SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (14 page)

Masters really didn’t like the slightly feral smile on Alex’s face, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it at the moment.

“But since the attempt to assassinate you isn’t a huge priority right now, care to tell me why we’re flying to Alaska?” Alex asked, changing the subject abruptly enough that Masters knew there was little point in pressing for more information.

Not that he knew what information he should be pressing for. He finally just filed Alex’s comment about the sniper’s sword aside for the moment, returning his focus to the mission.

“We don’t know.”

Alex closed his eyes. “I hope you realize that I had to ditch the hottest pair of coeds you’ve ever seen in order to catch this flight…and I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I hate flying. So if this is some sort of false alarm, you and me are going to be having some words. Clear?”

“Clear.” Masters smiled, glancing around the plane.

The rest of the team, Captain Andrews included, were either sleeping or trying really hard to sleep. Outside, night was falling again as they winged north, and he knew that the Canadian border was still some distance away.

“Look, we don’t know what’s going on up there, but something is.…Probably something big,” he told Alex. “We’ve got what looks like bodies in the streets, and we just lost contact with a National Guard unit that was sent up to help the state troopers deal with riots. The last contact from the troopers was nothing but screaming. So whatever it is, a false alarm it isn’t.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing, for you anyway,” Alex said with half a smile. “I won’t have to kick your ass in front of your navy buddies.”

“You can bring it on any time you like—the day I can’t take you and that French pansy bullshit is the day I retire.”

“That was about ten years ago, as I recall.”

“Asshole.”

CLAN SAFE HOUSE

“How is what you’re telling me even
possible
?”

The shivering man bowed his head, trying not to look any more scared than he already was, but failing miserably.

“We don’t know,” he said finally. “Most likely the target got…lucky.”

“Lucky?”

The elderly woman sneered down at him, eyes burning.

“Robert Black died at the hands of a gene-trash buffoon who got
lucky
? Say that to me again,” she demanded.

The man swallowed, but kept his head down and remained silent.

“Say it to me again!” she snarled. “I
defy
you to have the sheer gall to say that to me again.”

When no response was forthcoming, she quieted down, sinking into the old antique chair from which she could survey the room.

“Where is the sailor now?” she asked softly after a time.

“He was deployed, Matriarch. We do not know where at this time.”

She let out an annoyed chuff of breath, but nodded. “Find out.”

“Yes, Matriarch.”

“And, Ruben?” she hissed.

The man turned back, his eyes wide with fear. “Yes?”

“When you do, do nothing. Contact me. Do not send anyone after this man, do not have anyone check up on him, do not even
think
in his direction. I will deal with this myself. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Go. Now, before I do something drastic to improve the blood.” She glared at him, sneering as he stumbled and fled from her sight.

When he was gone, she sank back, her face drawn and tired.

“Is it truly possible? Could Robert lose to some random gene trash?” she asked of the empty room.

“Luck favors no man,” a voice said softly from behind her, as a young man appeared from the shadows. “Even the mightiest can be felled by the lowest. You’ve told me that many times, Matriarch.”

She sighed. “Indeed, I have. So, Michael, what would you have the Clan do in this case?”

“Sending Black was perhaps a bit presumptuous, if I may say. We don’t yet know what this man is doing for the navy. Karson is not one of ours, and he holds his secrets closely,” Michael said.

“Masters knows The Black,” the old woman replied testily, “which means he has information that cannot be given to the likes of the United States, nor any government. The time is not right. The time will, by the grace of the all power,
never
be right.”

“Yes, but what has he told Karson? Must we eliminate Karson too? Has Karson told others? If so, who?” the man offered logically. “Must we eliminate the joint chiefs next? The president himself? If it must be done, we can do it, but we need to know. Sending assassins after that many people would require a great many preparations.”

“So you think my order to eliminate Masters was premature?”

Michael hesitated just briefly, sensing the razor’s edge in the woman’s voice, then went on. “If it wasn’t then, it would be now. He’s had time to speak with the admiral, and we cannot silence him if he has already talked.”

She smiled thinly. “Very good, Michael. Confident, assured, decisive. That is what you need to be if you are to survive as a Clan patriarch. However, you made one mistake.”

Her eyes narrowed as she turned to look at him, and he paled.

“I…I did?”

“You should have given me this council before I gave the order,” she hissed. “Thinking you would make me look the fool, were you? That if I made an error you might be elevated early?”

“N-no, Matriarch I would never…I…,” he stammered out, losing his composure entirely as the woman got up and slowly advanced on him.

When she was within arm’s reach, her hand slashed out, blindingly fast, only to land on his cheek in a gentle caress.

“I know, Michael. You didn’t consider it at the time, nor did I.” She smiled; then that edge appeared in her eyes again. “In the future, however, I warn you to take care how you present your ideas. Not every matriarch would be as understanding, and almost none of the patriarchs would consider your inexperience as a reason or an excuse.”

