Tiger by the Tail (2 page)

“About our call sign—”

“Thank the All Father—I thought I would have to be the first one to ask,” Edvin Kulcyanov, Yosif’s second-in-command, said.

“Oh, All Father,” Yosif answered with a sigh, then shook his head.

“I understand it is from some TV show, but . . .” Vanel continued tentatively.

“I asked Martya the same question when we received the new call sign. I still don’t get it because I haven’t seen the show,” Yosif replied.

“Yes, thank you, Leader—It’s just . . .”

“We’re named after a whore . . .” Edvin said.

He was interrupted by the radio.

“Firefly to Team Inara, report.”

“A
whore
. . .” Edvin repeated, shaking his head ruefully.

“Inara One,” Yosif replied, clearly trying not to sigh. “Go . . . I think all the good names were taken.”

“Even
Oleg’s
team is named after a girl,” Devlich said. “Jayne. A girl’s name, yes? Inara Two, go.”

“Vil?” Dima Mahona said. “Zoe is a girl’s name, yes? Inara Three, go.”

“And why Washing and Book or whatever?” Devlich said. “These make no
sense
!”

“Inara Four, ready,” Vanel said.

“I am looking this up,” Dima said, pulling out his combat pad. “There’s an app for that . . .”

“You are
not
looking this up,” Yosif said. “We are in the middle of a mission.”

“And the mission name? Eh? I mean, Operation Goat-Fucker was both a tribute to Father Ferani and about capturing a
haji
goat-fucker. That I could understand. But . . .”

The last member of the team checked in, then Vanel heard the order he’d been waiting for all his life.

“Team Inara, commence Operation Joss-Whedon-Is-A-God.”

“Affirmative,” Yosif replied with another sigh. The Kildar had been insufferable ever since finding some failed American TV show. He kept promising to “hunt down some Fox exec and show him the meaning of pain.”

Yosif signaled the first man to slip into the water. The next man followed after a five-second delay to let the first one clear the insertion area.

When his time came, Vanel felt his mask to ensure the seal was tight all around and his oxygen mix was flowing. He checked his rebreather computer to ensure that all systems were green and checked his fins to ensure they wouldn’t catch or slip. Then he slid over the gunwale into the blood-warm waters of the ocean.

He sank down, achieving neutral buoyancy at thirty feet below the surface. As his sweat was washed away by the ocean water, Vanel saw the other members of his team through the glowing green of the night vision monocular. The view was a little disorienting, but he adjusted as best as he could.

When the team was assembled, Yosif led them on their one-klick swim to the target, compensating for the ocean currents to insure that they reached their target on time.

A suitable warm-up for tonight,
Vanel thought. His blood sang in his veins as he kicked forward, matching his teammates’ pace perfectly as they headed out into the tropical night.

* * *

“Team Yosif is away. More New Meat heading into the grinder.” Bullet-headed former SEAL Master Chief Charles Adams watched the tramp freighter the Keldara team was heading for through infrared binoculars.

“Is that concern I hear in your voice, Ass-boy?” Mike Harmon, Adams’ boss, another retired SEAL, leader of the Keldara Mountain Tigers Special Operations Group, didn’t lower his infrared binoculars either. Shorter than Adams by a few inches, he had short brown hair, direct brown eyes, and a broad-shouldered, solid physique. “After Florida, we agreed that Yosif’s team could use some real field training, and I can’t think of any place better than here.”

“Here” was off Pulau Mangkai, an island near Malaysia in the Anambas Archipelago. It was near the infamous Strait of Malacca, which separated the Malay Peninsula from Sumatra. The strait had been one of the world’s busiest shipping passages since the seventh century, when the Srivijaya Empire, based at Palembang, Sumatra, expanded its influence to Java and the Malay Peninsula. It controlled the strait for the next seven centuries, benefiting from highly profitable trade with Chinese, Indian, and Arab merchants.

When Srivijaya declined in the mid-thirteenth century, the Malacca Sultanate rose to power, aided by taking control of the strait. It was vanquished by the Portugese nobleman and naval tactician Afonso de Albuquerque in 1511. Portugal ruled the area for a strife-filled one hundred and thirty years, until the Dutch conquered Malacca in 1641. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 saw Malacca become a vassal of the British Empire. This lasted until 1957, when Malacca joined other Malay states to form Malaya and together with Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore, formed the nation of Malaysia in 1963.

