Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

Major Fallon placed the model of the Princess on the con­ference table, aware he had the attention of everyone present.

“I propose,” he began, “to ask the cruiser Argyll to turn herself broadside on to the Freya , and then before dawn park the assault boats containing my men and equipment close up in the lee of the Argyll , where the lookout, here, on top of the Freya’s funnel, cannot see them, even with binoculars. That will enable us to make our preparations, unobserved, through the afternoon. In case of airplanes hired by the press, I would like the sky cleared, and any emulsifier-spraying tugs within visual range of what we are doing to keep silent.”

There was no dissent to that. Sir Julian made two notes.

“I would approach the Freya with four two-man kayaks, halting at a range of three miles, in darkness, before the ris­ing of the moon. Her radar will not spot kayaks. They are too small, too low in the water; they are of wood and canvas construction, which does not effectively register on radar. The paddlers will be in rubber, leather, wool undervests, and so on, and all buckles will be plastic. Nothing should register on the Freya’s radar.

“The men in the rear seats will be frogmen; their oxygen bottles have to be of metal, but at three miles will not register larger than a floating oil drum, not enough to cause alarm on the Freya’s bridge. At a range of three miles the divers take a compass bearing on the Freya’s stern, which they can see be­cause it is illuminated, and drop overboard. They have lumi­nescent wrist compasses, and swim by these.”

“Why not go for the bow?” asked the RAF group captain. “It’s darker there.”

“Partly because it would mean eliminating the man on lookout high up on the fo’c’sle, and he may be in walkie-talkie contact with the bridge,” said Fallon. “Partly because it’s a hell of a long walk down that deck, and they have a spotlight operable from the bridge. Partly because the super­structure, approached from the front, is a steel wall five sto­ries high. We would climb it, but it has windows to cabins, some of which may be occupied.

“The four divers, one of whom will be me, rendezvous at the stern of the Freya . There should be a tiny overhang of a few feet. Now, there’s a man on top of the funnel, a hundred feet up. But people a hundred feet up tend to look outward rather than straight down. To help him in this, I want the Ar­gyll to start flashing her searchlight to another nearby vessel, creating a spectacle for the man to watch. We will come up the stern from the water, having shed flippers, masks, oxygen bottles, and weighted belts. We will be bareheaded, barefoot, in rubber wet suits only. All weaponry carried in wide web­bing belts round the waist.”

“How do you get up the side of the Freya carrying forty pounds of metal after a three-mile swim?” asked one of the ministry men.

Fallon smiled.

“It’s only thirty feet at most to the taffrail,” he said. “While practicing on the North Sea oil rigs, we’ve climbed a hundred sixty feet of vertical steel in four minutes.”

He saw no point in explaining the details of the fitness necessary for such a feat, nor of the equipment that made it possible.

The boffins had long ago developed for the SBS some re­markable climbing gear. Included among it were magnetic climbing clamps. These were like dinner plates, fringed with rubber so that they could be applied to metal without making a sound. The plate itself was rimmed with steel beneath the rubber, and this steel ring could be magnetized to enormous strength.

The magnetic force could be turned on or off by a thumb switch pressed by the man holding the grip on the back of the plate. The electrical charge came from a small but reli­able nickel-cadmium battery inside the climbing plate.

The divers were trained to come out of the sea, reach up­ward and affix the first plate, then turn on the current. The magnet jammed the plate to the steel structure. Hanging on this, they reached higher and hung the second plate. Only when it was secure did they unlock the first disk, reach higher still, and reaffix it. Hand over hand, hanging on by fist grip, wrist, and forearm, they climbed out of the sea and up­ward—body, legs, feet, and equipment swinging free, pulling against the hands and wrists.

So strong were the magnets, so strong also the arms and shoulders, that the commandoes could climb an overhang of forty-five degrees if they had to.

“The first man goes up with the special clamps,” said Fallon, “trailing a rope behind him. If it is quiet on the poop deck, he fixes the rope, and the other three can be on deck inside ten seconds. Now, here, in the lee of the funnel assem­bly, this turbine housing should cast a shadow in the light thrown by the lamp above the door to the superstructure at A deck level. We group in this shadow. We’ll have black wet suits; black hands, feet, and faces.

“The first major hazard is getting across this patch of il­luminated afterdeck from the shadow of the turbine housing to the main superstructure with all its living quarters.”

“So how do you do it?” asked the vice admiral, fascinated by this return from technology to the days of Nelson.

“We don’t, sir,” said Fallon. “We will be on the side of the funnel assembly away from where the Argyll is stationed. We hope the lookout atop the funnel will be looking at the Ar­gyll , away from us. We move across from the shadow of the turbine housing, round the corner of the superstructure to this point here, outside the window of the dirty-linen store. We cut the plate-glass window in silence with a miniature blowtorch working off a small gas bottle, and go in through the window. The chances of the door of such a store being locked are pretty slim. No one pinches dirty linen, so no one locks such doors. By this time we will be inside the super­structure, emerging to a passage a few yards from the main stairway leading up to B, C, and D decks, and the bridge.”

“Where do you find the terrorist leader,” asked Sir Julian Flannery, “the man with the detonator?”

“On the way up the stairs we listen at every door for sounds of voices,” said Fallon. “If there are any, we open the door and eliminate everyone in the room with silenced auto­matics. Two men entering the cabin; two men outside on guard. All the way up the structure. Anyone met on the stairs, the same thing. That should bring us to D deck unob­served. Here we have to take a calculated gamble. One choice is the captain’s cabin; one man will take that choice. Open the door, step inside, and shoot without any question. Another man will take the chief engineer’s cabin on the same floor, other side of the ship. Same procedure. The last two men will cover the first officer’s and chief steward’s cabins and take the bridge itself; one man with grenades, the second with an Ingram. It’s too big an area, that bridge, to pick tar­gets. Well just have to sweep it with the Ingram and take ev­erybody in the place after the grenades have paralyzed them.”

“What if one of them is Captain Larsen?” asked a ministry man.

Fallon studied the table.

“I’m sorry, there’s no way of identifying targets,” he said.

“Suppose none of the cabins or the bridge contains the leader? Suppose the man with the remote-control detonator is somewhere else? Out on deck taking the air? In the lavatory? Asleep in another cabin?”

Simon Fallon shrugged. “Bang,” he said, “big bang.”

“There are twenty-eight crewmen locked down below,” protested a scientist. “Can’t you get them out? Or at least up on deck where they could have a chance to swim for it?”