“Let’s go over it once more,” Darwin Hughes said slowly. Babcock looked at his Rolex. Five minutes until they were to move to the door, seven minutes before the door would be opened, nine minutes before they would leap out into the predawn blackness over the target. “There’s a small transponder inside the equipment package. The transponder will activate automatically when the chute opens. If the chute doesn’t open, I don’t think the package would survive the impact sufficiently that anything would be useable. The transponder’s signal will only carry for about five hundred yards; so, it is imperative, Lewis, that you spot the third chute as it opens. Once the package hits the water, the flotation device will activate, but there’s only enough flotation to keep it just slightly above the surface. So, you won’t be able to spot it visually. And with the seas getting choppier down there, that goes double. I’m going to the yacht as soon as I ditch my parachute, then getting aboard her.”
“The chute for the equipment package is rigged to the altimeter?”
“Right.”
Babcock nodded. “You go to the yacht and take out anyone aboard her, then I join you with the equipment package and we gear up, then go up onto the Empress.”
“From what I recall of her, that time I was aboard her, the deck plans haven’t changed at all when compared to the diagrams. That’s an advantage, having at least a vague physical familiarity with the terrain we’ll be working. What then?”
“We’re on board and we remove any sentries in the immediate vicinity as quickly as possible. Then we recon to ascertain where the bulk of the hostages are being held.”
Hughes nodded, glancing at his watch. “Then we ascertain as best as possible where the control for the demolitions is headquartered. We take out the demolitions control—”
“And we take action to free the hostages, physically freeing the ship’s officers first so they can supervise the evacuation.”
Hughes smiled, the lines in his cheeks furrowing deeply, his eyebrows cocking upward. “With all those people in lifeboats, once we have the job done, no Russian submarine’s going to dare surface. They wouldn’t have the room.”
“And we find Cross and the girl and this Russian guy and then we get Leeds to take us to the ampule.”
“Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?” Hughes smiled again. And he looked at his watch. “Time, lad.” Hughes offered his hand. Babcock took it.
Hughes started into his helmet, Lewis Babcock doing the same, Hughes starting to check Babcock’s equipment. “Good!”
Babcock turned and did an equipment check on Hughes. Both men bent to the cargo package, checking that it was secure, that the chute was rigged properly to it. They hefted the cargo package—it wasn’t tight—and brought it to the door.
The crewman who had bobbed in and out several times throughout the journey stood beside the fuselage door. Hughes secured his helmet chin strap, then pulled his oxygen mask up. Babcock did the same. “Let’s go on oxygen then one last radio check.” The headset radios were an emergency item only, radio silence to be maintained unless one of the two of them were in imminent danger.
“Testing one, two, three—Lewis?”
“I have you, Mr. Hughes. Am I coming through?”
“Reading you loud and clear, Lewis. Headsets off.”
Lewis Babcock shut down, checking the readings on his oxygen mask. The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We are depressurizing on my mark. Go to oxygen.” Babcock secured his mask, turning on the oxygen supply. The pilot’s voice again. “All personnel are on oxygen. Commence countdown to depressurization. Ten … nine … eight … seven …” Babcock checked each strap, each gauge, checked the position of the Gerber BMF lashed to his right thigh, checked the safety strap and the thong, secured it into the synthetic sheath. “… four … three two … one … MARK!” A klaxon sounded and Babcock reminded himself to breathe, a hissing sound growing progressively louder, his ears feeling strangely hollow, his sinuses starting to run. He sniffed back. The pilot’s voice again. “Cabin is depressurized to atmosphere. I say again. Cabin is depressurized to atmosphere.” The door was starting to open. There was a loud rushing sound of the slipstream passing around the fuselage.
Lewis Babcock looked to the jump signal. The red light changed in that instant to amber.
Babcock reached to the gear package, Hughes already starting to move it. The man beside the door, secured into the fuselage with webbing safety straps, reached down, grabbed at the package and consulted a stopwatch. He nodded, Babcock and Hughes throwing their weight behind it as the man at the door drew it outward, the package suddenly gone.
Babcock looked up.
