Cold Barrel Zero (22 page)

WE READIED OUR
gear on the concrete floor of an abandoned boat works. We were just south of a lagoon, on land cut off by train tracks, about twenty miles from where we had picked up Hayes. The building smelled like low tide and decaying fish, but it had a fenced-off yard and a boat ramp that was cracking up but still serviceable.

Hayes stacked ammo boxes and checked inside. It was green-and-white-tip .50-caliber ammunition—high-explosive incendiary armor-piercing rounds, each a half an inch thick and as long as my hand.

I could tell something was off with him, had been ever since he heard about his family.

“You all right?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Not until I know they're okay.”

Going after his home was a tactic to destroy him, turn duty against family, distract him from his real target. It was working.

“God forgive me,” he said. “This is where I need to be.”

We would be wearing and carrying twenty thousand dollars' worth of diving equipment—rebreathers, fins, dry bags—and had packed enough small arms for a squad: HK416 carbines, an SR-25 sniper rifle, MP7 submachine guns, and navy-spec SIG Sauer P226s that would have no problem shooting after being submerged.

You could do a lot with sixty-eight million.

“Foley.” Hayes looked over the gear and then shut his eyes. “He never let me down.”

Moret zipped her sniper rifle shut in the waterproof bag, and then pivoted the .50 cal M2 heavy machine gun to the side so she could double-check its mount at the bow of the RHIB. She wore sunglasses to preserve her night vision. She wasn't trained on the combat-diving rigs we were using, and as the best shot of us by far, we needed her watching over us on the .50 and the SR-25.

Hayes and I finished loading the gear and climbed onto the RHIB, a thirty-three-foot-long fast boat with a turbo diesel. Kelly finished the radio checks and gave me a handheld unit.

“I'm going with you,” she said.

I climbed onto the seawall and stood beside her.

“I wish you were. You've saved my ass twice. But you've got a grade-two concussion. And we're diving with closed-circuit rebreathers. You wouldn't make it.”

“Are
you
going to make it?”

I ducked the question. “Before, you asked if there was another woman. There was someone. Someone I loved. She got hurt and I couldn't save her. A lot of people close to me have died, died with my hands on them. It messed me up pretty bad. It's why I kept running, kept people out.”

“Their deaths are not your fault.”

“But—”

She put her hand on my shoulder and looked at me squarely. “You can't live like that.” I could see the concern in her eyes.

“I know that now.”

“You can't think it's your fault.”

“I know it in my head, but still—”

She nodded. “Don't believe it, Tom. You're a good guy.”

“I haven't felt this way about anyone in a long time. I didn't think I could. Until you. I need you to live, Kelly.” I handed her a case.

She opened it. Inside there were two hundred thousand dollars and three passports. “Those won't get you into the U.S. or Europe, but they will work everywhere else.”

“You pushing me away?”

“No. I need you to live. Someone needs to live. To get the truth out.”

“But Tom, this is crazy—”

“Please,” I said. “I need to do this. I made it out when so many others didn't. Maybe this is why. They need me here.”

She started to speak, then stopped, swallowed. I could see that she understood.

“I want to fight. I'll come with you.”

“You'll have your chance. Every badge in the U.S. is looking for you.”

“You're not a killer, Tom.”

“Prove me wrong, then. Live through this.”

I put my hand to her cheek and kissed her.

“Go ahead,” she said, and put her hand over mine. “You're not going to kill me, Tom. You can say it.”

“I love you.”

“Likewise.” She kissed me, then stepped back and slung her carbine over her shoulder. “I'll see you soon.”

I stepped into the RHIB.

“We ready?” Moret asked.

“Ready,” I said.

She gunned the engines, and we took off toward the
Shiloh
. The reflected light from town glimmered and ran like mercury on the surface of the water. I watched Kelly recede in the distance, saw her climb into the truck, but soon the waves came, and it was all I could do to hold on as we launched off the back of a shoulder-high breaker.

There are three ways to take a hostile ship: fast-rope down from a helicopter, throw caving ladders over the side and come over the gunwales, or blow a hole in the hull and enter through the breach.

The first two were out. There was no helicopter. We didn't have the numbers to shoot our way through the whole ship. Also, the men on board were simply hired guns who had no reason to doubt Riggs's version of events. They thought they were doing the right thing, and Hayes preferred not to kill them.

