by Jack Mars
Luke reached into the car and pulled out the heavy bolt cutters. He set the incendiary beneath the dashboard for one minute. Then he dashed to Frenchy’s side.
“You’re my driver! You’re not supposed to kill anybody!”
Frenchy shrugged. “Russians,” he said. “Cowards.”
“You shot them in the back.” To Luke the implications of that were clear. Who’s the coward around here?
But it wasn’t clear to Frenchy. He nodded and smiled. “Yes. I did.”
Luke put the clippers to the thick chain looped through the fence links and cut it. He dropped the cutters and shoved the gate open. Now they were really in.
Ba-BOOOOOOOM!
Ahead of them, a massive explosion ripped open the night.
A flash of light appeared. On the heels of that came a sound like boulders rushing downhill. An avalanche. The explosion rent the sky in oranges, reds, and yellows. For a split second, it turned night into day. It was not what Luke expected.
The explosion was so big that the ground trembled violently. Luke nearly lost his feet. Everything went sideways. For a moment, he thought the explosion was enough to tear the docks off their moorings. A giant flaming fireball went straight into the sky.
Ed’s boat had hit like a torpedo.
That was going to bring people. No doubt about it. Luke pulled his gun out, an MP5. His weapon of choice. The murder weapon. He started to run.
Frenchy was several steps ahead of him. The big Chechen reached the first man down, a guard who was trying to crawl forward, and finished him with a shot to the back of the head. BANG. Without pausing, he moved on to the next one. BANG.
Cold-blooded. He had just been sharing a laugh with these guys.
Three guards were still running out ahead of them. It was too late to let them live. Frenchy had scuttled that. Luke sprayed them with the MP5. They all dropped.
Now Luke was moving fast. He blew ahead of Frenchy, left him to clean up the mess. Ahead, the freighter, the Yuri Andropov II , was on fire. Oil or gasoline on the surface of the water had also caught. The whole area was fast becoming an apocalypse.
How much TNT had they put in that speedboat?
BOOM! Another explosion went up behind him. The Lada.
A second later, a smaller explosion went up. The Lada’s gas tank. Good. That flaming car at the gate would add to the confusion when the cavalry got here.
Luke reached where the freighter was docked lengthwise along the pier. The heat here was already intense, though the fire was on the other side of the boat. Flames ten stories high reached into the night. The fire shouldn’t be that…
BOOOOM!
Another long explosion rent the night, ripping out from somewhere inside the freighter. The docks trembled and Luke was nearly knocked off his feet again. The wind from a blast wave hit him.
What the hell was going on?
The ship was secured to the pier with giant shipping chains. Luke strapped his gun to his back, crossed the low barrier along the dock’s edge, grabbed a chain, and swung out over the water. He pulled himself, moving like a spider along the shipping chain on a diagonal up to the first deck.
There was no one on this deck. He moved along the catwalk, fast but careful, much like a cat himself. He came to a steel stairway. Gun out again, he moved cautiously to the top. Already, he could hear sirens behind him. Reinforcements were on their way. He’d better make this quick.
He stopped just short of the top of the steps and poked his head over the top. This was the deck. It was loud up here. A clarion bell was shrieking. Across the deck, the fire surged. Men had reached the firefighting equipment and were attempting to put the fire out. They sprayed it with powerful hoses—flame retardant or water, Luke couldn’t tell. From the smoke and the flames, all he could really see were vague forms moving through the chaos.
GA-BOOOOM!
Another explosion came, this one from directly beneath the firefighters. The deck erupted upward, and the men flew into the air, their bodies lit up like torches.
Luke stopped. He popped the magazine out of his gun and slipped it into his jacket. It was probably half-full. He pulled out a new forty-round magazine, slid it into the gun, and drove it home with his fist.
He gazed out at the deck. Flames shot through the hole. Burning corpses, ten, maybe twelve, littered the ground.
Ordnance.
