Betrayal Read online

  DJ and the others were looking over satellite images on Carbon’s tablet, discussing where to deploy in preparation for the ambush. Carbon sat silent like a good little hacker and waited for his wings. He would get some of those wings, too. If any of the others tried to hog it before he could get his hands on a few, they would pay. Not that he would attempt anything physical. He wouldn’t stand a chance. But he could threaten to scream like a baby with a wet diaper, invoking an attack by that hidden Russian submarine, if he didn’t get some of them wings. DJ had said that Navy submarine cooks were some of the best out there. Many of them went on to make five-star meals for the Pentagon and catered White House dinners. They even cooked for the President. Yep, he was getting some of them wings. Yes, he was.

  Carbon watched the young cook do his thing across the room and on the other side of a serving counter. He worked quickly but quietly among his peers, who seemed to be prepping for a future meal. There was no pan clanged, no door closed too hard, no timer with a bell set. He was obviously well versed in keeping noise to a minimum when required. After what seemed like an eternity, the kid started over with a tray of pizza slices arranged on paper plates. Carbon assumed it was to prevent the clatter of dishes. As the young man made his way around the counter, the sub suddenly banked like an aircraft, going into a hard turn. Carbon felt a knot develop in his chest, knowing the pizza would end up on the floor. Surprisingly, the kid tilted over against the turn, remaining upright and solid in his footing. The sailor must be used to this, he thought.

  As the kid set down paper plates in front of them all, making sure Carbon was one of the first to get his share, DJ pointed to the map turned towards their newest team member. “Doolie, I want you to take an alternate route in. Follow this ridgeline and set up overwatch on this hill. I want you to get there ahead of us so you can radio back anything you see.”

  The young cook, apparently eager to chat with his visitors, turned to Sam at DJ’s mention of the odd nickname. “Doolie? Is that short for something?” he asked quietly, a pleasant smile on his face.

  Doolie pointed to DJ. “Our team leader has a habit of giving everyone nicknames. My name is Sam Kenny. Since I have two first names, he calls me Doolie.”

  The kid smiled. “I have two first names, too. Evan Thomas.” He then turned to DJ. “So, what would my nickname be?”

  DJ smiled at the sailor. “That’s easy. E.T.”

  Across the room, a chuckle could be heard. Turning, Carbon saw another sailor leaning across the counter, listening in. The new person then turned to the other cooks in the narrow kitchen. “Hey, everyone. PO3 Thomas has a new nickname. E.T. Makes sense, right? He’s always the first one to call home when we hit a new port.”

  Evan shook his head. “I should have never opened my mouth. That’s going to stick around a while.”

  Carbon quickly lost interest when the sailor in the kitchen set a plastic tray loaded with wings on the counter. This was his chance. If he could get to the wings first, he could ensure none of his teammates denied him the deliciously prepared barnyard delicacy. He stood quickly, maneuvering around DJ, and making a beeline for the counter. That’s when tragedy struck. He tripped, went sprawling, and knocked over three chairs in the process. He and the chairs went clattering across the crew’s mess, making a tremendous amount of noise. Too much noise. Carbon’s heart dropped into his socks.

  PO3 Thomas held up his hands and hissed to them all, “No one move!” he darted silently to a corded phone hanging near the counter. He snatched the handset, tapped a few buttons on the dial, and then spoke. “Sonar, sound transient. Ten seconds ago, one of our visitors knocked over a few chairs in the crew’s mess.” He hung up the phone and turned to face the group.

  Carbon, still laying on the floor, too scared to move, whispered from the floor. “Did I just kill us?”

  E.T. shrugged. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Chapter 4: The Nutcracker

  The Captain of the Vermont was furious. Quiet, but furious. Captain Markel stood in the crew’s mess with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. “What part of quiet do you not understand?”

  DJ stood. “Sir, it was an accident. The man tripped.”

