Tiger by the Tail Read online

  “Surfer Dude.”

  “Ass-boy.”

  They might have been BUDS buddies but once a SEAL always a SEAL. Whichever coast.

  Adams kept his eyes on the small freighter the Keldara team was approaching. Every so often, however, he’d move the field glasses just enough to check his boss out of the corner of his eye.

  Mike had gone through hell and back in the last couple of months. Their last mission near home, involving a missing scientist and enough WMDs to wipe out most of Europe, had gotten FUBAR fast. In the end, the Keldara been forced to pull a 300 and eradicate about four thousand Chechens with only a hundred of their own in the shit. The enemy force had been stopped, no doubt. But the price the Keldara had paid was high, both in blood and a lot more.

  The casualties had been high—Sawn, Padrek, Kiril, Father Ferani, and many others—

  —Gretchen—

  That one Adams knew Mike was still coming to terms with, although he was much better than he had been immediately afterward. His love, Gretchen Mahona, had been killed during the fighting, and her loss had put him out of action for weeks. Even the threat of a whole cargo container of VX nerve gas shipped Stateside by Al-Qaeda terrorists hadn’t been enough to rouse him. The Keldara team sent to Florida, led by Adams and their intel chief, Patrick Vanner, had been caught in an ambush meant for Mike. Adams had taken five rounds in the chest and Vanner had been in a coma for a week. That’s when Mike had come back to his old self. And he had come back with a vengeance, dismantling the terrorist operation with a precision and lethalness that was fucking scary, even for the Kildar.

  Afterward, Mike had returned to his normal self, more or less. Adams, however, had resolved to keep a close eye on him for, well, as long as it took for him to be assured that Mike was truly back to his hell-bent for leather ways.

  The master chief wasn’t concerned that Mike wasn’t up to the task of planning or running the op. It had taken a lot of persuasion to convince Mike not to lead the underwater team, and Adams still wasn’t sure the Kildar wasn’t about to gear up and go after the assault force. No, the master chief was more concerned about his boss’s mental state. His concern wasn’t that Mike was crazy—it helped to be a little crazy, especially if you were a SEAL. Not crazy in the get-you-bounced-out-of-the-service-by-failing-a-psych-eval. No, Mike was crazy in the sense of doing whatever it took to complete the mission; like tucking himself into the wheel well of a jet plane and flying across the ocean to Syria, for example. That sort of crazy was the good kind.

  The kind of crazy that, when presented with the opportunity to buy a rural Georgian village and assume the mantle of Kildar, essentially ruling a bunch of farmers descended from the ancient Varangian Guard, made Mike ask, “Where do I sign?” He had immediately set about transforming the pre-Industrial Revolution village, turning it into a modern agrarian farming community that also brewed one hell of a beer. He had also turned the local boys into the hardest-fighting militia the likes of which Europe—or perhaps the world—hadn’t seen since World War II. That sort of crazy was the really good kind.

  No, the mental state Adams was concerned about was that of a commanding officer sending men into battle again. Mike, Adams, Vanner, and the one hundred had certainly vanquished the Chechens, although at a high cost. Hell, Adams hadn’t seen such a new crop of barely bearded Keldara warriors since he’d first signed on. The question in his mind—which he’d had to ponder long and hard before he’d even admit to thinking about it—was had the Kildar finally exorcised those demons that had hounded him ever since Gretchen?

  It was a simple truth: as the Kildar, his responsibility extended to everyone in the valley, all the families, every man, woman, and child. Each one would gladly lay down his life for Mike, Adams, or any of his brethren in a heartbeat. And Mike was the sole person accountable for giving them the orders that would put them in harm’s way. Never mind that to the Keldara, combat was like breathing, or that they were the very best Adams had ever seen. The point was that Mike was the one who was ordering them to go and possibly get their asses shot off. Adams knew he tried to maximize their chances with the best training, intel, and equipment they could get, but sometimes, things went wrong.

