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  The skipper of the USS Mesa Verde, Captain Xavier Bennett, was talking softly to a lieutenant commander. The exchange between Bennett and the unidentified officer showed an easy confidence between the two Surface Warfare officers. Easy confidence between Surface Warfare officers was an anomaly as far as Tucker was concerned. A happy Surface Warfare officer was one who had no time for friends, too much work to ever complete, and an opportunity to take work from others. How did the Navy story go about Surface Warfare officers — those officers who commanded ships at sea and got woodies at the idea of getting underway? Oh, yes: “Put a surface warfare officer in a room by himself with only a pencil and a piece of paper and within thirty minutes he’ll have developed a watchbill for himself.”

  Master Chief Collins moved away from the porthole, through the patch of sunlight, to the coffee pot against the aft bulkhead. “Light’s on,” the master chief said to no one in particular, referring to the red light above the spigot of the thirty-cup pot that indicated when the coffee had finished percolating. His rolled-up cammie sleeves revealed the twisted anchor tattoo of a chief petty officer on his left lower arm with a date beneath it. Tucker thought, Probably the date he made chief. Tucker saw the telltale blue of another tattoo on the right arm, but his quick glance couldn’t tell what it was.

  Collins stuck one of the ceramic visitor cups, embossed with the ship’s shield, under the spigot and filled the cup. The action revealed sinewy arms while the fluorescent lights highlighted a slight five o’ clock shadow on the sunned face of the Seabee. All that time outdoors had baked the man’s face into leather, but, then again, he’s in good shape for someone in his forties. Tucker smiled. I’m in my forties. The master chief turned, saw Tucker looking at him, and raised his cup toward him in an informal toast while silently mouthing the words, “Fresh, sir,” to him.

  Tucker smiled and nodded. Collins pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and ran it across the short stubble of hair covering his head. Then he poured another cup, walked the few steps to Tucker, and handed it to him. “Wouldn’t drink too much, Commander. I doubt they have head facilities on the helo.”

  “Doubt it, too. But, then again, Master Chief, this may be our last hot drink for a while.”

  “Or, forever,” Brute added.

  “Thanks, Brute. I needed that,” Collins replied.

  Collins winked at Tucker. “Sir, I intend to hold the commander to his word that this is a “quick in, quick out” mission where for once in our careers we Seabees are going to get to destroy something that is in perfect working order and doesn’t require us to rebuild it.”

  “I should have this ready in just a moment,” the ship’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Portnoy, announced.

  Captain Bennett moved away from the lieutenant commander he had been talking with and over to the table. “Commander Raleigh, this is for you and your team,” he said, motioning Tucker nearer the table.

  A drop of sweat ran around the corner of Tucker’s eye and into it before he could wipe it away. The salt sting added fresh tears to the sweet that ran down his cheek before he could catch them in an already soaked handkerchief. Bennett set a few vials and canisters on the table.

  “Yes, sir,” Tucker acknowledged, wiping his forehead. On the other side, Ricard walked around behind the ship’s captain to where Tucker, the master chief, and Brute — the enigmatic giant, the hero of the Seabee battalion — stood.

  Everyone was going to have to shower and change into dry clothes before they left. Tucker thought, Going into battle was bad enough in fresh attire, but going into an operation intentionally wet only added the danger of disease and sickness; plus it caused the skin to rub raw, or you had the pleasure of a combination of all three. He’d seen others emergency evacuated from missions because their skin failed. No other way to describe it — skin failure. Wasn’t much you could do about an enemy throwing bullets at you, but you could do something about keeping your skin dry, taking extra socks and underwear. The few things veterans understood and newbies soon learned.

  “Bactine and talcum powder.”

  “Yes, sir,” Collins said softly. “Bactine and talcum powder.”

  Tucker turned slightly to his left. The giant Brute stood quietly behind Collins and Ricard, his eyes focused intently on the intelligence officer who had pulled another batch of photographs from the leather courier briefcase. Tucker caught a glimpse and thought, satellite. Satellite photographs were only as good as the analyst who interpreted them.