The ship was a floating weapons depot. What else would cause these explosions? The Russians had loaded up this old rust bucket freighter with bombs. Was this what they were reduced to? That hadn’t been in any intelligence assessment Luke had…
BOOOM!
Another explosion ripped through the ship somewhere.
Now the fire just burned, unchecked, the flames crackling, the heat coming off it in waves. This thing was going to disintegrate. It was going to blow apart. It could happen any time. There wasn’t a moment to waste.
“Oh, man.”
Luke got up and ran across the deck, through the surge of heat. At the far end was a corridor. He raced along it. There were heavy steel doors on either side.
He stopped, tried the latch on one. It opened. He peeked in, gun raised and ready. There was no one in here.
He moved to the next one. Then the next one. Jesus. There was no one here. Where did they put the prisoners? He started to get a sinking feeling: the Russians had taken the prisoners somewhere else. This whole mission could turn out to be for nothing. Well, next to nothing—they could still destroy the submersible.
He tried another door. It was locked.
He stopped.
“If you can hear me,” he shouted. “Stay away from the door!”
He fired into the lock. Once, and the bullet ricocheted and whined off into the night. Twice, and the bullet punched a hole through the mechanism. Three times, and the lock came apart. He pulled the latch.
Three men sat on a low wooden bench. One was short and heavyset with a beard—the sub pilot, according to Luke’s information. One was thin like beef jerky—the spy, the prize, the man with the intelligence networks mapped in his brain. The last one was tall, broad, and muscular—the Navy SEAL. The men were blindfolded, and their hands were fastened behind their backs. They were slumped together as though they were asleep… or dead.
“You guys alive?” Luke said.
The SEAL nodded, his head moving sluggishly. He was the only one moving at all.
“American?” he said.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Have the interrogations started?”
The SEAL shook his head, just a bit. “No.”
Luke sighed. That was one piece of good news. He glanced down the corridor, both ways. No one was coming yet. Where was Frenchy? It looked like Luke was going to need him to get these guys moving.
“We’re here to rescue you. But I suppose that part is obvious.”
The SEAL shrugged. “They drugged us, man. Keeps us docile. Nothing is obvious right now.”
* * *
The water was on fire.
No one had game planned this. There was so much leaked oil and gasoline in this little harbor that the surface of the water was aflame.
Russians!
Ed poked his head up through the inky blackness. He took a deep breath. Ahead of him, the sky was on fire, great up-rushing bursts of orange and red and yellow, black smoke pouring from it. Closer, the bobbing swells were blanketed with red and orange and blue flame, all of it spreading its fingers toward him. All the fire gave an eerie effect—it was almost hard to tell where the sky ended and the water started.
As Ed watched, another explosion ripped open the night.
It was too much. There was no way his boat could have caused all this. There was an inferno going on over there.
To his left, gunfire erupted again. There were men still alive on the seawall. Ed ducked, thinking the gunfire was for him. But below the surface, he heard the rumble of approaching engines. Garry.
Thank God.
He popp
ed up, and here came the boat, moving slow, spotlight scanning the surface of the water. Ed moved to his left, putting the boat between himself and the gunfire coming from the seawall.
“Cut that light!” he screamed. “Cut it! I’m right here!”
The boat pulled up. It was a very different boat from the one Ed had driven. This one was also a fast boat, but it was hung from bow to stern with heavy aftermarket armor. It looked like something out of Mad Max. Ed stayed to its starboard side, all the gunfire hitting it on the port side. With the boat going so slow, the gunmen were really clobbering it.
Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. An automatic gun ripped up the metal.
Small arms fired winged it.
Ding!
Ed climbed the ladder and collapsed over the gunwale. Garry was up ahead, in the small protected cockpit, watching ahead through the slit in the metal.
“Edward!” he said, laughing. “You are alive!”
He was a big bear of a man, bearded, maybe forty years old. His hands were enormous. He looked back and smiled.
