Operation Caribe (34 page)

Struggling to regain his footing, Nolan looked out the port side window to see the huge
Mothership
engulfed in smoke and flames.

“What the fuck…”
he cried.

It didn’t seem real—and for a moment, Nolan wondered if he was having another Shanghai flashback.

Twitch even screamed, “Is this happening?”

But Nolan blinked twice and realized it
was
real.

Horrible—but real.

They’d been inside the ship’s CIC not five minutes before.

The others got to their feet. They, too, were shaking and disbelieving. It was as if an entire magazine of bombs and ammunition had blown up aboard the
Mothership
. Except the undercover vessel was not a warship. It didn’t have any munitions on board.

So what happened?

Just then, one of the Senegals cried out:
“Torpille!”

He was pointing south and, for a second, they could all see the churning telltale bubble trail of a torpedo streaking northward.

It was moving so fast, though, that no sooner had the Senegal shouted his warning that the torpedo detonated under the already blazing
Mothership
, causing a second incredible explosion.

“Jesus!” Batman yelled, as they all fell to the deck again. “It’s those asshole SEALs—they’re sinking the fucking thing!”

Just before the second torpedo hit the
Mothership
, they all saw a lone figure leap from the front of the vessel into the water.

He was a very lucky man, whoever he was, because after the second torpedo exploded, the
Mothership
broke into two burning pieces and went down immediately. The twin blasts had been so violent, there was no way anyone left on board could have survived.

The team was still reeling from the second torpedo strike when another Senegal cried out, “
Une autre torpille!”

He was right: A third torpedo was churning up the water south of them. It went past the fire and wreckage left from the
Mothership
and hit under the Blackwater vessel nearby, blowing it high into the air.

This blast also rocked the
Dustboat
, but everyone was holding on tight by now. Nolan and Twitch scrambled off the bridge, down to the rear deck and, spotting the lone survivor of the
Mothership
blast, threw him a life preserver and a rope. Now, as they pulled the survivor in, a fourth torpedo hit the Blackwater boat, just as it was coming back to the surface from the first hit. It disappeared in a geyser of flames and steam.

Nolan and Twitch pulled the oil-covered figure up from the water, only to discover it was Agent Harry. He was bleeding and his clothes were in threads, and he was screaming, “Get off this ship!
Get off!”

But Team Whiskey had already sprung into action. Batman had quick-started
Bad Dawg One
and Gunner had started
Bad Dawg Two
. They were throwing in everything they could carry: weapons, laptops and sat phones, and screaming for Nolan and Twitch to hurry up to the helipads.

Carrying Harry between them, Nolan and Twitch ran past the first helicopter just as Batman and Gunner, in the front seats, and three of the Senegals, in the back with a lot of their hastily grabbed equipment, were strapping in. Batman hit the throttles and the copter took off like a rocket.

Nolan reached the second copter moments later. He and Twitch pushed Harry into the back with the two other Senegals and then climbed in behind the controls. They didn’t even bother to strap in. Nolan immediately pulled up on the main control, and they went straight up, the engine screaming in protest.

Not two seconds later, a torpedo hit the
Dustboat
broadside.

Their little ship, their home and base for their many missions, disappeared in a cloud of fire and debris, sinking without a trace.

*   *   *

THE TWO HELICOPTERS circled the debris pools of both the
Mothership
and the Blackwater vessel, but there were no survivors.

The ships had been hit by torpedoes designed to sink aircraft carriers and other major warships. They had utterly destroyed the two vessels, as well as the
Dustboat
.

Harry was close to a state of shock, though. He was screaming, “I knew that fucking ship was cursed—I just knew it!”

Nolan signaled one of the Senegals to get the ONI agent to calm down, which the man did by clamping his huge hand on Harry’s shoulder in a firm but friendly manner.

“You are safe,” the Senegal said in his deep, broken-English baritone. “We are all safe.”

And Harry did calm down—for about two seconds. Then he began screaming over the copter’s engine noise and directly into Nolan’s ear, “But now we’re the only ones left who know what’s going on. And we’ve got no idea where that sub is going!”

