Jerusalem Bay between him and the tugs. At the last moment the commandos were crunched into their seats as the pilot shot the aircraft skywards over the container ship’s bow, flaring and coming to a hover above the containers behind the foremast.
Major Gould grabbed the m-biter on his fast rope and leapt out of the helicopter, leading the rest of the commandos onto the containers nearly 6 metres below. The terrorists on the Jerusalem Bay opened fire from the bridge and two commandos fell from their ropes, their bodies bouncing off the containers into the harbour. The commandos who made it to the top of the containers raced forward, returning fire with Heckler and Koch 9mm sub-machine guns.
‘What the fuck…’ The captain of the Wilberforce swore as the massive tanker veered to port, away from the westerly course that would take them clear of the gunfire on the harbour and to Gore Cove.
‘Pilot aboard the Ocean Venturer, this is Wilberforce, over.
‘Pilot, this is Wilberforce, do your read me, over?’ the captain of the Wilberforce asked urgently. There’d been no response to his query about gunfire on the bridge and if the tanker continued to turn it would eventually ground on the southern shore. For a tug captain to take over the pilot’s control of a vessel in the harbour was unprecedented and it could cost him his ticket, but Captain ‘Blue’ Gilchrist had spent over twenty years on tugs and he’d never been involved in anything like this. He didn’t hesitate.
‘ Woolwich, Waverton, Werombi, this is Wilberforce, am assuming command from the pilot,’ Blue said calmly. He eased the throttles forward slowly to avoid ramming the big tyres on the tug’s bow into the side of the turning tanker. The rain was heavier now, sheeting against the tug’s windscreen and hissing onto the wind-whipped water. Blue Gilchrist applied maximum power and the twin 2500 hp Daihatsu diesels responded immediately.
‘Give me full reverse on the starboard quarter, Waverton,’ Gilchrist said.
‘ Waverton, romeo.’ The young captain on the Waverton had only been certified the week before, and he was rattled by the downing of the Blackhawk and the carnage on the Bridge. As he pulled the steering joystick to the rear, the young captain pushed the Waverton’s twin throttle levers too far forward. The engines responded instantly and beneath the big tug, the propellers that were surrounded by thick bronze casings spun through 180 degrees in an instant. The Waverton surged away from the tanker and the young captain realised his mistake. With a breaking strain of over 170 tonnes, the state-of-the-art nylon hawser was twice as thick as a man’s arm but as the momentum of the powerful tug met the immoveable momentum of the massive tanker turning in the opposite direction, the hawser snapped like a piece of cotton and whipped back with the force of an artillery shell leaving the barrel of a gun. The crewman on the foredeck had no chance. He was decapitated, his head making a ghastly bloodstained arc over the Waverton’s bridge. The 80,000-ton tanker, its engines approaching full revolutions, kept turning towards the southern shore.
As the 9.47 from Strathfield climbed out of the subway under Sydney, the train driver could see a red light just past the tunnel exit. The track ahead looked clear. Still angry over his supervisor’s stinging rebuke, the driver slowed the train but he continued across the Bridge towards Milsons Point on the far side.
‘Shall we call Daddy and wave to him?’ Anthea asked. Louise’s and the boys’ eyes lit up. Surprised to find four messages waiting for her Anthea pressed the speed dial for Murray.
‘Where are you?’ Murray demanded.
‘On the train, darling, what’s wrong?’
‘Where’s the train!’
‘Just coming out of the tunnel on to the Bridge, why?’ Anthea asked, bewildered by the tone of her normally calm husband.
‘Can we speak to Daddy? Can we speak to Daddy!’ the twins demanded.
Murray looked across to the Bridge, horrified by the sight of train carriages coming slowly out of the tunnel. al-Falid’s man standing above the Jeffrey Street Wharf had checked and double-checked the compass bearing until he could picture the imaginary line in his sleep. The Western Tunnel had been laid on a bearing of 178 degrees magnetic, and the ‘line’ ran through the right-hand corner of a bus shelter near the harbour’s edge and across to a point on the Cahill Expressway, near where the expressway turned towards the Conservatorium of Music. The man waited until the centre of the turning tanker crossed his imaginary line and he pressed the green call button on his mobile. The mobile phone strapped to the pier beneath the Jeffrey Street Wharf at the bottom of the hill rang just once. The detonators ignited the detonation cord that ran across the bottom of the harbour towards the lethal cylinders on top of the tunnels.
