Warriors (20 page)

And she was submerging.

The giant USV nosed over into a steep dive.

“STUBBS!” TAYLOR SHOUTED. “EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!
She’s diving!”

“Aye, sir! We’re on our way. We see the water now, sir! A goddamn flood of green water sloshing right for us! It’s ankle . . . no, it’s knee-high already, Skipper!”

“How far are you from the breach we cut in the hull?”

“I’d say four hundred yards . . . but . . . there’s no way to tell, Moose. We’re going to be swimming in a second or two here. . . .”

The roar of the flooding breach amidships in the hull was deafening. “Move faster! Whatever it takes, man. I’ll meet you amidships, Stubby. Move your ass! Count your guys off as they go out the hole. I’ll do the same. Go, go, go!”

With no handholds or overheads inside the steeply down-angled companionway, Taylor and his five-man stern detail practically tumbled forward toward the bow. Taylor knew Moose and the men now struggling back from the bow had the opposite problem. They’d be scrambling up a slippery slope into an onrushing flood tide.

Death had been the last thing on his mind on the bridge this morning. But now . . . he knew a couple of things:

There was no crew.

That’s why wherever sat the asshole who was driving this boat, he had brought her up vertically. With no men aboard, it simply didn’t matter—the angle, the speed, nothing.

And now . . . with all that water weight accumulating in the bow . . .

She was going into a vertical dive.

TAYLOR COULD NOW SEE THE
dark green water pouring in. He could see men from Stubbs’s detail fighting uphill against the invading seawater, grinding through thigh-high water in a last-ditch effort to reach the escape hole.

One young sailor, whose blue shirt was drenched with salt water and blood, had gotten there first. He had a one-handed death grip on the perimeter of the hole, water pouring down over his head. He was reaching down to his guys with his free hand in a desperate attempt to haul them up and out.

Taylor saw one bow guy get out, then another, then a third, all kicking frantically and clinging to the heroic sailor risking his life for his comrades. The guy was literally fighting the sea. He was obviously in excruciating pain, his arm muscles surely giving way, and Taylor could see in his eyes that he was done.

He reached him and grabbed his straining forearm.

“Go! Go! Go!” Taylor screamed in his ear, prying the guy’s fingers from the rim. “I’ve got this! You are relieved, sailor! Swim for it!”

Another of Stubbs’s guys instantly appeared and Taylor got him out fast. That was five, he’d counted. Taylor waited, holding on, knowing the whole bow detail had to get out first. There was one to be accounted for. He’d give Stubbs a minute and then he’d have to . . . a cry above the frothing seawater.

“Sir!”

It was Ka-Ching. His normal smile was replaced by a mask of terror, his right hand raised toward Taylor in what looked like a plea.

Taylor took his hand and pulled him up into the roaring funnel that was the hole.

As Ka-Ching kicked up and away toward the surface, Taylor saw the rest of his own guys clawing their way toward him as the speed of descent increased every second.

Where the hell was Stubbs?

He grabbed the nearest hand and yanked with all his strength.

They were all seconds away from plunging to the bottom of the ocean—taking with them the knowledge of a watery grave and certain doom.

C
H A P T E R
  2 5

T
he rain had let up. The high white moon sailed on through black strips of cirrus cloud. The ambulance carrying Luis Gonzales-Gonzales to Dade Memorial ER had just left the lot on two wheels with a police escort clearing the way on the crowded causeway. The dead Chinese interpreter was still dead in the filthy toilet. Sprawled on the foul floor of the lavatory where the ME guys worked on him and other officers worked the scene, took statements, the entire enchilada.

Harry, looking at his watch in exasperation, had finally flashed his Langley credentials at the ranking Miami Dade officer, took him aside and explained the situation. The CSI guys immediately deferred any further questioning of either him or Stokely until sometime later tomorrow morning.

Stoke, meanwhile, had stepped outside, gotten on his cell, and called Mrs. Gonzales-Gonzales and told her what had happened to her husband. She dropped her phone, already on her way to Miami Dade ER. She’d wanted to know how bad it was. Stoke told her it was bad. He didn’t say how bad.

