Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  “Where’s the trigger?”

  Zabyshny pointed at a thick cable. It lay near a heavy box. Cables stretched away from it in ten directions across the shelf. The first cable trailed up the Continental Shelf and disappeared into the darkness. “Eight weapons embedded. Mr. Deyn wanted ten minimum. Once we connect it, any attempt to cut it will trigger devices.”

  James dared to hope. “The circuit isn’t connected yet?”

  “Two more devices to emplace.”

  “What was your timetable?”

  The Russian stared out at the second platform and the drill. “Finished in one hour.”

  Calvin did the math. Twenty-five devices. Six had spilled down into the abyss of the Hatteras Plain. Since they hadn’t gone off, they had most likely been crushed inert. Eight had been embedded in the hydrate ridge around them. Two more were ready for placement on the other platform. That left ten thermonuclear demolition charges unaccounted for. “Where are the other ten?”

  The Russian’s eyes rolled to the surface far above. “Deyn has them.”

  “They’ve been modified and put into deepwater casings?”

  “No, Deyn believed ten devices minimum for this project, sixteen for insurance. He decided the other ten would be earmarked for…other purposes. They are in original configuration.”

  James nodded. “You can lock on to that submersible and head for the surface. Naval helicopters will pick you up along with us.” James kicked his suit around to the Deep Flight. “Jack, send up the retrieval beacon. We’re done here.”

  Grimaldi punched a button, and a cone-shaped device released from the top of his sub in a stream of bubbles and shot toward the surface where tracking satellites would pick up its signal. James locked his claw on to the Deep Flight’s tow bar as the rest of his team assembled.

  The Mid-Atlantic Seaboard and Washington, D.C. had been saved.

  But three little towns named Avon, Buxton and Hatteras had been deemed strategically acceptable losses. They still faced a one-hundred-kiloton blast at Deyn’s hands in a last act of defiance. The only thing standing between them and annihilation were Carl Lyons, Mack Bolan, and T.J. Hawkins.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Platform

  “They have won.” Johan Mahke leaned his bulk back in his chair in disgust.

  Deyn’s fists clenched. “What do you have on the sonar log?”

  “There was a battle. The enemy consisted of four attackers in hardsuits like those our men were wearing, plus a submersible our sound catalog does not recognize. The battle lasted four minutes. There were sounds of explosions, violent decompressions, and what can only be cataloged as underwater gunfire.”

  “And?”

  “And the sounds of battle have ceased, Herr Deyn. Submersible Number 1 fled to the surface during the battle and is currently calling for recall. Number 2 has dropped off sonar. I am assuming it has been destroyed. The enemy submersible and sub Number 3 are currently rising to the surface in formation.”

  “How has this happened?”

  “I do not know. Sonar shows no surface ships in the area. I cannot imagine how they inserted.”

  “It was an airborne insertion.”

  “Airborne?” Mahke was incredulous. “With four ADS suits and a submersible?”

  “Yes. I do not know how they did it, but they did.”

  Mahke pressed Play on the CD recorder. “And we have this.”

  The two Germans listened to a crackling, slightly garbled recording of the hydrophones as Calvin James demanded Alexsandr Zabyshny’s surrender and the Russian capitulated. “Mr. Deyn, the construction crew was ahead of schedule. Eight devices are in place, but they failed to establish the link with them before they were attacked. We cannot detonate the devices from here.”

  “I am well aware of that.” Deyn took a flat plastic box out of his windbreaker.

  Mahke eyed the box in Deyn’s hand as if it were a venomous snake.

  Deyn smiled. “If the enemy is below, then I am willing to bet that they are here above, as well.”

  “How could they—”

  “They are here. Sound the alarm. Prepare for evacuation.” A muscle twitched beneath Deyn’s eye. “And bring the prisoners to me.”

  LYONS MOVED toward the command shack. He and Bolan came to a stop in the shadow of a crane. Steel storm shutters had been drawn down over the shack windows, but narrow observation slits spilled out yellow light. The platform was buttoned up tight against the storm. Neither Lyons nor Bolan was fooled. Deyn would be on a war footing. Everyone on the platform above and below would be armed to the teeth and ready to repel boarders.

