Nucflash (29 page)

“Hope for the best?” Bainbridge laughed. “We're talking about a nuclear weapon here, gentlemen!”

“I'm well aware of that, Admiral,” the Secretary of Defense said coldly. “Which is why this must be a
political
decision, not a military one. The detonation of that device could ruin the economy of a vital ally and would seriously threaten U.S. strategic interests in the area. If we have any chance, any chance at
all
of stopping that detonation, we must take it.
Must
take it. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” Bainbridge said coldly. “I understand you very well. I just wonder, though, if you'll give the order.”

“Eh? What order?”

“The order to those airmen who'll have to fly in and fire the missiles that will kill over three hundred civilians and a number of comrades-at-arms.”

Hemminger shot Bainbridge a black look but said nothing.

“So what are we saying?” Schellenberg asked.

Clayton shrugged. “I suggest we let them go. Go! We've got men on the platform already. The Brits have their SAS people on the tug. I say we deploy the rest of the SEALs to the
Noramo Pride
, back up the Brits with every scrap of air and supply at our disposal, and run with it!”

“But Christ,” Schellenberg muttered, his eyes wide. “I mean . . .
Christ!
We don't have any control over those people, those SEALs! We can't leave leave something this important to trained killers like them! We have no control!”

“Maybe,” Marlowe said with a faint, tight smile, “that's the way it should be.”

 

Murdock watched as Sterling listened intently to the headphones plugged into the HST-4 receiver. Was he receiving orders from Washington? Had to be, since he'd been listening without comment or acknowledgment for five minutes now. The question was . . . would the orders require the SEAL OP to support the expected assault? Or order them out . . . and home to a court-martial?

It had to be an assault. It had to be. If these tangos got away with their nuclear blackmail . . .

The past twenty hours had been fairly typical for a long-term SEAL OP watch. They'd prowled both platforms during the night, looking for intel, identifying tango security elements and positions, familiarizing themselves with the facility's maze-like layout. During the day, they'd kept to their perch save for brief forays to keep tabs on the terrorists who were also on Bravo, down on the first level. The rest of the time, they took telescopic photos of terrorists and equipment, watched the movements of men aboard the
Rosa
and the
Celtic Maiden,
ate cold packaged rations, and endured the numbing chill of wind and weather. Much longer, Murdock knew, and the men would begin suffering from the effects of exposure, despite the protection afforded by their dry suits.

Still, BUD/S had shaped all of their minds as much as it had shaped their bodies. They might grumble about the cold quietly among themselves, but they endured it.

They had to.
You
may not like it, ran the old SEAL adage,
you
just have to do it.

They did it. In Vietnam, SEALs had trained themselves to deliberately assume uncomfortable positions in order to stay awake, while waiting at an ambush for hour after aching hour. This, Murdock thought, was much like that . . . though he did make his men take turns catching a few hours of sleep at a time.

He checked his watch impatiently. Waiting. Not knowing. That was the hardest. Always.

“Watchdog, Eyrie, Sierra three-five,” Sterling whispered into his mike after an interminable wait. “Acknowledged. Eyrie, out.”

“Well?” Murdock asked.

“Orders, L-T,” Jaybird Sterling said, replacing the headset from the satcom unit in its case. “Looks like we stay. . . .” He paused, then grinned wickedly. “And kick some tango ass!”

Murdock felt a surge of relief. He'd risked everything with his decision to bend the rules this far, both for himself and for his men, by coming here instead of adhering to a strict interpretation of his orders and staying on alert ashore.

“Yes!” Roselli said, clenching his fist and jerking his arm back. “All right!”

“Are we gonna hit them?” Johnson wanted to know.

“Let's keep a sock on it, people,” MacKenzie said, lowering his binoculars and turning to face the others. But he was grinning. “What's the story, Jaybird?”

“Okay. They're gonna want to talk to the L-T to finalize shit.” He looked at his watch, peeling back the Velcro cover. “Thirty-five minutes. Fourteen-hundred hours, our time. But an assault is go. They're bringing in the rest of Third Platoon to hit the tanker out there, and more SAS to take down Bouddica Alpha. We're to stay put, but act in support from the Eyrie. And . . .”

