“Right. Just what I was thinking. Only now they’re moving the trawler in close to the platform again, and it looks to me like they’re readying the crane. What do you want to bet they’re making the transfer now?”
“Why’d they wait so long? They’ve been here two days.”
Murdock shook his head. “Hard to say.” Then he reconsidered. “No… maybe it’s not so hard to read after all. By now, they’ve gotten word that the Horizon is coming back with the Korean woman on board. These people aren’t stupid. They have to assume at least the possibility that we’re going to try something when the Horizon gets here.”
MacKenzie grinned. “We are.”
“Sure, but they don’t know one way or the other. If they suspect the Special Boat Service people are out, hell, if they know the SEALs are in town, they’re going to be worried about combat swimmers hitting the ships. Up until now, it was safer to keep us guessing about the bomb, maybe keep it squirreled away on the Rosa, out of sight belowdecks. Now they figure it’ll be safer on the platform, easier to defend, at least from frogmen.”
“Sounds logical. What can we do about it?”
“Depends on what they do with the bomb. I’m still wondering about that Korean submarine. If they mean to use it to plant the bomb, they might put it down right alongside, on the Celtic Maiden.”
“That would be a little too easy, don’t you think?” MacKenzie said.
Murdock smiled. “Hey, we can dream, can’t we?”
“Only if we pull a reality check once in a while. Why would they move the thing out of the trawler, which they think is vulnerable to SEALie types, only to plant it on the afterdeck of a tug three feet from the water?”
“Okay, okay, so they’ve got something else in mind. What?”
“Damfino, L-T. But if we watch, maybe we’ll find out.”
During the course of the next half hour, the Rosa was moved in close beside Bouddica Alpha and the moored Celtic Maiden and was lashed in place, her bow almost thrust beneath the bridge between the platforms. That gave Murdock and MacKenzie — and Sterling and Roselli when they woke up a short time later — virtually a bird’s-eye view of the whole operation. The crane was carefully positioned, the hook lowered into the Rosa’s open forward hold. There was a long and breathless pause… and then the slack was taken up and something was hoisted slowly clear of the trawler.
“Do you think that’s it?” Sterling asked, taking his turn at the binoculars.
“It’s about the right size,” MacKenzie pointed out. “And it looks heavy enough. I’d bet on it.”
“I’ll give it a sixty percent chance,” Murdock said, taking the binoculars from Sterling and studying the object suspended on the end of the crane’s hoist.
“Sixty? Why so low?”
“Hmm. If you were hiding an A-bomb and were expecting a boatload or two of commandos to show up, where would you hide the thing?”
“I don’t follow you, sir.”
“I didn’t make it clear. You said earlier that it would be too easy if they put the bomb on the deck of the Maiden, where we could get at it.”
“Sure.”
“Suppose they put something there that we might think was the bomb, while the real one was still stashed away someplace else?”
MacKenzie looked stricken. “Oh… shit… ” Murdock handed him the binoculars and he took his turn, studying the ungainly cylinder as it swayed gently in the stiff, westerly breeze. “Then that could be a dummy. Something to distract us, just in case of an attack. We go after it, and they’ve got the bomb safely down in the Rosa’s hold.”
“Something like that. We’re going to have to check it out, if we can. The problem is, if the attack begins at 2230, we’re not going to have much time to work with. Not much time after it gets dark, anyway.”
“At least,” Roselli pointed out, “we’ve got a target now.”
“Skipper?” MacKenzie said, peering through the binoculars. “Maybe you should have a look at this.”
A partly enclosed metal stairway had been swung out from the bridge between the platforms and one end lowered to the fishing boat’s deck. A number of people were leaving the ship now, making their way one after the other up the ladder toward the catwalk encircling Bouddica Alpha’s crew quarters module. From just over three hundred feet away, the powerful 7x75 binoculars clearly revealed the faces of the people as they lined up by the ladder.
Five rough-looking, armed men, all terrorists by the look of them. At his side, Murdock heard the tiny click of the digital camera, as Sterling started collecting another string of tango mug shots for Washington.
A sixth man whom Murdock had seen before: the Korean special forces agent and nuclear expert, Pak Chong Yong, looking cold and impassive.
And a female hostage. The front of her blouse was torn and she was barefoot. Her business-suit skirt seemed wildly inappropriate in this marine setting. They had to help her stand; she seemed to be having trouble standing upright on the trawler’s slightly rolling deck.
Murdock recognized her instantly with an anguished pang that very nearly drew a moan from his lips.
Inge…
“Easy, Fraulein. Watch your step.”
Inge blinked into unaccustomed bright light, trying to get her bearings. There’d been no porthole in the tiny cabin aboard the fishing boat where she’d been a prisoner for the past several days, and no light save that from a single small overhead fixture. Using the meals they’d brought to her as a rough measure of time, she was pretty sure this was the fourth day since her kidnapping, but suddenly being dragged out under so much open sky was disorienting.
The deck pitched heavily beneath her bare feet, nearly throwing her off balance. She’d never cared much for sea passages, especially rough ones, and in the terror of the moment, she’d not been able to eat much. She felt weak and sick.
Worse, though, was the not knowing. Not knowing what these people wanted with her. Not knowing where she was being taken. Not knowing what was going to happen to her the next time she heard the rattle of keys at her cabin door.
Now, though, she suspected that she was going to find out what it was all about, and she already knew that she was not going to like the answers to her questions.
When she’d seen the skeletal thrust of the oil platforms looming far overhead, she’d immediately recognized where she was: the names BOUDDICA ALPHA and BOUDDICA BRAVO were printed in one-meter type on signs affixed to the sides of the platforms, and she knew the BGA logo, a winged oil derrick on a globe, printed above each.
Why, why had they brought her here? It made no sense.
The only ones paying much attention to her at the moment, she realized, were the two men who’d come to drag her from the cabin a few moments ago. There were a number of heavily armed terrorists on the trawler’s deck, but their full attention at the moment was riveted on the gray, metallic cylinder that was being swayed on a derrick up out of the trawler’s forward hold. One man she recognized… an Oriental-looking man in civilian clothing and a heavy leather jacket, appeared to be in charge. The North Korean, Pak.
“Careful with that!” the man shouted in English. “Don’t bump it against the side!”
A bomb? It hardly mattered. She was more interested in the fact that so much attention was being focused on the trawler’s cargo. Possibly… possibly… there was a chance here for her to escape. Inge knew her chances of survival for more than a few minutes in the cold water of the North Sea weren’t good, but the oil-production platform offered hope. The thing was enormous, the size of a small city. The terrorists couldn’t have men enough to search the whole damned thing.