Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (20 page)

Crandall nodded. “Make it happen.”

The Det OIC spoke a few words into his lip mic, and the four boats broke from their line-astern formation. Immediately, the two Mark Vs accelerated up to their top speed and to headings that would have them flanking the yacht, a hundred yards to either side. The two RHIBs continued along the wake of the
Osrah
, now on side-by-side and on parallel courses that would bring them up to the port and starboard quarters of the big yacht. Above, the two Knighthawks moved into position to support the waterborne assault.

According to the plan, the two Mark Vs were to stand off to either side of the
Osrah
, hail her, and order her to stop for boarding. The RHIBs would then move up to a close-in support position near the stern sheets. One helo would serve as a platform for the SEAL sniper overwatch while the other would touch down on the
Osrah
’s helo platform to insert the initial fire team. The helo deck would save them from the exposure and danger of a fast-rope boarding. After depositing the first team of boarders, the first helo would then take up the overwatch while the second helo inserted the second fire team. The yacht and Christo were being surrounded; it was now only a matter of time and the level of force involved.

*  *  *

Vladimir was standing on the main afterdeck of the yacht, watching the four boats flank and close in on the
Osrah
. He and his four Spetsnaz commandos could at best only conduct a holding action, and Vladimir knew this. He sent the tender and his two men off on a heading of 45 degrees to port from that of the
Osr
ah
. The tender had twin 250 horsepower Mercury outboards; it was fast but not quite as fast as the Mark V. It quickly began to put distance between itself and the
Osrah
, and one of the Mark Vs followed, which was what Vladimir had in mind. One less boat for him to deal with.

The Russian security chief now knew they were American boats and correctly assumed they would soon be boarded by Navy SEALs. The only issue was how long he could delay that boarding before things got nasty. He was a security consultant, not a criminal, and he would honor his employer’s wishes—up to a point. Then Mikhail, the youngest of his security team, stepped out topside onto the helo deck, brandishing an AK-47. It was a mistake—and a fatal one.

The pilot of the lead helo was a skillful one. He had closed on the
Osrah
carefully, keeping his Knighthawk between the sun and the yacht. He was, in effect, coming out of the sun. With the noise of the yacht’s engines and the distraction of the closing surface craft, he was able to crab down a thousand feet and to a position some 150 yards on the starboard beam of the
Osrah
. The SEAL sniper in the port door of the helo had a clear field of fire, and his Winmag 300 dialed in for the range and altitude.

“I have a Tango armed with an AK on the helo deck, and a shot,” the sniper calmly reported on the tactical net.

It was Crandall’s call, and he made it quickly. “Take him.”

The sniper elected a head shot, which was not easy from a moving helo to that small of a target in a moving boat. But again, the
Osrah
was a highly stabilized yacht, and the helo pilot was very good. The big 190-grain, boat-tailed, special-purpose round went through Mikhail’s head like it was passing through a melon and buried itself into the reinforced helo-pad decking. Mikhail collapsed to the deck like a wet rag. A red-gray cloud of blood and brain tissue hung in the air over him for but an instant, then was snatched away by the wind.

Well off to port and now north of the main sea chase, the trailing Mark V was slowly closing on the
Osrah
’s tender. At the beginning, the two security men felt they could outrun their pursuer. They knew they were making something close to sixty miles per hour, but the sleek gray shape gradually closed the distance. Now it was nearly off their beam and working its way closer.

“What do you think?” the Russian at the helm yelled to his companion.

“We can’t outrun them, but maybe I can slow them down a little.”

With that he took his Kalashnikov and sprayed a long burst at the speeding Mark V. He could see waterspouts between the two vessels, and he knew at least a few of his rounds had hit their pursuer. It was his last conscious thought.

On the Mark V, the port-side .50-caliber swick gunner did not have to request permission to fire; the gunman on the tender had just done that for him. He saw the muzzle flashes from the AK-47, and even felt a round ping off his gun’s armored fairing. Then he pressed the butterfly trigger of the big machine gun. He swept the little RHIB bow to stern and back again, shredding the spray tubes, the two outboards, and the two men. Several rounds ripped into the onboard fuel tanks that were under pressure, creating an atomized cloud of gasoline vapor and liquid. A tracer round did the rest. The RHIB mushroomed into a fireball, as only a gasoline-powered watercraft at high speed can. The Mark V slowed and circled once, then twice. There was nothing but burning debris on the water, a few charred life jackets, and no sign of life. The Mark V OIC, a senior chief petty officer, marked the debris field with eight-digit GPS coordinates on his Garmin navigation system and headed back toward the
Osrah
at maximum RPMs—back to the fight, if there was to be more of a fight. They could return to the site of burned wreckage later if necessary.

