Tsar: A Thriller (Alex Hawke)

by Ted Bell

  “Stoke, look. I know you love this woman. I know it’s dangerous as hell, what I’m asking her to do. But it’s the only chance we’ve got, man. Not only to save four hundred people’s lives but to counter Russian aggression that could trigger a world war. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Fancha saves the world. Man, shit I get myself into hanging around with you.”

  Stoke got up and picked up the sat phone lying on the tiny grey desk, punched in a number, sat down on a corner of the desk, a look of pained concern in his big brown eyes.

  “Hey, baby. How you doing? I know, I know. But we’re coming to get you, okay? Soon, that’s when. That’s what I’m calling about. Now, calm down and listen. I’ve got a way maybe you can help us out…”

  Hawke dropped lightly to the floor and slipped out of the cabin, quietly pulling Stoke’s door shut. He didn’t want to hear this conversation. If things upstairs went badly, as they frequently did, there’d be only one person to blame, and he didn’t have time to think about that right now. He sprinted aft along the narrow companionway. It led to where Brock and Captain Jack Stiglmeier, XO of SEAL Team Six, were meeting in the sub’s NAVPSPECWAR wardroom, where all the missiles used to be.

  He had to get to Brock and the SEAL Team Six exec officer, work out some kind of operation that had even a minute chance of actually working. Before any SEAL mission, the assault force plans routes that will be used to gain control of the target. On surface vessels where hostages are held, the bridge is usually the assault-and-rescue team’s first objective, since it’s the nerve center of the vessel. Movements are conducted in a “bounding overwatch” mode, where one part of the team is always covering the other. Any enemy sighted can be taken under immediate fire without others having to move and shoot at the same time.

  Having an armed hostage aboard willing and capable of neutralizing the bridge and give the boarding team a viable insertion point was critical to the plan the three men now worked out. The success of this assault, Hawke knew, would be immeasurably more problematic should Fancha fail to reach the bridge alive.

  A long, sweat-soaked hour later, Hawke shoved his chair back, put his feet up on the table, lit another of Putin’s cigarettes, and smiled at Brock and Stiglmeier.

  “Yeah, okay,” Hawke said. “God help us, I think we’re finally good to go. You guys good? Everyone ready?”

  “Good,” Harry said, looking down at a diagram of the pod he’d drawn on a legal pad, outlining the two teams’ plans of action. Harry would be going up with Stoke’s squad, acting as his second in command.

  Stiglmeier said, “I’m good. And ready.”

  “Let’s go to work,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “You want to call a time, Jack?”

  “I still like midnight.”

  “Then we ride at midnight,” Hawke said, smiling at the team.

  59

  Fancha was ready, too. She had exactly fifteen minutes to make her way aft, down two decks to the bridge deck, get away from anyone who tried to stop her, find the control pod, and open the hatch for Stoke and his men at the stroke of midnight. She checked her watch again. If she was lucky, she’d reach the bridge a few minutes early. If she was unlucky, well, nobody blames you for being late if you’re dead.

  She had Stoke’s gun and the sat phone both stuck uncomfortably in the small of her back, inside the belt holding up her black jeans. She wore her dark red blouse untucked so it would cover the two items. She had no idea what to expect once she stepped outside her cabin, but she thought having the gun and a phone in her hands was probably a bad idea when and if she encountered one of the terrorists.

  She looked at herself in the mirror one last time.

  “You can do this, girl, you can do this,” she said to herself, and she almost believed she could. God knew she’d said it enough times since she’d hung up from talking to Stoke.

  She’d not cracked the door in almost three days, living in constant fear the terrorists would conduct a room-to-room search for her. Luckily, they’d either forgotten about her, or decided she wasn’t worth the effort. She’d had nothing to eat but snacks, sodas, and beer from the minibar. But she understood what Stokely wanted from her, how important it was, and she was determined to succeed or die trying.

  She unlocked the double locks on the door, grabbed the knob, and turned it. Slowly, as quietly as she could, she pulled the door open, an inch, two inches. Someone was coming! She pulled the door shut and leaned against the wall, her heart pounding.

