Virginia Class

20

Muhammad Jabarrah had been in the yacht's large and luxuriously appointed lounge when Al Qahir had jolted hard, scraped noisily along something just beneath the water, then floated free, her engines dead. Several of the fighters relaxing with him in the common room leaped to their feet, looking alarmed. "That idiot pilot!" Jabarrah snapped. "We've hit a reef!"

"Are we sinking?" one of the fighters asked. He was a teen-aged Pashtun tribesman from Afghanistan, wearing a bulky orange life jacket over his combat fatigues. The kid looked shaken. Small wonder. People from his tribe had little experience with boats and rarely found themselves venturing onto the open ocean. He was probably terrified of drowning.

"I doubt it. But it sounds like one of the propellers was damaged." He could feel the shudder as the helmsman tried to restart the engines. Before becoming one of Zaki's strong men, Jabarrah had had a fair amount of experience piloting pleasure boats in the Arabian Gulf, and knew the feel of a badly bent propeller blade. Judging by the shock, he was willing to bet that Al Qahir's right propeller and rudder were either badly bent, or had even been knocked off. If the former, the yacht would need to be rigged to travel on one engine. If the latter, there would almost certainly be leaking around the damaged shaft. They would need to sound the well and determine how bad the flooding was, then take steps to seal it off.

A moment later, Zaki's voice came over the intercom. "Attention! All hands! Go to combat stations!"

The men scrambled to grab their weapons, and started bounding up the three short steps out of the common room and onto Al Qahir's aft well deck. Jabarrah followed, stopping when he was outside to take a long, calculating look at the ocean.

The night was overcast, dark, and calm, with a low and oily swell to the sea. He looked over the side and saw only black water. Looking astern, he saw that the ocean was empty for as far as he could see. Nothing, no waves breaking, to mark the submerged reef they'd just kissed.

Yes, but he knew how easy it was to ground on a reef, and these waters were notoriously treacherous in that regard. The pilot should have been more circumspect in his choice of course, and should have been traveling more slowly.

No matter. The accident made possible a course of action he'd been considering for some hours, now, ever since they'd left Small Dragon Island.

Turning, he retraced his steps back down into Al Qahir's lounge, then made his way forward along the main central passageway to a portside stateroom guarded by two fighters. "I'll watch the prisoners," he told them. "You are needed on the aft deck."

"Yes, sir!" one of the guards said. He was another young Pashtun, and he looked scared.

"Be careful," the other guard, a Pakistani, an older man, said with a wink as he slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and handed Jabarrah the stateroom key. "They are wildcats. They might bite!"

"I think I know how to handle a couple of women." He sneered the word.

The Pakistani grinned, nodded, and walked away up the corridor, leaving Jabarrah alone outside the door.

Excellent. Zaki would be occupied on the bridge for quite a while. It would take time to assess the damage to the propeller and keel, and to repair any leakage around the shaft. Al Qahir would have no trouble reaching Jakarta with one engine, propeller, and rudder out of commission, but it would take a while— possibly several hours — to make certain the yacht was still seaworthy. That gave Jabarrah plenty of time.

He reached under his shirt and pulled his pistol out of his belt, an old but serviceable 9mm Makarov. It was quite possible that the two prisoners would have to be shot while they were trying to escape. But not just yet….

With the pistol in one hand, he unlocked the door with the other and stepped swiftly inside.

Halstead rose silently through blackness, one hand extended until he felt the smooth, solid bulk of the hull above him. Carefully, he felt his way off the keel and up the rounded slope of the yacht's hull until he reached the waterline just beneath the port bow.

Like the rest of the assault squad, he was garbed for what the Teams referred to as a VBSS subsurface assault — the initials stood for "Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure." He wore a Nomex flight suit and hood, mask and fins, both a Secumar UBA jacket connected to his Draeger oxygen rebreather and a standard inflatable UDT life jacket, and an assault vest with web gear. The assault gear and clothing made him massively bulky, and in the water it felt as if it was dragging him down, but he adjusted the pace of his kicks to hover motionless in the water.

He had to work entirely by touch in the ink-black darkness, but he could feel the tug at his combat harness as he moved that told him DiMercurio was a few feet away, attached to him by a short safety tether. With his free hand, he raised the leech and pressed it home.

