Moments later his red box gave an answering pair of beeps.
"Go," Lutfi instructed his six-man team.
They ran into the bunker and hurried out carrying the foot-square boxes of C-4 to a spot thirty feet in front of the bunker. One man set up a Cartouche light machine gun on a tripod, aiming it down the hard-surfaced road that led to the main section of the air base. A second man ran up with two cans of belt-fed ammunition, inserted the first round from a belt and charged the weapon.
Three minutes later the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter stabbed through the previously silent darkness. Sixty seconds passed before the big bird settled on a landing on the tarmac thirty feet from the bunker and beside the stack of boxes. At once the side doors opened, and two men inside helped as the six on the ground loaded the boxes of explosives.
A minute and twenty-eight seconds later the eighty boxes had been stowed on board the aircraft, while its rotors spun at idle.
Two men ran to the machine gun. A vehicle approached. A few moments later the rig came into range, and the crew launched a sizzling firetrack of tracer rounds at the military jeep. Before any return fire came, the rig spun out of control and tipped over. The Cartouche continued to pour rounds into the exposed undercarriage until the tracers found the petrol tank and the jeep exploded into a fireball.
With the precision of long practice, the machine gunner dismounted his weapon, loaded it on the chopper and jumped in. Lutfi stepped into the helicopter and it lifted off, skimming over the fence, then slanting west, staying less than twenty feet off the green Italian countryside.
Lutfi settled back in the aircraft. It had all gone smoothly. Planning was the key, based on good intelligence reports, and diligent training of top-quality experts. His chance of failure on any mission was extremely low.
The real task lay ahead. In twenty minutes they would be out of Italy, across the coastline and over the Mediterranean. The Italian defenses simply did not have sophisticated enough radar or search planes to find the chopper skimming over the waves at twenty feet. In less than a half hour after leaving Italy, they would make their rendezvous.
Then the next-to-last piece of the plan would be in place. This was a critical path point on his mission diagram. It all continued or stopped, depending on this transfer of the plastique.
Lutfi wiped the grit off his face and accepted a congratulatory bottle of wine from the chopper pilot. The dream was a step closer. It was the biggest fantasy of every terrorist.
It was the equalizer factor, but no one had ever yet achieved it.
4
The Tomcat broke through the soup at 28,000 feet, slamming past the last bit of death-gray clouds toward an eye-smarting golden sun. Below them the whipped-cream tops of the churning cloud mass looked solid enough to walk on.
Jack Grimaldi piloted the Tomcat through the cold crystal-pure air at 610 miles per hour, high over the English Channel on a short flight to Paris. The Executioner had moved quickly after his talk at the Company office. Soon they would pass the halfway point, and Grimaldi would switch over to the new NATO Joint Military Radio Command control.
Mack Bolan hunched in the tight rear seat of the Tomcat, mulling over his mission. Seldom had he possessed so little hard Intel for a job. Search and destroy. Right now the searching was the hard part. Finding was even tougher. His first task was to tie down the terrorist's new location. The true way to do that was to determine the guy's next target.
The aircraft radio chattered in Bolan's headset, but he only half listened. Grimaldi jolted the Executioner from his thoughts.
"Something's cooking," the pilot said. "NATO Joint Military says we should land in Paris at our earliest opportunity. They have a high-priority land-line telephone call waiting for you that is too sensitive to broadcast."
"Roger. How long to Paris?"
"Ten minutes," Grimaldi answered.
"Kick in the afterburners, Jack."
BOLAN SAT IN AN OFFICE at base operations in an airfield near Paris. He nodded as he spoke into the handset.
"Yes, I heard you, Perkins. How do you know it was Lutfi?"
"Colonel, it has all the telltale marks of his operation: surprise, military efficiency and timing, the 9mm parabellum rounds, no witnesses, knowing precisely where the plastique was stored. He's made two similar snatches at military bases in Italy with this identical pattern."
