Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel (38 page)

Fifty-two

“N
avy Blue, this is Big Red One, over.”

“Go ahead, Big Red One.”

“We located the target. He got by us. Seen anything unusual out there?”

“Uh, roger that, Big Red. We saw some kind of a UAV zipping around the backstreets and alleys of the villages. Damnedest thing you ever saw.”

“Could you pinpoint his direction, Stony?”

“Repeat, did you say ‘his’?”

“Roger. His. The aerial vehicle you saw is not unmanned. It’s our target. We’re out of the residence and headed across the piazza. Taking light fire, but nothing we can’t handle alone. Where was the target headed?”

“Looked like it was headed for the marina.”

“Stony, you’ve got to get there as fast as you possibly can. I think I know why he’s bound for the marina.”

“Why, over?”

“The big white yacht on the pier across from the fuel dock.
Cygnus
. Has to be his escape route.”

“On our way, Commander.”

“Listen carefully before you approach the target. That vehicle is armed with multiple fifty cals capable of firing simultaneously in three-hundred-sixty-degree rotations. Lethal fire in all directions.”

“Roger. Hold on, sir. One of our rooftop snipers has just spotted him. He’s definitely headed in the direction of the marina gate. He’s in a fucking flying wheelchair!”

“Has your sniper got a shot?”

“Negative. He’s disappeared into the backstreets.”

“Blue and Red teams converge at the gate. If Blue gets there first, keep going. Fight the fight, don’t fight the plan. Try and take him with an RPG. Maybe we’ve got time to board the yacht before he escapes.”

“Affirmative, Big Red One. We’ll get him, before or after he boards the yacht.”

Hawke and the Red Team made it across the piazza and into the confused maze of narrow streets. Hawke had memorized the fastest route to the gate in case it all went bad and they had to escape in a hurry.

R
ed Team arrived at the gate to find Blue Team pinned down under heavy fire. Saffari’s men had erected steel barricades to cover the man’s escape. They were pouring fire into the street where Stony’s men were taking whatever cover they could find. Hawke found Stollenwork emerging from an alleyway and into the street. He had an RPG attached to the muzzle of his M-16. He fired it at the center barricade and ducked back into the alley.

When the smoke cleared, Hawke could see that the damn thing had barely been dented. Hawke had a quick word with Stokely and Brock and then ordered his men to take whatever cover they could find and return fire. Then he ducked into the alley where he’d seen Stony disappear.

“Stony,” he said, crouching beside the man. He was jamming another mag into his assault rifle.

“Shit. That flying bastard is getting away.”

“Maybe not.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve sent my two best men up to the rooftops of this building and the one across the street. From that height, they can put fire on the enemy behind the barricades.”

Stony didn’t say anything, just smiled.

“Meanwhile, we can pick off as many of these guys as possible,” Hawke said, stepping out into the street and opening up with his M-16.

Five minutes later, they were storming the barricades, shooting the few remaining survivors on their way to the gate and then, the marina. When they emerged from the tunnel on the other side of the wall, they were cheered by the sight of the big white yacht, still moored to the pier to their right.

They raced down the central dock until they came to the “T” at the end. Left was the fuel dock and the captured patrol boat, right was
Cygnus,
moored at the end of the dock.

“Let’s move,” Hawke shouted, sprinting the length of the long steel pier.

He arrived first, staring up at the white hull of Saffari’s yacht. The first thing he noticed was that there were no mooring lines securing the yacht to the dock. And no crew casting off, yet the yacht remained in place, despite current and wind. The only possible explanation was that the hull was somehow attached to the pier underwater.

The second thing he noticed were lights up on the bridge deck. He could see figures inside the wheelhouse, and black smoke was pouring out of the two big red stacks amidships. No sign of Darius Saffari and no gangplank available for him to board the ship.

“Gangway must have retracted into the hull,” Hawke said to Stony and Stoke, who’d arrived first. “See that section that looks like a very large hatchway in the hull? Has to be it.”

“Yeah,” Stoke said, “but explain why there’s no crew on the deck, heaving lines ashore, casting off, getting under way.”

“Good question,” Stony said. “Let’s get aboard and find out.”

“Get aboard how?” Stoke said.

“SEALs carry grapnel hooks now, old-timer. We can get aboard anything.”

“Old-timer? Shit. Son, my SEAL team in the Mekong Delta was carrying grapnel hooks before your mammy met your pappy.”

“Sorry, sir. You’re an ex-SEAL? I didn’t know. No excuse. I apologize.”

“No time to apologize. Just get your hooks up on the gunwales and let’s get aboard this damn ghost ship.”

Four grappling hooks flew into the air simultaneously, easily catching the gunwales high above.

Stoke looked at Stony and smiled. “All is forgiven,” he said.

W
ith four lines dangling down the side of the hull, it didn’t take long before every man was aboard, assembling on the foredeck and awaiting further orders from Hawke.

