Joint Task Force #2: America (19 page)

Commodore West held the steaming cup of coffee between both his hands. “Let me tell you why I asked for you here,” he lifted the cup and took a sip. “I wanted to give you background about the weather because it does impact you. I have asked Washington for permission to return you home.” He nodded toward the Royal Air Force Wing Commander. “I think our Royal Air Force counterpart would prefer to be inland when the storm does break free, and since the focus of the search for this rogue merchant vessel is on their side of the Atlantic, both he and Captain St. Cyr may be of use to their own countries.”

“Are you sure you should be the one making this decision?” Captain St. Cyr asked in a nonconfrontational manner. “My orders were to remain here until the chase is completed. I would be disobeying orders if I departed based entirely on only the American decision, sir.”

West set his cup down on the table. “Right you are, Captain, which is why I have asked Washington to work out the details. Heaven forbid that America would even presume to decide something for France.”

“I think my country would acquiesce to the American decision,” Tibbles-Seagraves said. “We have too close of a trusting relationship not to work together.”

Tucker saw a flash of anger in St. Cyr’s eyes. You would think after all these centuries the animosity between England and France would have died out, but it remained. Two old empires and cousins still fighting on the international playing field, but with words and diplomacy as their weapons. The twenty-first century had added America to the game with France.

“Bottom line, gentlemen, is that until Washington, London, and Paris tell us otherwise, you three are the international Special Forces effort to stop that rogue merchant vessel in the event it sails this way.”

“Our teams?” Tucker asked.

“No teams, Commander. Your teams, as you know, remained with Admiral Holman. The SEALs I have assigned specifically for Special Forces work I’ve sent home.” He held his hand when he saw Tucker open his mouth. “I know what you’re going to say, Commander. But I discussed this with Commander, Special Warfare Group Two, and between the two of us decided their families needed them while we play out this game of Russian roulette with the storm. Plus, everything we are seeing from the intelligence community, including the CIA and DIA, all agree the rogue vessel is on the other side of the Atlantic heading toward the Mediterranean or, as the French believe, toward Rotterdam. Wherever it is, it isn’t here.”

“I have found that most intelligence becomes
politically tainted as it rises through the levels of government,” St. Cyr offered. “What if the ship isn’t heading east?” he asked, his voice rising. “What if it’s sailing to here? How are we going to take it down, as our countries would prefer, if we have no teams? Have no one but ourselves?”

West turned, his lips clinched, and walked to the window. Down below, the Mark V Special Operations Crafts bounced on the turbulent water. “Then, Captain, you will just have to use one of my boats. No aircraft are flying—couldn’t if they wanted to. They aren’t going to be able to fly for at least another two days, and if that storms does what we think, then you can count on that being a week,” West said, his words crisp and sharp. “And don’t expect more help from larger ships, because starting at about”—he looked at his watch—“In two hours—seventeen hundred our time—the fleet is going to start sortieing, heading out to sea to ride the storm out. The only ships remaining in port are those who can’t get underway for various reasons or because their mission design such as our SpecOps craft limit their survivability in heavy seas.”

“So should we return to our quarters?” Tibbles-Seagraves interrupted Captain West’s rising voice.

“Wing Commander, you may return to your quarters, or you can stay here with me through the night. I have bunks on the first deck. But you can’t leave until I get orders authorizing it.”

“Maybe we should go back to the BOQ?” Sam asked, looking at Tucker.

His eyebrows rose as thoughts of how to improve the passage of time flickered through his mind.

The Chief came back up the stairs from below, balancing a couple of pizzas on his arms. “Here you are, Commodore,” he said, sitting the boxes down on the table.” He turned to the Tucker. “Commander, your bags, along with Commander Seagraves’s and Captain St. Cyr’s, have arrived downstairs. I’ve put them in the bunk room.”

Tucker and the others looked at the Commodore, who was taking a bite from a slice of pizza. “Of course,” West
said through bites, “you’ll have to carry your own bags back.”

