A/N: Originally written for a Tracy Island Writers Forum Fic Swap Challenge.
The request I was given was: "Gordon and Scott's Old Service Stories."
It was nearly midnight. The moon, a couple days shy of full, floated serenely in the deep black starfield of the tropical sky, touching the tips of the waves with silver all the way out to the horizon.
Scott Tracy knocked back the last of his Johnnie Walker Black, savoring the smoky flavor with a contented sigh. The air was warm and fragrant; the ever-present din of the maka, as the local Fijians called the cicadas, subdued to the level of white noise thanks to the new selective sound barrier field that Brains and Gordon were testing in the pool area. It wasn't working perfectly yet – strange dead spots tended to crop up at random, which had at first made him think he was having hearing problems – but it sure beat trying to relax with the noisy insects in full song. Only Dad would pick an island group that had nineteen different species of cicada.
Beside him, the swimming pool was lit from beneath by multicolored filters over the bulbs, installed by Tin-Tin for Alan's birthday party. The offshore breeze stirred the water, creating a rippling rainbow effect in the soft yellow glow of the pool area's lanterns.
"Lightweights," Virgil declared. "All of 'em. It's a disgrace." Through the pleasant distortion of a belly full of twelve-year-old Scotch, it occurred to Scott that his brother was having a little trouble with his enunciation.
He rolled his head toward the others. On the far side of the group, Virgil had slid down in his seat until he was nearly horizontal, his legs propped up on the seat of another chair. He waved an uncoordinated arm in the general direction of Tin-Tin, who sat cross-legged beside the pool on a displaced cushion, the jade-green teeshirt she wore over her bikini the same color as her eyes. Alan sprawled beside her, his blond head in her lap, one arm trailing over the edge and into the water. Scott raised an interrogative eyebrow; Tin-Tin grinned and shook her head. "I told him he should have waited until tomorrow," she said.
Scott considered drinking to that, but discovered with disappointment that his glass was empty. He'd heard the discussion his youngest brother had had with Tin-Tin earlier. Even though he and Brains had already been severely jetlagged when they'd gotten back from Utah's Bonneville Flats that afternoon, Alan had insisted on going ahead with the traditional Tracy male birthday celebration, a long night of jokes, war stories and off-color singing while they all tried their best to drink each other under the table. And as Tin-Tin had predicted, the combination of too many hours without sleep and way too much booze had laid the youngest Tracy out.
He and Brains… Scott's overdeveloped sense of responsibility started chiming at him. "Where's Brains?" he asked. "Did he abandon ship?"
Virgil jerked his head back toward the villa and began to whistle a somewhat off key rendition of Taps.
Scott turned around in his seat – very carefully; the floor under his chair felt none too level at that moment – and surveyed the area. He spotted Brains right away, sprawled on his back halfway up the stairs to the main house, mouth open wide enough to catch a whole jar of flies.
"Hey, Gordo!" Virgil let out a piercing whistle, produced a half empty bottle of Scotch from down beside his chair and tossed it at his redheaded brother. "Drop and gimme twenty."
"Wha-wha-where are they..?" Gordon came awake fast, grabbing in the direction of the flying bottle and fumbling it. Tin-Tin caught it as it bounced off her cushion and handed it back to him.
Scott shook his head. "Swear I taught you to hold your liquor better than that."
"You taught me?" Gordon snorted. "Weren't you in the Chair Force?"
Virgil started laughing; saw Scott's look and laughed harder. "Don't let Dad catch you calling it that," he managed.
"I don't think that's going to be a problem, Virgil," Tin-Tin said, nodding her head at the patriarch of the Tracy family. Jeff Tracy was slumped in his chair between Scott and Gordon, head back, snoring softly.
His still-conscious sons regarded him for a moment in silence. Then Virgil started whistling Taps again.
"Now, that's pitiful," Gordon said. "I remember when he could outlast all of us. Did he even finish that last story?"
"Dunno," Scott said, finding his recall of the last few hours decidedly patchy. "I think I checked out someplace after the one about how his RIO turned in a 781 about seeing a ghost on board and the maintenance techs left him a note that he was either drinking too much or not enough… Where did he get to…?"
"Was it the one about how helicopter aerodynamics make no sense?" Virgil asked. "Not that that's true."
"Oh, it's true," Scott grinned.
Gordon furrowed his brow. "Naah…I think it was that part about flying though the valley of the shadow of death…"
Scott and Virgil joined in and they all finished the familiar chant in unison. "…I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing!"
"Do you think they really said that in Iraq?" Gordon mused.
Scott nodded. "We said it in Bereznik. All the time."
Virgil sighed. "You know what the problem is? We're getting predictable."
"Well, there are only so many times you can tell the same old war stories," Tin-Tin pointed out. Scott thought he heard a note of wistfulness.
"You aren't kidding. I can recite Dad's by heart," he said.
"We all can," Gordon said. "Sometimes we actually do, but he's usually too baked by then to notice."
"You hope," Virgil said.
"He just takes it as enthusiasm," Scott said. "Let's face it, with five kids like us, any time he can get all of us pulling in the same direction he's got to see it as a win."
"Well, maybe it's time for some new stories," Tin-Tin said. "Aren't there any you haven't told?"
Scott and Gordon exchanged speculative glances; both looked away again. Neither of them spoke. The others waited, picking up on the sudden frisson of tension.
"Well?" Tin-Tin prompted, after a moment.
"Throw me that bottle," Scott said. Gordon flipped it in a long arc in Scott's general direction; he had to lean forward to snag it out of the air as it sailed past.
Gordon watched him fill his glass. He fished in a pocket, came up with a quarter. "Call it."
Scott paused. He glanced over; looked around the small group. Hesitated.
"Oh, come on, Scott," Tin-Tin said. "It's just us."
Scott reached a decision. He shrugged. "What the hell. Heads."
