Those that weren’t working were relaxing in the lounge or preparing for the night’s watch out on the decks. They had set up guard rotations with three-man teams around the clock: two patrolling the deck and one on the radio. There were only eleven of them now, with the loss of Ben. The rotations were four-hour shifts, with Brad and Brooks filling the holes and taking the extra watches at the radio.
As the sun went down, the men heard the scurrying of movement on the decks below. The primals were reminding them that they were still there, that they owned the lower decks and the darkness. As the patrols walked the deck grating, they could hear the primals moan and scream below them. The darker and cooler the night got, the bolder the primals became. It was a nerve-racking duty, but a price they had to pay to keep the deck secure.
Sean and Brooks met in one of the offices and planned out the assault on the vessel. This was their expertise, and Brad trusted them to do the right thing. Brad had grown up on the Great Lakes and had some experience onboard small boats, but nothing like this. His most ambitious voyages were short day trips on a thirty-footer, doing some fishing on Lake Superior. Brad left the SEALs alone and made his way to the control tower to start his shift on the radios.
Brad sat at the radio slowly turning the dials, switching between UHF and VHF. After he had gone the entire length of the dial with no response, he set the console to ‘scan’. Brooks had managed to get one of the small computers working and found that it had a rudimentary radar application installed. Brad could see the large globe and dish spinning just outside the window, letting him know that the radar hardware was running.
Brad cycled through the filters while following the notes Brooks had scribbled on a sheet of paper. He could barely make out the coast as a jagged blurred line nearly sixty miles to their north. The radar was set to max scan and he occasionally saw static or surface noise on the screen, but nothing that would obviously identify itself as a ship. Brad cycled from surface to air to weather, noting nothing of interest or anything worth logging.
He picked up the log book. They had opened it back up and had begun using it again. He scanned the entries of the earlier watches: ‘Nothing to report’ and ‘all conditions normal’. Just as he was beginning to think they were alone, the radio scanner locked on a station. It was garbled and broken, but appeared to be in English. Brad turned up the volume and manually tweaked the tuning knob. He listened intently and struggled to transcribe the broken, static-filled message.
“Ma…ay, …ayday, …ay. This is the …rench vessel …dupar calling all …ons.
May… …ay, …day, … Captain … of ves… dupar… ead… water… …irty males …board.
Locat… is North …45 …st 67… …12.”
“Last calling station, say again,” Brad yelled into the microphone.
Silence.
“Last calling station, say again,” he tried once more.
The radio had again gone silent. Brad logged the communication and looked at the notes. It was impossible to determine anything from the broken call for help, but he would hand the notes to Sean when he left his shift. Brad checked the radar scope again for any vessel and finally gave up in frustration.
Private Craig came to relieve him just after midnight. Brad quickly refreshed the private on the use of the console. He told him about the broken radio contact and left word for him to send a runner if he heard anything else from the ship. Then Brad waited for the rest of his patrol to pass by the building so he could join them on his way back to the living quarters. They had set up a strict policy of ‘no one goes outside alone after dark’.
As they walked the grates, Brad could hear the primals following below; the sounds of footsteps and the labored panting were like being pursued by a pack of wolves. Brad stopped, asking the two Marines to hold up. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and shined it between the gaps in the grating. What he saw spooked him and he quickly turned out the light. He looked to the left and could tell that the Marines had seen it too.
“Holy shit, Sergeant, there are hundreds of them down there,” Private Nelson muttered with fear in his voice.
“Well it’s nothing we didn’t know, right? We secured the lift, ladders, and the stairs; they can’t get up here,” Brad tried to reassure the private.
“I’ll be glad when we leave this damn place,” Nelson whispered.
“Me too Private … me too.”
As Brad arrived back at the third floor, he found Sean sitting in the lounge cleaning his equipment. Brad handed him the note and told him about the radio contact. Sean took the note and read it as Brad explained the contact and how the radar scope had been clear.
“Shit, wish there was something we could do for them. That signal could have bounced for hundreds … even thousands of miles. No telling how far away they are,” Sean said, reading the message.
