by Tom Clancy
“Roger that. Very well, you may continue the mission, but the safety of your guests is your responsibility. Do not, repeat do not take any unnecessary chances. Acknowledge.”
“Yes, sir, we will not take any unnecessary chances.”
“Use your head, Commander, and report as necessary. Out.”
“Now there’s a vote of confidence,” Jackson thought aloud. “Carry on.”
“Left fifteen degrees rudder,” Chief Z ordered, rounding Greenbury Point. “Come to new course zero-two-zero.”
“Target bearing zero-one-four, range fourteen hundred, speed still eight knots,” His Highness told the quartermaster on the chart table. “They took a shorter route around this point.”
“No problem,” the chief noted, looking at the radar plot. “We have deep water all the way up from here.”
“Chief Z, do we have any coffee aboard?”
“I got a pot in the galley, sir, but I don’t have anybody to work it. ”
“I’ll take care of that,” Jack said. He went below, then to starboard and below again. The galley was a small one, but the coffee machine was predictably of the proper size. Ryan got it started and went back topside. Breckenridge was passing out life jackets to everyone aboard, which seemed a sensible enough precaution. The Marines were deployed on the bridgewalk outside the pilothouse.
“Coffee in ten minutes,” he announced.
“Say again, Coast Guard,” Robby said into the microphone.
“Navy Echo Foxtrot, this is Coast Guard Baltimore, do you read, over.”
“That’s better.”
“Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“We are tracking a small boat, about a twenty-footer—with ten or more armed terrorists aboard.” He gave position, course, and speed. “Acknowledge that.”
“Roger, you say a boat full of bad guys and machine guns. Is this for real? Over.”
“That’s affirmative, son. Now let’s cut the crap and get down to it.”
The response was slightly miffed. “Roger that, we have a forty-one boat about to leave the dock and a thirty-two-footer’ll be about ten minutes behind it. These are small harbor-patrol boats. They are not equipped to fight a surface gun action, mister.”
“We have ten Marines aboard,” Jackson replied. “Do you request assistance?”
“Hell, yes—that’s affirmative, Echo Foxtrot. I have the police and the FBI on the phone, and they are heading to this area.”
“Okay, have your forty-one boat call us when they clear the dock. Let’s have your boat track from in front and we’ll track from behind. If we can figure where the target is heading, I want you to call in the cops.”
“We can do that easy enough. Let me get some things rolling here, Navy. Stand by.”
“A ship,” the Prince said.
“It’s gotta be,” Ryan agreed. “The same way they did it when they rescued that Miller bastard.... Robby, can you get the Coast Guard to give us a list of the ships in the harbor?”
Werner and both Hostage Rescue groups were already moving. He wondered what had gone wrong—and right—tonight, but that would be determined later. For the moment he had agents and police heading toward the Naval Academy to protect the people he was supposed to have rescued, and his men were split between an FBI Chevy Suburban and two State Police cars, all heading north on Ritchie Highway toward Baltimore. If only they could use helicopters, he thought, but the weather was too bad, and everyone had had enough of that for one night. They were back to being a SWAT team, a purpose for which they were well suited. Despite everything that had gone wrong tonight, they now had a large group of terrorists flushed and in the open....
“Here’s the list of the ships in port,” the Coast Guard Lieutenant said over the radio. “We had a lot of them leave Friday night, so the list isn’t too long. I’ll start off at the Dundalk Marine Terminal. Nissan Courier, Japanese registry, she’s a car carrier out of Yokohama delivering a bunch of cars and trucks. Wilhelm Schörner, West German registry, a container boat out of Bremen with general cargo. Costanza, Cypriot registry, out of Valetta, Malta—”
“Bingo!” Ryan said.
“—scheduled to sail in about five hours, looks like. George McReady, American, arrived with a cargo of lumber from Port-land, Oregon. That’s the last one there.”
“Tell me about the Costanza,” Robby said, looking at Jack.
