Blue Forever (Men in Uniform) (20 page)

31

They knew they were walking into a trap.

So they’d come prepared.

Kip and the others had decided on a plan, and after grabbing a couple hours sleep they’d risen, made a few calls, hired more than a few players, and put it into motion.

They’d just parked Julie’s rental car in a grungy alley off the main road in Tiandu village, half a klick from the prison entrance. They were all wearing peasant jackets and black wigs. Not that they’d fool anyone in those disguises for more than a few seconds. But a few seconds were all they needed.

What they hadn’t counted on was Jaeger calling to tell them he couldn’t get hold of Darcy.

The submarine had gone dark.

Which meant something unforeseen had happened out there in the South China Sea.

Possibly something bad.

“Sonofabitch.” Quinn cursed as he hung up the throwaway cell phone Julie had given them along with a car boot full of other equipment that Bridger had somehow scrounged through his mysterious channels. The man was seriously connected.

Alarm clawed through Kip at the idea that the submarine had suddenly disappeared.
DeAnne was on that sub
.

“What the hell? They were supposed to wait for our okay to submerge,” Kip said unnecessarily. They all knew the plan. The sub was to do its thing
after
everything was in place here.

Quinn cursed again. “Think I don’t know that?” he snapped.

Okay. His fiancée, Darcy, was also onboard, Kip reminded himself. But still.

Before this, nothing else had remotely rattled the commander. Not even when Julie Severin’s astute analysis had convinced them all they were about to embark on a suicide mission.

“Don’t worry,” Alex assured him. “Nothing’s happened to the sub or the team. They’re fine.”

“That your Spidey sense talking?” Quinn muttered.

Alex didn’t seem to take offense. “Bridger would have called us.” He pointed to the cell phone. “He knows our number.”

At that astute observation, Quinn’s worried expression became a grimace of chagrin. “Hell. You’re right.” His shoulders notched down visibly. “Jesus on a goddamn stick. That woman has me tied in fucking knots.”

Alex’s lip curled. “Welcome to my world, buddy.”

Kip wasn’t about to say it out loud, but he could definitely relate. He had to take a breath and count to ten, forcing his heartbeat back to normal. The kid
was
right. There would be a perfectly good explanation for the sub submerging. It’s what submarines did. No need for concern. DeAnne was fine. Darcy, too.

God almighty. What a sorry bunch of tough guys.

He eased out a breath.

“Shit,” Quinn ground out. “I just wish she’d pick a goddamn wedding date. It’s bugging me that she won’t, and I don’t need that kind of distraction.”

Kip’s jaw nearly dropped.
Can you say displacement?

“Don’t even try to figure it out,” Alex returned. “Women are a mystery we’ll never understand. Get used to it.”

Quinn slashed out a hand in disgust. “What’s the goddamn problem, anyway? Women are supposed to
want
to get married.
I’m
the one who should be stalling.”

Kip blinked. He was ass-deep in a category-five op, and they were bitching about women and
wedding dates
? He was pretty sure he’d been transported to an alternate universe.

His new watch vibrated against his wrist.

He cleared his throat and looked down at the gadget he’d been given from Bridger’s bag of tricks: a watch that could send and receive texts. The screen was tiny, but enough for a word or two. Amazing the difference in sophistication between the equipment STORM supplied and what he had access to in the Marines. Light years. He could get used to this stuff.

But this vibration was just the alarm going off.

“We should get in position,” Alex informed them. His had gone off, too.

They still had an hour, but they didn’t want to take a chance on missing Romanov’s transport, should his transfer happen early despite predictions to the contrary.

The good news was that during the night, Jaeger had somehow managed to get eyes in the sky. He was now watching the vehicles and exits at Yulin for any sign of Nikolai Romanov being escorted out of the brig.

“All right,” said Quinn, putting his com earpiece back on. “Let’s do it.”

Kip and Alex followed suit and they went through a quick sound check, then Quinn dialed in Jaeger and Julie Severin. “STORM alpha six to romeo and juliet. Y’all set, over?”

Julie answered immediately. “Looking forward to a stormy breakfast.”

