Assault on the Empress (19 page)

“Let's go over it once more,” Darwin Hughes said slowly. Babcock looked at his Rolex. Five minutes until they were to move to the door, seven minutes before the door would be opened, nine minutes before they would leap out into the predawn blackness over the target. “There's a small transponder inside the equipment package. The transponder will activate automatically when the chute opens. If the chute doesn't open, I don't think the package would survive the impact sufficiently that anything would be useable. The transponder's signal will only carry for about five hundred yards; so, it is imperative, Lewis, that you spot the third chute as it opens. Once the package hits the water, the flotation device will activate, but there's only enough flotation to keep it just slightly above the surface. So, you won't be able to spot it visually. And with the seas getting choppier down there, that goes double. I'm going to the yacht as soon as I ditch my parachute, then getting aboard her.”

“The chute for the equipment package is rigged to the altimeter?”

“Right.”

Babcock nodded. “You go to the yacht and take out anyone aboard her, then I join you with the equipment package and we gear up, then go up onto the
Empress.
”

“From what I recall of her, that time I was aboard her, the deck plans haven't changed at all when compared to the diagrams. That's an advantage, having at least a vague physical familiarity with the terrain we'll be working. What then?”

“We're on board and we remove any sentries in the immediate vicinity as quickly as possible. Then we recon to ascertain where the bulk of the hostages are being held.”

Hughes nodded, glancing at his watch. “Then we ascertain as best as possible where the control for the demolitions is headquartered. We take out the demolitions control—”

“And we take action to free the hostages, physically freeing the ship's officers first so they can supervise the evacuation.”

Hughes smiled, the lines in his cheeks furrowing deeply, his eyebrows cocking upward. “With all those people in lifeboats, once we have the job done, no Russian submarine's going to dare surface. They wouldn't have the room.”

“And we find Cross and the girl and this Russian guy and then we get Leeds to take us to the ampule.”

“Sounds so easy, doesn't it?” Hughes smiled again. And he looked at his watch. “Time, lad.” Hughes offered his hand. Babcock took it.

Hughes started into his helmet, Lewis Babcock doing the same, Hughes starting to check Babcock's equipment. “Good!”

Babcock turned and did an equipment check on Hughes. Both men bent to the cargo package, checking that it was secure, that the chute was rigged properly to it. They hefted the cargo package—it wasn't tight—and brought it to the door.

The crewman who had bobbed in and out several times throughout the journey stood beside the fuselage door. Hughes secured his helmet chin strap, then pulled his oxygen mask up. Babcock did the same. “Let's go on oxygen then one last radio check.” The headset radios were an emergency item only, radio silence to be maintained unless one of the two of them were in imminent danger.

“Testing one, two, three—Lewis?”

“I have you, Mr. Hughes. Am I coming through?”

“Reading you loud and clear, Lewis. Headsets off.”

Lewis Babcock shut down, checking the readings on his oxygen mask. The pilot's voice came over the intercom. “We are depressurizing on my mark. Go to oxygen.” Babcock secured his mask, turning on the oxygen supply. The pilot's voice again. “All personnel are on oxygen. Commence countdown to depressurization. Ten … nine … eight … seven …” Babcock checked each strap, each gauge, checked the position of the Gerber BMF lashed to his right thigh, checked the safety strap and the thong, secured it into the synthetic sheath. “… four … three two … one … MARK!” A klaxon sounded and Babcock reminded himself to breathe, a hissing sound growing progressively louder, his ears feeling strangely hollow, his sinuses starting to run. He sniffed back. The pilot's voice again. “Cabin is depressurized to atmosphere. I say again. Cabin is depressurized to atmosphere.” The door was starting to open. There was a loud rushing sound of the slipstream passing around the fuselage.

Lewis Babcock looked to the jump signal. The red light changed in that instant to amber.

Babcock reached to the gear package, Hughes already starting to move it. The man beside the door, secured into the fuselage with webbing safety straps, reached down, grabbed at the package and consulted a stopwatch. He nodded, Babcock and Hughes throwing their weight behind it as the man at the door drew it outward, the package suddenly gone.

Babcock looked up.

Amber light still. He stepped into the door. Green light. Thumbs up from Hughes. A tap on the shoulder from the man at the door. Babcock jumped, tumbling, the wind rush around him deafening for an instant. His arms and tegs—he slowly spread them, getting his attitude correct, sailing forward, arms outspread like the wings of a bird. He saw the package, tumbling what looked like a mile beneath him. But it was only his perception.

His eyes came to the altimeter. He watched the needle spinning crazily downward, shifted his eyes from it for a moment. The package! He coutdn't—he spotted it, barely visible against the night as it descended below the horizon, now lost entirely. He checked his altimeter. He swallowed hard. His pulse was racing. It always did when he jumped because the thought of hurtling down into the night, on one level of consciousness, terrified him. And he tried to keep that level submerged in the technical details of the jump.

He checked his altimeter constantly now, watching the needle, watching the digital readout, ready to pull the ripcord. The numbers were dropping more rapidly.

“Shit!” Babcock growled into his mask.

He pulled the cord, the snap, his shoulders hauled up, his body wrenched.

He thought he saw a splashdown beneath him, but couldn't be sure…

Darwin Hughes had waited longer, controlling his rate of descent with body movement, aiming himself toward the white blotch beside the white mass, the yacht moored beside the
Empress
. Above and to his right, he saw Lewis Babcock's chute open.

