Cop rescues terrorist, Highland thought to himself, some headline that would be. The jailer had pleaded innocence, of course. There was a problem with the plumbing in Miller’s cell—somehow the work order had got mislaid, you see—and the jailer had been called to quell a disturbance elsewhere. Hadn’t heard a sound from that end of the cell block. Not a sound. Miller’s face had been beaten to a bloody pulp, and certainly he’d have no toilet problems for a few more days. His sympathy for Miller had been short-lived. Highland was still angry with the jailer. It was his professionalism that was offended. What the jailer had done was, quite simply, wrong, and potentially the first step on a path that could lead back to the rack and hot pincers. The law was not so much designed to protect society from the criminals, but more profoundly to protect society from itself. This was a truth that not even all policemen understood fully, but it was the single lesson that Highland had learned from five years in the Anti-Terrorist Branch. It was a hard lesson to believe when you’d seen the work of the terrorists.
Miller’s face still bore some of the marks, but he was a young man and he was healing quickly. Only for a brief few minutes had he been a victim, a human victim. Now he was an animal again. Highland was hard-pressed to think of him as a fellow man—but that was what his professionalism was for. Even for the likes of you. The policeman looked back out the rear window.
It was a boring drive, as it had to be with no radio, no conversation, only vigilance for something that almost certainly wasn’t out there. Highland wished that he’d put coffee in his thermos instead of tea. They watched the truck pass out of Woking, then Aldershot and Farnham. They were in the estate country of Southern England now. All around them were stately homes belonging to the horse crowd, and the less stately homes of those whom they employed. It was a pity it was dark, Highland thought, this could be a very pleasant drive. As it was, the fog hung in the numerous valleys, and rain pelted the flat metal top of the van, and the van’s driver had to be especially careful as he negotiated the narrow, twisting roads that characterize the English countryside. The only good news was the near-total absence of traffic. Here and there Highland saw a solitary light over some distant door, but there was little more than that.
An hour later, the van used the M-27 motorway to bypass Southampton, then turned south on a secondary—“Class A”—road for Lymington. Every few miles they passed through a small village. There were the beginnings of life here and there. A few bakeries had cars parked outside while their owners got fresh, hot bread for the day’s dinner. Early church services were under way already, but the real traveling wouldn’t start until the sun was up, and that was still over two hours off. The weather was worsening. They were only a few miles from the coast now, and the wind was gusting at thirty miles per hour. It blew away the fog, but also drove sheets of cold rain and rocked the van on its wheels.
“Miserable bloody day to take a boat ride,” the other cop in the back commented.
“Only supposed to be thirty minutes,” Highland said, his own stomach already queasy at the thought. Born in a nation of seamen, Bob Highland detested traveling on the water.
“On a day like this? An hour, more like.” The man started humming “A Life on the Rolling Wave” while Highland started regretting the large breakfast he’d fixed before leaving home.
Nothing for it, he told himself. After we deliver young Mr. Miller, it’s home for Christmas and two days off. I’ve bloody earned it. Thirty minutes later they arrived in Lymington.
Highland had been there once before, but he remembered more than he could see. The wind off the water was now a good forty miles per hour, a full gale out of the southwest. He remembered from the map that most of the boat ride to the Isle of Wight was in sheltered waters—a relative term, but something to depend on nonetheless. The ferry Cenlac waited at the dock for them. Only half an hour before, the boat’s captain had been told that a special passenger was en route. That explained the four armed officers who stood or sat in various places around the ferry. A low-profile operation, to be sure, and it didn’t interfere with the ferry’s other passengers, many of them carrying bundles whose identity didn’t need to be guessed at.
The Lymington to Yarmouth ferry cast off her lines at 8:30 exactly. Highland and the other officer remained in the van while the driver and another armed constable who’d ridden in front stood outside. Another hour, he told himself, then a few more minutes to deliver Miller to the prison, and then a leisurely drive back to London. I might even stretch out and get a few winks. Christmas Dinner was scheduled for four in the afternoon—his contemplation of that event stopped abruptly.
