Payback

1

Lieutenant Ed DeWitt kept one eye on the radar screen in the sleek cabin of the Pegasus as it slammed through the azure Caribbean Sea at thirty knots. He could just make out the trace of the pirate cruiser slashing through the water five miles ahead of them. The boatmen had done nothing illegal yet, but the Navy spotter in an aircraft high overhead had been shadowing the power cruiser for two hours and had called in the Pegasus for assistance. The same boat had been chased before by the plane, but it had become hidden and then lost in a maze of small inlets, narrow waterways, and tangled growth on an uninhabited stretch of the southern coast of Puerto Rico east of Punta Petrona. Now the spotter kept DeWitt up to date through his ear speaker on his Motorola personal-commo radio.

“Yes, I’d say the pirates are definitely aiming at that sailboat,” the spotter went on. “The target is about five miles ahead of the pirate, but he’s dead on course to overtake her shortly. Our hope was that you could charge up there and intercept the pirates before they hit the sail ship. But not a chance. I didn’t call you in soon enough.”

“We can kick this boat up to forty-five knots. Wouldn’t that be enough to cut him off?” DeWitt asked. He watched his seven-man team in the slender Navy powerboat.

“Negative. He’s got too much lead on you. My fault. We protect these sail craft whenever we can, but this bastard pirate came out of that damn fog bank and surprised everybody. We didn’t think he was out hunting today.” The spotter’s voice came through showing his frustration. The Navy coxswain at the controls of the Pegasus heard the exchange on his Motorola and nodded.

“Watch and wait,” DeWitt told his Bravo Squad of Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, home-based in Coronado, California. His squad was on special duty with the Coast Guard and the Navy to cut down on the pirating of small vessels in the Caribbean area.

The Pegasus is the Navy version of a “cigar” boat, eighty-two feet long and only seventeen feet wide. Officially it’s the Pegasus Class MKV (SOC/PBF). It was designed specifically to insert and withdraw Navy SEALs from unfriendly territory. Eight of the boats went into service in 1997, with twenty more added to the fleet in 1999. It’s powered by two 12V 396 TE94 diesels that turn out 4,500 horsepower.

DeWitt checked his men. All were ready. They had specific instructions to do as little harm as possible to the pirates, and were ordered not to use the Bull Pup exploding 20mm rounds on the pirates unless they had to, if it turned into a running gun battle.

Three minutes later the Motorola spoke again. “Yes, yes, we have the pirate ship within hailing distance of the sailing vessel. You can’t get there in time,” the spotter in the Navy plane said with a touch of guilt.

On board the charging powerboat, Sancho waved at the man steering the forty-two-foot sailboat only thirty feet away. Then he angled in closer and from twenty feet pointed to his best shot, Hernando, who blasted ten rounds from a Colt Commando on full automatic. The man at the yacht’s wheel didn’t even have time to look up as the sound of the shots and the 5.56mm lead messengers jolted into his body at the same time. He screamed once; then another round caught him in the throat and angled upward into his brain, dumping him on the deck, where he sprawled in sudden death.

Sancho eased his forty-foot powerboat up to the sailboat. Two of his men tied the crafts together, and at once six men leaped on board the pleasure craft. Each of the Puerto Rican pirates carried a submachine gun. Two had Ingrams, two had Beretta 3’s, and the rest CZ Model 25’s from Czechoslovakia.

A man rushed up from the cabin. He yelled at the first gunman he saw, and was rewarded with four rounds of parabellums to his chest. The shooter stripped out the dead man’s wallet from his shorts, and pulled off rings and his watch. Three pirates stormed below. They found four women and two more men in the saloon.

The pirate’s submachine guns stuttered out instant death as all three men fired. They killed two of the women where they sat. One of the men tried to charge forward, but was stopped in mid-stride when six rounds hit his chest and shoulders and two more punched deadly holes in his brain.

One blond woman in a bikini still held a drink in her hand where she sat on a couch. She looked up in terror as Sancho walked up to her and fondled her breasts. “Hey, pretty lady, I really hate to do this, but you know, it just got to be done.” He smiled at her and winked, then shot her once in the heart. Sancho laughed. “Hey, dead lady, I lied.”