  There had been a sound from the corridor, coming toward her from the left. Someone whistling. A woman. It sounded like one of the housekeepers. Could they really have the staff continue to clean the damn ship while people were being held hostage? Maybe even being killed? She supposed they could. This was, as Stoke had told her when they were boarding, a “tight ship.”

  And these “housekeepers,” as they called themselves, didn’t look much like housekeepers. The majority of them were young, mid-twenties, blonde, and all uniformly beautiful. Ukrainians, mostly, the ones she’d talked to, but there were pretty girls of every race, creed, and color aboard. All trained to walk and talk the same, pretty much indistinguishable. The Stepford Maids, she called them.

  It was some high-class form of white slavery, she supposed. Dirt-poor girls from small towns, desperate to get out. Horrible but not nearly as bad as what happened to thousands of other girls like them around the world. These women were the lucky ones; the unlucky ones got sold.

  She put her ear to the door. The whistling woman was just passing by. Fancha pulled the gun from her waistband, opened the door silently, and stepped out into the hall.

  “Excuse me?” she said, approaching the woman from behind. The housekeeper stopped, but before she could turn around, Fancha had brought the butt of the gun down on top of the woman’s head, swinging it just as hard as she could. She crumpled to the floor, out like a light.

  Fancha bent and grabbed her under the armpits, quickly dragging her back inside her stateroom. She shut the door and locked it. She stared down at the unconscious woman, breathing hard, unable to believe she’d done this to her. She grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. Strong. But wait just a minute. This woman was wearing a uniform. Black satin, with a frilly white apron and a frilly white cap. The size wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough.

  She bent down and started unbuttoning the woman’s blouse.

  It took all of two minutes to disrobe the maid and herself and put on the housekeeping uniform. She looked at herself. She’d tucked her dark hair up under the cap as best she could. Stuck the gun and the phone inside the apron strings, where they were tied tightly in the back. Found a long black cardigan sweater in her closet and put that on. It was just long enough to cover up everything back there. She’d pass for one of the housekeepers, she thought, if nobody looked too closely, remembered her face.

  There were two terry robes hanging in the bathroom. She took the sashes from both and used them to bind the unconscious woman’s wrists and ankles. She used a hand towel as a gag, tying it tightly, knotting it at the back of the girl’s head, praying it was enough to keep her quiet when she came to.

  She cracked the door, saw that the dimly lit passage was empty, and headed for the stairs at the far end. She didn’t run, because housekeepers didn’t run. She tried to take her time. And tried to whistle, as they all seemed to whistle. The maid encounter had cost her precious time. But the uniform also might save her life, she thought, hurrying up the steps to the deck two floors above. Her first job was to determine if the hostages were still being kept in the ballroom. Stoke guessed they were. The terrorists would want them contained, where they could keep a close watch over every move they made.

  She’d had an idea, and maybe it was a good one. First, go back through the kitchen, which she managed without seeing a soul. Next, go backstage, look for the small door that opened onto a tiny staircase leading up to the projection room. The ballroom was also where they showed m
ovies every night. She had a hunch there’d be no movie tonight, and the projection room would be empty, and she was right.

  Peering down through the tiny window next to the projector, she saw the hostages. They were mostly crowded on the floor, sleeping on blankets, although some were seated at the tables. They looked as bad as you would expect. Little food, little water, little sleep. And there were ten armed terrorists stationed around the perimeter of the room, just in case anybody got any ideas. She headed back to the kitchen and quickly made her way down to B Deck.

  Stokely had told her where to find the bridge deck pod. It was the clear plastic egg she’d seen suspended from the bottom of the airship’s hull. Stoke said to go to the very center of A Deck, and there she’d find the entrance ladder down to the control pod.

