“Where are the others?” Skoblin demanded. His voice sounded far off in his numbed ears.
Fadeyev shook his head. “Dead,” he mouthed. “Their necks were broken.”
Skoblin nodded grimly. The same thing could have happened to any of them. He gripped his rifle tighter and hobbled along the corridor. Beyond the blast-scorched doorway ahead, the night sky glowed with reddish-orange light. There were fires raging somewhere outside. “Come on,” he snapped. “We’re getting off this damned ship before it sinks under us. Shoot anyone who gets in our way.”
Growling their agreement, the three survivors of his Raven Syndicate team swung in behind him. They didn’t see the two grenades rolling across the deck toward them until it was far too late.
Tony McGill saw the twin flashes as his grenades detonated and smiled thinly. “Too bad, so sad, chums,” he muttered. With the ship obviously going down, he’d figured the bastards holding out near that missile control center would finally make a break for it.
“Nice work,” Shannon Cooke said tightly through pain-clenched teeth. He gripped the forearm of his broken left arm with his right hand. When those explosions rocked the tanker, they’d both been bounced across the deck, ending up being slammed against the nearest railing, and unfortunately his already-injured arm had taken the brunt of the impact. “So now what do we do?”
“We’re leaving, and pronto,” they both heard Flynn say wearily. He’d just slid down the ladder from the bridge wing above them. “This tub is going down fast. And I don’t plan on letting any of our guys who’re still alive go down with it. So come on.”
McGill and Cooke levered themselves off the deck and followed him down the stairs to the next catwalk, holding on tight as they stumbled down the steeply inclined steps. The Gulf Venture was listing to port now as more and more seawater poured into her ruptured storage tanks. Ahead, the ocean was on fire. Oil-fed flames danced across the surface. A thickening cloud of greasy black smoke hung low above the inferno.
Biting down hard to avoid screaming, Hossein Majidi painfully pulled himself along the slanting deck. He left a spreading trail of blood behind him. He knew he was dying, but the faint glow of a working computer console — the only one left intact in the bomb-ravaged control center — drew him like a moth to a flame.
Gasping aloud, he slid the horrifically mangled body of one of his technicians aside a few inches, just far enough so that he could see the display and reach the console’s keyboard. The dead man must have shielded this equipment from the worst of the blast. All the steel shards that would otherwise have ripped through the computer had instead shredded his corpse.
Through a fog of almost unendurable agony, Majidi studied the readouts currently displayed on the screen. Most indicators glowed red. A small inset on the display showed images captured by the single surviving external camera mounted on the Gulf Venture’s superstructure. In it, he could make out the ring of fire surrounding the sinking tanker, along with the shark fin — like sail of the Russian nuclear submarine slicing through the water not far off.
Carefully, focusing all of his remaining energies, he tapped a control on the keyboard, opening a new menu. It was labeled special weapon parameters. With the shattered halves of the ship flooding fast, successfully launching the Zuljanah rocket was no longer possible. That left him with only one remaining choice. He coughed once and then found he could not stop coughing. Blood dripped down his chin and spattered across the console. His life was fading, along with his vision. Knowing he had only seconds remaining, Majidi very deliberately altered several key parameters governing the nuclear warhead’s operation. He hung on just long enough to see several of the readouts on his screen turn green and fell back, dead.
Forty-Four
Carrying Tadeusz Kossak between them, Flynn and Hynes struggled up a steeply inclined accommodation ladder and fought their way along a tilting exterior catwalk to a landing perched in the middle of the tanker superstructure’s second level. Bandages, already reddening, swathed the Pole’s chest, but he was still breathing — if only just barely. McGill and Cooke were there ahead of them, standing guard over the badly wounded Wade Vucovich.
Below this landing, a bright orange enclosed lifeboat hung down at an angle. It was perched along twin slide tracks that stretched outward from the ship — aimed toward the sea. Like all modern oil tankers, the Gulf Venture was equipped with gravity-launched, fire-resistant lifeboats.
“Let’s go!” Flynn shouted, stumbling to a stop as the ship lurched over another few degrees. Sweat glistened on his face. With the vessel listing ever faster, the fires raging across the water below were suddenly that much closer. “Cast loose and get that damned hatch open!”
McGill leaped to obey. Swiftly, the former SAS sergeant released the secondary lashing lines securing the lifeboat to the davit. Then he yanked the rear hatch wide open. Working feverishly, he and Hynes loaded first Vucovich and then Kossak aboard.
Flynn was the last one in. He banged the hatch shut and latched it tight. Emergency lights glowed faintly, revealing a fully enclosed cabin. Rows of airplane-style seats faced the steeply raised stern of the lifeboat. The others were already strapping the injured men and themselves into chairs.
Perched on a raised platform above the passenger compartment, a single seat faced forward, offering a view through narrow slit windows. This was the lifeboat’s control station. Straining, Flynn pulled himself up and dropped into the seat. He quickly snapped his safety harness closed to avoid falling face-first into the panel ahead of him. With the Gulf Venture’s rapidly increasing list, they were hanging almost straight down off the side of the massive ship.
Rapidly, he scanned the rudimentary steering, engine, and davit release controls. Fortunately, they matched those in the manuals and training videos he’d studied while preparing for this mission. Using these lifeboats had always been one of their best options for evacuating the tanker in an emergency.
Flynn glanced over the side of his seat. Kossak and Vucovich lolled unconscious in their chairs, only held upright by their harnesses. McGill and the others flashed him thumbs-up signals. “Hey, remember, ladies and gentlemen, that no smoking is allowed for the duration of this flight,” Hynes reminded them all with a twisted grin. “Which oughta be about one second.”
No one laughed.
“Gee, tough crowd tonight,” Hynes said with a shrug.
McGill grinned at him. “Comedy is hard,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Soldiering is easy. Stick to what you do best, Cole.”
“Jesus,” Flynn muttered to himself, feeling the tanker roll even farther over. Through the windows ahead of him, the oil-fed fires licked higher. All the technical mumbo-jumbo boasting about “fire-resistance” in those manuals had better be accurate, he thought. Or this would be the shortest, most lethal thrill ride in history. Swallowing hard, he turned the key to start the lifeboat’s engine. It roared into life smoothly. One hurdle down. Then he reached down and removed the pin securing the release lever. A quick twist closed the lifeboat’s bypass valve.
“Here goes,” he said loudly. “Hang on tight.” Then he pumped the lever several times in rapid succession. Outside, the two metal clamps still holding the lifeboat in place opened wide. Suddenly freed, it slid straight down the rails, picking up speed as it went, reached the end of the track, and plunged almost straight down toward the ocean.