Amber light still. He stepped into the door. Green light. Thumbs up from Hughes. A tap on the shoulder from the man at the door. Babcock jumped, tumbling, the wind rush around him deafening for an instant. His arms and tegs—he slowly spread them, getting his attitude correct, sailing forward, arms outspread like the wings of a bird. He saw the package, tumbling what looked like a mile beneath him. But it was only his perception.
His eyes came to the altimeter. He watched the needle spinning crazily downward, shifted his eyes from it for a moment. The package! He coutdn’t—he spotted it, barely visible against the night as it descended below the horizon, now lost entirely. He checked his altimeter. He swallowed hard. His pulse was racing. It always did when he jumped because the thought of hurtling down into the night, on one level of consciousness, terrified him. And he tried to keep that level submerged in the technical details of the jump.
He checked his altimeter constantly now, watching the needle, watching the digital readout, ready to pull the ripcord. The numbers were dropping more rapidly.
“Shit!” Babcock growled into his mask.
He pulled the cord, the snap, his shoulders hauled up, his body wrenched.
He thought he saw a splashdown beneath him, but couldn’t be sure…
Darwin Hughes had waited longer, controlling his rate of descent with body movement, aiming himself toward the white blotch beside the white mass, the yacht moored beside the Empress. Above and to his right, he saw Lewis Babcock’s chute open.
Hughes glanced at his altimeter. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, he realized almost absently. He could feel his pulse racing maddeningly. Men his age had heart attacks and strokes, were at greater risk. Few men his age did what he did. What would happen if—He pushed the thought from his mind, the altimeter reading right, his angle right. He pulled the cord, his body whiplashing, the sea yawning up below him, the yacht suddenly gone. He turned his head, had it and worked his chute toward it. If someone with keen eyes spotted him from the deck of the Empress and were a good enough shot—But he told himself they would be looking for dozens of men, the SAS coming, not one man or two and a third chute for cargo.
The water was slamming up faster now and he at once braced and relaxed as he readied to hit.
He glided into it, but still the impact to his body took his breath away and he gagged for an instant beneath his mask, his body chilled beyond endurance for a split second. And his hands found the quick release for the chute and he punched it, the chute billowing around him, then gone, the weights added to the pack bringing it down. He turned away from it, his face feeling the pressure of his goggle gasket from the water. He broke surface and ripped away his oxygen mask and sucked air, a whitecap crashing over him.
Hughes tugged at the helmet chin strap, pulling the helmet from his head and trashing it into the water. It, too, was weighted to go down. He began orienting himself as he worked at the straps binding the breathing unit to him. He had them, shrugged out of it. Two hundred yards to the stem of the yacht. He started to swim, keeping his mouth closed, his nose and eyes just above the surface, whitecaps breaking over him.
Hughes looked back once.
There was no sign of Lewis Babcock.
Hughes told himself that Babcock had made it, then pushed the thought from his mind that somehow Babcock hadn’t. He kept swimming.
Fifty yards down. One hundred and fifty to go, the yacht’s definition growing. He could see a yellow light burning in what had to be the wheelhouse.
One hundred yards gone, one hundred remaining now. He treaded water for an instant, reaching down to his thigh for the reassurance of the Gerber knife. It was there. He started forward again, varying his stroke to conserve energy.
Fifty yards more.
He tucked down beneath the surface, gulping air as he did, swimming more easily now beneath the choppy topside, a dull grey blur ahead of him, the hull of the yacht. He surfaced, gulped air, and tucked down again, swimming easily now because the end was in sight and because he would need strength and breath control more above the surface than below.
His left hand reached out along the surface of the hull and he followed it up, breaking the surface, taking air. His right hand moved to his waist to release the weight belt, then down along his thigh, his skintight gloved fingers undoing the knot then opening the safety strap on the Gerber’s sheath. He withdrew the knife, putting it between his teeth pirate fashion as he moved along the hull, the yacht between him and the towering hull of the Empress. He found the anchor chain and reached up, biting down harder on the knife, pulling himself along its links hand over hand. He got one foot purchased against a drain hole, pushing himself up, eyes just at the level of the deck.
He saw no one, pulled himself up and slid under the rail, flattening himself against the decking.
