Charon's Landing - v4

by Jack Du Brul

  One of the men assigned to replace the tanker’s name guarded the closed doors of the elevator, the body of a crewman at his feet, shot to death as he tried to escape. He was turned away when Hauser dodged from the emergency stairwell.

  The bridge was only a couple of dozen paces away. Hauser had seen the terrorist the moment he committed himself, but there was nothing he could do about it now. A dozen paces to go. The gunman finally noticed Hauser, raising his Israeli-made Uzi machine pistol at the same instant. Four paces. Hauser could hear the subdued ping of the radar repeater through the open bridge door. Three paces.

  The hallway exploded. The Uzi opened up like a chain saw, bullets screaming, tearing into the walls, ricocheting into the bridge. The hallway filled with acidic smoke, deafening noise, and the full thirty-two rounds from the weapon’s stick magazine.

  The carpet caught a few of the rounds and the left side wall caught a few more but the majority raked across the control panel of the supertanker and slammed into the windscreen, creating round spiderwebs in the inch-thick glass. The helmsman was almost cut in half, two nearly separated chunks of his body crashing to the deck in a widening pool of blood. Hauser had escaped the fusillade by diving the last few paces to the bridge and rolling around the thick wooden pedestal of the chart table.

  The leaden sky was still dark, night oozing onto the bridge through the windows and portholes, gathering in the shadowed corners. A bullet had cut a wire somewhere in the tangled maze behind the controls, killing the lights with a blue arc of electricity as the system shorted. The emergency lights kicked on, and an alarm pierced the air shrilly. The murky bridge smelled of smoke, ozone, and blood.

  Hauser had managed to gain a few seconds, but he hadn’t escaped yet. There were two separate emergency distress systems located on the bridge console, but he didn’t have time to reach either of them. His only choice was to get out onto the flying bridge where the international orange canister of the EPIRB sat in its bin. If he could reach it and toss it over the side of the vessel, the contact with the saltwater would activate the system and send a distress call over a satellite uplink. He’d worry about his options after that.

  Forcing himself to ignore the helmsman’s corpse, he crawled toward the insulated door to the flying bridge, his arms shaking so badly that they almost couldn’t take his body weight. The rank sweat of fear slicked his body, bathing him in a clammy chill. Although he’d spent most of his adult life aboard supertankers, he’d never fully appreciated how wide they were until he was forced to crawl across the bridge of one, the fear of an assassin’s bullet urging him onward.

  He made it to the door, his body tensed for the inevitable shot in the back, but it didn’t come. He couldn’t understand what was delaying them. He stretched up from the floor, reaching for the handle to temporary freedom when an unfamiliar voice called out sharply.

  “Stop where you are.”

  Hauser ignored the order. With a burst of adrenaline he un-dogged the door, throwing his weight against the icy wind that raced across the ship. He fell out onto the snow-covered flying bridge. A pistol cracked three times in rapid succession, the shots landing just inches from Hauser’s slithering form, kicking up tiny geysers of snow and creating glowing hot spots on the metal deck that smelled of burned steel. He moved as fast as he could but with a tired resignation. The flying bridge was a dead end. He was trapped.

  The outside visibility was only about thirty feet. Snow, sleet, and freezing rain slanted against him, forced by nature and the movement of the ship into a forty-knot gale. He wasn’t dressed for this kind of weather; the cold and wet soaked through his uniform shirt, and only fear kept him from shivering to death. Hauser knew that he wouldn’t last more than fifteen minutes before hypothermia robbed him of control over his own body. The pistol roared again, the bullet fired blindly into the twisting storm but passing close enough to Hauser to make him duck. Hypothermia wouldn’t have the time to kill him.

  Lyle Hauser had never considered himself a brave man. True, he had done things that others wouldn’t, like jumping aboard a burning barge when he was twenty to save a deckhand trapped by the flames. He had always just done whatever he felt was necessary. If others saw his acts as brave and heroic, well, that was up to them. Hauser was just doing his job.

