Countdown to Midnight

Forty

Frantically, Flynn backpedaled away from a desperate crewman wildly swinging a wrench and fired directly into the man’s open-mouthed face. Killed instantly, the Iranian crumpled. Silence fell across this part of the deck. Panting, he turned rapidly through an arc, looking for any remaining threats.

There weren’t any. All of the sailors who’d rushed them were dead or obviously dying. The only ones still on their feet were his own men. But not all of them, he realized with sorrow.

Surrounded by the Iranians he’d taken down with him, Mark Stadler lay facedown on the deck. He had an axe head buried deep in his back. Obviously swung with tremendous force, it had smashed right through his armor. Cole Hynes, with blood dripping from a long gash across his cheek, knelt down, and quickly checked the former Marine over. He looked up, grim-faced, and shook his head. “Mark’s gone, sir.”

Flynn winced. He’d known the odds were against all of them making out of this mission alive, but somehow he’d hoped to beat those odds. As it was, he knew, they were extraordinarily lucky to have lost only one man so far. From what he could see, the others, like him, were bruised and shaken, but not otherwise seriously injured. The combination of firepower superiority and the protection offered by their helmets and body armor had given them just enough of an edge to survive that swirling, brutal melee.

“What’s next, Nick?” Alain Ricard asked somberly. After destroying their own wave of enemies in close combat, the former French Marine Commando officer, Kossak, Cooke, and Vucovich, had crossed over to this side of the oil tanker.

Flynn pointed toward the aft superstructure looming above them. “We take the key areas of the rest of this ship, especially whatever compartment they’re using as a control center. And we do it before that goddamned rocket lifts off.”

Ricard studied the stretch of open deck between their current position and the metal staircases and ladders climbing up the outside of the hundred-foot-high superstructure. Corpses were strewn everywhere. “Unless we’ve just eliminated the whole crew, getting there may not be easy,” he warned. “That clear section is a perfect killing zone.”

“As we just proved,” Flynn agreed. “So we’ll do this the smart way.” He saw Hynes open his mouth to make a crack at that and shrugged. “Yeah, Cole, I know,” he sighed. “The smart way would have been not to be here at all, right?”

“Something like that, sir,” the shorter man said with a crooked grin.

Quickly, Flynn indicated Ricard, Hynes, and Kossak. They were his best long-range marksmen. “You three take up positions here. You’re our base of fire, while the rest of us maneuver. Once we’ve cleared those catwalks, I’ll call you forward. Got it?”

They nodded, and swiftly dispersed to find good cover around this part of the deck. Flynn looked at the rest of his assault team. Cooke, Vucovich, and McGill returned his serious gaze. “Okay, listen up,” he said quietly. “The only way to do this at all is to do it fast. If someone gets hit, leave them. Don’t stop to return fire. Keep moving and fire on the move only if you have a target. If we get bogged down out there or on those stairs and ladders, we’re dead.”

McGill nodded. “Speed is life,” he commented.

“Thus endeth the lesson,” Cooke agreed.

Wade Vucovich only nodded.

“Right, then let’s ammo up and do this,” Flynn said. He checked the magazine of his carbine and saw that it was only half full. He dropped it out and slid it into a reserve pouch on his assault vest before slapping in a fresh magazine. The others did the same with their own weapons. “Dragon Two, are you and your guys ready?” he radioed.

“We’re set, Lead,” Kossak confirmed.

Flynn took a deep breath. “Follow me!” he snapped. Cradling his weapon, he leaped out from cover and sprinted forward. McGill and the others were at his heels, spreading out as they ran to make it harder for any single burst of fire to hit them all. They’d only covered a few yards when a near continuous crackle of assault rifle shots erupted from one of the catwalks halfway up the superstructure.

5.45mm rounds hammered down across the deck at a steep angle, ripping through the thin plating at supersonic speeds. Gouts of glowing, half-molten steel splashed away from each oblique impact point. Ignoring the danger, Flynn lowered his head, lengthened his stride, and ran even harder — racing all-out toward the shelter offered by a low overhang near the first flight of stairs heading up.

Kneeling behind a bulbous mooring bollard seventy yards from the superstructure, Tadeusz Kossak sighted in on one of the hostile gunmen leaning over the catwalk to fire down at Flynn and the others. His scope’s crosshairs settled on the figure and he stroked the Kel-Tec carbine’s trigger twice. Crack-crack.

He saw the gunman fling his arms wide and fall backward.

The Pole’s lips creased in a satisfied smile. One down, he thought. From their own positions, he could hear Hynes and Ricard firing, too. He tracked along the railing and spotted another of the enemy riflemen folded lifelessly over it, hanging limp with his head and arms dangling in the air. The others stationed there seemed to have gone to ground, driven back into deeper cover by the sudden deaths of two of their comrades.

