Power Play (49 page)

But neither captain nor
kapitan
had believed there was anyone within range to hear the whole message and move in to the rescue. If there had been, Gromyko might have attempted to get out of it, given the secrecy of his mission. Captain Farrell had seen only empty seas.

By now, Brad Charlton and his team had taken the entire tank deck without a fight, six unarmed Russian seamen having surrendered immediately when the master chief and his five black-faced warriors, machine guns leveled, came bursting into the area. Brad ordered his 2/IC to march them back to a dining room where there were already twenty-three Russians, crew and missile technicians, secured under padlock and key.

Brad himself, with two SEALs, was measuring the distances from the aft end to the French truck, on which he could plainly see the words
Lyon Generateur l’Électronique.
But it was backed hard against the hull, and it was not possible to get inside the rear section where the jamming gear was stowed.

It was the big wall on the truck’s left-hand side that was baffling Brad. It was newly painted, and without encumbrance, just one high, wide sheet of metal, without a blemish or a scratch. Brad banged it with his rifle butt. The distant echo was obvious.

These days, when rogue freighters were routinely apprehended by customs and warships, false walls were commonplace. And in Brad’s opinion, he’d just found one. Also, the distances on his diagram and the long measurement did not tally. The one on the
Jane’s
diagram was at least forty feet longer.

It was possible the nuclear stuff was sealed behind the wall, and Brad was uncertain whether to have a hole smashed through it with axes and
crowbars or to blast it with a hand grenade. But they were not that far above the waterline, and he sure as hell did not wish to “blow a darned great hole in the friggin’ hull and drown everyone.”

Just then Mack arrived, with two SEALs and two prisoners, Russian missile technicians whom he had persuaded to show him the stored nuclear warheads. That had been done by sign language: Mack’s bodyguard shot their colleague, and they agreed to cooperate.

Both of them had nodded keenly when Mack showed them his pictures of the TELAR truck, and now they were pointing at the blank wall, and one of them raised two fingers, which Mack took to mean the information he expected—the two big missile launchers were in there, obviously behind the wall.

Brad told him it would take a well-placed hand grenade to blast a hole, but he was wary of such an explosion in this enclosed space. Mack decided they did not need to see the TELARs, since the warheads were not installed, and he ordered someone to return to the
Róisín
and bring over a limpet mine, which they would place at the base of the wall. Brad would set it to detonate the same time as the ship’s hull, when the Americans were all well clear.

Both men had a picture in their minds of the
Koryak
going to the bottom of the Atlantic, with this watertight cavern behind the wall still housing the TELARs, which would somehow remain intact, with their missiles, until the end of time. Both men could not accept that. That TELAR cavern needed to be flooded, the TELARs destroyed. Mack Bedford had just sorted it out in quick time.

The question was now the warheads. The two Russians walked along to the companionway on the starboard side of the hull. They led the way down to the for’ard cargo hold, walking carefully to a row of lockers. They went to the large one at the end of the line and pulled open the door, which fell right out with a metallic clang on the floor.

Behind it was a dull gray box constructed of thick lead. One of the Russians pointed to it, and Brad ripped away the rest of the thin outer casing, easily tearing off black-painted sheets of metal to reveal two containers. They were heavily closed, like treasure chests, but not locked, and Mack and Brad heaved one of them open.

Inside the first they found what they’d come for: two cylindrical containers, three feet long, with rope handles on each side. There was a
skull-and-crossbones maritime danger symbol painted in red on the side. They exactly matched the photographs taken from the great lenses of the US satellites. Mack and Brad heaved, carefully removing the first of the two cylinders from its thick lead cocoon.

In a few moments the foredeck hatch would be opened from above and ropes lowered to lift all four of the cylinders to the deck. There they would be attached to the
Róisín
’s specially fitted crane and then swung slowly over to the Irish patrol boat.