  But that won’t happen tonight, he thought, sneaking another peek at Mike. Everything was running shipshape. The team was away, the first objective was about to be taken, all was in order—

  “I suggest that you spend more time observing your team and less time eyeballing me.” The Kildar still hadn’t lowered his binoculars.

  “Affirmative. You could have let them use the torps to get there, you know.”

  “Oh my God—when did my master chief turn into such a pussy? Next you’ll want to carry each one there on your back. This is advanced, live fire training. If the Yosifs prove they can handle this, they might be able to catch a ride next time out.”

  Adams returned to monitoring the freighter. A one-kilometer swim in calm water, even adjusting for the ocean currents, should take the team roughly fourteen minutes in full gear. Adams kept his eyes glued on the freighter that served as the enemy’s perimeter guard, waiting for the signal that they’d arrived.

  * * *

  The concept behind the closed-circuit rebreather system went back almost four hundred years to 1620. That was the year Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel first heated potassium nitrate to release oxygen for the crew of his oar-powered submarine. The heat also turned the potassium nitrate into potassium oxide, which absorbs carbon dioxide. Drebbel had inadvertently created a working rebreather system more than two centuries before a single-person system was invented.

  The first practical rebreather, designed for escaping submarines, was produced around 1900. The Dragër rebreathers were mass-produced and used by Germany in World War II. The U.S. Navy had its own expert in Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen, called “the father of the frogmen,” who ran the first rebreather class for the Office of Strategic Services at the Naval Academy in 1943.

  Although a variety of modern closed-circuit rebreathers (CCR) had been developed since, they all operated on the same basic principle: a gas-tight loop, consisting of sealed components, providing a breathable mix of oxygen and a diluting gas, such as nitrogen, to the diver. The mouthpiece—or in the case of Team Yosif, their full face masks—was connected to tubes conveying inhaled gas to and removing exhaled gas from the diver and into a counterlung, or breathing bag, which held the expelled gas. The loop also contained a scrubber containing sodium hydroxide to remove the exhaled CO2, as well as a valve that allowed the injection of gases, including oxygen and perhaps a diluting gas, from a separate tank into the loop, and another valve that permitted the venting of gas from the loop if necessary.

  Although early models required the diver to keep track of and adjust his own oxygen mix, twenty-first-century models used solid-state sensors to monitor the oxygen-nitrogen mix. It sent this information to a microprocessor that controlled the oxygen-delivery system, ensuring the optimum mix was delivered to the diver with every breath they took.

  The advantages of the closed circuit rebreather system were longer dive time (up to three hours), lighter equipment (since the bulk of the gas was pure oxygen that was mixed with nitrogen as needed, instead of the heavier oxygen-nitrogen mix), less decompression time (since inhaled nitrogen was kept to a minimum) and, most important for Team Yosif, no telltale trails of exhalation bubbles to mark their progress. The main disadvantage of standard rebreathers was that the diver couldn’t go much deeper than forty feet below the surface. Since the oxygen in the tanks was unpressurized, it would be affected in the same way that a human would as they descended. It would compress under the pressure, making it more difficult to draw a breath. Tonight, however, that wasn’t an issue for the infiltration team.

  Vanel, Yosif, Edvin, and the rest of the team reached their objective in eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds. The target vessel was a nondescript small coastal freighter, about 170 feet long and anywhere from forty to sixty y
ears old. Its once-maroon hull was covered with a mix of barnacles and large patches of orange rust that were slowly spreading toward the deck. The railing on the port side was bent in two places, with an entire section missing at the stern. Its exhaust stack was pitted and bent, and thermal scans had revealed that the engine was barely functioning, probably just enough to keep the batteries charged. Its anchor chains were also covered in rust and algae. But since it was the lookout post for the largest group of pirates in the area, it didn’t have to go anywhere.

  The team had trained on a matched vessel for the past two days, until they knew it inside and out. After the boat piloting issues the Keldara had run into in the Florida Keys, they’d also spent some time learning how the engine worked and how to pilot the damn thing—just in case they needed to get it running.

