One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (3 page)

Shit!

Kolt wasn’t sure if the SEAL had successfully dropped or if he had slipped off the end of the rope and fallen into the sea. But he did know a drifting Little Bird over a moving ship was fairly common. Weeks would make the fine adjustments and get them back over the correct insert point. No drama. Kolt held what he had.

“Twister’s Lame Duck, Lame Duck!” Weeks calmly transmitted.

Kolt froze.
What the hell?

Without further warning the MH-6M jerked nose down, wobbled out of balance, and went into an uncontrollable right-hand yaw.

Blade strike? Antenna? High-tension wire?

Now that wasn’t common. Kolt figured Weeks lost drive in the tail rotor from either a blade strike–induced break in the drive train or a Murphy-like mechanical failure. Either way, or anything different altogether, any barracks mechanic could tell you it was absolutely fucked-up shit.

Kolt thought to reach for his snap link, debating whether or not to hook back in. Or, just slide down the rope and safely into the water. Put distance between him and the problem, let the HIT save his ass, pop a pin flare, and get picked up later. Before he could decide, Kolt heard a hard metallic snap and yanked his neck to investigate. The tail rotor had snapped off the main cabin and was falling toward the ocean.

Kolt knew now the safest place to be was inside with the pilots, as far away from the six spinning blades on the main rotor as possible. Second to that, the open cabin just behind the pilots’ seats and near the auxiliary fuel tank offered the best protection, and the best chance of surviving the impending crash impact.

Kolt also knew Chief Weeks didn’t have many emergency-procedure options when the crash sequence began. He knew he would be concentrating on keeping it “wings level” as they spun downward to the drink from about fifty feet above the choppy sea.

“Fuck!”

Kolt didn’t know who shouted, but it summed up his feelings nicely. Fighting the centrifugal force created by the spinning, now tailless MH-6M, Kolt struggled to push off the rope and reach for the edge of the cabin. Kolt gripped the sheet metal with his right hand, releasing his left-hand death grip from the rope, and, half launching, half pulling, he managed to get his upper torso inside. Lying on his back, his legs still hanging out the starboard side, Kolt reached out for whatever hard points he could find. As he braced for impact, his eyes rolled to the top of his goggles. Kolt blinked twice.

Slapshot?

A moment later, the MH-6M smacked into the frigid waters upside down, the rotor blades slapping the water, reducing their speed significantly. Kolt slammed into the roof area of the helo, his body armor saving him from severe blunt trauma. He took in a heavy whiff of engine oil and JP8 as ice water gushed into the doorless bubble cockpit and cabin.

Kolt knew the pilots’ shoulder harness reels would lock on impact and that they would free themselves. Assuming they were conscious, their extensive training and basic mission qualification standards ensured that much. But, just as instinctively, Kolt figured he was screwed.

He remembered his pool workup and Slapshot’s adolescent scare tactics about some bullshit called the gasp reflex. Something about the average schmuck can hold his breath for 103 seconds in room-temperature air, but maxes out at about 12 seconds of air when immersed in cold water. The gasp reflex was involuntary, Slapshot explained, and didn’t give two shits how badass you thought you were.

The HEED!

Kolt held his breath as the MH-6M held him entombed and dragged him below the choppy water. But forgetting to close his mouth, either from the hard slam against his chicken plate or simple shock, he took in a gulp of seawater. He tried to spit it out but, already submerged, he had no choice but to close his mouth tight and fight the urge to panic.

He reached for his HEED, stoked to find it on the first try, but fumbled to turn the white rubber mouthpiece toward his face. He jammed it in his mouth, closed his lips tight around it, and purged the regulator and most of the water in his mouth. Kolt coughed, having not cleared all the salt water, and struggled to remain calm.

When submerged at night, without reference points and unable to see, Kolt knew the key to survival was actually counterintuitive. Swimming out of the crashed helo was the last thing he should do, as the arm strokes and kicks were more likely to hang his kit up on some unseen hazard. If that happened, he would suck his HEED empty trying to free himself. Once he was out of air, seawater would rush into his lungs, shallow water blackout would be rapid, and he would simply drown, sinking to the ocean floor with the wreckage. Really, Kolt certainly knew, no different from Yellow Creek.

