Trident Force (22 page)

 

“Jeez, Ray!”

“I don't believe it! You'd better tell the boss.”

“Boss, this is Alex,” she spoke into the radio. “Rounding just drove the HBI right into the rocks. A wave picked it up and slammed it into the cliff . . . it did a backward somersault and now it's lying upside down, tangled in the rocks at the base of the cliff with the surf breaking over it.”

“Get in there and get him.”

“Aye, aye, Boss,” replied Alex, a note of asperity in her voice. “He's wearing the dry suit, isn't he?” she added to Ray.

Ray throttled back and cruised slowly back and forth along the rocky shore, looking for any sign of life, any hint of ambush. The man did, after all, have an automatic with him. Meanwhile, Alex rooted through the HBI's lockers. “Here's one,” she finally almost shouted. “I knew there had to be at least one. In fact, here's a second.”

“What?”

“Emergency thermal survival wraps. In case somebody gets soaked and doesn't have any dry clothes.”

“How fortunate we found them,” said Ray, dryly. “Now the boss won't have to feel guilty about us. You see any sign of him ashore?”

Alex studied the islet. “No. And I don't see where he could hide. He must have been pretty badly beaten up when the HBI went ashore.”

Ray slowed and turned in toward the wrecked HBI.

“How deep is it up forward?”

“About four feet where there aren't any rocks.”

“Good. We're going to do it the way Jerry would.”

“It's too bad Jerry isn't here to demonstrate.”

Gunning the two big engines, each billowing clouds of blue-white smoke, which were immediately blown away, Ray backed into the waves. The waves returned the favor by breaking furiously over the transom and pouring cascades of icy water into the boat.

“Okay,” Ray finally said when they were about a hundred feet out, “let go.” Alex, who was up to her knees in water, pushed the largest anchor they could find over the side.

With the backing engines throttled way down and Alex keeping a strain on the anchor line, the boat drifted forward. “Okay,” she reported, “I think it's set.”

“Good. Now you come and take the helm.”

Once Alex was at the controls, Ray worked his way forward—his eyes still scanning the islet for any sign of movement—as the HBI pitched and rolled and twisted, until he was hanging over the bow. By now, both were totally soaked and shivering.

“Stop the engines and raise them,” shouted Ray, his teeth beginning to chatter, as he tumbled over the bow with the HBI's painter in his hand. “Shit,” he gasped as he landed in the water, his heart stopping for a beat or two and his legs going numb almost instantly. At least his ankle didn't hurt anymore. “Go, Alex!” he shouted again as he turned and, placing the painter over his shoulder, started to march in place toward the rocks.

Alex finished securing the anchor line so the boat was held stern-to the breaking seas. She then paused a second, observing the waves just as Jerry would have insisted she do. When one wave had broken and partially retreated, she slipped over the bow with as much grace and balance as she could—only to immediately trip on a loose rock and disappear underwater.

Oh God! She tried to think and found she couldn't. Her brain had seized up, leaving only the most basic of instincts to drive her. Her body stiffened and a mouthful of icy water threatened to be her last.

Hearing her splash, Ray looked back over his shoulder. “You okay?”

Alex floundered for several seconds—although at the time they seemed like hours to her—and was almost overrun by the HBI as it was driven forward by the next wave. After gasping and stumbling, Alex finally got her footing. “No,” she was able to stutter, “but I'll make it.”

Both of their words were now clipped, forced, breathless, due to the near impossibility of getting the muscles around their mouths to move the way they wanted them to.

“Good,” cheered Ray as a wave rose to his neck, “because in a few minutes we'll both be dead.”

Alex forced her way through the violently churning water until she reached what was left of Rounding's HBI. She quickly realized the boat was firmly anchored by the mass of its two big, and now very dead, engines. Without pausing—because pausing takes time, and neither she nor Ray had any—she forced her near-paralyzed lungs to gulp in a breath of razor-sharp air and felt them burn. She dropped to her knees, then her hands and knees and looked under the wreckage.

