“This is it,” sang out Marshall a little wildly as the whole bridgehouse lurched at the impact. “Welcome to the Big Apple!”
*
The shuddering impact made the lifeboat stir, but it did not begin to slide. They were as busy as ants around it, using the two torches to light their work as best they could. One team was detaching the lines from the net and gathering them together like a vast spider’s web to be attached to the lifeboat’s stern by a strong line, thirty metres long. The bow was being attached to New England’s lower drawbridge. The touch of a button on Harry’s handset would trigger the drawbridge’s opening mechanism. The lowering of the drawbridge would launch the lifeboat and pull the Semtex hill forward. The launching of the lifeboat into New England’s wake would tip the Semtex to which it was carefully but distantly tied over the edge and into the East River where it could explode with relative safety, under water and well away from the petrol in the upper hold — thirty metres away from the lifeboat as well. That was the plan. It would work well enough if Harry could throw the right switch at the right time, if the force of the lowering door was enough to do the job, if New England was moving fast enough to propel the lifeboat forward when it went into her wake, and if the long lines held.
The second team was bringing down the strong, moulded plastic top to the lifeboat which they reckoned on securing in place so that even should the little vessel be totally submerged by the powerful forces they were hoping to unleash, they all stood a fighting chance of being cocooned in warmth, dryness and breathable air, for a while at least. How everything would hold up when the Semtex detonated, or if it sank without exploding and pulled the boat to the bottom of the East River with it, was anybody’s guess.
“Bob,” called Richard as he worked. “That impact must have been the first bridge. They’re coming down on the flood. If they hit the first, they’ll hit the others too, I guess. Can you remember the sequence of the bridges?”
“I can,” called Ann at once. “Throgs Neck, Bronx Whitestone, Hell Gate, Triborough, Queensborough, Williamsburg, Manhattan and the Brooklyn.”
“Yes,” said Bob. “They get lower and lower. Triborough may be a metre higher than Hell Gate, but if we hit Throgs Neck, we’ll hit them all, like as not.”
“Then we’ve got a countdown. We can orientate ourselves pretty accurately without using the handset. Harry, keep trying to get into the HG program. But if you simply can’t, you’ll have to try something else.”
“Like mixing up the guidance? I could do that.”
“OK. But remember, the minute we come out of Hell Gate we’ve got to override everything and lower the drawbridge here.”
“That’s factored in, but you know it’ll ring alarm bells on the bridge.”
“With any luck it’ll be too late to do much about it then.”
Richard and Bob were sorting and measuring lines. Then Bob and Pitman, fit, fast and without steel pins in their knees, went swarming up the SEALs lines on the aft drawbridge and fed them through the fastenings there according to Richard’s instructions.
Two minutes after the impact with Throgs Neck Bridge, the bridgehouse shook again. Bob and Ann called out together, “That’s the Bronx Whitestone Bridge…”
“We’ll be passing La Guardia Airport next, won’t we?” asked Richard.
“Yes,” said Bob. “They’ll have to slow down past Riker’s Island. Then it’s the Hell Gate rail bridge.”
“Then it’s Hell Gate,” said Richard almost to himself. Automatically he looked at his watch, flashing the torch down to see the battered old Rolex analogue face. It was 11:45.
*
The F18s were on short finals now, coming down through the thinning murk over Hackensack, heading south-east at stalling speed, which was still far faster than normal approach speed for a commercial aircraft. The squadron leader was first, his wings empty. Immediately behind him, his second-in-command, a young man called Decker, burned with frustration that he had not been given the chance to demonstrate his prowess. As with most high-efficiency battle teams, fierce rivalry was used to give that extra sharpness to the battle edge, and there was no rivalry keener than that between Decker and his commanding officer.
Decker eased his F18 into that strange upside-down world immediately below the cloud base. The flat, greyish plain of vapour whipped past immediately above his cockpit as though he was scuba-diving beneath an iceberg. His eyes flicked up then down from the head-up displays to observe the jewelled brightness of Interstate 80 winding down towards the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge. The voice of the air control officer at La Guardia droned in his headphones, giving the non-military version of final approach instructions — elevation, wind speed…
Precisely who cut into the monotonous instructions, and with what authority, was never really clear to Decker, but suddenly, just after 23:45, an urgent voice came onto the airwaves: “It’s still out there! New England’s still out there!”
Decker’s commanding officer answered, cool as ever: “Say again? We have destroyed New England.”
“No! She’s coming down the East River. Jesus! She’s just hit the Throgs Neck Bridge and the Bronx Whitestone. She’s off La Guardia now, going at one hell of a…”
Decker knew his moment had come. He eased the control column slightly to his right and began to slide away. His headphones went mad at once as the men behind him called out, as his commanding officer barked orders, as the air controller at La Guardia started warning him he was deviating from the prescribed flight path. But Decker didn’t care. He was in the grip of fate. The amount of collateral damage which might arise from hitting a ship full of explosives with a high-explosive warhead in the middle of New York City simply beggared imagination, but Decker didn’t care. History was calling. It was him and New England, head to head — or rather, head to tail. Nothing could stop him now.