Gordon spun the quarter into the air. He was a little too drunk to quite catch it, though, and it bounced off his outstretched fingers into the pool with a distinct plop! "Well, shit," he said mildly.
Tin-Tin moved the unprotesting Alan out of her lap, stripped off the teeshirt and dived into the pool. After a few seconds she surfaced again, water streaming off her smooth tanned skin and slicked-back hair. "Tails!" she declared, holding out the coin.
Scott laughed.
Gordon settled back in his chair, nodded at his eldest brother. "I win. You go first."
Scott went very quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his eyes were focused out over the water, although nobody around the pool thought for a second that the moonlight on the waves was what he was looking at. "OK. I know you think I spent most of the war above 10,000 feet…that I've never been in a ground campaign. You're wrong. I've never told any of you this story, and maybe it's time. It happened the second time I went down behind enemy lines in Bereznik. When Buzz and I were located by Hellboy II, the Marine Force Recon team."
"You've told us about that," Virgil said.
Scott smiled. "Not all of it."
In Country
Scott jerked awake to the insistent sound of buzzing overhead, growing louder by the second.
Drones.
They were ever-present, especially around military installations in this war; you got used to them after a while. It seemed like everybody and their dog, no matter what group or organization or local militia they belonged to, was remoting a dozen or more of these overgrown mechanical dragonflies, wingspans ranging from twelve inches to three feet. Often the air would be thick with them, sometimes just taking pictures and video, but occasionally launching small but highly-explosive rockets that tore holes in the asphalt of the runway back at the base. Every time the base commander, Colonel Sisko – who hailed from Texas – got pissed off enough, he'd spend a couple hours out there with his vintage Winchester shotgun and a couple boxes of shells, bringing them down like flies.
Scott hadn't heard them since his flight's two F-35s had roared into the sky three days ago on what had turned out to be anything but a routine patrol. But now the sound was back.
The interior of the four-seater, 7-ton JLTV smelled like a locker room and the suspension was brutally hard. He couldn't believe he'd slept at all…but having to stay awake to guard his injured wingman until help arrived had taken its toll. Even a lifelong insomniac had to collapse from exhaustion sometime.
Trying to stretch muscles made stiff by cold and cramped by lack of space in the crowded vehicle, Scott inventoried his surroundings. His wingman, Lt. Jackson "Buzz" King, was still crashed beside him, cushioned on a pile of cammie nets and ropes and wedged in against the sidewall of the vehicle by a couple of cases of MREs. His color was better and at a glance, the field dressing on his left shoulder still looked dry; Scott didn't want to risk waking him up by checking any closer. The bandage around his splinted left leg seemed to be holding tight and firm. Like most Marine battlefield corpsmen in this war, this team's was good at his job.
In the front passenger seat, Hellboy II's lanky, redheaded team leader, Sgt. Bobby Harker, propped his M-4 rifle between his knees and tore open a foil packet of instant coffee crystals. He emptied the packet into his mouth and began to crunch. His eyes caught Scott's watching him in the JLTV's rearview and he reached into a pocket; tossed another packet back over the seatback. "Sorry, Cap'n, we're fresh out of the continental breakfast."
Scott grinned, feeling a half healed cut on his lip crack open. His voice came out dry and scratchy. "Last time I book this tour."
On the other side of the vehicle, Cpl. Ryan "Preppy" Prescott, the corpsman who had treated and dressed Buzz's wounds – and who really did look like he should have been attending Yale in tennis whites – was peering up and out of the narrow window. He raised his voice over the racket of the JLTV's diesel engine. "Hey, Gonzo! What's with the UAVs?"
Cpl. Mike "Gonzo" Gonzales, six foot six of solid muscle with shoulders wide enough to park an Abrams tank on, stood on the gunner's plate in the middle of the vehicle. All Scott could see of him was his boots and legs – his upper body was up in the gun turret with "Baby," the JLTV's MK-19 grenade launcher. "Don't sweat it, Preppy," he called back. "They're friendlies."
Prescott dug out a canteen of water and tossed it to Scott, who caught it and gratefully used it to wash down some of the grit and road dust in his throat. He looked at the foil packet of coffee, shrugged, tore it open and tossed back the contents. The bitter taste only lasted for a moment.
Prescott leaned forward to look between the front seats through the windshield; Scott followed his lead. A three-vehicle convoy was coming straight at them from the west, easily visible against the snow-covered ground. Scott squinted into the early morning sunlight, trying to make them out.
Riding point was a heavily armored, combat-modified Ford F150 Raptor with two .50-caliber machine guns; one mounted up front of the passenger seat and the other up behind the cab, in the center of the stripped-back roll bar. Tailing the Raptor closely was a blocky, angular vehicle with the front end of a dump truck and the back end of a tank, topped by a circular machine gun turret. The vertical radiator slats and distinctive slitted windows marked it as a Navistar MaxxPro. The rear was brought up by a smaller, ultra-maneuverable military ATV with a rear jumpseat. All the vehicles flew a black pennant emblazoned with an orange lightning bolt.
"Striker Force," Prescott said, by way of explanation. "I'm guessing you flyboys don't see much of them where you are."
Scott shook his head. He knew the name, of course. They were mercs – or to use the more politically correct term, private military. Striker Force was one of the better-organized, better-backed outfits on the ground in this war, run by a retired and much-decorated US Marine general, Samuel Striker. Rumor had it that their current employers were an under-the-table conglomerate of major oil and gas companies, anxious to protect their present and future interests in the region.
The oncoming Raptor flashed its headlights, and the JLTV braked as they came level. The Striker Force driver was a big Pacific Islander with a bloody bandage tied around one impressive bicep; he looked like a Samoan linebacker Virgil had gone to college with. Seated next to him, the team commander was a dead ringer for Dolph Lundgren, his spiky bleached hair sticking straight up above a dirty olive drab headband.
"Howdy, Pieter," Harker's Texas drawl was friendly; these two obviously knew each other. "Where're ya'll headed?"
