Nucflash

20

DeWitt released his equipment pack, which fell to the end of its tether with a sharp jerk, then dangled there five meters beneath his feet. Looking up, he checked the canopy of his ram-air chute, making certain that it was fully deployed and hadn’t twisted into a deadly Mae West. Doc Ellsworth, he remembered, had been the victim of a faulty chute deployment over the Balkans; he’d been able to work with his reserve okay, but he’d ended up coming in off course and slammed into a tree.

Incidents like that always tended to make everyone a little more careful afterward.

The wind was blowing from the east at a fairly gentle five knots, which meant that DeWitt and the other jumpers had to quarter slightly into the wind to compensate for drift to the east. This op had been pretty restrictive in what was available for insertion. There weren’t enough minisubs available for eight men, and if they were to reach their objective by IBS, they would have to come from the south or the west to keep from fighting the current… and an approach from the west would take them right under the noses of the tangos on Bouddica.

The current mission plan then, as were so many of them, was a series of compromises forced by available equipment and the lay of the land. The objective was at least in sight now… the long, low, black and white smudge of the tanker Noramo Pride, lying on the horizon just to the right of the tangled gray tower that marked Bouddica.

To DeWitt’s right, just visible as a blue-on-blue patch against the sky, was another chute, he couldn’t tell whose. Seven other SEALs were in the sky all around him, but DeWitt couldn’t see any of them, a fact that was oddly reassuring. If he couldn’t see them at a range of a mile or so, the terrorists on Bouddica and aboard the tanker wouldn’t see them either.

The plan was simple — the best kind when it came to combat. There were fewer things to go wrong, or to screw up, that way. The SEALs had leaped from an Air Force C-130 moments before at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, which put the aircraft easily beyond the range at which it could be seen or heard from the platform. The SEALs, wearing heavy coveralls and jackets against the cold, with oxygen bottles strapped to their sides and connected to the full-helmet masks they wore, had fallen to ten thousand feet before opening their chutes.

It was, in fact, a mix of HAHO and HALO techniques. High Altitude, High Opening approach would have had them pulling the ripcord above 25,000 feet, then literally flying to their target for as much as fifty miles across the open sea. They could damn near have jumped over the east coast of England and flown all the way to Bouddica on the power of the wind alone.

High Altitude, Low Opening gave the jumpers no distance but let them fall almost on top of the target, literally yanking their rip cords at the last possible moment, scant hundreds of feet above the surface.

The compromise, however, had them fall a long way in order to stay off the enemy’s radar. Bouddica had a decent radar setup, both to monitor the ever-changing weather and to watch the steady flow of surface traffic moving through this part of the North Sea. A skilled operator might detect the blips that were approaching parachutists, and while it seemed unlikely that terrorists would have radar experts within their ranks, SEALs only reached old age when they planned for all possibilities and were very, very careful in how they dealt with them.

They would splash into the sea five miles south of Bouddica, where they would home in on a Chemlite stick held by Brown, who’d jumped a few moments before the rest of them in order to serve as pathfinder. Once everyone was down, they would inflate two SEAL IBSs — one of them was part of the heavy bundle dangling beneath DeWitt’s feet — climb aboard, and begin motoring toward the Noramo Pride.

They would deliberately hang back out of sight, however, until 2200 hours, almost half an hour past sunset, when it would be dark enough to approach on the surface of the sea without being easily spotted.

Once they reached the tanker, of course, everything was easy. Just climb the damn thing, neutralize every terrorist aboard, and wait for further orders. Meanwhile, all hell would be breaking loose around them. The anchor tug Horizon would be returning to the area at just about 2200 hours, with the North Korean woman on board. There would be some final negotiations, and then Chun would be handed over to the tangos, just as they’d demanded.

