Chapter 12 - Night Flight over the Carolinas
The interior of the MH-60M Black Hawk was deafening. The twin turbine engines roared with a concussive vibration that rattled straight through the soles of our boots and vibrated in our teeth. Red interior lighting washed over the faces of the tactical operators sitting strapped into the nylon jump seats, their weapons checked, double-checked, and secured against their chests night-vision goggles flipped up against their helmets.
I sat near the open cabin door, the freezing slipstream tearing past my face, carrying the sharp, damp scent of the approaching Atlantic coast. Below us, the dark, sprawling highways of North Carolina stretched out like fractured neon veins against the black velvet of the midnight landscape.
My tactical tablet blinked rhythmically against my knee, displaying real-time telemetry data beamed directly from a reconnaissance drone orbiting ten thousand feet above the Wilmington coastline.
"Target is mobile," the lead scout pilot’s voice crackled through my headset comms. "Black luxury sedan, traveling eastbound on Interstate 40 at high velocity. Estimated time to private marina dock: twelve minutes. There is a commercial container ship—the Pacific Meridian—holding offshore with its engines idling. Harbormaster manifests indicate it departs for international waters at dawn, but thermal imaging shows a small high-speed Zodiac craft pulling away from the pier right now to meet the sedan."
"Copy that, Lead," I responded into my boom mic, my voice calm and measured above the roar of the rotors. "Do not let that Zodiac touch the hull of the freighter. If Marcus boards that ship with the ledger, the op becomes a diplomatic nightmare. Execute tactical interception on the dock before he hits the water."
"Copy, Colonel. Interception on the dock."
The Black Hawk banked hard to the left, the G-force pressing us sideways into our harnesses as the pilot initiated a rapid, low-altitude descent to avoid civilian radar sweeps. The dense pine forests below blurred into a dark, rushing ocean of green, quickly giving way to the sprawling industrial complexes, rusted cranes, and towering shipping containers of the Wilmington port district.
Through my night-vision monocular, the private marina flickered into view—a desolate stretch of concrete piers, rusted anchor chains, and empty warehouses where smugglers and corrupt elites conducted business far away from the prying eyes of local cops.
Parked right at the end of the main pier was a black sedan, its hazard lights flashing rhythmically in the dark. A figure in a tailored grey suit—Marcus Vance—was sprinting out toward the wooden floating dock, clutching a thick, leather-bound ledger tightly against his chest like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood.
At the end of the dock, a rubber Zodiac motorboat idled quietly, a shadowy figure sitting at the tiller waiting to haul him out to the freighter waiting in the dark horizon.
"Three minutes out!" the crew chief shouted over the intercom.
"Prepare for fast-rope deployment," I ordered, standing up and locking my safety harness into the overhead anchor cable.
The Black Hawk flared its engines, bleeding off airspeed with a violent shudder as it hovered fifty feet directly above the dark waters of the marina. The rotor wash whipped the surface of the harbor into a chaotic froth of white spray.
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"Go, go, go!"
The tactical operators dropped the heavy ropes down through the cabin door and slid down into the darkness with fluid, terrifying efficiency. I grabbed the rope behind them, sliding down onto the wet concrete of the pier just as Marcus Vance reached the edge of the dock, screaming in panic as the roar of the helicopter shattered the quiet night.
