The Devil's Waters (26 page)

On board HC-130 Broadway 1
18,000 feet above the Gulf of Aden

Doc, Jamie, and Mouse put their backs to the night, heels on the edge. Wally, Quincy, and Dow faced them.

The red ready light lit the team. Night vision goggles on, O2 masks up, jump containers, rucks, weapons, armor, gloves—nothing of each man was exposed in the seconds before the leap. The feel for each flowed through their hands holding one another in place on the windy open ramp.

Framed by stars, Doc nodded first. The others, Wally too, dipped helmets.

The red bulb extinguished. In Wally’s hands, Doc relaxed. The green go light flicked on. Doc hopped back into nothing.

Wally dove after him.

The HC-130 bolted away. Wally and the team were flung forward by the speed of the plane, hurled into a torrent of wind. Wally spread his limbs, arching his back to control the accelerating fall.

Gaining control of his descent, he counted five electric green figures through the NVGs. The team maneuvered with precision into a wide circle, all facing inward, dropping at the same rate. Five seconds into the jump, at 220 feet per second, the altimeter strapped to Wally’s wrist passed 17,000.

From three and a quarter miles up, the fleeing freighter was easy to spot. The bow light gleamed in Wally’s goggles like an emerald sparkler, and the starlit deck made the
Valnea
radiant against the darker waters.

In the plummeting circle, big Quincy fell faster, pulling ahead a few meters. Wally and the less bulky others, especially Mouse, lowered their profiles against the rushing air to keep pace. The digital readout on Wally’s wrist clicked off altitude.

The assault team streaked downward in their ring formation, uniforms rippling. In fifty seconds of freefall, they plunged two miles. The cargo ship grew larger by the moment. Wally wanted to say something like, “Here we go,” but no one would hear him over the radio for the roaring wind.

At four thousand feet, the men rotated away from the center to put more space between them. Executing the moves together, each waved and checked the airspace around him. Wally reached back to his container, gripped the pillow handle. Two seconds later, at three thousand feet, he and the PJs threw out their pilot chutes.

Six gray silks unraveled into the rushing air, lines played out at the fantastic rate of their descent. Jamie’s chute blossomed first, plucking him up and away. A split second after, Wally’s canopy filled. The whiplash snatched a gasp from his lungs, stretched his organs, tongue, every muscle downward for a heartbeat. Instantly the plummet slowed, everything snapped into place, and he floated gently down.

Wally grabbed the uncoiled toggles left and right. He found the green images of all five PJs drifting around him. He unclipped one side of the oxygen mask and shut off the oxygen bottle.

Team leader Doc called over the radio, “Sound off. PJ one up.”

Mouse, second in the stack, responded, “PJ two up.”

Wally answered last: “Six up.”

The team guided their chutes into a vertical stack. Wally spiraled to the bottom. The rest stalled and banked until Quincy was in position above and behind Wally, then Jamie, Dow, and Mouse, Doc riding at the top.

They glided down and forward on the southwest wind. Wally’s altimeter read 2,300 feet. They approached the freighter out of the west, gliding at eighteen knots. Still a mile off, the ship plowed from left to right, her phosphorescent wake glowing in the NVGs. Wally figured he had three more airborne minutes to intercept her.

He bored in straight for the starboard beam. His goggles highlighted pirates around the deck. Four spread out along the starboard rail, four at the bow, one on each of the wings. Wally had no line of sight on the stern or port rail. There’d be another three Somalis guarding each, just like LB said.

On the water two miles behind the
Valnea
, a small craft paired itself to the ship’s speed: Robey, Sandoval, and Fitz in the inflated RAMZ.

High overhead, Doc issued clipped orders to keep the stack in line, maintaining two hundred feet vertical separation between them. “Come left two; speed up four.” Wally latched his focus to the wind, calculating how far and fast he needed to fly.

A half mile out from the ship, another glowing silhouette appeared in the center of the freighter. It popped out of a hatch in the cargo deck, then ducked fast behind cover.

Wally thumbed his PTT.

“Lima Bravo, Lima Bravo. Juggler.”