The men belowdeck split up. One took wallets, rings, and jewelry from the women. Another one darted into the rear cabin, found the safe, and blew it open with a small controlled charge. He then quickly looted everything of value in the safe.

In the small forward cabin the boat’s navigation equipment, radios, depth gauges, and other instruments were stripped off the fittings, and rushed to the pirate ship.

Sancho stood by the wheel of his powerboat, Ingram in hand, watching the men work, and checking his watch.

“Sixty seconds,” he bellowed into the silence of the sea. “You have one minute to finish. Quickly now. The damn Navy plane is getting interested again. We need to race out of here.”

Sancho heard another controlled explosion. Good, they had found the second safe. There was always one hidden, but he and his men had seen plans of most of the yachts and he knew where to look. Moments later men began jumping back on board the motor launch. “All on board,” one of the pirates, wearing a bandanna over his head, called.

Sancho motioned for them to untie the sailboat, and then he counted his men. Everyone had returned. He took a small black case from his pocket and gunned the launch away from the sailboat. He opened the lid on the case and pushed one red button; then when they were a hundred yards from the sailboat, he pushed the second red button. A blast echoed across the water, splinters flew over the Marylue, and smoke gushed from two blown-out portholes. A moment later fire billowed up the stairwell and the ship began listing to port.

Sancho grinned, turned the launch toward shore, and pushed the throttles forward all the way. Now it would be a race between him and whoever the Navy and Coast Guard tried to throw at him this time. He laughed softly, fingering the scar tissue across his right cheek. Sometimes he enjoyed the chase as much as he did the attack. He coaxed one more knot of speed out of the big engines belowdeck and charged across the water.

The Pegasus had been slamming through the waves at its full forty-five-knot speed, making the SEALs hang on to keep from being bounded overboard as the long craft skipped from one wave top to the next.

DeWitt pulled down his mike from where it rested out of the way against his floppy hat brim. “These guys work as quick as expert car strippers. Everyone with a specific job to get done fast. We play it by ear when we get there.”

Two minutes later the radios came on. “The pirates have pushed away from the sailboat,” the spotter said. “The sails are down and she’s drifting; now she’s showing smoke and starting to list to port. The pirate ship is gunning for land.”

“Moving as fast as we can,” DeWitt said.

Two minutes later, the Pegasus nosed up to the dangerously listing sailboat. Her port rail was almost in the water. DeWitt had used his binoculars and seen one dead man on the deck. The man had slid almost into the water. The moment the Navy craft touched the sailboat they lashed both craft together. DeWitt pointed to Mahanani and Fernandez.

“You two, on board with me, the rest hold here. Get ready to cut loose the second you think this sailboat is going down.”

They jumped onto the slanted deck and hurried to the steps going down to the cabin. Inside, they paused.

“My God, a slaughterhouse,” Jack Mahanani, hospital corpsman first class, said.

“Check them,” DeWitt ordered.

Mahanani moved from one body to the next quickly. The whole boat gave a lunge to the left as it listed farther to port. The corpsman touched the throat of the last woman victim and looked up. “All dead, Lieutenant.”

The boat slued to port again.

“Out of here, she’s going down,” DeWitt barked, and the three raced up the steps to the canted deck. All but one of the ties had been undone, and they worked up the deck to the edge of the Pegasus and stepped on board. The last tie was cut and the Pegasus drifted a dozen feet to the left.

Ten seconds later the craft with the name Marylue on the bow tipped the rest of the way on her side, slowly took on water, and sank below the light chop of the blue sea.

Then they heard the spotter plane race overhead.

“We have it, SEALs. Videotaped the sinking and your getaway. You have the name of the craft?”

“Affirmative. The Marylue. Eight dead. No time for ID on any of them. We’re going after the pirates. Can you give us a heading?”

The northwest heading came through, and the Pegasus gunned through the waters heading toward Puerto Rico.

Five minutes later the spotter plane came on the air again.

