True Devotion (28 page)

They think they are the only people on the island.

They’ve been at sea at least the last fourteen hours.

It’s the middle of the night.

They want to wait until the plane arrives to move the device.

Joe still found it troubling. What was he missing? He scanned the tree line at the back of the beach. “All the men down there came off the boat?” he asked Cougar again.

“Yes.”

Joe eventually nodded, then moved back to the men.

0422, Joe silently signaled, setting the time of the attack. They acknowledged and moved into the water.

It was a slow, deep swim to get into position.

At 0422, six of his men appeared silently from the water to surge up the sides of the boat, seven appeared on the dock. Joe was the second man to the dock, positioned at the corner of the boathouse for line of sight down the pier to the beach. He counted the seconds by his heartbeats as he watched in his peripheral vision his men sweep through an assault they had planned and rehearsed until it was instinctive.

They got eight seconds before the first return fire came. Joe was startled at the ferocity of it. Fourteen men, most of them already down, could not hit the dock like this.

“It’s coming from the tree line!”

Joe looked around and saw men rushing across the sand toward the pier. Too many men.

* * *

Joe dropped his forehead against his arm as another bunch of wood splinters tore from the dock. With forty to forty-five men coming at them to try and overwhelm the pier, they couldn’t knock them down fast enough. Even the two snipers left on the rocks were finding it a challenge to slow them down. And somewhere in that tree line were two machine-gun nests determined not to give them a chance to try.

Boomer raced around the boathouse to the front line they had established, bringing more ammo, spreading the clips between them as he ran. He dropped in beside Bear. “I’m glad we brought more ammo than even I thought we would need.”

“The boat?” They would lose the pier soon if they couldn’t stop the machine-gun nests.

“Cougar’s almost got it.”

Shredded corrugated steel from the boathouse came raining down around them.

Boomer leaned against him as he began pulling grenades from his vest pockets. “Do you get the feeling we were expected?”

Twenty-Five

* * *

Kelly felt uneasy with no reason for it. When she would have normally stopped to chat, she bypassed friends in the church lobby to instead slip into the sanctuary, seeking the quietness there. She found an empty bench and took a seat, set aside her purse and her Bible. The sanctuary was cool. The organist had begun to play a background chorus to prepare for the service.

She gripped the back of the bench before her and rested her chin on her hands. Something was wrong.

Lord, I don’t know why I am feeling such a burden to pray for Joe right this minute, but You understand the need if there is one. Give them courage. Keep them focused. Keep them safe.

God is my refuge . . . Please be their refuge at this moment.

The burden lifted but not the sense of disquiet. It was like this when the team was deployed, the lack of news foretelling the worst. She repeated her prayer and the unease finally changed to calm trust. Even if they didn’t need the prayer, she did. She needed to let go of the worry. God was her refuge too. What if Joe didn’t come home? She let herself consider her worst fear. Would she change what she had decided regarding Joe?

No. If anything she would waffle less and instead show more courage. She had let Joe see her afraid and worried. Instead of going to God and being honest—
I’m worried; help me know You are my refuge—
she had asked Joe to accept her worry as normal, to carry that pressure she put on him.

Her eyes were beginning to open. She hadn’t escaped those three years of wandering unharmed—she was back but the restoration was still going on. Three years of going her own way had taught her to worry about life. Right now her worry was a good benchmark for how far from “God is my refuge” she had come. If something happened . . . She had survived before; she would survive again.

She owed Joe an apology.

God, I’m sorry. When Joe gets back, I want a chance to talk with him. I owe him that.

* * *

“We control the boat. We’ll cover while you come across!” Cougar yelled.

Under this kind of fire the time for the four of them still on the far side of the boathouse to get safely around the dock, climb over the boat railing onto the open deck, and get into the central hub was too great. The device had to come first. “Get that boat out of the harbor!” Bear hollered into the mike. “Swing around the reef to meet up with the snipers. We’ll take to the water and extract at point Charlie.”

“Roger, L-T!”

The engine was throttled hard, surging the diesel boat away from the dock and back to sea under SEAL control, most of the platoon already aboard.

Joe could see history repeating itself—the platoon taking the device to safety, he and a few others holding off the men who were trying to stop that from happening. It was his and Nick’s final actions all over again. He had just repeated the exact same decision. It was the right move. Logic told him that.

There was a time to be illogical.

He wasn’t repeating history, logical move or not. “Boomer, Franklin, Wolf, scrub point Charlie. We are heading to point Alpha on top of that ridge. We’re going out by air.”

It was a decade of sand, sweat, and trust that turned the three of them toward the new objective he gave without even a question. He chose going into the gunfire in front of them instead of back into the safety of the sea behind them.

“I’m going to slide into that crevice at the end of the pier and drop a few grenade rounds on those gunners; then we’re going to move like lightning up to the right around those rocks and come around above them. Franklin, Wolf, get ready to run. Boomer, stay put until I fire; then keep them off my back until I can reach that first step. As soon as I’m there, go for the rocks.”

He had to fire uphill into the gunners. The only way to get shells into those nests was to be in the tip of the V. Get to the end of the pier, and he could literally send them each a fastball down their throats. Six steps. He saw each one in his mind; six steps exposed before he could dive off the pier to the sand and be back under cover. He could do it in five. Kelly would appreciate him doing it in five.
I love you, Kelly, but you’re still a distraction.
“I’m going now!” Joe rushed forward, low, exposed to the gunfire as he lost the shelter of the boathouse and sprinted along the pier.

The symphony of covering fire drowned out the fire coming toward him. Joe knew it was providence not skill that slammed him into the sand, bruised but unhurt. “Get ready to run!” He racked the tube, took a breath, and pivoted up. “Run!” The blast cratered the right machine-gun nest even as his words echoed through the earpiece.

