Chapter 2
2
The wind shear drove them upward and cut into their matte black jumpsuits. Twister’s heart beat steadily in his ears, his breathing just as calm as his body whistling through the air toward the rapidly approaching sea.
At the designated altitude, he deployed his chute, then quickly donned his fins so that when he hit the water, he’d be ready to swim. Below him was nothing but green on undulating black. The moment that he splashed into the sea, he released his chute. The current was strong and would pull him away from their designated coordinates in seconds.
“Good grouping,” Tex said. “Hold. Our ride is incoming.”
The USS Montana was their designated ride, a cruise missile submarine referred to as SSGN and part of the patrolling Seventh Fleet.
The feeling of something big moving beneath them made Twister look down as a massive black shape glowed behind his goggles. The waves jostled them, displacing the water. Their dry suits protected them from fluctuation in body heat by maintaining an even temperature despite the seventy-one-degree water temperature in January.
“Dive,” Tex said. “Make it quick. We have a small window to latch on. The sub’s going to keep moving. We’ll transition to the escape hatch on the fly.”
They all submerged, swimming down to the long conical shape below them. He could see the deck, the hatch for access when the boat was on the surface, and the flat panels on either side of the sail, and the superstructure that stuck up from the deck of the sub. It housed conning gear, a periscope, and an enclosed observation area. With the flat sailplanes, he tagged the vessel as one of the Ohio class fast-attack models, telling him there were approximately fifteen officers and about 144 enlisted on board.
Twister wasted no time in locating the small handholds that were specifically designed for special operations infil and exfil. They would hang onto the side until half of the guys were in the dry deck shelter, a removable module that was attached to the sub to allow divers easy entrance and exit while the boat was submerged. The DDS was broken into three compartments: the forward-most compartment consisted of the hyperbaric chamber to treat injured divers, the middle compartment or transfer trunk where his team would enter and exit the sub. The third chamber was the hangar for their new dry combat submersible. They would need to board in sets of four. Once the first set of four were inside the vessel, the rest of them would crawl along the hull to access the DDS.
The moment that Twister latched on, Tex said, “Hang on. Bondo, Easy, Shark, and Dagger. Get it done.”
That left Twister Tex, Brawler, and Flash clutching a small metal handhold until it was time for them to get into the small chamber. There was a drag on his body, but nothing that he wasn’t used to.
The moment he thought about getting inside the sub, his chest started tightening, his lungs contracting. Bad idea in this situation. He only had so much oxygen in his rebreather to get this process finished. The breathing apparatus absorbed carbon dioxide from his exhaled breath to recycle the unused oxygen. It also was a closed-circuit system, eliminating any bubbles to give him away.
He closed his eyes as he held on tight, taking a full inhalation and counting to four. He held his breath as he counted to four again, then slowly exhaled, again counting to four. The gray sensation and the tightness in his chest receded. He continued to calm himself until he heard Tex. “Twister, Brawler, and Flash. Move.”
As soon as the man behind him vacated his handhold, Twister repositioned his body, then started crawling hand over hand until he reached the last hold while his teammates navigated the open DDS. As soon as they were inside, he started his own ascent, then transferred seamlessly into the compartment. He turned, grabbed and closed the watertight door to the trunk. That tightness threatened again, and he continued his breathing. He turned to Tex after securing the door and gave him a thumbs up. Tex communicated with the sub and the sound of pumps draining the water started up, a pressure light illuminating all the tubes and pipes. The panic got worse as the floating sensation dissipated and gravity took over, grounding him. The other three guys were already stripping down their gear and preparing to enter the sub. He tried to move, but he felt paralyzed. Tex pulled off his face mask and headgear, hesitating while Brawler and Flash exited.
Twister, through sheer will, made himself move, pushing past the debilitating immobility to reach down and remove his fins, spitting out his regulator, working to keep his breathing even. He rose as he pulled off his face mask and headpiece.
“Everything all right?” Tex asked, those blue eyes of his narrowed and concerned.
