by Jack Du Brul
“Captain Jim Patke.” The soldier was about thirty, with blue eyes and blondish hair kept longer than army regulations. He was a bit shorter than Mercer but appeared well proportioned. His grip was firm. His stance bespoke a selfassuredness that came from years of training. Mercer introduced Roddy Herrara. “For operational security,” the team leader said, “forgive me if I don’t present my men.”
The five other soldiers were cut from a similar mold—athletic without the steroid bulk of movie heroes. Mercer could see intelligence in their eyes and just a hint that being called into action, no matter how ill-planned, gave them a thrill.
They set their luggage on the floor and quickly began to change into black fatigues. Patke spoke as he stripped out of jeans and a button-down shirt. “A spare radio is in my bag there.” He pointed with his chin. Lauren retrieved it from its hiding place. “You’re familiar with it, Captain?”
She flicked it on and settled the earpiece and throat mike. “Affirmative.”
“Pre-select channels one through four are me and my guys.” Patke showed no self-consciousness about stripping to his underwear in front of her. “We’ll call out as we change them. Your code name’s Angel. We’re Devil One through Six. The McCampbell’s Heaven. She’ll be on channels five, six, and seven. Give ’em a call and see if they’re listening.”
“Heaven, Heaven, this is Angel. Radio check. Over.”
“Angel, this is Heaven, reading you five by five. Over.” The comm officer aboard the McCampbell was a woman. “Sit rep?”
“Devils and Angel are ready to go. Target is—” she looked at Mercer, who told her “—fifteen minutes from entering the lock. It will take about thirty minutes for her to clear the chamber and proceed to the cut.”
“Understood, Angel. The UAV is flying just low enough to see through the overcast. We’ve got her under surveillance. Heaven is standing by with all the wrath you might need.”
Lauren knew that meant her VGAS cannon had already locked onto the Mario diCastorelli and that her Seahawk helicopter was ready to go. “Roger that, Heaven. Angel out.”
“Let’s see the weapons,” Patke said when he’d finished dressing. Mercer lifted the second nylon bag onto the table. The commandos descended on the guns. In seconds each had an M-16 stripped down to its component parts. After one of them checked the assault rifles thoroughly, they gave the pistols the same attention. “You haven’t fired these yourself?” Patke asked Lauren.
She shook her head. “I only got them last night.”
Patke made a disgusted face. “This just gets better and better.” He looked to the armorer who’d inspected the weapons. “How about it?”
“Can’t promise accuracy but they’re all in good shape, sir.” He looked at Lauren. “Government issue?”
She wasn’t surprised the soldier could deduce that from his brief examination. These men were all experts on the tools of their trade. “I got them from a contact in the police.”
“Good enough for me,” the armorer announced, and his teammates, though unhappy about going into combat with unfamiliar arms, seemed satisfied.
“Oh, there’s one more thing. We’re gonna need Mr. Herrara to stay with us,” Patke said absently.
“No way,” Mercer snapped. “He’s more of a civilian than any of us.”
“That may be, but he’s also the only one who can maneuver that ship. None of my guys have experience with anything over a thirty-foot assault boat. We can take the ship, but unless we can get her out of the way, the Chinese will likely just take it back again with a superior force.”
Mercer wanted to protest again, maybe volunteer himself. That’s what his instincts told him to do, but he had no idea how to control a ship the size of the Mario diCastorelli. Roddy was the only logical choice. Goddamnit.
Roddy forestalled any further argument. “I will do it.”
There was no need to mention what he was risking by going with the Americans. The love he felt for his family was reflected in his eyes and the proud set to his shoulders.
“Right.” Patke checked over his team. “Once we get control of her, we’ll determine how the explosives are triggered and render them inoperable. Two of my men are demolition experts. Mr. Herrara will keep the ship moving so the Chinese can’t board her from a launch.”
“We’ll be waiting at the upper side of the lock complex,” Mercer told him.
Roddy was at the window, looking through the storm for the Mario diCastorelli. “Gentlemen, I think it’s time. She’s just about at the lock.”
