Task Force (5 page)

Chisnall wrapped his legs around the wire and twisted his ankles together, locking the cold metal between them. Without warning, the boat began to turn, a sharp veer to starboard. The force of it almost wrenched him from the wire, and he screamed in frustration and agony. But it was his salvation. As the boat turned, the wire swung to the right and suddenly the metal stairs that led to the platform were almost within his grasp. The impossible now seemed possible, and that thought gave him renewed energy.

He stretched out a hand, scrabbling at the edge of the short
flight of steps. His fingers touched it, then slid away. Again he tried, and this time the waves were kind and the rocking motion of the boat brought the stairs to him. He gripped it with a strength that he didn’t know he had. The boat began to straighten. He flopped into the water, his fingers steel claws on the railing of the stairs. He swung his other arm up and now both hands locked on, the rest of his body bouncing over the water behind the ship, buffeted by the turbulence from the propellers below. Two hands became two hands and a knee, then two knees, and finally he collapsed onto the platform.

He could have lain there and gone to sleep, or at least rested until he got some feeling back in his numbed fingers and legs, until the fires that burned in his muscles faded. But there was no time for that.

There were shouts coming from the deck above him. They were hunting again.

Price could hear the pinging through the cool water even before the Tsar spoke. It sounded like the tolling of a high-pitched bell.
A warning bell
.

“Active pinging,” the Tsar said. “Cavitation has increased, getting louder. They’re coming this way.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Wilton said.

“Spread out as much as you can, but stay in comm range,” Price said. “Head for the island. Barnard, you’re supposed to be the intelligence officer. Do you know anything about these depth charges?”

“The ultrasound blast will stun you up to about ninety feet,” Barnard said. “Outside of that it’ll rattle your teeth, but you’ll be okay.”

“And inside of that?” Price asked.

“If you’re within sixty feet, you’ll be knocked out cold,” Barnard said.

“What about thirty feet?” Price asked.

“The shock wave will probably stop your heart,” Barnard said.

“They’re right on our tail,” the Tsar said. He sounded panicky.

“What do we do?” Wilton asked.

Chisnall raised his head above the level of the deck. It was clear. The stern was lined with equipment lockers but nothing large enough to conceal a person. On the right side of the deck was an inflatable boat, a Zodiac, on a short slipway for easy launching.

He slid onto the deck and crawled behind the Zodiac. Only then did he raise himself up and peer forward. He didn’t have his night-vision mask, but he didn’t need it. The deck was well lit by fluorescent tubes mounted on the superstructure above him. A large window at the top opened onto the bridge, and he could see someone moving around inside.

He eased past the Zodiac, toward an open door. Inside, he could see some of the Demon Team. Three of them were conscious
but looked dazed, sitting cross-legged, leaning against a wall. Their hands were locked to their necks in a neckcuff, a type of Bzadian handcuff. Two others were lying on the floor, but their hands also were cuffed, which gave him some hope that they were still alive. One of them was bleeding from the ear. Varmint was missing.

He waited outside, listening for a guard. There had to be a guard. He couldn’t wait long. At any moment someone could decide to walk back to the stern, or someone up on the bridge could look down.

At any moment the boat could reach the Angel Team.

He was unarmed. His weapons were stored in the equipment pod towed behind Monster’s DPV. But there was no time, so there was no choice. He moved forward, sliding his feet across the wet deck to minimize noise. When he reached the door, he stopped again to listen and, hearing nothing, risked a quick glance inside. An internal flight of stairs led up to the bridge. There was an open door at the bottom of the stairs, and he could clearly hear the crew talking, discussing some new sonar contacts.

The Angels
.

Just the sound of the Bzadian tongue sent a cold chill down his spine. Hearing it made everything much more real. He really was once again behind enemy lines, walking a very precarious tightrope. Chisnall slipped into the cabin and shut the door at the bottom of the stairs. The voices from the bridge became an indistinct murmur. Good. The door was soundproof.

He ran over to the first of the Demons and kneeled beside him. Dazed eyes stared up at him. Chisnall had never seen the effects of an ultrasound blast at close range. It wasn’t pretty. Blood trickled from the Demon’s nose. His name was Miscreant, Chisnall thought, although all the Demons seemed to look the same—skinny, hard-faced, and with a shaved head. Miscreant had an even scrawnier look about him, which was how Chisnall recognized him. The next two Demons, Yobbo and Hooligan, seemed equally dazed and confused.

Chisnall examined Miscreant’s neckcuff. A flexible plastic collar with two wrist loops fastened at the back of the neck. Struggling or pulling on the wrist loops only tightened the collar, choking the prisoner until he or she relaxed. The locking mechanism was a simple one, requiring a key-tube to be pushed into a hole at the back of the neck. Chisnall didn’t have a key-tube. He could probably get the Demons over the side of the boat, but even conscious they would drown with their hands locked to their necks.

“Stop what you are doing,” a voice said, slow and even, and Chisnall looked up to see a steady coil-gun aimed right at his head. The Bzadian who held it was unusually tall and thick-chested: tough and competent.

Chisnall stood up, folding his arms across his chest, Bzadian style, with his palms out, to indicate that he was not going to resist.

“What have you done to these soldiers?” Chisnall asked. The language and the regional dialect flowed effortlessly, his
surgically created forked tongue buzzing on the difficult Bzadian sounds. “We were on a training exercise in the bay and found ourselves attacked by our own forces.”

“A training exercise?” the Bzadian said. “Why didn’t we know about it?”

“Of course you knew about it,” Chisnall said. He turned as he spoke, bending down over the scrawny shape of Miscreant and examining the blood that trickled from his ear. “The exercise has been planned for weeks. Coastal Defense Command knows all about it. Now you have killed some of my best soldiers.”