“Yeah,” Twister said, shrugging it off and passing by his LT before exiting the hatch. This situation he was experiencing was nothing but temporary. No need to involve Tex when he was still performing his duties. He had promised himself he wouldn’t quit in BUD/S, and now that he had taken the oath, not only one that numbered him among his elite brothers, but the Hippocratic oath, he wouldn’t quit here. This…weakness…for lack of a better term, wouldn’t beat him. He would get to the core of his problem, once he had time to sift through all his experiences since Haiti. He shifted his shoulders, feeling the bore of Tex’s gaze as he moved away from his CO. The only person who could take him out of the fight was that man, and he wasn’t going to give him a reason to make that decision. He didn’t need babysitting in BUD/S, and he didn’t need it here.
He had never had this problem, ever, but now this sub was nothing but narrow corridors and tight spaces—cramped was an understatement. At least they were shown to a missile compartment converted into extra berthing to carry two platoons of combat SEALs. That meant they had the whole berth to themselves, one that accommodated sixty-six special operators.
Once inside the berth, he chose a bunk and started to unpack his gear into the locker. At this point, he’d already done most of his homework regarding the mission. The sub was going to get as close to shore as possible. The navigation was the most intense part of the underwater trip, but that would be handled by two of their Special Warfare Combat Crewmen, or SWCC. They piloted the craft, and his team would be along for the ride. They had to slip around China’s surveillance, deploy to shore, take their photos, and return back to the sub, all without any detection.
The thought of the DCS made him break out in a cold sweat—another enclosed space.
The trip to shore was going to take too long for them to deploy when they reached their destination—twelve nautical miles to the line demarcating the beginning of Chinese territorial waters.
They would have to wait a whole cycle before they could deploy in the deepest dark of night. That meant they had some downtime. He was going to turn in and get some rest before the mission. His teammates had the same idea.
He entered the large showering area, specially designed for divers with access to warm water to raise their body temperatures and a drying space for their wetsuits. Continuing with his breathing, he got wet, turned off the water, got soapy, rinsed off, and finished. After drying off, he donned a pair of navy blue shorts and a gray T-shirt, towel-drying his hair as he walked back to his bunk.
Dagger, his hair still wet from his shower, came up to him, having taken a bunk over from him.Twister could see him frowning.
“You still worrying over Quinn and your nephews?” Twister asked, draping his towel over the top bunk. Dagger huffed out a breath, then gave Twister a tortured sidelong glance. “Ought-o? What’s wrong? Have you heard from her?”
Dagger scoffed as he turned down the bunk. “Like she would contact me for anything,” he growled.
Twister pulled down his own bed covers and sat down. “Kade? What’s up?” Twister was concerned about Quinn. She looked haggard, too thin, and stressed. He could easily understand Dagger’s worry. He certainly didn’t want to add to it, but he wasn’t one to pull punches. They were part of the same frog family, forged by a personal bond when men faced adversity as one, and Dagger had risked his life for him countless times.
Twister had to work on his own interpersonal issues. He’d learned to moderate his actions and reactions as he often came on too strong at times and ended up intimidating people instead of helping them. He’d worked at his listening skills in order to be a better teammate and corpsman. “You know your secrets are safe with me.”
Dagger sat down on the opposite bunk and nodded. “The same goes for you,” he said firmly, his gaze unwavering. Twister ignored that look. He wasn’t ready to talk about anything to do with what he was feeling right now. He often had trouble identifying emotions and understanding how he often denied them to keep doing what he was doing. Being a warrior didn’t leave much room for the softer side of a man’s personality, but that softer side often warred with his warrior ethics. He accepted the hard fact that his priority as a warrior was to take lives, and healing was secondary unless it was focused on one of his guys.
He’d resolved the one difficult edict in the Hippocratic oath—do no harm. He was a medic for his teammates and anyone who was wounded, including the enemy, even if he was the one who had inflicted that wound. He often had to reconcile that mission when Easy was drowning, needing his aid, and he had been commandeered to save one of the terrorist’s lives. Which he did. Easy thankfully survived, and Twister didn’t have to carry that tragedy on his heart.
“Noted. You can only do so much for someone, Kade. If they aren’t willing to reach out for help, when you offer it—multiple times—then you have to give them some space. Nothing you say or do is going to make an impact.”