"Good to see you, Robert." The commander gave a lazy two-finger salute. His English had that slightly stilted rhythm that gave away that it wasn't his first language; Scott thought he recognized a touch of an Afrikaans accent. "We must go to Krasnobinsk. We have orders to liberate six petroleum engineers from a private compound."
"Krasnobinsk?" Hellboy II's driver, Cpl. D.L. Williams, was as tall as Gonzo but not as broad, his skin so black it looked almost blue in the thin sunlight. His fine-boned, handsome face was screwed into a disapproving scowl. "You're bat-shit, man. You can't go back there now."
"D.L.'s right, Piet. The whole city's going down. Took us two hours out of our way to go around it."
The Striker Force commander bared his teeth in a grin. "They don't pay me to go around things, Bobby."
There was a long pause. The Striker Force commander raised an eyebrow at Harker. In the back of the JLTV, Prescott and Gonzales – who had hunkered down to hear the conversation – exchanged glances. "Here we go," Gonzales muttered. But Scott couldn't help noticing that he didn't seem too unhappy.
"Americans?" Harker said at last.
"Does it matter?"
Scott could feel the anticipation in the JLTV now. He realized he was holding his breath.
There was a distinct note of regret in Harker's voice. "Hell, Piet, I can't just go tearing off after you on some joyride. I've got a couple downed flyboys in the back I gotta deliver to the border."
The Striker Force commander glanced toward the back of the JLTV. He hefted the barrel of the German-made HK assault rifle that was propped between his legs and smiled. "Can they handle one of these?"
Harker caught Scott's eye in the rear view mirror. Scott found with something of a shock that he was actually considering it. He hesitated a long moment, looking from face to face of his rescuers. Something he was finding it harder and harder to resist was bubbling up in the pit of his stomach – excitement, adrenaline, anticipation… maybe all of those things. A chance to test his limits, even if it had to remain forever off the official record…
But… He turned guiltily toward Buzz. His wingman and friend. His responsibility. This was crazy. He couldn't do this.
As if he felt the attention focused on him, Buzz slitted open his dark eyes and smiled. "Hot Dog Tracy here's from Kansas," he said. "I'm from Missouri. Give us a stump, a couple empty cans and about five minutes."
In the driver's seat, Williams lowered his forehead to the wheel and bumped it softly.
TBTBTB
They could see the smoke a half hour out of Krasnobinsk, a black pall hanging over the horizon. Williams had slotted the JLTV in second position behind the Raptor, and as they sped toward the city, Scott had learned that Pieter's last name was Vermuelen and that he was a former Major in the South African Army. That's how it worked in the mercs, Harker explained. You usually took a step or two back in rank, but you also took, as he put it, "a big-ass step up" in pay. He told Scott the Raptor's driver's name was Solomon "Solly" Lafaele, and he'd been in Pieter's unit for five years. They'd lost the entire rest of their original team in the first Bereznik War, in the airstrike that leveled the town of Groznia, and had had to rebuild from scratch. Pieter Vermuelen had a score to settle.
They picked up another cloud of drones ten minutes later, this time hostile. The Raptor's gunner, Nigel Sanders, a stocky black man from England with weightlifter's muscles and wearing what the Marines would have called squared-away cammies, stood up and braced his legs apart for balance. He lifted the three-foot-long barrel of the big .50-cal that was mounted on the rollbar behind the drivers, and seconds later the thunder of gunfire boomed across the landscape, ripping a diagonal swath through the drones. Pulverized wood and plastic rained down like confetti. Several of the UAVs got off rockets that sizzled toward the convoy like fireworks, but they all missed, exploding in the snowbanks to the left of the speeding convoy.
"Incoming!" Pieter's voice over the JLTV's radio. "ATVs, ten o'clock!"
Harker made a signal with his left hand and Gonzales immediately clambered up into the grenade-launcher turret. "Most of these drones are short-range," the team leader shouted to Scott between the ear-shattering bursts of the mercs' .50-cal. "Gotta be the operators." He jerked a thumb toward the roof. "Baby'll get 'em."
"There," Harker said, pointing ahead to the left. Racing toward them on the diagonal were two rusted-out sport ATVs, stripped down to not much more than engine and seats. Scott counted five men in one, six in the other, one standing. A couple wore camouflage pants, but although the majority of them didn't look military, Scott had already learned from his time in-country that it was often impossible to tell anything from what the locals wore, drove or fired. Several of them had he guessed were remotes in their hands, by the way they were looking up at what was left of the drones.
A tremendous whump came from above, like someone had thrown dynamite into a barrel of gasoline. The ground erupted in front of the lead ATV, throwing it six feet into the air. "Get some!" the men in Scott's JLTV yelled – the unofficial Marine Corps cheer. The trailing ATV swerved frantically to avoid its falling companion, and the second grenade shell hit the passenger side, pulverizing it to shrapnel. Scott stared at it, speechless, as the JLTV sped past the wreckage, burning pieces of metal spattering against the roof.
"View's a bit different from down here, huh?" Prescott grinned.
Scott caught Buzz's wide-eyed expression, which told him exactly what his own face must look like at that moment. All he could offer Prescott was a nod.
TBTBTB
Over the next rise, the city of Krasnobinsk came into view. Or what was left of it – from this distance, it looked like most of the western half was burning. The drones were thick overhead, like a dense cloud of black flies. We're going in there? Scott thought, wondering for a moment just what he had gotten himself, and Buzz, into. Then he reminded himself that this was business as usual for the men in this convoy. They knew what they were doing.
Vermuelen raised his hand and the vehicles screeched to a halt. Harker hopped out of the JLTV, trotted to the driver's side of the Raptor and they put their heads together, poring over a smartpad. Both men looked up and Scott followed their eyes, seeing three sleek Apache Longbow attack helicopters, stubby wings bristling with missiles, flying low overhead toward the city. He'd seen six of them come in just last week, on board a C-5 transport plane out of Ramstein Air Base in Germany. He wondered if these were some of those same choppers.
