Rogue Warrior: Dictator's Ransom Part 18

I'm the first to agree that if a woman can't pull her weight, can't kick her quota of b.u.t.t, then she's got no place on the team. But that goes for a man as well. The standards don't change. You have to be one mean mother, willing to bite the head off of your enemy, chew, digest, and bite some more, if you want to run with Rogue. Not too many women can do that-but not too many guys can either.

Trace could bite with the best of them. And I was d.a.m.n well going to save her a.s.s from that Russian death trap.

MUD AND c.r.a.p swirled around the water. I pushed down, tugged by the current as I tried to follow the helicopter. I was seeing more shadows than lines when suddenly there was a new thick cloud around me. The next thing I knew, something brushed past me.

I thought shark-until it reached back and tugged my shirt.

Trace!

I pushed up with her. Not being a SEAL, she broke the water a little exuberantly, though under the circ.u.mstances I could hardly blame her.

"You okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine-are you?"

"I was knocked out. The water was up to my t.i.ts when I came to."

"Lucky for you they're good-sized."

She smirked at me and began stroking toward sh.o.r.e. The boat we'd spotted from the sky was a few hundred yards away, tied up to a battered concrete pier. Two small skiffs and a rowboat were tied nearby, and the half-rotted hull of an old wooden speedboat was beached on the rocks on the other side of the pier. A cl.u.s.ter of houses sat a few dozen yards away, arranged in a close jumble on the land.

The village inhabitants had apparently heard the helicopter crash. They were gathered near the pier, watching as we swam toward them. Wet, tired, and battered, the last thing we wanted at the moment was a fight. But we also wanted the fishing boat. And as the Bible says, those in need are best off taking first, and asking never.

That would be the Rogue Warrior version, of course.

"I'll get the ropes," I told Trace as we reached the boat. "Get the thing going."

"Aye-aye, Captain Bligh."

"Good to hear you joking."

"Who's joking?"

I got up on deck and hustled over to the stern. Ordinarily I'd've just cut the line, but there was nothing handy, so I had to jump onto the crumbling cement and untie it. By the time I reached the second line, Trace had the engine coughing.

I've coughed louder for the p.e.c.k.e.r inspector squeezing my b.a.l.l.s to see exactly which hernia I've added to the collection. The motor surged, spit, then died. Meanwhile, the crowd had begun moving in our direction.

"Get us going," I yelled.

Trace probably yelled something back along the lines of "no s.h.i.t," but if so, it was drowned out by the angry Russian curses that were being hurled in my direction by the three old women coming down the pier. Their average age looked to be just under ninety, and while they may have been spry for their age, they looked to have about ten teeth between them.

I undid the last rope and jumped down into the boat. One of the women hurled her cane at me, catching me on the side of the temple.

You have to admire gumption in someone that old.

Unfortunately, I could admire it from close-up, because Trace still hadn't managed to get the d.a.m.n engine restarted. The boat, which had been drifting away from the pier, changed its mind and started going back. The old women were spitting and flapping their arms at us. I was one happy son of a b.i.t.c.h when the engine finally started strong and we pulled away: I've done some terrible things in my life, but I have yet to stoop to smacking grandmas and confiscating their canes.

[ III ].

WE SET A course east, aiming to get out of Russian waters ASAP. The manufacturer's claims that my satellite phone was waterproof came up somewhat short, leaving me unable to call for help. But help was already on the way. Doc, knowing there was a problem because of the way our conversation had ended, used my last transmission to set up a search pattern for the navy. Not content with that, he contacted two helicopter companies based on Hokkaido and hired them to look for us. The first spotted us about four o'clock in the afternoon, and within fifteen minutes we were on our way to Hokkaido, which is that big island at the top of the j.a.panese chain where they make Sapporo beer.

The Havoc's crash may have helped us escape the Russian marines and anyone else Setrovich's people sent after us: the Russians were looking for a helicopter but couldn't find it. I didn't draw it up that way, but I was more than happy to take advantage of it. If you want to put that one in Murphy's column, go right ahead-he owes me a few.

DOC SENT SHOTGUN and Mongoose up to meet us. Shotgun was so happy to see us it was kind of cute-he was waiting on the helipad as we landed, big-a.s.s grin on his face, shirttails flapping in the breeze. Mongoose was Mongoose-all business, frowning like he'd just been foreclosed on, gripping his MP5 so hard his knuckles were white.

