Cold Barrel Zero (25 page)

He'd seen oxygen tanks go before. They didn't even need a flame. The gas was under a few thousand PSI and the friction as it expanded was enough for ignition. Hayes's unit had lost an apprentice armorer who thought he was swapping out the valve on an empty oxygen tank. All they found afterward was the case from his Omega and his left foot. The tank was a quarter mile away, embedded two feet deep in a concrete wall.

The blast lit up the passageways at the base of the tower. The overpressure alone would knock out anyone approaching through the confined spaces, and likely wreck the doors. Glass blew out over his head.

He stepped onto the forecastle. The wrecked turret of the ship's 20 mm Gatling gun stood near the bow. He turned and looked back at the tower looming over his head and the bridge windows thirty feet up.

The front of the tower was a vertical plane of painted steel, a hard climb even without the smoke and the flames. He traced a route: the footholds in the dogs of the door, the railing above, and then the wires of the standing rigging that led to the antennas sticking out from the top of the bridge.

It was the only way.

He lifted his radio and made the call.

The smoke closed in. He jogged at the steel bulkhead, jumped, planted his foot, and grabbed the railing. Ignoring the agony from his back, he hauled himself up.

Riggs came to in the passageway at the base of the tower. Caro was the first to reach him and found him looking like a broken man, gasping on the deck. He draped the colonel's arm over his shoulders and helped him walk away from the smoke after the oxygen explosion.

“Was it Hayes?”

“What?”

“Hayes!” Caro shouted.

Riggs opened and closed his eyes twice.

“Was it—”

“It was him.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you talk to him? What did he say?”

“What?”

“What did Hayes say? I heard you talking.”

Riggs grabbed the handrail of the ladder leading up the tower to the bridge.

“What did he say?” Caro asked. He had kept the truth hidden for so long, and now it could destroy him.

Riggs looked at him for a moment, as if deep in thought.

“Nothing,” Riggs said. “Nothing.”

“Let's get to the bridge. Leave your men down here on watch,” Caro said.

“Wait here,” Riggs said. He radioed for his guards and didn't move until they arrived. “I'll check out the bridge,” the colonel said.

“I'll come with you,” Caro offered.

“No,” Riggs said, and turned to his men. “Guard these ladders. That's the only way up.”

He closed his good hand on the railing and started climbing.

Caro watched him go. He had seen doubt like that on Riggs's face before, on the day of the massacre.

After Hayes had been ambushed on his way back from the infiltration, Riggs couldn't understand what had happened. He knew that Hayes had been hit and that arms and information from Riggs's command had possibly made it into the enemy's hands.

Caro had calmed him down. “He was ambushed in the badlands near the border. We know who leaked his location—it was the interpreters.”

They were the traitors in their midst. “Where are they? They may try another attack to kill the rest of your men.”

Riggs was silent, and finally he'd turned to Caro.

“Can you help me take care of them?”

Riggs was desperate.
Take care of them.
What did Riggs think Caro would do? Give the villagers plane tickets? Resettle them somewhere? No.

And Caro was sure that Riggs hadn't thought about it too hard, because his primary goal was saving his own career. However it had happened, the ambush reflected terribly on Riggs. The leaks had happened on his watch.

Caro sent his men to round up the villagers. Riggs arrived just after the killing started, and his mouth fell open with horror. He pulled Caro aside. It was a moment when Riggs had to decide what kind of man he was.

He had lived only in the United States, had never seen combat up close before, had never seen how things were done in the hard corners of the world. That day Caro showed him what it took to win wars in a land where mercy was interpreted as weakness and weakness was death.

Caro offered Riggs a way forward, an escape from his own mistakes. They would sacrifice the villagers' lives—people whom the world had forgotten anyway—in order to protect their own, to go on and save countless more. Caro broke him out of the CNN mentality that flinches from violence and ties America's hands in battle. “This is what you do with traitors.”

And there, looking at the huddled villagers, Riggs had to make his choice. He stood at the entrance to the house with his sidearm out, unsure.

He turned back to Caro and said, “Whatever it takes.”

He had to believe the villagers were guilty. What was his alternative? To admit that it was all his fault? To sacrifice his career? No. The truth would have destroyed him, so Riggs doubled-down on a lie. Who wouldn't?