Even if we could somehow make it to the cell where Nazar was being held, Hayes would have to open it, and that would take time. He had walked me through the basics of the tool he would use to open the door. He needed two minutes, at least; an eternity in an operation like this.

We had to find some way to hold Riggs's men off without killing them or getting killed ourselves.

Hayes had figured it out.

“The water,” he said. “We'll breach below the waterline and flood a compartment. The water will keep them out and give us time to work.”

“Has that ever been done before?”

“No. Since World War Two, there's been only one mission with combat divers against a ship, during the invasion of Panama. This is definitely not SOP.”

“Will it work?”

“We're going to find out.”

We rode on in silence, Moret at the wheel of the RHIB.

She called out three minutes, and Hayes turned to me. “If we get Nazar out, and I'm stuck behind, I want you to take her and head for shore.”

“We're not going to leave you behind.”

“It's not your decision. I need to finish this.”

“We're going to get her, and you're coming home with us.”

“You get Nazar, you go.”

I watched him for a moment. Nazar could testify to what really happened at the massacre. Hayes still believed that the truth mattered. That people would do the right thing. That Riggs and corruption couldn't win.

“You have faith,” I said. “After everything.”

“I don't know anymore. But if I'm going to die, I'd like to die believing in everything I fought for.”

As we rose and plunged over the swells, Hayes did a final check on my diving rig.

It had been over a decade since I had used the Dräger rebreather. Dräger diving was one of those activities, like riding a motorcycle, where you wish you had a little less medical knowledge.

The rebreather isn't like regular scuba tanks, which contain a breathable mix of air. The Dräger recycles your own breath, filtering out carbon dioxide and replacing it with pure oxygen. It releases no bubbles, allowing for complete stealth, and is an eighth the size of scuba tanks.

The largest tank on my back contained dry chemicals with the consistency of cat litter, primarily lime—a base that can be as caustic as acid but on the other end of the pH scale. That would absorb the carbon dioxide, and a small computer would add just enough oxygen to keep me alive.

Hayes had given me a refresher on the apparatus, pointing to the different elements, while all I could think about were the scratches and dents and signs of age on it. The equipment looked like it had fallen off a truck.

“That's the diluent. Don't touch it or you'll die. And this is pure oxygen. Ditto. And this is the bailout. Lose that…you get the idea. And remember, you're breathing your own exhaust.” He gave me a half smile. “So relax.”

Or else I'd die, exhale too much for the Dräger to keep up. And if my regulator got knocked out of my mouth before I could seal it, water would rush through my loop, dissolve the lime, and pour into my mouth a slurry—known as a caustic cocktail—that was corrosive enough to eat through metal.

Relax.

And the Dräger was keeping me alive; forget about the real threats ahead.

“One minute!” Moret shouted.

We pulled our fins on and strapped our dive bags and submachine guns across our chests. They were over-the-beach modified MP7s and could fire even when full of water.

Moret brought the boat to idle and loaded a strap of high-explosive rounds into the .50 cal. Hayes and I sat on the gunwale. He spat in his mask and wiped the inside.

“You know why I gave you such a tough time, right?”

“I just figured you were a hard-ass.”

“Because you were the best corpsman—not just that, the best guy I had. And I wanted to push you. Byrne, you saved the rest of the squad at K Thirty-Eight. I would have bled out without you. You were our best shot then, and you're our best shot now.”

He slapped me on the shoulder.

“Thank you, Doc,” he said. “Let's roll.”

He pulled his mask down and slipped backward into the water.

THE MECHANIC WATCHED
Bradac disappear among the morning commuters streaming toward Dupont Circle, then turned away and walked south on Connecticut.

He stopped in front of a hotel lounge and stared through the plate-glass windows at the TV screen mounted over the bar.

CNN showed standoff barricades going up around the White House, the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, and the New York Stock Exchange. Armored Humvees rolled into the downtowns of America's cities, and soldiers with automatic rifles and German shepherds patrolled the airports and key transport hubs.

The terror alert had gone out.

He needed to keep moving. The Mechanic broke protocol and messaged Caro.
They know,
he wrote.
How can they know?

He was walking down P Street away from the crowds, through a quiet section of turn-of-the-century town houses, when the message came back.

Because I told them. All is well. Proceed as planned.

Caro put down his encrypted cell and leaned against the ship's railing. Waves crashed into the side of the
Shiloh
's hull.

