Silent Running

by Don Pendleton

  “Something’s going on,” he told Spellman. “We need to go up a deck or two to find a porthole.”

  “That’s okay by me.”

  Spellman was ready for anything that would give him a break from the heart-pounding stalking of the Cubans. He had never been a hunter and had known nothing of stalking prey before this, to say nothing of stalking humans. Each time they spotted a victim he hung back as rear guard while the commando moved in on him and took him out. He wasn’t making the attacks himself, but it was nerve-racking nonetheless.

  Using the routes they’d reconned, the men made their way up to the C Deck and to a storage room off the movie theater. As with all of the doors on board, it was unlocked. Spellman kept watch by the door, his finger on the trigger of his borrowed MP-5 SD while Bolan slipped inside for a look.

  “We’re pulling into Miami harbor,” he announced. “I recognize the city’s skyline.”

  Just then they both heard the muted vibrations of the ship’s engine die down. “And I’d say that he’s coming to a stop.”

  The water served as a good brake and the Carib Princess finally slowed to a stop.

  “Okay,” Bolan said. “We’ve stopped a couple of hundred yards from the docks.”

  “Do you think he came here so he can release the hostages?” Spellman asked expectantly. If that happened, he and Mary could get out of this nightmare alive and go on to be the people they wanted to be together.

  Bolan turned back from the porthole, his face set.

  “Not a chance, I’m afraid, Dick,” he said. “That guy’s a terrorist, and the last thing in the world I expect him to do is turn anyone loose and hold his hands out for the cuffs. Men like him have a track record of not letting their hostages go until they have what they want.”

  Spellman frowned. Even with the events since 9/11 he hadn’t paid much attention to the lame excuses given as the motivations for terrorist attacks, so none of this entire incident made any sense to him. This latest move, though, was totally baffling. The Cuban had been foiled at every turn, so what more could he have in mind?

  “But what could he want now?”

  “From what he’s tried to do so far,” Bolan speculated, “I’d say that he wants nothing less than for the United States of America to cease to exist. Barring that, I think he wants to hurt us like the Arabs did on 9/11.”

  “But how?”

  Bolan shook his head. “That’s what’s bothering me. Considering the situation, there are only a few options he can use, and none of them is very good.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “These guys are into making grandiose statements,” Bolan explained. “They use grand gestures to make their point, no matter how illogical and twisted they may be, and most of these gestures involve killing people. Garcia already has all of the people on board the ship to expend, and now he has a cityful right in front of him to add to his body count. He’s got something in mind, and we’ve got to try to find out what it is.”

  “So what do we do different, then?”

  “We get even more cautious, because now that they’ve stopped, they’re likely to move around even more.”

  Spellman didn’t know how he could be more cautious than they had been, but if the commando said that they could, he’d at least try his best.

  BUCK GREENE, the Stony Man Farm security chief, arrived at the Miami emergency command center with a contingent of twenty-four of his blacksuit commandos, a communication suite complete with com techs, tentage and supplies for the crew and Barbara Price, Brognola’s SOG mission controller.

  “Jesus!” Brognola growled when he saw his people empty out of the convoy of trucks Greene had borrowed from the Florida National Guard to ferry them all from the Miami airport. “Who the hell’s looking after the Farm?”

  Price walked up on his blind side. “When I heard you were in so deep that you needed help,” she said, “I went down to the Dew Drop Inn right outside of town, grabbed the first dozen guys I could find, gave them some guns, showed them our perimeter and told them to be on the look out for idiots asking dumb questions.”

  For a second Brognola almost wished that he had stayed safely on board the Sandshark. At least there he’d had a chance to escape the woman he couldn’t run his SOG without.

  When Price saw Brognola’s hand reach into his pocket, she opened her shoulder bag and handed him a fistful of antacid tablet rolls. “I figured you’d be running a little low on these by now.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for coming.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  “What’s the cover?”

  She smiled. “Everyone’s carrying J.D. Protective Security Detachment paperwork so we’ll blend in with the rest of these Feds.”

  “What the hell is the Protective Security Detachment?” he asked. “Did you make that up?”

  “Actually, Aaron did. He felt that if the State Department could have their own commando units, Justice could, as well.”

  Brognola shook his head. He just knew that he was going to catch flak for that before this was over. “Did you at least clear coming down here with the Man?”

  “I guess you could say that,” she replied with the glimmer of a smile.

  Brognola knew what her enigmatic smile meant. She had simply told the President of the United States that she was coming south with the rest of the Stony Man crew and that he could like it or lump it; she didn’t care. Price had never learned how to be politic, nor did she have the slightest desire to learn. He almost envied her.

  BUCK GREENE reverted to his roots to get Brognola’s Stony Man command post in operation as soon as possible. Since he had been a U.S. Marine for years, it wasn’t difficult for him to revert to type. Much of his ranting was unneeded because his blacksuits were all consummate professionals. Stony Man didn’t often locate to the field, but when they did, they did it with the same practiced professionalism that marked everything they did.