“We’ve reported the attack and the sinking. Also have a new heading for you on the pirate. We estimate his speed at about thirty-five knots. He’s twelve miles ahead of you and looks to be heading for the coast of Puerto Rico. He’s got a nest there that we can’t find. It’s an elaborate complex of shallow waterways and tangled growth and canals and all sorts of places to hide and set up camp. The locals have been chasing this guy for years. We know about where he heads, but we’ve never been able to watch him go ashore. There are a hundred spots along here he could slip in and we’d never spot him from the air.”

“Busting our asses to get to him, spotter. No way we can catch him even at our forty-five knots. Best we can do is get a firm radar fix on him where he vanishes into the maze.”

“Better than we’ve had from the air, Pegasus. Once when we had a shot at him, we were on a hundred-twenty-foot cutter and no chance to follow him up those narrow little ditches he used. When you get the radar fix on his entrance, tell us and we’ll get ground units in there as close as we can. Use your second radio to contact them on TAC Two. Good luck.”

The three SEALs who came back from the sunken sailboat were subdued. Miguel Fernandez, gunner’s mate first class, stared at his hands and shook his head. He closed his eyes and held his sniper rifle close to his chest. “Worst damn slaughter I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They just mowed the tourists down where they sat like they were targets in a shooting gallery.”

Mahanani wiped the victims’ blood off his hands. He washed them with alcohol from his medic kit and took a long deep breath. “Like a damn close-combat kill house in there, only these were real people who bled a lot. Most of them were in their fifties. Retired, I’d bet, out to see the world. Those fucking pirates are worse than animals. I’ll be damn glad to find them.”

DeWitt stared straight ahead at the sea and the radar. He wouldn’t let his emotions get control. He had beaten down nausea twice since he came out of the sailboat’s cabin. He had wanted to throw up and then cry and scream to the heavens. But he didn’t. Officers don’t cry. He had to maintain.

He scanned the water ahead. No sign of the pirate ship yet. They were on the right heading. The plane had moved forward and tracked the pirate ship, but they had only a general idea where the boat would hit land.

Ten minutes later the longer-range radar picked up the powerboat, and less than two minutes after that it vanished off the screen, to be replaced by the solid land mass of southern Puerto Rico.

“Save that heading,” DeWitt said, and the ship’s driver nodded. On this angle they could come within a hundred feet of the spot where the pirate ship vanished into the maze of trees and waterways.

Ten minutes later, the Pegasus nosed up to the uninviting Puerto Rican coastline. It was mostly uninhabited along here, covered with jungle. They probed along a hundred yards each direction, and found several half-clogged narrow waterways. Which was the right one? Canzoneri sat on the bow watching the vegetation. He held up his hand, and DeWitt had the coxswain stop the boat.

“Look over there,” De Witt said. Some vines and tree limbs had been stripped of their leaves, and a few branches hung almost touching the water.

“Could be it,” Lam said. “How about nosing into that same spot and see what we can see.”

DeWitt looked at young Ensign Swartz, who commanded the boat. Swartz scowled and planted both fists on his hips.

“I told you when we started that the open sea is fine, but this running up channels and dodging vines is something else,” Swartz said. He paused. “I know our mission. I also know that as skipper of this boat I’m responsible for her. If anything gets damaged or broken or if we get grounded, I’m the one on the hot seat.”

DeWitt stepped toward him. “Hey, Swartz, understood. I’ve got carte blanche on this mission. The CNO himself authorized it. If we scrape up this Pegasus or total it, you won’t be given a statement of charges. I guarantee you that. Let’s nose in there and take a gander.”

Ensign Swartz looked at his coxswain.

“Sir, looks deep enough, good quantity of water coming out, check that current. We can nudge those vines apart and if we don’t hit the bank, we should be home free. Let’s try it.”

“Ahead, slow,” Swartz said. The coxswain moved the throttle and wheel and headed for the spot with the sheared-off branches. DeWitt, Swartz, and Lam stood on the bow of the sleek boat and watched the vegetation come closer. When they touched it, Lam brushed it aside and the craft edged inward. A moment later they were past the curtain of green growth and in a channel thirty feet wide that extended forward into the gloom.

