Nucflash sts-3

by Keith Douglass

  “Maybe. If we get close enough.”

  “Two. Assume they do have a bomb.”

  “We have to, damn it. If nothing else, there’s the radioactivity on that Korean woman’s clothing.”

  “Agreed. And they’re not going to touch the thing off at the first sight of combat swimmers.”

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself about that.”

  “Stands to reason. Push the button and…” Murdock shaped a mushroom cloud with his hands. “Boom. And that leads to some very serious consequences.”

  Wentworth laughed, a dry, forced bark. “No! Now pull my other one.”

  “No, I mean it. Serious consequences for them, for their cause. Remember how Saddam’s eco-terrorism backfired on him?”

  “Yes.” Wentworth hesitated, then his eyes widened. “Yes! You think this PRR is going to be concerned about world opinion.”

  “Hell, they have to. Saddam threatened to blow up all the oil wells in Kuwait if the forces leaning on him didn’t back off. He also threatened to set loose an enormous oil slick in the Persian Gulf. When Desert Storm kept storming, he did both. All he managed to do was convince the rest of the world that he was as crazy, as vicious crazy, as we’d been saying all along.”

  “That was war, of course.”

  “And terrorism isn’t? In fact, my impression always was that the terrorism of the seventies and eighties was designed to convince nice, soft, comfortable people in the West that they were now in a war zone, potential targets. Americans… hey. Wars between Arabs and Israelis, that didn’t bother them, right? Didn’t strike home. But when an airliner blows up and some of the passengers are from your home state, when suddenly it takes a couple of hours longer to check aboard your flight because of the security precautions, when laws are being passed that take away some of the freedoms you’d taken for granted up until then… when suddenly you’re fucking inconvenienced, you’ve become part of the war. And that’s exactly what those groups were after.

  “Well, after a while, most of the terror groups learned that they were sending the wrong message. Westerners started thinking of all Arabs as barbarians or worse, as crazed fanatics. Elite units that fought terrorists — the SAS, the SEALs, Delta Force — well, they were the heroes. It hurt the tangos’ cause, drove a damned stake through it. After a while, terror groups like the PLO that needed legitimacy started talking about diplomacy and peace instead of car bombs. The only ones left tossing bombs around are the ones who really do think they’re at war with the West, or who do it for revenge.”

  “Or for the thrill of seeing the write-up in the London Times.”

  “Maybe. Better example… when the Provos started getting bloody in the seventies, the IRA’s funding in the States started drying up. A lot of their money originally came from Irish-Americans, especially in Boston and New York, but Americans wouldn’t bankroll terrorists.”

  “Most Americans, anyway. But I take your point. Setting off a nuclear device in the North Sea, ruining the economics of the five or six countries that depend on North Sea oil and fishing productivity, causing massive unemployment, spreading radioactive fallout across a quarter of the continent and blackening the beaches with radioactive sludge… bad show, really. And a very bad press.”

  “I think it was Mao who said a guerrilla has to swim with all the other fish in the sea. He can’t alienate the people he’s trying to liberate. And that nuke, believe me, would alienate a lot of people.”

  “You don’t think the general population will respond to this idea of a nation without boundaries? If it means membership in the nuclear club?”

  “Look at the hits in world opinion that the U.S. has taken for being the only nation in history to use atomic bombs in war. These people know that if they touch off a nuke, they’re going to be remembered the same way.”

  “Some of those people out there,” Wentworth said. He stopped, then shook his head. “They might like the publicity.”

  “Not these people. They’re looking for political power. And they won’t rock the boat, won’t want to rock the boat, I mean, with the North Koreans bankrolling them and providing them with noisy toys. My guess is that they’ll be damned careful about setting off their device, if only because they need Pyongyang to supply them with more bombs, and the North Koreans don’t need to find themselves at the receiving end of an antinuke crusade any more than the tangos do.”

  “So, what’s your point? That the terrorists won’t set off the bomb? Assuming they have one, of course.”

