Assault on the Empress

by Jerry Ahern

  “What does biological warfare have to do with the hijacking of a ship on the high seas?”

  “The Russians developed a new viral strain, Hughes, Babcock. We wanted it because its potential was so devastating. It was felt that if our scientists could duplicate it and the Russian production plans were delayed, its effectiveness would be neutralized with both sides having it. No one would use it. It was being produced at a laboratory in the mountains in a remote section of Albania, where it was nice and cold in case anything went wrong.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nice and cold’?” Hughes snapped.

  “No two viruses are exactly alike, they told me, and this one multiplies exceedingly rapidly with heat. The virus—in an ampule—was stolen and all the lab notes and tapes destroyed. The virus was smuggled out of Albania into Italy. It wasn’t safe to fly it out. If something had gone wrong, like an explosion in mid-air, the virus would have been released and multiplied. And anyway, the intelligence agency handling it wanted first crack at it, didn’t want the military involved and all the civilian airports and everything would have been watched by the KGB. It was decided that the best way to get it out was by ship, that no one would suspect that. The viral agent is on board the Empress Britannia and, if O’Fallon and his gang of hijackers don’t get their demands, after they’ve executed some hostages, they’ll carry out O’Fallon’s major threat: to blow up the Empress. O’Fallon claims he’s got the vessel mined with plastic explosives and napalm. The heat from such an explosion would trigger the virus. Airborne, it could go anywhere the winds carried it.”

  “This virus, what does it do?” Babcock asked, his voice low.

  “I had a hell of a time getting that information myself, Mr. Babcock. Nobody wanted to tell me. But I finally nailed it down. It’s like an exceptionally virulent form of influenza at first. Once it reacts with certain enzymes in the human body, it mutates. The flu symptoms last for about twenty-four hours, but getting progressively worse. Then the virus attacks the cerebral cortex. The infected person would be dead-and most agonizingly—in under thirty-six hours. And there’s no vaccine available to counteract it. One of the things our scientists would have done was to develop a vaccine in the event the Russians someday did use it.”

  “How many casualties could be anticipated?” Hughes asked clinically.

  “That’s hard to say, I’ve been told. Depending on the amount of heat generated in the explosion, the altitude the plume from the blast would attain, prevailing winds. If the winds took it east, most of western Europe and North Africa would be covered, at the very least. That’s what they told me. And this is all unofficial.”

  “Can’t the British be told?”

  “I got a flat refusal on that, Hughes.”

  “How many dead?” Hughes insisted.

  “Millions. No one has an answer more specific.”

  “Idiots!” Hughes exploded. “How can anyone with a conscience play around with something like that? Are we all mad? The Russians and us, too!?”

  “We didn’t develop it. We were trying to defend against it,” Argus insisted. Babcock’s face went slightly grey.

  Hughes stood up and began pacing the raised area around the table. “So, we have to get on board and kill everyone of the hijackers so there is no possibility in the slightest that the bombs can be detonated. We can possibly count on some help on the inside from Cross, if he’s able and once he knows it’s us.Then we have to find the ampule containing this god-awful thing. And all before the British send in the SAS for a full-scale assault which could result in the unintentional release of the virus.”

  “It’s the only hope we have,” Argus said softly.

  Hughes turned around and looked at him. “Tell me about this O’Fallon. Would there be any chance we could…” He didn’t even finish the question. It was too absurd to bother finishing.

  “If we told O’Fallon, he’d use it. O’Fallon, according to the information we had on file, profiles out as a manic depressive with pronounced homicidal tendencies and some sort of Messianic complex. And then there’s another factor. A specialist in neurosurgery contacted Scotland Yard about six months ago that he had treated a man matching O’Fallon’s description. He’d seen the man’s face again on a Wanted poster and felt obligated to call. If it was O’Fallon, he’s been diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumor, at the time given less than a year to live. O’Fallon is an old hand at the terrorist game. He knows full well the British won’t honor his demands and that they’ll do the only thing they can do, hit him. But he’s dying anyway. If it was O’Fallon, the man’s got nothing to lose.”

