Strike Force Bravo (27 page)

And the third crate was there, too, sitting in the oily sand about twenty feet from the water's edge. Just as they had been told, it had been dumped here on the beach closest to the airport, or, more accurately, thrown off the back of a truck without ever stopping. An obstacle course of refuse and filth stood between the crate and the dunes. The beach was a disposal ground for several shantytowns nearby, a kind of combination junkyard and garbage dump. If the smugglers wanted to put the crate someplace where it would never be found, they'd dumped it in the right spot.

Martinez and the B-2 pilot John “Atlas” were with him. Ryder knew this was a bit of a fool's errand, coming here to look for the insignificant third box. But he felt it was necessary for reasons other than the mission. Martinez's mental condition had deteriorated badly over the past week or so. Sure, he'd popped Aboos with the rest of them during their island-hopping campaign to Manila. But at the same time he'd become more remote than ever, at times almost catatonic. Ryder had to get him home, back to the United States to his family and proper psychological care, before he slipped any further into the abyss. So this was his solution: take Martinez here, giving him a sense that he was helping out but at the same time keeping him out of the line of fire.

It was the same for Atlas. He, too, had fought aggressively against the Aboos, but the ordeal of his plane crash and the horrific imprisonment that followed had also taken its toll. Plus, he was a pilot, not a special-ops guy, and it was just a matter of time before he got hurt or even killed. So Ryder had suggested he come with him, too. They'd been up here for about ten minutes. All they had to do now was sit and wait for the others to call.

Ryder shifted over Atlas and slid up next to Martinez. No surprise the Army officer had been silent since arriving here.

“What do you think, Colonel?” Ryder asked him. “All quiet on the Western Front?”

Martinez just looked out on the beach. Though there was a lot of hustle and bustle happening nearby, the beach itself was very much away from it all, isolated on the edge of the sprawling dirty, grungy metropolis of Manila. Martinez said nothing.

“Don't worry, Marty,” Ryder told him. “We'll be going home soon. We've done everything these people expected us to do and more. No matter how this ends, we fulfilled our promise, so they have to fulfill theirs. I think we could all use a few burgers and some good hooch, don't you?”

Finally Martinez smiled, probably for the the first time since the events at Hormuz. Maybe burgers and beer was all that the shell-shocked Delta officer needed, Ryder thought. He patted Martinez on the shoulder. “And when we get back,” he said, “I'll even let you buy the first round.”

Martinez began to reply…but the words wouldn't come out. And he wasn't smiling anymore. Suddenly he was pointing frantically down to the beach.

“What is it?” Atlas asked, right next to him.

Ryder slipped on his night-vision goggles again. He saw first one, then two, then three human images on the scope. They seemed to have marched right out of the water. Ryder relayed all this to the other two.

“Could be pearl divers,” Atlas said. “That's a big business around here.”

Ryder tried to focus in on the figures, but the glare of the city lights nearby made them look ghostly and indefinable on the night scope. At least one of them was carrying a combat rifle, though.

“Diving for pearls—or shooting clams?” he murmured.

At that moment, their cell phone rang. Ryder answered it. It was Ozzi.

“Did the guys on
Ocean Voyager
call you?” the DSA officer asked him urgently.

“Not yet,” was Ryder's reply.

“Well, they called us,” Ozzi told him excitedly, “and they came up negative with the cargo ship.”

Ryder had to take a moment to let this sink in. Just as they had suspected, a mysterious plane had left Manila Airport shortly before the Kai team burst into the warehouse. An equally mysterious freighter had left Manila Bay earlier in the same time frame. The split American teams had taken off in hot pursuit.

“You mean they got the Buddhas?” Ryder finally asked Ozzi.

“No,” Ozzi replied hastily. “
We
got the Buddhas; that's all the airplane was carrying. The crate aboard the cargo ship was empty….”

Ryder looked over at Martinez and Atlas. They could hear Ozzi's voice because he was yelling so loudly into the phone. Atlas started to say: “But if the Kai got the Buddhas, and the cargo ship's crate was empty…”

Then he stopped. They all looked back at the crate on the dirty beach. The decoy that really wasn't a decoy at all….

