Light Up the Night (25 page)

Then, as soon as he'd for one little instant hoped they'd be all clear for loading, the
May
had jerked in the sky. It gave a sickening twist that no pilot would do intentionally.

The chopper twisted from nose down to almost onto her side.

No fire, no burst of flame.

He sprinted forward. It was stupid; he knew that even as he ran. But it didn't matter that he couldn't help her up in the air. It didn't matter that he was exposing himself. He had to get to her.

***

Dragging back on the cyclic didn't work. Roland was too heavy and Trisha could see the ground coming up far too fast.

She shoved the control sideways, and he flopped into her lap. That got his weight off the controls.

A hard correction and she managed to get the chopper right side up and the throttle wide open so that the turbine screamed for lift.

The
May
hammered into the ground hitting one skid first, then after a crucial moment of indecision, flopping down onto the other skid and coming to a rest upright. Her crash-tolerant pilot's seat slammed against the stops and jarred her body. She dropped the collective to kill any lift. If she took off with Roland lying across her lap, she'd have no control at all. The
May
had a distinct list to one side, so the skid must have partly crumpled. But the chopper was still running. Hadn't buried her rotor in the dirt.

A small element of her thousands of hours of training kicked in and she reached up to flip the control on Roland's seat belt harness without even looking. Under normal setting, the harness was designed to let the seat's occupant move as much as needed to reach the control console or lean over to look out the door. It would only lock up in a crash, just like a car seat belt.

On its new setting, it would retract, but not release. Once she got Roland upright, it would hold him tightly in place. It was built that way for moments exactly like this, when an injured pilot had to be pinned back, clear of the controls.

She reached down to drag him upright and froze.

An unexploded RPG was buried through the side of his helmet. A dud. The Kevlar could stop small-caliber bullets, but not this. It must have come up over the wall from outside the compound so that the ADAS mounted on the chopper's belly had been below the edge of the wall and unable to give warning.

Billy raced up beside her, and she'd never been so happy to see anyone in her life. He had his sniper rifle braced to his shoulder as he ran. Michael was three steps behind. They knelt to either side of the
May
's nose facing in opposite directions.

Trisha's racing heart slowly came back under control.

They were firing. There were people still in the compound firing, though the fire lessened moment by moment as the four separate teams worked their magic.

Time to worry later. Time to deal now.

She dug for a pulse under the edge of Roland's helmet but didn't find one, nor did she expect to.

Well, she wasn't going to fly with an unexploded RPG in her cockpit. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the tail of it, imagined she could feel it pulsingwith evil.

She shouted, “Fire in the hole!” Then, with a single clean jerk, she pulled it out and threw it as far as she could out the door opening.

***

Bill almost swallowed his tongue when he saw the RPG come tumbling through the air out of Trisha's chopper. He dove away from it, knocking Michael sprawling as he did so.

The explosion behind them was a sharp report, and he could feel the ground he was lying on pulse once with the fury of it. He remained still a moment longer to let the shock wave of dust sweep over them, then rolled to his feet to check Trisha.

Leaning into the chopper, he shouted into her face. “You okay?”

She was shoving her copilot back into his seat. Bill reached across to help, but she batted his hand aside. Another push or two and the harness held Roland in place, back against his seat. By the way his head hung, Bill knew he was gone.

“You okay?”

“Good enough for now. Let's get out of here.”

He wished he could see her eyes, but she didn't raise her visor.

She reached down and began pulling up on her collective.

He stepped back and covered his face against the cloud of dust thrown up by her rotor blades. Then she was aloft and gone.

A quick scan of the yard indicated that the four three-man fire teams who had landed inside the walls were ready to move. No other resistance fire was going on. Any pirate shooters were dead, injured, or smart enough to lie low until the invading force was gone.

“Let's load.”

Within seconds, the two Sea Hawks landed close beside him, as near as they dared to the main building's front door. They loaded the Hawks with a dozen hostages and two Rangers each.

They labored back into the sky. The
Vicious
came down from her guard station and gathered the rest of the hostages and all except the point men for each of the Little Birds.

Finally
Max
and
Merchant
came in and Bill, Michael, and the last two D-boys climbed aboard.

With heavy covering fire from
Vengeance
and, Bill could hardly believe it, Trisha flying alone in the
May
, the two Little Birds ducked down to pick up the front- and back-gate Ranger teams.

