Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack Read online

  BLACK OPERATIONS - THE SPEC-OPS ACTION PACK

  By Eric Meyer

  Copyright 2010-2018 by Eric Meyer

  Published by Swordworks Books

  www.facebook.com/ericmeyerfiction

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  ECHO SIX: BLACK OPS - ASSAULT ON IRAN

  By Eric Meyer

  Copyright © 2012 Eric Meyer

  Published by Swordworks Books

  Chapter One

  They stared out to seaward, but as ever there was only the crash of the waves. Spume frothing and breaking on the fine, white sand, lit only by the moonlight. Nothing. The air was warm, as it always was in the Caribbean. A light breeze, barely detectable, gave the two men a little relief from the stifling humidity, a very little relief. Jorge, the older man, wiped his brow and dried his hand on his jeans. The sweat trickled into a man’s eyes on these hot, damp nights and made it difficult to see any distance. He tracked around and took in sprawling main building. Clustered around it were the bungalow suites where the wealthy guests stayed. To one side of the resort, and perched on the edge of the cliff, was another set of buildings, windowless, but these were closed to visitors. He smiled, all they’d needed was to label them ‘staff only’, and even the most adventurous guest quickly lost interest in seeing how the lowly servants lived. He scanned along the high wall that separated these buildings from the guest areas, noting that the security gate, the only point of access by land, was shut tight. A red warning light blinked regularly to indicate the gate was locked. If the light ever went out, armed guards would rush to investigate, but during his fifteen months on the Cay, he’d never seen the light go out at night. He doubted if it ever would.

  Who the hell would be interested in this flyspeck of land?

  The government of Turks and Caicos was well recompensed, by way of taxes and huge bribes, to stay away. So they never came near; it was in their interest to keep the bribe money flowing. He did another sweep of the area, not that he expected to see anything. This was the remotest part of the island, Pelican Cay, set on the northeast tip of the remotest island chain in the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and there were rarely, if ever, any surprises. The company helicopter brought in wealthy tourists from JAGS McCartney International Airport, also known as Grand Turk, landed on the resort helipad and flew them out again when their vacation was ended. In the harbor, there were a number of pleasure craft, expensive yachts. Rich men’s boats, fast and luxurious. They were the property of the guests. And if you wanted something more, high-octane thrills, girls, boys, drugs, it was yours for the asking. No matter what your requirement during your vacation at Pelican Cay, the owners would find a way to provide it. The guests were impressed with the security too. Guards like him; all of them armed with the latest TEC-9s, made of molded polymers and stamped steel parts. Twenty round magazines, and the ability to fire on full auto, these 9mm machine pistols were not the watered down variants available to the American market. They could spit out bullets at a rate fast enough to empty the magazine in two or three seconds, and devastate anyone foolish enough to tangle with the guards at Pelican Cay. No one had been that foolish.

  They watched over this little piece of paradise and the bloated, pampered bodies of the guests as they lounged on the silvered, fine sandy beaches. Guests who had no idea that the guards' primary task was very different from looking after the millionaires and billionaires who came to Pelican Cay. And they never guessed the real reason. Jorge smiled to himself. It was better they stayed in ignorance, if they wanted to live.

  He saw his companion Cristobal coming toward him. As ever, he envied his trim, muscular body and flat stomach. Maybe Jorge should cut down on the booze and the pastries when he got home, his wallet stuffed with cash. The pay was good, that was true, and he’d want to find a pretty girl with whom to spend some of it. He knew his paunch did not make him as attractive as Cristobal. His companion was much younger too, a mean looking youth, just twenty years old, and also desperate to spend some of the cash that weighed down his pockets each payday. Pelican Cay Resort was a generous employer, so it was a pity there was so little for the guards to spend their money on in this place.

  “Hey, Cristobal, you see anything?”

  “Nada! Do we ever see anything, Jorge? This job is a total fucking waste of time.”