  Brognola was astounded at how quickly it had all come together. His communications were in action in less than an hour, before the tent was even erected. A collection of satellite disks and portable generators made it possible to operate without hooking up to the thick bundle of cables that snaked across the stadium.

  “We have established secure commo with the White House,” Barbara Price reported.

  “Please tell the Chief of Staff that we’re operational,” he said, “but that we have nothing to report at this time.”

  “Done.”

  Greene walked up next to report, his old Colt M-1911 .45 openly riding in his shoulder rig. His blacksuits were in full combat kit and had a mix of M-16s and H&K MP-5s slung over their shoulders as they worked. The Stony Man crew was ready to go to war at a moment’s notice, all they needed was a go sign.

  “We’re all set up,” Greene said. “You have anything for my guys do to right now?”

  “Not yet,” Brognola admitted. “But I want to have half of them standing by suited up at all times. Work up some kind of schedule so they can launch on a sixty-second notice.”

  “How are they going to be transported?”

  “I borrowed a Black Hawk from the Army and it’s due in five minutes.”

  “Where’re the pilots from?”

  “Spec Ops out of McDill.”

  Greene smiled slowly. “They should do.”

  Brognola went to the commo tent to tell the President that his clandestine strike force was ready to go to work.

  NGUYEN CAO NGUYEN returned to the captain’s cabin after a brief inspection of the human shields Garcia had ordered. He had no real concern for the lives of those people, but he had doubts about the effectiveness of the tactic. As he knew from experience, the Americans tended to get frantic when their citizens’ lives were threatened. Since they were moored in enemy territory, as it were, he didn’t need to have to deal with the unexpected.

  “We’re well protected, Comrade,” he reported. “I doubt that the Yankees will dare
attack us here. When do we make our next move?”

  “Our next move?” Garcia leaned back in his chair and smiled broadly. “We don’t have a ‘next’ move.”

  “Comrade, I don’t understand.”

  The Cuban leaned forward. “As I said before, we have a final move and it will take place right here. Once it is accomplished, we will have the victory that was denied us because of the storm.”

  The Vietnamese knew full well that the hurricane wasn’t the entire reason that the Matador plan had failed, but kept his tongue. His disappointment was no less than the Cuban’s, but his goals were more than personal gratification. Much more.

  “When do we make this attack?” Nguyen asked.

  “When I see that the time is right. The longer we wait, the more people the Yankees will bring in to deal with me.”

  He laughed. “And the more that are here, the more that will die.

  “Come with me, Comrade.” Garcia got out of his chair. “It is time for you to see what I have prepared for the Yankees of Miami.”

  Nguyen was very curious about what the Cuban had brought on board to use for his final strike. Since the storm hadn’t yet completely abated, his duties had kept him on the bridge and he hadn’t been able to oversee the loading of the material that had been flown from the island.

  Garcia walked down the passageway on the main deck and entered the main swimming pool complex. The last time the Carib Princess had gone through a rebuild, the pool had been sunk into the top deck to give the water frolickers full access to the tropical sun they had paid to enjoy. On those rare days when the weather didn’t cooperate, such as during the hurricane season, there was a retractable roof that could be extended to cover the pool. After withdrawing from the last oil platform, Garcia had ordered the pool pumped dry and the roof extended to cover it before their arrival in Miami.

  Since the roof was covering the pool, the floodlights had been turned on to illuminate it. A few Matador gunners were taking a break in one of the poolside cafés while another squad worked in the bottom of the pool.

  Five metal frames that looked as though they were made of welded-up water pipes had been erected in a line from one end of the pool to the other. To Nguyen’s eyes, they looked a lot like the improvised rocket launchers the People’s Army of Vietnam had used as mobile artillery launchers.

  “Here it is.” The Cuban almost beamed as the first of a long line of his “ultimate” weapons was brought out, carried by two men. It was a rocket, about five inches in diameter and three feet long. The warhead wasn’t attached.

  “These are standard 122 mm rockets from the Army’s BM-21 rocket launchers,” Garcia hurried to explain. “When they are fired against ground targets, they have a range of twelve miles, but I will fire them at a high angle over the city, so the warheads will burst high in the sky and will have the best effect.”

  Nguyen instantly recognized the rockets and was surprised, as they were nothing special at all. The 122 mms had been a standard artillery weapon of the People’s Army of Vietnam, as well as their Vietcong allies. Simple to set up and fire, they had a greater range than a mortar and had worked well for hit-and-run attacks against Yankee basecamps.

  But these were just the rocket-engine sections, the warheads hadn’t yet been attached. If what the Cuban had said earlier was true, the absent warheads were the heart of his plan.

  Another squad of fighters entered the pool bearing metal boxes they placed carefully beside the rocket motors on the bottom of the pool. At Garcia’s command, one of the boxes was opened and a warhead taken out.

  The warheads were about the length of the standard high-explosive warheads he remembered from his days as a young Vietcong helper. What was different was that these warheads appeared to have some kind of plastic sleeve fitted over the explosive case, which went from the base of the warhead all the way up to the fuse section, and was about four inches thick.