From then on, Caro held the secret of Riggs's role in both the ambush and the massacre, and that secret proved to be a powerful weapon. Caro owned him, whether Riggs cared to admit it to himself or not.

When Hayes and his team arrived at the massacre, it could have ruined everything, but there was grace in the bullet Hayes fired. It shattered Riggs's hand as he pointed into the valley and then tore through his upper chest. Hayes's men were down in the village, trying to save the dead, painting their hands with blood.

Hayes made it easy for Riggs to pin the blame on him. He had tried to relieve Riggs of command, had shot his superior officer. It was mutiny, and the punishment for mutiny in a time of war was death.

As Riggs lay unable to move and bleeding into the dirt on that hill, Caro put the idea in his ear: “The crimes. Let them fall on Hayes.”

They called in the Rangers.

Through the agonizing recovery, Riggs nursed his grievance against Hayes, the man who had rebelled against him, the traitor. Caro wondered sometimes if Riggs had finally come to believe his own lie, that Hayes had cut those interpreters down.

It hardly mattered. That was the fire that drove Riggs, half crippled by Hayes's hand, half blind with revenge, and he and Caro had labored together ever since, building their plans.

But now the work was complete and Riggs no longer useful. Caro stepped outside. There were two guards watching the ladder that led up the rear of the tower to the bridge. He thumbed the safety down on his pistol and waited for them to turn their backs.

Hayes reached for the next and highest railing, just below the wide windows at the top of the tower. He pulled himself up and eyed the wires running to the antennas. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him going through the pain. He could haul himself onto the top of the bridge and then drop down to the wings, open platforms on either side, like terraces.

He grabbed the wire with his right hand, leaned out, and gripped it with his left as well. He planted his feet against the sheer face of the tower and began to walk his way up the gray steel. He stopped, waited.

Black smoke billowed past, offering concealment. He pulled himself up the wire, hand over hand, and was nearly to the top of the bridge when sparks blew beside him. He turned and saw guards on the forecastle below him. They had finally forced their way through the door he had wrecked when he blew up the oxygen tank. He posted his legs out, held the wire with his left hand, and fired the MP7 in three-round bursts at the men below.

Blue sparks burst from the side of his gun. He felt the fire jump across his hand, his neck, his face. His gun dropped to the end of its sling. A bullet had hit his MP7, maybe his hand. He couldn't feel anything below the wrist, just the white-hot nothing of a fresh injury, the shock before the pain set in.

He had no time to think about it. He hauled himself up on the wire, pushed hard with his legs, and landed on his right side on the starboard bridge wing. His head pounded against the steel deck but he carried the momentum forward into a roll and came up in a crouch as a cloud of black smoke passed over.

The blood was seeping into the collar of his shirt. He took a quick look at his hand. The skin was shredded. He felt the cuts on his neck and cheek. The bullet must have fragmented off the gun. He felt the pressure. It was flowing slowly, nothing arterial. The shot had wrecked the chamber of the MP7. The pistol was gone. He reached across his body with his left hand, pulled his knife, got down low, and started toward the door of the bridge.

As the smoke cleared, he saw that the door was open. Riggs was just inside the pilothouse with a rifle aimed and ready in his good hand. Hayes stood, held the knife out front. And then he heard footfalls on the steel.

He turned. Behind him, on the bridge wing, Caro raised a pistol. He hadn't come through the bridge. He must have climbed up on the outside ladder on the back of the tower.

Hayes watched the surface of the ocean ripple in the firelight—a gust of wind. The billowing smoke neared the railing. It would hide him. He might have a chance in the blackness to kill them both. He had to try.

He readied himself for the lunge to get Riggs's rifle, prayed for the smoke to come, but it was too late.

Blue flames sprang from the muzzle in the shape of a star. Riggs fired an automatic burst.

THE FOG OF
diesel fumes closed in and Hayes saw nothing but the suffocating smoke. Then he heard it behind him, something slamming against the deck.

Caro's body.

Hayes pivoted, leaped toward him, and felt along the man's side through the slick of blood until he found the pistol. He dropped the knife and took the gun with his uninjured left hand.

Another gust, and the smoke cleared. Hayes and Riggs stood facing each other.

“He was coming for me,” Riggs said in a monotone. “I ordered my men to secure the bridge.”

Hayes looked down. “There are two bodies on the main deck. Not my work.”