Kolt did his best to stay calm, but with only two to five minutes of air, and a sinking helicopter, he needed to move fast. He used basic hand-over-hand and controlled pulls, working his way free of the wreckage by feel. Once he cleared the fuselage he knew his body’s natural buoyancy would right him head up and point him to the surface. With the HIT horse collar, even better.

But Kolt had swallowed too much seawater and struggled to juggle air from the HEED and the water in his lungs. Feeling with his hands, he found the outer edge of the submerged cabin, and felt the weight of the wreckage pull his hands downward. He let go to prevent himself from being dragged to the ocean floor and pushed off from an unseen hard point with his right assault boot.

Unable to see, even with his goggles still in place, the front end of Kolt’s Ops-Core brain bucket bumped into something blocking his escape route.

The surprise startled him, knocking the HEED from his mouth. Kolt reached out with his right hand to assess the obstacle while he ran the length of the dummy cord to secure his HEED and reinserted the mouthpiece. Again, he pressed the top of the air bottle to purge the regulator. Again, he coughed deeply, fighting the natural urge to spit out the mouthpiece.

A human!

Kolt quickly grabbed the upper body of the person in front of him. He ran his hands along the edges, determining the body was actually upside down and unconscious. Or quite possibly even dead.

Kolt wasn’t exactly sure if the guy on the opposite pod was the SEAL or his troop sergeant, Slapshot. He ran his hands up to the human’s waist, and felt around the open water for a monkey strap. The operator’s buoyancy and horse collar activation were working against the downward-sinking movement of the MH-6M. He followed the taut line to the snap link with his left hand, thumbed it open, and felt the lanyard yank upward, signaling the operator’s horse collar was pulling him to the surface.

Fuck!

Kolt felt the hard bite on his right forearm, the sharp teeth easily penetrating the polyurethane dry suit and puncturing his skin.

Roscoe!

The bomb dog didn’t loosen the bite, and began to shake his head rapidly from side to side, threatening to tear Kolt’s arm off at the elbow joint. Kolt thumbed the snap link gate open and unhooked it from the helo O-ring. Immediately Kolt felt the snap link pull up and out of his hand, confirming the SEAL was free and ascending to the surface.

With Roscoe still working the bite, thrashing back and forth as if he had the lungs of an alligator and wasn’t thirty feet under the ocean surface, Kolt suddenly recalled a glimmer of Slapshot just before impact. He reached toward the left edge of the outer pod and moved his hand back and forth, searching for Slapshot’s safety line. He would be inverted now, like the SEAL was, but still tethered close enough to the outer pod for Kolt to know for sure.

Nothing but space.

Kolt reached for Roscoe’s neck with his left hand and ran his thumb up to the dog’s right ear. He pinched hard, giving Roscoe something else to think about. Feeling the bite pressure release, Kolt yanked his right forearm free and reached for Roscoe’s snap link. He couldn’t find it initially as he ran his hands along the outer pod, and was forced to expand his search area. Just as he touched it with his right hand, one of Roscoe’s front paws slashed downward, pulling Kolt’s eye protection off his face and leaving a long scratch on Kolt’s right cheek. The cold salt water flooded his eyes just as a second paw slash knocked the HEED from his mouth.

Screw the dog, I need to get to the surface, or drown in this lonely ocean.

Kolt thought he had decided. Leave the dog and save himself. But his conscience grabbed him, reminding him that Roscoe wasn’t just a stray mutt in the Hindu Kush. Or, maybe God’s hand was working. Kolt knew that, even before 9/11, working dogs had proven to be must-have assets on target. Not everyone was a PETA extremist, but nobody could argue that their nose wasn’t a combat multiplier or that they didn’t take years to train. Kolt knew they had saved the lives of countless operators, either from sniffing out IEDs or taking down scumbags like the Chechen Black Widows at the Sochi Games.

Aw shit! I can’t leave Roscoe.

Kolt put both hands on Roscoe’s snap link and unhooked it easily. He held on to the snap link as he found his HEED again and reinserted it.

Fuck me. Empty!