“Yeah, looks good to me,” DeWitt said. Swartz took a deep breath and signaled the coxswain to motor forward slowly.

Ensign Swartz scowled. “We move inland only to the point where it could endanger my boat. Then we back off.”

“Agreed,” DeWitt said. “Looks from here like we have a clear way a long way ahead.”

The driver nudged the long, thin boat through the channel, and the officers retreated into the cabin as the brush trailed almost to the water on both sides. It was a slow-moving stream that angled to the left, and they went with it. Trees and brush and vines grew on both sides, sometimes bridging over the top, turning the small waterway into a tunnel.

Ahead fifty yards the stream turned right. Inland, on the left, they saw an open space with a shack of a house, a rowboat tied to the small one-plank dock, and a half-dozen chickens scratching in the moist soil. No people showed.

“Hold it,” DeWitt said. The coxswain cut the motors. “Get us to that bank,” DeWitt said, pointing to the side where the shack stood. “Franklin, Victor. Go check out that place. Capture or waste anybody you see. Silenced weapons.”

The two men waited until the Pegasus nosed into the bank. Then they jumped off the bow to solid ground, parted, and came up on both sides of the shack. There was no window facing the water, only a door half open.

Franklin signaled to Victor he’d go first. He charged up to the cabin, pressed himself against the outer wall three feet from the door, and waited. No movement or noise from inside. He edged to the door and jolted through it, his MP-5 pointing the way. He swept the single room and grinned.

A few seconds later, Victor charged into the same room. They both snorted. The downriver lookout had slumped over a wreck of a table. One hand held a nearly empty bottle of rum, the other a sandwich with only one bite gone. A small two-way radio lay beside the sandwich. His Uzi submachine gun lay on the floor at his feet.

Victor grabbed the man and dropped him to the floor on his belly, then bound his hands behind him. The man grunted and frowned, but remained unconscious. Franklin bound his ankles together with the plastic cuffs.

“Skipper, we’ve got one lookout, drunk as a skunk, and a sandwich. He’s bound up. I’ll bring his weapon.”

“Roger that,” DeWitt said. “Return quickly.”

In less than a minute the two SEALs were on board, and the Pegasus moved slowly forward. The throb of its engine was low and guttural, but mostly eaten up by the sound-absorbing jungle.

“Let’s stay alert, people,” DeWitt said softly into the Motorola. “Locked and loaded.”

The stream narrowed. Ensign Swartz bit his lip and kept watching the banks. At least they didn’t have to worry about the screws hitting bottom. The craft was propelled with twin water jets.

Anther small turn, and the coxswain idled the engines so the Pegasus stood still in the gentle current. Ahead fifty yards DeWitt saw two buildings, both built facing the river on the left-hand side. He guessed they were for storage.

“We’ve got to clear those buildings,” DeWitt said. “Canzoneri, Franklin, and Jefferson, on me. The rest of you set up a perimeter around the sides of the boat. Coxswain, move us over to that little sandbar and we’ll jump to it.”

The driver motored twenty feet upstream and to the left until the bow nudged the sandbar. The SEALs jumped off the bow onto the sand, stayed dry, and ran into the fringe of brush between them and the buildings.

They lay belly-down in the grass and weeds looking at the two structures forty yards ahead. Frame, one-story, maybe twenty feet square. No doors or windows in the back or on this side.

“On me, ten yards,” DeWitt said, and lifted up and ran through the brush crouched over until he could see the other side of the closer building. The three SEALs trailed him at ten-yard intervals. When all were around and down in the grass, they saw that there was a door and a window.

DeWitt pointed to Canzoneri, waved him forward, and then pointed to the building. They lifted up at the same time and sprinted for the side of the structure. DeWitt expected to hear the stutter of submachine guns at any time, but he made it there with no gunfire. Canzoneri hit the wall on the other side of the window. He lifted up and tried to look through the glass. He dropped down, moved his hand in front of his eyes, and shook his head.

