Read SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) Online
Authors: Evan Currie
SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series)
OTHER TITLES BY EVAN CURRIE
Odyssey One series
Into the Black
Heart of Matter
Homeworld
BOOK 4 (forthcoming)
Warrior’s Wings series
On Silver Wings
Valkyrie Rising
Valkyrie Burning
The Valhalla Call (forthcoming)
Other Works
SEAL Team 13
Steam Legion
Thermals
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 by Evan Currie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781477807743
ISBN-10: 1477807748
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936771
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
SOUTH CHINA SEA
TEN YEARS AGO
The rain was beating down, almost drowning out the roar of the twin outboards that pushed the small craft away from the Chinese coast. The blue waves were building on them, but the pilot of the boat kept the throttle open as his passengers scrambled about in what could easily be mistaken for sheer panic.
“What the HELL was that thing?!”
“Mother of God! I’m seeing things!”
“If you are,
we
are, so shut it and stay focused, sailor!” the commander growled.
Lieutenant Harold “Hawk” Masters kept his eyes fixed on the ocean ahead of him, one hand on the wheel, the other pushing the throttle as far as it would go. They crested a wave at better than fifty miles per hour, the trained responses of the team causing them to hunker down as the rubber boat left the surface of the water, becoming momentarily airborne.
Two of the men covered their primary, a Chinese national who’d been flipped by a CIA deep cover agent and now needed extraction, pushing him to the bottom of the boat just before the craft came crashing back down into the water, the whine of the motors becoming a gurgling roar as the props once more found something to bite into.
“Keep us right side up, Hawk!”
“Don’t worry about me, Commander!” Hawk yelled back. “Just nuke that sucker!”
Lieutenant Commander Alexander Johnson “AJ” Webster didn’t respond as he came up to one knee and swept the sea with a cold hard gaze that belied the tight knot in his gut.
The extraction mission had been going by the numbers, Hawk thought as he tried to stay focused on his task, just as smoothly as anyone had any right to expect, which he supposed should have been their first clue. They’d penetrated the Chinese coastal defenses just after 0300 local time and landed on the target beach without any problems. The pickup had gone off without a hitch—no sign of local police or military as they packed their primary into the boat and took off.
Everything went nuts after the continental shelf dropped out from under them. At first Hawk had thought they’d struck a whale—the impact had nearly capsized the small craft, and three men had been thrown clear. While the men were swimming back, though, it became clear that whatever it was, it was no whale.
Two of the men had been sucked under by whatever it was, and while they’d managed to pull the third aboard, he was missing the bottom half of his leg, and he bled out on the deck of the boat. AJ had ordered them to keep moving just seconds later, when it became clear that their two mates weren’t coming back up.
Had to be one mother of a shark, Hawk had supposed, inwardly cringing at the thought. Getting eaten alive was no way for a SEAL to go out. No damn way at all.
Now, though, he wasn’t sure what the hell it was. No shark on the planet would chase a damned boat at better than fifty miles per hour. No way, no how. Must be some kind of Chinese marine weapon, but damned if he could imagine anything that could do this.
The sound of small-arms fire erupted around him, but he kept watching the water. Somewhere out there the
Fitzgerald
was waiting, and then they’d see who had the bigger guns.
He almost missed the bulge in the water ahead of them, as it appeared at little better than point-blank range.
“Crap!” he snarled out. “Hang on!”
The SEALs threw themselves down, wrapping arms into and around anything they could as Hawk spun the wheel and started to pray.
USS
FITZGERALD
The USS
Fitzgerald
was an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer, one of the more advanced oceangoing weapon systems on the planet. She’d been under her current command for four years, and Captain Izerman was looking forward to another twelve before he retired, barring any promotions. He was settled into the command station, sipping his coffee as the crew went about their duties with the level of professional care he’d come to expect from them.
They’d been cruising their current arc for two days, but that was about to end. The team was due for pickup soon, and then the
Fitzgerald
would be ordered to begin its sweep back to Pearl for a refit. Izerman looked out over the sweeping ocean ahead of them and smiled tightly as he held his mug. He did love his job, even the long hours of mind-numbing boredom that came with it.
A young officer approached, more tentatively than Izerman would have liked from his junior, looking on for a moment before speaking. “Captain?”
“What is it, Ensign?”
“I think I have the team on approach.”
Izerman grunted, glancing at the clock. “They’re early.”
“Yes, sir. Coming in fast, sir. Very fast.”
“Oh?” The captain rose up, walking over to lean over the screen. “Any sign of pursuit?”
“Negative, sir.”
“I guess they must have been in a mood to push it, then,” the captain mused, walking toward the large windows that looked out over the forward deck of the
Fitzgerald
. “NODs.”
“Here, sir.”
The yeoman standing the watch lowered the night observation devices (NODs) from his eyes and dropped them into the captain’s hand. Izerman raised them to his eyes, sweeping the dark seas in the direction the instruments said the team was coming from. For a long moment he found nothing, and then there they were, a dark spot on a dark ocean, showing up just enough for him to pick them out.
