“Still here,” Eric replied. “We got three of them. Three left, but I’m almost out of ammo.”
“One mag for me,” MacD grunted.
“Okay,” Juan said. “We’re in position. As soon as you start shooting, we’ll rush them. On my mark. Three . . . two . . . one . . . Now!”
Two sustained volleys of fire came from below. Juan and Gretchen ran down the stairs and saw the backs of two men, crouching behind the doorjambs. The inexperienced crew members raised their assault rifles to fire, but Juan and Gretchen took them out with a couple of short bursts.
The one remaining man, who had advanced into the power supply room, whirled around at the shots behind him, exposing his position. MacD and Eric brought him down before Juan and Gretchen could finish the job.
They rushed in and found all but one of the bombs intact. Its timer had been damaged in the hail of gunfire. In spite of that, Juan thought enough explosives had been planted to take out the system.
“Remember, fifteen seconds,” Juan said to Eric, while Gretchen helped MacD up and covered their path out.
Juan entered the new time into the first detonator, but a high-pitched whine froze him before he could get to the next one. The eerie sound was followed immediately by a mammoth bang that shook the whole room.
They were too late. The railgun had fired.
—
The superheated air and smoke around the railgun’s barrel cleared almost instantly in the strong wind. Golov raised binoculars to watch the results of all his and Ivana’s hard work come to fruition. He silently mouthed the seconds to impact.
The vast station’s main transformer housing was unguarded except for a chain-link fence and barbed wire. Because it was unmanned, there would be no casualties—not that Golov cared. The building was shielded from the weather by a steel wall. The hypersonic round would drill through it as easily as it knifed through the air.
When Golov mouthed, “One,” a huge explosion engulfed the housing. Sparks flew from the transformers as they short-circuited, their oil-cooling systems blowing apart in succession like dominos. The spectacular chain reaction was even better than what he’d hoped for.
He dropped the binoculars and eagerly watched the TV monitors.
For a moment, there was no change, but Golov knew that it would take a few seconds for the cascade effect to ripple through the electrical system.
Then the first monitor went black. Amsterdam was dark. There was an elated cheer of victory from the bridge crew. They knew that meant their stolen money could no longer be tracked by investigators. By the time the grid came back online, the trail would be ice-cold.
Golov smiled wistfully and imagined Ivana’s pride at their accomplishment. He watched expectantly for the other screens to go dark.
But none of them did. The feeds remained up and running. The traffic lights remained functional. Vehicles continued to move.
His smile faded.
Then the live feed from Amsterdam came back online. The electrical grid was still intact. Golov stood staring in disbelief.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, hoping that there was just a delay, but after another few seconds, it was clear that there would be no cascading grid failure.
His mission had failed. Now there would be nowhere he could run without being tracked down.
His phone rang. It was Marie Marceau’s number.
He answered. “I’ll get you for this.”
“And my little dog, too?” Cabrillo replied, his voice masked by the sound of machinery in the background. “Give it up, Golov. Ivana’s program was deactivated. You’re done. If I were you—”
Golov hurled the phone against the bulkhead, shattering it.
He yelled at his XO, “Turn so we can fire on the Oregon!”
“But Captain, the railgun is overheating,” Kravchuk said. “It’s only a matter of time before the liquid-cooled capacitors explode, unless we shut it down.”
Golov grabbed him by the lapel. “Don’t you see that our only chance to get away now is to keep them from following us?”
“Sir, we risk destroying the Achilles if we fire a damaged gun.”