  The team had received up-to-the-minute intel on the boat guards’ slipshod patrols. They knew that, despite facing the direction an enemy would typically approach from, the rear port quarter stood unguarded a minimum of twenty minutes out of every hour. They had reached the boat seven minutes after the most recent guard had flicked his cigarette over the side and ambled back into the crew quarters.

  Yosif’s head popped out of the water, followed by Vanel’s. The two men listened for any noise from above for a few seconds, then Yosif nodded to his teammate. Readying his neoprene-clad grappling hook, Vanel propelled himself half out of the water with his fins. At the height of his lunge, he tossed the small hook up at the railing. It caught the lower horizontal rail with a barely audible clunk and snugged tight. Vanel tugged on it, then put his full weight on it and nodded.

  Receiving the go sign from his team leader, Vanel wrapped the line under his shoulders to secure himself, then removed and secured his rebreather and fins. Switching his mask over to breathe outside air, he began climbing hand-over-hand toward the deck. He was less than a meter away from the railing when he heard a hatch undogging and creaking open. Vanel froze on the line, listening to the approaching footsteps getting louder as someone approached his position.

  * * *

  “Sitrep on Yosif?” Mike asked, still scanning the ocean like the binoculars were surgically attached to his head.

  “The team has begun their insertion—shit, there’s a pirate on the rear quarter. Four’s dangling with his balls in the wind about a meter below the tango. Yosif has the ball.” Adams watched for a few seconds to see how Yosif would call it. Their primary goal was to preserve stealth for as long as possible while taking the ship. So far, so good. “Wouldn’t even know he’d almost gone down on the last op.”

  Yosif had been part of the team that had accompanied the Kildar to recover the VX gas. Unfortunately, he had been exposed to it when one of the boats they’d been chasing had run aground and broken up. Yosif and Sergei had injected themselves with the counteragents, atropine and pralidoxime. The secondary effects of both were bad, but much better than the slow, painful death promised by the nerve agent.

  Yosif had run though the entire gamut, according to their doctor: “hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, and mad as a hatter.” He’d suffered through a fever, flushed skin, photophobia, decreased sweating, dry mouth, dehydration and hallucinations. Although he had gutted it out and finished the mission, he also had been on restricted duty for two weeks. Their medic had cleared him for return just before they had left for the South China Sea. This was his first time back in the field since Florida.

  “I expected nothing less from him,” Mike said. “But confirm Lasko is on top of the situation.”

  “With pleasure.”

  * * *

  Five hundred yards east-northeast of the old trawler, Lasko Ferani sat in the lap of luxury. The two-hundred-foot yacht he was on was almost as stable as being on land. Well, not quite, but certainly close enough for what he was about to do.

  “Firefly to Blue Hand, over.”

  “Blue Hand.”

  “Confirm target.”

  Lasko didn’t move from the reticle of the ATN 4-12X80 Day/Night scope mounted on the Barrett .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle he was using for tonight’s operation. After extensive target shooting, this was the first field use of the switchable scope, and so far, he was impressed. It had a 1000-yard bullet drop compensator (he still figured his sightings on the fly, and so far the scope had matched him ten-for-ten) with interchangeable cams for six calibers—including the .50—a 1000-meter rangefinder, and an illuminated reticle with eleven light settings.

  What Lasko liked best was that he could convert it from daylight shooting to night vision in less than fifteen seconds with a simple swap of the eyepiece. There was no change in eye relief, and he could keep the scope zeroed at all times. It was just about perfect.

  “Target is confirmed.”

  “Hold visual, and do not fire until ordered.”

  “Affirmative.” Steadying his breathing, Lasko settled his reticle on the man leaning on the railing more than a thousand meters away. This wasn’t nearly as difficult as other shots he had made. Certainly nothing like shooting the engines of a cigarette boat traveling at sixty miles per hour from a chase helicopter, just taking one example.

  With each exhalation, calm enveloped him, until there was nothing but the ready shot and his finger ready to squeeze the trigger. The slight movement of the ship he was on, the slight movement of the ship his target was on, the negligible wind, round drop, his breathing, his heartbeat; all were calculated and factored into his bead on the target.