  “Better than peddling dime bags to the tourists in Cockburn Town, my friend.”

  Cristobal shrugged. “Maybe, but at least there was some action in the capital. Hey, Jorge, did you see that waitress, the new one? She has a room on the floor below ours. That girl is really something. I tell you, she’s a real princess. Do you think it’s true what they say about the young women that work here? I’d sure like to sample a couple of them.”

  “You mean that most of them are whores who put out to the guests for money?” Jorge replied with a grin. “Sure it’s true, my friend. But there are two problems you need to consider. First, even you haven’t got that kind of money. Those whores are a thousand dollars a night. And second, you know the rules. The girls are for guests only, and if any of the staff touches one of them, they get fired.”

  Cristobal grunted. “For that new one, it’d be worth getting fired. Mother of God, she’s a real angel.”

  “Maybe she is, but what would happen if you were caught? The management here is not likely to forgive something like that, not easily. You may find yourself swimming home to Cockburn Town.”

  “Fuck that, Jorge, it’s fifty miles! No man can swim fifty miles.”

  “Exactly. So keep your dick in your pants, my friend, and save it for when the contract is ended. And remember, there’s a new consignment coming in tonight, so stay sharp.”

  The younger man scowled and strutted away to find a quiet place to have a smoke, maybe catch up on some sleep. Jorge would call him if anything unexpected happened. And it never did.

  * * *

  “Target in sight, range five thousand meters. I can see the harbor clearly, Skipper. Sea is calm, and we have a half moon.”

  They all looked at the LCD repeater screen, which relayed the image from the camera on the electronic periscope to the control room. They could just make out the yacht harbor, with the buildings housing the resort complex onshore, and above them, the anonymous, walled compound with the windowless buildings that was their objective.

  “Very well, bring her up slowly until the sail is clear. Make sure the hull doesn’t breach the surface.”

  “Aye. Down scope, bringing her up to ten meters, no, belay that. Hold your depth. Skipper, I see a patrol boat on the surface. She was stopped in the water with her engines off. I guess that’s why we missed her, but she’s moving now. Her track is taking the vessel between us and the beach.”

  The overhead speaker came to life. “Con, sonar, small craft, moving across our course. Intercept point is fifteen hundred meters dead ahead, six minutes at our current speed.”

&
nbsp; They looked at the Captain expectantly.

  “Keep on it, sonar. Let us know when he clears the area. Raise the ESM mast. Let’s take a look. I’ll take the con.”

  “Aye, aye. Captain has the con.”

  He looked at the officer stood next to him. An American, sure, but his unit wasn’t US military, so this was a first for the USS Virginia, the boat normally carried Seals on their highly secret operations. “What do you want to do, Lieutenant? If we launch the RIBs now, he’s sure to see us. They’re pretty primitive in these parts, but not that primitive.”

  “Is it a Turks and Caicos naval vessel? Or something else?”

  “You mean like the traffickers?” He thought for a couple of seconds. “My guess would be traffickers, yeah. Government vessels in this area are few and far between. The crews like to be tucked up in a nice warm bed at night. No, it has to be ‘narcotraficantes’. Probably a guard boat watching for someone just like you.”

  “We’ll have to go in from further out. Would you take us out to ten thousand meters, Captain? And get those RIBs to take us in to five thousand meters. That should do it.”

  “It’s a long swim, Lieutenant. It’ll cut into the time you have ashore.”

  The officer shrugged. “We’ll manage.”

  We always do. That's our job.

  “Exec, you have the con. Take out to ten thousand meters.”

  “I have the con,” he agreed. “Ten thousand meters, aye.”

  The men waited, tense and silent as the sub reversed its course and headed back out to sea. The exec looked at the Captain.

  “We’ve reached the ten thousand meter point, Skipper.”

  “Very well, take her up to ten meters.”

  “Ten meters, aye.”

