Patriot

CHAPTER 67

The wind had increased dramatically. The big ship was pitching and yawing in heavy seas, towering waves of green water crashing over her bow and superstructure. A hard, slanting rain hammered the bridge, so hard you could hear the thrumming through the steel bulkhead above. Every now and then a jagged spear of lightning would crack nearby, lighting up the night outside the forward bridge windows, illuminating the rain so brilliantly that it looked like a solid wall. One they somehow penetrated as the ship steamed on toward the mouth of the island harbor.

Hawke looked at the Chelsea barometer up on the bulkhead and was shocked to see how quickly and how far the thin red needle had fallen. Masses of dark purple thunderheads were stacking up on the southern horizon, and the sky was now the color of a nasty bruise. Cuba was directly in the path, soon to get slammed by Hurricane Annabel.

Unless, as sometimes happened, the storm changed its mind. Veered west-northwest for the Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. But that was a very big maybe.

Hawke remained on the bridge, watching for any early skirmishes at the outset of the coming battle. The relatively moonless night and increasing dark clouds provided good cover for combat operations tonight. But the approaching tempest was putting severe pressure on the mission timetable. In his head, Hawke now advanced every aspect of his battle plan and made mental notes to keep his crew abreast of these critical changes as they happened. He was one of the few naval officers ever to graduate from Dartmouth Naval College who could hold an entire battle plan within his mind.

Everything was now dictated by the changing course and speed of the storm bearing down on them.

When the real battle commenced, former SEAL snipers with IR scopes in full camo, having taken concealed positions on the ship’s highest deck, would take out any uninvited waterborne guests who happened to make the serious mistake of getting too close to the bizarre yacht they’d declared war against.

Or, onshore, his navy snipers would handle enemy soldiers advancing on the Stokeland Raiders’ defensive position once they were safely ashore. And, finally, they were tasked with taking out all the enemy searchlight towers looming over the harbor compound to enable Stokely’s guys to breach the perimeter and attack their targets.

For now, the boat proceeding at dead slow, all calm aboard. Minutes passed…

The peace was soon shattered by the sonar-radar operator’s warning booming over the PA system. Two thirty-foot Cuban coast guard high-speed patrol boats made a fatal error as the strange vessel steamed into their harbor. Despite Blackhawke’s stern radio warning to their skippers to give the big yacht a wide berth, and come no closer than a thousand yards, the Cubans chose to come charging out into the harbor, engage, and open fire; each with two deck-mounted .50-cal. machine guns.

Hawke endured this pestilence of bee stings for as long as he could before giving the four turret commanders the “Engage. Fire at will” order to silence all that infernal buzzing. Suddenly, Blackhawke’s fore and aft 23mm cannons opened up, all four turrets swinging around, blazing away in tandem. The fire had a horrific effect on the lightly armored patrol boats and their crews; the barrage of incoming rounds was causing serious damage to the two enemy vessels. But, either bravely, foolishly, or both, on they came.

“Enemy vessels closing to within one thousand yards, Skipper,” said the voice on the PA system heard throughout the bridge deck. Hawke acknowledged as he spotted the approaching enemy blips on the nearest radar screen.

“Enough of their crap,” Commander Hawke told his gun crews. “Attention, two and three. Send those two bastards to the bottom where they belong.”

Gun turrets two and three immediately whirled and tracked and locked onto the two closing targets. Both turrets belched fire as two deadly antiship missiles were launched. The perfect twins arced into the deep black sky en route to their targets. Leaving a billowing plume of orange and white smoke trailing in their wakes, the pair of Hellfires raced upward, reached the apogee, and dove, screaming downward. They closed on the two zigzagging Cuban attack vessels, both captains now effecting desperate evasive maneuvers and hoping to escape.

But any hopes the Cubans had of avoiding catastrophe were instantly dashed. Two missiles struck each boat simultaneously, instantly turning both vessels into twin balls of hellish fire and death. Black smoke and flame rose up some fifty feet into the air while spilled fuel oil raged on the roiling surface of blackest water.

“On we go,” Hawke said.

The battle was joined. The yacht Blackhawke had just made a spectacular and very noisy announcement of her arrival in port. And she had plainly demonstrated her further intentions as she stormed deeper into the enemy harbor, all guns blazing. A half-dozen Cuban navy patrol boats buzzed around her, but the fire from their deck-mounted machine guns had negligible effect and they were dispatched to the bottom forthwith.

Commander Hawke was back on the bridge and his blood was up. Captain King was standing at the helm, watching him bark orders, as she witnessed what was for her a miraculous transformation: the kind and courteous man she’d only recently come to know had been replaced by a modern gladiator with an air of utter invincibility. Steel true. Blade straight. The cowardly saboteurs ashore would soon begin to feel his true heat.

Come on out you bastards, come out and fight.

Hawke glanced up at the mission clock above his head, the minutes relentlessly ticking down. It was now 2 A.M., Zulu time. The entire assault team had by now completed an exhaustive review of the strategic war plan for the third and final time.

