Assault on the Empress (14 page)

With several thousand members of the Devil's Princes at large on the Chicago streets and likely to remain so even though their leaders were all in custody and their economic base was destroyed, Darwin Hughes had thought it the better part of valor to avoid spending another night in the Windy City. And he regretted that. The Art Institute of Chicago was one of the finest museums of its type in the free world, the Lake Front, even in winter, a thing of beauty. The restaurants, the theaters. But, foregoing all of that, he had booked out to Athens, Georgia, via Charlotte, North Carolina. And Lewis Babcock had elected to spend a few days with him before settling out his personal affairs long enough to get up to New York and help convince Cross to join the team again once the
Empress Britannia
had arrived in New York.

Hughes had found himself grateful for the company, his mountain retreat a lonely place at times. He found it good to run against someone again, especially a superb athlete such as Babcock, good to shoot against someone, especially a marksman such as Babcock. And Darwin Hughes realized there was a great deal he had missed—the action.

Hughes was sitting on his porch, the weather in the mountains with rare exception perpetually comfortable. Babcock had just come back from a session on the range with the sniper rifle, the black synthetic stocked Steyr-Mannlicher SSG .308 held in the crook of his arm like a field shotgunner might carry his smoothbore. Babcock stood at the base of the twenty-three steps. “You know, Mr. Hughes, by the end of the day, these steps get a bit ridiculous.”

“I'll have the porch lowered, Lewis. Remind me in case I forget, will you? Or would you prefer the ground raised, instead?”

Babcock shook his head and started up the steps. The telephone rang, Hughes catching up his glass of tea, the ice clinking as he moved quickly, attempting to outrace the answering machine. He caught the phone just before the machine would have clicked on. “Hello.”

“Hughes. This is Argus. Have you been watching television?”

“Quit the military, have you, and gone to work as a Nielsen polster?”

“Very funny. I assume you haven't. Turn it on. I'll wait.”

“I have a satellite dish. Any particular station?”

“Any of the networks.”

Hughes set down the phone, saw Babcock entering the great room and told him, “General Argus is on the telephone. Evidently something's happening.”

“I thought we weren't committed until we talked with Abe Cross?”

“We're not,” Hughes answered. He turned the power on and tuned to the nearest network channel. He recognized the face of the newscaster.

“… or approximately four A.M. Greenwich Mean Time, only a little more than an hour ago. The
Empress Britannia,
flagship of her line, has been described by many as the most luxurious of the great ocean-going vessels. Although there has been no formal list of demands from the terrorists who identify themselves as, I quote, ‘champions of Northern Ireland liberty,' informed sources in London, speaking on condition of anonymity, say they believe the hijackers are members of an outlawed wing of the IRA with a record of violence to their credit. This may include the recent bombing in Belfast of a police barracks which has claimed one hundred and twenty-three lives.

“For those of you who may have joined us late, the
Empress Britannia
, one of the finest of the—” Hughes cut off the television.

“Cross is on board,” Babcock said quietly.

“Indeed.” Hughes nodded, going back to the telephone. He picked up the receiver and said to Argus, “I assume that's not all, what they're saying on the television. Otherwise you wouldn't have called. It sounds more like something the British would be involved with.”

“No. It isn't all there is. I'm sending a chopper for you and Mr. Babcock. I can fill you both in then. Any problems with that?”

“None. Are we moving out directly or coming back?”

“Directly would be best, for a number of reasons.”

“How soon before the chopper gets here?”

“About—hang on—about another thirty minutes.”

“If you're in touch with the pilot, tell him to watch out for the air currents up here. They're a bit tricky at times. Should we bring things we might need?”

“It won't be necessary. We have all that's needed.”

“Splendid. Thirty minutes.” Hughes hung up and looked at Babcock. ”I doubt they're thinking of dispatching us just to rescue Abe Cross.”

“We haven't trained.”

“Well, let's hope our Irish friends haven't either then, shall we?” Hughes looked at his watch. There was a great deal to do and very little time to do it. “Open the safe and get rid of the rifle and scour up the other guns.”

