Jaybird thought about it on the way back to his apartment. He lived only ten minutes from the field. Everything in Coronado was close at hand. He could take Ingles out in a half a second if it came to that. How did he keep it from happening again somewhere else? The only way was to get Ingles convicted as a pedophile. Then he would be on record and wherever he moved, the cops would know he was a sex offender. Yeah, easy to say, but how to get evidence good enough to stand up in court?
He turned around and drove back to the bathroom and checked it out. Yes, it would work. Six months ago he had bought a small video camera. Hadn’t used it much. He looked at the overhead. No ceiling, just an open area and beams to the roof. Over a small storage area he found a place where he could put the camera and it would record everything that went on.
All he had to do was get to practice early in two days, plant the camera, and turn it on. It would run on the battery for two hours. Then he’d pick it up and see what he had on the tape. With any luck Rusty Ingles would try it again with a different boy. It was an ideal setup for Ingles. The kids would be afraid to tell anyone, and he could take advantage of them. If this didn’t work, Jaybird had about decided he would break Ingles’s leg, and then maybe an arm, to convince him to stay away from the kids.
After training on Thursday, Jaybird set up the camera a half hour before practice started. He turned it on and went out to the diamond. Twice he saw Rusty Ingles go to the bathroom. Each time one of the boys was already in the small building. Practice was just about over, and Jaybird was ready to go pick up the video camera, when his beeper went off. He read the message. “Alert. We ship out in three hours.”
The SEALs had a job. He yelled at Albertson that he had to go, he didn’t know when he’d be back. Active duty. Albertson knew about his wild schedule and waved.
“Good luck, man. Stay safe and come back. We need you.”
Jaybird ran for his car. He was only ten minutes from SEALs headquarters on the Coronado strand. He was the last one to report in.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Sadler growled at them as they gathered around him.
“Oh, yeah, we’ve got one. Orders are for your desert cammies. Two pair, regular weapons. We’ve got seven Bull Pups for this run, so they will be spread around. We’ll want the MGs and the rest of you come with MP-5’s. Your usual mix of goodies for your vests. We will have available all the combat weapons, munitions, and supplies we need on the other end. That’s all I can tell you now. Get cracking. We fly out of North Island in two hours and twenty minutes.”
“What plane?” Jaybird asked.
“Like to throw you each in the rear seat of an F-14 and get you moving at Mach two-point-five. But we can’t do that. You’ll be in the usual fast-delivery aircraft, the Gulfstream II. Slam us along at five hundred and eighty-one miles per hour max, cruise at forty thousand. Nice and quiet up there. Now move it.”
Everyone was medically cleared to go. Lam swore up and down that his arm wound from Sierra Leone had healed and his left leg was damned near back to normal. He demonstrated for the senior chief and walked, then ran without any limp. Everyone knew it must hurt Lam, but they also knew he’d never admit it and get canceled out on this mission.
They were twenty minutes early getting to North Island, a ride in the Navy bus of about six miles from their home base. Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock sat the SEALs down on the tarmac to wait for the final fueling on the plane. His grin spread all over his face.
“Want to tell you that we won’t have the JG to kick around any more. Ed DeWitt’s papers came through today. He’s now officially a full lieutenant, and I want you deep divers to show him proper respect.”
“Hooooooo-yah!” the SEALs shouted in unison.
“Where is the lieutenant leading us this time?” Kenneth Ching asked.
Lieutenant DeWitt held the twin silver bars in his right hand, the railroad tracks glistening in the bright sunshine. He looked at them, then up at his men.
“We know where, and something of the why. We’ll be getting a printout on the plane with more about the what. We’re going to merry old England. Our destination is London, to a military airport just south of London actually, near the town of Crawley. Why? This is now a top-secret, ultra-secret operation. The British people don’t know about it. The American people don’t know about it. I doubt if more than five people in Washington, D.C., know about it. But we are legal. The CNO called Commander Masciareli about four hours ago, and told him the assignment. He called the master chief, who called me.”
“So what’s it all about?” Lam asked.
“Big trouble. Really, really big trouble. The kind of trouble the Western capitals have been fearing might come someday. Well, it’s here. Some Islamic militants or some extremist Palestinians have smuggled a nuclear warhead into London. We know where it is, on board a hijacked mid-sized Japanese freighter now anchored in the middle of London’s harbor.”
“Somebody wants us to go in and get back the boom-boom?” Jaybird asked.
“Precisely,” Lieutenant DeWitt said. “However, they don’t want it to go boom. That would spoil a lot of afternoon English teas in London.”
“What about the hotshot SAS?” Bill Bradford asked.
“They have requested us to come in on a joint operation,” Murdock said. “They will let us handle the water end of it, and anything else that we work out.”
“Time,” DeWitt said. He pointed to the plane that stood with the passenger door open. The SEALs stood, moved into two squad ranks, and jogged to the business jet and walked on board. The Gulfstream is a large executive jet used as a military VIP transport. The Grumman Aircraft/Aerospace plane has a crew of three and carries nineteen passengers in first-class-type seats. Two Rolls-Royce engines kick out 11,400 pounds of static thrust. It has a ceiling of 43,000 feet and can take jumps of 3,712 miles on one drink of fuel.
“Oh, yeah, this is the way to fly,” Paul Jefferson said, easing his two hundred pounds into the luxury seat. “Beats a Gooney Bird or a COD Greyhound any day.”
As they settled into the seats, a dress-blues Navy lieutenant commander in a regulation but tight skirt came out of the cockpit area. She was trim and more than pretty, with soft brown hair framing her face, showing high cheekbones and bright green eyes. She frowned a moment, then nodded.
“They told me I’d have a full load. Usually I get a better-dressed class of passengers.” She chuckled. “Hey, I’m kidding. I know what you SEALs do, and I’m proud to be a part of this mission. No, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to know. We take off in two minutes. We tried to get Navy box lunches for you for your evening mess, but we couldn’t. So the Hotel Del Coronado stepped in and provided you with twenty dinners, served on china. So don’t drop anything. We’ll stop in New York for fuel and take off right after we’re topped off. Any questions?”
“I don’t suppose a phone number would be available?” someone piped up from the back.
The pilot smiled. “The only one I give out is my husband’s.”
Half the SEALs groaned.
“Welcome aboard. If I can find some tailwinds upstairs, we should hit New York in five hours.” She went back into the cabin and seconds later, the jet engines revved up, the chocks were pulled away, and the sleek jet rolled toward the takeoff runway.