Countdown to Midnight

Twenty-Four

Two twin-engine AS565 Panther helicopters flew low over the sea at more than one hundred and fifty knots — rapidly closing on the huge black shape of the Gulf Venture, which was now less than five miles away. Nick Flynn had one of the fold-down seats inside the lead Panther’s crowded troop compartment. He was hemmed in between seven Shayatet 13 commandos. Bulky in their body armor, they were all loaded down with weapons — short-barreled X95 bullpup assault rifles, grenades, fighting knives, and 9mm pistols. As a diplomatic gesture to the need to minimize the Israeli military presence in an Arab state, there were no national markings on either helicopter or on any of their camouflage uniforms.

He glanced down through the open doors on his side of the helicopter. The waning, half sphere of the moon was just rising, casting a pale, silvery glow across the water. Below them, he spotted two small shapes arrowing across the sea at high speed, trailing V-shaped wakes of curling white foam. The two Morena RHIBs carrying the boarding party’s small reserve force were approaching on schedule.

Through the Panther’s forward cockpit canopy, he could make out the enormous oil tanker that was their target. Satellite photos hadn’t done justice to the ship’s actual size. The Gulf Venture was nearly three football fields in length and as wide as three school buses parked end to end. As massive as one of the U.S. Navy’s 100,000-ton Nimitz-class supercarriers, its broad bow plowed through the Gulf of Oman at roughly eighteen knots, hurling white-capped waves aside. Now that it was well outside Iran’s coastal waters, there were no other vessels in the immediate area.

“Stand by,” Flynn heard the Panther’s pilot say calmly over the intercom. “We’re about sixty seconds out.” To his relief, the language being used for this operation was English, rather than the usual Hebrew. Since Shayatet 13 commandos often cross-trained with American SEALs and operators from the UK’s Special Boat Service, they were all perfectly fluent in English.

Flynn noticed the two commandos closest to the doors check the thick, braided lines they would use to fast-rope down onto the ship’s deck. His shoulders tightened. This was quite literally an all-or-nothing tactical evolution. When you made an airborne drop from a plane, your static line would pull your parachute, even if you couldn’t for some reason. But fast-roping from a helicopter was one hell of a lot more dangerous. The need for speed when assaulting from a hovering helicopter meant there was no such thing as a safety line. If your hands slipped going down the rope, you’d find yourself doing your best Wile E. Coyote impression in midair… except that in real life no one walked away from going splat onto a metal deck.

Oh, smooth move, he scolded himself mentally. What was the number one rule for anyone with real-world military experience? Never volunteer for anything. And what was rule number two? Never, ever volunteer. Rules number three through ten were pretty much the same. And yet here he was like some overeager, green-as-grass recruit, getting ready to hurl himself out through the open door of a helicopter perched more than sixty feet above a fast-moving ship.

Swallowing hard, Flynn looked away from the side doors. Instead, he craned his head forward again, trying to get a better look at the tanker they were approaching. Apart from a few lights visible on the Gulf Venture’s multi-story-high aft superstructure, the vessel’s main deck was completely blacked out.

He frowned. Voronin’s Raven Syndicate had to have deployed an armed security force aboard. So the lack of any apparent reaction yet was odd. Both Panthers carrying the Shayatet 13 assault unit had various stealth features — radar-absorbent composite materials in their airframes, enclosed fanlike tail rotors, and reduced thermal signature engine exhausts. But there was no real way to render a military helicopter completely invisible to radars and IR sensors. And even though they were approaching from downwind to reduce their rotor noise, the Panthers were still pretty loud.

Flynn shook his head dubiously. Someone aboard that ship should have spotted them by now. They couldn’t all be asleep or blind and deaf to the attacking force heading their way. “Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly,” he muttered. Instinctively, he checked the assault rifle he’d been issued, making sure again that it was loaded and ready.

“You sense danger?” the Israeli commando seated next to him asked, raising his voice to be heard over the din of their helicopter’s turboshaft engines and spinning rotors. His teeth flashed white in the darkened interior. “More than we already expect, I mean?”

Flynn grimaced. “Yeah, I do. It could be I’m just turning yellow in my old age, but I’ve still got a really bad feeling about—”

And then all hell broke loose.

What had appeared to be ordinary shipping containers chained down across the Gulf Venture’s deck as some sort of extra storage abruptly fell open — revealing the weapon mounts hidden inside. Besides a number of Samavat twin-barreled 35mm antiaircraft guns, there were several launchers bristling with small Misagh-2 surface-to-air missiles, Iranian-made copies of China’s QW-2 Vanguard heat-seekers.

The moment their firing arcs were clear, the antiaircraft guns opened up. Curtains of bright orange tracers rippled through the night sky toward the Israeli helicopters. Seconds later, SAMs started launching — streaking off the deck in plumes of gray smoke lit from within by their rocket boosters. Reacting immediately, both Panthers veered away, twisting and turning in a series of desperate evasive maneuvers. Dozens of tiny decoy flares tumbled outward behind them, fanning out like a constellation of small meteors falling toward the sea.

