Chapter Twenty-five

“Ready, Lewis?”

“Ready, Mr. Hughes.”

“Whenever you wish then.” Hughes gave a final tug at the shooting muffs and raised the Beretta 92F, inserting the magazine up the butt and working the slide release. The slide followed forward and the hammer followed down, the safety on, just as it should be. His right thumb moved the safety up and he snapped the pistol into a two-hand hold and fired, pulling the first shot through double action, emptying all fifteen rounds as fast as he could. Like the other magazines before it, this one functioned flawlessly, the slide locking open over it when the last shot was fired. Hughes bent over to peer through the spotting scope as he moved the DeSantis night-simulation glasses up to his forehead, squinting his eyes against the sudden brightness. He had shot out the chest of the silhouette at twenty-five yards except for one hole which was in the thorax. He theorized this was the first round, the one fired with the stiffer double-action pull.

He looked to his left toward the next position. Lewis Babcock was removing his glasses and inspecting the performance of his pistol as well. It was taking some time, but there would be time enough to reach the objective. The aircraft which would carry them would not be ready for another—Hughes checked the Rolex on his left wrist—thirty-five minutes. That meant another fifteen minutes he could allow for range time.

Time forbade making a test jump, or trying to run through even the most basic aspects of the mission; but, there would be no possibility of success if they could not rely on their weapons.

Babcock was taking up one of the H&K submachine guns, getting ready to try his first magazine. Hughes began the same, stripping away his shooting muffs because they would not be needed.

The Azores were almost due east and the aircraft which would carry them would only dogleg to avoid the islands themselves and any watchful British eyes. Latest information from Argus indicated the SAS were mounting a full-scale attack force that would soon be ready to go, thanks to the cooperation of Portugal. Word also was that O’Fallon and his band of gangsters had begun killing hostages.

As soon as one magazine was emptied, Hughes would load the next, the purpose of the exercise not to test marksmanship. However that might be lacking, now was not the time to correct it. Rather, they were function-testing each weapon they would use and each magazine, only with the first and last magazine from each taking the extra time to test the weapon’s accuracy.

Hughes kept firing.

Cross was not the sort of man to sit idly by while O’Fallon executed hostages, which meant one of two things: Cross was either in action somehow, or dead.

Hughes kept firing.

As his hands worked, his mind worked, but to the same end, the success of the mission. Sound and light grenades, ear and eye protection in the event one of the grenades had to be detonated in an area where they would have to remain. Gas cannisters to be utilized if possible, the kind that would knock out everyone who breathed it quickly. But only the innocent would wake up again, because it was predetermined that none of the terrorists would leave the Empress except in body bags. Gas masks in sufficient quantity to make available to Cross, this Leeds fellow, the female CIA-er and themselves. And also one more. Just in case it was worthwhile to keep this KGB man Vols conscious.

He kept shooting.

The aircraft to make the pickup, the impact-proof, bullet-resistant flotation pouch for the ampule once it was recovered and the Rube Goldberg device for suspending the pouch so the pickup aircraft could hook it up and snatch it away.

Hughes rammed the last magazine up the H&K’s magazine well and worked the bolt, letting it slam forward. It was the last of the weapons testing. He opened fire on what remained of the silhouette target twenty-five yards downrange, firing from the shoulder in three-round bursts, using the Aimpoint sighting system for target aquisition. The H&K was all but soundless in any real sense. The submachine gun empty in his hands, he looked to Babcock beside him. Babcock was just raising his weapon after clearing the magazine. Babcock made a thumbs-up signal. Each of the MP5 SD A3s had functioned flawlessly. They could be serviced aboard the specially modified E-4 Boeing 747, the aircraft stripped and fitted with engine modifications about which Argus had been terribly vague. Hughes had conjectured that the engine modifications had to be quite interesting indeed since in the next breath he had said that they would be over the target in approximately four and one half hours.

“If half the men I’ve trained or worked with could shoot as well as you two …” Argus said from behind them. But he didn’t finish it.

“Anyone with reasonably normal vision and gross and fine motor skills can shoot well if they practice at it. Trouble is, there’s usually something better to do.” He turned around and looked at Argus. “These are good. Can we get these packed in those shock-proof padded cases?”