  Bolan scanned the command shack and surrounding outbuildings with his rifle optics. “How do you want to play it, Carl?”

  The two men hunched as every light on the platform clicked on, lighting up the structure like a Christmas tree. Klaxons began to sound. Armed men began spilling out of the buildings.

  “Lets just play it by ear.”

  Bolan raised his weapon. The door to the barracks flew open and two men with rifles leaped out with more behind them. The Executioner put them both down with a burst and then squeezed the trigger on his M-203. The grenade looped through the barracks door, smashing one man off of his feet and detonating to send more screaming, jerking and torn to the ground.

  Bullets from above smashed out the windows of the crane operator’s box. Lyons extended his arm like a fencer, the folding stock of the shotgun locked around his arm and began to fire up at the observation tower. Buckshot rounds blasted out the windows, and the rifleman folded around the rail and fell end-over-end into space. His ruptured body hit the ground level of the platform with a hideous thump.

  “Rocket!” Bolan’s hand slammed down on Lyons’s shoulder. “Move!”

  A hissing line of fire and smoke streaked across the platform. The Stony Man warrior dived behind a bulkhead as the rocket grenade slammed into the crane and blew the operator box to flying shreds. Cables broke, and the crane boom collapsed and fell with a horrendous clang over the bulkhead. Bolan ducked as the two-ton boom bounced against the bulkhead, then slid past just over his head in a shower of sparks. The boom hit the platform with a final clang.

  Lyons rose up, his shotgun extended. The IESHEN Group rocketeer was reloading with the help of his crewman. The Jungle Gun roared, printing a pattern of buckshot in the rocket man’s upper chest and head. His rocket tube fell to the roof and the dead man fell nearly headless to the platform. The loader screamed and dropped his rocket as a pattern of buck ripped his legs out from beneath him and a second blast rolled him off the roof.

  Other than the yammering of the Klaxon, the howling of the wind and the ceaseless drumming of rain on corrugated iron, it was suddenly very quiet.

  “They’re waiting for us,” Bolan suggested.

  Lyons shucked fresh shells into his shotgun, his eyes fixed on the command shack. “We could go knock on the door.”

  “They’re waiting for that.”

  The two of them crouched behind the bulkhead as the rain sheeted down on them. The storm was picking up. “I’m open to suggestion.”

  “Well…I could pull a Santa Claus.”

  Lyons flashed a rare smile. “The rocket launcher.”

  “If you haven’t blasted it to shit.”

  “Do it. I’ll do the front door.”

  “Cover me.” The Executioner slung his rifle and burst from cover. He made for the shack at a dead sprint and leaped, grabbing the dripping eaves, pulling himself up and flinging a leg over the top. He rolled across the roof and came up in a crouch, unslinging his rifle and shouldering it one movement. He scanned the platform for targets and saw nothing moving. Bolan raised a hand and waved Lyons in while he covered.

  Lyons ran to the shack and pressed himself against the wall by the door. He pulled out a length of shaped-charge adhesive and pressed it against the seam of the shack’s steel door. He took out his detonator box and clutched it in the two functioning finge
rs and thumb of his right hand. The Able Team leader raised the muzzle of the Mossberg over the eaves and waved it to signal he was ready.

  Bolan slung his rifle and examined his prize. It was a Panzerfaust 3 light antitank weapon system. Lyons’s buckshot had blown out the optical sight and the tube had some dings and lead smears on it, but the weapon seemed serviceable. He picked up the fallen rocket, which vaguely resembled a football on a stick with a long probe sticking out the front. Large yellow letters on the side of the warhead read BASTEG. Bolan nodded. A Barricade and Street Encounter Grenade would fill the bill nicely. He shoved the rocket motor down the tube and it clicked into place.

  The problem was minimum range. He needed room for the rocket motor to ignite and the warhead to arm.

  Bolan squinted into the squall and examined the radio antenna tower as it teetered in the wind. He took the thirty-pound weapon across his shoulder and began to climb. The antenna groaned beneath his weight. He reached the top and figured he had the minimum twenty yards. At the top the little tower swayed sickeningly in the gale. The soldier pointed the tube down at the roof and shouted over the wind. “Fire in the hole!”

