Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

Riggs broke the tight silence. “Did you get him?”

Wolf shook the snow from his dark hair and slid the big Sig Sauer pistol back into its nylon combat harness. He spoke with a German accent, his voice brutal and clipped. “He tried to rush me by climbing onto the railing, but he never made it past. He lost his footing and went over the edge.”

“How far down the bridge wing were you?” Riggs asked nervously.

“Nearly halfway. He either landed in the water or fell all the way to the main deck.”

“Take some men and make sure. He can’t be allowed to live.” She turned back to her crew, ignoring their accusing glances. It was clear to them that Riggs was discussing their new captain.

Twenty minutes later, Wolf returned with three of his men, snow clinging to them like glittering jewels. If the weather had made them uncomfortable, they gave no outward sign. When they brushed themselves off, they did it more out of annoyance than discomfort, as if the near-freezing night wasn’t even worth their attention. Riggs knew that they were former East German Special Forces and had trained for conditions much worse than those lashing the supertanker.

“Well?”

“We found no sign of him. The wind and the heat of the oil in the tanks have removed all of the snow on the main deck, so there were no footprints, but a man couldn’t have fallen that far without leaving a blood trail if he crawled away. He must have missed the ship and gone overboard.”

“Good, one less thing to worry about.” Riggs sounded relieved.

“How bad is it?” Wolf nodded at the partially dismantled controls.

The electrician and an assistant were crawling under the consoles. Only their backsides were visible; their heads and shoulders were buried in the wires, circuit boards, and microchips that kept the tanker running.

“So far, it’s not too good. The radar is out permanently, a round shattered the cathode-ray tube and the digital image processor. It’s a complete write-off. We have helm control, but the throttles can be engaged only from the engine room. We can live with that. Our biggest problem is the internal pumps. When the control panel was shot up, a power surge affected the pump control room and knocked out most of the systems. Monitors, gas pressure and ratio gauges, and the pump controls themselves were all severely damaged. We can’t shift the oil within the baffles of the main tanks to maintain proper trim, nor can we tell if the fumes above the ullage line are dangerous. The pumps themselves are fine, but the tank sensors are off-line. We have no way to tell how much oil is in each tank without visual inspections.”

Both Riggs and Wolf knew the importance of this particular system for maintaining control of the ship. Without the pumps, the Arctica could tear herself apart if they encountered rough seas. And when they reached their ultimate destination, the pumps would be critical to the success of their mission.

“Can the damage be repaired?”

“How should I know, I’m not an engineer,” Riggs snapped. “Your trigger-happy soldier boy really fucked us up.”

“He will be disciplined.” Wolf ignored her anger.

“Lot of good that’s going to do us,” Riggs seethed. “I should have him locked in the mess room with the rest of the crew, but we may need him before this voyage is over.” Riggs looked at Wolf pointedly. “But when his phase is done, I want him killed.”

“He is under my command.”

Riggs’ dark expression deepened. “And you are under mine.”

An ironic smirk curled Wolf’s cruelly handsome face. “Yes, sir.”

Below the whirling blades of the Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopter, the desert was stirred into a vicious sandstorm that chased the speeding machine like a relentless shadow. The military chopper was flying no more than forty feet off the desert floor, the pilot pouring all of his concentration into keeping the craft from smearing against the earth. He left the tricky navigation to the copilot seated at his right.

The sun was just lifting over the far horizon, but still the brighter stars could be seen against the deep blue sky. The land below was dark, a featureless plane of sand and rocks. Only to their right was the endless vista broken. Fifty miles distant and growing out of the night were the Hajar Mountains, jagged ramparts protecting the Arabian Gulf from the eternal pressure of the empty desert.

Colonel Wayne Bigelow lit a cigarette and regarded the other passenger with paternal fondness. He’d had a good hand in raising him from a callow youth into a fine man. Bigelow, a graduate of Sandhurst and an old Middle East hand, had lived in the Gulf for most of his life, both as a member of the British occupying forces and later as military adviser to the Emirates’ Crown Prince. That post was more honorary than functional. The old man just liked having Bigelow around to tell war stories. The Crown Prince often remarked that Bigelow should have been alive when T. E. Lawrence was riding with old Faisal against the Turks. The era suited him better. Bigelow had never argued the point.

Seated next to him in the stripped-down Gazelle was Khalid Khuddari, another man suited for an earlier time but just as adept in this one. Bigelow knew how remarkable it was that Khuddari had achieved his current position, since he’d not been born into the royal family. Secretly, the Crown Prince had confided in Bigelow that he loved Khuddari more than his own sons, three of whom lived in Europe with women who seemed to need cash infusions for sustenance.

Bigelow had been present when Khalid’s father had come in from the desert with his son and reminded the Crown Prince of his promise to look after the boy in exchange for the Bedouin’s oath of loyalty. The Crown Prince, a man true to his word, welcomed the young Khalid into his home. Bigelow had had the good fortune of becoming one of Khalid’s many tutors, a chore he relished simply because the boy was so bright and dedicated. When he looked at the man Khalid had become a quarter century later, he felt he could indulge in a little pride. A lifelong bachelor, Bigelow saw Khalid as the son he wished he’d had.

“Don’t look so serious. All of the hard work is finished,” Bigelow shouted over the roar of the turboshaft engine over their heads. His Arabic was flawless.

Khuddari couldn’t be brought out of his dark mood. “I’m afraid that the hard work is just about to begin.”

“If the Crown Prince finds out what we’re doing, we’ll have more to worry about than hard work,” Bigelow said pointedly.

The chopper was well into Ajmani airspace without authorization. While the seven Sheikdoms that made up the United Arab Emirates were considered one country by the international community, each member maintained a great deal of sovereignty over its own portion of the desert. By flying into Ajman, Khuddari and Bigelow were in effect crossing a national boundary without prior notice. Their actions could easily be labeled an invasion.

“So tell me how you found it,” Khalid invited.

Bigelow leaned toward the younger man so they could speak at a more conversational volume. Khuddari had access to an executive chopper, one outfitted with the latest silencing equipment so that the interior was as quiet as a luxury automobile, but they had agreed this machine was better suited for the trip into the desert.

“Nothing to it, really. There were no roads leading this far out from the city of Ajman so everything had to be brought to the facility by helicopter, usually at night. I had a man at the airport watching them come and go from dusk until dawn. Since we couldn’t follow one of their choppers without giving ourselves away, I called in an old favor. An Air Force adviser in Saudi Arabia and I spent four months together as peacekeepers on Cyprus in ’64. I saved his life during the August ninth bombings. Anyway, last night I called him just before another of Rufti’s helicopters went into the desert. He had one of the AWACS planes the Saudis bought from the Yanks divert from its normal patrol of the Iraqi border and take a quick peek our way.”