The Lucifer Crusade (34 page)

Lucifer's face was getting redder by the moment. He was shouting now, in his irritating whiny voice.

"There are almost one million men in this army!" he screamed. "And when I ask any one of them a question, they'd better know the answer."

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No one on the bridge dared breathe. Even Lucifer's bodyguards were tense, afraid he might ask one of them a fateful question.

"Now," Lucifer said in a voice barely above whisper. "Who is next in command?"

A young North Vietnamese ensign stepped forward. "I am, sir!"

Lucifer looked him over. "All right," he said. "When will we enter the Canal?"

The ensign hesitated one second, then cried out: "In approximately two hours, sir. Shortly after sunset, sir!"

/

Lucifer looked at him, then at the other sailors, and smiled.

"Now," he said. "That's better . . ."

Then he turned and walked out, unknowingly dragging his long cloak through the pool of blood left on the bridge's floor.

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"Well, that's the best news I've heard in ages!" Sir Neil said, clapping his hands and trying to sit up in his bed. Clara, ever at his side, helped him.

"Yaz said they'll get the reactor to go hot any minute now," Hunter said, continuing to explain the turn of events to Sir Neil. "Then we'll start seeing real electricity. Those generators we've been using are about to burst at the seams. Now we'll be able to power up all the radios, the on-board weapons.

Everything."

"Aye, but when can we get underway, Hunter?" the Englishman asked.

"Yaz has a team of propulsion guys on it right now," Hunter replied. "That's the first priority, of course. We'll know more as the night goes on."

"How about the Commodore?"

Hunter smiled and shook his head. "He's a trip," he said. "He fulfilled his mission just as he planned. Docked up to one of the frigates about an hour ago. He's got more than a hundred Russian mines in his hold. Just like he said he would."

"Good Lord, the man is intrepid! Isn't he?" Sir Neil was clearly delighted.

However, he quickly

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turned serious. "Those bloody Modern Knights. Where the hell are they!? We come back from the dead and they're probably still lollygagging around."

"Heath told the Italian communications guys to turn one of their antennas west for a few minutes each hour," Hunter said. "I know the Knights would never send us an open radio message, but our gear on board might be powerful enough to pick up their ship-to-ship communications. At least we'll get a fix on where they are."

"Good plan," Sir Neil said, calming down a bit. Just as he spoke, the lights in his cabin suddenly' tripled in intensity. It was as good an indication as any that Yaz's guys had the reactor up and working.

"Lights!" Sir Neil cried out. "Real lights! No more dim bulbs!"

Hunter nodded. For the first time he felt like he was sailing on a real ship.

The next day passed slowly but quietly.

Hunter had six aircraft in the air at all times, providing the carrier fleet with an air cap as well as serving as an early warning system for any approaching Soviet subs.

Hunter could only describe the mood on board the carrier itself as one of

"serious jubilation." Serious in that the air crews and the support people, plus the allied mercenaries, went about the duty of preparing for war. But there was jubilation too, every time some previously useless device or machine clicked back on thanks to the revived currents of electricity running through the ship. Hunter was thankful the carrier's catapults were finally working as they should. Launching the half-dozen aircraft earlier in the day had taken one-tenth the time of

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previous launches.

"The whole goddamn ship feels alive!" Hunter told Emma that morning.

But the real celebration came about mid-afternoon. This was when Yaz's men had boiled up enough steam using the reactor to open the valve which led to the Saratoga's powerful propulsion turbines. Those aboard felt a sudden, almost violent jolt. Then all were aware of a very strange sensation. They were moving. Evenly. Smoothly. No more push. No more pull.

A spontaneous cheer went up all over the ship. Crewmen on the ships nearby, all unaccustomed to seeing the Saratoga move under its own power, joined in with applause. Hunter happened to be on the bridge at the time and watched in awe as all the multicolored lights on all the control panels blinked on.

Heath and O'Brien were also there to witness the display.

"Good God," Heath yelled. "They've actually done it!"

"I never thought I'd see the day . . ." O'Brien said, speechless for probably the first time in his life.

