He closed his fist and launched the rocket. It flashed forward faster than his eyes could measure and slammed into the solid side of the lifeboat.
Slammed in and cannoned off. In his mad desire to get close to the target, he had miscalculated — the missile had not travelled far enough to arm itself.
Its impact seemed to tip the balance of the lifeboat and as the rocket soared away along New England’s massive wake, the boat vanished down into the turmoil of the East River.
The lines between the lifeboat and the hill of Semtex wound out to their full length and tautened at once and the great pile of explosive was jerked onto the lip of the drawbridge. The lines gathered the cargo net into a massive bundle as they moved and the toils of woven plastic fibre gathered the screaming soldier to themselves. Like Ahab riding the back of Moby Dick, Merrideth disappeared out of the ship fastened to the pale mountain of Semtex.
*
In the lifeboat more than thirty metres away, things were even worse than they had imagined. New England had accelerated to the better part of seventy miles an hour down the straight section of the East River and at that speed, the water was only a little less solid than the sea walls on either side of it. But the game little craft held together and the fastenings kept the watertight top safely in place. Its occupants rattled around inside it like dice being shaken by an energetic craps player. Only the care with which they had padded themselves kept ribs, backs and necks from being broken, though there was some very painful damage being done to, and by, feet, knees and elbows. Bob and Ann were wrapped tightly round each other, and Pitman had wrapped herself round Harry and was somehow managing to hold her and the handset safe. Richard yelled, “Now, Harry! Now!” and Harry obeyed. With her hands and her eyes fixed on the little instrument as though nothing else existed in the whole world, Harry punched in the final order to the modem in the rapidly departing ship’s library.
*
“NOW!” screamed Marshall, and he hit the red button so hard he shattered his right fist. He felt no pain.
He had imagined this moment and had assumed Merrideth would be at his shoulder if and when it came. But there was no sense of loss or disappointment that the major hadn’t made it in the end. He was somewhere aboard, Marshall knew. Fighting to the last to make this thing happen. And it was happening now. It was midnight, the tide was at the flood. Little more than a metre of wall stood above the surface and a couple of Stingers armed to explode on impact would clear that out of the way. All they needed was the roughest of slopes — perhaps not even that — and they were through. New England and everyone aboard her would be one massive fireball rolling across the black wilderness which had once been the United Nations building.
It towered like a bright blade just ahead and to the right, and behind it rose the other Manhattan giants. The low clouds were breaking and the moon hung behind the Empire State, magnified by some trick of the atmosphere.
Their lives could be counted in breaths now, in breaths and heartbeats.
“NOW!” called Marshall again. The men along the starboard side armed their Stingers and zeroed on the wall, waiting for the ship to swing in under the dictates of Marshall’s broken hand upon the emergency right turn button.
And deep within the ship’s guidance system Harry’s little virus threw a switch, so that when the command came TURN RIGHT, the system read TURN LEFT. That was all. It was as simple as that. And it was enough.
Marshall stood, riven with disbelief as the skyscape of towers swung away on his right. The men at the windows lowered their Stingers, turning towards him. He raised the ruin of his fist. Drove it hard down upon the red button once more. His black glove burst. Pieces of his hand spattered across the console as though he had been shot. He felt nothing. Nothing but an instant of utter defeat.
*
New England was travelling at seventy-five miles an hour when her left side swung into the Southpoint seawall on Roosevelt Island. The power of her jets drove the under-loaded hull up onto the blade of land. There, amid a wasteland of wild overgrowth, untouched except by the men from Macey’s and their fireworks, untended in nearly a century, stood the ruins of the old City Hospital, the Strecker Laboratory and the Smallpox Hospital. Into them New England tore with incalculable force. The petrol tankers in the hold ignited, detonated by the impact-sensitive device in the bow. The blast flattened the ruins of the ancient hospitals and rattled the windows of Manhattan, and a massive balloon of fire mushroomed into the sky. It rolled sinuously over the fireworks, setting them all off in one incandescent show.
