Light Up the Night (12 page)

Merchant
of
Death
had dropped so close to wave height that Bill wanted to pull up his feet to keep them dry. The
Sepeda
was big enough that this storm didn't toss her around much, but they were certainly surrounded by some awful seas.

The bow crested out of the darkness impossibly close, but the pilot must know that. A moment later,
Merchant
popped up over the bow, spinning until he faced into the wind, and came to a hover over the front twenty feet above the oil tanker's deck.

Michael tossed the FRIES descent rope free so that it dangled from a small hanger on the chopper. Even as the two-inch braided rope snaked toward the deck, Michael had wrapped his gloved hands and his boots around it and was sliding out of sight.

Bill counted to three and slid down behind him. He hit the deck at the same moment as the second D-boy from the other side of the helicopter. Michael and the first D-boy were already down in a crouch with their weapons raised.

Bill stepped forward just as the ropes dropped to the deck.
Merchant
had hit the release to shed the ropes and was already disappearing again over the bow. A quick glance with their NVGs as they crested the bow had revealed no forward lookouts yet. Over the sounds of the storm and with the terrible visibility of night and rain, no one should know they were aboard.

The four of them began moving forward as two teams, working down either side of the ship in two-by-two formation. Like a game of leapfrog, one man ran forward while the other covered him from behind, peeking out around a handy pipe or other deck fitting. Alternating sprints, they were able to move at a continuous fast trot. They had a fifth of a mile of deck that was as wide as a football field to clear. They didn't want to end up with anyone behind them when they arrived at the aft superstructure tower where all of the people, both crew and pirates, would be concentrated.

Bill was in the lead when he spotted the first person on board. He dropped to his knee and held up a clenched fist so that Michael wouldn't move yet. With a slicing motion of his flat hand, he indicated the direction of the man he'd spotted.

Through the night-vision gear, Bill could see one man. He ducked low and leaned his head out farther from the hatch he'd taken refuge behind. Two men. Cowering together against the storm at the head of the gangway.

The gangway was a long set of stairs that ran down the side of a ship so that a pilot or service boat could pull alongside. Apparently the
Sepeda
's captain hadn't even retracted those for the storm or to keep off the pirates. That was bad. It meant the pirates had probably been aboard for ten more minutes than they'd originally estimated.

Thankfully, the first two pirates had their backs to the weather. It wasn't cold, but the rain was driving hard. He waved Michael forward.

The D-boy slid up beside him. With a quick set of hand signals, they made their plan, then they were in motion. They came up so fast that the pirates had no time to react before they were facedown on the hard steel deck. A sharp rap of their heads together had them too dazed to shout before they were bound, gagged, and tied to the stanchion with plastic zip ties. A slap-shot injection would knock them out for a couple hours, so even if someone freed them, it wouldn't be an issue.

Quick inspection revealed no radios. That was good. No one would be calling them to check in.

A flash and a muffled “crack” from the far side of the deck showed that the other team hadn't been quite as successful. Hopefully the flash suppressor had been enough to mask the shot from any other sentries.

Michael waited a full three seconds without moving but nothing else happened from that direction. With a wave, Michael had Bill moving once again toward the stern.

Bill would have to take that back to his unit. No communication. No potentially revealing microphone click, even on an encrypted circuit. Had there been real trouble, the other team would have broken radio silence. But since they hadn't, it must mean the situation was under control.

It was so smooth that Bill felt a stab of envy and a bit clumsy. As if the SEALs weren't quite up to Delta standards. They weren't, no one was, but it didn't help to have direct experience of that, even if the SEALs probably came the closest.

They now had three or four fewer pirates to deal with. But since they didn't know how many there were, that wasn't of much use.

The next round of sentries was more alert. They had deck lights on and were standing in the shadows of the eight-story superstructure. The citadel, which would include the command bridge, perched at the uppermost level where the bridge wings stuck out to either side for visibility when docking.

Bill looked at Michael and tapped a smoke grenade that was hanging from his belt. Michael shook his head and pointed upward. The rain was driving down hard now. It would knock the smoke out of the airtoo quickly.

Bill had almost forgotten about the weather. He'd spent so much of his life at sea that the rolling of the massive ship had felt natural rather than unbalancing. And he might be wet, but a couple thousand hours as a Navy diver had made that of little consequence as well.