The Cenlac entered the Solent, the channel between the English mainland and the Isle of Wight. If these waters were sheltered, Highland didn’t want to think what the open ocean was like. The Cenlac wasn’t all that large, and the ferry lacked the weatherly lines of a blue-water craft. The channel gale was broad on her starboard beam, as were the seas, and the boat was already taking fifteen-degree rolls.
“Bloody hell,” the Sergeant observed to himself. He looked at Miller. The terrorist’s demeanor hadn’t changed a whit. He sat there like a statue, head still against the van’s wall, eyes still closed, hands in his lap. Highland decided to try the same thing. There was nothing to be gained by staring out the back window. There wasn’t any traffic to worry about now. He sat back and propped his feet on the left-side bench. Somewhere he’d once read that closing one’s eyes was an effective defense against motion sickness. He had nothing to fear from Miller. Highland was not carrying a gun, of course, and the keys to the prisoner’s manacles were in the driver’s pocket. So he did close his eyes, and let his inner ear come to terms with the rolling motion of the ferry without the confusion that would come from staring at the unmoving interior of the truck. It helped a little. His stomach soon started to inform him of its dissatisfaction with the current scheme of things, but it didn’t get too bad. Highland hoped that the rougher seas farther out wouldn’t change this. They wouldn’t.
The sound of automatic weapons fire jerked his head up a moment later. The screams came next, from women and children, followed by the rough shouts of men. Somewhere an automobile horn started blaring and didn’t stop. More guns started. Highland recognized the short bark of some detective’s service automatic—answered at once by the staccato of a submachine gun. It couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. The Cenlac’s own horn started blowing short, loud notes, then stopped after a few seconds while the auto’s horn kept going. The screams diminished. No longer shrill cries of alarm, they were now the deeper cries of comprehended terror. A few more bursts of machine-gun fire crashed out, then stopped. Highland feared the silence more than the noise. He looked out the window and saw nothing but a car and the dark sea beyond. There would be more, and he knew what it would be. Uselessly his hand went inside his jacket for the pistol that wasn’t there.
How did they know—how did the bastards know we’d be here!
Now came more shouts, the sound of orders that would not be disobeyed by anyone who wanted to live through this Christmas Day. Highland’s hands balled into fists. He turned to look again at Miller. The terrorist was staring at him now. The Sergeant would have preferred a cruel smile to the empty expression he saw on that young, pitiless face.
The metal door shook to the impact of an open hand.
“Open the bloody door or we’ll blow it off!”
“What do we do?” the other cop asked.
“We open the door.”
“But—”
“But what? Wait for them to hold a gun at some baby’s head? They’ve won.” Highland twisted the handles. Both doors were yanked open.
There were three men there, ski masks pulled down over their faces. They held automatic weapons.
“Let’s see your guns,” the tall one said. Highland noted the Irish accent, not that he was very surprised by it.
“We are both unarmed,” the Sergeant answered. He held both hands
up.
“Out. One at a time, and flat on the deck.” The voice didn’t bother to make any threats.
Highland stepped out of the truck and got to his knees, then was kicked down on his face. He felt the other cop come down beside him.
“Hello, Sean,” another voice said. “You didn’t think we’d forget you, did you now?”
Still Miller didn’t say anything, Highland thought in wonderment. He listened to the flat jingle of his chains as he hobbled out of the van. He saw the shoes of a man step to the doors, probably to help him down.
The driver must be dead, Highland thought. The gunmen had his keys. He heard the manacles come off, then a pair of hands lifted Miller to his feet. Miller was rubbing his wrists, finally showing a little emotion. He smiled at the deck before looking up at the Sergeant.
