Amber (2 page)

“Affirmative, Green 2. Contact when the base is in sight, over.”

“Copy that, dude.”

Out of sight from each other, Maddock and Bones began bouldering toward the central rock spire. The going was treacherous and demanded their full attention; turning an ankle or falling and shattering an arm would be an easy thing to do. For the outlying boulder field, neither Maddock nor Bones required the assistance of climbing gear. Both SEALs were experienced mountaineers and had bouldered this type of terrain many times. Still, the added element of active shooters in the environment introduced an additional layer of stress, a factor over which they had little control.

Maddock paused at times to listen above the rush of blood in his ears, but he detected no “enemy.” He reasoned that rather than hunker down silently, waiting and hoping for someone from an opposing team to cross your path, the odds were better at winning if you focused your energy on finding the prize.

While he traversed the uneven terrain he kept his eyes open for the asset. They weren’t told what exactly it was but so far he hadn’t seen anything that wasn’t natural. After sliding down the face of a ten-foot high stone into a dirt ravine surrounded by large rocks that became taller as he neared the center spire, Maddock heard the sound of a rattle. He froze in place, knowing all too well what the noise likely signified. His eyes scanned the dusty desert floor for signs of the rattlesnake. There it was, a couple of feet off the dirt game trail Maddock followed between the boulders, shadowed in rocks.

Maddock nimbly sidestepped the serpentine threat and wound around another boulder until he reached a break in the rocks where the rocky tower jutted skyward not fifty feet in front of him. He whispered into his radio.

“I have visual with Base. Green 2, status?” Maddock tried to stick with approved SEAL field protocol, but Bones had never been a stickler for the rules, though his reply was immediate. “I also have visual with the base, bro. Don’t see anybody up there. They must all be looking for your mom’s house. Over.”

Maddock shook his head while replying. “I don’t see anyone up there either.” Maddock couldn’t blame anyone for looking thoroughly everywhere else before attempting to scale the tower. It was an easy place to get shot down from, as they had already seen, and besides that was a difficult, arduous climb to the summit, with no guarantee the asset would be there. “Let’s meet up on the south side.”

“Last one there’s a rotten egg.”

Maddock slithered amongst the rocky piles toward the south face of the tower. As he neared the target he came to a relatively open space leading up to the vertical wall. He knelt among a clutch of rocks and waited for a minute, observing his surroundings. At first he detected nothing but then the sound of a boot slipping over loose soil reached his ears, off to his right. He swiveled his head and saw a member of Blue Team step over a dried Yucca log. Maddock raised his pistol but kept his finger still on the trigger. When the soldier crept out of sight again, obviously patrolling for the asset and not tipped off to Maddock’s presence, Maddock holstered his weapon. He could eliminate him, but it would be at the expense of giving up his own position. As long as he and Bones remained undetected, they could be well up the rock face before anyone noticed.

“Psssst. Maddock!”

Maddock looked toward the source of Bones’ hissing—to the rock tower—but saw nobody. On closer inspection he caught movement, saw Bones’ big hand waving, seeming to come directly out of the rock itself. Maddock traced the rocky spire from its apex back to the ground, noting the seams where the three massive pieces of the formation came together. Bones had found his way inside the space where they met.

Taking a last look around to ensure he had no eyes on him, Maddock shot across the small amount of open space and into the crevice in which Bones hid. It was an interesting spot. Looking up, they could see a pinpoint of blue sky as the three sections of rock narrowed until they almost but not quite touched. The area on the ground was wider and roughly circular, but with not much more room than was required for the two of them to stand in.

Bones pounded a fist on one of the smooth rock walls. “It’s like a stone teepee.”

Somewhere outside, but not too close, they heard voices, the words indistinct.

Maddock glanced upwards once before raising the radio to his lips. “Green 1 and 2 to 3 and 4, you read?”

“Copy, Green 1. Green 3 is out.” Professor could not hide the disappointment in his voice at losing Willis. “Good news is I took out the guy who got him. Blue Team is completely eliminated. Only three Black tangos remain, over.”

“Copy, Green 4. We have made target base, now we’re moving up in the world, out.”

“Copy that, moving up. I’ll give you cover fire. I just hope that damn thing is up there. No sign of it out here.”

As soon as the radio call ended Maddock and Bones heard the soft padding of footsteps just outside the cave. Very quiet, but moving quickly by the sound of them, sort of a pitter patter on the soft dirt, with an occasional
click.
The two men separated instantly to either side of the cave entrance, guns held in the ready position. Was one of the remaining Black squad about to enter and attempt an ambush?

There was indeed a threat just outside the cave entrance, but it was not at all what they were expecting. In trotted a dog-like animal about the size of a German shepherd. The canine ran into the cave, rocking back on its haunches when it saw the two humans. It bared its teeth and emitted a low growl, but did not advance.

