Patriot games - Tom Clancy [96]
"Surgeon Lieutenant Dilk, Doctor."
"Welcome. I'm afraid my practice is usually limited to horses and dogs," the vet replied at once. "One sucking chest, the other three are belly wounds. One died-I did my best, but-" there wasn't much else to say. "Fucking murderers!"
The sound of a diesel horn announced the arrival of the tugboat. Lieutenant Dilk didn't bother looking while the Captain and crew caught the messenger line and hauled in a towing wire. Together, the doctors administered morphine and worked to stabilize the wounded.
The helicopter was already gone southwest, a grimmer purpose to their second mission for the day. Another helicopter, this one with armed Marines aboard, was lifting off from Gosport while the first searched the surface with radar and eyes for a black ten-meter zodiac- type rubber boat. Orders had come from the Home Office with record speed, and for once they were orders that men in uniform were trained and equipped to handle: Locate and destroy.
"The radar's hopeless," the copilot reported over the intercom.
The pilot nodded agreement. On a calm day they'd have a good chance to pick the rubber boat out, but the return from the confused seas and the flying spray made radar detection impossible.
"They can't have gone too far, and visibility isn't all that bad from up here. We'll do a quartering search and eyeball the bastards."
"Where do we start?"
"Off the Needles, then inward to Christchurch Bay, then we'll work west if we have to. We'll catch the bastards before they make landfall and have the bootnecks meet them on the beach. You heard the orders."
"Indeed." The copilot activated his tactical navigation display to set up the search pattern. Ninety minutes later it was plain that they'd searched in the wrong place. Surprised-baffled-the helicopters returned to Gosport empty-handed. The pilot went into the ready shack and found two very senior police officers.
"Well?"
"We searched from the Needles to Poole Bay -we didn't miss a thing." The pilot traced his flight path on the chart. "That type of boat can make perhaps twenty knots in these sea conditions-at most, and then only with an expert crew. We should not have missed them." The pilot sipped at a mug of tea. He stared at the chart and shook his head in disbelief. "No way we could have missed them! Not with two machines up."
"What if they went seaward, what if they went south?"
"But where? Even if they carried enough fuel to cross the Channel, which I doubt, only a madman would try it. There will be twenty-foot seas out there, and the gale is still freshening. Suicide," the pilot concluded.
"Well, we know that they're not madmen, they're too damned smart for that. No way they could have gotten past you, made landfall before you caught up with them?"
"Not a chance. None." The flyer was emphatic.
"Then where the hell are they?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I haven't a clue. Perhaps they sank."
"Do you believe that?" the cop demanded.
"No, sir."
Commander James Owens turned away. He looked out the windows. The pilot was right; the storm was worsening. The phone rang.
"For you, sir." A petty officer held it up.
"Owens. Yes?" His face changed from sadness to rage and back. "Thank you. Please keep us posted. That