“Al?”
“Here.”
“Do you see the ship?”
“Like standing on railroad tracks inside a tunnel watching an express train come at you.”
“She's slowing down through the bend. We'll get one chance and one chance only before she picks up speed again.”
“Just in time for the buffet, I hope,” he said, still hungry after not eating since breakfast.
“I'm going to make a left turn and land on the open deck behind the aft runnel.”
“Right behind you,” Giordino said laconically. “Mind the ventilators and don't forget to step aside for me.”
Giordino's resolution conveyed the loyalty he felt toward his best friend. That he would have accompanied Pitt into the deepest reaches of hell went without saying. They acted as one, almost as if each read the other's mind. From now until they came down on the deck of the United States, no more conversation would pass between them. It wasn't necessary.
Not requiring power to land, Pitt and Giordino hit the kill switches to their little motors to cut off all sound of their final approach. Pitt set up for his circular course and firmly pulled on the left toggle in preparation for a sweeping hook turn. Under their canopies, like a pair of black flying reptiles out of the Mesozoic era about to attack a galloping Sphinx, they swung over the east levee and then made a tight corkscrew turn toward the approaching ship, timing their descent to come from astern for their landing, much like a hobo running from a field onto a railroad track to catch the last freight car of a train.
No gunfire erupted from the ship. No shells reached up and shredded their canopies. They were coming in unseen, undetected and unheard by the armed men defending the ship. With the helicopters down, the Chinese fighting force was no longer focusing on what it thought was an empty sky.
As the deck with its two rows of low ventilators came into view behind the huge funnel, Pitt expertly adjusted and buried both toggles, causing his canopy to stall as he gradually flared down in the clear space between the ventilators. His landing gear—his legs and feet—lightly touched down on the surface of the deck as his lifeless canopy collapsed with the barest of whispers behind him. Not waiting to congratulate himself for landing uninjured, he quickly pulled the canopy and caged motor off to one side. Three seconds later, Giordino dropped out of the sky and made a picture-perfect landing less than six feet away.
“Is this where one of us is supposed to say, 'So far, so good'?” said Giordino softly as he released his harness and engine pack.
“No gunshot holes and no broken bones,” Pitt whispered. “Who could ask for anything more?”
They moved into the shadow of the funnel and, while Giordino searched the darkness for signs of life, Pitt set a new frequency on his helmet radio and hailed Rudi Gunn, who was with the sheriff's deputies and a team of Army demolition experts on the highway above the Mystic Canal.
“Rudi, this is Pitt. Do you read me?”
Before a reply came back, he stiffened as a blast from the Aserma Bulldog intermingled with the staccato fire of an automatic rifle. He spun around and saw Giordino crouched on one knee, aiming the shotgun at an unseen target on the aft end of the deck.
“The natives aren't at all friendly,” Giordino said with glacial calm. “One of them must have heard our motors, and came to investigate.”
“Rudi, please answer,” Pitt said, an urgent tone in his voice. “Dammit, Rudi, talk to me.”
“I hear you, Dirk.” Gunn's voice came resonant and precise through the earphones inside Pitt's helmet. “Are you on the ship?”
Gunn's words ended just as Giordino unleashed another two rounds from his shotgun. “It's getting a bit warm,” he said. “I don't think we should hang around.”
“On board, safe and sound for the moment,” Pitt answered Gunn.
“Is that gunfire?” the unmistakable voice of Admiral San-decker came over the radio.
“Al is celebrating the Fourth of July early. Did you find and cut the detonators on the explosives?”
“Bad news on this end,” replied Sandecker soberly. “The army used a small charge to blow the doors to the tunnel at the end of the canal. We gained entrance and found an empty chamber.”
“You've lost me, Admiral.”
“I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but there are no explosives. If Qin Shang means to blast a hole in the levee, it's not anywhere around here.”
THERE WAS FAR MORE LIGHT ON THE HIGHWAY LEVEE ABOVE the Mystic Canal. Portable floodlights and flashing red and blue lights lit up the river and surrounding countryside. Eight Army vehicles in their camouflage paint schemes mingled with a dozen sheriff's cars from Iberville Parish. Highway barricades had north and southbound traffic backed up for nearly a mile.
The group of men standing beside an Army command vehicle wore expressions of grave concern. Admiral Sandecker, Rudi Gunn, Sheriff Louis Marchand of Iberville Parish and General Olson looked like men who had wandered into a maze with no exit. General Olson was especially exasperated.
“A fool's errand,” he snarled angrily. After being informed his helicopters were shot down and a dozen of his men feared dead, he no longer put up a cocky front. “We were sent on a fool's errand. All this talk about blowing up the levee is a myth. We're dealing with a gang of international terrorists. That's our real problem.”
