“RPG on Alpha’s belly!” he called. “Hit the bastard! Hit him!”
A second star flashed, hissing down toward the tug and exploding amidships with a shattering wet roar.
The first explosion had thrown both Chun and her guard to their knees. It had struck low, close by the waterline, and the icy cascade of water from the geysering spout drenched both of them and sluiced across the deck.
Chun grabbed the gangway railing and pulled herself upright. Her guard was just rising when the second grenade detonated just meters away, and the air sang with thumb-sized chunks of shrapnel. The SAS soldier yelled and grabbed his shoulder, his H&K jolted from his grasp. Chun rose to a crouch, pivoting sharply, snapping her leg up and around and kicking the man in the side of his head, knocking him back against the side of the tug’s superstructure.
Gunfire snapped and howled nearby. Ahead and high above the water, a dark shape screamed and dropped from a catwalk. Spotlights from the anchor tug pinned a second shape crouched on the walkway, a man frantically trying to reload his clumsy RPG launcher. SAS men already spilling onto the catwalk from the ladder up opened fire and cut him down.
Chun knew she didn’t have a moment to lose. They would be coming any second to check the damage from the two grenades. Bending over, she picked up the unconscious guard’s H&K and checked to make sure a round was chambered. Then, kicking off her shoes, she vaulted the gangway railing and leaped into the icy black sea.
A helicopter thundered slowly overhead, closing on Bouddica Alpha’s roof in a blaze of lights.
Gunfire burst and rattled behind him as Pak struggled up the ladder just below the crane’s cab. One round slapped against steel six inches to the side of his good leg, but with a last, desperate heave, one that drained almost the last of his endurance, Major Pak of the PDRK Special Forces hauled himself up and over the lip of the door and sprawled across the leather-covered seat.
An array of controls confronted him, black-knobbed levers for controlling cab rotation, for raising or lowering the crane arm, for winding in the cable. While they’d gotten one of the hostages to do all the crane work so far, Pak was familiar enough with the general layout of this type of heavy equipment. A special forces commando had to know how the thing worked in order to most effectively destroy it… or to use it to destroy something else.
There. That would be the cable release.
He reached for it…
MacKenzie slapped the fresh mag into the receiver and closed the bolt, chambering a round. In the handful of seconds it had taken him to reload, Pak had vanished into the crane. MacKenzie broke into a run. The night was filled with light and violence, and the thunder of helicopters circling overhead.
Out of the corner of his eye, off to the right, he saw three tangos sprinting toward him across the roof, but he had to stop Pak and stop him now.
Murdock and Roselli had burst through a fire door and onto the roof of Bouddica Alpha just below the helipad several minutes before. Almost at once, they’d come under heavy fire and been forced to take cover.
Then the helicopters had arrived, a deafening arrival of the just-in-time cavalry.
“Eagle, Eagle, this is Falcon Leader!” Wentworth’s voice called in Murdock’s ear. “How about a rundown on your lads so we don’t nick ’em by mistake? Over!”
“Falcon Leader, Eagle Leader,” Murdock called back. “Don’t worry about us. We’re scattered all over the place, but we’ll try to keep down until your boys are on the deck. Over!”
“We copy, Eagle Leader. Do you have any special targets in mind? Over!”
“That is affirmative, Eagle Leader. Hit the crane at Alpha’s southeast corner. But be careful of the baby on the hook. Over!”
“We read you.” The voice was grim. “We’ll have it secured quick as thought. Good luck, Eagle.”
“You too, Falcon. See you on the deck!”
“All units!” Croft called, fiercely depressing the transmit key on his microphone. “All units! The Korean woman’s escaped over the side. She’s got a gun!”
In the excitement of the moment, he didn’t realize he was transmitting on the general tactical frequency to all of the combatants in the area.
Inge reached the crane housing from the south side, ducking beneath the guy wires that helped counterbalance the long, yellow arm, and circling to the east side where the cab door was still open. Looking up, she could see Pak manipulating the levers.
“Pak!” she shouted, raising the pistol in the BKA-approved, two-handed grip. “Hands up!”
Pak stared down at the woman, who stood below him in an aggressive, straddle-legged stance, barefoot, wearing a skirt and a torn white blouse. Would she actually shoot him? If it had been Chun standing there he would have had no doubt about that whatsoever, but this was a Westerner, coddled and soft, weakened by notions of fair play.
Still, indecision held him there, immobile. If she did shoot, if she managed to hit him, he could be dead before he could release the bomb.
Suddenly, a huge, black vision of insect-faced horror heaved itself up from beneath the railing encircling the upper deck, hanging from beneath its clattering rotors, blinding lights beneath its nose obliterating the night. A hurricane of wind caught the woman from behind, shoving her forward a step as her yellow hair whipped in frenzied disarray.
Pak grinned, reaching again for the cable release.
“What was that?” SAS Lieutenant Kevin Donovan yelled. He was standing on the Sea King’s cargo deck, trying to hear as the pilot shouted something over the intercom channel.
“I said we just got a flash from the Horizon,” the pilot repeated. “Something about an escaped woman with a gun!”
“Sir!” one of the men tugged on his sleeve and pointed out the open door.
Speak of the devil! A woman was there, pinned in the helicopter’s lights, trying to get up off her hands and knees as the helo’s rotor wash struck her. She was holding a pistol, about to shoot someone inside the crane’s cab…
“Put her down!” Donovan yelled, slapping the machine gunner on the shoulder.
Something struck her from behind just as she got to her feet. There was no pain… just a savage blow that slammed her forward, knocking her down and leaving her stunned, almost paralyzed. Blinking back tears of shock and rage and adrenaline-charged fury, she rolled over and saw the helicopter edging closer.