Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

“I like the way you think.”

They all stopped at the sound of a loud bang. It wasn’t quite an explosion, but it also wasn’t like any gunshot Linc had ever heard.

MacD rapidly waved to them. He pointed above their heads.

Linc looked up in time to see the side of a container above them tumbling toward the deck like a fluttering leaf.

He picked up Raven and heaved her into the space between two container stacks next to them and then dove in after her. The container side-slammed into the deck inches from his boots and then slid over the side of the ship. There was a dent in the steel where they’d been standing.

“I don’t normally like getting thrown around,” Raven said as she

hopped to her feet, “but in this case I’ll make an exception. I owe you one.”

Linc got up, and they ran to MacD, who was still gazing upward.

“You don’t see something like that every day,” he said.

They turned around and saw that the roof and sides of the topmost container on the stack next to where they’d been standing were gone, blown away by explosive hinges.

Now there was nothing there except its cargo: a missile launcher canted at a twenty-degree angle.

They all ducked when a geyser of flame erupted from the tube and a missile blasted out. When it was safely away, the booster rocket dropped into the sea, and stubby wings sprang from the fuselage. White-hot exhaust shot from the tail, and it accelerated away toward the southeast at a fantastic rate.

As they stood up, Linc cocked an eyebrow at Raven and MacD and said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, “I’m guessing that’s the launch they were talking about.”

TEN

For a moment, everyone in the op center froze, including Max, who stared at the sight of the missile disappearing into the distance.

Linda had been glued to the radar looking for any signs of an incoming aircraft or missile. Nobody had been expecting a missile launch from a container on the Triton Star.

“What kind of missile was that?” Max asked Murph, the ship’s foremost weapons expert.

“BrahMos cruise missile,” Murph answered without hesitation. “Supersonic. Indian design.”

Max’s first priority was the safety of the ship. “Activate defensive measures. Lock on with an anti-aircraft missile and fire.”

“Firing Aster,” Murph said. The Oregon’s hull reverberated with the sound of the European anti-aircraft missile rocketing out of its tube toward the cruise missile.

“Gatling guns and Metal Storm coming online,” Murph added.

The Aster anti-aircraft missile was their primary defensive weapon. But if the cruise missile turned around and avoided the Aster, the Oregon also had secondary defenses. Hull plates retracted to reveal three six-barreled Gatling guns that fired 20mm tungsten shells at a rate of three thousand rounds per minute. The Metal Storm gun rose out of the stern, ready to fire a wall of five hundred electronically activated rounds in the span of six milliseconds.

“Is the missile turning back toward us?”

“Negative,” Linda said. “It’s tracking on a straight path away from us southeast.”

“Time to target?”

“If it doesn’t change course,” Murph said, turning to look at Max with a concerned expression, “time to intercept the cruise missile is thirty-two seconds.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The BrahMos got a ten-second head start, and it’s almost as fast as the Aster.” The short-range anti-aircraft missile was designed to intercept airplanes and missiles coming toward the ship, not for chasing them down.

Murph put a map up on the viewscreen showing the red dot of the cruise missile heading away from them at Mach 3 and the Aster missile in pursuit, gradually gaining on it at Mach 3.5.

“If we’re not the target,” Max said, “where’s it heading?”