The Nemesis Program_Ben Hope

by Scott Mariani

  ‘They have it coming,’ he muttered to himself.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  It was from the rocky Estonian shoreline, just before the break of dawn, that the high-performance rigid inflatable boat cut rapidly across the waters of the Gulf under cover of darkness. It had no lights, and the men aboard were dressed all in black. It was cold. Their faces were hard, their eyes fixed purposefully on the dark shape of the ship on the horizon.

  As the RIB approached, the Triton grew larger and larger ahead, like a vast mountain looming out of the pre-dawn murk. The small craft steered a course slightly ahead of the ship’s, then cut its motor and drifted silently on the swell, waiting for the towering prow of the cargo vessel to catch up. Closer, closer; the RIB bobbed precariously over the foam of the ship’s prow wave and down the side of the hull, a dangerous operation if the men on board hadn’t known just what they were doing.

  As the rusted side of the Triton streamed by, close enough to reach out and touch, Ben clamped a short magnetic mooring cable to the hull. With a jerk, the dinghy was suddenly being towed along with the ship, attached like a tiny remora to some vast leviathan and tucked tightly into the concave curve of its flank so that it was invisible to anyone peering down from the edge of the deck.

  Phase One had been accomplished.

  Ben turned to Jeff, who grinned at him from behind his diving mask and gave the thumbs-up while Boonzie McCulloch helped him don his oxygen bottle. As the ex-Navy diver, Jeff was better qualified for the next job than anyone. This was Phase Two, essential to the success of the operation.

  Crouching in the bottom of the boat, Ben unzipped a bag and lifted out a heavy metallic round object, the size of a dinner plate but several inches thick. Two carabiner clips secured it onto Jeff’s harness together with the life-line that would allow him to keep up with the ship once he went under. A moment later, the former SBS commando slipped with practised ease into the water and disappeared.

  Ben waited tensely, counting the seconds by the illuminated dial of his watch. Nobody spoke – hand signals only.

  Jeff resurfaced less than a minute later, pulled himself back to the dinghy by the life-line and clambered aboard, quite a few kilograms lighter now that the high-explosive limpet mine had been successfully clamped to the underside of the Triton’s hull. When remotely detonated it would rip a fatal hole that would sink her in minutes.

  But sending the cargo ship to the bottom of the Gulf of Finland was just part of the plan. Jeff quickly stripped off his diver’s gear, mask and flippers and, shivering with the cold, pulled on his trousers, assault vest and boots. Ben tossed him a backpack like the one everyone else was wearing.

  Now they were ready to move to Phase Three.

  In the Triton’s command centre, a radar operator named Rick Yemm jumped up from his station to report to one of his superiors the anomaly he’d just noticed. The message quickly filtered up the line and reached Isaac Friedkin, who went anxiously to relay it to Victor Craine in the main control room.

  The old man turned with an icy stare as Friedkin’s presence interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you, sir. But radar is picking up a signal nearby. We think it’s a small vessel.’

  ‘This is a busy lane, Friedkin. It’s full of small vessels.’

  ‘This is different, sir. Whatever it is, it came extremely close and then disappeared.’

  ‘It can’t have disappeared,’ Craine snapped, then quickly thought again. ‘Unless—’

  Friedkin nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Unless it’s moored itself to us. It’s the only way the radar could miss it.’

  Craine’s brow wrinkled. If they were being quietly boarded, then by whom? It wasn’t unknown for Finnish customs officials to mount surprise raids on the off chance of intercepting drug shipments, but even that sounded unlikely. ‘Send a team to investigate,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do it now, Friedkin.’

  Friedkin nodded again and hurried off to alert the security personnel.

  The grappling iron burst with a breathy thud out of the muzzle of the launcher and sailed up the ship’s side, trailing on its cable the lightweight rope ladder that unwound rapidly from the coil at the bottom of the RIB. The iron’s rubber-coated hooks cleared the railing, thumped softly to the deck and slid a few feet before gripping something solid.