Vladimir watched as the two RHIBs climbed up his wake. On each RHIB there were two men, SEALs he rightly guessed, laying on the spray tubes with automatic weapons. The bow .50-caliber was trained on him.

“On the motor-yacht, this is the United States Navy,” came the voice on the bullhorn from the single Mark V now no more than fifty yards away. “Heave to and prepare to be boarded! I say again, heave to and prepare to be boarded! This is your final warning!”

Vladimir held the Motorola handset to his mouth with one hand and kept the other in plain sight. “Okay, Captain, we have no choice. Slowly bring down your speed and come to a complete stop.” Then he stood along the starboard rail in full view of the Mark V, his hands spread wide in a crucifixion gesture.

The
Osrah
’s
captain did not answer, but he immediately complied and the yacht began to lose way. From the pilothouse he had watched the gray speedboat chase after their tender and destroy it. He was all too willing to resist no further. In the solarium, Christo completed his shredding and the deletion of the most sensitive files from his laptop. He thought about stepping onto a weather deck and dropping it over the side, but he too had seen the tender leave the
Osrah
and watched as it was run down and destroyed. He sighed, closed the lid of the laptop, and picked up his Iridium satellite phone. He hit a number on the speed dialer and waited for the connection to go through. It was answered immediately by a trusted retainer.

“Please let me talk to my wife,” Christo said without preamble, and he waited. A moment later, “
Cherie
, it is good to hear your voice this day,” he said warmly. “I am fine, could not be better. And how are you and the little one?” The sat phone was encrypted, but he still never mentioned their names on the phone. “Excellent. I am happy for you both . . . No, I am not sure when I can join you, and that is why I am calling. I may be tied up for a period of time and perhaps hard to reach . . . No, no, nothing’s amiss . . . just business.” Christo then heard the thumping of an approaching helicopter. “Listen,
Cherie
, I really must go now . . . I know, and I miss you as well. My best to the little one . . . Yes, all my love as well.”

Christo pulled back on a heavy sliding window near his desk and, with a penknife, cut a long slit into the window screening. He tossed the sat phone through the opening, over the rail, and into the water. Then he lifted one of the balls of his Newton’s Cradle and let it go. When the first SEAL exploded through the door, he was sitting back comfortably and listening to the
klack-klack-klack
of the steel-ball interaction. The
Osrah
was now almost dead in the water and beginning to wallow in the gentle seaway. He noted, and not for the first time, that the inertial interaction of the steel balls was not as smooth or precise as when the yacht was up and running and the gyro-stabilization system deployed to full advantage. Like many who engaged in complex and dangerous enterprises, when things became stressful, he noticed the little things.

The second helo touched down to deposit the second fire team and Senior Chief Otto Miller without incident. This insertion helo did not actually land, as the
Osrah
could not take a helo as large as the Knighthawk fully aboard, so the pilots simply put the tip of a single skid to the deck and held a semi-hover while the SEALs scrambled aboard. The RHIBs were now close aboard on either stern quarter, but remained abaft the beam so as not to put themselves in a crossfire if the shooting started. As it turned out, there were only two more shots fired. Dmitri had not heard the call from the captain of the
Osrah.
He had been awakened from a sound sleep by the approach of the helicopters and raced topside. He bolted from a port-side door to the main deck with a pistol in
each hand. It was a theatrical move, and his smove. last. The lead SEAL of the port clearing team saw him, saw the pistols, and center-punched him twice. He was dead before he hit the deck.

