Light Up the Night (21 page)

The main rotor began spinning faster and making noise. Yes, the
May
was a stealth chopper, but she was far from silent.

And did they want a pickup, or were they just in the lead of the other vehicles? She didn't want to be “blowing” Billy's cover again. They already had enough reasons to be pissed at each other.

“I'm going to give them the option,” she informed the
Vengeance.
“I'll park ahead and either they'll board or blow by.”

“Roger. Descending to five thousand for cover.” That would put the convoy just marginally in range of the
Vengeance
's miniguns. But it also placed them under a dozen seconds from joining the fray up close and personal if things went ugly.

Trisha had the
May
aloft while the vehicles were still two minutes out. She flew thirty seconds in their direction, then turned facing north and settled right in the middle of the lane just past a small rise in the road. She kept the rotors spinning at full speed, but dead flat. They wouldn't stir up any more dust that way. And between the dust her landing had stirred and the bluff, no one would see the disk of sparks made by the dust and sand as it pinged off the rotors.

She had less than a hundred yards of visibility aft because of the rise in the road, so all she could do was wait.

“Fifteen seconds,” Lola informed her.

Trisha tried not to watch the clock in the corner of her visor or count the seconds, but her whole body was so tensed and ready for action that she could practically see each second drawn out as its own piece of reality. She had the dial on her ADAS camera spun to show the aft view along one side of her visor.

An impossibly long time later, the two motorcycles crested the rise, actually catching a little air in the process. She was glad she'd parked the extra hundred yards downslope so that they didn't loft into her spinning blades.

She blinked on her running lights, the white stern beacon and the red and green sidelights, so they'd see her.

The motorcycles split to race to either side of her.

Would they speed by and then she'd have to bug out fast, or would they—

The bikes slammed into the side carriers still moving so fast that she didn't know why the riders didn't go over the handlebars. Their impetus actually shoved the chopper forward several inches.

She didn't need Billy's shout of “Go!” to get gone. She doused the running lights and yanked up on the collective. Before she was a dozen feet up, she heard a hand slap against the chopper's skin, first on one side, then the other. They'd latched the bikes in and she could safely maneuver now. Back down to five feet above the sand and scrub brush, she banked to the right hoping that the dark would cover her dust trail departing the roadway.

“Convoy crossing your point of departure in forty-five seconds,” Lola announced as if she were at a country fair.

They were three thousand yards out when Lola called down, “They're cresting the rise… And… Three cheers for the home team. Ground vehicles past your pickup position and continuing north.”

Trisha aimed for the coast as Billy came on the intercom. He must have his helmet on.

“Go back to the road, ahead of the convoy by ten miles, and find a bad spot in the road.”

She wanted to ask, but Billy's voice indicated he was still in full-on mission mode. So, against her better instincts, she informed
Vengeance
of the course change as she curved off her beeline for the coast and headed back toward the road at an angle to the north.

It was harder estimating what was ten miles ahead of the moving convoy than it was finding a bad spot in the road. The roads of Somali were rarely paved and, outside of cities, required four-wheel drive and a strong spine to navigate. Out here, there was more pothole than road in some places. She found a dry river wash down in a small valley. The bigger boulders had been cleared to the side, so a bike would probably have to be walked over the remaining cobbles to be safe.

“Do you have any demolition charges?” Michael this time.

“Just the ones to destroy the chopper in case it goes down in bad territory.” Every SOAR chopper was not only a valuable asset, but also a dangerous one. Even if it could no longer fly, its sophisticated weapons and controls would have immense value on the black market, and facing a jury-rigged minigun mounted on a technical wasn't something any pilot wanted to contemplate. So they all flew with enough explosives to demolish the chopper if needed. And every pilot was trained to do just that as an option of last resort.

Michael came forward, inching along the skid and holding tightly onto the door frame. She compensated with the cyclic for the shift of his weight. He leaned in through the copilot's door, his eyes asking her the question.

“Lower left side of console and just behind my head against the ceiling.” The former explosive was big enough to take care of the electronics and any weapons in the forward part of the compartment. The latter would blow the turbine and rotor mechanisms to smithereens. If she'd had the heavy weapons out on the hardpoints, there'd be two more smaller charges embedded in the pylons, one to either side, to destroy those.

Michael reached down and pulled the block of C4 off the console and the one over her head as well. It felt slightly odd for them to be gone. She could see trying to explain the problem to her parents, being uncomfortable because she now had one less way to blow herself up in case she crashed. No way to make a civilian understand that.

“Detonators and remote control are in my right thigh pouch.”

As soon as Michael slid back into position, Billy moved forward along the skid on his side. He pulled the detonators and remote, squeezed her thigh reassuringly, and was gone again.