Sharkey, as had been prearranged earlier that day, had left his pale blue Contender 34 moored just outside the entrance to Marker 9. The boat was tied at the dock, ready to rumble offshore. She was Sharkey’s pride and joy. She had a tuna tower, state-of-the-art GPS and electronics, bow and stern thrusters, and triple Yamaha 300s. Basically, one kick-ass 900-horsepower sportfishing boat. Harry Brock had helped Sharkey acquire it at a DEA auction in Hialeah two months earlier.

The
Miss Maria,
Shark had called her, after his new wife.

This is a debt I never repay, Señor Brock,
Luis had told him at the time, the day he took proud possession of her.
What you did for me and my wife today, Mr. Brock.

Yeah, well, you’re paid up now,
Harry thought, thinking about Shark’s wife and what she was going through right now. He’d tried to comfort her when he’d called standing behind the ambulance. Told her how brave Sharkey had been. Too brave to know when he was supposed to be afraid. And far too good a man to understand he was incapable of ever doing bad.

Now Brock and Stoke jumped down in the boat. Stoke cranked it while Harry cast off the bow, springs, and stern lines. He shoved them bow out away from the dock and into the channel toward open water. Stoke leaned on the twin throttles. Nine hundred angry horses lifted the bow almost straight up, and
Miss Maria
shot the hole and roared out into Government Cut, headed southwest to Biscayne Bay.

Stoke flicked on the big new LED spotlight Luis had mounted forward on the bow only this morning. He’d also mounted a siren and a “headache” flasher bar atop the windshield. At night, at high speed, the target would take the blue flashers for Coast Guard.

Stoke used the spot to pick out the channel markers ahead, now flashing by to either side in a blur. At this speed, they were coming up fast and he was correcting his course at the last second as each one flared up in his peripheral vision. It was a tricky business, but no one was better at it than the old swift boat vet.
Miss Maria
was doing forty-five knots on a black windless night, but only because they were late.

“Tell me some more about Hi Lo,” Stoke said, eyes dead ahead, concentrating. He didn’t even glance at Harry standing beside him at the helm station.

“Like what, Cap?”

Now Stoke looked at him.

“Like how the hell he had a goddamn weapon, Harry. For God’s sake! Like how you didn’t know about it. Start with that.”

“He didn’t, Stoke. I swear. I patted him down. He was clean.”

“You’re sure.”

“I wouldn’t lie about something like that. Cut me a little slack here. Jesus. Shark’s my friend, too.”

“My partner’s down. Maybe dead. Make that probably. Because of a guy you brought along without even talking to me first, seeing if I was okay with it. I’m not in a slack-cutting mood.”

Harry was silent.

A few minutes later, Brock said, “Aw, shit.”

“Aw, shit, what?” Stoke said.

“I didn’t pat him down.”

“What?”

“I didn’t frisk him. I mean, after the Shell station thing.”

“What?”

“He could have had a prearranged piece stashed there, waiting for him inside that goddamn gas station restroom. Somebody on the outside left it waiting for him in the toilet tank. Or inside the paper towel dispenser. Wherever. The station’s just across the road from the county lockup. Would explain why he bolted across the turnpike like he did. All that crap about being sick.”

“Yeah. That would explain it, all right,” Stoke said.

He leaned on the throttles and
Miss Maria
jumped up a little higher on the plane. Harry watched him a minute. Stoke had that thousand-yard stare. The one he’d picked up in the jungle.

STOKELY JONES LOOKED OUT INTO
the blackness. No boat showed a light.
Jade
was out there to the south somewhere, steaming north to Biscayne Bay. The plan was to board her down south, near the Keys, where they wouldn’t attract much attention. This was a black op, off the radar intercept, and they didn’t need civilians shooting video with their iPhones.

But what he was really thinking about was Sharkey.

“Harry, go below and set up the equipment. Get your gear on. Weapons check. We’re closing fast. We’ll be on top of them in twenty minutes or less at this rate. I have her lit up on radar now.”

There was a small cuddy cabin forward and Harry went below. All the weapons he’d had delivered to Sharkey at the dock that afternoon were laid out just the way he’d ordered. In addition, there was Tactic’s full complement of assault gear: FN SCAR short-barreled assault rifles with FN40 grenade launchers mounted on the lower rails, Sig P226 navy pistols, web belts with smoke and flash-bang grenades, balaclavas to hide their faces, the whole nine yards plus a couple more.

