, who was floating supine and appeared only semiconscious, his face bloody from a deep gash along the left side of his head. He must’ve struck some debris as he’d entered the water. Moore surfaced at the man’s shoulder. He splashed salt water onto the gash as Kayani stared vaguely at him. “Lieutenant! Come on!”

Thirty meters away, the sea surface was aflame with burning diesel fuel. The stench left Moore grimacing as for the first time he felt the deep rumble of nearby diesel engines …the submarine. He had some time. The sub wouldn’t approach the wreckage until the flames subsided.

Other men were in the water, barely visible, their shouts punctuated by more explosions. A strangled cry resounded nearby. Moore scanned the area for their Taliban prisoner, but the twin thunderclaps of another detonation sent him back under the waves. When he came up and turned back, the Quwwat was already listing badly to port, getting ready to sink. The Agray’s bow was entirely submerged, the fires and deep black smoke still raging, ammunition cooking off with sharp cracks and half-muffled booms. The air grew clogged with a haze that reeked of burning rubber and plastic.

Willing himself into a state of calm as the heat of the fires pressed on his face, Moore removed his shoes, tied the laces together, then draped them around his neck. Three miles to the beach … but right now, this low in the water, he had no idea where the beach was. With the exception of the flames, everywhere he looked was inky black, and each time he glanced toward the conflagration, his night vision was ruined.

Flash-flash-flash. Wait a minute. He remembered. He started counting …one one thousand, two one thousand …at nineteen, he was rewarded with three more quick flashes. He had a lock on the Turshian Mouth lighthouse.

Moore seized Kayani and rolled him around. Still drifting in and out of consciousness, the lieutenant took one look at Moore, at the fires around them, and panicked. He reached out, seizing Moore by the head. Obviously the man wasn’t thinking straight, and this behavior was not uncommon among accident victims. But if Moore didn’t react, the frantic lieutenant could easily drown him.

Without pause, Moore placed both hands on the front of Kayani’s hips with the heels of his hands against the man’s body, fingers extended, thumbs grasping the lieutenant’s sides. He pushed Kayani back toward the horizontal position, using this leverage to loosen the man’s grip. Moore freed his head and screamed, “Relax! I got you! Just turn around and breathe.” Moore grabbed him by the back of the collar. “Now float on your back.”

With the man in a collar tow, Moore began a modified combat sidestroke around the burning debris, the pools of burning diesel beginning to swell toward them, his ears stinging from the continuous thundering and drone of the spitting and whipping flames.

Kayani settled down until they passed through a half-dozen bodies, members of his crew, just more flotsam and jetsam now. He hollered their names, and Moore kicked harder to get them away. Nevertheless, the sea became more grisly, an arm here, a leg there. And then something dark in the water ahead. A turban floating there. The prisoner’s turban. Moore paused, craning his head right and left until he spotted a lifeless form bobbing on the waves. He swam to it, rolled the body sideways enough to see the bearded face, the black jumpsuit, the terrible slash across his neck that had severed his carotid artery. It was their guy. Moore gritted his teeth and adjusted his grip on Kayani’s collar. Before starting off, he looked in the direction of the submarine. It was already gone.

During his time as a SEAL, Moore could swim two ocean miles without fins in under seventy minutes. Collar- towing another man might slow him down, but he refused to let that challenge crush his spirit.

He focused on the lighthouse, kept breathing and kicking, his movements smooth and graceful, no wasted energy, every shift of the arm and flutter of the feet directing the power where it needed to go. He would turn his head up, steal a breath, and continue on, swimming with machinelike precision.

A shout from somewhere behind caused Moore to slow. He paddled around, squinting toward a small group of men, ten — fifteen, perhaps — swimming toward him.

“Just follow me!” he cried. “Follow me.”

Now he wasn’t just trying to save Kayani; he was providing the motivation for the rest of the survivors to reach the shore. These were Navy men, trained to swim and swim hard, but three miles was an awful long way, more so with injuries. They needed to keep him in sight.

The lactic acid was building in his arm and his legs, the burn steady at first, then threatening to grow worse. He slowed, shook his legs and the one arm he was using, took another breath, and told himself, I will not quit. Ever.

He would focus on that. He would lead from the front, drive the rest of these men home — even if it killed him. He guided them across the rising and falling sea, kick after agonizing kick, listening to the voices of the past, the voices of instructors and proctors who’d dedicated their lives to helping others unleash the warrior’s spirit lying deep and dormant in their hearts.

Nearly ninety minutes later he heard the surf breaking on the shoreline, and with every rising swell he saw flashlights moving and bobbing all along the beach. Flashlights meant people. They’d come down to view the fires and explosions offshore, and they might even see him. Moore’s covert operation was about to make headlines. He cursed and looked back. The group of survivors had drifted much farther back, fifty meters or more, unable to keep up with Moore’s blistering pace. He could barely see them now.

By the time his bare feet touched the sandy bottom, Moore was spent, leaving everything he had back in the Arabian Sea. Kayani was still going in and out as Moore dragged him from the surf and hauled him onto the beach as five or six villagers gathered around him. “Call for help!” he shouted.