Chapter Twenty-Six

The sandy-haired man he had seen prowling about below decks had to be a Russian agent, he had told himself. Otherwise, why would the man have been looking for the ampule? There had been a poker game going with some of the other men from the boiler crew and, once the game had broken up, he had retrieved the ampule from its hiding place, determined to keep it on his person to better guard it.

And then some of the men from the crew had produced guns, shot the Chief when he’d gone after them with a wrench. And he had used the opportunity to slip away, the big military Beretta and the spare magazines for it still hidden among the maze of pipes, and the six rounds in the inherited PPK Alyard had given him not enough to do anything with against four handguns and one of those miniaturized submachine guns.

Then he had decided to hide the ampule again, first retrieving the Beretta then working his way as far aft along the shafts as possible, where the heat from the steam was almost intense enough to make him pass out. But there was a circuit-breaker box with a few inches of free space at its base. He couldn’t fit the watertight bag into the gap, nor even the little maroon foam-padded box, but the ampule itself fit there as perfectly as if the space had been made for it and, by pulling down some of the wires, he was able to camouflage its appearance completely.

Planning ahead, he stored the empty maroon case and the watertight, cushioned bag back among the piping, just in case. He would, after all, need something in which to safe!y transport the ampule once he retrieved it.

And then the business was survival, to hide out and wait it out until the hijacking thing was resolved, if it would be resolved at all, or find some other means of getting the ampule to safety if it came to that.

He had heard each episode of the grisly execution drama unfold over the PA system. And he knew then how it would be resolved. The British, whose ship-of-the-line this was, would have no choice but to send in their crack Special Air Service people, perhaps the best unit-sized counter-terrorist force in the world. But then he had seen them planting the charges of plastic explosives in the main hold, left the area immediately, seen the evidence of more plastique planted elsewhere. He’d had elementary demolitions training. Not that he qualified as any expert, but he knew enough to recognize a setup that would be enormously difficult if not impossible to safely defuse.

Thomas Griffeth had always prided himself on making advantage out of adversity. If the Empress Britannia went down, then “Alvin Leeds” would go down with it, and the Russians would think the United States had lost the ampule, enhancing the strategic advantage possession of the ampule represented. The Russian program to duplicate the processes by which the contents of the ampule had been developed would not need to be so accelerated when they were convinced that the Americans didn’t have it.

“Alvin Leeds” would die, taking his precious cargo with him. But Thomas Griffeth, his military pistol and spare magazines hidden on his body, would find the means to escape, confirm the chances, return to the electrical box where he had stored the ampule, then get away.

He had climbed down into one of the lifeboats from the deck above; despite the cool temperatures, the air beneath the heavy tarp was stiflingly warm. Sentries moved about on the deck above and below, but when it was safe to do so, he would peer out. After looking at it several times, he decided. The yacht. There was no one aboard her in open view, likely no one aboard her at all. And under cover of darkness, he could slip her moorings and get her round behind the Empress’s radar image and make good his escape with the ampule. The British vessel off the port bow would be none the wiser until it was too late, nor would the sentries aboard the Empress. There was always the chance a stray shot would get him, but here the only certainty was death. He would wait until just before dawn, slip below and retrieve the ampule, then make for the yacht….

“Mr. Hughes?”

“Yes, Lewis?” Hughes was into his black BDUs and securing equipment, Babcock doing the same.

“What if we can’t locate the ampule? I mean, what if we can’t find Leeds or something’s happened to him?”

“Well, what alternatives suggest themselves?”

“The SAS will go over the ship with a fine-tooth comb. They’d find it. And we don’t want that to happen, especially since no one’s telling them how dangerous it is. And there’s always the possibility that if this O’Fallon has the Empress wired, we can’t neutralize the explosives. I mean, you’re the expert. There are some charges that can’t be defused, right?”

“Indeed there are. So, then what will we do, Lewis?”

“Get everybody off the Empress and scuttle her, right.”

“Yes,” Hughes agreed. “Yes. That’s just what we’d do, Lewis. Help me with this parachute harness—needs tightening over here.”

Babcock started working the strap.