As he watched, he saw a rocket streak from the lead Apache, and two seconds later a huge gout of flame shot up from the ridge across the city to the convoy's right. "I-SAMs," Williams said, handing Scott back the field glasses so he could take a look. "Chinese."
Scott focused the powerful glasses on the spot where the Apache's rocket had hit. Through the smoke he could see the distinct outline of two more rocket trucks, mounted with the gleaming white surface-to-air missiles Williams had identified.
"Chinese?" Buzz frowned. He glanced at Scott. "That wasn't in the reports."
"Forget the reports," Harker said as he dived back into the passenger seat. "This is the real world, gentlemen. You'd be amazed what General Berenora can get his hands on. The rockets are Chinese, the M4s are Russian knockoffs, the scopes are Bulgarian, the ammo's out of North Korea… Everyone around the negotiation table denies everything, of course."
"Time to suit up," Prescott said, handing Buzz and Scott a pair of flak vests and Kevlar helmets.
As he donned the vest, Scott saw the Apaches wheel about at the far edge of the city. Beautiful to his eyes but dangerous; airborne sharks sweeping in for another attack run on the I-Sam trucks on the ridge. The explosions had already begun by the time the Raptor lurched forward at the head of the convoy.
Five minutes later they had reached the outskirts of the city and were beginning to thread their way through the streets. The scars of battle were everywhere –walls pockmarked with shell holes, piles of shattered concrete and broken pieces of wood, spent shell casings, burned-out vehicles. Explosions and gunfire were constant now; several times they saw gunships overhead, rockets streaking across the sky between the buildings. It was hard to tell what side they were on. For a hundred yards they ran a heart-stopping parallel, one narrow street away, with a pair of Russian tanks, the kind the news reports called "Terminators." Everyone in the JLTV went silent and tense, but if the tanks saw the convoy, there was no sign, and a few intersections later they were gone.
Welcome to hell, Scott thought, when they could all breathe again.
Harker had filled them in on the situation as they approached the city. The trapped petroleum engineers would have made it out the day before under their own steam if not for three stray artillery shells that had wiped out the parking lot of their company building, and all their vehicles. They had been relocated by local allies to a house in a walled compound not too far from the edge of the city, and one of them was wounded. No one had come after them aggressively so far, but according to Pieter it was highly possible the enemy were waiting for the rescue attempt they knew was coming.
All that had elicited from Prescott and Gonzales was a shouted "Ooh-rah!" and a high five.
That sentiment was put to the test ten minutes later. The Raptor exited the T-junction between two buildings, opposite and to the right of where the maps said the compound gates were located. Then, without warning it shot backwards again, swinging hard to the left to avoid the Marine JLTV and halting beside it. Prescott was thrown sideways, his helmeted head bouncing off sidewall. Amid his colorful response, the radio crackled; Harker listened and punched up the video Vermuelen was sending them from their own drones. Scott leaned forward to get a look at the screen. The compound's leading wall was bristling with armed men. "Looks like AKs and RPGs," Williams said.
"That's "rocket powered grenades," for the civilians among us," Harker said.
"Fuck you," Buzz grinned.
"They've got a PK on the roof, too." Prescott pointed out the mount of the Kalashnikov machine gun, just visible at the edge of the screen. "Those suckers are bad."
Harker conferred quickly with Pieter via the radio. The plan they threw together involved the Marines drawing fire at the front of the compound and the mercs going in from the rear, where one of their drones had located a gate. Before Scott could even start thinking about the insanity of it, the Raptor was in motion again, the other two merc vehicles speeding after it.
And then the JLTV broke into open street and the battle began in earnest.
If Scott had ever imagined a moment like this, he had reckoned without the brutal, mind-numbing pounding of gunfire and the searing flare of explosions, robbing him of any hope of clear sight or hearing. It was sheer, unadulterated chaos. The JLTV ran straight at the compound, the deep whump of the MK-19's grenades sounding every second as Gonzales let the gun emplacements on the wall have it. Chunks of concrete rained into the street, smacking into the hood and sides. Prescott and Harker laid down suppressing fire with their M4-40s, Prescott whooping whenever they felt the heavily-armored skin of the JLTV take a hit. "Gonna look like Emmentaler when we're through," Williams complained.
"What's that?" Prescott yelled.
"Swiss cheese," Williams shouted back. "You got no class, Preppy!"
A grenade blew the corner off the compound wall right behind the JLTV as she cleared it, close enough to feel the heat. Under cover again in a side street, Williams hauled the vehicle through a Y-turn while the other Marines grabbed fresh ammo.
"Jesus Christ," Buzz said. "You guys don't mess around."
"I'm not going through that again like a fucking passenger," Scott said, trying to master regular breathing again. He jabbed his finger at Prescott's M4-40. "Give me one of those right now."
"Well, all right, Air Force!" Harker barked out an approving laugh. "Cpl. Prescott, give these gentlemen something that'll do some damage."
"Get some!" Prescott grinned.
After about a minute of fast instruction, which basically involved aiming and leaving the weapons on automatic, the JLTV was ready to go back into action.
A massive explosion rocked her on her chassis just as she cleared the wall again. "What the hell was that?" Prescott demanded.
The radio crackled. It sounded like the Samoan. "IEDs! Bobby, get your ass over here!"
Scott knew what that meant…the acronym stood for improvised explosive devices – homemade bombs, often combining scavenged artillery shells with timing devices from consumer electronics like mobile phones. They could be triggered like a mine, by motion, or by remote from a distance. Sometimes a row of them were wired together and buried in the ground to claim a whole convoy of vehicles.
Harker and Williams exchanged swift glances. Then the JLTV shot into reverse, backed up into the side street and raced out again in the opposite direction.