  In the next few seconds, the man would be dead, one way or another.

  * * *

  Vanel clung to the line as a match flared above him. A moment later, he smelled harsh local tobacco burning. A shadow fell over him, and he saw a man leaning against the railing and looking out to sea—right above his head. A droplet of sweat fell off the pirate’s hand onto Vanel’s facemask. If the guy glanced down or noticed the small grapple against the railing, the mission would be blown before it had even started.

  Not if Vanel had anything to say about it. He clicked his tongue in the back of his throat once, querying his superior officer as to what he should do. The answer came back immediately.

  “Hold position. Terminate only if sighted.”

  Great. Nominal for the mission but not his preference. Keeping a firm grip on the line with his left hand, Vanel slowly, very slowly, reached for his suppressed Sig. Undoing the snap in time with a wave slapping the ship’s hull, he drew it just as slowly. He kept his feet planted on the rusting hull, careful not to scrape any flakes of metal off. He raised the pistol, aiming just under the target’s chin. A hit there would ensure that the subsonic bullet would do the most damage, and more importantly, prevent the pirate from crying out.

  Vanel held his shooter’s position, waiting until he heard the order to fire. Five seconds . . . ten seconds . . . fifteen seconds. But until he got the word, he aimed and waited as the unsuspecting man smoked his cigarette above him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Adams gave his side of the ocean one more sweep, then lowered his binoculars. Vanner’s intel team had assured them that there wouldn’t be any Indonesian Navy patrols or commercial traffic in the area tonight. However, eyes in the sky only went so far compared to boots on the ground—or in this case, on deck.

  Since the operation they were about to commence could involve a fair amount of heavy ordnance, Mike had wanted to make damned sure there were no local entanglements. Sure, he could have made a call and gotten his connects in D.C. to help clear the way if it had come to that. It wasn’t like they didn’t owe him a favor or ten. And then there was a cache of records in the basement of the caravanserai that included some interesting stuff on Indonesian politicians. But rather than getting wrapped up in red tape, the Kildar preferred to do it the old-fashioned way. By scanning the horizon and making sure no one was heading toward them.

  Of course, the state-of-the-art radar that had been installed in—and cost more than—the battered trawl
er they were using gave them backup far beyond the horizon. Add the equally powerful unit in the yacht serving as their HQ several hundred meters away, and a UAV overhead and they were covered six ways from Sunday.

  The only problem was, as they all knew from hard experience, it was that seventh god-damned way that always bit you in the ass. Raising the binoculars to his eyes again, Adams checked on the freighter insertion team.

  “How’s he doing?” Mike asked, still scanning the ocean around them.

  “So far, so good. All that guy has to do is look down, and he gets himself a bullet in the brain.”

  “Yeah, or he heads back inside and gets one a few seconds later. Ironic, isn’t it, how close this guy is to buying it, and he doesn’t have a goddamn clue.”

  “Yeah, and us with ringside seats, so to speak.” Adams’ jaw worked. “A bit different running the show from out here, eh?”

  Mike didn’t reply, just nodded.

  Adams was about to scan the starboard side again when his attention was drawn by a commotion on the deck of the old freighter. A pair of pirates dragged a struggling, sobbing man down from the bridge onto the main deck. Adams noticed that Mike’s field glasses had also turned toward the action on the distant ship. The pirate above their man glanced briefly at what was going on, but soon returned to staring out into the night

  “Fellow pirate, or hostage from the last ship they hit?” Mike asked rhetorically.

  “Hard to tell.” Adams watched the kneeling man plead with his captors, obviously begging for his life. “Should the team intervene?”

  There was a second’s silence, and Adams knew Mike was weighing the pros and cons of having his team risk exposing themselves and allowing their targets to possibly raise the alarm versus saving one man. As he opened his mouth to reply, one of the pirates thrust his parang into the prisoner’s chest, impaling him on the short, curved blade. He pushed the still living man off his weapon, dragged him to the edge of the deck, and kicked him into the water.