*
Like Sir Justin Bulwer-Lytton, whom he had hoodwinked so effectively and whose death he had personally arranged, Merredith had thought of his own death and had assumed, especially recently, that it would be by fire, not water. And yet as he struggled ineffectually against ropes he could not even feel, let alone unloose, he found the chilly strangulation of the East River flooding into his nose and mouth as the Semtex to which he was secured plunged downwards. He was forbidden even a final sight of his men. Instead he was dragged swiftly and inexorably into the cold black depths and death became an icy hand pushing its fingers deeper and deeper down his throat. Almost the last thing he felt was the cold. And that in itself was a kind of victory, for it was so long since he had actually felt anything.
But then New England ploughed over the sea wall into the ruins on Southpoint and the impact detonator in her bow sent its brief message to the slave detonators in the Semtex and the explosive erupted. So that it could be said that Merrideth had foreseen his death accurately after all.
The lifeboat was tethered to the Semtex by a tangle of netting more than ten metres long and by Richard’s thirty metre line. The explosion blew it free. Having dragged it into the depths of the river, the dead weight of the explosive now reversed the process with some force so that the buoyant little vessel, its watertight top still in place and its occupants battered and bruised but by no means beaten, exploded out of the river like a champagne cork.
*
Mrs Charleston joined her husband at the window just a moment after midnight, vaguely wondering how a wind had sprung up strong enough to rattle the windows. She nestled up beside him, full of excitement, life and love. She looked down onto the southernmost point of Roosevelt Island.
“Oh look,” she said, her evening rendered perfect, “they’ve lit a bonfire and set off all the fireworks! How beautiful!”
And the Senator turned with more forcefulness and decisiveness than she had seen in him in over a decade. “No, my darling,” he said with quiet but terrible authority. “The fireworks are only just about to begin.”
EPILOGUE
The big black Jaguar E Type cruised down the suburban street like a shark on land. Abruptly its indicator flashed and it turned left between two unremarkable suburban houses. As soon as it had done so it slowed, coming to a stop with its sleek snout within a couple of centimetres of the bright security barrier. A uniformed corporal came out of a hut at one end of the barrier and crossed to the car as its window wound down.
The corporal found himself looking down into two pairs of the brightest blue eyes he had ever encountered. “Sir?” he enquired.
“Captain Richard Mariner and son. Here for the ceremony.”
“Right, sir. When I raise the gate, please drive directly to the guardhouse. Do you know where that is?”
“We got a map with the invitation.”
“Fine. They’ll give you the necessary ID and direct you on.”
“Thank you, Corporal.”
“Sir.”
The barrier swung up. The E Type rolled forward. Richard Mariner and son entered Stirling Lines, headquarters of the SAS.
It was mid-August and ferociously hot. Robin and Mary were currently cruising up the M6 in the Freelander, bound for Carlisle where Richard and William would meet them at Cold Fell this evening. Then they were all bound for Skye and for their summer holiday. Two weeks of rest, relaxation and relati
onship building.
This sidetrack to Stirling Lines wasn’t helping matters but Richard felt that he simply had to go in spite of the fact that it added yet another grievance to the wall which was all too rapidly growing between Robin and himself. As far as she was concerned, he had gone too far this time. Throughout all the years of their marriage, he had often pushed her to the brink. He saw this as unavoidable circumstance. He always seemed to be where things happened. He always seemed to be the one expected to pick up the pieces.
But of course Robin was the one who had to pick up the pieces after him when he was picking up someone else’s pieces. And as far as she was concerned she had to do it once too often. He had put his life, their company and their marriage on the line again without even warning her, let alone consulting her. It was thoughtless, juvenile and selfish and she was not going to bloody put up with it any longer. Further than that she had not thought. Yet. As far as she knew.