“I'm forced to agree with the general,” said Sheriff Marchand. No redneck, this man. He was trim and smartly dressed in a tailored uniform. He was polished, urbane and extremely street-smart. “The plan to blow up the levee to divert the river seems most implausible. The terrorists who stole the United States have a different goal in mind.”
“They are not terrorists in the usual sense,” said Sandecker. “We know for a fact who is behind the operation, and they did not steal the ship. This is an incredibly complex and well-financed operation to divert the flow of the Mississippi past the port of Sungari.”
“Sounds like some kind of fantastic dream,” retorted the sheriff.
“A nightmare,” Sandecker said flatly. He looked at Marchand. “What's been done about evacuating residents from the Atchafalaya Valley?”
“Every sheriff's department and all military personnel are alerting the farms, towns and neighborhoods to the possible flood and ordering them to go to higher ground,” replied the sheriff. “If there is a threat to lives, we hope to keep casualties to a minimum.”
“Most residents will never get the word in time,” Sandecker said seriously. “When that levee splits apart, every morgue between here and the Texas border will be working overtime.”
“If your conclusion is correct,” said Marchand, “and I pray to God you and Commander Gunn are wrong, we're already too late to conduct a search for explosives up and down the river before the ship arrives some time in the next hour—”
“Make that fifteen minutes,” interrupted Sandecker.
“The United States will never reach here,” Olson said emphatically. He paused to glance at his watch. “My battle group of national guardsmen under the able command of Colonel Bob Turner, a decorated veteran of the Gulf War, should be in place and ready to fire from the levee at point-blank range any minute.”
“You might as well send bees after a grizzly bear,” snorted Sandecker. “From the time she passes in front of your fire-power until she passes out of sight around the next bend your men will have no more than eight or ten minutes. As a Navy man, I can tell you that fifty guns won't stop a ship the size of the United States in that length of time.”
“Our high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds will make short work of her,” persisted Olson.
“The liner is no battleship and carries no armor, sir. The superstructure is not steel but aluminum. Your armorpenetrating shells will dart through one side and out the other without detonating, unless a lucky shot strikes a support beam. You'd be far better off firing fragmentation shells.”
“Should the ship survive the Army's blitz,” said Marchand, “matters
little. The bridge at Baton Rouge was designed and built low specifically to prevent oceangoing ships from continuing any farther up the Mississippi. The United States will have to stop or destroy herself.”
“You people still don't get it,” Sandecker said in frustration. “That ship is rated at over forty thousand tons. It will go through your bridge like an enraged elephant through a greenhouse.”
“The United States will never reach Baton Rouge,” Gunn maintained. “Where we stand is exactly where Qin Shang intends to blow the levee and scuttle the ship as a diversionary dam.”
“Then where are the explosives?” asked Olson sarcastically.
“If what you say is true, gentlemen,” said Marchand slowly, “why not simply ram the liner through the levee. Wouldn't it produce an opening with the same result as explosives?”
Sandecker shook his head. “It may breach the levee, Sheriff, but it would also plug its own hole.”
The admiral had no sooner finished speaking than the sound of cannonfire began thundering a few short miles to the south. The highway quaked as the tank's guns roared out in unison, their flashes lighting up the horizon. Every man on the highway stopped and stared wordlessly downriver. The younger ones, not having served during a war, had never heard a cannon barrage before and stood enthralled. General Oskar Olson's eyes gleamed like a man looking at a beautiful woman.
“My men have opened up on her,” he exclaimed excitedly. “Now we'll see what concentrated firepower at point-blank range can do.”
A sergeant came rushing out of the command truck, snapped to attention in front of General Olson and saluted. “Sir, the troops and deputies manning the north highway barricade report that a pair of tractor trailers have crashed through at a high rate of speed and are heading this way.”
They all spontaneously turned and stared north, seeing two large trucks speeding side by side down the southbound lanes of the highway, the sheriff patrol cars giving chase with sirens and flashing lights. A patrol car cut in front of one of the trucks and slowed in an attempt to pull it to a stop on the road shoulder, but the truck driver deliberately swerved into the patrol car and struck it in the rear, sending it spinning wildly off the highway.
“The idiot!” Marchand snapped. “He's going to jail for that.”
Only Sandecker instantly recognized the threat. “Clear the road!” he shouted to Marchand and Olson. “For God's sake clear the road.”
Then Gunn knew. “The explosives are in those trucks!” he yelled.