Hughes glanced at his altimeter. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, he realized almost absently. He could feel his pulse racing maddeningly. Men his age had heart attacks and strokes, were at greater risk. Few men his age did what he did. What would happen if—He pushed the thought from his mind, the altimeter reading right, his angle right. He pulled the cord, his body whiplashing, the sea yawning up below him, the yacht suddenly gone. He turned his head, had it and worked his chute toward it. If someone with keen eyes spotted him from the deck of the Empress and were a good enough shot—But he told himself they would be looking for dozens of men, the SAS coming, not one man or two and a third chute for cargo.

The water was slamming up faster now and he at once braced and relaxed as he readied to hit.

He glided into it, but still the impact to his body took his breath away and he gagged for an instant beneath his mask, his body chilled beyond endurance for a split second. And his hands found the quick release for the chute and he punched it, the chute billowing around him, then gone, the weights added to the pack bringing it down. He turned away from it, his face feeling the pressure of his goggle gasket from the water. He broke surface and ripped away his oxygen mask and sucked air, a whitecap crashing over him.

Hughes tugged at the helmet chin strap, pulling the helmet from his head and trashing it into the water. It, too, was weighted to go down. He began orienting himself as he worked at the straps binding the breathing unit to him. He had them, shrugged out of it. Two hundred yards to the stem of the yacht. He started to swim, keeping his mouth closed, his nose and eyes just above the surface, whitecaps breaking over him.

Hughes looked back once.

There was no sign of Lewis Babcock.

Hughes told himself that Babcock had made it, then pushed the thought from his mind that somehow Babcock hadn't. He kept swimming.

Fifty yards down. One hundred and fifty to go, the yacht's definition growing. He could see a yellow light burning in what had to be the wheelhouse.

One hundred yards gone, one hundred remaining now. He treaded water for an instant, reaching down to his thigh for the reassurance of the Gerber knife. It was there. He started forward again, varying his stroke to conserve energy.

Fifty yards more.

He tucked down beneath the surface, gulping air as he did, swimming more easily now beneath the choppy topside, a dull grey blur ahead of him, the hull of the yacht. He surfaced, gulped air, and tucked down again, swimming easily now because the end was in sight and because he would need strength and breath control more above the surface than below.

His left hand reached out along the surface of the hull and he followed it up, breaking the surface, taking air. His right hand moved to his waist to release the weight belt, then down along his thigh, his skintight gloved fingers undoing the knot then opening the safety strap on the Gerber's sheath. He withdrew the knife, putting it between his teeth pirate fashion as he moved along the hull, the yacht between him and the towering hull of the
Empress
. He found the anchor chain and reached up, biting down harder on the knife, pulling himself along its links hand over hand. He got one foot purchased against a drain hole, pushing himself up, eyes just at the level of the deck.

He saw no one, pulled himself up and slid under the rail, flattening himself against the decking.

Hughes took the knife from his teeth and resheathed it, then pushed up on right knee and left elbow, his right hand jerking down the zipper front of his black wetsuit, then moving beneath it. He felt the plastic bag, drew it out, tore the plastic open and closed his fist over the gunbutt.

To his knees, then to a full crouch, he started forward, the plastic bag balled tight in his left fist, his right thumb sweeping up the silenced Walther PP .22's safety.

The wheelhouse was just ahead, a darker shape against the yellow light. He dropped flat, the Walther ready. Nothing. He moved along on knees and elbows now until he was beside the superstructure, then drew himself up again into a crouch.

The wheelhouse windows—he ducked down.

Past the windows.

Darwin Hughes rose to his full height. He approached the wheelhouse door. It was closed against the night cold. He could see the door handle faintly. He moved his left fist down against it and the door swung open inward. Hughes stepped into the doorway, the door creaking on its hinges, the man at the chart table spilling his coffee as he turned around, the man's right hand holding a large-caliber revolver. Hughes stabbed the PP toward him and fired once, then again, shooting out the left eye with the first shot, the second shot going into the open mouth.

The body flopped back, the right fist tightening on the gun, then the revolver falling, clattering against the table and the body knocking it over, slipping from the chair to lie in a heap against the overturned table.

If there was anyone else aboard the vessel, they'd heard the noise of the table falling. He wheeled toward the companionway steps, racing toward them, a trash basket beside them. He flipped the crumpled plastic bag into it, taking the steps down two at a time, no allowance for caution.

A man was sitting up in a berth near the base of the steps and Hughes shot him once between the eyes. As the head flopped back, Hughes ripped the pillow from beneath it, smothering the pillow over the mouth in case an instant's life were still in the man.

He left the pillow where he'd put it and quickly now explored below decks. Only the two men. No one else. But ten fifty-gallon drums in the compartment amidships, the smell overpowering. And, they didn't smell like diesel.

He had no time to open them, but suspected that here was the much-threatened-with jellied gasoline, the napalm not yet transferred to the Empress perhaps, or perhaps too its proximity to charges set aboard the
Empress
deemed enough. Hughes kept moving forward, nothing in the galley except garbage someone had been too lazy to pick up and the smell of onions. He cautiously opened the forward stateroom door, the silenced Walther tight in his fist. He closed his eyes for an instant. Plastic explosives were roped about the cabin like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Hughes's eyes followed the ropes, all of them coming together at the head of the master bed, right where the hull tapered to form the bow. And just below the waterline. He approached the bed. At the confluence of the ropes of plastique there was an obvious detonator. Too obvious. He touched at the plastique into which it was imbedded, feeling a stiffness below it that could only mean one thing. A concealed detonator. There was no time. And, if there had been, there was no guarantee it was defuseable. Hughes closed the cabin door after him.

Hurriedly, Hughes walked back the way he had come, took the companionway steps three at a time, passed through the wheelhouse, cautiously stepped out onto the deck. Keeping to the heaviest shadows, he made a complete round of the yacht's topside. No one else, a sentry barely visible from the prow standing looking over the railing of the
Empress.