Hughes took the knife from his teeth and resheathed it, then pushed up on right knee and left elbow, his right hand jerking down the zipper front of his black wetsuit, then moving beneath it. He felt the plastic bag, drew it out, tore the plastic open and closed his fist over the gunbutt.
To his knees, then to a full crouch, he started forward, the plastic bag balled tight in his left fist, his right thumb sweeping up the silenced Walther PP .22’s safety.
The wheelhouse was just ahead, a darker shape against the yellow light. He dropped flat, the Walther ready. Nothing. He moved along on knees and elbows now until he was beside the superstructure, then drew himself up again into a crouch.
The wheelhouse windows—he ducked down.
Past the windows.
Darwin Hughes rose to his full height. He approached the wheelhouse door. It was closed against the night cold. He could see the door handle faintly. He moved his left fist down against it and the door swung open inward. Hughes stepped into the doorway, the door creaking on its hinges, the man at the chart table spilling his coffee as he turned around, the man’s right hand holding a large-caliber revolver. Hughes stabbed the PP toward him and fired once, then again, shooting out the left eye with the first shot, the second shot going into the open mouth.
The body flopped back, the right fist tightening on the gun, then the revolver falling, clattering against the table and the body knocking it over, slipping from the chair to lie in a heap against the overturned table.
If there was anyone else aboard the vessel, they’d heard the noise of the table falling. He wheeled toward the companionway steps, racing toward them, a trash basket beside them. He flipped the crumpled plastic bag into it, taking the steps down two at a time, no allowance for caution.
A man was sitting up in a berth near the base of the steps and Hughes shot him once between the eyes. As the head flopped back, Hughes ripped the pillow from beneath it, smothering the pillow over the mouth in case an instant’s life were still in the man.
He left the pillow where he’d put it and quickly now explored below decks. Only the two men. No one else. But ten fifty-gallon drums in the compartment amidships, the smell overpowering. And, they didn’t smell like diesel.
He had no time to open them, but suspected that here was the much-threatened-with jellied gasoline, the napalm not yet transferred to the Empress perhaps, or perhaps too its proximity to charges set aboard the Empress deemed enough. Hughes kept moving forward, nothing in the galley except garbage someone had been too lazy to pick up and the smell of onions. He cautiously opened the forward stateroom door, the silenced Walther tight in his fist. He closed his eyes for an instant. Plastic explosives were roped about the cabin like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
Hughes’s eyes followed the ropes, all of them coming together at the head of the master bed, right where the hull tapered to form the bow. And just below the waterline. He approached the bed. At the confluence of the ropes of plastique there was an obvious detonator. Too obvious. He touched at the plastique into which it was imbedded, feeling a stiffness below it that could only mean one thing. A concealed detonator. There was no time. And, if there had been, there was no guarantee it was defuseable. Hughes closed the cabin door after him.
Hurriedly, Hughes walked back the way he had come, took the companionway steps three at a time, passed through the wheelhouse, cautiously stepped out onto the deck. Keeping to the heaviest shadows, he made a complete round of the yacht’s topside. No one else, a sentry barely visible from the prow standing looking over the railing of the Empress.
“Damn!” Hughes hissed under his breath. It was an impossible shot with a handgun, at least for him. He drew back deeper into the shadows, then more quickly made his way aft.
There was no sophisticated signal between them. He simply leaned over the stern rail and hissed into the darkness, “Lewis!”
“Here, Mr. Hughes.”
“Company on the portside rail of the Empress. Mum’s the word,” Hughes hissed back as he worked the hammer-drop safety and put the Walther away. “By the anchor, Lewis. Keep low.”
He caught the line Babcock flipped up, caught it on the first try, then began to pull.
There was a clanging sound and Hughes ducked, drawing the Walther from beneath his wetsuit again. It was the cargo package hitting the hull. Hughes licked his lips, worked the safety on again and put the Walther onto the deck beside his feet, then kept pulling. In a moment, Babcock was pulling beside him.
“Two here, two gone. Safe as church except for the five hundred gallons of napalm. Keep pulling, Lewis!”
“Napalm?”