“Yeah I know. It just sucks, man. Be nice to get some good news for a change. I put Craig on the frequency and told him to wake me if it comes back,” Brad said.
“That’s all you can do, Brad, now get some sleep. I’m going to need you to be sharp tomorrow,” Sean said, turning back to his equipment.
Some of the other men were also still up in the lounge, preparing for their watch, not able to sleep, or just avoiding sleep altogether. Sleeping was not a thing people enjoyed on the platform. Often it ended being awakened by nightmares, sometimes by the screams of your buddy in the cell next door as he relived the events of the past month. They all worked until they were exhausted, until avoiding sleep wasn’t an option, but they rarely got more than four hours before they found themselves back in the lounge.
Brad used his free time and took advantage of the running water to shower and do laundry. It was a recent luxury to have a functioning laundry room and latrine. With the stores of food and the life support systems, Brad wondered if he might be tempted to stay here if they
could
somehow remove the primals. At least until the food and fuel ran out.
His thoughts drifted back to the men in the compound and the promise he had made to them. Brad lay back in his bunk, holding one of PFC Ryan’s dog tags in his hand, knowing the other was buried on the man back in the Afghan sand. It was a stern reminder that it wasn’t his mission to find a safe refuge. It was his job to seek rescue for his men. That he was, and would always be, on the clock until he got them all home.
Brad placed the dog tag on his night stand, then checked his good luck charm: the unfired S&W pistol. He pulled back the slide to make sure a round was chambered, then placed it within arm’s reach. Brad reached up behind him and cut the light, drifting to sleep with the sounds of the humming generators calming his nerves.
It was go time. Tony was in the cab of the crane. A large steel cable had been looped over the ball and hook that extended from the end of the crane’s arm. Brooks had attached another two hundred and fifty feet of heavy rappelling line to the end of the hook. The SEALs sat on the rail with the ball and hook just over their heads. On command, Tony would swing them out over the open water and lower them to the boat below.
Sean had synced his wireless headset to the radio in the cab. He gave Tony the word to move them. Brad watched as the crane swung out away from the platform, the SEALs dangling beneath it. Sean and Brooks were dressed in bright green dive suits and swim fins that had been salvaged from a locker on the platform. The men had tried to camouflage or at least darken the colors with grease, but the attempt only made them look worse.
The crane swung out and abruptly jerked to a stop, swinging the men out and away uncontrollably. Sean reached out at the length of his arm and grabbed the steel cable, stabilizing them. He turned back and shot Tony a cold stare. Tony put his hands up apologetically and then gave Sean a thumbs up. Brooks nodded back and unclipped his D-ring, then began a slow descent to the attack craft below.
Brad changed positions farther down the railing so he could see the boat hundreds of feet below. He held his rifle at the ready but was not confident he would be much good if he needed to fire at such a steep angle. Brad watched as Brooks descended, then slowed and hung barely twenty feet above the surface of the water. Sean slid down the length of the rope, stopped just above Brooks, and placed himself into an over watch position with his suppressed MP5 at the ready.
Once Sean was in a comfortable position, Brooks continued his decent and cut into the water. Brad watched as Brooks disconnected himself from the line and quietly swam to the side of the attack boat before he slipped under the water. After several seconds, Brad watched him surface near the dock with his dive knife in hand.
Slowly and quietly he cut the rope holding the smaller boat to the dock, allowing the small damaged military craft to drift free and away from the platform. He then swam closer to the attack boat and, finding the mooring lines too big to cut, pulled himself out of the water and onto the dock. Brad felt his heart race as he tried to get an angle to cover his friend.
Brad watched the larger ship also begin to slowly drift free and away from the platform. On closer inspection, he could just make out Brooks’ head barely sticking above the surface of the water; he was holding one of the heavy lines and signaling for Tony to lower the hook and cable. The crane swung and came back to life.
