“We saw her up and running this afternoon. Are the plants still in one piece?”
“I think they’re pretty much all here, ma’am. It’s hard to tell with some of the jack-leg patch jobs done on this thing.”
A muscle jumped in Amanda’s jaw. “Can you get her going?”
“I think so, ma’am. The injectors seem to work, and we got a charge of air for the starter. Uh, I’m just hoping this engine instrumentation is trashed, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because according to what I’m seeing on these gauges, we got no bunkerage. The fuel tanks read empty.”
The Oil Tanker Bajara 1020 Hours, Zone Time; September 8, 2007
“Go!”
As the sudden curtain of total darkness swept over the southern side of the harbor basin, the primary boarding force made its move on the stern quarter of the Bajara. There were lookouts and sentries posted aboard the tanker, but they had been using white visible-spectrum light as their perimeter defense. Suddenly deprived of it, they went blind.
The five assault boats slid in under the curved side of the ship. Featherweight titanium and Fiberglas boarding ladders had been assembled aboard each craft. Now the ladders swayed upward, the rubber-sheathed hooks at their upper ends silently fitting over the lip of the deck edge.
Quillain was the first man on the ladder from his boat. The ladder’s structure, seemingly fragile, yet strong enough to bear several times his weight, quivered unnervingly as he clambered swiftly upward to the tanker’s deck.
Yet not quite fast enough. A bewildered Union soldier peered over the rail almost at the head of Quillain’s ladder, looking down full into Quillain’s face. Through his night vision visor, Quillain saw the African’s eyes widen and his mouth open to yell.
The shots from the boat below were so well silenced that Quillain didn’t hear their firing. He only felt the shock waves generated by the flight of the bullets brushing the back of his neck. The Union soldier attempted his yell, but only a faint sodden gasp emerged. No man can shout with a .45 hardball round driven through each lung.
Quillain lunged up the last rung of the ladder. Grabbing the cable railing with one hand, his other went for the front of the Union sentry’s shirt. With an explosive heave, he launched the man outboard and over the side with enough force to clear the raider boat below.
The Bajara’s deckhouse lights flickered and came on again. Someone had gotten the landline disconnected and an auxiliary generator started. But it came too late to be of any use to her defenders. Like the buccaneers of old, the Marines were pouring over her rail.
Each squad and each fire team of each squad of the boarding platoon had its own specific objective or string of objectives. Dispersing outward, they began to fulfill them. The Foxmen cleared the tanker’s decks with a deft and coolly professional ruthlessness, the only audible noise being the pad of foam-soled assault boots and the occasional cough or flutter of a sound-suppressed firearm.
Quillain personally led the force targeting the tanker’s bridge, serving as point man for the headlong rush up the exterior superstructure ladderways. There hadn’t been enough of the sound-suppressed Heckler and Koch SOC pistols and H&K-5 submachine guns available to issue a silenced firearm to every member of the boarding party, and Quillain had passed on the chance to carry one. He had a quiet killer of his own he preferred to rely on.
With the coming of the short, lightweight assault rifle, the bayonet had almost disappeared from the scheme of things on the battlefield. However, the Mossberg 590 combat shotgun was the last good bayonet mount in U.S. service, and Stone Quillain was one of the last true aficionados of this ancient martial art. Honed to a razor’s edge and a needle point, an issue M-7 gleamed from the mounting lugs of his personal weapon.
Storming around the ladder stage on the second level of the deckhouse, Quillain found himself confronting a figure clad in Union army camouflage. Gaping at the Marine, the Union officer clawed for the pistol holster at his belt. Countering, Quillain exploded into the long-practiced moves of the ancient pikeman’s drill. Lunge! Twist! Extract!
The Union officer folded over, clutching at his pierced belly and retching blood. Reversing his weapon, Quillain stepped in, driving the edge of the Mossberg’s composite stock downward upon the juncture of spine and skull with surgical precision, shattering the first vertebra with the lethal and merciful vertical butt stroke. The dead man’s body refused to fall fast enough. Quillain bulldozed it aside and continued the race upward.