But Nolan began immediately shaking his head.

“That’s not the case,” he yelled back to him. “We know
exactly
where it’s going.”

31

THE TWO COPTERS split up.

Flying
Bad Dawg One
, Batman pushed the throttles to full power and headed north.

Nolan turned south.

They had the rough coordinates of Crash’s text messages. Plus, Nolan knew the range of a U.S. Navy MK-48 torpedo was about twenty miles. Because of the warm, clear water of Blue Moon Bay, traces of the bubble trails caused by the five torpedoes were still visible.

“Follow those freaking things,” Harry told Nolan, yelling from the backseat again. “They’re like jet contrails. They’ll point us to where those torpedoes came from.”

And that’s what they did.

“Crash is a SEAL,” Nolan kept saying as they streaked southward, trying to give himself and the others on board some hope where none really existed. “He knows how to swim, how to maintain himself until help arrives.”

“But he also knows how to type,” Twitch said grimly.

The top speed of the OH-6 was 170 mph. Within a minute of leaving the devastation of Blue Moon Bay, Nolan had the copter booted up to more than 200 mph, causing the engine to absolutely scream in protest. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting to the spot where Crash was last heard from and finding him.

*   *   *

IT TOOK JUST five minutes to travel the twenty miles to the end of the fading bubble trails.

The sub was long gone, of course, but Harry spotted something about one mile to the east.

“Right there,” he yelled in Nolan’s ear, pointing over his shoulder.

And there it was. The abandoned
Sea Shadow
. It was listing heavily to starboard and emitting a thin trail of smoke. It was the first time Nolan had seen it without its shrink-wrap covering. But it was unmistakably the famous stealth boat.

They continued south for about a half-mile when they saw something else. Also listing heavily and riding atop the waves, it was the SEALs’ mini-sub.

And about a half-mile south of
that
, they finally saw him. He was facedown, his bright blue battle suit sticking out from the greenish-white Caribbean waters.

It was Crash.

“God damn,” Nolan whispered as he dove toward the floating body.

He pulled the copter up just above the waves and circled once. This was now a recovery operation—that much was clear.

But just as Nolan was about to go right down to the surface, without warning, Twitch opened the copter’s door and jumped out.

At first, Nolan thought he had fallen out. But then he saw Twitch hit the water and start swimming madly against the prop wash toward Crash’s body.

“What the hell is he doing?” Harry yelled.

Nolan was furious. What was the point of this? That two of them get killed today?

Twitch reached Crash’s body and, incredibly, he flipped him over and began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, even as he was fighting the sea’s rotor-induced waves.

Nolan had never seen anything like it. He turned to the Senegals, who were just as astounded.

“
Fou homme,”
one said.

Crazy man.

But in a split second, Nolan recalled how it was Crash who’d saved Twitch from the rough seas off an Indonesian island after Twitch had just completed his dangerous undercover mission against Zeek the Pirate. It was also Crash who had pulled Twitch out of the hellhole of the Walter Reed Army Hospital, just seconds before Twitch was about to take his own life.

Maybe this was Twitch’s way of finally paying Crash back.

Nolan maneuvered the copter down far enough so Harry and the Senegals could grab Twitch and Crash and drag them into the passenger compartment. Twitch never missed a beat. He continued giving Crash mouth to mouth, even though his colleague’s face was blue and his eyes had rolled back into his head.

Whether his own fragile mental state had finally caused him to snap, or he just refused to give up on a friend who never gave up on him, Twitch never broke the rhythm of blowing into Crash’s mouth, stopping, giving him a series of chest compressions, and then listening for a breath, before starting all over again.

Nolan pulled up off the water and put them in a slow orbit about 200 feet high. He was devastated; they all were. But on his mind at the moment was just giving Twitch a respectful amount of time before signaling the Senegals to gently pull him away and convince him that their friend was really gone.

So Nolan orbited for a minute, during which Twitch did not slow his frantic pace one bit.

