by Jack Du Brul
“So I have you to thank?”
“No need to show your gratitude with a gift or anything. A card will be fine.”
They drifted back toward the others. “When we get out of this, you’re going to get a pounding,” Mercer said but already his anger toward Ira was abating. Paul Barnes, on the other hand, was going to pay. “Well, Agent Lasko, what do you propose?”
Ira turned deadly serious. “We have Rath contained on the Sea Empress, but we can’t risk him nuking these people.”
Mercer agreed. The Universal Convocation had to be protected at all costs. The men and women on this ship represented the hopes and dreams of billions of people. “We have to flush him out so we can take him at sea.”
“How? All Rath has to do is threaten to open the box and everyone on the ship is his hostage.”
Mercer shook his head. “He knows that he can’t win a hostage situation. No one ever does.”
“So what do you suggest? We’d be in for one hell of a mess if we alert the Swiss Guards. They’d probably make the situation worse in their zeal to protect the pope.”
“You’re right about the Guards not being an option, which means we’re on our own. Remember that Raeder said the ship’s security men are in Rath’s pocket. We have to get him to escape from the Sea Empress the way he came.”
“His boat is with the larger launches next to the marina I think you were hiding in,” Klaus Raeder offered.
“And Greta said Rath’s on the bridge,” Anika added.
Mercer had gone quiet, his eyes out of focus. Suddenly his features sharpened and he grinned wickedly. “I can think of only one way to get Rath to leave the ship without him feeling directly threatened. Actually, I can think of another way, but I doubt the seven of us could get the ship to start sinking.”
Anika and Ira exchanged startled looks and regarded Mercer as if he’d lost his mind. “Thank God you’re not thinking that,” she said. “So what is your idea?”
“Simple. We hijack the Sea Empress ourselves.”
ABOARD THE SEA EMPRESS
Before Mercer launched into his explanation, Ira suggested that Anatoly Vatutin’s cabin would be a better place to talk. Mercer gave him the MP-5 to tuck under his robes. He took point when they exited the machinery room, the pistol held behind his back with a round in the chamber. They left the guard Vatutin had dispatched behind a large hydro pump. Ira walked the drag slot, moving backward so they couldn’t get jumped. Because it was so late at night, the Sea Empress was running with just a skeleton crew on the bridge and fortunately no one in the engineering spaces. Mercer found an elevator after a few minutes, and they ascended to Vatutin’s deck. Moments later, they piled into the priest’s room.
“So far so good.” Anika smiled with relief.
“Hear out my plan before you have me committed,” Mercer said when they were settled. He ticked his fingers as he counted their options. “We can’t stay here until the ship docks because Rath will organize a room-to-room search once he realizes we’ve escaped. Even with Raeder’s help, we can’t approach the captain because Rath’s people are likely watching him. The Swiss Guards are out because they’ll probably turn us over to ship’s security, i.e., Rath. We could try to find a satellite phone belonging to one of the reporters covering the Convocation, but there are two thousand cabins to check and we’d be stopped long before we found one. And finally we can’t risk a direct confrontation with Rath in case he opens the box.
“Does everyone agree so far?” Mute nods. “Okay, to get Rath off the ship we have to make him think escaping is a better option than remaining on board. To do that we either sink the Sea Empress or create a situation where he feels just threatened enough to want to leave. That’s where we come in.”
“By pretending to be hijackers?”
“It’s going to put the Swiss Guards on full alert and distract some of Rath’s people. Rath will figure out what’s going on but he can’t say anything without compromising himself. It would be easier for him to cut his losses rather than fight us. He’ll let the Swiss Guards and the ship’s regular security detail handle that.”
“Why wouldn’t he just hang around until his goons kill us all?” Marty asked.
“Rath can pretend the solar max has shut down the ship’s communications but when we fire the first shot every reporter with an independent satellite uplink will be calling in the scoop. In hours, the Empress will be swarming with choppers and motor launches from Iceland. Rath would be trapped.”