As they departed, he heard a harsh sizzle nearby. He leaned out into the wind and spotted
Vengeance
.

She was living up to her name. Chief Warrant Lola Maloney had just fired a pair of Hellfire missiles into the main building.

All three stories went up with a roar that shook the night.

Back at the FARP, Bill rushed over toTrisha's chopper.

“You okay?” He came up beside her.

“I guess.” She slid up her visor.

Screw security. He pulled a small red flashlight out of a hip pocket and flipped his own NVGs out of the way. He had to see for himself.

Trisha's face was drawn, and he'd wager pretty pale. He wanted to tell her how incredible she was, but it didn't seem right with her sitting next to her dead copilot.

“I guess Roland is fine there.” Trisha didn't turn to look at her strapped-in copilot. “I'll fly him home.”

“The hell you will.” Bill turned and shouted over to the
Vengeance
that had landed nearby. “You guys have a body bag?”

The reaction was galvanic. It was the first anyone else knew about any mortality. Lola Maloney rushed over and did a quick inspection that Bill recognized as totally professional.

“Medic?” he asked her.

“Former CSAR.”

Combat Search and Rescue. Good person to have around. Maloney took over in that efficient way of someone who'd seen worse, much worse and too many times, and she had Roland extracted quickly from the
May
. Then she was back at Trisha's side.

“Are you okay?”

“Would people stop asking me that?”

To Bill's ear, she sounded more Trisha-style pissed than just-lost-her-partner numb. But with a high degree of stress overlay.

“Lieutenant O'Malley…” Maloney suddenly sounded like a kick-ass officer rather than an easygoing SOAR pilot. “Do you judge yourself capable of flying, or would you like to trade with my copilot?”

It was an elegant solution. No loss of face, she'd still be at the controls, not relegated to being a back-end passenger. And trusting that Trisha was a good enough pilot to assess her own mental state.

Trisha blew out a breath and squared her shoulders. “I'm okay to fly, sir. Let's get it done.”

Maloney nodded a sharp acknowledgment. “I'll go find you a copilot.”

“No need,” Bill wasn't letting Trisha out of his sight at the moment. “I'm certified in type.”

Maloney gave him a meaningful nod, one that told him he'd better not screw this up or he'd have yet another woman trying to beat the crap out of him. Then Maloney squeezed Trisha's shoulder and returned to the
Vengeance
where they'd already taken Roland's body bag.

Bill fished around in back, found the spare helmet he'd worn when flying with the motorcycles aboard, and pulled it on. In moments, he was wired in.

Trisha didn't get out of the chopper. She just sat there unmoving.

So Bill kept an eye on the refueling.

***

They were aloft and almost back to the coast before Trisha was able to find any words at all. Billy had offered her silence and she appreciated that.

“Thanks, Billy. I wouldn't have liked having Roland here growing cold. Thanks for taking care of it.”

“It's done.”

“It's done,” she agreed, though they both knew it wasn't. They both had been through the “team member loss” counseling sessions that were sure to follow this event as well. Though no one in her own crew had been killed before, she had seen a chopper disintegrate in a ball of fire not a hundred yards ahead of her. Another time it was a crew chief who took a round and would never walk again. For the duration of this flight, though, it was done.

“Bill?” AMC Stevenson's voice crackled over the radio.

“Go ahead.” She liked how close and assuredhe sounded.

“The Navy team that entered Hobyo on the hovercraft has just reported the successful recovery of fourteen hostages. They're ‘feet wet' and headed back to the ship. No losses.”

“Roger. Job well done.”

“Well done,” Stevenson echoed.

The plan for the Hobyo hostages had been elegant in its simplicity, Sly's masterpiece. The massive LCAC hovercraft had cruised right up the beach and into town at the same moment the choppers had descended on Galkayo. When the hovercraft reached the building that was believed to hold the hostages, they simply drove the eighty-ton craft through the surrounding wall and parked in the front yard. When the hovercraft gate dropped, twenty Rangers had stormed the building. Chances were that most of the hostages' feet never hit the ground, they were hustled aboard so fast. Total contact time was under three minutes, compared to the seventeen in Galkayo.

“I also have a special communication on a private frequency.” Stevenson again.