“I heard it on the radio. Caro must have executed them. He was going to kill me, kill us all, and then blame you.” He lowered his gun. “Again.

“You've earned it,” Riggs went on. “Take the shot.”

“That's not how this works, Colonel.”

“Do it.”

“You made the wrong choice in the village. Make the right one here. Call off the rest of your men. And work with me. What was Caro doing? What were you two planning? We have to stop it.”

“No,” Riggs said. “Just end it.”

Hayes stepped closer.

“After everything I did to you.” Riggs shook his head. “Your wife, your daughter. The people you had guarding the money are dead. Do the honorable thing and take the fucking shot.”

The colonel deserved to die, but Caro had risked coming to the U.S. for a reason, and Hayes needed Riggs alive to find out what it was.

“Call off your men,” Hayes said. “We need to stop what Caro set in motion.”

“It's too late. No one will believe you. This is the only justice you'll get. So don't waste it. Take the goddamn shot.”

Riggs raised his gun, and Hayes his. Hayes weighed the choice with his finger on the trigger. A nonlethal shot on the deck of a shifting ship was almost impossible. It was suicide by cop, and if he murdered Riggs, he didn't know if he could ever convince the authorities that he was innocent.

The barrel aimed straight at Hayes's face and then kept moving up as Riggs brought the gun around. Hayes dived at the colonel as Riggs buried the muzzle under his own jaw.

He struck the gun arm. The shot boomed through the bridge. The muzzle flare blinded Hayes for a moment, and as his vision returned, he saw Riggs on the deck, with blood on his face. Hayes stepped on the wrist of his gun hand, took the carbine, and slipped its sling over his shoulder.

He cleared the blood away. The cheek was torn apart and scorched from the muzzle flare. Blood trickled from Riggs's right ear, but he wasn't dead. Not yet. Hayes tore off his sleeve and tamped it on the injury. Ears ringing, he dragged Riggs toward the bridge wing.

He could barely hear as the door inside the pilothouse opened. He turned. Four guards stepped out.

Hayes threw his injured arm around Riggs's chest and lifted him up as a shield. It was Bill and three others. Hayes brought the gun forward with his left hand, pulling the sling taut to steady his aim.

“Drop the weapon and we can get this sorted out. We don't want to kill you,” Bill said.

Hayes stepped back, over Caro's dead body, crushing a pair of sunglasses that had fallen from his pocket. Caro's head had been torn off by the gunshots.

He backed toward the edge of the wing. It was a forty-foot drop to the water, and he needed to make it far enough horizontally to clear the gunwale and not break his neck. Flames surrounded the ship, a slick forty feet wide.

A hard swell lifted the
Shiloh
. Helicopter blades chugged toward them. Hayes tried to keep Riggs close, but he knew that as their bodies drew apart, one of these men would get the shot. He had trained two of them in hostage rescue himself. Hayes stared down the muzzles of four carbines.

Marine Super Cobra helicopters closed in. Riggs couldn't talk. He was still in shock. The truth wouldn't save Hayes now.

He saw the barrel line up perfectly, and just before Bill's muzzle flared, Hayes pulled Riggs tight to his body, compressed his legs, and threw himself over the edge.

The fall seemed to last minutes as they dropped toward the flames on the water. They passed through a chaos of heat and fire. The surface hit them like a car crash and then all was cold silence and darkness. The water soothed Hayes's burns. He clamped Riggs to his side and stroked underwater with his good hand, sliding through the dark, the red glow dancing above their heads.

Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty.

He could see full dark ahead, and pulled hard, drove himself with his legs.

Ten.

He kept on, then angled to the surface, broke through into the night air, and filled his lungs.

Hayes hit the IR beacon on his shoulder, floated on his back with the swells. He watched the clouds drift overhead.

A helicopter came in low, searching with its light like a circle of midday sun on the water. He dived and waited, dragging Riggs's limp body down with him.

When he came up, he saw the floodlight moving away and heard another engine over the chug of the helos.

It was the RHIB. Fifty feet out he could see the man standing at the pilothouse: Byrne. Hayes had called him on the radio before he assaulted the bridge. The boat pulled alongside. Hayes hauled himself in, and he and Byrne dragged Riggs over the gunwale. Byrne brought the boat through a fast 180-degree turn and gunned the engines for the shore.