  His job right now was surviving. There was only one option, and it would take all the bravery he possessed. He raced to the end of the bridge wing and stopped to pick up the two-and-a-half-foot-tall canister of the EPIRB, but it was gone, the brackets empty. Riggs must have removed it as a precaution when she began taking the vessel. Out of time, Hauser looked over the chest-high railing of the flying bridge. All he saw below was a curtain of white, but somewhere underneath his position was the balcony of the second deck, no more than fifteen feet away. If he could land on that narrow perch, he had a chance of escaping, finding a place to hole up for a while and consider his next move. But if he missed the scant promenade that surrounded the next level down, the main deck was a drop of forty feet, and if he missed that, the North Pacific would kill him the moment he hit.

  He stood just above where the flying bridge cantilevered over the side of the vessel. He had to get closer to the center of the tanker before he could jump, which meant getting closer to the men trying to kill him. They were on the bridge, weapons drawn, bright eyes peering into the storm for his shadow to come within range.

  He launched himself back down the narrow walkway, his boots finding little purchase on the slick decking. He suppressed a desire to shout as he ran, to give voice to the fear that tore at him like the wind stinging his face. Just as he discerned the red glow spilling from the emergency lights on the bridge, he gathered himself and leaped up to the six-inch-wide railing, scrambling with feet and hands and chest, breaking stride for only a second. Ignoring the oblivion that sucked at him from below, he ran on, pushing each stride when he felt his feet sliding off the ice-encrusted railing.

  The armed figure looming out of the snowy night was startled by Hauser’s unusual position. The man’s weapon was held low, ready for a frontal charge; not this tenuous rush at the level of his shoulder. The terrorist began to twist, raising his pistol in a movement as graceful as ballet. Hauser chanced two more paces, stretching himself too far on the last step so that when he went over the railing it was more of a fall than a leap. In an instant, he’d vanished.

  On the bridge, JoAnn Riggs took immediate charge of the pandemonium. There should have been no need for violence when taking the ship from the unarmed crew, but it hadn’t worked as planned. Two crewmen were dead, Hauser was missing, and the bridge was virtually destroyed. Riggs’ first act was to cut the alarm klaxons and return the lighting to its normal nighttime luminance. One of the terrorists who’d stormed onto the bridge following the gunfire had already extinguished an electrical fire below the helmsman’s station, and two more had removed the corpse to the other flying bridge. Riggs gave orders that the Chief Engineer, the electrician, and a replacement helmsman be brought up from the crew’s mess where they were being held.

  She didn’t try to hide her new position of authority. She ordered both crew and terrorists with equal command. At the back of the room, the terrorists watched impassively as Riggs mustered her crew into cleaning up the mess and reestablishing control of the vessel.

  Everyone on the bridge paused for a moment when the door to the flying bridge opened with a blast of raw arctic air. The leader of the terrorists, a granite-faced man known only as Wolf, stepped out of the night. The crew looked at him, silently wondering what this new threat represented. Riggs and the others regarded him expectantly.

  Riggs broke the tight silence. “Did you get him?”

  Wolf shook the snow from his dark hair and slid the big Sig Sauer pistol back into its nylon combat harness. He spoke with a German accent, his voice brutal and clipped. “He tried to rush me by climbing onto the railing, but he never made it past. He lost his footing and went over the edge.”

&n
bsp; “How far down the bridge wing were you?” Riggs asked nervously.

  “Nearly halfway. He either landed in the water or fell all the way to the main deck.”

  “Take some men and make sure. He can’t be allowed to live.” She turned back to her crew, ignoring their accusing glances. It was clear to them that Riggs was discussing their new captain.

  Twenty minutes later, Wolf returned with three of his men, snow clinging to them like glittering jewels. If the weather had made them uncomfortable, they gave no outward sign. When they brushed themselves off, they did it more out of annoyance than discomfort, as if the near-freezing night wasn’t even worth their attention. Riggs knew that they were former East German Special Forces and had trained for conditions much worse than those lashing the supertanker.

  “Well?”

  “We found no sign of him. The wind and the heat of the oil in the tanks have removed all of the snow on the main deck, so there were no footprints, but a man couldn’t have fallen that far without leaving a blood trail if he crawled away. He must have missed the ship and gone overboard.”