“Hover twenty feet up over the rocks about thirty feet from the road.”

She slid into place and waited five seconds.

“Okay, tip your nose down hard.”

When she did, the two motorcycles shot forward off their mounts and tumbled toward the rocks below. She almost screamed, but caught herself when she saw there were no bodies. She'd expected they were dumping something to explode, but hadn't had time to think of what. Of course it would have to be the bikes. Each bike also still had a machine gun resting across the handlebars, sure evidence the drivers had been there if they chose to inspect the fire, but not too closely.

Then she fully understood the scenario they were building and turned down the arroyo to the east. When she was fifty yards gone, they detonated the bikes. At the last second, she remembered to warn the
Vengeance.

“Fire in the hole!” The explosion sent a fireball skyward. Even at her present distance and increasing, they were peppered with small gravel and bits of bike pinging loudly off the chopper's skin. She hoped none hit her two passengers clinging to the chopper out on the skids. The extra fuel tank would allow them only the smallest part of the rear cargo space to let them lean in and shield themselves.

A glance backward in the ADAS revealed that the bikes burned furiously, sending a pillar of fire into the night sky that would be easily visible to the approaching convoy, now barely two miles distant. Hopefully it would still be burning badly enough that the people in the convoy wouldn't look overly hard for bodies. The departure of the black stealth helicopter running fast to the east in the bottom of the arroyo wouldbe invisible.

Michael and Billy had apparently been leading the convoy but wanted to appear dead by accident. Crashing and burning the bikes in the rocks just to the side of the road—as if they'd missed the arroyo's proper crossing point in the darkness—was a great ploy.

Trisha didn't ease up on the controls, keeping it right at maximum throttle the whole way to the coast. So low that she had to dodge the taller bushes and the occasional tree. She couldn't even risk a glance to look back at Billy, though he'd be clinging to the chopper only a few feet behind her.

“Hi, guys.” Trisha greeted them over the intercom.

“Thanks for the ride.” Michael.

“Hey, O'Malley.” Billy. She thought she detected a private warmth in the way he said it. If anyone else said anything, she didn't hear it because she had to concentrate on the nap-of-the-earth flying without any copilot to feed her engine and position status.

When the
Peleliu
came into sight, Trisha knew two things. First, she loved this kind of flying, right out on the edge of the envelope. And second, no matter how much she didn't want to be involved with Billy, she was.

Her chopper hadn't been the only thing that flew so fast tonight.

Her heart did too.

Bill felt like he'd been struck by a maelstrom from the moment they hit the
Peleliu
's deck.

Trisha had given him a welcome-back kiss the minute they were off the chopper. Even as the
Vengeance
settled beside them and Michael came around from the other side, she hadn't let up.

“Hi,” she'd finally said when she freed his lips.

“Hi,” was all he could think to reply. He couldn't believe how much he'd thought about her on the mission and how much better she tasted and felt in real life than in his imagination.

“That's twice now.”

“What's twice now?” He breathed her in, the best smell in days.

“Twice I've saved your ass.”

“Appreciated.” She'd done it perfectly too.

“At least you're thanking me this time.”

And that was the last word they spoke in private for the next ten hours. The priority first was the debrief and the next plan. Phase Two.

They took over the big briefing room. No one even left to go to the officers' mess. Instead, sandwiches were delivered. Bill dumped water over a napkin and scrubbed at his face, removing at least a little of three days and nights of Somali grime. Rather than the one screen in the planning room, the briefing room sported three massive wall screens. He brought up the map of Somalia on one side and set close-ups of the four captured ships in the north on the other. In the center, he put up a split screen of Galkayo and Garowe.

Everyone had arrived long before he had a chance to finish his second hamburger, and he barely remembered eating the first one, it had gone down so fast. The room's perimeter chairs were filled with SOAR and Delta crews. The SOAR crew leads were at the main table: O'Malley, Lola Maloney, and Air Mission Commander Archie Stevenson. Also at the table were Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis; the head of the Ranger team, Lieutenant Clint Barstowe; and Petty Officer Sly Stowell.

“I was only slumming by pumping fuel with the grapes,” Sly addressed Michael as the leader, clearly speaking one warrior to another. “My normal job is running the landing craft. I'm senior man on the crew, so they sent me to answer any questions if there's a ‘by sea' element to your plans.”

Even the little girl showed up. No one commented on it as she sat in a seat by her mother, so he figured it wasn't up to him to chase her out. And he wasn't terribly interested in getting on the wrong side of the country's top marksman anyway.

Michael indicated that Bill should take the lead once everyone had gathered.