"The leech" was a temporary mooring ring, an attachment point for the cable DiMercurio was trailing behind him. Halstead sealed it to the hull by pushing down two levers, one to either side of the ring, creating a powerful suction that anchored the device to the hull. As soon as it was set, Halstead tugged at the safety tether three times. DiMercurio moved closer, then, snapping a hasp over the mooring ring. The

ASDS was now secured to the yacht; the suction device wouldn't be up to towing a fifty-five-ton SEAL minisub very far, but if the yacht suddenly hared off toward the far horizon, the drag on the mooring line would certainly slow the Al Qahir before it gave way. The line also provided a path, by following it down hand-over-hand, back to the relative safety of the sub, should the assault squad need to make a hasty exit.

"Trident Three, in position" sounded over the headset imbedded in his Nomex hood, the voice somewhat garbled, but intelligible. The SEALs wore seaproof Motorolas, tiny radios with microphones imbedded in their flight suits at their throats. Range was sharply limited underwater, since radio waves didn't penetrate that medium well, but was good enough for the squad to maintain contact in the area immediately around the target.

"Trident Seven, ready."

"Trident Four, ready to roll!"

One by one, the other SEALs checked in, each reaching a pre-assigned position and sounding off.

"Trident One ready," Halstead said when the other seven all had spoken. "Trident Two, give us a sneak-and-peek."

"Roger that," EM1 Nemecek's voice responded. "I see four… five… make it six tangos on the aft deck. AK-47s. Looks like they have an attitude."

Meaning Nemecek thought they looked like they were on the alert. Well, they couldn't have everything.

"Assault team, stand ready. Trident Two, give 'em a show!"

Nemecek had come to the surface some fifteen to twenty yards off the Al Qahir's starboard side, surfacing just enough that he could get his face above water and eyeball the target. At Halstead's order, he yanked the lanyard on a small flare attached to its own flotation collar and hurled it into the darkness; the flare burst into intense white light, bobbing on the surface of the ocean only a few yards off the Al Qahir's starboard side.

"They see it," Nemecek announced. "Port side clear!"

"Trident, go!" Halstead snapped, and the SEAL squad surged upward.

There were nine SEALs in the water including Hal-stead. One — Nemecek — was providing the starboard-side diversion. The rest worked in four buddy teams of two. In each pair, one man carried as a part of his gear an extensible painter's pole with a hook on the business end attached to a rolled-up caving ladder. On Halstead's command, the four men with the painters' poles surfaced, extended the poles, and snagged Al Qahir's gunwale at four different spots along the port side. The other four SEALs, weapons strapped at the ready to their sides, grabbed hold of the caving ladders and scrambled up out of the water.

The brightly burning flare had grabbed the attention of every man on Al Qahir's deck, dragging them over to the starboard side. Four SEALs came up the port side as one, opening fire as soon as their heads and shoulders cleared the yacht's gunwale.

Most of the tangos — milspeak for terrorists — had their backs to the SEALs as they leaned over the side, staring at the flare. One tango was just turning to face the port side as Halstead surged up the railing. Hal-stead grabbed the grip of his H&K, flicking on the laser sight. When the dancing red dot jittered across the tango's center of mass, he triggered the weapon one-handed, putting the man down with a sound-suppressed three-round burst.

CQB — Close Quarters Battle — is not the arena for fair play or chivalry. The man Halstead gunned down probably hadn't even seen the SEALs, not if he'd stared into the flare's light and wrecked his night vision. The other terrorists started twisting and collapsing as silenced rounds slammed into their backs close behind the dancing red dots of the laser sights, cutting them down before they even had a chance to realize they were in danger. Within three seconds, the first four SEALs were on the deck, each down on one knee, their weapons covering all directions as the next four men climbed aboard.

A tango standing on the weather bridge walked over to the ladder leading down to the superstructure; Diller hit him with a three-round burst and he tumbled down the ladder, hitting the deck with a heavy thud.

Slipping off his fins in favor of the gripping soles of his wetsuit booties, Halstead rose and jogged for the door leading down into the yacht's interior. DiMercurio took the ladder next to the door, heading up topside for the superstructure and bridge.