So, the door. DeWitt moved silently to the door and tried the knob. It was unlocked. He pulled it gently forward fearing a squeak. Nothing. He edged it out an inch and looked inside. At first he couldn’t see a thing. Then, at the far side, he saw two chairs and a card table with a single lightbulb burning above them. Two men sat in the chairs, and a submachine gun and a small two-way radio lay on the table.

DeWitt took a breath, motioned Canzoneri over, and let him look through the inch-wide slot. He motioned to the SEAL to jerk the door open. DeWitt would be in first. He held a silenced MP-5 set on three-round bursts.

DeWitt took one more look. The men were playing cards. He nodded. Canzoneri jerked the door open and DeWitt charged forward across the wooden floor, his boots sounding like thunderclaps as he brought up the sub gun.

“Don’t try for it or you’re dead,” DeWitt brayed. One man grabbed the submachine gun and dove to the floor. DeWitt tracked him with the MP-5 and sprayed six rounds into him before he could get the weapon around to fire. The second man froze in his chair, and then silently lifted his hands high over his head.

Canzoneri was right behind DeWitt. He checked the throat on the man on the floor. He shook his head. The man in the chair mumbled something, and DeWitt pushed the MP-5 into his belly.

“What did you say?”

“Hablo español. Hablo español.”

Canzoneri waved at DeWitt. “I’ll go get Fernandez.”

Five minutes later the Spanish-speaking Fernandez had all the information the downriver guard knew. They were hired to stay there and guard the river. Nobody ever came up there. It was an easy job. He didn’t even think his gun was loaded. Yes, the radio connected them with the first guard in the shack. If he said somebody was coming upstream, they were alerted.

DeWitt checked the live guard’s weapon. It was loaded with a full magazine, and a round was in the chamber with the safety off.

“That’s about it, Lieutenant,” said Fernandez. “He said the boat went upstream about half an hour ago and they all waved. Most of the men on the boat were drunk. He said the camp is upstream another mile, but the motorboat can go only half that distance.”

“Tie up this one and bring his sub gun,” DeWitt said. He used the Motorola. “Ensign Swartz, tie up the Peg there. We’ll move on up by foot. SEALs, get your asses up here to the buildings. This one is clear. Canzoneri and Fernandez, clear that other building. Then we’ll be ready to haul ass out of here.” The two SEALs rushed out the door and approached the other structure. There was no light inside. They crept up to the door that sagged on one hinge and looked inside. One room, some boxes, and a large rat that scurried away. Nobody else in the place.

Five minutes later the SEALs had assembled, checked weapons, and moved up the left-hand side of the stream. The prisoner had said that was the side the camp was on, a mile ahead. The SEALs left the lookout tied hand and foot on the floor.

“There will be someone with the boat, so we take them down silently,” DeWitt said. He sent Colt Franklin out in front as point, and they moved out ten yards apart.

Franklin had always wanted to be scout, and now was his chance. He moved as silently as he knew how, keeping a hundred yards ahead of the main body. The closer he came to where the boat should be, the slower, more deliberate, and more careful his movements. He faded from one tree to the next, skirted a spot of brush, and always kept near the river so its gurgling and bouncing down rocks would cover any sounds he made.

Ten minutes later he edged up to a clearing, parted some heavy grass, and stared at a dock on the river. It was solid, made of four-by-sixes and built to last. The floating pier would rise and fall with the water level. Tied to the pier was the boat they had chased. Two men worked on it. One was scrubbing it down with fresh water and a sudsy brush. Franklin saw a second man working inside. Both men had sub guns slung over their backs.

“Lieutenant, you need to take a look,” Franklin whispered into his Motorola mike. A few moments later, DeWitt bellied up to where Franklin lay.

“Oh, yeah. Just two. We take them out, then move on up. Fernandez, get up here with that sniper. We need you.”

When all of the SEALs had lined up along the edge of the brush facing the boat, DeWitt gave Fernandez the go. He sighted in on the man washing down the boat, who was on the dock now with a swab and a bucket of soapy water. Just as he started the next swipe with the swab, Fernandez nailed him in the middle of the back with a silenced 7.62 NATO round. The pirate crumpled without a sound and didn’t move.

