Strike Force Bravo (9 page)

Fuggu Island.

It was but a grain of sand when viewed from space. It was shaped roughly like a fist, one with an extended middle finger sticking out of it. The natural formation perfectly fit its obscene-sounding name. Of the three islands inhabiting the Bangtang Channel, Fuggu was the smallest. It was the first destination of the hastily assembled American team.

The trip of eleven hundred miles aboard the Kai had been fairly uneventful. There were a lot of different airplanes flying around this part of the world; many were old, prop-driven, and carrying a pair of sea floats underneath. A big Japanese-made flying boat was not so out of place.

But for security reasons, the fewer eyes that saw them, the better. So Ryder and Gallant had made the dash across the South China Sea at wave-top level. This involved a bit of work. Planes liked flying high, especially big ones, because there is less resistance where the air is thinner. Flying the giant Kai below 50 feet was dangerous. One slip and that 50 feet would be gone in a snap and they'd go in nose-first. Few people survived a crash at sea like that, even if the plane was a flying boat.

The Kai had a terrific communications set in its cockpit. Because its primary mission was long maritime patrols, flown over vast areas of water, for long periods of time, a powerful and reliable radio suite was essential. Fox had put the plane's radio receiver to its “monitor-all” setting shortly after leaving Vietnam. They'd heard a cacophony of radio squawk the whole trip, very little of it in English. Most was commercial air traffic, small island airlines flying around 10,000 feet, the bigger carriers sailing up near 35,000. They heard a few stray U.S. military conversations, too, but these went to white noise a second or so after being picked up.

They'd also been monitoring the weather channels closely. A massive bank of clouds to the north had been trailing them for most of the journey. Building up over the course of the afternoon, those clouds were heading in roughly the same direction as the Kai. So far Ryder and Gallant had managed to outrun the atmospheric disturbance. Even way down low, the Kai could fly at 250 knots. But the weather in this region was famous for its unpredictability. Some of South Asia's largest typhoons were born here.

And it was very hard to outrun a typhoon.

 

It was late afternoon when they spotted the Bangtang Channel. The lights were already on throughout Luzon to the south. The streetlights of Manila were coloring the horizon in an odd pinkish glow.

No light was coming from their destination, though. The Bangtang Channel ran deep red in the rays of the departing sun. The swift waters were giving off a glow that was strangely phosphorescent. Lots of coral lying beneath, no doubt. But Fuggu itself was absolutely dark.

That this was would be their first landfall was not due to anything any search planes had found. In fact, there were no U.S. search planes looking for the missing spy bomber. The number of people in the world who even knew of the B-2F's existence could fit inside a small room. Fewer than one-third of them knew it had gone down. To mount a huge air-sea search effort would have set off alarms that the deep operations command at the Pentagon did not want set off, for many reasons. That's why this thing had to be done quickly.

 

They were about ten miles out from Fuggu when the weather suddenly changed. The dark clouds to their north began blowing south. Black and churning mightily, they'd been whipped up by heat from the Chinese mainland and the energy of moving over the open water. At that moment reaching critical mass, the bank of clouds turned into a huge storm right before their eyes. High winds began to swirl; rain, torrential in sheets, exploded from its inner regions. A waterspout began forming below. And this hellish mix was now heading right for the Kai.

Ryder and Gallant stayed cool. They'd seen worse. They started climbing, quickly, to 2,500 feet. Using hand gestures, they indicated to Fox what was happening. Fox went pale; he couldn't believe a storm could build that fast. Martinez, too, stood briefly at his seat, just long enough to see the gigantic plume of clouds coming at them.

“Damn, we don't need this!” someone cried. No sooner were the words out than the Kai was hit by the concussion wave traveling before the storm. The big plane was pushed violently to the left and then to the right. The nose suddenly dropped. Ryder and Gallant fought to get it level again. They succeeded, but then the nose started to wildly go up. They fought mightily to bring it back down.