There wasn’t much point in looking at the terrorist. Around them he saw at least three men dead. One of the black-clad gunmen pulled a shattered head off a car’s wheel, and the horn finally stopped. Twenty feet away a man was grasping at a bloody stomach and moaning, a woman—probably his wife—trying to minister to him. Others lay about on the deck in small knots, each watched by an armed terrorist as their hands sweated on the backs of their necks. There was no unnecessary noise from the gunmen, Highland noted. They were trained men. All the noise came from the civilians. Children were crying, and their parents were faring better than the childless adults. Parents had to be brave to protect their kids, while the single had only their own lives to fear for. Several of these were whimpering.
“You are Robert Highland,” the tall one said quietly. “Sergeant Highland of the famous C-13?”
“That’s right,” the policeman answered. He knew that he was going to die. It seemed a terrible thing to die on Christmas Day. But if he was going to die, there was nothing left to lose. He wouldn’t plead, he wouldn’t beg. “And who might you be?”
“Sean’s friends, of course. Did you really think that we’d abandon him to your kind?” The voice sounded educated despite the simple diction. “Do you have anything to say?”
Highland wanted to say something, but he knew that nothing would really matter. He wouldn’t even entertain them with a curse—and it came to him that he understood Miller a little better now. The realization shocked him out of his fear. Now he knew why Miller hadn’t spoken. What damned fool things go through your head at a time like this, he thought. It was almost funny, but more than that it was disgusting.
“Get on with it and be on your way.”
He could only see the tall one’s eyes, and was robbed of the satisfaction he might have had from seeing the man’s reactions. Highland became angry at that. Now that death was certain, he found himself enraged by the irrelevant. The tall one took an automatic pistol from his belt and handed it to Miller.
“This one’s yours, Sean.”
Sean took the gun in his left hand and looked one last time at Highland.
I might as well be a rabbit for all that little fucker cares.
“I should have left you in that cell,” Highland said, his own voice now devoid of emotion.
Miller considered that for a moment, waiting for a fitting reply to spring from his brain as he held the gun at his hip. A quote from Josef Stalin came to mind. He raised his gun. “Gratitude, Mr. Highland... is a disease of dogs.” He fired two rounds from a distance of fifteen feet.
“Come on,” O’Donnell said from behind his mask. Another black-clad man appeared on the vehicle deck. He trotted to the leader.
“Both engines are disabled.”
O’Donnell checked his watch. Things had gone almost perfectly. A good plan, it was—except for the bloody weather. Visibility was under a mile, and—
“There it is, coming up aft,” one man called.
“Patience, lads.”
“Just who the hell are you?” the cop at their feet asked.
O‘Donnell fired a short burst for an answer, correcting this oversight. Another chorus of screams erupted, then trailed quickly away into the shriek of the winds. The leader took a whistle from inside his sweater and blew it. The assault group formed up on the leader. There were seven of them, plus Sean. Their training showed, O’Donnell noted with satisfaction. Every man of them stood facing outward around him, gun at the ready in case one of these terrified civilians might be so foolish as to try something. The ferry’s captain stood on the ladder sixty feet away, clearly worrying about his next hazard, handling his craft in a storm without engine power. O’Donnell had considered killing all aboard and sinking the boat, but rejected the idea as counterproductive. Better to leave survivors behind to tell the tale, otherwise the Brits might not know of his victory.
“Ready!” the man at the stem announced.
One by one the gunmen moved aft. There was an eight-foot sea rolling, and it would get worse farther out beyond the shelter of Sconce Point. It was a hazard that O’Donnell could accept more readily than the Cenlac’s captain.
“Go!” he ordered.
The first of his men jumped into the ten-meter Zodiac. The man at the controls of the small boat took alee from the ferry and used the power of his twin outboards to hold her in close. The men had all practiced that in three-foot seas, and despite the more violent waves, things went easily. As each man jumped aboard, he rolled to starboard to clear a path for the next. It took just over a minute. O‘Donnell and Miller went last, and as they hit the rubber deck, the boat moved alee, and the throttles cracked open to full power. The Zodiac raced up the side of the ferry, out of her wind shadow, and then southwest toward the English Channel. O’Donnell looked back at the ferry. There were perhaps six people watching them pull away. He waved to them.