He was rolling to put two down the throat of the left machine-gun nest even as he heard Boomer yell, “Bear, roll right! We’ve got company behind us!”

Joe rolled right and got slammed on the back with debris as the end of the pier took a mortar round. Where had they gotten mortars?

He got a glimpse and felt the world twist. Another boat. It must have been anchored in some cove, camouflaged and waiting. It was small, maneuverable—it couldn’t stop another boat, but it could spray everything in its path with gunfire.

Had he and the other SEALs gone to the water to exit the cove, the four of them would be dead. The realization was like a fist in the gut.
Lord, thank You!

If that boat pulled to the pier and unloaded the men on board, they might still end up dead. It wasn’t the odds; it was the ammo. His vest was way too light for another firefight.

“Boomer, get off that dock!” Boomer saw the threat, should have broken for the rocks moments ago. Joe could see him flat on his belly on the dock, lying between the boathouse and the empty diesel barrels.

“I’m right behind you,” Boomer yelled back.

Wolf and Franklin had the lines of retreat protected, could hold back the men on the beach from moving forward but could do nothing about the boat now reversing engines to close with the dock. Joe dashed from his exposed position to the first boulder where he could give Boomer some cover, then heard his friend close to a step behind him. “Keep going! It’s going to be hot!”

The dock and pier shredded behind them in a powerful explosion, a wall of fire and heat reaching out to envelop the boat, and moments later the mortars on board lit all at once. “One problem solved,” Boomer remarked as they ran.

They disappeared into the rocks along the ridge with Franklin and Wolf, leaving confusion behind.

Moving fast, ready to fire, they cut north. Franklin was calling in the extraction helicopter as Joe and Boomer split directions to circle and ensure the landing zone stayed clear.

The race up the ridge had his heart pounding in his ears, the gunfire absorbing his hearing. Only as they slowed at the extraction site did the static-meshed voices distinguish themselves into discernible words. “Say again, Cougar. Say again.”

“The holds are empty! There never was a device on board!”

Joe got the news the mission had failed as fire erupted from the beach below tracing up into the sky toward the incoming helicopter.

* * *

He had almost gotten his men killed. For no device, no Raider, he had almost gotten his men killed. Joe leaned his head back against the cold metal of the helicopter gunner’s rack and closed his eyes, let it sink in that they were safely racing out to sea, and felt the nausea slowly fade. His body was taking pleasure in reminding him what he had just endured. The adrenaline had been so powerful it had nearly stopped his heart.

“You’ll get a medal for taking that kind of risk.”

Joe didn’t bother to open his eyes as Boomer moved from manning the side gun to the floor beside him. “Getting a medal for failing is hardly something I want on my record.”

“You saved my life, not to mention that of Franklin and Wolf by getting us off that pier when you did. If they don’t award you the Navy Cross, I will.”

“I notice you blew apart the pier about two seconds away from perfect,” Bear replied.

“It seemed like a prudent thing to do under the circumstances.”

Joe smiled. “We hadn’t even thought about that one when we what-if’d what we might need to do.”

“That dock was a classic World War II Seabee design, and goodness knows my dad built enough of them. Use a small charge to blow a hole in the center pillar, then put a brick of C-4 inside the pillar’s hollow core and blow that. It’s literally like blowing a chimney apart. You just have to know the metal beam is hollow. If Dad built it, he wanted to know how I would blow it up. It was one of his favorite Saturday afternoon questions. I’ve done that dock before, just never live.”

“We owe the medal to your dad.”

“I just wish I could tell him the story.”

They shared a smile. They both knew this mission would never declassify in their lifetimes. Joe returned to the problem. “We should have known the mission was blown.”

“How?”

“None of the tangos came out to meet the boat. I knew it was wrong. We should have taken the time to send a reconnaissance team around behind the beach.” They had considered it during the mission work-up but in the end ruled it out. It took time, split their men, and ran a high risk of an accidental encounter destroying the surprise factor.

“We would have still gone to get the device.”

“The other side not only knew we were coming, but they also knew it far enough in advance to set up that reception committee. I want to know where the leak is,” Bear replied grimly.

“Do you think Raider deliberately fed us false information through that contact in Hong Kong?”

“After that mission three years ago, he had to know that he had a mole somewhere in his organization or we would never have been able to intercept that K-42. Why not feed out bad information at a critical time and watch us react? It’s what I would do.” They were getting outmaneuvered by the man and it was time for it to stop. Past time.

“He picked the wrong platoon to mess with.”

Bear nodded. Somebody had just punched a grizzly bear, and he could feel the fury. “I want this man, Boomer.”

Twenty-Six

* * *

Their flight arrived back on Naval Air Station North Island at 1400 hours, Monday. Joe stood at the base of the ramp as the men filed off the cargo plane in pairs, carrying their personal gear. He watched faces, reading eyes, seeing what he had expected in the grim expressions. Getting shot at when it was a setup did not sit well with any of them. This was a mission they would debrief in earnest. They would learn from it.

He saw Boomer and Christi meet each other, Boomer’s long hug that did not let go. His friend had almost gotten himself killed taking those extra few seconds to blow up the dock. Boomer had done it without hesitation to protect the rest of the team, but it had been a decision that had ramifications. Boomer had come close to never seeing his wife again. Joe could feel that emotion across the tarmac and understood its depths. If he had been forced to face Christi and tell her Boomer was not coming home as he had once been forced to face Kelly—Joe knew it would have destroyed Christi.

The last of the men came down the ramp. Joe thanked the pilot who had expedited their return home. The supply crews came in to begin unloading the heavy equipment. Joe picked up his own gear.