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  Ross would not allow the burning sensation behind his eyes to go any further. He nodded and hurried away.

  By the time the jet left the ground, Ross had learned that Mitchell had put in a request with the Navy to have one of their littoral combat ships (LCS) intercept and shadow the Duman from just over the horizon.

  ‘Are we still on mission?’ he asked the major, who stared back at him from a window on Ross’s laptop.

  A smile nicked the corners of Mitchell’s mouth. ‘What do you think?’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Ten days later, on a moonlit night at 1930 hours, Ross and his men were shielding their eyes from the rotor wash of a CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy lift transport helicopter landing at Paya Lebar Air Base in eastern Singapore. The base was used by many flying units of the US Navy and Air Force as a refueling stopover and staging post/transit point, and it was also the permanent home of the 497th Combat Training Squadron, which provided operational and logistical support to US Air Force fighters currently training with the Republic of Singapore Air Force.

  The Sea Stallion was operated by a crew of four: pilot, copilot, crew chief, and an aerial observer, but it was the crew chief who waved them inside while he and the observer supervised the loading of a crate the size of a Volkswagen Beetle up the chopper’s rear ramp.

  ‘What the hell you got in the box?’ the chief asked Ross, once they were under way and wearing their headphones and mikes.

  ‘That’s classified,’ Ross said. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing: It makes a lot of noise when it’s angry.’ Ross wiggled his eyebrows and smiled.

  Once they’d learned that Duman was, indeed, heading toward Singapore, Ross had a sneaking suspicion that the weapons’ final destination was close, and with that in mind, he’d requested from Mitchell a few of the team’s more offensive tools, one of them particularly large, but that wouldn’t be a problem since there’d be plenty of room to store it on the LCS.

  After about a two-hour ride, they neared the USS Independence (LCS-2), a unique littoral combat trimaran warship. Her most recognizable physical feature was an elongated narrow bow with three parallel hulls that inspired the crew to call her a Klingon warship. Her silhouette was most definitely futuristic, with aft landing deck and container-size mission modules on her port sides, the containers capable of carrying all types of mission-specific hardware, vehicles and ordnance. ‘Littoral’ meant that she spent most of her time near the shoreline, and she was the perfect vessel to hunt a ship like Duman in these waters.

  Independence’s skipper, Commander Troy Ladd Wagner, Gold Team, was, Ross imagined, settling into his starboard bridge chair and sighting along the ship’s bow, which reminded Ross of a cigar boat. Driving a 418-foot LCS at thirty knots in twenty feet of water was no easy task, Ross knew, but add to that the three dozen fishing boats directly in his path, and Ross figured that Wagner was not having a great night. The pilot had told Ross that the Malaccan Strait fishing fleet was an issue whenever air ops were carried out during east-west prevailing winds that required Independence to travel at right angles to the main shipping channel.

  They were four minutes out now and on final approach. The pilot confessed that their landing would be close. If they didn’t set down exactly on time, they would have to abort, be put in a holding pattern, then sent around for another pass, once Wagner repositioned the LCS to avoid the fishing fleet. If Ross were that skipper, he would be wondering why some Special Forces prima donnas from the Army had taken so long to get there. A SEAL operation would have transited aboard three minutes early and with half as much equipment.

  Thankfully, the landing went off without a hitch, and within ten minutes Ross was standing in the LCS’s narrow wardroom, speaking with the skipper himself: ‘My apologies, sir. I know our timing wasn’t the greatest. I saw all those fishing boats up ahead. It was getting dicier by the minute.’

  ‘Nonsense, I welcomed the opportunity to live up to our motto, Libertas Per Laborem Audentium – Independence Through Bold Action.’

  ‘I appreciate that, sir.’

  Wagner was at least six feet tall, graying, and nearly bald. His faded blue eyes had telltale crow’s feet from squinting directly into far too many sunrises and sunsets. He hadn’t escaped from becoming a little chunky from a combination of good Navy chow and living a confined life aboard ship. ‘Now my XO tells me that five or six years ago he transported a SEAL team run by a guy named Andrew Ross. Any relation?’

