Trident's First Gleaming: A Special Operations Group Thriller (9 page)

_______

A
quiet rustle startled him, and he realized he’d fallen asleep—and that someone had boarded the yacht. He opened his eyes, but the cabin was dark. He snapped to his feet, and the light came on. Chris’s arm twitched to just short of drawing his pistol. It was Victor, carrying a grey travel duffel bag in his left hand, and his reaction was similar to Chris’s. As they both recognized each other, they didn’t draw, but their hands remained near their pistols.

“What are you doing here?” Victor asked.

“Where are Hannah and Jim Bob?” Chris asked. “And the Switchblade Whisper?”

Victor stood silent, and his face was expressionless. His fingers wiggled slowly and deliberately, as if stretching before drawing and shooting his firearm.

Chris waited, staring at him. He, too, stretched his fingers. Moments later, footsteps sounded on the upper deck. The footsteps descended the stairs.

“Chris, you made it!” Jim Bob exclaimed. “I was so worried about you!”

“Well, I’m a little confused right now,” Chris said slowly. “Maybe you can help.”

“Confused?” Jim Bob said in his fatherly tone. “Are you injured?”

“Where’s Hannah?”

“I thought she was with you.” Jim Bob’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

Chris took a breath. “That’s not the response I was hoping for.”

“What response were you hoping for?” Jim Bob replied with concern in his voice that contrasted the emptiness of his words.

“The truth.”

Jim Bob appeared confused. “The truth?”

“Why don’t we start with the exploding SUV?”

Jim Bob gestured with open palms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Somebody planted explosives in the SUV, rigged to go off when the driver’s door was opened.” Chris’s jaw clenched. “That was meant for Hannah and me.”

“Oh, my,” Jim Bob said. “Who would do such a thing?”

“I thought it was Victor, but seeing you here is making me rethink things.” Chris tried to place the pieces of the puzzle together. “Victor could’ve taken me out when I finished planting the explosives. With his skill as a gunfighter, he’d be the logical choice—make sure the job was done right. Why didn’t he?”

Jim Bob shook his head.

Chris tried to put himself in Victor’s shoes. “I can only guess that maybe Victor isn’t the greatest fan of fratricide. I don’t doubt that he could’ve killed that guard in the office at the Latakia Marina. But who killed Wolf?” Chris pointed to the bloodstain on the wall.

Victor looked at it, and the edges of his mouth sagged. But Jim Bob didn’t look at it.

Chris’s voice became louder. “You can’t look at it, can you, Jim Bob?”

“Look at what?” Jim Bob gave a cursory glance at the bloodstain on the wall before returning his gaze to Chris. “I looked. You see? I looked.”

“Cut the good-ole-boy crap, and tell me where Hannah is!”

Jim Bob stopped speaking.

“Hannah isn’t with either of you, so that means she isn’t
with
either of you,” Chris said. “But you and Victor sold the Switchblade Whisper to the Chinese, didn’t you?”

Jim Bob sighed and shook his head. “What you’re saying is madness.”

“I’m sorry Hezbollah kidnapped and tortured you. I’m sorry the Agency didn’t rescue you. I would’ve been happy to risk my life to free you. Both of you,” Chris said.

“That’s just the way things happen,” Jim Bob said, his lips becoming taut.

“But God knows that doesn’t excuse you for putting Hannah in danger. And I know.”

“I’m not responsible for Hannah. I didn’t want her on this mission. Somebody upstairs wanted her.” Jim Bob fidgeted. “I don’t know if it was some equal opportunity horseshit or if somebody wanted her out of their corral for a season—maybe somebody didn’t trust me and wanted her to play mommy to us. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t get the green light for this mission without bringing her.”

“You tried to blow us up and left me on that mountain for dead!”

Jim Bob shook his head and motioned for Chris to cool down. “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that she wanted you on this mission, and when I objected, she threatened to walk out.”

“Where is she?”

