Gideon's War/Hard Target (25 page)

Gideon had fallen about eight feet. This put him just below the railing. He swung back and forth in the wind, slammed into the railing before he managed to grab hold. There was just enough slack for him to climb the railing as Timken shoved Kate backward.

Gideon crested the railing, reached up, and disconnected the carabiner from his harness, yanked off the helmet, which was still attached to the air hose and to the comm and electrical lines.

Embedded in the railing next to one of the dive winches was the small axe Timken had used to sever their umbilicals. Gideon yanked it from the railing mount and then jumped to the deck.

Timken turned at the sound Gideon made as he landed. His eyes took in the axe in Gideon’s hand. There seemed to be no fear in his expressionless eyes—just a rapid and clear appraisal of the threat. For the moment, Timken was unarmed. He was being attacked by a large and athletic man with an axe. The equation was simple. Time to retreat.

Timken was gone before Gideon could cross the five yards of deck that separated them.

Gideon turned his attention to Kate. “Are you okay?” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Kate shrugged off Gideon’s hand and ran to Big Al’s side. “Al!” she shouted. “Stay with me!” He was nonresponsive, his pulse thready.

“We can’t stay here,” Gideon said. “Timken will be back with his people in about thirty seconds.”

“You go,” Kate said. “I have to stay with Al.”

“Kate—”

Timken’s pistol lay at the far end of the dive station, half hidden under a pile of scuba gear. Gideon grabbed the gun and took off after Timken.

The rain had let up a bit, enough for Gideon to run without holding on to the railing. He’d already gone a hundred yards when he realized that he hadn’t asked Kate whether she’d managed to disarm the bombs. And it was too late to go back and ask her.

He turned a corner and nearly stopped at what was the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen. A curved line of cloud extended to the horizon, like a giant white wall—and above it, pale blue sky. A brilliant orange ball of light broke over the rim of clouds, and the first bright rays of sunlight hit Gideon square in the face.

We’re in the eye of the storm, he thought.

The rain had stopped and the wind had gone still. But there was no time to enjoy the extraordinary calm that surrounded him. If they were going to survive, he had to stop Timken.

CHAPTER FORTY

MAJOR DALE ROYCE JR. looked around, then turned to the pilot. “Where’d he go?”

“Who?” the pilot said.

“The meteorologist,” Royce snapped. He had been making last-minute preparations with his team and he’d come to the cockpit to see how the weather was holding out.

The pilot didn’t notice what had happened—she was squinting out the windscreen into the blackness of the clouds, responding to someone on her radio.

“Copy that, SAT Seven.” She looked over her shoulder at Royce. “Good news, Major,him widt221; she said. “Satellite’s got a visual on the Obelisk. It’s in the eye. You’re cleared to jump.”

The pain was starting now, a sickening fire that was starting to burn its way up his leg. Royce gave the pilot a tight smile. “Outstanding,” he said.

Then he turned and began limping back into the cabin, trying not to let his boys see the agony in his face.

“All right, ladies, lock and load,” Major Royce shouted. “We’re going in!”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN THE SUDDEN EERIE silence, Gideon could hear a steady thudding on the other side of the rig. He realized it was the sound of Timken’s footsteps. Where was he going? Not that it mattered. If he could cut him off and kill him, the leaderless mercenaries would be easier to take out. Then all he’d have to do was find Earl Parker.

He pulled the mag of the Makarov. It was a single-stack mag, nine-shot capacity. Except for the two bullets Timken had used on Big Al, the mag was full and the chamber was loaded. He slammed it back into the Makarov and pulled back the hammer, ready to fire single action.

Timken’s footsteps pounded up the stairs of the BLP and onto the bridge linking it to the drilling platform.

Gideon hoped he’d get a shot at him while he was exposed. But by the time he reached the bridge, Timken was on the other side, disappearing into the stairwell leading down to D Deck. Gideon could only figure that he was heading for the remote bomb controls in D-4. The son of a bitch was going to blow the rig!

Gideon charged across the bridge. Two mercenaries popped up on B Deck over on the drilling platform, swinging their AKs at him. He crouched behind a pipe halfway across the bridge, squeezed off a shot at the first man, caught him high in the chest. The man dropped. He squeezed off another round at the second mercenary, but the man ducked down and disappeared.

Now he was down to five rounds.

He jumped from his cover and ran toward the drilling platform. A third man stepped out from behind a bulkhead. Gideon fired as he ran, his sight picture bobbing and jiggling. The first two rounds missed, but his third shot hit the man in the face. Gideon hoped he’d be able to scoop up the man’s AK on the way. But he was too late. The dying man dropped it over the side as he fell screaming to the deck, his jaw blown cockeyed and slinging blood.

Two rounds left.

Gideon hit the drilling platform, grabbed the railing, and wheeled around, taking the stairs three at a time down to D Deck.