His deputies had painted the online networks with chatter warning of an attack. Why tip off the authorities? He wished he could explain it all to the Mechanic, but there was no time. There was the simple purpose of distraction, like the British had used against the Ottomans in the Sinai campaign. While the Americans ringed their landmarks with steel barriers and overmuscled police, they'd left their soft belly exposed, blinded themselves to their real weaknesses: sentimentality, overreaction.

But Caro's game was more complex. He had been planting the seeds for this moment for years. Every scrap of intel, every bread crumb he fed to Riggs—it all pointed to the wrong enemies. And after the bombs blew, and the Americans' anger raged, it would overcome all reason, and they would launch themselves into attacks, into wars like those that had bled America in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was the only way to tear down an empire.

All the while it would be his voice whispering in their ears.

For months he had warned Riggs and his circle of such an attack, had railed against U.S. complacency. When the bomb hit, it would only cement his rumors as truth, and he would lure them toward quagmire and bloodshed.

Caro looked to the
Shiloh
's bridge, where Riggs was standing behind glass, thirty feet overhead. He might be able to decipher Caro's role in the bombing. He was the only one who knew all the details of their collaboration.

Kasem had already executed Riggs's men and taken the money. Caro stepped inside and began to climb toward his target. Within the hour he would kill Riggs himself.

AFTER THE LONG
ride to the
Shiloh,
action came as a relief. Riggs had anchored in the wind shadow of the Catalina Islands. To conserve our oxygen tanks, we approached the ship by turtlebacking: swimming on the surface, on our backs, with our gear and guns rigged to our bellies.

We moved through the darkness by dead reckoning. I had forgotten the terror of the open ocean at night, with swells and currents dragging us back and nothing but cold black water for miles. Hayes carried the attack board, a mounted compass and watch used to navigate on combat swimming missions. Its tritium hands gave off the faintest green glow.

We stopped one mile off the starboard side of the
Shiloh,
far enough out that the crew wouldn't be able to see us. We switched to our regulators and let the air out of our buoyancy vests. Once we had dived to eighteen feet, we continued underwater.

I could hear and feel the ship well before I saw it. Its turbines churned and pulsed the water. As we moved closer, I could see a shadow, a deeper black, and then I recognized the outline of the hull.

“Expect it when you least expect it” was a combat diver motto. They would wait for the killing hours before dawn, for bad weather, for their targets to take cover and grow bored, and then they would strike.

Our plan was to disable the ship first. Then we would breach the hull below the waterline, flood a compartment, and enter. We had four charges to lay down. Two on the driveshafts just forward of the propellers would immobilize the
Shiloh
. Two more shaped charges would cut two holes through the hull in the compartment that contained Nazar's cell, fill it with water, and give us a way in.

We started with the explosives on the props, which were the easiest to place, satchel bombs full of C-4 on a remote RF detonator. We came around the stern twenty feet underwater, then rose to six feet. The diffraction of moonlight allowed us to read the vessel's name, reflected upside down on the surface of the water. I followed as Hayes dived into the black. We had no lights, so he went by feel, counting the riveted panels on his way down.

He returned one minute later, materializing out of the lower depths, and gave me the A-OK. We cruised in shallow water up the port side of the ship, then Hayes signaled for me to stop. He had one shaped charge lashed to his gear bag. I had the other.

We found the seams in the hull we would use as guides, about twenty feet apart, then dived down. I counted the steel plates by feel in the blackness as we descended. My respiratory rate was elevated, but acceptable. The silence, the dark; it was strangely peaceful, but that wouldn't last.

My explosives for breaching the hull were on a two-foot-square metal frame. Each side was a linear-shaped charge, and the corners were hinged so that I could carry it collapsed flat as we swam.

I opened it. The corners clicked tight. When the long strips of explosive blew, they would shoot copper against the steel of the hull, slicing a neat hole. In theory, at least.

I laid the frame against the hull, easing the magnets down to avoid any noise. As soon as I placed the charge, I started to float up. My buoyancy was off from dropping the weight. The light filtered through the water as I neared the surface.

I reached around to my vest and vented. The bubbles rose. If the guards on the ship saw them, they would know we were here.

With my buoyancy neutral again, I dived down, lost in the blackness. Running a hand along the body of the ship to orient myself, I found what felt like my seam and swam back to my charge.