“Yes,” Ed said. “I’m alive.”
“Then man the gun, my friend.”
There was a big rear-mounted .50-caliber machinegun surrounded by armor. It could spin on a turret and poke its snout out through the slits in its armor. It was already loaded, but Ed would have to feed it himself, one hand on the trigger, one hand keeping the rounds flowing smoothly.
Ed sighed. “With pleasure.”
He crawled to it and slithered up into the turret.
No sooner had he gotten inside than Garry opened the throttle. The boat planed upward and took off toward the towering flames in front of them.
Ed sighted through the turret slit. Men ran along the seawall, shooting at the boat.
Ed opened fire with the .50-caliber.
* * *
“Frenchy, where the hell have you been?”
The big man loomed out of the dark inferno. His face was red with flames. The reflection of the fire shined in his sweat.
He shrugged. “Killing Russians.”
Luke shook his head. Where did they get this guy?
“Can you help me, please?” Luke said.
He had cut the cuffs off the prisoners and roused them from their stupors long enough to get them moving. The SEAL was okay. His eyes were dazed and his balance was off, but he could walk well enough. The other two were zonked. Vacant eyes, mouths hanging half ajar, stumbling footsteps. They didn’t seem to understand what was happening. Luke pushed them along in a single file line. He had stopped the convoy at the head of the corridor. In front of them, the deck was burning out of control.
“We need to find another way out,” Luke said.
Frenchy pointed the way Luke had just come. “I am on ships very much. That way. New stairwell will be at end of this hall.”
Luke’s shoulders slumped. The hall was fifty or sixty yards long and might as well have been a mile. Then the stairs down to the water, and the rendezvous with Ed and the Georgian, if that was even happening. How were they supposed to navigate all that?
“We might need to carry these guys,” Luke said.
Frenchy shook his head.
“What?” Luke said.
“I have bad back. No one said before we carry men. Not possible.”
Luke rubbed his forehead. What kind of commando had Big Daddy given him? The guy was overweight, he smoked, and he had a bad back. He seemed pretty good at killing people, but that was all he did, whether you wanted him to or not. He was a one-trick pony.
Luke pulled out his second satellite phone. He turned it on and waited several seconds while it powered up. Several seconds seemed like several minutes verging on several hours.
“Luke…” Frenchy said.
Luke raised a hand. “I know. I know. Let’s get them moving anyway.”
Frenchy took control of that. He walked over to the three men, physically turned them around, and started to push them along the hallway. He pushed the pilot too hard and the man fell to the metal deck.
Frenchy looked at Luke and shook his head. He reached down, grabbed the heavyset man around his ample waist, and wrenched him back up to his feet. He let out a long, guttural bark as he did so. It sounded like a bark of agony.
Luke smiled. “And you said you had a bad back.”
Luke hit the green button on the phone and it auto-dialed Swann, the signal beaming back and forth across the earth and the stars before finding its mark in Turkey.
A cautious voice came on the line. “Jimi?” It was Swann.
Luke had nearly forgotten. They were supposedly throwing a concert.
“The very same.”
“You’ve got a crowd gathering. It might be time to exit the stage.” This was Swann talking in code. It was too late for code. Everything was in motion.
“Where is Ed?”
“The big man?”
“Swann! Cut it out. I don’t have time. Okay? The boat is on fire.”
Swann was quiet for a long second.
“Yes, I see that it is. That wasn’t really the plan. We were just gonna do a hole. Maybe a little bit of fire as a distraction.”
“Thanks for the recap, Swann.”
Sirens were howling now. Somewhere just below them, someone was screaming. It sounded like agony. The ship trembled again as something rumbled deep in its bowels. Flames made a great whooshing noise as another fireball went up into the sky.
“Where is Ed? If you say the big man again, I’m going to kill you when I see you.”
A female voice cut in. Trudy.
“Luke! Don’t say that!”