  “Except his immortal soul,” Hughes commented quietly, then sat down. “What’s the British posture in terms of control of the area? And will the Russians be going into the area as well? We need to know that.”

  “I’ll get you whatever information we can come up with,” Argus promised.

  “Why,” Babcock began, “are you sending us in? Not the SEALs? Because you can’t make it official?”

  “There are two CIA people aboard the hijacked vessel, Mr. Babcock. One is a man, black, like you—”

  “You mean I’m black?! That’s news to me,” Babcock interrupted in one of his rare attempts at humor. “And I’d always thought it was just that I tanned easily!” Hughes smiled, thinking the opportunity had probably been irresistible.

  “—who’s traveling under the name of Alvin Leeds,” Argus continued, as if Babcock had said nothing at all. “It’s just a cover identity. He’s traveling as a boiler wiper or something. He’s the man who brought the ampule of the viral agent aboard the Empress and it’s his job to protect it. A second CIA person was sent in at the last minute to cover Leeds, Leeds not even knowing about it. A woman named Jennifer Hall. She’s a regular CIA courier and gatherer working under the cover of a singer.”

  “She’s actually singing aboard the Empress?” Hughes interrupted.

  “That’s right—” Argus began.

  “Cross should know her, at least casually,” Babcock said, sounding as if he were thinking out loud. “She might turn to him for assistance if she knows anything about his background.”

  “Were either Leeds or the woman—this Miss Hall—armed?”

  “Both of them were, Hughes. Trouble is, Leeds will think he’s all alone. He doesn’t know anything about her.”

  “What geniuses organized this thing to begin with?” Hughes asked.

  “A few geniuses who may retire earlier than they’ve planned. That’s the word from the White House,” Argus told them.

  “There are two possibilities only, unless anyone can think of something else,” Hughes began. “And I’m open to suggestions, believe me. But, as I see it, we can do a high altitude, low opening drop near enough to the Empress to swim in—if weather, wind and sky conditions are right. Have to be under conditions of total darkness or the game’d be up. The only other option—and British or Russian presence, or both, could preclude that immediately—is go in by submarine and leave the vessel while it’s submerged. If this O’Fallon and his gangster friends have installed any intruder alert systems on the hull or anywhere else we might bump into them. In either event, they’ll make us as soon as we try getting aboard. And assuming we do get that far, how do we get the ampule off?”

  Argus studied the tent he’d made of his fingers for a moment, then said, “Just a thought, but the hijackers have a yacht pulled alongside the Empress. Presumably how they got aboard. Probably the old routine of letting the vessel lie dead in the water and when the Empress stopped to assist, they came aboard with their guns. But maybe you can utilize the yacht to get the ampule off.”

  “Too easy to be stopped. If I were this O’Faiton—and thank God I’m not—I’d have the yacht rigged with explosives that could be radio detonated in case any of the passengers or crew tried making a break for it. No. The yacht’s out.”

  “Helicopter,” Babcock said absently.

  Hughes bit his lower lip. “Wa
it a minute. When I was a little boy, I saw it done once. They used to pick up mail that way.”

  “What are you talking about?” Babcock asked him.

  “All right. In the early days of airmail. To speed up the pickup process and sometimes because they’d pick up where there wasn’t really an airfield, they utilized a system originally developed to pick up mail at railway stations where the train wasn’t scheduled to stop. Modified, of course. They’d have a pouch on a tensioned line, but a little slack in it. The old biplane would come through, flying low and slow and it had a hook out at the bottom of the fuselage. The hook would snatch the pouch off the line and then the pilot would draw it up into the cockpit at his leisure and go on to the next pickup point. We could use that same system if we can set up the rig and find a pilot good enough.”

  “One of those guys who lands on aircraft carriers,” Babcock suggested.