Without a mask her view was both fuzzy and confused by the roiling water, and at first she saw nothing of interest. Just as the pain in her lungs became unbearable, she spotted what could be Rounding—wedged between the console and the seat. When her lungs screamed loud enough, she dragged herself out from under, stood up and took several deep breaths, her brain too numb to even curse. The second time under she was able to grab one of Jake's legs and pull. At first the body moved, then the other leg jammed up against the side of the HBI. Somehow, in a fury, she grabbed the wayward foot and pulled it over beside the other. She then pulled again and the body slipped partway out from under. Standing, she pulled the body the rest of the way out and—pummeled by the waves—headed for their HBI, dragging Rounding by the collar. With every shuddering breath, her lungs felt as if they were being massaged with a lighted blowtorch.

“Well done, Alex.” Ray tried to say it, but it came out an almost incomprehensible jumble of sound.

Alex and her prize reached the HBI just when a wave was ebbing. As the boat dropped and the water roiled around her, Alex shoved the body half over the gunnel, only to collapse herself. She found it amazing how low the HBI's gunnels appeared when you were in the boat and how high when you were in the water.

Ray turned and, while keeping a strain on the painter, stumbled back to the HBI and gave Alex the biggest shove he could muster. He then did the same to the body, and with Alex pulling, they got Rounding into the half-swamped boat. Then it was Ray's turn to collapse, barely able to hang on to the line rigged along the gunnel.

Alex grabbed the soggy, frozen marine under his arms and, with a heave so mighty it surprised her, got him over the side and into the boat. They looked at each other a second, oblivious to Mike's HBI, which was now about two hundred yards away. Alex stepped over to the console and turned the ignition, praying that the electrical system wasn't soaked, while Ray started to haul on the anchor line. Both were on the verge of completely losing control of their bodies. It was only by the most strenuous acts of will that they succeeded in doing anything other than shudder.

One after the other the engines started with a growl, and Alex lowered them while Ray continued to pull on the anchor line, the breaking waves fighting his every effort. “Okay,” he said finally, tossing the anchor line as far from the boat as he could, “we're under way.” Alex spun the HBI and headed away from the islet.

“You leaving the anchor?”

“Hell yes. And the wreck too. What do I care if somebody gives SECDEF a ticket for leaving garbage in an environmentally sensitive area?”

Alex had to smile, despite the throbbing numbness that scorched her every nerve.

“You have Rounding?” demanded the radio as they struggled to wrap themselves in the thermal blankets. And to hold them in place.

“Affirmative, Boss,” replied Alex finally. “He's dead, I'm afraid. Can't say what killed him and we're too busy trying to avoid joining him to look carefully,”

“Well done, the two of you. We'll work out the details when we get back to the ship. I'll escort you.”

“Roger.”

“So,
chica
, no matter what the boss says, we have not had such a good day today,” stuttered Ray a few minutes later above the growl of the engines.

Chica!
There were few men Alex would allow to get away with that . . . and Ray was one of them. “No,
chico
, today has not been our best.”

“You think this guy was really a terrorist?”

“Either that or he was utterly insane, and I can't honestly guess which. So much of this mission doesn't fit together.”

“If he was, what did he leave for us to find?”

“Let's leave that to the boss to worry about for now. We've still got to get back to the damn ship and warm up. I hurt now more than I ever have in my entire life. I can barely steer this damn boat I'm shaking so hard.”

Ray, his face an unhealthy mixture of blue and pasty white, just nodded as he hung on for dear life and balanced on his one good leg, desperate not to be tossed over the side as the HBI bounced, skidded and slid across the choppy gray waters.

14

The Bellingshausen Sea

“I don't like doing it one damn bit, but the media has forced our hand. According to the owners, Jen and Jessica and what's his name have managed to convince the entire world that Captain Chambers's people identified and killed a terrorist who was an officer of this ship. We're going to Ushuaia and offload the passengers.”

