random chapter for Katelyn

CHAPTER ONE

THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE

Present Day
Briefing Room – USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
0400 Hours | Combat Information Center
Red Sea AO – Near Hudaydah

The air in the briefing room was cold enough to keep men awake and just warm enough to make them uncomfortable. Overworked AC ducts rattled softly overhead, pushing recycled air that smelled of machine oil, old coffee, and stress that had been marinating too long. The hum never stopped—servers whispering in racks behind sealed panels, encrypted comms breathing quietly, the ship’s bones flexing as it cut through black water.

Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly, bathing the steel bulkheads in sterile white. No windows. No clocks. No phones. Not even watches. Everything that could listen had been stripped away.

This was deep-classified. The kind of room where words were weapons and silence carried weight.

Chief Petty Officer Lucas Kincaid sat at the edge of the long steel table, forearms crossed, boots planted flat like anchors welded to the deck. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t lean back. Didn’t scan the room like he needed to measure it.

He already had.

Salt-and-pepper stubble shadowed his jaw, more steel than age. His eyes were sharp, alert without being restless. The kind of eyes that missed nothing and forgot even less. He looked like a man who didn’t rise to pressure because pressure lived inside him already.

Around the table sat the usual mix—SEALs in plain utilities, EOD techs with hands that never stopped moving, intelligence officers who wore tension like a second uniform. Nobody spoke. They didn’t need to.

Commander Ellie Voss stepped to the head of the table.

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.

“Secure,” she said. “Eyes only.”

The last low murmurs died. Chairs stopped shifting. A few men leaned forward instinctively, like gravity had changed.

Voss tapped the console.

The main screen came alive with a high-resolution satellite image of Hudaydah port. Rust-red cranes. Oil-slick water. A single cargo vessel riding low in the harbor, its deck cluttered, its lines wrong to anyone who knew ships.

Iranian registry markings were barely visible beneath grime and poorly applied Arabic graffiti.

“The Sakeenah,” Voss said. “Officially registered as a humanitarian aid vessel.”

A pause.

“Intelligence confirms otherwise.”

She swiped again.

The image shifted to internal schematics—deck plans reconstructed from ISR, infrared overlays bleeding through steel. Below decks, rows of tightly packed crates glowed faintly, each outlined by thermal anomalies that told a different story than rice or medical supplies.

Kincaid narrowed his eyes.

“Those aren’t rice bags,” he said quietly.

“No,” Voss replied. “They are not.”

She advanced the feed.

“Quds-1 cruise missile components. Samad UAVs. Shaped charges. Crates of 120mm mortar rounds. Enough to support a six-month insurgency—or to sink a guided missile frigate if deployed creatively.”

Someone near the end of the table exhaled low.

Voss didn’t acknowledge it.

“You’re looking at a floating weapons depot,” she continued. “Our assessment is immediate offload to Houthi coastal batteries within seventy-two hours.”

Kincaid leaned forward slightly. “Who walked this in?”

Voss didn’t answer right away.

Instead, she nodded toward the rear of the room.

A woman stepped forward.

She was about 5'9" tall, but she carried herself like height was optional. Mid-twenties. Dark hair pulled back tight, no wasted movement, posture straight without being rigid. Quiet confidence. Civilian clothes—navy blazer, slate blouse, no visible jewelry except a small silver chain tucked beneath the collar. Her badge stayed clipped inside her jacket, unseen but understood.

Her eyes were the first thing Kincaid noticed.

Clear. Focused. Not impressed.

“This is Katelyn Mae Byers,” Voss said. “CIA. Mid-level analyst, Near East Division.”

Kincaid’s gaze stayed on her, unreadable.

Byers met it without hesitation.

“I ran the pattern analysis,” she said. Her voice was calm, precise, Midwest flat with just enough steel underneath to matter. “Shipping manifests. AIS spoofing. Port authority bribes. Dock rotation anomalies. The Sakeenah isn’t hiding. It’s daring us to blink.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying this is bait.”

