Bring On the Dusk (28 page)

Claudia and Trisha had debated Bill's final cryptic message as they continued to sit on the beach of Vulf Island awaiting the start of Phase IV.

Bill had said, “Shoot the
Brower
from over the 21631. You'll know when. Into water. Four.”

They'd agreed to send no messages in the clear despite the encrypted radio. It was overkill, but that was the right mental image for this whole mission. But there was “not in the clear” and there was cryptic.

The 21631 was the model number of the Russian's Buyan-M missile corvette—two hundred feet of a brand-new and very nasty breed of fighting ship. This one was presently cruising along the Azeri shore. They didn't know which specific ship he was—the Russians always called their ships by the male pronoun—and Claudia didn't care. All that mattered for their purposes was that it was the newer missile model and not the older 21630 gunship.

“Is your husband always so clear about what he wants?” Claudia kicked one of the pedals of her still parked and silent helicopter.

“Into water. Four. At least that part is easy.” Trisha slouched lower, which was a hard thing to do in the tight Little Bird seats. “At least we know they're now off the cutter and boarding the sub.”

“Phase IV has now begun,” Claudia agreed.

“Past the point of no return.” Trisha made her voice spooky, which Claudia really didn't need.

Their next signal should come from Moretti. Sure enough, the screen that was set to the Gray Eagle's data feed showed the small submarine moving away from the anchored
Point
Brower
Coast Guard boat.

“As to the rest of his message…” Trisha waggled her hand back and forth. “Billy seems to think that we can somehow communicate without actually speaking. Usually he's right, but I think he sees it as a kind of game.”

“I don't have time for games.” Claudia knew she was snarling at the wrong half of this couple, but couldn't help it. Her attitude didn't appear to faze Trisha in the slightest.

“Oh, I don't know, Captain. That was a pretty damned hot kiss I just saw. Better than he ever gave—Shit! Sorry, Claudia. Didn't mean to say that. Just being envious because Bill wasn't here to give me one just like it.”

Claudia left Trisha to squirm, not that she did it for more than a few seconds before continuing.

“Anyway. His message is that when they shoot the primary target, we should be hovering over the missile boat and fire at the poor old
Brower
. I'm guessing he wants to make it look like a two-shot attack by the bad guys.”

Claudia considered it. “So…he figures the Russians will be too busy trying to figure out what's going on. They won't spot our stealth bird in the confusion, and we can make it look like a double-shot attack, making it even clearer that they are the guilty party.”

“Uh-huh.” But Trisha didn't sound any more certain than Claudia felt.

It seemed like a lot of trouble and risk for not much gain. Not Bill or Michael's style. Well, even if she didn't quite know why, she at least knew what to do.

They watched as the submarine disappeared into the depths and out of the
Tosca
's sensor range. Now she wished she had ordered the ASW package for the Gray Eagle just so they could track the sub, but she couldn't think of what she'd have sacrificed from the payload they'd loaded aboard. No point in second-guessing herself now.

If the Russian ship stayed on track, it would pass five kilometers off the point of the Azeri peninsula. That was what had so upset the Iranians originally.

There were constant disagreements among the five nations bordering the Caspian. They hotly debated the borders for surface rights such as fishing versus sub-benthic rights for minerals such as oil and gas. The collapse of the Soviet Union had turned the discussions into a real nightmare because now there were five countries where there had only been two. Proposals had been made and goodwill squandered with almost nothing solved.

The proposed Trans-Caspian pipeline would bypass Iran and Russia, at either end of the Caspian, and cut both countries off from the lucrative transport share. The only thing the two countries wanted more than having the resources routed through their own country was not having the other country receive a hundred percent of the traffic.

Russia had recently become very aggressive in its unwillingness to allow a pipeline to run through Iran or across the Caspian, although neither route encroached on their own resources or territory. The nightly circling patrol by their newest missile warships—deep in territorial waters, down the Azeri coast and back up the Turkmen coast where the other end of the line would begin—was an obvious threat that had worried Iran no end.

No one had been willing to risk confronting the Russians. Finally, Iranian President Madani had asked the U.S. President's wife for help in stopping Russia, even if the price was Iran losing the passage of the pipeline through their own territory.

Claudia would very much like to know someday what was on the other end of that equation. With this mission, the United States was doing a huge favor for the new Iranian president. Maybe that was payoff enough, strengthening the position of a friendly politician. Or maybe it was that all of that gas would be piped directly to U.S.-friendly Azerbaijan.