Then Michael took the smoke grenade from Bill, signaling him to stay, and scooted off to mid-deck staying low.

“Now.” Michael transmitted the single word, then lofted the smoke grenade up against the middle of the superstructure. The guarded entries were at either side of the tower. The middle expanse of the structure was just blank wall and windows.

With a flash and a sizzle, a billow of bright green smoke erupted and was quickly beaten down by the rain.

But both of the guards turned to face what they thought was a threat.

He and Michael charged them. The pirates were aware of the attack at the last second and managed to get off just one wild shot before they were taken down.

That single shot was like an alarm bell.

***

Trisha watched the
Sepeda
's superstructure erupt with gunfire from a dozen places. From her position a hundred meters off the port side of the ship and just above deck height, she was as good as invisible, but she could see that the pirates already occupied the first four or five of the stories. They shot out windows and then began firing wildly downward.

The Special Ops Forces knew this was going to happen. Michael's “Now” had launched Phase Two of the plan. At this instant, while all attention was to the front,
Mad
Max
would be delivering the four other Delta operators onto the narrow stern of the ship close behind the tower structure.

Per instructions, Trisha unleashed a line of fire from her miniguns close across the front of the superstructure. Her rounds would go harmlessly out to sea, but the stream of bright tracers was intended to attract the startled attention of the pirates. Perhaps even scare them back inside, leaving the D-boys and Billy time to put their part of the plan into action.

The DAP Hawk was doing the same thing just aft of the superstructure. A heavy stream of fire two stories above the deck. Let the pirates think that the entire U.S. Army had landed.

The captain of the
Sepeda
had reported they were still secure within the citadel. Then he'd begun asking an endless stream of questions that no one had time to answer. Trisha turned down that radio frequency to just a murmur. She figured when that frequency went silent, the citadel would have been breached. Now it was her and the
Vengeance
's mission to keep the pirates distracted so that the hostages stayed safe and the Captain could keep talking.

A round pinged off her windscreen.

Someone had shot wild in hopes of hitting whoever was shooting at them.

Her visor showed a pirate leaning out one of the windows, fourth story up. She'd been ordered to make no direct attacks in Phase Two of the plan, but this was an easy shot.

She shifted sideways until she was exactly flush with the front of the superstructure and fired off a half-second burst. The shooter and his gun disappeared back inside. She couldn't tell if she'd hit him, but at least he'd think twice before leaning back out. A sudden roll of the ship made her accidentally shoot one of the main floodlights on the front of the superstructure. No great loss in the scheme of things.

***

Bill cursed as a rain of glass showered to the deck around him. He looked for the shooter, but couldn't see one. The main light fixture had blinked out abruptly, plunging their section of the deck into darkness. He had to flip his night-vision goggles back into place and did so barely in time to spot and kill a pirate who was about to shoot him.

That cleared the lower deck and the Special Ops teams began clearing the superstructure, fighting upward deck by deck. It was now simply a race. Could they get to the citadel before it was breached and the pirates had a set of hostages?

It was a close thing. A small group fought hard on the third level but were finally subdued with a flash-bang. At the final standoff on the sixth story, no one had been willing to give way. Bill and Michael had to shoot more than a dozen with their sniper rifles in the tight confines of the ship's ladders before the pirates gave in, dumping their weapons down the companionways with a sharp clatter. Most of them hadn't even set the safeties. It was a wonder that none of the weapons fired randomly as they tumbled down the metal ladders.

There was no way to get a chopper aboard in this weather. So the Night Stalkers returned to the
Peleliu
, and he and the D-boys took turns standing watch over the prisoners. No one was about to trust the four South Africans who had been hired on as security but clearly barely knew which end of a gun to hold. On day three, once the
Sepeda
had driven out of the dying storm, a British cutter was able to come alongside and take off the pirates.

They'd steamed far enough south that only Dusty James's transport Black Hawk had the range to come fetch them. The
Vicious
took a midair refuel each way to get them back aboard the
Peleliu
.

After three days at sea standing back-to-back watches, all Bill wanted was a shower and sleep. Even if Trisha was willing to repeat their intimacy, he wasn't sure he'd have the energy.