  “No. That they’re not going to be so itchy-twitchy to set it off that they’ll push the button the moment they catch sight of one of us. My guess is they won’t push the button until they have absolutely no other choice. As long as the bomb hasn’t gone off yet, they still have a hold on us, a way to manipulate us. If they set it off, they’ve got to know that the whole world is going to brand them as monsters, as outcasts, and at least a dozen governments aren’t going to rest until every last one of them is hunted down. Where’s their political power then?”

  “You know,” Wentworth said with a faraway look in his eyes. “That actually makes a crazy kind of sense.”

  “There’s one more reason nothing will happen,” Murdock said.

  “And what is that, then?”

  “The crazy sons of bitches aren’t going to see us, that’s why. In and out, sneak and peek. SEALs are good.”

  “Not to mention modest.”

  “And truthful. At least while operating UNODIR.”

  “Okay. Let’s say I buy into all this. What’s your idea?”

  Murdock had been thinking about such an operation for some time now, ever since the communication had arrived from Washington. He began sketching the outline for Wentworth, and the SAS colonel, listening carefully, began to smile.

  “I have access to the blueprints for Bouddica,” the SAS colonel said after several minutes of listening. “I can download them through my fax back at headquarters. We’ll have to talk with someone higher up about the notion of a prisoner release… or an exchange, and that will give us the excuse we need to get a boat in close. The powers that be might go for that in any case, just to be able to talk with the opposition.”

  “That’s what I thought. Sounds like the people on Bouddica are especially eager to get that Korean woman, Chun, back.”

  “Yes. Yes, they are. Getting M15 and the people at HQ to go along with the idea, though…”

  “We can try. What have we got to lose?”

  “Our commissions, for one thing. But I think you’ve got a decent plan there. I’ll get on it with my staff people right away.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Just one thing, Leftenant.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Why do you insist that you be along as one of the scouts? Wouldn’t things be better served if you coordinated from the rear?”

  “That’s not the way SEALs do it, Colonel.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. But I was wondering if you had… personal considerations in this.”

  Murdock didn’t answer immediately. Of course he had personal considerations… and Wentworth damn well knew it. He’d been worrying about Inge Schmidt ever since Monday, when he’d heard the People’s Revolution had kidnapped her.

  Where was she? There were, essentially, two possibilities as he saw things. They might be holding her in a safe house ashore, probably somewhere in Germany. If that was the case, there was almost nothing he could do about it… nothing, that is, except carry out the raid against the tangos on the Bouddica platform. It was just possible that a prisoner taken there, or a document, or some other piece of intelligence picked up in either the preliminary reconnaissance or in a full-blown takedown later would yield some clue as to where they were holding her. The moment such a clue surfaced, Murdock would see to it personally that Lieutenant Hopke of GSG9 had it too… and then God help the terrorists who were holding Inge captive!

  The second possibility was more intr
iguing. The bad guys must have kidnapped Inge to find out more about the Americans who’d been seen with her. If they knew Murdock and MacKenzie were SEALs, they’d be questioning Inge about how much the American SEALs knew, about why they were in Europe, about how they might react to the Bouddica takeover. Depending on how the tango command structure worked, it was distinctly possible that they would take Inge out to Bouddica and hold her there. It would be more secure than any safe house ashore; the terrorists must be afraid that intelligence picked up by the SAS in Middlebrough would compromise their operation all over the continent. They might see Bouddica as the safest place to hold their hostages.

  Either way, Murdock was determined to be on that recon team.

  “I’m going, Colonel,” he said quietly. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?” He shoved his glass back across the table and stood up. “Perhaps it’s time I got my boys out of the pub, off the streets, and away to someplace where they’ll do no harm.”

  “That lot?” Wentworth asked. He laughed. “No chance there. Your lads, like mine, were born to do harm, and heaven help the poor soul who gets in their way.”

