In addition, although he had armed Spellman, he knew that the man had zero experience with what was coming. The fact that the doctor had been able to hide out for so long was a good indicator of his worth, but he knew not to put too much into that. The man was a medical researcher, not a dedicated outdoors type, and he had no military training.
“To do that, though,” Bolan said, “we’re going to have to keep ourselves hidden as long as we can. As soon as they figure out that we’re on board, we won’t be able to help anyone.”
Spellman knew the numbers they were facing and could only agree. He was beginning to think that the arrival of the commando was more of a two-edged sword than a solution. But he hadn’t been able to do anything on his own and maybe at least he’d be able to get some payback now before he was hunted down and killed.
“You lead off,” he said, meeting Bolan’s eyes, “and just tell me what you want me to do.”
THE SUBMARINE continued to follow the Carib Princess as she headed in a northerly direction, but the tension level had lessened significantly since the splashing of the choppers. The waning of the hurricane had also added to the sense of normalcy in the sub’s control-room crew. Hal Brognola had taken up residence in the control room whenever the captain was at the com, leaving only to visit the communications suite periodically.
“It looks like he’s making for Miami,” Brognola announced when he returned from his half-hourly check in with Stony Man Farm.
“That’s confirms what we’re getting from his sonar plot,” Rawlings replied.
The sub crew didn’t need to use radar to tell them where their target vessel was heading. The Sandshark was an underwater hunter, and her sonar returns worked just as well and had a greater range than surface radar.
“I don’t like it,” Brognola growled. “He sure as hell isn’t just going to let those people off the ship as a gesture of goodwill or some feel-good horseshit like that. His only chance now is to try to set up some kind of exchange, and I don’t think that’s going to fly. The President isn’t going to cave in to European concerns and let those assholes off the hook no matter what.”
Hal Brognola was probably the nation’s most experienced counterterrorist operations officer. The list of incidents he had overseen would be the size of a small phone book, but he was more of a coordinator and didn’t consider himself a skilled tactical analyst. For that kind of information, he used the sharply honed minds of people like Striker.
At the present time, though, Striker was out of communication. That left him dependent on the more conventional thinking of the State Department and the Oval Office, which didn’t give him much confidence.
It took a certain kind of man to be a good skipper for a nuke attack boat. Like a hunting cat, Doug Rawlings always had to work alone and his sole thought was to kill. No matter what the odds, no matter what the defenses, he had to get in close enough to his target to loose his weapons and kill. With that mind-set, he was predisposed to look for the counterattack options of every man he went up against.
This wasn’t the usual tactical situation Rawlings was accustomed to working with, but the man who had taken over the Carib Princess was as cunning an enemy as he had ever faced. And if he were in the Cuban’s position, he’d be planning yet another attack.
“What if he has an actual hot weapon on board?” he asked Brognola.
The big Fed frowned. “A hot weapon?”
“Along with the nuclear waste we know he had, maybe he has some kind of nuclear device, as well,” Rawlings said.
“Jesus!”
“That’s the one threat,” Rawlings continued, “that we’ve never had a defense against—a nuke detonating in a harbor. If I was in his situation, that’s what I’d do, and Miami harbor is a real good place to do it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Once the destination of the Carib Princess had been clearly established, the Sandshark came to the surface and was running in plain sight a thousand yards behind the hostage-laden cruise ship. Hal Brognola had been invited to join the captain in the small bridge in the sail to watch the continuing pursuit. Rarely was a nuke boat commed from the sail bridge for longer than an entry or exit from a port, but nothing about this mission was normal, so running on the surface made a weird kind of sense.
Watching through his borrowed high-powered field glasses, Brognola could see the hostages spotted along the ship’s railing and the dozen or so gunmen who kept them there. Beyond that, no other activities could be observed. He lowered the glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Do you think your man’s still alive?” Rawlings asked him.
Brognola paused before answering. “I do. He’s still alive, and you can take that to the bank. Not only is he alive, he’s pissed off, and doing everything one man alone can do to try to get that thing turned around.”
“I’ll give you that he’s good,” Rawlings said. “Chief Duffy can’t stop talking about him, and I know I sure as hell wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley. But he’s still only one guy, you know. Do you really think that he can take on those people all by himself and bring that situation under any kind of control?”
“I do.” Brognola nodded. “I’ve known him for a long time and he’s a truly remarkable man. Every time something goes wrong and I’ve given him up for dead, he’s come back still breathing and ready to go. He’s not immortal, God only knows. But I don’t think that this is the time that I’m finally going have to bury him.”
“I sure hope not.” Rawlings smiled. “That man’s got more balls than a ten-lane bowling alley and he deserves to pull this one off.”
“That he does.” Brognola chuckled as he brought the field glasses back up to his eyes.
He hadn’t overstated the confidence he had in the man he called Striker, but rarely had Bolan put himself in a situation such as this. He was a trapped like a rat in a coffee can, and once the Cubans discovered that he had joined them, the game would be over. Though he knew the reality of what Striker was facing, he still had hope.
