Nucflash (38 page)

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.

No . . .
no! It wasn't goddamned fair!
She wasn't supposed to be shot by the guys on her
own
side! . . .

Men were running toward her . . . terrorists. She tried to rise, but her left arm refused to support her. They were firing, though whether at her or the helicopter behind her she couldn't tell. She did know they would be on her in seconds. . . .

Then fire stabbed again from the helicopter's open side door, cutting into the running PRR terrorists and scattering them like tenpins.

And then the big SEAL from Texas, Blake's friend MacKenzie, was there, sliding to a halt next to her, helping her up. “No!” she shouted above the helicopter's thunder. “In the crane! In the crane!”

In a heartbeat, she'd pushed free of MacKenzie and raised her pistol again, one-handed, aiming once more at Pak, who was illuminated now by the light inside the crane's control cabin, struggling with one of the levers.

Gasping against the crushing paralysis that was clamping down on the entire left side of her chest, Inge squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in her hand and she kept firing, slamming round after round into the cab.
Damn!
She couldn't hold the target! Miss! Another miss!

She kept firing. . . .

 

Bullets slammed into the cab, smashing the windshield, pocking the metal roof. Turning in his seat, Pak saw the woman sprawled awkwardly on the deck outside, firing round after round directly at him. One of the SEALs was there too, aiming his H&K.

One bullet slammed into Pak's side, nearly knocking him out of the seat, but the woman was too late, the SEAL and the noisily hovering helicopter were too late, they were
all
too late. . . . Laughing, the sound a bit hysterical even to his own ears, Pak grasped the release knob and pulled, just as a string of rounds struck him in the side, higher up, just beneath his left arm.

There was an agonizing delay . . . and then the atomic bomb suspended at the end of the cable dropped away; the cable leaped into the air, dancing at the release of so much weight. The bomb plummeted through darkness toward the surface of the water fifty feet below.

Pak didn't hear the splash when it hit two seconds later.

Murdock had seen the bomb's release as he raced across the rooftop toward the crane, seen it drop from the hoist and arrow fifty feet straight down, vanishing into the gray water with a splash. He reached the railing above Alpha's southwest corner and stood there looking over the edge, hands gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles ached, holding his breath, waiting for that searing, final instant that could come any second now.

No one knew how the thing might be armed and triggered. The assumption all along had been either a remote-control device of some sort that would detonate the thing at the press of a button, or a timer, set either manually or through a remote control. The former was a nightmare possibility; the latter was deemed more likely. The PRR terrorists who set the thing would almost certainly allow some leeway for their own escape. There were terrorists who seemed suicide-minded enough to go to certain death, but that didn't fit the usual profile of terrorist shooters drawn from the old RAF or the Provos. Politically motivated, they seemed to go for the main chance, seeking to create havoc but rarely allowing themselves to get drawn into suicide situations. They shot it out to the last bullet only when there was no other way out.

If these terrorists had been members of the Japanese Red Army now, it would have been a lot more worrisome from the start. Some of
those
guys deliberately sought martyrdom, like the Hezbollah crazies who'd driven an explosives-laden truck into an American compound in Lebanon.

As the minutes passed and there was no blinding flash, Murdock started to relax. Maybe the bomb hadn't been armed after all. Perhaps it had dropped by accident.

Or . . . Pak was supposed to have a remote control of some sort. Turning from the rail, Murdock raced back toward the crane . . . then came to a dead stop. Mac was there . . . and, oh, God,
no. . . .

Mac was there, cradling Inge's head. There was a lot of blood on her blouse, and some on her face as well, next to her mouth. SAS and GSG9 commandos had circled off the area, creating a perimeter around the crane. A young officer looked up as Murdock approached.

“I'm sorry, Yank,” he said. “We thought—”

“Inge!” She was unconscious. He looked up at Mac. “How is she?”

“Don't know, L-T. She took a fifty through her back.”

