Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (4 page)

The sun dropped behind the clouds before it dropped behind the ocean. No green flash tonight. The SEALs and the kids gradually played themselves out and began to straggle back to the food tables. It was a standard beach spread with chips, burgers, hotdogs, potato salad, and coleslaw. The other wives fussed over Jackie, and Roark moved from one table to another, taking a few moments with each extended family group. Dave Nolan was on the move as well. Their circuits converged when they reached a couple comfortably ensconced in two beach chairs on the edge of the group. Their kids were older and off doing what teenagers do on a Sunday night.

“Evening, Senior Chief. Hello, Mary. Good to see you again.”

“Evening, sir,” he replied. Then to Nolan, “How goes it with the Bandito, Jefe?”

“It goes well, Senior—even better knowing Cetty g that you’ll be with our detachment.”

Mary, sensing they needed to talk, pushed herself to her feet. “Think I’ll go and see what the girls are doing.” She paused, then gave Engel a hug. “I just heard the news, Roark. I couldn’t be more tickled. Blessings to you and Jackie.”

“Thanks, Mary. We won’t be long.”

They watched as she made her way over to a group of wives. Engel sensed that the collective mood of their ladies was much lighter than it had been during previous pre-deployment parties. Those rotations had been to Afghanistan or Iraq, with the prospect of certain and continuous combat. This deployment, with the task unit away from the active theaters in a contingency posture, held the prospect of probable engagement, but not the daily combat operations nearly all of them had known since 9/11. On this rotation, they would be looking for opportunities to get their guns in the fight. Currently in Afghanistan, as it had been in Iraq a few years before, the environment was target rich, and quite often, the fight found you.

The SEAL wives were for the most part bright, attractive, outgoing women and, in many cases, much more than the home half of a marriage. SEALs tended to marry women like themselves—capable, self-reliant, and independent. Many, including Jackie, were professionals whose income exceeded that of their husbands. Most worked until the children arrived. Some then became stay-at-home moms while others retained nannies and continued their careers. Yet because many SEALs and their wives shared the type-A gene, divorce rates were high—not noticeably higher now than before 9/11 but still high.

“Senior, I didn’t speak with you before I asked the skipper if you could detach in support of us. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No worries, sir. I’ve been to Southeast Asia many times, and before this deployment’s over, we’ll all probably be back out in WESTPAC with the rest of the task unit.” He grinned with some satisfaction. “It’s a chance to work a new area of operations. Other than that, I go where they tell me, just like you do. That much hasn’t changed.”

At thirty-nine, Senior Chief Otto Miller was older than any of the platoon SEALs and one of the older hands at Team Seven. He was also a legend in the SEAL Teams. As a platoon leading petty officer at SEAL Team Five, he had been badly wounded in an urban firefight during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. His squad had gone out to rescue an Army patrol that was pinned down by insurgents. Early in the fight, his face had been raked by shrapnel, and a bullet found its way under his body armor and lodged itself in his spine. Yet he kept his gun in the fight, and his actions saved many lives in the beleaguered patrol. The bullet left him with permanent nerve damage and only the partial use of his left leg. He could have taken his Navy Cross and a substantial disability pension and retired, but Otto Miller was not finished serving his country. While he was still in physical therapy, he asked to have his Navy rating changed from Special Operator First Class to Intelligence Specialist First Class. Intelligence Specialists are among the Navy’s smartest sailors, and their rating is known to be one that demands a great deal of ability. Miller got his rating change, but he also had to pass the IS1 exam to keep it—no easy task for someone new to the Ce nlitspecialty. He passed the exam and then some, exceeding the scores of other more-seasoned sailors, specialists who had been working in military intelligence for years.

The ten years of continuous combat since 9/11 produced a good many wounded SEALs, men physically unable to return to duty. Not all of them handled it well. They had not joined the Navy and the SEAL Teams because they couldn’t find work or because college proved too difficult or to receive job training. They joined to become professional warriors. Once in the Teams, they entered this elite brotherhood and came to know the sometimes-narcotic thrill of special-operations combat. When their battle wounds forced them out of combat rotation, either they adjusted or they did not. Most got to where they were because they were goal oriented and success driven. The disabilities imposed by combat simply brought on a new set of challenges. A great many left the Navy and began a new life, usually with great success. Others, like Otto Miller, found a different way to serve in uniform. For a few, what they had come to know and what had been taken from them proved to be too much. They became the emotional casualties that every war produces.

