Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

“I hope,” shouted the young lieutenant commander who skippered the Cutlass to the Marine beside him, the second-in-command of the team, “that those whizz-bangs you’re car­rying back there don’t go off.”

“They won’t,” said the Marine captain with confidence, “not until we use them.”

In a room adjoining the main conference center beneath the Cabinet Office, their commanding officer was poring over photographs of the Freya , taken by night and day. He was comparing the configuration shown by the Nimrod’s pictures with the scale plan provided by Lloyd’s and the model of the supertanker British Princess lent by British Petroleum.

“Gentlemen,” said Colonel Hohnes, joining the assembled men next door, “I think it’s time we considered one of the less palatable choices we may have to face.”

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian regretfully, “the hard option.”

“If,” pursued Hohnes, “President Matthews continues to object to the release of Mishkin and Lazareff, and West Ger­many continues to accede to that demand, the moment may well come when the terrorists will realize the game is up, that their blackmail is not going to work. At that moment they may well refuse to have their bluff called, and blow the Freya to pieces. Personally, it seems to me this will not happen be­fore nightfall, which gives us about sixteen hours.”

“Why nightfall, Colonel?” asked Sir Julian.

“Because, sir, unless they are all suicide candidates, which they may be, one must assume that they will seek their own escape in the confusion. Now, if they wish to try to live, they may well leave the ship and operate their remote-control det­onator at a certain distance from the ship’s side.”

“And your proposal, Colonel?”

“Twofold, sir. Firstly, their launch. It is still moored beside the courtesy ladder. As soon as darkness falls, a diver could approach that launch and attach a delayed-action explosive device to it. If the Freya were to blow up, nothing within a half-mile radius would be safe. Therefore I propose a charge detonated by a mechanism operated by water pressure. As the launch moves away from the ship’s side, the forward thrust of the launch will cause water to enter a funnel beneath the keel. This water will operate a trigger, and sixty seconds later the launch will blow up, before the terrorists have reached a point half a mile from the Freya , and there­fore before they can operate their own detonator.”

“Would the exploding of their launch not detonate the charges on the Freya ?” asked someone.

“No. If they have a remote-control detonator, it must be electronically operated. The charge would blow the launch carrying the terrorists to smithereens. No one would survive.”

“But if the detonator sank, would not the water pressure depress the button?” asked one of the scientists.

“No. Once under the water, the remote-control detonator would be safe. It could not beam its radio message to the larger charges in the ship’s tanks.”

“Excellent,” said Sir Julian. “Can this plan not operate be­fore darkness falls?”

“No, it cannot,” answered Holmes. “A frogman diver leaves a trail of bubbles. In stormy weather this might not be noticed, but on a flat sea it would be too obvious. One of the lookouts could spot the bubbles rising. It would provoke what we are trying to avoid.”

“After dark it is, then,” said Sir Julian.

“Except for one thing, which is why I oppose the idea of sabotaging their escape launch as the only ploy. If, as may well happen, the leader of the terrorists is prepared to die with the Freya , he may not leave the ship with the rest of his team. So I believe we may have to storm the ship during a night attack and get to him before he can use his device.”

The Cabinet Secretary sighed.

“I see. Doubtless you have a plan for that as well?”

“Personally, I do not. But I would like you to meet Major Simon Fallon, commanding the Special Boat Service.”

It was all the stuff of Sir Julian Flannery’s nightmares. The Marine major was barely five feet eight inches tall, but he seemed about the same across the shoulders and was evi­dently of that breed of men who talk about reducing other humans to their component parts with the same ease that Lady Flannery talked of dicing vegetables for one of her fa­mous Provenaal salads.

In at least three encounters the peace-loving Cabinet Secre­tary had had occasion to meet officers from the SAS, but this was the first time he had seen the commander of the other, smaller specialist unit, the SBS. They were, he observed to himself, of the same breed.

The SBS had originally been formed for conventional war, to act as specialists in attacks from the sea on coastal in­stallations. That was why they were drawn from the Marine commandos. As a basic requirement they were physically fit to a revolting degree, experts in swimming, canoeing, diving, climbing, marching, and fighting.

From there they went on to become proficient in para­chuting, explosives, demolition, and the seemingly limit­less techniques of cutting throats or breaking necks with knife, wire loop, or simply bare hands. In this, and in their capacity for living in self-sufficiency on, or rather off, the countryside for extended periods and leaving no trace of their presence, they simply shared the skills of their cousins in the SAS.

It was in their underwater skills that the SBS men were dif­ferent. In frogman gear they could swim prodigious distances and lay explosive charges, or drop their swimming gear while treading water without a ripple and emerge from the sea with their arsenal of special weapons wrapped about them.

Some of their weaponry was fairly routine: knives and cheese wire. But since the start of that rash of outbreaks of terrorism in the late sixties, they had acquired fresh toys that delighted them.

All were expert marksmen with their high-precision, hand-tooled Finlanda rifle, a Norwegian-made piece that had been evaluated as perhaps the best rifle in the world. It could be, and usually was, fitted with an image intensifier, a sniperscope as long as a bazooka, and a completely effective silencer and flash guard.

For taking doors away in half a second, they tended, like the SAS, toward short-barreled pump-action shotguns firing solid charges. These they never aimed at the lock, for there could be other bolts behind the door; they fired two simulta­neously to take off both hinges, kicked the door down, and opened fire with the silenced Ingram machine pistols.

Also in the arsenal that had helped the SAS assist the Ger­mans at Mogadishu were their flash-bang-crash grenades, a sophisticated development of the “stun” grenades. These do more than just stun; they paralyze. With a half-second delay after pulling the pin, these grenades, thrown into a confined space containing both terrorists and hostages, have three ef­fects. The flash blinds anyone looking in that direction for at least thirty seconds, the bang blows the eardrums out, causing instant pain and a certain loss of concentration, and the crash is a tonal sound that enters the middle ear and causes a ten-second paralysis of all muscles. (During tests, one of their own men once tried to pull the trigger of a gun pressed into a companion’s side while the grenade went off. It was impos­sible. Both “terrorist” and “hostage” lost their eardrums. But eardrums can grow again; dead hostages cannot.)

While the paralytic effect lasts, the rescuers spray bullets four inches over head height while their colleagues dive for the hostages, dragging them to the floor. At this point, the fixers drop their aim by six inches.

The exact position of hostage and terrorist in a closed room can be determined by the application of an electronic stethoscope to the outside of the door. Speech inside the room is not necessary; breathing can be heard and located ac­curately. The rescuers communicate in an elaborate sign lan­guage that permits of no misunderstanding.