But he was almost there now.
Inge reached the roof of the quarters module by finding her way back to the fire-escape ladder running up the south side of the building and going up from there. She knew she wasn’t combat-trained, for all the joking about her being an honorary SEAL, so she elected to avoid the sounds of the heavy firefight coming from directly overhead.
But she was damned if she was going to be left all alone in that cabin, waiting for the men to finish with their killing and get back to her. With a cool and professional detachment, she’d reloaded her magazine, snapped it home, and chambered the first round with a metallic snick of the slide release.
Then she’d headed for the roof.
She still wasn’t entirely sure why she’d done so. That first shock she’d felt after realizing she’d killed a man had faded, replaced by a wild, almost enjoyably furious pounding of heart and quickening of her breathing. She wanted to be where the action was, not sitting in that cabin, wondering what was going on outside.
Besides, Blake had talked about these terrorists having an atomic bomb, and that fit with the information she’d found for him back in Wiesbaden, helped piece it all together. She’d been a part of this operation from the beginning. She didn’t want to be left out now.
Inge Schmidt wasn’t sure what she would be able to do, but she ought to be able to do something.
So she grabbed her pistol and went.
A pitched battle was still being fought on the module roof when she stepped off the ladder. She couldn’t tell who was shooting at whom, especially with the darkness closing in fast, but stuttering, flaring muzzle flashes off to the left suggested that quite a few people were there, firing in her general direction. Ducking low to take advantage of the shelter offered by air ducts and machinery, she ran barefoot across the poured concrete roof in the direction of the big crane.
Thunder filled the night, louder, vaster than the crackle of small-arms fire, and Inge stopped, leaning back against a sheet metal duct. The thunder grew, wind stirred…
… and then the night sky exploded in light. Helicopters! She couldn’t see them clearly, couldn’t tell how many there were, but she could sense huge, insect shapes sweeping low over the platform, searchlights stabbing and sweeping out of the night. One helicopter passed right overhead, the rotor wash whipping her hair and skirt with a frigid blast of howling, shrieking wind. A machine gun mounted in the aircraft’s open, right-side door spat flame, though the thump-thump-thump of the rotors was so loud she couldn’t hear the gun’s bark.
A stray round hit the duct two feet above her head with a sound like a clashing garbage can. Inge ducked, then started running.
The crane was just ahead…
“One-three, this is One-four,” the helicopter’s pilot called over the air tactical net. He was Lieutenant Gerald Gerrard, “Jerry” to his mates, and he’d been flying Sea Kings for 846 Squadron for almost five years now. Rigged for commando assault, the 846 helos were deadly, their crews the best in the business. “Watch your tail, Manny. We’re on it!”
The lights and forest-like tangle of towers rising from the Bouddica complex swept past the cockpit windows in a dizzying blur, as though trying to claw the Sea King from the sky. Gunfire stabbed. Something thumped loudly in the rear… a piece of gear gone adrift possibly, or a round punching through metal. The controls continued to respond, however, and the gauges all showed everything was champion.
“Roger that,” One-three replied, the voice strained behind the static of the radio. “We’re picking up fire from the helipad, fire from the helipad. Over!”
“All Falcons, this is One-one,” Wentworth’s voice announced. “We’ll put down suppressive fire on the helipad. The rest of you drop your chicks.”
“Ah, roger, One-one. We’re on approach.”
Falcon One-two was drifting toward the helipad, sweeping the area with fire from the machine gun in its cabin door. Flame leaped, then exploded skyward in a dazzling fireball and, for a horrifying instant, Gerrard though the whole rig was going up… but it was just the Royal Dutch navy helicopter resting on the helipad, the fuel in its tanks touched off. Falcon One-three banked left, came nose high, and drifted toward the center of the platform. Men in black combat garb spilled from the side, fast-roping to the complex’s roof in a fast-moving pearls-on-a-string line.
“Falcons,” Wentworth’s voice warned. “One-one. Mind the Yanks now! Watch your fire until you’re sure of your targets!”
“Yes, Mother,” One-four’s co-pilot said, and Gerrard laughed. The helos were operating under damned stringent restrictions for this assault. In the first place, indiscriminate fire could knock holes in natural gas lines down there, especially in the bridge or in the forest of pipes and storage tanks on Bouddica Alpha’s west side. A stray round going into that lot could touch off the whole complex, which was why he’d winced when that helo had brewed up. Hell, a firestorm of flame and destruction like that would be overshadowed only by the flash of a nuclear detonation, something Gerrard didn’t like thinking about.
To make things even more complicated, both the terrorists and the Yank SEALs down there were running around in basic black. Picking out one from another wasn’t going to be easy… though it was safe to assume that anyone firing at the helicopters was not friendly.
So the five helicopters of 846 Squadron had been ordered to fire only at targets that were shooting at them… and then only when the field of fire would sweep the roof of the platform complex away from the refinery section next to it.
Still, everything was going perfectly, a smooth op, money for jam.
The pilot banked the helo out over the sea, angling for an approach that would place him and the twenty-eight commandos at his back down on an open area between the crane and the Operations Center.
The anchor tug was nosing up beneath the bridge now, close alongside her sister tug, the Celtic Maiden. Croft watched from the starboard side of the bridge, peering up at the platform’s superstructure. The tug’s nose bumped into the Maiden’s port side aft, thumping heavily along the fenders hung over the rail.
“Go!” he shouted over the radio. “Go! Go!”
On Horizon’s bow and starboard side, thirty SAS troops, all in combat black with the blue, white, and red of St. George’s Cross Velcroed to their sleeves, leaped from one tug to the after deck of the other. Two terrorists stepped out from behind the submarine, subguns raised… but a fusillade of fire from the Horizon’s superstructure and from the men going over the side nailed the gunmen in a withering crossfire, tattering their bodies in a hail of bullets. Neither got off a shot; one crumpled beside the minisub, the other pitched sideways into the cold, black water off the Maiden’s stern.
SAS troops swarmed across the Maiden’s deck, moving forward. Gunshots sounded. “Maiden’s bridge secure! One terr down!” someone called over the net.
A flash grabbed Croft’s eye. He looked up, looked into the crisscross of beams and struts and piping that supported the whole of Bouddica’s crews’ quarters module like a fantastic, high-tech bird’s nest. A dazzlingly bright star flashed out from a catwalk there, passed just to the right of the Horizon’s bridge, and slammed into the superstructure astern. The explosion sent a shudder through the anchor tug’s hull. Rocket!