They heard the other man call out. Then when he had no response, he came out of the cabin to the rail looking for his buddy. Fernandez let him lean over the rail, then shot him in the chest with one round. He added a second one, and the inside man tumbled over the rail and hit hard on the wooden dock. He never moved again.

Three silenced shots, like a huff or a puff, and it was over. They left the dead men where they had fallen and moved up the river. There was a good trail here, much used. Franklin kept a fifty-yard interval now in front of the troops. Things were tightening up. He’d seen Lam do it a dozen times. Move and watch, all eyes and ears. Every bit of him. Observe and work ahead if it was clear.

Franklin stopped after a quarter of a mile and asked DeWitt to come up for a look. Not a lot to see except trees and brush and vines and a few wildflowers. Green on green. Then DeWitt found it. Thirty yards ahead along this open stretch of trail a lone lookout leaned against a thick tree trunk smoking. He wore jungle fatigues to blend in with the foliage, and held a radio in one hand and the end of a smoke in the other.

“Can’t risk a silenced shot,” De Witt said. “Too damn close to where there must be others. Keep the rest of our guys here. I’ll go up and shake hands with him.”

“How about Lam?” Then Franklin realized. “Oh, yeah, he ain’t here. Lieutenant, you be careful. I’ll be up about halfway with my MP-5 if you get in trouble.”

DeWitt slung his MP-5 across his back, and a moment later had vanished into the thick brush. Time to shit or get off the pot. Never ask one of the men to do something that he wouldn’t do. Yeah, now was the time. De Witt moved with more caution than he had ever done, working slowly, never putting weight on one foot until he was sure nothing would go swish or snap. He angled slightly toward the river. At the higher elevation it was much shallower now, and the gurgle and splash as it came down mini rapids gave him some sound cover.

He worked forward for five minutes, then took a break and relaxed all the muscles in his body a pair at a time. The process took two minutes; then he was on his feet and moving again. He drew his KA-BAR fighting knife. He’d honed the blade last night so it was far, far sharper than it ever had been. He bent back to the left toward the trail. Yes. There it was. The smoker?

The sentry had put out the cigarette, and held a sub gun in both hands as he looked up the trail toward the camp. Why was he looking that way? Then he turned and stared down the trail, then relaxed against the large trunk of his favorite tree.

Twenty feet.

Almost no cover.

How would he do it? The old distraction trick? A rock the other way to make the sentry look that way? Could he take a half-dozen steps silently, then charge toward the man before he realized someone was coming? Maybe. How about a knife throw? DeWitt vetoed that one at once. He could throw a knife and hit a target, but he wasn’t going to bet his life on it. He came back to the rock.

Twice more the sentry turned and looked toward the camp. Maybe a replacement was coming. Wait for the next turn. It took two or three minutes. As soon as the sentry turned again, DeWitt came upright and took six running, almost silent steps toward the man. Just as the guard was due to look down the trail, the lieutenant threw a fist-sized rock beyond where the guard had been looking. The pirate jolted his gaze that way for another two seconds.

It was long enough. DeWitt kept up his charge at the sentry, holding the knife straight in front of him like a lance, gaining four feet of distance and precious tenths of a second.

The sentry never even started to turn. Instead he pulled up his weapon and aimed it at the rock sound. DeWitt’s KA-BAR sliced through the man’s shirt on the side, missed his ribs, and slanted through half a lung and stabbed two inches into his heart, killing him instantly. DeWitt caught him before he fell, pressed the sub gun against his chest, and dragged him off the trail into the brush.

By the time De Witt had returned to the trail, Franklin knelt there looking upstream. He flashed the officer a grin and gave him a thumbs-up, then waved his arm forward and the rest of the SEALs moved silently up the trail with five-yard intervals.

“Out twenty yards, Franklin,” DeWitt whispered, and the scout moved forward with caution. DeWitt and the rest of the squad followed. Franklin found no more guards, and five minutes later he and the rest of the SEALs stared at the group of buildings ahead from a fringe of brush that bordered a cleared area. DeWitt scanned the structures and decided there were three houses, a large garage, and two outbuildings that could be used for storage. It was still daylight, and he could see electric wires strung around, so they had power.