  17

  Thursday, May 3

  1710 hours

  Anchor-handling tug Horizon

  The North Sea

  Five miles southwest of the Bouddica facility

  Captain Ronald Quentin Croft stood on the afterdeck of the wallowing tug, wondering how anybody could do this for a living. The North Sea, predictable only in its rough and unruly character, seemed determined to swamp the vessel from astern, and each passing wave pitched the work-boat aft-high and forward, then surged beneath the keel with a queasy, rolling motion. Croft knew the SAS prided itself in fighting anywhere, in any conditions, but this particular venue he would gladly have left to the SAS’s sister unit, the SBS.

  While the Special Boat Squadron was on alert as well, however, it had happened that the 23rd Regiment was already set to go with full kit… and the Old Man, Colonel Wentworth, had seemed particularly eager to push this one through. Croft wondered if it had anything to do with that tin full of Yanks aft…

  The Horizon was properly classified as an anchor-handling tug and had originally been designed to haul oil-drilling platforms from one North Sea site to another. She was 250 feet long, with a high prow, with all of her superstructure crowded as far forward as it would go, and with a long, low afterdeck that gave her a decidedly unbalanced look. For the past twelve years she’d served as one of the supply boats that kept the North Sea oil platforms linked with the shore. On her voyages out from her home port in Middlebrough, she carried food, drilling mud, bits, shafts, piping, and all of the other myriad supplies and spare parts necessary to keep a small community of oil-field workers going. On her voyages back, she carried garbage.

  This time, however, Horizon was carrying a piece of equipment unlike any she’d ever hauled before.

  Forward, just aft of Horizon’s white-painted superstructure, a massive winch as thick as a man was tall rested on its supports, a six-inch steel cable paying out astern and vanishing into the churning white foam of the tug’s wake. A second cable, no thicker than Croft’s little finger, paralleled the first. It was attached to a com unit near the winch, where half-a-dozen SAS men were huddled together, keeping down and out of sight. The twin towers of Bouddica had slowly risen above the horizon over an hour ago, and it had to be assumed that men with binoculars were there, observing all that they could of the approaching supply boat. In Croft’s case, it didn’t matter; he was wearing civilian clothes — jeans, a heavy leather jacket over a wool sweater, and a balaclava — but most of the SAS men aboard were in their combat blacks.

  Ready to go.

  Briskly, Croft walked toward the crouching men. Sergeant Major Dunn acknowledged him with a nod but did not stand. He was listening to a headset pressed against his ear.

  “How are they?” Croft asked.

  “All’s right so far,” Dunn replied. The Horizon gave a heavy lurch as she slid into another trough, and Dunn grinned. “I’d say they’re getting an easier ride than we are.”

  Croft nodded, then walked around to the side of the superstructure, peering forward. He could have gone up to the bridge for a precise figure, but he estimated — a guess close enough for government work, he decided — that the Bouddica complex was about five miles off.

  “Pass the word to Tagalong,” he told Dunn. “Release in another minute.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dunn held the headset’s mike close to his mouth. “Tagalong, Tagalong, this is Big Brother. Do you copy?”

  It was time.

  1715 hours

  “The Bus”

  The North Sea

  Five miles southwest of the Bouddica facility

  It was cold. Even in the British-designed dry suit, the bitter chill of the North Sea seeped through the stubborn material and permeated Skeeter Johnson’s bones.

  Crammed into the cockpit of the bus, he scarcely had room to breathe, much less stretch or move to unkink muscles too long cramped into a space smaller than any coffin. Worse, visibility was zip. Even though it was broad daylight above the surface, the light filtering down through the silt-filled water at a depth of forty feet was just enough to turn the world around him to a soft, gray murk. Before joining the Navy, Johnson had dived in plenty of different conditions, including at night, but he’d never gone diving in really deep water. Always before there’d been a bottom to give some sense of scale, perspective, and movement, even if only glimpsed in the moving beam of a hand-held diver’s light.

  SDV evolutions, however, rarely had the luxury of light save for the faint green luminescence coming off the console instrumentation, and there was nothing beneath him now but the blackness of a night unchanging across a span of time measured in tens of millions of years. The bottom along this part of the central North Sea averaged forty fathoms—240 feet. The sensation was less like being aboard a small submarine than like what Johnson imagined it would be flying through the depths of space.