  “Good, one less thing to worry about.” Riggs sounded relieved.

  “How bad is it?” Wolf nodded at the partially dismantled controls.

  The electrician and an assistant were crawling under the consoles. Only their backsides were visible; their heads and shoulders were buried in the wires, circuit boards, and microchips that kept the tanker running.

  “So far, it’s not too good. The radar is out permanently, a round shattered the cathode-ray tube and the digital image processor. It’s a complete write-off. We have helm control, but the throttles can be engaged only from the engine room. We can live with that. Our biggest problem is the internal pumps. When the control panel was shot up, a power surge affected the pump control room and knocked out most of the systems. Monitors, gas pressure and ratio gauges, and the pump controls themselves were all severely damaged. We can’t shift the oil within the baffles of the main tanks to maintain proper trim, nor can we tell if the fumes above the ullage line are dangerous. The pumps themselves are fine, but the tank sensors are off-line. We have no way to tell how much oil is in each tank without visual inspections.”

  Both Riggs and Wolf knew the importance of this particular system for maintaining control of the ship. Without the pumps, the Arctica could tear herself apart if they encountered rough seas. And when they reached their ultimate destination, the pumps would be critical to the success of their mission.

  “Can the damage be repaired?”

  “How should I know, I’m not an engineer,” Riggs snapped. “Your trigger-happy soldier boy really fucked us up.”

  “He will be disciplined.” Wolf ignored her anger.

  “Lot of good that’s going to do us,” Riggs seethed. “I should have him locked in the mess room with the rest of the crew, but we may need him before this voyage is over.” Riggs looked at Wolf pointedly. “But when his phase is done, I want him killed.”

  “He is under my command.”

  Riggs’ dark expression deepened. “And you are under mine.”

  An ironic smirk curled Wolf’s cruelly handsome face. “Yes, sir.”

  The United Arab Emirates

  Below the whirling blades of the Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopter, the desert was stirred into a vicious sandstorm that chased the speeding machine like a relentless shadow. The military chopper was flying no more than forty feet off the desert floor, the pilot pouring all of his concentration into keeping the craft from smearing against the earth. He left the tricky navigation to the copilot seated at his right.

  The sun was just lifting over the far horizon, but still the brighter stars could be seen against the deep blue sky. The land below was dark, a featureless plane of sand and rocks. Only to their right was the endless vista broken. Fifty miles distant and growing out of the night were the Hajar Mountains, jagged ramparts protecting the Arabian Gulf from the eternal pressure of the empty desert.

  Colonel Wayne Bigelow lit a cigarette and regarded the other passenger with paternal fondness. He’d had a good hand in raising him from a callow youth into a fine man. Bigelow, a graduate of Sandhurst and an old Middle East hand, had lived in the Gulf for most of his life, both as a member of the British occupying forces and later as military adviser to the Emirates’ Crown Prince. That post was more honorary than functional. The old man just liked having Bigelow around to tell war stories. The Crown Prince often remarked that Bigelow should have been alive when T. E. Lawrence was riding with old Faisal against the Turks. The era suited him better. Bigelow had never argued the point.

  Seated next to him in the stripped-down Gazelle was Khalid Khuddari, another man suited for an earlier time but just as adept in this one. Bigelow knew how remarkable it was that Khuddari had achieved his current position, since he’d not been born into the royal family. Secretly, the Crown Prince had confided in Bigelow that he loved Khuddari more than his own sons, three of whom lived in Europe with women who seemed to need cash infusions for sustenance.

  Bigelow had been present when Khalid’s father had come in from the desert with his son and reminded the Crown Prince of his promise to look after the boy in exchange for the Bedouin’s oath of loyalty. The Crown Prince, a man true to his word, welcomed the young Khalid into his home. Bigelow had had the good fortune of becoming one of Khalid’s many tutors, a chore he relished simply because the boy was so bright and dedicated. When he looked at the man Khalid had become a quarter century later, he felt he could indulge in a little pride. A lifelong bachelor, Bigelow saw Khalid as the son he wished he’d had.