Next, Sean was slowly lowered into the water. He swam the lead line to Brooks and together they pulled it until the end of the steel cable was in their hands. Working together, they attached the cable to one of the heavy mooring lines. Tony took the slack out of the line and carefully guided the boat out away from the dock and close to one of the four large pylons that anchored the rig to the sea bed.
Brooks swam close to the pylon and tied the attack craft off to a series of pinion hooks embedded in the base of the structure just above the water line. Once the boat was secured to the pylon, Sean reached up and released the cable from the vessel and allowed it to swing free. Tony raised the cable up and away from the boat below while Brooks and Sean pulled themselves onto the dive deck at the rear of the vessel and ducked down, hiding.
Tony quickly raised the hook back to the third deck and swung it in towards the rail. Bill immediately unhooked the steel cable from the ball and hook, then hurriedly attached a large basket to the end of the ball and motioned to Brad that it was ready. The basket was nothing more than a steel cage the size of a phone booth. Bill opened a gate on the basket and ushered them in. Brad shook his head but willed himself forward and stepped into the basket with Wilson and Craig, weapons at the ready.
They held on tight as Tony raised them up and swung them out over the water. The crane again stopped quickly, swinging them out hard. They swung back and forth several times before slowing, and Tony began lowering them down toward the vessel. Brad looked out over the edge of the basket as it passed the second deck. It was far worse than he had imagined.
A series of elevated cat walks surrounded by heavy pipes and drilling equipment covered the second deck. The walkways were littered with the dead. The sun was high in the sky, leaving the deep internal area of the deck shaded and in the dark. Brad squinted in the contrasting lights, trying to search for movement. There was little he could see but he knew they were there, hiding in a maze of walkways.
The basket continued its descent until it was just above the vessel. As they got closer, Brad was finally able to take in the size of the attack boat. It was over a hundred feet long and painted in a grey camouflage pattern. He could see a turret on the bow – possibly a 30mm, maybe 40mm gun; it reminded him of the Bushmaster he had seen on the Bradley fighting vehicles. There were at least two .50 caliber machine guns on the rear platform.
The bow was completely covered with metal deck plating. Brad could see a walkway that horseshoed around the large bridge structure and continued beyond onto the rear deck. The bridge held large, tinted windows, but Brad could barely see inside over the reflective glass. The interior looked empty, but the side doors leading to the walkways were open, swinging along with the swells of the sea. A large array of antennas and radar dishes sat motionless along the top of the bridge structure.
The rear deck of the ship was vacant except for a large rigid hull inflatable strapped to a rack. Brad couldn’t see evidence of a battle or even a struggle on the decks; if there had been one, then the storms of the last week must have washed it away. Looking farther back, Brad could just barely make out the lime green silhouettes of the SEALs crouched low on the dive deck.
Tony swung them to the left and right, trying to drop them precisely onto a cleared space over the covered bow of the attack boat. They touched the surface of the ship with a metallic crunch; the vessel briefly bobbed away from them, then rose and made a screech as the basket dragged. Tony let out more line, taking the weight of the basket off the crane and putting it onto the bow.
Craig quickly jumped from the basket and helped to steady it as Wilson and Brad followed him onto the bow of the ship. Once they were clear, Tony began raising it away from the boat. They immediately checked their surroundings, making sure they were alone. Spotting cover, Brad and the Marines walked hunched over and hid behind the bow-mounted gun turret.
The noise of their landing did not go unnoticed. They heard the screaming moans start from the second deck. Brad looked up just in time to see a primal run at them and leap into the water. He watched the primal fly out and away from the platform before plunging over a hundred feet to the water’s surface. The primal hit the water with a sickening crack.
Brad then watched the creature begin to slip below the surface before it shuddered awake and tried to swim towards them. Craig raised his rifle and shot it twice in the head, ending the primal’s struggle. Before they could look away they heard three more screaming as they also flew through the air and smacked the water. Craig and Wilson took aimed shots at these creatures as well as they moved and struggled to stay afloat. As fast as they could shoot them, more dropped into the sea, jumping from the high platform.