Jim Bob sighed. “I’d guess that she’s looking for you, but since she obviously hasn’t found you, I’d say she’s looking for the Switchblade Whisper.”

“And where is that?”

Jim Bob’s mouth twisted. “Victor, the stench is getting worse. It’s past time to take out the garbage.”

Chris shifted his gaze to Victor, who slowly put his duffel bag on the deck but otherwise kept still.

Jim Bob looked at Victor. “You didn’t want to do it before. But now do you see where that road has taken us?” Jim Bob said.

“Why don’t you kill me yourself, Jim Bob?” Chris asked.

“Jim Bob is a hero,” Victor said. “You’ve disrespected him enough.”

“He disrespected himself.”

Victor took a deep breath. “You know, Ron Hickok taught me personally.”

“Ron taught a lot of people. If I perish, I perish.”

Victor remained cold. “You don’t seem too concerned. But you should be.”

“Since I became a pastor, I’ve become closer to God than ever before in my life. I can’t think of a better time to die,” Chris said. “You, on the other hand, would be better off not drawing that pistol.”

Victor grinned. “Why’s that?”

“If you draw, I’ll be forced to draw, too, and I’ll do all I can to kill you. On the other hand, if you succeed in murdering a man of the cloth, it’d be better if you’d never been born.”

The corners of Victor’s smile drooped.

“There is no God,” Jim Bob hissed.

Victor’s eyes stayed on Chris. But he made no move toward his gun.

“Victor.” Jim Bob shook his head. “If we let Chris go, he’s going to peddle this loony story of his around Washington, and he’s going to find someone loony enough to buy it. Then you and I will pay for his lunacy.”

“I can’t go to jail,” Victor said. “I can’t go to jail.”

Jim Bob grinned as if he’d already won.

Victor’s shoulder twitched, but his pistol hand moved, too, as he went for his gun.

Chris performed as efficiently as he could, but he needed speed, too, and he wasn’t fast enough. As his hand grasped the pistol handle, Victor had already brought his pistol out of its holster. As soon as Chris’s muzzle cleared the holster, he rotated the muzzle in Victor’s direction while bringing the weapon up to fire. Without thinking, Chris squeezed the trigger. He should’ve heard or felt his weapon fire, but a tunnel blackened everything except Victor. His first round struck Victor in the knee.

Chris felt like he was outside of his body, deaf and motionless, when the second shot fired. It struck Victor in the pelvis, making him crumple like a paper ball. Victor lost his aim and brought his head down into Chris’s line of fire. Chris’s third shot hit Victor in the skull.

Pop
. The heat of a bullet creased Chris’s brow. He twisted toward Jim Bob until the duplicitous good-ole-boy appeared in a blur. Jim Bob’s next projectile parted Chris’s hair.

Chris returned fire, punching Jim Bob in the chest. His next shot cracked Jim Bob’s nose, spraying a pink mist. Jim Bob fell forward, and his chin bounced off the deck.

Shaken and angry, Chris tried to take long, slow breaths—tried to rein in his pulsing adrenaline. “May God have mercy on your souls.” He said the words out of obligation, but in his heart, he hoped they burned in Hell.

Although he should’ve been worried about how the partiers in the nearby yacht would react to the shots fired and about how he was going to find the Switchblade Whisper, he could only worry about one thing.

Where are you, Hannah?

All warfare is based on deception.

— S
UN
T
ZU

_______

C
hris wanted to kill Jim Bob again, but resurrecting him just to drill him in the face once more wouldn’t bring Chris closer to finding Hannah. Chris had searched through the pockets of dead men before, but Iraq was so many years ago that his senses had forgotten what it was like, and now it felt like he was doing it for the first time. Jim Bob and Victor appeared to be asleep except for the awkward positioning of their bodies and that Victor’s eyes were still open. His unblinking eyes unnerved Chris, so he closed them. Jim Bob and Victor made no snoring or breathing sounds that sleeping men make. In spite of the morbidity of frisking dead men, Chris put aside their humanity and focused on his objective: gather intel.