Seconds later, all ten cylinders exploded in a muffled roar and a plume of foaming water shot up the starboard side of the tanker, like an anti-submarine depth charge. Only five of the cylinders were directly underneath the turning tanker’s keel but the clearance was less than a metre, and it was enough. The blast ripped a jagged hole in the Ocean Venturer’s outer hull.
Had it not been for a warning light flashing on the console in front of him, Khashoggi would not have even noticed the blast. ‘Allah be praised,’ he muttered. Several of the compartments that were designed to protect the environment from an oil spill were being flooded with seawater. With a full cargo of crude on board, this flooding would be enough to ground the tanker under the bridge, sealing the harbour like a cork in a bottle.
Curtis O’Connor and Brigadier Davis exchanged glances as the camera on the roof of one of the city’s tallest buildings showed a wide shot of the harbour. At the top left of the screen, the tanker was still turning, the bow passing under the bridge at an oblique angle. At the bottom right of the screen, the Jerusalem Bay was almost abeam the Opera House, and there were several small black figures running across the top of the containers on the foredeck. In the middle of the screen, a fishing boat had just left Fort Denison where she appeared to have been sheltering from the firing. The Destiny was now heading west towards the tanker at full speed.
Davis reached again for the direct line to General Howard’s Special Forces Headquarters a short distance away.
‘I know you’ve got your hands full at present, General,’ he said, ‘but a large fishing boat’s just broken out from behind Fort Denison and she’s headed straight for the tanker.’
‘Not exactly a good news day,’ Howard grunted as he hung up the phone and reached for the radio.
‘Tiger 01, this is Eagle, are you airborne yet, over?’
‘Tiger 01, negative, loading ammunition, over.’
‘As soon as you are, contact me on this frequency, out.’
‘Fuck,’ Howard muttered. Well, if they couldn’t do anything about the tanker, at least they might be able to stop the Jerusalem Bay.
With the Destiny ’s big diesel engine thundering beneath him, Jamal centred the laser beams on a point about 2 metres above the water line. As the two red dots came together on his computer screen he fired the port anti-armour rocket and then the starboard one. The first rocket breached the outer hull of the Ocean Venturer and exploded against the inner hull, a metre further in. The second rocket exploded as it breached the inner hull. The weight of millions of litres of oil in the amidships tank was immense and a powerful geyser of Kuwaiti crude shot out of the side of the tanker, spewing on to the surface of the harbour, blackening the white caps.
Further down the harbour, Captain Jeffery and his commandos onboard the flying RHIBs had their hands full as they pressed on towards the tugs. Both of the RHIBs still had more than 300 metres to cover and Malik al-Falid had one more weapon.
Malik ducked behind the control console as a burst of machinegun fire ricocheted off the side of the steel bridge of the Montgomery. He nodded to the crew member crouching in the starboard wing with the rocket- propelled grenade launcher.
‘The closer the better; wait till they get within 100 metres then hit them,’ he commanded quietly.
The young Palestinian cell member raised the RPG-7 grenade launcher to his shoulder. The return fire from the commandos was continuous but they were struggling to get accuracy as the big RHIBs bounced off the water at high speed.
Steadying himself against the bridge, the Palestinian calmly aimed just in front of the bow and fired. Seconds later, the anti-tank grenade exploded with a deafening roar against the hull, killing three of the infidels instantly. As the shattered RHIB fell back to the choppy water, the big outboards were still screaming at full power and the commandos’ boat was driven under the surface in a ball of exploding foam.
‘ Allahu Akbar! God is Great!’ Malik clenched his fist as he drove the big tug at the men struggling in the water.
Fifty metres. Forty metres. Jamal raised his fist in defiance as he adjusted his course to avoid the geyser of