Yes, he did have his gun with him, and in plain sight. Ditto for Shotgun. Doc had told them to take no chances.

"Hey, Cap, how's it hangin'?" shouted Shotgun as Trace and I hopped from the helo.

"Low, Shotgun. How about yourself?"

"Tucked up tight like a bull going for a fight." Shotgun giggled like the schoolgirl that he is. "And how's the most beautiful woman in the world?"

"About an inch away from giving you a kick that will make you a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for life," said Trace.

"Touchy," Shotgun said with a laugh. "Glad you're in a good mood."

"Doc says you wanna hustle, boss," said Mongoose. "We got a plane waiting for us. Taking us to Sado-gashima. There's food onboard."

"Is that like sado-masochism?" said Shotgun.

"Ha-ha," said Mongoose.

"Hey, you shouldn't name a place that if you don't want it made fun of."

"Maybe you should write a letter to the emperor and point that out."

"Since when did Shotgun learn to write?" Trace asked.

Sado-ga-shima is an island off the western coast of j.a.pan. It's generally a quiet place, with a few fishing villages around the rocky sh.o.r.elines. The medieval j.a.panese rulers used it as a place to send exiles; most notably Emperor Juntoku and the Buddhist priest Nichiren both called Sado home. Tourists generally don't get too much farther than Ryotsu on the east side of the island, or Ogi, which is on the southwest, where hydrofoils connect them to the mainland. There's a gold mine museum at Aikawa, which is on the west side of the island; if you go, try not to ask too many questions about the slaves who worked there during World War II.

Doc had set up shop in a small fishing village on the northwestern end of the island. It wasn't a casual choice-Toshiro Okinaga had once again come through with an a.s.sist, arranging on very short notice for us to use a rustic compound his unit occasionally used for training. When I say rustic, I mean rustic-there were no European-style bathrooms in any of the huts.

Which pleased Trace all to punch soon after we arrived. But she was cranky from the plane flight and boat ride anyway. Even the arrival of Sean Mako, her sometime partner in busting newbie recruits, didn't cheer her up.

Jimmy Zim had come over, too, and stalked through the situation room Doc had set up in one of the larger cottages we'd been given. He was talking on his sat phone when I came in, pausing every so often to look at a map taped to the wooden table. A cardboard cutout representing Polorski's ship was tacked to the map. It was 150 miles from the North Korean coast. A navy plane had flown over the ship a few hours earlier, just before sundown. We were expecting the photos within an hour, but the preliminary word was that nothing unusual had been seen on deck.

"A photo may not tell us," said Doc. "It could be below ship. Crated and in pieces."

"Or it could be somewhere else, in a cargo container, aboard any of a thousand other ships," I said, finishing his thought. Ships represent a vast security problem, and containerized shipping is especially difficult to police. The newest container ships can carry upward of twelve thousand containers; there are something like six million containers on the sea at any one moment. Imagine trying to inspect each one of them. The longest piece of the Topol missile was the first stage; it was roughly eight meters long-round it out a bit and say twenty-six feet. Containers come in five basic sizes; the first stage would fit in all but one of them. The launcher would have to be cut up and sectioned off, but welding steel back together is not a difficult skill.

Jimmy Zim was apparently debating what to do with his superiors back in Washington. The argument was essentially the same one that had taken place earlier. Under no circ.u.mstances did the CIA want the missile-launcher combo to escape. On the other hand, the State Department was screaming about the "delicacy" of the North Korean disarmament talks. Not seeing the missile on deck meant it might not be there, and the possibility of Yong Shin Jong being on the ship made everything more complicated.

Not in my opinion, of course. As far as I was concerned, there was no need to take chances: just nuke the ship and North Korea while we were at it. But no one in charge seemed ready to consider that one.

"Okay, this is the story," said Jimmy Zim, snapping off his phone. "We have a go for military action-our guys this time, not the Russians. We can use two platoons from SEAL Team 2 to stop the ship."