They rounded the corner at the rear of the compound and saw the Raptor immediately, or what was left of it. It was wedged into a jagged gap in the wall that had probably once been the back gate; the vehicle looked like it had been peeled from the inside out, the wreckage burning bright and hot. Scott couldn't see any sign of the three mercs it had carried. A dozen yards beyond the Raptor was the mercs' ATV, which from this distance seemed in once piece. It was also empty.
The radio crackled again, but the short burst of speech was unintelligible. "Solly, say again," Harker said.
"…Piet…need…got four…" Static wiped out the rest.
Another massive explosion to their right, flaming debris shooting up and over the compound wall. "Shit!" Harker swore. "They must all be in there. Gonzo, take that wall down."
Baby began to boom out grenades. Scott checked the sight line. "We make that hole, that AK on the roof can see us."
"Then take it out," Harker said shortly.
Scott joined Buzz on the right side of the JLTV, aiming the M4-40 through the narrow window. "Helluva hunting trip," Buzz grinned. "Deer just ain't gonna measure up after this."
The wall was cracking away under the grenade launcher's assault. Scott got his first glimpse through; saw the rear of the Navistar, beside it Vermuelen and Solly Lafaele. Pieter's bleached blond hair was soaked with blood. Baby spit two more grenades and the smoke and dust temporarily wiped out his view; then they heard the unmistakeable rat-a-tat of the Kalashnikov.
The smoke cleared, and it was now or never. Scott aimed and let loose with the M4 on full automatic, the sound hammering deafeningly in his ear. At the other window he could hear Buzz doing the same but he didn't dare look away from his target. The men on the roof scattered; he thought one fell into the courtyard but he couldn't be sure. His M4 went silent – it took him a full two seconds to realize it was empty. He grabbed another magazine and slapped it home, pulled the trigger again.
The AK tumbled from the roof, smacking down on the concrete below. "Get some, Air Force!" Harker and Williams yelled.
The opening was wide enough for the JLTV now. The radio crackled back to life. "Get in here!" the Samoan's voice came through.
"IEDs?" Harker rapped.
"Negative. We detonated the other one."
"Roger."
Harker nodded to Williams and the JLTV lurched forward. It began taking hits almost immediately from the left; Prescott raised his own M4 and started shooting. The incoming bullets stopped abruptly.
They were beside the Navistar now. The side facing them looked like a cheese grater, there were so many holes. Scott could see two men in civilian clothes standing in the open doorway of the house, obviously petrified to take a step outside. He didn't blame them – the doorframe was pockmarked by gunfire.
Prescott went out the left rear door and raced across to Solly and Pieter, using the Navistar as cover. Scott saw him try to get Pieter into the vehicle, but the Striker Force commander resisted. Solly pointed at the doorway and the trapped men. Then the radio crackled. "Sarge, they got four of the engineers out but there are still two in the house. Two of Piet's guys are down. Piet's wounded, but he won't get in the damn vehicle without the guys he came for."
"Christ." Harker craned round in his seat, scanning the walls. "Tell him I'll get 'em."
He booted the passenger door open and dived into the courtyard. The gunfire was instant, hammering from somewhere on the wall. Halfway between the JLTV and the house, Harker went down and rolled.
Everything shifted into a bizarre kind of slow motion. Before he even fully realized what he was doing, Scott threw open his own door and went for the downed Marine. From behind him he heard Buzz yell his name, and then the reassuring staccato hammering of his wingman's M4.
Scott made it to Harker, dragged him to his feet with the brute strength of adrenaline, powered them both on toward the house. He dimly felt bullets snag at his vest and ping off his helmet, but by some miracle nothing seemed to do any damage. Hands grabbed at his arms, and he abruptly realized they'd made it to the doorway and the trapped engineers were pulling them through to safety.
Then Baby spoke, and the gunfire abruptly stopped.
Harker looked at Scott, sprawled beside him on the tile floor of the entranceway, shaking his head. "You're crazy, Air Force."
Scott was about to retort when he saw Harker looking at the sleeve of his flightsuit. He went cold when he followed the Marine's gaze. Completely shredded by gunfire, the thick material was hanging in tatters from his arm.
More like lucky, he thought.
TBTBTB
No one by the poolside said anything for quite a few moments after Scott finally fell silent.
"Jesus, Scott," Virgil managed at last. His tone held equal parts of 'wow' and 'oh, shit.' "No wonder you never told us."
"Couldn't," Scott said. "Harker's team made Buzz and me swear that we'd never breathe a word. What those guys did was completely unauthorized by their command and they could all have wound up in the brig. But if we hadn't been there..."
"You did the right thing, Scott," Tin-Tin said quietly.
Scott looked at her for a moment, then smiled. "I know we did."
"So what happened then?" Virgil asked.
"Between us and the mercs, we got all of those guys out of there. Pieter's team had a safe house with a doctor two hours away and we got all the wounded treated. Striker Force sent in an evac chopper. Pieter wouldn't get on it, stubborn sonofa...sorry, Tin-Tin."
She grinned.
"Anyway, Hellboy II delivered Buzz and me to the border the next day. We never saw those guys again. I think about them sometimes...wonder if they made it through the war in one piece."
"And Dad doesn't know any of this either?" Gordon asked.
Scott shook his head. "Are you kidding? I'd have been on house arrest for a decade."
Gordon laughed. "I'd be right there with you, I think."
"Which reminds me...you also have something to tell us, I believe?" Scott said pointedly.
"Aw, you're just trying to change the subject." Gordon glanced around at the group by the pool.
"Ahem." Tin-Tin made a show out of clearing her throat.
"Oh, all right." Gordon settled back in his seat. "Remember when I was delayed coming back home from my stint on the bathyscape off the Barrier Reef?"
"Yeah," Virgil said. "You said the sub got diverted on the way to the rendezvous."
Gordon smiled. "That wasn't exactly the way it happened."
