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They sat there basking in the sun, talking about their future for the better part of an hour, teasing each other playfully about how many kids they were going to have, how they were going to be raised, what names they liked and what they would do if one of the kids was as stubborn as either of them. Rapp refrained from sharing his opinion as she talked about what she would do with her job after they had a baby. It was one of those new things he’d learned about relationships. He understood that she was talking it out, and not looking for him to throw in his own two cents.
For her part, Anna kept her promise that she would steer clear of digging for details on the goings-on at Langley. Rapp knew that if they were going to survive in the long run he would have to share certain aspects of his job with her, regardless of what Agency policy dictated. Anna was too curious to spend the rest of their lives never discussing what he spent the majority of the week doing. The general subjects of terrorism and national security were fair game, but anything involving specific intelligence or covert policy was off the table. Having been silent for so many years, Rapp actually found it satisfying to be able to share his opinions with someone who had a decent grasp of the issues.
They opened two more beers and Anna joined him in the water. They clung to the edge of the gravity pool and looked out at the ocean, their elbows and chins resting on the edge, their legs gently floating behind them. They laughed about the wedding and their week of seclusion and avoided mentioning that it was about to end. Rapp could tell that Anna was getting tipsy. She weighed only 115 pounds and the combination of beer, warm sun and a lazy breeze meant a siesta was in the cards.
After a little while she kissed him on the lips and swam to the other end of the small pool. Climbing out, she stopped on the top step and pulled her hair into a loose ponytail. As she twisted it with both hands the water cascaded down her smooth back and over her tiny white bikini bottom. With a flirtatious glance over her shoulder she began to unhook her top. “I’m going to go take a nap. Would you like to join me?” Keeping her back to him, she slipped off her bikini top and draped it over the hammock hook to her right.
Needing no further encouragement, Rapp set his beer down and hoisted himself over the edge. He followed his wife into the bedroom, losing his swim trunks along the way. His eyes never left her body, and for a brief moment he found himself wishing they could stay on this tiny island forever.
When they got back to Washington it wouldn’t be like this. There would be fires to be put out and plans to be put into action. He watched Anna slip out of her bikini bottom, and the problems awaiting him in Washington vanished. They could wait, at least for another day. Right now he had more important things on his mind.
2
The black boat lay still in the water while Devolis took a quick fix with his handheld GPS. They were right on the mark, two miles off the coast of Dinagat Island in the Philippines. The men retrieved their night vision goggles (NVGs) from their waterproof pouches and secured them tightly on their heads. Thick clouds obscured the moon and the stars. Without the NVGs they’d be blind. On Devolis’s signal the boat moved out, the modified Mercury outboard engine no louder than a hum.
The powers that be in Washington had finally decided to make a move. Abu Sayyaf, a radical Muslim group operating in the Philippines, had kidnapped a family of Americans on vacation, the Andersons from Portland, Oregon. The family, Mike and Judy and their three children—Ava, nine, Charlie, seven, and Lola, six—had been plucked from their seaside resort on the Philippine island of Samar five months earlier.
Devolis and his men had followed the story closely, knowing that if the politicians ever got off their asses, it would most likely be their job to go in and rescue the Andersons. Devolis had spent a lot of nights thinking about the family, especially the kids. The twenty-eight-year-old officer wanted to rescue those kids more than anything else he’d wanted in his six years as a U.S. Navy SEAL. He’d stared at their pictures so often the edges were worn and brown, and read their files over and over until those innocent little faces visited him in his sleep. For better or worse this mission had become personal. He wanted to be their savior. With Devolis it was not false bravado but an honestly and fiercely held conviction that someone needed to show these fanatics what happened when they screwed with the United States of America.
Devolis was in no way sadistic, but he felt an unusual amount of hatred toward the men who were holding the Andersons. He couldn’t grasp what type of person would kidnap innocent children, but whoever they were, Devolis felt confident that he would lose no sleep over whacking the whole lot of them. Tonight Abu Sayyef was going to feel the full force of the U.S. Navy and the terrorist group would deeply regret having locked horns with the world’s lone superpower.
The USS Belleau Wood was lurking fifteen miles off the coast of Dinagat Island. The Tarawa-class amphibious and air assault ship could bring to bear an immense amount of firepower. One of five such ships in the U S. Navy’s arsenal, the Belleau Wood was the air force, army and navy rolled into one. She was a hybrid aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ship with an 800-foot flight deck. She carried six AV-8B Harrier attack jets, four AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters, and for troop transport, twelve CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters and nine CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters. The 250-foot well deck in the stern of the ship held the navy’s superfast 135-foot, cushioned LCAC, capable of delivering heavy equipment, such as tanks and artillery, to the beach at forty-plus knots.
She carried a crew of 85 officers, 890 enlisted men and women and a battalion of 2,000-plus marines. The Belleau Wood provided true tactical integrity. Rather than waiting for various air force and army units to come together to form an integrated fighting force, the Belleau Wood delivered a complete self-contained fighting unit to the hot spot with air power, muscle, and logistical support all at the same time. She was the culmination of everything the marines and navy had learned as they clawed their way across the Pacific during World War II.
Devolis’s squad was the advance element of the operation. Their job was to go in and recon the camp. Once they’d verified what the intel guys had told them, they were to set up a blocking position between the main opposing force and the hostages and call in the doorkickers. Because of this they’d left their suppressed MP-5s back on the Belleau Wood, sacrificing stealth for firepower. Six of the eight men were carrying the M4 carbine, an undersize version of the venerable M16. With a shorter barrel and collapsible butt stock the weapon was much easier to maneuver through the thick jungle. The squad’s machine gunner was carrying an M249 SAW and the sniper was carrying a customized silenced Special Purpose Rifle. When the shooting started it would be very noisy, but for tonight’s mission, this would be a plus. The noise created by Devolis’s squad would both shock and disorient the opposing force as the helicopters swooped in from above and disgorged the assault teams.
