Sappho's Commando

THIRTEEN (ISELEN POV)

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do, lieutenant colonel?" the boss asks concerned while I check for the last time that I'm carrying everything I need in my backpack. The girls remain silent, checking their own equipment around me, although I know they're listening closely and they're nervous. Which is reasonable, I'm nervous too.

"Of course it is," I answer looking right into her eyes, deadly serious. It doesn't matter if I have doubts inside my head, neither my superior officers nor my mates will notice the slightest hesitation in my tone of voice. No matter what happens, a good leader must look confident, otherwise the mission will be a disaster. "Colonel, you know our fate was sealed since the moment we walked into that meeting room. We have no choice but to go, otherwise, we'll be ashamed every time we look at other operators' faces, we'd always be the women who rejected the most important mission of their lives. That's not going to happen, we're not trained to give up."

"I know, but we didn't train you to jump head-first into suicide missions either," Cecilia Larsen shakes her head, frowning. "I couldn't get them to promise me that they'll send a team to rescue you if you're caught. This is ridiculous, most special operations teams would say no to a mission without the most basic guarantees for their safety. You won't have any support."

"We're not any team, we're Sappho's Commando," I answer winking at my friends who smile back proudly. "Don't worry, we won't let them catch us. This way, the big boys won't have to come and rescue us."

"I have a complaint," Tara moans, zipping up her wet suit. "I was expecting to fly on a plane and jump with a parachute from high altitude, or fly on a chopper and rappel down, whatever, but in the air... In a worst-case scenario, I planned to drive all night long to cross the Ukrainian border from a nearby country discreetly. But it turns out I have to get my butt wet again."

"Under water is safer," the boss rolls her eyes hard but there's a hint of a smile in her lips. "And in addition to that, I managed to persuade the SEALs to let us borrow one of their expensive toys."

"Yes, I can't believe I'm going to pilot an SDV," Dakota smiles excitedly. "I don't know how you did it, colonel, but thank you."

The boss nods, smiling, while Sierra gives me her Tablet, she needs my autograph for the logistics guys, as usual, after we checked that we have everything we need and it matches her list. It's a very special list with lot of technical equipment that's new for us too and I know this is something colonel Larsen is worried about, big boys train for months to learn how to pilot a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV) but we only had a few days to get used to it. But we'll get it right, there's no choice.

We're traveling on a Virginia-class submarine with state-of-the-art technology, the fact that we're inside this amazing submersible is a huge privilege and it proves how serious our bosses from the NATO are about this mission. We'll get as close as possible to the Ukrainian coast avoiding Russian battleships and we'll go out on the SDV from the DDS (dry deck shelter) in order to dive the last 20 kilometres and reach Odessa's port. We'll leave our vehicle at a predetermined spot so they can rescue it discreetly a little later while we dive with our bottles the last metres through the maze of underwater tunnels that the port workers use to smuggle goods into the city.

We can trust those men, supposedly, because some of them are Zenaida's relatives and they're worried about her since she vanished into thin air, that's why they agreed to assist the CIA, guiding us through the tunnels despite they're taking a big risk. Smuggled goods are the only thing that prevents Ukrainian people from dying starved right now since Russian soldiers control the markets and the trucks that bring food into the city. If the enemy finds one of the tunnels and blocks it, it'll be difficult for them to feed their own children.