“What?” Murdock asked as Sterling hesitated.

“The station's radar. They want both of them taken out, just before the show goes down.”

“We don't have much with us in the way of bang-clay,” MacKenzie said. “What . . . three kilos?”

“That would be enough to take both radars down,” Murdock decided. Bouddica had two radar towers, visible above the main platform as a pair of slender towers capped by what looked like large, white golf balls—the weather shrouds housing the radar dishes.

“There's more,” Sterling added.

“What?”

“Any preliminary data we can acquire about the location and nature of the, quote, possible nuclear device, unquote, as well as any information on the location of the hostages and the disposition of tango security elements on any of the targets, including the fishing trawler
Rosa . . . ”
Sterling stopped, and drew a deep breath, before proceeding. “Would all be greatly appreciated!”

“Tall order,” Murdock said. He was already considering possible approaches to the main personnel habitat over on Alpha. If they could just slip across the bridge unobserved, at night . . . “We'll have to see what we can do about that. When it's going down?”

“Tonight. Time's not set yet, but tonight. The British government has been in radio communication with the terrorists. I gather they've agreed, at least in principle, to all of the tangos' demands, though they're claiming some problems.”

“Delaying tactics,” MacKenzie suggested.

“Sounds like it,” Sterling agreed. “Things like, the UN can't make an official vote on admitting the PRR until a full session of the General Assembly can be arranged Monday.”

“They bought that?” Roselli asked. “The tangos, I mean?”

“They're probably more interested in the money transfer,” Murdock suggested. An earlier burst-transmission picked up from MILSTAR had brought the SEALs up to speed on the terrorist demands.

“Probably.”

“What about the prisoner release?” MacKenzie wanted to know.

“The British have promised to release the prisoners,” Sterling said. “One of them, the Korean woman, will be sent out to Bouddica tonight. The terrorists were demanding that she be flown out to the platform by helicopter, but the Brits are pleading that bad weather in the area might pose a danger. So they're sending her out on the
Horizon
.”

“Which lets Wentworth get his boys in close when they come in to hand her over,” Murdock said, nodding. “Slick.”

“If they can manage it, the tug will move in close and provide a diversion while SEALs and SBS take down the tanker and the trawler. We'll hit the facility's radar so that the main assault force can come in by helo.”

“What about the minisub?” Johnson asked.

“The SAS'll hit that off the
Horizon
.”

“Sounds like it's all covered then,” Roselli said.

“Yeah,” Murdock said. “Except for one little thing.”

“What's that?”

“Where the hell's the A-bomb? Sounds like Washington is expecting us to find that out for them.”

Sterling nodded. “I guess they're working out a set of code words now, Skipper. They'll discuss that with you when you talk to them later. So we can tell them where the thing is, or even call the whole thing off.”

Roselli laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Which makes it our fault if the thing goes down bad.”

“Shit, Razor,” Murdock said, grinning. “Isn't that the way it always is?”

“Scars and stars, L-T,” Roselli said, shrugging. An old SEAL saying held that others got the stars—meaning promotion to admiral—while the SEALs faced the actual combat. “It's always scars and stars. . . .”

DeWitt released his equipment pack, which fell to the end of its tether with a sharp jerk, then dangled there five meters beneath his feet. Looking up, he checked the canopy of his ram-air chute, making certain that it was fully deployed and hadn't twisted into a deadly Mae West. Doc Ellsworth, he remembered, had been the victim of a faulty chute deployment over the Balkans; he'd been able to work with his reserve okay, but he'd ended up coming in off course and slammed into a tree.

Incidents like that always tended to make everyone a little more careful afterward.

The wind was blowing from the east at a fairly gentle five knots, which meant that DeWitt and the other jumpers had to quarter slightly into the wind to compensate for drift to the east. This op had been pretty restrictive in what was available for insertion. There weren't enough minisubs available for eight men, and if they were to reach their objective by IBS, they would have to come from the south or the west to keep from fighting the current . . . and an approach from the west would take them right under the noses of the tangos on Bouddica.