  The captain stepped closer. “Is that supposed to make it better? Your little accident has us hovering about fifty meters above the ocean floor at a dead stop. Our sonar picked up your accident. If we picked it up, you can bet that Russian heard it too. So, now we have to sit here playing hide and seek, waiting to see if the other captain is too stupid to give himself away. You not only compromised your mission, making meeting your deadline almost impossible, but you compromised this submarine and all one hundred and thirty-three souls that call it home. And for what?” He focused his glare on Carbon. “Hot wings?”

  DJ tried to apologize again. “Sir,” he started, but Markel cut him off.

  “No, you zip it. We are six miles from your drop-off point, but it might as well be six thousand because I can’t risk moving. I can’t do a slow surface because the Russian is too close. I can’t dive because we’re in water less than three hundred feet deep. We’re already parked on the bottom. And I can’t sprint for the internationally recognized boundary for territorial waters because it’s too far away. The last time we caught a sniff of that Yassen, it was only ten miles out. So we’re stuck here, doing our best imitation of a shadow.”

  DJ was now worried. If they didn’t make the rendezvous location on time they would lose the data drive. “Sir, if we’re this close just drop us off here. The SEALs can run us to the shore. Surely a RIB can make it there and back without fuel being an issue.”

  The captain shook his head. “Three things are horribly wrong about what you’re asking. I can get us to the surface quietly, but if the Russian is closer than we think and happens to be looking through his periscope, we’ll be seen. Secondly, we don’t have a RIB on board. Do you really think you could fit one down that hatch? We do have a couple of inflatables, but running the outboard would alert the other sub. That leads me to number three. What SEALs?”

  DJ blinked. He was told they would be responsible for infil and exfil, getting them to the shore and back to the sub. He hadn’t seen any since arriving. DJ had just assumed that since they were only performing escort duty, and the fact that DJ and his team were civilian contractors, they had elected to stay away until it came time to depart. “We were told a SEAL team was onboard and would get us in and out.”

  The captain smiled. “Then your CIA friends lied to you. You’re on your own, buddy. But relax, you won’t be going on any mission anyway. We’re going to pretend to be a hole in the water until I think it’s safe to move again.”

  At the mention of no SEALs, his team began grumbling and muttering under their breath. “We should have never trusted anyone but Ali,” he heard Bounder say.

  DJ snapped his fingers to silence them. “Sir, do you know the mission we’re on?”

  Captain Markel nodded. “You’re supposed to rescue some spook who got themselves in hot water. Well, the CIA can figure out another way to rescue their friend. I’m not risking this entire sub for the life of one spy.”

  DJ shook his head. When this was over he was going to snap Agent Seymour’s neck. “Looks like the CIA lied to you too. At least let me explain why we’re really here. It’s your boat, I get it. Your word is law here, but please let me explain to you the mission we’re really on.”

  The Captain looked at him and the team. DJ could tell he really wanted to tell them all what to do with themselves. He had been forced to take on operators who weren’t in any branch of the service. He had been ordered to do the bidding of the CIA. Not to mention one of them clumsily made a racket on his boat and placed his entire crew into harm's way. He wasn’t happy. He was rightly and royally pissed! But DJ and his team still had a job to do. It was a job that meant securing America’s secrets and keeping innocent citizens safe from other countries. If there was a chance of getting the captain on his side, he had to
take it.

  Captain Markel nodded. “Explain your mission, but understand it doesn’t change the situation we’re in.”

  __________

  Abbi threw the satellite image onto the giant screen for Brett and their agent invaders to see. Her desk sat in a back corner. Behind her was an arrangement of things that looked out of place in this state-of-the-art operations center. There was a shelf with diapers, baby powder, creams, and ointments. A changing table decorated with tiny comical ducks was placed underneath. A playpen sat in the corner, and one of those automatic swings that ran on batteries, currently swinging Cassie who was fast on the way to nappy time, stood nearby. There was even an activity center for tots and a small box of toys. Her little corner of the room was more a childcare center and less high-tech gadgetry. That was fine by her. She only needed her three screens, a mouse, and a keyboard to perform her part of the missions these warriors went on.