Two hours later, they watched the first of the aircraft carriers sail past the entrance to Special Boat Unit Twenty harbor. Close behind it sailed an assortment of cruisers, destroyers, and several frigates. The remaining bulk of the United States Navy Second Fleet was underway, making its way through heavy seas, heading to the open ocean where they had the freedom to maneuver to avoid the worst the storm could offer.

Darker clouds sailed in as the ships sailed out, darkening the skies and casting a heavy gray pale across the landscape, accompanying the last two aircraft carriers as they sailed past. It was an impressive parade of American Navy power for the six people who stood in an old World War II seaplane tower; their own special review platform. Few words were spoken as they watched the warships, amphibious ships, and auxiliary ships sail out to the sea, fighting against the wind that sought to blow them into shallow waters along the coast. South, along the coast of Florida, another ship worked its way north, unaware that the United States Navy had vacated its major hub on the East Coast.

CHAPTER 8

THE DARKNESS RECEDED SLOWLY AS EARLY BEGAN TO
regain consciousness. A kaleidoscope of faces, knives, guns, and a roaring bull chased nightmares across jumbled thoughts. There was pain ahead, and it grew as she struggled upward. The last thing she recalled was seeing the tall man with the mustache draw back. It was as if slow motion had taken over as she watched the first fist arc toward her face. After the first couple of blows, she had passed out. She rolled her head to the side, expecting to feel the hard deck of the ship against it, but instead discovered a softness that made her think of a pillow.

Maureen Early opened her right eye slowly, feeling her eyelids fighting against dried moisture gluing them together. Her left eye, swollen, didn’t want to open, and with her hands tied behind, there was little she could do. Her legs, toes pointed outward, lay splayed in front of her with two untied boots resting in the faint passageway light filtering through the small porthole in the door. She stared silently, watching the toes of the boots sticking straight up and realized they weren’t moving. She wiggled her toes and felt relief when they touched the top of the steel
toes of the flight boots. She still had feeling in her feet. She scrunched her head into the softness beneath it. The ship didn’t seem to be rolling as much as it had been yesterday.

“Lieutenant, you awake, ma’am?” Senior Chief Leary asked from behind her.

She looked up with her right eye. He was leaning over her from behind, looking down, his eyes searching her face. “Yeah,” she said, the word forced through cracked lips and a dry mouth. “You look like shit, Senior Chief,” she mumbled.

“Don’t try to talk yet, Lieutenant. You took a few punches, but I liked the way you avoided the rest by passing out.”

“Don’t be funny. It hurts too much. Water?” she asked weakly. She forced her left eye open against the strand of mucus that had dried across it. The vision was blurred.

“Mr. Kelly, can you do it?” Leary asked.

Early shut her eyes and did a mental assessment of her body. Her arms hurt. Four, maybe five now, days they had been tied behind her back. She wiggled her fingers; still had feeling. Her stomach hurt when she breathed, and her face felt as if someone had taken a hammer and beaten her with it.

“Did they—?” Her voice trailed off.

Senior Chief Leary shook his head. “No, they didn’t.”

“My face hurts,” she said. Early raised her head, opening her eyes. The vision in the left one was a little clearer. Her copilot Scott Kelly was knee-walking across the metal deck toward some bowls near the door.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice trailing off.

“They finally decided we needed more than a cup of water a day. You’ve been out of it for the past twenty-four hours, Lieutenant, but from what we can tell, there’s nothing broken.”

“You sound different, Senior Chief,” she said. She took a deep breath and started coughing.

“On the other hand, you could have a cracked rib.”

Across the compartment, Scott bent over, dipping his
face in the bowl and sucking up a mouthful of water. He turned and knee-walked over to where the Senior Chief and Early sat.

“Lean up, Lieutenant,” Senior Chief Leary said, raising his knee to force her head up. “Now this is going to be shaky, but Lieutenant Kelly is going to put his lips near yours. You have to open them, so he can give you the water he’s carrying in his mouth.”

She blinked several times, loosing the yellow strands of mucus from her left eye. She opened her mouth and shut her eyes. A moment passed and the wet, satisfying taste of water filled her mouth. She swallowed. The short flood quit and she opened her eyes. Scott Kelly looked down at her. “You all right?” he asked.

