Operation Caribe (43 page)

“We’ll cut you in on the deal—our team and your team,” Smash was yelling, as the gunfire died down. “We’ll give you points on the movie.”

“And that’s on the gross, not the net!” Beaux echoed.

Nolan finally reached the forward part of the missile compartment. But he soon discovered none of the tubes here was marked any differently than the rest. There was nothing indicating which tubes were the lockout chambers.

So he randomly selected one tube and yanked open its hatch, only to find a huge Trident missile inside. Suddenly Beaux and Smash renewed their barrage. Their bullets went over his head and started ricocheting off the missile poised inside the tube.

Nolan quickly pushed the hatchway closed, then held his breath.

He waited about five seconds—and nothing happened. No explosion, no sound of the missile taking off. No start to Armageddon.

Then from the darkness, he heard more taunting.

“If we have to shoot you we might all go up together!” Beaux yelled.

“Then no one wins!” Smash added.

Nolan pulled Twitch along again and made it to the next tube. He yanked this hatch open—only to have a body fall right into his arms.

The corpse almost embraced him. It was so close, Nolan could read the nameplate over the left breast pocket:
COMMANDER SHEPHERD
.

The
Wyoming
’s captain …

He’d been shot in the head and the wound had swelled to grotesque proportions. The smell was unbearable. Nolan dropped the body immediately. It hit the deck with a sickening crunch.

He almost lost it right there. But he shook off the horror when he realized there was only one tube to go before he ran out of choices.

He yanked its door open—and a small gush of water came out, soaking both him and Twitch. But this was a good sign. There was no missile inside; instead Nolan could see a metal ladder that led straight up to the deck.

He stuck his head inside the launch tube, but his heart sank when he heard people and equipment moving around the silo just above him. He knew who it was: Ramon, his welding gear and his armed guardians.

He thought he could actually see the glow of the arc welding light seeping through the seams of the hatch.

“God damn,” Nolan cursed, looking up into the empty tube

The only way they had to get out of the sub—and Ramon was right above him, about to weld it shut.

*   *   *

RAMON’S ACETYLENE TANK was running low.

His back was hurting. He was soaking wet. Until just minutes before, a gunfight had been raging around him.
And
he was in the middle of a hurricane, welding.

But he hadn’t had this much fun in his life.

“One more to go, mon,” he said to Agent Harry and the two Senegals still watching over him. “One more shim and dis boat is sealed.”

Ramon jammed the small metal piece into the missile hatch and fired up his torch. He wiped the rain from his eyes, flipped down his mask … but suddenly the missile hatch began to move.

“Jesus, mon!” Ramon cried out.
“What is this?”

He and the others watched in astonishment as a bloody hand emerged from underneath the hatch. It was like a horror movie happening right before their eyes. A monster inside the sub was trying to escape. But was it real? Ramon freaked out. He went to step on the hatch and sever the fingers, when Agent Harry yelled for him to stop.

Something else was being jammed between the hatch seal and the lid.

It was a piece of white plastic—with a boot on it.

Twitch’s fake leg.

Harry pulled up the hatchway to see Twitch’s bloody, distorted face looking up at him. Below him was Nolan, trying his best to push his lame colleague up and out of the lockout chamber.

The strange thing was, they really
did
look like creatures from a horror movie.

“What the hell happened to you guys?” Harry yelled at them. “Everyone thought you’d be coming back out the torpedo tube!”

“Just pull us out, will you!” Nolan yelled back. “We’ve had two freaks on our ass and I’ve been boosting Junior here for the last forty-eight feet!”

The Senegals reached down and lifted Twitch out of the tube, allowing Nolan to get to the top rung of the ladder.

But just as he was easing himself out, something grabbed onto his leg.

He looked into the hole and saw Beaux was right behind him, arms wrapped around his right leg, trying to pull him back down.

This shouldn’t be, Nolan thought. With bullets flying and the two SEALs just inches away from catching them, he and Twitch had dashed into the empty missile tube, locking it with just seconds to spare. They’d heard Beaux and Smash banging on the hatch door as they began their mad climb up, but were sure they’d finally left them behind. Now, in this moment of terror, Nolan saw Beaux no longer had his M4 with him. Had he and Smash expended their ammo shooting open the silo’s lock?