Hawke stood in the center of them, staring up at the illuminated wheelhouse on the bridge deck. He could see men up there behind the windows, but there was no movement, nor any movement anywhere. The big ship felt deserted, devoid of any crew at all. A ghost ship. Something was clearly wrong with this picture. But Stony had seen Darius flying down the pier toward the yacht.

He was either aboard.

Or he’d elected suicide over capture and was now at the bottom of the sea.

“Spread out,” he told the men. “We search this ship from stem to stern, every inch of the damn thing. Unless our little flyboy decided he was better off in paradise, he’s on board this yacht. We’re going to find him, and we’re going to kill him. That’s a direct order. I’ve no intention of taking him alive. Go.”

Hawke grabbed Stoke’s sleeve.

“Stick with me. We’re going directly up to the bridge. I want to check something out.”

There was an exterior metal staircase, four flights, that led directly up to the bridge wing outside the entrance to the wheelhouse. Hawke, followed by Stokely, took the steps two at a time.

They reached the top and burst inside, weapons at the ready.

“Cardboard cutouts,” Stoke said.

“Yeah.”

There were five of them. One at the helm, and two on either side.

“He’s playing for time,” Hawke said, disappearing down an illuminated staircase that led to the interior of the deck below. “C’mon, old-timer!”

The staircase ended at a small corrugated steel platform, semicircular with a railing. More steps led down from it. It was virtually pitch-black, with a faint reddish glow visible far below.

“Say something, Stoke. Loud.”

“Something!”
Stoke shouted as loudly as he could.

The word reverberated, echoing loudly within the steel hull.

Hawke snapped on the powerful light on his M-16. Stoke did the same. The two brilliant white beams pierced black nothingness beyond and below. He’d known there was something odd about the vessel the instant he’d seen it. Now, he knew.
Cygnus
was an empty shell and nothing more. But why? What was the point?

“Where the hell is everybody?” Stoke said.

“Locked out. I’m sure all the hatches and doorways are sealed shut. Just in case somebody got curious. Let’s go down and find out where that red light is coming from.”

Fifty-three

“N
avy Blue, this is Big Red One,” Hawke said. “Call off the search. The only way inside the hull is an internal staircase inside the wheelhouse. This entire vessel is an empty shell. No decks, no propulsion, no systems, no crew, no one aboard. We’re going down to the bilges. There’s some kind of light down there we want to check out. Post guards on deck all along the portside rail. The bad guys aren’t done yet. They might well be gathering inside the wall for an assault on this vessel. Stony, come down here and take a look. Ask Mr. Brock to keep me informed of any unpleasant developments within the citadel.”

“Affirmative. Five minutes.”

Hawke and Stoke each put fresh mags in their M-16s before they began their descent. There could well be an unfriendly reception committee waiting down in the bowels of the ship. Hawke didn’t mention it to Stokely, but he was also concerned about the possibility of IEDs, pressure-sensitive explosives under one or more of the metal steps they were descending. Every step they took could mean instant death. Or, not.

In any case, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Reaching the bottom of the staircase safely, they found themselves in a darkened room. The SureFire lights on their weapons revealed a sizable space full of all kinds of equipment. A massive, humming generator dominated one bulkhead. A large air compressor was still running, and there was a control panel where numerous systems could obviously be monitored.

“Damn,” Stoke said.

“What?”

“I just tripped over something.”

Hawke lowered his beam to the deck. Covering the surface was a mass of writhing snakes, thick black cables of all shapes and dimensions that disappeared around a bulkhead to their left.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, boss?”

“No doubt. Let’s see what’s at the other end of these cables and I’ll be able to answer your question more definitively.”

They moved cautiously around the bulkhead and discovered a long dark corridor. The cables ran along the floor and disappeared through an open hatchway.

Red light was emanating from whatever lay beyond.

The two comrades quickly moved toward the light and ducked their heads to step through the hatch.

“Holy shit,” Stoke said.

“Precisely my thinking,” Hawke said.

It was a submarine pen. An
empty
submarine pen.

A large rectangular opening cut into the keel in the bottom of the hull, with black seawater sloshing up onto the surrounding deck, the deck strewn with countless disconnected but live cables, hissing and spitting fire in the dampness.

The submarine was gone and Darius was aboard it.

“Lost him, boss. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe not,” Hawke said, ripping the battle radio from the Velcro on top of his black battle helmet.

“
Blackhawke, Blackhawke, Blackhawke,
this is Big Red One.”

“This is
Blackhawke,
First Officer speaking; go ahead, sir.”

“Is Captain Carstairs on the bridge?”

“Affirmative, sir. He’s standing right here beside me. Hold on.”

“Carstairs.”

