Patriot

CHAPTER 68

Stoke dove below the surface and swam up inside the SDV’s plexiglass-canopied cockpit. In the SDV, the pilot was dry from the waist up, wet from the waist down, giving him cockpit-style visibility to drive the boat, monitor the batteries and compressed air supply, and then egress the hell out when it was time to shoot bullets and kick Commie ass.

He pulled himself up into the enclosed pilot station in the port-side watercraft and said hello to his copilot, Gator Luttier. He’d gotten to know Gator pretty well when they’d boarded the Russian spy ship and he’d liked what he’d seen.

Another one of his Raiders, the skinny kid from Kentucky, Fat Jesse Saunders, otherwise known as Fat, climbed up inside to take the helm on the other boat with his copilot, Harry Brock, in the vehicle located to starboard in the well. Gator and Stoke were both smiling.

They loved operating these damn boats. Stoke had the most experience, having first encountered them as a young Navy SEAL in his war, his guys using them for riverine operations in Cambodia and Thailand. Gator had gained experience tearing ass all over the harbor at Tripoli during the dustup in Libya.

Clandestine SDV teams used the submersibles to operate or access ports, harbors, and beachfronts held by hostile forces. Or, like now, areas where military activity would draw unwanted notice and objection. Let’s just say Vladimir Putin for starters. The vehicle was flooded during maneuvers, and the swimmers rode exposed to the water, breathing from the onboard compressed air supply or using their own SCUBA gear.

Each of the modified Mark 8 SDVs was lithium-ion battery powered and equipped with propulsion, navigation, communication, and life-support equipment. Each also was capable of transporting one-half of a SEAL platoon composed of sixteen SEALs — two officers, one chief, and thirteen enlisted men, from the mother ship to the mission area. The submersible boat could then be “parked” or loiter in the area, retrieve the troops, and return home to the mother ship.

Blackhawke’s interior SDV launch well was crucial to tonight’s success in achieving surprise once ashore. The well allowed the vehicles to exit unseen beneath the ship’s keel and to remain submerged and out of sight as they began powering away from the megayacht and across the broad harbor toward the mission target, the explosive-laden warehouses on Spy Island.

The two boats, each fully loaded with its complement of eight covert warriors, shoved off. They were both headed in the same direction, ESW to the fortified Cuban navy complex, about a fifteen-minute excursion beneath the sea. After a final video surveillance a quarter of a mile offshore, they would proceed directly to their agreed-upon insertion point.

Fat, working late in the war room the night prior, had determined the single shoreside location where the invaders stood any chance of making landfall without detection. He’d done a thorough search of all the possibilities, located the ideal spot, then created a new map of the harbor that pinpointed their LZ for tonight. They would disembark just off an old and abandoned Soviet area of the port, well beyond the reach of the big searchlights and the big dogs patrolling the perimeter fences.

Fat had pinpointed a dilapidated concrete launch ramp on one of the sat photos, in an area built by the Soviets prior to JFK’s Bay of Pigs invasion. This section of the old port was originally designed for launching amphibious vessels to use against the Americans and had not been used since. The ramp and surrounding buildings were in a section of the harbor that was no longer functional and devoid of any visible guard or other personnel.

Back on duty on Blackhawke’s bridge, Commander Hawke raised the high-powered Zeiss lenses to his eyes. His eyes happened to alight at the top of the ship’s flag mast, mounted just forward of the wheelhouse. Damn it. The ship was still flying the Hawke Industries burgee and the yacht ensign, both designed to conceal the ship’s true nature while in U.S. ports and in transit to the operation sector.

Irritated with himself for his own sloppy lack of attention to detail, he grabbed the PA mike and depressed the transmit button.

“Ahoy, the foredeck! About time we showed the enemy our true colors, gentlemen.”

“Aye-aye, Skipper!” said a young crewman already racing toward the base of the mast.

“Strike the colors,” Hawke said, referring to the burgee flying now.

“Strike colors, aye!” was the reply.

The young sailor turned to the flag halyard secured to the mast, eased the lines, and hauled down the offending burgee and ship’s ensign. Once they were in his hands, he disengaged them from the halyard and replaced them with a faded and tattered old cotton flag of black and white. Hawke had given the rubber pouch containing it to the sailor for safekeeping while they were still in Key West.

The new colors were now hauled smartly up to the masthead and the flag was soon whipping around in the stiff breeze. Headed yet again into the thick of battle, the yacht Blackhawke was flying her true colors once more.

Something stirred inside Hawke at the sight, roiling his pirate blood. He had long admired this artifact from his pirate ancestor’s treasure trove of museum-quality artifacts. It had been discovered years ago during the excavation of an area of the port of Kingston, Jamaica, and somehow made its way into the hands of Alex Hawke.

It had been flown by the legendary pirate Captain Edward Teach. Sometimes known by his nom de guerre — Blackbeard.

The skull and crossbones of the mighty Jolly Roger.