“Sh-i-i-i-t!”
Ryder cried, dropping the phone. He yanked his weapon off his back and went over the top, rolling down the mountain of sand. Atlas and Martinez were right behind him. All three were slipping and sliding down, so out of control at one point both Martinez and Atlas overtook Ryder in the confused race to the bottom.

Just as the three landed at the foot of the dune, they saw a flare go up about fifteen hundred feet offshore. It was followed by a great
boom!
An object came flying out of the night from the same direction where the flare was launched. It was a grappling hook; they could see the reflection off its prongs as it landed with a thud on the beach. It was attached to a rope that disappeared into the dark water. No sooner had it come down than the three ghostly figures retrieved it and hooked it onto the crate.

The Americans got to their feet and began running. Helmets flying, ammo belts falling off, they were like three soldiers who'd overslept and missed the start of the battle. They'd been fooled again, the smugglers' shell game sucking them right in. And now, if they let this crate escape, the Stinger missiles would be on their way to the United States, with no way to stop them.

The crate started to move. It was on a skid made of eight pontoons, which had lain hidden under the wet sand. The crate was being pulled right into the water, the three men who'd done the attaching casually riding on top of it. It started to sink at first but then bobbed back up and leveled off. By the time the Americans reached the spot where the crate had stood, it was already disappearing into the darkness.

Ryder came to a slippery halt, pulled his weapon up, pulled his night goggles down, and started firing. His tracers lit up the night. The three men riding atop the crate had to hastily dive into the water, his bullets came so near. For the first time they realized someone had seen what they had done. They were soon swimming madly alongside the big floating box.

Meanwhile Atlas and Martinez had plunged right into the water, firing as they went, and kept on going. Ryder followed, still shooting his weapon. He did not stop firing until he was up to his neck in the water and holding the rifle over his head.

But God damn! it wasn't enough. The crate was at least a couple hundred feet away by now and was being pulled away very quickly. And he couldn't swim and shoot at the same time.

Ryder finally stopped and looked around. Atlas was beside him. But where was Martinez?

Then came a throaty roar from behind. Ryder and Atlas turned to see a motorboat heading for them at high speed. Was it here to run them over and drown them? No—Martinez was at the wheel!

He stopped in a great whoosh of dirty water, and Ryder and Atlas quickly climbed aboard. Where did Martinez find the boat? How was he able to start it up and get it going so quickly? There was no time to ask and at the moment it didn't matter. In seconds they were in hot pursuit of the disappearing crate.

Now it was water flying, tracers disappearing into the night. Ryder was shooting wildly, but what was he shooting at? He didn't know. He was confused. Things were happening fast, yet they were unfolding like a dream.

Martinez was driving the boat like a madman. Atlas was firing his M16 wildly as well. Ryder flipped his night-vision goggles down again. He was surprised they still worked after being soaked. The boat was a dilapidated 12-footer, its engine sputtering and laying down an unintentional smoke screen behind them. They roared out of the inlet and were nearly blinded by the lights of Manila now. The brightness above just made for more darkness below, turning the water especially black. Now they couldn't see anything more than 20 feet in front of them. Atlas was still propped up against the windshield, though, firing round after round into the murk. Occasionally they caught a brief glimpse of the crate and the pontoon raft bouncing in the waves. It didn't seem to be moving any faster than they were. How could it stay ahead of them for so long? It didn't make sense.

Martinez gunned the motorboat's engine, but instead of responding it began coughing badly. Ryder looked back at it. Not only was it smoking heavily, but licks of flames were shooting from under the outboard cover. No doubt it was going to crap out in a matter of seconds. Doomed again….

That's when he heard Atlas shout:
“There they are!”

