Sea Of Terror

Chapter 24

The minutes passed, as they always do just before a step into emptiness, slowly.

The Osprey had reached its service ceiling of about twenty-four thousand feet. HAHO parachute jumps usually took place at altitudes over twenty-five thousand feet, but that could always be tailored to fit mission requirements. Cougar would be steering to target across a distance of only five miles, rather than the more usual thirty to fifty. They droned along now in level flight, steadily closing on the waypoint designated Charlie One.

"What's the word, Mr. Rubens?" Dean asked, keeping his helmet comm gear switched off while he used his implant to talk to the Art Room. "We've got about two minutes to go/no-go."

"The President still hasn't gotten back to Bing," Rubens said. He sounded tired and not a little exasperated. "This may be a CYA hand-me-down." "Shit."

Dean hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the bureaucratic games in Washington lately, but he'd heard enough from Rubens over the past several days to make a pretty fair guess as to what was happening. The current administration didn't want to be seen as militarily adventurous at a time when it was trying to disengage from Iraq. The United Kingdom had rejected an offer of help by the United States with Harrow Storm, and that had been fine with the President. He wanted to stay out of what publicly was a British crisis if he possibly could.

But the two hijacked ships were now just two hundred nautical miles from New York City. Rubens was convinced that the real goal of the IJI Brigade terrorists was to force the United States to step in and either attempt a bloody takedown of both ships, one that might well end in hundreds or thousands of casualties and risk radioactive contamination of the entire North Atlantic Gulf Stream, or, failing that, sink the two ships out of hand to keep them out of American waters or ports, an act that would show the U. S. military murdering thousands of hostages and contaminating the ocean, all live on the nightly cable news.

By doing nothing, the administration might be hoping that someone else took the responsibility of actually making a decision. If Rubens decided to launch Operation Neptune on his own, he would give the President options. If Neptune was a success, the President could accept the praise. If it was a disaster, he could always "disavow all knowledge of their actions," as the old TV spy show so succinctly put it.

As Rubens said, a CYA hand-me-down of responsibility — cover your ass, and let someone else take the responsibility.

"Neptune," Rubens said after a moment, "is a go. On my authority."

"Copy," Dean replied. "Neptune is go." At that moment, he was very, very glad he did not have Rubens' job. Success would mean someone else got the praise and he, most likely, would get a severe dressing-down for exceeding his authority. Failure meant political crucifixion and quite probably legal action as well. If Neptune turned sour, they would be looking for scapegoats in the morning.

"Good luck, Charlie."

"Thanks. And… don't worry. We'll do our best."

"I know you will."

The aircraft cargo master slapped Dean on the shoulder and switched his headset back on. "The tangos just called to wave us off," the cargo said over Dean's helmet radio. "Guess they're nervous about us flying so close."

"What'd you tell them?"

"That we were a fat, stupid UPS plane en route to Boston," the cargo master replied. "Just like we planned it."

"Any reply to that?"

"Negative. But you can bet they're watching us!"

"Yeah, but a cruise ship's radar isn't going to spot man-sized targets. They can watch all they want."

The cargo master held a hand up as he listened to an intercom transmission from the cockpit, then nodded and gave Dean the ready sign. They were coming up on Charlie One. The pitch of the Osprey's rotors changed as the aircraft slowed sharply.

With a shrill grinding sound, the rear ramp to the Osprey's cargo deck opened, dropping to create a descending ramp leading into darkness.

Dean opened his communications channel again. "We're good to go, people," he said. "Light your strobes." At the back of the helmet of each man in the line, an IR beacon began winking on and off, invisible to the unaided right eye, visible as a white, pulsing flash through the NVG monocular each man wore over his left.

The sudden wind from outside whipped at the legs of Dean's jumpsuit. The oxygen coming through his mask was cold and unbearably dry. More seconds crawled past, and then the cargo master said, "Okay, people! We're coming up on jump point Charlie One in five.. four… three… two… one… now\"

"Go!" Dean yelled. "Go! Go! Go!"

The line of twelve black-clad men moved forward swiftly, passing the line of empty seats to their right, the line of watching comrades still seated on their left. They hit the lowered ramp one close behind the next, launching one after the other into the night.

Dean was the last man out… and then he was falling through the dark.

"This way," Johnny Berger, the steward, whispered. "But be quietl"

Andrew McKay nodded and passed the whisper back to Nina, and she passed it on to the others following. There were twelve of them strung out in a long line, emerging one by one from the door onto the Starboard Boat Deck. Eleven would be taking the lifeboat; the twelfth, Dr. Barnes, was bringing up the rear. He would help them keep a lookout and actually operate the davits that would lower them into the sea.