"We couldn't have gotten this far without you," Hunter told the Irishman.

"Hear, hear!" Heath echoed, shaking hands with the tugboat skipper. "In fact, on special orders from Sir Neil, I am now naming you the commander of the Saratoga."

As those sailors present on the bridge gave him a round of applause, O'Brien pointed to himself, genuinely surprised, and asked, "Me? Why me?"

"It's just logical," Heath told him. "Of us all, only Olson, the Commodore, and yourself are real sea captains. I'm sure you'll agree they've got their hands full right now. Yaz's job has now increased tenfold 342

since he's got the ship running. So, Captain O'Brien, that leaves you in command."

The BBC crew was on hand, of course, to record the historic moment. As the leader of the video crew came forward, microphone in hand, to interview O'Brien, the old tug man looked at Hunter. But the pilot only smiled and said,

"It's all yours, Skip . . ."

That night, as the Saratoga was approaching the Canal at a speed of fifteen knots, two frigates pulled out ahead of the flotilla and steered due south.

On< board was the Commodore, the UDT team, and a squad of Spanish Rocketeers.

One of the frigates carried a Harrier, just in case the pair of ships was spotted from the air.

The other frigate was running on a skeleton crew. All of its armament had been stripped off, as had anything of value not bolted down. In the frigate's cargo hold were the 100 Soviet mines.

The two ships plowed silently through the night waters traveling the sixty-five miles to a point just a mile off the entrance to Alexandria, Egypt.

It was two in the morning when they arrived. Quickly, quietly, the UDT frogmen slipped into the calm seas and went about the task of planting the Soviet mines in strategic, predetermined places.

Later on they would report that, while the minelaying operation was going on, they had observed the holographic face of Lucifer projected off in the distant eastern sky.

Hunter spent most of the night in the CIC, sitting with Heath, a Moroccan translator, and Giuseppe, the head of the Italian communications group, lis-343

tening to the multitude of radio broadcasts coming from Lucifer's fleet.

The carrier flotilla had lost time crossing the Med. The battles, the storm, the loss of the tugboats, and other distractions had put them days behind Sir Neil's original schedule. For Hunter, it was a miracle they had made it at all, but the delay had presented some problems.

Originally Sir Neil had intended to sail the carrier through the Canal and plant it -and the soldiers sailing with it -at the northern entrance, thus denying the entire gateway to the Med to Lucifer's ships. But, as the intercepted communications indicated, the first elements of Lucifer's fleet had already entered the Canal. And, in fact, gunboats allied with the madman had been patrolling the Canal for days.

Now it looked as if a mid-Canal confrontation were imminent.

"It's going to be tight," Hunter told Giuseppe and Heath as they moved markers around the ship's plotting map. "The Canal is only about three hundred feet across. That's wide enough to accommodate two major ships going in opposite directions and that's about it."

"We are lucky that the Egyptian Navy dredged the blasted thing before the Big War," Heath said. "Otherwise, we might have scrapped the bottom."

"We still won't have much room to maneuver, if any," Hunter said.

"Well, I imagine if we were still using the bloody tugs!" Heath said. "I guess our best bet is to crank it out, get to a good position in the middle of the Canal, disperse the troops, and launch an air strike immediately."

"I agree," Hunter said, studying the map. "We can tie up a lot of his ships if we just sink a few early,

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thereby sealing off the Canal midway, at least temporarily. I'm sure his Soviet minelaying group is equipped with a UDT. They can clear one sunken ship in about six hours. But if we ice six or seven ships, those guys are going to get real tired real quick."

"Look here on the map," Heath said, directing a pointer to an area about halfway down the Canal's 100-mile length. "Here's the only place where the Moroccans would have some kind of cover to meet Lucifer's troops -granting that, if we sink his ships,, he's going to throw his foot soldiers off the tranv ports and make them walk."

The group was silent for a time, until Heath spoke up again.

"The question is," he said, "can we get to that point before Lucifer does?"

Hunter finally retired about three in the morning. Tomorrow would be a busy-day, he knew, and even three hours' sleep would help.