  Ben tested the ladder with his weight. It was secure. He signalled the okay to the others and began to scramble nimbly upwards. Quigley, Boonzie and Jeff watched him climb, a diminishing black figure swaying from side to side on the flimsy ladder, padding lightly with his feet when the ship’s motion swung him against the hull. He reached the top and signalled down before disappearing over the rail. Boonzie was next, powering up the rope rungs with the energy of a man half his age.

  One by one, the team assembled on the deck to merge invisibly with the shadows between container stacks. In silence, each man opened up his waterproof backpack and emptied out the equipment inside. The MP5s emerged first. Loaded magazines snapped into receivers. Silencers were screwed tightly onto muzzles, bolts were cocked, rounds chambered. Tactical lights and lasers were kept off for the moment. They checked and holstered their pistols, and clipped on their grenades.

  The scarlet dawn was just beginning to break in the east. Phase Three had begun.

  Minutes later, the five-strong patrol who’d been sent out to check for a possible boarding party combed the deck, each man carrying his regulation M4 carbine with thirty-round magazine. So far they’d detected nothing suspicious. The tallest of them tried leaning out over the rail as far as he dared, with another two clutching his belt. All he could see was the ship’s side and the heaving slate-grey sea far below. He shook his head. Like the others, he didn’t see how anyone could have boarded the vessel, but they had their strict orders to search every inch of her thoroughly.

  As they patrolled the aisle between two towering container columns, four shapes came flitting out of the shadows behind them. The dawn sun glittered redly on the blade of a Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger.

  The guards were taken by surprise. It was all over with a few stifled cries and grunts, followed quickly by five faint splashes as the bodies were dropped over the side, minus their weapons and ammunition.

  Ben’s team retreated behind cover and began stealthily weaving a path from one container stack to the next, heading for the towering superstructure. Ben led the way, followed by Quigley, then Boonzie, then Jeff. They knew exactly where they needed to go.

  At fractionally over six hundred miles away, the Triton was now almost within range of its target and the buzz of anticipation in the command centre was reaching its peak. The targeting sequence was now complete, the coordinates entered and identified by the satellite. Victor Craine eyed the atomic clock on the wall. It was split-second synchronised with the digital countdown on the computer screen in front of him. In precisely twenty-three minutes, it would be time.

  The Director trusted nobody. He climbed out of his chair, picked up his sticks and was hobbling over to the other computer to triple-check the coordinates when the control room door burst open and the red-faced, breathless and clearly agitated Friedkin hurried up to him.

  ‘Well?’ Craine demanded.

  ‘We may have a problem, sir. The patrol I sent to check the outside—’

  ‘They found something?’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know if they did, or what.’

  The Director balked at such a reply. Was the man drunk, to come back to him with such vague information?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Friedkin repeated insistently, ‘because they’re no longer answering their radios.’

  ‘What? Then send another team out after them.’

  ‘I did. They’ve fallen out of contact as well.’

  Craine opened his mouth to bark a furious reply, but the words were snatched out of his mouth by the loud explosion that rocked the ship and made him stagger.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

&
nbsp; ‘Jesus Christ!’ Friedkin cried out. ‘What the—?’

  Victor Craine steadied himself against the computer console and stared slack-jawed at the screen on the wall that showed a section of the Triton’s deck erupt in a bright leaping flash of orange flame. Through the mushrooming fireball tumbled pieces of wreckage and shattered container. A huge plume of black smoke rolled upwards, blotting out the rising sun. Instantly, alarms were sounding all over the ship.

  ‘We’re under attack,’ Craine said with calm certainty.

  ‘B-but how?’ Friedkin stammered, wide-eyed. ‘From who? There’s nobody there.’

  ‘Don’t just stand there, man. Issue weapons to every available man and get them out there to search this ship from top to bottom.’

  ‘Even the scientists?’

  ‘Anyone with the right number of fingers can pull a trigger,’ Craine said. ‘I want the situation contained and whoever’s responsible brought to me alive. Alive, understood? Now get out there and organise it. Report back to me in two minutes. It had better be good news.’