They'd studied the blueprints for yachts identical in design to Al Qahir, and had a good idea of what was where and how to get from one place to another. The assault now had three goals. First and foremost, they needed to find out if there were hostages on board and secure them. Halstead's group had that responsibility. At the same time, DiMercurio's fireteam would secure the yacht's bridge and communications center. Only after those goals were accomplished would they take down the rest of the terrorists on board.

Halstead kicked in the flimsy door to the yacht's lounge and rolled back as Forrester tossed a crash-bang through. The lounge lit up with a firecracker string of piercingly loud detonations, and then Diller and Pulaski stormed through the door and down the steps.

One tango, a scrawny, terrified-looking kid wearing a bright orange life jacket, was on his knees, hands over ears streaming blood. Diller shot the kid through the head and the SEALs kept moving. Ahead, a passageway led forward, with four closed stateroom doors.

Each SEAL took a different door, moving up beside it, slapping a breaching charge next to the lock, and yanking the fuse igniter. Almost as one, the four charges went off in a stuttering barrage of four ringing blasts that splintered wood and filled the passageway with roiling clouds of smoke.

Halstead leaped through the wreckage of the door, his H&K held shoulder high, the red beam from its laser startlingly crisp in the smoke-filled air. There was only an instant to determine that he'd hit pay dirt — a blond woman in a bikini handcuffed to a chair to the left, a red-headed woman on the bed to the right, naked, pinned down on her side by a wild-eyed, half-naked man.

The man was already dragging the woman in front of him as a shield with one arm, while his other hand brandished an automatic pistol. "Tawaqaf!" Halstead yelled as the laser dot jittered back and forth between the bulkhead and the woman's body. "Halt!"

"She dies!" the man shouted back in English, the muzzle of the pistol pressed hard against the woman's head. "You move, she dies!"

The woman doubled forward against the guy's arm, slamming her right elbow against the man's ribs. She probably didn't hurt him much, but the blow startled him enough to break his focus. Halstead triggered a three-round burst as the laser dot danced between the terrorist's eyes, exploding the man's head in a gory spray across the bulkhead over the bed. The pistol fell from nerveless fingers as the terrorist crumpled backward; the woman spilled onto the deck, shrieking.

"Lieutenant Halstead, U.S. Navy!" he shouted. "Stay down! Stay down!"

He checked the stateroom for other threats, then turned to cover the shattered doorway. "This is Trident One!" he called. "Room Three! One tango down! Two hostages secure! Clear!"

"Room One, all clear!" came back.

"Room Four, one tango down. Clear!"

"Room Two! Clear!"

Diller came through a moment later. "Looks like you won the prize, Skipper."

"Cut them, loose," he snapped, keeping his aim on the door. "We're not out of this yet!"

Zaki had just been discussing Al Qahir's condition with the yacht's captain when they'd heard the consternation coming from the aft deck. Leaning out of the starboard door and looking aft, he could see something burning on the water.

"What is that?" the captain asked. "A flare?"

"The men may be playing games," Zaki said, his voice dangerous. "I will have words with them!"

For Zaki, it was one more irritation in a very irritating night. According to the captain, water was coming in around the damaged propeller shaft at an alarming rate. It could be patched, and would not immediately threaten the boat, but it meant a further delay of some hours before they could get under way once more, and that news had not improved Zaki's temper.

"I don't think so," the captain said, scowling. "My crew knows better!"

"It might be my people, however. I'll go check…."

But he stopped himself an instant before stepping outside, something nagging at his awareness.

That was it. During one of his rounds of training at a camp in Afghanistan, years ago, he'd studied some of the great hostage and terrorist actions of the past forty years. If one knew how the opposition had launched assaults and hostage rescues in the past, it was possible to better prepare for the future.

In particular he'd read about a classic action in Somalia in 1977. The then-West German GSG-9 antiterrorist unit had stormed an airliner hijacked by Palestinian commandos at Mogadishu, killing the terrorists and liberating the passengers and crew.

What Zaki was remembering was the diversion — a bonfire built in the night some distance in front of the aircraft's nose, a fire that drew all of the terrorists forward to the cockpit moments before the GSG-9 troops stormed aboard.

"We are under attack!" he shouted, whirling away from the door. "Arm yourselves!" He reached for an AK-47 on the chart table. A loud thump sounded from overhead.

"What was that?" the sonar man said, rising from his console.

"Probably Abdul," the captain replied. "Stay at your post!"

