Battleship Boys

by Paul Lally

  “I’d much rather slash your wrists, fuckhead” he growls. “But orders are orders.”

  Vargas’ plastic “handcuffs” don’t stand a chance. With one measured slash, he’s finally free.

  While he massages his rubbed-raw wrists, Gunny covers up his Hawaiian shirt with the dark blue ferry crew jumpsuit, then takes up residence beside the prisoner. He folds his hands and sits there; no longer a vigilant guardian, now a patient USMC Buddha waiting for enlightenment.

  While all this is taking place, Admiral Lewis monitors the deck crew slowly lowering the launch to the water, while drumming his fingers on the railing, waiting to speak to the idiots back in Florida, dragging their feet on a weapons authorization.

  The Falcon V radio’s software-enhanced, multi-channel capability doesn’t disappoint, when a voice says loud and clear, “General Richardson, SOCOM commanding. With whom am I speaking on this secure channel?”

  “Clark Bar! When the hell did you get your fourth star?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “One of the few guys still left in the world who’s earned the right to use your nickname, that’s who.”

  “JJ! That really you?”

  “In the flesh and up shit’s creek without a paddle, my friend. You following this clusterfuck?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “So, what’s the hold up with those Reapers?”

  A brief pause. “Um...to be honest?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “They’re shared assets. The CIA’s in the middle of a mission and we can’t pry them loose for at least two more hours. What’s the latest? Do you have that kind of loiter time?”

  The launch settles onto the water and CW disconnects the davit ropes.

  “Estimating twenty minutes, tops.”

  Another pause. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Are those birds on a strike mission?”

  “Not yet...final recon, then weapons hot—providing the target’s confirmed.”

  “Ours sure as hell is confirmed—what’s their load out?”

  “Hellfires on one, JDAMs on the other.”

  “Do what you can, Clark Bar. In the meantime, patch me through to the White House. We’ve got Vice President Jensen’s kid on this boat, alive and well. But I can’t guarantee that’s going to last forever. Not with machine guns aimed at us.”

  No pause this time. “I understand your situation, JJ but...”

  “But what?”

  “You know I can’t do something like that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both. Besides.....”

  “Besides what?”

  The general sighs “JJ, listen up... You’ve been out of the game for quite a while. And I’m glad as hell you’ve got hold of the reins again. But things have changed, intel-wise since you were active duty. Let me just say that the White House is fully briefed on the situation, top to bottom.”

  “The current one? The one with us out here on the ocean with a bunch of cartel assholes with machine guns wanting to kill a bunch of veterans. That one?”

  “Affirmative. A Global Hawk’s is transmitting a live feed to the Situation Room—and to us.”

  “Real time? Watching us right now?”

  “Of course. That’s why—"

  “Why what?”

  General Richardson’s voice stiffens into politico-speak. “The vice-president is fully aware her son is in harm’s way. She has complete faith in you and your team’s ability to do your very best to succeed in your assigned mission.”

  Admiral Lewis lets this sink into his brain. Then he says, “I know how you got that fourth star, Clark Bar. You kissed every ass in sight until they pinned it on your shoulder.”

  “Wait a second—”

  “But you never kissed my ass. When I get back—if I get back—I’m going to give you a real-time taste—Mainiac OUT.”

  JJ grits his teeth and feels his blood pressure soaring as the launch begins its slow passage across the water to Muñoz’s cigarette boat. Vargas sits in the back like that Washington Crossing the Delaware painting, supremely confident he’s outfoxed them all.

  The very thought of a mass murderer getting away with murder sends JJ’s blood pressure even higher.

  He raises Major Williston on the radio and says, “Plan C is out the window.”

  After the admiral clues him in on SOCOM’s negative response, CW says, “No surprise there, sir. ‘Look but don’t touch.”

  “Affirmative. Looks like we’re on our own.”

  “That’s okay. The good guys always win.”

  “In the movies, maybe. But this is real life—including real bullets.”