Gritting his teeth, Flynn held on tight as the helicopter he was aboard spun wildly through the air. Though the forward canopy and open doors, he could catch only split-second glimpses of what was happening around him. But what he did see was nightmarish.

The Gulf Venture, once darkened and seemingly lifeless, was now lit from stem to stern by the strobing flashes of its guns and missiles. A dazzling orange-white explosion suddenly engulfed one of the Iranian antiaircraft guns. Another blast turned a missile mount into smoldering wreckage. The Israeli flight crews were fighting back, he realized, trying hard to knock out the tanker’s defenses using their helicopters’ pod-mounted 20mm guns. But it was all too clearly a completely unequal fight.

Flashes suddenly peppered the sky near the second Panther. It staggered in midair, obviously hit hard. The badly damaged helicopter dove away at high speed — skimming low over the waves with thick smoke curling away behind it. Frantic voices echoed through Flynn’s radio headset. “Paladin Two breaking off! I’ve got an engine out and wounded aboard,” its pilot reported.

“Roger that, Two,” he heard his own pilot reply. “We’ll cover you.”

Flynn grabbed hold even tighter as the Panther banked sharply, coming around in another tight turn. Through the door next to him, he saw the sky and sea swing dizzily through a wild arc. The star-flecked blackness outside the helicopter tore apart in a swirling maelstrom of blindingly bright tracer rounds, missiles, and flares.

And then their own luck ran out.

WHAAM. WHAAM. WHAAM. Multiple 35mm shells hammered the Panther’s fuselage.

Everything around Flynn seemed to happen in horrifying slow motion. An almost simultaneous series of bone-jarring bangs and jolts nearly threw him out of the helicopter. Jagged splinters punched through the sides and sprayed across the crowded troop compartment. Some were stopped by body armor. Others ripped through unprotected arms and legs. The Israeli commando next to him slumped over, with blood pouring from his wounds. Dazzling showers of sparks erupted wherever the razor-edged fragments struck metal. A thickening haze of smoke filled the torn cabin.

“Brace for impact!” one of the Panther’s flight crew yelled. “We’re ditching!”

Flynn threw one arm around the injured commando and wrapped the other around his seat, holding on with all his strength. Through the doors, he saw the wave-topped sea rushing upward at them with terrifying speed as the wrecked helicopter spun down out of the sky. They smashed into the water with an enormous, shattering impact, sending a wave of white-hot agony sleeting through his whole body.

There was a moment of almost unearthly silence, broken only by low moans and the pinging of hot metal contracting in sudden cold as the shell-riddled helicopter settled lower.

Dazed by the crash, Flynn shook his head frantically to clear it. Blood trickled down his chin. He spat to clear a salty taste from his mouth. Swell, he thought muzzily. He must have gashed his face on something when they slammed into the sea.

“Everybody out! Now!” he heard the Shayatet 13 detachment commander bark. “Go! Go! Go!”

Yeah, no shit, Flynn realized as everything around him suddenly shifted back into full focus. Seawater was already flooding in through the doors. The Panther was going down fast. He dumped his weapons and other gear with frantic speed. Then, hauling the wounded Israeli commando with him, he struggled to his feet and splashed out into the rising sea.

Sidestroking frantically, he swam away from the sinking helicopter — aware of other heads bobbing all around. When he got far enough away, he started treading water. Still cradling the injured man, he fumbled with the straps holding his body armor — desperately shrugging out of it before the added weight could drag him under.

Moments later, the Panther’s mangled fuselage slid out of sight with a sudden spurt of bubbling white foam. Torrents of water were hurled in all directions by its still-spinning rotor blades when they smacked into the sea… and then vanished. A few lighter pieces of wreckage bobbed back to the surface, but that was all.

Still treading water, Flynn turned through a full circle, counting off those in the water nearby. Like him, the Israeli commandos who were not seriously wounded were supporting their bleeding, half-conscious comrades. Miraculously, it appeared that everyone else had made it out of the helicopter before it sank. Off in the distance, he could see the two Morena inflatable boats speeding toward them to conduct a rescue.

With a deep sigh, he wheeled back toward the now-distant Gulf Venture. The huge black ship hadn’t altered its course by so much as a degree. It was still headed away from them, steaming almost due south into the darkness. Small fires guttered in places across the oil tanker’s deck, showing where return fire from the two helicopters had knocked out a couple of its antiaircraft guns and missile launchers. But it was obvious that the ship was otherwise completely undamaged — and now free to carry its lethal secret cargo wherever it wished.

Flynn felt a wave of despair wash over him. He’d failed.

MIDNIGHT was fully underway.