"I’ll buy that. But why? A kidnapper doesn't need a ton of C-4. What does a terrorist do with fifteen hundred pounds of one of the most powerful explosives in the world?"
"He blows up something damn big."
"What, Perkins?"
"I don't know, sir. It could be almost anything, or anyone, from what we know of Lutfi."
"Thanks, Perkins." Bolan hung up and stared at the notes on a yellow ruled pad. "Fifteen hundred pounds of C-4 plastique stolen from an Italian airfield," he muttered. "Escape by fast chopper, probably directly over the Mediterranean.... "
He looked out the window without seeing anything. Target. Target. Target. What was the terrorist's target? For a moment a flash recall shot across the warrior's mind, then vanished. Slowly it came back until it was sharp and clear. "Waterproof fuses and waterproof radio sender with a sensitive receiver-detonator," Bolan whispered.
He frowned and paced.
Limpet mine, Bolan thought.
He ran for the door as the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle began dropping into place. Shaped charges, limpet mines, pictures of the supertanker.
Bolan felt an icy shiver rocket up his spine. He knew it. He knew Lutfi's target.
The scum was going to attack the Contessa. Bolan did not know why or how or when, but Lutfi was going to attack and try to capture or sink the world's largest carrier of crude oil.
Five minutes later Bolan got through to Perkins on the phone. "Her location?" Bolan barked out the question. "Where is the Contessa right now? Do you have that registry that lists ships clearing ports?"
"Yes, sir. I've got a man tracking down the sailing registry. But the Contessa may not be listed. She never enters a port, she's far too large. She sits seaward and is off-loaded by floating pipelines or by smaller tankers."
"I'll call you back from the flight line, Perkins. You should know where the Contessa is by then. Wherever she is, I want to get under way so I can get on site."
It was fifteen minutes before Bolan and Grimaldi had checked out with the French and Grimaldi was satisfied that the Tomcat was ready. The Executioner got an open line to London and located Perkins.
The CIA man sounded worried. "The Contessa is in the Mediterranean heading for her second port of call. That means she still has ninety percent of her cargo, over 1.3 million tons of crude oil in her holds."
"Where is she?"
"Ten miles off the coast of France, approaching Toulon. That's 450 miles southeast of Paris near Marseille."
"Good. We're moving now. That's less than an hour from here. We still have some daylight."
The nightfighter hung up without saying goodbye. There was no time now for formalities. He waved at Grimaldi and they ran toward the Tomcat, which was plugged in and fired up.
As the twin-tailed jet clawed its way into the sky, Bolan became convinced that his combat reflex about the Contessa was correct. He had been in too many situations where there wasn't a day, an hour or even a minute to think through a problem, working it out logically with firm intel. Instead the decision had to be made in seconds, sometimes in a fraction of a second with men's lives depending on it. In those combat crunches he knew the answer, the right answer. Again he felt that intense compressed combat logic. The target had to be the Contessa. The red-marked newspapers were nothing but a false lead, Lutfi's way of laughing at whoever found them.
France hurtled by below them at 624 miles per hour. From 20,000 feet, France looked like one large green golf course. Soon the Tomcat's sleek nose dropped, starting the letdown toward the southern coast.
Five minutes later they flashed over t
he ancient city of Toulon with its modern port facilities and the five distinctive basins. But even this port, which could accommodate the world's largest battleship, would not stretch far enough to hold the length of the Contessa.
Grimaldi throttled back to reduce speed and soon they saw the floating island, the huge dark mass of the tanker seaward and slightly south. Bolan had walked across the deck of a 500,000-ton supertanker, but the size of the Contessa amazed him.
They dropped to 200 feet and buzzed the ship.
"I don't believe it," Grimaldi said over the intercom. "Nothing that big has any right to float."
Bolan stared. She was half a mile long. The ship was an impossibility. She was also a tanker that could disgorge a million tons of crude oil to foul the entire southern coast of France....
