Jason began to have a change of heart. ‘Rowena! Tell me why we’re risking our lives for them. They’ve chosen to do this. We should go back down, get into the water and rendezvous with Jackson at the mini-sub, just as Stratton said. You forget why we’re here.’
‘Forget why we’re here?’ Rowena repeated, stupefied. ‘I don’t have a goddamned clue why we’re here, other than to satisfy your and Binning’s egos. We’ve lost Smithy. God only knows if Jackson’s still around out there. We can’t do anything about them but we might be able to do something about Binning. I can’t stand him but he’s still one of us.’ It did not look as if she was getting through to Jason. ‘If you don’t know what to do, ask yourself what Stratton would do,’ she shouted finally. The comment stung him, as it was meant to. ‘There’s another difference between you and Stratton,’ she continued. ‘He knows when it’s time to forget what you’re supposed to do and try to save the life of someone else instead.’
Rowena took out her pistol and was about to move to the narrow staircase when she paused to say something else. ‘I’m too damned scared to go back down. I don’t think I’ll be any less a victim by jumping back into that ocean and floating off into the beyond in the hope that someone might find me.’
She walked on up towards the next level. Jason gripped his pistol, exhaled tiredly and marched on after her.
Stratton let the outer door close behind him and opened the inner one slowly and smoothly. No one. He stepped inside and allowed the door to close quietly against his back. The hum of ventilation pipes. Suppressed sounds of weather or machinery.
He padded along the corridor, leaving a line of wet footprints behind him. Doors on either side, some closed, those open revealing compact bedrooms, toilets, showers. Personal items on the floor in rooms and along the corridor signs of a hurried departure by the occupants.
He came to the end door and opened it carefully. Another corridor ran across his path.
Stratton couldn’t remember the living deck too well, not having spent much time in the private quarters of the platform during his time here. He’d trained on the Morpheus, concentrating on familiarising himself with the main operations deck and on practising climbing the structure. But he knew there were a couple of places large enough to keep a hundred and sixty men out of the weather. The first he planned to check was the galley. A simple diagram of the deck and its main locations was posted on the opposite wall.
He walked along a wider corridor past soft-drink machines, a water fountain, snack dispensers and cupboards of emergency equipment. Up ahead was a pair of swing doors, a clear glass panel in each of them. After them another corridor and the galley. As he approached the swing doors he kept tight to the wall.
Stratton lowered his body and placed an ear against one of the doors but he could hear nothing above the sounds of air vents and humming machinery. He decided to take a risk.
He moved his face to the corner of the glass and took a quick look, his eyes in the window frame long enough to make out a couple of figures standing ten or fifteen metres down the corridor.They were near the entrance to the galley, a strong indication that they were playing at being jailers.
He leaned back against the wall. He had to think. This was the pivotal juncture of his private task. The next point of no return. He hadn’t really believed he would get here and now that he had the questions were starting. It was a bit on the crazy side, he had to admit. He could still change his mind. But Jordan had been even crazier when he’d driven into that Afghan village to rescue him. The man had been selected to be executed by the hijackers, and Stratton owed him his life, and that meant he owed Jordan a future.
Stratton put all other thoughts aside and examined the next phase. He needed to disrupt the hijackers’ flow. If he could release the workers - assuming they were all in the galley - that would drastically alter the hijackers’ plan. He asked himself how many of them there were, how they would react, what price they were willing to pay to succeed, and what they were willing to sacrifice when faced with failure.There were endless gambles. Endless consequences of his actions.
‘Bollocks,’ he muttered as he stood to face the swing doors and brought his weapon’s butt into his shoulder. The gods had got him this far. He took a deep breath, exhaled, pushed open the doors and marched into the corridor. Both of the men were big. One had red hair. The other looked Slavic. They reacted slowly to him striding towards them in his black dry-bag, shoulder harness, kit hanging from hips, pistol strapped low on thigh, another weapon levelled in front just below his face, both eyes in short-range battle mode staring into theirs.
Viking and the Bulgarian began to move apart and brought their weapons up to fire. Stratton pulled the trigger. Click, click. No other sound. The first silenced bullet struck Viking in the chest, the second hit the Bulgarian in a similar spot. The initial rounds were intended to destabilise whoever they hit, the centre of the torso being a bigger and easier target than the head, which required the shooter to take a millisecond longer aiming to ensure a hit. Operatives still did this even if the targets were wearing body armour since the purpose was to disrupt the enemy’s aim and increase the time they would take to return fire.
Both men rocked back as the bullets entered their bodies. Stratton neither slowed nor speeded up his deliberate pace. He fired again, the weapon going clickety-click as two more bullets spat from the end of the silencer extension. These hit both men in the head. The life went from their limbs and they dropped as if they had been switched off, the sound of their falls the loudest noise of the firefight. But the clatter of their weapons on the solid floor had been significant relative to the quiet of the corridor.
Stratton speeded up as he approached the galley doors. He found himself in a classic hostage situation. He’d breached the first line of the kidnappers’ defence and bodies had begun to drop. He knew the surviving kidnappers’ choices: give up and surrender, lie down and toss their weapons aside, mingle with their captives; defend themselves and engage the attackers; or turn their weapons on the hostages in an attempt to kill as many as possible before dying themselves. It was his single responsibility to make sure he reached his objectives as swiftly as possible and kill every one of the enemy in the quickest possible time.
Stratton pushed through the galley doors and stopped dead, unable to move in further to dominate the room because of the bodies sprawled on the floor in front of him. He kept the weapon against his shoulder, looking along the top of it, analysing the panoramic image he was presented with.
Jock and Queen stood at either end of the long serving counter, weapons in their hands. They’d heard about the movement on the spider decks. The thumps and clatters in the corridor outside had snapped them out of any daydreaming. But the only way they could have been assured a fighting chance against the man who entered their space was if they’d had their weapons against their shoulders and pointing at the door.
Stratton’s two targets, being at opposite ends of the counter, presented him with something of a challenge though. He would have to pivot in a wide arc to engage them both. What was more, both of them were experienced fighters and knew the first rule of engagement: move from the static position. Precisely the type of situation in which to use instinctive shooting techniques as distinct from target-shooting methods.The second option employed the weapon as a tool, the first made it an extension of one’s body. One required the use of the weapon’s sights, the other didn’t. One needed conscious thought and deliberation, the other was all subconscious reflex and instinct. And to be effective in a close-combat situation in which the shooter was outnumbered by targets at different angles, the ‘target’ version undoubtedly required great skill, while the ‘instinct’ style demanded something extra that could not be taught.