Right here was the incontrovertible evidence of Russian intentions—nuclear warheads, to fit into the big missiles in the hidden TELARs. This was the moment when everything Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov had forecast actually came true. This was the moment when the SEALs’ brutal and apparently murderous acts could be utterly justified. There was enough atomic power in those four missiles to flatten half of Fort Meade, where thirty-two thousand Americans worked every day and where the loss to US military intelligence would be incalculable.

While the heavy-lift operation went ahead, Mack and Brad Charlton went back to the tank deck and between them clamped a magnetic limpet mine to the bottom of the new wall. The master chief took personal charge of the detonator, checking with Mack, “Say, one hour?” he asked.

“Yup,” replied Mack. “We’ll be out of here in thirty minutes, and that gives us another half hour to clear the datum. It’s almost 2200 now. We’ll set that mine, and the ones on the hull, for 2300.”

By now the ship was dark and quiet. No more machine-gun fire. On his cell phone Mack called his senior men into a huddle for 2215 on the aft deck, and then he watched while the deck crew slowly hauled the last of the nuclear warheads up and out of the
Koryak
’s cargo hold.

They were moved with delicate care once attached to the crane. Two SEALs had lines on each warhead, and when the lifting gear swiveled back to the foredeck of the
Róisín,
they very slowly played out the rope, allowing each warhead to cross the twenty-foot gap without undue movement. They all knew the uranium would not detonate upon impact, but that did not lessen the creepy, sinister atmosphere that always lurked around the very word
nuclear.
They all knew that if one of them went off by mistake, the impact of the explosion would take both ships and everyone on board to Davy Jones’s locker.

The transfer went without a hitch, and Mack vanished into the darkness
to speak to his senior men. His question was simple: “Is the ship secure—no chance of anyone getting free?”

“Not now, sir,” replied one young SEAL. “There are quite a few dead.”

“I know there are, son,” replied Mack. “But there was no other way.”

“Sir, quite a few of the guys are not real happy about killing any more unarmed sailors,” he said, “but they will, of course, if you ask them.”

“I’m not real happy about it, either,” said Mack. “But you guys know the problem. We cannot let news about this operation leak to the outside world . . . because it would be highly detrimental to the United States, and hugely embarrassing for the president. And that means no survivors. The Russian ship has to sink without a trace. No one can be allowed to live, to tell the story.”

“I know, sir. We all know. But it was still hard to see these guys as real enemies. They didn’t know who we were, or what they’d done, or why we were killing them.”

“Let me help you out on that,” said Mack. “This ship was carrying four of the fastest guided cruise missiles ever built. They carried nuclear warheads and were headed to a secret launch site, halfway along the Panama Canal, in the fucking jungle.

“With Chinese help, the launchers were headed for some clearing in the trees, and, on a given day, the missiles were to be unleashed at the US National Security Building in Fort Meade, Maryland. The Russians have already test fired them successfully over the optimum distance, two thousand miles, Panama to Fort Meade.

“Not only that, but the Russians were planning to fuck up our president’s emergency communications, rendering him helpless, unable to launch a retaliatory move. Every single one of the big Russian brains who masterminded and built this wicked fucking operation is right here on this ship.

“You shot someone? You probably shot the guy who was launching the missile. You probably blew the brains out of some crazed Russian scientist who checked out the codes to wreck the US president’s system. I just hope it was one of President Markova’s best friends. And I hope you shot him dead.

“This ship, the one you’re standing on, represented to us the biggest single danger our nation has faced since Pearl Harbor. US casualties would probably have been twenty times worse. Americans vaporized in a nuclear blast.

“Well, you guys just fucked up those Russian plans. And I hope you fucked ’em up real good. Right now, I want every one of you to get around the ship and slash all of the ropes and lines holding the lifeboats. Anyone gets free, he still isn’t going anywhere.

“And at 2300 hours, this ship dies. And if we do it right, no one will ever know what happened. When you’re all done, head back aft. That’s where we evacuate back to the
Róisín
.