"Mommy, I'm sleepy," Melissa said.

"Shh, dear. Not now."

Their escape had been put off one time after another. Not long after their secretive meeting up in Kleito's Temple on Tuesday afternoon, the helicopter attack had thundered out of the east. Several of them, including McKay and his family, had seen the helicopter shot down off the starboard side. The escape, which had been planned for that evening, was put off. The hijackers would be on their guard, and it was too dangerous to go wandering around on deck.

There were rumors that a passenger had been shot afterward, but no one in the group had been able to confirm that. They'd agreed, though, that the terrorists might decide to lock all of the passengers up at any time — perhaps put them with Harper and Bernstein and the ship's captain and the Cruise Director and everyone else who seemed to have vanished during the past five days.

But then the wind had picked up and it had started raining. Berger had pointed out that they did not want to try to drop into the sea from a moving ship. The maneuver would be dangerous enough even if the water was calm.

And so they'd put the escape off for another night.

That afternoon, however, the rain had lifted and the wind had died down as the ship had emerged into sunshine from a long line of squalls. Barnes had checked some maps in the ship's library earlier. He'd pointed out that — given their speed and course since Sunday — they ought to be somewhere off the coast of Massachusetts by now, probably less than fifty miles from shore; they could start rowing northeast and hope to strike land within a day or two, even if the military didn't pick up their emergency signal and come get them.

Tonight, they'd all agreed, would be the night.

Turning right, they moved along the safety railing toward the loom of the first lifeboat, hanging just above the deck. Barnes used his security key to swipe through a reader. Everyone else had left their ID cards in their staterooms; if the hijackers were tracking people by the locations of their passkey cards, they likely wouldn't notice the ship's doctor on the boat deck, where they would definitely come investigate twelve passengers and crew out here late at night.

A ready light winked on, and Barnes pressed a button. With a grinding whine, the lifeboat swung across the deck and over the railing.

"Let's get the women and children on first," McKay said, nudging Nina and Melissa forward. He knew it sounded silly — a bit of melodramatic nonsense — even as he said it. But the stress was building inside him to the point where he could hardly stand still. He needed to get them off the ship now…

"Wakkif!" a harsh voice barked from farther aft… and then three flashlights switched on, pinning the party of passengers against the railing. "Stop! Stop where you are!"

"Aw, shit!" Carmichael said. Turning, he started to run forward, but a hijacker with an AK-47 stepped out of the shadows and knocked Carmichael down with a rifle butt to the jaw.

Stunned, the civilians could only stand there, helpless as a half-dozen armed men came toward them both from forward and from aft. A few of the civilians raised their hands.

"Put hands down," one of the hijackers said in heavily accented English. "We know you no have weapons. Now move! That way! You will come with us!"

And the hijackers herded the twelve of them forward along the deck, back toward the door from which they'd just emerged.

They fell to twenty thousand feet before releasing their chutes. With a shock, Dean's parachute opened above him, rapidly slowing his terminal velocity from free fall to a gentle drift through the night.

Grabbing his left and right steering toggles, Dean brought his parafoil into a gentle left turn. His parachute was an MC-4 ram-air military chute, two night-black rectangular canopy sections joined by seven air cells to create a double wing, one just aboye the other. Ram-air chutes had astonishing glide and control characteristics that allowed the parachutist to steer them with extraordinary precision. The red arrow on his forearm display was showing the direction toward the Atlantis Queen and the range… now about four and a half miles.

He could see the other jumpers ahead of him in a ragged and uneven curve, the bright wink of their IR strobes showing their positions in the sky as they slowly began adjusting their positions relative to one another. Vic Walters and David P. Yancey had point and would be going in together; the rest were spacing themselves out so that they would come in one at a time, about five to ten seconds apart.

Dean would come in last.

His rate of descent was steady at fifteen feet per second, his speed twenty-five knots. The wind was light — about five knots from the southwest. The sky had been clear earlier, when they'd left the Eisenhower, but was becoming overcast again swiftly.

With the Queen steaming away from him at twenty knots, it was going to take him some time to catch up with her.

Rubens stood in the Art Room, looking up at the big screen. Deck plans provided by Royal Sky Line had been turned into computer-graphic schematics showing every deck on board the ship, Decks One through Twelve above, Decks A through D below. The sheer size and complexity of the target meant that Neptune was going to have to be carried out in sections. Cougar was only the first wave. Jaguar was in reserve, the Ohio was closing with the Pacific Sandpiper, and the, SAS had just reported that they were ready to go with Operation Harrow Lightning.

But the critical part was getting those first few men down safely onto the Atlantis Queen's deck.