  B Deck aft where she was now, was mostly crew quarters. Zero décor. Pretty grim compared with the luxurious spaces above. Two jumpsuited crewmen were headed her way. Laughing, arms around each other, drunk. She took a deep breath, kept whistling, smiled at them as they approached her. The one nearest her reached out, leering, and grabbed her arm. She hissed at him, something low and threatening, and wrenched her arm away. “Asshole!” she said, giving it her native Cape Verde accent. She was clearly more trouble than she was worth. They kept moving.

  She kept moving. All the way to the end of the corridor, down a set of service steps to the A Deck. Then she started back toward the middle of the ship. It was steerage down here, crew quarters even less appealing than the deck above.

  “Hey! Stop!” someone called out in English as she passed an open door. She’d caught a glimpse inside and speeded up a little bit. There had been at least a couple of men in there, playing cards, it had looked like, a huge cloud of smoke over their heads, noisy, drunken laughter from inside.

  “Hey! You deaf? I said stop.”

  She did, her heart pounding. If she ran, he’d catch her. It would be over. She turned around.

  The guy was at the door, leaning out into the hall, a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand. He looked vaguely familiar. Oh, yeah. Happy the Baker, God help her.

  “Come back here.”

  “Okay,” she said, using a universal word and trying to give it a bit of an island accent. She turned around, walking toward him, head down with her hands clasped behind her back. A perfectly obedient little Stepford Maid but one with her finger on the trigger.

  “Haven’t seen you before. What’s your name, honey, you look familiar.”

  “Tatiana.”

  “Whatever. Come on in, baby. Join the party,” the big fat man said, slapping her rump as she stepped through the door and into the smoke-filled room. He turned and locked the door.

  Not a good sign.

  TWO FOURTEEN-MAN TEAMS of commandos huddled at the base of the steel ladder inside the conning tower. They’d been exhaustively briefed over the last hour. The mood was good. They had a workable mission plan now, and they had confidence in the two men who’d lead the assault. One was American, Stokely Jones, a legendary SEAL in his day.

  The other was a Brit named Alex Hawke, and it was obvious he’d been there, done that, and, besides, they liked what they saw in his eyes.

  The absolute animal willingness to kill.

  Each man was clad in black rip-stop Nomex with lightweight Kevlar and ceramic body armor. Their faces were smeared with black camo face paint. They carried a lot of gear, including the new M8 assault rifle, maybe the deadliest such weapon in the world. The SIG Sauer P228 pistol, carried in a low-slung tactical holster just below the hip, would act as backup. Pistol magazines hung precariously from gun belts, M8 mags rode in thigh pads for quick access. Some members carried the M4-90, a magazine-fed tactical shotgun. A street sweeper if ever there was one.

  In addition to the knives and ammo hung from their web belts, they were equipped with flashbang stun grenades. These nonlethal explosives could incapacitate targets through blinding light and an excruciating 180-decibel noise. And they had smoke grenades to screen movement or disorient targets when necessary.

  Each man wore a Kevlar helmet headset with an earpiece that fitted snugly inside the left ear and a filament microphone that lay just below the lower lip. They had their Motorola wireless sets turned off now, most of them practicing how to say “Drop the gun!” and “On the floor!” and “Shut the fuck up!” in phonetic Russian.

  Hawke, Stoke, Brock, and Hynson stood to one side of the group, going over last-minute instructions with the skipper of the submarine. Timing was going to be absolutely everything now, and they couldn’t afford even the slightest error on anybody’s part.

  Hawke checked his watch. Ten minutes out.

  They were ready. Now all they had to do was wait and pray for Fancha’s call.

  HAPPY THE BAKER. That’s who the guy was, all right. The one at the birthday party in Coconut Grove, whom Stoke said the FBI called the Omnibomber. A guy who went around the world blowing up people the Russians at the Kremlin didn’t like.

  Happy and two other guys were sitting around a card table littered with overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles, and dirty glasses. Russian engine-room crewmen, by the looks of them. They were wearing oil-stained “wife-beater” undershirts, the ones with shoulder straps. By the sweat and stink rolling off them, there wasn’t a lot of bathing going around here.

  One of them looked her up and down, picked up an ashtray, and upended the contents onto the rug.