“I hear ya. Romeo? Howzit with the rich and famous?” Their prearranged code for his setup on the yacht.

“Hundreds, six,” Jaeger came back. “Chow’s
lekker
.”

At Kip’s baffled expression, Quinn rolled his eyes, tapped his earpiece, and said, “Afrikaans slang. In three words he managed to convey everything’s fine, the food is great, and he probably got laid last night.”

“
Befok
you, romeo, over,” Alex retorted, and Jaeger snickered.

Kip didn’t really need a translation.

Alrighty, then.

Kip liked how easy they were with each other. He and the men of his MOC unit were a solid, tight-knit group, and had the utmost respect for each other, but his rank was ever-present, coloring all their personal interactions. He would trust his life to each and every one of his men without hesitation, and vice versa. But would they invite him over for a backyard barbecue? He honestly didn’t know.

But these guys would, he had no doubt.

Quinn tapped his earpiece again. “Anything on our lost dog?” he asked Jaeger, clearly still worried about the status of the submarine.

“Unexpected company, I hear.”

Quinn frowned. “Who?”

“Unknown.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Keep me in the loop, over.”

“Yep. Out.”

Quinn hit his com with a curse. “I do not fucking need this right now,” he muttered, scooping up an MP7 from the car boot along with several ammo magazines.

“Bobby Lee,” Alex began, but Quinn held up a hand.

“I’m good.”

Kip hoped so. This was no time to go off the rails. He was concerned about DeAnne, too. But not about the submarine. He’d met the crew, and they were top notch. She was in a lot less danger with them than she’d been on the run with him . . .

“Any word on the bus?” he asked, steering the conversation back on point as he slid his rucksack over the Chinese peasant jacket he was wearing, and checked his Beretta. They’d met the tourist bus driver in front of the roach motel chatting up the hookers, and had instantly recruited the cheerful but wily man with a pile of cash, altering their plan slightly. A bus was even better than a truck.

“Standing by for our signal,” Quinn confirmed, stuck the ammo in his peasant jacket pocket, and tucked the machine gun under the front flap. He grabbed three stun guns from the trunk and passed them around.

“I hope to God this works,” Kip murmured, sliding his into the back of his waistband.

“Amen, brother,” Alex agreed.

They all bumped fists, grunted, “Oo-ra,” and turned to head for their assigned positions. But before Kip could take two steps, Quinn touched his shoulder and shook his head. Curious, Kip held back while Alex trotted away and around a corner.

“Problem?” he asked.

“No. It’s just—” Quinn slashed a hand through his hair. He was a study in contrasts, this tall, blond Viking in Chinese peasant garb and combat boots. He glanced after Alex, looking torn.

Kip figured it was something to do with his hesitation to bring the younger man in the first place. “Worried about him?”

“Yeah. No.” Quinn jetted out a breath. “He seems fine. But if something goes wrong, or if he has one of his—” He gave his head a quick shake. “If anything happens, anything at all, grab Romanov and get him the hell off the island. Find Julie. Call your men. Steal a boat. Do whatever you have to do.”

Kip studied him. “What about you and Alex?”

Quinn met his gaze soberly. “I won’t leave him.”

Seeing the unshakable resolve in the commander’s expression, Kip’s respect for the man went way up. “Understood,” he said.

With that, Quinn nodded, turned, and loped off.

Kip headed in the opposite direction.

Not good
, he thought. The leader of this little sortie had too many things on his mind other than the mission. That was a recipe for disaster.

Which meant Kip must stay extra vigilant.

He arrived at his position at a crumbling stone wall that overlooked the road that the PLA transport had to take to reach the prison, and looked around for a good place to hide.

In choosing this spot, they’d taken a page from Sun Tsu and avoided the expected. The transport’s route went through several miles of dense jungle, past wide tracts of fields, as well as skirting the shore of a large reservoir. All prime places to stage an ambush. Which was why they’d avoided picking any of them. Another possible route would have taken Romanov’s transport smack through the middle of the National Tourism Area, which was a real temptation, but it was unlikely the PLA would choose that way.