Finally, Nolan nodded to the Senegals, who quietly urged Twitch to stop.

But Twitch pushed them away.

Another half-minute went by, Nolan did a few more orbits, and the Senegals tried again.

But again, Twitch resisted—with a little more anger this time.

The Senegals. They immediately tried again—and were startled when Twitch pulled out his service revolver and aimed it at them.

“No fucking way I’m giving up!” he screamed at them.

“It’s over, Twitch!” Nolan yelled back at him.

But Twitch just ignored him and kept up with the heartbreaking resuscitation procedure.

Nolan was at a loss what to do.

He yelled back at Twitch again—gave him a direct order, but again was ignored.

“Your friend is dead!” one of the Senegals finally yelled in Twitch’s ear. “Let him go peacefully.”

That’s when Twitch finally did stop, but only long enough to say, in perfect French, which Nolan had never heard him speak before: “
Nous sommes Whiskey. On ne mort pas!”

We are Whiskey. No one dies.

But he was wrong.

Crash was dead.

And it was at that moment that Twitch finally realized it. He just fell away from the body and buried his head in his hands. Harry took off his jacket and used it to cover Crash’s face.

They would never know exactly how Crash drowned, how he got out of the sub’s lock-out chamber, or how the flooded SDV became detached from the
Wyoming
.

But it didn’t make any difference. At least not to Nolan.

He turned the helicopter sharply and screamed, “
Someone’s
going to pay for this!”

Then he lined up the SDV mini-sub within his gun sights and opened up with the copter’s twin 50s. The two long streams of bullets tore into the vessel with fiery accuracy, blowing it to pieces.

Then the
Sea Shadow
appeared in his sights. He opened up on it, too. It took only a five-second burst before the hundred-million-dollar ship blew up, scattering debris for hundreds of feet in all directions.

Then Nolan turned again, this time toward the north, angrily pushing his throttle to full forward.

Behind him, on the horizon, a line of black swirling clouds was growing steadily.

Another storm was coming.

32

Naval Command Center
Norfolk, Virginia

ADMIRAL J.L. BROWN sat in front of the communications console, nervous, mouth dry, barely able to stay still.

He was in a large, spare, windowless office known as the Rubber Room. Located in the basement of the main administration building for the vast NS Norfolk complex, it was the nickname for the base’s blast-proof intelligence bunker. The occupants of the floors above him—the hundreds of officers, sailors and civilians of the Fleet Forces Command—were responsible for watching over all U.S. Navy ships operating between America’s East Coast and the Indian Ocean.

That number included roughly half of the country’s forty-plus nuclear submarines.

And now one of them was missing.

*   *   *

BROWN WAS FLEET Forces Command’s top security officer. In his early sixties, with the look of a college English professor, he was charged with making sure all the ships under NS Norfolk’s control stayed safe while at sea and were protected whenever they were in port.

Arriving at work shortly after 0900 hours, Brown learned there’d been a disturbance on the submarine USS
Wyoming.
The first report said a sailor on board had either gone berserk or had tried to lead some kind of insurrection. Brown knew the
Wyoming
had made an unscheduled stop at Gitmo Bay the day before to offload about two-thirds of its crew due to extreme medical issues. At first he was sure this trouble report was related to the sub’s unusual situation and had nothing to do with the ongoing, highly classified Operation Caribe.

The good news, though, learned in a follow-up report, was that the unpleasantness aboard the
Wyoming
had been quelled almost immediately. This was thanks to the quick intervention of a SEAL team that had gained entry to the sub by enacting a new, still obscure security drill known as Plan 6S-S.

Even Brown had to go to his operations codebook to see what Plan 6S-S was all about. But at that moment, he was grateful that it had worked. And he was confident that the Navy could keep the whole incident under wraps until the inevitable follow-up investigation.

In fact, the first call Brown made after hearing about the SEAL team’s heroics was to the Navy Personnel Office at the Pentagon, asking how fast he could propose the SEALs for some kind of commendation.