  Cigarette Boat #2 armed with the .50 caliber machine gun maintains its threatening position off the starboard bow, just out of range of the Delta Force’s weapon. The slightest retaliatory move by CW’s guys will result in the bad guys’ M2 Browning ripping open the ferry’s aluminum hull bow to stern and massacring everyone inside—including JJ before they’re done—but the admiral most likely from the sniper lying prone on the fo’c’sle of Cigarette Boat #3 hove to about fifty yards abeam of the ferry.

  Muñoz has JJ over a barrel, SOCOM’s holding him there, pants down, ready for a White House screw-job. Meanwhile, Miguel Vargas is getting away with murder.

  He sees no way out.

  Until he turns and sees the Rock.

  “Fuck plan B, here comes plan Z.”

  Admiral Lewis’s voice is crisp and confident sounding in Stanley’s headphones. “Standby for action, port side. Guns ready?”

  “Quads ready, SIR!”

  “Direct fire, target bearing nine-zero degrees, just forward of the ferry. Red and white. Low in the water. Pylon-mounted machine gun mounted in stern. Can you see it?”

  Stanley’s binoculars steady on the pencil-thin speedboat gently rising and falling as it maintains position. “Target acquired.”

  “On my command, open fire. Continuous.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Any suggestions? This quad’s your baby.”

  “Walk in ranging rounds in at first. Use water splash to adjust elevation and bearing. But be damned quick about it.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “If you can take out that machine gun, we can start counter-fire.”

  “One dead gun and guy, coming up.”

  Stanley spins around in his steel seat. “Listen up. Once we start, it’s going to be too loud to talk, so here’s the plan: whatever you do with the rest of your life is your business and I wish you the best. But for the next few minutes, Curcio and McAfee, you need to do one thing and one thing only. Never EVER stop feeding me those clips—you got plenty extras on the deck? You won’t have time to go looking for them.”

  They nod in unison, each with a full clip in their arms and practically knee-deep in stacked clips.

  Stanly turns to a wide-eyed Airman Howe sitting in the seat across from him.

  “You won’t be able to hear me once we start firing, so watch my hands like you’ve never watched them before. The minute we start, that fancy-ass cigarette boat will try to make a getaway. Odds are he’ll duck behind the ferry. If so, we’ll swing to port and meet him there when he pops out for a peek.”

  Howe’s look of alarm makes Stanley smile.

  “This ain’t my first day on a ship, kid. You spin that training wheel so fast it’s a blur, point this thing in the right direction, stop when I say stop, and I’ll lay those rounds right on the money. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Great. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Stanley swings around and cranes his neck to look up at the Rock’s docking bridge where Captain Koga observes the unfolding drama with his binoculars. Directly below him in the navigation bridge, the helmsman maneuvers the Azipods in such a way to keep the Rock steady on station, relative to the ferry. Nearly impossible to keep a 68,000-ton battleship stationary with conventional screw drive, her thruster pods make it look eas
y. With a twist of the joystick and pushing a few buttons, the Rock can change from immobility to being underway less than sixty seconds.

  Koga and Stanley stare at each other for a brief moment. Then the captain raises his hand in a respectful salute to Stanley and his team.

  Stanley returns the honor and smiles “Never thought the day would come when I’d salute a Jap captain. Hells bells, I fought his grandparents in the Big Two, know what I mean?”

  The others can’t appreciate the irony. The Second World War is buried in the pages of history books, or floating around somewhere in cyberspace, a “click” away on the computer. Time marches on, so do grievances. A good thing too, in this case, because one man’s war has become another’s salvation.

  Stanley claps his hands together. “Okay folks, it’s PARTY time!”

  He directs Curcio and McAfee to take up their positions, then leans forward and peers through the gunsight to gauge the target. After a few seconds, he raises his right hand, thumb extended and gestures while speaking to his trainer.

  “Starboard...keep going...keep going... HOLD it! Target in sight.... C’mon JJ, let’s raise some HELL!”