When he stepped on the deck, Boyd was waiting for him. Beside him stood an orderly with the duffel bag that the Quartermaster had issued to Bill.

This didn't look good.

The Lieutenant Commander came up and shook his hand, resting the other on Bill's shoulder in a companionable way. “I hear you did really great things on the
Sepeda.
Well done.”

“Thanks.” Okay, Bill wasn't in trouble. So why was he being shipped out on no notice? Not that it hadn't happened before, but he'd only just started to feel as if he and Michael and the Night Stalkers were becoming an effective team.

“Turns out that
sepeda
means ‘bicycle' in Indonesian. Who would name a quarter-of-a-million-ton oil tanker ‘Bicycle,' I ask you?”

Bill had known, but didn't care why. Indonesian was one of a half-dozen languages he spoke well enough to be understood, little better than an experienced tourist, but understood.

“Dennis is waiting for you, over in his chopper, to get you out to the aircraft carrier.” Boyd looked genuinely upset on Bill's behalf.

“Care to tell me what's going on?”

“Right, sorry. I, uh, have some bad news and feel awful that I'm the one to deliver it. No way to sugarcoat it. Last night we received notice that your mother just died. Didn't want to tell you over the radio. You've been given immediate leave to, uh, go home and take care of things.”

Bill staggered to one side as if the
Peleliu
had just slammed into a hurricane. Only Boyd's remaining grasp of his hand kept him on his feet.

“Come on. I'll walk you.”

Bill couldn't see, couldn't have walked without the escort. He must not have heard right. Constance Bruce couldn't be dead. But here he was, climbing aboard the Little Bird
Merchant
of
Death.
A helicopter he'd jumped off just three days before. How goddamn appropriate was that?

If Dennis greeted him, he didn't hear it.

As they lifted, all he could see was the wide empty ocean and the sky scrubbed a painfully bright blue by the passage of the storm.

“Someone's waving you off.” Dennis tipped the bird so that Bill could see down on the deck.

A small figure with bright red hair stood there with an arm raised.

He was too numb to return the gesture.

“O'Malley, walk with me.”

Trisha dropped off her tray at the cleaning station of the officers' mess and followed Lola Maloney out the door. Had word gotten out about her and Billy? Not that it seemed to matter. He hadn't even waved back when he left the ship last night, as if he didn't want to acknowledge her. She was still hurt and angry about that, so she shoved it aside for the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours.

In silence, the Chief Warrant led her up one flight to the helo hangar. In the middle of dinner service there was no one running. The vast, cavernous space echoed with its own silence. It felt as if even a whisper would be trapped here and repeat forever.

They walked in silence until they stood at the wide opening in the starboard side where the aircraft elevator ran. The ceiling lights in the helo hangar were just bright enough that she could make out the crescent moon down near the horizon but no stars.

“What is it, Chief?”

Trisha took the initiative and tried to sound casual about it. She certainly didn't know Lola Maloney well enough to call her by her first name, especially when Trisha didn't know what the hell was going on.

“Pull up your shirt.” Maloney's voice was rough, as if she was having trouble getting out the words.

“What the—”

“Just do it!” No questioning the order.

Halfway through tugging the shirt's hem out of her jeans, Trisha finally knew what this was about. No point in playing games. She exposed the black-and-blue mark across her ribs. At Maloney's nod, she dropped the shirt back in place but didn't bother tucking it in.

“Who?”

“Not that it matters, but Kee Stevenson spotted it in the shower. Made some idle remark about it. I didn't think anything more of it until I spotted the new patch on your flight suit. Anyone looked at that?”

“No need.” Trisha shrugged it off. “Doesn't hurt anymore.” Not even when she and Billy—there was a painful thought she shut down hard.

“When?”

“Last week, first mission with Lieutenant Bruce. Stupid pirates didn't know they were done after I shot off their engine and tagged me as I swung aside.”

“You should have overflown them.”

“I know that now.”

“You should have already known that
and
reported it immedi—” Maloney cut herself off with a deep sigh.

Okay, so Trisha now knew that too. But she hadn't wanted to go see a medico and complete all the paperwork that went with any injury. Or admit to anyone that she'd been shot. How could she have told Billy the jerk SEAL? How could she have done that?

“Shit!” the Chief swore under her breath. “I can't believe this fell to me. Emily should be here.”

