Death Wave

One of the Seahawks circled around the Yakutsk’s port side, turned sharply, and came in across the bow. Hovering above the forward deck, the helicopter hung motionless as a rope curled from the open side hatch and the first Navy SEAL slid down and onto the deck. He was followed by a second man, and a third. The SEALs on deck spread out as soon as they touched down, H&K submachine guns up against their shoulders as they moved. With the last of the five SEALs delivered to the Yakutsk’s deck, Alfa Three moved off, to be replaced by Alfa Four. Within the space of a few seconds, five more SEALs fast-roped to the ship’s deck.

“Alfa Four element, on deck! Moving!”

An armed man — whether Papa or Tango, it was impossible to tell in the battle haze — appeared on a walkway along the side of the bridge house and was immediately cut to bits by a minigun burst from Alfa One. Alfa Two moved aft, drifting into position, then delivering its five-SEAL payload to the Yakutsk’s fantail.

“Alfa Two element, on deck! Moving!”

Alfa One continued to hover alongside the ship, LCDR McCauley directing the attack. At his command over the network, Bravo One moved in then and took up station off the ship’s starboard side, flying shotgun as Alfa One moved in to deliver its five SEALs. TM1 Johnson tossed a coiled line out the open door.

“First up!” McCauley yelled. One by one, then, the SEALs grabbed hold of the line with gloved hands and jumped out into wind-blasted space. McCauley went down last, a dizzying descent through the hurricane blast of the Seahawk’s main rotor, landing on the open area directly above the Yakutsk’s bridge.

He continued to hear radio chatter from the other SEALs as they moved through the ship. “One-three! I’m on the bridge! Two Tangos down, two Charlies down!”

A ladder led down to the port bridge wing, then past the piles of broken glass, a dropped weapon, a torn body in a pool of blood. Inside the bridge proper, the other four SEALs of Alfa One were checking for survivors in cupboards, behind the compass binnacle, inside the tiny head.

“Alfa, Alfa Three-one,” sounded in the radio receiver in McCauley’s ear. Nearby, two of the SEALs in his element kicked open a door leading off the bridge and found two men cowering inside the ship’s radio shack. “Fo’c’sle secure! We have six Charlies, two probable Tangos, tripped and zipped.”

“Copy, Three-one.”

“Alfa One-one, Bravo One-one,” another voice said.

“Alfa One, go,” McCauley replied.

“NEST One and NEST Two are inbound,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Carl Raleigh told him. “ETA five mikes.”

“Copy that,” McCauley replied. He glanced around the ruin of the Yakutsk’s bridge. Holloway and Yancey had dragged the two men out of the radio compartment and forced them onto their bellies and were now zip-stripping their hands behind their backs. Judging by their clothing and pale skins, they were ship’s crew and probably Russians, but in an op like this one you did not take chances. “Objective’s bridge is secure. Two collaterals.”

“Copy bridge secure, Skipper.”

McCauley glanced at his watch. Two minutes, fifteen seconds had passed since the first minigun burst, and he’d been on board the ship for fifty seconds.

ART ROOM

NSA HEADQUARTERS

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

SUNDAY, 0948 HOURS EDT

Rubens watched the battle unfold on the big screen as the images were relayed from an orbiting Fire Scout UAV to the Lake Erie, then by satellite back to Fort Meade and the Art Room.

“Objective’s bridge is secure,” came through on the speaker in the Art Room’s ceiling. “Two collaterals.”

The minigun fire directed at the bridge must have swept through the compartment like a storm, killing two terrorists and two crew members. Collaterals — collateral damage, meaning civilian casualties — were unavoidable in a fight like this. The SEALs were there to secure the nukes, not rescue the Yakutsk’s crew. There would be apologies to the Russian government later, perhaps reparations as well, but the imperative at the moment was to clear the ship of hostiles. The NESTs — Nuclear Emergency Security Teams — were on the way now. The SEAL assault force did not have much time.

This is the tough part of the job, Rubens thought. Sitting back here in a nice, safe underground fortress playing puppet master, giving orders and watching others carry them out seven thousand miles away.

“So how do you think this is going to go over at the White House, sir?” Telach asked him.

“Not well.”

If there’d been any other way …

“You know we’re behind you, sir. Every one of us.”

Rubens smiled. “I appreciate that.”

But if it came to a sacrifice, to someone needing to put his neck on the chopping block, Rubens would make sure that it was his neck, that no one else would go down with him.

The decision — and the deception — had been his, and his alone.

“Alfa, Alfa Three!” A voice called. “We’re in the Number One Cargo Hold. Two Tangos down, hold secure! Moving to Hold Two!”

As always when it came to Washington politics, success became the best form of validation. If this op off the island of Socotra was a success — if the nukes were found on board and no Islamic militant loony decided to push the button and go straight to paradise in a sun-brilliant flash — the status quo would be maintained. Desk Three would survive, the NSA would survive, even Rubens’ career might survive — though that wasn’t what was important here. Diplomacy would smooth things over with the Russian government, especially since the Russians wouldn’t care to admit that suitcase nukes had been stolen from one of their facilities, then shipped by terrorists on board one of their freighters.

If things went wrong, however — if a terrorist did manage to detonate the nukes rather than see them recaptured, or even if the NESTs got on board and the nukes turned out not to be there — the diplomatic fallout would be damned near as bad in some ways as real fallout might have been, at least in terms of finger-pointing and cover-your-ass recriminations.

Still, Rubens played the cards he was dealt.

The chance to stop an Armageddon-born nightmare was absolutely worth any risk to himself, to the agency, to the men now boarding that ship.

FORWARD HOLD

CARGO SHIP YAKUTSK

GULF OF ADEN

SUNDAY, 1649 HOURS LOCAL TIME

The enemy was getting closer.

Syed Rehman Ashraf crouched in the darkness, listening to the approaching enemy. He wasn’t sure who they were — American Delta Force, SEALs, or Marines; British SAS; Israeli Mossad; even Pakistani Black Storks, their Special Service Group. He knew only that they were deadly, black clad, and silent, shadows descending from the helicopters onto the freighter’s deck who’d proceeded to kill his fellow fighters with a ruthless and implacable efficiency. Interception by a foreign counterterrorist force had always been a possibility in Operation Nar-min-Sama, and the fighters accompanying the weapons had been prepared to sacrifice themselves in the name of Allah.

That was why Ashraf was here in the near darkness.

The weapons had been stored in the ship’s forward hold, carefully hidden in a wooden crate identical to the crates of machine tools around it. The hiding place was sheltered by several empty crates positioned next to a bulkhead; slinging his assault rifle, Ashraf shoved the empty crates aside, then used a knife to pry open the one he was after.

He could hear the distant stuttering thunder of helicopters, punctuated now and again by the high-pitched shriek of their weapons. He’d seen Achmed literally sliced in half by one of those guns, and was still shaking.