Chapter 18 - Midnight on the Black Water
The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter skimmed thirty feet above the churning, black waves of the Atlantic, running completely blacked-out without navigation lights.
The rotor wash sprayed sea salt across my face as I stood in the open doorway, hooked into the overhead safety harness.
Behind me sat ten battle-hardened Navy SEALs, their faces painted in matte-black camouflage, checking the suppressors on their short-barreled rifles.
Nobody questioned why a four-star general was riding the skids into a direct combat drop.
They had seen the classified files.
They knew who had built the defective armor that almost killed their brothers in Kandahar.
And they knew who had spent twenty-six years fighting her way from a South Bronx gutter to ensure justice was delivered to the traitors.
"One minute to fast-rope!" the crew chief shouted over the interphone, flashing a single green light in the cabin.
Through the night-vision goggles strapped over my eyes, the sprawling, rusted deck of the lead container vessel loomed through the ocean fog like an iron leviathan.
Armed mercenaries patrolled the catwalks, their thermal signatures glowing bright orange against the cold metal superstructure.
"Fast-rope out!"
The thick braided ropes dropped from the skids, slamming onto the container ship's aft helipad.
I was the first through the door.
My gloved hands gripped the rope, sliding through the freezing mist, my boots striking the steel deck with a muffled thud.
Before the nearest patrol could raise his weapon, the SEAL directly behind me fired two suppressed rounds, dropping him silently into the shadows.
We moved across the deck in fluid, violent perfection.
Team Alpha secured the bridge controls to sever the ship’s satellite uplink to Eleanor's offshore command station.
I led Team Bravo down the iron stairwells, descending directly into the cargo bay where the primary missile firing console was housed.
We stacked against the heavy, watertight blast door of Cargo Hold 3.
"Breaching charge set," the lead breacher whispered, tapping my shoulder.
"Three... two... one... blow."
A localized directional blast tore the locking lugs from the door.
We flooded the chamber, weapons raised, sweeping the cavernous space.
The cargo hold was lit by harsh white halogen work lights.
In the center sat forty-eight vertical launch canisters, their hydraulic launch covers already retracted, their targeting telemetry counting down on a bank of illuminated computer terminals:
*T-minus 14 minutes to automated ignition.*
Standing before the launch console was not a masked mercenary or a foreign agent.
It was a young woman in civilian clothes, her hands working furiously across the keyboard to accelerate the firing sequence.
She turned around, terrified, raising her hands into the air as our laser sights painted her chest.
"Don't shoot!" she screamed, trembling uncontrollably.
I lowered my weapon slightly, my eyes widening in cold shock as I recognized the family resemblance in her striking blue eyes and sharp jawline.
"Who are you?" I demanded, stepping forward through the smoke of the breached door.
The girl sobbed, tears cutting through the grease on her cheeks.
"My name is Victoria Mercer," she wept.
"I’m Arthur’s secret daughter."
"Your half-sister."
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"And Eleanor told me that if I didn't launch these missiles tonight, she would kill my mother just like she killed yours!"
***