“Welcome back to us, Sean,” he shouted to his comrade.
“I didn’t tell them a bloody thing,” Miller replied.
“I know that.” O’Donnell handed the younger man a flask of whiskey. Miller lifted it and swallowed two ounces. He’d forgotten how good it could taste, and the cold sheets of rain made it all the better.
The Zodiac skimmed over the wavetops, almost like a hovercraft, driven by a pair of hundred-horsepower engines. The helmsman stood at his post ‘midships, his knees bent to absorb the mild buffeting as he piloted the craft through the wind and rain toward the rendezvous. O’Donnell’s fleet of trawlers gave him a wide choice of seamen, and this wasn’t the first time he’d used them in an operation. One of the gunmen crawled around to pass out life jackets. In the most unlikely event that someone saw them, they would look like a team from the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Service, running an exercise on Christmas morning. O’Donnell’s operations always covered the angles, were always planned down to the last detail. Miller was the only man he’d ever had captured; and now his perfect record was reestablished. The gunmen were securing their weapons in plastic bags to minimize corrosion damage. A few were talking to each other, but it was impossible to hear them over the howl of wind and outboard motors.
Miller had hit the boat pretty hard. He was rubbing his backside.
“Bloody faggots!” he snarled. It was good to be able to talk again.
“What’s that?” O’Donnell asked over the noise. Miller explained for a minute. He was sure it had all been Highland’s idea, something to soften him up, make him grateful to the cop. That was why both his shots had gone into Highland’s guts. There was no sense in letting him die fast. But Miller didn’t tell his boss that. That sort of thing was not professional. Kevin might not approve.
“Where’s that Ryan bastard?” Sean asked.
“Home in America.” O’Donnell checked his watch and subtracted six hours. “Fast asleep in his bed, I wager.”
“He set us back a year, Kevin,” Miller pointed out. “A whole bloody year!”
“I thought you’d say that. Later, Sean.”
The younger man nodded and took another swig of whiskey. “Where are we going?”
“Someplace warmer than this!”
The Cenlac drift
ed before the wind. As soon as the last terrorist had left, the captain had sent his crew below to check for bombs. They’d found none, but the Captain knew that could just mean they were hidden, and a ship was the perfect place to hide anything. His engineer and another sailor were trying to repair one of his diesels while his three deckhands rigged a sea anchor that now streamed over the stem to steady the ferry on the rolling seas. The wind drove the boat closer to land. That did give them more moderate seas, but to touch the coast in this weather was death for all aboard. He thought he might launch one of his lifeboats, but even that entailed dangers that he prayed he might yet avoid.
He stood alone in the pilothouse and looked at his radios—smashed. With them he could call for help, a tug, a merchantman, anything that could put a line on his bow and pull him to safe harbor. But all three of his radio transmitters were wrecked beyond repair by a whole clip of machine gun bullets.
Why did the bastards leave us alive? he asked himself in quiet, helpless rage. His engineer appeared at the door.
“Can’t fix it. We just don’t have the tools we need. The bastards knew exactly what to break.”
“They knew exactly what to do, all right,” the Captain agreed.
“We’re late for Yarmouth. Perhaps—”
“They’ll write it off to the weather. We’ll be on the rocks before they get their thumbs out.” The Captain turned and opened a drawer. He withdrew a flare pistol and a plastic box of star shells. “Two-minute intervals. I’m going to see to the passengers. If nothing happens in ... forty minutes, we launch the boats.”
“But we’ll kill the wounded getting them in—”
“We’ll lose bloody everyone if we don’t!” The Captain went below.
One of the passengers was a veterinarian, it turned out. Five people were wounded, and the doctor was trying to treat them, assisted by a member of the crew. It was wet and noisy on the vehicle deck. The ferry was rolling twenty degrees, and a window had been smashed by the seas. One of his deck crew was struggling to put canvas over the hole. The Captain saw that he would probably succeed, then went to the wounded.