They would discover the missing sentries, but the Executioner had already bought the time he needed.
The towering hulk of the sunken freighter was distorted by the filtered glare of underwater high-intensity lamps at the middeck superstructure. The dead ship lay on its side on a ridge amid jagged patches of millepore coral.
The nerve center of the salvage operation appeared to be the cluster of lights. There was a lot of activity. Bolan counted five divers, and he knew there would be more inside the ship.
Bolan swam on, carefully avoiding the sharp coral fingers. At this depth, if he accidentally ripped his suit, he would die instantly. But he was too close now to even consider using his diving light.
He edged closer to the ship's midsection, angling for a ventilator cowl that would offer enough cover for a scan of the area where the illumination seemed to be brightest.
Bolan was halfway to the cowl when he saw, in his peripheral vision, two divers who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. They were approaching Bolan on his right side.
Bolan and the frogmen eyeballed each other simultaneously.
The terrorists stopped swimming, raising their shark guns.
With a powerful kick, Bolan gained the cover of the cowl. He fired the shark gun at the diver closest to him, bursting the man's air tank. The impact tore loose the terrorist's breathing apparatus.
The diver drifted upward wildly amid a burst of bubbles.
The other diver had maneuvered himself behind Bolan. Bolan swung his shark gun around. He triggered an electrical jolt that zapped the diver at the exact instant the man fired his own weapon, pointed well away from Bolan.
The explosion rumbled everywhere. But the concussion would be powerful enough for the terrorist force not to have any doubt that it came from very close.
This underwater hit had suddenly gone very hot.
* * *
When he felt the tremor of an explosion, Jesus DeSilva swam through the companionway and finned himself to a stop at a point just beyond the shimmering glare of the high-intensity lamps.
He guessed the source of the noise to be one of the underwater weapons supplied by Gurgen, the Russian adviser. But he couldn't pinpoint the direction of the blast.
"Rafael, Santos. Report," demanded DeSilva through the communications system of his diving suit.
No response.
"Everyone, alternate frequency."
The rest of DeSilva's team maintained silence as they activated their DDS transceivers according to the contingency plan.
DeSilva appreciated anew the expert training that he and his diving team had received outside Cardenas, in Cuba, under the careful scrutiny of Comrade Gurgen.
The frogteam leader maintained a holding pattern beyond the cluster of lights near the sideways superstructure of the downed freighter. His finger curled around his shark gun's trigger. The salvage operation was suddenly forgotten.
DeSilva glanced at his dive watch. Their air supply was running dangerously low.
"Luis, Abelardo. Investigate. Be very cautious now," he ordered two of his divers.
"Be very cautious, my ass," crackled Abelardo's too cocky voice.
"Maintain silence unless you have something to report," snapped DeSilva, wishing again that he hadn't been chosen to lead this operation.
The team of terrorist divers were all weary from being squeezed by seventy-five pounds per square inch of deep-water pressure.
DeSilva had been supplied with an infrared scanning device for this mission by his Russian adviser. As he drifted, he surveyed the vicinity with the eight-inch viewer held close to his face mask.
The IR converted the darkness into a deep twilight up to a range slightly over 125 feet. At this depth there were no colors, only various shades of white and black.
He could see the coral, the sunken freighter.
No sign of anyone.
Suddenly a voice blurted in DeSilva's headset.
"Wait a minute. We see something." It was Luis, excited exertion obvious in his voice.
"What is your position?" demanded DeSilva.
"He's seen us!" cried Abelardo across the communications frequency. "Santa Maria!"
There was no more.
DeSilva felt a clammy sweat form beneath the second skin of his diving suit.
A heartbeat later, he felt another concussion.
DeSilva swam cautiously in the direction of the forward deck. He avoided the lights amidships. He continued to scan the deep with the IR as he propelled himself along.
"Everyone turn off your diving lights," he instructed his team of divers. "Seal off entranceways into the vessel. We've been infiltrated, but we can isolate them. Work together."
Jesus DeSilva had liked nothing about this mission from its inception.
He and his team had diligently searched the passageways of the sunken ship, which were decorated with ghastly, water-rotted corpses of sailors.
And DeSilva's team had not yet found the nuclear device!
The divers had just completed sectoring off another portion of the ship when the rumbling explosions had alerted DeSilva of this penetration.
Jesus DeSilva wondered how many of his men were already dead. He wondered if the mother ship above was attacked.
Who was attacking? he wondered.
The terrorist diver swam on with extreme caution, scanning the murky depths with the IR. He knew he held a slight advantage over whoever was trying to get into this death ship.
DeSilva's antagonists would not be carrying the IR, he knew. Such instruments were bulky and would hinder the swiftness of their attack.
Yet there was no sign of diving lights since he had ordered his men to black out.
Then he realized the penetrators were attacking blind, relying on the high-intensity lamps to guide them!
DeSilva curtly ordered the lights extinguished. The undersea world became black as pitch.
DeSilva grinned to himself.
Now the attackers would be easy marks for him, with the infrared scanner.
