Light Up the Night (20 page)

The room gave a collective gasp at the suddenness and power of the moves.

Again the interminable stand and stare. An epic battle by two men who knew the true battle was mental and who could anticipate each move, the countermove, and the strike after that, and… And not find an opening that either felt would provide an advantage worth exploiting. It was much more a chess match played a dozen moves ahead in the mind than a wrestling match.

Ignoring the slow buildup of the hecklers who didn't see what was going on, the two of them did their shift-and-flex dance for almost five minutes. The crowd began stamping feet and clapping hands, at first sporadically, but rapidly coordinating its efforts into a common rhythm. All of it built until it was a solid wave of sound that shook the room.

Again, without any warning that she could spot, Michael exploded into a whirlwind of moves, stunning the room into sudden silence. He moved so fast that Trisha couldn't even see it though she'd been watching for it.

But Billy did, or his body was so in tune with Michael's that his nervous system reacted for him. The spinning strike, wholly out of place in a wrestling match, but appropriate for these two men, got within an inch of Billy's temple before he was able to avert it. He turned it into a grapple that should have locked up Michael's arm in a painful backward bend, possibly snapping the elbow backward or dislocating a shoulder if followed through.

Instead Michael slithered to the mat, his legs and arms wrapped around Billy's knees. Billy was strong enough to step, despite Michael's weight and keep his momentary stagger from turning into a fall. Then Billy knelt down, hard and fast, and Trisha was half afraid that he'd crush the Colonel.

Michael managed to move clear of Billy's descending knees, which made a loud slap when he hit the mat. Michael fired out a straight-edge finger strike that he stopped against Billy's abdomen. Not at the sternum, but a little lower, just an inch.

Trisha had heard about the move on the street, but never heard of anyone actually doing it. A “heart grabber” was supposed to be literally that. Strike up and in so hard that you actually break the skin and drive your hand up behind your opponent's ribs, grab their heart, and rip it out for them to see as they die. If Michael made the move, that meant it was technically possible, which she'd always wondered.

Billy had stopped his massive palm a half-inch from the Colonel's nose. If he'd finished the stroke, he'd not only shatter Michael's nose, but probably kill him when the bones and cartilage were driven into the Delta operator's brain. If they followed through, they'd have died together.

They each held the pose for a half moment, and then released.

There was dead silence as they helped each other to their feet; then deafening applause exploded around the room.

The crowd thought they'd seen a show. A spectacle put on for their behalf. A show of something to aspire to in the U.S. military, as if Michael and Bill were the Thunderbirds doing an aerobatic stunt over Boston Harbor on July Fourth.

Trisha had seen two of the men she cared most about in the world come within inches of killing each other.

She turned and forced her way back out through the bodies, her ears gone deaf to the stupid cheers. If it was what she thought it was, she just might kill both of them.

Trisha couldn't figure out if she was chicken or pissed. And being in that undecided state, she decided it was best to simply steer clear of Billy, mostly because she had no idea what she'd say and what she wouldn't be able to take back later if she changed her mind. Once her head cleared, once her temper had eased enough to think rationally, then she'd be safe. Until then she was as stable as century-old TNT dripping with nitroglycerin.

Stupid Navy didn't put locks on the doors. If it was valuable, you had a small lockbox, but that was all that was private in the military. That and your thoughts, which she couldn't seem to get away from.

So, after the following night's flight, she grabbed a couple sandwiches and a water bottle, then disappeared back to that sprawling empty bunk room where she'd run into Dilya. Selecting a top bunk in the rear starboard corner, difficult to spot because of the structural elements of the room, she unstrapped the mattress and rolled it out. Climbing up into her eagle's aerie close below the ceiling of the next deck, she ate a quiet and unsatisfying meal. Should have grabbed a cookie. Like that would make a difference.

Then she set her watch for an hour before the nightly flight briefing and crashed back into a dreamless sleep. At least that was the plan.

Trisha didn't think they were fighting over her. It just didn't make sense. Besides, she could take care of her own damn self. In her current mood, she wouldn't mind getting Billy the SEAL on that wrestling mat and hurting him. But her head space sure wasn't right for a friendly screw to clear the air.

God, even that sounded awful. “Queen of SOAR?” Billy had called her. “Queen Bitch!” would be way closer.

Option two, Billy working out some frustration over her fight with him? Reject. Not the kind of game he'd play with Michael.

