Nucflash

25

Pak’s leg had started to hurt.

It was sheer agony to cling with both arms to one rung of the ladder leading up to the invitingly open door of the cab and, with his right leg dangling limp and useless, lift his left foot to the next rung and push himself up one more grueling step. The pain below his knee as the splintered ends of his tibia grated across one another with each short, jerky movement was excruciating, and it had slowed his progress to an inch-by-inch creep across the deck.

But he was almost there now.

Inge reached the roof of the quarters module by finding her way back to the fire-escape ladder running up the south side of the building and going up from there. She knew she wasn’t combat-trained, for all the joking about her being an honorary SEAL, so she elected to avoid the sounds of the heavy firefight coming from directly overhead.

But she was damned if she was going to be left all alone in that cabin, waiting for the men to finish with their killing and get back to her. With a cool and professional detachment, she’d reloaded her magazine, snapped it home, and chambered the first round with a metallic snick of the slide release.

Then she’d headed for the roof.

She still wasn’t entirely sure why she’d done so. That first shock she’d felt after realizing she’d killed a man had faded, replaced by a wild, almost enjoyably furious pounding of heart and quickening of her breathing. She wanted to be where the action was, not sitting in that cabin, wondering what was going on outside.

Besides, Blake had talked about these terrorists having an atomic bomb, and that fit with the information she’d found for him back in Wiesbaden, helped piece it all together. She’d been a part of this operation from the beginning. She didn’t want to be left out now.

Inge Schmidt wasn’t sure what she would be able to do, but she ought to be able to do something.

So she grabbed her pistol and went.

A pitched battle was still being fought on the module roof when she stepped off the ladder. She couldn’t tell who was shooting at whom, especially with the darkness closing in fast, but stuttering, flaring muzzle flashes off to the left suggested that quite a few people were there, firing in her general direction. Ducking low to take advantage of the shelter offered by air ducts and machinery, she ran barefoot across the poured concrete roof in the direction of the big crane.

Thunder filled the night, louder, vaster than the crackle of small-arms fire, and Inge stopped, leaning back against a sheet metal duct. The thunder grew, wind stirred…

… and then the night sky exploded in light. Helicopters! She couldn’t see them clearly, couldn’t tell how many there were, but she could sense huge, insect shapes sweeping low over the platform, searchlights stabbing and sweeping out of the night. One helicopter passed right overhead, the rotor wash whipping her hair and skirt with a frigid blast of howling, shrieking wind. A machine gun mounted in the aircraft’s open, right-side door spat flame, though the thump-thump-thump of the rotors was so loud she couldn’t hear the gun’s bark.

A stray round hit the duct two feet above her head with a sound like a clashing garbage can. Inge ducked, then started running.

The crane was just ahead…

“One-three, this is One-four,” the helicopter’s pilot called over the air tactical net. He was Lieutenant Gerald Gerrard, “Jerry” to his mates, and he’d been flying Sea Kings for 846 Squadron for almost five years now. Rigged for commando assault, the 846 helos were deadly, their crews the best in the business. “Watch your tail, Manny. We’re on it!”

The lights and forest-like tangle of towers rising from the Bouddica complex swept past the cockpit windows in a dizzying blur, as though trying to claw the Sea King from the sky. Gunfire stabbed. Something thumped loudly in the rear… a piece of gear gone adrift possibly, or a round punching through metal. The controls continued to respond, however, and the gauges all showed everything was champion.

“Roger that,” One-three replied, the voice strained behind the static of the radio. “We’re picking up fire from the helipad, fire from the helipad. Over!”

“All Falcons, this is One-one,” Wentworth’s voice announced. “We’ll put down suppressive fire on the helipad. The rest of you drop your chicks.”

“Ah, roger, One-one. We’re on approach.”

Falcon One-two was drifting toward the helipad, sweeping the area with fire from the machine gun in its cabin door. Flame leaped, then exploded skyward in a dazzling fireball and, for a horrifying instant, Gerrard though the whole rig was going up… but it was just the Royal Dutch navy helicopter resting on the helipad, the fuel in its tanks touched off. Falcon One-three banked left, came nose high, and drifted toward the center of the platform. Men in black combat garb spilled from the side, fast-roping to the complex’s roof in a fast-moving pearls-on-a-string line.

“Falcons,” Wentworth’s voice warned. “One-one. Mind the Yanks now! Watch your fire until you’re sure of your targets!”

“Yes, Mother,” One-four’s co-pilot said, and Gerrard laughed. The helos were operating under damned stringent restrictions for this assault. In the first place, indiscriminate fire could knock holes in natural gas lines down there, especially in the bridge or in the forest of pipes and storage tanks on Bouddica Alpha’s west side. A stray round going into that lot could touch off the whole complex, which was why he’d winced when that helo had brewed up. Hell, a firestorm of flame and destruction like that would be overshadowed only by the flash of a nuclear detonation, something Gerrard didn’t like thinking about.

