“Crank her up! Captain Peters, we need some Marines.”
“Sar-Major Breckenridge, secure the area, and bring along ten men.”
The Sergeant Major had left the officers to their arguments while getting the civilians loaded onto the truck. He grabbed Cummings.
“Sergeant, take charge of the civilians, get ’em to sick bay, and put a guard on ’em. Beef up the guard force, but your primary mission is to take care of these people here. Their safety is your responsibility — and you ain’t relieved till I relieve you! Got it?”
“Aye, Gunny.”
Ryan helped his wife to the truck. “We’re going after them.”
“I know. Be careful. Jack. Please.”
“I will, but we’re going to get ’em this time, babe.” He kissed his wife. There was a funny sort of look on her face, something more than concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. You worry about you. Be careful!”
“Sure, babe. I’ll be back.” But they won’t! Jack turned away to jump aboard the boat. He went inside the deckhouse and found the ladder to the bridge.
“I am Chief Znamirowski, and I have the conn,” she announced. Mary Znamirowski didn’t look like a chief bosun’s mate, but the young seaman — was seawoman the proper term for her? Jack wondered — on the wheel jumped as though she were. “Starboard back two thirds, port back one third, left full rudder.”
“Stem line is in,” a seaman — this one was a man — reported.
“Very well,” she acknowledged, and continued her terse commands to get the YP away from the dock. Within seconds they were clear of the seawall and the other boats.
“Right full rudder, all ahead full! Come to new course one-three-five.” She turned. “How’s the radar look?”
The Prince was looking over the controls on the unfamiliar set. He found the clutter-suppression switch and bent down to the viewing hood. “Ah! Target bearing one-one-eight, range thirteen hundred, target course northeasterly, speed . . . about eight knots.”
“That’s about right, it can get choppy by the point,” Chief Z thought. “What’s our mission. Commander?”
“Can we stay with them?”
“They shot up my boats! I’ll ram the turkeys if you want, sir,” the chief replied. “I can give you thirteen knots as long as you want. I doubt they can do more than ten in the seas we got.”
“Okay. I want us to follow as close as we can without being spotted.” The chief opened one of the pilothouse doors and looked at the water. “We’ll close to three hundred. Anything else?”
“Go ahead and close up. For the rest of it, I am open to ideas,” Robby replied.
“How about we see where they’re going?” Jack suggested. “Then we can call in the cavalry.”
“That makes sense. If they try to run for shore . . . Christ, I’m a fighter pilot, not a cop.” Robby lifted the radio microphone. The set showed the boat’s call sign: NAEF. “Naval Station Annapolis, this is November Alfa Echo Foxtrot. Do you read, over.” He had to repeat the call twice more before getting an acknowledgment.
“Annapolis, give me a phone patch to the Superintendent.”
“He just called us, sir. Stand by.” A few clicks followed, plus the usual static.
“This is Admiral Reynolds, who is this?”
“Lieutenant Commander Jackson, sir, aboard the seventy-six boat. We are one mile southeast of the Academy in pursuit of the boat that just shot up our waterfront.”
“Is that what happened? All right, who do you have aboard?”
“Chief Znamirowski and the duty boat section, Captain Peters and some Marines, Doctor Ryan, and, uh. Captain Wales, sir, of the Royal Navy,” Robby answered.
“Is that where he is? I have the FBI on the other phone — Christ, Robby! Okay, the civilians corner under guard at the hospital, and the FBI and police corner on the way here. Repeat your situation and then state your intentions.”
“Sir, we are tracking the boat that attacked the dock. Our intentions are to close and track by radar to determine its destination, then call in the proper law-enforcement agencies, sir.” Robby smiled into the mike at his choice of words. “My next call is to Coast Guard Baltimore, sir. Looks like they’re heading in that direction at the moment.”
“Roger that. Very well, you may continue the mission, but the safety of your guests is your responsibility. Do not, repeat do not take any unnecessary chances. Acknowledge.”
“Yes, sir, we will not take any unnecessary chances.”
“Use your head, Commander, and report as necessary. Out.”
“Now there’s a vote of confidence,” Jackson thought aloud. “Carry on.”