Miller waited patiently on the helo deck, with a single armed SEAL there for his security. The
Osrah
was now fully stopped and rolling gently in a modest swell. He could hear the SEALs calling out with room-clearing chatter: “Pilothouse clear! . . . Salon secure! . . . Moving forward! . . . Entering port forward stateroom!” and so on. As they moved deeper into the boat, he listened to them on the tactical radio circuit. When the platoon leader declared the yacht secure, the two RHIBs came alongside and disgorged more SEALs. Miller pulled off his headset and handed it, along with the MBITR, to the SEAL at his side. Then he made his way aft and down to the main afterdeck. There he met Vladimir, who was now on the deck facedown, with his hands slip-tied tightly behind his back and a SEAL standing over him. There was a nasty bruise on his cheekbone; he was going to have quite a shiner. Miller squatted beside him, tilting his head to one side to better bring him into view.

“Dobraye utro. Kak pazhivayte?”

“I’m fine, you Yank bastard,” Vladimir spat in English. “And fuck you, too, you son of a bitch.”

Miller regarded him a moment, then,
“Kak vas zafut?”

“It’s Vladimir, and that’s all you need to know.”

“Very well, Vladimir,” Miller continued in a reasonable tone and in English, “we have accounted for four of your men. Are there any more? I ask for a truthful reply, for their sake as well as your own.”

“There are four besides myself, and we are a lawful contract security team employed by the owner of this boat. You have no right to board this vessel and threaten us.”

“Perhaps not,” Miller conceded, “but all four of your men are dead. And should we find a fifth or a sixth, then I will be back to speak to you, and you do not want that.”

Vladimir started to protest, but Miller nodded to the guarding SEAL. He put a foot into his back and a strip of duct tape over his mouth. Miller rose and stepped to the Bandito Platoon assault leader standing by the door to the solarium. The other SEALs were carefully searching the
Osrah
except for the solarium, which they carefully avoided.

“Have the rest of the crew been restrained and segregated, sir?”

“Roger that, Senior Chief.”

“And the owner has been confined to his desk, as I instructed?”

“Roger that, as well. Billy and Walt are guarding him, and everything is in place. We’ll be standing by close at hand and observing from where he can’t see us. He’s all yours, Senior.”

“Thank you, sir,” and he stepped into the solarium.

*  *  *

Half a world away on the
Bonhomme Richard
another group of Navy SEALs were preparing for an entirely different kind of mission. They were going ashore to conduct a raid on a small village on Cedros Island. Earlier that afternoon, a platoon of SEALs from SEAL Team One had been flown aboard by VS-22 Osprey. SEAL Team One was the next team from the West Coast in deployment rotation, so the Team One SEALs were the most combat ready of the West Coast platoons. The Team One platoon, together with the Bandito squad already aboard, gave Roark Engel three SEAL squads to conduct the assault. It would be an over-the-beach operation conducted in CRRCs, or combat rubber raiding craft—Zodiac-type boats with powerful outboards that could carry a squad of armed SEALs into and through a line of surf.

Earlier the previous evening, Lieutenant Engel and Chief Nolan had conducted their warning order, a three-hour-long briefing that covered every aspect of the raid. The warning order was attended by the SEALs, the SWCC coxswains, and the helicopter pilots that would support the operation. It was now just after midnight. The SEALs were either below in the
Bonnie Dick
’s well deck preparing their gear and the CRRCs, or on the flight deck preparing to board the Knighthawk helos for their insertion role. Lieutenant Engel was conducting a final briefing for his squad leaders and boat coxswains. They were crowded into the little TOC around a large flat-screen monitor. Everyone was in black night-assault uniforms.

“Nothing has changed since the warning order,” he began. “If anything, the cell-phone chatter and thermal activity in the village has increased. Too much so. This is a very small village and a very poor one. And it’s isolated. Most of the population on Cedros lives along the southern coast of the island. Here we are some forty miles from Cedros.” On the monitor, the island was shown as a green land mass with a blip to the west that was the
Bonnie Dick
. “We’re still scheduled for a zero two zero zero launch in the two CRRCs. The Bandito squad will be in the lead boat, and the Team One alpha squad, Tom’s squad, in the trail boat. A third CRRC will follow us in case one of our boats has a problem. We’ll skirt the northern tip of the island and come in from the east. Two miles offshore, we’ll throttle back to idle and make our way in as quietly as possible.” The monitor expanded to show the northeast coast of Cedros Island and a small fishing village. “Once we’re on the beach, the boats will pull back out and wait offshore. The weather guys are still calling for less than three feet of surf, so you should be able to deal with that.” The three SWCC coxswains all nodded. “After we’re ashore, we’ll go into a security perimeter and wait until just before first light.”