The team freq scratched, then cleared.

“Juggler, Lima Bravo. Right on time. Where are you?”

At a thousand feet altitude, Wally and the team would be visible only if someone knew exactly where to look and tracked them blacking out stars.

“Off the starboard beam, fifteen hundred feet out, one thousand altitude.”

LB’s green image raised hands. “Nothing.”

“Good. You secure?”

“Ready.”

“Winds on deck?”

“Five to eight headwind.”

“I’ll cross over your position in about thirty seconds. I’ll bank left and come up from behind.”

“Is there a guard on the wing?”

“Yeah.”

Wally worked the right toggle to counter a crossbreeze. Altitude was down to 750 feet. In ten more seconds he would cross over the
Valnea
’s starboard side. This close, the deep hum of her engine and the slicing bow matched the buzz of the radio’s silence. Between his dangling boots, Wally lined up the image of a crouching LB.

LB said, “Do what you gotta do. All of you.”

“Roger that. Look straight up.”

“Nothing.”

“Over you now.”

“I can smell Quincy.”

The big PJ answered. “Bite me, LB.”

“Come get me outta here and I will.”

Doc spoke. “Clear the line.”

Wally stepped back in. “Roger. LB, monitor.”

“Will do. Good luck, boys.”

Wally’s canopy kicked him left, tugged on a gust eddied by the great ship passing beneath him. He adjusted, staying on course across the freighter’s midsection. His altimeter read six hundred feet. Wally subtracted ninety feet; the LZ stood at the top of the superstructure, nine stories above the water.

The NVGs gave Wally his first clean look at the Somali on the port wing. The pirate faced into the headwind, elbows on the rail. The pirate looked thin, with arms and shoulders typical of an underfed villager in Africa. His blouse ruffled around him; a scarf covered his head. Wally was glad for the glimmering image of the man, just an amplified light signature, no memorable features.

He cleared
Valnea
below and flew another hundred meters past her port beam. Behind him, the freighter kept pushing ahead at twelve knots.

“Doc.”

“Go.”

“Ready?”

“Get ’em, Wally.”

Wally hauled on his left toggle. The ram chute responded, banking him counterclockwise. On the left harness strap across his chest, he unclipped the Stevens lanyard. This would stop his reserve chute from deploying when he landed, because he was going to hit the LZ without his main canopy. Last, Wally flicked off the safety on his M4.

Completing the turn, he shortened the distance to the
Valnea.
A hundred yards out and two hundred yards up, Wally braked to let the freighter slide completely by. The NVGs highlighted the guards on the port rail just as LB described, with one exception: below the superstructure, where LB claimed he’d taken out a Somali, there now stood two green figures.

Wally had thirty more seconds under canopy before he either landed on the ship or splashed. The pirate on the port wing made no movement to show he was aware of Wally hanging in space, circling in behind him.

The ship was now four hundred feet below. Wally put on speed, zooming down from behind, chasing her. Accelerating, he bled more altitude. The freighter whipped up a five-knot head-wind as LB had predicted, mingling with the ten-knot crosswind out of the southwest. Diesel exhaust and a wave of heat rising from the smokestack washed across Wally’s glide path, fouling and stirring the air. The freighter ran away from him at twelve knots. Wally worked the chute’s airfoil for all the velocity and lift he could squeeze from it, holding his line behind the freighter.

He had only moments left. Quincy, two hundred feet above him, was lining up on the same track. The Somali in Wally’s goggles kept his focus forward.

Wally drifted down, coming level with the belching smokestack. Without warning, hot exhaust smacked his chute, sheering him left, away from his target.

With no time to spare, he yanked hard on the right toggle, correcting so quickly the chute stalled. The violent maneuver bucked him outside the wing’s railing, over the dark water. The approach was going wrong. Twenty feet out and ten feet above the wing, Wally was close enough now to shoot the guard but couldn’t spare his hands from the toggles; he might manage to take out the Somali just before slamming into the side of the ship—not an option. His nerves spiked. Wally clamped his teeth, stuck with the plan, and fought the chute in its final seconds.

