Building Courage (Seal Team Heartbreakers #11)

Prologue

Standing at the stern of the Saudi-supplied dive ship, Tiniyn Albahr , or in English, Sea Dragon, Petty Officer Tucker Giles shook his head and cursed under his breath. “What a fucking mess.”

A petroleum-scented scum floated on the surface of the water directly over the site. The rising sun peeked over the sandy bank, refracting the oil into a black mother-of-pearl sheen. The lazy waves caused by passing craft pushed against the sunken trawler and the twisted metal just visible beneath the surface, trumpeting a sad wail almost painful to hear.

They had no business taking on this job. They were SEALs, not technical divers. But word had come down from on high, and the powers that be were hoping to bank some goodwill for later use with the Saudis.

He’d spent days mapping the wreck and the shelf on which it sat. If they could blow away enough of the shelf, the fishing trawler would tumble down into the depths and clear the way for the large oil tankers. Currently, the commercial fishing vessel was too shallow to keep one of the tankers from possibly snagging the wreck and causing an expensive snafu.

When the oil tanker had collided with the trawler, it had ripped a huge hole halfway through the smaller boat, killing three of the men on board and sinking her. They’d already recovered the dead—a gruesome task.

The oil tanker, many times the size of the trawler, had sustained little damage. After a two-day investigation to discover who was at fault, the tanker had gone on its way to empty its tanks.

The fishing vessel had settled on the shelf and become hooked on chunks of debris, nets, garbage, and even a car left behind by thousands of other ships.

To ensure both halves of the ship went down and took the debris with them, they’d have to set some charges along the hull to finish what the tanker had started and blow her in half, so the two pieces fell independently and dragged everything with them.

He’d dived some famous wrecks on the East Coast. It was dangerous business—a thrill—but dangerous all the same. Working in pitch black with only a dive light to guide the way, it was easy to get disoriented in the spaces inside a sunken ship and, once lost, run out of air and drown. Or a diver could get trapped beneath debris, entangled in electrical wiring…because once a ship was mortally wounded and sank, things never stayed in place. Everything inside the ship got churned up and twisted.

He’d be the one inside the vessel while the others had dealt with the exterior charges. Now, a dozen dangerous scenarios played through his mind. With an effort, he locked the thoughts down hard. He wouldn’t let what could happen psych him out.

The other team members had never dived and entered a sunken vessel like this. His past experience was probably why this dive had been dumped on them. With a sigh, he turned to go below.

The Saudis knew how to deck out their equipment and had the money to do it. He passed the recompression chamber mounted to the deck on the starboard side of the vessel. A refill station for the scuba tanks was secured in a storage bay on the port side. He’d already gone over the emergency medical equipment, and his team had done practice dives and mapped the wreck. They’d done everything they could to make this mission go smoothly.

Denotti, Swan, Squirrel, and Arrow sat at one of the mess tables eating a breakfast of eggs, dates, bread, cheese, and vegetables. It was all washed down with rich, dark coffee. Lieutenant Sam Harding sat at the next table on the right with Bullet and Beck.

He was confident in his team. They’d had some upheavals with Book’s jump accident two years ago and Squirrel’s unexpected transfer right after. But they were smoothing out and falling back into a familiar rhythm.

Rosenburg, aka “Squirrel,” was back, but Elijah Ashe “Book” would never be a SEAL again. These days, he drove a wheelchair while the rest of them were still taking down terrorists or training others to do it.

Lieutenant Sam Harding motioned for him to join them, and Tucker got a bottle of water from a glass-fronted fridge and wandered over to fill a plate and eat. Even though Harding was their team leader, he’d given Tucker full control over this mission since he had the most experience diving wrecks and was a certified dive specialist with experience in salvage diving. Harding was a good team leader and never let his ego get in the way of the mission.

“You’ve done an excellent job preparing us for this, Gilly. We have it down. Relax and eat. You’ll need the energy.” Sam said as he bit into a date and popped out the pit.

“I’ll relax when the mission is over, and we’re on the flight home, LT.” He dished up some of the same fare the others were eating and tore loose a chunk of the khubz , a flatbread baked fresh by the cook on board.

Harding turned the bottle of water in front of him before taking a drink. “I’ve told the others, but you were busy when the word came down. My father took the plea deal, so Morgan won’t have to testify.”

Tucker didn’t bother to tell Harding he already knew. He kept in touch with Owen Morgan because he felt the guy had gotten a raw deal witnessing a murder and being suspected of killing his wife all in the same timeframe. Morgan had transferred to another platoon for the fresh start he’d hoped to have with their team.