The others joined him. Through the woolly curtain of rain, the bulk carrier loomed over the waters like a rust-streaked cathedral. Her four-story superstructure was located at her stern, and was painted a murky blue, with a single funnel that belched black smoke. Three cranes rose from her low deck on spindly stalks, like enormous insects whose arms could pick at the carcass they were poised over. Her bows flared upward, and where her anchor dangled on a massive chain her name was stenciled in faded letters.
Nothing about her dilapidated appearance gave a hint to the deadly cargo in her holds.
“We’ve got to go,” Roddy said.
Patke fitted his earpiece and told Lauren they were starting on channel one. All the team members checked the comm link with each other and with the guided-missile destroyer standing off the coast.
Mercer shook Roddy’s hand and that of Captain Patke. Lauren gave Roddy a quick hug and saluted the Special Forces officer. “Good luck, Captain.”
Nothing further needed to be said. Roddy climbed up to the bridge and keyed the engines to life. Mercer and Lauren began jogging off the pier. In a minute they heard the timbre of the fishing boat’s engine change as Roddy pulled from the marina. It would take only a couple of minutes to dash across the shipping lines and deposit the commandos on the far bank of the canal. From there, Mercer estimated Patke would wait until the last minute before rushing the lock chamber and boarding the bomb ship. After that he had no idea how it would go.
He looked at Lauren as she ran at his side through the deluge. Her jaw was relaxed as her breathing came deep and even. Her hands were formed into loose fists. When she felt his stare upon her she turned to him, her eyes undiminished in the washed-out light.
He put aside his growing feelings toward her and turned his gaze back into the storm, his eyes slitted, his stomach a churning mess.
The Pedro Miguel Lock Panama Canal, Panama
The pickup was parked in the middle of the visitor’s lot, the lone vehicle there under the punishing rain. Harry sat alone in the front seat, something nagging at the back of his mind as he read the transit manifest for the fourth time. With the windows closed, the cab was blue with smoke. When Mercer and Lauren came jogging up, he stubbed out his cigarette and slid over so she was between the two men. “They on their way?”
“Yes,” Mercer replied. “They’re taking Roddy when they board the Mario diCastorelli.”
Harry didn’t seem surprised by this revelation. Come to think of it, Mercer realized, Roddy hadn’t been either. He began to see that the two of them had known the Green Berets were going to need a pilot and conveniently didn’t tell anyone about it.
He continued. “I think they’ll be all right. Patke and his team look pretty tough. I told him that we’ll be ready to help once the ship’s secure.” He leaned forward so he could look directly at his friend. “Harry, with Roddy acting as pilot, I don’t think we’re going to need you out there. I want you to wait in the truck.”
“And get captured by some of Liu’s guards, who I’m sure are lurking around someplace? Forget it.” He snorted. “Besides, if the commandos fail, chances are Roddy won’t be in too good a shape. If they need you, you’re going to need me.”
“You’re sure you can handle that ship?”
“It’s like falling off a bike,” Harry dismissed with a grand wave. “Do it once and you never forget how.”
Lauren smiled. “Your metaphors are a bit screwy.”
“So’s Mercer’s head if he thinks I can’t conn a ship like that.”
Lauren rubbed the windshield to smear away the fog. They were all breathing heavier than normal and felt the claustrophobia of being jammed into the tight cab. Mercer suspected it was even worse for the five men in the cargo bed.
Rene Bruneseau tapped on the glass partition separating the cab from the truck’s enclosed bed. Harry reached behind to slide it open. “May I have one of your cigarettes?” the French spy asked.
“Here you go.” Harry handed him his pack but made sure to get it back.
“How long before they hit the ship?” The question was almost rhetorical. The Green Berets would radio just before the strike. Rene had asked just to dispel some of the nervous energy infecting them all.
“Probably just before she comes out of the lock. Say twenty minutes.”