TBTBTB
The Taking of the Galatea
Gordon had been underwater for six months this time, and he was looking forward in no uncertain terms to seeing the sunshine again. As it turned out, he would see it a lot sooner than he thought.
It had been six hours since he'd boarded the WASP submarine Emerald River at the scheduled rendezvous with the Adams Mercola underwater research dome. Gordon was visiting the bridge when Captain Orly made an appearance to inform the crew in his heavily French-accented English that they had received orders to divert to the Indian Ocean. He conferred in low tones with Lieutenant Stockton, the officer of the deck, and then left again. Gordon approached Stockton, a laid back Englishman he had known in submarine school, and asked him what was going on. He was met with a frown and one word. Pirates.
Gordon abruptly realized that it was highly likely he was about to see his first military action aboard a WASP vessel. It was highly unlikely they were going to be sinking anything from on board, though...Emerald River was a boomer, a ballistic missile submarine, and she was designed to launch at targets on land, not other ships. "Do we have attack boats in the area, Pete?" he asked quietly.
Stockton shook his head. "WASP doesn't have anything in the area right now. Closest ship right now is an Australian Navy frigate en route from HMS Stirling. Marineville Ops says they've been informed that a SEAL team is on its way here on fast transport, and we're to try to keep the situation stable until they arrive. No one else we have a treaty with has anything close enough to be of use."
Gordon raised his eyebrows. "They're sending SEALs? Who exactly is in trouble up there?"
Stockton spread his hands to indicate he had no idea.
Gordon got his answer two hours later, when Emerald River blew her ballast tanks and rose to just below the surface, 250 miles off the coast of Somalia.
He'd returned to his assigned quarters. He didn't expect to be told much about what was going on, unless Stockton was feeling extraordinarily generous –he was technically a passenger on this boat, after all. He had his smartpad out and was absorbed in working on the new underwater breathing apparatus he was attempting to design, when the speaker in the wall came to life. "Lieutenant Tracy, report to the captain on the bridge."
When he got there, puzzled and curious, Captain Orly and Lieutenant Stockton were waiting for him. "What's this about, sir? If I may ask?"
The captain motioned for him to look at the screens beside him. They carried a live feed from the periscope, focused on a massive, multidecked motor yacht. She was a gleaming white beauty, easily 400 feet from her sleekly pointed prow to the Greek flag mounted on her rounded stern. Gordon recognized her immediately, with something of a shock. "Captain, that's the Galatea. She's a civilian yacht."
"Lieutenant Stockton told me you were familiar with the ship."
"Yes, sir, she belongs to the Konstantine family. My father and Mr. Konstantine are old friends. I've been aboard at least a dozen times." He stared worriedly at the two attack skiffs that were pulled up to the Galatea's starboard side, and the rope net that had obviously been the pirates' way of boarding her. "Sir, do we know if the family is on board?"
"I am afraid all intelligence points to yes, Lieutenant."
"So this is a ransom operation," Gordon said.
"Maybe…" Stockton said. "But that's not all we know." He looked to the captain for permission to continue; Orly nodded. "Apparently the Konstantines were facilitating a below-the-radar meeting between a faction in Somalian politics who want to overthrow the current regime, such as it is, and unite the country under one flag, and a rather aggressive new private security firm out of Malaysia that wants to help them get what they want. In exchange for making the meeting happen, we are told that Mr. Konstantine extracted a promise that the new regime, if it is successful, will take immediate action against piracy in Somalia."
"Oh, that's going to go down well," Gordon said tightly. He was well versed on the history of piracy on the open seas…it was part of the standard WASP induction training. Piracy was the reason WASP existed at all in its current form – the escalation of deaths and ransoming of personnel and cargoes had been the platform from which NATO had strong-armed the expansion of the former International Organization for Oceanic Studies into the multinational security force it was today, the World Aquanaut Security Patrol. Gordon also knew how entrenched piracy was in poor and fractured countries like Somalia, and how much help they had from well-heeled, well-armed "investment partners" in the Middle East and Russia. Still, he couldn't blame Nik Konstantine for trying to do something about it – he was a third generation Greek shipping magnate, and he had a lot of friends in the same business, all of whom were eager to see the end of the constant bloodletting and financial drain that the pirates imposed on them.
"Where was that private security firm when all this was going down?" Gordon tried to keep a damper on his frustration. "Galatea has a water-jet propulsion system, she can do thirty-five knots, for God's sake. She could have outrun these guys."
"We do not know what happened," the captain said. "But it seems obvious that someone must have leaked the particulars of this meeting to the pirates, and they had surprise on their side. And now they have not only the Somalian political delegation but also the Konstantine family."
"How long until the SEAL team gets here?" Gordon asked.
Captain Orly raised his eyebrows at Stockton, who managed to look suitably contrite. "Another six hours at least," he said.
"With all due respect, sir, that very well could be too late. What if they want to prove they're serious about killing hostages if they don't get what they want?"
"I know, Lieutenant, I know."
"Let me go over there."
That took both other men by surprise. "I beg your pardon?" Stockton stared at him.
"That is out of the question, Lieutenant," the captain said firmly.
"Sir," Gordon leaned closer, lowering his voice earnestly. "It'll be dark in an hour, and I know that ship. Galatea's a monster, she can handle a hundred passengers and crew and you can land three helicopters on her decks. Her interior's a maze…but I know my way around. I guarantee you I can find the hostages."
"Lieutenant, you are an underwater research specialist, not a Navy SEAL. What do you propose to do if you manage to board that yacht?"
Gordon grinned at Stockton. "Lieutenant Stockton can tell you that, sir. My father, as you know, is former Air Force. Ever since I've been a kid, once a year we and my four brothers would pick a spot somewhere out in the wilderness and play war games."
The captain's eyebrows rose. Gordon continued, "Sir, my father is very rich and very well known. There are downsides to that. Pretty early on, his security chief encouraged him to make sure we could all defend ourselves in case of a kidnap attempt. I think it's safe to say I would pity the kidnapper who tried, now."