“I wish it was just that kind of problem I was facing. Quinn—you know she faults us for Brian’s death—more so me, for being his brother and seemingly allowing him to die.”
“That’s not what we did. She should know that, Kade, but I can’t discount how much she must have grieved over his death. I’m clear that we didn’t let him die. It was a fast action that was out of our hands. We had no idea the warden would go off the rails and torture him for information.”
“I know all that,” Dagger said wearily, hunching over and stacking his forearms on his thighs, narrowing his gaze. His tone firmed and got hard as rock. “Don’t you think I’ve been going over and over that mission in my head and my heart repeatedly?”
“What is it then?” Dagger stilled. That tortured look was back, and an uneasy feeling unfolded in Twister’s gut.
Keeping his voice low, he said, “I didn’t want to admit it to myself, let alone utter it out loud. It feels like a betrayal to Brian’s memory.”
“Oh, fuck,” Twister said.
“Yeah, I think I’ve had feelings for her from the beginning, but I denied them and pushed them down because she was dedicated to my brother. I attended the wedding but drank myself into oblivion.” He took a breath, then an even harder one. “Those boys?” He raised his head and looked at Twister. “They’re mine…well, I gave my seed to Brian when he asked for the donation. He’d sustained an injury in training that made him unable to father children, but Quinn wanted them desperately, and I couldn’t say no to her. Maybe it was a way to validate my feelings for her. I always thought of them as Quinn’s kids. They were my gift to her, and because of that, I’ve never allowed myself to think of them as anything but my nephews.”
“That’s some heavy shit, man. Especially now that you’d be the last person on the planet she would consider suitable to fall in love with.” When Dagger winced, Twister felt immediate remorse for being so painfully blunt. He tried to temper that. “I’m so sorry, Kade.”
He nodded. Even in the dim light, he could see him react, and his fists clenched. He was clearly shaken, but he held it together, a bleak, determined set to his profile. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. I won’t abandon her or her children, no matter how she treats me.” His voice dropped, and his tone went uneven. “Brian is counting on me to keep them safe, healthy, and happy. I can’t let him down…”
He trailed off and Twister was aware that he’d omitted the word “again.” The guilt he was carrying must be heavy with the loss of his brother and the feelings he’d had for Brian’s widow.
It wasn’t until he heard Dagger’s soft, even breath that his own mental pain and history started to pile up on him.
His father was a renowned heart surgeon, and from as far as Twister could remember, he’d hammered it into his children that service was the most important aspect of life. His father had dedicated himself to service his whole life—Doctors Without Borders, charity work, pro bono operations, and his dedication to the needy on the speaking circuit.
As a young boy, Twister found the suffering of others to be overwhelming and made him feel powerless in the big scheme of things. He’d always been a loud person and considered that, with only one life, it was something to be lived to the fullest. He believed that taking a risk and making the most out of his time on the planet was a priority. His father didn’t mean to be neglectful of his family. It was just a result of his selfless acts that he spent more time with other people than he did with his family. As a result, how could Twister or anyone in his family complain about it? It just got stuffed down with all the other shit most people didn’t address.
That left his mother mostly alone with four children, his older brother and his two younger twin sisters. He often helped his mom cope with all the stresses of being basically a single parent.
He had no romantic relationship, and to be honest, ever since he enlisted in the SEALs, it had been easy to keep his personal relationships superficial—fast, uninvolved sex that was nothing but physical in nature. He had always thought sex was about action, physical urges, and less about self, but maybe he was completely looking at it from a skewed perspective. The evidence was his four brothers who had found something special with truly special women: Nora, Tex’s wife, strong, capable, and courageous; Cameron, Bondo’s wife, another capable and strong woman who wasn’t afraid of standing up to Bondo; Astraea, Easy’s wife, who had overcome her own personal demons to give Easy everything he needed and allowed him to be reciprocal to her own needs; and sweet, funny, and outrageous Maddy, Shark’s fiancé. It all slapped him in the face every time they were together socially.
