Dom gave Biery a hard look that Ryan plainly saw. Biery realized he’d screwed up. Gavin cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Okay. Well, I’d better go tell my staff they’re going to have to read an instruction manual on computers, because I won’t be here to hold their hands for a few days.” He took off toward the stairs.
Ryan looked at his cousin. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Tell me.”
“Clark says we have to be trained to go it alone from time to time. To keep our work compartmentalized for the good of the whole. Something happened. I dealt with it. Now it’s time to move on.” Dom winked at his cousin and slapped him on the shoulder.
“But—”
“No buts.”
Ryan sighed. “Okay.”
16
United Nations Resolution 1874 authorizes member states, in accordance with international law, to inspect cargo in transit to and from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea if a member state determines there are reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains materials related to weapons of mass destruction.
As with all international law, there was much gray area with this resolution, including but not limited to the types of actions that constituted suspicious behavior. And reasonable grounds could mean different things to different nations at different times, and this meant the interdiction of cargo in transit could be applied unequally in different cases.
All that said, the actions of the Emerald Endeavor, a feedermax cargo ship flying the flag of Liberia and traveling in international waters due west of the city of Inchon, were without question highly suspicious, and anyone aware of UN1874 knew that this particular resolution certainly applied to this particular situation.
The Emerald Endeavor’s stated cargo was sugar from Cuba, and it did originate its voyage in Havana six and a half weeks earlier, but since then it had taken a strange route from the Caribbean. And one day out of the port of Batangas in the Philippines, the ship abruptly stopped transmitting its Automatic Identification System. The AIS was required on all maritime traffic of more than 300 tons, the Emerald Endeavor was 2,300 tons, so its failure to broadcast was either the result of a serious mechanical problem or else it was a clear violation of international maritime law.
Further, attempts to raise the ship via radio over the past twenty-four hours had been unsuccessful. It was possible the Emerald Endeavor’s bridge communication system was down, but that would have been a huge problem for the captain, and the vessel steamed along in its shipping lane as if nothing were amiss, passing multiple ports of refuge as it headed north off the coast of South Korea.
Any UN member state had the authority to intercept the ship by UN rules, but not every UN member state had the ability to do so. If it was, indeed, carrying cargo in violation of international sanctions, then the crew might well resist interdiction, either by racing away at full speed or even by using weapons or other means to repel boarders, so a ship inclined to force compliance with UN1874 needed to have two things in sufficient quantities before attempting the interdiction.
Speed and guns.
It was well past midnight now, the Emerald Endeavor was just hours from entering the territorial waters of North Korea south of the port of Haeju, and it must have seemed to the North Korean captain of the ship that he was all but home free, until the moment the large blip on his radar representing a vessel outside the shipping lanes turned and began closing on him at forty-five knots, a speed impossible for a vessel of the size displayed on his screen.
Unless, of course, it was a modern warship.
Soon the captain learned who was after him because his radio did, in fact, work, and a Korean speaker announced, over and over, that the American naval ship USS Freedom planned on enforcing UN Resolution 1874, and the Emerald Endeavor should bring its engines to idle and prepare itself for boarding and inspection.
From then on the captain knew he would not make it to port in Haeju without a confrontation, but he did not acknowledge receipt of the message, and he did not slow.
The act of boarding and inspecting the noncompliant 2,300-ton cargo ship in transit fell to two groups of eight American men, all aged between twenty-three and forty. This was not a large number of men for such a daunting task, but this was Echo Platoon of SEAL Team 5, squads Alpha and Bravo, and these guys lived for this shit.
Thirty-seven-year-old Chief Daryl Ricks of Chico, California, was in charge of the eight-man Alpha squad. He and his seven special warfare operators rode in a rigged-hulled inflatable Zodiac boat that closed on the Emerald Endeavor from astern at thirty-eight knots.
Even though the RIB smashed plumes of spray as it bounced along on the black water and its motor roared, so far it had approached undetected because circling above the big cargo ship 350 yards off the RIB’s bow were a pair of big and loud MH-60S Seahawk helicopters. The helos had been at it for a half-hour now, thumping low over the deck of the Emerald Endeavor in figure eights and swooping passes, shining spotlights on the crew on the weather deck and through the windows of the bridge.
The MH-60S helicopters had two functions this morning. The first was to make a lot of noise and flash a lot of lights in order to cover for the approach of the RIB at the ship’s stern. And the other was to deposit the eight men of Bravo squad on the ship’s deck as soon as Chief Ricks called for them.
The practice of hitting a ship at sea was called an “underway boarding operation,” and it was about as good as it got for a Navy SEAL. Every one of these men had not only trained for events just like this, but had also dreamt of such events, prayed for them.
Their plan was straightforward. Alpha would use a grappling pole to board at the stern, and they would climb to the weather deck, then move in two four-man leapfrogging teams to the stairs of the superstructure. They would climb to the bridge while Bravo fast-roped from the helo to the bow, distracting those watching from the bridge deck and using a stack of containers as cover. This would put sixteen men on the ship, quickly and at multiple ingression points. “Bottom up” Alpha would go for the wheelhouse, and “top down” Bravo would go for the engine room. From here both teams could detain and isolate the crew from the cargo. When that was accomplished they would begin their own quick inspection of the cargo holds while Marines from the Freedom came over to help with the search.
If any hint of contraband was found a real inspection would take place after the ship had been towed to port in Inchon.
All sixteen Navy SEALs were armed with Colt M4A1 carbines outfitted with SOPMODs, special operations peculiar modification accessory kits, essentially allowing each operator to customize his weapons platform to his preference and mission.
Ricks’s carbine was gadget-rich; it wore a flashlight and a thermal optic and an infrared illuminator and a suppressor and a foregrip, certainly not all the bells and whistles available with the SOPMOD, but an impressive array nonetheless. Other guys in the squad had grenade launchers and lasers and variable scopes latched onto their weapons, but the rifles themselves all fired the same 5.56 round, and any operator could pick up and employ any one of his teammates’ guns in a firefight if it came down to it.
They wore night-vision goggles on their foreheads and black balaclava masks with the image of a white jawbone on their lower portion, fortifying the men with a particularly terrifying appearance.