Ghost Recon

THIRTY-FOUR

The moment the second sailor collapsed with a bullet lodged in his head, SEAL Chief Tanner and his partner wove back through the woods, heading west to circle around and come in from behind the remaining men.

Tanner and Phillips now held their pistols in one hand, their SOG SEAL knives in the other, the seven-inch blades powder-coated to conceal glare.

They darted to the edge of a slight clearing and crouched in the brush.

Just ahead, one sailor shouted to another, giving up his position — his last mistake.

With their predator's instincts finely tuned on the forest ahead, Tanner and Phillips moved in for the kill.

Diaz sat cross-legged on the deck and propped one elbow on the gunwale, sighting the oncoming chopper pilot. He roared down at a forty-five-degree angle, lining up on their stern and interrogating them with his searchlight.

Mitchell hollered as the rotor wash finally hit the boat, whipping up a mist that, in the next few seconds, would ruin Diaz's shot.

The chopper's gunner opened fire, and it was Brown who, despite his head injury, held a steady bead on the bird with his light machine gun. He quickly adjusted fire, and the gunner slumped after firing a salvo that stitched across the deck, missing Diaz by an arm's length.

Brown glanced back at her. "You're clear, Alicia! Take him out!"

It was the least she could do for the man she had almost killed.

Diaz froze and tuned out every noise, jostle, and vibration of the boat. She ignored the cuts, stiff joints, and bruises, and even the searchlight's pulsating glare.

Carlos and Tomas were strangely silent, as though she'd finally convinced them that she was their equal. Oh, that was hardly the case, but maybe they, too, were wondering in rigid silence if she could really pull this off.

Her crosshairs lined up, and just like that, she took a shot, squeezing off a second before thinking about it.

Both rounds punched through the canopy and struck the pilot in the chest and shoulder, respectively, blood darkening the side window as the man fell back, then slumped forward.

To her left, Beasley and Mitchell hauled a bleeding Ramirez back into the boat, and Jenkins climbed aboard himself while the chopper continued to descend.

"Oh my God," Diaz whispered, lowering her rifle as the enemy bird pitched even more, engine and slicing rotors blaring, speed increasing.

The deafening noise stole everyone's attention, Diaz knew, and it was Mitchell who vocalized their thoughts: "It's going to hit! Everybody out of the boat!"

Tanner had holstered his pistol when he'd realized he'd had the perfect kill. He called, "Over here," in Mandarin and got the sailor to turn around and come toward him. As the young man passed the tree behind which Tanner huddled, Tanner came around, covered the kid's mouth with one hand while punching his blade into the man's aorta.

The sailor would not die instantly, Tanner knew, so he'd kept his hand over the guy's mouth and withdrew the blade. He drove the sailor forward and came down with a second strike to the spinal cord.

That finished him.

Tanner carefully lowered the body to the ground and stood upright to catch his breath and wipe off the blade on his thigh.

Phillips, who'd slipped off to their right to take out the dead man's partner, called to say his guy was down, but his transmission broke off at the sound of gunfire.

"Phillips?"

He didn't answer. A hollow pang seized Tanner's gut. He cursed and bolted toward his partner's position.

They had just finished hauling Ramirez into the boat when Mitchell grabbed him and threw himself and the assistant team leader back over the side.

He wrapped an arm under Ramirez's chin and swam as hard as he could until the horrible sound of the chopper's rotors slashing through the fishing boat made him cry, "Joey, hold your breath!"

Mitchell dragged them underwater as a fireball swept over the water and lit up the waves with a surreal, flickering light, as though he were staring at a fireplace through warped glass.

For a moment, time slowed, and nearly all of Mitchell's senses shut down, but then the muffled cries of his Ghosts and the reverberating chomp, chomp of the rotors as they snapped off wrenched him back to reality and drove him to paddle deeper.

His thoughts reached out to the others, to what would happen to them now as his legs burned with exertion and his wounded arm twinged.

Ramirez began to struggle. He could no longer hold his breath, and Mitchell turned and kicked harder, heading back up.

They broke the surface just a few meters outside a large pool of burning fuel that had leaked from the chopper and boat as both had begun to sink.