So rather than dwell on how furious she'd be with Trisha O'Malley if she were him, she reassessed the fight for about the hundredth time. The chance to watch two such masters… It was almost better than flying with Emily Beale. What did it say about her that she'd seen different ways to take them on? She wouldn't know if her ideas would work until she tried them, but short of the killing stroke, there were definite possibilities.

And why hadn't Billy answered her question last night in bed? Was he really such a straight arrow? Former street kid turned angel didn't play any better than Billy and Michael having a spat about one Patricia O'Malley in front of most of the crew. If Michael was really pissed on her behalf, he'd probably come to her first to make sure of his facts. If he was angrier than that, Billy simply wouldn't come back alive from some mission.

So, whatever was between them definitely wasn't about her. Which left her once again contemplating her exceptional taste in fighting men and the fact that Billy didn't feel they were close enough for him to tell her something bad he'd done.

That's what really hurt. It's when she thought of that fact that her vision blurred with frustration, even rage…and bitter disappointment.

She'd trusted him, but he didn't appear to trust her.

***

That night's flight wasn't totally routine, which was a relief. They'd spooked a pirate mother ship. That's when pirates managed to capture a small vessel, one bigger than their own tiny boats. Then they'd use that to chase an even bigger vessel that traveled farther out to sea, dragging along their smaller boats for the final attack.

It started when Trisha overflew a life raft with a mixed crew aboard. Everyone went on high alert while Trisha and Roland circled down on them. No sign of guns or RPGs. A raft was unusual as well, and neither she nor Roland had seen them dumping an engine at the chopper's approach. They simply didn't have an engine at all. Still, she slid up cautiously. Roland made sure the
May
's weapons stayed trained on the small raft, ready to tear it to shreds.

They were the crew off a Korean fishing vessel. The fact that they were far inside the Somalia territorial waters was typical. Some militias' regimes had financed themselves with “special licenses” to the very ships they were supposed to be stopping, who then brought in the heavy trawling and bottom-dredging gear that decimated both fish and their reef habitat.

The Korean trawler hadn't had a citadel or enough weapons to repel boarders. They also hadn't radioed for help, probably because they were illegally in these waters. Nine hours. The Somali pirates had a nine-hour head start, placing them anywhere within a hundred and fifty miles, about an hour's flying time.

Unusually, the captain on the raft insisted that the entire crew was on the raft safely with him. “We told them the captain was dead and none of us knew where we were or how to run the boat. They grew so tired of our whining that they put us all overboard.” He appeared very proud of his stratagem.

They were lucky they hadn't simply been shot as a nuisance. Very unusual not to take them as hostages; the pirates must have been hot on the trail of that bigger quarry. The captain gave the Night Stalkers a direction that the trawler had headed and the chase was on.

It was after the third refueling of the night, just a few hours before dawn, that
Max
spooked up the Korean trawler. They put up a heavy battle, right up until Kee, Michael, and Billy, all working from the cargo bay door of Maloney's DAP Hawk
Vengeance,
demonstrated exactly what American snipers could do with their rifles. Every pirate who attempted to shift into the clear to shoot at the choppers was shot. When a half dozen of them were sprawled about the deck, dead or dying, some survivor cut the trawler's engine and came out with his hands up.

Dusty, who had brought a team of Rangers along in his transport Black Hawk, dropped them on the boat. The medic set to work on the survivors even before the rest of the team finished clearing the boat and pronounced it secure.

After medevacing the two worst ones into Dusty's chopper, the Rangers turned the trawler back toward the carrier group, where the Korean crew should now safely be. Free to return once again to their illegal fishing activities. Trisha popped up a few thousand feet and spotted a ship not more than ten miles ahead. Under high magnification she could see that it was a container ship. Insider information this time. Someone had clearly fed the ship's position to the Somali crew, maybe some native Somali working at the London shipping company. Or even worse at EU NAVFOR, the European Union-led international effort to stop piracy in the Gulf.

That's why these pirates didn't care about taking the Korean hostages with them. They'd known exactly where their next batch of hostages were; they simply hadn't gotten there in time.

Back on the
Peleliu
, as the first predawn light washed over the sea and ended the too-long night, Chief Warrant Maloney pulled Trisha aside. “You're going crazy, aren't you?”

Trisha considered denying it or making excuses, but finally, mostly out of sheer weariness with it all, she gave up the façade and felt nothing but relief at doing so, damn the consequences. She leaned back against the nose of her chopper and opened the front seam of her flight suit down to her gym shorts.

“Completely bugfuck borderline psychotic, sir. What did I do wrong this time, and what do I need to do to fix it?”