“Once he’s gone,” Anika interrupted, “we give ourselves up, bring Raeder to the captain, and alert the authorities about Rath’s escaping with the Pandora box.”
“You got it.”
“Once he’s flushed out, why don’t we ambush him when he’s trying to launch his boat?” Erwin’s suggestion had merit, and a fatal flaw.
“He may have fifteen or twenty men with him. If we can’t guarantee a clean kill, he could open the box.” Mercer saw Ira’s skeptical look, and added, “All we need to do is fire off a few rounds, terrorize some passengers, and let panic do the rest. As long as we don’t get caught before Rath leaves, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Except Swiss Guards are not wearing blue-and-gold uniforms and carrying medieval weapons,” Anatoly Vatutin said. “They have combat armor and machine pistols, and they will shoot to kill.”
“This isn’t without risks,” Mercer answered solemnly, looking each person in the eye.
Ira Lasko didn’t hesitate. “Tell me how you want to do this.”
Mercer spent ten minutes outlining his plan and refining it with suggestions from the others. The key was to protect Klaus Raeder until after Rath left the vessel. Mercer estimated that would be about twenty minutes after the first firefight.
Because of his injuries, Erwin would wait with the industrialist in Vatutin’s cabin. Mercer wanted the others to stay with them. Martin Bishop agreed. However, Vatutin categorically refused. He reminded Mercer that he’d been fighting for this for his entire life and wouldn’t back out at the end. And once Anika translated their plan to Hilda, the chef too wanted to help. She had military training, she stated, and could handle a gun. Mercer’s eyes asked Anika her intentions.
She looked at Erwin.
“I can hold out for a while longer,” Puhl said as if reading her mind. “The pain’s worse and my arm’s numb to my fingers, but once Raeder talks to the captain, I’m going to the ship’s doctor.”
Without a professional excuse to remain behind, Anika Klein tried to find a personal one. And couldn’t. The others were risking their lives for something much bigger than they were and she couldn’t let them go alone. “I’m in.”
Moments later, the ersatz terrorists left the cabin.
Finding additional weapons for the teams was easier than they thought. In the elevator headed up to the main deck, the car stopped a few floors short of their destination and two Swiss Guards stepped in, barely giving Mercer and his band a passing inspection. Both uniformed men carried Beretta Model 12 submachine guns on slings. As soon as the doors swept closed, Mercer clubbed one with the butt of the H&K at the same time Ira laid open the other’s scalp with his machine pistol. A minute later, the Swiss were bound and gagged, and their weapons, including concealed pistols, were distributed.
“You promise we’re not going to kill anyone?” Anika asked when Mercer handed her his H&K in favor for the Model 12. He’d unscrewed the German pistol’s silencer.
“We’ll be shooting for effect,” Mercer reassured. “If it comes to a real firefight, aim for people’s legs.”
“That still goes against the Hippocratic oath.” Despite her protest, Anika tightened her grip on the big handgun. She’d do what was necessary.
“This is where we split into two teams.” Mercer’s voice was harder than he’d intended. “Ira, take Hilda and Father Vatutin and find the biggest group of people you can, maybe in the theater. I saw a bulletin for a midnight showing of The Agony and the
Ecstasy. Take them hostage, scare the hell out of them, and get out again. Stay loose and mobile. Don’t remain in one location for any length of time, and make sure when you escape no one follows. We meet back at Father Vatutin’s cabin in thirty minutes to wait for Erwin’s all-clear from the bridge.”
The doors opened before anyone could acknowledge his final instructions, and they scattered without a word. Because the majority of the passengers were men, Mercer and Anika used a ladies’ rest room to give the others time to get into position. They both even managed a nervous pee.
They reemerged from the tiled bathroom after five minutes. Casually Mercer walked across the corridor near the main atrium and yanked the handle for the fire alarm. Nothing happened for a second, and he feared the system remained silent until an actual fire was confirmed. Then the electronic horns began to cry, wailing like a colicky infant drawing breath. They kept their weapons out of view as a few late-night strollers looked around anxiously.