In his opinion, they’d failed the guy.

“I suppose it’s a relief for you to have that settled,” Tucker said.

“Yeah, for my mother and brothers. It hasn’t affected me. I’m here, and my life is separate from all that.”

Thomas Harding had murdered a guy in cold blood. Jesus! LT had been smart to cut him out of his life at an early age. It surely made the whole thing easier for him, knowing he’d done the right thing. But still…the guy was his dad. It had to hurt.

Tucker was glad he’d called his dad the night before, just as he did before every big mission. If something happened and he hadn’t called him…to let him know he was good, focused, and doing what he needed to do…. Well, he wanted no regret to linger for his family.

“What’s Moira working on these days?” Tucker asked to shut out the conversation in his head.

Harding’s expression lightened at the mention of his wife. “She’s working on a one-woman show at the gallery and doing her day job.”

“Good for her. She deserves the recognition. Got any pictures of the work?”

“Sure.” Sam tugged his cell phone out of one of the pockets in his camouflage pants, opened the screen, scrolled through, and then extended the phone to him.

There was a blend of abstract and realistic works, but they all had Moira’s distinctive style. “She’s going to be famous one day, LT, and you’ll be dodging cameras while she’s soaking up the limelight.”

“I hope she is. She works her ass off at school and then works every weekend. She deserves to be successful.”

Jeff Sizemore, aka Bullet, reached for the phone and scrolled through the photos. “Fucking amazing, LT.” He passed the phone on to make the rounds.

They finished breakfast and went to their cabins to dress in their dry suits. The trawler was still leaking oil. The dry suits, with their rubber seals at wrists, ankles, and neck, would protect them from exposure to the petroleum in the water, as would the heavy goggles they used. Their MK16 Rebreathers extended bottom time, and wearing helmets with lights kept visibility at maximum. Downtime was only supposed to be an hour. With eight of them setting charges, they would have the work done easily in that length of time.

Tucker paired off with Squirrel to buddy-check each other’s gear. Denotti and Bullet climbed down into the Zodiac, and then he and Squirrel lowered a heavy metal basket containing mesh bags filled with the explosive devices. They would be triggered by a remote device topside once the team was out of the water and the Sea Dragon had been moved a safe distance away. Denotti took the driver’s seat with Bullet riding shotgun, and the rest of the team systematically climbed down to join them.

A temporary buoy bobbed directly over the site with a downline secured to it. Every other man armed himself with a speargun to dissuade the sharks that cruised the site. They dropped anchor next to the buoy, and the men wasted no time getting their supplies, dropping over the side, and following the line down to the wreck.

From his position behind Harding and Swan, Tucker found it strange to see the men kicking downward with no bubbles flowing upward behind them. The rebreathers absorbed the carbon dioxide from their breath and recycled the oxygen to extend their downtime.

They came upon the trawler tilted slightly on its side on the edge of the chasm. Had the boat been forced thirty feet further to the left when struck, it might have ended up in the depths instead of becoming a collision hazard.

The men paired up and dropped down behind the trawler to set the charges. Squirrel took a position with a speargun outside the ragged hole where the oil tanker had struck the fishing trawler and done its best to rip it in half.

Tucker hesitated outside the opening and took a minute to get his mind right. He’d studied the plans and done mental dry runs in preparation for entering the vessel, but none of that would prepare him for what he would face inside the wrecked ship. He’d gone over and over the plans with the entire team in case something went wrong, and they had to come in after him.

He had an hour. He’d find his way. He flashed Squirrel an okay sign and swam into the ship’s dark interior.

In the glow of his helmet light, Tucker caught the glint of crinkled metal hanging in jagged pieces at the entrance of the fissure created when the bow of the oil tanker sliced into the smaller vessel. Vinelike electrical wiring hung from the partially detached upper bulkhead in the passageway. He swam along the slope of the deck as he did an easy cave-diving kick to propel himself forward without stirring the water too much. Regular kicks would stir the sediment inside into a cloud. He could get lost in that cloud. He needed to reach the hold where the fish had been stored. He’d studied the location of a hatch at the bottom of a stairway that had given the crew access to the storage compartment so they could clean it.

On his way there, he set to work laying in the explosives along the farthest bulkhead opposite the seam where the boat had been ripped apart. Finding a buckled breech in the deck, he peeked downward into the space.

