The pilot must have satisfied himself with a positive identification, because when he came around again the side door had been rolled open and a pair of soldiers stood ready with AKs. Points of light winked at the muzzle tips, and lead rained from the sky. Their aim was thrown off by the speed of the chase, but the amount of ammunition they were pouring down on the hydrofoil was staggering. Holes erupted on the Liberty’s unarmored roof while bits of chewed-up fiberglass whipped by Eddie and Cabrillo at the helm. Eddie fired a controlled burst back at the chopper and managed to score a hit. A spray of blood pattered the inside of the copilot’s window.
Juan weaved the hydrofoil back and forth, trading a little speed to keep them out of another deadly assault.
“My
kingdom for a Stinger missile,” Eddie said.
Cabrillo nodded glumly.
“Rubber Duck, we have a chopper on radar at about your position,” Max called over the radio.
“He’s right above us. Anything you can do?”
“Wait two minutes.”
“Roger.”
The chopper dove in for another run once the soldiers had reloaded. Juan cut the hydrofoil hard to starboard, skipping it across the waves like a stone and nearly tearing away her underwater wings. His quick maneuver put the boat directly under the Mil and robbed the gunman of their open shots, and Cabrillo matched the pilot’s every turn as he attempted to shake them out of his blind spot. Eddie put the FN to his shoulder and fired straight up, peppering the underside of the chopper with a dozen perfectly aimed rounds.
This time it was the helicopter that was forced to retreat. It took up a station at around two hundred feet in altitude and more than a thousand yards off the Liberty’s starboard rail. The pilot maintained their speed but showed no interest in coming closer. That last attack had cost him.
Then from over the horizon came a streaking blur that cut the air like lightning. It was a burst from the Oregon’s 20mm Gatling gun dialed up to its maximum of four thousand rounds per minute. At that setting it wasn’t individual bullets she threw into the sky but a solid wall of tungsten hitting hypersonic speeds. Such was the ship’s targeting system that the rounds came within three feet of the chopper’s spinning rotor without hitting it. Had they wanted, they could have blown the helicopter into a falling meteor of scrap aluminum, but the demonstration of such awesome firepower was more than enough.
The Mil banked away violently and soon vanished.
A moment later Juan spotted the Oregon as she waited patiently for her wayward children. Under her patchwork coats of naval paint and artfully applied rust streaks she was the most beautiful sight in the world to him. The garage-style door of her boat garage was opened at the waterline amidships on her starboard side. While Eddie made ready to open the sea cocks and send the Liberty to a watery grave she did not deserve, Juan guided her in to a perfect stop. Max stood on the sloping ramp with two orderlies from medical and a gurney for MacD. Behind them loomed a second RHIB assault craft like the one they had abandoned in the jungle. It sat on a launching cradle that could shoot it out of the ship using hydraulic rams.
Juan tossed Hanley a line, which he tied off to a cleat.
“Good to see you.”
“Good to be back,” Juan said with a weariness he felt all the way to his bones. “I tell you, my friend, this has been a nightmare from the word go.”
“Amen to that,” Hanley agreed.
The orderlies boarded the lifeboat, carrying a backboard to stabilize Lawless and prevent any more injuries. They moved quickly, knowing that they were minutes away from engaging in a battle with Myanmar’s finest gunboat.
Once MacD was lifted clear and was on his way to the infirmary with Julia huddled over the speeding gurney, Eddie opened the seacocks and leapt from the lifeboat.
“Sorry,” Juan said, and patted the Liberty’s coaming before making the jump himself.
Max mashed an intercom button that linked to the high-tech Op Center. “Punch it, Eric. We’re out of time.”
Then came an echoing boom from across the sea followed by the high-pitched shriek of an artillery shell in flight and then an explosion of water thirty yards beyond the wallowing Liberty. Hanley was right. They were out of time. Almost immediately they were bracketed by a second shell. The Oregon was pinned.
13
DEEP INSIDE THE SHIP’S HULL, HER REVOLUTIONARY engines came online with a command from Eric Stone. The supercooled magnets sitting encased in liquid nitrogen began stripping free electrons from the seawater being sucked through her drive tubes, creating an incredible amount of electricity that was transformed into horsepower by the pump jets. Like a thoroughbred that breaks from a standstill to a full gallop, the Oregon took off, a bone in her teeth and a creaming wake at her stern. The cryopumps’ whine soon went ultrasonic and disappeared above the normal range of hearing. A third blast concussed the air, and an explosive shell hit the ocean in the exact spot the ship had occupied moments earlier. It blew up a towering fountain of water that stayed suspended for what seemed like an impossible amount of time before collapsing with a guttural splash.
Cabrillo’s first order, as he was hobbling to the Op Center with Max supporting one arm, was to send a crewman to his cabin to get him another prosthetic leg.
The high-tech room buzzed with coiled energy that gave the air an electric tang. Eric and Mark Murphy were in their customary seats. Hali Kasim was to the right, monitoring communications, and Linc had taken over the radar station generally manned by Linda Ross when the ship was facing danger. Gomez Adams was at a spare workstation, flying an aerial drone over the area. The drone—really, just a large commercial RC plane—was fitted with a high-def Minicam that relayed incredible real-time pictures.
“Sit rep,” Juan commanded when he threw himself into the Kirk Chair.
“Single Hainan-class missile destroyer about twelve thousand yards off the port beam and coming in at about fourteen knots,” Eric reported.
“Wepps, how are we looking?” That was Cabrillo’s nickname for whoever commanded the Oregon’s array of weaponry, usually Murph.