The elevator doors opened to reveal the aft section of the supertanker's main hold.
Schofield, Knight and Mother emerged, leading with their guns.
The missile hold was absolutely enormous—a massive interior space the size of three football fields stretched end-on-end. And in its forward half, the Chameleon missile silos: high reinforced titanium cylinders stretching all the way up to the underside of the supertanker's foredeck. Inside them: the most devastating weapons known to man.
And in that forward section of the ship, a brutal battle was underway.
A dozen Nigerian commandos were bunkered down beneath the farthest pair of missile silos, covering the missile control console— an elevated platform mounted ten feet off the ground on steel struts, and the place Schofield needed to be within sixty feet of in order to disarm the missiles.
The Nigerians were positioned behind a very well-prepared barricade, and they fired machine guns and hurled grenades at their Israeli attackers.
Bullets and grenades hit the silos, but did no damage—the walls of the silos were far too strong.
In between Schofield and this battle were all sorts of supply materials: shipping containers, missile spare parts; he even saw two yellow mini-submarines with hemispherical glass cockpits suspended from chains high up near the ceiling catwalks.
Schofield recognised the subs as heavily-modified ASDSs—
Advanced SEAL Delivery Systems. With their glass domes, these shallow-water mini-submarines were often used by the US Navy to visually inspect the exterior hull of an aircraft carrier or ballistic missile submarine for sabotage devices. It was a given that a project as important as Kormoran-Chameleon would be equipped with them.
1740.
Schofield, Knight and Mother dashed forward, ducking low, winding their way between the supply materials, observing the battle.
Just as the Israelis launched a ruthless offensive.
They sent a few men to the right to draw the Nigerian fire, then they hit the Nigerian barricade with three rocket-propelled grenades from the left.
The grenades shot down the length of the missile hold . . . three white smoke-trails, flying together . . . and hit the Nigerian barricade.
It was like a dam bursting.
The Nigerians flew into the air. Some screamed. Others burned.
And the Israelis stormed forward, killing the Nigerians where they fell, shooting them in the heads, at the same moment as . . .
... a gigantic steel loading door set into the starboard wall of the hold rumbled open, rising into the air on its runners.
The massive door opened fully and—whump!—a wide steel boarding plank clanged to the floor from outside the aperture and like a crew of 16th-century pirates boarding a galleon, the men of IG-88 flooded into the missile hold, charging into it from their stolen Coast Guard boat, their devastating MetalStorm guns blazing.
Schofield watched as—now under fire from at least twenty IG-88 men—the Israeli commandos, the crack Sayaret Tzanhim, seized the area around the missile control console.
They formed a tight semi-circle around the elevated console platform, all facing aft, firing their Uzis and M-16s at IG-88.
Under their protection, the Israelis' leader—a man who could only be Simon Zemir—climbed up onto the steel platform and went
straight over to the console, flipped open a briefcase and extracted a CincLock-VII disarm unit.
'Sneaky bastard Israelis,' Mother said. 'Is there any US technology that they haven't stolen?'
'Probably not,' Schofield said, 'but today they're our bestest buddies. We watch over them while they watch over Zemin'
1741.
From behind his missile silo, Schofield watched as Zemir's CincLock unit illuminated like a laptop and Zemir stared at its touchscreen, flexing his fingers in anticipation of the disarm sequence he was about to face.
He's going to disarm the missile system, Schofield thought.
Excellent. We might get out of here without much hassle after all.
But then, to his absolute horror, Schofield saw three shadowy figures descending by rope from the rafters of the missile hold above and behind Zemir's console platform.
None of the Sayaret Tzanhim saw them. They were too busy firing at Demon Larkham and his IG-88 bounty hunters.
'No,' Schofield whispered. 'No, no, no . . .'
The three shadowy figures whizzed down their ropes at lightning speed.
Zamanov and his Skorpions.
Ziplining down from the ship's foredeck, from a hatch near the bow.
Schofield broke cover, yelled uselessly above the gunfire: 'Behind you!'
Of course, the Israelis responded immediately.
By firing at him. Even Zemir himself looked up, about to start the disarm sequence.
Schofield dived back behind his silo, rolled to the ground, peered back out—
—just in time to see the three Skorpions land lightly on the elevated platform a few yards behind the preoccupied Zemir.
And Schofield could only watch, powerless, as in the strobe-like glare of the Israelis' muzzle-flashes, Zamanov crept silently forward,
drew his Cossack fighting sword and swung the blade at Zemir's neck from behind in a brutal horizontal slashing motion.
And in that instant, Shane Schofield became the last person on the bounty list still alive.
And the only man on Earth capable of disarming the CincLock-VII missile security system.
Zemir's head dropped off his shoulders. He had not even been able to start the disarm sequence.
Schofield's mouth fell open. 'This cannot be happening.' One of the Sayaret Tzanhim glanced over his shoulder—in time to see Zemir's headless corpse drop off the console platform and down to the floor, spilling blood; to see Zamanov stuff Zemir's ragged head into his rucksack and whiz back up his retractable zipline—
Blam!
Covering the fleeing Zamanov, the other two Skorpions shot the Israeli trooper in the face—just as two more Sayaret Tzanhim soldiers were blasted by IG-88 fire from the other direction.
Fire from both directions—twin forces of professional bounty hunters—assailed the Israeli commando team.
And as the remaining Sayaret Tzanhim noticed Zemir's fallen body and the fleeing Skorpions above it, they became confused and in the face of IG-88's superior firepower, lost formation.
They were decimated.
IG-88 overwhelmed them. Within moments, the entire Israeli
force was dead.
1742.
IG-88 took control of the barricade. Demon Larkham strode like a conquering general into the enemy blockade. He pointed up at the ceiling, at Zamanov and his Skorpions fleeing on their retractable ziplines with Zemir's head in their possession.
The three Skorpions hit the ceiling next to a wide cargo hatch.
Zamanov's two companions climbed up through the hatch first, stepping up into the pouring rain on the foredeck, reached back down as Zamanov handed them the severed head of Simon Zemir.
Supermachine-gun fire riddled their bodies.
The two Skorpions on the foredeck convulsed violently, their chests exploding in bloody fountains.
A six-man subteam of IG-88 troopers stood in the rain waiting for them. Demon Larkham had anticipated this, and so had already dispatched a second team to the foredeck.
The rucksack containing Zemir's head dropped to the deck, and the IG-88 subteam ran forward, grabbed it.
Outnumbered and outgunned, Zamanov ducked below the floorline, swung over to a catwalk high above the missile hold and disappeared into the shadows.
Down in the missile hold itself, Schofield was speechless.
This was unbelievable.