The minutes passed, as they always do just before a step into emptiness, slowly.
The Osprey had reached its service ceiling of about twenty-four thousand feet. HAHO parachute jumps usually took place at altitudes over twenty-five thousand feet, but that could always be tailored to fit mission requirements. Cougar would be steering to target across a distance of only five miles, rather than the more usual thirty to fifty. They droned along now in level flight, steadily closing on the waypoint designated Charlie One.
'What's the word, Mr. Rubens?' Dean asked, keeping his helmet comm gear switched off while he used his implant to talk to the Art Room. 'We've got about two minutes to go/no-go.'
'The President still hasn't gotten back to Bing,' Rubens said. He sounded tired and not a little exasperated. 'This may be a CYA hand-me-down.' 'Shit.'
Dean hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the bureaucratic games in Washington lately, but he'd heard enough from Rubens over the past several days to make a pretty fair guess as to what was happening. The current administration didn't want to be seen as militarily adventurous at a time when it was trying to disengage from Iraq. The United Kingdom had rejected an offer of help by the United States with Harrow Storm, and that had been fine with the President. He wanted to stay out of what publicly was a British crisis if he possibly could.
But the two hijacked ships were now just two hundred nautical miles from New York City. Rubens was convinced that the real goal of the IJI Brigade terrorists was to force the United States to step in and either attempt a bloody takedown of both ships, one that might well end in hundreds or thousands of casualties and risk radioactive contamination of the entire North Atlantic Gulf Stream, or, failing that, sink the two ships out of hand to keep them out of American waters or ports, an act that would show the U. S. military murdering thousands of hostages and contaminating the ocean, all live on the nightly cable news.
By doing nothing, the administration might be hoping that someone else took the responsibility of actually making a decision. If Rubens decided to launch Operation Neptune on his own, he would give the President options. If Neptune was a success, the President could accept the praise. If it was a disaster, he could always 'disavow all knowledge of their actions,' as the old TV spy show so succinctly put it.
As Rubens said, a CYA hand-me-down of responsibility — cover your ass, and let someone else take the responsibility.
'Neptune,' Rubens said after a moment, 'is a go. On my authority.'
'Copy,' Dean replied. 'Neptune is go.' At that moment, he was very, very glad he did not have Rubens' job. Success would mean someone else got the praise and he, most likely, would get a severe dressing-down for exceeding his authority. Failure meant political crucifixion and quite probably legal action as well. If Neptune turned sour, they would be looking for scapegoats in the morning.
'Good luck, Charlie.'
'Thanks. And… don't worry. We'll do our best.'
'I know you will.'
The aircraft cargo master slapped Dean on the shoulder and switched his headset back on. 'The tangos just called to wave us off,' the cargo said over Dean's helmet radio. 'Guess they're nervous about us flying so close.'
'What'd you tell them?'
'That we were a fat, stupid UPS plane en route to Boston,' the cargo master replied. 'Just like we planned it.'
'Any reply to that?'
'Negative. But you can bet they're watching us!'
'Yeah, but a cruise ship's radar isn't going to spot man-sized targets. They can watch all they want.'
The cargo master held a hand up as he listened to an intercom transmission from the cockpit, then nodded and gave Dean the ready sign. They were coming up on Charlie One. The pitch of the Osprey's rotors changed as the aircraft slowed sharply.
With a shrill grinding sound, the rear ramp to the Osprey's cargo deck opened, dropping to create a descending ramp leading into darkness.
Dean opened his communications channel again. 'We're good to go, people,' he said. 'Light your strobes.' At the back of the helmet of each man in the line, an IR beacon began winking on and off, invisible to the unaided right eye, visible as a white, pulsing flash through the NVG monocular each man wore over his left.
The sudden wind from outside whipped at the legs of Dean's jumpsuit. The oxygen coming through his mask was cold and unbearably dry. More seconds crawled past, and then the cargo master said, 'Okay, people! We're coming up on jump point Charlie One in five.. four… three… two… one… now'
'Go!' Dean yelled. 'Go! Go! Go!'
The line of twelve black-clad men moved forward swiftly, passing the line of empty seats to their right, the line of watching comrades still seated on their left. They hit the lowered ramp one close behind the next, launching one after the other into the night.
Dean was the last man out… and then he was falling through the dark.
'This way,' Johnny Berger, the steward, whispered. 'But be quietl'
Andrew McKay nodded and passed the whisper back to Nina, and she passed it on to the others following. There were twelve of them strung out in a long line, emerging one by one from the door onto the Starboard Boat Deck. Eleven would be taking the lifeboat; the twelfth, Dr. Barnes, was bringing up the rear. He would help them keep a lookout and actually operate the davits that would lower them into the sea.
'Mommy, I'm sleepy,' Melissa said.
'Shh, dear. Not now.'
Their escape had been put off one time after another. Not long after their secretive meeting up in Kleito's Temple on Tuesday afternoon, the helicopter attack had thundered out of the east. Several of them, including McKay and his family, had seen the helicopter shot down off the starboard side. The escape, which had been planned for that evening, was put off. The hijackers would be on their guard, and it was too dangerous to go wandering around on deck.
There were rumors that a passenger had been shot afterward, but no one in the group had been able to confirm that. They'd agreed, though, that the terrorists might decide to lock all of the passengers up at any time — perhaps put them with Harper and Bernstein and the ship's captain and the Cruise Director and everyone else who seemed to have vanished during the past five days.
But then the wind had picked up and it had started raining. Berger had pointed out that they did not want to try to drop into the sea from a moving ship. The maneuver would be dangerous enough even if the water was calm.
And so they'd put the escape off for another night.
That afternoon, however, the rain had lifted and the wind had died down as the ship had emerged into sunshine from a long line of squalls. Barnes had checked some maps in the ship's library earlier. He'd pointed out that — given their speed and course since Sunday — they ought to be somewhere off the coast of Massachusetts by now, probably less than fifty miles from shore; they could start rowing northeast and hope to strike land within a day or two, even if the military didn't pick up their emergency signal and come get them.
Tonight, they'd all agreed, would be the night.
Turning right, they moved along the safety railing toward the loom of the first lifeboat, hanging just above the deck. Barnes used his security key to swipe through a reader. Everyone else had left their ID cards in their staterooms; if the hijackers were tracking people by the locations of their passkey cards, they likely wouldn't notice the ship's doctor on the boat deck, where they would definitely come investigate twelve passengers and crew out here late at night.
A ready light winked on, and Barnes pressed a button. With a grinding whine, the lifeboat swung across the deck and over the railing.
'Let's get the women and children on first,' McKay said, nudging Nina and Melissa forward. He knew it sounded silly — a bit of melodramatic nonsense — even as he said it. But the stress was building inside him to the point where he could hardly stand still. He needed to get them off the ship now…