He liked to keep his fights clean and the sex dirty and gray areas made him wary. There was no time for his needs when there was so much injustice in the world. The very nature of his job kept him in that mindset for most of the year. But he couldn’t help the longing that bled into his consciousness. Ever since Haiti, he wondered what he was missing, especially now that Tex, Easy, Shark, and even stoic Bondo had found such fulfilling relationships. It made him feel hollow, and that kind of thinking made all his deeds and actions seem hollow, even when he knew they weren’t.
What was he truly missing? And would he ever allow himself the chance to find out?
The next morning, Twister was up and doing PT before he ate breakfast. He wanted to keep busy so that he didn’t overly think about how enclosed the spaces were and especially how tight the submersible would be tonight.
The USS Montana was about to get close to China’s territorial waters, although staying about twenty miles out. The Montana was running silent and was submerged, but the Chinese Navy was active in the area, especially along the boundary of their border and international waters, and they were already prickly about United States vessels in what they considered their territory—they had claimed the whole of the South China Sea.
The plan was that China wouldn’t be alerted to any Naval action at all. They would insert to shore with their DCS, do their surveillance, then extract the same way.
Most of the guys on the sub were used to seeing SEALs onboard, but there were a few with stars in their eyes who were new to the experience. SEALs were the rock stars of the SOF community. He understood the hype, and according to a lot of special forces guys, they were in the media way too much, especially after the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden.
What they did was covert, and they preferred to be invisible when they did it.
“So you climb?” the guy next to him said.
Twister had been doing arm curls and he set the weights down, glancing in the other direction at Dagger.
“The shirt,” Dagger said.
“Oh, yeah.” He’d forgotten he’d donned a Patagonia T-shirt.
“My brother climbs.” He smiled.
“Not you?”
“No. I like the climbing part, but not the falling part.”
He and Dagger chuckled. “That’s the tricky part.”
He nodded. “We all appreciate what you guys do and are proud we get to deliver you where you need to go.”
“Appreciate that, man,” Twister said.
After that they went to the mess deck, and Tex ate with the officers and Bondo with the master chiefs. Then it was down to their berth to take care of mission preparation. Twister focused on cleaning his weapons, loading his vest, going over his rebreather and dive gear, his med kit, and checking his mags.
When the time came to get back into the DDS and load out for the mission, he moved with his teammates to the DDS hatch, waited while Tex and Bondo loaded out with Easy, and Shark. Then Brawler and Flash were next with him and Dagger. The SWCC pilots were already in the water with the submersible, having done a mission precheck.
Twister’s chest started to get tight as he went into the DDS, but he kept himself calm. Tex would be watching him because his boss had an inkling that Twister was struggling since getting back onto active duty.
That would be true, but only in tight circumstances. He couldn’t quite figure out what was bothering him about it all, and he’d been more than preoccupied with this mission to really give it a good rundown in his brain. Not to mention, emotions were a hurdle for him to manage. Whatever it was wasn’t physical. It was mental—ah, he hated to admit it, but this response had to be emotional.
As the chamber started to fill with water, the four of them fitted their facemasks, set their regulators in their mouths, and their fins over their swim boots. When the DDS was completely filled, Brawler opened the door, and they swam out into the ocean. It was pitch black, only the lights on their gear illuminating the water so they could see to load up.
They were going to be traveling at about five knots, which roughly was about six miles per hour. They were looking at a five-hour trek.
He kept his breathing calm and steady as the tightness in his chest ramped up and was pushed down throughout the uneventful journey. At their destination, which was about three miles out from the coast, the submersible stopped and unloaded them. The tide was going in, so that would mean less pull to get to shore and a much faster swim. They were to spend an hour taking photos, and then report back to this location for pick up back to the USS Montana .
Again, the mission went off without a hitch until about the last five minutes.
“Wolf One to Wolf Leader,” came through Twister’s comm. “Be advised. Vehicle compromised. No extract available. Egress to home target on physical power. Copy?”
“Copy,” Tex growled into the comm.
“That’s a thirty-two-mile swim, LT,” Shark said with enthusiasm.
“Then we’d better get to paddling,” he said as they retreated from the shore and slipped back into the water. The ocean was vast, and that word didn’t adequately explain the breadth, width, and depth of water that covered seventy percent of the planet, and all of that water teemed with life. Yet there was thirty-two miles of ocean with riptides, open sea, and a myriad of dangers.