AFTER RUNNING Richard Spellman through a couple more weapons and tactics drills, Bolan decided that it was time to take their act on the road. He was going to start slow, though, to see how many of these people he could eliminate silently. This was no time for a Banzai exhibition with both hands blazing fire. Once things got too noisy the best weapon in his arsenal—surprise—would be lost and so would his chances. Ninjalike stealth was his only option.
The Executioner’s first victim literally walked into them, or almost. The man came down a darkened passageway completely unconcerned about what might be hiding in the shadows. In other circumstances he could be excused for his inattentiveness. The terrorists had absolutely no idea that they weren’t alone on their purloined ship, but Bolan wasn’t cutting anyone any slack today.
He and Spellman had come up to the third deck and were moving toward the stern when they heard the man’s footsteps and ducked into an alcove. Bolan pushed Spellman behind him, drew his Tanto fighting knife and put his finger to his lips. The Executioner pressed against the bulkhead and his black combat clothing made him almost invisible in the dim light. But death was almost always invisible.
When the unsuspecting terrorist walked past his hiding place, Bolan stepped out behind him and took him down.
His knee went into the small of the man’s back, his left hand clamping around the man’s mouth at the same instant, and he pulled him backwards. The knife slid into his lower back and twisted, ruining his right kidney. The shock of the assault and the massive blood loss that ensued quickly ended the terrorist’s life.
Bolan caught the man’s slumping body under the arms and dragged him into the alcove.
Spellman wasn’t a cutter, but he remembered all of the anatomy he had hammered into his head to pass the required examinations. However, he had never cut into a live body. And beyond the occasional household mishap involving a sharp kitchen implement, he hadn’t had much to do with blood. That had just changed b
ig-time.
Bolan led Spellman down the passageway toward the galley. As their recon had shown, the galley and the engine room were the only two places still manned by members of the original crew. And to keep them on the job, a Cuban with a gun was keeping an eye on them.
When they had passed the gallery on the recon, the guard had been lounging in the coffee-break room right off of the main galley. The cooks were so cowed by what they had been put through that the Cuban had little to do. That was about to change.
Down on the galley deck, Bolan found a different terrorist on guard duty. This was an older guy, but no smarter. He, too, was sitting in the break room, his AK lying against the wall while he sucked down a cup of black coffee and smoked a thick Havana cigar as he cruised through an American skin mag.
Walking into the break room and knifing the guy probably wasn’t going to work well this time, so Bolan freed the Beretta 93-R from his shoulder leather. He flicked the fire selector switch to single shot, then stepped through the open door. The Cuban looked up just in time to get a subsonic 9 mm round right through his left eye.
The guard fell face-first onto his skin magazine, leaking blood onto the blond centerfold.
To keep from leaving too much of a mess behind, Bolan and Spellman eased the body into a locker and cleaned up the table. The skin mag went into the locker with its late owner.
Once the place was tided up, the pair left. Bolan decided to go down to the engine room to try his luck there.
DIEGO GARCIA, on the bridge in personal command of the SS Carib Princess as they sailed into Miami harbor, smiled thinly when he saw that the harbor had been evacuated in honor of his arrival. On a normal day the port would have been brimmingly full of merchant and cruise ships of all descriptions, as well as swarms of smaller working craft and pleasure boats. This day, though, except for a couple of small military and police patrol craft, he had the harbor all to himself.
He felt as if he were commanding the Yankee battleship Missouri when it had sailed into Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II. But he was bringing war to this country, not putting an end to it.
Though the harbor and waterways were clear, the sky overhead wasn’t. It was apparent that civilian air traffic had been banned, so all those helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft had to be military and police. The barrage of chatter on the aviation and marine frequencies the Princess’s radioman was picking up was all military and police. Garcia also knew that federal SWAT teams, Army counterterrorist commandos and every kind of local police were waiting just out of sight ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness or lack of vigilance he showed. But that wasn’t going to happen.
These units had run hundreds of hours of simulated hostage war games and thought that they were ready for anything. In the exercises they had run, though, the “terrorists” had always been portrayed as common criminals who were hoping to buy their miserable lives with those of their captives.
He laughed when he thought of the incredible stupidity of both the cops and the crooks involved in those types of scenarios. The end was always the same. Sometimes a few hostages were killed, and sometimes the criminals were shot instead. But rarely did taking hostages ever result in the captors going free. That’s why the police always spent so much time in “negotiations” with the hostage-takers. And that’s what would happen this time. Both Florida and federal authorities would spend endless hours, even days, trying to talk him out of doing whatever he was going to do.
Garcia didn’t mind at all, though. The longer the Yankees spent with their stupid little games designed to confuse the minds of even more stupid common criminals, the better. He was an avenger, not a criminal. If there were any criminals in this scenario, it was those in power in the United States who had inflicted so much damage on the Cuban people for so many years. Unlike the victims in common criminal acts, he didn’t see his “hostages” as being guiltless of the crimes of the United States. They’d had a duty to vote leaders into office who wouldn’t act as criminals against the lesser people of the world, and they hadn’t done so.
When he got tired of playing stupid games with these people, he would take his long overdue vengeance.
