Operation Southern Cross - 02 Read Free

this. At the very least, it would be something the ferry crew could tell their grandkids someday.
    So the man commanding the ship—a middle-aged Naval Reserve officer named Jumbo Eliot—typed back a response immediately. By all means, the copters could land aboard his ship, if they could find it. The reply from Army SOC stated that there would be twelve copters in all. Again, no problem, Eliot replied. Then he asked where would the Lex be bringing the copters once they’d landed. To Panama? All the way to San Diego?
    There was a long hesitation in the reply message. Finally, it popped onto the screen. “To be determined,” was all it said.
    But then came another strange request: The person at Army SOC asked if Eliot could get on a secure phone. All Eliot had was his cell phone, so he typed in his number and then retreated to his very spare captain’s quarters. His phone was ringing even before he shut his door.
    The caller identified himself as Bob Shaw, major, U.S. Army. He worked for both the DIA and Army Special Ops Command. He apologized for the interruption, but then surprised Eliot by saying the topics they were about to discuss were highly classified. And while Eliot’s standard security clearance was “Secret,” Shaw was temporarily raising it to “Top Secret.”
    Shaw told him the incoming copters belonged to one of the country’s most classified Special Ops units. They were so secret, few people outside of Army SOC even knew the unit existed. Shaw explained they were an offshoot of the famous TF-160 Nightstalkers, the copter drivers whose job it was to fly people like Rangers and Delta Force in and out of their missions. Eliot didn’t have to be told who TF-160 was. Everyone in the military knew about the Nightstalkers. Heroic to a fault, they flew the copters that dark day in Somalia back in 1993, in the disastrous mission forever known as Black Hawk Down.
    Eliot had just assumed the TF-160 copters were taking part in a training mission—unexpectedly landing at sea, that sort of thing. He was just about to tell Shaw the Lex would help in any way it could, when suddenly the call was interrupted by a loud squeal of static. When Shaw came back on the line, his heretofore calm voice sounded very troubled, very anxious.
    “How many people do you have onboard?” he asked Eliot, a bit out of breath.
    Eliot replied the ship was carrying a very skeletal crew of 350.
    Then, an even stranger question: “Do you have any weapons aboard?” Shaw asked.
    In the background, behind Shaw’s voice, Eliot could hear a roomful of people, talking loudly and trying to be heard over each other. He could almost feel the tension through the phone connection.
    Eliot told Shaw: “This is just a ferry cruise. We are barely more than a hull and some engines. We don’t have a squirt gun onboard.”
    Another interruption of static; more tense voices, some were now shouting. Then Shaw told him: “Put every man you can spare up on your flight deck. Give them flashlights, flares, anything with illumination. Then turn on every light you have onboard. And if you have ship’s horns, sound them.”
    Eliot couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was just recovering a bunch of black ops copters on a training mission, right?
    Shaw’s reply was stark.
    “Negative, Captain,” he said. “This situation has just turned hostile…”
     
     
    THERE WERE NO BELLS TO RING ABOARD THE LEX . NO horns, not even a Klaxon system. So Eliot ran to the officers’ galley, clicked on the ship’s intercom button, put an air horn up to the mike and let it blow. The noise was deafening, almost painful. But it got the attention of everyone onboard.
    Then Eliot made an astonishing announcement: every available light aboard the ship was to be turned on. Plus, every available crewman was to report to the flight deck and they were to bring flashlights, ship’s beacons, flares with them. Their mission: to move around, look active and await twelve