“Could be thirty guns in there, Lieutenant,” Franklin said. “We got any help coming land side?”

“Supposed to be. The spotter plane man said as soon as our boat vanished into the woods, they would get land troops out and cover all roads, buildings, and houses in our general area. Let’s hope that they do.”

“Hey, Cap. How about a small diversion?” It was Mahanani.

“Like what?”

“I was thinking maybe one of them outbuildings could catch on fire. One twenty-mike-mike WP into that far one should make it burn like a torch.”

“Too much noise. They’d know we were here.”

“Right, Lieutenant,” Franklin said. “But what if I was to slip up on the back side of that shack and drop in a couple of Willy Peter grenades. They don’t make much more than a pop.”

“Good. Get in position, but don’t drop the WP until I give the word. We’re supposed to have help out front. They gave me a radio, and I hope to hell it works. Donegan, you still have that GPS to pinpoint our location?”

“Sure do, Cap. You want the coordinates?”

“Work them out. I’ll see if I can raise anybody on this tin box.”

He turned on the second radio he took from his vest and lifted a two-foot antenna.

“Skyhook, this is Grounded. Do you read me?”

There was no response. He tried again. “Skyhook, this is Grounded off the Pegasus. Do you read me?”

“Yes, Grounded. Skyhook here with the land troops. We have fifty men on roads leading into the area where you vanished. What have you found?”

DeWitt told him the setup. “Can’t see any cars from here, but there must be some in front. Here is the GPS coordinates.” He read them off, and the Coast Guard man repeated them.

“Yes, we have men near there. We’ll move forty men to the one lane leading into those three houses. The old Bamford place. Sold recently. We’ll be on station in about fifteen minutes.”

“Let us know when you’re ready. You bring your men in from the front on an attack, and we’ll bottle them up if they try to come down the river. We have their boat.”

“Good. Talk to you in fourteen.”

Five minutes later, Franklin said he was ready. He was against the side of the building. It looked like it once had been a barn with hay and stalls, he said. “Even has a window with the glass out,” Franklin said. “I’ll toss in the WP and haul ass on your command.”

“Make it in ten minutes, Franklin.”

“Roger that.”

DeWitt started the timer on his wristwatch, and then told the rest of his men what was going down. “We spread out along here as a blocking force. We’ll wait until we see if they are armed, then give them a chance to surrender. If they don’t, we’ll blow their asses all the way into San Juan.”

The SEALs spread out, found cover, settled in, and waited. Then DeWitt gave Franklin the go, and they heard the WPs pop. A short time later smoke gushed from a broken window on the side of the old barn, and there were shouts from the houses.

Quickly a dozen men, women, and children ran out of the houses and stared at the fire. It was beyond a bucket brigade, and the one garden hose had no pressure.

While they watched the barn burn, a submachine gun chattered off a dozen rounds in front of the houses.

“Men in the three houses,” a powerful bullhorn blasted. “This is the FBI. You are surrounded. Come out the front doors of your homes with your hands in the air and we won’t fire. Don’t endanger the lives of your women and children. You have three minutes to move.”

The people around the fire raced back into their houses. A short time later the bullhorn sounded again.

“No, we don’t want your women and children to come out. We want the men to show themselves with their hands in the air.”

Just then a dozen men ran out the back of the houses heading for the river trail. Each man had at least two weapons.

“I’ll do warning shots,” DeWitt said into the Motorola. “Hold fire.” He fired three three-round bursts from his MP- 5. “Hold it right there and drop your weapons,” DeWitt bellowed.

Three of the pirates fired at the woods in front of them.

“Open season on pirates,” DeWitt said, and the SEALs opened fire with eight guns. Five of the pirates went down. Two tried to keep firing as they crawled away. Five more dropped their weapons and held their hands in the air.

DeWitt called a cease-fire and used the special radio. “Skyhook, looks like it’s time for you to come through the houses and collect the garbage. We have five pirates down and wounded, five with their hands in the air, and two trying to crawl away. Happy hunting. As soon as you collect this filth, we’re heading back to San Diego.”