  Certainly, this wasn’t what he’d dreamed about before joining the Navy, exploring the ocean depths and the wonders of the sea. There was almost nothing whatsoever to see here; his vision through the sub’s tiny forward window was sharply limited. His breathing sounded harsh in his ears. The submarine’s cockpit, like its passenger compartment aft, was flooded. Johnson was wearing a full-face mask, one equipped with a radio. His backpack rebreather had been switched off, and his mask hooked to the SDV’s life support.

  “Tagalong, Tagalong” sounded in his earphones. “This is Big Brother. Do you copy?”

  Peering ahead and up, he could just make out the vast shadow of the Horizon—Big Brother — churning through the water forty yards ahead. The sound of her screws was a pounding, hollow thunder.

  “Big Brother, this is Tagalong,” Johnson said. His own voice sounded strangely muffled inside his mask. “I copy.”

  Normally, the SEALs would have avoided communications this close to a target… but the link this time was by cable, not radio.

  “Okay, Tagalong,” the voice said. “We’re five miles out now. We can see the complex fine. Any closer, and they might spot the tow. The boss says it’s time for your guys to let go.”

  “Roger that,” Johnson said. “Any word on what the reception’s going to be like?”

  “They’ve given us permission to come to one hundred meters” was the reply. “Don’t imagine they’ll sink us right off, not if they want to negotiate for their friends back on shore. But they don’t sound friendly.”

  “Copy that. I’ll pass it on.”

  “Right. Here’s the skinny. Your target is at a bearing of three-five-five true, range five miles. Any questions?”

  Johnson took a last look at his instrumentation — not that he had that much to look at. The Mark VIII SDV didn’t pack that much in the way of fancy electronics. “Ready when you are, folks,” Johnson said. “Let ’er rip!”

  “Hold on t’your hats, then, mates
. Cast off!”

  For the past four and a half hours, ever since leaving Middlebrough, Johnson had been riding the SDV’s diving and control planes to keep the vessel at a depth of between thirty and forty feet, but nothing else had been required of him in the way of steering. The Horizon had four times the SDV’s maximum speed and far, far more endurance.

  It was for that reason that Murdock had suggested the idea of having an anchor tug tow the SEAL recon team most of the way to the objective.

  Johnson hit the shackle release. There was a rattling clank from somewhere above his head, then a sudden lurch and a loss of forward velocity as Horizon’s cable slid free. His communications headset went dead too as the simple jack popped free of its receptacle on the SDV’s hull. The control yoke assumed a life of of its own as the vessel’s nose tried to come up, and Johnson forced it down.

  The SEALs were all alone now.

  Reaching to the channel select, he switched on the SDV’s intercom system. “Yo,” he called. “How’s the ride back there?”

  “I’ve seen coffins with roomier amenities” came back the reply. A few feet behind Johnson’s back, in a separate compartment, four SEALs were crammed into a space only slightly larger than a typical phone booth. “I just hope those other guys can drive.”

  Johnson chuckled. “Roger that. They said the target was in sight. Range five miles.”

  “Yeah,” Roselli’s voice added. “Assuming, of course, they found the right rig. Don’t know about them, but all those derricks look the same to me!”

  Johnson leaned forward, peering upward through murky water. The wake was thinning overhead in a churning wash of gray light. The Horizon was pulling away. Gently, gently, he eased the SDV’s yoke forward, taking the vessel deeper.

  By craning forward and looking up, he could see the surface, a vast, shifting ceiling of liquid silver stretched overhead, with occasional shafts of pale light slanting through the water, illuminating myriad specks of drifting gunk. Below, the light faded rapidly into pitch blackness. The thunder of the Horizon’s screws were fading into the distance, and in another few moments, near-silence descended on the tiny undersea craft. The only sounds were Johnson’s breathing and the high-pitched whine of the Mark VIII’s electric motor. Like a World War II glider cast off from its tow plane, the bus was now on its own.