The rain came next. Very quick, very heavy. Soon they could not see out the cockpit's windshield. Ryder and Gallant remained calm; they worked together to keep the airplane straight. The people in back weren't so cool. The sudden departure from level flight knocked many to the floor of the cabin. Now that the plane was bouncing all over the sky, both Delta guys and SEALs were being tossed about like rag dolls. Their equipment was flying around, too, unguided missiles ricocheting off the unpadded walls. Only the SDS guards were able to stay in their seats; in fact, their hair was barely mussed. They'd thought to tie their gear down before takeoff and had their seat belts fastened throughout the flight.

The plane's nose dropped again. Suddenly they were heading straight for the drink. Yelps from the back, cursing from Fox. A voice-activated warning signal began addressing them in Japanese. Slowly, though, Ryder and Gallant pulled the plane back level again. They stayed this way…for about three seconds. Then they were hit with a massive blow of turbulence on their port side. The plane almost went completely over; only because Ryder quickly applied more power did they gain control of it again. The center of the birthing storm was just a mile away and they were being sucked right into it. Ryder and Gallant immediately put the plane halfway up on its left wing. They had to try to skim the edge of the gigantic front. The people in back didn't appreciate it, as they continued being pummeled. But the two pilots had saved their lives at least twice already.

They collided with the worst part of the storm a moment later; it was all the pilots could do to keep the wings tipped up. The smell of burnt plastic flooded into the cockpit. All those microprocessors were overheating as the two pilots struggled to keep the big flying boat in the air. It was black as night all around them now. The wind was screaming and the rain so heavy, it was like they were flying through a car wash. Everyone finally got tied down in back, but the sheer horror of being thrown all over the sky in such a huge airplane was something even the battle-hardened spy teams had trouble containing.

But then, suddenly, they broke through. One moment it felt like the plane would finally come apart at the seams; the next, they were looking down on the strangely colored water of the Bangtang Channel.

Directly below, enshrouded in rain and fog, was Fuggu Island.

 

It took them five minutes to turn the big plane back to the west, the direction they had to land in.

They slowly brought the Kai back down to the wave tops again, this time at full flaps and with the engines backing off on the power.

There was a tiny inlet right in the knuckle of the island's crook finger. This was where Fox wanted them to go. The waters around the island had been churned up by the locomotive that had just swept through. Instead of landing atop of glasslike surface, as would normally have been the case, they were about to set down in eight-to-ten-foot waves.

Ryder and Gallant didn't care. They hit the water hard and fast. The huge flying boat went straight up into the air, only to be slammed back down again and again. This seemed like it would go on for an eternity, but gradually the flying boat settled down. They made the outer reaches of the inlet, and here the water did indeed turn to glass. Suddenly they were riding smooth. There was practically a prayer meeting going on in the back, so many people were whispering thanks to the Lord. The Nipponese engineering had come through. The Kai looked ugly, but it was tough as well.

The flying boat slowed, and a calm came over the airplane. It had been one of the roughest 10 minutes Ryder had ever been through—and he tested experimental planes for a living. He looked over his shoulder to see many ashen faces staring back at him. Half the Delta guys looked like they wanted to hug him for getting them down safely; the other half wanted to kill him for putting them through such an ordeal. At the far end of the cabin, the SEALs were still in their duck and cover positions. Only the SDS guys still looked composed.

Fox, too, was just recovering his equilibrium. He came up on Ryder's shoulder as the pilot shut down the plane's outer engines.

“Please tell me we are where we are supposed to be….” He was holding a GPS readout of Fuggu Island.

“Close enough,” Gallant said.

All Ryder could see was jungle, and it was getting closer. He checked his depth gauge. They were quickly being drawn into shallow water. He searched the control panel, looking for the land-gear set-down switch. He was sure it was here someplace. The Kai was a true amphibian; it had the ability to come out of the water and roll onto land. But they would have to put the wheels down quick for that to happen.

Gallant joined the search for the magic button even as the big plane drifted dangerously close to shore. Finally they found a control just below the throttles. Gallant gave it a push. The plane shuddered as a set of tricycle wheels came out from the bottom. Wielding more control now, Ryder eased the big plane toward the shore. Small waves helped carry them in even closer. Finally came a huge
thump!
The Kai's wheels had met the sand. Ryder gave the throttles another goose and the plane crawled up out of the sea and onto the land.