“And I’m telling you, even if no one else knows, there will be big muckety-mucks in the Pentagon, not to mention the White House, who understand precisely what you achieved. And for us, that represents undying personal glory. Now
LET’S GO!
”

The SEALs once more fanned out and headed for the lifeboats. Ten minutes later they were on the rope ladders and climbing down the
Koryak
’s hull, to the huge cargo nets the SEAL deck crews had rigged between the ships for the fastest possible escape.

They had suffered no casualties, principally because no one on the Russian ship had shown any intention of fighting. When the last man was aboard, the lines were cast off and the Irish cutter began to pull away.

Barney Wilkes and his team all wore on their backs light harnesses carrying the heavy limpet mines, which resembled industrial-strength Chinese woks without the chop suey, just compressed TNT, sufficient to knock down a Shanghai street market. All four SEALs were lined up in wet suits on the port side of the ship, which was almost upright now, since the buoyancy tanks had been pumped nearly dry and the
Róisín
was back on her correct lines.

With the engines running, Captain Farrell stood off about forty yards, and Barney’s men attached air lines and flippers and jumped into the water, swimming immediately to a depth of around fifteen feet and heading right back to the hull of the
Koryak.
And there they kicked forward under the keel, to their allotted places, where they tested the deepest part of the hull for barnacles.

It was pristine clean, principally because the ship had been in dry dock for its refit and repaint, moored in freezing water thereafter, and moving swiftly ever since, none of which was in any way appealing to the deepwater mollusks that fasten onto ships’ keels when they’re parked in warmer, still waters with peeling bottom paint.

When Barney’s men unclipped their limpets, it was pure routine to
snap them magnetically to the underside of the hull close to the keel. But it was dark, and the working conditions were grim and awkward. Because of the mines, they wore their small oxygen tanks on their chests, and it was obviously restricting for working divers. The frogs needed to fix the mines in an agreed pattern, because the “shaped” charge was designed to intensify and focus an upward blast, which would cut through several inches of steel.

Each one of these “sticky bombs” would put a major hole in the hull, which would be fatal in the end, but probably would not sink her for several hours. The trick here was to detonate four of these powerful explosions quite close together, causing four good-size holes, maybe six or eight feet across, to become one whacking great gash, thirty feet across, the keel obliterated.

That would sink her. Fast. The aging Russian warship was not compartmentalized, and the onrushing ocean water would cascade right through the decks. She’d be gone in less than twenty minutes.

But the main task, always the most difficult, was for the SEALs to ensure the detonators were correctly set to blow simultaneously. Most of the normal procedures had been carried out on the ship, unscrewing the black plastic “bung” in the casing of the mine, to reveal the priming well, and then to fix the mechanism. But each underwater timing clock must be set for 2300 hours, and every second was critical for one big bang, not a series of average explosions.

It’s difficult to curse and swear underwater, but the level of frustration was high down there under the
Koryak
’s keel. The four SEALs struggled, turning their screwdrivers, twice dropping them, and thanking God they each had two spares. Their hands were cold in the freezing water, and that added to the slowness of the operation. Also, they were trying to breathe slowly, to conserve the oxygen, and this too required a major effort.

One by one they completed the bomb-laying phase of the operation. Each frog waited for the last man to finish, treading water in the dark, and then kicking back together, two by two, SEAL standard practice, no one on his own, to the
Róisín,
to await the result of their labors . . . the death of the
Koryak.

When they arrived, the cargo nets were down, and they pulled off their flippers and clipped them to their thighs. Then they climbed back up the
hull of the Irish cutter, where Captain Farrell had arranged for hot cocoa and sandwiches in the dining room.

It was 2245, and the
Róisín
was already retreating, moving back to a point one thousand yards east of the Russian freighter. No one doubted the forthcoming triumph of the mission, but many of the SEALs could not stop thinking about the fate of the men on board. It did not seem to matter whether they were missilemen or electronics technicians: their fate would be the same. Drowning. And every man in any navy has an innate sympathy for that.