On the Bajara’s bridge, Captain Moustapha Ahmed recalled nervously that he had not knelt to Mecca his five times that day. Truth be told, he had not done so even once, and should the absolute factuality be demanded, he rarely did when he was aboard ship and out of sight of the mullahs. However, this night, he deeply regretted not accommodating the demands of his faith.
The bridge windscreens faced to the south, and intermittently the flare of a powerful explosion outlined the horizon beyond the port. American cruise missiles. Something not good to think of when one was sitting atop thousands of tons of highly inflammable petroleum.
Ahmed wished fervently he’d been able to unload his cargo this day. He wished even more fervently that he might get himself and his ship out of here. Most fervently of all, he wished that he had prayed. This was not a time or place to have Allah displeased with you.
The Union Special Forces commanding officer of the ship’s guard must have read Ahmed’s expression. He grinned at the Algerian skipper’s discomfort, sharing the smile with his lieutenant and the two sentries who also occupied the Bajara’s wheelhouse.
“What’s the matter, Captain Ahmed?” the African officer said. “The U.N. is putting on a little fireworks show in your honor. Don’t you appreciate it?”
“It is an honor I would avoid if I could,” the Algerian grunted back. “What’s to prevent them from attacking the harbor itself, and us?”
“Half of the Union army, Captain. But only half.”
The Special Forces officer grinned again. Then his face collapsed inward into a bloody mush and the back of his head exploded, spraying brain matter across the port side of the bridge. Ahmed heard a series of soft coughing sounds behind him and felt silent deadly things hiss past. The three remaining Union soldiers also twisted and writhed in a few steps of a grotesque and ugly dance before crumpling to the deck, scarlet patches blossoming on their uniforms.
Ahmed did not want to see what was behind him. Yet he could not keep from turning around.
A second group of solders had burst in from the starboard bridge wing, tall and bulky men with pale eyes and artificially darkened skin, each bearing a far more lethal-looking accumulation of war tools than any of the Union troops had possessed. A literal giant of a man stood at their head, a massive and exotic-looking weapon held ready in his hands, blood sheening its bayonet.
The giant looked deep into Ahmed’s eyes and scowled disapprovingly, like a god who had judged a sinner and who now was deciding upon the appropriate eternal punishment.
The time was wrong. He had neither prayer rug nor the true bearing to Mecca. Yet, as he clutched at the edge of the chart table for support and felt the hot urine trickling down his leg, Captain Moustapha Ahmed prayed with a fervor he did not know he possessed.
Belowdecks, other Algerians learned to pray as well. In the seamen’s quarters, the majority of the Bajara’s civilian crew had been lounging in their sour-sheeted bunks, idly complaining about the lack of shore leave, women, and justice in general.
Suddenly the passageway hatch crashed open. The Arabic seamen looked up and found themselves staring at two men with green faces.
One of the two stood directly in the hatchway, a hand grenade clenched in his fist, the safety lever held down but with the pin already drawn. His cold blue eyes swept the room, and he lifted the grenade a little high
er so that all in the compartment could see it. With great deliberation he shook his head, silently advising the Algerians not to try anything stupid. Beside him, the second Marine stood poised and ready to slam the watertight door in the face of any rush to escape the explosive results of an error in judgment.
Wisdom lived in the crew’s quarters of the Bajara that night. No one moved. No one even breathed.
Amidships on the tanker’s weather deck, two Union sentries stood watch at the head of the gangway. Maintaining an easy parade rest, they shifted their weight from leg to leg as their tour on post inched past. Beyond the peak of their efficiency curve as sentinels, their attention had started to drift, random trains of thought distracting them.