  “Don’t look so serious. All of the hard work is finished,” Bigelow shouted over the roar of the turboshaft engine over their heads. His Arabic was flawless.

  Khuddari couldn’t be brought out of his dark mood. “I’m afraid that the hard work is just about to begin.”

  “If the Crown Prince finds out what we’re doing, we’ll have more to worry about than hard work,” Bigelow said pointedly.

  The chopper was well into Ajmani airspace without authorization. While the seven Sheikdoms that made up the United Arab Emirates were considered one country by the international community, each member maintained a great deal of sovereignty over its own portion of the desert. By flying into Ajman, Khuddari and Bigelow were in effect crossing a national boundary without prior notice. Their actions could easily be labeled an invasion.

  “So tell me how you found it,” Khalid invited.

  Bigelow leaned toward the younger man so they could speak at a more conversational volume. Khuddari had access to an executive chopper, one outfitted with the latest silencing equipment so that the interior was as quiet as a luxury automobile, but they had agreed this machine was better suited for the trip into the desert.

  “Nothing to it, really. There were no roads leading this far out from the city of Ajman so everything had to be brought to the facility by helicopter, usually at night. I had a man at the airport watching them come and go from dusk until dawn. Since we couldn’t follow one of their choppers without giving ourselves away, I called in an old favor. An Air Force adviser in Saudi Arabia and I spent four months together as peacekeepers on Cyprus in ’64. I saved his life during the August ninth bombings. Anyway, last night I called him just before another of Rufti’s helicopters went into the desert. He had one of the AWACS planes the Saudis bought from the Yanks divert from its normal patrol of the Iraqi border and take a quick peek our way.”

  “And?”

  “The coordinates he gave us were right on. Our assault team found the camp four hours ago, as easily as you find the naughty bits between a whore’s thighs.”

  “What did you find?” Khalid asked expectantly.

  The intercom squawked as the pilot interrupted their conversation. “ETA two minutes.”

  “Wait and you’ll see for yourself.” Bigelow stroked his mustache, sitting back in his seat.

  The chopper thundered over a low dune, the skids near
ly ripping off the top of the sand wave. The desert before them was bright enough to see the smoking ruins a few miles ahead. The ground had been scorched black by a blazing fire, a small ring of ash on the clear white sand. Tendrils of smoke still lifted into the shimmering sky.

  Following the arm motions of one of Bigelow’s troopers who’d scouted a solid landing spot, the helicopter landed a few hundred yards short of the camp. Khuddari and Bigelow jumped down lightly, bending low to avoid the spinning rotor. Both were dressed in desert camouflage but only Bigelow was armed, a heavy Webley Mark VI revolver buckled around his thick waist. The heat was on the rise, and beads of sweat blistered Bigelow’s ruddy face by the time they were halfway to the destroyed camp, yet he continued to walk easily over the loose sand, matching Khuddari’s long-legged pace.

  The camp sat in a natural bowl in the desert, a circular depression ringed by heaped sand dunes like the walls of an earthen castle. The center of the camp had been some sort of parade ground or training area; surrounding it were the remains of dozens of tents, their charred poles thrusting up like the empty ribs of some prehistoric monster. Steel scaffolds littered the parade ground, the struts blackened by fire. It was obvious that there had been a purpose to their original placement, but they now looked like girders from an Erector set that had been tossed aside by a vengeful child. Sand was already building up against their windward edges. The two camouflaged Toyota Land Cruisers used by Bigelow’s soldiers were parked at the camp’s perimeter, their drivers guarding them with roof-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns.

  “How did he know?” Khuddari hissed, his dark eyes gazing at the desolation around him. “How the hell did that fat bastard know?”

  “Those last helicopter flights were not to resupply the base. They were already pulling out. My agent was too far from the airport to tell the difference. As near as we can tell, the place was torched early last night.” It was obvious from Bigelow’s tone that he hated admitting they’d been too late, but regrets would do them no good. “However, to clear out a camp of this size, they must have started pulling out a few days before you spoke to Rufti.”