He watched for a moment; then his breath hitched, and he dropped the NODs, eyes widening.
“Commander,” Izerman called sharply.
“Sir!” Commander Yvonne Sanderson called, stepping to his side in an instant.
“Check me,” he ordered, handing her the NODs. “Four o’clock.”
The petite commander nodded and took the device from him, quickly sweeping the night sea herself. She found the target quickly, and the captain saw her freeze as he had, her breath coming out in a
whoosh
as she dropped the NODs and looked over at him.
“Small-arms fire, sir.”
He nodded at the confirmation, pivoting on his heel. “General quarters! All hands to battle stations!”
“General Quarters, aye!”
Klaxons began to wail as the ship’s already-dark lights shifted further into the red, and the USS
Fitzgerald
went to war.
Hawk groaned as he picked himself up off the deck of the small craft, ears ringing from the impact and the sound of gunfire. An arm grabbed his shoulder, shaking him hard.
He swiveled around and found himself staring into the commander’s face. AJ’s mouth moved, but no sound seemed to come out. The commander shook him again, then looked behind him and shouted something else.
Sound came back to Hawk in a rush, staggering him, but he held on tightly to the return of his senses and focused on AJ, who was screaming at him again. “Damn it, Hawk, snap out of it!”
“I’m okay.…I’m okay, boss.”
“Good man! Check the motors; we’ve got to get moving again!”
Hawk nodded, crawling unsteadily back to the controls. He jammed his thumb down on the starter, but only received an ugly grinding sound in return. He winced, crawled back to the rear of the boat, and hauled up one of the outboards.
When he saw the twisted wreckage of the prop, he swore loud and hard, dropped the motor back into the water, and yanked up the other one.
Same sight, same desecration of the English language.
“We are
boned
, Commander!” he called out, looking over his shoulder. “Both outboards are shot to hell!”
AJ swore too, then nodded. “Grab your gear, Hawk, and if you see something moving in this soup, blow it away. Rankin! Tell me you’ve got the
Fitzgerald
on the comms!”
Hawk blocked out their conversation, trusting his mates to do their jobs, and flipped open the compartment where he’d stashed his weapon. He pulled the German UMP-45 from the box, checking the action and breech on reflex, and turned back to the rear of the boat as he automatically shouldered the weapon.
The tactical light lit off as his finger swept across the trigger, illuminating the sea just beyond the boat, and Hawk did something he had never done in his life, especially since joining the SEALs.
He froze.
Against all training, against his instincts, and against everything he’d ever considered himself to be, Hawk
froze
as his eyes slowly began to range upward, drawn inexorably to the column of…something that was rising from the ocean. It was only a few yards away, as thick around as the entire freaking boat he was in, and he felt his jaw slacken as he took it in. It towered above them, waving slightly like some monstrous vine hanging from a tree. Only it was hanging
up
, and it was far too large to be any kind of vine or plant or any other damn thing he could think of. His weapon slumped for a moment as he started, and nothing else seemed to exist for him just then.
Then the moment passed and Hawk’s eyes widened as the thing began to topple.
“Holyyyy…,” he said slowly, barely suppressing the insane urge to scream
Timber!
“
Shit!
Evac the boat! Now, now, now…”
The men behind him swung around, guns lining up as they opened fire, but it was far too little and far too late. A few threw themselves aside in time as the enormous limb crashed down into the boat, splintering fiberglass and destroying metal as it drove the small military Zodiac below the waves.
“What are they shooting at?!”
“I don’t know, Captain!” The beleaguered response came from a harried lieutenant. “There’s nothing on radar!”
“Stealth ship?” Izerman asked instantly. The Chinese were rumored to be developing something along those lines, but they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near either the British or American programs, and he was pretty sure neither of them had ships in the open water yet.
“If it is, it’s the tightest stealthing imaginable, sir!”
“Sonar! Submerged contacts?”
“We’ve got…something, Cap,” the sonar operator confirmed, but his tone was decidedly uncertain.
“I need more details!”
“I don’t have any! There’s something out there, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Izerman growled, pushing his way over to the station to take a look at the contact himself. He saw in an instant what the mate was talking about—the screen contact faded in and out, looking more like a living being than any submarine he’d ever come across.
The closest thing the captain could connect it with was a pod of whales he’d once tracked along the Alaskan coast. Even that wasn’t a match, though, and he was as flabbergasted as his man.
“Target a hundred yards behind the team,” he ordered, turning back to the weapons station. “Put a warning shot out there.”
“Aye, sir.”
Out on deck the five-inch Mark 45 came to life, pivoting to bear on the distant target as the
Fitzgerald
surged under military power toward its wayward SEAL team. The gun roared out, flash lighting the deck and sea for a moment, sending its deadly payload down range.