Hayes flex-cuffed Riggs, then took the helm with his good hand while Byrne tended to the colonel.

“He's in shock, but he should live,” Byrne said. He stepped to the pilothouse and started dressing Hayes's neck and hand.

“Nazar has major trauma to the chest. She's going to die if we don't get her to a cardiothoracic surgeon.”

“Oceanside,” Hayes said, and scanned the skies behind him: no aircraft. He could hear them in the distance, but they weren't in close pursuit. “There's a cache. It's our best chance.”

“We can't go in over the beach with these casualties.”

“The harbor,” Moret said. “But they'll catch us.”

Hayes looked to Moret, to Nazar. A syringe attached to a catheter in the old woman's chest was half full of blood.

“I'm not letting anyone die,” Byrne said. “The harbor.”

Hayes turned the wheel.

“You dive when we're close to shore,” Byrne said to Hayes. “Run for it. I'll take the casualties in.”

“I'm not running. We stopped Samael. We brought them Nazar, brought them the truth. I did what I needed to do. We have to warn them.”

“They'll try you.”

“I knew what I was doing. If I broke the law, I'll pay the price. I wouldn't want it any other way.”

“Don't,” Byrne said. “They might execute you.”

“I can't kill them all. I can't make them believe at the point of a gun. This is too big for Riggs to control anymore. I have to trust my country.”

Nazar moaned, and Byrne crouched next to the old woman. The swells picked up.

“How are we doing, Byrne?” Hayes shouted.

“Blood pressure's dropping. Give it everything.”

Hayes pushed the throttle. The boat skipped over the surface of the ocean. The chug of helo blades never quit the horizon as they saw the mountains rise behind Camp Pendleton and the glow of Carlsbad and Oceanside resolve into lights, and then houses.

“We're losing her,” Byrne said. They rounded the mouth of the harbor. He cleared the blood from the syringe.

Hayes headed for the end of a dock. The attack helicopters came in fast from the west and south. They had held off, and now they were tightening the noose. There was no way out of the harbor.

The dock came closer as the helicopter lit them up with a flood. Police and navy aircraft touched down in the parking lot beside the water. The Super Cobra hovered just ahead, its 20 mm turreted cannon aimed straight at the RHIB.

In the lights from the circling aircraft, Hayes could see the SWAT teams closing in on land. There were a dozen SUVs, more patrol cars, and two armored personnel carriers. The tactical teams fanned across the parking lot and surrounded the dock. The police took aim from behind the doors of their black Suburbans. The whole waterfront was a circus of blinking lights.

“Drop your weapons! Drop your weapons!”

Hayes brought the boat to the dock, stepped onto the concrete, and raised his hands.

“Don't give them an excuse to kill you,” he said to the others.

The SWATs circled him. He watched them move in slowly and cautiously, checking off each step, like they had just watched a long PowerPoint presentation on squad tactics.

He kept his hands in the air. “I have Colonel Riggs and Cyrine Nazar on this boat. They are innocent and require medical attention. Do not hurt them.”

A squad leader moved in.

“The woman has trauma to her heart and needs an airlift to a surgeon. She can tell you the truth about who we are and what we have done.”

An officer shoved Hayes forward and tried to trip him to his knees. He didn't go down.

A man in a suit parted the crowd. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

“I need to talk to your CO,” Hayes said. “Do what you want with me, but listen. There is an imminent threat. Listen to Riggs. People are going to die.”

“What did he say!” someone barked.

“On your knees!” A rifle butt slammed into Hayes's back. He took a knee but didn't fall.

Cox tried to move through the crowd. “Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” But his voice was lost in the chaos.

“A plot is under way. People are going to die. You can stop it. Let me talk to your CO.”

“Is that a threat? Is there a bomb?”

The SWATs crowded in.

Hayes could see the fear in their eyes, their hands tight on the grips of their rifles, the fingers on the triggers, the discipline ebbing. Caro was dead. Hayes had completed the mission. He could die content.

“Listen to Riggs. To the woman.”

They slammed him facedown onto the concrete.

“What did he say! He could trigger it!”

“What's he doing? Do I fire?
Do I fire?
”

A deputy, the youngest and most inexperienced of the forward squad, leveled his rifle and aimed at the back of Hayes's head from five feet away. He would later swear he had heard the order.

“Take the shot. Now!”

His finger pulled on the trigger.