This is not the normal, a.s.signed operational area for SEAL Team 2 but the op-tempo of combat in the Middle East and the worldwide expansion and franchising of terrorism have made the teams rotate a.s.signments as they come up. I like it. No one is going to miss the action due to bureaucratic bulls.h.i.t like primary AOs. Thank G.o.d. But it's not something new: when the fun happened in Cuba in the 1960s, SEAL Team 1 came east, and everyone was invited to play when Vietnam broke out. True Team spirit.

But I digress.

"You go with the SEALs," Jimmy Zim continued. "They get the missile, you get Yong Shin Jong."

"And we take the fall if something goes wrong?" said Trace.

"What could go wrong?"

"Maybe your information is screwed up."

"You gave us both leads," said Jimmy Zim. "Don't blame the CIA."

"We can work with SEAL Team 2," I said.

"That's not the point, d.i.c.k." Trace had her arms folded, and her lips pressed together in a pout.

Junior grunted from his workstation in the corner. I went and looked over his shoulder, observing what looked like a satellite image of a lone ship in the ocean.

Which was what it was.

"Russian system," said Junior. "Didn't think it would be polite to break into ours. Besides, this was easier, though there's a bit of a trade-off in detail."

"This is our target?"

"Yeah. Trawler, old fishing vessel."

The Russian vessel was a basic fishing trawler, roughly twenty-five years old, similar to ships used for cod fishing in the Barents Sea. The blocky bridge superstructure sat just forward of midship; a pair of stacks sat about a third of the way from the stern, between two large boom structures. There was a well below these booms, so large fishing nets could be pulled up from the stern. The booms looked like the lower half of the letter A; their main function was to hold two ma.s.sive pulleys above the deck that made moving the large fishing nets considerably easier. A narrow deck ran across the top of the boom; there was a radio mast in the center.

A pair of lifeboats sat on raised cradles between the superstructure and the wedge-shaped smokestacks; a crane filled the s.p.a.ce between them. Another crane sat above the ship's forecastle.

"They could have a whole missile in that factory section," said Doc, studying the photo. "This could be it."

"Hmmmm," said Trace. She was still skeptical, but no more than usual. The more we looked at the vessel, the more obvious it was that it wasn't an ordinary fishing boat.

"They have watches posted here, here, and here." Junior pointed to four spots around the ship. "There may be more. I think this is an infrared sensor here, but I can't get enough resolution out of the Russian system to tell. And check this out."

He slid the mouse cursor to the top of the screen, revealing a menu of tools. They were written in Cyrillic, of course, but thanks to trial and error our intrepid hacker had managed to figure out what most of them meant. He clicked on a tool that placed a magnifying gla.s.s on the screen, and selected a small area near the bow. Four or five clicks later, the fuzzy outline of a tarp with a long pencil sticking out the front filled a box on the screen.

"At least a machine gun," said Junior. "Maybe a cannon. And what do you think this is?"

He clicked away, zooming again on the flying bridge at the top of the superstructure. The image showed a boxy baseball bat on a box or maybe a table.

"Launch kit for an SA-16," said Doc.

"I think it's something like that," said Junior. "But I've never seen one."

I had, and though admittedly the image was on the blurry side, I thought Doc and the kid were right. Boarding the ship by helicopter would not be a simple operation.

As it happened, the SEALs had no intention of using helicopters. They planned a seaborne a.s.sault, launched from the USS Greenville, an attack submarine that had been on maneuvers off the coast of Korea near the DMZ and was at that moment hurrying to get into position to intercept the trawler.

SEAL Team 2 is the unit that yours truly served with in Vietnam. (And if you haven't read the story in Rogue Warrior, hie thee to the local bookstore or library and do so. Now, gra.s.shopper!) I'll just mention again for the record that the unit continues to uphold the finest warrior traditions in the military. Today's SpecWar fighters are a breed apart, highly trained professionals who are the best in the world at what they do. A lot of them give me the aw-shucks routine when I meet them today, telling me how proud they are to meet me and all that BS; I can honestly say that I'm the one who's impressed. These young bucks have a lot of ability and are true professionals in every sense of the word. I'm proud to say I once served in the same unit they do.

The USS Greenville is a Los Angeles-cla.s.s warship that has been modified to operate the Advanced SEAL Delivery System, or ASDS. The ASDS is a piece of metal shaped like an obese, rectangular torpedo. It does exactly what its name says it does: deliver SEALs, generally to dangerous places near sh.o.r.e. Why a submarine equipped with gear like that would be near North Korea-shucks, I have no idea.