"Gordon's not kidding, sir," Stockton said ruefully. "I went with them on one of those trips right after he and I were in Submarine School together. Those Tracys are great people but they can be rather terrifying when they want to be!"
"Suppose you could find the hostages," Orly said. "How would you get them off the ship?"
"Eris," Gordon said.
Orly and Stockton looked at each other blankly. "Who is Eris?" Orly asked.
"The Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord. Also the name of the Konstantines' secret escape boat. I guarantee you nobody outside the family on board knows about her…she's the equivalent of a panic room in a house. And she's bulletproof."
Captain Orly was weakening visibly. "I can't order you to do this, Lieutenant – you're not even technically under my command."
"You didn't order me to, sir," Gordon said, with a grim smile. "I volunteered."
TBTBTB
Luck was with them that night; the sky was overcast and easily obscured the light of the stars and the first-quarter moon. Gordon donned black wetsuit and SCUBA gear and as soon as it was dark enough, Emerald River surfaced just enough for him to exit the sail. A swift look across at the yacht through night vision goggles to check the coast was still clear, and he banged twice on the hatch. The submarine sank back into hiding a few feet below the waves.
Gordon submerged, switched on the remarkably quiet propulsion unit and let it pull him smoothly across the distance to the Galatea.
The lights that were on, were mostly forward, where the bridge and passenger lounges were located. Gordon headed for the stern, passing underneath the two pirate skiffs on the way. He reached the ladder without incident and stripped off his headgear, listening carefully. Satisfied he was in the clear, he removed the rest of his SCUBA gear and tied it and the propulsion unit to the bottom of the ladder. From a forward compartment of the unit, he took a neoprene pouch that he slung over his shoulder on its long webbed strap. Then he began to climb.
The rear deck was empty. Gordon slipped over the railing and ghosted forward to where he could flatten himself against the corner of the rear salon. It was dark, although he could hear men's voices and laughter coming from somewhere up ahead. He opened one of the sliding glass doors just far enough to enter, silently apologizing to Marianna Konstantine for tracking water over her blue and cream Persian rugs.
The bar was to his right, the long mahogany surface gleaming dully in the light spill from further inside the ship. In the corner was a door the bartenders and kitchen staff used – it led down to the rearmost of the Galatea's two galleys. He was willing to bet that the pirates didn't know about it.
The door opened easily and he left the stairwell dark, feeling his way down the familiar spiral staircase.
The rear galley was empty, although the lights were on, illuminating what looked like acres of stainless steel. Gordon crossed the room swiftly and cracked the door on the opposite side, listening for a moment before entering the long passageway which led to the crew quarters. Through two more doors and up two flights of stairs and he'd be in the corridor that held the guest staterooms, and further along, those belonging to the Konstantine family themselves. It seemed like the ideal place to start looking for hostages…deep enough into the ship that they couldn't easily be located by a rescue force from outside.
As he reached the top of the second flight of stairs, a scream rang out. It sounded like a young girl. Footsteps pounded toward him and a figure with long, chestnut hair flashed past. He caught her with one arm and swung her towards him, covering her mouth with one hand and putting his finger to his lips in warning with the other.
It was Adrianna, at fifteen the youngest of the Konstantines' three daughters. Her dark eyes went huge when she saw his face.
He motioned her to flatten herself against the wall beside him. He could hear more footsteps coming, and a man calling out to her in very broken English.
It was over swiftly. Gordon caught the man as he tried to turn into the stairwell and slammed him into the wall, winding him. Then he knocked him out.
It felt good.
He turned to Adrianna. "Adi, where are the others?"
"Mama, Lexie and Chloe are in Mama's stateroom. That's where I was, too, until…" she glanced down at the unconscious Somali and her eyes filled with tears.
"It's all right, it's all right now," Gordon promised, gripping her hands reassuringly. "I'm here now. Do you know where your dad is?"
She shook her head. "They took him and Xander away."
She helped him drag the downed guard a few feet down the corridor and stow him in an empty stateroom, gagged and bound. "OK," he said, as they came back out of the room, "Now go down to Eris and put her on standby, and wait for us. You know what to do."
She nodded. "Yes. Be careful!"
She gave him a swift kiss on the cheek, and then Gordon watched her disappear down the stairwell. Then he took off at a run in the other direction, toward the family staterooms.
The guard outside the Konstantines' stateroom was leaning against the wall, his AK-47 slung across his back, obviously not expecting trouble. Gordon proved him wrong. He was on the Somali before he knew what hit him, grabbing the assault rifle's strap, swinging the pirate into the wall head first. The man bounced off and tried to lunge at him, but Gordon had the AK-47 loose by now and he slammed the butt hard against the Somali's jaw. He went down in a loose-limbed heap.
Gordon stood there for a moment, breathing hard. Then he tried the stateroom door, which wasn't locked. He turned the handle and walked in…and everything went black.
TBTBTB
"I'm so sorry, Gordon!" Marianna Konstantine said for the fifth time in the last five minutes. She offered Gordon a cold, damp washcloth. "We thought you were…"
"…a pirate, yes, I know." Gordon managed a smile through the pounding of his head. "I don't blame you, Mrs. Konstantine. Really. And you did pretty good for someone with no combat training."
"But I hit the wrong person," Marianna frowned.
"You won't next time," Gordon said reassuringly, patting her arm.
On his instruction, they had pulled the downed guard into the room and Adrianna's sisters had tied him up with sheets, stowing him out of sight under one of the beds. Gordon checked him over, appropriating his radio. "Any idea where Mr. Konstantine and Xander are?"
Marianna shook her head, dark eyes worried. "I'll find them," Gordon promised. "Now, I want you three to go down and join Adi. The more of you who are safe, the less I need to worry…"
He froze. There were voices approaching, calling out loudly. He picked out the names "Jamal" and "Abuukar," but didn't understand anything else. He waved the women toward the bathroom, picked up the AK-47 and positioned himself behind the door.