“I’m stiff and my face hurts when I talk. Can you squirt some of that in my eyes?”

“Think you can move?”

“Push me up, Senior Chief,” Early said. She pulled forward, doing a sit-up. Bright spots swam across her vision, and her body swayed to the right, where she fell against Leary, who had shifted his body so he was behind her.

“Take it easy, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’ve been horizontal for a day. Let your body adjust to the new position.”

She opened her eyes. Scott had worked his way back to the water, filled his mouth again, and was returning.

“Open your mouth again,” Leary said.

She kept her eyes opened. Kelly squirted a little water onto each eye, then spit what little remained into Gotta-Be’s mouth. A few seconds later, she had swallowed the water. “Thanks.” She blinked her eyes rapidly, the water stinging slightly. Her vision cleared.

“Much better than doing the Senior Chief,” Scott said, smiling, revealing a long open gap where white teeth had once been.

Her eyebrows bunched. “What happened?” she asked.

“It looks worse than it is,” Scott replied, his tongue
visible as he ran it over the stumps of missing teeth. “You should have seen the other guy.”

She drew another deep breath. Her ribs on the right side hurt. She rolled her upper left shoulder, sending a dull pain across the top of her chest—as if something was sticking into her from beneath the skin. The pain from the shoulder was manageable. Early pulled herself all the way up to a sitting position, moving off the Senior Chief. She blinked several times and then turned to face him without falling over or passing out.

She looked his face over, saw the swollen sides of the cheeks. “Open your mouth, Senior Chief.”

He grinned, revealing a spilt lip caked in blood. “Nothing like a good beating to get the blood flowing . . . if you know what I mean.”

She couldn’t tell if any teeth were missing in the faint light of the compartment.

“Where is Win?” she asked, looking to where the young Operations Mission Evaluator had lain yesterday.

“They carried him out hours ago. There was a man with them, wearing a white smock, who told us in broken English that he was a doctor and wanted to see if there was anything he could do for Win.”

The three remained silent for a moment, knowing that whatever they were going to do to the young OPEVAL would not be pleasant. What happened to them told the true story of what would happen to the unconscious Lieutenant Junior Grade.

“We can only pray the man told the truth,” she said softly.

“Yes, ma’am. That’ll do a hell of a lot of good,” Senior Chief Leary mumbled. “The only time I’ve seen prayer solve a problem is when you solve it yourself. Then you can say something like ‘Thank God.’ ”

“Huh?”

“We gotta get out of this,” Leary continued. “They ain’t keeping us alive because of some misguided charity. They got something planned for us. And whatever it is, it ain’t gonna be good, and it ain’t gonna be pleasant.”

Maureen Early, using her hips to move, wiggled back, alongside the Senior Chief, until her back reached the cool bulkhead. She raised first one hip, then the other, letting the blood circulate in her buttocks, the familiar tingling sensation grew in her buttocks and legs as feelings returned.

“Damn, Ma’am. I hope you ain’t . . .”

“Butt’s asleep, Senior Chief. That’s all.” She took a deep breath. “You’re right, Senior Chief. We have to escape.”

“How?” Lieutenant Scott Kelly asked. “It isn’t as if we could do anything. Our hands are tied. They feed us once a day and barely give us enough water to keep us from becoming dehydrated.”

“Regardless, Scott. The Senior Chief’s right,” Early said, tenderly running her tongue along her lips. At least the dryness from her voice was gone. “Just don’t know what we can do.” She looked at the Senior Chief. They may be officers, but this tall, muscular Senior Chief had ten more years of Navy service than both her and Scott together. A smidgeon of doubt bubbled from beneath a brief moment of confidence that maybe the Senior Chief had a way for them to escape. Then, recalling the man’s Naval history, she realized there was no way he could have experienced anything such as this. She doubted if anyone had and lived to tell about it. Damn! For the first time, she truly realized they were going to die. The dryness returned. They didn’t teach anything about escape and evasion while imprisoned on a ship when she went through Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion—SERE, they called it—training. SERE training for flight crews was targeted toward being shot down over land and avoiding or escaping capture from the same. No one taught them what to do when they were shot down at sea and captured by an enemy ship.

