Pak! And he was going for the bomb release.
In that nightmare moment, Heinrich Adler saw how the People’s Revolutionary Republic, how he had been used by the North Korean agent. Pak wasn’t interested in the national autonomy of the PRR. For Adler, the bomb represented power… but only if the bomb remained as a threat, not as a rising pillar of superheated vapor and radioactive fallout. Detonated, the bomb would no longer confer power or immunity on the PRR. Adler himself would be dead, incinerated along with most of the PRR’s paramilitary strength, its bargaining power, and its credibility. The organization’s survivors, those left ashore on this op, would be hunted down and exterminated one after the other by the more civilized members of the world community.
Pak, clearly, was determined to set the hellish thing off no matter what.
And maybe that had been the North Korean agent’s plan from the very beginning.
Adler raised his gun, then lowered it. The windows of the Ops Center were reinforced with plastic and very tough; designed to deflect the winds of a North Sea storm, they’d have little trouble deflecting bullets. He would have to go outside to stop the Korean. Maybe he could find some of the SEALs and—
The door from Corridor 1 at the northwest corner of the room burst open, and a cardboard tube sailed through the opening. Adler had presence of mind enough to dive for the floor, throwing his arms over his eyes and ears as, an instant later, the flashbang erupted in a shattering chain of explosions.
The woman screamed and fell off her chair; two of the four PRR gunmen went all the way down, while Strauss and Kelly dropped to their knees.
Two men in black combat garb spun through the doorway, sweeping the room with their MP5SD3s. Kelly’s head exploded and he toppled backward, arms flailing. Strauss fired his own H&K with an ear-splitting chatter, then pitched backward under a double fusillade of silenced fire, his finger still clamping down on the trigger as he stitched a ragged line of 9mm bullet holes along the soundproofing in the Ops Center’s ceiling.
Acting almost instinctively, Adler sprang forward, grabbing the civilian woman by the waist and hoisting her in front of himself as a shield. “Stop!” he shouted, and the gunfire stopped and both commandos pivoted their weapons to aim directly at Adler’s head. He scrunched down behind the struggling woman, pressing the muzzle of his Glock against the side of her skull. If he could just talk long enough to warn them of the danger. “We must talk about the—”
Someone landed on him from behind, grappling with his arm, clawing at his throat. “Nein!” Adler shrieked, and he let go of the woman, trying to fling his attacker clear…
The male civilian was riding Adler’s back, one arm around his throat, the other grabbing desperately at his right arm and the Glock pistol. The two commandos froze in place, both aiming their weapons but unable to fire with the civilian in such close and wildly spinning proximity to their target. With a powerful thrust, Adler hurled the BGA employee clear, smashing him back into the radar console. He pivoted left, bringing up his Glock to cover the commandos—
Twin bursts of 9mm rounds slammed into his chest, knocking him backward, knocking him down as both commandos continue to trigger three-round bursts that riddled him again and again.
“The bomb!” he tried to shout, but then his throat and mouth were filled with blood. He spat, trying to clear his throat, trying to speak. “Die bombe— ”
It was growing dark at last, the night outside filling the control center, blotting out even the advancing feet of the enemy commandos…
“He’s dead, L-T.”
“You two okay?” Murdock asked the woman.
She glanced at the man who was standing next to her, an arm around her shoulder, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What’d the tango mean about the bomb?” Roselli wanted to know.
“Don’t know, Razor. Maybe we’d better get out there.”
“Roger that.”
Murdock looked at the two civilians. “Quick. Was this the leader?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. “He was the one giving all the orders. And making the threats.”
“Did he say anything about a bomb? Anything at all?”
“No,” the woman said. “He threatened to shoot us, not blow us up.”
Maybe Adler hadn’t told his hostages that he had a nuclear device outside. There could be a good reason for that. Terror could be used to control hostages, but too much terror might make them even harder to handle.
Roselli was on his knees, searching the dead terrorist’s jacket pockets. “Did he have any kind of controller on him? Maybe a push-button remote control device? Anything like that?”
“I never saw anything like that,” the man said. “There was that Chinese guy, though—”
“What Chinese?”
“Little man, this high,” the woman said, measuring fiveseven or so with her hand. “He had something like a little box, with buttons on it. I thought it was a portable computer.”
“Where is he?”
“He went out a few minutes ago.” She pointed at the door. “That way.”
“You two stay here. Lie down on the deck, stay away from the windows, and don’t move. Understand?”
They moved to comply. “Yes, sir!”
Murdock hesitated, then checked his watch. The cavalry would be here in another few minutes. “Eagles!” he called over the radio net using the code word agreed upon for all SEALs. “Eagles, this is Eagle Leader. Show your colors!”
Acknowledgments came in from the other SEALs. Murdock reached into one of his vest pockets, retrieving a Velcro-backed American flag which he pressed onto a Velcro patch affixed to his dry suit’s left sleeve.
The act was not one of flag-showing patriotism, but of deadly practicality. When the SAS choppers arrived, their gunners would have one hell of a time telling friend from foe, and the flags would help. Even among the SEALs, with Mac alone out on the deck somewhere, and Roselli and Murdock moving to help him, misidentification was a terribly real possibility.
Friendly fire could kill as easily as hostile fire.
Nonetheless, Murdock felt a surge of pride as he settled the flag in place. Patriotism might be outdated in most sectors of the American public these days. But not here. Not among SEALs.
“Let’s go, Razor.”
MacKenzie winced and ducked as a ricochet stung his cheek. This was turning into a goddamned cluster fuck. If the bad guys had rigged their A-bomb to blow with the push of a button, it would all be up now. He sensed movement among the shadows to the right and loosed a burst in that direction. Bullets shrieked and clanged among steel generators and air ducts, but he couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything.
Probably not. The tangos were working toward him crabwise, cautious now that some of their buddies had been tagged.
He would have to try something different. He just needed to wait for them to get close enough…
As the flashbang’s final crack rang off steel bulkheads, DeWitt rolled through the starboard side door into the tanker’s pilothouse, dropping to his knees and rolling to clear the door as Frazier came in close behind him. At almost the same instant, Higgins and Brown smashed through the port-side entrance.