Free Amber by David Wood

Bones, who aimed the craft accordingly.
    Without dive gear, they had no choice but to slog along on the surface through the heavy swells, but Bones occasionally took the sub on a deliberate nose dive directly through the middle of a wave rather than be slapped in the face by going over the lip of it. Maddock shook his head at hearing Bones whooping and hollering like a surfer as they sledded down the face of another crazy wave. Somehow he managed to find the fun in just about any situation.
    But where was the harbor? Where was any land at all for that matter? The batteries in this thing wouldn’t last forever, Maddock was all too aware. No sooner did he have the thought than the sky split apart with a spectacular forked lightning bolt and ear-shattering thunderclap.
    Very close.
    “Floor this thing, man!” Willis urged Bones, who nosed into another powerhouse wave in response. But when Maddock felt the vibrations beneath his fingertips begin to lessen he knew that the inevitable was now happening.
    “Batteries, Bones?”
    Bones tapped one of the SDV’s gauges. “Dying fast.”
    It wasn’t a fault with the systems. All four SEALs were well aware that the SDVs were designed with a range of a mile or so in mind, not to be used for long distance travel as with a boat, like they were using it now, and burdened with a full crew of four men plus gear, to boot. Maddock checked his dive watch. It was good they’d made it this far, wherever it was they had reached. He called out to Bones again, shielding his face from the wind-whipped spray with a hand.
    “What’s our position?”
    Bones glanced at the GPS unit a second before it blinked out with lack of power. “Two mile swim to the nearest land.”
    They felt the SDV slow to a stop and bounce with the waves. It floated because of the air bladders, but no longer had power for the electric motors.
    “We’re dead in the water, guys.” Bones grabbed his mask and fins and put them on. “Let’s start swimming.”
    Maddock vented the air from the bladders so that the SDV would sink to the bottom instead of being found floating around or washing up somewhere. Then the SEAL foursome slipped into the water.
     
    The rain let up as Willis trudged up onto the rocky beach and let himself drop. He lay there in an exhausted heap as his three associates followed quickly behind. Somewhere behind all the gray clouds the sun was setting. The day so far had been long, grueling, and not particularly productive. But they still had work to do, and they were SEALs and so would stick to it.
    After a few minutes of lying in the sand to rest, Maddock was the first to break the silence.
    “We need to get back to the Williamsburg so we can debrief with the Admiral over the secure phone line.”
    Professor turned his head so that he was no longer face down in the sand. “Can’t wait to break the news to Metcalf, who didn’t want us here anyway, that we lost two of his men.”
    At this all of the SEALs became somber. Unless they had been picked up by another vessel—probably Russian—there was a good chance that Alex Yu and Raul Jiminez were dead. It was a sobering thought, but one that pushed Maddock to his feet as he brushed off some of the caked-on sand. He didn’t know how long it would take to walk to somewhere they could find a ride back to the harbor, but he did know one thing.
    The amber mission had just become deadly.
     

Chapter 9
     
    USS Williamsburg
     
    Maddock had to admit that he did not at all relish the thought of confronting Underwater Operations Coordinator Andy Metcalf. But men had been lost—he hoped literally—that they were in Russian custody and would be deposited back to U.S. personnel, tail between their legs, the Russians’ feathers bristling while they made noises about acts of war. But deep down Maddock knew that wouldn’t be happening. Alex Yu and Raul Jiminez had perished on that ghostly wreck at the hands of the Russians.
    They had already called Metcalf