The plan here was simple: the Greenville would locate the trawler, then move into position nearby. It would surface out of sight during the night. The SEAL team would board high-speed rubber raiding craft, approach the target under the cover of darkness, get aboard, and take things from there.

While we were invited along, there was one caveat in the plan. SEALs wait for no man. Or men. Or women. Certainly not us. So if we wanted to be part of the party-and remember, it was supposed to be our party-we had to get out to the SEALs and their submarine, the Greenville, posthaste.

Our island was about 350 miles from the sub, too far for a helicopter without refueling. Jimmy Zim got us in touch with an air farcer who promised an MC-130 to pick us up at Niigata, the airport on the j.a.panese island of Honshu opposite Sado. From there, we would fly to South Korea, where another helicopter-this one belonging to the U.S. Navy-would take us out to the submarine. The schedule was going to be tight; we'd have maybe five minutes leeway to find the submarine or miss the adventure. In that case, we'd have to go back to Korea, refuel, and join the show in progress, missing all the fun.

The MC-130 is an excellent aircraft, a version of the venerable C-130 Hercules outfitted for spec warfare and flown by specially trained air farcers who coat their b.a.l.l.s in bronze and take their aircraft into places where aircraft are not supposed to go, depositing warriors where they're least expected. Most of this depositing is done via parachute-which gave me an idea.

"If we have to go all the way to Korea to grab a helicopter, we may not make it back in time," I told Doc, who was helping Jimmy Zim with the arrangements. "Why don't we just use the plane."

"You finally figured out a way to walk on water, skipper?"

"No, but I can fall into it pretty well. We'll parachute and aim for the sub. Shouldn't be too difficult to find if they're on the surface."

"Like h.e.l.l it won't," said Doc.

"Yo, d.i.c.k, screw all that," said Shotgun, who was standing nearby and stuffing his face with some sort of j.a.panese egg roll. "Why don't we just, like, parachute onto the ship. KISS."

Trace smirked, but Shotgun wasn't getting h.o.m.o on us. He was referring to one of the main precepts of special operations-keep it simple, stupid. But only Shotgun would think a night jump onto a ship is simple. True, the ship is more of a target than you'd think; even if it's not all lit up-and we didn't expect this one to be-it sticks out like a sore d.i.c.k with even minimal international nav lights. But seeing what you want to hit and actually hitting it can be two different things.

It would be easier than parachuting to the submarine, though.

To make sure the creeps in the trawler didn't see us, we planned the mission so the MC-130 would fly in a straight line nearby just before drop time. We also mapped a flight profile that would make the aircraft look as if it were a commercial flight-and would keep it above fifteen thousand feet, the ceiling of the Russian antiaircraft weapon we'd spotted. We'd jump a bit over five miles south of the ship, and swoop-you may call it parasailing if you prefer to be more accurate-onto our target, guided not only by guts and instinct but GPS units with big-a.s.s, glow-in-the-dark faces that strapped onto our arms.

One of the things they never mention in movies and online games where guys parachute out of airplanes in the middle of the night is that it is F'in' cold. And "F" doesn't stand for freezing. The temperature in the back of the aircraft was bad enough; once we went out it would be below zero. As we waited for the plane to hit its last way marker, everyone on the team was moving around to try to stay warm.

Except Shotgun. He was eating Twinkies.

"Way marker reached," said the crewman a.s.signed to shepherd us out the plane. "You have five minutes."

We checked our gear and got ready to jump. Besides thermal undies, we were equipped with jumpsuits, balaclavas, and some Nomex gloves Doc had "found" while we waited for the air farce to get its aircraft over to us. The oxygen-you go out at twenty-eight thousand feet, you need oxygen-had come courtesy of a jump school at the airport.

Courtesy might be too strong a word, as they had charged us twice the usual rental. Something in Mongoose's shifty eyes must have given him away as a poor risk to return them.

We made sure our watches were synched, the radios in our helmets were working, and the GPS units calibrated. We were ready. All we needed was word from the SEALs to proceed.

But the SEAL communications channel was uncomfortably silent.