Looking at the drone image of the old
Point
Brower
anchored offshore from Pirallahi still had Claudia perplexed. She wished she knew what her team had been thinking, but that was her answer right there. Her team. These were the best handpicked people she could find. Her job was to stop worrying and make sure the shot happened.

“I'll take the shot,” she told Trisha. “You be ready to meet them at the RV.” The prearranged rendezvous was a simple set of GPS coordinates another five miles out into the Caspian Sea.

“You get all the fun jobs.” Trisha punched her arm. Then she sobered up. “I'm just glad it's not me running this show. I would have long since cracked.”

Claudia didn't feel shaky. What she felt was terror, but showing that wasn't going to help anybody, least of all her.

The next step that was most dangerous, and her lover was going to be out there alone when he did it without even Bill to help him.

Michael double-checked as Bill took a final set of readings and then bottomed the submarine. They now lay a hundred feet down and five miles off the Azeri coast. The dim instrument lights on the small panel were the only things to look at while they waited.

The Triton-2M could carry up to six divers. It was a wet sub, but it allowed for pressure retention. So, inside the sub, Michael and Bill were only exposed to shallow water pressure and could rise without having to stop for decompression.

At a hundred feet down, they were too deep to receive any signals from the surface. The reason they were here was that they would look like nothing more than a rock on the bottom of the sea to the Buyan missile corvette as it passed overhead. The Russians were unlikely to also be watching astern, since the brand-new missile boat had no fear of attack in these waters. That was why the sub was the perfect solution. Even a small rubber Zodiac would stand a much higher risk of being detected in such a close approach.

For forty-five minutes, they sat on the bottom and waited. The timing was critical. The Buyan was moving at a leisurely pace since its whole purpose here was intimidation. But a missile corvette's leisurely pace was only a little slower than the submarine's top speed. They had to come up close enough behind to catch the Russian warship.

It was 1:00 a.m. when Michael heard the first sound of propellers turning at low speed. Bill floated in the seat beside him in the two-man cockpit of the sub, both of them using breathers hooked into the sub's air system. The air tasted of old fish and crude oil no matter how many times they spit out the mouthpieces and rinsed them in the salt water. A soft red light emanated from the simple instruments of the sub's control panel. Heading, speed, depth, and battery condition: the three-decade-old sub was not a complex craft.

The propeller and motor noise from the Buyan missile corvette up on the surface was growing louder, transmitted through water, the sub's hull, and the water filling the compartment.

He looked at Bill, but the man remained with his hands quietly in his lap. He'd been a SEAL for seven years before Michael had recruited him, so he'd know far more about the sound of a ship's passing than Michael.

So he waited.

Just a moment before Michael couldn't stand it any longer, Bill reached out to take the controls. Battery connected. Motors started at low rpms. Compressed air released into ballast tanks changing their buoyancy, and they began driving up and forward.

Michael released his seat belt and checked his gear for the third time. For Phase IV, he would be traveling very fast and light.

Fifty feet up, fifty to go. It felt like he was climbing a tree with a trunk that would never end. He wished he knew what to say to Claudia. Wished he'd said it. Instead he'd kissed her and simply let the fire that she was ignite inside him until it burned away all his words.

Well, need wasn't enough. Not if he wanted to keep her safe.

Fifteen feet. He shifted until he was crouched on the seat and his hands were on the release wheel for the overhead diver's hatch. The sound of the Buyan's screws was louder. Loud enough that Michael wondered if they were going to rise right into them, damaging both the sub and the ship and aborting their mission and perhaps their lives.

Ten feet.

Rising.

Five.

Rising.

The four hand-wide round portholes that surrounded the cockpit broke free of the water. Bill leveled the sub so that it didn't fully surface but remained high enough to enable them to see ahead. And, exactly per plan, they were looking at the broad, flat stern of the Russian ship
Grad
Sviyazhsk
less than a hundred feet ahead.

Michael shot the wheel on the hatch and climbed up into the air. He left behind his face mask and breather. Bill brought the sub up another foot and drove it ahead at full speed.

Michael stripped open a waterproof bag and pulled on the dark-blue work shirt of a Russian navy machinist. He'd worn synthetic poly-blend pants that would still be wet but wouldn't obviously look so without close inspection. He pulled his bandolier of tools on to hold the shirt in place and felt naked without more weapons. He had an old AK-47 dangling over his shoulder and an outdated Marakov PM pistol, both filled with handloads that he'd done himself. Both weapons shot perfectly even after immersion in salt water, and both were silenced.

