The Secret Cardinal

12

Max Gates stood atop the dune surveying the carnage below. A stocky, barrel-chested man with forearms that would make Popeye proud, he was clad in a battle-dress uniform of woodland-pattern camouflage with the pants bloused into a pair of black Bates 924/922 boots. The master chief’s sandy-brown hair had receded to nothingness long before it had the opportunity to turn gray, though what he lost on top he made up for in a pair of bushy eyebrows and a thick handlebar mustache.

Explosions and gunfire shattered the night, war in all its fury unleashed on a thin strip of sand along the Pacific Coast. The air was thick with smoke, the harsh smell of cordite strong and familiar to CMC Gates — the command master chief and senior enlisted adviser charged with the training of recruits for the Navy’s elite SEAL teams.

The CMC stood next to Captain Hunley, the CO and an officer with as many years in the teams as the master chief. Both men were veterans whose vast wealth of experience in this particular brand of warfare was now employed to shape the next generation of naval Special Forces.

On the beach below, the instructors serving under Hunley and Gates set off grenade and artillery simulators, fired full-auto bursts from M-60 machine guns, and shouted commands at the increasingly confused and disoriented class of recruits. Push-ups, sit-ups, flutter kicks, and dive bombers — the instructors drove the recruits through a punishing regimen of physical training exercises, all while soaking the young men with icy blasts from fire hoses. Sand coated every inch of the sodden recruits’ bodies, working through their clothing and grinding in every crevice.

‘Looks like Hell Week’s off to a roaring start, Chief,’ Hunley said.

‘The men are making a fine batch of sugar cookies out of those tadpoles, sir,’ Gates agreed.

Cold, wet, hungry, and tired — for the next five days, the SEAL recruits would experience these four sensations in extremes they could never before have imagined. And at every turn, their instructors would berate, goad, cajole, and tempt them into giving up.

‘Hit it!’ Petty Officer Portage shouted.

Portage’s command sent a sand-encrusted boat crew of seven men into the cold surf for a plunge. One of the men straggled a bit behind his buddies, and the petty officer pounced on him.

‘You ain’t moving too fast, banana. You got sand in your panties?’

Gates and Hunley couldn’t hear the faltering recruit’s response as Portage hounded him into the water.

‘Looks like Portage has our first bell ringer of the night,’ Gates shouted over the din.

A boat crew in the surf lay in a foot of water, linked elbow to elbow, facing the shore. Portage stood at the water’s edge, alternating bursts from an M-60 with tender words of encouragement to the shivering men.

‘You embryos aren’t getting outta that water until one of you quits!’ Portage shouted. ‘Who’s it gonna be? I only need one! There’s a hot shower and a dry bed just waiting for one of you.’

A young lieutenant, the sole officer among the sodden boat crew, tried to shout over Portage’s banter and encourage his teammates to hang together. A large wave crashed over the men, and one recruit broke away from the others. He struggled ashore and walked with leaden steps toward a brass ship’s bell mounted atop a wooden frame. He rang the bell three times to signal his surrender and was taken away.

‘That gets us down to forty-eight,’ Gates said, unsurprised.

The class was in its fourth week of BUD/S — Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training — and already two-thirds of those who started were gone. Only twenty-five percent of recruits in the initial muster of a typical BUD/S class completes the twenty-six-week course and earns the right to display the Special Warfare Badge — commonly known as the Budweiser — on their uniforms.

Despite appearances, the purpose of Hell Week is not to destroy a man but rather to prove to him that his body can do tenfold the work he ever thought possible. It also drives home the importance of teamwork, because men acting as individuals cannot overcome the challenges faced in BUD/S. The recruits that learn these two important lessons through the catharsis of blood and sweat have the best chance of becoming SEALs.

‘When do you leave?’ Hunley asked.

‘Later today,’ Gates replied, ‘just as soon as I get a few things squared away. I should be back by the end of the month. The guys know the drill.’

Hunley nodded. Earlier that morning, the captain had received an unusually cryptic order that temporarily removed Gates from the active-duty roster. Though curious about this sudden reassignment, Hunley knew not to pursue a matter when the order was authorized by the commander in chief.

‘Good luck, Chief.’

Gates saluted his CO, then climbed behind the wheel of a HumVee and drove back to his office on the main base. It was just past midnight, and the complex of buildings was dark except for those areas manned by the night watch. He parked in his designated spot, kicked the sand from his boots, and made his way through the instructors’ building to his office. Gates keyed his password into his computer and logged into the base network. He glanced at the new messages in his inbox and was pleased with the responses he found from fellow warriors in the U.S. Special Forces community. He tapped into a secure A/V communications program and keyed in the address for Kilkenny at the Vatican. The two computers shook hands through the Internet, and a window opened into the catacombs workroom.