“That and the plastic explosives with the hidden detonator. Keep pulling!” They had it up, only the weight of a man or so, but awkward, especially to do in silence. “Into the wheelhouse, lad.” They carried it between them, through the door, dropping to their knees as they lowered it. Hughes had his knife out, slashing away the lashings over the watertight case. They pried open the lid, each man reaching for one of the Aimpoint-fitted MP5 SD A3s. “Stand guard while I gear up. Won’t be a moment. Watch the man on the deck of the Empress. Stay aft. Go on!” And Babcock was through the door.
He took the battle vest with the magazine pouches for the subgun and the extension magazines for the Beretta. He zipped it closed. Hughes took his own pistol belt—they had marked each with tape—and cinched it around his waist, checking the magazine and Swiss Army Knife and mini-Maglite pouches by feel. He took the sheath from his leg and pulled away the lashings, opened the Bianchi fastener and closed it over his belt, then resheathed the knife. The hood from his wetsuit. He stripped it away with a snapping sound, then opened the small utility pouch on the battle vest, pulling out first the other hood then the earplugs. They would not prohibit sound, but only serve to break it up. Hughes put the plugs into his ears, then pulled the mask/hood over his head and down along his throat, adjusting it to line up the eye holes, for an instant feeling as though it were going to smother him. He ignored the feeling. He stripped away his diving boots and pulled on boot socks, then stuffed his feet into his combat boots and speed-laced them.
To his feet, the H&K submachine gun in his right fist. And then he bent over the open waterproof container and took out one other object. It was a stock Cold Steel Magnum Tanto. He’d promised himself he’d deliver it to a friend. He slipped it into the loops at the front of his battle vest—he’d sewn them in on board the aircraft—and secured them. He caught up his gas mask bag and slung it, then his musette bag with the stun grenades and the smoke and gas grenades.
Hughes stepped out of the wheelhouse. “Lewis—you take Cross’s things. Then we take out our friend on the rail of the Empress.”
Babcock nodded, disappearing into the wheelhouse.
Slowly, silently as he could, Hughes drew back the bolt of the H&K, then eased it forward, stripping the top round from the magazine and chambering it. His thumb played with the safety.
In just over a minute as he ticked it off mentally, Babcock was out of the wheelhouse, the second pistol belt strapped across his chest, the pistol beneath his left arm, the second submachine gun slung across his back.
Hughes looked at him. Babcock nodded. Hughes wondered if he looked as unearthly with the hood pulled over his face as Babcock did? He suspected that he did.
Quickly, silently, they moved forward along the starboard side, keeping in low crouches, hugging against the superstructure as they neared the bow rail.
The man Hughes had seen before lounged there still, a cigarette glowing in his fingers.
Hughes already had the H&K’s stock retracted and he shouldered the weapon now, set to semiauto. The light was poor, but he trained often with poor light intentionally. He held over a little because of the extreme angle and fired, aiming for the head.
There was the tiniest plop, the body rocking, collapsing over the rail. “We live right—if he’d fallen to the deck here or into the water, only a deaf man couldn’t have heard it. Come on!” And they started for the gangplank lowered from the Empress to the level of the yacht’s deck….
Thomas Griffeth pushed up the edge of the tarp which covered the lifeboat. He saw no one. The military pistol in his fist, he pushed the tarp up further and swung one leg over, the lifeboat swaying in its berth. Then he swung his other leg out and dropped. He was instantly chilled, sweating under the tarp which prevented any sort of air circulation, and now the cold predawn air making him shiver. He started aft toward the companionway steps. First get the cases for it, then the ampule itself, then back topside and down to the yacht.
Griffeth started moving. A voice came out of the shadows. “Faith now, blackie. You wouldn’t be this Leeds feller we been lookin’ after findin’, would ya now?”
Griffeth had already turned toward the voice, saw no one. And then he felt the thing, colder than the sweat which bathed him or the night air which cocooned him, so cold as it penetrated into the very heart of his being. He fumbled for the safety, but the strength was all gone from his hand.
“Looks like we won’t be needin’ to look for you no more, blackie. ”
Griffeth felt an emptiness and he suddenly realized he was dying….