  His gaze wandered back to the giant Seabee. Other than the comment at the coffee pot, Tucker couldn’t recall hearing the newest third class petty officer of NMCB-133 say a complete sentence since they’d left the Seabee encampment. What was his story? Tucker wondered. Everyone has a story, some were just better than others. What little he knew wasn’t sufficient to form an opinion on how this man would perform in combat. Being good in a bar brawl was a lot different from dodging bullets in unfamiliar jungles. For that matter, this whole thing was ludicrous. Tucker had no idea how well these three would support the four of them in a firefight, and the three of them had no way of knowing how competent he was. Combat was a poor training field for coordinating teamwork. Teamwork and an appreciation for your shipmates’ combat skills needed to exist before you charged over the proverbial hill to confront the enemy on the other side.

  Brute shifted his weight from one leg to the other and crossed his arms. Tucker thought, Probably weighs two-fifty or more. Look at those biceps! The Seabee’s upper arms stretched the fabric of the sweat-soaked cammie sleeves. Tucker glanced at his own rolled-up sleeves, stained with water from the elbows to the shoulders. He lifted his arm slightly. Dark wet areas bathed the armpits. This one had better hold his own in combat, especially if things go to hell in a handbasket like Tucker’s inner voice told him they would. No way he and the others would carry this mission out without some sort of hiccup. Even trained SEALs encountered hiccups in a mission regardless of how well trained, well briefed, or how well the mission was executed. The adage of “shit happens” was never more evident than in the fog of war. Brute glanced up, unsmiling, and met Tucker’s gaze. They nodded at each other. There’s more than air between those ears, Tucker thought.

  Lieutenant Commander Portnoy stepped back and looked at Captain Bennett. “Skipper, I’m ready, sir.”

  “Good, Allen. Commander Raleigh, you and your team gather closer around the table, our intelligence officer Lieutenant Commander Portnoy will give you our intelligence brief. Before he starts, let me remind everyone here in the compartment that this brief is classified top secret. It’s not for general discussion outside this compartment. When you return early tomorrow morning, I am under instructions to conduct a debrief at which time each of you will sign a non-disclosure agreement binding you to forget the mission and never to speak of it. Don’t think this agreement is being generated only for you. Everyone in this room and anyone who knows about this mission is being required to sign it, also.”

  “I’ve never had to do that before,” Tucker objected. “Is there some reason we’re being asked to do this now?”

  Bennett sighed. “Not my idea, Commander. Let’s just say that this order came from way up high; way above our paygrades.” He pointed up. “The good news is that they even forwarded the exact words to our legal officers to have you sign. It made the two of them very happy not to have to word it from scratch.”

  Tucker opened his mouth to object further, but closed it just as quickly. Futile. It wasn’t the skipper. The skipper was as much a bit player in this masquerade of a mission as the four of them. Somewhere in Washington, a village was missing a fool, and it wouldn’t surprise him if the asshole who did this wasn’t some political appointee covering the administration. Then he thought of something. “Why don’t we sign them before we go?” Bennett shook his head. The man’s face scrunched up. Suddenly, Tucker didn’t want to know the answer. “Sorry, sir. Belay my last.”

  Bennett held up
his hand, palm out, for a moment. “No, you deserve to know, and if I knew for sure, I’d tell you, but I don’t. Therefore, I’m going to give you my informal and personal observation.”

  Bennett held up one finger. “First, as you already know, this mission doesn’t exist. It hasn’t been officially approved. It didn’t arrive through normal channels. I have nothing in writing, in either official message traffic or even informal emails, telling me to do this.”

  He pointed at Tucker. “Neither do you, nor the three volunteers who are going with you.” Bennett waved his hand at Collins, Ricard, and Brute. “Therefore I would submit that if we sign these before you leave and something happens, and Congress, in its own apolitical way, demands an investigation, then those signed papers would be the bucket of blood for Washington sharks. If the mission goes well, then the papers bind you to silence under threat of criminal prosecution.”

  Tucker thought about this a moment. “So, basically, the papers are evidence if we get killed and insurance if we succeed.”

  Bennett smiled. “That’s right, Commander.”