Mitchell's earpiece/monocle was still attached to his head, and although the device was waterproof, he only got static.

He spotted Diaz treading water off to his right. "Alicia?"

"I'm all right," she answered. "I see Marcus, John, and Alex. They're okay."

Something thumped into Mitchell's head. He shifted around, saw Boy Scout's body floating facedown. Just a few meters off lay Buddha, faceup.

Mitchell wanted to shake his fists at the universe. They'd been so damned close — and now the ultimate failure. Operation War Wraith would be pinned on the United States because he and his Ghosts had failed to exfiltrate. They would be captured, tortured, paraded in front of the media, then spend the rest of their lives rotting away in a Chinese prison. It was hard to suppress those thoughts while floating in the harbor beside a pool of fire.

Beasley and Smith kicked toward him, clinging to a long piece of the fishing boat's hull. Beasley grabbed Ramirez, who was still conscious but barely moving, and pulled him up, onto the wood.

"Got nothing on the Cross-Com," Mitchell told them.

"Me neither," said Beasley.

Tanner returned fire, nicking the corner of a tree trunk. One of the sailors behind the tree kept rolling out and firing, while the other was on the ground, wailing over his wounded thigh.

Phillips had shot that man, but not before taking a round in his neck, another to the chest. Now he just lay on his back, breathing slowly.

Tanner crawled to his side. SEAL or no SEAL, it took incredible force of will for Tanner to remain composed with his partner and friend lying there, dying.

A pale orange shimmer out in the harbor caught his attention, and he fished out his binoculars. He gasped over floating wreckage, a wall of fire lifting from the black water, and the Ghosts floating at the edge of it all.

Tanner steeled himself. "We're getting out of here, buddy. Time for plan B."

Phillips nodded. "I'm ready."

A round blasted dirt in Tanner's eyes, and he rolled, faced that tree trunk, and returned fire. His second shot was echoed by a groan.

With that, he rose, hauled Phillips into a seated position, then, with the inhuman strength fueled by a massive adrenaline rush, he lifted the stocky SEAL over his shoulder, turned, and double-timed off, back toward the pier.

Only ten steps into their escape it dawned on Tanner that they'd shot five sailors. The sixth was still out there, and that fact sent a chill coiling up his spine.

Gummerson stood in the control room, flinching as every new piece of information came in.

The XO came over, his expression souring. "Captain, SEAL Chief Tanner reports that SEAL Chief Phillips is seriously wounded. Tanner also says he's lost contact with the Ghost Team. We just got some streaming vid from the harbor. The two choppers are down, but the Ghosts are in the water near burning fuel. They've lost their boat."

Gummerson frowned, then studied the images and map overlays on the screen before him and shook his head. "They're still too close. We can't risk surfacing there."

"Agreed, but, sir, how will they get out of the harbor?"

"I want to talk to SEAL Chief Tanner. I bet he's already got a plan."

Mitchell clung to another piece of the hull, along with Diaz and Smith. All of them floated there, coughing and spitting salt water as the fires began to die. Beasley had made sure that the bodies of the CIA agents were secured to another piece of wood in the event that some miracle happened and Captain Gummerson decided to risk it all and bring his boat into the harbor and surface.

Hijacking a rickshaw and heading west seemed a real possibility and a not-so-amusing quip now.

All right. The team was looking to him for orders, perhaps his final order as a Ghost Team leader. He would instruct them to paddle toward the piers along Haicang. Xiamen Island to the east was twice as far away. They had no other choice.

He took a deep breath. "Everyone, listen up."

"Captain, wait," said Diaz, staring through her binoculars. "Got a small boat coming from the sand spit. Looks like that Zodiac launched by the patrol boat. One guy on board."

"Who?"

"Can't see him well enough yet."

"Beasley? Jenkins? Target that boat. Get ready to fire."

"Roger that," said Beasley, trying to balance his rifle atop the shattered piece of hull he was lying across.

"Diaz?" called Mitchell.

"He's turned again, coming right at us. Wait. I see him now, but something's wrong. Aw, no."