It was time to kill or die.
3
Grimaldi held the big Harrier at a sustained hover thirty feet above the choppy ocean where Mack Bolan had disappeared, almost a half hour before.
The pilot tried to ignore a nagging worry that plagued him.
He and Bolan had survived plenty of action together, on lots of hot missions in both Bolan's old Mafia war and in the Executioner's hits out of Stony Man. He had seen the Mafia-busting Bolan "die," then to be reborn as Colonel John Phoenix, under full White House sanction.
Yet through all those battles, the man born Mack Samuel Bolan had never changed.
No way.
Grimaldi knew the blitzing guy better than just about anyone, maybe even better than April Rose, because Jack had seen so much more of the real, unleashed fury of this incredible fighter. Shared combat forged strong bonds of friendship.
The pilot had faith in the big warrior's ability underwater.
But the ace flier had sensed that something was troubling Mack. Grimaldi had seen it plain enough before the communications screwup with the Farm.
He had noticed it during their last mission, too. Of course Bolan was too much of a pro to let it affect his performance. When he fought, he fought. But something was on Bolan's mind.
The pilot was hoping like hell that it would not interfere with this mission.
What the hell was going on with Stony Man?
Where the hell was Phoenix Force?
And all Grimaldi could do was wait, bucking the rowdy air currents of the Atlantic.
He kept trying to reach Stony Man Farm on the radio, alternating the mission red priority frequencies.
Nothing.
Grimaldi itched for action.
He got it.
Three beeps appeared on the radar-scan map console, approaching rapidly from the southeast.
Grimaldi tried to establish radio contact.
There was no response.
Those three fast-approaching beeps could be Phoenix Force, but Grimaldi quickly dismissed that thought.
Phoenix Force was scrambling to this rendezvous at sea from their last Stony Man assignment. Since the five-man combat team was heading here from one point, it didn't make sense to Jack Grimaldi that they would split up in transit. But he couldn't be sure until visual contact was made.
Grimaldi bristled in the Harrier's cockpit.
Phoenix Force should have responded to Grimaldi's attempt at radio contact, but there was the communications foul-up with Stony Man to consider. It might somehow be affecting a linkup between Grimaldi and Phoenix Force.
Three choppers suddenly emerged from the low thunderheads.
Grimaldi's doubts were confirmed as they immediately opened fire on the Harrier.
He was ready for it. He tugged the jet fighter into a sharp evasive maneuver the instant he recognized gunflashes from the three approaching aircraft. He heard a line of bullets thud into his plane's body somewhere behind him.
Grimaldi recognized the approaching gunships as Cobras, probably surplus from the Vietnam War.
They'd been hanging back beyond the Harrier's radar range and were probably carrying replacements for the divers Bolan was now fighting underwater.
The Cobras were equipped with rockets, 40mm cannons and miniguns.
Grimaldi left the hammering of those weapons far behind. The best chopper pilot alive was no match for the Harrier's jet-action capabilities. The Stony pilot could easily have outrun the three helicopters, but he could not desert the area in case Mack surfaced. He had to get the Cobras away from there somehow.
The Harrier screamed into a hard fast bank. He faced the enemy.
The three choppers started to break formation, fanning out to opposite sides. The Cobra in the middle was sailing in to engage the Harrier. The chopper's miniguns blazed twin streams of lead tracers that sailed wide of Grimaldi's plane.
Grimaldi triggered a sidewinding heatseeker that blasted the approaching enemy copter. The chopper exploded into a fireball before plummeting into the ocean.
One down, two to go.
Goddamn, Phoenix Force, where are you? Grimaldi wondered.
He arced the big bird back from the four streams of upcoming fire and rockets from the two remaining aircraft.
Grimaldi caught himself shredding his lower lip between his teeth. If they get me, Bolan will be dead when he shows his head above water.
It was time to face the two wild Cobras.
But the two gunships had maneuvered themselves for a run at the Harrier from two directions. Even the mighty Harrier could only take on one of them at a time.
Grimaldi prayed for the best and sent 30mm zingers at the chopper nearest him.
The thundering explosion of the hit cut through the roar of the Harrier as another Cobra disintegrated into a ball of flame.
The Stony pilot shifted his war bird to track on chopper number three.
While the fighter jet's cannon had been busy canceling the second chopper, Cobra number three had got the Harrier in its sights.
Grimaldi saw it too late. A missile from the Cobra came whistling at the Harrier.
The ace pilot had just begun to tug the responsive jet into an evasive action.
But his luck ran out.
He bit off one last curse. He felt the mighty plane respond to his touch, but not fast enough.
The missile caught the Harrier's tail in a hellfire of sound and fury.
For Jack Grimaldi, everything went black.
* * *
Mack Bolan made an ally of the ocean's dark floor in the same way he would befriend the night on any other hit.
The Executioner swam through the gloomy depths ten meters off the bow of the sunken vessel.
He saw the enemy divers douse their dive lights.
In the illumination of the underwater lamps amidships, he saw the terrorist force breaking up, merging with the deeper shadows of the ship.