“I’m saying it’s confidence,” Byers replied. “Iranian advisors onboard. Layered counter-diver defenses. Sonar buoys in a three-hundred-meter perimeter. They expect observation. They don’t expect interdiction.”

“And why is that?” Kincaid asked.

She didn’t miss the test.

“Because the last four shipments like this were watched and logged but never touched,” she said. “They’ve built a model. They think we’re risk-averse.”

A beat.

“They’re wrong.”

There was a flicker of something like approval behind Kincaid’s eyes.

Voss gestured. “Brief them.”

Byers stepped closer to the screen, fingers moving across the console with practiced ease.

“Dockside chatter confirms night patrols rotating every forty minutes,” she said. “Two skiffs, one static overwatch tower, thermal optics recently upgraded. Iranian Qods Force advisors embedded with the crew. Anti-diver sonar calibrated to flag anything larger than marine life.”

Kincaid tilted his head. “Currents?”

“East to west,” Byers answered immediately. “One-point-two knots average. Slight variance after midnight due to tidal pull. Favorable for insertion, marginal on exfil if delayed.”

“You check that yourself?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How?”

She didn’t smile. “My father was a Navy Master Chief. Hospital Corpsman. FMF Corpsman, spent his life Green Side with Marines. Taught me early not to trust summaries.”

That earned her a fraction of a nod.

Voss took the floor again.

“Chief, your team inserts via USS Colorado, eighty klicks south,” she said. “Sub will deploy two SDVs at oh-two-hundred tomorrow. You surface here—” she zoomed in on the harbor grid “—four hundred meters east of the pier. Swim in under cover of darkness.”

Kincaid folded the information in without comment.

“You’ll carry two demo loads,” Voss continued. “Primary amidships. Secondary along the keel aft. EOD recommends synchronized detonation.”

“Split the hull,” Kincaid said. “Make her sink fast.”

“Exactly.”

He glanced toward Morales. “What are we cooking with?”

Morales leaned forward. “C4 base. Semtex overlay. Shaped charges to fracture vertically. Burn-through sleeves for hull adhesion. Three-minute delay after remote arm.”

Kincaid’s mouth twitched. “Fancy.”

Morales shrugged. “I like my ships to stay sunk.”

Byers interjected. “You’ll have a five-minute window before dock security realizes what’s wrong. Once the waterline ruptures, the port goes loud.”

“Overwatch?” Kincaid asked.

“USS Gravely,” Voss said. “F-18s on alert. No-fly zone until detonation.”

Kincaid straightened. “ROE?”

“Silent in,” Voss said. “Fire only if fired upon. Lethal authorized post-detonation.”

“If compromised?” he asked.

Byers answered this time.

“Then extraction shifts to secondary rendezvous for SDV pickup,” she said. “And every hostile in the harbor suddenly realizes they’ve made a bad career choice.”

Kincaid studied her for a long moment.

“You’re confident,” he said.

She didn’t flinch. “I’m accurate.”

The room went quiet.

Finally, Voss tapped the last slide. Red threat rings bloomed across the harbor.

“These are your known threats,” she said. “Dock security. Patrol skiffs. MANPADS within a two-kilometer radius. Expect shoulder-fired thermals.”

Kincaid rose from his chair.

“We’re not getting caught,” he said flatly.

No bravado. No challenge. Just a statement of fact.

Voss held his gaze. “Good.”

He motioned to Morales and Dane Rourke, his SDV pilot.

“We’ve got work.”

As they filed toward the hatch, Byers watched them go, eyes tracking movement, filing data.

“Chief,” she called.

Kincaid paused.

“You’re not the variable they’re worried about,” she said. “You’re the one they didn’t plan for.”

A corner of his mouth lifted—slow, dangerous.

“Good,” he replied. “Neither did I.”

The hatch sealed behind them.

Somewhere deep in the ship, the clock started.