He probed her shoulder, front and back. Entrance and exit wound were clean and no wider than his gloved finger, punching through her left shoulder blade from behind and emerging beneath her collarbone; a fifty-caliber round was so powerful it must have punched clear through her and scarcely slowed. Still, there was a hell of a lot of blood. Mac or someone had plugged the wound with a cloth that was already sodden through with blood.

“We've got a medic coming down now,” the SAS officer said.

“Where's Pak?” Murdock demanded.

MacKenzie nodded toward the crane. “Up there. She got him, L-T. You would've been proud. But he pulled the damned lever anyway.”

“We're still here,” he said. “Take care of her.”

“Right, L-T.”

He left them and started up the ladder to the crane cab.

Crackling radio calls over Murdock's earphone followed the progress of the assault inside the quarters.

“Delta-one, this is seven. We are in the rec hall. Repeat, in the rec hall. Two terrs down. The hostages are okay.
”

“Echo two, Echo one. Watch yourselves. We're coming down Corridor Seven.
”

Elsewhere, the battle was rapidly dying out. British helicopters remained hovering off each corner of Alpha, as dozens of SAS and GSG9 troops scoured the roof, penetrated the doors, filtered down into the depths of the labyrinthine installation. Occasional scattered bursts of gunfire sounded from below, but by and large, all resistance had ceased. Several tangos had been rounded up by SAS troopers and were lying flat on the deck, hands in the smalls of their backs, as commandos cuffed and searched them.

Pak was crumpled in the corner of the cab, bleeding from a dozen wounds but still alive. Murdock thought the man was unconscious, but as he started searching him, as he found and retrieved the remote-control unit in an inside jacket pocket, the North Korean's eyes opened.

“Too . . . late.”

“What do you mean, ‘too late'? What'd you do?”

Pak started coughing, vomiting blood. “Too late,” he managed to say again as his eyes drifted shut. He was dying.

Murdock glanced down at the twisted, broken leg. His hand snapped down, slamming against the broken ends. “Wake up, you bastard! What did you do?”

Pak's eyes opened again. The pain seemed to brace him, to give him strength. “Pressure switch,” he said. “I set it for eighty . . . for eighty . . . ”

The eyes glazed over. Pak was dead.

A pressure switch! That was why the bomb had been suspended over the water. It could be jettisoned easily, possibly with the non-suicidal PRR gunmen being told it would be detonated by a simple timer after they'd had a chance to escape. Probably the idea had been to use the minisub to plant the thing if there was time. Then arming the pressure switch would be like a direct trigger, detonating the bomb as soon as the button was pushed. In either case, having the bomb detonate deep underwater would be certain to cause maximum damage to all of the bottom installations in this part of the North Sea.

He'd set it to detonate at eighty something. Eighty what? The water in this part of the North Sea averaged forty fathoms . . . about 240 feet. Murdock frowned. Pak was North Korean . . . and the Koreans measured everything in meters.

Eighty meters?

That would be 248, almost 250 feet.

Oh, God! Could it actually be that simple? Had Pak miscalculated . . . and armed the bomb to explode eight feet
deeper
than the water around the Bouddica Complex? Murdock sagged back against the crane's support, suddenly weary. That bastard Murphy had been up to his old tricks on
both
sides of the battle this time.

He dropped from the cab and started walking back toward Mac and Inge. Other helicopters were approaching now, with more troops, with NEST personnel, with medics and doctors.

Roselli met him. “I just heard about Inge.”

“She'll be all right,” he said.
She's got to be.

“Yeah, she's tough. They'll have her on a medevac chopper in another few minutes. What's the word on Pak's bomb?”

“He said there was a pressure switch, set for eighty meters.” Murdock managed a weak smile. “I think he miscalculated. The water's not that deep here!”

Roselli laughed. “Ha! That's a good one! All that high-tech, and the son of a bitch forgot to check his depth charts!”

The moon, just past full, was rising over the southeastern horizon, enormous and silver, its light casting cool illumination across the sea.

The moon
. . .

And with a terrible, icy certainty, Murdock knew that he was wrong, that Pak had made no mistake, that the bomb deposited moments ago at the base of Bouddica Alpha was still very much alive and very, very dangerous.