  She was sure some would find her role here odd. Not so much the baby, but the fact she participated at all, or why she even tolerated her husband to go guns a-blazin' into parts unknown. She had long ago come to terms with who DJ was. It was how she had been introduced to him. It was how she had fallen in love with him. She knew him to be a warrior. She knew there might come a day when that warrior didn’t return home. If that ever happened, she would weep. But she suffered no regret about sticking with him. She either loved him or she didn’t. And if she did love him, she had to accept him for who he was. Every part of him. The dark and brooding parts, the violent and dangerous parts; none of that could be removed without changing who he was. Love was an all-or-nothing thing. And, oh, how she dearly loved her man.

  All eyes stayed focused on the satellite image, even though there was nothing to be seen. There was still plenty of time left before the scheduled meeting of bad guys and the exchange of the data drive. Soon, her team would beach a small boat onto the shore and set up their ambush. For now, they were somewhere under the Sea of Japan, making their way towards their target. Until they emerged from hiding, they were out of contact.

  With Brett and the others focused away from her, she set about doing the other thing Brett had asked. She concentrated on learning more about Agent Seymour. Something wasn’t sitting right with Brett, and she was zeroed in on finding out why that was. The first thing she did was send an email to Agent Ali, asking if he knew anything about the mission they were on. She didn’t have to wait long for the reply. He didn’t, Ali said. She sent him a few details and asked if he could corroborate any of the information. He said he would check but was out in the field at the moment. It might be a while before he could find out anything.

  The second thing she did was attempt to breach the firewalls in place at the CIA. She wanted to do some sleuthing on the agent himself. Was there anything in his file that might flag him as a threat? Had he been sanctioned for anything in the past? Had he been involved with any missions that her team would find lacking a sense of morality? The CIA, after all, had been involved with drug running to finance conflicts in the past. Couldn’t they be doing something similar now?

  She set her custom-designed program running to break in, and minimized it into the background as one of the agents stepped around to see what she was working on. She glared up at him and thought of punching him in the testicles for the intrusion into her space. They were hanging right there, just begging to be used as a speed bag. Instead, she fired off a venomous comment. “Do you mind? I don’t like people I don’t know looking over my shoulder.”

  The idiot, who proclaimed himself to be Ted, smiled innocently at her. “I was just wanting to know if you heard from your team yet. Why so defensive? You’re not hiding something, are you?”

  Abbi clenched her fist, preparing to teach the spy a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget, doing everything in her power to restrain herself. “One, you need to lower your voice before you wake Cassie. Two, when I hear from the team, you’ll know it because it will come across the speakers in the ceiling. Three, I’m not the spook in the room. You are the ones who conceal things for a living. And four, if you don’t back out of the way, you’ll find yourself wheezing on the floor and regretting your decisions.”

  Ted looked down on her. It was the same look she had seen from sexist men her entire life. “Take it easy, sweetheart-” She wasn’t sure what the rest of that sentence was going to be, because she cupped his balls in her left hand and squeezed. She stood quickly and followed her move with an open-palmed jab into his face, feeling the man’s nose crack with the blow. Still squeezing with her left, she grabbed his shirt collar with her right and twisted him to the floor. Her left hand tightened around his manhood one more good, hard time, and then she released. She stepped back and glanced at Cassie, still out cold in the swing.

  Returning her attention to the man on the floor, she said, “Call me sweetheart one more time and I won't be so gentle.” Both Brett and the agent called Bill were across the room, their mouths slightly agape with dumbfounded looks on their faces. She shrugged. “I warned him. He didn’t listen.”

  Ted lay writhing on the floor, one hand on his groin and the other covering his bleeding face. “You broke my nose,” he exclaimed.

  She gave him a sarcastic version of the same smile he had offered her only moments before. “Relax, sweetheart, it’s an improvement.”