  ‘That would be me, sir.’

  ‘Really? I find that strange. What the hell did you do to get fed to the Army?’

  Ross chuckled. ‘Well, they told me the Group for Specialized Tactics is the wave of the future, so I figured I’d give it a try.’

  ‘And how’s that working out for you?’

  ‘The hardest part was getting used to being called “captain.” For the first few weeks I kept looking around to see who my guys were talking to.’

  ‘Well, we’ll forgive you for leaving us too soon.’

  ‘Thank you again.’

  ‘All right, let’s get down to it then. We’ve put our Fire Scout over Duman for the past three nights. She’s tracking right down the channel, and we haven’t heard her request a pilot to enter any port. If her skipper is familiar with his destination, he might not even need the services of a local pilot.’

  The ‘C’ version Fire Scout Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was equipped with a sensor ball turret that carried electro-optics, IR cameras, and a laser range finder. The robot chopper operated over a line of sight to a distance of 172 miles and had an endurance of fourteen hours at cruising speed of 110 knots. Independence could comfortably shadow the Duman from 100 miles away without fear of counterdetection.

  ‘I’m alternating my two Seahawks on standby every night. The crew will sleep on board,’ said Wagner. ‘In addition, we have a platoon of Fleet Anti-Terrorism Marines out of Manama, Bahrain, on board. The Chief of Naval Operations ordered the Third Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Battalion to place them under your command. I’ll introduce you to their CO.’

  ‘That’s excellent,’ Ross replied. ‘And if you’ve got the time, why don’t we head down to the hangar deck, and you can meet the fifth member of my team.’

  ‘I take it you keep him in that giant crate?’

  Ross nodded. ‘He seems to like it in there.’

  FIFTY-SIX

  Later in the evening, word reached Ross that Duman had left the shipping channel and was heading toward the northern entrance to the Rupat Strait, which detoured around the western side of Rupat Island before again merging with the Strait of Malacca. The following evening, a helo had lifted off from the island and was heading toward the container ship.

  ‘That looks suspicious enough to me,’ Wagner told Ross.

  ‘Roger that. We need to reconnoiter that island.’

  ‘We’ll get you there. In the meantime, we’ll have higher work things out with the Sumatran government so you boys don’t get a ticket for trespassing.’ Wagner grinned and winked.

  Ross and the others quickly familiarized themselves with the area and worked out a hasty reconnaissance mission with Wagner and Mitchell, along with intel updates from Maziq.

  Rupat was a circular island lying three miles off the eastern coast of Sumatra, in the Riau province of Indonesia. The island was swampy and sparsely populated, with only one primary settlement, Batupanjang, on the southwestern coast. A few primitive villages of thatched-roof huts, along with some rickety piers and a small fishing boat rental place, were up on the northern coast. Just up the beach from them stood the more modern Tanjung Medang Lighthouse, an impressive 171-foot-tall tower with lantern and gallery, along with keepers’ huts on the small cape. Every ten seconds a brilliant white flash marked the narrower section of the strait. Most of the island’s tropical wet interior was too difficult to explore and still belonged to the insects and wildlife. Seasonal floods made farming all but impossible, save for some rice paddies in the south. With a diameter
of just thirty miles, Rupat was a mere blip on the map, and Ross had never heard of the island until now. The Malaysian government planned to build a bridge from Melaka to Rupat and on to Dumai, the ‘Malacca Strait Bridge.’

  Down in their quarters, Ross briefed the team, and they were champing at the bit to get off the ship and get back on dry land. Pepper was okay, but Kozak and 30K had suffered mild cases of seasickness, and that amused Ross no end.

  ‘All right, this is a recon,’ Ross said. ‘And as you boys might say, we’re going in light to get the ground truth, doing what we do best. See you up top.’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  At 0020 hours, Ross and the team were fast-roping down from one of the Seahawks, inserting into a clearing on the south side of the island. At one point all four were dangling from the same line, the rope running hotly through their gloved hands and between their boots as they maintained a three-meter gap from the next guy.