“Are you and Mummy going to get divorced?” asked William now, his wide bright gaze seeming to shine across the sultry gloom of the E Type’s interior.
“Of course not! Why do you think that?”
“Mummy called you “that bloody man”. Mummy only uses bloody when she’s very angry. Andrew Motion’s mum and dad got divorced when his mummy got angry with his daddy. But that was something to do with the au pair. We haven’t got an au pair.”
“Well, there you are, then,” said Richard, inspired. “Look at that map, will you, old chap? Do we turn right here or left?”
“Starboard your helm,” ordered William. At the age of ten he was really beginning to explore the adult world around him, and to look more deeply into his father’s and his mother’s professions, prompted by his apparently more intelligent and mature twin sister. Richard obeyed without hesitation; William was a solid little navigator and seemed to have known port from starboard since before he understood left and right.
“Remember,” said Richard quietly, “this will be a very sad and formal occasion. We are very honoured to have been invited. We must call everybody by their rank — just listen out for me. If in doubt, call them “Sir”.”
“Even the girls,” asked William as a squad of mixed gender ran past in fatigues and white T-shirts.
“You may call any woman there “Ma’am”.”
“Same as the Queen,” William informed him. “Miss Featherstone says we must call the Queen “Ma’am” if we ever meet her.”
“Miss Featherstone is quite right, and I’m glad to see all that expensive education isn’t being wasted,” said Richard. “Knowing what to call the Queen is an important life skill. Here we are.”
“Andrew Motion says the most important life skill of all is to keep your parents together,” observed William seriously and thoughtfully as they walked towards the red-brick guardhouse.
*
The ceremony in the Regiment’s cemetery was brief and quiet. None of the men of 13 Int. whose names adorned the simple grey-white stones beneath the winged daggers were actually lying under the turf. None of them had any serving colleagues in attendance. The Regiment had sent representatives as well as the burial detail, but no one else was there. For all of them, even for Merrideth, the SAS had supplied all the friends and family they had. All of the dead men had come from other regiments originally and had transferred to the SAS twelve years earlier. The regimental culture is that men who apply to go to Hereford consider themselves too good for their original squads. But the SAS looks after its own.
After the service, the men who had been detailed to mourn Bruce, Danny, Smell and Pain, Tom, Martin, Russ and Mike, Op, Mac and Doc went back to the club. Richard, William and the brigadier went to the mess with the men who mourned Merrideth. It was ever thus — though not in the cemetery, Richard had noticed. The gravestones stood side by side, officer and men all in a row. Marshall and his men would be commemorated, equally democratically, somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, wherever they buried SEALs, no matter where they had died, or how or why.
At the subdued little reception in the mess, Richard sat with a wine glass full of sparkling Malvern water, talking quietly to the brigadier. William paid scant attention.
“We’ve given our evidence to the Committee of Inquiry in Washington,” Richard was saying. “They’ll publish a report, I know. No one in London seems to want to do one here.”
“We’ve been told to hang fire,” said the brigadier. “It’s not actually a Regiment matter apparently. Though that’s not what the papers think, or the news services. The Jellicoe Boys ride again, I’m afraid.” He winced as he said the name.
“If you need me, just ask,” said Richard. “I’m the only one who can give chapter and verse from beginning to end.”
“Even with the reports in the papers,” said one of the young officers, leaning forward and forgetting his funereal air in the intensity of his interest, “it’s almost impossible to tell what actually went on. Could you fill us in on the detail, sir? Off the record, so to speak? If that’s all right with you, Dan.”
“Well, yes, Peter,” said the brigadier. “I must admit there are details I would like to have a firm grasp of. I simply cannot seem to get their basic motivation clear.”
All the young faces round the table — and even the brigadier was a good ten years his junior — turned towards Richard. Something about the intensity, the respect in them, caught William’s attention then. He looked across the crisp white linen to where his father’s long, familiar fingers toyed with the stem of his water-filled wine glass.
