The chopper flew over the top of his position and transitioned into a hover. Nolan looked up and saw the large side door of the aircraft slide open. A light inside the chopper blinked on and a boom arm was swung out through the open door. A shiny hook was hanging from a cable which was threaded through the boom arm and coiled up onto a winch. Someone’s head poked out from inside the chopper, and a face encircled by a black helmet with a thick chin strap appeared alongside the boom arm.
Nolan thought that the face looked young — like real young. He guessed she was between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Between the light of the fading flare, and the interior light of the helicopter, he could discern that the eyes of the youngster operating the boom were not Asian. This meant his rescuers were not North Koreans. In waters surrounded by Asian countries, he had expected the first responders would be Asian. Nolan eased his finger off the trigger of the semi-automatic pistol but didn’t remove it from his ear. The young Anglo female screamed something down at him he could not hear over the engine noise. Then the girl’s arm reappeared outside the aircraft, clipping a yellow sling to the J-hook to the end of the cable. The winch came to life and began to unroll a thin metal cable. Nolan watched as the sling began to descend toward his life raft.
With his free hand, Nolan again wiped saltwater from his eyes. Having given the situation ample consideration, he lowered the gun from his head, clicked on the safety and stuffed the weapon into his chest rig. He waited patiently for the sling to make its way down the 100 feet that separated the helicopter from his life raft. The lieutenant commander scanned the ocean in all directions, verifying if other vessels or aircraft were closing in on his position. Seeing nothing, and having no other options, he grabbed the yellow sling when it came within his reach. He did his best to get off his butt and onto his knees. He pulled the ring over his head and then wiggled his upper torso through the sling, letting the rubber-coated cable rest under his armpits. Nolan looked up at the young girl, and he gave his rescuer a thumbs-up. There was nothing to do but wait.
The winch began to take in line and the sling tightened around his chest. Nolan looked down as he was lifted out of the small life raft. The wind from the helicopter’s blades blasted the orange raft, and a second later, Nolan watched as the raft was blown into the air and sailed away in the darkness.
“Who in the hell is this?” he mumbled to himself.
Even before he was pulled into the chopper, the aircraft tilted forward and began picking up speed. Once he had been reeled in, the winch stopped, and the boom arm, with the lieutenant commander still attached swung back inside the cabin. The door was drawn shut, and the chaos of sound immediately reduced to a tolerable racket.
Nolan found himself sitting on his butt on the floor of the chopper, still hooked into the cable. He looked up at the girl standing over him. She said nothing. Instead of talking, she reached down and grabbed the bottom of the sling and began to pull up on it. The lieutenant commander lifted his arms and allowed himself to be separated from the lifeline. The girl unclipped the sling from the boom arm and it fell onto the floor. She swung the heavy boom up against the wall of the helicopter, securing it with a thick metal latch that held it tightly against the frame of the chopper.
“Are you hurt?” the girl yelled over the noise of the engines.
“A little sore, but I’m OK. I was lucky,” he replied.
“You still are lucky,” the girl said, handing him a thick blanket.
“I’m not cold,” the pilot told her.
“Wrap yourself in it. You could be in shock.”
“I would know if I was in shock or not,” Nolan argued, but his words had no impact on his young rescuer. She took the blanket out of his hands, shook it out and draped it over his shoulders.
“That’s what people say who are in shock,” the young woman insisted.
Instead of saying thanks, he asked, “Who are you?”
Initially, the young woman ignored him. Instead of answering his question, she located the yellow sling that had been discarded on the floor and picked it up.
She replied, “My name is Paige.”
Nolan looked frustrated and responded, “No, I mean who do you work for — the CIA?”
The woman stowed the yellow sling in a compartment fused to the wall of the chopper and shut off the interior cabin light.
“I work for Marshall Hail,” she responded. “You sit tight. We’ll board the Hail Nucleus in a few minutes.”
“The Hail Nucleus?” Nolan responded. “What is the Hail Nucleus?”
By the time the words had left his mouth, the girl had already moved forward and plopped herself down into the copilot’s seat.
The lieutenant commander could only see the back of the pilot’s black helmet. Nolan didn’t know if the person piloting the Seahawk was a man or a woman.
Thus, he had no idea that the person flying the twenty-eight million-dollar 17,000-pound Sikorsky was a sixteen-year-old boy.
Two Years Ago
Lagos, Nigeria
The first time the Nigerian terrorist, Afua Diambu, saw the Russian 9K333 Verba man-portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile was in a warehouse. It was in an old building, hardly even a warehouse by Western terms. It looked more like a dilapidated wooden box with a few weathered wooden doors and a leaky roof. The few windows the building had were barred on the outside with rusty rebar. The windowpanes contained glass broken in several areas cheaply repaired with recycled Plexiglas now a milky-white due to weather, sun and time. In between the windows facing the alley behind them were two wooden garage doors. They did not slide on tracks. Instead, the two heavy doors swung open on hinges. Currently, both doors were closed and secured with a thick metal bar which slid between twin iron brackets. Inside the room, and nearer the windows, were a few large work tables hastily constructed using a few sheets of aging plywood and recycled two-by-fours. A dozen rotting mismatched chairs were scattered about the room.
Afua Diambu had been driven to the port city of Lagos, Nigeria by his leader, Mohammed Mboso. This was his point of embarkation for his long boat ride to Caracas, Venezuela. The missile retrieved from its hiding place had been packed in a case which previously had belonged to an expensive upright bass instrument sold for a fraction of its value to a street vendor. The case itself had been kept and molded to hold the large launch tube and its projectile.
“I didn’t think it would be this big,” Afua Diambu told his leader, Mboso, who was carefully removing the weapon from its new case.
Using both arms, he held up the 5.5-foot launch tube for Diambu to admire.
Mboso looked toward the muzzle end of the tube and scanned the weapon with his eyes, taking in every inch of the dark metal object, as if it had fallen from heaven.
“Is it heavy?” Diambu asked.
“Eighteen kilograms,” Mboso answered absentmindedly, still admiring the weapon.
Diambu didn’t think the older man could hold up a 40-pound object for much longer. The jihadi stepped forward and handed the missile system to
Diambu, who accepted the gift, bouncing it a few times in his arms, testing its weight and confirming its authenticity from nothing more than its existence.
“Is it armed?” he asked, certain it wasn’t. But it never hurt to ask.
“Of course not,” Mboso said curtly. “But it will be armed very soon. You need to know how to operate it. You will arm and disarm the device many times before your voyage. We only have one missile, so there will be no test firings. The first time you pull the trigger, you will be pulling it for Allah.”