  The rocket hissed down into the roof. The BASTEG was a tandem warhead weapon. The extended probe in the nose of the warhead hit the roof and detonated the shaped-charge warhead, cutting a hole. The second warhead was a high-explosive grenade encased in preformed metal fragments. It instantly launched behind the shape charge and flew into the shack.

  Steel shutters rattled on either side of Lyons’s head. The glass within shattered and flame and smoke squirted out the observation slits. He hit his detonator box. “Fire in the hole!” The cutting charge slashed down the door frame in a hissing line. Lyons put his boot to the door and it flew off its hinges. He came in, shotgun at the ready. The interior of the shack was in ruins. Four men with rifles lay blasted and dead. Laurentius Deyn and Johan Mahke were nowhere in sight. Lyons called up through the smoking hole in the roof. “Clear!”

  Lyons kept his eye on the door at the back of the shack. Bolan appeared a moment later with the reloaded Panzerfaust across his shoulder and another rocket thrust through his belt. He thumbed his throat mike and frowned. “Radio signals are still being jammed. There has to be a secondary command and control.”

  The Able Team leader scanned the torn and blackened control panels. He flipped a switch and the Klaxons ceased their honking. Lyons pressed a button on the panel and was pleased to see the public-address system had survived. He picked up the mike and clicked Send. His voice reverberated throughout the platform.

  “Surrender the weapons. Surrender the prisoners. I’m only going to ask once.”

  “No.” Laurentius Deyn’s voice came back. “You will disarm, go to the helicopter pad and kneel with your hands behind your heads, or I will detonate the Hatteras Ridge.”

  “If you could do it, you would’ve done it already. We’ve secured the ridge, and you know it. Have your men disarm

  go to the pad. Surrender any remaining devices you have. Surrender the prisoners.”

  “I have nine weapons on this platform, each set for the maximum ten-kiloton yield. I have detected no evacuation of Cape Hatteras on satellite. You will be unable to secure the devices. The casings are tamper-proofed to detonate if they are molested. If you come for the devices, the Cape towns will be slaughtered. If you come for the prisoners, so will they.” Deyn’s voice went reptilian. “But come, come anyway.”

  Lyons clicked off. “You know something? I think the psycho son of a bitch still thinks he’s getting out of this.”

  “I agree. He has an out.”

  “He doesn’t have shit.” Lyons’s lips skinned back from his teeth. “He isn’t leaving this platform alive.”

  T. J. HAWKINS AWOKE to the sound of gunfire. At first he was startled to find that all he could see was green static. He spit blood out of his mouth and reached up to his face. He ran his fingers over his night-vision goggles and found the lenses were cracked. He pushed them up onto his forehead and winced when he found a lump the size of an egg in the way. He pulled off the goggles and glanced around groggily. The first thing he noticed was the massive concrete pylon three feet in front of him. A Rorschach inkblot of blood stained it directly in front of his face. Hawkins peered upward and saw his parafoil wrapped up around rebar and struts. He was hanging sixty-five feet above the ocean by his straps. Hawkins remembered sailing beneath the platform. He remembered the pylon rushing toward him. He remembered trying to steer around it. He did not remember eating the pylon, but the math was pretty clear. His nose was broken. His front teeth felt loose. His vision kept blurring. He wondered if he had a concussion.

  The Phoenix Force commando glanced down and saw a dock at the bottom of the platform. An open-frame elevator shaft as well as a steel staircase led up to the main platform. A number of concrete berths surrounded the dock. Three were empty. One contained the long dark cigar shape of a submarine. The sub looked small, like a diesel-electric coastal patroller. Hawkins wasn’t enough of a naval nut to identify what international inventory it had come from, but Laurentius Deyn was a billionaire with the ability to sift and manipulate the funds of a multinational corporation. If he wanted to buy a small, obsolete patrol sub from North Korea, China or Russia quietly, he had the money to make it happen.

  That answered another question.