“Ed is in the second speedboat,” Swann said. “They are en route to your position. They’ll arrive at the dock just south of you any minute. My imagery is on a time delay, so they might already be there.”
“Tell Ed I need him to come up here.”
“No way. The speedboat is under sustained assault from the seawall. A bunch of guys are setting up weapons along the opposite shore. The ship you’re on is like the towering inferno. It looks like the whole thing is gonna go. And they’re right in its shadow. Also, the harbor itself is on fire. I don’t even know how long they can hang out there. There’s no way he can get off that boat.”
“Swann, if he can’t get off the boat, how are we supposed to get on it? I’ve got the prisoners here, and they’re all drugged to the gills. They can barely walk.”
There was no answer.
“Swann?”
“I’m thinking.”
Luke shook his head, the phone pressed to his ear. “Take your time.” They were moving along the hallway, Frenchy pushing, shoving, holding up, and otherwise cajoling two of the prisoners along. The third prisoner, the Navy SEAL, stumbled down the hall under his own power. At times he put his hand along the wall to hold himself up.
Dammit! Luke had been hoping to put a gun in that guy’s hands. None of this was going according to plan. From Frenchy suddenly deciding to kill people, to the ship blowing up of its own accord… 100% SNAFU.
They were almost at the stairwell.
“Luke, it’s really time to go. There are two helicopters coming in from the northeast now. They’ll be above you in seconds. They’ve massed about ten or twenty vehicles at the front gate.”
“What kind of choppers?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get a good ID. Small. Could be anything. News choppers, police, Spetsnaz. Who knows?”
Luke sighed. “The vehicles?”
“First responders, fire trucks, ambulances, looks like maybe some SWAT guys. More coming. The roads to your location are full of flashing red and blue lights. It’s gonna be a traffic jam there in a minute.”
“All right. Just tell Ed we’re coming down. Tell him be ready to blow out of here. We’ll get these guys on the boat somehow. Signing off.”
“Luke?” Swann said.
“Yeah?”
“What about the sub?”
Luke looked at the phone. “What about
it?”
“You’re supposed to scuttle it.”
Luke patted the plastic explosives and the blasting caps in the pockets of his cargo pants. He had the tools, but he had no idea how he was supposed to reach the sub and use them.
“Swann, have you seen this place?”
“Yeah. It’s on fire. But that doesn’t mean the sub is on fire. If the ship goes down, but somehow the sub doesn’t burn… it’s a sub, you know what I mean? A little water isn’t going to hurt it.”
“I always enjoy talking to you, Swann.”
* * *
Swann hung up the phone.
“We got problems,” he said.
“What is it?”
Swann looked at Trudy. Her brown hair cascaded to her shoulders. Her eyes were big and pretty and wide open and concerned behind owlish, bright blue glasses. She wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and pink socks. The T-shirt had a cartoon of a sexy female cat lying on its side, propped up on its elbow, its head resting in its hand. The shirt had one word on it, just below the cat: Meow.
Meow was right. Trudy looked beautiful. Behind her, a giant bay window looked out on the night skyline of Trabzon. They were together in this crazy opulent suite at the top of this hotel, pretending to be rich newlyweds from Marin County. Just two young kids, holed up in bed together for days, ordering in room service.
Swann shook his head to clear it. It was a nice fantasy.
He turned to look at his bank of computer monitors. On two of them, there was nothing but raging fires. On the third, there was a blinking light—the GPS location of the submersible Nereus near, but not necessarily within, those flames.
“They’ve got all kinds of Russian personnel converging on them. Luke has the prisoners with him, but they’ve all been drugged. They can’t walk, apparently. The boat is on fire, and it looks to me like it’s probably going to sink. But that might not take out the sub. We need to think of something so Luke can just get out of there.”
Trudy pursed her lips. “Thinking out loud here. What if they don’t destroy the sub? If they get the prisoners out, that’s still a win, right?”