He listened to the chatter from the string of parachutists. There wasn't much. The team had drilled endlessly and didn't need to say much as they lined themselves up for the approach to their target.

"Cougar Two," a voice said, identifying itself. "Slowing descent. Winds picking up a bit. Eight knots."

"Copy."

So far, everything was going perfectly by the book. Rubens was already composing his resignation letter in his head, however. By ordering Neptune to go in without authorization from the President or the Pentagon, he was committing a decidedly illegal act, dropping a dozen armed men onto the deck of a cruise ship belonging to another nation and running the risk that his actions would precipitate disaster. If Khalid decided to blow up either ship out there, radioactive fallout would easily stretch along the prevailing winds three hundred miles across southern Newfoundland, while seaborne contamination might wash across beaches from Newfoundland to Ireland and possibly the rest of western Europe as well. It would be an unprecedented ecological and radiological calamity. That he'd given the order while the U. S. government was supposedly carrying out negotiations with the hijackers, or trying to, would only cast his decision into a sharper, harsher light.

But the alternative was to let the Queen keep coming, with the New England coast now less than six hundred miles away.

It was an alternative that simply didn't bear consideration.

"How about it, Kathy?" he asked the woman seated at a computer console nearby. Kathy Caravaggio was one of his best handlers. "Ready to raise the stakes?"

"We have full admin control,", she told him. "They don't know it yet, but we have control of their security systems now."

"Do it," Rubens said.

"What is wrong with it?" Khalid demanded.

"Amir… I don't know. The security system appears to be running normally, but all of the security cameras have just switched off!"

"That's impossible, unless you shut it down here!"

"I did not, Amir! I swear!"

"Let me see the deck displays."

Hamud Haqqani touched a switch, frowned, then hit it again. "Sir… we don't have those screens, either."

Khalid felt a cold twist in his gut. The deck display screens should have been able to show him points of light for every person on board the ship — red for passengers with ID, blue for people sensed in various areas of the ship without ID, green for the hijackers and the members of the crew. If he couldn't see where the hostages were, he was losing control.

"There was a large group of hostages in the casino, yes?"

"Yes, Amir," Haqqani said. "Last time I looked, there were around fifty passengers and a few crew members there.. Tahir and Faruk are on the deck outside there, and El Hakim is inside the casino."

"Are there other large gatherings of passengers?"

"No, sir. A few in the Kleito Bar… four or five, perhaps. Most passengers are in their staterooms, except for the ones in the theater."

"We may be facing an attack," Khalid said. "Get those screens working!"

They were picking up speed. The maximum forward velocity of a standard ram-air chute is about 25 miles per hour. The team's MC-4s had been modified, however, to improve their speed in horizontal flight. They could manage about 34 miles per hour, now, which meant they were closing on the Atlantis Queen at about 14 miles per hour… or roughly twelve knots. Four and a half regular miles was a little under four nautical miles. Four nautical miles at twelve knots — twenty minutes.

Which meant they were getting damned close by now.

Guided by the GPS-controlled readouts on their wrists, the strike force steadily closed on their target, now less than half a mile ahead. The Queen was running with her lights on and so made a splendid visual target.

"Okay, Cougars One and Two," Dean said over the squad channel. The men were identified by their order in the stick. "You've got the call."

"Cougar One. I see the Atlas Deck. I see two, repeat, two tangos close in by the windows, as expected. AK-47s and cigarettes."

"Cougar Two, roger that. Two tangos in sight."

"Doesn't look like they're expecting us," Cougar One, Vic Walters, added.

One point of HAHO drops was that the parachutes opened so far from the target that the crack of unfolding fabric grabbing air couldn't be heard at the target. Another was the ability to literally fly to the target, within certain fairly broad parameters.

"Cougar One, Two, this is Twelve," Dean said. "Take them down at your discretion."

There was no going back now.

"Inside!" Rashid Abdul Aziz said, nudging one of the Westerners with the muzzle of his AK-47. "Sit down and no make trouble!"

The twelve captives meekly filed through the door and into the theater, escorted by Nejmuddin and Sadeeq, one of them, the black one, still clutching his forehead where Baqr's rifle butt had clipped him.

Stopping in the hallway outside the theater entrance, Aziz pulled out his radio and called the bridge.

"What is it?" Fakhet's voice replied.

"This is Aziz. We've caught them all," Aziz told him. "We're putting them inside the theater now."

"Any trouble?"

"None at all."

"Good. The Amir wants you to — " The voice broke off.

"Bridge? Are you there?"