Most of the catch had spilled out into the bay as the ship had tumbled to the bottom and settled on the ledge, but there were still piles of carcasses resting in stagnant heaps on the port side. Their decomposition filled the hold with a foggy stew of tissue that drew smaller fish. He thanked God he was spared the smell underwater. His dry suit would stink like death after this. He didn’t relish scrubbing it—if it could be salvaged at all.

He dropped down into the hold, then swam upward to the starboard side of the ship and set to work laying the devices in a straight line ten feet apart from one side of the hold to the other. As he set the fifth charge and swam forward to position the sixth, a pale gray shadow shot out of the haze, and he had only a second to recognize it as a shark before it struck him. It was a hard glancing blow to his hip, a test to see if he was edible. The force of the blow spun him around, and he hit his arm on a zagged piece of metal. The tough fabric of his dry suit protected his arm but didn’t cushion the full-on blow of a huge shark butting him.

His heart rate quickening, his breathing ragged, he jerked his dive knife free of his belt and held completely still, suspended just above the deck by his buoyancy vest.

Fuck! With all the food shoved against one side of the hold, this fucker had decided he wanted fresh meat.

Out of all the scenarios that had run through his mind, being trapped inside the hold with a shark hadn’t been one of them. He tried to calm his breathing, but the surge of adrenaline kept his heart racing.

When the beast didn’t appear again, he sheathed the knife. With every nerve in his body on red alert, he hugged the deck and glanced over his shoulder every few seconds. Setting the last four devices seemed to take forever. With every muscle in his body tensed and ready for battle, he followed the dim blinking lights of the set charges back the way he’d come. Pausing to get his bearings, he looked up and spied the edge of the opening through which he’d entered. He was almost home free.

He caught quick movement to his right. Like a gray shadow, the shark pierced the cloudy water and came straight at him, its powerful tail whipping back and forth like a sickle. Tucker jerked his dive knife free again but realized it would be like trying to stop a torpedo with an icepick. Out of options, he pushed off the deck and swam upward, kicking for all he was worth.

Expecting to feel the agonizing pain of having a leg or foot ripped off, he scrambled through the hole, caught the edges with his fingertips, tucked his legs in against his body, and twisted to face the threat.

The shark shot up through the hole. Tucker lashed out with the knife with all his strength, catching the animal along one side. It bowed in reaction, teeth bared. He braced for an attack, but injured, it darted away and sped down the passageway, churning up a cloud of sediment and leaving a thin trail of blood as it went.

Relief had barely rushed in when a thought occurred to him. Shit! Squirrel was right in its path.

And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to warn him.

The water looked as thick as milk. Tucker forced himself to maintain his easy kick as he hovered as close to the sloped deck as possible. He came upon the dangling electrical wiring pulled low. The shark had obviously gotten tangled and torn loose more wire. Concerned his rebreather might get hooked to the wires, he flipped onto his back to kick beneath it and had to release some of the air from his buoyancy vest to fit. Six feet later, he reached clearer water and the jagged hole through which he’d entered the wreck.

He swam out to find the other seven members of his team hovering at the breech, waiting for him. He looked around for the shark, but it was nowhere in sight. Denotti gripped his shoulder and looked into his eyes through his facemask.

He signaled he was okay and adjusted the air in his vest again to make his assent easier.

Squirrel and Swan took the lead to the downline while Arrow and Bullet brought up the rear, all armed with spearguns. When they settled in for a decompression stop at forty feet, Harding gave him a once-over and flicked a finger at his torn dry suit. He signaled he was okay, but now that the adrenaline had leached away, he was shaking, and his hip, where the shark had hit him, was beginning to ache.

Once in the Zodiac, he dragged his helmet and facemask off, took a deep breath, and almost gagged.

Swan’s, “Jesus Christ! What is that smell?” ripped him and everyone else into laughter.

“No wonder that shark wanted to eat you, Gilly. You reek!” Bullet complained from beside him.

“Put this thing in gear and get us out of here,” Sam said. “Maybe we can outrun that stench until we get back to Sea Dragon.”

The levity finally broke the tension that knotted his muscles, and Tucker laughed the entire ride.

Later, when they’d all had a chance to clean up, and the Sea Dragon was moved to a safe distance, the team stood on the deck observing while Sam threw the switch and blew the charges. Even from a safe distance, the water seemed to jump two feet in the air, and the shock wave hit the dive vessel hard enough that it rocked violently.

Tucker hoped the damn shark was close enough to feel the impact of the charge. The next moment, he allowed himself to feel the satisfaction of another successful mission and wondered what the next would be.