Retribution (Moonstruck Genesis #4)

Chapter 1

LIGHT.

Blinding.

Phosphorescent.

Deadly.

Followed immediately by the whistling whoosh of a mortar round. The team’s Zodiac, pulled up on the beach, disintegrated in a flash-bang and a shower of sand.

“Well, hell. Talk about a SNAFU.” Alex “Tank” Russell pretty much summed up the situation. Situation normal—all fucked up. The big Texan exchanged a look with Jack “Cop” Coppola. “Let’s get to work, hoss.”

Master Chief Petty Officer John Wayne “Duke” Reagan set up his sniper rifle. “Do what you have to do, Tank. I’ll hold them off.” The team would have to swim to the pick-up zone and lugging Tank’s heavy weapons or Cop’s extra stash of explosives was a no go. The same went for the communications gear. Roger “Wilco” Wright was going to be one unhappy camper about that. The freaking comm unit was like his first born.

A second round of staggered parachute flares ignited, turning the moonless night into high noon. The chatter of small automatic arms fire chopped through the silence. Spurts of sand danced where bullets hit harmlessly. Dalton Thomas, surfer dude, lady’s man, and general screw-up, squatted behind a rock barely big enough to cover his broad shoulders as he flashed a series of hand signals to Duke since Dalton had lost his radio earpiece somewhere along the way. Making a few minor adjustments to the sights on his rifle, Duke hunkered down, eye to his scope. While Dalton opened random fire with his assault rifle, Duke picked and chose. The occasional grunt rewarded his efforts.

Two flares finally hit the water but continued to glow beneath the waves. Yeah, that wasn’t good. Duke needed to find the Tango with the flare gun. The guy was way too quick on the trigger. They required a few seconds of dark to hit the waves so they could disappear.

Dalton popped up like a damn Whac-a-Mole, flashed more signs, and ducked back behind his rock as another round of automatic weapons’ fire splattered across the beach.

Duke caught movement up on the hill. Finally. “Target acquired,” he acknowledged quietly in the mic laying against his cheek.

He waited until sparks from the flare gun gave him the perfect target. He fired, but not in time to prevent the sonavabitch from pulling the trigger. The first flare lit up the beach even as the second hit the hillside and burst into flame, igniting the dry brush. Snatching his rifle, Duke sprinted around the side of Dalton’s rock, sprawled in the sand, and stuffed his sniper rifle into a waterproof sack. He’d be damned if he left it behind. He’d almost rather lose a limb.

“Got a message out, Duke.” Wilco reported. “We only have to get to international waters. They’ll have a boat waiting.”

“Say g’bye, boys.” Cop attached a wire to the small detonator in his hand, and as the last flicker of the parachute flare died away, he flipped the switch.

The seven members of SEAL Team Atlantis were sprinting toward the ocean before the explosion rocked the beach. The resulting blast was hot enough to fuse sand into glass, loud enough to deafen the Tangos on their tail, and bright enough to give them cover.

They hit the curling surf in a sprinting line, dove into the next big wave lapping at the beach and started swimming deep underwater. They stopped only long enough to put on the gear they’d all attached to their wetsuits with carabiners. In moments, seven pairs of fins churned water in their wakes. When they reached four miles out, according to Dalton’s hand signals—and since he was the team’s navigator, he’d know—Duke broke rank and surfaced. Enemy helos were still stabbing the ocean surface with searchlights. Not that it mattered. SEAL Team Atlantis swam through dark ocean depths, able to go as deep as thirty meters—almost a hundred feet below the surface. He grabbed a breath out of habit, not because he really needed it, and headed down to catch up with the others. With Dalton in the lead, the rest of them formed a tight vee formation behind him. The only equipment they relied upon was the swim fins on their feet.

At fifteen miles out from shore, Dalton began a slow ascent that would take them further out into the ocean before they ever reached the surface. Duke would have preferred rendezvousing with the submarine underwater, but since this team was top secret, and they didn’t have SCUBA gear, that wasn’t going to happen. It wouldn’t do to scare the swabbies with the fact they swam the entire distance underwater. They had to surface, meet the Zodiac the sub sent to retrieve them, and board the sub the old-fashioned way. Somewhere beyond the twenty-five-mile territorial limit just to be safe.

Unerringly, Dalton swam to the pick-up point. If Duke didn’t know better, he’d swear the former champion surfer had sonar, like a whale or dolphin. But he did know. He knew exactly what capabilities each member of his team possessed. The seven of them had been together since basic, since their time in the labs underneath Area 51 in the Nevada desert. BUD/S training followed—competing with sailors who didn’t have the same advantages. Twenty-six miles underwater with no SCUBA gear? Piece of cake when you were genetically enhanced and surgically altered with gills and other little touches that made spending time in deep water easy.