  “Better still,” Argus supplied, “the guys who take off and land from smaller vessels—they do it in the Med a lot—with observation planes. Electronic surveillance equipment aircraft.”

  “All right!” Hughes clapped his hands together. “Forget about the submarine option unless the moon will be too bright or the winds too high. We airdrop off the Empress and swim up to her. Then we get aboard. We’ll need a picture of this Leeds fellow and the woman CIA op. We find them and Cross, then start liquidating the hijackers until we can reach whatever area of the ship we settle on for the pickup. We erect whatever gadget it is we need and call in the aircraft by radio, then finish the wetwork.”

  “Sketch out what you need,” Argus said.

  “Lewis and I’ll need diagrams, photos, everything you can get on the Empress. And we’ve got to go in quickly. This madman O’Fallon will start executing hostages if he hasn’t already and the SAS won’t be left waiting around forever once he does. We’ll need some special weapons. I can make you a list. What you can’t get immediately, you might be able to hit up one of the SEAL Teams stationed around the District of Columbia for as a loan.”

  “How’d you know about them?” Argus asked him.

  “I helped train them,” Hughes answered.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Argus had left the room to gather what information he could pertaining to weather in the predawn hours of the next day in the area where the Empress was being held, and to ascertain what information he could concerning British and Soviet submarine traffic in the area as well, in case weather precluded the preferred of the two options.

  Hughes had been making a list, Babcock pacing the floor, stopping to stare occasionally at the same rerun newsreel footage of the Empress Britannia in happier days, before all of this, footage of the bombing of the Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks, which was linked to Seamus O’Fallon, footage of other terrorist atrocities in Northern Ireland.

  Babcock turned away from the television screens in disgust. “I think people like this stuff.”

  “It’s like a soap opera to some people, only the characters are real; but, in a way, they’re not real at all. They see something that disgusts them and they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible,’ and then they flip channels and there’s ‘The Honeymooners’ or ‘I Love Lucy’ and they’re laughing again. And all the while, they’re on the road to oblivion.”

  “You sound like a pessimist, Mr. Hughes.”

  “I’m certainly not an optimist. Optimists rarely study violence, Lewis, because in their world, violence isn’t something that happens. It only happens to other people and if it ever does involve them, they sincerely expect that the rest of society will say ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible,’ and really mean it. But of course, very few people really mean it because very few people are ready to do anything about it if it happens to someone else, let alone themselves. When a confrontational situation occurs, they are willing to sacrifice the higher good they’ve always preached about for a good that’s even higher, their own self-preservation. And afterwards, if they’ve made it through alive, they congratulate themselves that they’re still around to help make the world a better place. True pacifists act out of dedication to principle, right or wrong, and because of that, are at least deserving of respect. But too many people are totally lacking in principle, lacking in anything that at all gives any depth or purpose to their lives. They just live; and, when death finally comes, they feel cheated. And, of course, they have been. But they weren’t cheated by death, only cheated by their lack of perception of life, cheated by themselves. Like baseball, Lewis. They missed their chance at a base hit simply because they were waiting to make a home run on a perfect pitch that on one level of consciousness they hoped would never come; and they were waiting so long, they only wound up being walked.”

  Slowly, Babcock said, “You’re a cynic.”

