“Any change in orders?” the leader of the first boat asked. His eyes shone bright against the rivulets of black crude oil staining his face. Motoring through the widening slick surrounding the Gulf Venture had doused them all with splashes of the foul-smelling gunk.
Danilevsky shook his head. “None! Clear the aft deck and superstructure. Kill everyone you encounter. Then, once that missile is away, we’ll scuttle this damned tanker and shoot anyone trying to escape from belowdecks.” He nodded vigorously. “Now get moving!”
Loaded down with weapons and equipment, one by one, the first boatload of former Spetsnaz soldiers leaped for the ladder and started swarming upward. Men from the second and third inflatables crowded in behind them, ready to begin their own laborious ascent to the ship’s deck as soon as the way ahead was clear.
Tadeusz Kossak and Alain Ricard swung over the edge of the first catwalk, lowered themselves by their arms, and then let go — dropping heavily onto the deck several feet below. Jumping up, they unslung their carbines and sprinted aft along the edge of the hull toward the stern.
There in the darkness ahead, they could see a man clambering up and over the ship’s outer railing. More men crowded the ladder behind him.
The two Four agents opened fire on the move, peppering the area around the ladder with 7.62mm rounds. With a muffled cry, the first Russian aboard fell sprawling. Another, caught by a bullet just as he threw a leg over the railing, screamed shrilly, and tumbled backward into the sea. Kossak and Ricard charged on, still shooting.
Around the edge of the superstructure, Cole Hynes heard the sudden burst of firing. His head reared up and his eyes widened. The Russians were already coming aboard.
Weakly, Wade Vucovich put his hands on the combat tourniquet his friend had been frantically applying. “I got this, Cole,” he said, gripping the tourniquet rod and starting to twist it to stop the blood pulsing from his bullet-torn leg. “You go.”
Hynes nodded once. “Don’t screw this up, Wade,” he warned, scrambling to his feet and grabbing his weapon. “Make sure that sucker is tighter than an off-base loan shark.”
Vucovich tried to grin back at him. “Count on it.”
But Hynes was already gone, racing toward the sound of the gunfire.
Ricard and Kossak skidded to a stop beside the railing and leaned over to open fire. More Raven Syndicate troops fell screaming from the ladder to plunge into the ocean. They were dragged under instantly by the weight of their weapons and equipment. Instead of panicking at this sudden threat, the Russians still crowded aboard the boats started shooting back, aiming for the two dimly seen shapes high above them.
Kossak drew a line across the closest boat, firing rapid, aimed shots that knocked down two men in as many seconds. Suddenly, he heard a startled gasp from beside him. He turned his head in surprise. “Alain?”
Hit in the head and killed instantly, Ricard slumped forward and slowly crumpled to the deck.
“Damn it,” Kossak murmured. Somberly, he swung back toward the boats below, determined to pile up more dead Russians to avenge his comrade of many years. But then two hammer blows hurled him back from the railing. He spun around and slid down to his knees. Distantly, he realized that he was very badly wounded — perhaps fatally so, if help could not arrive in time. Already, the world around him seemed to be growing even darker and colder.
No, the Pole thought angrily, summoning all his willpower to push back against the darkness. Doggedly, he pawed through one of the pouches on his assault vest. He would not yield to death or unconsciousness. Not yet. He would not lose this fight. He would not make another mistake. At last, his hand closed on the cylindrical shape he’d been hunting and pulled it out. Desperately, he strained to stand back up.
And then Cole Hynes leaned over him. Almost gently, he took the grenade from Kossak’s trembling hand. “I got this, Tad,” he said quietly.
Kossak looked up with a smile. “Wyślij ich do piekła. Send them to hell,” he said in Polish, not caring that the American would not understand his words. Letting go at last, he slid gratefully into darkness.
Hynes stepped toward the railing, already twisting the grenade’s pull ring and then yanking it out to release the pin. With one smooth motion, he lobbed the AN-M14 TH3 incendiary grenade into the nearest Raven Syndicate boat and ducked back down. With a snakelike hiss, it ignited — spewing a glowing ball of blinding white flame burning at more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Instantly, it set the oil-coated sea ablaze.
Flynn finished wiring the last of the several demolition charges he’d fixed to the bridge’s steel deck. Lines of det cord now snaked across the floor in different directions, all connected to another length of flexible shock tube. Sweating, he sat back on his heels and checked the time shown on the readout over the enemy’s chart table. He now had less than two minutes left before the countdown reached zero and that rocket roared aloft on its way toward the United States. But one detail remained to make sure his hastily rigged charges would work as planned.
He grabbed a water-filled IV bag out of McGill’s satchel and duct-taped it down across the lump of plastic explosives he’d just set. Then he hurried over to the others and did the same thing. This was a field expedient pioneered by the U.S. Marine Corps to create shaped charges out of ordinary C4. The liquid in those IV bags should compress the explosions when they went off — directing much of their force downward through the deck.
The countdown clock now showed just over a minute remaining.
Unreeling the shock tube as carefully as he could while still hurrying, Flynn backed out through the hatch and onto the bridge’s port wing. He moved all the way to the far end, about thirty feet from the open hatch. This was still way too close, he knew, but he was now completely out of both time and sensible, safe options. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled over the Dragon Team’s tactical radio net as a warning to Cooke, McGill, and the others. Then he laid down with his head aimed toward the bridge to present his helmet to the oncoming blast, pressed his face hard against the deck, and yanked the igniter ring.
Forty-Three
From the small navigating station atop the submarine’s tall sail, Nakhimov stared through his binoculars — transfixed in horror by the gruesome sight of Danilevsky and all of his Raven Syndicate soldiers abruptly transformed into blazing human torches. Writhing and screaming in eerie, high-pitched agony that could be heard across the water even that far away, they flailed wildly at each other before toppling into the oil fires that were now roaring skyward all around the Gulf Venture.
He lowered his binoculars, feeling nauseated.
At that instant, a powerful explosion ripped through the very top of the tanker’s aft superstructure, lighting up the night sky for miles around. First, a blinding flash silhouetted the large bridge windows from within and then they all blew out simultaneously. A huge cloud of smoke and shards of shattered glass and burning debris billowed outward, cascading down across the tanker’s weather deck and into the sea.