Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

“No, and I can’t take over the one he’s controlling manually. I wouldn’t have the right setup here to maneuver the plane anyway. But it’s possible that I could reprogram the autopilot.”

“Do it. At their current closing speed, we’ve only got ten minutes until those drones are on top of Air Force Two.”

Maria Sandoval was escorted into the op center and her eyes went wide as she took in the high-tech command bridge.

“Who are you people?” she said in awe.

“We’re the good guys, Captain,” Juan said as he rose to greet her. “And I need your help. I can’t explain everything that’s going on right now, but it seems that your friend Admiral Ruiz is going to try to sink us and I need to know where she is. Do you know the captains of the cargo ships Maracaibo or Valera?”

“Not the Maracaibo,” she said, “but Eduardo Garcia is the master of the Valera. I’ve met him a few times while we were docked in Puerto Cabello. He’s a good captain, though he’s a bit of an odd character.”

“It’s very important that we speak to him. I’m going to pass you to Hali and he’s going to help you get in touch with Captain Garcia. What we have to ask him will be better coming from someone he knows.”

“I’ve got an incoming missile!” Linda called out.

“What? From what direction?”

“It came over Île de la Gonâve to the south. Ruiz’s launch ship must be on the other side of the island. Our radar couldn’t see anything until the missile passed over the island.”

Juan cursed under his breath. She was using the same tactic against him that he’d used against her with the Washington by putting the island between them. He couldn’t fire back with his own missile because he didn’t have a lock on the target while apparently she had a clear lock on the Oregon thanks to Kensit and Sentinel.

“Wepps! Get ready!”

Murph didn’t look up from his furious typing. “I’m kinda busy trying to save the VP.”

“Max, get on weapons.”

Max rushed over and took Murph’s usual spot at the weapons station. The missile was already on its supersonic final approach. He pushed the button to activate the Gatling gun.

Using the same technology as the Navy’s Phalanx close-in weapons system, the six-barreled gun spun up to its full speed and fired 20mm armor-piercing tungsten rounds that sounded like an industrial saw ripping through a redwood. The radar, housed in a dome above the gun and looking uncannily like R2-D2, attempted to lock onto the elusive target, but at such a high rate of speed it had trouble connecting.

Max kept it firing, and fired the Metal Storm gun as well, unleashing five hundred rounds in the blink of an eye. The wall of tungsten finally made contact eight hundred yards from the Oregon.

Most of the missile disintegrated and plunged into the sea, but a substantial portion tumbled on, propelled by its supersonic velocity. Metal fragments smashed into Oregon’s hull.

“Damage report,” Juan said.

Max consulted the exterior cameras. “No hull breach, but we’ve lost the Gatling gun’s radar in the impact. Reloading the Metal Storm.”

“Another missile on the way!” Linda said. “Two minutes to target.”

“I’m turning us one hundred and eighty degrees to bring our starboard Gatling gun to bear,” Juan said as he swung the Oregon about. “Be ready on the Exocet, Max.”

“We need a target first,” Max answered. “We could hit any vessel on the other side of the island if we don’t have the coordinates of the ship that’s firing.”

Juan looked at Maria, who stared back at him with a stunned expression, the phone headset to her ear.

All he said was, “Hurry, please.”

The captains of both the Maracaibo and the Valera were radioing desperate Maydays about a ship in their midst firing missiles as the second Klub rocketed over the island separating Ruiz from the Oregon. Ruiz saw, by her adversary’s impotence, that her plan to hire ships to sail next to the Reina Azul had the effect she’d intended. Cabrillo didn’t have the cojones to fire blindly back at her when there were two cargo vessels full of innocent crew members not a quarter mile to either side. Even with all that was at stake, he was too weak to risk sinking a noncombatant.

She watched the Oregon on the monitor feed from a camera planted on the other side of the eight-mile-wide island. Kensit had warned her that he would be too busy to provide real-time intel about the Oregon’s location, so in the middle of the night she’d sent two men to set up a camera with a high-powered transmitter on a remote beach on the opposite side of the island. When Cabrillo’s ship sailed into view on the only course it could have taken out of Bahia de Grand Pierre, she’d attacked.

As her launch team had cautioned her, the missile control was limited by the container’s positioning on the old cargo ship, so they could only be launched one at a time. Initially, she’d been furious about the restriction, but now she was rather enjoying seeing the Oregon flail away at the missiles. The high-tech ship wouldn’t be able to shoot them down indefinitely. One of them would get through.

“Do you have the escape boat ready for evacuation?” she asked the captain.

“Aye, Admiral,” he replied. “It’s tied up on the port side.”