“I’ve arranged for it to be done. All the maintenance gear you’ll need is ready to go aboard. Parachutes, bouyancy vests, all the chemical weapons you’ve asked for. Twice as much ammunition as you requested. Got your knives. Everything.”

“How do we get away after this thing is over, assuming we’re able?” Babcock asked suddenly. “Once we hit, the SAS is going to know about it pretty fast and may get in before we can get out.”

“As soon as you two get aboard,” Argus told them, taking a small black-surfaced box from his left outside uniform jacket pocket, “one of you will activate one of these. It emits a one-time only radio signal. Trash it afterwards. And please do because this is classified and we can’t have you getting caught with it if anything goes wrong.”

“Perish the thought,” Hughes smiled.

“Yes.” Argus nodded. “One of our satellites will pick this up, matter-of-factly log the coordinates even though we know them. It’s programmed for it. The signal will be transmitted to a submarine we already have moving into the area. It’ll stay out of the hot area until this signal comes, then move in at flank speed. If the British detect it by then they’ll have so little time to do anything, it won’t matter. By the time the operation is concluded, the submarine should be within visual range of the Empress. Get yourselves into the water on her portside and fire a flare. We’ll come right in to get you.”

“Unless the SAS see us first,” Babcock remarked.

“Unless the SAS see you first. We don’t want that to happen, but they are friendly forces so don’t try shooting your way out of anything with them.”

“How about Russian submarines?” Hughes asked.

“Satellites tell us there are two in the immediate vicinity. But I doubt they’ll risk surfacing.”

“What if they do?” Babcock inquired.

“I have no instructions to cover it,” Argus told them, looking at each of them in turn.

“What sort of instructions will the captain of the U.S. submarine have?” Babcock asked very deliberately.

“I had no control over that. He was told to withdraw and leave you in the water. There was nothing I could do. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well, that makes it all right, then,” Babcock said, hammering his fist into one of the partitions which separated the range positions, the spotting scope mounted to it vibrating.

“Things don’t really change at all, do they, General.” Hughes said it as a statement, not a question, then looked at his watch; it was time to go….

Another woman and child were murdered as they listened, helpless, and soon there would be another. Jenny Hall’s action had left Cross no other choice. He could not trust her alone, nor could he drag her along kicking and screaming once she woke up. He had checked; she was regaining consciousness. And he had taken the strap from her purse and tied her hands with it, leaving Liedecker to stay with her while he and Comstock took care of other matters.

They crouched at the top of the catwalk now. Comstock whispered, “She will hate you for this. And hate me for helping you.”

“I couldn’t have made her understand.”

“I have a feeling you and I may have a falling out, Cross.”

Cross looked at Comstock, puzzled for a moment. “Why?”

“You’ll want to kill this man O’Fallon. And so do I. But until then, allies, hmm?”

“Until then. Ready?”

“Ready. Yes.”

Cross stood up, the AKM in both fists, Comstock beside him, the Browning High Power in his belt, one 12-gauge in his hands and a second one leaned against the catwalk.

“Now!” Cross shouted, and they both opened fire into the six men below them, the roar of the Soviet assault rifle and the belching of the shotgun blending into a deafening cacaphony, the sound reverberating again and again off the steel walls of the cargo hold all around them and above and below, return fire starting to come up at them, bullets ricocheting off steel plate, Cross feeling something tear at his left thigh, Comstock staggering back, throwing down his shotgun, picking up a second and firing one-handed, the Browning High Power in his left fist.

Cross emptied the AKM and rammed the fresh magazine into place, continued firing until the last of the six were down. Had the men been near the plastic explosives with detonators set, there could have been—but there had been no other choice. And they had waited until the men had been about to leave the hold to do their bloody work.

Cross looked at Comstock. The Englishman’s white shirtsleeve was stained red with blood. “Just plenty of blood, but nothing serious I think. Have a look at it, will you, when you get the chance?” And Comstock staggered, almost fell, Cross letting the AKM drop on its sling to his right side, bending down with the man. Cross’s left thigh burned.

He inspected the wound to Comstock’s arm. “You were right. It doesn’t look serious. Betchya it hurts like hell.”

“You’re right there, old man.” And Comstock’s eyes flickered to the right for an instant. “Not unscathed either, are we?”