Seamus O'Fallon stood up and stretched, picked up his Uzi submachine gun and started down from the bridge of the Empress. Only three passengers and one crewman remained unaccounted for, only one of the four traveling on a British passport. The rest of the British subjects he had had assembled in the main lounge. He stopped on what the diagram he had memorized—kindly provided by a travel agent—had called the Beach Deck. There, on their knees, were the captain and his senior officers, wrists cuffed behind them, ears plugged with cotton and heavy black velvet bags pulled over their heads, the drawstrings of the bags pulled tight enough to make it uncomfortable but not so tight as to choke them, then tied at the backs of the necks.

He stood in front of them, looking toward the east. Soon the sun would be rising and he didn't want to miss that. The British passengers he had cowering in the lounge could wait for him. He'd waited for the British all his life. Paddy was walking up toward him, playing with one of his switchblade knives as usual. “Seamus. There's still nothin' at all on where the missin' crewman and the three missing passengers have gotten themselves. Should I start executin' hostages? Might make them change their minds about playin' hide and seek.”

“Not yet, Paddy. We might be needin' all the hostages we can muster once they start in to threatenin' us with their bloody SAS bastards. A damned Brit writer, a piano player and his songbird and some negro engine wiper ain't gonna do much.”

Soon it would be time for the sunrise. A headache had started, but the pills had put it to the back of his brain and he could control it there. It was only when it came at the front of his brain and the blood cast was over his eyes that it wasn't controllable at all….

Cross had reasoned that the boat deck would be the place to start for two reasons. There were no elevators running, of course, because there was still no electrical power. So, they had worked their way up cautiously along one of the stairwells. It was the logical place for two reasons that formed into one: It was on the boat deck along the portside where the trap shooting was conducted in the mornings and afternoons, and where the shotguns and ammunition used were stored; if this Alvin Leeds were a clever man and wasn't armed, it would have been the first place he'd gone; and, by Cross, Jenny and the Englishman Comstock going there, there was a slim chance of encountering Leeds and a better chance (not much better, but a little) that just maybe the terrorists hadn't thought of the armory yet and weapons might still be available.

A problem standing on two legs presented itself just forward of the stairwell as Cross peered out, then quickly tucked back. “There's a guard. He's got an assault rifle. Looks like an AK.”

“Damn the luck!” Comstock murmured.

“Maybe not,” Cross said after a moment. “An assault rifle is gonna be a lot better than a bunch of long-tubed scatterguns and some trap loads. And if he's right here, maybe he's guarding the armory because they haven't emptied it yet.”

“A regular Pollyanna, aren't you?” Comstock observed.

Cross looked at Jenny Hall. “Well? Want me to try for him?”

“You could get yourself killed, Abe,” she told him, her voice just as warm sounding in a whisper.

“That means you won't tell me to, but it sounds like a good idea, right?”

“Take my gun,” she advised.

“No. I've got what l need. Hang loose.” Cross edged forward so he could peer just around the flange for the open watertight door which capped the stairwell. The man hadn't moved, his Ask-47 slung across his back and not handy to instant use, smoke curling up from in front of him, the occasional smell of pipe tobacco on the air, the vessel still aimed into the wind.

Cross reached under his shirt and took the Mini-Tanto from its sheath. He moved the blade in his hand, wheeling it through his fingers to get its balance. The Magnum Tanto, vastly larger, was his favorite edged weapon. And, despite the size difference, the balance was surprisingly similar.

With the knife folded back, spine against the interior of his wrist, edge along the edge of his forearm, Abe Cross stepped fully into view—if the man turned around.

Cross started toward the man slowly, in his mind visualizing the sheet music from Chopin's “Revolutionary Etude,” a complicated and beautiful piece he'd memorized as a child and still played when the lounge crowds were thin enough or drunk enough not to notice he was slipping in something classical. He had learned, years ago, that there was a sort of empathy struck between stalker and prey, and the prey would turn because he had felt something, heard nothing, seen nothing, merely felt it.