To make things even more complicated, both the terrorists and the Yank SEALs down there were running around in basic black. Picking out one from another wasn’t going to be easy… though it was safe to assume that anyone firing at the helicopters was not friendly.

So the five helicopters of 846 Squadron had been ordered to fire only at targets that were shooting at them… and then only when the field of fire would sweep the roof of the platform complex away from the refinery section next to it.

Still, everything was going perfectly, a smooth op, money for jam.

The pilot banked the helo out over the sea, angling for an approach that would place him and the twenty-eight commandos at his back down on an open area between the crane and the Operations Center.

The anchor tug was nosing up beneath the bridge now, close alongside her sister tug, the Celtic Maiden. Croft watched from the starboard side of the bridge, peering up at the platform’s superstructure. The tug’s nose bumped into the Maiden’s port side aft, thumping heavily along the fenders hung over the rail.

“Go!” he shouted over the radio. “Go! Go!”

On Horizon’s bow and starboard side, thirty SAS troops, all in combat black with the blue, white, and red of St. George’s Cross Velcroed to their sleeves, leaped from one tug to the after deck of the other. Two terrorists stepped out from behind the submarine, subguns raised… but a fusillade of fire from the Horizon’s superstructure and from the men going over the side nailed the gunmen in a withering crossfire, tattering their bodies in a hail of bullets. Neither got off a shot; one crumpled beside the minisub, the other pitched sideways into the cold, black water off the Maiden’s stern.

SAS troops swarmed across the Maiden’s deck, moving forward. Gunshots sounded. “Maiden’s bridge secure! One terr down!” someone called over the net.

A flash grabbed Croft’s eye. He looked up, looked into the crisscross of beams and struts and piping that supported the whole of Bouddica’s crews’ quarters module like a fantastic, high-tech bird’s nest. A dazzlingly bright star flashed out from a catwalk there, passed just to the right of the Horizon’s bridge, and slammed into the superstructure astern. The explosion sent a shudder through the anchor tug’s hull. Rocket!

“RPG on Alpha’s belly!” he called. “Hit the bastard! Hit him!”

A second star flashed, hissing down toward the tug and exploding amidships with a shattering wet roar.

The first explosion had thrown both Chun and her guard to their knees. It had struck low, close by the waterline, and the icy cascade of water from the geysering spout drenched both of them and sluiced across the deck.

Chun grabbed the gangway railing and pulled herself upright. Her guard was just rising when the second grenade detonated just meters away, and the air sang with thumb-sized chunks of shrapnel. The SAS soldier yelled and grabbed his shoulder, his H&K jolted from his grasp. Chun rose to a crouch, pivoting sharply, snapping her leg up and around and kicking the man in the side of his head, knocking him back against the side of the tug’s superstructure.

Gunfire snapped and howled nearby. Ahead and high above the water, a dark shape screamed and dropped from a catwalk. Spotlights from the anchor tug pinned a second shape crouched on the walkway, a man frantically trying to reload his clumsy RPG launcher. SAS men already spilling onto the catwalk from the ladder up opened fire and cut him down.

Chun knew she didn’t have a moment to lose. They would be coming any second to check the damage from the two grenades. Bending over, she picked up the unconscious guard’s H&K and checked to make sure a round was chambered. Then, kicking off her shoes, she vaulted the gangway railing and leaped into the icy black sea.

A helicopter thundered slowly overhead, closing on Bouddica Alpha’s roof in a blaze of lights.

Gunfire burst and rattled behind him as Pak struggled up the ladder just below the crane’s cab. One round slapped against steel six inches to the side of his good leg, but with a last, desperate heave, one that drained almost the last of his endurance, Major Pak of the PDRK Special Forces hauled himself up and over the lip of the door and sprawled across the leather-covered seat.

An array of controls confronted him, black-knobbed levers for controlling cab rotation, for raising or lowering the crane arm, for winding in the cable. While they’d gotten one of the hostages to do all the crane work so far, Pak was familiar enough with the general layout of this type of heavy equipment. A special forces commando had to know how the thing worked in order to most effectively destroy it… or to use it to destroy something else.

There. That would be the cable release.

He reached for it…

MacKenzie slapped the fresh mag into the receiver and closed the bolt, chambering a round. In the handful of seconds it had taken him to reload, Pak had vanished into the crane. MacKenzie broke into a run. The night was filled with light and violence, and the thunder of helicopters circling overhead.

Out of the corner of his eye, off to the right, he saw three tangos sprinting toward him across the roof, but he had to stop Pak and stop him now.

Murdock and Roselli had burst through a fire door and onto the roof of Bouddica Alpha just below the helipad several minutes before. Almost at once, they’d come under heavy fire and been forced to take cover.