  He looked at the other man. “Let’s hope this’ll be far enough to clear that patrol boat. They carry some heavy hardware.”

  The other man reassured him, “It’s far enough. We’re good.”

  “Hatch is one meter below the surface, Sir.”

  “Very good. On my order, put the hatch out of the water and hold her steady.”

  It was quiet, very quiet for such a large warship, one that carried so many men and such a mighty complement of devastating armament. Captain Ed Dawson, Skipper of the USS Virginia, stood in a relaxed position in the control room, listening to the low hum of the ship's systems, his ears attuned to the familiar sounds and alert for anything unfamiliar. He glanced at his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander John Waltham, who was monitoring the boat’s status boards. He squinted at the lights and indicators, like a jealous mother guarding its young. The water off the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands, or more specifically here, the Caicos Island, was shallow, especially for a boat like theirs. The nuclear powered craft, motto ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis, Thus Always To Tyrants’, was modern by most standards, commissioned in 2004. Powered by an S9G nuclear reactor, the USS Virginia was one hundred and fifteen meters long, and weighed seven thousand eight hundred tons. Almost silent in the water, and with a crew of one hundred and thirty-four officers and men, the vessel was already a veteran of the United States war on terror. The boat was equipped with four VLS tubes, the vertical launching system that could propel Tomahawk missiles from under the sea to their targets. She was also unique in having a pressure chamber to deploy Navy Seal divers or other Special Forces units while still submerged. This time, the boat was carrying a NATFOR Special Operations unit, part of NATO. The pressure chamber would not be needed. The SpecOps unit on board would travel the last part of their journey on the surface. A pair of RIBs was ready to be launched; silent, powerful, low profile rubber raiding craft that would not attract the attention of any watchers gazing across the calm, clear sea above them. At least, that was the theory.

  The Skipper of the Virginia turned to the man dressed in a black wetsuit standing next to him.

  “Lieutenant Talley, this is where we part company. We’re set to launch the RIBs. You have everything ready in the sail?”

  Talley nodded. “We’re ready, Skipper.”

  Dawson nodded. “Very well. The hatch will be clear of the surface soon, so you can proceed. Good luck, Lieutenant. We’ll remain on station as long as we can for the pick up. Don’t forget, I can give you until dawn, no more. This is a large vessel to stay hidden for too long in these waters. In daylight, the water is clear enough to spot a rowing boat. If you’re not back, we’ll return tomorrow night and wait for you. But if you’re…”

  Talley nodded. “I get it, Skipper. But if we’re not back by dawn, we won’t be coming back. There’s nowhere to hide on that flyspeck island. Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”

  “A pity about that patrol boat, it’s thrown our schedule to hell.”

  “Yeah. We’ll get by.”

  They shook hands and Talley went forward into the sail. He entered a large steel chamber, crowded with men and equipment. Above him, in the top compartment just under the main hatch, he could make out the legs of the two sailors preparing to launch and navigate the RIBs that would carry his assault party most of the way to the objective. There was little room to maneuver. The steel compartment was crowded with the men of Echo Six, like him wearing wetsuits ready for the long swim to the beach. He nodded a greeting to Sergeant Guy Welland, his second-in-command. When he’d first made Welland his Number Two, there’d been a couple of objections, not least because some of the team were commissioned officers. But the protests quickly died when they saw the hard, tough, SAS trooper in action. Guy got the job done, no matter what. He was almost an elemental force, immensely skilled, diamond hard, and unstoppable. The success of Echo Six owed much to Sergeant Guy Welland, and success inevitably meant fewer casualties. His methods were hard and brutal, often raising more than a few eyebrows. But Echo Six was the SpecOps unit that their NATO bosses sent for when they needed to get results fast. Toughness and brutality was their ‘Modus Operandi’, and there were few after-action complaints. From the enemy, there were inevitably none, only a long eternal silence. NATFOR operatives were selected from member countries for one reason only. They were the best of the best.

