Executive Intent

“I think the helicopter got hit!” Malkin shouted. “For God’s sake, who would shoot down a rescue helicopter?” Seconds later he saw a jet fighter fly high overhead, but he couldn’t identify it. With shaking fingers he keyed the microphone button on his radio: “Seven-One, Seven-One, this is Sierra, how copy?” No response, even after several more tries. His face was a frozen stunned mask of confusion. “Holy crap…!” He keyed the mike again: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, any radio, any radio, any radio, rescue helicopter down, possible hostile antiaircraft fire, any radio, please respond.” He then reached over and activated the raft’s satellite EPIRB, or Emergency Position-Indicating Rescue Beacon, which would broadcast location information via satellite to rescue coordination centers around the world.

“I think we’re going to have company, Petty Officer,” Boxer said. “Keep trying to raise someone on the radio.” Boxer found her personal satellite locator in her harness and saw that it had not automatically activated upon ejection-because she’d been flying near possibly hostile forces, she did not want it to automatically activate-so she activated it now, and activated the beacon on Friel’s vest as well. She then started to drink as much of the water as she could without throwing up, and she stuffed nutrient bars from the survival rations into her flight suit.

The thing she feared showed up about fifteen minutes later: a Russian-made Ka-27 naval helicopter. This one was fitted with pylons carrying antiship missiles, a machine gun in a turret in the nose, and machine gunners in the side doors. Neither Malkin nor Boxer could see any other flags or markings. With guns trained on the Americans in the raft, two black-suited divers dropped into the water, swam over to the raft, and climbed inside. They wore black balaclavas; neither could tell if the men were black or wore black camo paint on their faces. They motioned for Malkin to raise his hands.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Malkin shouted. He raised his hands but kept the mike button on the portable radio keyed. “Who are you?”

“Don’t resist, Petty Officer,” Boxer said. “They’ll gun you down just to save weight.” Again, neither American could see any insignia on the uniforms, and they said nothing so it was impossible to identify them by their voices or accents. While the first commando pushed Malkin over on his front and secured his arms behind his back with plastic handcuffs, the second removed Boxer’s survival harness, ignoring her cries of pain, wrapped Malkin’s radio and the EPIRB in the harness, and dropped it into the ocean; the weight of the radio pulled everything underwater. A rescue basket was lowered, and in just a few minutes both Americans were aboard the Ka-27.

Before being hoisted back aboard the helicopter, the last commando punctured all of the air chambers of both rafts and Friel’s life vest with a knife, and in seconds Frodo had disappeared beneath the waves of the Gulf of Aden.

RUSSIAN MILITARY HEADQUARTERS, MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

THAT SAME TIME, EARLY MORNING

“General Darzov here.” The chief of staff of Russian defense forces spoke.

“General, the site is ready to radiate,” the commander of the special intelligence unit on Socotra Island, Yemen, said. “Overflight will be in five minutes.”

“I received a message from the GRU, reporting a possible security breach of the facility,” Darzov said. “But I found nothing in your daily reports about it. Explain.”

“Sir, the military intelligence branch from Sana’a detached to Socotra Island arrested an American engineer here, claiming he was a spy,” the commander said. “They advised us to shut down all special intelligence operations and do a complete search of the facility.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, sir. We found nothing.”

“Did you interview the suspect?”

“We could not, sir-the GRU beat the man senseless. He is probably a vegetable.”

“Where is he?”

“They said he was to be transferred to GRU headquarters in Sana’a or to the Putin for further medical tests.”

Darzov knew full well that meant chemical-induced torture-the guy was certainly going to disappear after the GRU was through with him. “Did you look at the files on the suspect?”

“I did, sir. He checked out. He builds robots. He was scheduled to demonstrate some sort of robotic fishing device to the local fish company here. We looked at the device-it’s a robot that walks in the ocean and checks fish traps. All his other papers were in order. He flew in the day before on Felix Air from Sana’a. We checked his entire itinerary and background. Clean.”

“So what was the GRU suspicious about?”

“I do not know, sir,” the commander said. “They said his dive suit was unusual. I looked at it: It was fancy, very high-tech, made for long and deep underwater missions, but it was a dive suit. I think the GRU mouth-breathers got a little too overexcited on this guy and beat the hell out of him, and now they want to deflect attention from themselves.”

“And your facility checked out?”