  In addition to the team’s reconnaissance load out, the chopper crew lowered an F470 Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC) with outboard engine. Within minutes, 30K and Kozak had the CRRC inflated via the CO2 tank, and once they had the outboard attached, they dragged the rubber boat over to a river just twenty meters north of the drop zone. Technically, it wasn’t a river, just part of a heavily flooded tropical jungle, with mangroves that reminded Ross of Colombia, along with that oppressive humidity.

  They climbed into the CRRC, and Kozak served as coxswain, switching on the battery-powered outboard, the engine humming quietly like a bass boat’s trolling motor. He clutched the tiller, steering them into the jungle, the course wide open for a few minutes until they were forced to groan and duck under a few low-hanging limbs and broad palm fronds.

  Ross’s night vision turned the swamp into a pale green maze glowing on its edges, an almost photo negative perspective that made spotting what Pepper called ‘the creepy crawlies’ a bit more difficult. That twisted root was actually a reticulated python coiled around a tree, and that silhouette that seemed like a collection of branches was really a hornbill bird with his head tipped to one side.

  Occasionally, Ross would motion to Kozak to take this path or that one, checking their bearing and GPS coordinates against Duman’s current position. That they’d doused themselves in bug spray and wore camouflage face paint that also contained DEET was fortunate; the constant buzzing of mosquitoes in Ross’s ears and the giant wood spiders that dropped down on to the boat, having been torn from their webs, were enough to make him and even a tough guy like 30K get the willies. 30K swatted away bugs with his rifle’s muzzle, whispering obscenities at their unwelcome hitchhikers. Ross had trained quite extensively in the jungle, and he’d learned that addressing the bug problem was a true priority. Swatting a mosquito could compromise your position and literally get you killed.

  After the first five miles, Ross mused that they really had found the heart of darkness. He’d never been in a swamp this tight or remote. If any one of them got hurt, bitten, stung, what have you, it’d be hours before they could get him out of there for proper medical treatment. There were no clearings within which a chopper could land, and hauling a man up through the canopy was well-nigh impossible, at least in this region. They’d crossed the River Styx, traversed the valley of the shadow of death, and had laughed at the signpost marking the point of no return. Now the doormat read: ‘Welcome to the Underworld.’

  They’d been heading due north, and at the first sound of the helicopter, Ross ordered Kozak to head northeast, toward the chopper and the distant flashes from the lighthouse.

  Within an hour they had reached a muddy riverbank, which swallowed their boots up to their ankles as they hauled themselves out of the raft. Ross spat out the mosquito that had flown into his mouth and gave a hand signal to 30K, putting him on point. He whispered for Kozak to begin dropping markers so they could find their way back to the boat.

  And with that, they trudged off, their boots squishing as they pushed farther northeast, the jungle beginning to thin a bit, the timpani roll of that helicopter much closer.

  Some twenty minutes later, near a cluster of nipah palms whose fronds grew straight from the ground, making them appear like trunkless palm trees, 30K had his fist in the air, and they dropped to their haunches. His voice came softly over the team net: ‘Tree line ends just ahead. I see a very narrow dirt road, then another section of jungle, and then something, maybe another clearing, a little farther out.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Ross. ‘Keep moving. We’ll cross the road together.’

  A window opened in Ross’s Cross-Com, and Mitchell appeared. ‘No need to reply, Captain. Just an intel update from Maziq. Keyhole satellite got some good pictures of that chopper, an old Caracel transport/cargo bird deployed from the island. She’s offloading pallets of what we believe are your Grinch launchers from the Duman, taking them to coordinates about two kilometers from your position.’

  Another window showed a map of Rupat with a glowing red overlay that marked the team’s current position, as well as the cargo ship’s and the chopper’s drop-off point.

  Ross shared that map with the rest of the team, and Kozak said, ‘Maybe it’s some kind of weapons depot. They pick a remote island and hide the stuff here.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Ross answered. ‘But I have a feeling it’s a lot more than that.’