  The sleeves carried no markings, but Nguyen knew that they had to contain the radioactive cobalt Garcia had bragged of having. He had heard these kinds of weapons being called “dirty bombs” and the “poor man’s nuclear weapon” in the Yankee media. The high explosive would detonate, pulverize the plastic sleeves and spread the cobalt on the wind just as Garcia had predicted.

  As a method of attacking the Yankees, it was crude, but it would be effective, and Nguyen had no problem with them being used. What he had a problem with was that the Cuban had yet to mention how he, or any of the other Matador operatives, were going to escape the devastation they would cause.

  He had dedicated his life to the People’s struggle to free the world from the clutches of Yankee Imperialism, but he wasn’t a fanatic, like the Cuban. Should it come his time to die for his cause, he had no problem with that. But he had no intention of throwing his life away when he could do more for the struggle by staying alive.

  “And I assume that we escape in the panic that follows the attack?”

  Garcia’s eyes glittered. “You might say that.” Nguyen decided to examine the survival gear on board the ship more closely and to start planning his own escape. He had no intention of going down with the mad Cuban.

  BOLAN WAS RIGHT about there being more terrorists on the move now that the cruise ship had halted. In fact, they were trapped in their storage room by the foot traffic in the passageway as more hostages were moved onto the deck to reinforce the ring of human shields as Garcia had ordered.

  Spellman was taking a turn at peering around the side of the porthole when he spotted a familiar figure. “Oh, God!” he pointed. “That’s Mary!”

  Bolan looked and saw the pleasant-looking woman who had been with Spellman in Cancun. She was standing at the railing looking outward.

  “Can she swim?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Spellman admitted. “We weren’t together that long before the terrorists took over and…” He paused. “After that happened we kind of didn’t have a chance to talk about anything but that.”

  Bolan understood completely. Since their relationship was a shipboard romance, it was understandable that he didn’t know all that much about her. It was a relatively short swim to the docks, but the swimmer would need to do most of it under water to keep from getting shot.

  “Just an idea.”

  When Spellman started for the porthole, Bolan took his arm. “Don’t,” he cautioned. “Even if you can get her attention, it’s not going to do either of you any good right now.”

  Spellman slumped and pulled back. “We’ve got to do something to help those people.”

  “We will,” Bolan promised.

  BOLAN AND SPELLMAN were heading back down to D Deck when they heard a scuffle ahead of them in the dimly lit passageway. They raced to a corner, peered around it and spied a terrorist screaming in Spanish at a man against the wall as he slammed his rifle butt into him. The hostage slumped to the floor, and the terrorist lifted his AK to deliver a blow to the man’s head.

  A round from Bolan’s silenced 93-R took the Cuban in the side of the head. The terrorist slumped to the deck, half covering the body of the passenger.

  The American abruptly shoved the corpse off him with a snarled, “Asshole!”

  “You okay?” Bolan asked as he helped the ex-hostage to his feet.

  “I’m fine.” The man wiped the blood from his mouth and forehead. “Who are you two guys, anyway?”

  Bolan met his eyes squarely. “Let’s just say that we got trapped in here and decided to see if there was anything we could do to get this situation changed around.”

  The man eyeballed Bolan’s hardware and combat suit, not quite the sort of thing a man who just happened to get trapped on a hijacked ship would wear. But he wasn’t going to complain about the deception. He was alive and this guy, whoever he was, had saved his life.

  “Can you get us off of this ship?”

  “Not right now,” Bolan replied.

  “If I’m not going to be leaving anytime soon,” the man said as he p
ointed to the dead Cuban’s AK-47, “can I have that? I know how to use it.”

  When Bolan hesitated, the man continued. “I was an Army doctor back when they still made sure that we knew how to defend ourselves and our patients.”

  Bolan handed the AK to him. “Do you remember where the safety is?”

  “Sure do.” The doctor pointed to the flat lever on the right side of the receiver. “All the way up for safe, down one for single fire, down two for rock and roll. Right?”

  “That’s it.”

  The doctor reached down, took the magazines from the Cuban’s ammo pouches and stuffed them into his pants’ pockets. “As the man said, ‘Let’s roll.’”

  “Let’s do it,” Bolan said. “But I take point. Keep behind me and Dick, and don’t shoot unless it really starts hitting the fan.”

  “I’ve got it,” the doctor said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Now that Bolan had two comrades-in-arms, moving around the passageways without being seen was going to be a bit more of a problem. His new recruit, though another medical type, looked as if he knew how to carry his own load, but his experience was limited and far in the past.

  Bolan had an idea. “Can you swim?” he asked to the doctor.

  “Like a freaking fish,” he answered. “Why?”

  “If I can create a diversion to draw the guard’s attention, can you dive off the ship and swim under water long enough to get out of small-arms range?”

  The doctor took a deep breath and shrugged. “I can sure as hell try.”

  “Let’s go to the stern of the ship,” Bolan said.

  As Bolan had expected, only half a dozen terrorists guarded twenty or so hostages on the stern of the Carib Princess. Most of the guards had their AKs slung over their shoulders, and they looked extremely bored. That was going to change real quick, but first he had to brief his pickup team on the game plan.