Washington and London had agreed on that one, at least, though DeWitt imagined there’d been some pretty acrimonious infighting over the question at first. But they needed to bring Chun in close, even let her go across to Bouddica, so the terrorists could see her and perhaps believe that the government forces had capitulated; while the exchange was taking place, at precisely 2230 hours, DeWitt’s SEALs would take down the tanker, Murdock and the four men with him would knock out the facility’s radar, and the SAS men aboard Horizon would storm the main platform. A small SBS team, DeWitt had been told, would deal with the trawler Rosa, just in case the A-bomb was hidden in her hold. The final blow would be delivered minutes later, when a flight of British helicopters, ferrying in SAS and GSG9 commandos, would come skimming in out of the west at wave-top height. If Lieutenant Murdock and his people were able to take down Bouddica Alpha’s radar, the helos ought to make it all the way in without being sighted until literally the last moment. More helos would be coming in behind the first wave, these carrying American NEST agents and Navy EOD experts, with the tools and the know-how to disarm a live nuclear warhead.

Simple.

Except that there’d been no time to rehearse this thing, no time even to be sure of the preliminary intelligence. DeWitt had at least been told that most of the intel they’d received had come courtesy of Lieutenant Murdock and the other SEALs in the recon force, which meant it could be trusted as gospel, but there were so many unknowns still. How many tangos were there aboard Bouddica, aboard the Rosa, aboard the Noramo Pride? How alert were they? Could the separate assault teams of SEALs, of British SAS and SBS, of German GSG9 troopers all work smoothly together and coordinate their separate attacks without either giving away the show by jumping the gun or confusing an already confused situation by blundering into each other’s fire zones?

And most vitally important of all, where was the PRR’s atomic bomb?

So vital was that last bit of intelligence that the entire operation had a built-in hold. Lieutenant Murdock and the others were supposed to be looking for the thing, starting at 2200 hours when the tangos would be busy watching the handover of Miss North Korea. Murdock had a satellite uplink; what he put out over the tactical net would be heard by everyone in the assault team. If Murdock could learn the whereabouts of the bomb, all of the teams involved had several alternate and fallback plans to cover various possibilities. The code phrase “snapping turtle” meant to concentrate everything on the freighter, that someone had picked up hard intel that the A-bomb was there. “King cobra” meant the tanker, Noramo Pride. “Copperhead” meant that the attack would go as planned — but immediately, whether or not everyone was in place and ready to go. “Copperhead” would be invoked if one of the OICs on the site — meaning Murdock or Croft on Bouddica, or DeWitt aboard the tanker — discovered the bomb and thought that the assault’s best chance would come from a quick rush now, rather than waiting for the 2230-hour deadline.

The reptilian code word that no one wanted to think about, however, was “crocodile,” transmitted by Murdock or one of his SEALs. Crocodile meant that the SEALs had discovered something about the bomb that made assaulting the platform too damned risky, something like a tango with a dead-man switch, or the bomb placed where it couldn’t be reached and disarmed.

Lieutenant Murdock literally had it in his power to call off this whole damned show, even after things had already started going down.

It was not the sort of responsibility that DeWitt envied in anyone.

“Say… L-T?” MacKenzie had returned to his lookout and was peering once more through his binoculars. He had them focused on the freighter, riding on her mooring several hundred yards off the platform’s east face. “Something happening here. I’m not sure, but this sure as hell could be it.”

Sliding down alongside MacKenzie, Murdock accepted the binoculars from the big Texan.

Murdock too had been thinking hard about the responsibility that had been assigned to him that afternoon. It was, he thought, a typical dodge pulled by the spineless bureaucratic types who so often screwed up a slick, simple mission with impossible add-on requirements — this “crocodile” abort code he’d been given, or worse, the code word “copperhead” that literally meant charge!

Of all the pencil-necked fucking stupidities. Giving that kind of power to a junior officer in an advance OP was begging for trouble. An inexperienced man might panic or chicken out; an overeager one, or one just burned out by combat, could ignore the danger and blunder full ahead… right into a nuclear disaster. It would have made a hell of a lot more sense if the powers-that-were had simply worked up their plan, relied on the SEAL intel to find the bomb or not and then deploy, based on what they’d learned.

Possibly, the brass in both Washington and London had decided there simply wasn’t enough time, that gathering the intel and launching the raid both had to be carried out almost simultaneously. But Murdock didn’t like it, not one small bit.