In the end, the team had decided to go with a far more exposed place, and a riskier plan that they hoped would truly take Romanov’s guards by surprise. They were making their move just blocks from the entrance to the prison, at a main highway interchange on the outskirts of the village.

With any luck, there wouldn’t be a single shot fired. That was the idea, anyway.

Supreme excellence in battle consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting
.

The plan was dicey, but doable. Definitely old-school.

Very
old-school.

The big question was, would Romanov’s military guards be young enough to fall for their little surprise?

If not, Kip, Quinn, and Alex would be stepping into a goddamn shit storm, and landing in a world of hurt.

32

They didn’t call the Kilo class 636 “the black hole” for nothing.

That’s what DeAnne was learning as the crew took the submarine through a set of maneuvers that would rival a chase scene in a Tom Clancy novel.

The submariners were bent with laser-like concentration to their individual tasks. The atmosphere was tense and on edge, but rife with quiet excitement. This was what these men lived for.

More adrenaline junkies
.

Oddly, that no longer bothered DeAnne.

There wasn’t an inch to spare anywhere on the vessel, every space was packed to the gills with instruments and crew—and nowhere she could easily tuck herself. No way was she hiding in her stateroom, not knowing what was going on. But every other square inch seemed to be occupied.

The control room was off limits, the radio room too crowded, and the engineering space too hot, dangerous, and chaotic.

She’d finally found an empty swivel chair in the forward torpedo room next to Walker. She was steadily quizzing him as to what the sub was doing, why, and what she was watching on the indecipherable console monitors. It all looked like static to her. And the ride still felt like Space Mountain.

But she was getting used to it. And the crew’s excitement was catching.

“I still don’t understand why a submarine with a clunky diesel engine could possibly be quieter than a nuclear-powered sub,” she said.

“Because you can shut the engines off,” he explained as he typed on three different keyboards and watched the monitors like a bird of prey. “You can’t shut down a nuke. It’s the engine noise that gives you away. Ever driven in a Prius?”

She had. She owned one, in fact. The hybrid was completely silent when it switched over to electric power.

“Ah.” Sometimes the simplest explanation was the least obvious. “I get it.”

“There’s a bit more to it than that—the way things are built and put together—but basically that’s the reason.”

“That makes sense. So why doesn’t our navy have diesel-electrics anymore?” She knew that officially, the U.S. Navy had been using nuclear subs exclusively for a couple of decades now.

“Yeah.” Walker shot her a sardonic look. “Don’t get me started.”

She swiveled toward him in her chair. “Not a fan of nukes?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. Gotta have our boomers. But in my opinion we need both types. They’ve got much different strengths.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I’m not in charge.”

She looked around at the space. “Well, maybe this super-secret navy Kilo is a sign they’re changing their minds.”

“I’m not holding my breath.” He peered closer at a screen. “Hello. What have we here?”

A second later, the overhead speaker blared, “Tube door opening on tango three! Stand by!”

DeAnne straightened instantly. “Tube doors?” Her voice went an octave higher all by itself. “As in
torpedo
tube?”

Walker reached over and put a hand on her arm, though his eyes stayed on the monitor. “Don’t panic yet. I doubt they’re launching a torpedo.”

“Tube flooding!” the speaker boomed, followed by a flurry of orders.

Panic filled her veins despite his assurance. “What else are torpedo tubes used for, other than launching torpedoes?”

“Oh. Getting rid of garbage. Burial at sea. Scientific instruments.” He winked. “Launching UUVs.”

She cut her gaze back to the monitor. “You think that’s what they’re doing?”

“A torpedo attack would be a political nightmare for their government. And we haven’t killed anyone. Yet.”

Her eyes widened.

“Kidding.”

She punched his arm.

She doubted the other submarine was expelling galley scraps—or scientific instruments—in the middle of a high-speed chase, either, so it must be either a UUV or a torpedo. She prayed Walker was right.

He pursed his lips. “Hmm.” He suddenly jumped to his feet, said, “Wait here,” and ducked through the watertight door to the control room.