“Okay.” Bill took a big bite of his burger before setting it aside. They'd eaten well by Somali standards, and it had really sucked. He and Michael had entertained the pirates by comparing Somalia with their other “mercenary” tours. Amazing how he'd forgotten in his short month aboard ship to appreciate that the Navy at sea ate really well. He chewed fast and swallowed.

“Sorry if I'm covering common ground for some of you, but I want us all on the same chart here.” He grabbed a couple of fries and shoved his plate aside.

“I spent three months in Somalia trying to locate who the power players were among the pirates. That is easier said than done. Half of my leads led to the old fisherman pirates who are no longer in power. They just want to sit around chewing khat and talking about the good old days when the ships weren't armed and the pickings were lush. There were times they had a dozen or more ships up for ransom and no one was trying to kill them over it. That the ransoms were a tenth what they are today was only grounds for envy.”

He went to the map of the whole country, an upside-down L-shape around the Horn of Africa, so that he could point out his route. “I came into the Mog in the south along with the Ugandan reinforcements for ANISOM. Then I detached myself and began working my way north. Al-Shabaab terrorists are operating in the south and they're outside my mandate.”

“And outside the realm of reasonable survivability,” O'Malley filled in.

“True.” He actually appreciated the interruption and gave her a nod of thanks. It was often hard, due to standard military training, to shift from briefing to brainstorming. But with the caliber of people in this room, they wouldn't need much more encouragement than that. O'Malley had just broken the ice for them. Though he still had more to say before they began the brainstorming of Phase Two.

“It took me three months to work my way into the Galkayo teams. The Bosaso thing was a fluke. Those guys were beginners and weren't expected to catch anything, then they nabbed that pleasure yacht. Any self-respecting merchant marine with a flare pistol could have chased those guys off. A fellow named Hassan Abdullah Abdi sent me—as a test, I assume—to oversee and advise them, along with a fellow named Abshir. That's the guy O'Malley shot while saving my ass.”

Got him a bit of a laugh, though Trisha looked grim. She'd shot many more than that when she took out the building and the technicals, though that hadn't been one on one with a rifle. Or maybe it was recalling his stubbornness. That particular trait was something they both had a serious dose of, and it wasn't helping them a bit personally. He'd have to work on that.

“Michael and I were not only able to get back in touch with Abdi, but Michael was able to convince him that the U.S. incursion was just a first attack and that the fleet would be hitting Garowe next. My best information said that Garowe was where a third of the present hostages from the other three ships are being held. Our convoy was a rush job to the north to extract those hostages before the supposed U.S. attack.”

Trisha burst out laughing. Damn, but the woman was sharp.

He exchanged a glance with Michael who simply nodded. They'd slept as little as possible the last three days, standing watch-and-watch in case their identity slipped somehow. In the darkest hour of the second night, they'd started talking about Trisha.

It had taken a bit for Bill to catch on that she and Michael had been more than just friends at one time; not that he actually said so. No wonder the man was so bloody protective of her. But that hadn't turned out to be the issue. Michael really did respect and care about her that much.

This time he didn't have to state the message as baldly, but that night it became very clear that Michael had a close eye on one Lieutenant William Bruce. That's what the fight in the bowels of the ship had been, a one-on-one test of skill as well as a worthiness test for someone Michael cared about. Was Bill good enough for fighting with on a team, and was he good enough for Trisha? That latter one was tough to answer.

Her quick perception of the game they'd played on Abdi was one more proof that all of that speed she had wasn't just physical. It was mental as well. Damn, but he liked being around this woman.

“You tricked them into getting all of the hostages together so that we'd be able to extract them in a single snatch.” Trisha practically crowed it out with delight.

“Two locations. Inland at Galkayo is one and the other lies along the coast at Hobyo where two of the ships are anchored. Abdi had been looking for an excuse to take down the Garowe leader for a while anyway. We were riding lead as the most expendable muscle if we hit any bad checkpoints. Don't think they would have liked two white guys on motorcycles much when we arrived, so we really appreciated you giving us a lift.”

“We've been keeping a UAV on the convoy,” AMC Stevenson reported. “They had three Range Rovers and six technicals. They spent under a minute checking out your demise at the arroyo, not even going close enough to see if you guys were hurt.”

“Yeah, about what we hoped. Abdi isn't long on sympathy for the dead. Probably saw it as a neat way to deal with the problem of whether or not to trust us.” Bill was even more thankful for Trisha's neat flying skills than he had been.

“We were able to track them,” Stevenson continued. “They had a brief but ferocious gun battle in southwest Garowe. They are now proceeding back toward the highway with two Rovers, five technicals, and a big van that could hold about a dozen people, more if they're packed tight, but with the surviving Range Rovers, that might not have been necessary. We do have time to launch and intercept in the desert if we depart in the next thirty minutes.”

Half the room went electric, but Bill patted his hands downward and they calmed slowly.