He flew the last ten feet forward as fast as the chute could carry him. A southwest gust gave him one last jolt of lift. The canopy loomed above the rail. The pirate tilted back his head to catch the sudden dark whoosh above him. Instead of sneaking up on the guard from behind, Wally by accident and fortune swooped in from the side. His boot had a clean shot at the pirate’s temple.

He cocked his leg to time the kick. The canopy swept him down and in, fast. Wally flared the chute, hitting the brakes. The tip of his boot struck dead in the center of the pirate’s head scarf. The man was bowled over, buckling to a heap on the deck.

Wally sailed over the flattened pirate, reaching back for the handle of the main chute cutaway. He yanked out the pillow grip. Instantly, the long lines separated from the container, the toggles beside his shoulders sprang away. Wally dropped the last few feet to the floor, spreading his legs to straddle the pirate, a final flourish. Behind him, the freed canopy, snared on the breeze, blew across the wing’s rail, tumbling into what he hoped was enough darkness.

Wally slung the M4 into his hands. Bending at the waist, he shoved the suppressed muzzle into the dazed pirate’s chest and punched two rounds through the heart. The Somali spasmed as if shocked, then lay still.

Wally stood above the body, pausing to read his own reaction. He’d known this kill was coming and could not predict what would come after. A shaking hand, bile in his throat, dry mouth—he needed to adjust and continue. He wanted to feel nothing, and that was what he got. He sensed only luck and the wind.

“Okay,” he whispered as if to someone else. “Here we go.”

He thumbed the talk button on his vest. “LZ secure. Five?”

Quincy answered, “Five. Go.”

“Watch out for turbulence from the smokestack. Come in wide.”

“Roger.”

“One, you copy?”

From the top of the stack, Doc said, “PJ one. Roger.”

The dimly lit wheelhouse stayed dark. Wally’s NVGs showed the green heads and shoulders of two men standing in the middle of the wide room, another pacing between them.

Wally ditched the empty container. He folded the night-vision goggles onto his helmet to get a fuller view of Quincy coming in. The big PJ drifted out of the blackness, invisible until the final ten feet. He nudged his gray chute left, giving the ship’s chimney a wide berth to slide in without a whisper. Quincy touched boots down in the center of the wing, then dropped to his knees. Before the wind could drag his canopy back into the air and him with it over the rail, Wally gathered in the lines to collapse it. Quincy unclipped his harnesses, dumping the container. He thrust his weapon at the wheelhouse door while Wally finished securing the silk.

Wally took a knee beside him, M4 up and ready, infrared sight on. He clicked the NVGs down over his eyes.

Quincy cocked his brow at the dead pirate. “I fucking saw you kick him in the head. Nice.”

“Go help Jamie.”

“Mouse owes me fifty.”

“Fifty?”

“He bet against it. I couldn’t get him to lay out the cheerleader’s phone number.”

“Go.”

Wally would discuss that lack of faith with Mouse later, maybe over the Ping-Pong table.

He scooted out of the way to make room. Quincy moved to help the next jumper in line. Descending, Jamie had trouble negotiating the crossbreeze and the headwind together while dodging the smokestack, leaving himself too little altitude closing in on the wing.

The radio buzzed. “I’m gonna miss it.”

Wally could not turn to watch or help; his weapon had to stay trained on the wheelhouse.

Quincy stayed calm. “Brake left. Left. More.”

“Too late.”

“Stick out your arm. Now.”

A scuffle sounded at Wally’s back, a grunt in his earpiece. “Jesus,” Jamie heaved, “you’re strong.”

Moments after, Jamie crouched next to Wally, gun to his cheek, breathing hard.

Dow drifted down next. Judging by the lack of radio chatter, he landed without a problem. One by one the PJs hit the LZ, and Quincy collapsed their chutes. Each shed his container and med ruck. They took positions on the wing, suppressed barrels in a row at the dark wheelhouse. Dow defended the approach from the staircase. Once Doc was down, Quincy rolled all the chutes in their lines to stash them in a corner.