Curses at the rain. More curses at the line platoon that had the pier watch. Those bastards had the undeserved shelter of the dockside sheds. Concern over the continuing thunder of the Monrovia bombardment. More concerns over the way the war and the world were going. Thoughts of women. Thoughts of home.
Their daydreaming killed them.
Sergeant Tallman came up swiftly and noiselessly behind his man. The burly Marine NCO’s left arm whipped up and around the taller Union soldier’s throat, the bone of the forearm smashing the carotid artery, jugular vein, and windpipe. Tallman’s right arm came around in a lower arc, driving his K-Bar knife upward into the Union man’s belly and through the diaphragm, then savagely across from left to right in the killing slash.
Hot blood gushed across Tallman’s wrist and the Union soldier’s back arched in agony. Tallman tightened the lock across his throat, bottling up the death scream. The African’s rifle fell from his nerveless hands, and another camo-clad arm darted out of the shadows, catching it up before it could clatter to the deck.
The second sentry had simultaneously been taken out in the same quiet and savagely effective manner, and the bodies of both Union men collapsed back onto the deck. Hastily, Tallman and another Marine yanked off their K-Pot helmets and donned the uniform caps of the two dead soldiers. Catching up the Union-issue FALN rifles as well, the two Marines resumed the sentry stations at the head of the gang way, the distinctive silhouette of the headgear and the long barreled rifles adequate to indicate “friend” in the misty darkness of the night. The remainder of the Marine squad fanned out on either side of the gangway, keeping low along the railing.
The guard had been relieved.
“Gangway secure.”
“Forecastle secure.”
“Crew’s quarters secure.”
“Engine room all secure.”
One by one the reports came whispering in over the tactical circuit, the little PRC communicators having been frequency set to work even through the steel of the tanker’s hull.
And not a single loud round’s been fired yet, Quillain mentally rejoiced. Hallelujah and holy shit! Come on, Lord, keep it comin’!
The paralytic tanker captain had been carried down to the main cabin to join the rest of his officers under guard, and the bodies of the dead Union troopers had been dumped out onto the bridge wing. Alone in the wheelhouse, Quillain was the master of all he surveyed. At least for the moment.
“Belowdeck teams,” he called. Any sign of those kids yet?”
“No sign.”
“Negatory, Skipper.”
“Negative.”
“Roger that, all teams. Maintain search.” Wouldn’t it be fine if they’d all just been sent home to Momma? Better not expect it, though. God’s been obliging so far, but even he’s got to have his limits.
Quillain switched radios and went over to the command circuit. “Strongbow to Palace. Primary objective is secured. Situation nominal. Ready to receive Moonshade. I repeat, ready to receive Moonshade.”
“Acknowledged, Strongbow. Moonshade has secured secondary. Operation proceeding.”
Harbor Tug Union Banner 0131 Hours, Zone Time; September 8, 2007
“Palace to Moonshade. Strongbow reports primary secured. Strongbow standing by.”
“Roger, Palace. Moonshade moving out. I say again, Moonshade moving out.”
Amanda lifted her hand from the radio controller and glanced down at the engine-room interphone. What if those fuel gauges weren’t broken? Either way, there wasn’t anything that could be done about it now. She picked up the interphone and buzzed the engine room.
“Smith. Start engines and make ready to answer bells.”
Gripping the cord-wrapped wheel, she waited.
After a few moments, the hiss of a diesel air starter came from belowdecks, followed by the clanking rumble of a cold plant turning over, and finally, after a heart-stopping pause, the burbling bark of an ignition. A burst of sparks issued from one of the narrow twin stacks aft of the wheelhouse and the big medium-speed marine diesel bellowed to life, firing on all ten of its cylinders. A few moments later, its partner cranked over and joined in the hammering iron chorus.
The wheelhouse interphone rasped. “Those orangutans turned out to be pretty fair engineers, Captain. You got power and the bridge engine controls are engaged. You’d better let her warm up a second, though.”
“Understood, Smith.”