He tried to push the doubts aside as he concentrated on focusing the binoculars on what Mac was pointing out.

“They’re bringing the Rosa in close again,” he said.

“That’s sure what it looks like to me, Skipper.”

Murdock glanced back over his shoulder. Sterling and Roselli were both out cold, taking their turns at catching some sleep, stretched out on the steel deck with their rucksacks as pillows. He wouldn’t wake them yet… but this could be what they’d been waiting for. He could see tangos on the trawler’s deck, some of them holding coils of line as though they expected to tie up alongside Bouddica Alpha.

Even more significantly, someone was moving one of the cranes mounted on Alpha’s superstructure, swinging it around until its arm was out over the water.

As though they were getting ready to unload something heavy from the ship’s hold.

“What’s your guess, Mac?” Murdock said softly. He handed the binoculars back to the other SEAL.

“About what, L-T?”

“Where’s the damned bomb?”

“Well,” MacKenzie said, drawling the word with an exaggerated Texas accent. “It would have to be in the trawler, in the tanker, or it’s already on the platform somewhere, hauled in on that helicopter. I don’t see any other option. But our satellites would have spotted an unloading operation out of the trawler, for instance, even if they did it at night or under the cloud cover. Right?”

Murdock nodded. “Right so far.”

“But to get it onto the tanker, they’d have had to pull a transfer at sea. That’s a tricky maneuver, even for experienced hands, and I doubt that these guys have that kind of experience. The sea’s been rough the last couple of days, too. Seems risky, for something as heavy as an A-bomb.

“And I don’t think they’d use the helo either. They’d need all the payload for troops for their first assault. And in dirty weather like we’ve been having, well, I just can’t see them trusting an atomic bomb, maybe a one-of-a-kind and very expensive bomb, to the possibility of a crash at sea, or something going wrong when they land their troops. So if it was up to me, I’d have to guess the thing was still on the Rosa.”

“Right. Just what I was thinking. Only now they’re moving the trawler in close to the platform again, and it looks to me like they’re readying the crane. What do you want to bet they’re making the transfer now?”

“Why’d they wait so long? They’ve been here two days.”

Murdock shook his head. “Hard to say.” Then he reconsidered. “No… maybe it’s not so hard to read after all. By now, they’ve gotten word that the Horizon is coming back with the Korean woman on board. These people aren’t stupid. They have to assume at least the possibility that we’re going to try something when the Horizon gets here.”

MacKenzie grinned. “We are.”

“Sure, but they don’t know one way or the other. If they suspect the Special Boat Service people are out, hell, if they know the SEALs are in town, they’re going to be worried about combat swimmers hitting the ships. Up until now, it was safer to keep us guessing about the bomb, maybe keep it squirreled away on the Rosa, out of sight belowdecks. Now they figure it’ll be safer on the platform, easier to defend, at least from frogmen.”

“Sounds logical. What can we do about it?”

“Depends on what they do with the bomb. I’m still wondering about that Korean submarine. If they mean to use it to plant the bomb, they might put it down right alongside, on the Celtic Maiden.”

“That would be a little too easy, don’t you think?” MacKenzie said.

Murdock smiled. “Hey, we can dream, can’t we?”

“Only if we pull a reality check once in a while. Why would they move the thing out of the trawler, which they think is vulnerable to SEALie types, only to plant it on the afterdeck of a tug three feet from the water?”

“Okay, okay, so they’ve got something else in mind. What?”

“Damfino, L-T. But if we watch, maybe we’ll find out.”

During the course of the next half hour, the Rosa was moved in close beside Bouddica Alpha and the moored Celtic Maiden and was lashed in place, her bow almost thrust beneath the bridge between the platforms. That gave Murdock and MacKenzie — and Sterling and Roselli when they woke up a short time later — virtually a bird’s-eye view of the whole operation. The crane was carefully positioned, the hook lowered into the Rosa’s open forward hold. There was a long and breathless pause… and then the slack was taken up and something was hoisted slowly clear of the trawler.