Bolan sensed movement to his left. He bent his body backward and swam away.
He registered a momentary glimpse of an approaching diver, holding what looked like an infrared scanning device.
This would be the team leader, Bolan knew. They would not all be entrusted with costly IRs.
The high-intensity lights were extinguished.
The frogman leader did not see his enemy.
Bolan propelled himself faster, gauging the approximate position where he had last seen the diver with the IR.
In the darkness, it was impossible to know for sure.
The deep-sea pressure made every move slower, more laborious.
Bolan unsheathed his knife, then risked switching on his dive light for one second to confirm that he had homed in on his target.
The terrorist frogman could not turn around in time to react.
Bolan plunged the blade into Jesus DeSilva's throat. The thrust severed the terrorist's breathing system.
The man's body thrashed for an instant then hung suspended as a dark cloud spread upward.
The IR scanner tumbled into Bolan's grip.
He used the infrared device to advantage to take out two more divers.
Bolan entered the ship and swam on through the maze of corridors, guiding himself with the IR, searching.
He came upon the body of a trapped seaman, the ghastly corpse already half devoured by fish.
There was no sign of sharks now.
He swam on, pedaling his way the length of the sunken wreck.
He glanced at his watch. Only ten minutes of air time left. He had to find that nuclear device. He considered radio contact with Grimaldi, but decided against it. He still did not know how many men were left. They were around him in the gloom of this sunken ship. He could feel it. They would be listening.
Bolan continued his search, thinking about his air supply.
He was running out of places to look for the nuclear device.
He found it in the middle of a row of three nondescript lockers: a suitcase-sized container with the markings Bolan was looking for.
And with it, Bolan found them.
The underwater compartment blazed to life with a high-noon glare that pinned Bolan in its center.
These divers had split off from the others and found the cargo they were looking for. Then they waited for the invader to swim his way into the kill-ground.
Bolan twisted sideways as weapons began to rumble, spitting projectiles where he had been an instant before.
He unleashed a round from his shark gun that took out the lamp and pitched the killzone into total darkness.
He had been forced to drop the infrared device. The Executioner fired off a close pattern of heavy slugs from his weapon, aiming from memory at the positions of three divers before the lights went off.
He waited for a few moments and no one challenged him.
He chanced a quick scan with his diver light on. He found and retrieved the IR.
He flicked the infrared device upward and gazed through it. He saw three floating corpses, trapped from rising any farther by the walls of the compartment. The water around the divers took on a deeper hue in the IR viewer.
Bolan returned his attention to the nuclear device.
There were two handles on the container. He gripped one handle and began swimming away from the underwater killzone, holding the scanner up before him as he retraced his route.
He wondered if the damn thing would be intact. Or had these men all died for nothing. No. Nothing is ever for nothing.
The dead divers had consciously chosen this path. But they had been brought unwittingly to this appointment with their executioner. Whether they were motivated by greed or power, Bolan could not know. But it did not matter now. Their evil deeds had culminated in a fitting demise in the hellish depths of the dark Atlantic.
Now the bastards were shark food.
All that remained for Bolan was withdrawal.
Gripping the container, he swam on.
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The underwater warrior conserved the remaining air in his tanks, breathing shallowly despite his effort.
He turned on the diving light and began to swim clear of the dead ship.
He ran into no further opposition as he moved upward.
Bolan released the IR and stroked faster toward the surface with the deadly cargo.
It was time to alert Grimaldi, up in the Harrier, to get ready for him. He would have to spend time in the decompression chamber on the boat then a quick flight back to the States. The communications blackout with Stony Man still troubled him.
"Stony Man One to Stony Bird. I'm coming up, Jack. I've got it. Do you read me?"
No response.
Bolan was about to try to raise Grimaldi again when the watery world around him thumped with a loud, hollow sound.
Bolan looked up.
And saw Death descending.
The massive shape of Grimaldi's Harrier was coming toward him.
Its misshapen hulk was sinking like an oversized stone, plunging directly at Bolan.
4
Bolan did not try to swim out from under the fast-descending tonnage of the Harrier.
He reversed his course and dived back down the way he had come. He gained cover within the sunken hulk of the Liberian freighter.
He made it with one heartbeat to spare, still gripping the nuclear device.
The tips of his fins cleared the entranceway to the tilted superstructure of the ship just as the heavy weight of the Harrier impacted the submerged vessel. Bolan was socked by the nearest wall of the companionway as the ship jarred.
He reversed himself and swam out of the companionway to find the Harrier lodged against the superstructure and the ocean floor.
The downed fighter plane was still making strange little underwater sounds as it settled into its new environment. The Harrier had sustained a serious hit to its tail section.
Bolan's gut constricted with apprehension.
Grimaldi!
He approached the plane with extreme caution despite his concern for Jack. He raised the shark gun, which was slung around his shoulder by its strap. He now scanned the vicinity of the wreckage for terrorist divers he might have missed.
There was no one.
Day of Mourning te-62 Page 2