Marauder (Oregon Files 15)

“What do you mean?” Linda asked. “What are you doing?”

“I see where he’s going with this,” Linc said, getting into the driver’s seat and starting up the truck.

“They’re seven seconds behind us,” Eddie said. “Plus give us an extra ten seconds of safety.”

He typed seventeen seconds into the keypad of the detonator.

Linc reversed the truck, with them inside, until it was near the rear edge of the car deck, and Linda understood.

The whole truck was going to be the depth charge.

* * *

—

Trim the starboard props and make sure they aren’t over-revving,” Parsons said from the pilot seat of the Marsh Flyer, his good left hand on the steering yoke.

Juan followed the instructions, and the huge hovercraft slewed away from the edge of the swamp track through the trees.

“Nice work,” Parsons said. “You’re a natural.”

“It’s just point and click.”

Steering the Flyer must have been challenging for Parsons, even with both his hands and at half the speed. But with a bullet hole in his right hand and the throttle at maximum, he needed Juan’s assistance to keep it from spinning out of control.

Juan pulled out his radio a

nd called the Oregon.

It was patched through to Max. “Where are you? We don’t see the Marsh Flyer yet.”

“You will soon,” Juan said. “Tell me you’ve already cast off from the Nhulunbuy dock.”

“As planned.”

“Good, because we’re coming in hot. Be ready for hostile forces.”

“Roger that.”

The updated Flyer cockpit had screens showing the view from cameras on all four corners of the craft to give a view of the surroundings, including the mushroom cloud of smoke rising behind them from the remains of the factory. While Juan helped Parsons with the instruments, he also served as eyes for the rest of the team.

He had an image of the car deck on his view screen, so he’d seen the entire gun battle. Linc was still in the driver’s seat of the truck he had driven to the stern of the hovercraft, and MacD and Linda were on either side of it. He couldn’t see Eddie.

“We’ve got four Qingdao hovercraft approaching fast from the rear,” Juan said. “Can you see them?”

“We’ve got an idea,” Eddie replied.

A guard in the lead Qingdao had a launcher for a rocket-propelled grenade on his shoulder. Linda and MacD took a few shots, but the driver of the hovercraft swerved to avoid them.

“They’ve got an RPG,” Juan said. “Whatever you’re planning, do it now.”

Eddie came into view and waved to the rest of them. Linc jumped out of the cab as the truck started to roll backward while the rest of them pushed. The truck fell off the lip of the car deck and flipped backward into the swamp.

“Bombs away,” Eddie said.

The Qingdaos easily went around the truck, and the guard with the RPG lined up for his shot. At the same time that he fired, the truck erupted in a massive explosion. It was too far behind the hovercrafts to destroy them, but it threw off the aim of the guard.

Instead of flying into the car deck, the RPG went high. At first, Juan thought it would miss them completely, but it struck the starboard rear propeller. The broken blades went flying into the sky.