Two Somalis came bursting in, reacting with surprise when they saw the room was empty. One began to berate the other. Taking advantage of their confusion, Gordon kicked the door shut.
They turned around to face the muzzle of the assault rifle. "Take me to your leader," Gordon said, without a trace of humor.
TBTBTB
The Somalis, it turned out, were not so tough without their automatic weapons. Marianna sent Alexandra and Chloe down to join Adrianna in Eris – despite Gordon's protests, she insisted on taking one of the AK-47s and following him so that she could watch the rear.
The pirates led them down the long passageway toward the bow of the Galatea. For Gordon there was a weird sense of déjà vu, his happy memories of running through these passageways as a young teenager colliding with the current, much grimmer reality. He tightened his grip on stock of the Kalashnikov, trying not to think about what he – and especially Marianna Konstantine, would find where they were going.
He knew only too well what these men were capable of doing.
A couple hatchway doors and a right turn later, it dawned on Gordon that he knew where the pirates were taking them. This particular passageway led to the Galatea's large media room, placed in the center of the bow area underneath the ship's bridge. Since there were no windows to let in light, it was an ideal place to hide the hostages.
It was also an ideal place to approach unseen.
The heavy wooden doors to the media room were slightly open, and he could hear raised voices from inside as they drew closer. One of them, to his sharp relief, belonged to Nik Konstantine. Now beside him, Marianna squeezed his arm and he knew she had heard it, too. He glanced at her, tried to smile reassuringly. Her husband and son were both in that room.
He hesitated for a second. What if it were his father and one of his brothers in there? How much risk to Nik and Xander was acceptable here?
Then he heard his father's voice in his head and he knew.
He motioned the two Somalis to approach the media room doors. "Don't try anything," he warned. If they didn't understand his words, they would understand his brandishing the rifle.
As they turned their backs, he unzipped the neoprene pouch and drew out a cylindrical, olive drab object that resembled a dumbbell with a cap and holes in the sides. Marianna's eyes went wide. Gordon motioned for her to remain silent, knowing that she'd seen one before and knew what it would do.
The pirates had reached the door. Gordon hid the M-84 against his side as they turned their heads to look at him. He gestured for them to knock.
A harsh response came from within. The Somalis said something else and then they both headed into the room.
Gordon raced up behind them and threw in the flashbang, yanking the doors shut behind it. He and Marianna hunched down facing the opposite direction, eyes tight shut and ears covered.
The deafening ammonium nitrate bang was clearly audible even through the thick doors. Although he knew that the explosion would have been paired with a bright, intense flash of light that would temporarily blind and disorient those in the room, it wasn't visible in the passageway. Yells of surprise and fear sounded from inside.
Not one to leave anything to chance, Gordon grabbed a pair of smoke grenades from the pouch and pulled open the doors. He tossed the grenades in one after another and billows of bright yellow smoke poured back out into the passageway. More yells, choked off by the smoke.
After that it was just a matter of waiting for them to come up for air.
The Somali crew stumbled out first, coughing and colliding with each other, suffering the miserable side effects of the double assault. A couple of them collapsed to their knees in the passageway, retching. Grim faced, Gordon booted them back to their feet and he and Marianna herded them all into a small conference room two doors down from the media room. It was an easy job with men as incapacitated as these.
Under his watchful eyes, Marianna took their weapons and piled them in the passageway outside. She regarded the pirates with hard, vengeful eyes through the open door, berating them with a stream of Greek invective like an ancient Fury. Gordon had never seen her look or sound like that before, and he hoped never to again.
He didn't allow himself a deep breath until the door was locked, the pirates safely inside.
He turned back toward the media room then, to see the best sight he could have hoped for. The tall figure of Nik Konstantine, limping and with a cut on his temple but otherwise unharmed, leaning on the shoulder of his son. "Gordon Tracy?" Xander exclaimed in surprise. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Gordon barked out a laugh as Marianna ran to embrace her husband and son.
It was over. All they had to do now was wait until the SEAL team arrived.
Gordon almost felt bad that they'd missed the party.
TBTBTB
"You go, Gordo!" Virgil said in admiration. "Nicely done!"
"So how come we didn't hear anything about this when you got home?" Scott asked.
"Same reason as you, really. All's well that ends well, but we figured WASP command probably wouldn't feel that way. We had no orders to interfere, and if it had gone badly and people had died… Well, you know. It would have been Captain Orly's career on the line as well as mine. We all decided to keep it quiet and not tell command about what I did. The minute I got word that the SEALs were parachuting in, I got out of there and back to the sub. The Konstantines kept it to themselves for my sake, although they really wanted to tell everyone…and the Somalis had no idea who I was. They never even knew the Emerald River was out there."
"Sucks that the SEALs got to take the credit, though," Virgil said.
Gordon shrugged. "Better that than the alternative. Main thing is, nobody died."
"I hate to think what would have happened to those women if you hadn't done what you did, Gordon," Tin-Tin said. She reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You're a hero in my book."
Scott and Virgil made appropriate gagging noises. Tin-Tin stuck out her tongue.
Scott looked at the almost empty bottle of Scotch, but it had lost its appeal. "No way we can top that," he said, getting to his feet. "I'm gonna turn in."
"Me too," Virgil said.
"You need some help with the birthday boy?" Gordon asked Tin-Tin, nodding at the soundly sleeping Alan.
She laughed. "No, thank you. It's a lovely night. I'm going to stay down here with him awhile."
"I'll get Brains," Virgil offered. He went up the wide stone stairs and paused beside the scientist, lifting his slight frame easily in his arms.
Gordon and Scott headed toward the house together. They had almost reached the stairs when they heard the rumble of their father's voice. "You're both grounded. Forever."
Both his sons' faces split into broad grins. "Yes, sir," they said, in unison, and kept walking.