Then the helicopters had arrived, a deafening arrival of the just-in-time cavalry.

“Eagle, Eagle, this is Falcon Leader!” Wentworth’s voice called in Murdock’s ear. “How about a rundown on your lads so we don’t nick ’em by mistake? Over!”

“Falcon Leader, Eagle Leader,” Murdock called back. “Don’t worry about us. We’re scattered all over the place, but we’ll try to keep down until your boys are on the deck. Over!”

“We copy, Eagle Leader. Do you have any special targets in mind? Over!”

“That is affirmative, Eagle Leader. Hit the crane at Alpha’s southeast corner. But be careful of the baby on the hook. Over!”

“We read you.” The voice was grim. “We’ll have it secured quick as thought. Good luck, Eagle.”

“You too, Falcon. See you on the deck!”

“All units!” Croft called, fiercely depressing the transmit key on his microphone. “All units! The Korean woman’s escaped over the side. She’s got a gun!”

In the excitement of the moment, he didn’t realize he was transmitting on the general tactical frequency to all of the combatants in the area.

Inge reached the crane housing from the south side, ducking beneath the guy wires that helped counterbalance the long, yellow arm, and circling to the east side where the cab door was still open. Looking up, she could see Pak manipulating the levers.

“Pak!” she shouted, raising the pistol in the BKA-approved, two-handed grip. “Hands up!”

Pak stared down at the woman, who stood below him in an aggressive, straddle-legged stance, barefoot, wearing a skirt and a torn white blouse. Would she actually shoot him? If it had been Chun standing there he would have had no doubt about that whatsoever, but this was a Westerner, coddled and soft, weakened by notions of fair play.

Still, indecision held him there, immobile. If she did shoot, if she managed to hit him, he could be dead before he could release the bomb.

Suddenly, a huge, black vision of insect-faced horror heaved itself up from beneath the railing encircling the upper deck, hanging from beneath its clattering rotors, blinding lights beneath its nose obliterating the night. A hurricane of wind caught the woman from behind, shoving her forward a step as her yellow hair whipped in frenzied disarray.

Pak grinned, reaching again for the cable release.

“What was that?” SAS Lieutenant Kevin Donovan yelled. He was standing on the Sea King’s cargo deck, trying to hear as the pilot shouted something over the intercom channel.

“I said we just got a flash from the Horizon,” the pilot repeated. “Something about an escaped woman with a gun!”

“Sir!” one of the men tugged on his sleeve and pointed out the open door.

Speak of the devil! A woman was there, pinned in the helicopter’s lights, trying to get up off her hands and knees as the helo’s rotor wash struck her. She was holding a pistol, about to shoot someone inside the crane’s cab…

“Put her down!” Donovan yelled, slapping the machine gunner on the shoulder.

Something struck her from behind just as she got to her feet. There was no pain… just a savage blow that slammed her forward, knocking her down and leaving her stunned, almost paralyzed. Blinking back tears of shock and rage and adrenaline-charged fury, she rolled over and saw the helicopter edging closer.

No… no! It wasn’t goddamned fair! She wasn’t supposed to be shot by the guys on her own side!…

Men were running toward her… terrorists. She tried to rise, but her left arm refused to support her. They were firing, though whether at her or the helicopter behind her she couldn’t tell. She did know they would be on her in seconds…

Then fire stabbed again from the helicopter’s open side door, cutting into the running PRR terrorists and scattering them like tenpins.

And then the big SEAL from Texas, Blake’s friend MacKenzie, was there, sliding to a halt next to her, helping her up. “No!” she shouted above the helicopter’s thunder. “In the crane! In the crane!”

In a heartbeat, she’d pushed free of MacKenzie and raised her pistol again, one-handed, aiming once more at Pak, who was illuminated now by the light inside the crane’s control cabin, struggling with one of the levers.

Gasping against the crushing paralysis that was clamping down on the entire left side of her chest, Inge squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in her hand and she kept firing, slamming round after round into the cab. Damn! She couldn’t hold the target! Miss! Another miss!

She kept firing…

Bullets slammed into the cab, smashing the windshield, pocking the metal roof. Turning in his seat, Pak saw the woman sprawled awkwardly on the deck outside, firing round after round directly at him. One of the SEALs was there too, aiming his H&K.

One bullet slammed into Pak’s side, nearly knocking him out of the seat, but the woman was too late, the SEAL and the noisily hovering helicopter were too late, they were all too late… Laughing, the sound a bit hysterical even to his own ears, Pak grasped the release knob and pulled, just as a string of rounds struck him in the side, higher up, just beneath his left arm.

There was an agonizing delay… and then the atomic bomb suspended at the end of the cable dropped away; the cable leaped into the air, dancing at the release of so much weight. The bomb plummeted through darkness toward the surface of the water fifty feet below.

Pak didn’t hear the splash when it hit two seconds later.