Lola Maloney laughed. “Thought so.”

“You're laughing at me?” Trisha expected to get angry, but just felt tired instead. Tired with the situation and tired of herself.

“Yep. You are trying so damn hard to behave that I bet y'all are staying up nights rethinking your flights.”

“Uh, how did you know?”

“This gal wasn't born just yesterday, hon. I'm from N'Orleans. I know shit.” She was clearly laying it on a bit thick to have fun at Trisha's expense, as she normally spoke accentless English. Or at least accentless American.

Trisha dragged off the upper part of her flight suit and tied the arms around her waist. Even just past sunrise, the air was getting warm. Soon she'd be wishing she could lose the T-shirt and sports bra as well. Another scorcher of a day in the Gulf. No surprise there, at least. But a definite surprise from her commander for certain. She still didn't know what to say.

“What I do know is that you'll never be all you can be as long as you keep holding on so tight.”

“Any suggestions?” And she'd thought she was doing such a good job of hiding it all.

“Yep. Y'all come to the forward briefing room on the 02 deck right after we eat. The ‘boys'”—she placed air quotes around the word—“have a special mission they want to run. Though they aren't telling me what yet. I'm thinking that the one-off operation is your true strength. And flying those will let you be more patient with the routine stuff.”

“Maybe.” Trisha kind of liked the sound of that. If she could bust out once in a while, the mundane missions would be far more tolerable.

Lola gave her a cocky salute and then headed down below.

Trisha felt calmer than she had in weeks. A special mission, doing something where she could just do what needed doing. That sounded good to her. She waited in the morning light, enjoying the shifting colors of the sky as straight above shifted from hard blue toward crystalline, the horizon going from orange to gold and finally from purplish haze to bluish haze.

And nowhere on that horizon did Billy wander up.

Guess she deserved that.

“Thanks for coming,” Michael greeted her easily when she entered the briefing room just behind Lola Maloney. Okay, didn't seem to be any problem there.

Billy looked at her and offered one of his carefully neutral nods. The two trays of dirty plates near him and Michael showed that he hadn't been avoiding her at the meal as well. Or at least not only avoiding her. Clearly they'd been doing a lot of planning, Mr. D-boy and Mr. SEAL.

A large electronic map was on a big wall screen. Galkayo. That was a bad sign right there. Galkayo was one of the most powerful pirate strongholds, despite being a hundred miles inland.

At Michael's nod, Trisha closed the door, just the four of them. She and Maloney traded a questioning glance, then sat down across from the “boys.” Then Michael indicated for Billy to speak.

“There are presently six ships and fifty-three hostages being held by the Somali pirates. The longest holding period of these is two years, the newest, three weeks. Present demands for combined ransom are well over fifty million dollars U.S.”

Trisha had to swallow hard. Somalia was rated as the most dangerous and most corrupt country in the world. Not a good place to be a hostage. And Billy had walked in there undercover.

“We know that at least four of these ships and forty-two of the hostages are either held by the northern pirate lords of Galkayo or others under their direct control. This includes the ship of the hostages we rescued last month. Two of the ships and the other hostages are being held by southern pirates that we know less about.”

Michael zoomed the image back and pointed to the small red triangles along the coast south of Mogadishu near Kismayo.

“These two southern ships are being held by a totally different clan than the others. We feel that we can set an operation here in the north without causing further problems in the south because the clans hate each other and would never cooperate in anything. Command concurs.”

Command. So they'd already sent their idea up to the Pentagon for approval and gotten it back. This was no idle planning session; a live operation was being proposed here.

Michael pointed to the four triangles located along the northern coast.

“We feel that if we can strip the prisoners and ships from these northern pirate lords in a single strike, their position will be sufficiently weakened so that growing pressure from domestic governments as well as clan elders may significantly curb future activities.”

The four northern triangles representing captured ships that were spread across six hundred kilometers. Farthest north, the idiot son's sightseeing yacht was still parked in Bosaso. A small coastal merchant ship at Eyl lay anchored at a seaside hamlet partway down the coast. Both were controlled by Garowe. This despite the Darod clan, which controlled the northern province of Puntland, insisting they had eradicated piracy from their shores.

The last two, a small tanker and a midsized container ship, were anchored close ashore to Hobyo near the middle of the Somali coast. It was on the part of the coast closest to the inland city of Galkayo where the Hawiye clan made no such claims of altruism.