Timken’s footsteps thumped down the hallway in front of him. Gideon turned the corner in time to see Timken disappearing into the storage room where the bomb control equipment was located. Gideon blasted through the door, expecting to see Timken heading for the bomb controls. But instead he found Timken on the far side of the big steel box, standing in front of the equipment locker door, spinning the dial on the padlock. He was still unarmed. As Gideon charged into the room, Tim-ken yanked the lock off and pulled open the door.

Behind him, Gideon heard the clank of a rifle boepsotstelt slamming home.

He froze, realizing the mistake he’d made. One of Timken’s men had been standing behind the door, ready to ambush him.

Timken spun around, then grinned, his hand still resting on the knob of the half-open door behind the metal box. “Too impulsive there, chief,” he said.

Gideon looked over his shoulder. A very thin, somewhat frightened-looking young man stood behind the door, eyeing Gideon through a pair of thick glasses. He wore an odd vest with a great many pockets that contained a variety of tools, bits of wire, detonators, pieces of circuit board. It occurred to Gideon that this man must be the demolitions specialist, the man who had rigged the bomb.

“Go ahead, Rashid,” Timken said. “Shoot him.”

Rashid hesitated. Timken was directly behind Gideon, putting him in the line of fire. To avoid shooting Timken, Rashid moved sideways. Gideon seized his opportunity. He dropped to his knees, rotating as he dropped, and squeezed off a round. It caught the bomb-maker center mass. Gideon saw in the very instant that he pressed the trigger that he’d made a mistake. The vest worn by the bomb-maker didn’t carry just his tools; it also contained a large Kevlar panel. Rashid grunted and stepped backward, essentially unharmed.

Gideon raised the sight twelve inches, fired again. The shot shattered one of the lenses in the bomb-maker’s glasses. He fell backward without a sound. Then Gideon turned his gun on Timken, who was jabbing his finger toward the bomb controls. “Now I’m the only one who knows how to disarm the bomb. Kill me and everybody on the rig dies.”

Gideon had counted his rounds and knew his clip was empty. He kept the gun trained on Timken, hoping he wouldn’t notice. No such luck. Timken’s eyes flicked to the slide of Gideon’s Makarov. It was locked back, the chamber open, indicating that the pistol was out of ammunition. “Damn, that’s inconvenient for you, huh? Kind of levels the playing field.”

Gideon noticed that the downed bomb-maker had dropped his AK-47 as he fell. It was about ten feet away, closer to Gideon than to Tim-ken. He coiled, preparing to spring toward the weapon.

But Timken had seen it, too. As Gideon leapt, Timken leaned his shoulder against the big metal box, gave a primal scream, and heaved. The box was set on a metal frame, which in turn rested on four large rollers. The steel box began to move, heading straight toward Gideon, and slamming into him just before he could grab the AK-47. Timken propelled the box forward like a nose tackle pushing a blocking sled, pinning Gideon against the wall.

And there they stopped. Timken, though several inches shorter than Gideon, was a powerfully built man. And with his feet sprawled behind him and his shoulder against the box, he was perfectly situated to keep Gideon pinned to the wall.

Gideon struggled to free himself, but with his back against the wall, he had no leverage. If Timken let go to pounce on the AK, Gideon would get free. The AK lay closer to Gideon than to Timken. It was a stalemate.

Timken grinned at Gideon.

Gideon had thought Timken was coming here to trigger the bomb. And yet when he entered the room, Timken had ignored the bomb controls and headed for the equipment locker on the far side of the room"0e¡€†. Were there weapons inside? No—if there had been weapons in the equipment locker, Timken would have grabbed something from the locker instead of attacking Gideon with a clumsy metal box.

The box.

“What was in the box?” Gideon said. It occurred to Gideon that whatever they had smuggled onto the rig in the box was probably now somewhere in the equipment locker. “It obviously wasn’t the bomb. So what was it?”

Ignoring his question, Timken said, “That bomb’s ticking down. We stay here, we both die. I can disarm the bomb. But I’m not about to do it with you holding that AK to my head.”

The LED on one of the bomb controls read 03:10:41. Time was running out.

Then Gideon heard a thump. It sounded like it had come from inside the equipment locker.

“What’s in the locker?” Gideon said.

Timken glanced back toward the locker again, then gave Gideon a sarcastic smile. “I realized I left my health insurance card in there,” he said. “Life’s so full of risk these days, I just feel naked without it.”

Another thump from inside the equipment locker.

“Tell you what,” Timken said, “if you put your hands up, step over here away from the AK, I’ll reset the bomb. Truce, right? We’ll both be unarmed, even-steven, nobody has the advantage, nobody gets hurt. Fair enough?

Gideon had no plan. But he knew a truce with this snake would go badly. “Don’t think so,” Gideon said.

With that, the door to the equipment locker burst open and a figure stumbled into the room. He was dressed like Timken and his men— faded, mismatched green BDUs and black combat boots. He wore a black leather holster on his hip, the same as Timken. The only difference was that his holster was empty. And unlike Timken, the man’s hands were flex-cuffed behind him, and his head was covered with a black hood. A muffled, inarticulate roar erupted from the man, as though he were gagged beneath the hood.