“Coyote. Where there’s one, there are usually more,” Bones warned.

Maddock made a sudden, threatening move toward the animal, swiping at it with his gun. The coyote turned tail and ran, but they knew it didn’t go far. They could hear it pacing not far outside the cave, whining and yelping.

“Thing’s gonna give our position away!” Bones complained.

“We better get on with it.” Maddock looked up toward the top of the rocky spire.

Bones had his pack open, organizing his climbing gear while assessing the joins in the rock, tracing them upward with his eyes. “I guess I’ll take lead.”

He stepped over to the wall and began inserting his fingers into a crack line, testing it. He knew well from experience that rock climbing was both a mental puzzle, determining the most efficient routes and combinations of hand- and footholds, and a physical one, knowing how to orient one’s body to the rock as well as having the arm, finger and leg strength and stamina to move about over long periods of time.

“I’ll take lead,” Maddock said, placing a foot onto a small irregularity in the rock wall.

“Why are you taking lead? I should take lead.”

Maddock looked at his friend. “Why you?”

“I’m the better climber.”

Maddock rolled his eyes. Bones reached into his pocket and produced a coin, an old buffalo nickel that he carried for good luck. “Flip you for it.”

“Fine.”

“I call heads.” Bones flipped the coin up into the air. Before it landed they saw a black splotch of paint appear on the wall of their chamber, not six inches from Bones’ head.

“Heads, I’ll lead.” Bones scrambled up the rock face, leaving his nickel on the dirt. Inside the tower, the going was tougher near the bottom because the walls were slightly concave. Until the three rock walls were closer together as the tower rose, climbing inside here would be tricky. It did afford the advantage, once off the ground, that they couldn’t be fired upon unless someone was inside with them, shooting up.

By the time Bones hammered his first piton into the face, twenty feet up, they heard a man shout, “Crap, I’m hit!”

And then their radios crackled with Professor’s voice. “Took out the trash for you. Should be clean in there now. Two more guys out here somewhere, how’s it going?”

Maddock relayed that they were making their way up the inside of the tower. He clipped a line to his harness that was fastened to the metal spikes and carabineers that Bones was installing as he went higher. He followed Bones’ route up the conical formation. It was a sound assumption that if it worked for Bones it would work for him, until he reached one section where the tall man’s long reach was clearly an advantage when grabbing for the next hold. Maddock jumped, the rock flaying his fingertips as he tried to dig them into a paper-thin nick in the wall.

The face at this point was sharply concave and Bones was barely hanging on as it was. With maybe fifteen more feet until the three rocks were close enough together to be able to wedge one’s body against the opposing walls, Maddock fell from the rock face. The only thing keeping him from landing on his back about forty feet below was the safety rope Bones had hammered into the wall. Even so, Maddock faced a twenty-foot freefall at the end of which his body was jolted hard at the end of the rope before dangling there in midair.

The impact also pulled Bones from the face, although being tethered directly to the piton in the wall, he didn’t have far to fall, but just dangled there, looking down to see how Maddock had fared. The team leader hung upside down, slowly spinning, his head about four feet out from the wall. Bones was about to admit defeat--there was no way he’d be able to haul Maddock all the way back up and then resume the arduous climb—when Maddock called up to him.

“Bones...I found it!”

“Found what? A way to fly? Because that would be great right about now.”

“No, I mean I found
it
. The asset.”

Bones looked down and saw Maddock reaching both arms out toward a crevice in the wall from his upside down position. Bones began rappelling down the face, using his legs to bounce off the wall when needed. In a few seconds he was hanging in midair next to Maddock, face to upside down face like a couple of bats.

Maddock now cradled a white plastic box with the black letters, ASSET, stenciled on one side. A red button was visible on top of the box inside a transparent plastic door.

“What are you waiting for Batman, press it!”

“You can do the honors.”

Bones flipped up the lid and depressed the button.

Within a few seconds their radios sounded with the commander’s voice.

“SEALs, this exercise has been won! Blue Team, Black Team, report back to me. Green Team: there is a transport helicopter waiting for you a click to the south. You are to report there without delay.”

Airborne aboard chopper

“Gentlemen, I’m told
you were able to leverage a disadvantage into an advantage today. Nicely done.”

To Maddock, Bones, Professor and Willis, the words themselves were surprising enough without considering who they came from. But the fact that those words were uttered by none other than a high-ranking Admiral, one of the Navy’s top brass, made them all the more impactful.

“Thanks, Admiral Liptow!” Bones’ reply elicited eye rolls from his three fellow SEALs, but Admiral Jason Liptow smiled good-naturedly. His uniform cap hid the male pattern baldness they knew was there from the pictures they’d seen of him in the media throughout the years, but his eyes burned brightly as he stared at the four SEALs in turn.