Three more squads of SEALs, twenty-four men total, would then fast-rope in from above and both secure the hostages and sweep the camp. From there the doorkickers would move the Andersons one click from the camp to a small clearing for a helicopter evacuation. The clearing would be secured by a platoon of Force Recon marines, and if things started to fall apart and they met more resistance than they’d planned, the Harrier attack jets and Super Cobra attack helicopters were on station for quick deployment.
The squad would remain until the rescue element was safely out, and then work their way back to the beach and exfiltrate the same way they’d come in. A pretty straightforward plan, with one exception: they would be operating in the backyard of one of their allies and the Filipinos weren’t going to be involved in the operation. Not only were they not going to be involved, they weren’t even going to be told it was going on. No one had told the SEALs why, but they had their suspicions. The Philippine army had been promising for months to rescue the Andersons and they hadn’t done squat. There were rumors working their way around the teams that our old Pacific allies could no longer
be trusted, so the United States was going to take care of things on its own.
Devolis had learned early on in his career to steer clear of diplomatic and political questions. They tended to cloud the mission, which for a SEAL was a very bad thing. Mission clarity was crucial for a Special Forces officer. Besides, all that stuff was way above his pay grade. It was for the hoity-toity crowd with all their fancy titles and degrees.
Despite knowing better, Devolis couldn’t help but wonder how some of this might affect the mission. The scuttlebutt was that some pretty heated debates had taken place in Washington before they green-lighted the rescue operation. A rivulet of sweat dropped from his left eyebrow and landed on his cheek. He pressed the sleeve of his jungle BDU against his forehead and mopped his face. Silently, he cursed the heat, knowing that if it was warm out here on the water, it would be completely soupy in the jungle.
As they neared the beach, the boat slowed and settled in the calm water. There was only about fifty feet of sand between the waterline and the jungle. Every pair of eyes in the little rubber boat scanned the beach and the thick jungle in search of a sign that they weren’t alone. Even with their night vision goggles there was nothing much to glean beyond the empty beach. The jungle was too thick. Insertions were always a tense part of the op, but for tonight, at least, the intel guys had told him that it was highly doubtful they would meet any resistance upon landing.
A large, mangled piece of driftwood sat at the water’s edge. On Devolis’s order the boat headed in its direction. Unless it had moved since this morning’s satellite photographs, that was their spot. Just to the right of it, and in from the beach approximately a hundred yards, was a shallow stream they would use to work their way inland to the camp.
The boat nudged onto the sand beach, just to the right of the driftwood. The men moved with precision and speed. This was where they were most vulnerable, here on the beach out in the open. They spread out in a predetermined formation that they’d practiced with numbing repetition. The lead men in the front of the boat maintained firing positions while the others fanned out, creating a small secure beachhead that provided 180 degrees of fire.
Devolis lay in the prone position slightly ahead of the others, the muzzle of his rifle pointed at his sector of the jungle, his heart beating a bit faster but under control. The goggles turned the dark night into a glowing green, white and black landscape. Lying completely still, the lieutenant squinted his eyes in an attempt to pierce the wall of vegetation in front of him. After he’d given it a good look he took his right finger off the trigger and pointed toward the jungle twice. Ten feet to Devolis’s right, Scooter Mason, his point man, popped up and scampered off toward the jungle in a low crouch, his weapon at his shoulder ready to fire. Devolis took a second to check their flanks and looked down the beach in both directions.
That was when it happened. A three-round burst that shattered the still night. Three loud distinctive cracks that Devolis instantly knew came from a weapon that didn’t belong to any of his men. As Devolis swung his head around he saw Scooter falling to the ground and then the jungle in front of them erupted in a fusillade of gunfire. Bright muzzle flashes came from everywhere. A bullet whistled past the young lieutenant’s head and the sand in front of him began to dance as rounds thudded into the beach. In return, the squad let loose with everything they had. Each man hosed down his sector, focusing on the bright muzzle flashes of the enemy.
Devolis unloaded his first thirty-round magazine and ejected it. While fishing for a fresh magazine, he yelled into his lip mike, “Victor Five, this is Romeo! I need an immediate evac!” Devolis rammed home the fresh magazine and chambered a round. A muzzle flash erupted at one o’clock and he sent a three-round burst right back down its throat.
“Say again, Romeo” came the reply back over Devolis’s earpiece.
Devolis continued to fire and shouted, “We are taking heavy fire! We have at least one man down and we need an immediate evac! Bring it right in on the beach!”
An earnest voice crackled back over the radio, “We’re on the way.”
Devolis knew the rest of the team had heard his call for an evacuation over their headsets. They had covered it thoroughly in the premission briefing. The Mark V was to circle back after it dropped them off and take up station a mile and a half off the beach in case they were needed. It was a standard mission precaution, but one that no one thought they’d need tonight. As Devolis returned fire, he loudly cursed the people back in Washington. They’d walked right into an ambush and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how it had happened.
“Guys, give me a sit rep, by the numbers.” Devolis continued to fire while his men sounded off one by one. Only five men checked in. Devolis knew Scooter was down and that left only one other. “Irv, talk to me.” Devolis repeated the request, then looked to his left. He could see Irv’s prone figure, but there was no movement. “Listen up!” His shout was interrupted by several loud explosions as one of his men fired his M203 40mm grenade launcher into the jungle. “Gooch, put some smoke into their position. The boat will be here any second. When the big fifties start to rake the jungle we move. I’ll grab Irv. Gooch, can you get to Scooter?”