  By Iván’s calculation, the launch is less than fifty yards from their cigarette boat. Muñoz leans against the gunwale, binoculars in one hand, pistol in the other.

  How easy it would be to tip his ass into the ocean, Iván thinks. But then thinks better of it. Death is the answer here, not dunking. And not just the cartel’s security chief.

  The bobbing launch draws closer and closer.

  Muñoz takes a sharp breath, turns to Iván, his eyes wide with alarm. “Ellos no son Mexicanos!”

  “Of course they aren’t, you idiot. They’re gringos dressed up like crewmen. I could have told you that long ago.”

  “To deceive us!”

  “Wrong. They couldn’t leave the transfer to the ferry crew. But don’t worry, they’re unarmed. You’ve got them dead to rights with those two other boats. They don’t dare risk a confrontation. If you want Vargas, put your damn gun down—better yet, hand it over. You need to get the golden boy back on board.”

  Muñoz mentally debates Ivan’s argument and comes to a conclusion that deepens his frown.

  “You’d better be sure.”

  “I am.”

  He hands over his pistol. “Cover me.”

  “My pleasure.”

  The launch is almost alongside. Muñoz’s gun feels warm in Ivan’s hand. Soon its barrel will be a lot hotter. But not yet. He tucks it into his waistband, cups his hands and shouts to the prisoner sitting upright in the approaching boat, “Miguel, amigo, mucho tempo sin verto!”

  Vargas looks up, holds his hand to his forehead to block the sun’s glare, recognizes Ivan’s voice, smiles, and raises his arm high in the air and brandishes his middle finger in a return “screw-you-bro” happy salute.

  The last thing Sergeant Nuell wants to see is Vargas get away with murder. That’s the truth of the matter, and the final sad result of a mission that went good until it went bad.

  As Iván lends a hand to help Miguel board the cigarette boat, Nuell instinctively locks eyes with Muñoz: two Alpha wolves catching sight of each other in forbidden territory—no frowns, no tough-guy looks between them. None of that Hollywood action films nonsense.

  When equal forces meet on the playing field a “knowing” passes instantaneously between them before anything else happens. A silent salute? That’s one way to think of it. An acknowledgement of a calm before a terrible storm? That too. But the time it takes to describe the meeting of these two equally dangerous opponents takes a lot longer than the microsecond during which that “look” actually happens.

  And it does.

  Muñoz nods, Nuell lowers his head fractionally, while he and the two other men remain seated in the launch, hands visible at all times. The only thing keeping the two vessels together is a line taken around a midships cleat on the cigarette boat. The instant Vargas is seated, Muñoz frees the line with a practiced flick of his wrist.

  “Cast off,” CW says.

  Gunny Nuell tries not to growl, but he can’t help it any more than a bear can’t help it when his dinner escapes. And make no mistake, Nuell likes his “meals” on time and calorie rich.

  To witness it seated in the aft section of the enemy’s boat, safe and sound and out of reach is almost more than he can stand. He calculates the risk of ignoring Major Williston and leaping into the boat and burying his Glauca B1 knife into Vargas’s heart. It wouldn’t take much; less than five seconds, providing he doesn’t lose his footing.

  That other guy’s armed, so death would be pretty much the end result for this “bear,” not the meal. So... in the boat Sergeant Nuell sits, stewing and growling as the Delta force helmsman reverses gears, swings the bow back toward the ferry and heads for it.

  “Step on the gas, will you?” CW says. “Things are about to get mighty interesting.”

  The good thing about loud noises is that your eardrums get used to them fairly fast. And that’s a good thing, too, because when Admiral Lewis orders, “Commence firing, continuous,” Stanley stabs the firing pedal of the 40-millimeter and the CRACK of the first round startles everybody out of their skin—including Stanley.

  But ever the gun captain, he keeps his foot firmly on the firing pedal as the back-and-forth action of the twin Bofors cannons pump round after round across the water in a nearly flat trajectory.