It made little difference now, though, as the 616 commander was laughing crazily and tightening his grip on Nolan’s leg. Nolan tried kicking him away with his other leg, but Beaux still hung on tight. Nolan tried to hit him with his fist, but the rogue SEAL was just out of reach. Meanwhile, Nolan’s friends on top, with the wind and the rain still swirling around them, were trying their best to pull him one way, with Beaux pulling him in the other. And the SEAL was winning, because he had such a tight grip on him. Making it worse, Smash was on the ladder right below Beaux and now he had hold of Nolan’s other leg.

The desperate tug of war seemed to go on forever—with Nolan caught in the middle and losing. It was like he was being pulled back down to the underworld by the devil himself.

Is
this
how it ends?
he thought.
After such a perfect escape?

Finally, Ramon took action. He re-fired his torch, leaned almost all the way into the hole and with one of the Senegals holding his feet, put the flame right next to Beaux’s throat.

“Let go of my friend,” he growled. “Both of you—or this guy gets his gullet fried.”

Beaux had no doubt this crazy-looking man would burn him. So both he and Smash immediately let go of Nolan. But because the people up top were still pulling on him, Nolan came shooting out of the missile tube at high speed, knocking over Harry and the other Senegal, with all of them landing in a heap on top of Twitch.

Nolan rolled off the pile and collapsed on the sub’s tilted deck for a few seconds, fighting hard to catch his breath. The rain was pelting his face, the wind was still blowing fiercely—but at that moment, he couldn’t recall anything feeling so beautiful.

“One more moment,” Harry said to him, finally helping him up, “and it would have been curtains for you.”

Then Ramon started calling out from below. He was still headfirst in the missile silo, still holding his lit welding torch.

“Do you even want these dizzles now?” he asked. “Or should I drop them back where they belong and then seal this coffin?”

Nolan recovered enough to stagger back to the missile tube and look down. He saw Ramon with his welding torch clenched between his teeth, one hand holding Beaux and the other holding Smash.

“
Fucking hey
we still want them!” Harry yelled, also peering down the tube. “There’s only two, but that’s okay. It still means The Plan is back on schedule. And
that
means it’s payback time—for all of us.…”

The Senegals looked to Nolan. He hesitated just a moment, but then said: “Yes, OK—pull them out.”

With that, the two Senegals reached down and roughly pulled the SEALs to the deck. Both hijackers were visibly disoriented and terrified. Ever since Whiskey let it be known that they were the ones who’d found them and the
Wyoming
here, it was clear that if anyone from 616 was ever captured outside the sub, only a horrible death awaited them.

In fact, Harry already had his pistol out. He shoved it so far into Smash’s temple, it broke the skin and the SEAL started to bleed.

Ironically, in the midst of all this, the rain had suddenly stopped. Morning had come, and the hurricane was moving off as quickly as it had arrived. There were even signs the sun was about to break through on the rapidly clearing horizon.

“Perfect weather for a firing squad!” Harry roared.

Word had spread of what was happening on the deck and a group of freed sailors had gathered on the lake’s muddy bank nearby to watch the drama play out. Harry’s call to action elicited screams of support from them.

“Drown them!” someone yelled from the bank.

“No! Burn them at the stake!” came another voice.

“No—
hang one! And make the other walk the plank!”

Harry buried his pistol even deeper into Smash’s head wound.

“I say we do them right here—right now,” he growled. “No ceremony. No bullshit. No last words. Quick justice, just like we planned.…”

An even louder cheer erupted from the muddy bank. Smash began to weep openly. Harry’s finger started to squeeze his trigger.

But then Nolan calmly reached over and moved Harry’s pistol away from the SEAL. “As much as I want to do this,” he said, “we just can’t…”

Harry looked back at him in total bewilderment.

“Can’t what?” he asked. “Shoot them up here you mean?”

Nolan shook his head. “Can’t shoot them at all,” adding quickly: “Or hang them or burn them or drown them.”