Kolt pulled on the inverted outer pod above his head, and felt himself moving free of the still-descending Little Bird. Out of breath and feeling the early effects of shallow water blackout, he knew he needed to get to the surface immediately. Sure, he knew drowning was actually peaceful, once you reached your limits. Kolt certainly knew his, but the panic before the peace was a mankind equalizer.

Kolt pulled stroke with both hands and frog-kicked, thankful for the horse collar and no longer worried about the cold water that had entered his neck area or the rash. Two more long pulls and Kolt’s helmeted head popped out of the water, with Roscoe surfacing a moment later. The silence from inside the sinking helo was interrupted immediately by the rotor blades of a hovering MH-6M, most definitely Twister Two-Two.

Just as Kolt raised his hand to wave at the hovering Little Bird, a white beam of light from an operator’s rifle illuminated Kolt, Roscoe, and the immediate area. Kolt noticed several objects floating nearby. Kolt wasn’t surprised to see an obvious pilot seat cushion, and what looked like a pilot’s map board that is usually strapped to the thigh, but the third item floating nearby was oddly out of place. He tried to focus on it, squinting into the rotor wash of the hovering Twister Two-Two and fighting the bright white light.

He rubbed the salt water out of his eyes.

A fucking doggie toy!

TWO

USS
Ponce,
Atlantic Ocean

Son of a bitch!
Delta commander Jeremy Webber did his best to count his blessings, but found them few and far between. The joint training mission to assault a large ship at sea was a bust as far as Delta was concerned, but at least the men had all been plucked from the water alive and in relatively good shape.

Webber drew in a deep breath and did his best to compose himself as he walked with SEAL commander Hank Yost from the planning bay up to the main hangar deck of the USS
Ponce
. They knew the MH-6M Little Birds would be landing on the flight deck soon, signaling the soggy return of the rescued men. Webber gave way to his navy peer, letting him navigate the galleys and the shortcuts through a string of heavy watertight doors, before they reached the main hangar deck.

“Your boys took a hell of a dunking tonight,” Yost said.

“No wetter than yours,” Webber said, annoyed that he rose to the bait. It was no secret DOD was considering combining Delta and the SEALs, or even getting rid of one altogether. It was one of the reasons this joint exercise had been planned.

“So much for the training exercise,” Yost said.

Is he looking for an elbow to the teeth?
He and Yost had been friends for years, but right now Webber was ready to pop him one. “I’m happy everyone is okay,” Webber said, exerting more control over himself.

Webber climbed the last set of aluminum stairs from the second deck and lowered his head as he followed Yost, stepping over the bottom of the watertight doorjamb. The hangar deck was bustling with activity as sailors and troops ducked in and out of the unit’s and the 160th’s open equipment containers. Maintenance crews were seen behind the roped-off area that held the spare AH-6 gunships, their wooden rocket cases, and the MH-6Ms, prepping to launch if the order came.

Hangar deck elevator number two lowered from the flight deck on the starboard side of the ship. Backlit by the moonlight bouncing off the dark blue sky, a dozen or so silhouettes stood on the elevator as it slowly came into view.

Webber saw Kolt’s feet first as the elevator cleared the outer edge of the flight deck and continued to lower a half foot per second. Behind Kolt, Slapshot was visible, and nearby two SEALs, one holding a K9 in his arms, and just behind them the two Little Bird pilots. Webber marveled at Raynor’s nine lives. The soldier was a lot like the USS
Ponce
in that regard. Two years ago the ship was to be decommissioned, but all that changed when U.S. Central Command realized they needed a floatable forward staging base to handle contingencies in the Middle East and off the coast of Africa. Now, instead of being so many car parts or flying the flag of some third-world ally, the USS
Ponce
was a refitted fighting machine, and had become the first ever laser weapon system.

Webber and Yost stood a few feet from Kolt as the medics went to work. They used medical scissors to cut off his horse collar and assault vest, then drew the scissors up his arms, cutting the polypropylene dry suit away from his body.

“You cut into me and I’ll sic that damn dog on you,” Kolt growled. “And I could have just taken the assault vest off. You didn’t have to ruin it.”

Webber chuckled to himself.

As Yost moved off to check on his SEALs, Webber moved in closer to Raynor. A dozen or so medics were checking the survivors’ vitals. Webber noticed the blood running down Kolt’s face.