A jagged shaft of pure pain lanced through his head right behind his eyes and he fumbled at the lid of the bottle in his pocket. Finally getting it open, he downed two pills, swallowing them dry. He was running low on his medication again, but this time he wouldn’t need a refill.
As soon as he could focus again, he saw a police helicopter make a high-speed pass across his bow. The doors were open and he could see marksmen with high-powered rifles laid across their laps.
“Get some of the children up on deck,” he ordered one of his men on the bridge. “Leave them up there long enough for the Yankees to see them and then take them down below again.”
The man looked at him strangely. “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
“Do it!” the Cuban snapped as he placed the butt of his hand on the pistol holstered at his waist.
The man turned and left.
“Where do you want us to stop, Comrade Colonel?” the helmsman asked.
Garcia looked around the expanse of water. “Anywhere around here, but stay in midchannel.”
“All engines stop,” the helmsmen called down to the engine room.
With her engines at stop, the ship slowly came to a halt in the middle of the harbor.
“Put the anchors down, Comrade,” Garcia ordered.
“Aye, Comrade.”
CAPTAIN RAWLINGS kept the Sandshark in position behind the Carib Princess as she entered the Miami harbor. When he saw the vessel slow in midchannel, he keyed his intercom. “Full stop,” he ordered. “Maintain steerage.”
“Full stop, aye.” The loud speaker repeated the command. “Maintaining steerage.”
Brognola looked up to see that the Carib Princess was slowing in the middle of the harbor. “What do you think he’s going to do now?” he asked.
“Well—” Rawlings took his field glasses from his eyes “—he’s dropping anchor, so it looks like he’s going to park there for a while. As to what he’s going to do while he’s there, I’ll be damned if I know. I’m sure you know more about that than I do, but I still think a nuke’s a viable option considering the target.”
Brognola didn’t remind the captain that neither Stony Man Farm nor the NRO had detected neutrino emissions from the Carib Princess or the vicinity. And no neutrinos meant no nuclear weapons. That fact, if it was in fact a fact, hadn’t changed Rawlings’s mind one iota. The skipper was a warrior to the bone and to be a warrior meant to always be on the lookout for a way to attack his enemies. He was convinced that Garcia hadn’t come to Miami to surrender.
Even though he had no proof, Brognola was inclined to agree with Rawlings. He was also convinced that they hadn’t seen the last of the atrocities committed by the Cuban. And, speaking of, the time had come for him to get off this tub and to get his feet on dry land and in contact with the Farm.
“Since everyone now knows where that bastard is going to be for a while,” Brognola said, “I think it’s time that I left and went back to work the way I usually do it.”
“I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see you go.” Rawlings laughed. “But now maybe I’ll be able to get back to doing what I do best. Chasing around the oceans of the world looking for someone to shoot at.”
Brognola chuckled. “Good luck with that, all the action seems to be here today.”
HAL BROGNOLA had the Navy chopper put him down on the landing pad at the emergency command center that had been set up in the Miami Dolphins’ football stadium. His biometric ID Justice Department card got him through the layers of security into the tent containing the communications center. Flashing the card again, he got a direct secure line to the President and made his report.
After leaving his name and ID number with the Justice Department desk in the command center, he walked outside the tent into the sun. After having been in a hurricane and a submarine
for too many days, he was glad to feel the warmth and light soak into his skin.
The entire stadium was boiling with humanity, official and freelance, and there was no shortage of units ready to do battle. Starting at the lowest level, there were Miami Police SWAT teams and, at the very top, Delta Force Hostage Rescue Teams. In between, every police unit in the southern half of the nation was represented with every federal agency from the Red Cross to FEMA.
And, of course, the American media was smelling blood and was out in full force.
The only human Brognola wanted to see was someone he could talk to, but that was highly unlikely in this mob. He also wanted a cleaning team on hand in case things went very bad for Striker. Going back into the tent, he flashed his card to bully a cell phone away from some lower-ranking Fed and walked outside to make his second call.
“I’m on an unsecured line,” he said when the other end picked up. “I’m at the Miami command center, and I need cleanup for Striker. Send me Buck, a dozen of his people and a full commo setup for me.”
Walking back into the tent, he returned the phone. Now if something horrific did happen, he could get Bolan out dead or alive.
Above the adrenaline and sweat of overanxious humanity, he could smell coffee on the breeze. He followed his nose to the nearby Red Cross tent and poured himself a cup. He took a tentative sip and wished he’d passed on it. But his need for caffeine overruled his protesting taste buds and he choked it down. It was so weak, though, that he had to go for a refill to bring his blood values up to operating levels. As bad as it was, after finishing the second cup, he was charged up and ready to do whatever he could.
Exactly what that was going to be, though, remained to be seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bolan had only been able to work his way through four more solitary terrorists before he’d noticed that the background noises of the Carib Princess were lessening as if the ship were slowing. On a vessel as large as a cruise ship, it was difficult to determine actual speed unless one had a visual frame of reference to judge by. Being deep inside the hull as they were, he needed to get to a porthole to see what was happening. That meant going up to one of the higher decks, thus increasing their risk of being spotted.
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