Operation Malacca (6 page)

'Our MTh will have to drop you, then beat it for the station. The second MTh will have to hang back a couple of miles so that the destroyer doesn't spot them on radar. You won't have any trouble finding them with your sonar, will you?' Keilty asked anxiously. 'Or the destroyer either?'

`N0000, I wouldn't think so,' Charlie answered dryly. He was about to add something about the quality of the human underwater gear, then thought better of it.

Àll right, if that's all there is to it, you can tell them they've got a minelayer.' Charlie hesitated. 'That's a joke, son.'

`Yeah, I know,' Keilty said with a straight face, and stood up. 'Look now, get some rest. I'

ll go back and tell those clowns you're willing and maybe dicker with them.' He patted Charlie's rough gray head and went out, after warning the mess crew to let the dolphin rest.

This time the marine guard saluted and opened the hatch quickly.

'Thanks,' Keilty said, and stepped in. The loud buzz of conversation died down as he made his way between the tables to the map. When he reached it, he turned his back to the bulkhead and grinned at the expectant faces.

`Gentlemen, he agrees.

Several heads nodded at this wise choice, except Rawingson's. Keilty noticed he was staring at him with a slightly quizzical look.

He held up a hand, grinning wolfishly. 'Our fee will be one hundred and fifty thousand U.

S. dollars. A letter of commitment, signed by you . . .' He turned to the American Secretary of State, who looked rather thunderstruck. . and witnessed by the rest, will do for now.'

Angry voices began shouting and arguing. 'And,' he finished with a roar to override the noise, 'it will be payable on demand and of course subject to G and A fees and overhead.'

It took forty-five minutes of bland indifference to the shouting, but eventually he pocketed the letter of commitment.

They spent a sickening ten minutes getting Charlie's tank transferred from the rolling and pitching Bradley to the MTB, bobbing and dancing beneath the black wall of steel that was the destroyer. Keilty could imagine the sweating face and strained muscles of the helmsman as he fought the wheel to keep the relatively tiny craft from being crushed by the larger destroyer. From the sound of the engines, both Rolls Royce gas turbines must have been turning over at maximum power.

Keilty had supervised the rigging of the transfer line himself and had inflated the oil-filled sacs that would cushion Charlie in place of water. The dolphin had said nothing the entire time, although Keilty had left the transphonemator in place and working so that he could soothe the highly nervous dolphin. He had noted with concern that the tension had drawn strong lines around Charlie's beak and eyes and lines along his body that shifted constantly with his muscle action.

Deep black clouds filled the sky from horizon to horizon and pressed down closely on the three frail craft in the center of a dark, empty universe. The barometer needle had been dropping slowly all day, and strangely enough, there had been no wind. Only a leaden silence broken by the muted roar of engines and the quiet slap of feet. Talk in the oppressive atmosphere was limited to desultory conversation and occasional commands.

The destroyer's floodlights had been turned on at the bow and along the starboard side to provide light for the MTh crews. Their own running lights added to the harsh glare that surrounded the three ships. Looking down from the railing to the deck of the frantically bobbing MTh, Keilty could see angry waves with foamy crests lashing upwards like solid metal hulks before sliding brokenly back into oily troughs. Once overboard in that, he thought, if you weren't crushed against one side or another, the giant twin screws of the destroyer, or the smaller, sharper ones of the MTBs would make mincemeat out of you.

Providing you escaped that fate, you would be lost forever in the eight-foot seas.

The lights from the ships, a bright pool in the ocean of darkness, created a scene strongly reminiscent of an Ingmar Bergman movie. The whites were crystalline and harsh and the blacks were pools of jet, with no shade of gray or color in between. Except for the fluidity of movement, the slow-motion rise and fall of the man-made ships, and the wild insanity of the sea, the scene could have been that of a lunar rock formation at sunset. He wished he had a camera to record the drama so he could later compare the scene with photos taken by various Apollo Lunar Expeditions. He was sure that he would find the same breathless prescience of danger that almost screamed from the two-dimensional recordings of man's attack on what was essentially alien territory.

Turning away from the rail, he tried to shake off his sinister and superstitious dread. He said a few words to Charlie, who did not reply, and he noted the clear whites that showed completely around his pupils. Like a frightened horse, he thought ... or a man.

He stroked the dolphin's head and was about to say something else, when the iron voice of the PA system boomed at him.

Àre you set down there, Dr. Keilty?'

He waved back at the bridge and caught snatches of muffled conversation with the MTB

carrying over the loudspeakers.

`Prepare to transfer tank. Cargo officer, at your discretion.' The flat, metallic voice died quickly with no trace of answering echo. Keilty shivered again. Charlie must have caught his mood, because he looked up at Keilty and dropped one eyelid in a close approximation of a wink.

