Nucflash

24

MacKenzie’s plastic explosive bomb detonated with a sharp bang that blasted the service access panel off and sent it fluttering off over the sea. The report took some of the heat off MacKenzie too, for the terrorists trying to flank him suddenly ducked for cover and opened fire, blazing away at the radar tower.

The distraction was enough for MacKenzie to rise from cover and open fire himself — not at the PRR terrorists who were scattered across half of the quarters module’s roof — but at the large white shroud covering the second radar dish. Snapping his select-fire lever to full auto, he emptied the rest of his magazine at the target, watching bits and tatters of the plastic cover flying away under the caress of the steady stream of 9mm bullets.

His weapon clicked empty and he dropped to cover again, dropping the dry magazine and slapping home a fresh one. Rising again, he emptied another twenty rounds at the radar, until the tango gunmen started throwing shots his way once more; sometimes, the subtlety of carefully prepared and packaged explosive charges had to give way to the sheer, brute force of full-auto fire.

Sure that he’d shredded that radar dish enough to take it off the air as effectively as the first, MacKenzie dropped to his belly and started crawling. The tangos were closing on him fast now from two directions, and he wanted to reach the crane before they did.

Heinrich Adler looked left and right, panic gibbering like a looming black beast somewhere in the back of his mind. Pak! Where was Pak? The Korean must have dashed out, but Adler hadn’t seen him go.

He didn’t trust Pak, never had trusted him completely. The man was unpredictable… even dangerous.

The operations center had huge, slanted windows fronting on three sides of the long, east-facing room. The north windows overlooked the helipad, where the Lynx in its Royal Dutch Navy livery still rested. East there was only water, and the dark shapes, almost invisible now in the rapidly deepening twilight, of the Noramo Pride, the Rosa, and the Horizon.

South was a view of Bouddica Bravo and the bridge connecting it with the main platform. The yellow-painted arm of the crane extended past the window, the atomic bomb suspended in space some eighty feet below the level of the windows.

He could hear the chatter of automatic weapons fire outside and knew the enemy commandos were storming the facility. An instant ago, both radars had gone down, first one, then, seconds later, the other, and he’d known that the end was in sight.

“Sir!” Strauss yelled, fear visible in his eyes and in his stance. “Sir, what do we do?”

Adler yanked back the slide on his Austrian-made Glock automatic pistol. What should they do? He stared for a moment at the two hostages, sitting together at the control center console, and his wild gaze and the way he was holding the weapon must have convinced them that he was about to shoot them both.

“No!” the man shouted, standing and putting himself between Adler and the young woman. “Don’t do it!”

“Ruhe!” Adler snapped, his English forgotten for the moment. “Halte die Klappe!”

Turning, he raced down the long room to the south window, where he could peer back at the elevated cab of the crane. Despite the near-darkness, he could see enough by the light off the flare stack to make out a solitary figure in civilian clothing raising himself painfully to the ladder that led up toward the open cab.

Pak! And he was going for the bomb release.

In that nightmare moment, Heinrich Adler saw how the People’s Revolutionary Republic, how he had been used by the North Korean agent. Pak wasn’t interested in the national autonomy of the PRR. For Adler, the bomb represented power… but only if the bomb remained as a threat, not as a rising pillar of superheated vapor and radioactive fallout. Detonated, the bomb would no longer confer power or immunity on the PRR. Adler himself would be dead, incinerated along with most of the PRR’s paramilitary strength, its bargaining power, and its credibility. The organization’s survivors, those left ashore on this op, would be hunted down and exterminated one after the other by the more civilized members of the world community.

Pak, clearly, was determined to set the hellish thing off no matter what.

And maybe that had been the North Korean agent’s plan from the very beginning.

Adler raised his gun, then lowered it. The windows of the Ops Center were reinforced with plastic and very tough; designed to deflect the winds of a North Sea storm, they’d have little trouble deflecting bullets. He would have to go outside to stop the Korean. Maybe he could find some of the SEALs and—

The door from Corridor 1 at the northwest corner of the room burst open, and a cardboard tube sailed through the opening. Adler had presence of mind enough to dive for the floor, throwing his arms over his eyes and ears as, an instant later, the flashbang erupted in a shattering chain of explosions.

The woman screamed and fell off her chair; two of the four PRR gunmen went all the way down, while Strauss and Kelly dropped to their knees.

Two men in black combat garb spun through the doorway, sweeping the room with their MP5SD3s. Kelly’s head exploded and he toppled backward, arms flailing. Strauss fired his own H&K with an ear-splitting chatter, then pitched backward under a double fusillade of silenced fire, his finger still clamping down on the trigger as he stitched a ragged line of 9mm bullet holes along the soundproofing in the Ops Center’s ceiling.