It took about three minutes for an emergency crew to be dispatched to the pull station. When they rounded the corner from a stairwell, Mercer drew his weapon and fired a tight burst over their heads, shredding the acoustical material in the ceiling. A light fixture exploded, and the screams of passengers reached an instant fever pitch.
The battle for the Sea Empress had begun.
Usually when he was inside Greta Schmidt, Gunther Rath delighted in making her bleed. He had to make up for his small size by the punishing savagery of his strokes, making their sex more akin to rape than a display of intimacy. This time, however, he made love with a grateful tenderness unlike anything he’d ever shown before.
Rath had been in the cabin he’d commandeered from the Sea Empress’s second officer when she’d come to him, her expression a mix of smug pride and feverish anticipation. She whispered she had a secret for him but wouldn’t reveal it until they’d made love. Rath wasn’t in the mood for one of her games and would have struck her if she’d been within range of the chair he occupied, a glass of vodka in his hand. Instead, he simply ignored her. Seeing that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted, Greta doled out a little more information.
“In fact, I have six secrets for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Get into bed and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me now or I’ll beat it out of you.” His threat was more habit than menace.
“I went below to check on Raeder and guess who I ran into?” Rath didn’t ask. “Philip Mercer.”
“What?”
“And what’s more, when I had him tied up with Raeder, a break-in was reported on a lower deck near the marina. I went with a couple of the ship’s security people and found the other five survivors.” She loved that her gift lifted his spirits. “They actually did try for Iceland in that antique sub but made it only as far as the Sea Empress.”
From the moment he’d lost the boxes, Rath had been scrambling to minimize the damage. The Libyans were waiting for the Njoerd’s precious cargo, and he had to get the one remaining box to them until a salvage operation could be mounted to raise the rest. He also needed to track down and kill Mercer and the others. It was clear they had been in the cavern and doubtlessly watched Rath empty the chamber through the submerged U-boat’s periscope. If Mercer managed to raise an alarm, Rath could forget any attempt at recovering the sunken boxes.
He laughed. “Mercer’s audacity is going to cost him his life. I wonder if he knew we were going to use the Sea Empress as a refueling stop on our trip to Iceland?”
“How could he? We didn’t know we’d need to come here until the rotor-stat went down. I’m just grateful it was here at all.”
Far from a lucky break, the Empress’s presence in the Denmark Strait had been the result of careful planning and timing. Greta had been the one to suggest it as fallback position months ago when Klaus Raeder was in discussions with the Vatican over the ship’s lease. Needing the cruise liner as a contingency had seemed unlikely, but Greta had insisted that, with so much money on the line, it would be foolish to rely solely on the Njoerd as transport. Raeder had had no idea of Rath’s ulterior motives when he passed along the suggestion to Cardinal Peretti, the pope’s secretary of state. The priest had thought cruising under the northern lights was a wonderful idea and successfully lobbied the other delegates to accept.
Greta pulled her shirt over her head, her breasts still red from earlier rough treatment. “Is my surprise worth a lay?”
“That and much more,” Rath said, launching himself from his chair and sweeping her into his arms. He laid her on the bed. “From triumph to disaster back to triumph, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”
His lips never left hers the whole time they were joined.
Rath was in a self-satisfied sleep when the call came from young Bern Hoffmann, who’d been detailed to relieve the guard they’d posted at the auxiliary pump room door. The prisoners had escaped! Rath slammed down the phone and tossed Greta aside.
“What is it?” She wiped sleep from her eyes, her body sticky with dried sweat from their lovemaking.
Rath was already in his pants. “Mercer escaped.”
She came more awake. “He couldn’t have. We’ve accounted for everyone on the DC-3, those killed in the crash, and the body we found after the pitaraq storm. There’s no one left to help him.”