  “You’re observant. Tell me how you can do what we do even once, let alone more than that, without being a cynic? But yet, I’m not a true cynic; because, if I were, I’d say the hell with it and walk away from it, wouldn’t I? You and I, and Cross if we can get him back—we’re the fellows with the buckets put in charge of bailing out the boat after so many leaks have sprung, it’s impossible. And, just to make it interesting, we aren’t given buckets to use at all, just sieves. And, depending on our ingenuity and endurance, we can find ways of plugging up the holes in our sieves or work faster and faster. The result will be the same. The only advantage we have is that we can say we tried to slow it down a bit. Which brings us back to the concept of optimism. Each of us doing this sort of thing feels somewhere inside himself that maybe, just maybe, with the little extra time we buy before the ship of civilization sinks, mankind may figure out how to keep it from sinking entirely. And it sounds so much nicer to say you’re looking forward to the future optimistically than to just admit to all and sundry that you’re an asshole.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The weapons on the equipment list Hughes had ready for General Argus were what Hughes considered bare bones, all necessities. Hughes would bring the Magnum Tanto for Cross, so only two knives were needed, Gerber BMFs, Gerber MKIIs or Benchmark TAC Ils his first choices. He allowed for no second choices. There were many fine custom-makers, his own personal favorite the blades of Weatherford, Texas, knifemaker Jack Crain, and not just because the man was a fellow Texan. But anything handmade, unless it were crafted in some yurt in Inner Mongolia, could be traced to the maker these days. And that could trace back to the man who used it.

  Three Beretta 92F military pistols, eight spare fifteen-round magazines for each pistol and two twenty-round extension magazines for each pistol. The availability of the pistols he wasn’t worried about. To holster the pistols and carry the spare magazines, he wanted Bianchi UM-84 rigs, the civilian version of the M-12 holster and its concurrent accessories. He needed the civilian version because he needed black. Black BDUs were already packed, for himself and for Babcock, but they’d likely do the entire operation in wetsuits since either way they went in they would get a dousing.

  Assault rifles would be unnecessary considering the battleground, but H&K MP5 SD A3 integral suppressor 9mm submachine guns would be essential, each to be fitted with an Aimpoint Electronic sight. Not only were the H&K subguns reliable and efficient and silent, but they were deadly accurate for a weapon of their type.

  A silent weapon of smaller overall size might be needed and, for this, Hughes opted for a Walther PP in .22 Long Rifle. There would be no time to have a pistol fitted with a slide lock or to have one gunsmithed so it would work properly with subsonic ammunition, so it wouldn’t be quite as silent as it could have been. But silent enough if used with discretion.

  Argus returned, sheafs of computer paper in his hands, Hughes saying to him, “Here’s the list. I don’t really want to accept substitutions. For the Walther .22, if you have to, get Bob Magee at Interarms on the phone and tell him it’s for me. He’s an old friend and it won’t be the first time Bob’s helped the federal government get the equipment it needed in a pinch.”

/>   “There’s something you have to know,” Argus interrupted, his voice oddly subdued as he almost threw the computer printouts down on the table. “There’s a new factor to consider. It may be critical.”

  “A deadline for the demands to be met?” Babcock asked.

  “No, not yet. Feeling is this O’Fallon wants to prolong the thing as much as possible for maximum media attention. No. It has to do with one of the passengers. I just got word from the CIA that their man—they didn’t give me his name—their man who got the ampule out of Albania and into Italy. After he handed it over to this other agent going under the name Alvin Leeds, he was captured by the KGB. They gave him some kind of truth serum and the best guess is he spilled everything he knew about who he gave the ampule to. He didn’t know the name of the vessel, but he would have been able to give an accurate enough description of Leeds that if the KGB had somebody clever working for them on this they might have found Leeds in time to get aboard the Empress. And that’s just what probably happened. The CIA man that was drugged—he remembered the name of the KGB officer in charge. The name was Ephraim Vols. Used to be Volshinsky. Vols or Volshinsky or whatever he calls himself is one of their best people they tell me. Very efficient and imaginative. A bad combination for us. His name has popped up as being wholly or partially responsible for some of their most successful operations in the last several years. There’s reason to believe he has passed himself off as an Englishman on several occasions. It’s quite possible Vols is aboard the Empress traveling under an assumed identity and using a British passport. He’d know exactly what that ampule contains.”

  Hughes said nothing for a moment, then, “That could conceivably work to our advantage. I doubt the Russians are eager for this viral agent to be released over Europe and North Africa if they don’t have any way of innoculating against it. Vols might realize the danger, if he’s as sharp as you imply, and take steps to obviate it. Could be to our advantage that he’s there.”