Feeling slightly relieved, Keilty swung himself up onto the tank so that he was astride one of the oil cushions beneath the middle tackle guy.

The cargo officer came over at a run. `Dr. Keilty, you can't go over on that.' The fear in his voice was obvious to all.

Trying to keep his voice calm, Keilty replied, 'Why not? You guys said it was safe.' It didn't come off, and his voice was harsh with suppressed fear.

Òf course it's safe. But if something should go ...'

`God damn it. If it's safe, nothing will go wrong. You think I'm going to let him ride across if the whole lousy system's going to fall apart?'

The officer, his face screwed up with doubt, hesitated, then turned on his heel and ran back to the bosun's chair lying on the deck next to the winch. He was back quickly with a wide safety strap.

`Put this around your waist and secure it to the tackle lock. If something goes wrong, it's got a quick-release buckle. Lift

up on the right side.' He hesitated again and looked up at Keilty as he took the belt. '

Good luck, sir,' he said quietly, and went back to the winch.

Keilty finished buckling up the belt and glanced up at the bridge. A line of faces pressed against the window, but the angle and light made it impossible to make out features. He rapped Charlie on the back and waved a hand at the cargo officer.

The tank jerked, then swung crazily for a moment until the winches took up the slack in the guide ropes.

'Here we go, ugly,' he muttered through clenched teeth.

'Looked in a mirror lately?' was Charlie's strained reply.

The tank lifted smoothly for a moment, then dropped sickeningly over the rail and began the long slide down to the jouncing deck below. Behind, Keilty could see the destroyer out of the corner of his eye as the deck dropped below them. He jerked his head around in time to see the MTh ride up a crest.

'Christ,' he roared. 'Hang on ...'

The cable above his head whipsawed sharply and the tank sprang upwards, then violently down as the destroyer rode up again. The winch screamed behind him at the overload, smoke pouring from the motor housing as the cable sawed into the reel.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tank was level again and seconds later thumped onto the deck, where it was securely bolted down. Keilty painfully pried his fingers loose from the guy wire and turned on his stomach and slid down stiffly.

'How the hell did I ever get mixed up with you?' Charlie asked wearily.

Five minutes later, the two MTBs were beating their way southeast through steadily worsening seas.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Keilty crouched on the lee side of the MTB's cabin, watching through the aft hatch the radio operator with his head cocked to one side and earphones held with both hands to his ears. The man's face tightened for a moment, then he reached for his pencil and began scribbling out the message. Keilty looked at the huge Maori beside him in the camouflage greens of the Royal New Zealand Marines with the pips of a lieutenant.

When the radio operator nodded vigorously at them, the Maori smiled broadly and went below to chivvy up his troops. Keilty remained where he was, crouching into the open hatchway to escape the cold, blowing spray that was spurning back from the bow. He, like Charlie, was wondering how he had ever gotten himself involved in this mess.

Ten miles to the southeast, the Vietnamese destroyer was coming fast. The sea conditions, which were worsening steadily, had hidden them from the destroyer's surface radar when they had dropped Charlie minutes earlier, and they were now roaring northwest in the direction of the research station. Charlie, with the limpet bomb, was waiting for the destroyer. If everything went off according to plan, the mine would explode in about twenty minutes and the destroyer would be damaged severely enough to have to turn back in these heavy seas. Keilty had spent twenty minutes on the run south explaining to Charlie just how and where to plant the bomb.

The message that had just come in was from the Bradley. Two Indonesian destroyers were rushing up from Sumatra and an Australian mine layer from Singapore was on its way to supplement the Bradley, but wouldn't arrive for at least eight hours or better. The two MTBs were detailed to go in immediately Charlie was recovered and word was received that the Vietnamese destroyer was out of action. They would land their component of marines under covering fire if necessary. The station must be secured as fast as possible to prevent the crew on board destroying the bomb and the evidence that it had been prepared for this special operation.

Keilty looked at his watch in the dim glow from the interior of the small bridge. Just about five minutes to go. He hoped that the second MTB had not missed Charlie in the stormy

seas. Peter Owterry, the Maori lieutenant, slid in next to him, grinning from ear to ear.

Àll set on this end. It promises to be a bloody good show ...

Keilty raised his hand. 'Quiet a second' And indicated the radio operator scribbling on his pad again.

He tore off the sheet and handed it to the boat's commander, who swung round, and grinning from ear to ear, said, `Looks as if your dolphin made it, Dr. Keilty. He's been picked up, and without the mine'

Suddenly, the storm-shrouded horizon was lit by a brilliant flash, revealing heavy clouds banked tier on tier. As if waiting for the signal of the explosion, sheets of lightning ripped the sky, and were followed by heavy rolls of thunder; rain poured down on the small boat, causing a steady drumming. Before Keilty could pull his slicker tight around him, he was soaked clear to the skin by the heavy drops. The rain cut effective visibility to next to nothing.

