it?”
The TAO nodded. “Sir, you mentioned some men. ” he ventured.
The captain smiled, real relief crossing his face. “Let’s just say that we’re doing our part for a SAR mission and leave it at that.”
“Okay, gents, just like last time. You know the drill.” Sikes touched his gear, verifying the tightness of the connections, then took a hard look at Garcia. Behind him, Huerta and Carter were performing similar services for each other.
Finally, satisfied that all their gear was operational, they slipped into the warm water and headed for shore.
Twenty miles to the southeast, the other team was repeating the same maneuver. The diversion to the north, in the form of Arsenal’s cruise missiles bombarding isolated military targets, drew Cuban forces away from both landing zones, at least to the extent of available reserves.
But, as Sikes had noted, there was always somebody who didn’t get the word.
“Helluva good swim.” Sikes forced the words out, trying to disguise his urgent desire to suck in deep, gasping breaths.
To his right, Huerta smiled slightly, recognizing the deception.
“You might start finding time from now on to break away from that paperwork for more IT,” Huerta mused. He took the entrenching tool out of his backpack, unfolded it, and began digging a shallow hole near the base of one tree. He’d already taken his cammies out of the waterproof pack, carefully reversing the vent that allowed him to pump air out of the plastic container. He stood, stripped off his wet suit, and folded it carefully before putting it in the hole. He then slipped into his cammies.
The other SEALs followed suit, metamorphosing from waterborne warriors to land commandos. Versatility was one of the most critical qualities of any SEAL team.
After the preliminaries, they set off east, traveling in a widely spaced, snaking line toward their objective. Huerta took point and vanished into the shadows. Sikes caught an occasional glimpse of him, sometimes just the slightest hint of movement, but never saw the man in profile against the sky, or the slightest glimmer of equipment. It was as though he was a ghost, an unnatural presence stalking the land.
Sikes tried his best to follow suit, knowing that in the arcane science of this type of warfare, he was hopelessly outclassed.
Finding the concrete building where their objective was supposedly housed was simple. At that hour of the night, men’s spirits and attention spans are at their lowest. With the sun still hours away, even in the southern tropical climate, sentries around the world found it difficult to concentrate on the graduated shades of black and shadow around them. If anyone were still on watch, not drawn off to the north by the diversion, that is. The SEALs were counting on the Arsenal ship’s evening the odds.
They clustered together under a small clump of bushes and conferred in soft whispers and hand movements. Their intelligence said that Miss Drake was hardly here against her will, although the Cubans might have been less than cooperative in letting her go. Too, given the prior incursion of the SEALs onto their island, it might be reasonable to expect a heavier guard on her. While they publicly hooted about any threat that a Cuban security force might pose to a team of SEALs, privately each man knew that an armed guard of any kind could pose a problem. That, and your luck going sour on you at the worst possible moment.
A few minutes of observing the compound did much to allay their fears.
Although the base blazed with lights, there was evidently only one patrol, and he was a slackard at best, criminally negligent at worst.
The Cuban patrolled at regular intervals, pacing his way easily around the compound in continuous circles. With a nightscope, Huerta watched him, noting how the man kept his attention centered on the lighted areas, never peering beyond the fence into the dark shadows surrounding the compound.
The Cuban nodded, satisfied. It was doable.
With the arrival of the team outside the compound, leadership of the evolution had shifted to SEAL3. Sikes waited until he saw the hand signal, nodded acknowledgment, then darted silently forward. He was wearing the nighttime version of woodland green cammies, a combination of burnt green and dark gray that made him part of the night. He darted twenty feet across open land, then settled down into the grass surrounding the fence. A few quick experiments told him their intelligence was accurate it wasn’t electrified, a relief, even though the SEALs had come prepared to deal with that eventuality if necessary.
Garcia joined him moments later and pulled an insulated set of wire snips out of his back pocket. Two minutes later, there was a SEAL-sized hole in the wire fence.
Sikes and Garcia squiggled through it, found cover, and waited for Huerta and Carter to join them. Operating in teams of two, they proceeded leapfrog fashion through the dark and shadows, blending in with the night when they could, taking cover when they couldn’t.
The security guard was almost painfully easy to avoid.
The cement building was locked from the outside by a heavy padlock.
Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, but effective. They made a quick circuit of the building, verifying that there were no windows in it, then turned back to the problem of the lock. A shot from a pistol would have destroyed it, but even their silencers would have been easily detectable in the quiet Cuban night.
Garcia produced the snips that had dealt with the fence around the compound and fitted them experimentally around the lock’s shaft. He bore down, squeezing the blades together, but made little impression on the metal. Huerta watched patiently for a few moments, then gently shoved him aside.
He took the handles to the snips in his two massive paws, his hands enveloping them completely. Sikes watched in awe as Huerta bore down, knots of muscles and blood vessels popping out at odd angles all over his hands and arms. The metal blades whined slightly as they bit into the steel, complained, and suddenly met with a sharp click.
Huerta twisted the rest of the lock off the door and tossed it to Garcia. Sikes shook his head, then put his hand on the doorknob.
It is always difficult to tell how hostages will react, even more so when they are members of the media. There is a well-known phenomenon, the Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages begin identifying with their captors, to the extent of even resisting rescue. Sikes wondered if such would be the case with Miss Drake.
He shook his head. No, no way. Their biggest problem would be getting her out without letting her catch it all on film. These reporters just who the hell did they think they were? A spur of anger cut through his concentration, distracting him. She was here by her own actions, but her willful disobedience of her nation’s embargo on Cuba was now endangering his life and that of his men, plus the team on the other side of the island headed for the downed pilot.
Was it worth it? No, she probably wasn’t but the pilot sure as hell was.
He shoved the door open quietly and stepped into the room, still a ghost. It was stark, furnished only with a bed and linen. A door off to the right appeared to lead to a bathroom.
Pamela Drake was asleep. She was lying on her stomach, her head cushioned in one elbow, the pillow partially shielding her eyes. It also covered her ear, making it unlikely that she’d heard them enter the room. He motioned the other men in, out of immediate line of sight, then quietly shut the door so that it would appear normal from the outside. The only problem would be if the sentry came close enough to observe that the lock was now missing from the door. Given his brief observation of the man’s performance, he doubted that was a probability.
Crossing the room in a few steps, Sikes knelt quietly by the bed. He shook the mattress slightly, trying to rouse her without bringing her to full consciousness. Many times he’d found that actually touching sleeping hostages had startled them so much that they’d screamed, thus bringing unwanted attention to the rescue operation.
Pamela moaned and rolled over onto her back, and her eyelids fluttered.
He shook the bed again.
Her eyelids slammed upward and she rolled to the right, freezing as she saw the man kneeling next to her