Throughout it all, the strait saw ships carrying everything from glassware, camphor, cotton goods and textiles, ivory, sandalwood, perfumes and gemstones back in the day to oil, coffee, cheap Chinese toys and expensive electronics today. And all the older stuff as well.

When pirate activity surged early in the twenty-first century, the Malaysian, Indonesian, and Singaporean navies stepped up their patrols of the strait, cutting hijacking in half over the last few years. The pirates didn’t stop working, they just moved their operations elsewhere. Like off Mangkai Island. All of this made them the perfect training targets for Yosif’s underwater operations team.

“Hell, no,” Adams said. “Every man among them can chew thunder and shit lightning. They will take the objective and reduce it to a bag of smashed asshole if so ordered. I am still a bit puzzled, however, why you didn’t rate Vanel higher after my recommendation.”

Mike and Adams were “team buddies,” a bond far far stronger than family, from their SEAL days. After a short stint on the teams Mike had switched to being an instructor for most of his SEAL career. When he did go back to the teams there had been an “issue” that saw him out on civvie street with sixteen years of training to be the deadliest human being on earth and not many other skills. Adams, on the other hand, had taken the usual route of promotion through the teams, eventually rising to master chief. They’d reconnected a few years later, when Adams and his SEAL team had gone into Syria to rescue Mike. Mike had gotten seriously wounded while executing a one-man holding action against an entire commando battalion to rescue forty-nine kidnapped American women.

When Mike had settled in the valley of the Keldara a few years later, he’d called up Adams—by then retired and looking to escape four ex-wives—to help train the local “militia” in small arms combat and tactics. Adams had come over, loved the place almost as much as Mike did—the landscape, women and beer were all spectacular—and had been living there ever since. He had Mike’s back every second, but that didn’t mean he was afraid to question “The Kildar’s” orders when he felt it was appropriate.

“It’s not for lack of talent. The kid swims like he’s got gills instead of lungs, you put him through BUDS yourself, and with a bit more practice, he might be almost be as sneaky as me someday.”

“So where’s that ‘but’ I’m waiting for?”

“Well, I don’t call you Ass-boy for nothing. Vanel will earn his stripes soon enough. I instructed Yosif to put him on point tonight.”

“Works,” Adams grunted.

“Once he gets through this, we’ll know where he goes from there. And you know the best way to get blooded—”

“—is to get bloody. Hoo-yeh.”

“Hoo-
yah
,” Mike responded. There was an accent difference between east and west coast SEAL team battle-cries. “Hoo-yeh” or “hoo-yay” was east coast, the more laid back “cooler” “hoo-yah” was west coast.

“Surfer Dude.”

“Ass-boy.”

They might have been BUDS buddies but once a SEAL always a SEAL. Whichever coast.

Adams kept his eyes on the small freighter the Keldara team was approaching. Every so often, however, he’d move the field glasses just enough to check his boss out of the corner of his eye.

Mike had gone through hell and back in the last couple of months. Their last mission near home, involving a missing scientist and enough WMDs to wipe out most of Europe, had gotten FUBAR fast. In the end, the Keldara been forced to pull a 300 and eradicate about four thousand Chechens with only a hundred of their own in the shit. The enemy force had been stopped, no doubt. But the price the Keldara had paid was high, both in blood and a lot more.

The casualties had been high—Sawn, Padrek, Kiril, Father Ferani, and many others—

—
Gretchen
—

That one Adams knew Mike was still coming to terms with, although he was much better than he had been immediately afterward. His love, Gretchen Mahona, had been killed during the fighting, and her loss had put him out of action for weeks. Even the threat of a whole cargo container of VX nerve gas shipped Stateside by Al-Qaeda terrorists hadn’t been enough to rouse him. The Keldara team sent to Florida, led by Adams and their intel chief, Patrick Vanner, had been caught in an ambush meant for Mike. Adams had taken five rounds in the chest and Vanner had been in a coma for a week. That’s when Mike had come back to his old self. And he had come back with a vengeance, dismantling the terrorist operation with a precision and lethalness that was fucking scary, even for the Kildar.

Afterward, Mike had returned to his normal self, more or less. Adams, however, had resolved to keep a close eye on him for, well, as long as it took for him to be assured that Mike was truly back to his hell-bent for leather ways.