Acting almost instinctively, Adler sprang forward, grabbing the civilian woman by the waist and hoisting her in front of himself as a shield. “Stop!” he shouted, and the gunfire stopped and both commandos pivoted their weapons to aim directly at Adler’s head. He scrunched down behind the struggling woman, pressing the muzzle of his Glock against the side of her skull. If he could just talk long enough to warn them of the danger. “We must talk about the—”

Someone landed on him from behind, grappling with his arm, clawing at his throat. “Nein!” Adler shrieked, and he let go of the woman, trying to fling his attacker clear…

The male civilian was riding Adler’s back, one arm around his throat, the other grabbing desperately at his right arm and the Glock pistol. The two commandos froze in place, both aiming their weapons but unable to fire with the civilian in such close and wildly spinning proximity to their target. With a powerful thrust, Adler hurled the BGA employee clear, smashing him back into the radar console. He pivoted left, bringing up his Glock to cover the commandos—

Twin bursts of 9mm rounds slammed into his chest, knocking him backward, knocking him down as both commandos continue to trigger three-round bursts that riddled him again and again.

“The bomb!” he tried to shout, but then his throat and mouth were filled with blood. He spat, trying to clear his throat, trying to speak. “Die bombe— ”

It was growing dark at last, the night outside filling the control center, blotting out even the advancing feet of the enemy commandos…

“He’s dead, L-T.”

“You two okay?” Murdock asked the woman.

She glanced at the man who was standing next to her, an arm around her shoulder, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“What’d the tango mean about the bomb?” Roselli wanted to know.

“Don’t know, Razor. Maybe we’d better get out there.”

“Roger that.”

Murdock looked at the two civilians. “Quick. Was this the leader?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. “He was the one giving all the orders. And making the threats.”

“Did he say anything about a bomb? Anything at all?”

“No,” the woman said. “He threatened to shoot us, not blow us up.”

Maybe Adler hadn’t told his hostages that he had a nuclear device outside. There could be a good reason for that. Terror could be used to control hostages, but too much terror might make them even harder to handle.

Roselli was on his knees, searching the dead terrorist’s jacket pockets. “Did he have any kind of controller on him? Maybe a push-button remote control device? Anything like that?”

“I never saw anything like that,” the man said. “There was that Chinese guy, though—”

“What Chinese?”

“Little man, this high,” the woman said, measuring fiveseven or so with her hand. “He had something like a little box, with buttons on it. I thought it was a portable computer.”

“Where is he?”

“He went out a few minutes ago.” She pointed at the door. “That way.”

“You two stay here. Lie down on the deck, stay away from the windows, and don’t move. Understand?”

They moved to comply. “Yes, sir!”

Murdock hesitated, then checked his watch. The cavalry would be here in another few minutes. “Eagles!” he called over the radio net using the code word agreed upon for all SEALs. “Eagles, this is Eagle Leader. Show your colors!”

Acknowledgments came in from the other SEALs. Murdock reached into one of his vest pockets, retrieving a Velcro-backed American flag which he pressed onto a Velcro patch affixed to his dry suit’s left sleeve.

The act was not one of flag-showing patriotism, but of deadly practicality. When the SAS choppers arrived, their gunners would have one hell of a time telling friend from foe, and the flags would help. Even among the SEALs, with Mac alone out on the deck somewhere, and Roselli and Murdock moving to help him, misidentification was a terribly real possibility.

Friendly fire could kill as easily as hostile fire.

Nonetheless, Murdock felt a surge of pride as he settled the flag in place. Patriotism might be outdated in most sectors of the American public these days. But not here. Not among SEALs.

“Let’s go, Razor.”

MacKenzie winced and ducked as a ricochet stung his cheek. This was turning into a goddamned cluster fuck. If the bad guys had rigged their A-bomb to blow with the push of a button, it would all be up now. He sensed movement among the shadows to the right and loosed a burst in that direction. Bullets shrieked and clanged among steel generators and air ducts, but he couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything.

Probably not. The tangos were working toward him crabwise, cautious now that some of their buddies had been tagged.

He would have to try something different. He just needed to wait for them to get close enough…

As the flashbang’s final crack rang off steel bulkheads, DeWitt rolled through the starboard side door into the tanker’s pilothouse, dropping to his knees and rolling to clear the door as Frazier came in close behind him. At almost the same instant, Higgins and Brown smashed through the port-side entrance.

Several men were there, close by the ship’s wheel. With a skill born of long practice in killing houses and practice mock-ups of tankers like this one, DeWitt picked out the ones with weapons and triggered his MP5.

The two tangos still standing went down hard before they’d even acquired a target. Two more, gasping on the deck and with blood streaming from their ears from the flashbang detonation, were put down an instant later. A fifth, crouched against the instrument console forward hurled both hands high above his head. From his face, DeWitt guessed that he was seventeen or eighteen years old.

“Nicht schiessen!” the kid screamed. “Ach! Scheisse! Nicht schiessen! ”

The only other man left — dazed but unhurt — was one of the ship’s officers, judging from his uniform jacket.

“Name!” DeWitt snapped, covering him with his weapon.

“S-Scott! Dennis Scott! I’m the Pride’s skipper.”

“Lie down on the deck, please, Captain! Facedown, hands out from your body!”

