fishing boats. So, Kilos gave them the DUS-7 instead.
It was exactly what the team needed. Like the Kilos workboats, the small freighter, in its former life, had transported highly sensitive cargos to some of the company’s shadier customers. To this end, the DUS-7 had a so-called rubber room hidden deep within its lower decks. It was a compartment where up to ten tons of cargo—usually arms and ammunition—could be sealed off behind false panels that even the most ardent NATO search party would miss. In this hidden storage cabin now sat Team Whiskey’s small arsenal of weapons, communications equipment and various gadgets of the special operations trade.
The DUS-7 had another important attribute: With not one, but two propulsion systems, the old coastal freighter was much faster than it looked.
Its primary means of motion was a dual diesel-based system that turned twin screws and moved the ship at about eighteen knots in a calm sea. But because the old freighter was specially adapted by Kilos for cargoes that absolutely had to get there—“sensitive shipments,” in the company’s parlance—Kilos engineers had added a small gas turbine as a second propulsion unit. Hundreds of gallons of seawater sucked into huge tanks in the hold of the ship were condensed and, using power from the spinning turbine, shot out the back of the ship at high velocity in the form of jet sprays. When the ship needed some extra speed and the crew turned on these jets, it was like switching on the afterburner in an F-16. With this added power, the freighter could top forty knots, faster than some of the U.S. Navy’s speediest warships.
Along with the ship, Kilos had also provided Whiskey with a crew of five Senegalese nationals. Widely regarded as excellent sailors, these longtime employees of Kilos Shipping were loyal, smart, funny, and could pilot the ship under even the worst circumstances. They also knew their way around combat weaponry. But because their names were just about impossible to pronounce, the team just referred to them as the Senegals.
And the team had a nickname for their ship, too.
They called it the Dustboat.
* * *
AS IT TURNED out, Nolan slept for almost the entire trip west.
From the day they’d set off from southern Italy, the location of their rehab stay, and where the Dustboat had been docked, and went across the western Mediterranean Sea, out past Gibraltar, and into the Atlantic, it was as if he’d been injected with a sedative. He’d sleep, wake up, eat—and then fall right back to sleep again.
He felt so odd, he asked Crash, the team’s medic, about it during one of his few waking moments. Was something wrong with him? Yes, there was, Crash replied. There was something wrong with all of them. Since they’d started their new enterprise three months before, they’d been so busy, none of them had gotten anything resembling a good night’s sleep. The closest thing to it had been alcohol-induced slumber, which inevitably came with a hangover.
Crash’s diagnosis: Nolan was suffering from exhaustion. They all were.
And the cure?
Sleep—and lots of it.
Nolan enjoyed the new experience. No card playing, no DVDs, and definitely no reading. Just deep, peaceful sleep.
Until their fourth night out on the Atlantic.
He had slept that whole day, and had planned to do the same that night. But sometime just after midnight, he suddenly woke up—and this time, when he lay down again, he didn’t instantly fall back to sleep. Instead, his mind started racing, and for him, that was not a good thing. When the past ten years of his life started going through his head, it was like a highlights reel stuck in fast forward. Except these weren’t exactly his favorite memories.
That last day at Tora Bora. Their OK from Higher Authority to pursue bin Laden, the excitement of actually seeing him, catching up to him, chasing him down, only to be called back at the worst moment by the pissheads in
It was exactly what the team needed. Like the Kilos workboats, the small freighter, in its former life, had transported highly sensitive cargos to some of the company’s shadier customers. To this end, the DUS-7 had a so-called rubber room hidden deep within its lower decks. It was a compartment where up to ten tons of cargo—usually arms and ammunition—could be sealed off behind false panels that even the most ardent NATO search party would miss. In this hidden storage cabin now sat Team Whiskey’s small arsenal of weapons, communications equipment and various gadgets of the special operations trade.
The DUS-7 had another important attribute: With not one, but two propulsion systems, the old coastal freighter was much faster than it looked.
Its primary means of motion was a dual diesel-based system that turned twin screws and moved the ship at about eighteen knots in a calm sea. But because the old freighter was specially adapted by Kilos for cargoes that absolutely had to get there—“sensitive shipments,” in the company’s parlance—Kilos engineers had added a small gas turbine as a second propulsion unit. Hundreds of gallons of seawater sucked into huge tanks in the hold of the ship were condensed and, using power from the spinning turbine, shot out the back of the ship at high velocity in the form of jet sprays. When the ship needed some extra speed and the crew turned on these jets, it was like switching on the afterburner in an F-16. With this added power, the freighter could top forty knots, faster than some of the U.S. Navy’s speediest warships.
Along with the ship, Kilos had also provided Whiskey with a crew of five Senegalese nationals. Widely regarded as excellent sailors, these longtime employees of Kilos Shipping were loyal, smart, funny, and could pilot the ship under even the worst circumstances. They also knew their way around combat weaponry. But because their names were just about impossible to pronounce, the team just referred to them as the Senegals.
And the team had a nickname for their ship, too.
They called it the Dustboat.
* * *
AS IT TURNED out, Nolan slept for almost the entire trip west.
From the day they’d set off from southern Italy, the location of their rehab stay, and where the Dustboat had been docked, and went across the western Mediterranean Sea, out past Gibraltar, and into the Atlantic, it was as if he’d been injected with a sedative. He’d sleep, wake up, eat—and then fall right back to sleep again.
He felt so odd, he asked Crash, the team’s medic, about it during one of his few waking moments. Was something wrong with him? Yes, there was, Crash replied. There was something wrong with all of them. Since they’d started their new enterprise three months before, they’d been so busy, none of them had gotten anything resembling a good night’s sleep. The closest thing to it had been alcohol-induced slumber, which inevitably came with a hangover.
Crash’s diagnosis: Nolan was suffering from exhaustion. They all were.
And the cure?
Sleep—and lots of it.
Nolan enjoyed the new experience. No card playing, no DVDs, and definitely no reading. Just deep, peaceful sleep.
Until their fourth night out on the Atlantic.
He had slept that whole day, and had planned to do the same that night. But sometime just after midnight, he suddenly woke up—and this time, when he lay down again, he didn’t instantly fall back to sleep. Instead, his mind started racing, and for him, that was not a good thing. When the past ten years of his life started going through his head, it was like a highlights reel stuck in fast forward. Except these weren’t exactly his favorite memories.
That last day at Tora Bora. Their OK from Higher Authority to pursue bin Laden, the excitement of actually seeing him, catching up to him, chasing him down, only to be called back at the worst moment by the pissheads in
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