  Thanks to Chef Curcio and Margaret McAfee feeding clip after clip into the loading rack, the BAM-BAM-BAM of the departing rounds soon translates into a march of vertical splashes in the distant water that stitch closer and closer to cigarette boat #2. Reddish-gold tracer round streaks help Stanley refine his aim.

  A plume of exhaust rises over the cigarette boat as the driver starts the powerful engines to escape certain death and take refuge behind the ferry, where it will most likely gain speed and emerge near the stern like a horizontal skyrocket.

  “Starting to go!” he suddenly shouts. “Traverse port, port, PORT!”

  As the gun swings, Stanley says to himself, “Lead the target, lead the target, lead it, LEAD it” while spinning the elevation wheel ever so slightly to estimate the fall of the rounds that will soon be landing at a greater distance.

  “Ready to feed, ready.......touch more port traverse... HOLD it....and when I say swing, you SWING...”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Stanley squints into the gun ring, blinks gunk from his rheumy eyes to focus more clearly, then says softly, “Get ready to go to God.”

  He stomps the firing pedal and the Bofors does what it does best: firing round after round that land at least forty yards astern of the ferry, their vertical splashes doing no more damage than killing fish—at least that’s what it seems to the uninitiated, because there’s no target in sight.

  But for those of you familiar with the principles of gunnery, then you know that based on the estimated speed of the boat, the angle of deflection, and wind direction, Stanley’s expertly leading the—as yet unseen—target with admirable skill.

  Seconds later, a blur of red and white as the long and lean cigarette boat BLASTS into view from behind the ferry, going at least forty knots and accelerating fast. The 40mm shells keep landing as the Bofors does what its Swedish designers dreamed it could do against a determined enemy back in the 1903s. And here we are today, almost 100 years later, witnessing this reliable weapon of war still doing its one and only job: stopping the bad guys.

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM

  Four consecutive splashes in the water well in advance of the approaching speedboat are the last thing the cartel guys must have seen, because the next two 40mm rounds raise a tower of white water into which the cigarette boat enters....then an orange-red flash.... followed by an explosive BOOM.

  When the waters subside, there’s nothing left but choppy ocean waters filled with bits and pieces of what once upon a time was a threat to peace on earth but is no longer.

 
Gunny Nuell WHOOPS with delight at the sight of the vaporized cigarette boat and its occupants on their way to meet their Maker. Once there, it won’t be there long before they head straight to hell. Not that Nuell’s expects to get inside those pearly gates either. He’s raised enough hell on earth to deserve nothing but hellfire in the afterlife.

  But that’s then. Not now. The cigarette boat’s gone to glory and Major Williston’s smiling like he knew it was going to happen all along.

  “You knew, sir. C’mon, ‘fess up.”

  CW shrugs. “The boss figured it was time for us to be the judge because the jury can’t make up its Goddamned mind. I concurred wholeheartedly.”

  “By ‘boss’ you mean the admiral.”

  “None other.”

  CW points in the direction of the ferry, getting closer and closer. “The old man may be old, but by God, he knows when all else fails, forty-millimeter guns can make justice prevail.”

  Gunny points to the distant speedboat. “What about the assholes over there with Vargas in their lap?”

  CW points to the Rock and smiles. “Admiral Lewis’s court is still in session.”

  At this distance, Muñoz’s reaction can’t be distinguished, but for sure he just witnessed what Stanley and his Bofors gun crew just did to his much-vaunted machine-gun boat.

  When bad guys go to the movies, they root for the good guys.

  It’s true.

  Up until the moment that cigarette boat disappeared in an explosion, Muñoz was thoroughly convinced his master plan against Vargas’s captors was not only righteous, but it was also well-intended—in other words, “good.”

  He’s even more convinced now because the bad guys just killed some of his best men. What’s worse, the ones who ferried Vargas over here are hauling ass back to the ferry, well out of pistol range.

  He screams on the radio to the remaining cigarette boat, even while smoke’s still hanging in the air from the explosion of its sister boat. “Open fire on the bridge!”

  Within seconds, a round crashes through the Rock’s wheelhouse window.