Billy selected the pre-agreed channel. Trisha wondered, What next? He didn't have anyone else to lose, did he? If she could free up a hand, she'd reach over to rest it as a comfort on his arm just in case the news was bad. That's when she realized he did have someone else to lose, someone he loved. But at least she was sitting right beside him.

Trisha had seen him storm out of the main house, despite the active crossfire, to protect her in her chopper. Would he have done the same for Dennis or Max? Maybe. But not a pell-mell kind of race that had left Michael eating his dust. Unable to free her hands, she leaned her shoulder against his for a moment.

“I don't know if your team wants to know this or not,” Stevenson was hesitating which wasn't good.

Okay, it was bad news for the team, not for Billy. At least she could share in that, though she'd kind of had enough bad news for one night.

“Proceed.” By his tone, Billy felt the same way. Wasn't it enough that they had just freed every hostage north of Mogadishu as well as liberated three of the four held ships?

Another ship. Must be.

“Remember the yacht guy, Wilkin Benson Jr., and the
Gracie
up in Bosaso? Well, he went and hired a mercenary team. They just went in to try and recover his own yacht from the pirates. Apparently he's no better at hiring mercs than he is at cruising.”

Billy cursed an impressive streak, even for a sailor. Which, she realized, might well be the first time she'd heard him swear. When he finally calmed down enough, he asked the crucial question, “Did the idiot go in with the team?”

“We have a report of four new hostages now in captivity there, and he's one of them.”

Billy clicked off and continued to swear quietly, his expletives getting more colorful and imaginative as he went. She'd have to remember a few of them. They were really creative and perhaps even anatomically possible if enough force was applied.

Trisha kept her attention on her flying and the other choppers around her. The Black Hawk and two Sea Hawks with the hostages reported “feet wet.” The hostages would be aboard the
Harry
S. Truman
within twenty minutes and calling home. The news would be global by morning.

Their own flight, which had stopped at the FARP only long enough to refuel and then destroy the equipment, still had forty minutes of flight to reach the
Peleliu
.

“You know…” Billy sounded angry enough to damage her bird with his fists. “The instant they hear about us grabbing all of the hostages and ships, they're going to move those hostages into the deep desert where we'll never find them. And the ransom will be astronomical. Did you know that young twerp Benson Junior is a senator's son and tried to bribe me with a presidential pardon if I rescued him, back when he thought I was a pirate?”

Trisha had to laugh. The degree of disgust in Billy's voice was so complete. Even on this horrid day, she'd managed to laugh. It struck her that was exactly what Billy had been trying to do. Help her find her center to continue her flight. To remain steady while in the air. He was such a good man.

Trisha had been doing her own calculations while Billy had been cursing.

“You know, if we change our heading in the next few minutes, everyone in this flight has enough fuel to make it to the aircraft carrier in an hour and a quarter.”

Billy turned quickly to look to the north as if he could see it two hundred miles away across the arid land and the salty sea.

“It's almost two hundred more past that to Bosaso.”

“Isn't the French
Mistral
up there somewhere? We could refuel on her.”

They both turned to the clock on the central control panel, though the time was repeated inside their helmets on the visor.

It was twenty-three-thirty, half an hour to midnight. A three-hundred-and-fifty-mile flight with refuelings would get them to Bosaso about oh-three-hundred.

She counted thirty seconds while Billy thought about it. A dozen battle plans must be going through his mind as he juggled assets in his head. That would also mean they'd been flying almost continuously for eight hours before they even entered the third battle of the night.

Billy clicked on the radio's general frequency. “Flight, this is Lieutenant Bruce, turn heading five-zero, make maximum speed for aircraft carrier
Truman
. Captain Stevenson, we'll need someone to hook us up with the French
Mistral
. Everyone, we've just received report of four more hostages in Bosaso. We have to go get them tonight before they're dispersed into the desert. Let's do it.”

The only answer was that they all turned in unison to the new heading and lifted to fifty feet above the water as they broke clear of the coast.

***

At the aircraft carrier, they lined up formally in an aisle from the
Vengeance
to the elevator that would take Roland's body down to the carrier's morgue. There would be time to write letters and inform parents after the mission. For now, all they could offer were their salutes and honor to the fallen.