“Well, obviously,” said Richard slowly, sorting things out swiftly in his mind, “obviously it all began in the Gulf. But perhaps a little further back in time than you might think … Have any of you heard of Ras Al’I? No? What about Hansen’s disease?”
“Miss Featherstone,” said William at once, “says that’s another name for leprosy.” Then, seeing that everyone was looking at him, he shyly added, “Sir.”
*
“Look at this,” said Robin, coming across the sitting room at Cold Fell later that day. “I brought it up from Ashenden specially to show you.”
Sir William looked up from his Daily Telegraph and the new Lady Heritage put down her well-thumbed copy of Manon des Sources. “This” was a postcard. “It’s from Bob and Ann,” said Robin. “They’re on holiday too.”
“Really? Somewhere exciting?” asked her father.
“Somewhere romantic?” inquired her stepmother.
“Neither. Somewhere isolated. They’re in a place called Valentine, Nebraska.”
“It sounds romantic,” observed Helen. “Well, more romantic than some places. I once met a Swiss girl in Sainte Maxime who had honeymooned in East Grinstead and considered that extremely romantic.”
“No, they haven’t gone there for adventure or romance. Well, they have, I expect, but you know what I mean. Or for a honeymoon. Yet. No. Ann took Bob there because it is the furthest you can get away from the sea in the whole of the United States.
She got a map and ruler and she measured it. There’s nothing particular there, but it’s over fifteen hundred miles away from the coast in every direction! Isn’t that a scream?”
“Very amusing, dear,” said Sir William, picking up his paper again. The headline on the front said, “FIRST AMERICAN SECRETARY GENERAL RESIGNS BECAUSE OF GULF WAR SCANDAL”. In smaller writing it added, “UNITED NATIONS IN TURMOIL AS SENATOR CHARLESTON LEVELS CHARGES”.
Helen pushed her book further away and held out her hand for the postcard. Her placid Provencal face was folded into a frown, for she had seen far more than her bluff husband in the words and tone of her stepdaughter. “Where is Mary?” she asked quietly.
“Up on the landing looking out for Richard. William phoned on the mobile when they came through Carlisle. They had one of their chats.” Since going off to boarding school together, the twins had become close companions with their own impenetrable, almost psychic, conversational codes.
H
elen patted the seat beside her. “It will be very difficult for Ann and Bob,” she said as Robin sat. “But I know they will make a go of it.”
“Depends how much actual romance there is in Valentine, Nebraska.”
“Enough for those two, I should think. I will have to start looking out for a wedding outfit. But it will be hard for them. She will not give up her career. And Bob will not give up the sea. He will find it difficult enough to be that far away from it, in Valentine.”
“That’s why she took him there.”
“A high-risk strategy, mon ange”
“He’s worth the risk.”
“He always will be,” agreed Helen companionably. “It is hard, but men such as him are always worth it.”
Both of them knew they were not simply talking about Bob and Ann. Robin herself had for some years mentally been keeping Richard in Valentine, Nebraska, asking him to stay as far away from the sea as he could, fearing that it would be the death of him. A fully qualified ship’s captain herself, she never gave a second thought to it when she herself went off in a boat, but for him she had begun to see blue water as The Widow-maker of legend. But with the able assistance of a perverse fate, he had answered her loving requirements by getting lost in the storm of the century, being marooned on Tiger Island in the China Seas, dashing off after New England in Hero and becoming closely acquainted with death at Hell Gate. But he came back. Time after time. And this time, too. He would be here soon, brighteyed, aglow with enthusiasm, irresistible. And they would be off to Skye in the morning.
And Heaven knew where after that.
Helen was right. It was hard. But was he worth it? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Was he worth it? Bloody man…
Mary erupted into the room, all flying elbows and knees and blonde curls. “He’s here,” she shouted. “Daddy’s here! Oh, this is going to be the best holiday ever!”
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 33