“I like this plan.”
“ Nighthawke ’s got enough firepower to discourage anyone from trying to follow us in those pirate scows.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Stony said with a wide grin. He saw the Nighthawke ’s twin Browning. 50-caliber barrels protruding from a ring-mounted armored turret swivel 180 degrees on the foredeck and start spitting lead at enemy fighters threatening to ascend to higher decks from the stern of the big white yacht. Another gunner, operating a similar turret on the stern, opened fire. The loud chatter of the two big guns gave rise to Hawke’s hopes that the main body of his force might actually survive. At least three of his Red Team members fighting off the boarders had not been so lucky in the brutal firefight. Many more were injured and needed immediate medical attention.
Stony said, “I’ll go below and give the order to move to starboard now. Post a rear guard to fire and scramble, from as many positions as possible, to give the illusion of a larger force to disguise the retreat.” Hawke looked at him, thinking fast.
“Give me your gun and ammo first. Shooting with two hands is better than one. With any luck, I’ll see you on board Nighthawke. Tell your men to scramble. Down the lines, then just drop to the tender’s deck, head for the nearest open hatchway, and get the hell below.”
“What about my four divers?”
“Don’t worry, Stony. We’re not leaving without them.”
Dead and wounded were being lowered in makeshift slings down to the decks of Nighthawke and swiftly carried below to receive medical attention. The armored tender’s heavy firepower, fore and aft, was keeping the enemy down, covering the rapid escape as Blue Team and Red Team rappelled down the starboard hull of Cygnus, most just dropping the last ten feet to her deck and scrambling for cover, before returning fire at the suicidal Iranian fighters who appeared at the rail, raining fire down from high above.
Hawke was the last man to leave Cygnus.
Stoke was standing below on the foredeck hatch cover, watching his descent, waiting anxiously to receive him, having seen the bloody chest wound Hawke had received covering the retreat of the bloodied combatants. Hawke only had the use of his left arm to descend. The pain was merciless. When Hawke was halfway down, Stoke saw his head slump forward. Then he lost his grip. He dropped the last thirty feet into Stoke’s arms. Stoke caught the one-hundred-eighty-pound man, staggered a step, but held on, cradling Hawke against his own massive chest. He looked at his friend’s face, a pale grey, his body weak with blood loss.
“You okay, boss? You don’t look so good…”
Hawke managed a forced smile and a ragged reply.
“Stoke. What have I always told you about pain?”
“Pain is just weakness leaving your body.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I know, boss. Just another pretty little scar to add to your collection.”
Stoke hurried his wounded comrade under the cover of the steel-roofed wheelhouse. “Corpsman!” he shouted and a navy medic came running to attend to Hawke’s injuries. He examined him quickly and expertly.
“Shoulder wound, sir,” the young corpsman said. “And clean flesh. No bone, no arteries. The round passed straight through. I’ll stitch him up and he’ll be on the mend straightaway.”
Ten minutes later, Hawke was resting quietly in the sick bay, his entire chest strapped with surgical tape and his right arm in a sling. His color was coming back and Stoke could see in his eyes that there was one hell of a lot of fight left in him. He was down, but he wouldn’t be down long. Weakness was leaving his body.
H awke looked up at the starboard rail above him and saw that the enemy had abandoned the field of battle, at least for now. He immediately headed for the stern, looking for the four SEAL demolition divers. Nighthawke had a wide, teak-decked boarding platform protruding from beneath her stern. It was raised and lowered hydraulically and could lift anything from the four heavily armed Jet Skis that were stowed just forward of the platform to four navy divers kitted up in very heavy dive suits and equipment.
Just as Hawke reached the stern rail, the first head popped up out of the water. The diver raised his clenched fist in victory when he saw Hawke, and any fear Alex had had for these brave men or their mission vanished.
“Stoke! Brock! Come back here and help me haul these guys aboard. You may have noticed I only have one arm, otherwise I’d do it myself.”
A second black helmeted head appeared on the surface, then a third and a fourth. Seeing Hawke lowering the platform beneath the sloppy surface of the water, they swam for it. The first diver had already whipped off his helmet and was sitting on the platform, his legs awash, talking excitedly to Hawke, Brock, and Stokely Jones.
“You guys didn’t tell us we were blowing up the Emerald City!” Lieutenant Ryan White said, rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is that place, anyway? Freaking lightning crackling around inside this big tower and, at one point while I was finishing rigging the charge at the base of the central tower, lighting started racing faster and faster in circles around the six towers on the perimeter. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen! I thought we were about to get our asses fried!”
“Tell them about the music, Lieutenant,” a diver said.
“Oh, yeah. All the towers started broadcasting this weird music,” Ryan White said. “I thought I had narcosis, but the other guys could hear it, too. It was making us sick, so we shut down our acoustics.”
“Good thing,” Hawke said, knowing they’d all dodged a deadly bullet.
Stokely helped the third diver out of the water. He got to his feet and removed his helmet. The diver looked at Ryan White and said, “Lieutenant, I’m sorry I had to shut my combat radio down. I started hearing this very weird music in my earpiece. Made me crazy. Something like narcosis, you know? Did you guys hear it, too?”
“Hell, yeah, we all heard it. Next thing I knew I was tugging at my regulator, trying to rip it loose. Just before I blacked out, I turned the volume down and got my head straight again. What the hell was that all about?”
“Perseus was attempting to save himself by convincing you four men to commit suicide,” Hawke said.
“Perseus? Who the hell is he?”
“The computer you just rigged.”
“Wait-that’s-those black glass towers-are a computer?”
“It’s a long story,” Hawke said. “More than a computer, really. An empire of the mind. How long did you set your detonation timers for, Lieutenant White? We need to be getting out of here before they start lobbing mortar shells at us.”
Ryan White looked at his dive watch and then back at the water off Nighthawke ’s stern.
“Right about… now, Commander Hawke,” he said.
A shock wave rocked the boat from below just as seven mushroomlike mounds of foaming white water appeared on the surface. They expanded to about five feet in diameter and then dissipated, leaving no trace of the catastrophic destruction that had just occurred below. Hawke couldn’t even imagine how much high-explosive Semtex it took to create even a ripple a thousand feet above the ocean floor.
Hawke stared at the undulating surface of the black water, thinking about the staggering implications of what he had just done. More important, he was wondering if he had the right to do it.
Had he even done the right thing?
All the giant leaps forward in scientific achievement, the unimaginable medical advances, reverse aging, a cure for famine, or even a To hell with it.
He realized he would never really know. Maybe someday mankind could produce something like Perseus. A superintelligent machine, but one that could be kept in check. One with hardwired incapacity for doing harm, or evil. A force that was only capable of doing good, solving insoluble problems, making the world a better, safer place.
But Perseus had not been that machine.
Ironically, Perseus’s true value, and Professor Waldo Cohen’s enormous contribution to the evolution of science, would be that Cohen had somehow strayed down the wrong path.
And that, Hawke knew in his heart, might ultimately make the right road far, far easier to follow in the future.
He turned to the man he could always lean upon.
“Stoke, it’s finished. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Great. Leave Iran without even getting to taste the caviar. Story of my life.”
Hawke looked at Brock with undisguised admiration.