  Deyn himself might be willing to go down with the Continental Shelf, but most of the men working for him wouldn’t. They would want a ticket out before the aquatic Armageddon. Diesel-electric boats, no matter how obsolete, had one very distinct advantage over the latest nuclear-driven boats. They could be very, very quiet when they wanted to be, particularly when hugging the mud along a coastline, and Deyn would have had years to upgrade the boat with the latest acoustic tiling, listening devices and quiet propeller screw designs. Hawkins smiled and spit some more blood. One mystery solved. How he was going to get down and do something about it was the next one.

  His ass was literally hanging in the breeze.

  It was slightly calmer beneath the shelter of the platform’s mass and there was no rain pelting him. There was really only one choice. Hawkins took a deep breath, hit his release buckles and dropped into space He tucked his knees into his chest in a cannonball as he fell sixty-five feet into the Atlantic, which hit him in the tailbone like a mallet. He gasped and swallowed ocean as the black water closed over his head. He instinctively began to kick. Ceramic armor inserts, assault rifles, pistols and grenades weren’t exactly buoyancy bonuses. It took every ounce of his strength to claw his way to the surface and start to stroke. Every wave hit him like a hammer. The Atlantic lifted him up and dropped him back down, and he felt like he had drunk half of it. He felt nauseous and his limbs were going cold. All he could do was continue his enfeebled stroke, aiming desperately for the dock.

  Hawkins’s hands and feet hit metal. He crawled up the hull of the sub while the waves struggled to wash him back into the water. He got up onto relatively dry land behind the sail and spread out his arms and legs, clutching the hull and shaking like a dog that had been left out in the rain.

  The Phoenix Force warrior took a deep breath and resumed his crawl up the hunched back of the sub to the sail. He rose to a crouch and peered over. Two men stood on the dock twenty feet away in slickers. They were smoking cigarettes and luckily peering off to the east. The howling wind and slapping waves had covered his approach. Hawkins reached for his silenced SOCOM pistol and found his sodden holster snapped open and empty.

  So much for silence. Guns were going off upstairs anyway. Hawkins unclipped his Barrett and rested it on the lip of the sail. He blinked and yawned as his the crosshairs doubled skewed as he peered through the optical sight. He let his vision return to normal and put his sights on the farthest man’s back. His hands were shaking uncontrollably.

  Sparks shrieked off the railing by the guard’s shoulder as he fired.

  The two men jumped in alarm and spun, bringi
ng their rifles to bear. Hawkins flicked his selector to full-auto as sparks whined off the sail next to his head. He squeezed the trigger and was rewarded as water sprayed from the chest of the guard’s wet slicker and he crumpled. The second guard sprayed on full-auto, and bullets cracked overhead. A single bullet from Hawkins’s 5-round burst snapped the guard’s head back and dropped him.

  The big ex-Ranger sagged against the sail and groaned. The gun blasts stabbed through his throbbing head like knives. His was definitely messed up. He was too weak, slow and cold to—The hatch in the sail clanked open and a man with a pistol shoved his head up and started shouting in German. Hawkins hosed the man back down the ladder with the rest of his magazine. Pistols barked back instantly from below. Hawkins pulled a fragmentation grenade, yanked the pin and tossed the bomb down the hatch.

  The men in the sub shouted in alarm, Hawkins followed it with a white phosphorous. The submariners screamed as shrapnel whined around the narrow confines of the bridge. The screams ended as white-hot smoke and burning metal filled the interior. Hawkins leaned back as streamers of white fire rose up out of the sail. He reloaded his rifle and tottered along the hull, leaping for the dock and nearly missing.

  The Phoenix Force commando put his hands on his knees to catch his breath and woozily contemplated the stairs and the elevator. The elevator car was currently up top. It was a wide, steel freight elevator, made to take heavy loads from the bottom to the top. It made only two stops. Hawkins pulled a length of flexible charge from his fanny pack, leaned inside the open girder shaft and wrapped it around the pair of thick cables in a figure eight. He pushed in a detonator pin and stepped back.

  “Going down!” Hawkins flicked the arming switch on his detonator box and pushed the button. The flexible charge hissed yellow fire in a halo around the cables and they suddenly came free, snapping and thrashing like angry snakes. Upstairs something made a very unhappy “clank!” and the elevator car dropped free.