The hostages who had arrived a half hour earlier wanted to come and thank them and talk to them and do whatever hostages wanted to do when released from months—or in a few cases, almost two years—of captivity. Again, there'd be time for that later.

While their birds were serviced and reloaded with fuel and ammo, they all gathered in the flight-deck-level briefing room of the tower. A service crew had even tackled straightening the skid on the
May
, though they didn't have the parts to replace it. The little chopper was better, though it still leaned distinctly to the right, as if tipping its hat.

Bill had Connie and Big John check the rest of the systems on
May
. Trisha and Connie had traded hugs before he dragged her into the briefing.

Food was brought in and Bill began the briefing on the ship's layout. He took twenty minutes reviewing the ship itself. When last seen, it had been anchored a mile down the coast, west of Bosaso. The main port of the northern half of the country, Bosaso was really little more than a pier and a breakwater.

“At last report, the yacht was still directly offshore from the compound where we did the first hostage rescue last month. It is also placed far enough away that the local officials can pretend that they don't notice a hundred-and-fifty-foot luxury yacht that just happens to be anchored there week after week. As they probably have a stake in the final payout, this isn't hardto understand.”

He had almost no information on the failed recovery team of mercenaries.

“The only reason we know anything is that Wilkin Junior was on the phone with his personal assistant right before he was taken. Apparently, they'd thought that rescuing his own ship would make a good news piece to launch his own political career, separate from his father's legacy. That's how we know there were at least four survivors at that time. He had the good sense to set down the phone but leave it active as he was captured. We don't know the size of the initial team.”

“So we don't know where they actually are?” Dennis asked around a mouthful of meatloaf.

“Wilkin Junior's team would have targeted the ship directly, probably a seaside approach in a Zodiac rubber boat launched from another boat farther out at sea, perhaps even a passing freighter. Did the pirates leave them aboard, or take them to the same compound as the first hostages or to a third location? This is a crucial unknown. Therefore, we will have to take the pirates holding the
Gracie
as hostages. If we determine that we are unable to recover the yacht, the senator, who is apparently fairly sick of his son, has given us permission to sink her. Probably take it out of the boy's allowance.”

That got the laugh he'd been looking for.

He scanned the crews. They weren't tired yet, but they would be after flying another four hours. They'd be exhausted and their bodies shaken by such a long night of flying before they could even begin the battle.

After reviewing the half-dozen different scenarios he'd worked up with Stevenson as they flew to the carrier, which could only be solidified when more intelligence had been gathered, Lola Maloney stepped to the front of the room.

“Okay, crew, you have five minutes to flake out, then we're aloft. This isn't any worse than a lot of flights the Night Stalkers have made. Even though it may be stupider than most.” Again the laugh. She was a good leader. “The key fact is that civilian lives are on the line. And there's one thing we know for sure…” She didn't even have to complete the sentence.

The crews chanted out the 160th's motto in strong unison: “Night Stalkers Don't Quit.”

He checked Trisha, and she gave him a sharp nod of ready even as she spoke the words aloud.

Amazing damn woman.

She'd better come to her senses soon or he'd have to tell her again how much he loved her.

***

The
Mistral
represented the latest in amphibious-assault-ship technology. With a sixth of the size and crew, she claimed she could deliver over eighty percent of the force support of the
Peleliu
when she was at full capacity
.
The wonders of a design that was thirty years newer.

The French welcomed them with sparkling water,
croque
monsieur
ham and cheese sandwiches, and immense efficiency. They'd cleared the flight deck of their own choppers and were already steaming north by the time the three Little Birds, the
Vicious
, and the
Vengeance
arrived. It was the first visit of the secretive stealth helicopters to a French vessel and the commanders kept the deck clear of gawkers, though they were clearly struggling not to gawk themselves. Despite the interest, there just wasn't time for tours either of the ship or the choppers.

The French captain had come himself to greet them. “By steaming north at full speed,” he said, “we will be placing ourselves approximately eighty miles closer by the time at which you complete the operation. Therefore, we calculate that no in-flight or waypoint refueling will be required.”

That was a relief. Coordinating a FARP this far afield would be a difficult operation. The United States would have a C-130 aloft to cruise the shore just in case an emergency refueling was required. Though Bill would bet that the C-130 pilot was no more excited than he was about setting up a FARP on a Somali beach somewhere.

