Several men were there, close by the ship’s wheel. With a skill born of long practice in killing houses and practice mock-ups of tankers like this one, DeWitt picked out the ones with weapons and triggered his MP5.
The two tangos still standing went down hard before they’d even acquired a target. Two more, gasping on the deck and with blood streaming from their ears from the flashbang detonation, were put down an instant later. A fifth, crouched against the instrument console forward hurled both hands high above his head. From his face, DeWitt guessed that he was seventeen or eighteen years old.
“Nicht schiessen!” the kid screamed. “Ach! Scheisse! Nicht schiessen! ”
The only other man left — dazed but unhurt — was one of the ship’s officers, judging from his uniform jacket.
“Name!” DeWitt snapped, covering him with his weapon.
“S-Scott! Dennis Scott! I’m the Pride’s skipper.”
“Lie down on the deck, please, Captain! Facedown, hands out from your body!”
The man complied. Higgins crossed the pilothouse and knocked the stunned terrorist facedown on the deck; Brown covered him as Higgins cuffed his wrists behind him with a plastic tie, then started frisking him. Nicholson appeared out of the door leading aft to the radio and chartrooms. “All clear back there, Two-eyes,” he said.
“Engine room secured!” Kosciuszko’s voice called in DeWitt’s radio earpiece. “One tango down!”
“Roger that, Chief,” DeWitt added. “Bridge secure! Four tangos dead, one prisoner. And we’ve got Captain Scott.”
At the moment, they had Captain Scott flat on the deck, as Higgins tied his wrists. Since the SEALs hadn’t seen photographs of any of the tanker’s officers and crew, they would follow SOP and keep even the rescued hostages immobile until their identities could be confirmed — just in case.
DeWitt moved to the port wing of the bridge, stepping out into the open night air and peering into the gathering darkness, first at the immense and dazzlingly lit towers of the oil complex a mile ahead, then at the much nearer, darkened form of the trawler Rosa. It was hard to tell; was there movement on the Rosa’s deck? A flicker of light… or gunfire?
“Two-eyes!” sounded in his headset. “This is Rattler! We’re secure forward!”
“Roger that. Kos! Make sure the plugs and fuses are pulled in the engine room. Then everybody get up here, on the double.” If there were still tangos wandering around loose in the cavernous labyrinth of the Noramo Pride, the SEALs’ best course of action was to make certain the tanker was immobilized, then turn the upper decks of the superstructure into an easily defended strong point. By daylight, someone would be along to relieve them.
Reaching into a pouch in his load-bearing vest, he extracted a pen-sized flare launcher, armed it, aimed it at the sky, and triggered it. A yellow flare arced through the night, trailing sparks.
An instant later, an answering yellow flare speared into the night from the Rosa’s bridge, and DeWitt felt a heady thrill of excitement… and of accomplishment. They’d done it! The SEALs had secured the tanker, while the SBS people — shadowy and rarely heard-of British counterparts to the American SEALs — had taken down the trawler.
For once, DeWitt thought with a burst of sheer joy, old Murphy had been left at home. For once, the operation was going down perfectly!
The Horizon had been fully powered up and ready to move all evening. The instant the word “Copperhead” had been flashed over the tactical net, Captain Croft had given the order to move. The twenty-eight SAS men aboard had been packed away out of sight aboard the miserable little workboat, until the spaces below decks were a fetid hell of stink and vomit.
By now, Croft thought, his boys were mad. Heaven help the sods who got in their way!
Standing on the tug’s bridge, next to the SBS man in civilian clothes who’d been seconded to the Horizon as one of the stand-ins for her crew, Croft had to step forward and look up through the bridge skylight windows to see the full, tangled majesty of Bouddica Alpha towering above them. Dead ahead, the Celtic Maiden rode the North Sea swell, tied up alongside a temporary floating platform with a spidery metal stairway running up the forty feet to the platform’s lower deck.
“There’s the sub,” the helmsman said. “Looks like they have’er cleared for launch.”
“I see.” Bathed in spotlights on the main structure, the North Korean minisub was resting on its complex wood- and aluminumframe cradle, still on the afterdeck of the other anchor tug. “Put us alongside,” Croft ordered. “Our boys will cross over and secure the Maiden and the sub both, then hotfoot up the ladder.”
“Aye, sir.”
He heard a noise and glanced behind him. The Korean woman, Chun, was there, standing impassively beside the SAS man detailed to guard her. Damn! He’d forgotten all about the woman. He’d brought her onto the Horizon’s bridge half an hour ago in case he’d needed her to talk to her mates on Bouddica, but things had been a bit frantic since then. “Get her below!” he snapped at the woman’s guard.
“Sir!” The trooper grabbed her arm and steered her away, off the bridge.
“Better ’ave the lads get ready,” the helmsman said. “Another minute or two’ll do it.”
Croft passed the word for the assault teams to get ready.
MacKenzie hurled the flashbang in the direction of his nearest opponents. When the first detonation cut loose, he broke from cover in an unexpected direction, zigzagging back toward the command center’s west wall, leaping across a dark, wet trail on the cement, plunging behind a line of steel pipes and ducts, then twisting around and opening fire at the terrorists closing on him from that side.
Stunned and blinded by the grenade, they were helpless. Two went down… then the third. Mac tossed another burst at the farther group of terrorists, driving them to cover. Then he turned and sprinted south, racing toward the crane.
That black trail was blood! He must have hit Pak earlier, but the tough little bastard had kept on going.
Well, MacKenzie knew that he would have done the same thing, had the situation been reversed.
The crane was just ahead, the cab mounted twelve feet above the cement deck atop a steel pillar. Pak was there, dragging himself toward the opening. Mac raised his subgun and pulled the trigger. There was a single shot, and then the bolt snapped shut on an empty chamber.
“Fuck!”
He dropped the empty mag and reached for a reload…
25
Pak’s leg had started to hurt.
It was sheer agony to cling with both arms to one rung of the ladder leading up to the invitingly open door of the cab and, with his right leg dangling limp and useless, lift his left foot to the next rung and push himself up one more grueling step. The pain below his knee as the splintered ends of his tibia grated across one another with each short, jerky movement was excruciating, and it had slowed his progress to an inch-by-inch creep across the deck.