The man complied. Higgins crossed the pilothouse and knocked the stunned terrorist facedown on the deck; Brown covered him as Higgins cuffed his wrists behind him with a plastic tie, then started frisking him. Nicholson appeared out of the door leading aft to the radio and chartrooms. “All clear back there, Two-eyes,” he said.

“Engine room secured!” Kosciuszko’s voice called in DeWitt’s radio earpiece. “One tango down!”

“Roger that, Chief,” DeWitt added. “Bridge secure! Four tangos dead, one prisoner. And we’ve got Captain Scott.”

At the moment, they had Captain Scott flat on the deck, as Higgins tied his wrists. Since the SEALs hadn’t seen photographs of any of the tanker’s officers and crew, they would follow SOP and keep even the rescued hostages immobile until their identities could be confirmed — just in case.

DeWitt moved to the port wing of the bridge, stepping out into the open night air and peering into the gathering darkness, first at the immense and dazzlingly lit towers of the oil complex a mile ahead, then at the much nearer, darkened form of the trawler Rosa. It was hard to tell; was there movement on the Rosa’s deck? A flicker of light… or gunfire?

“Two-eyes!” sounded in his headset. “This is Rattler! We’re secure forward!”

“Roger that. Kos! Make sure the plugs and fuses are pulled in the engine room. Then everybody get up here, on the double.” If there were still tangos wandering around loose in the cavernous labyrinth of the Noramo Pride, the SEALs’ best course of action was to make certain the tanker was immobilized, then turn the upper decks of the superstructure into an easily defended strong point. By daylight, someone would be along to relieve them.

Reaching into a pouch in his load-bearing vest, he extracted a pen-sized flare launcher, armed it, aimed it at the sky, and triggered it. A yellow flare arced through the night, trailing sparks.

An instant later, an answering yellow flare speared into the night from the Rosa’s bridge, and DeWitt felt a heady thrill of excitement… and of accomplishment. They’d done it! The SEALs had secured the tanker, while the SBS people — shadowy and rarely heard-of British counterparts to the American SEALs — had taken down the trawler.

For once, DeWitt thought with a burst of sheer joy, old Murphy had been left at home. For once, the operation was going down perfectly!

The Horizon had been fully powered up and ready to move all evening. The instant the word “Copperhead” had been flashed over the tactical net, Captain Croft had given the order to move. The twenty-eight SAS men aboard had been packed away out of sight aboard the miserable little workboat, until the spaces below decks were a fetid hell of stink and vomit.

By now, Croft thought, his boys were mad. Heaven help the sods who got in their way!

Standing on the tug’s bridge, next to the SBS man in civilian clothes who’d been seconded to the Horizon as one of the stand-ins for her crew, Croft had to step forward and look up through the bridge skylight windows to see the full, tangled majesty of Bouddica Alpha towering above them. Dead ahead, the Celtic Maiden rode the North Sea swell, tied up alongside a temporary floating platform with a spidery metal stairway running up the forty feet to the platform’s lower deck.

“There’s the sub,” the helmsman said. “Looks like they have’er cleared for launch.”

“I see.” Bathed in spotlights on the main structure, the North Korean minisub was resting on its complex wood- and aluminumframe cradle, still on the afterdeck of the other anchor tug. “Put us alongside,” Croft ordered. “Our boys will cross over and secure the Maiden and the sub both, then hotfoot up the ladder.”

“Aye, sir.”

He heard a noise and glanced behind him. The Korean woman, Chun, was there, standing impassively beside the SAS man detailed to guard her. Damn! He’d forgotten all about the woman. He’d brought her onto the Horizon’s bridge half an hour ago in case he’d needed her to talk to her mates on Bouddica, but things had been a bit frantic since then. “Get her below!” he snapped at the woman’s guard.

“Sir!” The trooper grabbed her arm and steered her away, off the bridge.

“Better ’ave the lads get ready,” the helmsman said. “Another minute or two’ll do it.”

Croft passed the word for the assault teams to get ready.

MacKenzie hurled the flashbang in the direction of his nearest opponents. When the first detonation cut loose, he broke from cover in an unexpected direction, zigzagging back toward the command center’s west wall, leaping across a dark, wet trail on the cement, plunging behind a line of steel pipes and ducts, then twisting around and opening fire at the terrorists closing on him from that side.

Stunned and blinded by the grenade, they were helpless. Two went down… then the third. Mac tossed another burst at the farther group of terrorists, driving them to cover. Then he turned and sprinted south, racing toward the crane.

That black trail was blood! He must have hit Pak earlier, but the tough little bastard had kept on going.

Well, MacKenzie knew that he would have done the same thing, had the situation been reversed.

The crane was just ahead, the cab mounted twelve feet above the cement deck atop a steel pillar. Pak was there, dragging himself toward the opening. Mac raised his subgun and pulled the trigger. There was a single shot, and then the bolt snapped shut on an empty chamber.

“Fuck!”

He dropped the empty mag and reached for a reload…