“The guard they knocked out recalls a priest approaching him before he was struck.” Rath wanted to shower her scent from his skin but didn’t have time. “Somehow, Mercer has a contact on the ship we didn’t know about, maybe another member of the Brotherhood of Satan’s Fist. I should have killed Mercer’s group when you told me you’d captured them.”
“He can’t go anywhere.” Greta legged into her panties. “The marina garage doors are rigged to an alarm on the bridge, and he can’t launch a lifeboat for the same reason. There’s no sign of the U-boat, so they’re trapped. Mercer can’t go to the ship’s security people because Raeder must have told him they are loyal to you and the Swiss Guards would lock them up as stowaways.”
“I know the options he won’t choose,” Rath snapped. “I don’t know the one he will. He’s unpredictable.”
At that exact moment the fire alarm went off. Rath actually smiled. “You clever son of a bitch.”
“What’s clever about pulling the alarm? It’s a pathetic attempt to distract us so Mercer can escape.”
“But it alerts everyone on the ship to danger, and it won’t end with that single alarm.” Before Rath finished dressing and checking his personal weapons, the phone rang again. “What is it?”
“Herr Rath, it’s Dieter. I’m in the security office. We’re getting reports of gunfire in the port-side atrium.”
“Against our people?”
“No,” the rally driver said. “Someone shot at the damage-control team checking the fire pull station that just went active.”
“Mercer’s trying to make the Swiss Guards think the Convocation’s delegates aren’t safe.”
“It’s working. The captain of the Guards is screaming for an immediate SOS to bring reinforcements from the Italian warship shadowing the Empress.”
Rath made his decisions quickly. “Have everyone meet at the launch. We’ll let the Swiss Guards fight Mercer and leave the ship during the confusion.”
“Why leave?” she persisted. “We control the ship.”
“Not after Raeder contacts the captain and he turns to the Swiss Guards. We don’t have enough people to fight them.”
“But we’ll never be able to get the rest of the boxes!”
“Calm down. We can charter a helicopter in Iceland and return to the Njoerd. She has the right gear to mount a quick salvage job. We won’t recover all of them, but we’ll get enough to satisfy the Libyans.” Rath turned his attention back to the phone. “Dieter, I have an idea to buy us a little insurance. Have some men meet me on A deck.”
“I’ll join you myself.”
Rath turned
to Greta, who had been dressing. “Once we get away from the ship, no one will touch us.”
“And if they try to follow?”
“Good point.” Rath used his walkie-talkie to contact the men converging on the marina and ordered them to disable all the large boats stored there. “That’ll buy us enough time to reach Reykjavik and take off again for the Njoerd.”
“What’s this insurance you mentioned?”
“We’re taking a few guests with us.”
They raced into the atrium from the corridor where the damage crew was cowering. Mercer unleashed another barrage into the skylight above, dodging a rain of glass shards. “We are the Action Front for Liberation,” he roared at the few men on the bridge with them. He menaced them with his gun and they dropped to the carpet. “End tyranny now!”
Leading Anika across the bridge, he dashed through a fire door and collided with a pair of Rath’s men coming up the echoing stairwell. Mercer’s momentum knocked one down the half flight of steps, and the other was a fraction too slow recovering from the unexpected collision. Mercer smashed him in the forehead with the side of the Model 12 and spun to target the guard on the landing. Recognition flared. It was Bern Hoffmann, the young German Mercer had saved from carbon-monoxide poisoning in Camp Decade.
In the moment of hesitation before Hoffmann reached for his holstered pistol, Mercer jumped the eight steps to the landing, dropping so his foot broke the young man’s wrist. Hoffmann cried out, but was silenced by a well-executed pistol-whip to the jaw. Mercer removed the pistol from Hoffmann’s limp hand and recovered a matching weapon from the unconscious man at the head of the stairs.
“Anika, let’s go. They’ll be fine.”
Her face was a mask of shock and revulsion. Mercer’s quick savagery had stunned her. “I can’t. I just…”