The master chief wasn’t concerned that Mike wasn’t up to the task of planning or running the op. It had taken a lot of persuasion to convince Mike not to lead the underwater team, and Adams still wasn’t sure the Kildar wasn’t about to gear up and go after the assault force. No, the master chief was more concerned about his boss’s
mental
state. His concern wasn’t that Mike was crazy—it helped to be a little crazy, especially if you were a SEAL. Not crazy in the get-you-bounced-out-of-the-service-by-failing-a-psych-eval. No, Mike was crazy in the sense of doing whatever it took to complete the mission; like tucking himself into the wheel well of a jet plane and flying across the ocean to Syria, for example.
That
sort of crazy was the good kind.

The kind of crazy that, when presented with the opportunity to buy a rural Georgian village and assume the mantle of Kildar, essentially ruling a bunch of farmers descended from the ancient Varangian Guard, made Mike ask, “Where do I sign?” He had immediately set about transforming the pre-Industrial Revolution village, turning it into a modern agrarian farming community that also brewed one hell of a beer. He had also turned the local boys into the hardest-fighting militia the likes of which Europe—or perhaps the world—hadn’t seen since World War II.
That
sort of crazy was the really good kind.

No, the mental state Adams was concerned about was that of a commanding officer sending men into battle again. Mike, Adams, Vanner, and the one hundred had certainly vanquished the Chechens, although at a high cost. Hell, Adams hadn’t seen such a new crop of barely bearded Keldara warriors since he’d first signed on. The question in his mind—which he’d had to ponder long and hard before he’d even admit to thinking about it—was had the Kildar finally exorcised those demons that had hounded him ever since Gretchen?

It was a simple truth: as the Kildar, his responsibility extended to everyone in the valley, all the families, every man, woman, and child. Each one would gladly lay down his life for Mike, Adams, or any of his brethren in a heartbeat. And Mike was the sole person accountable for giving them the orders that would put them in harm’s way. Never mind that to the Keldara, combat was like breathing, or that they were the very best Adams had ever seen. The point was that Mike was the one who was ordering them to go and possibly get their asses shot off. Adams knew he tried to maximize their chances with the best training, intel, and equipment they could get, but sometimes, things went wrong.

But that won’t happen tonight
, he thought, sneaking another peek at Mike. Everything was running shipshape. The team was away, the first objective was about to be taken, all was in order—

“I suggest that you spend more time observing your team and less time eyeballing me.” The Kildar still hadn’t lowered his binoculars.

“Affirmative. You could have let them use the torps to get there, you know.”

“Oh my
God
—when did my master chief turn into such a pussy? Next you’ll want to carry each one there on your back. This is
advanced
, live fire training. If the Yosifs prove they can handle this, they might be able to catch a ride next time out.”

Adams returned to monitoring the freighter. A one-kilometer swim in calm water, even adjusting for the ocean currents, should take the team roughly fourteen minutes in full gear. Adams kept his eyes glued on the freighter that served as the enemy’s perimeter guard, waiting for the signal that they’d arrived.

* * *

The concept behind the closed-circuit rebreather system went back almost four hundred years to 1620. That was the year Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel first heated potassium nitrate to release oxygen for the crew of his oar-powered submarine. The heat also turned the potassium nitrate into potassium oxide, which absorbs carbon dioxide. Drebbel had inadvertently created a working rebreather system more than two centuries before a single-person system was invented.

The first practical rebreather, designed for escaping submarines, was produced around 1900. The Dragër rebreathers were mass-produced and used by Germany in World War II. The U.S. Navy had its own expert in Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen, called “the father of the frogmen,” who ran the first rebreather class for the Office of Strategic Services at the Naval Academy in 1943.

Although a variety of modern closed-circuit rebreathers (CCR) had been developed since, they all operated on the same basic principle: a gas-tight loop, consisting of sealed components, providing a breathable mix of oxygen and a diluting gas, such as nitrogen, to the diver. The mouthpiece—or in the case of Team Yosif, their full face masks—was connected to tubes conveying inhaled gas to and removing exhaled gas from the diver and into a counterlung, or breathing bag, which held the expelled gas. The loop also contained a scrubber containing sodium hydroxide to remove the exhaled CO
₂
, as well as a valve that allowed the injection of gases, including oxygen and perhaps a diluting gas, from a separate tank into the loop, and another valve that permitted the venting of gas from the loop if necessary.