A hand closed on my shoulder. I threw my arm out, but the hand squeezed—two short, two long—and I realized it was Hayes. That was one of our signals. I don't know how he found me in that obscurity. He checked my explosives rig and double-primed it.

We swam under the hull, running the double-stranded detonation cord out behind us. As we sank into the depths, I could feel the pressure building against my chest. We crossed under and began to rise on the starboard side.

The blast from an explosion is three times more powerful underwater. Hayes had told me we needed to use the hull for cover. That's why we had come to the opposite side. We would detonate the charges, and then Moret would speed in on the port side and use the .50 cal to take out the
Shiloh
's helicopter, its fast boat, and its close-in-weapon system: a 20 mm Gatling gun mounted near the bow of the ship that could shoot seventy-five rounds per second.

We had radios fixed to the side of our face masks, but we would use them as little as possible, for stealth. Hayes checked with me. I gave him the okay.

He tapped the radio. “Jericho, Jericho, Jericho.”

It was the code to begin the assault. Hayes started counting down the twenty seconds Moret would need to race into effective range on the port side. He lifted the detonator, pushed aside the safety cover.

Fifteen.

Ten.

It was strange to wait in silence, knowing what was about to happen. A long swell rocked us and the ship up and down.

Five.
They would be able to see her in seconds. It was time.

My heart beat louder, a pulsing roar in my ears, amplified by the water pressing against them; it was one of the most unnerving parts of diving. I cupped my hand over my ass to protect my organs and opened my mouth so I wouldn't shatter my teeth.

Hayes triggered the driveshaft charges. The explosion surprised me: a low thud instead of a crack. The pressure didn't hit me in the ears and mouth. It traveled through me, carrying me back with the water. I couldn't hear, and the shock wave tore at my stomach and lungs, seemed to wrench them loose as I was thrown back, straining the muscles in my arm.

The M2 Moret was firing was a fearsome gun, sixty-five inches long, capable of shooting down aircraft and killing from a mile and a half away. Even underwater we could hear it popping. Our first two explosions rocked the ship, and the distraction should have given her enough time to destroy the
Shiloh
's other defenses and disable the helicopter on the flight deck.

We waited as she rained gunfire down above the waterline. The timing of the bombs was critical. Hayes knew the tactics and procedures aboard the
Shiloh
. He checked his watch. They needed time to raise the general alarm, time for all hands to get to their stations. As part of the standard protocol, they would leave the prisoner. The ship compartment that contained her cell would be unguarded.

The chug of Moret's .50 cal died out. Between her fire and the prop bombs, we had stranded the
Shiloh
. Hayes gave the crew ten more seconds, and then swam to the surface. All attention would be fixed on the other side of the ship, where Moret had attacked. He placed a suction cup with a ring handle against the hull, gave my vest a tug to signal going up, then hauled himself out of the water.

I surfaced next to him and reached for the ring as well. We were about to blow the breaching charges, and at that range, the pressure would kill us if we remained underwater.

I hoisted myself up. Above the water, the sounds of battle leaped out at full volume: the rattle of gunfire hunting down Moret, the shriek of the sirens on the
Shiloh,
the cries of the men on deck.

Hayes focused on his watch and the detonator. He pressed his thumb down, as calm as a man changing a channel on a TV, and triggered the last two charges.

The ship shuddered and cavitated through the water. I could hear the steel tremble and strain, like teeth grinding inside my own head amplified one thousand times.

The
Shiloh
was divided into a series of watertight compartments. It was designed so that even if two of those compartments flooded completely, it would still float, though barely. We had just taken one. The ship heeled slightly as seawater surged through the holes we had punched in the hull and filled the interior.

The plan was to wait until the violent rush of water abated and then swim under and enter through the breaches.

A light scoured the water a hundred meters back. “They're coming,” Hayes said.

We had hoped the gunfire would keep their attention fixed on the port side of the ship, but they had kept their heads and were now looking for attackers from every direction. I dropped back to the surface. Hayes unfixed the ring and slipped below the water. I followed.

Once we were ten feet down, we didn't even have to kick toward the breaches. The water pulled in a slipstream along the hull, dragging us along the barnacles toward the razor-sharp edges of the holes we had blown. We were in the black now, blind and barely able to steer ourselves with our fins.