“I ain’t sure myself, but I know we have two chances. One when they bring the food and water every night. Of course, if they decide to keep us alive, eventually they’re going to have to wash us down—fire hose or something.
So far, that ain’t happened, and we can’t wait around thinking it is.”

This would be one part of their captivity she had no intention of sharing with anyone when they returned to civilization—how she’d sat in her own urine with two men while a prisoner. At least, so far, it had only been urine, though they knew Win Forrester had lost his bowel control soon after they were thrown into this compartment. She suspected the Senior Chief had also, but it wasn’t something that civilized people discussed. It was just something that happened when you were cast into a brutal situation that left no choice. She had feared when she first woke that they had molested her. Sure, the Senior Chief said they hadn’t, but the three of them were unconscious for a period, and who knew what happened during that time. She shut her eyes, trying to feel “down there” to see if she could tell if anything had happened. It didn’t feel like it to her, and she had some confidence that she would have known if she had been raped, but the only way she would know would be when she was rescued—if she was rescued. They could always change their minds if they hadn’t done anything to her. Then, just as suddenly, the fear passed. They never would have taken the time to redress her if they had. Being soaked in one’s waste is a great defense against rape.

“We have to figure out how to get our hands untied.”

“The only way I figure we can do it is to cut through these plastic ties.”

“Even if we had something to cut through them, and even if we managed to get free, our hands are going to be useless until we get some circulation back in them.”

“Lieutenant Scott, I would rather slap them to death with dead hands than sit here and wait for them to put a bullet between my eyes.”

“So, how do we free our hands?” Scott asked, nodding in agreement.

The Senior Chief looked at Early. “You’re looking at me. What can I do?” she asked, confused.

“Ma’am, you’re the only one of us with a full set of teeth.”

“I think I’ve heard that line before. I believe it was in South Carolina, or maybe West Virginia. It didn’t work then either.”

The continuous engine noise with them for the past four days, with its low monotonous vibration in the background, increased in tempo for several seconds, then the vibration intensified as the ship started to reverse.

“What’s happening?” Kelly asked, a tinge of fear in the question.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” the Senior Chief offered.

Suddenly the engine noise quit. A few seconds elapsed, and then the ship began rolling slightly from side to side as the wave motion of the Atlantic Ocean pushed against the starboard side before rolling under the aged freighter.

“Looks as if we’ve stopped,” Early said. She forced her right eye open, feeling the thick moisture that had been holding it together give. The water earlier spit in her mouth by Kelly had provided some relief. Shuffling around the deck, even with her hands tied, had restored circulation to her body. Her face hurt. It hurt like hell. She moved her jaw back and forth several times, sending slight pain waves down the right side of her face when she shifted her jaw to the left. How did that joke go?
Doc, my arm hurts when I do this. Then, don’t do that.

“That jaw hurting you?”

She glanced at Kelly, who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the compartment in the small beam of light from the passageway outside. She nodded. “No . . . well, a little. But, I don’t think anything’s broken, just swollen and sore.”

“If it’s broken, you’d know.”

She turned to Leary. “Okay, Senior Chief, let’s say I manage to use my God-given talent with teeth and get us loose. What then? As soon as they see we’re loose, they’re going to tie us up tighter or kill us.”

“Ma’am, they’re going to kill us anyway. Why they’re
keeping us alive is the question, and the more I think about it, the more I’m damn sure it ain’t from any sense of human compassion. They’ve got some sort of plan for us, and whatever it is, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“THERE YOU ARE, TAMURSHEKI,” CAPTAIN ALRAJOOL SAID
, pointing west. “That’s called Florida—”

“The land of the infidel,” Tamursheki muttered softly as if offering a prayer.

“You can call it that, but those infidels seem to be kicking your butts all across the globe. We’re about ten miles south of the American city of Jacksonville. The Americans have their second largest Navy base along the East Coast there.”

Tamursheki glared at the freighter’s Captain. “You make me angry, Alrajool. I would even suspect that you lack conviction of our righteousness. They have their aircraft carriers there?”