“She arrived in ballast and loaded up a cargo mainly of farm equipment and some other stuff. Sails before dawn, supposed to be headed back for Valetta.”
“That’s probably our boy,” Jack said quietly.
“Stand by, Coast Guard.” Robby turned away from the radio. “How do you know, Jack?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a solid guess. When these bastards pulled that rescue on Christmas Day, they were probably picked up in the Channel by a Cypriot-registered ship. We think their weapons get to them through a Maltese dealer who works with a South African, and a lot of terrorists move back and forth through Malta—the local government’s tight with a certain country due south of there. The Maltese don’t get their own hands dirty, but they’re real good at looking the other way if the money’s right.” Robby nodded and keyed his mike.
“Coast Guard, have you gotten things straightened out with the local cops?”
“That’s a rog, Navy.”
“Tell them that we believe the target’s objective is the Costanza.”
“Roger that. We’ll have our thirty-two boat stake her out and call in the cops.”
“Don’t let them see you, Coast Guard!”
“Understood, Navy. We can handle that part easy enough. Stand by.... Navy, be advised that our forty-one boat reports radar contact with you and the target, rounding Bodkin Point. Is this correct? Over.”
“Yes!” called the Quartermaster at the chart table. He was making a precise record of the course tracks from the radar plot.
“That’s affirm, Coast Guard. Tell your boat to take station five hundred yards forward of the target. Acknowledge.”
“Roger, five-zero-zero yards. Okay, let’s see if we can get the cops moving. Stand by.”
“We got ’em,” Ryan thought aloud.
“Uh, Lieutenant, keep your hands still, sir.” It was Breckenridge. He reached into Ryan’s belt and extracted the Browning automatic. Jack was surprised to see that he’d stuck it in there with the hammer back and safety off. Breckenridge lowered the hammer and put the pistol back where it was. “Let’s try to think ‘safe,’ sir, okay? Otherwise you might lose something important. ”
Ryan nodded rather sheepishly. “Thanks, Gunny.”
“Somebody has to protect the lieutenants.” Breckenridge turned. “Okay, Marines—let’s stay awake out there!”
“You got a man on the Prince?” Jack asked.
“Even before the Admiral said so.” The Sergeant Major gestured to where a corporal was standing, rifle in hand, three feet from His Highness, with orders to stay between him and the gunfire.
Five minutes later a trio of State Police cars drove without lights to Berth Six of the Dundalk Marine Terminal. The cars were parked under one of the gantry cranes used for transferring cargo containers, and five officers walked quietly to the ship’s accommodation ladder. A crewman stationed there stopped them—or tried to. A language barrier prevented proper communications. He found himself accompanying the troopers, with his hands cuffed behind his back. The senior police officer bounded up three more ladders and arrived at the bridge.
“What is this!”
“And who might you be?” the cop inquired from behind a shotgun.
“I am the master of this ship!” Captain Nikolai Frenza proclaimed.
“Well, Captain, I am Sergeant William Powers of the Maryland State Police, and I have some questions for you.”
“You have no authority on my ship!” Frenza answered. His accent was a mixture of Greek and some other tongue. “I will talk to the Coast Guard and no one else.”
“I want to make this real clear.” Powers walked the fifteen feet to the Captain, his hands tight around the Ithaca 12-gauge shotgun. “That shore you’re tied to is the State of Maryland, and this shotgun says I got all the authority I need. Now we have information that a boatload of terrorists is coming here, and the word is they’ve killed a bunch of people, including three state troopers.” He planted the muzzle against Frenza’s chest. “Captain, if they do come here, or if you fuck with me any more tonight, you are in a whole shitpot full of trouble-do you understand me!”
The man wilted before his eyes, Powers saw. So the information is correct. Good.
“You would be well advised to cooperate, ’cause pretty soon we’re going to have more cops here ’n you ever saw. You just might need some friends, mister. If you have something to tell me, I want to hear it right now.”