They watched in silence as small locomotive engines drew the ship into the massive chamber. Once the doors were closed behind her, she would begin her thirty-foot vertical journey to the level of the Gaillard Cut and Lake Gatun. Another of the freighters trailing the Mario diCastorelli entered the nearer lock chamber, partially blocking their view of the bomb ship on its far side. She was an old tramp steamer laid out somewhat like a World War II Liberty Ship with a centrally located superstructure and a raised forecastle. The booms on her two cranes were like skeletal fingers.
“Which ship is that?” Harry asked.
With the truck at a slight angle in the deserted visitors’ parking lot Mercer had the better view. “The Robert T. Change.” He could see her flying a white triangular flag speared by a red dot. It was the Pilot On Board pennant. He couldn’t see her national flag so he didn’t know where she was registered.
“Angel, Heaven, this is Devil One.” Lauren had pulled out the earpiece from her radio so they all heard the voice from the tiny receiver.
“Go ahead, Devil. This is Heaven,” answered the comm officer aboard the McCampbell.
“We’re deployed. Estimate zero minus four minutes.”
“Roger,” Lauren and the destroyer responded simultaneously.
Looking at the lock complex less than two hundred yards away, it appeared that the Robert T. Change would leave her chamber before the Mario diCastorelli. They could see the bows of the small tramp steamer just peeking out as the chamber doors swung open on their hydraulic rams. Behind her, the much larger diCastorelli was still firmly held in the middle of the lock.
“That is not how it usually happens,” Lauren said with concern. “It’s always first ship in, first ship out. They never let vessels pass in the locks unless there’s some kind of snag.”
“Well, the wind’s kicking up,” Harry remarked, looking up to the leaden sky. “The Mario could be having trouble. I’ve been through here a few times myself back in the early 1950s. I’ve actually seen a mule locomotive pulled off her tracks and get dumped in the lock when a gust slammed against a freighter.”
Lauren suddenly struggled to replace her earpiece, her voice tight. “Devil One, this is Angel, over.”
“Go ahead, Angel.”
“Target may be held in place for a few more minutes. I just remembered they’ll need the time for divers to prepare the hull for when they attach the submersible.” She’d recalled a detail the others had all but forgotten and her quick thinking prevented Captain Patke from launching his assault too early.
“Affirmative, Angel. Thanks. Out.”
Lauren let out a relieved sigh.
“Good job,” Mercer said and laid his hand on hers. She let it linger.
“I can’t believe I’d forgotten that.”
They could no longer see the Mario diCastorelli as the Robert T. Change blocked their entire view. The small silver train engines straining to haul the vessel from the lock looked like circus workers trying to lead a stubborn elephant. Mercer craned around. Blocking his view down the canal were warehouses, machine shops, and other structures needed to run the complex. Even if the sprawling facility hadn’t obstructed his view, the distance was too great to see the next ship patiently waiting below the lock for its turn to climb the water ladder. Because of where they were parked, the downstream end of the lock was nearly a half mile behind him.
No matter how large the ships that used the waterway, he thought, it seemed nothing could dwarf the scale of this century-old marvel.
A sharp rap on Mercer’s window made them all jump.
Standing in the rain wearing a camouflage poncho was a Chinese soldier. The rubberized cloth ran with water and barely hid the barrel of his machine pistol. He’d tapped the glass with its barrel. Swallowing a ball of fear, Mercer cranked down his window.
“What you do here?” the soldier asked in angry broken English.
“Watching the ships with my wife and her grandfather. He helped build the canal.” Harry hadn’t even been born when the construction was completed but Mercer needed a reasonable excuse to be sightseeing on such a miserable morning.
“It rain. You no see. You go ’way.”
“We’ll leave in a few minutes.” He gave the man his friendliest smile. “As soon as the next big cruise ship goes by.”
“You leave now!” The soldier pushed aside a fold of his poncho. The bullpup design of his type 87 was unmistakable.