Something bounced onto the bridge from the open doorway leading aft, past the radio room. Zaki spun, following the object with his eyes… and then the object detonated with a string of blinding flashes and ear-wracking blasts.

He dropped to the deck, the AK falling from his grasp. He couldn't see! His ears were ringing, he couldn't hear…

And then something unseen and unheard slammed against the side of his skull, punching Zaki into unconsciousness.

"Now hear this, now hear this" rang over Virginia's 1MC, as Jorgensen passed the word. "Rig ship for female visitors. That is, rig ship for female visitors."

Garrett looked up from his console, met Jorgensen's eyes. The XO shrugged. Women and submarines do not go together, he seemed to be saying.

Women rarely came on board submarines, in fact. When a sub was in port, there were the occasional dependents' cruises, where mothers, wives, and girlfriends were taken out on a quick sortie. The boat would dive— no deeper than 400 feet — and go through some angles and dangles to impress them, and then return straight to the dock.

With "ship rigged for female visitors," nudity was secured, cursing and loud shouting were secured, and all hands wore full uniform instead of skivvies or towels. It was, in fact, the same routine as for when a visiting admiral or other dignitary came on board.

The real problem was where to put the two women just rescued from the Al Qahir. They would be headed for sick bay first to be fully checked out, but after that… where did you put two women on a sewer pipe already crowded with 150-some men?

The gallant choice — Garrett surrendering his own cabin — was not an option. The bunk in there would only sleep one, hot-bunking was not a good idea when both women needed to catch up on a lot of sleep, and the adjoining office was a high-traffic area with lots of noise and lots of coming and going. In the end, he'd talked to the denizens of the goat's locker—Virginia's chief petty officers — and asked them to volunteer their quarters for the duration. The women would have their own shower, head, and some privacy. The chiefs would bunk with the enlisted men in the already crowded torpedo room and enlisted quarters.

Fortunately, Jorgensen had remembered in time to send Chief Kurzweil forward to the goat's locker with instructions to secure all salacious material — pin-ups, copies of Playboy and assorted skin books, posters, and Internet printouts of naked women and sex acts, and the like. Such materials were officially prohibited and vanished magically just before each shipboard inspection, but Garrett and Jorgensen both knew that those materials always reappeared magically within moments of the inspecting officer's departure.

On the control room screen forward, the monitor showed the view aft, where the Al Qahir had been tied up alongside the Virginia. Several sailors rigged with safety lines secured to the deck were helping to bring the two rescued women across to the submarine. Both wore life jackets and ill-fitting dungarees. Lieutenant

Kendall had broken the dungarees out of stores to replace the swimsuits and tattered shirts that were all they'd had with them on board the yacht. That nudity-secured rule went both ways in the cramped world of a submarine.

The women were safely on board. Good. Lieutenant Falk was leading them forward to the main hatch.

He was standing a moment later when Falk led them into the control room. Both had dark blue blankets draped over their shoulders and around their bodies; there was no way to transfer from a small boat to a submarine without getting at least a little bit wet.

"Welcome aboard, ladies," he said. "I'm Captain Garrett, commanding officer of the USS Virginia."

"Captain Garrett!" the redhead exclaimed. "I'm Katie Milford. Thank you, thank you for the rescue!"

He grinned. "All I did was provide the bus service, ma'am. It was the SEALs who did the actual rescuing." He glanced at the blonde, who had a dazed expression on her face. Katie was supporting her with an arm around her shoulders. "Is your friend all right?"

"Ginger's been through a rough time, Captain. She'll be fine."

"You've both been through the wringer. Lieutenant Falk will take you down to sick bay, where Dr. Colbert can have a look at you. I'll have them send down more dry clothes."

"Thank you, Captain."

She looked as though she wanted to say something more. "Yes?"

"I told this officer already. There are seven more of us being held back at that island."

"The island. Small Dragon?"

"I think that's what they called it, yes. There's a huge base there, covers the entire island. It has a dock inside a huge room, like a garage a couple of stories tall with sliding doors."

"You were there on the yacht, the Sea Breeze?"

"Yes, sir. A submarine surfaced and hijacked us first. That was… God. I don't know how long ago. Days, though."

"A submarine." He studied her face. "Was it Chinese?"

"I think there was at least one Chinese officer on board, but he wasn't in command. No, the crew was

Arab."