  Chapter 5: Complications

  DJ sat with his team, bobbing in two inflatable boats, watching the massive hull of the Vermont slip silently below the waves. The Captain had listened as promised. In the end, he took a chance, surfaced, and let them off. DJ was warned, however, there may not be a recovery for him when this was all over. He was also told they may not make it to the shore alive. The plan was to sit here for fifteen minutes and let the sub slip away. They would then start the small outboard motors and head for the shore. However, if the Russian sub was closer than they thought, and if they took a peek through their periscope, they would likely call it in. This would mean a patrol boat would intercept them before they even got close to the shore, or a platoon of soldiers would be waiting on the beach to pick them up. None of those scenarios were ideal, but his team took a vote and decided to go for it anyway. The idea of the data drive not being recovered and all of those secrets being auctioned off to the highest bidder was not something they could live with.

  DJ checked his watch. It was a little after three in the morning local time. If they managed to not draw the attention of the Russian navy, they were going to be pressed for time to make it to the shore and into the trees before daybreak. It was going to be close. The seas were rough for their tiny boats so it was slow going.

  Carbon sat clutching a waterproof backpack, his night-vision goggles making him appear like a frightened praying mantis. “Can’t we just go already? Our submarine is gone. They’ll never know.”

  Cash shook his head. “Yes, they will. As soon as we fire up these outboards the sonar will pick it up. The Captain asked for fifteen minutes to get to the bottom. We break our word and he likely won’t be here when it’s time to go. You want to risk that?”

  Coonie chimed in. “The Captain already offered me twenty dollars to leave you behind. I don’t think you want to make him madder than he already is.”

  Carbon smirked at her. “Twenty bucks? Really? That’s all I’m worth?”

  Connie shook her head and smiled. “Oh, no. I told him you were worth at least fifty.”

  They waited the allotted time and then headed for shore as fast as the boat could handle it. Thankfully, the swells were with them making the ride smoother than expected. They kept an eye out for other vessels, but saw none. It wasn’t long before they could hear the breakers crashing onto the shore. Soon, they were riding one in and beaching their boats. Their GPS kept them on track, and they managed to land precisely where they had intended. Fortune continued to be in their favor. The beach was devoid of life. They wasted no time on arrival. They hoisted the boats and ran for the tree line, burying them in the und
ergrowth as best they could.

  DJ pointed to Doolie. “Alright, Two Names, time to prove yourself. You get a twenty-minute head start. Get to the top of the ridge and get me eyes on that valley and the meet point. We’ll wait and then head in. Hopefully, none of these guys are early. Let’s hope our luck stays.” He directed his next comments to Cash. “Get our comms connected to home. See if Abbi was able to get us an ISR feed for an overhead view.” Lastly, he turned his attention to Carbon. “Get your bird in the air.”

  The bird in question was a specialized drone first put in place by the Navy SEALs. It was a small fixed-wing aircraft fitted with a laser scanner and high-res camera. A battery-powered propeller pulled it through the air when required, but it was specially designed to float on air currents and updrafts like a large, winged bird. In fact, it looked just like one. It was called the Falcon.

  The Falcon’s primary objective was to soar in the sky mimicking an actual bird. It was even equipped with synthetic feathers that adorned the wings and tail to be both convincing and to enhance flight. A small computer gathered sensor data to process air movement around it. It used this to bank and soar with the winds and updrafts. From twenty-five yards away, it was completely convincing.

  SEAL teams and other Tier 1 echelons of the Special Forces utilized the Falcon to gather intel by flying over targets. With its camera, it could zoom in to identify enemy combatants below. With its laser scanner, it could range targets from a distance for guided munitions, or with multiple passes from various angles it could send the information downstream. An accurate computer model of a set of buildings, or a ship, could be used for infiltration assessment. If connected to a 3D printer, they could even build a scale model for assault planning with teams. None of that would be needed here, only the high-resolution camera. Still, it was a specialized tool and Carbon took it on every mission. He even named it Fred.