Ryder was back at the windshield in a flash, M16 up, night scope leveled. Atlas was really cranked—cranked
and
angry. He had a right to be a little nuts, though. To his mind, anyone who came within the sights of his rifle at that moment was just as bad as the person who had pushed the button that launched the SAM that killed the guys in the tanker and shot him down that night. He took it all very personally.

“See them!”
he was yelling in Ryder's ear. And suddenly Ryder saw what Atlas saw.

In the green glow of night vision about a half-mile ahead was what at first looked to be nothing more than a diving platform, something that might be found floating in the old swimming hole back home, just a lot bigger. There were six more scuba divers standing on top of it. They had an electric winch, and with it were reeling in the crate and its pontoon float. Ryder had seen one of these things before. It was an SLP-I, for surface loading platform, inflatable. It was a kind of temporary docking place used by waterborne special ops soldiers to tie up small raiding boats, store fuel, set up communications. SLPs had been used a lot in the Persian Gulf over the years, especially during the secret war against Iran.

The crate was quickly up on this platform and indeed frogmen were unloading the Stingers within. Other people on the inflatable platform were in the process of stacking the weapons. The speedboat was only about 1,200 feet away by this time, but then the engine really started chugging. At the worst possible moment, they began slowing down.

“Son of a bitch!” Ryder and Atlas screamed in unison.

The engine died completely a few seconds later. They were still 1,000 feet away from the floating platform and their forward momentum carried them another 100 feet or so. But then they stopped for good. Atlas went nuts. He pushed a new clip into his M16, sighted through the night scope, and let loose another volley. Meanwhile Ryder and Martinez were looking at the engine to see if anything could be done.

Suddenly Atlas cried out: “Jesus Christmas! I got one of the bastards.”

Ryder leaped back up to the front of the motorboat. He didn't need his night scope to see that indeed, Atlas had shot one of the men on the platform and he had fallen into the water. He was struggling even as he was caught in a current pushing him away from the float and toward the motorboat. He appeared to be gravely wounded. Atlas was not satisfied, though. He kept firing at the man, sending ripples of bullets all around him. Soon enough the man stopped struggling. Then he stopped moving altogether.

Atlas was quickly hanging over the side; Ryder was right beside him. Together they reached down and grabbed the body. They had pulled him halfway into the boat…when suddenly Atlas let out a chilling scream.

“This is fucking impossible!” he cried.

He looked at Ryder as if he'd seen a ghost, which in a way he had. The body was that of Atlas's former flight partner, the guy they called Teddy Ballgame.

At that moment, before Atlas could utter one more word of exclamation, Ryder felt the motor boat suddenly rising below his feet. One moment they were on the surface of the water; the next they were 15 feet above it. Then 20, then 25.

What was happening? All of them grabbed for something to hold on to, startled for their lives. Somehow Ryder was able to look down and see a large black mass had surfaced right below them. It had come up so sharply, it was carrying them up with it.

The first thought through his head—crazy, as he knew it could be his last—was:
Is this a fucking whale?

The motorboat was shattered by the impact from below. Ryder, Atlas, and Martinez were thrown into the air; it was like they were weightless. The boat's motor blew apart, sending burning gasoline everywhere. In his last conscious memory, as he was falling into the water surrounded by flaming debris, Ryder saw that this was not some great black whale sent by the devil to kill them.

It was a submarine.

A big one.

 

The Kai found them the next morning, floating 20 miles out in the South China Sea.

Ryder, Martinez, and Atlas were all clinging to the coffin-shaped packing crate, barely alive. Their encounter with the huge submarine had nearly killed them. The discarded crate was the only piece of debris large enough to save their lives; it had floated right up to them in the hell that followed the sub's sudden appearance. As they drifted away, half-drowned, they saw the weapons being loaded into the sub by men in dark naval uniforms. Once done, the divers on the floating platform climbed onto the sub themselves. Then it disappeared, vanishing beneath the waves.

Ryder remembered little after that. He'd been hit on the head by something after crashing back down into the water. He barely recalled Martinez pulling him up to the top of the crate. But then sometime during the long night he'd pulled Martinez back up after
he'd
fallen over.