He searched Victor’s body first, looking for anything that might give a clue as to Hannah’s whereabouts. Victor’s pockets were warm, and the muscles in his legs were at rest and unresponsive, as if he’d fallen into a drunken stupor. Chris discovered a cell phone along with a set of keys. Then he examined Jim Bob’s body and found his cell, too. At any moment, the late-night partiers on the other yacht could call the police and report the gunshots fired—time wasn’t on his side. After pocketing the phones and keys, he opened Victor’s duffel bag and looked inside: Jim Bob’s laptop, Victor’s handheld GPS tracker, an HK416 with a configuration similar to the one Chris had lost in the explosion, and magazines of 5.56 mm ammo. He zipped it back up and carried it by its shoulder strap before scurrying up the ladder to the main deck.

Topside, he observed the young partiers from the corner of his eye. Their mood had sobered, and they were watching him, but when he turned his head toward them, they turned away.

Should I kill them before they contact the authorities?
It wasn’t a priestly thought, but it was a legitimate SEAL thought, though he felt guilty for thinking it.

He walked swiftly to the van and tried one of Victor’s keys in the door. It opened. Chris hopped in and drove. Stepping harder on the accelerator, he increased the distance between himself and Jim Bob’s and Victor’s corpses.

If I were Hannah, where would I go?

He switched on Victor’s GPS tracker and waited for the main screen to pop up. When his eyes returned from the GPS to the road, he saw the road had curved and he was heading for a ditch. He steered quickly and recovered. He glanced at the GPS again. It displayed a map icon and tracking icon. Touching the tracking icon led him to another screen where he saw an icon labeled
SW—Switchblade Whisper
. A map highlighted his current location. After touching a green button, a violet arrow showed the road and direction he should take to follow the Switchblade Whisper. It had already traveled northeast into Turkey.

Using the GPS to calculate distance, he figured it would take him sixteen minutes to reach Highway One then fourteen minutes to the border. But he didn’t have a visa for entering Turkey. He’d have to find a way to sneak across. During the first minutes in the dark solitude of the van, he felt sleepy and just wanted to close his eyes for a moment, but he didn’t dare for fear of drifting off.

On the yacht, Jim Bob had spoken in his fatherly tone, telling Chris that his accusations of foul play were crazy. When Chris was little, his father had thought he was crazy. The week after his rescue, he’d been sitting in the living room on the couch reading a book when his father interrupted.

“What are you reading?”

He looked up from his book. “
The Three Musketeers
.”

“Oh, do you like it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yes.”

“You remember the psychiatrist who you talked to when you came home?”

“I don’t remember his name.”

“He said that you told him a voice spoke to you, saying you would be rescued, but no one was around.”

Chris nodded. The voice had said,
Fear not. On the morrow when the night cometh, you will be saved.

“Sometimes when people become tired and weak like you were in the well, they see things or hear things that aren’t really there. They have hallucinations.”

Why don’t they believe me?
He wiggled his fingers anxiously. “It wasn’t a hallucination. It was real.”

“It might have seemed real, but you were tired and weak.”

“I know what I heard.”

“You know what you think you heard,” his father said. “But God doesn’t speak to children like that.”

“He spoke to me!”

“Son, the psychiatrist is worried about you. You can’t tell people things like this because they might think the wrong things about you.”

His mother stepped into the living room. She gave his dad the death stare. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to talk some sense into him,” his father said, his voice agitated. The psychiatrist thinks he has schizophrenia and wants to see him again—run a PET scan and fMRI.”

“He’s not going to medicate my son,” she said. “The psychiatrist isn’t experienced in spiritual matters.”

“I don’t want him to medicate Chris, either.”

“But you’re trying to tell him that what he heard wasn’t real,” his mom pressed.

