The radar operator in the Nimrod high above spotted the steel hull of the fishing launch instantly; the rubber-compound speedboat gave no reflector signal.
“The launch is moving,” he told the Argyll below him. “Hell, they’re coming straight at you.”
Captain Preston glanced at the radar display on his own bridge.
“Got ’em,” he said, and watched the blip separating itself from the great white blob that represented the Freya herself.
“He’s right, she’s boring straight at us. What the hell are they trying to do?”
On full power and empty, the fishing launch was making fifteen knots. In twenty minutes it would be among the Navy ships, then through them and into the flotilla of tugs behind them.
“They must think they can get through the screen of warships unharmed, and then lose themselves among the tugs in the fog,” suggested the first officer, beside Captain Preston. “Shall we send the Cutlass to intercept?”
“I’m not risking good men, however much Major Fallon may want his personal fight,” said Preston. “Those bastards have already shot one seaman on the Freya, and orders from the Admiralty are quite specific. Use the guns.”
The procedure that was put into effect on the Argyll was smooth and practiced. The four other NATO warships were politely asked not to open fire, but to leave the job to the Argyll. Her fore and aft five-inch guns swung smoothly onto target and opened fire.
Even at two miles, the target was small. Somehow it survived the first salvo, though the sea around it erupted in spouts of rising water when the shells dropped. There was no spectacle for the watchers on the Argyll, nor for those crouched on the three patrol boats beside her. Whatever was happening out there in the fog was invisible; only the radar could see every drop of every shell, and the target boat rearing and plunging in the maddened water. But the radar could not tell its masters that no figure stood at the helm, no men crouched terrified in her stern.
Andrew Drake and Azamat Krim sat quietly in their two-man speedboat close by the Freya and waited. Drake held onto the rope that hung from her rail high above. Through the fog they both heard the first muffled boom of the Argyll’s guns. Drake nodded at Krim, who started the outboard engine. Drake released the rope, and the inflatable sped away, light as a feather, skimming the sea as the speed built up, its engine noise drowned by the roar of the Freya’s siren.
Krim looked at his left wrist, where a waterproof compass was strapped, and altered course a few points to south. He had calculated forty-five minutes at top speed from the Freya to the maze of islands that make up North and South Beveland.
At five minutes to seven, the fishing launch stopped the Argyll’s sixth shell, a direct hit. The explosive tore the launch apart, lifting it half out of the water and rolling both stern and aft sections over. The fuel tank blew up, and the steel-hulled boat sank like a stone.
“Direct hit,” reported the gunnery officer from deep inside the Argyll where he and his gunners had watched the uneven duel on radar. “She’s gone.”
The blip faded from the screen; the illuminated sweep arm went around and around but showed only the Freya at five miles. On the bridge, four officers watched the same display, and there were a few moments of silence. It was the first time for any of them that their ship had actually killed anybody.
“Let the Sabre go,” said Captain Preston quietly. “They can board and liberate the Freya now.”
The radar operator in the darkened hull of the Nimrod peered closely at his screen. He could see all the warships, all the tugs, and the Freya to the east of them. But somewhere beyond the Freya, shielded by the tanker’s bulk from the Navy vessels, a tiny speck seemed to be moving away to the southeast; it was so small it could almost have been missed; it was no bigger than the blip that would have been made by a medium-size tin can; in fact it was the metallic cover to the outboard engine of a speeding inflatable. Tin cans do not move across the face of the ocean at thirty knots.
“Nimrod to Argyll, Nimrod to Argyll ...”
The officers on the bridge of the guided-missile cruiser listened to the news from the circling aircraft with shock. One of them ran to the wing of the bridge and shouted the information down to the sailors from Portland who waited on their patrol launches.
Two seconds later the Cutlass and Scimitar were away, the booming roar of their twin diesel marine engines filling the fog around them. Long white plumes of spray rose from their bows; the noses rose higher and higher, the sterns deeper in the wake, as the bronze screws whipped through the foaming water.
“Damn and blast them,” shouted Major Fallon to the Navy commander who stood with him in the tiny wheelhouse of the Cutlass, “how fast can we go?”
“On water like this, over forty knots,” the commander shouted back.
Not enough, thought Adam Munro, both hands locked to a stanchion as the vessel shuddered and bucked like a runaway horse through the fog. The Freya was still five miles away, the terrorists’ speedboat another five beyond that. Even if they overhauled at ten knots, it would take an hour to come level with the inflatable carrying Svoboda to safety in the creeks of Holland, where he could lose himself. But he would be there in forty minutes, maybe less.
Cutlass and Scimitar were driving blind, tearing the fog to shreds, only to watch it form behind them. In any crowded sea, it would be lunacy to use such speed in conditions of zero visibility. But the sea was empty. In the wheelhouse of each launch, the commander listened to a constant stream of information from the Nimrod via the Argylclass="underline" his own position and that of the other fast patrol launch: the position in the fog ahead of them of the Freya herself; the position of the Sabre, well away to their left, heading toward the Freya at a slower speed; and the course and speed of the moving dot that represented Svoboda’s escape.
Well east of the Freya, the inflatable in which Andrew Drake and Azamat Krim were making for safety seemed to be in luck. Beneath the fog the sea had become even calmer, and the sheetlike water enabled them to increase speed even more. Most of their craft was out of the water, only the shaft of the howling engine being deep beneath the surface. A few feet away in the fog, passing by in a blur, Drake saw the last remaining traces of the wake made by their companions ten minutes ahead of them. It was odd, he thought, for the traces to remain on the sea’s surface for so long.
On the bridge of the Moran, which was lying south of the Freya, Captain Mike Manning also studied his radar scanner. He could see the Argyll away to the northwest of him, and the Freya a mite east of north.
Between them, the Cutlass and the Scimitar were visible, closing the gap fast. Away to the east he could spot the tiny blip of the racing speedboat, so small it was almost lost in the milky complexion of the screen. But it was there. Manning looked at the gap between the refugee and the hunters charging after it.