But all he could see was thirty-two miles of challenge—him against one of the most formidable forces on the planet.
Water was as familiar an environment as land and the vast expanse of the skies. Training played an integral part in that comfort. Twister’s muscles, lungs, and mind went on autopilot. His body was tuned to the rhythm of the ocean. The waves lifted his torso as it passed overhead, then pushed him flat against the bottom as the water receded before the next set. Up, down, breathe, hold. The rocking motion was relaxing.
As they got past the breakers, Tex said, “Underwater until we clear this area. Then we’ll surface and swim until we reach the Montana . Any questions?”
Brawler raised his hand. “I think Flash forgot his pretty pink unicorn floaty.”
“Fuck you, Brawler,” Flash said.
“What about sharks?” Easy asked.
“In how do sharks deal with Navy SEALs? We’re apex predators, Easy. We would fuck them up,” Shark said. “And since we’re not cute, cuddly, big-eyed seals, they won’t be interested in us.”
“Not cute and cuddly? Speak for yourself, Shark,” Bondo quipped with a smile.
“Right, Bondo. You’re nothing but a teddy bear,” Tex said. The guys chuckled. “If it gets choppy, we’ll go under, but we only have about six hours of breathable air left. I’d prefer to keep it in reserve when we get back to the sub. Let’s get going,” Tex ordered.
Twister linked up with Dagger, and each of them got into a cadence right into their tried-and-true sidestroke of top arm, bottom arm, kick, kick, kick, and glide. He started his exhalation underwater, then fully exhaled when he broke the surface as he stroked through with his top arm, inhaling when he powered through with his bottom arm, then kept up a smooth momentum through the water.
With stops to hydrate and eat power bars, Tex kept track of the location, and eleven hours later, they made it back to the coordinates of where the Montana lay in wait, but with considerably less air than they hoped to have. The team, tethered together, had to swim underwater through a particularly nasty squall, using up all but fifteen minutes, due to the extra exertion. It had been a labor-intensive part of the swim, more so than stroking easily on the surface. After that the sea had cooperated, and in the distance, they had spied a Chinese destroyer, just as the sun dusted the horizon, lingering between sky and rolling sea. But it was unlikely to detect the dressed-head-to-toe-in-black, stealthy team in the dusk, especially when they didn’t expect to encounter US forces in the water.
Because of the nature of the mission and its clandestine priority, the sub stayed submerged at periscope depth, which was about forty feet of water. That destroyer was a little too close for comfort. Due to the urgency in getting the SEALs aboard, Tex, Bondo, Easy, and Brawler used the trunk for entry, and Twister, Dagger, Flash, and Shark were directed to torpedo tubes.
The moment that he discovered he was going to have to enter the boat through the slimmest egress ever, his chest started that familiar tightening. He swallowed, working at keeping his mind clear and his breathing even. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to spare with just fifteen minutes of air.
Dagger went into the open tube feet first, and Twister went in behind him headfirst, but a swell caught him and slammed him against the rim of the casing. Dagger immediately reached out and caught his hands, steadying him, then pulled him deeper inside.
As soon as the hatch closed behind them, the water started to drain, but a huge, rolling mass of panic surged into his throat. He tried desperately to hold back the increasing pressure. Terror could take possession of him and cause increased breathing, using up his precious air. He corralled the spiraling sensation and concentrated on surviving, telling himself he only had to endure minutes of this enclosed hell. His breathing labored as bursts of stars and brilliant white shards of light exploded before his eyes. A loud ringing filled his ears. Even in his reduced state, he recognized the symptoms of carbon dioxide toxicity and oxygen deficiency. A hundred terrible visions flashed through his mind, a grim reminder of how close he came to dying in Haiti.
Dagger’s voice came through his headset, but he couldn’t respond. There just wasn’t enough air. He slipped into darkness.
Until moments later, his eyes popped open. He was on the sub deck, medics working over him, his gear stripped off him. His throat felt raw and his lungs hurt. Despite the explanation that his rebreather had been damaged, all he could think about was how he had panicked and how much that angered him. His control was in question, and for a man who liked to be in command of every aspect of his life, he felt…diminished by it.