Page 5 of Twister

Hah. That was part of their particular magic.

Dagger was still wrestling with what had happened with Quinn. Twister could tell he was twisting himself up into knots. Brian’s tragic death had hit them all hard, but, of course, no one harder than Dagger and his family. The fact that Quinn blamed them for Brian’s death had never been verbalized, but it was clear she was holding that bitterness in her heart. He was no shrink, but he figured she needed someone flesh and blood to blame. He understood how she felt.

They were jumping into the South China Sea in the dead of night, their sights set on strict coordinates. There wasn’t any margin for error.

There never was in anything they did.

“Lock and load, ladies,” came through his earpiece, the heads up that they were nearing their coordinates. Tex was the king of this mountain.

Grabbing his helmet, he pulled hard to settle the custom headpiece over his head. The guys started lining up, their features hidden behind helmets and oxygen masks, his night vision goggles strapped against his chest to the left of his rebreather before he stepped to the hatch. All conversation ceased as he dropped the transparent black shield down over his eyes. Seconds later, the belly of the plane started to descend, the hard suck of air pulling on their eardrums.

Icy wind filled the cabin, whipping around them like unseen blades. Adrenaline pumped into his system, mixing with his own violent, daring tendencies. Tex waited for the light to go from redto green. The moment it switched, he saluted the flight boss and disappeared into the dark maw.

Bondo, Shark, Easy, and Flash cleared the way in their own leaps of faith, and Twister waited a beat, giving Flash a moment to clear the airspace. They didn’t want any mid-air collisions.

Below him lay an endless sky, a vast ocean, risk, and uncertain fate. “Hoo-yah,” he growled, then jumped.

2

The wind sheardrove 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 USSMontanawas 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 thissituation. 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.

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