Grimaldi switched to the special frequency to contact the ship.
"Tanker Contessa, this is the jet aircraft overheard. Can you read me?"
"Yes, Tomcat, we know your twin tails."
"Contessa, have you been contacted concerning your safety?"
"Affirmative, Tomcat."
Bolan used his microphone. "Contessa, do you have an arms locker on board?"
"Affirmative."
"Is your captain listening?"
A heavier voice sounded through Bolan's earphones.
"Yes. This is Captain Running, Hans Running."
"Captain. I'd suggest that you break out your arms and put every man on guard on that floating island of yours. We'll fly cover for you as long as our fuel holds out."
There was an awkward silence on the air.
"Tomcat, I'm still confused. What's the problem? No one has told me."
"Captain, we believe an international terrorist is going to try to take over your vessel. He'll use every means he can to get possession of your craft and the 1.3 million tons of crude on board. He wants it so he can threaten to spill it."
"My God, dump it?"
"We have a suspect, Captain, and he would dump it. Just take all precautions that you can. Put everyone on watch, and be sure they are armed."
"I never thought I'd see the day. All right, Tomcat. We seem to have little choice. We also have orders from the owners and lessors." There was a long sigh. "We'll put the orders into effect at once."
"We'll be upstairs for a while," Bolan said. "Good luck."
Bolan felt the big bird ease upward. Grimaldi put the Tomcat into a gentle climbing turn as he slowly scratched for altitude, so the jet engine would use less fuel for the same amount of thrust.
Bolan pulled a sheaf of papers from his flight suit and leafed through them. They were specifications on the Contessa.
The craft was classified as a Super Ultra large Crude Carrier (SUCC). It carried one and a half million tons of crude oil direct from the Persian Gulf to the hungry refineries spread across Europe. She was 2,400 feet long, just short of half a mile, 430 feet from scupper to scupper and seven stories high. She carried everything she needed for a year at sea for her crew and self-maintenance.
For the crew there was recreation equipment: movies, television, a gymnasium, and video, computers and a thousand different video games. She was really a floating hotel, with two saunas, two bars, enough filled food lockers and grocery stores to feed an army for a year, central heating and air conditioning, two dining rooms, double staterooms for the ten officers and thirty crewmen, and a mile-long jogging trail around the deck.
Bolan studied the list of equipment and the scientific specifications. There were enough electronics on board to fly a space shuttle to the moon and back. There were complicated computer-linked instruments, sensors, probes and pumps that all functioned in unison to fill the Contessa's holds to precise levels of crude, and then to empty them in any order needed. The ship had ninety holds all constructed of rupture-proof steel.
Other computer-activated instruments piloted the ship and could hold her on a precise course for days at a time without the touch of a human hand regardless of the weather, tides, winds, currents or changes in engine power, since she was locked on to the stars for her precise foot-by-foot guidance across the vast seas.
Bolan heard Grimaldi talking on the radio, getting clearance to land at the military base at Marseille, which was only forty-two miles along the coast. They were expected. Their cover-time fuel had run low. Grimaldi gave a final farewell to Captain Running on the Contessa, steaming along below them at her full-load speed of eighteen knots.
Shortly after, they landed at a French airbase.
A half hour after landing, Bolan sat in a room in "officer country" and continued memorizing the layout of the SUCC Contessa. The nightfighter hated waiting, but he took advantage of the few free hours to learn the structure and location of the major centers of the ship. He was sure he'd have practical need for all the information.
The huge deck of the craft had three helicopter landing pads, all near the stern, and all reinforced to accept large fully loaded military choppers. She had all types of radar, frontal-scan equipment and communications antennas, depth sounders and display scopes that pictured the seabed under the hull whether it was 50 feet down or 40,000 feet away. The deck was half covered with a maze of pipes that led to each of the main holds for filling and pumping out the crude.
