that we have here, including all of the portable communications systems.
Hand-held radios, GPS–all here as soon as you can.”
The younger man looked grim. “Be all that you can be,” he said
finally. A tight smile crossed his face.
2120 Local
USS Jefferson
“How many men?” Admiral Wayne asked again.
The young SEAL petty officer looked haggard and drawn. “At least
thirty, maybe more. Maybe forty, I don’t know for sure,” he said. His
fatigue was evident in his voice.
“Could you see whether your teammates were shot?” Lab Rat asked. He
stared at the man before him, wondering at the combination of strength,
training, and sheer courage that had brought the SEALs back alive.
“I don’t know. We were too far away. I heard gunfire–a Kalishnikov,
I’m certain of it. One burst from an M16, that’s all. I thought I saw a
SEAL on the ground, but I couldn’t be sure.”
Batman turned to Lab Rat. “I suggest you start talking to the other
SEALS, Commander,” he said. “We’re going to have to get them out.”
“Let me go, sir,” the SEAL they were interrogating said suddenly. A
look of desperation crossed his face. “We don’t leave our men
behind–never.”
Batman regarded him carefully. “This mission isn’t going in the next
five minutes, son,” he said quietly. “You let the commander finish up with
you, then you hit the rack for a good solid twelve hours. After that,
we’ll see what you and your shipmates look like. If you’re up to it,
there’ll be a spot on the mission for you.”
The younger man looked relieved. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
“I think I’m done with him, Admiral,” Lab Rat said. He turned to the
SEAL. “Hit the rack, sailor. If you need something to help you sleep, see
Doc. But if you want to be part of this mission, you’d better be asleep in
the next fifteen minutes.”
The young sailor left quickly, his eyes already half-lidded at the
thought of sleep.
Lab Rat turned to the admiral. “This will be a bastard of a mission,”
he said quietly. “The SEALs will want to do their own planning, of
course.”
Batman nodded. “They always do. Anything they want–anything
intelligencewise, or any other form of support, we get it for them.”
USS Coronado
“She’s on final, sir,” the TAO said. Tombstone studied the plat
camera mounted in one corner of TFCC.
“Doesn’t look like she’s having problems to me,” he said shortly.
“Airspeed good, hover is stable–no, I can’t see a damned thing wrong with
that bird.” The helicopter gracefully settling onto the deck above him
confirmed his suspicions. “Get them down here,” he snapped at the chief of
staff. Then he turned to the lawyer behind him. “In my stateroom,
Captain. You’ve got ten minutes to make me real smart on what my options
are. Let’s start with treason and work our way down from there.”
Aflu
The moment the weapon left his hands, something slammed into Sikes’s
back. The force sent him flying through the air like a linebacker, and he
landed facedown on the hard ice, the grooves and ridges in it scraping the
protective gear away from his face and smashing one lens of his protective
goggles.
For a moment, he thought he’d been shot. He felt a deep ache starting
in his back, and he wondered which would kill him first–bleeding from the
wound or hypothermia from lying on the ground. A few moments later, he
realized that he’d been body-blocked rather than shot. The familiar oozing
of blood was absent, although the ache below his left shoulder blade
remained. He lay on the ground motionless, not daring to move.
A harsh voice barked out a short pause, evidently a command of some
sort. Sikes turned his head slowly, aware now of the ache in his neck, to
look at the man who had spoken. Something about the phrase–he tried to
remember if he had ever run across it in his language schools. No, but it
was tantalizingly close to something he did know.
The man barked out another sentence, and two of the paratroopers
approached him from either side. One pointed the barrel of his Kalishnikov