It wasn't working, his mind still being drawn toward the man he stalked, the man shifting uneasily on his feet, but not turning around yet. Cross tried visualizing a transposition into a minor key. He started moving again, just on the balls of his feet, the Mini-Tanto still against his forearm, hidden, his forearm almost limp at his side. The gap to the man with the Soviet assault rifle was less than eight feet, Cross pausing, inhaling, focusing his strength and all his concentration except for that portion of his mind mentally notating the transposition to the hand in which he held the Mini-Tanto. His fingertips were acutely aware of the variations in surface texture of the rubberized handle coating, reading it like a road map but written in Braille.

Four feet.

The man twitched uneasily.

Cross started bringing the piece up a minor third.

Two feet, his fingertips pressing more tightly against the haft of the knife.

He reached out, his left hand going quickly over the face and nose, snapping the head back at the neck as his right hand arced outward, the knife moving in his fingertips and the edge crossing from left to right, literally from beneath ear to ear, deep enough to sever any powers of speech, the body already dying as he held it, the Mini-Tanto spinning in his fingertips, driven downward like a stake into the heart of something despicably evil. And to Abe Cross, terrorist and evil incarnate were now and had been and would, he suddenly realized, always be synonymous.

He brought the body down slowly, looking from side to side, not bothering with untangling the sling from the dead arm and shoulder, merely slicing through the webbing, catching up the assault rifle, making a hasty square knot where he'd severed the sling, putting it over his shoulder and starting to drag the body back toward the stairwell in which Jenny Hall and Comstock were still hiding, he thought.

And then Comstock was beside him, taking some of the weight of the dead body, whispering hoarsely, “I think you terrified the girl, old man. Be understanding with her.”

Cross whispered back, “You're the strangest man I ever met—and I don't really know how I mean that.”

“Then I'll take it as flattery.” They had the body beside the watertight door and boosted it up over the flange.

Cross looked at Jenny Hall's face. It was whiter than he could have imagined human skin to be, but the cheeks were red and flushed. But he gave her credit. Her hands trembling slightly as she did it, she dropped to her knees beside the body, blood still trickling from the wide crimson gash in the neck, starting to search the body for anything useful. The man wore combat boots. Cross untied the laces and started pulling them from the eyelets, the nylon cord laces useful potentially as garrotes.

“Two magazines for a Browning GP—High Power to you,” Comstock announced. “Now, if we can only find the bloody gun.”

“I've got it,” Jenny announced. “And a magazine for the assault rifle.”

“Swiss Army Knife—only a cheapie copy,” Comstock noted.

Cross had the bootlaces free, feeling up the legs. There was a buldge and he used his knife—it needed cleaning anyway—to cut away the fabric. On the left calf there was an improvised fabric harness holding a Gerber MKI boot knife in place. He cut away the harness and took the black-handled knife and black leather sheath.

“Identity papers,” Comstock said. “Name's McCarthy.”

“Wonder if he's any relation to Charlie?” Cross asked without expecting an answer.

He didn't get one.

“Nothing else on him—but I haven't checked around his crotch. I see some kind of bump—and don't laugh. But I'm not going to,” Jenny announced. “One of you guys do it. I'll keep watch through the doorway.”

Cross did it, pulling down the zipper, feeling inside. He struck paydirt. There was a leech holster on a garter clip tucked under the front of the shirt just below the trouser band line, inside the holster some sort of unrecognizable brand of .25 automatic. “This is next to useless,” Cross remarked.

“I agree. Keep it anyway.”

Cross looked at him. Comstock had the Browning High Power 9mm in his right fist. It wasn't held menacingly or anything like that, but Jenny had made a good point despite her syntax. All they had to say Andrew Comstock was who he said he was was that he said he was.

Abe Cross wondered if that were enough….

The chopper touched down, Hughes ducking his head as he grabbed up his two bags and ran for it, Lewis Babcock beside him. There was only one actual weapon Hughes had packed. It was one of the long-bladed Tantos. He was determined to give it to Abe Cross or die trying to.