“Thank you, Mr. Darwin,” Gallant deadpanned.

There was a grove of overgrown rubber trees just twenty feet off the beach. Ryder headed straight for it. The hanging branches parted ways and allowed them to hide the Kai beneath. Ryder and Gallant quickly shut down everything; they even killed all power from the generators. Then came the silence. They all just sat there, for more than a minute, catching their breath, collecting their thoughts. Becoming one with their stomachs again.

Then Fox bellowed, “Time to rock! We've only got a few hours to do what we have to do—so let's get to it….”

He gathered the team around him in the hold of the plane for one last briefing before they set out. Standing on an ammunition box, he looked like a college football coach addressing his players minutes before the big game. The Pentagon had precious few clues as to where the secret bomber may have gone down, he told them. No one was even sure it went down in the Bangtang Channel. However, he did have an image from an NSA Keyhole satellite, an orbital package that was designed to look for nuclear explosions, as in nuclear testing, or nuclear missile launchings. The satellite's imagers were light-sensitive. One of them picked up a speck of light in this area just about the time the B-2 went missing. That speck of light occurred just a mile east of here. Maybe it was the B-2, maybe it wasn't, Fox said. But if it was, the telemetry indicated something might be sitting right about the center of Fuggu's middle knuckle. Even though subsequent satellite images had shown nothing, this was where they would look first.

Fox asked if there were any questions. Barney, the chief SEAL, raised his hand.

“Any chance this bomber was carrying a nuclear weapon?” he asked.

The usually unflappable Fox hesitated a moment. Did spy bombers carry nukes? It was a good question but it was never addressed before Fox's hasty departure for the Pacific. The DSA officer really didn't know and said as much to those assembled.

From that moment on, though, most of the team members were convinced they were out here looking for a nuke.

 

They climbed out of the flying boat and onto the tiny beach. It was past dusk and the last light was fading fast. They contemplated the jungle before them.

It was heavily overgrown and looked antediluvian, prehistoric even. The trees seemed much taller than what would be expected in a tropical jungle, much thicker and darker, too. Running throughout them were vines upon vines, covered in green moss, a massive spiderweb that looked like thousands of years in the making.

“Jesuzz Christmas,” Fox said, startled by the forbidding jungle up close. “Haven't I seen this in a movie before?”

The sun had disappeared for good by now, just as they were standing there. Not two seconds after the last ray faded into darkness, a symphony of strange and disturbing noises erupted from the thick Asian forest. Hoots, cries, caws. Roars.
Screams….
Not all of them were coming from birds.

“Yeah, I saw that movie, too,” Ryder finally replied. “This place looks like Kong Island. All we need now is the big monkey.”

Two of the SDS guys would stay with the Kai; they were equipped with a .50-caliber machine gun and a cell phone. This was such a remote location, it seemed impossible for another human to be anywhere close by. But no one on the team was naive enough to believe that.

“I think I might even smell him,” Gallant said to Ryder as they checked their weapons. He was talking not about King Kong but Kazeel, the man they'd been enticed out here to capture—and kill. According to Fox, the terrorist mastermind was in the Philippines and might have even been spotted in this area just a couple days ago. Though the thickly jungled island seemed a long way from the sands of the Middle East, Ryder replied: “If he's out here, we'll find him.”

Like the Delta guys, Ryder and Gallant were carrying M16/15s, the special ops version of the famous M16 combat rifle. This model had a shortened stock, an oversized bullet clip, and extra gear that allowed its user to fire grenades, flares, and even shotgun shells. Most had laser-aiming devices on their muzzles; a thin line of red light would tell the bullets where to go. The Delta guys were all wearing night-vision goggles as well. The SEALs were carrying their standard assortment of weapons, waterproof M16s mostly, with a couple shotguns as backups. The SDS guys were all sporting Uzis, including Fox. Only Martinez was unarmed.