Going Dark(70)

“My info’s better,” Sheffield said. “She’s being sheared, about to take a hard left, get torn up by the Sierra Maestra mountains in Cuba. Thirty minutes this wind’ll die down, an hour at the most. If we head out now, it’ll be sloppy, but by the time we reach Prince Key, wind should be down to fifteen to twenty. Rough sailing, but also damn good cover.”

Magnuson looked around at his men as if taking their silent vote.

“Your choice, guys,” Frank said. “Stay here, stay dry, or come with me and costar in the movie.”

Frank was drenched, cold, and fighting back shivers by the time they made it to the end of the channel and faced the howling bay, thinking maybe this was a mistake. Nicole kept her head bowed against the wind, the hood of her rain gear cinched so tight only a small oval of her face showed. The pretty parts: her mouth, nose, those Garbo, high-voltage eyes.

Their night-vision equipment was useless. Between the pelting rain and the lightning, they were better off with their naked eyes.

Frank led the armada out of the choppy water of the channel, and once they entered the bay, they were plastered from every direction by swells, their rafts pitching high over crests, then wallowing for a moment before hammering into the troughs. Hard as hell to hold a heading, but Frank outwrestled the wheel and managed to keep the GPS arrow pointing due east toward the island.

Buffeted by headwinds, the two Black Hawks skimmed low overhead, then split apart, moving into position. One would hover a few miles north, and the other a few miles south, of Prince Key. Out of range of hearing, but near enough to swoop in when the five teams came ashore.

Twenty minutes into it, everyone was still fanned out on either side of Sheffield. With each lightning stroke, he caught their silhouettes. Every minute or two his radio squawked, but Frank made out only a few garbled words.

An hour into the crossing his GPS said they had a mile to go before they reached Prince Key, a mile for his forecast to come true.

As the water shallowed, they fell into the lee of the island and the wailing dropped to a moan. Spitting rain speckled the water that sloshed around the floor of the raft, and small waves jostled them as they worked to shore. By God, the storm had made its hard turn to the south. Once again his friend Matt White, the lychee-nut farmer, had nailed it.

Nicole loosened her rain hood and released her terror grip on the bench seat. She stretched her neck and reached inside her black rain suit and withdrew her handgun, a compact nine-millimeter Sig P229.

In a hushed voice, Sheffield told her she wasn’t going to need that.

“Bet me,” she said.

Because he was piloting the lead Zodiac, Sheffield’s role was to await the radio signal from Magnuson indicating all teams were in place around the island. Meantime, hold his position just offshore, spend the time looking for an entry spot among the dense mangrove roots. Five minutes max.

The radio squawked a couple of times, more static. Sheffield kept it close to his ear, waiting for the green light, one intelligible word that everyone was set. Five minutes became ten, then fifteen, and Frank, growing anxious, was moving the mike to his lips to whisper a query when the gunfire erupted.

He dropped the mike, hit the throttle, rammed the nose of the raft into an opening between two large black mangroves. Scrambling over the bow, he dropped into muck to his knees and held his hand out for Nicole. She had other ideas. Male assistance not required. From the starboard side she jumped onto a shelf of roots and branches, slipped, then hauled herself upright, drew her weapon, and pushed off into the dense cross-hatching of flora.

Frank lashed the raft’s bowline to a tree trunk and slogged up the bank as another burst of automatic fire sounded. He tried to hail Nicole but she’d already bulled ahead into the darkness. Shit, shit, shit.

Branches snatched at his shirt and stabbed his flesh as Frank hauled ass in the direction of the shooting. It was coming from straight ahead, which put it around the larger of the two tents.

He would be approaching the tents from the rear while Magnuson’s team and the other two in the NCIS group would have landed fifty yards closer, coming from each flank.

Sheffield’s guys had been assigned the eastern shore, all the way on the other side of the island, which meant they’d be approaching across an open field, moving past the obstacle course, and heading toward the tent’s front opening—the longest distance to travel. And the most exposed.

Frank drew his Glock.

Everyone was supposed to move on Magnuson’s signal, a simultaneous landing, then proceed in unison toward the barracks tent. They’d set up a perimeter around the barracks tent, but no one was to approach the tent, no one would do any damn thing on his own until everyone was in place. Fire if you’re fired upon, only then.