“Y-yes, Matriarch.”

“You have much to learn, but don’t fret so much, child. I am far from ready to give you up as a cause lost.”

“Thank you, Matriarch.”

CHAPTER

BARROW, ALASKA

The Gulfstream banked as it circled the town below, lights shining up at them through the darkness.

“That place is lit up like a Christmas tree,” Alex said from his window seat. “You sure there’s anything wrong down there?”

“No contact from the guard unit, the troopers, or the air-traffic controllers,” Masters replied dryly. “Yeah, something’s wrong.”

“Are we putting this sucker down, or are we jumping?” Nathan Hale asked from farther back, not bothering to look out the window. Lights in the darkness or not, he just wanted to get boots on the ground.

“Jumping?” Alex snapped up. “Whoa. No one said anything about jumping.”

Eddie Rankin chuckled behind him. “Is the all powerful Oz afraid of heights?”

“No, the all powerful Oz is afraid of slamming into the ground at terminal velocity!” Alex hissed. “Do I look like The White to you?”

Masters watched as most of the others exchanged confused looks, but now wasn’t the time to delve into the meaning of that question.

“Calm down, Alex. Your little problem with heights aside, I’m afraid we
are
going to have to jump in.”

Alex paled, but collapsed back into his seat rather than making any further complaints.

“This is going to be a HAHO, high-altitude, high-opening jump. That means we’ll use breathing gear, and we need to exercise careful control coming in,” he told them. “Captain Andrews, are you jump qualified?”

“Yes, but not for HAHO,” she answered, grimacing.

“Fine, you’ll fly with me,” he told her. “Rankin, you take Alex. The rest of you know the drill. Nathan, I want you to pick your spot and stake it out. Make sure you have a good vantage point—you’ll be our overwatch on this.”

“Works better with a spotter,” the sniper replied, raising an eyebrow. “Not to mention at least one other team to cover blind spots.”

“I know, but we’ll work with what we have,” Masters told him. “Everyone else, stay together. We need to pick a landing zone we can clear and control in a hurry.”

“Water.”

Everyone looked over at Alex, who was still grumbling.

“Pardon?”

“If it’s from the other side,” he said, nodding his head to the side, “water is important. Running water is best, but any moving water is a defense.”

Captain Andrews blinked, shaking her head. “What in the name of God is he talking about?”

“Water, right.” Masters nodded, thinking about it. “Assuming it’s not, you know, waterborne.”

“Obviously,” Norton drawled.

“I don’t know, I don’t like it.…” Masters ignored the sarcasm and the distraction of Andrews demanding that he pay attention to her. “There aren’t any rivers down there. We could come down between the lagoons, but it’ll be a death trap if you’re wrong. With the narrow access, we’d be bottlenecked.”

“So would they.”

“Yeah, and I’d consider that if we had the slightest idea who
they
are,” Masters conceded, “but we don’t. So we’re going to come down west of town, right here.”

He pointed to a location on the map he was looking at, near the beach that faced out over the Beaufort Sea. “This is far enough out of town that we shouldn’t be spotted, unless they’ve got enough men to post guards literally all over the place.”

“And if they do?” Rankin asked from over his shoulder.

“We’re fucked anyway.”

“Just checking.” The master chief sighed.

“All right,” Masters said, “suit up. I’ll tell the pilot to climb and bring us to the south. We’ll ride the prevailing wind right into town.”

“I just want to go on record as not liking this plan,” Norton said, sounding resigned.

“Tough.”

“Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re all talking about
now
, please?” Andrews demanded, finally finding a lull in the planning.

“Yes, actually, I would. Get your kit on. Oxygen and cold-weather gear, now,” he told her, his voice grave. “Or stay behind. Personally, I’d prefer it if you stayed behind.”

She scowled at him, but finally broke the staring match and turned to grab her kit bag.

I always wondered what it would be like to tell my superior officers to go to hell
, he thought, smiling to himself as he made his way up to the pilot,
and it’s even better than I imagined.

A HAHO (high altitude, high opening) jump was the counterpart of the more commonly known HALO (high altitude, low opening) jump. Requiring more skill with the parafoil and certain favorable conditions, the HAHO offered operatives several key advantages over the HALO.

Primarily, and crucially, a high opening of the parachute would completely mask the pop of the airfoil deploying, therefore allowing for an almost completely silent approach. The main drawback was that the control needed to maintain an accurate flight path over the kinds of distances involved in a HAHO required a degree of skill that surpassed the requirements for normal precision jumps.

Additionally, if you were jumping into an enemy-controlled region, HAHO offered a way to evade surface-to-air missiles since jump rigs had extremely low radar profiles compared to aircrafts, and you could glide in from a significant distance. In this case, however, Masters was simply more concerned about his team being spotted.