  After ensuring that the road was clear, 30K gave the signal, and they darted forward, Ross casting a look to the west, where the road stretched off in an almost perfectly straight line, all the way to the beach.

  Just ahead, the second patch of jungle was noticeably thinner, the ground much firmer, and they made good time, weaving around the giant palms, ducking and turning, covering ground twice as fast as they had before – until 30K tripped and crashed on to his stomach.

  ‘Holy shit, bro, you all right?’ stage-whispered Kozak.

  30K rolled over and sat up. ‘What the hell was that?’

  Ross came forward and got on his haunches, staring down in disbelief over the obstacle in 30K’s path: railroad tracks.

  They’d been constructed just within the tree line and wove out to the next clearing. As far as Ross could tell, they kept going, extending much farther north, and the beauty of their placement made them difficult if not impossible to see on a satellite photograph – if you didn’t know what you were looking for. They curved while in the clearing, then vanished again, the pattern haphazard, irregular.

  ‘Look at these ties and spikes,’ said Kozak. ‘They’re new. These tracks were just put in here.’

  ‘Why the hell do they need a train running along the coastline?’ asked Pepper.

  ‘30K, you all right?’ Ross asked.

  ‘Yeah, I guess I should’ve been looking out for F-ing railroad tracks in the middle of the jungle.’

  Ross snorted. ‘Yeah, and if they’ve got railroad tracks, then they’ve got an engine,’ said Ross. ‘Wonder why …’

  Five minutes later they reached the next clearing, and from there, crouched down at the edge, Ross marked a line of four lean-tos heavily camouflaged with more fronds. Beneath each one, perfectly hidden from satellites and other prying eyes, was a boxy APC, which Ross photographed and uploaded for identification.

  ‘This is Ghost Lead. Hold up,’ he ordered the others.

  Barely thirty seconds later, the photos and schematics flashed across Ross’s HUD: Puma M26-15 Armored Personnel Carrier with mine and IED protection. Its main users were military, police, and security companies during peacekeeping operations. They were manufactured by OTT Technologies, a South African defense contractor.

  ‘Contacts,’ said 30K. ‘Four just behind the lean-tos. Probably guards for the APCs.’

  ‘Sir, check it out,’ said Pepper, pointing to their left, where the railroad tracks broke free of the trees.

  Ross zoomed in with his night-vision lens, and for a moment, he had to wipe his eyes, blink hard, then stare again, wanting to make sure that the image was real, that his lens
wasn’t out of focus, and that Hamid and his cronies had really gone this far.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Ross took point now, forging a path about fifteen meters behind the railroad tracks until they came around the lean-tos and got a better look at the clearing –

  Where the helicopter was lowering one of the pallets to a team of about ten men below. Ross called for a halt, and they watched as these soldiers removed the crates from the pallets, stacking them on hand trucks to be rolled into a thatched-roof hut identical to the ones present on the northern part of the island. Ross shifted his position to spy at least ten more huts lying beneath the denser canopy, and beyond them, just visible through the maze of trees, was another surprise: a network of bunkers constructed of rectangular walls that formed a semicircular perimeter between the outpost, the final patch of jungle and the white sand beach beyond.

  ‘You believe this? They got Hescos,’ said 30K. ‘Weird thing is, even with the trenches they’ve dug, I don’t see where they got enough dirt.’

  A ‘Hesco’ was a ‘concertainer’ manufactured by the Hesco company, basically a cellular mesh framework with geotextile lining filled with dirt to create protective walls that were strong and structurally sound. They were used by the US Army to build Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) and other outposts all over the world. How these bastards had gotten their hands on them was another story; then again, there was always a black market for everything.

  APCs … Hescos … surface-to-air missiles …

  And their deadliest weapon lying ahead, the one that Ross had just caught the barest glimpse of and still couldn’t believe was there.

  He signaled the team to move out once more, and they came within twenty meters of the terrible confirmation that the Bedayat jadeda were importing much more than just shoulder-fired weapons. The real reason for the railroad tracks was undeniably clear.