  Friedkin obeyed and ran out of the door, leaving Craine alone in the control room. On the screen, little figures of security personnel and ship’s crew were swarming to the site of the explosion, where a fierce blaze was now raging among a section of destroyed containers. Emergency hoses blasted foam and water at the flames, beating them back.

  Craine gripped the arm of his chair for support as a second blast suddenly erupted closer to the ship’s bridge. He caught a glimpse onscreen of the orange fireball and flying wreckage before the camera was hit by some piece of shrapnel and the image went black.

  ‘Whoever you are, I promise you that you won’t get off this ship alive,’ he said out loud.

  The pressure wave from the second explosion shattered dozens of windows in the ship’s superstructure, raining glass down on deck and scattering a group of security personnel in all directions. Just as the fire hoses were getting to grips with the first blaze, the new one began to spread fiercely, threatening the bridge.

  ‘That should keep them busy for a minute or two, aye?’ Boonzie said with a grin. Alarms were keening everywhere. The raid team’s arrival on board the ship was now well and truly announced – but with the diversion in full swing, nobody who was still alive had seen them yet as they filtered their way from cover to cover towards the hatchway that the ship’s plans showed led below. Rounding the side of the last container stack the hatch came into view, just a short run across the open deck.

  Ben glanced left, right, left again and signalled ‘Go’. They moved out from cover and slipped unseen through the hatchway, trotting fast and silently along a short passage. At the end of the passage were two more riveted steel hatches, one to the left and the other leading to a downward flight of steps. Ben pointed ahead.

  But before they reached the companionway, they caught the approach of running footsteps and the hatch to the left swung open. Through it burst a group of security guards with their M4 carbines at the ready. Six against four, but the team had the advantage of surprise. Before the guards could bring their weapons to the shoulder, Ben had time to aim centre-of-mass and put a suppressed double-tap into the nearest one, then into the one next to him. Boonzie took the two on the left, Jeff the two on the right – but he snatched the trigger on the last one and his shot went wide. The guard’s rifle swung up. The loud report from the .223 would have given their position away to half the ship, but it never came. Quigley fired a three-shot burst and the man crumpled and twisted to the floor.

  ‘Good one,’ Jeff said, slapping Quigley on the shoulder.

  ‘Keep moving.’ Ben stepped over the bodies and led the way deeper into the ship.

  ‘You’re late, Friedkin. Update me,’ the old man said acidly as his aide came running back into the control room, red-faced and out of breath.

  ‘Sir, every available man is scouring the vessel. But there’s no longer any question that our security has been breached by a boarding party. We have eleven men down that we know of, plus five more missing. No wounded.’

  Craine nodded sagely. ‘Professionals.’

  ‘Sir, the situation is reaching crisis point. We may have to get you off the ship.’

  ‘Evacuate?’ Craine said. ‘On the verge of the biggest moment in political history? Out of the question.’ He eyed Friedkin’s jacket. ‘Are you armed?’

  The aide flapped open his jacket to reveal the holstered Glock 17. To Craine’s certain knowledge, he’d never once drawn it except on the practice range.

  ‘Get yourself an M4 from the armoury and join the others,’ Craine ordered him. ‘If you can’t contain this, don’t bother coming back.’

  The alarmed Friedkin rushed from the room without protest.

  The command centre was strangely quiet now that every member of the personnel had been sent out to hunt the boarders. Craine looked up at the atomic clock. Six minutes, forty-one seconds and they’d be within range of the target. Everything was ready. The technical stuff was all out of the way and all that remained was for him to arm the trigger device and press the red button.

  Six minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Craine felt in his trouser pocket for the arming key. It was there, solid and chunky and reassuring.

  Nobody could stop what was going to happen.

  Craine reclined in his chair, closed his eyes and pensively caressed the carved surfaces of the ivory and ebony sticks resting across his lap. He felt tired and very, very old, yet a feeling of serenity came over him. Down here in the depths of the ship, insulated from all the chaos happening above, it was almost peaceful.

