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“Fair assessment,” said the man. “The ship is close. I figure we come in low and fast, drop the guys amidships, and then circle for surgical fire support.”

“That works for me,” added Bianca.

“What’s your endurance?” asked TJ.

“Four hours from launch to bingo. But it’s gonna be a tight squeeze in the back.”

“How are we going to get the dogs back?” asked Ali.

“We’ll draw from the internal bladders first,” said the aviator. “Once you’ve got control of the ship, we can put down, kick them out, and then we’ll have more room.”

“Mike,” added TJ. “We’ve got a bag of extra harnesses and muzzles in case the pups are agitated.”

The pilot gestured to Axe, who was listening calmly to the brief. “If they’re all as cool as this guy, we aren’t going to have a problem.”

“Worst case,” said Ali. “I could come along, and we could sedate them.”

Mike shook his head. “No way. I’m not letting you anywhere near that vessel.”

“She makes a good point, though,” said TJ. “If we can’t get the pups on the aircraft, we’ll have issues.”

“We could always come back, make a drop, and head back out,” said the pilot. “Ship’s not that far out. Going to be real fast turnarounds.”

“That would buy me enough time to find a local vet and get some sedatives,” said Ali.

Mike sighed. “Fine, but it’s only a contingency.”

“Right,” said Deb. “Every minute spent here, that ship gets further away, and our risk increases. Suppose no one else has any issues? I say we check comms and get this show airborne.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“They weren’t kidding when they said it would be tight,” said Mike over his headset in the back of the Blackhawk helicopter. “This is worse than Rick’s hire car.”

With two fuel bladders occupying half the compartment, there was barely enough space for their makeshift team. Mike was forced to let Axe sit on his lap, and the Malinois was far from light.

Bianca was the only one with any space. She sat facing outward, her rifle muzzle down between her knees, in the left-hand seat usually occupied by a loadmaster. From there, she could quickly engage targets through the opening that usually housed a machine gun.

The Blackhawk was traveling at close to one hundred and forty miles per hour as it approached the Ocean Dancer. Skimming the ocean, the two former 160th pilots kept the bird well below the detection level of the ship’s navigation radar. “Thirty seconds,” one of them announced over the radio.

In the rear, the four shooters made minor adjustments to their kit and unlatched the strops that connected them to the aircraft.

The pilots slowed the bird and turned to the right-hand side of the ship as Bianca braced her rifle against a strap that was slung across the opening to her front.

Stomachs lurched as the helicopter turned abruptly, popped up over the side of the ship, and came to a rapid hover over the forward bulkhead covers. The pilots used a downward-facing camera to keep the aircraft hovering mere inches above the deck as the assault force disembarked.

“All clear,” announced Bianca, and the chopper roared off the deck, its downwash buffeting Mike and the others.

“Shooter on the port bridge wing,” snapped one of the pilots.

Bianca was already on it. She fired two rounds at the armed figure as it raised a weapon. One of her bullets punched through steel plating, striking the man in the leg. He spun from sight, incapacitated. “Tango down,” she reported as the chopper reached altitude and the pilots put it into a lazy orbit, circling the ship at a range of about three hundred yards. Outside of submachine gun range, it remained well within the lethality of Bianca’s rifle.

Rick and Mike dropped off the cargo hold covers onto a gangway that ran down to the deck. The chopper had dropped them close to the bow, and they had to cover almost eighty yards of open space. The pair leapfrogged along the deck, one man always covering the other as they advanced. TJ and Gar followed behind, covering the rear to ensure one of the Koreans didn’t sneak up on them.

“A lot of movement on the bridge,” reported Bianca. “I can’t determine if any of them are armed.”

“Roger, we’re approaching the superstructure,” reported Mike.

The team reached the base of the office block-like structure that supported the bridge four stories above. They moved to the rear of the structure and waited for the helicopter to position itself where Bianca could cover the external staircase.