speed.
They would have the newly freed hostages in tow behind the speeding sub, an idea Hawke had gotten on that first day, watching a blue fishing boat towing a string of white dinghies. The sight recalled a favorite children’s book, one his mother had brought him as a present from America. Make Way for Ducklings, it was called. There was a problem with the idea, however. When you have your ducks in a row, they make for a very easy target.
If all went well, though, the machine guns would be silent, the twin towers by then a heap of rubble, brought down by massive charges at the base rigged by Chief Charlie Rainwater. Egress from the fortress via the main gate would be blocked. The tunnel the only way out. It might work.
And the dock he was swimming beneath would no longer exist. He reached up and attached an MK-V Limpet assembly module to the underside of the dock. The module contained more than one hundred pounds of high explosives. He set it to detonate in the standoff mode at 0330 hours. By that time, it was expected, the infiltrators would be gone.
That, at least, was the plan.
Hawke submerged once more and located the pinpoint violet beam they had affixed to Bruce’s nose. Two seconds on, two seconds off, invisible from above. Hawke had a portable version, a pencil light sheathed in rubber. He signaled three times rapidly, flashing the all-clear, and saw three short flashes in return from the SDV. Stoke had acknowledged and was proceeding directly toward Hawke.
The tricky part now would be maneuvering the cumbersome vehicle in reverse at one knot. Once they’d gotten the thing inside the tunnel, they’d be backing down until they reached the powder magazine. It had been agreed that Stoke, who had trained in undersea warfare at Little Creek with both an early version of the vehicle, the Mark VII, and newer, larger versions, would now pilot Bruce from the navigator’s helm on the port side.
They would run dead slow. Swimming, Hawke would position himself at the new “bow,” grasping the handhold and kicking off from sides of the tunnel to keep them on course as they moved deeper within. The screeching sound of metal on stone was to be avoided at all costs. So was damaging the props and disabling the vehicle, which would be disastrous.
“Anything exciting up in the real world?” he heard Stoke say in his headset. Bruce was now hovering just ten feet from the surface and five yards outside the underwater entrance. Hawke swam over and grabbed a rail running the length of the vessel.
“Negative. Let’s turn this brute around.”
“Jaws of death, man. Come to call.” Stoke was psyched; Hawke could hear it in his voice.
Stoke reversed the port motor and shoved the starboard throttle half ahead. The painted nose began to swing slowly to the left and Hawke, using his flippers, started kicking, helping to push the nose around. After five minutes of heavy exertion, they had the thing correctly positioned, stern-to, just outside the entrance. Time for Bruce and his unexpected guests to go calling.
Hawke checked his watch. He and Stoke were due to meet up with the rest of the force in less than twenty minutes.
On the surface, things were going pretty much according to the plan Hawke and McCoy had agreed upon. Everybody was awake and sober, nobody had fallen overboard, and nobody was shooting at them as of this moment. This, based on FitzHugh McCoy’s vast experience of the counterterrorist trade, was an exceedingly dangerous state of affairs. Something was bound to happen in the next thirty minutes or so that would blow all his plans out the window and everything else to hell and gone.
He imagined Hawke and Stokely had the sub just inside the tunnel now. In twenty-two minutes, they would all regroup inside the large ammunition storehouse just inside the entrance to the fort on the left. A stone staircase led down from that storeroom to the old powder magazine and the tunnel. If there were to be trouble for Hawke, it would most likely be on those steps leading up from where he moored the sub. If an alarm sounded, if the garrison realized they’d been breached, that’s the first place armed guards would go. It was a weak point in the plan but it couldn’t be helped.
Fitz was standing on the bow of the good ship Obaidallah in his Arab regalia. His hands were on his hips, his eyes were everywhere as the battered supply boat slowly approached the docks just below Fort Mahoud. He could feel many pairs of eyes on him, imaginary death beams coming from the gunners manning the tops of the twin towers.
The old boat was running dead slow, black smoke leaking aft from her stack. She had only her running and navigation lights on. A reddish glow illuminated the first mate, Abu, standing at the wheel. His would be the familiar face to anyone on the docks. Fitz had told him to angle the overhead light so that his face was clearly visible from the dock. To a casual eye, Fitz believed, all was precisely as it should be aboard the weekly supply ship.
Two men, dockhands, were lounging on the dock silently watching their approach. One of them leaned casually against a bollard, smoking a cigarette. He looked just like he should look, Fitz observed, sullen and lazy. Both men had lines loosely at the ready. There was nothing at all about their body language or facial expressions to cause Fitz any concern.
It was two-thirty in the morning.
Except for the soft yellow lights at either end of the dock, it was pitch dark in the little marina. The docks, as anticipated, were empty. The French patrol boat had left the dock on schedule, fifteen minutes earlier. Fitz checked his watch again. Forty-five minutes, roughly, until the cutter returned. Enough time to do this thing, maybe.
Fitz had his eyes peeled, taking it all in. These rascals with the dock lines had probably been roused again from their bunks to greet the delayed supply ship. They’d be cranky and sleepy, nothing more. He hoped.
Brock’s man, Ahmed, who was standing on the stern, lifted his right hand in a vague greeting as the boat neared the dock. He muttered something in Arabic to one of the dockhands as the vessel bumped up against the pilings. The hand tossed him a line, and Ahmed made it fast to a stern cleat. The other line came aboard amidships and Abu stepped outside and handled that one. The old diesel was still throbbing, and Captain Ali shut it down.
Ahmed stepped easily onto the dock and after a brief exchange sent one of the two hands scurrying for the hand carts. He remained with the other, amiably chatting him up. Ahmed was their point man in dealing with any Arabs they encountered. Without him, Fitz had told Hawke, this mission would have been virtually impossible.
Fitz remained on the bow, checked his watch, and did a surreptitious weapons check beneath his loose-fitting white garments. He had two weapons at the ready. A Heckler & Koch MP 5 machine gun. And a Fairbairn- Sykes fighting knife in a leather sheath.
The knife was the pride of the McCoy armory back home at Fort Whupass in Martinique. Designed by two British officers based on their close-quarters combat experience with the Shanghai police, it was designed specifically for striking accurately at the target’s vital organs. It had been a standard weapon for commandos during World War II. Fitz touched the hilt, reassured by the well-worn smoothness of the leather wrapping.
He looked aft. Abu and Brock had gotten the heavy iron after hatch open and the first of the supplies were being passed up from the men below. The words SUGAR and RICE were stenciled on burlap sacks. Some actually contained sugar; many others contained satchel charges, Semtex explosives, and nine-millimeter cartridge belts. The dockhands had returned with dollies and were loading up the carts under the supervision of Ahmed.
Rainwater stepped suddenly out of the shadow of the wheel-house and joined Fitz standing on the bow. With his dark skin and flashing black eyes, Charlie Rainwater looked like some children’s book illustrator’s vision of a terrifying Barbary pirate. All he needed were brass hoops in his ears and a flashing scimitar.
“Looks good,” Rainwater murmured under his breath.
“Doesn’t it just?” McCoy said, also keeping his voice low.
“You see the guys up in the towers?”
“See ’em? I can feel their fooking breath down my neck. Don’t look up there. They appear to have lost interest in us.”
“Here’s some good news. That metal surveillance platform that runs around the top of the tower? They can’t see me rigging charges down at the base unless they happen to lean way out over the rail and look down.”
“I noticed that. I thought you’d be happy. You like your privacy when you work.”
“I’m ready to do this, Fitz. Now. I like the timing. I’ll throw a sack of ‘Semtex sugar’ over my shoulder and take a casual stroll down the dock. Have the charges rigged at both towers in five minutes or less.”