A lot of problems spread out over four hundred miles of coastline, not even counting the Kismayo ships. That's when Trisha figured out what was going on. They weren't talking about prevention. Until now, the patrols had only been concerned with what happened out at sea, preventing more piracy by driving potential ship-nappers back to shore or carting them off to an Ethiopian or Ugandan jail. Or burial if they resisted.

“You're talking about rescue.”

Maloney looked up at her, startled. She hadn't caught on just yet.

Michael merely nodded. “Sharp as ever, Trisha. That's exactly the mission that we've been authorized to research. The problem is that we need to get better intelligence on the ground than we've had to date. We were able to rescue the hostages in Bosaso only because of Lieutenant Bruce's willingness to go undercover and find out that information.”

“You're not going back in!” Her blood ran cold as she faced Billy. “Being nearly killed once in Somalia wasn't enough for you? Forget about it. You can't go.” She had a personal stake in him now. He was important to her, even though she wasn't quite sure in what way. Didn't matter. She was putting her foot down.

Billy gave one of those soft smiles that always melted her and she fought against it, rising back to her feet to do so.

Then he said, “I'm not going alone, and you're the one taking us.” And she fell back into her chair when her knees let go.

***

Trisha still couldn't believe she was doing this as she swung in from the northwest of Galkayo. She'd circled far and wide to be clear of the city. And she was flying alone to conserve weight. At least alone in the cabin.

Back on the
Peleliu
, the crew chiefs had done a quick change on the
May
. Pulled off her rockets and miniguns. The two big ammo cans that normally sat behind Trisha's seat were replaced with an interior fuel tank for extended range. Her only weapons would be her handgun and her FN-SCAR rifle, neither of which she'd have a free hand to use unless she wound up on the ground. And if that happened, things would have gone seriously wrong.

A special rig had been hung from the anchor point for the munitions struts and the skids. On either side of the chopper, their big knobby tires exactly even with her skids, now hung a pair of 250 cc dirt bikes that looked like they were one-twenty-fives. They were beat, battered, disreputable, and might once have been of Russian or Indian manufacture. That was before the Special Ops mechanics began tinkering with the engines. They were now highly geared, tough-as-hell racing motorcycles that only
looked
like crap.

“Two minutes,” she called to Michael and Billy over the headsets. Two minutes until the scheduled 2:00 a.m. drop in central goddamn nowhere a dozen miles northeast of Galkayo. They'd found a very distinct pillar of stone in the desert not far from a road, really a dirt track, which was what described most roads in this country. She would be coming in behind the pillar, masking vision and sound from the road, just in case there was someone on this remote stretch at this late hour.

Ten thousand feet above, Lola and her crew flew the
Vengeance
as both spotter and serious weapons backup if trouble occurred. It felt good knowing
Vengeance
was up there, especially with all the heavy weapons stripped off the
May
.

Trisha glanced back at Billy, who sat astride his motorcycle on the pilot's side of her chopper. He'd pulled off his helmet and hung it inside the chopper's passenger area. Now he wore a bandana and special sunglasses that looked mirrored on the outside to hide what his eyes were doing but offered a clear view from inside, even though it was dark out.

He again wore his battered M-16 and Russian handgun. She'd helped him strap both on just a few hours ago in the privacy of her cabin. He looked just like the battered mercenary she'd rescued from central Bosaso a month before. But now she knew him so well that it was as if he'd become a part of her when she wasn't paying attention.

Last night, after the long strategy session had finally wound down and no one could think of any additions to the plan, she and Billy had returned to her cabin in silence. Neither of them had spoken. She hadn't asked any of her thousand questions, figuring the man had enough on his mind. Billy kept his own counsel, as he was inclined to do.

They had made slow, gentle love, the kind two people make when they're each afraid that they'll never see each other again. Yet another thing not to talk about. They had lain awake and unmoving through the long day, her head on his shoulder, her leg across his hips. Billy spoke as night approached once again.

“I have to go. I don't have a choice.”

Nine words. Nine words, and Trisha's only option was to accept them at face value. She'd finally nodded, acknowledging that whatever else was true, she had no words to fight with. And no desire to do so.

He and Michael were no longer wired into the helicopter's intercom, so she couldn't give them the ten-second warning. If she had a copilot, she could remove a hand from the cyclic long enough to flash a “1-0” signal—one finger, then closed fist—out the door for him to see, but flying solo she needed both hands and both feet. A moment later, exactly on time even without the signal, she could feel the chopper wiggle side to side as the two men jammed down hard on their kick-starters.

The dirt bike engines roared awake loud enough to be heard over the rotors and turbine noise of her engine. Billy and Michael revved them once, twice, then her skids touched the ground.