They knew the Cuban and Russian guard unit’s rotation schedules down to the second and they knew it by heart. They knew the exact height of the concertina fences and the gauge of the steel-reinforced gates. They knew the exact height of the guard towers and the aspect ratios of their varying fields of fire; they knew the number of guard dogs patrolling behind those fences. They knew down to the last cubic foot the interior volume of the three large buildings where they would set their own explosive charges. And they knew exactly how long those fuses needed to be to ensure their timely and healthy departure.

This was, after all, going to be a hit-and-run operation. There would be no hanging around later to mop up and take prisoners. When this one was over, the Stokeland Raiders would just pick up their toys and go home. But right now, as Stoke told his guys, it was nut-cuttin’ time.

It was time for Alex Hawke to make one final appraisal of the troops before they went ashore. He left the bridge and headed aft, then down four decks to the stern of the vessel. There, in the aftermost part of the ship, grand de luxe had given way to the austere. Here was the true home of Stokely Jones Jr. and his Raiders. Their no-nonsense assault team accommodations, their mess, their weapons storage, machine maintenance shops, military communications post, and their combat satellite uplink. All were in a state of high readiness.

But Hawke had a personal need to witness and feel that sense of urgency and commitment in the men he was about to send into harm’s way.

Here in the spec-ops part of the ship, he found the Stokeland Raiders gathered. They would form two squads for the mission: Redcoat and Bluecoat. Both teams were kitted out in head-to-toe black Kevlar assault gear, looking like some demented alien NFL coach’s football fantasy of the most badass damn team in the universe. Which is exactly what the hell these guys were.

Hawke was now down in the ship’s well, a large rectangular opening cut into the aft section of the keel inside the very bottom of the hull; he saw black seawater sloshing up onto the surrounding decks. The steel decks were strewn with various items the assault teams had selected but chosen to discard at the last moment.

Extra M16 hot mags, assault knives, gloves, a couple of pairs of NVGs, even an M110 sniper rifle someone already heavily armed had felt was overkill. Hawke had ordered this undersea-launching platform for the two SDVs (SEAL Delivery Vehicles) built while the boat was still in dry dock back in Key West. It was comparable to the dry deck shelter used aboard U.S. Navy submarines.

The Stokeland Raiders, the sixteen-man platoon divided into two squads of eight, and containing battle-hardened frogmen, demolition experts, and snipers, were already splashing around in the black water inside the ship’s enclosed well. They appeared to be simply a bunch of incredibly fit young men without a care in the world, laughing and joking. Beach boys who just happened to be swimming around inside the hull of a megayacht, waiting to climb aboard a pair of highly classified U.S. Navy torpedo-shaped minisubs and go to war instead of playing water polo.

Humor was a great armor to don before battle. It offered a kind of mystic or mythic protection, some of them thought, and those who didn’t believe such stuff went along with it simply because, after all, you never know, do you? How many guys die laughing? Prayer takes many forms on the grim eve of battle.

One younger guy hollered to his mirthful brothers, “So this flashy car salesman says to the young black guy, ‘You thinking about buying this Cadillac convertible, son?’ And the black guy says, ‘Hell, no, man. I’m thinking about how much pussy I’d get if I bought this Cadillac.’”

And the echoes of laughter of a bunch of men who had been there and back more times than they could count filled the steel interior of the ship’s well. Every one of them knew that as soon they deployed inside the two SDVs and were en route to engage the enemy, everything was going to get deadly serious in a hurry. American frogmen were coming… watch your ass, boy…

Underwater, undetected, and underestimated.

Hawke saw Stoke standing on the deck, looking down at his men, alone with his thoughts.

“You good, Stoke?” Hawke said quietly, standing next to his old friend.

“All good, all the time,” was Stoke’s standard reply to that one.

Hawke looked down at Brock, already swimming up inside his sub on the port side of the well.

“And Mr. Brock over there in SDV 2? He ready?”

“Good to go. He loves this stuff. Never short on courage, you gotta give him that.”

“Right. Listen, because he doesn’t, Stoke. Tell him that as soon as he blows that Cuban command bunker, his team hauls ass back down the mountain. I want him at the warehouses to reinforce you and your guys’ final attack. I still don’t have a good feeling about the human intel on the amount of resistance we’re going to see tonight. But, hell. Darkness, element of surprise working for us, superior fighting men, tactics, weapons… we’re good, right?”

“We got me, remember?”

Hawke laughed briefly, then turned very somber. “You get shot up bad tonight? I want you to remember what I told you about pain that night in that Hormuz Strait hellhole after I got shot to hell, right?”

“I remember.”

“What’d I say?”

“Pain is just weakness leaving your body.”

Hawke saw the concern in Stoke’s eyes and looked away, embarrassed.

“It’s just that the stakes are as high as they can get now, Stoke. High as they’ve ever been. The world will little note nor long remember what we do here tonight. But — if we screw this up, well… you know… it’s pretty much all over. All of it.”

“I do know. And I won’t let you down, boss. My guys won’t let you down. None of us. Never.”

“Give ’em hell, Stoke,” Hawke said, giving his friend’s shoulder a squeeze.

Might as well try to squeeze concrete.