Bill was winning the race. The moment before he would have nudged the
Grad
Sviyazhsk
, Michael ran the three steps to the raised vertical bow fin of the sub, placed his foot on the top, and leaped for the rail. He hung there from the stern rail of the Russian warship until Bill had safely slipped back beneath the waves behind him.

* * *

Claudia had seen the small sub surface once more on the Gray Eagle's screen. It was so close behind the Russian ship that it looked like they were the same boat.

Kara zoomed the Gray Eagle's display in for a close-up just in time for Michael to make his jump.

Claudia choked. She slapped her hands over her mouth to stop any sound, but then couldn't remove them.

Trisha placed a comforting hand on her shoulder as they watched the submarine disappear astern and a figure climb up and over the stern rail. Trisha shook her slightly as Michael began creeping along the afterdeck and climbed up between the two turreted 30 mm cannons.

Then she jerked Claudia's hands down and kissed her on the tip of the nose. The surprise was enough to jerk Claudia back to reality.

“What the hell, Trisha?” She pushed the woman away and rubbed the arm of her flight suit over her nose.

“Figured it was better than slapping you. Michael's the very best there is. We gotta go. You up for this?”

Claudia stared down at the digital feed showing the green outline of a figure moving easily toward the missile launching tubes as if he belonged there. A crew of only thirty men to hide among. Well, he didn't have to hide for long.

“Okay.” She nodded to herself. “Okay. I've got this.” She grabbed Trisha by taking a handful of her flight suit's sleeve.

“Thanks, Trisha. Now get out of here.” And she shoved the woman out of her helicopter so that she tumbled onto the sand.

Trisha hit with a roll and ran for her own bird. Less than a minute later, they were both aloft. The final moves were coming and they had to be in position.

Michael knelt in the deepest shadow beside a starboard-aimed missile launcher on the
Grad
Sviyazhsk
missile corvette. The four angled launch tubes rose out of the deck like a growing thing.

He rolled out his Phase IV kit on the deck. With an electric screwdriver, he had the outer service plate off it in a minute flat. The missile's plate was less forgiving; the missiles weren't designed to be serviced in the tube. He had just pulled the inner cover plate free when a deep voice called down to him in Russian.

“What are you working on, Yuri?”

Michael didn't look up but kept his attention focused ahead of him. In Russian he replied, “There is a warning light that we have a bad seal here. The captain said for me to fix right now. So I'm fixing it.”

“You're not Yuri. Step into the light.”

Michael sighed. He really hadn't expected the ruse to work.

He stepped forward, and even as the look of surprise crossed the man's face, Michael had his hand over the man's mouth. With a sharp twist, he broke the man's neck. Using the momentum of the man's collapse, Michael dumped him overboard. If the body was found, it would look more like an accident than if he'd put two bullets in the man's forehead.

Michael went back to his task.

* * *

Claudia almost caught one of the helicopter's skids in the waves when she saw the body fall over the side of the ship and quickly disappear astern. Catching a skid in the water would be fatal for the
Maven
and possibly for her as well. She had to be more careful. Michael was just coming out of his shell, and it would be cruel if she were to die and leave him only to crawl back into it.

When the figure returned to the missile tube, she calmed down and focused on her flying. Five more minutes and she'd be hovering less than thirty seconds behind the missile boat.

* * *

Michael slipped out his Phase IV hot-wire kit. It was much more sophisticated than the wire stripper and clips that he'd used on the fuel truck at Karachala. He jumpered into the programming lead without interrupting it. He didn't want any warning lights going off on the boat's bridge.

It took almost five minutes to program the missile correctly. One of the targeting options was a GPS system. The only problem was that the missile used the Russians' own GLONASS system rather than the American one his controller was set for. He had studied the Russian interface enough to know it well, but it took three full minutes to be sure he had the settings correct.

He set the timer and began closing up the access panels.

* * *

Claudia remained in position. Three feet off the wave tops and idling forward at the same leisurely four knots as the Russian ship. The waiting was killing her. The worst was she didn't know exactly what her next task was.

Bill's message had said she'd know when to fire, but that she was to do it from over the missile ship. That way any observers would think her own Hellfire missile had also come from the Russians.

He really could have been a little clearer.

Then she understood.

Bill's message did make perfect sense.

She heard Michael click his microphone key twice, announcing he was ready.

She swung hard to port, out over the Caspian, and then circled around to fly directly at the side of the ship. This time she did let the skids get wet as they cut through the wave tops.