*
With her engines idling, the high arches of her water jets little more than a trickle, and all of her manoeuvring jets pointing forward and full on to slow her, New England came past the end of La Guardia’s main runway and out round Riker’s Island. She was completely under the control of the computer now and the moment she passed under the Hell Gate rail bridge, the HG program would click in. The only manual instruction would come when Marshall hit the red button on the console behind the helm to execute a hard turn to starboard.
As the power of the wind past the steel-scooped windows lessened, the roaring noise on the bridge diminished and it became possible to hold conversations. But no one had anything left to say. Those at the windows watched the lights of New York passing but their dead eyes saw nothing of worth or beauty there. They saw only enemy positions, possible attack points. They thought of no one in particular — of not one individual among the bustling masses up there. They thought only of the enemy who might at the last moment thwart their plans. They were in the grip of the kind of group hysteria that can take hold of religious sects, united in this instance by a sentence of death through the slow, irreversible, inevitable rotting away of living tissue by a mutant strain of Hansen’s bacillus. Each and every one of them was all too well aware that no one could stop it, that no one cared. There was one man responsible: Hiram Hoover III. And the organisation for which he worked, the organisation which had allowed him to do this unspeakable thing to them, had no intention of punishing him; on the contrary, it was honouring him with the most prestigious post it could offer. Right now he was on the fortieth floor of the United Nations building less than ten minutes downriver, waiting for the fireworks to begin.
*
“Secure here!” called Bob.
“And here,” sang out Pitman.
The bridgehouse gave another lurch. This one was longer and more severe, shaking the hull like a rat being killed by a terrier. Bob and Pitman half jumped, half fell onto the deck. Pitman rolled expertly, trained in parachute drops; Bob landed less well but picked himself up with hardly a wince.
“That
was the Hell Gate rail bridge,” said Ann.
“Triborough will be next,” panted Bob. “Five hundred yards between them. Two cables.”
“We’re in Hell Gate,” sang out Harry. “The Hell Gate program’s running. I can’t stop it now.”
“Do what you can,” said Richard. “We’ll finish getting the lifeboat ready. We’ve got what, five minutes?”
“Six,” said Bob. But the word was lost in the shuddering as they scraped beneath Triborough Bridge.
New England came out from under Triborough Bridge and into the narrows south of Wards Island at thirty knots. Immediately the program kicked in full power. The water jets thundered and the jet engines fired, hurling the massive ship down towards Randalls Island with the sort of acceleration normally only seen in powerboats. The air battered past the open windows on the bridge where the men of 13 Int. stood ready, their concentration fine-honed to a higher plane of existence, far removed from the rotting corpses they were trapped within.
Then, with less than five minutes to go, things started to go wrong. The warning lights on the control panel began to flash and Mac, at the rear of the ruined radio room, lifted his Stinger to his shoulder and called, “We’ve got company!”
*
Decker dropped his F18 so low he nearly blew the traffic off Triborough Bridge with his exhaust. New England’s stern filled the whole of his attack display at once and he hurriedly armed his heat-seeking missiles. The heat generated by New England’s jets would make this easier than shooting fish in a barrel. He tensed himself to fire.
But suddenly the heat register on the lower bank of jets began to fade. They were cutting power. His eyes flicked up from the read-outs. Scarcely able to credit what he could see, he realised they were opening the lower cargo drawbridge. At full speed, in the middle of the East River, they were opening their back door. The realisation was instantaneous. As was the decision to disregard it. The part-completed command to his right thumb went on. But in that micron of hesitation all his alarms came on. The F18 was being targeted by a ground-to-air missile. Automatically, Decker disengaged and pulled away, the speed of his reaction testimony to the training that qualified him to be in the cockpit of an F18. His eyes flicked wildly over his instrument displays and then out into the sky, looking for the telltale of bright rocket exhaust. But all he could see were the lights of Manhattan and against these no exhaust would show up. Screaming with a combination of fear and frustration, he put the F18’s nose straight up and broke the sound barrier in a perfectly vertical climb which, like the scream, did not ease until he was more than twenty thousand feet above the city.
*
Senator Charleston looked up, frowning at the sound of the F18 going through the sound barrier immediately above his head, and caught a glimpse of its improperly armed heat-seeking missile heading uselessly out over Liberty Island. He did not know what the sound was, but he had been on edge all evening. Only his dear wife’s determination and excitement could have got him here tonight, after all that had happened. But she had so wanted to come. The authorities had been alerted, she argued. It was inconceivable that they would have allowed the party to go ahead if there was any danger. So he had steeled himself and agreed.
But there had been more than simple marital indulgence in the Senator’s decision to come. The actions of 13 Int. in pirating New England, holding them all to ransom and planning their terrible revenge filled him with utter loathing. But so did all the actions of the man which had prompted them. Senator Charleston had an agenda of his own here at this reception; an agenda in direct opposition to the dreams of his beloved wife, but one he had been working on with increasing determination since the debriefing. For the Senator had arrived with every intention of confronting Secretary General Hoover and putting to him, face to face and man to man, in the most public manner possible, the terrible accusations of Merrideth, Marshall and their dying men.