"Arab." That could mean almost anything.

"They kept us locked in a tiny room. They shot poor Mr. Kingsfield when he tried to stop them from taking me and Ginger away. Then they met up with the Al Qahir at sea and we were sent over to the yacht. A day later, we reached that island base. They took the men off the yacht and led them into the complex, somewhere. They kept Ginger and me on the yacht. I didn't know why at the time." She made a bitter face. "I guess I do now."

"I'll want to have a talk with you later. We'll need to know everything you can tell us, everything you remember, about that base, and about your friends. But later. Have the doc check you out, and get some dry clothes, some food, and some rest first. Okay?"

She smiled. "Okay. Thank you, Captain. Again. Come on, Ginger…. "

Garrett watched as Falk led them out of the control room. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sailor at the dive plane station nudging the helmsman with a lascivious grin.

"Belay that shit, Simmons," he growled. "Eyes on your station or you're on report!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Simmons yelped, his eyes snapping back to his console so sharply Garrett could almost swear he'd heard them click.

"Our two passengers have been to hell and back. They will be treated with kindness, gentlemanly conduct, and respect, or I'll have the hide of the sorry son of a bitch in question nailed to the Photonics mast as a flag! Am I clear?"

"Clear, sir!"

The word, Garrett thought, would spread… and be more effective than a 1MC announcement.

He returned his attention to the control room monitor. The deck party was casting off Al Qahir, so that the yacht and the submarine didn't risk damage to each other in the heavy seas. The SEALs, all but their CO, would remain on the terrorist yacht for the time being — along with five prisoners taken out of the eighteen men on board, and with Chief Vance and a working party of the Virginia. Al Qahir was taking on water, and the idea was to plug the leak around her starboard shaft and keep her from going to the bottom. As soon as a Navy Sea Stallion could reach them from the Roosevelt, terrorist experts and computer technicians would begin sorting through the small mountain of data stored in the computers on board. At that time, a special boarding party would try to take Al Qahir to port — probably to Manila, which was closest — and begin disassembling her, looking for any useful scrap of data.

Virginia would have to remain in the area until then. The evaluation team would relieve the SEAL VBSS party, which would then return to the Virginia. At the same time, the two rescued women would be transferred to the helicopter and flown back to the Roosevelt. Current ETA for the Sea Stallion was no sooner than 1030 hours — about eight hours from now — and the met boys already were making doubtful noises about that estimate. For this kind of at-sea transfer, the helicopter pilot needed daylight, low winds, and a calm sea. According to the most recent satellite weather report for the region, they would be looking at more rain by dawn, and that might mean Katie and Ginger would be guests on board the Virginia longer than expected.

Garrett decided he would worry about that when the time came. In the meantime, Virginia could submerge in order to take the ASDS back on board. The minisub had limited battery life, and needed to be docked in order to recharge. That maneuver was next on the list, just as soon as Al Qahir was clear, and the last of the deck party on her afterdeck had come below.

Lieutenant Falk returned to the control room. "The ladies have been escorted to sick bay, Captain. Request permission to return to my station."

"Granted, Mr. Falk." Falk was currently standing as JOOD — the junior officer of the deck — which meant partly that he was learning the duties of the OOD, or officer of the deck, and partly that he was on hand to run errands like escorting visitors below to sick bay.

Lieutenant Lanesky was the diving officer of the watch. "Mr. Lanesky. Make all preparations to submerge."

"Make all preparations to submerge, aye aye, sir!"

As the control room crew went back to work, Garrett took another look at the Al Qahir, wallowing uncomfortably in the seas off the Virginia's port stern quarter. The report he'd heard from Halstead mentioned that one of the captured men was Zaki — the al

Qaeda kingpin who might well be in charge of the terrorist operation in the Spratlys. Garrett was going to be very interested in hearing what that debrief had to say.

Garrett needed that last bit of information — plus an interview with the women, if it could be managed— and then he could begin planning the final leg of this op: taking down the Chinese base supporting terror activities in the region, and hunting down and killing a terrorist submarine.

"Skipper?" Jorgensen said, approaching the command chair. "Eng and Weps say the firing system is good to go. All circuits tested out okay."

"It'd better be," Garrett said. "We're going to need it."

It wouldn't be long now.