Ahead, he saw Flynn reach the overhang and then lunge up the stairs, with McGill and Cooke close behind him. Wade Vucovich had stumbled and gone down about three quarters of the way across the deck. His left leg was a mangled mess, ripped wide open by a bullet slanting down from above. Kossak could see the American fumbling desperately through one of his equipment pouches for a combat tourniquet to stop the bright arterial blood spurting from his wound.

“Cover me!” Hynes yelled. He darted out from behind a big oil pump and sped toward his injured friend. When he reached Vucovich, he grabbed hold of the back of his assault vest and dragged him onward toward the overhang.

Suddenly, Kossak spotted movement on the catwalk high above them. One of the enemy soldiers stationed there had just reappeared. Assault rifle at the ready, the man was leaning far out over the railing, obviously lining up to butcher the two helpless Americans. “Gówno. Shit,” the Pole snarled, furious with himself. Awed by Hynes’s heroic and foolish gesture, he’d lost track of the tactical situation at exactly the wrong moment.

Two more gunshots rang out.

Hit in the head by Alain Ricard’s carefully aimed fire, the hostile gunman whirled around and toppled behind the railing. “My bird, I think,” the Frenchman called out cheerfully.

Kossak breathed out in relief and grimly sighted down the short barrel of his own carbine, sweeping it back and forth across the superstructure — scanning closely for the slightest sign of any movement. He’d made one bad mistake already in this battle, one that might easily have cost the lives of friends and comrades. He didn’t plan to make another.

His mouth set in a frown, Captain First Rank Mikhail Nakhimov looked across the crowded control room toward his diving officer, Senior Lieutenant Anatoly Yalinsky. “Surface the boat!” he ordered.

The realization that an enemy airborne commando force was attacking the Gulf Venture had triggered an immediate reaction from the Raven Syndicate’s Colonel Danilevsky. His instructions from Moscow were clear: the huge tanker and its missile must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. That imperative, plus the obvious need to swiftly reinforce the ship’s defenders, overrode any further interest in keeping their presence here a secret.

“Surfacing the boat, aye, sir,” Yalinsky replied. His fingers danced across the control board in front of him. With a faint hiss, compressed air replaced some of the water in the eighteen-thousand-ton nuclear submarine’s forward ballast tanks. As Podmoskovye’s bow rose a few degrees, the deck took on a perceptible slant. Around the control room, officers and ratings held on tight.

“Passing through ten meters,” the diving officer reported, watching his instruments closely. Abruptly, the submarine’s broad, rounded bow broke through the oil-coated surface, followed by its tall sail. The bow climbed several meters into the open air before splashing back down in a rolling wave of dirty brown foam. “Surfaced!” Yalinsky snapped. He leapt into action to open valves across his board. More water flooded into different ballast tanks along Podmoskovye’s long hull to make sure it rode evenly, gliding across the ocean at five knots — matching the slow speed of the oil tanker they were tracking.

For several seconds, Yalinsky studied his various gauges and dials. Then he whipped around to Nakhimov. “The boat is stable, Captain!” he reported. There was no longer any serious danger of losing control over the submarine’s buoyancy and plunging back underwater.

“Very well,” Nakhimov acknowledged. He darted a finger at the two sailors in foul-weather gear clustered at the base of a ladder to a hatch on the ceiling of the control room. It opened into a chamber at the base of the sail. From there, another ladder led up to the observation platform at the top. “Lookouts to your posts!”

They swarmed upward and through the hatch. Donning his own jacket, Nakhimov followed them up. The raw, acrid smell of oil greeted him as soon as he scrambled through the final hatch and came out into the narrow navigating station at the top of Podmoskovye’s sail.

He raised his binoculars, focusing on the huge oil tanker a couple of thousand yards off the submarine’s starboard bow. Repeated flashes lit the night at different points on the ship’s aft superstructure, accompanied by the distinct pop-pop-pop of distant gunfire. He lowered his binoculars. The battle was still in progress. He swiveled around and leaned over the coaming to peer toward the stern.

Danilevsky and the other Raven Syndicate mercenaries were already out on the hull there. Bulky in their body armor and life jackets, they were busy wrestling equipment and weapons out through a large hatch. Held by lines, three inflatable, high-speed boats bobbed alongside, buffeted by low waves curling off the submarine’s glistening flank. Even as he watched, Danilevsky and his troops slithered carefully down into the three crowded boats. One by one, the three rubber-sided craft cast off and motored away toward the Gulf Venture—cutting V-shaped wakes through the thick layer of crude oil covering the sea.