Owterry, staring up into the driving rain, laughed. 'This rain is certainly going to be a help. It seems that the elements are conspiring with us instead of against us for a change.

The rain will hide us from lookouts and the waves from surface radar'

The radioman interrupted again to announce that the flash had been the explosion of the Vietnamese destroyer. The Bradley's radar showed she was steaming at about four knots for the nearest point of land, which was the extreme southern tip of Sumatra.

Keilty hung on to the bridge stanchion as the deck whipped beneath his feet. The MTB, taking the full brunt of the pounding waves, leapt from wave to wave in the heavy seas.

The rain fell harder and was thrashed by the wind into the flying spray until it seemed to be a solid sheet of water.

The two boats hammered on northward skirting the larger of the islands until shortly before dawn, when the commander throttled down. Keilty went down into the cramped cabin where he could watch the radar building a picture of the research station. The short-range sweep showed the Bradley some ten miles west, steaming on at close to thirty-five knots. The British commander swore softly to himself when he heard the Bradley's speed.

'She was built during the latter part of the war,' he said to Keilty in his soft west-country accent. 'She must be taking a

terrible pounding in these seas.' Then he brightened, 'I'll bet all those high muckety-mucks aboard are wishing they could die.'

Keilty agreed whole-heartedly with the picture.

The MTB came round the tower at almost full power in a heeling, skidding turn that would have done credit to an outboard. Her sister ship broke off to rendezvous with the Bradley.

Keilty wondered how Charlie was taking all this. His conscience had been bothering him since Charlie had gone overboard. Events had moved too fast for the dolphin to keep up with them. He had been confused and nervous, and if Keilty had not known better, he would have thought the dolphin was scared silly. But the animal's nervous condition was close to actual human fear. He had almost huddled in his tank aboard the tossing craft, his flippers and tail making fluttering motions against the side of the tank, his eyes rolling back until the whites showed against his almost black skin. Keilty had done his best to calm him, stroking his flanks, moistening him with a large sponge and promising a long, quiet airplane ride when this was all over.

Keilty knew that the dolphin was aware that this mission was much more dangerous than the other. He would be completely detached from Keilty and would not even see him when it was over. He would be depending on others to look after him and pick him up. In addition, the storm had frightened him. He had never been involved in a surface storm before, and the lashing waves and the tossing motion of the boat were rapidly giving him a classic case of seasickness. But then, when it came time to put him over the side, these symptoms disappeared and the dolphin shot over the side and sounded deeply. Keilty only hoped he had not been frightened so badly that he would revert to his native state.

Owterry plopped down beside him and shrugged out of his slicker. 'Have to clear the decks for action,' he said cheerfully. 'Can't move at all in that blasted thing. Besides, I couldn't get any wetter.

He peered over the side at the thrashing waves and then to where the bulk of the station could be seen dimly outlined against the black sky. 'Looks like we may have to go in under fire. The Bradley's not in position yet and she couldn't fire from where she is without hitting us.

`Hell of a fine fix to be in on a night like this,' Keilty muttered. He shrugged his shoulders against the pelting rain

that was seeping beneath his collar and down his neck. The deck boards had a nasty habit of dropping away suddenly and then smacking hard against him as the boat slammed sharply upwards. The MTh tightened the circled approach until she was less than a hundred yards away from the tower. Owterry climbed unsteadily to his feet for a better look.

`Damned station's awfully quiet. . .' As if waiting for just this cue, the Vietnamese opened up with a withering blast of light-arms fire. Keilty pressed himself into the deck to escape the hail of lead that stitched into the hull with amazing accuracy. Owterry dropped half on top of him, squirmed into the open hatchway, and then reached a huge hand up and around Keilty and dragged him in. He caught a glimpse of the second MTh returning off their stem.

`Captain,' he shouted against the screaming of the wind and engines, 'can you run us in under the deck of the tower?'

Keilty looked at him slowly. It would be suicide to get in under the deck in these seas.

One heavy wave could crush them against a supporting column, or even the underside of the deck. The commander obviously thought so too, but Owterry rushed on before he could interrupt.

'Get in under the overhang of the deck and around to the far side of that ladder. MTB

two-oh-three can stand off and sweep the decks with machine-gun fire until the Bradley gets here. By that time, we should be aboard.' He paused to take a quick look at the tower, illuminated now by heavy flashes of lightning and by the quick, small flashes of the fire fight. The accuracy of the station gunners' aim had fallen off drastically in the heavy seas. As Keilty watched, the station was hidden from view by a large wave until only the upper works of the tower showed. As they crested the station was in full view, and then lost again.

Ònce we get in and onto the ladder, you put out quickly and keep them busy around the top of the ladder so they can't get to us,' Owterry finished.