“Just a scratch. Probably a ricochet. Fragment in it feels like. Yours went clean through. I’m making a pressure bandage here,” and Cross began cutting away Comstock’s right sleeve.

“Don’t suppose you’d rather mutilate your shirt. Heaven forbid.” Comstock grinned.

Cross placed the bandage. “Just keep your elbow crooked until the bleeding slows up. Try to keep it elevated.”

“Your thigh, old man.”

“One of us has to get down there and hold that position. All the racket we made, they’ll be on us quick. Take your time on the stairs. Come down on your butt if you feel light-headed, all right?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Cross was up, the half-spent AKM in his right fist, Jenny’s stainless Colt Officers ACP in his left. He started down the stairwell off the catwalk. Get the weapons gathered up from the dead, then get to defusing the plastique if it could be done. And the unpleasant but necessary part. If any of the six weren’t dead, see that they became that way.

He kept moving….

“Liedecker! Bring her.” Vols ordered.

“Yes, Herr Comstock,” the recreation officer shouted back.

Vols turned his back and, using one of the shotguns like a cane to support himself, he started back along the corridor toward the catwalk. The lights came on and the speaker crackled and Vols sagged against the bulkhead, a wave of nausea gripping him. “Five minutes have passed. Faith and doesn’t it bother ya that innocent women and babies are dyin’ now?”

There was a child’s voice, crying. Then the first blast of gunfire came. Vols pushed himself upright and quickened his pace….

Babcock followed Hughes’s lead, as soon as the craft was urborne getting into a cross-legged sitting position on the fuse-age floor. “All right, lad. Submachine guns first. Complete field ;trip, light lubrication only, then reassembly. Save loading magazines until the last. There’ll be time.” Hughes started dismounting one of the three Heckler & Kochs.

Babcock looked at his Rolex. As General Argus had put them aboard, he’d told them, “The Air Force people tell me that come specialized equipment on one of their planes has been picking up traffic between the British vessel off the Empress’s portside and the Azores. It was voice; some sort of code; didn’t nake any sense. Except for one thing. They kept repeating the word ‘lighthouse.” We think it’s an attack order.” And Babcock wondered if, by the time they got there, there would be anyone eft to save….

Only one of the six hadn’t been dead already. With the knife he’d borrowed from Jenny earlier, he corrected that, as quickly is he could and as mercifully, the man unconscious anyway. Three UZI submachine guns, fine weapons but the cyclic rate too fast for some applications; two more AKMs and two spare magazines for each of them; two revolvers and three semiautomatic pistols; an assortment of cheap knives. He looked up the stairwell, Jenny Hall being taken down toward them by Liedecker, her hands still evidently bound behind her to keep her from getting away to turn herself in. Coming along just ahead of them, looking a little wobbly, Comstock.

Cross gave the Englishman credit. SIS men were tough if this man were in any way typical. Only two of the pistols were decent, one of them a Browning High Power like Comstock already had, the other a SIG-Sauer P-226 9mm. The revolver was an old, blue worn Model 10 M&P Heavy Barrel Smith. Cross unloaded the cylinder and checked the timing. Satisfactory, the action wear-smoothed feeling. He reloaded it. “Liedecker! Get down here and check the bodies for spare magazines or ammo, pocketknives, anything we might be able to use for anything.”

Cross stood up. He licked his lips nervously. He had experience with explosives, but nobody except an idiot liked dismantling something already set to go off. And these things were. He wished Darwin Hughes were here, because Hughes was the best explosives man Cross had ever seen. Cross set to work, using the Gerber with its spearpoint blade as his probe, starting on the first confluence of plastique ropes.

The announcements had stopped coming and Cross prayed that the killing of hostages had stopped as well. Comstock joined him. “I’m not half bad at this stuff. May I?”

“Please. Those guys looked like a bunch of schlubs.”

“Schlubs?”

“No talent dumb asses.”

“Ahh.” Comstock nodded as Cross looked at him for an instant.

Then Cross put his attention back to the explosives. “But I don’t think they were. You have any experience with hidden detonators?”

“A bit. Let’s have a look.”

“See if you get the same idea I do,” Cross said. He lit a cigarette. Smoking wouldn’t cause the stuff to blow.