“Do you think that’s it?” Sterling asked, taking his turn at the binoculars.

“It’s about the right size,” MacKenzie pointed out. “And it looks heavy enough. I’d bet on it.”

“I’ll give it a sixty percent chance,” Murdock said, taking the binoculars from Sterling and studying the object suspended on the end of the crane’s hoist.

“Sixty? Why so low?”

“Hmm. If you were hiding an A-bomb and were expecting a boatload or two of commandos to show up, where would you hide the thing?”

“I don’t follow you, sir.”

“I didn’t make it clear. You said earlier that it would be too easy if they put the bomb on the deck of the Maiden, where we could get at it.”

“Sure.”

“Suppose they put something there that we might think was the bomb, while the real one was still stashed away someplace else?”

MacKenzie looked stricken. “Oh… shit… ” Murdock handed him the binoculars and he took his turn, studying the ungainly cylinder as it swayed gently in the stiff, westerly breeze. “Then that could be a dummy. Something to distract us, just in case of an attack. We go after it, and they’ve got the bomb safely down in the Rosa’s hold.”

“Something like that. We’re going to have to check it out, if we can. The problem is, if the attack begins at 2230, we’re not going to have much time to work with. Not much time after it gets dark, anyway.”

“At least,” Roselli pointed out, “we’ve got a target now.”

“Skipper?” MacKenzie said, peering through the binoculars. “Maybe you should have a look at this.”

A partly enclosed metal stairway had been swung out from the bridge between the platforms and one end lowered to the fishing boat’s deck. A number of people were leaving the ship now, making their way one after the other up the ladder toward the catwalk encircling Bouddica Alpha’s crew quarters module. From just over three hundred feet away, the powerful 7x75 binoculars clearly revealed the faces of the people as they lined up by the ladder.

Five rough-looking, armed men, all terrorists by the look of them. At his side, Murdock heard the tiny click of the digital camera, as Sterling started collecting another string of tango mug shots for Washington.

A sixth man whom Murdock had seen before: the Korean special forces agent and nuclear expert, Pak Chong Yong, looking cold and impassive.

And a female hostage. The front of her blouse was torn and she was barefoot. Her business-suit skirt seemed wildly inappropriate in this marine setting. They had to help her stand; she seemed to be having trouble standing upright on the trawler’s slightly rolling deck.

Murdock recognized her instantly with an anguished pang that very nearly drew a moan from his lips.

Inge…

“Easy, Fraulein. Watch your step.”

Inge blinked into unaccustomed bright light, trying to get her bearings. There’d been no porthole in the tiny cabin aboard the fishing boat where she’d been a prisoner for the past several days, and no light save that from a single small overhead fixture. Using the meals they’d brought to her as a rough measure of time, she was pretty sure this was the fourth day since her kidnapping, but suddenly being dragged out under so much open sky was disorienting.

The deck pitched heavily beneath her bare feet, nearly throwing her off balance. She’d never cared much for sea passages, especially rough ones, and in the terror of the moment, she’d not been able to eat much. She felt weak and sick.

Worse, though, was the not knowing. Not knowing what these people wanted with her. Not knowing where she was being taken. Not knowing what was going to happen to her the next time she heard the rattle of keys at her cabin door.

Now, though, she suspected that she was going to find out what it was all about, and she already knew that she was not going to like the answers to her questions.

When she’d seen the skeletal thrust of the oil platforms looming far overhead, she’d immediately recognized where she was: the names BOUDDICA ALPHA and BOUDDICA BRAVO were printed in one-meter type on signs affixed to the sides of the platforms, and she knew the BGA logo, a winged oil derrick on a globe, printed above each.

Why, why had they brought her here? It made no sense.

The only ones paying much attention to her at the moment, she realized, were the two men who’d come to drag her from the cabin a few moments ago. There were a number of heavily armed terrorists on the trawler’s deck, but their full attention at the moment was riveted on the gray, metallic cylinder that was being swayed on a derrick up out of the trawler’s forward hold. One man she recognized… an Oriental-looking man in civilian clothing and a heavy leather jacket, appeared to be in charge. The North Korean, Pak.