Miller was heavily scarred about his mouth and neck, and no amount of plastic surgery would ever make him what he was. He wore a beard and mustache that hid most of the damage, but that was not why he let his facial hair grow. Among his many talents was his knack for languages and his skill as an interrogator. In Iraq, a man wore a mustache; and in Afghanistan, men wore beards and mustaches. So did most of those detained as terrorist suspects. He was merely conforming to the culture of those from whom he wished to extract information. Miller’s record of successful interrogations now exceeded his considerable operational success. It was said that he could get a hardened criminal to dime out his own mother and to feel good about having given her up. When he was an operational SEAL, he was in high demand in the platoons. Now every task unit wanted Miller in their intel shop. Both Engel and Nolan considered it something of a coup to have him in support of their detached squad. That they were given Miller was a further indication that there could be some activity in or around Central America that might require an on-call, special-operations response element.

“Any idea what’s going on down there?” Engel asked the senior chief.

Miller considered this, thoughtfully pulling his hand down his beard in a professorial gesture. He wore his hair longish and combed it straight back over his head. His deep green eyes seemed to be backlit. During interrogations, they became incandescent and piercing, and he used them on his opponent like he had once used the targeting laser on his automatic weapon.

“It could be just about anything,” he finally replied. “Drugs, extortion, a kidnapping. I’ll know a little more tomorrow morning once I’ve had a chance to run the agency alphabet trapline. But something’s got someone’s attention, that’s for sure.”

After more than ten years of war, the military special operators and the diverse appendages of the national intelligence apparatus had finally become synched. They now talked to one another, and the talk led to cooperation—the kind of cooperation that had resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Miller had good contacts at the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, and DIA, and with their human and technical collec Chniof tion organizations. The intelligence community and the military were also now linked by sophisticated and secure communications networks. Early Monday morning, Miller would be pushing his agency and military contacts in Central and South America for any breaking leads. Usually, but not always, bits of information came from the opposition’s use of unencrypted cell phones or some other technical collector. There was also the occasional agent on the payroll of some hardworking CIA case officer who came up with some obscure but related fact. And that fact could be linked to another fact and to still another until the mosaic produced operable intelligence in the form of a target folder. This was called operations-intelligence, or ops-intel, fusion, and it was making life dangerous for terrorists worldwide.

“It’s like this, fellows,” the senior chief continued, “over in the sandbox, in the jihad-land, it’s all about religion and tribalism. Down south, it’s all about money. The money comes from drugs. There are the drug-support industries like gunrunning, the bribing of officials, assassination, and so on, but the big bucks come from producing drugs and moving drugs to the U.S. and European markets. It’s a sixty-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The U.S. military mission down south has to do with training—training the Colombians and the Salvadorians to fight drugs. But we don’t fight drugs down there, they do, or at least that’s the idea. We’ve had the Green Berets and some of our special boat teams helping with this training, but not a SEAL direct-action element in this mix, which, gentlemen, is what you are.”

“What
we
are,” Engel interrupted. “You’re a part of this team.”

“Thanks, sir. The money from drugs only comes when the product gets moved north. So the druggies have some very efficient and sophisticated ways to get the stuff across our southern border. And God knows there are plenty of illegals moving south to north. The big concern has always been that the jihadists and the druggies might climb into bed with each other. It’s got the boys and girls at Langley scared shitless. See, the jihadists have money and motivation, and the druggies have the mules to move contraband into this country. So the fear is that some deal gets cut to bring chemicals or radiological materials across the border. I know the Agency and Homeland Security have people working on this. So our going south may have something to do with this. My guess is they wouldn’t pull a SEAL detachment down there unless there was something afoot. Someone’s concerned about something. There are probably indicators, but nothing solid yet. But, hey, you fellows have been around long enough to know it could be something or it could be nothing.”