There was a moment's silence, and then Fakhet's voice sounded from the radio again. "There is a… problem," he said. "Listen. Take all of your men to Deck Nine, then aft to the casino. The Amir wants all of the people gathered there to be rounded up and moved to the theater as well!"

"Why?" Aziz asked. "There must be fifty or sixty — "

"Just do it, Aziz! All of our security cameras have just switched off! The Amir says there may be an attack coming at any moment!"

Victor Jeffery Walters was an old hand. Forty-Height years old, now, he'd joined the Army Special Forces as soon as he'd made sergeant and eight years later had been selected for Delta Force. He'd seen action in both Afghanistan and Iraq, been promoted to staff sergeant, and finally retired after twenty-two years.

His retirement had been illusory, however… or, at best, in name only. An NSA recruiter had approached him last year, and he'd volunteered for paramilitary service with the Deep Black program and Desk Three. Since then, he'd been training with the Cougars, keeping up his weapons skills, keeping up his jump certification.

And now it all was paying off.

Not that this jump was an easy one. He'd done it time after time in training, and his heart still felt like it was trying to climb up out of his throat. He'd once heard a Navy aviator friend talk about the difficulties of landing at night on an aircraft carrier… a huge vessel that during the approach appeared to be about the same size as a postage stamp, and it was moving.

His friend, he thought, had nothing on him. This was a lot worse.

Through the NVG monocular he could clearly see the Atlas Pool and the large deck around it, positioned at the rounded back end of the Atlantis Queen. Light spilling from the casino inside made the deck area as bright as day; he could see the two hijackers clearly. They appeared to be relaxed, weapons slung, the red star of a burning cigarette in the mouth of each.

Thirty feet from the Queen's taffrail, he hauled back on the brake toggles of his parachute, spilling air and speed. As he drifted forward at the uncertain edge of a stall, he pulled his H&K, which he'd released during the jump to hang by its straps from the right side of his body, up to his shoulder.

The touch of a gloved thumb switched on the infrared laser targeting system; through his monocular, he saw the ruby-bright point of light, invisible to the naked eye, dancing across the torso of the terrorist on the right.

"Cougar One," he whispered. "Target right."

"Two. Target left."

"Take 'em!"

It was tricky taking a shot while trying to control a parachute just thirty feet from touchdown, especially with some turbulence kicking up as he flew through the cruise ship's slipstream. He had to release the parachute control toggles while in a sustained near-stall, raise his weapon, aim, and fire, all before he stalled completely and lost control. The IR laser made aiming simpler; as the red dot slipped swiftly up the tango's body, from left hip to right shoulder, Walters began squeezing off shots, the H&K's integral sound suppressor muffling each shot to a loud, hissing snap.

The terrorist jerked backward, chin going up, hands clawing at his chest as he slammed into the glass at his back. Walters managed five shots before he dropped his weapon and grabbed the control toggles again, allowing himself to pick up airspeed once more and glide toward the open deck. To his left, Dave Yancey seemed to hover motionless in mid-air for a second or two as he continued pumping near-silent rounds into his target, then dropped his weapon as well and continued his glide in for a landing.

The deck came up to meet Walters' booted feet. He misjudged his speed, though, which was a little high. He touched down running, dragging down the toggles and collapsing the ram-air chute behind him, then slammed full body into the glass doors leading into the brightly lit casino.

Jerry Esterhausen jumped at the slam of something heavy hitting the door leading out to the Atlas Pool. Howorth stood and turned, trying to see, but it was dark outside and the lighting, though low, had wrecked her night vision. She thought she saw movement out there, however, a shadow in the blackness.

And she saw the two outside guards as well, crumpled on the deck.

The hijacker guard who'd remained inside the casino had been sitting at a chair up against the aft-starboard bulkhead. He'd started at the thump as well, and was moving toward the door to investigate.

He was five feet from Rosie, Esterhausen's card-playing robot.

"Jerry!" Howorth hissed. "We need a distraction! Fast!"

"Huh?"

"Your robot!…"

Jerry typed a command into his computer, then dragged his fingertip across the touchpad. Rosie, who'd been sitting lifelessly in her kiosk, awoke suddenly, her metal arms snapping up and out, her torso spinning to face the hijacker.

Behind Walters, David Yancey stepped onto the deck alongside the swimming pool at a gentle walk, his forward velocity perfectly matched to the speed of the ship.

"Army klutz," Yancey said. David Yancey was a former U. S. Navy SEAL.

"Fuck you, squid!"

Walters struggled to unhook the harnesses holding the parachute to his body As he looked up, however, he saw movement… and the flash of a weapon. Their last briefing had mentioned a tango inside the casino.

And suddenly a man screamed, and Walters heard the sharp clatter of a weapon firing full auto.