* * *

Michael moved to the rail of the Russian ship and counted in his head. He double-clicked his microphone when there were fifteen seconds left on the countdown for the missile launch he'd just hot-wired.

At five seconds, he flipped his radio to the Azeri emergency frequency that Bill had given him.

At one second, he covered his face and eyes to protect his night vision and shifted behind a gun mount to protect himself from any backsplash from the rocket motor's exhaust.

The 3M-54 “Sizzler” lit off with a roar, and he could hear it depart in a big hurry. By the time he looked, it was far to starboard and headed for the land. Thirty feet of rocket was about to make a hell of a bang.

With the missile traveling at just under the speed of sound, he had to wait twenty-nine seconds for it to cross the five miles of ocean and find its target. All hell was already breaking loose on the Russian ship. Everyone was shouting for information that no one had.

The scale of the explosion when it struck the Azeri shore was incredible. Even in Delta, they didn't get to test such large-scale munitions. The tower of fire bloomed upward. The wooden forms-work for the foundation of where the new pipeline would emerge from the depths onto the land would be utterly destroyed.

He keyed his radio and began screaming his memorized message in Azeri.

The sharp sizzle of a Hellfire missile, a sound he knew well, snapped to life mere feet over his head.

He ducked, then looked up and back just in time to see one of the stealth Little Birds briefly lit in the backflash of the rocket motor. They'd fired so low that the Hellfire actually passed below the muzzles of the ship's turreted machine guns as it rushed toward shore.

There was more panicked shouting coming from fore and aft of the Russian ship. That was his cue. He started to repeat his message, then cut it off in mid-word. He pulled on a black mask, crossed his arms over his chest, and let himself fall backward over the rail.

He splashed into the Caspian and did his best to pretend he was an invisible piece of driftwood.

Searchlights and wild gunfire sprouted from the ship even as its big engines roared to life and the propellers dug in. But none of it came near him. As far as he could tell, they were simply firing in all directions in panic, a swath of 30 mm shells cast forth upon the deep.

Then he saw it. The Russians would probably never know they'd made a hit as they roared off into the night, because it wouldn't show on their radar.

By the light of the
Point
Brower
patrol boat exploding into flames five miles away, he watched the shadow of a Little Bird helicopter tumble out of the sky.

* * *

By the time Michael swam the hundred yards separating them, the Little Bird had already sunk out of sight. He reached the middle of the flotsam and dove. He had to clear his ears twice before he was deep enough to reach the bird. With open sides, the cockpit had trapped no air to keep it afloat and the helo sank quickly.

In the darkness he found an opening and grabbed on. Copilot's side. No one there. He groped across the cockpit as the helicopter jarred hard and slammed into him. They hadn't had time to sink a hundred feet yet.

He ignored everything else and fought his way through the swirling wreckage over to the pilot.

His fingers found a limp figure in the darkness. He slapped the seat harness release and tried to shove the person out the pilot's side door.

Trisha or Claudia. Which would be worse?

Don't think, Gibson!

Something was blocking the pilot's opening. He reached out and felt steel.

If he could see, his vision would be tunneling from lack of oxygen. Years of training were all that kept him from the fatal mistake of gasping for air that every instinct in his body was screaming for.

Locking a fist through the pilot's harness, he dragged the pilot out the copilot's side of the craft. And launched them both into the air.

He gasped in a wracking breath that scraped across his lungs. He kept the pilot afloat, face up. No response. He couldn't tell if she was dead or alive. Or which of the women it was through all the gear.

Which would be worse? Telling Bill or accepting his own loss?

Stop
it!

His head cleared from the anoxia.

How had he surfaced so quickly?

The mangled helicopter floated just a few feet away.

But something was different. It didn't float. It lay crumpled across the bow of a small submarine. Bill had dived under it and caught it across his bow.

Michael swam over, dragging the pilot with him.

“Who? Is she alive?” He heard the desperation in Bill's voice as he stuck his head out of the hatch.

“Don't know… Got to—” Breathe.

He handed the pilot to Bill without stopping to look and climbed back into the helicopter. He found the timer on the self-destruct charges, set it for ten minutes, and pulled the pin. He gave the Little Bird a kick, and it slid off the submarine and began its final plunge into the depths.

Bill was looking at him when he turned. “It's Claudia. She's breathing, I think. Hard to tell.”

“Give me a harness. We'll run on the surface.”

In moments they were rigged and heading east at five knots. He sat with his back against the rear of the sub's little conning tower. His feet dragged in the water to either side.

And Claudia lay in his arms.