He got his rig on, zipped up his ceramic-tile-plated assault jumpsuit and got Stoke’s equipment ready. He’d relieve Stoke at the helm in ten minutes; then Stoke would come below and get his shit together.

Three miles out from the rendezvous zone, Stoke would throttle back to dead idle and they’d go through the whole thing one more time. Weapons check, timing, signals. They had the element of surprise going, and whoever was on that boat had no idea anyone suspected a damn thing. But Harry’d learned the hard way that if a black op can go south, it will go south in a heartbeat.

It’s already gone south, Harry,
he said to himself and then banished that unhealthy thought from his brain.

“READY?” STOKE SAID TO HARRY.
He was still pissed, but they had a job to do. You didn’t carry emotions into battle.

They could see
Jade
’s running lights approaching them in the blackness. Harry flicked the switch and put the powerful LED spotlight on her. She was big, all right, hundred and forty, hundred and fifty feet maybe.

“Born ready,” Harry shot back.

“Standing up and talking back?”

“Kicking ass and taking names.”

“Awright. Game on.”

Stoke snatched up the VHF radio mike and depressed the send button.

He said: “Vessel located position 38 degrees, 26 north, 129 degrees 131 west, steering course bearing two-eight-zero, speed seven knots, this is United States Coast Guard vessel
Vigorous,
approximately five nautical miles off your port beam, standing by on channel 16, over.”

“We read you loud and clear, Coast Guard. This is
Jade,
over.”

“Roger,
Jade,
this is Coast Guard, request you switch to channel 22, over.”

“Going to 22, over.”

“
Jade,
Coast Guard, standing by on channel 22, over.”

“Go ahead, Coast Guard . . .”

“
Jade,
I am going to send over a boarding team. Maintain your current course and speed, over.”

“Roger that, Coast Guard, maintain course and speed,
Jade
standing by on 22 . . .”

Stoke smiled.

“You think he bought it?”

“Think? Hook, line, and sinker. Let’s go see what they’re hiding aboard that floating pussy palace.”

Brock said, “The
Jade
guy on the radio. Sounds like some old redneck from Podunk to me. Didn’t sound hostile.”

“They never do, Harry. On the radio, anyway.”

“Right. I knew that.”

Stoke just looked at him and shook his head.

In his own small way, Harry Brock was the price America had to pay for freedom.

C
H A P T E R
  2 6

P
ip Trimble trudged along snowbound Sidney Street, his large pointed ears glowing red with the cold. The old fellow was shivering badly, even though the sun was well up now, doing business at its old stand. Pip was astounded. He’d never seen a snowfall like this one, this late in the spring.

Pip was bound for the Porters’ Lodge at Sidney Sussex College. This was no mean feat on a snowy morning like this. The elderly gardener was trying to shield his face from the wind-driven sleet, not-so-artfully dodging the sheets of ice periodically sliding from the rooftops above, sharp ice particles glimmering in the air as they came crashing down.

Sidney, as his beloved college was commonly known, was the place he’d called home for all but ten of his seventy-five years. His kingdom was the college gardens, large and small, public and private . . . and some, even secret. Pip had spent the majority of his allotted hours on this earth inside walled gardens, with all the pleasures and limitations that implies.

Last night’s heavy snowfall had brought the ancient market town to a standstill. In the narrow streets, the white stuff was knee-deep, crusty on top, and bloody hard sledding for a man his age. Pip stuffed the oily paper bag containing bacon sandwiches and crisps inside his mac and slogged forward.

Taking daily breakfast to the boss, the college’s head porter, was perhaps a small tradition in a town so chockablock with them as Cambridge, but render unto Caesar, as they say. Old Bill Woolsey was a hard man but a fair one, and Pip had long ago come to consider Bill a friend rather than a superior.

“Morning, Pip,” the fellow said cheerfully to him as he pushed through the heavy wooden door and into the warmth. Dark warrens of old rooms, the traditional Porters’ Lodge at Cambridge is usually a beehive of noisy students milling about, crowding around freshly posted test scores, plucking their mail from the slots, or parking their bicycles at the door. Not this morning however.