  Tucker nodded. “Nice to be trusted, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Yes, it is. Now, Commander, if we can get along with this briefing, I promise that Lieutenant Commander Portnoy, known for brevity — like most Intel officers — will keep it short. You’re lifting off in less than an hour.” Bennett pointed to the Navy-issue analog clock on the forward bulkhead. The clock showed ten o’clock.

  Tucker glanced at the porthole. Still a little light outside. The ship’s crew would still be working. Bennett had revised the work hours so the crew could stand down during the hottest of the afternoon hours and then do the remainder of the ship’s work in the cooler early evening hours. What cooler evening hours?

  “I think you’ll want a fresh change of clothes before you depart. Our supply people are gathering the combat gear you’ll need. Luckily, we have a depot of SEAL weapons here.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Someone clearing his throat caught the two men’s attention. “Sirs, if I may,” Portnoy said.

  Portnoy was a thin reed of man, but not much shorter nor thinner than Captain Bennett. Black hair ringed a small bald spot at the back of the intelligence officer’s head, and Tucker noticed on the left side of the khaki uniform that the man had no warfare devices such as wings, submarine dolphins, or Surface Warfare insignia. That was expected for what the Navy called “unrestricted line officers” such as intelligence, cryptologic, and information professional officers.

  “This is a photograph taken by satellite about two hours ago,” Portnoy said, his finger lightly touching an 8x10 photograph on the table and pulling it forward so it rested in front of Tucker.

  The photograph showed a dual runway with one tarmac running east to west and a second crossing it at a forty-five degree angle to run southeast to northwest.

  “This is the French military airfield about twenty kilometers west of Seguela, Ivory Coast. According to our sources in the French military, this airfield doesn’t exist. Never has. Naval Intelligence researched the archives of Office of Naval Intelligence when this mission rose. They discovered this airfield is less than five years old. Five years ago, this area was brush and rolling hills along the edge of the jungle. We don’t know what they’re using the airfield for, but…”

  Tucker bent down to better examine the photograph. He wasn’t an aviator, but he knew the numbers at the end of the runway were the compass bearing that aided pilots for visual landings. A large paved tarmac with several aircraft parked on it lay directly between a row of buildings and the taxiway to the airstrips. At the edge of each airstrip were circular aprons. He counted a total of eight. Four of them had multi-engine aircraft, of which any of those four could be the four-engine French Atlantique reconnaissance aircraft.

  “… you’re going in with minimum intelligence…”

  Which might not be too bad, considering some of the intelligence Tucker had received on other missions was found to be a myth.

  “… one of these four,” Portnoy said, using a pencil to tap on the four multi-engine aircraft, one of which Tucker had already determined had to be their target, “is the Atlantique aircraft.” Portnoy touched the pencil to the aircraft at the bottom-left side of the photograph. “This is the one we believe is the aircraft you seek. This one and this one,” he continued, tapping two other circular parking spots, “have been confirmed as a C-130 and a French C-160 transport aircrafts. Most likely, these two provide logistic support in terms of transporting people and supplies to this isolated airfield. Reconnaissance photographs from two days ago show the aircraft we believe to be the Atlantique in this same location, and the C-130 and C-160 parking spots empty.”

  “So, we have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the wrong aircraft?” Tucker asked, tapping the photograph in front of him.

  Portnoy bit his lower lip, his eyes narrowing as if thinking of the proper answer to Tucker’s question. Then the intelligence officer let out a deep audible breath. “I think it’s less than fifty-fifty, Commander. The reason we believe this is the aircraft is that one of the times when we knew the aircraft was flying a mission, this spot was empty.”

  “Well, I would say that kind of seals the fact that this must the aircraft.”

  “Not exactly, Commander Raleigh. This other spot was empty also. What we’ve done is analyze the shadows of the aircraft at the time the imagery was taken. Both aircraft are within ten feet length of each other, but this aircraft is nearer the length of an Atlantique.”

  “Size isn’t everything,” a voice boomed out.

  Everyone turned. It was Brute. The giant turned his head back and forth as if surprised at the attention. “Sorry, I thought I was thinking it.”