Abe Cross moved quickly down the corridor toward the casino’s main entrance, nervous-sounding chatter coming through the open doors, the nervous chatter of people consumed with fear. He’d heard it before. He looked across the corridor to the opposite side, Comstock moving as he did, flat against the bulkhead, an Uzi submachine gun in each fist, a pistol stuffed in his belt.
They stopped just before the doors.
He looked back down the corridor.
She stood there, waiting. Cross nodded to her. She started walking, on the balls of her feet as if she were wearing high heels, hips swaying an imaginary skirt, head high, hair tossed back. He’d asked her, “Will you? It’s the only diversion we’ve got. We need something.”
Naked except for her bra and panties, Jenny Hall walked past him straight through the open doorway, Comstock’s expression half arousal and half amusement.
There were shouts. There was a whistle. A catcall. A scream, he assumed from one of the women passengers.
Cross nodded to Comstock.
They stepped through the doorway.
Jenny Hall, standing in the middle of a crap table, tore off her bra and threw it into the knot of terrorist gunmen around her. Cross shouted, “Hostages down!” And the first fingers of each hand touched the triggers of the Uzi submachine guns. A heavier roar came from his right. It would be Liedecker with one of the AKMs. Terrorists, shock registering in their faces, fear in their eyes, were wheeling toward them. A flash of pink bare flesh as Jenny dove off the table to cover. Cross tracked his subguns toward the crap table now. She knew the chances. He kept firing, the one in his right fist out, chunks of furniture and ceiling fixtures flying around the room, pieces of wall and ceiling tile disintegrating, the dust spraying everywhere. His second Uzi was gone and he let them drop at his side and drew the Colt Officers ACP that was cocked and locked in his waistband. He extended his right hand, fired, acquired a new target, fired, his left hand grasping the liberated Smith & Wesson M&P .38, thumb-cocking it, firing, acquiring another target, firing. He shot one of the terrorists in the mouth with the .45, another twice in the throat with the .38, another one gutshot with the .45. Liedecker fired on the terrorist too, the already dying man’s body flopping back as the round from the AKM hit. Cross looked right. Comstock, a Browning High Power in each hand, fired point-blank into the chest of a man charging at him with just bare hands, then wheeled, firing into the head of a terrorist crawling across the floor toward his assault rifle.
Cross looked toward the center of the casino floor. There were whimpering sounds, and children cried, and there were murmurs of “Oh, my God,” and Jenny Hall stood there, nothing on but her panties, her arms folded across her to cover her bare breasts. He saw her bra and told Liedecker, “Get that for her, huh?” And he started around the room, checking bodies. Comstock was doing the same, a grim set to his features like nothing Cross had ever seen before. Cross had decided: Any who weren’t dead would get that way. With the arms and ammunition from these men, he had the rounds to waste. And there would not be enough medical personnel or lifeboat room for the terrorists anyway. They had stepped out of the human community when they had become terrorists.
One of the terrorists moved, reached up, clawed at his trouser leg. Cross turned toward him and moved the muzzle of the revolver on line with the man’s forehead. “Die.” Cross pulled the trigger. Sometimes, he thought, a person really did get what he earned….
They had crossed up onto the Empress, dragged the body of the man he had shot off the rail, putting it inside the darkened doorway of the snack shop.
There was gunfire aft, Hughes signaling Babcock. “The casino. Either they’re executing hostages or someone’s doing some rescuing of his own. We go to the Seabreeze Lounge—hurry!” There were steps leading up to the decks above, Hughes running toward them, dodging left as he heard the racking of a submachine-gun bolt, but tripping on something as he moved deeper into the shadows. “Company!” Hughes dropped to one knee, punching the H&K toward the steps as soon as he saw a target, firing, the ones from the steps returning fire, chunks of the bulkhead beside Hughes blasting away, Hughes drawing back.
He looked down in the darkness to find what he’d tripped over. It was the body of a man.
Hughes stabbed the H&K round the edge of his cover and fired a short burst.