  ‘Victor Craine,’ said a voice behind him.

  Craine opened his eyes. Snatched up his sticks and struggled out of his chair to face the presence in the room.

  Ben was standing in the doorway. His MP5 dangled loosely from his hand. ‘So this is where we play with our toys,’ he said, glancing about the room.

  Craine wasn’t particularly afraid. He’d lived too long and faced death too many times in the past for that. ‘Major Hope. You surprise me. I confess I’d taken your demise somewhat for granted.’

  ‘I told you it was au revoir,’ Ben said. He stepped into the room, followed by the others.

  ‘Nice place ye’ve got here,’ Boonzie commented gruffly.

  ‘Agent Quigley too,’ Craine said as he recognised the American. ‘My, my.’

  Jeff stepped over to flip a wall-mounted switch. With a clunk and a whirr, an armoured steel shutter glided down to bar the doorway. Designed to isolate the main control room in time of crisis, it would resist a rocket-propelled grenade and take all day to breach with a thermal cutter.

  ‘It looks as though you have me at a disadvantage, Major Hope,’ Craine said, leaning wearily on his sticks. ‘You’re an incredibly persistent man.’

  ‘I do have that irritating tendency,’ Ben said. ‘And don’t call me Major. I’m retired.’

  Craine shrugged. ‘Be that as it may, a man of such admirable tenacity would have been an asset to me.’

  ‘Sorry, Craine, but destroying the world, wiping out thousands of innocent people – it’s not quite my style.’

  ‘Your profile says you’re a drinking man,’ Craine said. ‘There seem to have been some issues with that, towards the end of your military career.’ He shuffled away from his chair and over towards a polished cabinet by the wall. ‘If you still imbibe, perhaps I can tempt you with a glass of something very special.’ Hooking the ebony stick over his arm, he opened the cabinet and lifted out a bottle. ‘This cognac is almost as old as I am. My doctor has declared it off-limits, but under the circumstances …’ He carefully poured some out into a crystal glass. ‘Care to join me?’

  ‘I don’t tend to drink with mass murderers so much,’ Ben said.

  Craine took a sip and smacked his wrinkled lips. ‘I realise the superficial view a man like you must take of a man like me. You’re a soldier. Soldiers follow orders without thinking twice about the deeper strategies
involved, strategies conceived by deeper and more knowing minds. You perceive only the obvious. There are so many things you don’t understand. You see, we’re not destroying, we’re building. Sparing lives. Working to create a better place for us all.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Quigley said. ‘Let’s take him and get out of here.’

  ‘Sounds good tae me,’ Boonzie grunted.

  Ben said nothing. Until that moment he’d paid no notice to the screens on the wall, but he was staring at them now. He stepped closer and peered at the illuminated map with the target location flashing bright red at its centre. To its left, another screen displayed the target’s GPS coordinates. To the right, another again showed what looked like a live satellite image of a city. A city with an extremely distinctive skyline, lit in reds and golds by the rising sun.

  Ben could hardly believe what he was seeing. And yet there it was.

  ‘Moscow,’ he said. ‘I should have seen it. This is your next target.’

  Craine sighed, with the regretful look of a surgeon committed to performing an unpleasant, yet vitally necessary, operation. ‘I’m afraid that’s so. The most populous city in Europe, home to eleven million people, shortly scheduled to be hit by an earthquake measuring approximately nine point eight on the Richter Scale.’

  ‘The big one,’ Ben said, aghast, remembering what Lund had told them.

  Craine gave a dry smile. ‘Indeed. The largest disaster in recorded history, surpassing the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile by some ten gigatons or more. But then, it takes a heavy hammer to crack a nut so tough. And believe me, it will be cracked. I only have to press that button, and our dear Moscow more or less ceases to exist. Even you would have to admit that’s quite a feat. I’d forgotten how good this brandy was. Sure you wouldn’t care for a … what is it the Scots call it? A wee dram?’