  “Oops,” he said, laughing, the other two finding the whole thing hilarious. They looked at her through lowered lids, their hands moving down to the crotches of their greasy work pants.

  Happy the fat boy, his little pig eyes narrow, nuzzled her ear, his hand on her ass, mercifully too drunk to recognize her from the party in Miami.

  “Clean it up, bitch,” Happy said, his voice thick with alcohol and lust. He was standing close behind her, his foul breath on her neck, his rough hands kneading her buttocks, reaching up under her arms to squeeze her breasts hard enough to make her wince. He wasn’t close enough to feel the gun yet, but he was getting there.

  She had to get him, get all of them, out in front of her.

  Now.

  “Okay,” she said, moving quickly away from Happy.

  She dropped to one knee and swept the butts and ashes back into the ashtray with her hand. Then she rose and carried it over to the table between the two unmade beds. She placed it on the table and sat down on the bed farthest from the door. She saw the ugly black gas masks hanging on the backs of their chairs. And in the corner behind the card table were the tanks she’d seen on Happy’s back when the terrorists seized the ship. She might not live through this ordeal, but at least there was one threat she could eliminate right now.

  “What are you sitting on your pretty little ass for, honey?” Happy said in his Brooklyn accent. “Boys want to see you dance.”

  “Dance?” she said, smiling sweetly.

  She stood up and reached behind her, fussing with her apron strings. “Shouldn’t I take all this off first?”

  “Yeah, baby. That’s a great idea,” Happy said. “That’s it. Take it off. All of it. Real slow.”

  “Real slow,” she repeated, smiling as she brought the 9mm automatic pistol around where they could all get a good, long look at it.

  “Fuck,” Paddy said.

  “You said it, not me,” Fancha said.

  She raised the gun, squeezed the trigger, and shot Happy the Baker in the crotch. Giving him just a second to look down at the spreading bloodstain and realize what had just happened to him, she then raised the gun and put one in the middle of his face. A cherry-and-black blemish instantly bloomed on the bridge of his nose, and a piece of his skull about the size of a quarter hit the wall behind him in a spray of red mist.

  The other two, terrified, were diving for the floor. She took a step forward so she’d have a clear shot at each of them. She took her time, gripping the pistol out front with two hands the way Stoke had taught her at Gator Guns,
aiming carefully, squeezing the trigger gently. She shot each one of the men in the head.

  Once, then twice.

  She collapsed back onto the bed and pulled out the sat phone. Thank God for speed dial. Her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t have punched more than one button.

  “Stoke?”

  “Fancha, you okay?”

  “Baby, I just killed three people. They were going to…rape me, and I just—”

  “Aw, honey, I’m so—”

  “No, no. Shh. I’m okay. Happy is dead. I shot him. Those gas canisters I told you about are here in his room. I think they’re just small enough to go out through the portholes if I can get them open.”

  “Do it now, okay? I would love to know there is no gas in play when we come aboard.”

  “Hold on.”

  She was back on the line a minute later. “Canisters just went overboard,” she said. “Gas is gone.”

  “Great. Now, hostages? Still in one place?”

  “Yeah. All in the ballroom, most of them trying to sleep on the floor. Some huddled around the tables. Ten armed guys standing around the perimeter.”

  “So, ten standing watch over the hostages, ten off duty, maybe sleeping. That’s a big help.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How long till you get down to the bridge, baby?”

  “Ten minutes, if I’m lucky.”

  “Don’t be lucky, be careful. I love you. See you soon.”

  60

  The submarine lay at a depth of 600 feet below the surface, maintaining neutral buoyancy.

  In the middle of her control room were two periscopes on a raised platform. One of the periscopes had a surface video camera that sent pictures to monitors throughout the control room and to the captain’s quarters. Each monitor now displayed an image of the giant zeppelin hovering five hundred feet above the ocean’s surface. Except for the flashing red running lights along her hull and a few lit windows along the center of the fuselage, she was mostly dark, darker even than the black sky behind her.