the corner, Pope called, “Boscombe, Breezy, you copy?”
“Read you, Boss.” It was Bosco.
“We’re coming around your end. You guys take the point and move forward of the access while we enter. I’ll leave one man inside while we head below.”
“Gotcha.”
Moments later, Bosco felt Pope’s hand on his shoulder. Without further words, Bosco and Breezy advanced side by side, Breezy’s eyes following his HK’s muzzle that swept the upper deck. Once past the hatch, they stopped while Pope prepared to enter. He spoke into his lip mike.
“Jeff, we’re ready on this side.”
Malten replied from the other side. “On your mark.”
“Okay, I’m testing the hatch. The handle’s not moving.”
“Same here, Boss.”
“Prepare to blow it.” He looked over his shoulder. “Tom, you’re on.”
Pope stood aside while Pfizer quickly attached plastique to the access door’s hinges and handle. He linked the three charges with primer cord and inserted an adjustable one-minute detonator. “Fifteen seconds?”
Pope nodded. Then he called, “Jeff, set your detonator for one-five seconds. Start on my mark.”
“Ready, Vic.”
“Ready, ready, go!”
Malten twisted the dial one-quarter of a rotation. “Fire in the hole.”
Bosco and Breezy did a reverse moon walk, muzzles elevated, while Pope’s team retreated to a safe distance. The Composition Four charges detonated in a rolling, metallic eruption that left Pope’s hatch dangling at an awkward angle. While the team stacked behind him, he peeked inside and saw Malten’s men entering over their flattened door, scanning left and right.
“Clear!” Malten shouted.
“Cover us,” Pope replied. He wedged himself through the opening and the others followed. “Jacobs, you stand by here. Give a shout if you see something.”
Malten looked at his superior. “Well, Boss, they know we’re here now.”
“Roger that.” Pope adjusted his protective goggles and took position behind Pascoe. Checking visually with Malten, he said, “See you guys on the next level.”
“They’re coming,” Rivera said. The explosions two decks above could only mean one thing.
“Of course they are,” Hurtubise replied. Considering what was about to happen, he remained unusually calm. Especially since he was not accustomed to working with explosives.
“How much longer?” the Spaniard asked.
“Maybe ten minutes. Just keep them out of here until I signal. Leave Georges and Felix here to guard the entrance.”
Alfonso Rivera was a competent young man within certain limits, but shipboard tactics remained beyond the ken of his experience. Nonetheless, he hefted his AKM and climbed the ladder from the engine room to the next level, remembering to dog the hatch behind him. He wondered how he was going to hold off a dozen or more intruders with three men besides himself.
Approaching the second level down, Pope’s operators heard the machinery more clearly than before. Even though the SSI prize crew manned the bridge, the ship’s engine remained under control of the black gang.
Malten led the starboard team, descending the narrow ladders between decks. A few yards away, on the opposite side of the hull, Pope’s team kept pace. The two elements were able to maintain visual contact with one another most of the time, communicating by hand signals and occasional whispers over the tactical frequency of their headsets. Pope wanted to present the defenders with a dual-axis offense, concentrating two pairs of leading shooters against whatever the Frenchmen deployed against him.
Malten and Pope took no chances. Knowing that defenders had to be waiting on one or both of the last two levels, the operators stopped to drop flash-bangs down the ladder on each side. The second man in each team produced a Mark 84, pulled the pin, and on Pope’s signal dropped the grenades down the ladders.
The SSI operators had eye and ear protection but reflexively most turned their heads. Two seconds later the stun grenades detonated with 170 decibels, a horrific sound only amplified in the confined steel spaces within the hull.
Instantly the first two men on each side were down the ladders, scanning left and right.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
Finding nothing on the second deck, Malten and Pope advanced several steps aft to the next ladder. With compartments on either side, they took time to clear each one in turn, the last man in each team leaving the doors fully open to mark them as checked.
The teams proceeded to the next ladder. They knew that this time somebody was certainly waiting for them.
On the next level, Alfonso Rivera licked his lips. His throat was dry but he was as well prepared as possible, with body armor, gas mask, and hearing protection. He doubted that the intruders would use flash-bangs this close to the engine room, as Mark 84s could ignite fuel vapors, and nobody wanted to fight aboard a burning ship at sea. He glanced at his companions: Georges appeared calm; Felix fidgeted constantly.
From interrogating the bridge crew and one of the wounded mercenaries, the SSI men knew what to expect. Gas would be negated by the defenders’ masks, and smoke would only confuse matters. In extreme close quarters, where a tenth of a second was a meaningful measure, it would be easy to confuse friends and enemies. But a straight-out attack would surely result in friendly casualties.
Pope dropped a Mark 84.
The five-inch-long object clattered down the steps and rolled along the grilled platform where the defenders stood. Instinctively, the three men turned away from the impending blast that could blind and deafen them.
Pope and Pascoe were instantly down the ladder on their respective sides. The next men in the stack were immediately behind them, deploying left and right. Pfizer tripped on the next to last step, tumbling into Collier and causing momentary confusion that could have been fatal.
“Freeze!”
“Drop the weapons!”
Rivera was closest to the intruders. Wide-eyed behind his mask, he looked down at the grenade. The detonator had been removed. He realized that he had been bluffed and dropped his Kalashnikov. Slowly he raised his hands.
A few feet farther away, the gunman called Felix had a fraction more time to react to the collision at the bottom of the steps. He raised his AKM from the low ready position, aimed at the closest opponent, and began to press the trigger.
Eight 9 mm rounds shattered the faceplate of his mask. Pope’s and Pascoe’s suppressed MP-5s clattered audibly from ten to twelve feet away spilling empty brass onto the deck. Felix’s body went limp as a rag doll and seemed to collapse inward upon itself.
Rivera and Georges were screaming inside their masks, waving their empty hands. “No shoot!”
Collier defaulted to his television youth. “Cuff ‘em, Danno!”
While the survivors were secured with flex cuffs, Pope and Malten considered their next move. Only one hatchway separated them from the engine room, and as they decided how to blow their way in, the door slowly opened. A dirty gray rag appeared at the end of a hand.
“Do not shoot! We surrender.”
Seconds later, Victor Pope looked into the eyes of Marcel Hurtubise.