There was a clear pulse in Miscreant’s neck, but the Bzadian wouldn’t be able to see that.

“They were all alive when we brought them on board,” the Bzadian said.

“Alive? I don’t think so. Not with a bullet in the back of his head!” Chisnall said.

“What?”

“See for yourself,” Chisnall said, and the Bzadian came closer. “I want to speak to your captain immediately. And get Coastal Defense on the radio. Tell them …”

Chisnall never finished the sentence. Bending down had been an excuse to shift his weight onto the balls of his feet. He exploded upward, hitting the Bzadian’s midriff, just below the coil-gun he was carrying. The gun became a club, smashing into the Bzadian’s face. Anyone else would have gone down at that point, but this one seemed to be made of rock. He grunted
and staggered back a few steps. He was smart too. He didn’t try to bring the coil-gun to bear; it would never have worked in that confined space. He dropped the gun and swung an elbow at Chisnall’s head. It exploded into his temple, rocking him sideways.

Chisnall didn’t want to get into a boxing match with someone who seemed to have been carved out of granite. Instead, he put the Bzadian on the deck with a quick judo move, slipping his leg behind the Bzadian’s legs and pushing him backward. The Bzadian grunted as his head hit the deck but shook it off and punched upward with both fists. Chisnall flicked his head sideways and the blow glanced his cheek. Had the blow connected solidly, the fight would have been over there and then.

Chisnall kneed him in the stomach, forcing the air from his lungs, but the Bzadian’s hands were around his neck, pulling him down. With a sudden shift of his body weight, the Bzadian was on top of him and the metal cable from his coil-gun was around his neck. Chisnall could feel the metal dig into his skin. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. He tried to bring his legs up, to twist himself out of the other’s grasp, but he was too firmly pinned.

The muscles of his chest started to spasm as they heaved to find air that would not come.

Price didn’t need sonar to hear the churning sounds of the propellers through the water.

“Here it comes!” the Tsar yelled.

“What do we do?” Wilton asked. “What do we do?”

“Dive deep,” Price said. “Get as far as you can from the bomb.”

“No! Surface!” Barnard yelled.

“Which?” Monster asked.

“Surface,” Barnard said. “After the depth charge hits the water, there will be a delay while it sinks. Try and get your head and as much of your body as possible out of the water before it explodes.”

“Why?” Price asked.

“The air-water barrier,” Barnard said. “The surface of the water acts like a mirror for sound. Ninety percent of the sonic boom will be reflected back down.”

“Do it,” Price said. “Tsar, let us know the second the bomb hits the water.”

“You’ll know it!” the Tsar said.

“As soon as you hear it, unplug your sonar,” Barnard said. “If you want to have any ears left afterward.”

A loud thud penetrated through the roaring in Chisnall’s ears, and the pressure on his neck released. Vision returned and with it an image that Chisnall could not at first comprehend. A wet-suited figure was standing over him, a metal pipe in his hand.

“What the hell was that Puke made of?” the figure asked, its face gradually coming into focus. It was the Demon leader, Varmint. “I had to hit him twice before he went down,” he said.

The Bzadian was lying unconscious beside Chisnall, blood flowing freely from a head wound.

Varmint extended a hand, helping Chisnall to his feet.

“Thanks,” Chisnall said. His lips seemed to be made of clay.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Varmint asked. “I had everything under control.”

“Let’s get your guys out of here,” Chisnall said. They could argue about it later.

Varmint had already found a key-tube on the Bzadian and was uncuffing his team. One was trying to sit up now, consciousness gradually returning.

Chisnall grabbed a couple of the neckcuffs, thinking that they might come in handy. He moved to the doorway and checked outside.

“Where are you going?” Varmint asked.

“You look after your guys,” Chisnall said. “I’m going to try and save mine. See if you can launch the Zodiac without anyone noticing. I’ll stay on your comm channel. When I give you the word, make some noise.”

“What’s your plan?” Varmint asked.

“I’ll tell you when I figure that out,” Chisnall said.

Most of the Demons were on their feet now, two of them helping Yobbo, who must have taken the worst of the blast. He was still unconscious but breathing steadily.

“Hey, Chisnall,” Varmint said as Chisnall headed for the doorway.

He glanced back. “Yeah?”

Varmint gave him a short nod. “Thanks. For coming to help.”

“You’d have done the same,” Chisnall said.

“Not a fat rat’s chance in hell,” Varmint said, grinning.

Chisnall smiled and slipped out through the doorway, up a short flight of steps, and onto a starboard passageway that extended the length of the ship. Low deck lights cast oval pools of amber across the deck.

He padded forward. Shouting came from the bow of the ship, and a group of Bzadians was clustered around the rails. The sea was incandescent, lit by a pair of underwater searchlights. As he neared the bow, he could see the squat shape of the depth-charge launcher, a simple catapult-like device with a cradle for the depth charge, which was about the size and shape of a two-liter soda bottle, with stubby fins at the bottom. He had to get to it before it fired, or it would be the Angels floating facedown on the surface of the ocean with blood trickling from their ears and noses. But to get to it, he would have to get past at least seven or eight Bzadians, who were leaning over the railings, peering down at the gleaming water.

Even as he was trying to formulate a plan, the long arm of the launcher flicked skyward in a whiplash-like motion, catapulting the depth charge into the air. It disappeared from sight in the black of the sky, and he instinctively started counting as he waited for the explosion.

The waiting was the hardest part, Price thought. In a few seconds she would either be alive or dead, and there was little she could do to affect things either way. She looked around for Monster but couldn’t see him.

“Splashdown!” the Tsar yelled, and Price twisted the throttle of her barracuda. The craft began to rise.

“Come on!” she yelled, as if that would make it go faster.

The water around her was alive with the powerful searchlights from the rapidly closing ship.