“Course set. All clear,” the navigator announced.
The pilot increased power to the propellers and they were moving, heading due north.
“It’s like a shot in the dark, sergeant major,” Vasquez said.
“They’re not going to come paddling through in a canoe.”
“No, they aren’t,” Skibicki agreed.
“But that’s why we got this, Vasquez,” he said slapping the small black box between his legs. They were seated on the breakwater, just to the west of Fort Kamehameha, facing toward the channel leading into Pearl Harbor. A housing area for Hickam Air Force base was just behind them, but all was quiet, the two having crept in just after dark and taking up their position, easily hiding among the rocks whenever the rare Air Patrol car rolled by.
“According to my buddy in Navy Special Ops we can pick up an octopus farting with this bad boy,” Skibicki continued.
“If they come in, we’ll hear them and we’ll be able to track them. We still up with the commander?” he asked, referring to the Satcom radio in the backpack she had carried.
“I got them six by.” Vasquez considered the situation.
“But why tonight? The ceremony isn’t until—”
“Recon,” Skibicki interrupted.
“No man worth his salt would hit a target without taking a look first.”
He glanced out at the dark strip of water through which generations of fighting ships had passed.
“They’ll come.”
“Running clear,” the navigator said.
“I put us at three klicks off coast. Change heading to three-four-five degrees.”
“Three-four-five degrees,” the pilot confirmed, as he manipulated the controls.
“ETA, forty minutes.”
“Roger.”
The SDV slid through the water, the propellers leaving no trace, fifty feet below the surface. As they got closer the navigator directed the pilot up closer to the surface, at the same time being aware they were getting closer to the coral reefs lying off the shore.
“We have one hundred feet under us,” the navigator announced. Since Oahu was a volcanic island, the hydrography dictated rapid loss of water depth due to the steep slopes.
“Eighty feet.”
“Sixty. We’re near the reefs.”
The pilot slowed their forward speed.
“Forty. I’ve got contact off to the right front. Path still clear.”
The pilot slowed until they were at a crawl.
“Hey, why does the commander—”
“Shh,” Skibicki said, slicing his across his throat.
“I’ve got something.” He listened hard into the headphones.
“Something’s coming underwater. Something small.”
“I’ve got solid contact,” the navigator said.
“Shoreline,” he confirmed.
“New heading, one-one-zero degrees.”
“One-one-zero degrees.” The SDV turned hard right, paralleling the shore to the east.
“What the fuck?” Skibicki muttered. He turned the hydrophone in the water, tracking.
“They’re going east!”
“Not the harbor?” Vasquez asked, shifting her gaze in the indicated direction, even though she knew the vehicle that they were looking for was under water.
“Come on,” Skibicki said, pulling up the cord for the phone.
“We’ve got to follow. Call it in.”
As Skibicki packed up the hydrophone, Vasquez called in the change to their higher commander.
“Easy, easy,” the navigator muttered.
“On my mark. Hold.”
The pilot brought the SDV to a halt, then slowly let them sink down until they rested on the bottom, in-forty feet of water, inside the coral reef off of the edge of Hickam Field, 200 meters off shore. To their front, due east, was the reef runway for Honolulu International Airport.
“Switch to personal air,” the pilot ordered before he shut down the vehicle system.
The two men quickly turned off all the equipment on the SDV. They pushed open their hatches and slid out, pulling their equipment bags with them. Leaving the Mark IX resting on the bottom, they swam forward, toward the shore.
“I’ve lost them,” Skibicki cursed, throwing the headphones down.
“They must have stopped. They’ll be coming in somewhere around here.
Keep your eyes open,” he ordered, pulling out his own set of night vision goggles.
Putting them on, he then checked his MP-5 submachine gun, insuring the safety was on and a round was in the chamber.
He looked over his shoulder. The hangars for the Hawaii Air National Guard abutted the shore, and in the distance the runways of the Air Force base lay straight ahead and those of the international airport were off to the right.
The two swimmers cut smoothly through the warm water, their fins flickering back and forth. The lead man held his computer nav board in his hands, directly under his mask, reading the data off it. There was no visibility and they dared not use lights. He followed the indications on the small glowing screen in front of his face and turned slightly right, his buddy close on his fins.
Skibicki and Vasquez walked past the Hickam Marina, weapons at the ready, eyes open for both the infiltrators and the Air Police. Skibicki saw a dark line ahead, cutting in from the shore — the Kumumau canal and, although he didn’t know the destination, he now knew the route.
It was what he would do.
“Let’s go,” he ordered, sprinting toward the canal.
The two swimmers found the entrance of the canal. It was very shallow, less than eight feet, and they swam just above the bottom. They put their navigation devices away now. There was only one way to go. They followed the’ narrow waterway until it ended, then carefully popped to the surface. They were inside the perimeter of Hickam Air Force Base and the large hangar that housed Air Force One was less than forty feet away.
Caching their swim fins and nav devices, the two men slithered out of the water and began making their way through the six-inch grass toward the back of the hangar.
“There,” Skibicki hissed, spotting the two forms edging over the lip of the canal and melding into the earth. He watched them move toward the hangar, then tapped Vasquez on the shoulder.
“Stay here and keep in commo with the CO.”
He went to his knees, then his stomach and began following the two men.
They were very good, taking their time in the approach, but Ski had done this many times before during his years in Vietnam, and he was better. By the time the two men had reached the dark wall of the hangar, he was less than forty feet behind them.
He paused and watched as they began climbing up the outside wall, using rungs that were welded onto the metal.
Like two dark insects they crept up, then disappeared over the edge of the roof.
Skibicki gave it two minutes, then he followed, grabbing the first rung and scaling the 100-foot wall. When he reached the top rung, he carefully peered over the edge.
The roof of the large hangar was flat, with ventilation ducts spaced every thirty feet. The men were a little over halfway across the roof at one of the ducts.
Skibicki crept over the edge of the roof and made his way to the cover of another duct where he could watch them from a concealed position.
Taking great care, the two men removed the top of the duct noiselessly.
They then took something small and square out of one of the packs they had carried and attached it to the end of a rope. They lowered the object into the duct and Skibicki watched as they maneuvered whatever it was for several minutes, until they seemed satisfied. When the rope came back up, whatever had been on the end was no longer there.