Amanda socked the phone back into its cradle. She’d hung her night-vision visor around her neck, switched on and ready, and now she lifted it over her eyes. The dark world outside the wheelhouse snapped into green-tinted light. The Marines of the fire team became visible, crouching down along the tug’s deck railing. So did the unconscious tarp-covered forms of the tug’s crew on the float and the next set of Union sentries down at the midpoint of the pier. Amanda could see them well enough to note they were looking in the tug’s direction.
They couldn’t afford to wait for any more of a warm-up. “On deck,” she spoke into the tactical radio. “Cast off all lines.”
The Marines sprang to the unaccustomed task. With a final look fore and aft, Amanda popped the tug’s propeller controls into reverse and cracked the throttles wider. The tug shivered as her propellers cut water. Slowly she started to drift astern, the pier pilings edging past. There was a squeal and a thump as the tug cleared the float dolphins, and then they were clear and backing into the open harbor.
Gauging the clearance, Amanda spun the wheel hard over, kicking the stern around. She might be battered and maltreated, but the tug still answered her helm crisply and the engines seemed to be pulling strongly. Dear Lord, let there just be a few gallons in the tanks. That’s all I need.
Amanda shifted the propeller controls to forward and opened the throttles to half ahead, aligning the bow with the deckhouse lights of the Bajara, the sole constellation glowing in the darkness of the harbor. With that done, she reached over to the auxiliary panel and closed a switch.
“Captain,” an urgent call sounded on the tac circuit. “The running lights just came on!”
“I know, Sergeant. I just turned them on,” she replied into the lip mike. “That’s what the tug’s real skipper would do if he’d been called out on a routine job. And we want to keep this all routine for just as long as we can.”
Waypoint Sun Village 0132 Hours, Zone Time; September 8, 2007
The firing cell thumped back flush with the Queen of the West’s weather deck.
“All rounds expended,” Snowy reported. “All missions launched.”
“Right.” Steamer nodded. He rocked the swimmer throttles forward and spoke into his headset mike. “Royalty to Palace. Fire missions complete. Proceeding to Waypoint Blue Mountain. Royalty to squadron. Taking departure now.”
The acknowledgments flowed back as the seafighter gained silent way, edging closer to Port Monrovia’s harbor mouth.
“Snow, what’s on tactical? Where’s that Union squadron?”
“They’re still out there sweeping for the Santana,” she replied. “I don’t think they caught the recall order yet. I think our j
ammers have ’em cut off.”
“Yeah. Let’s just hope they keep right on going.”
“Yeah … Hey, Steamer, what happens when they do get the word? What if we get caught inside when we go for the pickup?”
“Then I suspect, Snow, that there will be one hell of a fight on the way out.”
Footsteps clattered up the ladderway and Scrounger Caitlin stuck her head up into the cockpit. “Eyeball verification on the launching cell, Skipper. Fully retracted and secured.”
“Good deal, Scrounge. How’s everybody down in the hull?”
“Hangin’ in,” the turbine tech replied. “How’s the mission coming?”
“By the numbers so far, but I think things are going to blow pretty quick. We’re moving in to the recovery point. Tell everyone to look alive.”
“Yeah … yes, sir.”
Snowy twisted in her harness and looked aft at the turbine tech. “Hey, Scrounge, you okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m fine.”
Sandra Caitlin hastily dropped back down the ladder. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about what she felt like just at the moment. She recalled what had happened the last time she’d tried to speak to someone about this vague and formless uneasiness creeping into her guts. Pausing at the base of the ladder, she gripped the handrails, trying to control the protracted shudder that rippled through her body.
Aboard the Tanker Bajara 0135 Hours, Zone Time; September 8, 2007
“Strongbow, Strongbow, do you copy on this circuit?”
The familiar husky alto came through faintly on Quillain’s tactical set. “Roger that, Moonshade, I got you.”
“We are under way and inbound. What’s the situation there?”
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