“Don’t thank me yet, Bonebrake. You and your esteemed colleagues, here, are about to embark on one heck of a mission. But it won’t be stateside.” He waved toward the helicopter’s window, where below them the desert floor rushed past in a moving pastiche of dull browns and occasional reds.

The bird in which they flew, a modified CH-46 Sea Knight, had been retrofitted with a small but serviceable conference area in the forward portion of the cargo hold. Seated at a table, the admiral was flanked by two naval officers who went without introductions, while the SEAL foursome sat across from them.

The admiral turned something small over in his hands as he spoke to the team.

“We are now en route to Naval Air Station North Island.”

“San Diego. Hell, yes! I’ll trade rattlesnakes and cactus for the three B’s any day!” When no one asked him to elaborate, he added, “Beaches, bikinis, and babes. Wait, I think booty’s supposed to be in there somewhere.”

The admiral shook his head. “Sorry, Bonebrake. You won’t have time to leave the base, because as soon as we land a transport jet will be waiting to take the four of you to Russia.” He paused for emphasis, to let this sink in.

Professor shrugged and looked at Bones. “Vodka and ski bunnies?” But it was Maddock at whom Bones glanced. “We’re on pretty good terms with the Russians, right, Dane?” Maddock’s sea gray eyes took on a sparkle as he recalled an incident with a sunken space capsule and a Russian submarine.

The admiral ignored them by continuing. “The four of you have been selected for a special operations mission to recover an asset deemed to be of high-level importance to the United States government. We only have a few minutes until we arrive at North Island, so I need for me to do most of the talking and you to do the listening. Is that clear enough?”

All four SEALs nodded and then the admiral tossed the object he’d been holding onto the tabletop, where it clattered and came to rest. It was an oblong gemstone with a not-quite-golden color that was non-metallic and translucent.

“Any of you know what this is?”

Maddock reached out first and picked it up, but it was Professor who spoke. “Amber. I’m not a geologist, but I don’t think it’s really an actual rock. It’s formed from some kind of tree resin. Bugs and other crap get stuck in it and then fossilized.”

The admiral grinned and nodded. “That’s close enough, Chapman. Pass it around, feel it, look at it. I just want you to get a sense of what we’re looking for beyond what you’ll read about in the briefing materials.”

Maddock ran his thumb over the cabochon, a non-faceted jewel cut with one flat side and a smooth, domed side. “It’s light,” he said, before passing it to Bones, who held it up to his eye and tried to see through it. He turned in Maddock’s direction.

“You look better through this thing, dude. Like some weird blurry skeleton man.”

Willis snatched the organic gemstone from Bones’ hand. “Gimme that, man. You’ve gotten us into enough trouble for one day, seriously.” Bones shrugged and looked out the plane’s window while Willis examined the gem.

The admiral continued. “Long story short. In the early 1700s a famous work of art known as the Amber Room was created in Prussia. Basically four walls and a ceiling completely covered with high-grade Baltic amber, about six tons’ worth all told, but it could be crated up and moved around when needed. Later it ended up in Russia under the care of Peter the Great, and in Russia it remained all the way until World War Two, when in 1941 it was stolen by the invading German army. It was last seen in 1945, thought by many to have been destroyed in the Soviet invasion of what is now known as Kaliningrad.”

The officers flanking the admiral passed an identical folder to each SEAL while Liptow went on.

“You’ll have plenty of time to read up on the detailed background during your transcontinental flight over to Russia. For now, just understand that your official, Top Secret level mission is to locate and retrieve the Amber Room, or as many pieces of it as you can, and then turn it over to me.”

All four SEALs had looks that betrayed the question they were dying to ask.
Why does the U.S. government want the Amber Room?
But all of them, even Bones, knew that to question orders from such a high level of command was tantamount to insubordination. They were SEALS, tools of force. They did what they were told, no more, no less. The admiral pointed to one of the briefing folders.

“You will have additional support in the region. The Navy has ships and aircraft in the area for the annual BALTOPS--Baltic Operations—exercise, and you will be boarding the cruiser
Gettysburg
for use as a marine platform from which to investigate a wartime shipwreck. The details are in your briefing materials. One word of caution: latest intel has it that the Russian government is also actively searching for the lost Amber Room at this time.”

Then the pilot’s voice came over a speaker, informing them that they were about to land in San Diego.

The commander had one last thing to say. “Call in to report your status after you dive the wreck. The intel situation up high is fluid, and we’ll need to approve your go-ahead on each objective outlined in your briefing materials. Questions?” The admiral gave each of his SEALs a hard stare that somehow suggested they had better not have any questions.

At length, Bones raised his hand. When the admiral nodded Bones picked up the piece of amber which had once again found its way back to the table.

“I lost my good luck charm on the exercise. Can I have this?”