  “When we get out in the field, Petty Officer McIntosh, no thinking out loud.”

  “Sorry, sir. No, sir.”

  Portnoy reached over with his pencil, touched it lightly on a chart, and pulled it over in front of Tucker. He looked at the lieutenant commander standing beside Captain Bennett. “Steve, you want to take over here?”

  The heavyset Navy officer wearing a Surface Warfare device stepped over to the table. “Evening, Commander Raleigh. My name is Steve Cutters. I am Captain Bennett’s operations officer. Here is the operations plan for tonight’s mission. Sunset occurred fifteen minutes ago. Complete darkness is expected by 2130 local hours — another thirty minutes. When darkness falls, you and your team will board a CH-53 Sea Stallion on the flight deck.”

  The operations officer took the pencil from Portnoy. “Lieutenant Commander Portnoy and his group of highly professional intelligence specialists have identified a small clearing about two kilometers from the edge of the French airfield.”

  “And we’ve identified what we think is a path that will take you directly to it,” Portnoy interrupted.

  “Thanks, Allen,” Cutters said. “We are estimating one hour for you to get to the airfield and ninety minutes to do your job — which is to board the aircraft and recover the laser technology system. It should be latched onto the aircraft so you can flip a lever and pull it out. The French don’t usually permanent-mount their prototypes. After you recover the system, you’re to blow up the aircraft. The trip back I believe will take less time because of the great incentive the explosion will cause.”

  “Was that supposed to be a joke, Commander?” Tucker asked with a smile.

  “A poor one, I see.”

  Tucker looked at Bennett. “I thought if we successfully recovered the technical boxes of our weapon inside the aircraft then we didn’t have to blow it up.”

  “I did, too, but Admiral Holman called while you were with the Seabees and he passed on further directions from Washington.”

  Tucker sighed. “Should we warn the French before we blow it so they can move far enough away to avoid getting hurt?” he asked derisively.

  “I think we both know this isn’t being driven by our immediate bosses, Commander.”
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  “Yes, sir, I know,” he said softly.

  “Departure time is 2130 hours. Arrival in drop zone—”

  “Drop zone? By parachute!” Tucker said with disbelief. He glanced quickly at the master chief, Brute, and Ricard. “Even if I thought we could jump, these three aren’t qualified to jump in daylight, much less at night.”

  “I’m sorry, Commander. I thought drop zone was the right word for dropping you off — the helicopter is going to touch down—”

  Tucker waved him off. As his beneficiary, his mother was going to be one rich woman the way things were looking with this mission.

  Tucker kept his mouth shut as the operations officer continued the mission briefing. Two-hour flight time, two and a half hours on the ground, two hours back, and, after a warm shower, iced beer on the pier. Some reward should be there.

  “That’s it. Any questions?” Captain Bennett asked.

  Tucker shook his head. “No. Let’s hope it goes well.”

  “There is one ‘by the way,’” said Portnoy. “The African National Army is operating west of your operations area. They have basically stayed away from contact with the French, focusing on an effort to clear out the missionaries and the Islamic schools. We don’t know how they will react if you were to run into them.”

  “How big is this African National Army?” Tucker asked.

  Portnoy shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. They have a leader who is growing in popularity with the Africans all along the west coast. The older Africans like him because of the stability his forces bring, in this continent of children warriors. It’s ironic because he’s not getting rid of the children warriors. We have reports of some as young as eight carrying AK-47s, but somehow he appears to have them under control without the drugs and beatings other African warlords have used.” Portnoy held his hands up in a questioning gesture. “Go figure. If you can, you’re doing better than anyone else in Africa.”

  “Where is this African National Army right now? And, better yet, where do we think Abu Alhaul is?” Tucker asked. Tucker didn’t have a bone to pick with this nationalist army and he was sure they had none with him. The newspapers said this mystery army was rounding up the Islamic Jihadists and killing them. He had no problem with that. He’d send his congratulations and a thank you card to this what-ever-his-name-was who led them if they would get the Jihadist terrorist leader off his back.