Mercer opened his mouth to protest once more when the gunman’s expression inexplicably changed from anger to confusion to pain. And then suddenly he vanished from view. Mercer pushed open his door in time to see a corner of the poncho and a bloodless hand disappear under the truck. He whipped his head around. Lieutenant Foch was just getting to his feet on Harry’s side of the truck. With a defiant gesture that needed no further explanation Foch rammed a fighting knife back into the sheath hanging from his web belt.
No one had felt him getting out of the truck or heard him crawl under the vehicle. A moment later he was back at the partition. “I saw him coming across the parking lot,” Foch explained. “I think the next time you complained he’d call his friends, yes?”
“Oui, oui, oui,” said Harry, “all the way home.”
Lauren disagreed. “More than likely his squad leader is waiting for a report right now.”
“Devil One to Heaven. Zero minute in two.” Patke’s voice sounded like it came from inside her head.
“They’re going in two minutes,” she told the others.
“Foch, give me your best guess,” Mercer asked over his shoulder without looking at the Legionnaire. He kept his attention on the chain-link fence separating the tourist parking lot from the one used by canal employees. “How long do you think it’ll take them to neutralize the ship?”
“If Liu took off most of her crew like we think, and with the element of surprise, it shouldn’t take more then seven to ten minutes. Figure two men to the bridge, two to the crew’s spaces and two to engineering.”
Mercer started the truck’s engine. “All right.”
“What are you doing?” Lauren asked.
“You are right. That Chinese soldier’s gonna be missed. No way we can wait here for ten or fifteen minutes. Might as well get to the pilot boats early.”
“Should you tell Patke?” Rene asked.
Lauren said no. “He’s got enough on his mind.”
The fence was a hundred yards away, a diaphanous wall of wire mesh that stretched from the water all the way to the Gamboa Highway. Mercer left the big truck in low gear, trying not to appear suspicious. As they rolled across the wet asphalt, his view back to the lock chambers changed and he could see the great doors had parted before the Mario diCastorelli. She was being pulled free by heavy lines running from the towing engines through her fairleads.
When they were twenty yards from the fence, he knew that nothing he did now wouldn’t look unusual to the guards Liu had stationed here during this critical transit. He mashed the accelerator. The truck hummed and the wheels turned shallow puddles into a cloud of mist that rose in their wake like smoke.
&nb
sp; All at once, the air around them seemed to explode, a sharp report that pounded on their eardrums painfully.
For a frantic second they all thought the Mario diCastorelli had detonated. A moment later they saw a flash of lightning and another deafening clap of thunder assaulted them. It was just the storm.
“Hold on!” Mercer called as they reached the fence.
He steered for one of the support poles. The truck barely paused as the steel bent under the bumper and a section of fencing sagged and then fell under the wheels. They drove over it and Mercer accelerated again, racing across the large employee parking lot, weaving along rows of workers’ cars.
At the far end of the lot was a dirt road that ran behind a series of low structures. Mercer tore down this road, shielded from the canal by the corrugated metal buildings, slowing only when they reached a boat ramp. Next to the access ramp lay a small inlet with a cement pier where four of the Canal Authority’s utility boats were moored. They were sturdy little craft with black hulls and white upperworks broken up by numerous windows for easy visibility on the busy waterway. Each boat was festooned with orange flotation rings and other safety gear.
Mercer braked hard at the base of the quay. He felt more than heard the Legionnaires pile from the rear. He pulled the .45 from his waistband and jacked a round into the chamber, not that he thought any hapless employee would resist the French soldiers and their wicked-looking FAMAS assault rifles.
“This is Devil One. We are on the target undetected. Switch to channel two.”
Lauren guessed Captain Patke and his men had simply jumped aboard from the seawall and were now hiding somewhere on the deck of the Mario diCastorelli. She changed channels on her small radio as the commando leader continued his report. “Target is being held in position after clearing the lock, possibly for submersible attachment. Ship that just exited the second lock has also stopped while a third vessel is in the chamber about to be raised. Also, be advised the seawalls around the locks are crawling with heavily armed Chinese.”
“Roger, Devil One. Don’t forget that the Canal Authority has stationed two Panamanian guards on all transiting ships. Over.”
