Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

It seemed to matter little to Blake that the cargo was fully insured against loss by Lloyd’s. He was one very angry Texan that morning.

Harry Wennerstrom was on the line most of the morning to Stockholm, calling every one of his friends and contacts in shipping, banking, and government to bring pressure on the Swedish Premier. The pressure was effective, and it was passed on to Bonn.

In London, the chairman of Lloyd’s, Sir Murray Kelso, found the Permanent Under Secretary to the Department of the Environment still at his desk in Whitehall. Saturday is not normally a day when the senior members of Britain’s civil service are to be found at their desks, but this was no normal Saturday. Sir Rupert Mossbank had driven hastily back from his country home before dawn when the news came from Downing Street that Mishkin and Lazareff were not to be re­leased. He showed his visitor to a chair.

“Damnable business,” said Sir Murray.

“Perfectly appalling,” agreed Sir Rupert.

He preferred the Butter Osbornes, and the two knights sipped their tea.

“The thing is,” said Sir Murray at length, “the sums in­volved are really quite vast. Close to a billion dollars. Even if the victim countries of the oil spillage if the Freya blows up were to sue West Germany rather than us, we’d still have to carry the loss of the ship, cargo, and crew. That’s about four hundred million dollars.”

“You’d be able to cover it, of course,” said Sir Rupert anx­iously. Lloyd’s was more than just a company, it was an insti­tution, and as Sir Rupert’s department covered merchant shipping, he was concerned.

“Oh, yes, we would cover it. Have to,” said Sir Murray. “Thing is, it’s such a sum it would have to be reflected in the country’s invisible earnings for the year. Probably tip the bal­ance, actually. And what with the new application for an­other International Monetary Fund Loan ...”

“It’s a German question, you know,” said Mossbank. “Not really up to us.”

“Nevertheless, one might press the Germans a bit over this one. Hijackers are bastards, of course, but in this case, why not just let those two blighters in Berlin go? Good riddance to them.”

“Leave it to me,” said Mossbank. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Privately, he knew he could do nothing. The confidential file locked in his safe told him Major Fallon was going in by kayak in eleven hours, and until then the Prime Minister’s or­ders were that the line had to hold.

Chancellor Dietrich Busch received the news of the intended underwater attack in a midmorning face-to-face interview with the British Ambassador. He was slightly mollified.

“So that’s what it’s all about,” he said when he had exam­ined the plan unfolded before him. “Why could I not have been told of this before?”

“We were not sure whether it would work before,” said the Ambassador smoothly. Those were his instructions. “We were working on it through the afternoon of yesterday and last night. By dawn we were certain it was perfectly feasible.”

“What chance of success do you give yourselves?” asked Dietrich Busch.

The Ambassador cleared his throat.

“We estimate the odds at three to one in our favor,” he said. “The sun sets at seven-thirty. Darkness is complete by nine. The men are going in at ten tonight.”

The Chancellor looked at his watch. Twelve hours to go. If the British tried and succeeded, much of the credit would go to their frogmen, but much also to him for keeping his nerve. If they failed, theirs would be the responsibility.

“So it all depends now on this Major Fallon. Very well, Ambassador, I will continue to play my part until ten tonight.”

Apart from her batteries of guided missiles, the U.S.S. Moran was armed with two five-inch Mark 45 naval guns, one for­ward, one aft. They were of the most modern type available, radar-aimed and computer-controlled.

Each could fire a complete magazine of twenty shells in rapid succession without reloading, and the sequence of vari­ous types of shell could be preset on the computer.

The old days when naval guns’ ammunition had to be manually hauled out of the deep magazine, hoisted up to the gun turret by steam power, and rammed into the breech by sweating gunners, were long gone. On the Moran the shells would be selected by type and performance from the stock in the magazine by the computer, the shells brought to the firing turret automatically, the five-inch guns loaded, fired, voided, reloaded, and fired again, without a human hand.

The aiming was by radar; the invisible eyes of the ship would seek out the target according to the programmed in­structions, adjust for wind, range, and the movement of ei­ther target or firing platform, and once locked on, hold that aim until given fresh orders. The computer would work to­gether with the eyes of radar, absorbing within fractions of a second any tiny shift of the Moran herself, the target, or the wind strength between them. Once locked on, the target could begin to move, the Moran could go anywhere she liked; the guns would simply move on silent bearings, keeping their deadly muzzles pointed to just where the shells should go. Wild seas could force the Moran to pitch and roll; the target could yaw and swing; it made no difference, the computer compensated. Even the pattern in which the homing shells should fall could be preset.

As a backup, the gunnery officer could scan the target visually with the aid of a camera mounted high aloft, and issue fresh instructions to both radar and computer when he wished to change target.

With grim concentration, Captain Mike Manning surveyed the Freya from where he stood by the rail. Whoever had ad­vised the President must have done his homework well. The environmental hazard in the death of the Freya lay in the es­cape in crude-oil form of her million-ton cargo. But if that cargo were ignited while still in the holds, or within a few seconds of the ship’s rupture, it would burn. In fact it would more than burn—it would explode.

Normally, crude oil is exceptionally difficult to burn, but if heated enough, it will inevitably reach its flashpoint and take fire. The Mubarraq crude the Freya carried was the lightest of them all, and to plunge lumps of blazing magnesium, burning at more than a thousand degrees Centigrade, into her hull would do the trick with margin to spare. Up to ninety percent of her cargo would never reach the ocean in crude-oil form; it would flame, making a fireball over ten thousand feet high.

What would be left of the cargo would be scum, drifting on the sea’s surface, and a black pall of smoke as big as the cloud that once hung over Hiroshima. Of the ship herself, there would be nothing left, but the environmental problem would have been reduced to manageable proportions. Mike Manning summoned his gunnery officer, Lieutenant Com­mander Chuck Olsen, to join him by the rail.

“I want you to load and lay the forward gun,” he said flatly. Olsen began to note the commands.

“Ordnance: three semi-armor-piercing, five magnesium starshell, two high explosive. Total: ten. Then repeat that se­quence. Total: Twenty.”

“Yes, sir. Three SAP, five star, two HE. Fall pattern?”

“First shell on target; next shell two hundred meters far­ther; third shell two hundred meters farther still. Backtrack in forty-meter drops with the five starshells. Then forward again with the high explosive, one hundred meters each.”

Lieutenant Commander Olsen noted the fall pattern his captain required. Manning stared over the rail. Five miles away, the bow of the Freya was pointing straight at the Moran . The fall pattern he had dictated would cause the shells to drop in a line from the forepeak of the Freya to the base of her superstructure, then back to the bow, then back again with the explosive toward the superstructure. The semi-armor-piercing shells would cut open her tanks through the deck metal as a scalpel opens skin; the starshells would drop in a line of five down the cuts; the high explosive would push the blazing crude oil outward into all the port and star­board holds.