Harry just didn’t understand—and neither did the growing crowd of sailors on the bank.

But strangely enough, Ramon understood, and so did the Senegals. And Twitch. And even Batman and Gunner, who were standing in the shallow water nearby.

Ramon said, “We kill them like that, mon, we become as bad as they is.”

Nolan looked at the others and just shrugged. “Exactly…” he said.

But Harry was devastated. “I’m so confused,” he moaned.

Nolan collected his thoughts, then spoke again. “We’re better than this. All of us—because we’re Americans, in spirit if not in body. I know it seemed like a good idea at the time, freaking these guys out, screwing with their heads, and intending to get our pound of flesh when we finally got our hands on them. But we have to remember
who
we are, and what country we call home—and what the hell we’ve been fighting for all these years, two hundred and thirty years and more. Fighting these traitors, defending ourselves against them—that’s a different story. But if we pop these guys now, taking justice into our own hands, then we’re no better than the tyrants who run Iran or North Korea or the Taliban or bin Laden and his mooks. Like our very good friend here just said, if we kill them now, like this—we become like them. No …
We’re
civilized. They’re
not
. We’re Americans—and now they’re not. And that’s what makes all the difference.”

The sailors on the muddy bank were stunned at first. But slowly, Nolan’s words began to sink in.

“We’ll turn them over to the Navy,” he went on. “They’ll get a trial—and
then,
they’ll get their punishment, guaranteed. But until then, we’ll do this the right way.”

Many of the sailors on the bank started to applaud. A few even cheered. And though a few remained silent, Nolan had given them all something to think about.

Standing near the muddy bank, watching it all, Batman lit up a damp joint, took a puff and passed it to Gunner.

“That was an interesting speech,” Batman said, letting out a lungful of smoke. “Especially from a guy who’s not allowed to step foot inside the U.S.”

At that moment, the sun finally broke through on the horizon, bathing the top of the tilted sub and illuminating Nolan in particular.

Harry took note of the atmospherics and just shook his head. “Oh for Christ’s sake!” he exclaimed. “If you got the Almighty doing your special effects, how the hell can I argue against that?”

Harry then turned back to the still confused but much relieved SEALs, now sitting on the slanted deck, their hands tied behind them.

He leaned down and spit in both their faces.

“What do you know?” he hissed at them. “Today’s your lucky day.”

40

THE SUNRISE TURNED out to be especially spectacular that morning. The hurricane was entirely gone thirty minutes later, taking its wind and rain and heading north to brush the Atlantic coast, but ultimately to die at sea.

After binding and gagging Beaux and Smash and then lashing them to the sub’s top tail fin, the Whiskey team, plus Harry and Ramon, went down to the blue hole and helped sort out the sick sailors from the very sick ones. But even the crewmen who appeared the most ill were starting to look better. Maybe it was being out of the sub and out of danger, or maybe it was the water from the mysterious blue hole, but everyone seemed to be improving, including Nolan and Twitch. When Ramon told them the blue hole’s water was rumored to have healing powers for both mind and body, both men drank a gallon each.

*   *   *

THE FIRST C-130 appeared over Big Hole Cay around 10
A.M.

It was a Coast Guard plane out of Miami. It circled a few times, then dropped three flares. Nolan had exactly three flares left in
Bad Dawg Two
; he fired them in reply.

The C-130 wagged its wings and flew off.

*   *   *

THE FIRST NAVY copters arrived about an hour later. There were five of them in the initial wave. Three were filled with heavily armed Shore Patrol police; another was carrying Navy investigators, engineers and medical personnel. The fifth copter was the command aircraft.

The CO of the landing party was a Navy captain from Fleet Forces Command named Billias. Sitting in the cabin of his large Sea Stallion helicopter, he listened to Whiskey’s account of what had happened, first warning everyone involved that they would still have to do a full debriefing starting the next day on a Navy ship yet to be determined.

This debriefing would take at least a couple days, but as Billias told them, the team couldn’t complain very much. After all, Whiskey was still on the clock.

Batman asked him how the Navy finally figured out where to look for them. Whiskey sure didn’t call them—even if they had wanted to, their sat phones had crapped out long ago.