I could hear the driveshaft turning, the wrenched metal grinding in its housing. Running the propellers was a standard antipersonnel measure. The ship went nowhere.

I felt myself rising, moving faster. We were close. I kicked hard, oriented myself with the flow, and waited.

Something slammed hard into my lower back as I was pulled through the breach, but it was less violent than I had feared. The compartment we had flooded was nearly full, the pressure almost equalized.

Red and white lights shot by in a flash. I was upside down. Hayes was ahead of me, shining his spot around the compartment. Now that we were inside, light security didn't matter. We had entered through the larger breach, about three by four feet, with the hull plating curved in, torn into jagged edges. I half expected to see maimed bodies, viscera, and blood snaking through the water, but it was clear.

The large breach led into a machinery room lit by the glare of a single emergency light, with an open door to the passageway that ran up and down this side of the ship. I followed Hayes through. It was empty except for pipes and junction boxes along the bulkheads. To our left, toward the stern, the passageway ended in a heavy watertight door.

Riggs might have known that divers had played a part in the assault, or maybe he believed that it all somehow came from another boat. But there was almost no chance he would imagine that we were already inside, with a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of water pressing against the door between his crew and us. It would give us time to rescue Nazar—if we didn't drown her first.

We turned and headed right, toward the bow of the ship. There were three rooms along the passageway, all on the same side, just inside the hull. We had come through a breach in the first. Next to it was the vault room, and finally there was a third room, with the door blown open, where we had breached the second, smaller hole.

We swam toward the door to the vault. Then I heard a
tink
behind us, like the highest key on a piano.

I turned.

Tink. Tink-tink-tink.

Hayes shone his light back down the passageway. The partitions and doors within the compartments weren't nearly as strong as the massive walls that separated the watertight compartments from one another. If there was an area within this compartment that hadn't flooded, the weight of the water would build up on one side of the partition with nothing but air on the other until the partition blew in an implosion.

There was another
tink,
then a loud crack as a bolt sheared.

Hayes said something, but there was so much noise inside the ship, my radio was useless. I grabbed for a railing along the bulkhead. At the end of the passageway behind us, metal screamed, and the partition began to crumple away from us.

It gave out with a blast as the unflooded area swallowed enough water to fill it completely in seconds. The rush of water grabbed me, hauled me back down the passageway, nearly pulled my regulator from my mouth.

I bit down, held on as I smashed into rivets and pipes and prayed that I wouldn't tear my loop or puncture either one of the counterlungs that were keeping me alive. I rag-dolled through the compartment and slammed hard upside down into a pipe as the water dragged me, folded me around it, tore at my equipment.

Finally, pressure bounced back the other way and threw me off the pipe. I was upside down, breathing far too fast for my Dräger.

After a half a second of peace, a jet of froth and bubbles filled the passageway and roiled the water. I couldn't see. I patted myself, checking for lacerations. I tried to calm down, slow my breathing, waited for the drunken feeling of too much carbon dioxide in the loop or the nausea and tunnel vision of too much oxygen.

I could hear water in my rebreather, a faint gurgle with every breath. Some water I could survive—there were traps in the loop to catch it—but a leak would be fatal. And the danger of the Dräger is that once that careful balance of breathable air is gone, you're likely to die before you even figure out something is wrong.

Debris filled the water: upended chairs, fire extinguishers, papers, and a whiteboard. I reached for my chem light—my flashlight was gone—and scanned for Hayes.

He was ahead of me in the passage. I swam toward him as he lifted our bailout, the backup tank we had been carrying. Divers on rebreathers always carry a small tank of breathable air, like those used in traditional scuba, for emergencies. He ran his finger across his throat. Our bailout was gone. The next mistake would kill us.

The strong room was the first door on our right, protected by a steel door in a steel frame. It was originally a vault built into the ship for holding cryptographic equipment, but Riggs had found a new use for it. There was a small glass panel, about two inches high and eight inches wide, set in the door at eye level. I peered through it.

In the blue glow of my chem light, I could see Nazar leaning forward, shackled to the bulkhead, as water poured in all around her, flooding the vault. I could barely make out her condition.

She was still alert enough to cry for help. The door had held. It was more than enough to keep the water back, but the cell was filling fast, the cold black Pacific up to her knees and rising. It flowed from the vents and the pipe fittings near the overhead—what the ceiling is called on a ship.