He studied the layout of the holds. The ninety immense tanks were four abreast in columns twenty-two feet long. Holds were situated crossways to the others at each end. Thirteen strategically situated, computer-determined holds were used as permanent ballast tanks so the craft would remain stable and operable even when emptying her cargo. These ballast holds held 312,000 tons of seawater.
Two of the holds became scavenger tanks, where the cleanings from the sixty-five cargo holds were pumped. This ensured that no oil spills or oil clean-outs could result from swabbing down the empty holds. The scavenger tanks were pumped out with the regular crude, since high-pressure crude was used as the cleaner.
The remaining sixty-five cargo holds could handle a little under 24,000 tons of oil each. Bolan lifted his eyebrows. What an ideal target for a terrorist who wanted international attention and probably a huge ransom, not only for the release of the giant ship but also in exchange for not dumping the oil.
Such an event would happen over Bolan's dead body.
5
The jet helicopter sliced through the blackness of midnight, slanting away from the Italian coastal town of Savona, roving ten miles seaward, then cutting north. It soon turned back over the coast and moved cross-country into the hills behind San Remo. The bird and its cargo were only a few miles from the French border.
Lutfi and his men rested for sixteen hours in a farmhouse hidden in the hills. Then, again in the darkness, they boarded the same chopper. The heavily laden craft angled toward the sea, turned west and followed the French coastline a mile over the water, sliding past Nice, Cannes and St. Tropez. They passed over the Lies D'Hyeres and gained some altitude, coming off the wave tops so the men could search the black water.
"There," Lutfi said softly and the pilot homed in on a single light half a mile north. The craft circled slowly, made certain the ship was the one they wanted, and then the pilot inched the special rubber-encased landing struts down toward the ship's deck.
Lutfi tensed as he watched the delicate process. One slip here and his whole project would sink.
Two minutes later the helicopter had settled solidly on the slightly rolling deck of a surfaced World War II German U-boat. As soon as the rotors stopped spinning, the torpedo supply hatch opened and two men dressed in dark blue hurried out and lashed the chopper to the open decking and to prepositioned cleats. Then, with military precision, the cases of C-4 plastique were off-loaded into the submarine's forward hatch. All lights had been turned off. The men worked with cool efficiency in the blackness.
Lutfi checked his glowing watch dial and drummed fingers on the edge of the helicopter until the last case was safely lowered inside. At last he motioned his men to enter the U-boat. He talked
a moment with the pilot before the two sub crewmen untied the landing struts. Lutfi and the sailors hurried below into the Nazi ship killer and looked out the hatch. Lutfi listened to the chopper's growl as it lifted off the underseas vessel. The sub rose with new buoyancy.
A smiling young man with a full beard met Lutfi.
"My good friend and comrade. Right on time. I knew you would make it." He spoke in Italian.
Lutfi answered in the same language.
"Carlo. Is everything ready? Any problems?"
"All ready, and no problems. We will make a strike that the world will never forget. We will obtain the ultimate weapons. Our glorious cause will prevail now and for a thousand years."
Lutfi held up his hand to stop the stream of Red Brigades party propaganda he knew was coming. He smiled to take some of the sting from the quick action.
"Later, Carlo, later. We have much work to do and little time. It will be daylight in two hours. How far to the target?"
"The Contessa is a half hour from us, landward. We have observed her on the skyline and believe she is anchored for unloading tomorrow."
"Perfect, Carlo. You will receive special recognition. Now, show me the details. I want to see our forward-firing tubes. All four are operational as you promised? And did you get your twenty men?"
"Yes, all four tubes will fire, and we have twenty-eight men. As we discussed, our fish can dive to no more than twenty meters, but that should be enough. We shouldn't need to go below periscope depth."
"Which is where we should be right now, Captain. We don't want daylight to catch us surfaced. Take her down."
The young Italian went to the small control room midships and gave the curt orders. After one false start his inexperienced crewmen took the old warrior beneath the waves and leveled her off at periscope depth.
Executioner 059 - Crude Kill Page 3