The exchange of words didn’t take long and Senior Chief Baylor came over to relay what had obviously been decided. “Gather up, boys. We’re heading out.”
“Going old school, Tex?” Donovan asked.
“Looks like it,” the senior chief responded with a quirk of his mouth.
“You don’t seem too disappointed by our unexpected complication.”
“Not having some recently graduated Ivy League liberal analyst who’s never seen the outside of a cubicle second-guess the way I scratch my ass? Damned straight.”
The men laughed, but they all knew that despite the freedom from oversight, they also wouldn’t have Sauron to alert them to company in the area.
Brian didn’t let it bother him. Crap always went wrong on ops. It was the one truism you could count on.
For the next four miles they moved as quickly as their night-vision goggles allowed in the thick brush and dense forest. According to Brian’s GPS they were less than a mile away from their target when they stopped again.
He was close enough to Lieutenant Commander Taylor to hear him ask Ruiz, “Anything?”
Ruiz shook his head. “It’s a brick out here. Should I try the sat phone?”
The LC shook his head. “Not unless we need to. We don’t want to risk doing anything that could give us away.”
Although the navy and Naval Special Warfare Command used layers and layers of encryption software, satellite phones—if they could get a signal out here with all the trees and mountains—could be vulnerable.
So no drone and no communications. This was getting better and better. That they were light on comms gear already was due both to the long swim and the hike in difficult terrain where every ounce counted, and to wanting to minimize any signals that might give them away.
But communications or no communications, it wasn’t as if command could do anything if there was trouble. There weren’t going to be any Blackhawks coming to get them. They were the cavalry.
Lieutenant Commander Taylor nodded as if he’d planned for the setback. He probably had. SEAL commanders had contingencies for contingencies. “Looks like we’re on our own. I’m sure some of you are going to be disappointed not to be seeing yourselves replayed over and over on the screen later.” He sent a knowing look in Donovan’s direction.
“Ah, hell, you mean I trimmed up for nothing?” Donovan said, tugging at the short beard he wore.
“Mix in a mirror next time,” Brandon Blake—Donovan’s best friend and former BUD/S buddy—interjected. “You look like a caveman.”
Long hair and beards (aka “relaxed grooming standards”) were a theme for men in special mission units like Team Nine. It helped them blend for clandestine ops.
“Yeah, well, Hollywood and Geico commercials will have to wait,” Lieutenant Commander Taylor said dryly. He looked back at the men. “We go in slow and quiet—go dark on comms. Donovan and Blake will do a quick recon, and if it looks clear, we’ll proceed as planned. Any questions?”
Silence. They’d all been well briefed. When they reached the camp, they were to break off into two squads. Navy Squad under the command of Lieutenant White would investigate the dilapidated wooden barracks building that had housed the workers sixty-odd years ago, while Gold Squad under the command of Lieutenant Commander Taylor would investigate the heavily fortified concrete command building and attached mess hall, where most of the satellite activity had been detected.
Navy and Gold. The LC had obviously gone to Annapolis.
Brian had assumed that Senior Chief Baylor would go with Lieutenant White, as White was the junior officer, but the senior chief was going with the lieutenant commander—as was Brian. That probably wasn’t a coincidence.
But if the senior chief resented having to watch over the FNG, he didn’t show it. Although showing emotion wasn’t exactly something Senior Chief Baylor seemed to do a lot of. “Stony” was putting it mildly.
The platoon started forward, moving much slower this time and communicating only when necessary by hand gestures. No talking wasn’t unusual, but it was rare they didn’t use sounds—tics, tweets, or others—to communicate. The LC wasn’t taking any chances.
About a half mile from target, they intersected with thedirt “road” and the rusted train tracks that had once connected this camp to Vorkuta, the coal-mining town that had been built around one of Russia’s most notorious gulags, Vorkutlag, and its hundred and thirty-two subcamps.
Overgrown with brush and trees, the muddy surface marked by deep potholes that were filled with water and enormous rocks, the road looked as though it hadn’t been used since the camp was abandoned in the ’60s. It would have taken a tank to go through here. But one hadn’t. Tree limbs would have been broken, and there would have been some sign of tracks in all that mud.
Brian saw the two officers exchange a glance. There was no other visible road into the camp. They’d thought that when they got close enough and were able to look under the trees blocking the sat images, this one would show evidence of tracks.
Brian hoped to hell this wasn’t another Iraq WMD goat fuck, but the hairs on his arms were buzzing.
Donovan and Blake had gone ahead to scout. They returned as the rest of the platoon reached the outskirts of the camp and gave the all-clear sign.
Lieutenant Commander Taylor gestured forward with his hand and then held up two fingers. The two seven-man squads broke apart. Lieutenant White and the rest of Navy Squad skirted the camp to the west toward the barracks. Brian followed the lieutenant commander and the senior chief east to the former command center. In addition to the two leaders and Brian, Gold Squad consisted of Donovan, Ruiz, Hart, and Steve “Dolph” Spivak.