They had rehearsed the responses to specific situations with predetermined, numbered routines. “Alpha!” Hughes shouted. “Number Three!” Hughes called again, reaching to his musette bag, taking one of the sound and light grenades from it, pulling the pin. As he hurtled it, he closed his eyes, turning his face away, the palms of his hands cupping over his ears, his shoulders hunching.
Despite the plugs in his ears and his hands shielding them, he could hear the high-pitched whine, almost deafeningly loud. It was deafening to unprotected ears, the flash of light from the grenade blindingly bright, the effect wearing off in a few hours totally. But these people would never be alive long enough for that. There was sporadic submachine-gunfire audible as Hughes started forward in a dead run, Babcock right beside him, both men spraying their weapons into the writhing bodies of the three terrorists. “Toss their weapons over the side. Something I have to do.” Hughes ran back, to where he had tripped over the body. From the pouch at his belt, he took the mini-Maglite, twisting the flashlight’s head and shining it over up along the body and toward the face. There was a huge, open wound in the abdomen, as though a long knife had gutted the man, the man’s hands clasped over it in death. And the face.
Hughes dropped to his knees and detail-searched the body.
“Damn!” He rose to his feet, twisting off the flashlight, running to rejoin Lewis Babcock. Babcock was already halfway up the steps, Hughes picking his way over the bodies to join him. “That was our friend Alvin Leeds. Dead. No ampule. Nothing. Which means unless somebody else has it, the blasted thing’s hidden aboard the Empress.”
“We scuttle her?”
“We scuttle her.” Hughes nodded.
He reached the head of the steps just behind Babcock. It took only a second to orient himself, then he rasped, “Follow me and be ready with the gas but don’t use it unless I say so. We can’t load hundreds of unconscious passengers into lifeboats.” He broke into a run for the Seabreeze Lounge….
Nineteen of the men and two of the women from among the passengers who had been held captive in the casino had some type of military experience. Cross ordered Liedecker to parcel out the captured weapons and the shotguns taken earlier as best he could. He stepped up onto the crap table. “This is gonna be short, so listen. There are passengers and crew—the ones with British passports, it appears—and the ship’s officers held in the Seabreeze Lounge. We’re going after them now. This vessel is mined with high explosives and there doesn’t seem to be any way to defuse them.” There were screams, cries. Cross shouted over them. “Listen. There are plenty of lifeboats. You can’t go to your cabins for your life vests so you’re just going to have to be a little more careful. Mr. Liedecker, as a ship’s officer, is in complete command. Anyone who doesn’t cooperate or panics he has authority to shoot. Now, under Mr. Liedecker, move quietly and safely toward the lifeboats. He will direct you. Mr. Liedecker!”
“Here.” And Liedecker stepped up onto a roulette table. “Everyone was given a lifeboat assignment when they came aboard. We will have to alter that procedure. Families whose last names beginning with the letters A through M will assemble on the portside of the casino—to my left,” and he began gesturing to his left.
Cross tapped Comstock on the shoulder. “Still game?”
“As a matter of fact, I am old boy.”
“Count me in,” Jenny Hall told them, coming to stand beside them, fully dressed now. “I took another Uzi and rounded up a half dozen more spare magazines.”
Cross smiled at her. “All right.” They started out of the casino….
Seamus O’Fallon screamed his orders from the stage. “All the children in the bathrooms. Get ’em, lads!”
Paddy Kehoe, still wiping off his knife, tapped two of the others on the shoulder, young Martin one of them, then sprinted off toward the restrooms where the British children—more than a dozen and a half of them—were incarcerated.
“All of ya—your damned SAS won’t save ya!” And he looked to the half dozen men he had left. “Jack. You’ve got the responsibility, lad. Bunch the hostages around ya and take ’em topside. Demand that they withdraw. Hurry!”
There were screams, the voices of people begging not to be separated from their children. As O’Fallon stepped from the stage, a woman in a stained dress ran to him and fell to her knees at his feet. “Please, my children!”
O’Fallon kicked her away. “Paddy!”
“Comin’, Seamus!” They were dragging some of the children, pushing the rest, O’Fallon fighting his way through the crowd toward them as Jack and the other lads assembled the adult hostages around them.