“Shit,” Timken said.

The man hurled himself toward Timken’s voice, lowering his hooded head like a bull.

Timken turned to face the onrushing attacker, still bracing himself against the steel box, so that Gideon couldn’t move.

Timken attempted to kick the man, who still managed to ram his hooded head into Timken’s chest. The impact shifted Timken’s weight just enough to give Gideon the clearance he needed to get out from behind the box.

Seeing that Gideon was about to free himself, Timken gave the box one last shove, then dove for the AK-47 lying beside the dead demolitions man.

Gideon stumbled slightly as the corner of the box caught him painfully in the left hip. It was hardly even a stumble—barely more than a stutter-step. But it was enough to slow him down. Timken reached the AK just a fraction of a second before Gideon. His right hand clamped around the grip and his left around the wooden fore end. Gideon was able to get both hands on the stock, but his leverage was no good. Timken’s finger found the trigger and he began slowlyen ¡€† forcing the barrel around.

From behind Timken the hooded man groaned. Timken glanced backward. It was just the break Gideon needed.

He reached down toward the dead man, grabbed a pair of needle-nose pliers from the bomb-maker’s vest and jammed them into Timken’s neck.

Timken screamed and grabbed his throat. He tried to say something, but it was lost in a fountain of blood coming out of his mouth. He stumbled backward, knocking over the box, so that it fell on top of the hooded man. Timken pulled the pliers from his neck, eyes wide with panic, then slipped in his own blood, fell on top of the box, and stopped moving.

Gideon stepped around Timken and yanked the box off the prone body of the hooded man, then pulled the hood from his face. The man’s mouth was gagged with several loops of blood-smeared duct tape and his clothes and bearded face were covered with blood, obscuring his features. It took Gideon a moment to realize that it was Timken’s blood, not that of the man who lay on the floor. Gideon quickly unwrapped the duct tape, the man’s eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light.

“Gideon?” the man said, wincing. “Is that you?”

The wind hit Major Dale Royce Jr. like a hammer as he jumped from the rear of the C-17 into the blinding sun. As he caught the slipstream, his body spun, the motion twisting his already broken ankle. He screamed. Dale Royce had played football at the academy and had gone through all of the most dangerous and painful training that the United States Army could dish out.

But never had he felt pain like this.

He spread his arms instinctively, slowing in the wind. The buffeting jiggled his ankle. But still, unaccountably, he felt a grin come across his face. Below him, stretching out to the west, was a great blue circle, surrounded by towering walls of cloud. It was surely the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

And at the edge of the circle was a tiny black dot. The Obelisk.

The drop had been pretty good. But not perfect. If they’d done a high altitude, high open drop, it would have been a piece of cake to land on the rig. But HALO—high altitude, low open drop—meant they’d fall over forty-two thousand feet before opening their chutes. Then they’d pull their ripcords at five hundred feet. A modern square ram-air chute could cover several hundred horizontal feet for every thousand feet of fall. On a HALO drop over these lethal seas, there was no room for a near miss. If you were more than a few hundred ground-feet from the rig when you pulled, you were a dead man.

So you had to steer in free fall.

Steering meant diving headfirst, extending your toes, pulling your arms to your sides, and using your feet as rudders. His team had worked out the order in which they would fall, transitioning from belly diving to head-down diving. With the greater speed and aerodynamic control of the head-down dive, they could head downward in a stack, just like a formation of fighter jets. One by one, his men assumed their positions. He followed, last.

It was only as he straightened his legs and pulled in his arms that he realized he couldn’t point his left toe. In fact, when he looked down, he saw that it had been twisted backward by the force of the wind. And now the drag of his ruined foot was cauy w¡€†sing him to roll slowly over, like a plane doing a barrel roll. He tried to countersteer with his right hand. To his relief, he steadied.

Below him, though, his men were slowly drawing away from him. And, to his horror, he realized that he would be unable to steer in any meaningful way. Just keeping himself stable was going to destroy his ability to steer the dive. His men were heading in perfect formation toward the Obelisk. But he was veering slowly to the west. By the time he reached the water, he realized, he’d be as much as a mile off course.

He couldn’t deploy his chute high enough to steer himself to the rig or he’d risk giving his men away. The success of any HALO jump rested on pulling so low that the enemy had no time to react. If somebody was scanning the sky and saw him deploy half a minute before his boys hit the Obelisk, the enemy would sit there and pick them right out of the sky.

It hit him with a strange shock. He was a dead man. In this orientation, he was moving at roughly 150 miles an hour, terminal velocity. He’d be airborne for nearly a minute. He wore an inflatable life vest. But so what? No one would be able to get to him to pick him up from those mammoth waves. He’d fight until he drowned or until exhaustion and hypothermia finished him off.

The men all wore comm links, but they were observing radio silence, so he couldn’t even alert them to his plight. The senior NCO, Sergeant Williams, would take command when they hit the deck. He’d do fine. Every man would do his job.