They were talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t tell me that you believe him, too,” he said.

She raised her voice. “I wasn’t there, okay? But yes, I believe him.”

“Come on. God doesn’t speak to kids.”

“Jesus did. And Chris is a lot closer to Jesus than you or me. We’ve always felt that.”

His father paused for a moment. “Events in the Bible happened a long time ago.”

“Are today’s events so much different?” she asked.

“Well, he can’t go around telling people he heard God, or they’re going to think he’s a lunatic and put him on medication and turn him into a walking vegetable!”

She turned to Chris, ignoring his father’s outburst. Her eyes softened. “Honey, I believe you.”

His parents rarely argued, and while he hated hearing them go at each other, he loved that his mother believed him.

She continued, “You had an experience that was special—like the pearls on a necklace. But some people don’t appreciate how special pearls are. You can only share special things with special people.”

Chris could still hear her voice in his ear and sighed at the memory. He’d felt so alienated when his father had thought him crazy, but his father had questioned Chris’s sanity because he didn’t understand. And Jim Bob had questioned Chris’s sanity because he wanted to shake his conviction that he’d been double-crossed. Chris wondered if he
was
brain deficient for becoming both a SEAL and a minister, but he held on to his conviction anyway.

He glanced back at the GPS tracking monitor. When he returned his eyes to the road, a man was in the middle of the intersection riding a donkey across Highway One. And he was naked except for his boots and the charred remains of a shirt around his shoulders.

I must really be losing my mind.
He blinked.
Still there.

It was so surprising he almost forgot to slam on the brakes. The wheels screamed horrifically as they locked up and slid. The naked man lifted his legs, saving himself from being crunched between the vehicle and the animal. The donkey fell over and brayed loudly enough to be heard for kilometers. The man rolled across the little hood, and his white buttocks briefly pressed against the windshield in front of Chris’s face before he slid at an angle and landed in the road.

Both Chris’s engine and the vehicle came to a stop, but the lights were still on in the dark night. The naked man stood with his privates in full view now. His mouth opened wide, and he screamed at Chris, but the donkey brayed so incessantly that Chris couldn’t understand him.

Chris tried to start the engine, but it just stuttered. He tried again. No luck.

The naked man limped over to Chris’s window. The donkey fell silent. “Where in the hell did you get your driver’s license?” the naked man demanded in a New York accent. He was short, bald, and looked like an angry Elmer Fudd. “Walmart?!”

Chris stared at him in disbelief. “Who are you?”

The naked man’s brow furrowed in the middle. “What?”

Chris rolled down the window a couple of inches so they could hear each other better. “Who are you?”

“I’m the guy on the donkey you almost killed,” Elmer Fudd said, indignant. “Who are you?”

Chris tried to start the engine again, but it wouldn’t turn over. “I’m the guy whose engine won’t start,” he said with frustration.

“I can’t stay around here. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Why don’t you pop open the hood, and I’ll take a look at it,” Elmer Fudd said.

Chris watched the man carefully. What could an American be doing way out here in a country fighting a civil war? He could be faking the New York accent, but it sounded real enough. Chris hadn’t met him in the Teams. Maybe he was Delta Force. Or CIA. Maybe one of Jim Bob’s goons. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing out here, and right now, I’m not feeling too much peace on earth and goodwill to men.”

“Name’s Sonny.” He held out a hand to shake.

Chris ignored it but hesitantly responded, “Chris.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any spare clothes, would you?”

Chris shook his head, but he reached under the seat and felt around for a poncho he’d seen Jim Bob stash there when they’d first arrived. He rolled down the window the rest of the way and handed Sonny the raingear.

He put the poncho on and smiled.

Chris couldn’t help but return the smile. Something about this guy was oddly comforting. He handed Sonny a compact yet powerful, flashlight.

Sonny took it and examined it. He eyed Chris suspiciously.

It looked like they both needed a change of fortune, and maybe a little faith was the ticket. Chris rolled the dice and pressed the hood release.