Trisha guessed that Maloney was talking about Emily Beale, but she'd retired to fly with a firefighting outfit in Oregon. Something to do with getting pregnant. But what did Emily have to do with anything? It still wasn't an association she was going to admit to. She'd succeed on her own merits, or not succeed at all.

“Okay, O'Malley.” Again that puff of a sigh. “I'm going to say this about half as well as I should, not something a commanding officer should ever admit.” They'd been standing side by side, facing the night, but now Maloney turned to face her directly.

“You're a wild card. You're an amazing pilot. No one denies that. But to fly with the 160th SOAR, you have to be more than that.”

Trisha's heart stopped beating for a moment. There was something going on here that was going to be a far bigger blow than Billy flying off without even a word or a wave.

“On some flights you are exceptional, but on others you are taking liberties that put yourself or your team at risk. Missing the third technical in Bosaso and especially not calling for help to begin with. Getting shot because, I'm guessing, you didn't trust your gunner's timing or that
Max
would be in the right position. And shooting out that deck light when you'd been
ordered
not to engage the structure. The broken glass and unplanned loss of lighting put the deck-based crew at severe risk.”

Trisha opened her mouth to protest that. To explain about the shooter she'd taken out, or at least chased back inside. But she stopped when she thought about exactly who was on the deck at that point. She'd shot out the light right over Billy and Michael's heads. If her action might have killed one or both of those men…

Maloney continued in the silence left by Trisha's shock.

“I need team players, not individuals, no matter how good. The Night Stalkers can't use individuals. Exceptional people, brilliant skills, ones with deep intuition, yes. We need every bit of that, and I'm starting to think you have all that. But if you aren't a team player, if you continue flying as a maverick who doesn't also consider the consequences to the rest of the team, we can't use you.”

Trisha could only bite her lower lip. The only thing she'd ever wanted to be was to be like Emily Beale. She was the most amazing woman Trisha had ever met. They'd fought side by side through the 101st together. Both of them had done Green Platoon, the first two women to survive it and come out the other side of that brutal month-long test. No way Trisha could have pulled that off if she weren't trying to live up to Beale's standard.

“Shit!” Maloney cursed once more. “I had no idea this would be so hard to do. Emily always made it look so simple.” Then the Chief Warrant squared her shoulders, and Trisha shifted into a stance at full attention in response, even though her shirttail still hung out.

“Lieutenant O'Malley. I'm hereby ordering you off this ship for a week of paid leave. Transport will be provided immediately. After a week, you may choose to return to this ship, or return to the 101st Airborne Division with the highest of recommendations. The choice will be yours. Dismissed.”

Trisha saluted sharply. She didn't know what else to do. Unable to release it, even after Maloney's answering salute, she remained there until long after Maloney had walked away into the shadows.

She finally was able to drop the salute, and then a bit later found she could still walk upright off the hangar deck, though her world had crashed down around her. Trisha returned to her cabin to pack her duffel. She found Dennis standing there waiting for her.

“You my ride?” She managed to say it without her voice cracking.

He nodded reluctantly.

“And my escort?”

His shrug was even more uncomfortable.

“Glad it's you,” she managed before she turned to pack so that she wouldn't have to see whatever his next pained physical response might be. It only took her a minute or two, then they trooped up to his bird.

She didn't touch the flight controls, felt she didn't have the right to. Nor did they speak most of the way to the aircraft carrier. From there she could catch the next C-2A headed…who knew where.

She sure as hell wasn't going home to Mommy and Daddy in Boston. Somehow going to her apartment at Fort Lewis, Washington, the home of the Night Stalkers' Fifth Battalion, didn't sound very cozy at the moment. Hell, she'd only been there long enough after training to drop off a couple boxes of belongings and climb aboard a transport to the Gulf. She hadn't even looked in the bedroom to see if the place came with sheets.

“Where the hell did Billy go?”

“Vermont.”

Trisha didn't even know she'd spoken aloud. Of course Dennis would know. He was the one who'd carried Billy off the
Peleliu.

“What was so damned important in Vermont?” That he had to leave without talking to her or anything.

“His mom died and he went back to Richmond, Vermont, to bury her.”

“Oh.” She was such an idiot.

God, no wonder he hadn't waved back.