They barely had time to chew and stretch before the birds were refueled and they were aloft once more.

Once they were airborne, AMC Stevenson began feeding Bill information from the drones he'd sent scurrying north. At least one of them would have insufficient time to return before it ran out of fuel. It would be ditched at sea when its mission was complete. Another couple hundred thousand dollars that the U.S. Armed Forces should be charging Wilkin Benson Junior.

Heat signatures on the boat showed little activity. The
Gracie
was still right where they'd left it a month before. And, the good news, the compound ashore was still occupied. The problem was that it was heavily occupied.

It was a tenth the size of the Galkayo compound and had no such luxuries as a pool. But neither did it have an outer wall stout enough to fend off any outside forces that wanted to come and join the fight. Four technicals were parked around the outside perimeter. The main building still appeared to be unusable from the damage caused by Trisha's rockets.

They briefly discussed involving the Puntland military. The autonomous state had driven most of the pirates out of its territory and even begun creating a slim form of stability in the northeastern part of Somalia. While the ground forces would be welcome, all it would take was a single sergeant with a clan brother on the pirate crew and the element of surprise would be gone.

The French had offered to send a pair of their Tiger attack choppers, but between the
Vengeance
and the
May
, the SOAR team had that covered. And they'd already had to leave behind some of the Ranger force who had flown in the Navy Sea Hawks. The plan was a lean force and a fast strike, operating way out at the limits of supportability by other forces.

This would be a U.S. Army operation with no one the wiser. Army plus one Navy SEAL, Bill had to remind himself. Had Michael been serious about recruiting Bill to join SFOD-Delta? Had Colonel Michael Gibson ever not been serious about anything to do with the military? Even though Bill knew Delta occasionally recruited SEALs, he'd never thought about leaving his team before. Of course, he'd been on the outside of his team for the last six months preparing for, then infiltrating the Somali pirate community. He wished he had someone to ask.

Maybe he did.

“Hey, Trisha?” he asked her over the
May
's intercom.

“Yeah?”

“Remember what I said about getting a job offer?” He let his hands ride along on the helicopter's controls. It was always a good practice for both pilots to stay engaged, and he liked feeling her constant small adjustments transmitted through the linked cyclic, collective, and pedals. They were as smooth and unconscious as if the chopper had become but an extension of her body. And the heavily weaponized
May
actually was a good extension of this particular woman.

“Yeah, right. Sort of forgot that what with you telling me you loved me and all. What's the offer?”

He smiled that she managed to say the word “love.” It wasn't something she'd managed in prior conversations. He decided against pointing it out as progress.

“Michael.” Bill realized that he only needed the one word to have a whole conversation with Trisha.

“Wow! That's major.” Her voice was soft and drawn out. “To be asked to join Delta…” She let it trail, clearly considering the implications.

“Not just Delta. He wants a second embedded liaison with SOAR's Fifth Battalion D Company.”

“That's us. That's…” She flew in silence for several minutes as she processed what he'd spent a fair chunk of the last few hours chipping away at.

“Okay. Twenty questions time, I guess.”

He didn't even have to tell her why he'd mentioned it. She'd understood that he needed help and was willing to offer it.

“So, let's first set you and me aside. As well as what that might mean for that ‘we' you mentioned earlier.”

It was a huge point to ignore, but he could see why she was doing it that way. “Okay.”

“First.”

He could feel her correct left, then right for some small turbulence in the air he would have just ridden through, perhaps not even noticed if she hadn't made the adjustments. As a result, their path was just that much straighter. On the ADAS projection across his visor, he could see that only Lola in the
Vengeance
made the same corrections. He suddenly felt he'd been pretty arrogant to insist on sitting as her copilot. He was a better-than-average pilot, even by SEAL standards. He'd be bottom rung in SOAR, if that.

“How have you liked all of the testing Michael has been handing out to you as his right hand this last month?”

“He's been doing what?” Even as Trisha laughed at him, his view of these last weeks shifted. Michael had slowly included him in more and more actions. Leading the oil tanker attack together, the hand-to-hand wrestling match, letting Bill take the lead on tonight's mission planning and execution. Even fighting side by side tonight and every conversation they'd had since the moment he'd come aboard now shifted into that new focus. It had been an escalating series of tests, and he'd never even seen it.