It took Owterry only a few minutes to convince the boat's commander that, under the circumstances, it was the only way to secure the research station and the bomb.

Signals were made to MTh 203 advising her of the plan and then to the Bradley. With the commander at the wheel and the twin Rolls turbines screaming to full rpm, the boat went in on a straight course from a point two hundred yards from the ladder. The MTB sliced through the heaving seas at forty-five knots, bouncing like a surfboard, then straightened out and beat her way through the twenty-foot waves. Water boiled around her stern from the creaming bow wave, sweeping half as high as the slanted mast. Keilty, crouching in the bow with the initial ten-man landing party, hung on for dear life. He hung back slightly, trying to stay out of Owterry's view. The New Zealander was busy trying to gauge the distance and the effect of the shells and bullets that were beginning to converge

0n 202.

Keilty watched the big Maori at work, marveling at the calmness of his Oxfordian voice deeply resounding above the racket of the storm. Earlier, one of the marines had proudly told him that Owterry was educated in England at St. James, had been New Zealand boxing champion, and had almost taken the Commonwealth boxing crown until the war interrupted. Owterry himself had told him that he had fought from Burma down the Malay Peninsula in 1944-45, and then back up against the Communists in 1947-50.

`You're lucky we're in the strait and not on the mainland,' Owterry had grinned. 'This is relatively clean. Malaya has jungles like nowhere else on earth: Keilty had noticed the leech scars on his hands, wrists, and ankles, and mentioned them.

À doctor once told me that the scars on my ankles form a ring of scar tissue nearly an inch deep,' he had replied. After that, Keilty was prepared to believe anything about Southeast Asian jungles.

The distance was now less than a hundred yards. A flurry of light 1.5-inch shells splashed and exploded dead ahead of them. The concussion and the water they kicked up almost washed Keilty over the side. The commander kept the boat steady on its course.

Keilty watched the tower loom ahead of them, seeming to grow larger with infinite slowness. A second salvo hit closer, bracketing the boat and lifting the bow high in the air. For a moment it hung suspended.

Keilty had time to notice that the rain, which had become almost horizontal in the wind, was no longer pelting him for a brief second as the hull came between him and the watery horizon. Then the MTB slapped down hard, jarring every bone in his body. He tasted blood in his mouth where a tooth was broken. His back was on fire where the FN

carbine on its loose sling had crashed down. Dazedly he noticed that the boat was skidding into a hard starboard turn as the engines cut out and then screamed up as the propellers reversed and the boat slid under the overhang, port quarter first.

The commander idled the engines down enough to maintain steerageway and turned her towards the single narrow ladder, outlined dimly by the hooded beam of the boat's searchlight. They drew alongside the ladder and were held fast by two ratings as they piled over the side into two rubber life rafts. Keilty was the last over. He ignored Owterry's shout, and watching the bobbing raft, jumped and landed half across the stern and was hauled into the bottom of the raft.

`Where the hell do you think you're going?' Owterry stormed at him from the other raft.

`Where the hell do you think?' Keilty shouted back. 'Stop yelling and let's get going. I've got a vested interest in this operation.'.

Owterry waved the MTB away. It idled away from them and then slipped into full power and shot from beneath the deck, its two quad .50s blazing away at the station decking.

Keilty watched it roar away, swinging in a wide circle to allow the gunners to track their target, and then he lost it in the rain and fog.

The noise of the fighting came to them in a mishmash of hollow sound, reflected from beneath the steel tower by the chopping seas. The rafts were made fast to the tower ladder and the combined units of New Zealand and Australian marines swarmed up first, followed by the Indonesian unit. They had shed their packs on the MTh and wore only shirts and shorts, with their weapons slung over their shoulders within easy reach to leave their hands free for the ladder. They went up professionally. Keilty was pushed back until he was last man on the ladder. Gunfire sounded above and a brief spray of bullets swept past him. A body came hurtling down; which side, he was unable to tell.

Then he was being yanked over the top and pushed down behind a hastily constructed barrier of empty oil drums. Owterry was waving four men around the far edge of the barrier in a flanking movement to the drilling rig. Snipers in the rig took two of the men before they had taken five steps. Cursing horribly, his eyes white-rimmed in the flashing lightning, Owterry landed beside him, directing a barrage of fire to the rigging. Keilty unslung his carbine, worked the slide to make sure it wasn't jammed, and aimed at a figure crouching

behind a web of bracing halfway up the tower. He fired three shots and missed. Rain water sluiced down the barrel and spattered into his eyes. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes clear, ignoring the stinging, then turned his attention back to the sniper. He slid the catch to full automatic and opened up. The figure straightened, took a quick 'step backwards, arched its back, and sailed off into space. He landed with a sodden thump on the steel deck plates. Grinning savagely, Keilty jammed another magazine home.