The current mission plan then, as were so many of them, was a series of compromises forced by available equipment and the lay of the land. The objective was at least in sight now . . . the long, low, black and white smudge of the tanker
Noramo Pride
, lying on the horizon just to the right of the tangled gray tower that marked Bouddica.

To DeWitt's right, just visible as a blue-on-blue patch against the sky, was another chute, he couldn't tell whose. Seven other SEALs were in the sky all around him, but DeWitt couldn't see any of them, a fact that was oddly reassuring. If he couldn't see them at a range of a mile or so, the terrorists on Bouddica and aboard the tanker wouldn't see them either.

The plan was simple—the best kind when it came to combat. There were fewer things to go wrong, or to screw up, that way. The SEALs had leaped from an Air Force C-130 moments before at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, which put the aircraft easily beyond the range at which it could be seen or heard from the platform. The SEALs, wearing heavy coveralls and jackets against the cold, with oxygen bottles strapped to their sides and connected to the full-helmet masks they wore, had fallen to ten thousand feet before opening their chutes.

It was, in fact, a mix of HAHO and HALO techniques. High Altitude, High Opening approach would have had them pulling the ripcord above 25,000 feet, then literally flying to their target for as much as fifty miles across the open sea. They could damn near have jumped over the east coast of England and flown all the way to Bouddica on the power of the wind alone.

High Altitude, Low Opening gave the jumpers no distance but let them fall almost on top of the target, literally yanking their rip cords at the last possible moment, scant hundreds of feet above the surface.

The compromise, however, had them fall a long way in order to stay off the enemy's radar. Bouddica had a decent radar setup, both to monitor the ever-changing weather and to watch the steady flow of surface traffic moving through this part of the North Sea. A skilled operator might detect the blips that were approaching parachutists, and while it seemed unlikely that terrorists would have radar experts within their ranks, SEALs only reached old age when they planned for all possibilities and were very, very careful in how they dealt with them.

They would splash into the sea five miles south of Bouddica, where they would home in on a Chemlite stick held by Brown, who'd jumped a few moments before the rest of them in order to serve as pathfinder. Once everyone was down, they would inflate two SEAL IBSs—one of them was part of the heavy bundle dangling beneath DeWitt's feet—climb aboard, and begin motoring toward the
Noramo Pride
.

They would deliberately hang back out of sight, however, until 2200 hours, almost half an hour past sunset, when it would be dark enough to approach on the surface of the sea without being easily spotted.

Once they reached the tanker, of course, everything was easy. Just climb the damn thing, neutralize every terrorist aboard, and wait for further orders. Meanwhile, all hell would be breaking loose around them. The anchor tug
Horizon
would be returning to the area at just about 2200 hours, with the North Korean woman on board. There would be some final negotiations, and then Chun would be handed over to the tangos, just as they'd demanded.

Washington and London had agreed on that one, at least, though DeWitt imagined there'd been some pretty acrimonious infighting over the question at first. But they needed to bring Chun in close, even let her go across to Bouddica, so the terrorists could see her and perhaps believe that the government forces had capitulated; while the exchange was taking place, at precisely 2230 hours, DeWitt's SEALs would take down the tanker, Murdock and the four men with him would knock out the facility's radar, and the SAS men aboard
Horizon
would storm the main platform. A small SBS team, DeWitt had been told, would deal with the trawler
Rosa,
just in case the A-bomb was hidden in her hold. The final blow would be delivered minutes later, when a flight of British helicopters, ferrying in SAS and GSG9 commandos, would come skimming in out of the west at wave-top height. If Lieutenant Murdock and his people were able to take down Bouddica Alpha's radar, the helos ought to make it all the way in without being sighted until literally the last moment. More helos would be coming in behind the first wave, these carrying American NEST agents and Navy EOD experts, with the tools and the know-how to disarm a live nuclear warhead.