O’Fallon reached Paddy, Biff, and young Martin and the children. “All right, now, lads, stick with me.” And he bent down to a little girl and swept her up in his arms.
“Let me go!”
“Shut your bloody little mouth, girl,” O’Fallon hissed, crushing her close to him. “Each of ya grab a child into your arms. Can’t shoot when you’re holdin’ a kid. Come on!” The radio detonator was in his pocket. All he needed was to flip the cover and pull the antenna and push the switch into the on position. But if he led the SAS a merry chase through the bowels of the Empress, he’d take more of them with him.
“Come on, lads!” The headache was intensifying….
Darwin Hughes skidded on his boot heels, throwing himself against the flat of the bulkhead, then edging forward along its length. There was an ease led poster advertising a singer named Jennifer Hall and a pianist named Abe Cross.
He peered around the corner, and from between the open glass doors with etched birds and palm trees on them, he saw a group of dissheveled men and women, clothes rumpled and stained, hair uncombed, faces dirty, fear in their eyes, some of the women crying, all of them bunched together, all of them with their hands bound, some of them with adhesive tape patches over their mouthes.
“We’ve got trouble,” Hughes told Lewis Babcock.
Hughes called out. “The game is up! O’Fallon’s men! The game is up! Lay down your weapons and release the hostages!”
“Fuck off, SAS-er. Or they all get it here and now!”
Hughes was warm beneath the mask. Suddenly warmer. He licked his lips. “Look. We aren’t the SAS. We only care about the hostages being freed. Then do what you want. All right?”
He was lying, but it didn’t matter now.
There was a burst of submachine-gun fire and a scream, Hughes stepping partway from cover so he could see, react if he could. Two of the hostages were on the floor, bleeding. The rest, screaming, crying, were bunched around the terrorists so tightly Hughes couldn’t even see how many of them there were.
Hughes ducked back rather than provoke another outburst of killing. Babcock whispered beside him, “Mr. Hughes. The stun grenades?”
“No, no, we can’t. They’d still have time to fire out their weapons into the people around them. It’d be a bloodbath. The same for the gas. Even with the glass enclosure to the seaward side, there’s too much ventillation. Never work in time. Damn!” Hughes hammered his fist against the bulkhead. His mind raced as he ran the options. There were none.
Hughes called out again to the terrorists. “What do you want?”
“A bloody boat.”
“You have the yacht already,” Hughes called back, stalling.
There was a laugh. “You can have that boat, copper.”
“Look. Fine, we’ll get you a boat. Just release the hostages and you’re all free to go. O’Fallon’s got this boat wired to blow,” Hughes said, gambling, “and the yacht, too. What’s the sense of everybody dying? If you had a point to prove to the Brits, you’ve proved it. Save your lives, damnit!”
“Bleedin’ British lies, copper! We’re comin’ out—don’t try nothin’ or they all dies!” Hughes swapped magazines in his submachine gun.
Hughes looked at Babcock. Lewis Babcock was doing the same. “If you have a brilliant stratagem in mind, Lewis, this is no time to hold back.”
Babcock shook his head.
Hughes peered round the comer. They were coming—but behind them. He blinked his eyes. Through his teeth, Hughes hissed, “Be ready, lad. Only guns.”
Two men were just inside the double doorway, one of them was Abe Cross and the other face—Hughes couldn’t be sure—he thought was the Russian, Vols or Volshinsky or whatever his proper name was.
Cross was armed, but nothing was in his hands except a knife. The Russian was holding a knife, too. “My God,” Hughes hissed to Babcock. “No guns. Be ready with your knife, lad.”
Cross and the Russian were slowly moving forward, each of them in a low crouch. Hughes felt his body tense. The nearest of the hostages was less than three yards from him now.
“We’re comin’ through, we are,” the terrorist who’d spoken before snarled.
“Well. Then come ahead,” Hughes told him, letting his submachine gun fall to his side on its sling, starting to move his hands outward and away from his torso.