She snapped her mouth closed, and listened intently to the overhead speaker for any hint of an impending torpedo attack from the harassing submarines. Thankfully none came.

Instead, she heard the captain order their own tube doors to be opened in succession, and then flooded. Her jaw dropped again. What the heck was going on?

Meanwhile, Walker had sprinted back to his chair and was now typing furiously on the keyboards.

“What’s happening?” she asked, her pulse speeding.

“We’re creating a diversion. So I can launch our UUVs.”

She listened as the captain ordered the tubes to be randomly blown and the doors closed. Then he started the sequence all over again. In the middle of it all, Walker sent the UUVs out and dropped them to the seabed, putting them into sleep mode.

“Wow,” she said, realizing what he’d done. “That was pretty smart.”

He grinned over at her. “It was getting down to the wire and I didn’t want to lose our window on the Chinese AUV. Our fish will wake up after we’re all out of range, then proceed with the mission sequence.”

She checked the time on the computer screen. The Yulin test would begin in just over an hour. “How long will it take our UUVs to intercept it?”

“Hard to say. Depends on what the Chinese are having it do.” He frowned. “We’d planned to steam around making a handy target for it to latch onto. But with all this hullabaloo going on with the Vietnamese subs, I’m not sure what’ll happen. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“You mean this could fail?”

“Always a possibility. But don’t give up so easily. We’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeves.”

God, she hoped so. She’d hate for all this to have been for nothing.

Speaking of sleeves and tricks . . .

She thought about Kip and the away team, and wondered how they were faring. She really hoped they’d been able to figure out a way to rescue Nikolai Romanov without getting themselves killed in the process.

She hated that Darcy hadn’t been able to communicate with the guys since the sub was forced to crash dive. She had no idea how they were doing. Or if their mission was going well. Or even if they were still alive.

Darcy didn’t seem too worried. She said Bobby Lee always scraped through, no matter what was thrown at him. He was a genius at strategy and getting out of tight places.

“I do wish I was there, though,” Darcy had admitted. “I feel better when I’m there to watch his back. And then there’s Alex . . .” She let the thought trail off. “Hell, they’ll be fine. No worries.”

Unfortunately, DeAnne had gotten the distinct impression she’d been about to say something like, “And then there’s Alex, who may go off the deep end into crazyville at any moment,” rather than, “And then there’s Alex, who’s a crack sharpshooter and a black belt in six karate styles.”

Ho boy.

Darcy may not be worried, but DeAnne certainly was.

She sent up a little prayer for them.

Suddenly, the torpedo room tilted precariously, yanking her back to the present. She grabbed onto her seat. Around them, the hull shuddered, and she felt the sub slow down dramatically.

“What the—”

Walker lifted a hand. “Wait. Listen.” The shudder melted away into a smooth glide.

The chatter from the overhead speakers cut off abruptly, as though a switch had been flipped. The entire sub went quiet as a tomb.

After two days of listening to the hot, noisy diesel engines, the utter silence was unnerving. It was like going from the streets of New Delhi to the absolute stillness of the Antarctic.

She looked at Walker questioningly, and he mouthed, “Electric power. We’re hiding,” putting a finger to his lips.

She’d seen submarines do this same thing in World War Two movies.
Silent running
. Good grief. Talk about old tricks . . .

Turning back to the monitors, Walker studied the solid blips suspended in snow, then another screen undulating with mysterious squiggles and lines. After a minute, he indicated the first one to her, and she realized the blips for the three other submarines were slowly moving off the screen.

Walker smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

Apparently the ruse was working.

Her blood pressure slowly eased back to normal.

Right up until a ridiculously loud
ping
blasted through the submarine, exploding the silence and reverberating against every metal surface around them.

Walker swore, his voice joining a collective curse that rose from the entire crew.

“Active sonar,” he said disgustedly. “They’ve found us.”

Instantly, the mechanical noise and human chatter was back. The engines rumbled, and DeAnne gripped the console as the propellers bit into the water, sending the vessel forward with a groaning lurch.

“Hang on to your hat,” Walker said, listening intently to the overhead commands. “This could get hairy.”