They hadn’t been pushing it, hoping the Tangos would get tired of looking for them and back off before they surfaced. They could swim all night if necessary. Even so, their steady speed got them where they needed to be just over two hours later. Dalton picked up the soft cavitation created by a submarine double-parked in the middle of the ocean, engines basically idling. He changed headings and angled toward the surface. Five minutes later, he popped up like a cork. He could see the sub’s running lights about two miles away. A Zodiac rocked with the waves about half a mile away.

Behind him, six heads broke the surface. Duke swam up beside him. “We’d better stay on the surface from here. We don’t want to freak out the natives.”

Silently, they stroked through the relatively calm waves. The occasional glance back toward shore offered glimpses of the full-scale hunt for them still in progress. Numerous helos crisscrossed the area between their location and the beach they’d so precipitously vacated, their lights visible even at this distance due to the special vision enhancements the team had received.

About twenty yards from the rubber dinghy, Duke called out. “Ahoy the Zodiac.”

They all heard the sounds of bullets clicking into firing position in the assault rifles held by to two men in the small craft.

“Goin’ our way, sailor?” Dalton quipped, and then burst out laughing as one of the swabbies almost fell overboard.

THIRTY MINUTES later, the team sat in the, what to them seemed cramped, wardroom waiting for their commanding officer, Lieutenant Mason Carter. The man was a prick on any given day, but to keep them waiting now? They hadn’t eaten. Even though they’d dried off, salt from the ocean coated their skins, leaving them itchy and uncomfortable. Neither condition was a huge hardship for the SEALs, but it was downright disrespectful for a commanding officer to treat his team this way. Duke fumed inwardly, though only those closest to him—his team—would recognize the seething anger he bottled up.

Carter finally arrived and when the men didn’t jump to their feet, coming to attention to salute him, he snarled at them.

“I expect discipline from my men.”

Duke quirked an eyebrow. “And I expect respect for those men from their CO.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Making a show of checking the time on the enormous diver’s watch he wore, Duke eventually looked up, his gaze lasering in on Carter. “Whatever you want it to mean, Lieutenant Carter.”

“Officers eat off this table, sailor.” The lieutenant shoved Dalton’s feet off the table before facing Duke. “What the hell happened tonight?”

“I was hoping you could tell us .” Duke wanted to know the answer to Carter’s question, too. “They were expecting us.”

“They must have picked you up on radar. Or…something.”

“Or something? The intel briefing did not mention radar. Nor did it mention attack helos. Or a heavily guarded compound.”

“Our intel was solid, Master Chief Reagan. You. Fucked. Up.” Carter was livid and Tank had to lean way back to avoid the flying spittle.

Duke crossed his arms over his chest and exchanged looks with each man on his team. Carter was nothing more than a staff puke, but losing it like this? The guy was walking a little too close to the edge to make any of them comfortable. “I can only report what I know, sir . They knew we were coming. They were waiting to ambush us.”

“What about the mission? Did you abort it? I bet you fucking did, you bastard.” Carter leaned in and grabbed a handful of the fatigue green T-shirt Duke had pulled on as he reported for the debriefing. “You’ve always had it out for me, Reagan. Well, I’ll be getting my promotion despite you and your merry band of stupid idiots.”

Yeah, the team was going to take real offense at that. Even Dalton, the dumbest of them all had an IQ way above norm. They hadn’t been handpicked just because they were foolish enough to sign onto a project so scientifically advanced the SyFy channel would make a movie about it if anybody in Hollywood had the imagination to dream it up. They’d been put through a battery of physical, psychological, and mental tests where the washout rate was ninety-nine percent. After more rounds of testing and training, they were the one percent of the one percent of the one percent who made it into surgical trials. And survived.

With utmost care, Duke peeled Carter’s fingers off his shirt, one at a time. “You know, Lieutenant Carter, I don’t give a flying Philadelphia fuck about your promotion. I’m telling you, our intel sucked and my team almost got our butts shot off. Yet, despite the suckage that was our mission briefing, despite the ambush, and despite the fact we had to fucking swim almost thirty miles to get back to this gawddamned boat, I can report that we accomplished our mission. The virus was uploaded to their mainframe, their ammunition stores should be exploding—” He checked his watch again. “Right about now.”

Duke pushed off the metal chair and stood, forcing the other man to back away. “Now, Lieutenant Carter, if that’s all you got, my men are tired, hungry, and in bad need of showers. We’re done here.” He motioned for the others to precede him out. Each man snapped off a salute as they passed the lieutenant, which only pissed off the man even more. Duke wore his smirk honestly as he saluted and exited. After he closed the door to the officer’s wardroom, his team erupted into laughter. They’d pay for their insubordination once they got back to their base but Duke was too disgusted to care. Let the lieutenant scream and yell all the way up the chain to the fucking Commander in Chief. This team didn’t get disciplined. They were the Navy’s ace in the hole and every one of his men knew it. And it was about time that dumbass Carter figured out the facts of life in SEAL Team Atlantis.