“Left fifteen degrees rudder,” Chief Z ordered, rounding Greenbury Point. “Come to new course zero-two-zero.”
“Target bearing zero-one-four, range fourteen hundred, speed still eight knots,” His Highness told the quartermaster on the chart table. “They took a shorter route around this point.”
“No problem,” the chief noted, looking at the radar plot. “We have deep water all the way up from here.”
“Chief Z, do we have any coffee aboard?”
“I got a pot in the galley, sir, but I don’t have anybody to work it.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Jack said. He went below, then to starboard and below again. The galley was a small one, but the coffee machine was predictably of the proper size. Ryan got it started and went back topside. Breckenridge was passing out life jackets to everyone aboard, which seemed a sensible enough precaution. The Marines were deployed on the bridgewalk outside the pilothouse.
“Coffee in ten minutes,” he announced.
“Say again, Coast Guard,” Robby said into the microphone.
“Navy Echo Foxtrot, this is Coast Guard Baltimore, do you read, over.”
“That’s better.”
“Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“We are tracking a small boat, about a twenty-footer — with ten or more armed terrorists aboard.” He gave position, course, and speed. “Acknowledge that.”
“Roger, you say a boat full of bad guys and machine guns. Is this for real? Over.”
“That’s affirmative, son. Now let’s cut the crap and get down to it.”
The response was slightly miffed. “Roger that, we have a forty-one boat about to leave the dock and a thirty-two-footer’ll be about ten minutes behind it. These are small harbor-patrol boats. They are not equipped to fight a surface gun action, mister.”
“We have ten Marines aboard,” Jackson replied. “Do you request assistance?”
“Hell, yes — that’s affirmative. Echo Foxtrot. I have the police and the FBI on the phone, and they are heading to this area.”
“Okay, have your forty-one boat call us when they clear the dock. Let’s have your boat track from in front and we’ll track from behind. If we can figure where the target is heading, I want you to call in the cops.”
“We can do that easy enough. Let me get some things rolling here, Navy. Stand by.”
“A ship,” the Prince said.
“It’s gotta be,” Ryan agreed. “The same way they did it when they rescued that Miller bastard . . . Robby, can you get the Coast Guard to give us a list of the ships in the harbor?”
Werner and both Hostage Rescue groups were already moving. He wondered what had gone wrong — and right — tonight, but that would be determined later. For the moment he had agents and police heading toward the Naval Academy to protect the people he was supposed to have rescued, and his men were split between an FBI Chevy Suburban and two State Police cars, all heading north on Ritchie Highway toward Baltimore. If only they could use helicopters, he thought, but the weather was too bad, and everyone had had enough of that for one night. They were back to being a SWAT team, a purpose for which they were well suited. Despite everything that had gone wrong tonight, they now had a large group of terrorists flushed and in the open . . .
“Here’s the list of the ships in port,” the Coast Guard Lieutenant said over the radio. “We had a lot of them leave Friday night, so the list isn’t too long. I’ll start off at the Dundalk Marine Terminal. Nissan Courier, Japanese registry, she’s a car carrier out of Yokohama delivering a bunch of cars and trucks. Wilhelm Schorner, West German registry, a container boat out of Bremen with general cargo. Costanza, Cypriot registry, out of Valetta, Malta –”
“Bingo!” Ryan said.
“– scheduled to sail in about five hours, looks like. George McReady, American, arrived with a cargo of lumber from Portland, Oregon. That’s the last one there.”
“Tell me about the Costanza,” Robby said, looking at Jack.
“She arrived in ballast and loaded up a cargo mainly of farm equipment and some other stuff. Sails before dawn, supposed to be headed back for Valetta.”
“That’s probably our boy,” Jack said quietly.
“Stand by, Coast Guard.” Robby turned away from the radio. “How do you know. Jack?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a solid guess. When these bastards pulled that rescue on Christmas Day, they were probably picked up in the Channel by a Cypriot-registered ship. We think their weapons get to them through a Maltese dealer who works with a South African, and a lot of terrorists move back and forth through Malta — the local government’s tight with a certain country due south of there. The Maltese don’t get their own hands dirty, but they’re real good at looking the other way if the money’s right.” Robby nodded and keyed his mike.