“Yes,” Comstock nodded, probing with the knife, “this one for sure. Fake detonator here, as you supposed, but beneath it buried in the plastique—oh. well. So much for this.”

There was some movement coming from decks above them now, but Cross didn’t think that O’Fallon had enough manpower to launch a major attack, at least not so rapidly. “Liedecker. You any good with a rifle?”

“Try me.”

“Good. I’ll do that. Burrow in someplace and shoot the first thing that moves above us, right?”

“All right!”

O’Fallon’s men would know about the charges and be doubly reluctant to shoot down at them; the terrorists, after all, weren’t trained combat marksmen, just a bunch of homicidally delinquent sociopaths. Cross didn’t feel safe, but the danger wasn’t so immediate, either.

Cross looked at Comstock. “Any brilliant ideas?”

“And I was just about to ask you. One thing, while we think, let’s get that bullet fragment out of your leg.”

“I was afraid you’d remember.”

They found some shelter beneath a reasonably solid steel overhang that supported a wide conveyor belt used to move cargo, Comstock taking out a Zippo lighter much like Cross’s own, heating the primary blade of the Swiss Army Knife copy they’d taken off the dead man near the ship’s armory. As Comstock fanned the blade on the air to cool it, he said under his breath, “Those are radio detonators, you know.”

Cross nodded, saying nothing.

“And,” Comstock continued, “I’d wager if our friend has that degree of sophistication, he’s likely planted similar devices aboard the yacht they used to intercept us. Which means we can’t get out of here with this thing Alvin Leeds is carrying, and we can’t stay here either. Stickier than I’d supposed, actually. As soon as you have some marvelously innovative idea beyond the obvious one of getting O’Fallon and neutralizing his detonators, let me know, would you?”

Cross started to say that he didn’t have any marvelously innovative ideas, but then Comstock started probing for the fragment in his leg and it was all he could do to keep from screaming or biting off his tongue.

Then Jenny Hall started to speak, her voice lifeless sounding. Her jaw was bruising where he’d knocked her out, and there was a reddish mark where he’d slapped her. It had all gone wrong between them, he knew. “I know you did what was practical. Abe, I know you did. But I’m going to have to live with those deaths for the rest of my life. If I’d turned myself in, maybe they would have stopped.”

He wanted to tell her they would only have killed her. But there wasn’t any use to doing it….

Babcock looked up from what he was doing. Hughes was inspecting the parachutes. All the weapons had been serviced, all the magazines loaded, the edges of the knives touched up. Babcock smiled momentarily at that. Hughes had brought one of the Cold Steel Magnum Tantos to give to Cross. Babcock shook his head. The drone of the aircraft was not so terribly loud, just incessant. Babcock looked back to the deck plans he studied. There were acres of deck space, hundreds of people O’Fallon was using as a shield. And what would a man like Alvin Leeds have done with the ampule? At first, he would have hidden it someplace accessible only to crewmen like himself. That much seemed obvious. Restrict the access and you restrict the number of people who might stumble onto it. But if Leeds had kept himself free, had he left the ampule in its original hiding place? Was it on his person? What were his plans? Was he just going to wait for the hostage crisis to be resolved? Did Leeds know that the contents of the ampule were capable of producing death on an almost unprecedented scale?

Babcock closed the file containing the plans to the Empress. He opened the file with the photographs. Alvin Leeds, as General Argus had put it, was indeed black, like he—Babcock—was. But his skin looked darker in the photographs, front view and right and left profiles. A high forehead, thinner lips than normal and a crooked sort of smile. What was Leeds’s real name? He looked then at the photos of the girl singer, Jennifer Hall. Very pretty with strong features and a look in her eyes that was at once defiant, yet gentle. The next photos were not posed, but blown up candids, very grainy. They showed a tall, good-looking man with sandy hair and, as best Babcock could tell from the photos, a look of amusement in his eyes. This was the KGB man, Vols or Volshinsky or whatever.

Babcock turned to the last group of photos. Dark hair that looked as though it had been combed with the fingers and needed a washing. Deepset dark eyes, the face and the look it held almost Rasputin-like in the image it projected. Seamus Colin O’Fallon. Babcock closed the photo file; O’Fallon’s face gave him the chills.