  “We all set?” he asked Guy.

  “Yep. The sailors up top say as soon as the hatch is opened, they only need a minute to inflate the RIBS and start the motors, no more. They seem pretty slick, so as soon as they go out the hatch, we’ll follow.”

  Talley looked around at his men. Vince DiMosta, formerly Delta Force, was a unit sniper who resembled a Mafia hit man, with his dark Mediterranean looks. The other sniper stood next to him, Jerzy Ostrowski, known to all of them as Jerry. He'd served in the Polish Special Operations force GROM, and NATO had selected him just like the rest of them; he was at the top of his profession, and the best. For a pilot, it would have been the astronaut program that was the pinnacle of their ambition. For a SpecOps soldier, it was NATFOR. Lieutenant Domenico Rovere watched closely. An Italian, and the unit joker, Rovere was a typical Italian, dark haired, olive skinned, and dark eyed. He was well built, bigger than Guy Roland, with a baby face that made him appear almost ten years younger than his twenty-five years. Rovere’s specialty was chasing the ladies, when he wasn’t playing practical jokes on other members of the unit. There were twenty operatives in all, including Talley. They were the men of Echo Six, NATO’s secret weapon of last resort.

  The Skipper gave a quiet order. The boat moved up a fraction, and the sail ascended so that the hatch cleared the surface. A seaman flung it open, and Talley looked up as a cascade of seawater showered down over them. As the hatch opened, the pressure equalized, causing his ears to pop. Already, Guy was hurling himself up the ladder, and the other men followed close behind.

  “Fuck!”

  Domenico Rovere cleared the seawater from his eyes. He spoke the curse with an Italian accent. A veteran of the 4th Alpini Parachutist Regiment ‘Monte Cervino’, the man above him had banged a compressed air bottle against the Italian’s head as he moved.

  “Sorry about that.”r />
  The Italian grimaced. “As a great man once said, ‘I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.'”

  He shook his head to clear it as the men chuckled, and he continued climbing up to the hatch. Sergeant Roy Reynolds, a Delta Force operative before he’d joined NATFOR’s Echo Six, followed him. The black sergeant grunted as he hauled a heavy, waterproof bag after him. Talley knew it contained the unit’s two Minimis, the lethal SAWs. Squad Automatic Weapons, lightweight machine guns that were issued to most NATO units. In the US, the Belgian designed weapon was designated the M249 Machine Gun. The men all carried their personal weapons in bags strapped to their chests. Like Special Forces across the NATO countries, many of the men preferred the Heckler and Koch MP7 for CQB, close quarters battle. The radical new carbine length submachine gun fired lethal, undersized 4.6mm rounds. The bullets were specially designed to penetrate most body armor where a larger caliber round would fail to penetrate. Talley took a last look around, hefted his air tanks, and followed the men up to the deck where they were checking their gear.

  “We’re all set, Boss.”

  He looked at Guy. “I’m not happy about the moonlight. We’ll need to be careful when we hit that beach.”

  “Maybe. I doubt they’re expecting trouble. We’ll catch them in bed with their senoritas.”

  “Maybe. I’ll take the first boat and lead the swim inshore. You follow in the second boat, and watch out for stragglers, I don’t want anyone falling behind.”

  “Copy that. They won’t fall behind.”

  No, they won’t. Guy will make sure no man lags behind.

  Talley stepped into the first RIB and hunched next to the sailor manning the console. The men followed, distributing themselves around the boat. He nodded and the sailor pushed the throttle forward. The boat purred away toward their embarkation point, five thousand meters offshore. The target was known to have a ring of subsurface sensors that could pick up propeller noise from a craft that came within five hundred meters, and so the plan was to enter the water at one thousand meters. But extending their swim to five thousand meters would slash the time they had to complete the operation. If they weren’t out by daylight, well, it was best not to think about that. The island was small, too small for concealment during daylight.