Covington paused to look around the conference table at Mike; Ernesto Montalba,
Aurora
's chief engineer; the purser; the chief mate; and Dave Ellison, the ship's security officer.

“Arthur,” said Montalba, “I still find it difficult to believe Jake was a terrorist. Strange, yes, but not a terrorist.”

Mike, who had been frowning, looked especially sour when he heard the chief engineer. He didn't really believe Rounding was a terrorist either, and he was furious that the media was attributing his death directly to Ray and Alex. He was certain Alan had fanned the flames, and he resented it. There was nothing the bastard would like better than a dead terrorist to point at. One who had been identified and neutralized by Mike and his people.

“Is there a plan yet for the passengers?” asked Winters.

“More or less,” replied the purser. “The owners are arranging for several charter flights out of Ushuaia, and we're going to offer them three choices—a three-day trek through Patagonia, three days more in Buenos Aires or a direct flight home and a modest refund.”

“This is going to cost a fortune,” observed the chief mate.

Yes, it is, thought Covington. And it will probably also cost me my job.

“What about the sponsors . . . Greenpeace?”

“Publicly they're totally supportive and Rod Johnson seems to agree with the decision. Privately, some of their people have been whispering to the press that the American government has engineered this whole thing to screw them up,” reported Covington. “If all goes well,” continued the captain, “we'll be safely anchored in Ushuaia in two to three days. In the meantime, Captain Chambers intends to continue searching. Jim,” he nodded at the purser, “will have his hands full and so will you, Dave. In addition to ensuring that nobody steals the passengers' jewels, you're going to have considerably more upset passengers than usual.”

“I've already noticed an increased level of irritability among them since Hensen disappeared,” Ellison said.

“You haven't found anything new about that, have you? Something that Captain Chambers's people may have missed?”

“No.”

Covington sighed. He hated having to abandon his schedule. He hated having people die—even suspected terrorists—and he hated mysteries.

 

“Well done, Mike, well done to all of you.” Alan's satisfaction, and even relief, was totally clear, despite the electronic mangling of his voice. “You and your people identified and neutralized the terrorist—before he could act—under the most trying of circumstances. It's on all the networks, complete with interviews with some very relieved passengers. They're also suggesting that the man who was lost overboard was killed because he was interfering with the scheme. All we need now is for you to get your stuff together and hold a press conference. You and Alex. Keep it simple; we'll fill them in later with all the details.”

Mike was standing in the suite he shared with Jerry, dressed in a borrowed bathrobe and drinking a double shot of brandy, hoping it would make him at least feel warm, even if he wasn't. As he listened to Alan, he wanted to throw the phone on the deck. “Alan,” he finally growled, “you're so damned worried about your turf war with Homeland Security you're not thinking straight. We have absolutely no evidence this Rounding was a terrorist. All he did was run—he didn't attack anybody. And there seems plenty of evidence that he's been highly unstable for some time, although nobody really paid much attention to it. The five of us, along with Captain Covington and his chief engineer, are still inclined to believe he was just nuts. That he lost it for some reason—possibly the circumstances of his daughter's death. We'll probably never know. Furthermore, we didn't kill him. He killed himself. And the guy who went overboard was the ship's drug dealer.”

“The media seem to think that Fuentes and Alex killed him.”

“They didn't.”

“There were no witnesses.”

“They didn't even fire. The round that killed him came from his own automatic.”

“By the time that's established nobody will care. None of that disproves my case, which, Captain, is now policy!”

“Roger,” replied Mike, after pouring the rest of the brandy down his throat.

“Keep me posted.”

“There's more.”

“What?”

“Even though we can't find a terrorist or anything else, both Covington and I have had enough. We're going to head northwest for a few hours to get clear of the peninsula then turn northeast and go to Ushuaia. The ship's owners aren't happy about it since they agree with you, but they're making arrangements for the passengers.”