‘Chief, right on time.’ Kilkenny smiled.

‘Early bird gets the worm, son. Though around these parts the early birds are trying to keep from getting their tail feathers shot off.’

‘Ah, Hell Week,’ Kilkenny sighed wistfully. ‘I still have vivid memories of dining in the demo pit, chowing on a box lunch, knee-deep in that cold putrid cesspool while the instructors lit off smoke grenades and tossed M-80s into the water. You going any easier on the new recruits?’

‘Hell no. If it was good enough for you ‘n me, it’s good enough for them.’

‘Glad to hear it. How are you coming with the team for my op?’

‘Every spec warrior I polled has signed on,’ Gates replied, referring to members of the elite special forces community, ‘so we should have a full roster by midday. Amazing how many guys will volunteer for something with so few details.’

‘Must be the thought of your charming company.’

‘Or the chance to see a crusty old SEAL strap on his fins one last time before he retires,’ Gates said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. ‘Remember our last op?’

‘Haiti? Like it was yesterday. Bet Admiral Hopwood was smiling down from heaven on us after that little foray into the bush.’

Anytime you can rescue a bunch of hostages and send a steamin ‘sack of shit to hell — well, my friend, that is a good day.’

‘This will be a good one to hang up your fins after, Max. Any thoughts on the plan?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘A few. About six or seven years back, you and I did a stint with the Night Stalkers. Remember those funky ultralights they were toying around with — the BATs?’

Kilkenny clearly recalled one night flight in which the pilot from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) did all he could to get his Navy passengers to lose their dinners. Gates repaid the pilot with a little unscheduled underwater cross training.

‘Bitchin’ Airborne Things?’ Kilkenny mused, recalling the unofficial acronym. ‘Think we can use ’em?’

‘They’ve come a long way since the Mark One Mod Zeros we played with. Take a look at the latest iteration.’

Gates uploaded an animation that quickly appeared in a window on Kilkenny’s screen. The new BAT sported an open, lozenge-shaped fuselage made with curved sections of piping and seated four occupants in a two-by-two configuration. Like a helicopter, the fuselage rested on a pair of skids, but any resemblance between the two types of aircraft ended there. Tubular tendrils sprouted organically from a slender, three-foot-long turbine engine mounted atop the spine of the fuselage above the rear seats. The tendrils flowed seamlessly like arteries that could draw energy from the power plant. The most distinctive feature of the craft was its wings — a pair of fabric-clad armatures with visible ribs and scalloped along the trailing edge like its nocturnal namesake.

‘Looks like something Tim Burton and H. R. Giger might have dreamed up,’ Kilkenny opined.

‘It ain’t a fighter jet, but it sure flies like a sono-fabitch. Can turn on a dime, hover, and do moves in the air that are almost unnatural. I figure with three of these, we can jump across the Mongolian border and reach the outskirts of Chifeng in just a few hours. That’ll save us a couple days of transit heading in and out — time that I’d rather use on the ground eyeballin’ that prison.’

‘As I recall, BATs were just for short-range hops.’

‘For the most part, they still are. This beast is totally electric now, powered by a fuel cell. Given the juice it takes to put one of ’em into the air, round-trip range is a couple hundred miles.’

‘We’re going a lot farther than that.’

‘I know, but some of the prototypes they’re testing are for long-range insertion.’

‘How long?’

‘Don’t know yet. On these new BATs, they replaced the fuel cell with a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator,’ Gates pronounced each syllable carefully as he read the words off a specification sheet. ‘A RITEG for short. I understand they use ’em to power satellites.’

‘Max, it’s a nuke.’

‘No shit. I guess that’s why they say that with a RITEG, this thing will keep going like the Energizer Bunny. Anyhow, I figure three BATs will do the job quite nicely, and I got a trio of pilots chomping at the bit to try ’em out for real. Best of all, they’re not in Uncle Sam’s inventory yet — strictly off-the-books hardware.’

Kilkenny reran the animation on his computer. ‘Flying in and out would solve a number of logistical problems. Off the books or not, we better make damn sure we don’t leave one of these behind.’

‘Yeah, the folks at Boeing who pimped this ride would be most put out.’

‘Did you just use the phrase pimped this ride in a sentence?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Yeah. Pimp My Ride is one of my favorite shows. I TiVo it along with Monster Garage and Myth Busters. Best TV programming since This Old House.’

Kilkenny laughed. ‘Just send me a full set of specs on the BATs. If we’re going to use them, we have to figure out how to smuggle them in and out of Mongolia.’