Engel nodded. It made sense. “Chief, what else?” he asked, looking at Nolan.

Nolan simply shrugged. “It is what it is. We’re ready to fight—as a platoon or now as a detached squad. All we need is a target folder and a mission-support package, and we’re good to go.” He paused and glanced over to where the platoon SEALs were gathering expectantly, in two separate groups: one, the squad that would be deploying with the task unit to the Philippines, and the other, the detached squad that would go south. “Boss, the guys all know about the change, but a little fatherly platoon officer advice might be in order right now.”

“Understood. Senior, you want to excuse us for a Ccus/di moment.”

“No problem, fellows. I’ll let you know if and when I learn anything.”

It was the custom on the eve of a deployment for the senior platoon officer and the platoon chief to each give a short, private out-the-door speech to the SEALs before they broke off to finish the evening with their families. Since the Bandito Platoon would be splitting into two squads for at least the initial part of this deployment, Engel had elected to make the break now. His assistant platoon officer and the next senior enlisted leader, the platoon leading petty officer, would caucus with the task unit squad, while he and Nolan would quickly meet with their detached squad. The platoon SEALs sensed this, and the two groups of SEALs separated and moved apart—from the families and from each other. Engel and Nolan led their group to one of the outlying picnic tables. There were five others besides the two of them, making it a light squad. The task unit squad would have a total of nine SEALs, which Engel knew would make his task unit commander more comfortable. He had his own responsibilities. Engel and Nolan had selected the five for their individual skills but had not cherry-picked them; they would fight alongside any of the Bandito Platoon SEALs.

There was Diego Weimy, or just plain Weimy. He was one of the platoon snipers and now the lead sniper for their squad. Like many SEAL snipers, he did not grow up hunting or shooting with his father or uncles. In fact, he grew up on the south side of Chicago, where the closest he came to a rural experience was the trash-strewn vacant lot where the kids played baseball and hid from local merchants after they’d boosted a candy bar or a radio from their store. The SEAL sniper instructors liked men who had limited shooting instruction, as it meant there were fewer bad habits to break in teaching them long-range shooting. Weimy had been stocking shelves in Albertsons when he decided to go into the military. He chose the Navy because he wanted to get away, and there was no saltwater near Chicago. He volunteered for SEAL training on a whim, having no idea what he was getting into. In training, Weimy had been what they called a gray man—someone you never noticed. But after Hell Week had caused most in his class to quit, he was still there. He was good at all SEAL skills, but by SEAL standards, not great at any except for shooting. Still, he had the right temperament, the shooting mechanics, and the cold efficiency of a natural-born sniper. Weimy, like the rest of them, was now anxious to learn more about the squad’s detached duty. He was also anxious to get back to his wife and infant son.

Ramon Diamond was the one SEAL they selected because he was the best. He was the most experienced of the two platoon radio operators, and since they would not have the support of the task unit’s communications team to draw on, they drafted him for the squad. Ray was an electronics geek first and a SEAL second. Everyone came to Ray—with a new cell phone that they needed to learn how to operate or with a laptop that had fallen prey to a particularly nasty virus. Engel suspected that Ray quietly hacked into national-security databases for satellite imagery. On their last deployment to Afghanistan, he always seemed to come up with great aerial imagery of their targets. When Engel had asked where he got them, Ray had been evasive, saying that you just had to know where to look. They had worked well together on that last deployment. Ray normally stayed close to Engel, as communications were critical in the modern fight—comms with the engaged SEAL fire teams as well as comms with the support elements and higher headqu Chig inarters. During one particularly vicious firefight, Engel had looked around and couldn’t find Ray. A teammate had gone down, and Ray had raced through a hail of fire to drag the injured man to safety. That action led to Ray’s second Silver Star. One of the big dichotomies with their platoon geek was that his arms were covered with gang tats, which he refused to discuss. “Some guys are reborn in Christ,” Ray would say when asked. “I was reborn in the Navy. That’s all you need to know.” In addition to his IT skills, he had a dry sense of humor and a knack for pushing other people’s buttons.