“If we hit them, we'll never see the bulk of the hostages again. This is only a third of them and Hassan Abdi was not traveling with us. There were only fifteen in Garowe. We're better off hitting them at a collection point, even if they will be more heavily protected.”

“I agree.” Michael's first words at the briefing confirmed Bill's plan. The people who had been ready to leap into action moments before settled uneasily into their chairs. It was hard to let a present opportunity pass in favor of a possible future one. Bill could feel the need for action, but it would be premature at this moment.

He and Michael had agreed on a timeline and the rough outlines of a plan, just not how to pull it off.

“The problem,” Michael continued, “is we estimate that once they're back in Galkayo tonight, they'll hunker down through the day.”

“But if they were smart,” Trisha picked up the thought, “I'd bet they'll redistribute the hostages as soon as the moon sets after dark tonight.”

“Exactly! We have”—Michael checked his watch—“about sixteen hours to form and execute a plan or we'll lose this second opportunity as well.”

***

Trisha hadn't been down to the well deck of the
Peleliu
before. Somehow it hadn't been a part of her “welcome aboard” tour. Actually her tour had been the “there's your bunk” tour. She'd crashed into it for twenty hours after the forty-hour trip from Tacoma, Washington.

They all followed Petty Officer Sly Stowell down two more decks than the level of her quarters and the officers' mess. It felt as if they were descending into the bowels of the ship or perhaps to the center ofthe earth.

“You said there were Smurfs here,” she teased Billy who was following close behind.

“Nah, they prefer sunshine and daisies and all of that.”

“Oh, that's a great comfort.” She could feel the thirty thousand tons of steel squeezing in on her. It was one of those odd conundrums. She spent her flying hours in a space smaller than the reach of her arms, surrounded by the best technology America could provide. More than twenty distinct systems were available at her fingertips—from weapons to satellite communications. Sometimes she felt she was half cyborg. Here she was, free to move around in a massive steel ship a thousand times safer from attack, and she felt as if the steel walls were about to collapse in on her.

And when they reached the well deck, she felt even more anxious seeing the ocean wash through the rear half of the hull. The entire stern of the ship lay open right at water level. Several inches of water washed lazily from side to side. A wooden landing deck shimmered just below the surface. A seaman came around handing out heavy sound muffs.

“The well deck can be lowered and flooded deeper so that low-draft landing craft can be driven right into the ship.” Sly sounded entirely too pleased and proud to have the ocean washing through the belly of his ship.

At the head of the landing craft well, a steep ramp led up into the heart of the ship. At the next level up was parking space for dozens of Humvees, APCs—armored personnel carriers, and even tanks.

At present all the
Peleliu
carried was a dozen APCs and two amphibious landing craft. The echoing emptiness of the helo hangar several decks above pervaded here as well.

“Watch this.” Sly stopped them all halfway down the ramp, as if they were on the last bank of some cozy beach made of corrugated steel in the dark guts of the ship. He pointed out the wide open stern.

While they'd been in the planning session, morning had come to the Arabian Ocean. The golden glow still clinging to the horizon said that it was just dawn, while shadows across the open stern showed that they were facing south at the moment.

A small black dot appeared on the horizon. Trisha tried blinking, but it didn't disappear from her vision. Billy, who'd come to stand close beside her, also was blinking and turning his head as he looked out. So they were both seeing it.

The well deck acted like a giant amplifier. The tiny splashing of the waves echoed about the space. But the open space was focused toward whatever was approaching. At first she heard a high buzzing that rapidly grew to a throaty roar as the black dot expanded into a low rectangle.

“Muffs,” Sly shouted out.

She pulled hers on, which muted most of the noise, but it continued to build.

Then the approaching object resolved itself. She'd never seen one up close, not even in training. The LCAC, Landing Craft Air Cushion, was a hovercraft and it was heading their way fast.

“What's its speed?” It was growing larger fast. She had to shout over the focused roar as it was getting close now and showing no sign of slowing.

“Right now? She's running at about seventy knots. Not really pushing it much and she's lightly laden. She'll carry a dozen Humvees, a main battle tank, or about four hundred troops and their gear. Can still crack forty pretty easily then.” Sly had to really shout the last of it to be heard.

Several of the people were stumbling backward, but Sly, Billy, and Michael were standing fast, so she stood with them, though she was desperately cringing inside.

In the last moments, the roar slackening not one bit, the LCAC zoomed up until it filled the expanse of the stern gate and blocked most of the morning light. It felt as if the landing craft was about to ram the ship, but then the LCAC cut her power abruptly. The large twin fans at her stern that had driven her forward now reversed. She slowed abruptly and nosed into the well deck dead center at an easy walking pace.