“Laddie, Hawke. Target slipped the noose. You now have a minisub in the water; judging by the size of the pen and the electronic support systems, she’s a Koi class Chinese two-man, no more than twenty meters long. Powered by proto-lithium batteries so you won’t pick up her screw signatures. You have our coordinates. The sub is probably on a heading from the mouth of the marina en route to the Strait of Hormuz and out of the Gulf. Alert the sonar officer. Tell him the minisub will present a very small, faint picture on his screen. Easy to miss. If you get a contact, initiate hot pursuit. The second he’s within torpedo range, destroy him.”

“Affirmative. What’s your exfil situation? Do you require assistance?”

“Negative. We have taken minimal casualties. We have not yet found the machine. We will continue search-and-destroy mission. We’ve posted guards on the patrol boat. If we need a hot extraction, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Understood.
Blackhawke,
standing by on channel eleven, sir, over.”

“Good God,” Stollenwork said, making his way into the pen. “An escape sub. Of course. Rather clever, actually.”

“He’s got a lot of help,” Hawke said, a droll expression on his face. “A higher intelligence. What the situation up there?”

“It’s not over. They seem to be regrouping inside the wall. A large force. I think they intend to storm this yacht, in the belief they outnumber us.”

“Not a belief,” Stoke said. “A fact.”

“Stony, order your second in command to position Blue and Red teams on every
Cygnus
deck, taking cover with direct line of sight on the gate. They’ll be at their most vulnerable funneled up at that exit point. Concentrated fire there will, at minimum, slow them down when we make for the patrol boat.”

“Aye, sir,” Stollenwork said, then raised his radio and repeated Hawke’s orders to his number two up on deck.

“Stokely, I noticed a hidden indentation in the bulkhead to our left when we reached the first platform down from the bridge. There’s no way Saffari could have negotiated three steep flights of narrow stairs in his manned aerial vehicle. I’m guessing there’s a hidden elevator opening in the hull, directly onto the dock. It would make more sense in escape mode. Go back up and check it out, would you? I need a word with Stony.”

“Done,” Stoke said over his shoulder, sprinting up the staircase.

“Stony. You took the lab out. But we’re not leaving here without destroying that bloody machine.
Blackhawke
can take out Saffari’s sub if he stays within her sonar perimeter. She’s got torpedo tubes fore and aft. We’ll find him and sink him somehow.”

“You’re joking.”

“You don’t know the half of it. She’s a warship with nearly as much firepower as a navy frigate.”

“Boss?”

At the sound of Stoke’s deep bass voice behind him, Hawke wheeled around.

A large section of the hull was still sliding open. Stoke was standing inside a large, stainless-steel elevator with a big smile on his face. “What goes up, must go down,” he said. “Step inside, gentlemen.”

T
he three men were shocked by the lift’s initial acceleration. Hawke calculated the lift was descending at one hundred feet or more per minute. The trip was ten minutes long, which put their destination at a thousand feet below the surface of the sea when the elevator slowed and bumped to a stop on the ocean floor.

They stepped cautiously, weapons at the ready, out of the lift and found themselves in a large airlock. The floor was made of some highly polished metal. To their left they could see an illuminated tunnel of some kind, constructed of clear Perspex or thick laminated glass able to withstand the enormous pressure. It was about ten feet in diameter and seemed to lead across the sea bottom.

“The machine?” Stoke said, following Hawke and Stollenwork as they entered the tunnel.

“That would be my guess, yes,” Hawke said. He was busy admiring the sea life, flora and fauna, all around him. There were large, high-powered undersea lights mounted atop the tunnel every six feet. They turned the murky depths to daylight and the effect was overwhelming.

“Holy Mother of God,” Stollenwork exclaimed.

Suddenly, all three men had come to an abrupt stop. What lay before them was the stuff of dreams, an underwater scene of majestic power and beauty.

The tunnel had suddenly angled right, and now the lights were illuminating a giant rectangular tower that rose from the seabed at least a hundred feet. The monolithic structure stood atop a circular base and seemed to be constructed entirely of jet-black glass, but faint bluish light seemed to be ricocheting around inside the thing.

Arrayed in a circle around the central tower were six black rectangular structures, identical in design and material, but about forty feet shorter than the primary edifice. It looked, Hawke thought, like Stonehenge as imagined by Stanley Kubrick, something that had stood down here for eons, before man, before machine. What made it all so breathtaking were the flashes of pure spectral and brilliant razor wire of white light that crackled constantly between the central tower and its six satellites.

It was clear that the tallest of the towers was the core AI unit, and that it was exchanging information at unfathomable rates of speed with the other six. Laserlike mental fireworks was the only thing that began to describe it, Hawke thought. And as soon as he thought it, a stunningly colorful nebula, a hologram, filled the upper third of the central edifice. He felt like he was getting a peek at the outermost reaches of the known universe.

When the tunnel reached the outer perimeter of the structures, it nosed down beneath the ocean floor, plunging them into darkness. Embedded in the floor, a fluorescent blue centerline kept them oriented within the winding tunnel. After about 150 yards it began to climb again. Hawke, leading the way, could barely contain the heart beating wildly inside his chest.