Heads ducked low over their handle bars so that they were well below her spinning rotors, Billy and Michael were beating dust trails to the south before the Little Bird even fully settled. The sudden loss of load popped the chopper back into the air, and she pulled up on the collective to continue the climb. Time on Somali soil…under one second.

Just after they cleared the edge of her rotors, Billy raised his hand in salute, then he was gone.

Rolling right and staying low, she was gone as well.

***

Three nights now, Trisha had sat behind the rock pillar in the Somali desert. Three nights in a row from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., she'd squatted northwest of Galkayo, wondering if Michael and Billy were coming back tonight. If they were alive to do so. There had been no transmissions, nor were any planned. They did have radios embedded in their bikes' structure, but would only use those in a dire emergency.

Had their ploy worked? They'd certainly rehearsed it enough.

She and Lola had listened while Billy gave the pitch they'd been working on for a day or so. Maybe if she hadn't bugged out after their sparring match down in the ship's hold, she would have distracted Billy and all this wouldn't be happening. He and Michael wouldn't have had time to bond over this crazy idea. But instead, Billy had his mercenary act down smooth. Even convincing her that he was already someone else, mostly, though they'd been sitting in the
Peleliu
briefing room.

“If I can track down the pirate leader at his home in Galkayo, my story to him will go something like this: Yeah. I was, uh, busy, you know, with a lady friend, when those choppers came through. Real sorry to have missed that show. Maybe if I'd been in on it, it all woulda come out differently. Anyway, after I saw the mess they left behind, I decided the best idea was to bug the hell out of Bosaso.

“But I wanted to hook back up with whoever sponsored that crew. We were doing just fine up there until those choppers showed. I want another shot at them. Hunting around Garowe, I ran into an old buddy of mine from the Congo days.” It was one of the places both Billy and Michael had served, though on different missions, so they could both talk convincingly about fighting there. It was also a notorious tour for mercenaries. “Name's Mickey. We didn't have much luck in Garowe, so we came down to Galkayo hoping to find ya.”

Somehow his voice and manners had shifted. He'd looked less “Billy the SEAL” and more “Bill the Mercenary” who just might be a little wired on the ubiquitous Somali drug khat and might be a low-lifer, but had seen so many battles that he would be eager to find another. Just another adrenaline junkie hooked on war. Even Michael managed to shift from his quiet, calm self to a slightly dumb and nasty-looking piece of work, despite not saying anything. Just a change of attitude and body language.

And Billy was far safer with Michael along than if he were traveling by himself. But no matter how many times Trisha assured herself of that, she was still sitting here in the desert suffering over it.

And what if something more did happen between her and Billy? Without defining what “more” might be, it was pretty clear that nothing long term would work. One reassignment and they might never see each other again. Honestly, they were just hooking up for Operation Heavy Hand and then he'd swim off to another SEAL mission or she'd be SOARing into the Colombian jungle. That kept it light and easy. Which was good.

It just didn't feel good.

She stewed on that a while, as the clock moved from 03:07 to 03:15. Damn, how time dragged when you were having fun sitting by yourself in a shutdown chopper on a cold desert night.

The problem was, they had left “light and easy” behind the day she chose to show up for his mother's funeral. And they'd traveled a long way further since then.

Her radio crackled. “Vehicles headed your direction.”

“Roger.” Without more information from Lola hovering ten thousand feet overhead, there was no way to know what to do. This had now happened four times over the last three nights. Someone traveling the road at night, three vehicles from the north and one from Galkayo in the south. Individual vehicles were rare outside the cities in Somalia, but they happened. Pirates or drug bosses, among others, traveled in groups, usually with a technical somewhere in the mix ready to shoot whoever might be stupid enough to bother them.

Waiting in silence, she only kept power to the radios. But now, with traffic approaching, she powered up the other systems so she'd be ready to start the engines quickly if necessary. If the traffic just went by, she'd power back down and keep waiting.

“Go hot!” The command came down from Lola, and Trisha had the turbine spinning up before Lola even got out the next word. “We've got a pair of motorcycles running at high speed. A squad of three vehicles coming fast behind, half a mile back. Can't tell if it's a chase or if they're rushing to Garowe. On your position in four minutes.”

It was pitch dark and the moon had long since set. Trisha's night-vision gear came up, covering the inside of her visor with its detailed gray images revealing the few bushes and the dry rolling landscape. She wouldn't be able to see the road until she was in the air and out from behind her rock where she'd been hiding the Little Bird.