Sonny hurried to the front, lifted the hood, and flashed the light around the engine.

“How’s it look?” Chris called.

“Some of the electrical connections in your fuel injection on the air intake side got knocked loose,” he answered.

“Can you fix it?” Chris asked anxiously.

“I hope so.”

Arabic voices sounded from the woods to the west, breaking the still night. “Friends of yours?” Chris asked.

“Probably an al Qaeda tracking team,” he said casually.

Chris’s pulse burned through three stages of rocket fuel. “How do you know?”

“Lucky guess.” A sedan shining its high beams stopped fifteen meters behind them. “Friends of yours?” Sonny asked this time.

“Police,” Chris said matter-of-factly.

“How do you know they’re police?” Sonny closed the hood, hurried to the passenger side, and waited.

“Lucky guess.”

Chris unlocked the door and let him in. Sonny stared at the long, grey travel duffel between them.

From behind, a PA system sounded. “Police, surrender yourself now!” At the same time, muzzles flashed, and shots rang out from the woods.

Chris turned the key again. The engine started. The fecal matter was about to hit the rotating oscillator, and Chris wouldn’t be able to drive and shoot effectively at the same time. And he wasn’t about to give this stranger a weapon. “You drive.” He climbed over his travel duffel and Sonny.

No sooner had Sonny settled into the driver’s seat than he drove around the lifeless donkey. Then he stomped the gas, and the van leaped forward. They sped north on Highway One, passing through a spattering of vertical dark lines, trees in orchards. The van stank of astringent sweat. Chris didn’t know if it was his, Sonny’s, or both.

Chris unwrapped his rifle. Al Qaeda on foot were no threat, but now the police were a clear nuisance. The fastest way to disable their vehicle would be to take out the driver, but Chris had no reason to kill a cop. He aimed through the van’s back window and squeezed off four rounds. The window blew out, and Chris’s bullets struck the police car engine. The shots wouldn’t disable it, but they’d deliver a message.

The police swerved off the road and stopped following. Message received.

“That was easy,” Sonny said with a nod.

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Where you heading?”

“As far from here as possible. You?”

“Turkey.”

“Turkey’s good,” Sonny said.

At normal speed, it would take about fifteen more minutes to reach the border, but Sonny wasn’t driving at normal speed.

Forests of trees materialized on both sides of them. Chris turned and surveyed a large, shimmering light emerging behind them.

“We’ve got company again,” he said calmly.

“Not driving in jeeps, are they?” Sonny asked.

The glaring orb neared, and it split into multiple lights, a swarm of headlights racing after the van. “How’d you know they’d be driving in jeeps?”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Sonny accelerated. The forest on the left opened up to orchards with fewer trees and a handful of residences.

Now Chris became irritated, and he didn’t hide it in his voice. “AQ tracking team?”

“AQ revenge team.” Sonny glanced at Chris’s GPS tracker. “That’s an interesting piece of equipment. Who you following?”

Chris turned it off and put it in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. “Amelia Earhart.”

As the road veered right, Chris leaned to counteract the effect of the centrifugal force tugging on him. Weaving back and forth through both lanes, the men in the jeeps weren’t concerned about rules of the road. AK-47s fired on full auto, pecking holes in the van like the fangs of angry rattlesnakes. One round hissed past Chris’s head and struck the front windshield of the van.

Chris aimed for the driver in the closest jeep, but he wasn’t a hundred percent the shooter he used to be. Even if he was, adrenaline overrode his fine motor skills, the van veered, centrifugal force pulled him, AQ weaved, and the darkness worked against him. He missed. Then his muzzle hissed two-round and three-round bursts through his sound suppressor—still no satisfaction. The bullets’ smokeless powder smelled like chocolate, charcoal, and metal, and the hot empty shells ejected from the side of his rifle, hitting Sonny, who howled and rained f-bombs.