Cross jumped. Hughes reached to his fighting knife. The Russian charged forward like a benighted football player trying to break up a huddle instead of a play. Hughes snapped, “Now, lad!” to Babcock, then hurtled himself toward the knot of hostages and the terrorists within it, Cross visible for an instant at the edge of Hughes’s peripheral vision, a head snapping back, a throat slit. Hughes shoved aside a woman, ramming the blade of his knife into the throat of one of the terrorists. A submachine gun discharged. There was screaming. Hughes saw Babcock, left fist flashing out, catching one of the terrorists in the mouth, the right hand driving his knife forward and into the terrorist’s chest.
Hughes felt something cold, then suddenly hot across his back and he stumbled forward as he heard the burst of submachine gun fire. He hit the deck and rolled, his knife slashing across the right kneecap and left thigh of the terrorist. As the man recoiled from the knife, the Russian was suddenly there, driving his smallish blade home like a rapier, into the right side of the terrorist’s neck.
Hughes was up, Cross locked in combat with the last of the men as best Hughes could tell. Babcock stepped forward, swinging the butt of his submachine gun as if it were a baseball bat, the terrorist’s head snapping left, Cross stepping in, driving his knife into the man’s throat to the hilt. The body fell.
Hughes swung his submachine gun on line, covering a quadrant of the lounge foyer at a time.
Abe Cross spoke. “Three more, plus O’Fallon himself. Jenny followed after them. They were going below. Had about eighteen kids with them ranging in ages from early teens to preschoolers. It was either go after them or help you, and you sounded like you needed it.”
“We did, lad. Your Russian friend’s a good fighter.”
“Russ—” Cross wheeled toward Vols, but Vols had his submachine gun up and aimed at Cross and Babcock. Hughes leveled his weapon at Vols.
“Everybody down!” Babcock ordered, the hostages still screaming, crying, terrified, huddled around them.
“I have no desire to hurt anyone, sir,” Vols said, a smile on his face but his eyes not smiling at all. “All I want is the opportunity to recover the property stolen from my nation by your nation. Ask Mr. Cross. I’ve assisted him throughout. I only came for the rightful property of my country.”
Hughes lowered his submachine gun. “Well, I’m sorry, Major Vols, but there’s a bit of a problem with that. I found a body on the deck out there, down on the boat deck. It was Alvin Leeds. I bet you know who he is.”
Vols’s right eye twitched.
Hughes said, “I searched him quite thoroughly. We were briefed concerning the viral agent. He didn’t have it. There was nothing on him to indicate where he’d hidden it. Is the Empress wired?”
“Radio-controlled detonators,” Vols said. “Cross and I—we inspected them. They are booby-trapped. Can’t be defused, I doubt even by an expert.”
“And you know what will happen to the viral agent if it becomes heated and gets into the upper air currents, don’t you?”
“You are telling me the truth, then? Finding the ampule is hopeless?”
Hughes nodded. “Finding the ampule is hopeless. We’ve got to scuttle the ship before O’Fallon can blow it. It’s the only way to neutralize the contents of the ampule.”
Vols looked at Cross. “I trust you, Cross. Is he telling me the truth?”
“Yes. He’s telling you the truth.”
Vols nodded. He looked at Babcock, then at Hughes. “I would think a truce might be in order, then, sir. We have to free those children.”
“Good man,” Hughes said softly.
He heard Cross saying, “Russian, gee whiz.” And as Hughes looked, Vols lowered his submachine gun and Cross clapped him on the shoulder.
“This is ridiculous,” Lewis Babcock remarked. “Let me look at your back,” and he came over to Hughes. “Looks like a graze. The vest deflected it.”
Hughes looked to the hostages huddled around them. “All right. Give me your attention, please. The crisis is over for you, but we have to get all of you off the Empress …”
“My children!” a woman screamed from beside him. Hughes dropped to a crouch before her, gently helped her to her feet. “That devil’s got my—”
“We’ll get them back for you, ‘ma’am. We specialize in fighting devils.”
And the hostages all began to stand now, Babcock and Cross and the Russian, Vols, aiding them to their feet. There wasn’t much time left.
Cross said, his voice low, “All the ship’s officers. They’re dead on the floor in there, in the lounge, hands cuffed behind them, bags over their heads, strangled or throats slit. She’s right about the devil part.”