“Careful with that!” the man shouted in English. “Don’t bump it against the side!”

A bomb? It hardly mattered. She was more interested in the fact that so much attention was being focused on the trawler’s cargo. Possibly… possibly… there was a chance here for her to escape. Inge knew her chances of survival for more than a few minutes in the cold water of the North Sea weren’t good, but the oil-production platform offered hope. The thing was enormous, the size of a small city. The terrorists couldn’t have men enough to search the whole damned thing.

If she could find a hiding place… and a way to communicate with the outside world…

Desperate hopes, clutching at straws, at fantasies. But Inge was not the sort to simply allow herself to be herded from place to place, helpless. Her captors shoved her along, away from the unloading operations, guiding her toward a metal gangway hung over the trawler’s side. One of them, the one they called “Johann,” went first. The second urged her forward with the barrel of his gun.

Feigning submission, she stumbled down the ladder, then stumbled again on the smooth, hard steel of the temporary floating dock below. Johann reached out to steady her…

Her snap kick caught him in the knee, dropping him to the deck and eliciting a yelp of pain. She dashed past him as he crumpled, sprinting for the long, narrow ladder leading up the side of the platform called Bouddica Alpha.

Two steps up, a powerful hand snagged her left ankle and yanked her leg out from under her. She fell heavily, bruisingly against the steps, and as she started to struggle up on trembling arms, the butt of an assault rifle cracked the back of her head.

She tumbled back to the deck, head throbbing, as Johann leaned close, his leer blotting out the sky. “You’ll be sorry for that, Fotze!” The word he’d called her was sexually graphic, a foul vulgarity reducing her from a person to a thing to be used more completely than anything done to her in her captivity so far. She spat in Johann’s face.

“Scheisse!” he howled. “Dirne!”

She tensed and squeezed her eyes shut as he raised his fist…

Murdock bit off a savage obscenity as he watched the drama come to a close on the floating temporary dock four hundred feet away. One of the gunmen, the one she’d kicked, struck Inge twice with his fist before the second man pulled him off of her. Together then, they lifted her between them and half walked, half dragged her up the steps.

God! Why had they brought her here? Presumably they’d been holding her aboard the trawler until they felt it was safe to move her across. Or maybe they were simply getting her beyond the reach of any possible naval commando attack. He followed her through the binoculars as two of the tangos forced her up that long, long, steel-rung stairway.

A few hours ago, he’d been willing to accept the judgment of some military planner in the Pentagon about whether or not to launch an assault in the middle of hostage negotiations. Now he was watching one of those hostages climb that ladder, a woman he knew.

A woman, he realized with a small, almost guilty start, whom he cared for very much. The guilt, he thought, arose from the fact that he shouldn’t allow personal considerations to intrude at this point.

But intrude they did. There was no escaping them.

“We’re going over there to get her, Mac,” he said quietly. “Before the show goes down.”

“Yeah, I thought you might want to do that,” MacKenzie replied. “You sure it’s a good idea?”

Mac’s words were level, calm, and unhurried, not questioning Murdock’s reasoning so much as… forcing him to examine it.

“I know what’s percolating through that thick skull of yours, Mac,” he said. “It’s not what you think.”

“No?”

“They’ve been holding her aboard that trawler. With that… thing that looks like it could be a bomb. If we can get her to tell us what she saw down there…”

“She could help nail it down for us, L-T,” MacKenzie said, taking the binoculars back from Murdock and focusing them on the trawler’s deck. The bomb — if that was what it was — was hanging out over the water now, as the crane operator slowly reeled it higher. “Well, we were going to have to talk to some people over there anyway. Wonder what they’re having for dinner in the mess hall?”

Murdock rolled on his side, drawing his Hush Puppy and checking the action. “How about nine-mike-mike parabellum?” he asked.

“Cordon blam,” Roselli said, grinning.

“Yeah,” Johnson added. “Shot cuisine. I like it.”

They would have to move before it got fully dark.