Frenza hesitated, his eyes shifting toward the bow and back. He was in deep trouble, more than his advance payment would ever cover. “There are four of them aboard. They are forward, starboard side, near the bow. We didn’t know—”
“Shut up.” Powers nodded to a corporal, who got on his portable radio. “What about your crew?”
“The crew is below, preparing to take the ship to sea.”
“Sarge, the Coast Guard says they’re three miles off and heading in.”
“All right.” Powers pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt. He and his men took the four men standing bridge watch and secured them to the ship’s wheel and two other fittings. “Captain, if you or your people make any noise at all, I’ll come back here and splatter you all over this ship. I am not kidding.”
Powers took his men down to the main deck and forward on the port side. The Costanza’s superstructure was all aft. Forward of it, the deck was a mass of cargo containers, each the size of a truck-trailer, piled three- and four-high. Between each pile was an artificial alleyway, perhaps three feet wide, which allowed them to approach the bow unobserved. The Sergeant had no SWAT experience, but all of his men had shotguns and he did know something of infantry tactics.
It was like walking alongside a building, except that the street was made of rusty steel. The rain had abated, finally, but it still made noise, clattering on the metal container boxes. They passed the last of these to find that the ship’s forward hold was open and a crane was hanging over the starboard side. Powers peeked around the corner and saw two men standing at the far side of the deck. They appeared to be looking southeast, toward the entrance to the harbor. There was no easy way to approach. He and his men crouched and went straight toward them. They’d gotten halfway when one turned.
“Who are you?”
“State Police!” Powers noted the accent and brought his gun up, but he tripped on a deck fitting and his first shot went into the air. The man on the starboard side came up with a pistol and fired, also missing, then ducked behind the container. The fourth state trooper went forward around the deck hatch and fired at the container edge, covering his comrades. Powers heard a flurry of conversation and the sound of running feet. He took a deep breath and ran to the starboard side.
No one was in sight. The men who’d run aft were nowhere to be seen. There was an accommodation ladder leading from an opening in the rail down to the water, and nothing else but a radio that someone had dropped.
“Oh, shit.” The tactical situation was lousy. He had armed criminals close by but out of sight and a boatload of others on the way. He sent one of his men to the port side to watch that line of approach, and another to train his shotgun down the starboard side. Then he got on the radio and learned that plenty more help was on the way. Powers decided to sit tight and take his chances. He’d known Larry Fontana, helped carry his coffin out of the church, and he was damned if he’d pass up the chance to get the people who’d killed him.
A State Police car had taken the lead. The FBI was now on the Francis Scott Key Bridge, crossing over Baltimore Harbor. The next trick was to get from the expressway to the marine terminal. A trooper said he knew a shortcut, and he led the procession of three cars. A twenty-foot boat was going under the bridge at that very moment.
“Target coming right, appears to be heading towards a ship tied to the quay, bearing three-five-two,” His Highness reported.
“That’s it,” Ryan said. “We got ’em.”
“Chief, let’s close up some,” Jackson ordered.
“They might spot us, sir—the rain’s slacking off. If they’re heading to the north, I can close up on their port side. They’re heading for that ship—you want us to hit them right when they get there?” Chief Znamirowski asked.
“That’s right.”
“Okay. I’ll get somebody on the searchlight. Captain Peters, you’ll want to get your Marines on the starboard side. Looks like surface action starboard,” Chief Z noted. Navy regulations prohibited her from serving on a combatant ship, but she’d beaten the game after all!
“Right.” Peters gave the order and Breckenridge got the Marines in place. Ryan left the pilothouse and went to the main deck aft. He had already come to his decision. Sean Miller was out there.
“I hear a boat,” one of the troopers said quietly.
“Yeah.” Powers fed a round into his shotgun. He looked aft. There were people there with guns. He heard footsteps behind him—more police!
“Who’s in charge here?” a corporal asked.