He found Emma as he always did: curled up naked on his bunk as a candle flickered away on the bed table. He took off his boots, zipped down his flight suit, and crawled in next to her. She immediately drew herself up close to him, one of her small delicate breasts falling right into his hand. He squeezed it softly. Then he looked at her sweet face. She's so much like a young Dominique, he thought.

Right away his thoughts flashed over the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, and back to America. Dominique. He yearned for her as much as he yearned for his country. Although he knew he was changing his mind almost every other day, right now he had somewhat settled whether his being here, on 345

this "crusade," was really the most productive thing to do. In the long run, he felt the answer was yes. Whether Lucifer was in the picture or not, his Legion would keep moving if they weren't checked in some way. It sounded old hat, but there was a good possibility that, if the madman's army was not stopped here, in the eastern Med, the day would come when they'd be landing on the shores of America. And the democratic forces in America might not have their shit together enough to mount a decent defense. It was a question of where and when to battle the enemy.

For Hunter, the place was here and the time was now.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the American flag, and felt its threads with his fingers. He always gained some power from the act. Someday, he said.

Someday the flag will fly again. Mean something to millions again. It was his life and he knew it and he accepted it. "America," he whispered to himself. "/

am an American . . ."

He had drifted off for a couple hours, only to be awakened by a sharp knock on the cabin door. This was getting to be a habit. He would finally start to get some sleep when something would happen and he'd be back in action again.

This time the person at the door was one of Giuseppe's men. "Message," he kept saying, as if it were the only English he knew. "Message . . ."

Hunter was in the CIC inside of two minutes. Heath and Yaz were there, along with Giuseppe.

"What have you got?" Hunter asked, reaching for a mug of coffee.

"An intercepted radio message from the western 346

Med," Heath said.

Hunter stopped in mid-sip. "The Modern Knights?" he asked.

"Could be," Yaz said. "Listen for yourself . . ."

He reached over to the large radio set and turned on the built-in tape recorder. There was a burst of static, then an indecipherable chatter. Then, gradually, individual voices could be heard. They had definite British accents.

"Lancelot, Lancelot ..." one voice repeated. "Fueling time for you is 0830."

"I copy you, Galahad," another voice said. , More static went by, then another moment of ' clarity.

"Godfrey, Godfrey," a distinctly French-accented voice said. "Repondez.

Repondez."

"Oui, Norman," the reply came back. "Nuit blanche. Repete. Nuit blanche."

The tape ended with a final burst of static.

"Nuit blanche," Hunter repeated. "I think that means 'a white night,' like in

'a sleepless night.' "

"It's got to be some kind of code," Yaz said.

"Could be," Hunter said, rewinding the tape and listening to it again.

"Maybe it means they're working overtime," Heath offered.

"Any idea where they are?" Hunter asked.

Giuseppe nodded and pointed to a map of the Mediterranean. "Near Majorca," he said in his best English.

"Really?" Hunter was surprised.

"I felt the same way," Heath said. "I thought, 'My God, at least they've pushed off.' Maybe Stanley's return got them into gear. But then I realized they are still some distance away. That is, if they manage to avoid all the problems we encountered."

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"Christ," Yaz said. "We did our best to clear the way for them."

Hunter looked at the map. Majorca. Where it all started. It seemed like a year ago, when it was only a matter of a couple of weeks. How things had changed in this New Order World. At one time, crossing the Med was a lark on a cruise ship, or a flash in a jet airliner. Now, the other side of the Med-and those ships-might as well be a million miles away.

They listened to the messages one more time, then walked out into the open air, Hunter looked out on the horizon and saw it first.

"Jezzuz," he exclaimed. "Is that really it?"

Heath shielded his eyes against the glare of the rising sun. "I believe it is, old boy," he said excitedly.

A voice above them confirmed what they were thinking.

"That's it, lads," O'Brien called down from the bridge railing. "That's the entrance to the Suez Canal . . ."

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Hunter watched the S-3A roar off the deck of the carrier, climb, and turn south. Inside, he knew, the pilot, E.J. Russell, would be flying the most dangerous mission of his life.