But the Jellicoe Boys had managed to thwart him even in this. Such was the security surrounding Hoover as a result of their escapade so far, that he had found himself unable to get anywhere near his host at all. And now, at midnight, he found his own plans being subsumed beneath fatigue, hopelessness, old age, and a growing desire to be satisfied with his wife’s simple pleasure at being here after all. And he was glad he had done nothing, for her sake. She positively glowed with pleasure as she mingled with the glittering array of celebrities. But the flat detonation which rattled the windows of the fortieth floor of the UN building and hushed the cheerful chatter of the Secretary General’s reception chilled the Senator’s blood. He could not get it out of his head that the men from 13 Int. would somehow manage to gatecrash the party. But then, he reckoned grimly, with a thought darker than any he normally entertained, it might be as well to go out like this, now, together, with his wife so happy. God knew what the succeeding years would bring but the Charlestons would probably never be at a party like this again.
Gloomily introspective, the Senator turned and looked out of the window, along the length of Roosevelt Island up towards Triborough Bridge. And as he did so, the terrifyingly familiar shape of New England came charging into the North Channel round the island, filling the narrow waterway, seemingly heading straight for him. And in that instant of stunning shock, the Senator was revitalised. There was, in fact, so much to look forward to — so much to do. Into his mind whirled a prayer for more time — a prayer it was already too late to pray.
*
Merrideth pounded down the internal companionways at a dead run, with Bruce and his brick close behind him. Merrideth held his 203, Bruce carried his Stinger missile, and the others were equipped with an assortment of weapons.
As soon as Mac had seen off the F18, the group of SAS men had sprung into action, Merrideth grimly certain that his earlier unease, so painstakingly examined and dismissed, was well-founded after all. Someone was down in the lower hold monkeying around with the equipment and a penny would get you a pound it was that arrogant bastard Richard Mariner. Whether they managed to blow away Hiram bloody Hoover or not, if Mariner was down here then he was personally going to settle his hash. It was little enough to ask of the last four minutes of life. He slammed through the door into the lower hold and hit the lights.
The rear drawbridge was half open and with a mixture of frustration, horror and simple awe, Merrideth saw that the untidy mass of ropes and pulleys which they had had no time to clear away since Marshall’s arrival had all been put to shockingly good use. As the massive drawbridge door wound inexorably down, it was pulling the whole pallet piled with Semtex smoothly towards the opening. And slipping out across the hold deck itself, waiting to be launched, moved the lifeboat, sealed and shut tight, behind it trailing loop after loop of line attaching it to the Semtex.
Bruce, Pain and the rest crowded in. Merrideth’s mind was racing. What could he do to stop what was happening? The answer was swift in coming.
“Bruce,” he bellowed, staggering forward into the gathering storm to position himself, “give me the Stinger! Now!”
*
“They’re trying to override the open door command!” called Harry, her eyes fixed on the little handset’s bright screen.
“They’ll be trying a damn sight more than that!” said Richard. “Leave it now. We know they can’t override it until the door is fully open. What can you do with the guidance program, Harry?”
“Like I said — ”
The boat gave a lurch and all of them wedged tightly in the bottom flinched. They knew this was going to be a rough ride and they had emptied out everything that wasn’t screwed down and then they had tried to pack themselves in with padding to protect them. They all wore lifebelts with wedges of polystyrene round their waists and inflated lifebelts round their necks, shoulders and chests. Even so, when the lifeboat moved, they were hurled forward down the tiny space towards the bow with threatening power.
Richard and Bob had laid down a series of lines calculated to tighten at different time
s and at different rates as the rear drawbridge swung down. The first series, which unknown to them Merrideth had already seen, was designed to move the Semtex towards the opening in the cargo bay. The second set, which had just engaged, was designed to ease the lifeboat forward and launch her down the slope of the drawbridge into the East River. The third set, thirty metres long, would tighten as the water pulled the boat away at nearly seventy-five miles per hour and would drag the Semtex over the edge and out of New England altogether. The instant they hit the water, Harry was going to screw up the guidance system so that New England would not go where she was directed. This interference could last for only a minute or two, but if the ship could not be handled at the critical moment and they passed their target, Marshall, Merrideth and their men would surely have no reason to continue their wild dash to doom.
*
Merrideth had the Stinger on his shoulder and was peering through slitted eyes at the side of the lifeboat as it slid away. He pressed the button to start up the targeting. He pressed it twice, in fact, unable to feel anything through his dead fingers. He heard the hiss of the cooling system switch in. He prayed that Bruce and the others had had the good sense to keep well behind him. He closed the talon of his hand round the firing mechanism. The target jerked forward out of his view.
Screaming with frustrated rage, he hurled himself forward until he could see the boat teetering on the lip of the drawbridge. All he saw was the target, a dead black bulk against the shining, light-spangled water. He did not see the grandeur of Hell Gate behind with the shoulder of Roosevelt Island rising to the light at its far north point. He did not see the suspended tramway on his right hand high above the Roosevelt Island condos. He did not see the distant span of Triborough Bridge crossing to the Manhattan shore. He did not see the skyline rising brightly above the low, black sea wall, along the top of which ran FDR Drive.
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 32