“I am,” Powers replied. “You stay here. You two, move aft. If you see a head come out from behind a container, blow it the hell off.”
“I see it!” So did Powers. A white fiberglass boat appeared a hundred yards off, coming slowly up to the ship’s ladder.
“Jesus.” It seemed full of people, and every one, he’d been told, had an automatic weapon. Unconsciously he felt the steel plating on the ship’s side. He wondered if it would stop a bullet. Most troopers now wore protective body armor, but Powers didn’t. The Sergeant flipped off the safety on his shotgun. It was just about time.
The boat approached like a car edging into a parking space. The helmsman nosed the boat to the bottom of the accommodation ladder and someone in the bow tied it off. Two men got out onto the small lower platform. They helped someone off the boat, then started to carry him up the metal staircase. Powers let them get halfway.
“Freeze! State Police!” He and two others pointed shotguns straight down at the boat. “Move and you’re dead,” he added, and was sorry for it. It sounded too much like TV.
He saw heads turn upward, a few mouths open in surprise. A few hands moved, too, but before anything that looked like a weapon moved in his direction, a two-foot searchlight blazed down on the boat from seaward.
Powers was thankful for the light. He saw their heads snap around, then up at him. He could see their expressions now. They were trapped and knew it.
“Hi, there.” A voice came across the water. It was a woman’s voice on a loudspeaker. “If anybody moves, I have ten Marines to blow you to hell-and-gone. Make my day,” the voice concluded. Sergeant Powers winced at that.
Then another light came on. “This is the U.S. Coast Guard. You are all under arrest.”
“Like hell!” Powers screamed. “I got ’em!” It took another minute to establish what was going on to everyone’s satisfaction. The big, gray Navy patrol boat came right alongside the smaller boat, and Powers was relieved to see ten rifles pointed at his prisoners.
“Okay, let’s put all the guns down, people, and come up one at a time.” His head jerked around as a single pistol shot rang out, followed by a pair of shotgun blasts. The Sergeant winced, but ignored it as best he could and kept his gun zeroed on the boat.
“I seen one!” a trooper said. “About a hundred feet back of us!”
“Cover it,” Powers ordered. “Okay, you people get the hell up here and flat down on the deck.”
The first two arrived, carrying a third man who was wounded in the chest. Powers got them stretched out, facedown on the deck, forwards of the front rank of co
ntainers. The rest came up singly. By the time the last was up, he’d counted twelve, several more of them hurt. They’d left behind a bunch of guns and what looked like a body.
“Hey, Marines, we could use a hand here!”
It was all the encouragement he needed. Ryan was standing on the YP’s afterdeck, and jumped down. He slipped and fell on the deck. Breckenridge arrived immediately behind him and looked at the body the terrorists had left behind. A half-inch hole had been drilled in the man’s forehead.
“I thought I got off one good round. Lead on, Lieutenant.” He gestured at the ladder. Ryan charged up the steps, pistol in hand. Behind him, Captain Peters was screaming something at him, but Jack simply didn’t care.
“Careful, we have bad guys down that way in the container stacks,” Powers warned.
Jack went around the front rank of metal boxes and saw the men facedown on the deck, hands behind their necks, with a pair of troopers standing over them. In a moment there were six Marines there, too.
Captain Peters came up and went to the police Sergeant, who seemed to be in command.
“We have at least two more, maybe four, hiding in the container rows,” Powers said.
“Want some help flushing them out?”
“Yeah, let’s go do it.” Powers grinned in the darkness. He assembled all of his men, leaving Breckenridge and three Marines to guard the men on the deck. Ryan stayed there, too. He waited for the others to move aft.
Then he started looking at faces.
Miller was looking, too, still hoping to find a way out. He turned his head to the left and saw Ryan staring at him from twenty feet away. They recognized each other in an instant, and Miller saw something, a look that he had always reserved for his own use.
I am Death, Ryan’s face told him.