When the team poured out of the Gulfstream, almost instantly losing sight of the blacked-out aircraft as they plummeted through the cold northern air toward an equally black void below them, Masters found himself thinking about how much he’d actually missed doing things like this in the years since he’d been pushed out of the SEALs.

Of course, I would have preferred not to have an extra couple hundred pounds strapped to my chest, even if a good portion of that does happen to belong to a rather good-looking female captain.

Captain Andrews was surprisingly controlled as they fell, obviously experienced enough not to throw off his balance. He knew then that she was certainly jump qualified, even if she wasn’t proficient enough to trust her skills for this sort of exercise.

After they jumped, fifteen seconds passed before he pulled the chord on his chute, the force snapping them upright. Masters checked his compass, and then guided the parafoil around to the right. Behind him he could hear the pop of someone’s chute opening, but he couldn’t be certain if it belonged to Rankin, who was right behind him, or one of the others, since he could have missed the noise if Eddie had been close enough behind his own deployment.

The lights of the town became visible again as they leveled out—a blob of familiarity against the abyss of blackness all around them—but he wasn’t aiming for the lights. He steered west of it, gliding silently through the night over the last thirty miles to the prearranged touchdown point. As they drifted lower, the ground became visible, appearing out of the abyss in a dark blur that rushed past at decidedly unhealthy speeds.

“Hang on,” he said over the rushing wind, “here comes the landing.”

Andrews tensed against his body, but otherwise didn’t say a word as he hit the risers at the last second to bleed off horizontal motion into a brief vertical climb. His stomach plummeted as they swooped low over the half-frozen mud and dirt, barely missing a chemical pool, which he could only assume was related to the nearby oil wells.

Andrews’s feet hit the dirt first, preceded by the heavy duffel bag hanging below them, and he was pleased when she took more than her fair share of the impact with flexed legs. He planted himself an instant later and hit the release on the chute so that he could twist around and start reeling the silks in. He felt Andrews unlatch herself from the harness as he did, and in moments he’d rolled up the chute and was digging a rough hole in the ground to bury it in.

He could see the shadows of the others around him as they did the same. When he was done, he rose from his knees and briefly clapped the dirt from his hands and clothes while looking around.

“What is this place?” Captain Andrews asked, breaking the silence.

“Chemical pools and a dirt quarry for the oil wells, I expect,” he said, reaching down to pick up the duffel. “Keep an eye and an ear out. Normally this place probably runs twenty-four hours a day, though I don’t know how busy it would be.”

“Doesn’t sound like there’s anyone here right now.”

“Yeah, and that worries me a little,” he admitted. “If there’s anything that would keep running, no matter what hits it, it’s a drilling operation. Time is money, and they don’t tend to care about much else. Come on, let’s round up the others.”

“Right.” She nodded, gripping her HK417 reflexively as she fell into step behind him.

The others, save for Hale, had landed within six hundred and fifty feet, so getting the team together only took a couple of minutes. They gathered together, perching on a dirt berm that had been piled up by construction equipment, and looked toward the town to the east of them with some interest.

“Damn. Nothing. I’ve got nothing,” Masters said finally. “You guys?”

Keyz shook his head. “From what I saw on the way down, the whole place looks dead, ’cept for the lights. Thing is, boss, it’s a small town, and it’s nighttime, right? That could be normal?”

“Normal?” Norton scoffed. “Am I the only one who sees that fire burning over there? Someone should be putting it out.”

“Good point,” the explosives expert conceded.

“No one sees any sort of guards, patrols, whatever?” Masters asked, overriding the conversation.

“Negative.”

He nodded, accepting the consensus before thumbing his throat mic. “Hale. Report.”

Nathan finished cutting himself loose, roughly folding the silks up into a pad that he unceremoniously wrestled his kit bag onto. The school rooftop he’d chosen to land on wasn’t the best spot he could have hoped for, but unfortunately the area didn’t have many high-ground spots with decent cover, so he’d chosen the best of a bad lot.

He unpacked his Barrett M82-A1, special-application scoped rifle (SASR), which he fondly called Sassy, smoothly unfolding the bipod and settling it down along the building’s peak as he lay prone on his chute. He flipped open the caps protecting his scope optics, and when he peered through it and into the apparently deserted small town, the darkness was transformed to a grainy green daylight.

“Hale. Report.”

Nathan casually reached up and flicked open his comm, speaking softly but clearly into the throat mic.

“I’m down and in position. Town’s deserted,” he said. Then he rested his rifle on the roof as he pulled a pair of light-intensifier binoculars from his kit, using them to scan the area. “Guard C-130 is still on the strip. Looks intact. No movement.”

“Roger. We’re coming your way. Maintain position and take overwatch.”

“Wilco,” Hale said. “Overwatch is mine.”