Olson stood shock-still in uncomprehending confusion. His first reaction, his instantaneous conclusion, was that both Sandecker and Gunn had gone mad. Not Marchand. He responded without hesitation and began ordering his deputies to evacuate the area. Finally, Olson came out of his trance and shouted orders to his subordinates to get all men and vehicles a safe distance away.
Crowded as the highway might have been, guardsmen and deputies scattered to their cars and trucks and accelerated away, leaving the stretch of road totally empty within sixty seconds. Their response was as immediate as it was instinctive once they became aware of the danger. The trucks could be seen clearly now as they sped closer. They were semitrucks and trailers, big eighteen-wheelers capable of carrying a load weighing over eighty thousand pounds. No markings or advertising was painted on their sides. They came on seemingly unstoppable, their drivers hunched over the steering wheels, acting as though they were bent on suicide.
Their intentions became unmistakable as they skidded to a stop adjacent to the Mystic Canal, one of them jackknifing across the center strip dividing the highway. Unseen and unnoticed during the bedlam, a helicopter appeared out of the darkness and dropped between the trucks. The drivers leaped from their cabs, ran to the aircraft and scrambled inside. Almost before the last driver's feet had left the ground, the helicopter's pilot lifted the craft into the sky, whipped it on a nearly ninety-degree bank and disappeared into the night toward the Atchafalaya River to the west.
As they raced south in the backseat of Sheriff Marchand's patrol car, Sandecker and Gunn twisted around and stared back through the rear window. Behind the wheel, Marchand kept darting his eyes from the highway and the vehicles speeding around him into the sideview mirror. “If only the Army's demolition men could have had time to defuse the explosives.”
“It would have taken them an hour just to find and figure out the detonating mechanism,” said Gunn.
“They won't blow the levee just yet,” Sandecker said quietly. “Not before the United States arrives.”
“The admiral is right,” Gunn agreed. “If the levee is breached before the United States can be angled across the channel to divert the water, enough of the Mississippi's flow will gush into the canal to leave the liner with her keel in the mud.”
“There is still a slight chance,” said Sandecker. He tapped Marchand on the shoulder. “Can you raise General Olson on your radio?”
“I can if he's listening,” replied the sheriff. He reached for the microphone and began asking for Olson to respond. After repeating the request several times, a voice answered. “Corporal Welch in the command truck. I read you, Sheriff. I'll patch in the general for you.”
There was a pause punctuated by static, and then Olson answered. “Sheriff, what do you want? I'm busy getting battle reports from my tanks.”
“One moment, sir, for Admiral Sandecker.”
Sandecker leaned over the front seat and took the microphone. “General, do you have any aircraft in the air?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I believe they intend to set off the explosives by radio from the helicopter that snatched the drivers.”
Olson's voice suddenly sounded old and very tired. “Sorry, Admiral, the only aircraft I had at my immediate command were two helicopters. And now they and the men inside are gone.”
“You can't call up any jets from the nearest Air Force base?”
“I can try,” Olson replied solemnly, “but there is no guarantee they could scramble and get here in time.”
“I understand, thank you.”
“Not to worry, Admiral,” Olson said, his self-assurance all but gone. “She won't get past my tanks.” But this time around he didn't sound entirely as if he meant it.
The gunfire downriver came like a death knell as the United
States presented her broadside to the gunners inside the tanks. What General Olson did not yet know was that it wasn't a one-sided battle.
Sandecker passed the microphone back to Marchand and sagged into the rear seat, anxiety and defeat etched in his eyes. “That bastard Qin Shang has outsmarted us all, and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it except stand by helplessly and watch a lot of people die.”
“And let us not forget Dirk and Al,” he said grimly. “They must be taking it from the Chinese as well as Olson's tanks and howitzers.”
“God help them,” Sandecker murmured. “God help everybody who lives on or near the Atchafalaya River if the United States comes through the chaos.”
THE UNITED STATES did not reel, she barely quivered as the guns on the turrets of the six tanks opened up on her, their flashes lighting up the sky. At less than two hundred yards it was impossible to miss. As if by witchcraft, black, jagged holes appeared in the funnels and upper decks that once housed the cocktail lounges, cinemas and libraries. As Admiral Sandecker had predicted, every round in the first salvo from the tanks' 120-millimeter guns was ineffective. The armor-penetrating rounds passed through the ship's aluminum bulkheads as if they were made of cardboard, buried themselves in the marshlands on the other side of the west-bank levee and exploded harmlessly. The 106-millimeter mortar rounds fired from the launchers of the M125 carriers arched high into the sky and rained down on the exposed decks, gouging craters in the decks below but causing little serious damage. The tried-and-true 155-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation shells that spat from the Paladin self-propelled howitzers were a different story. Their fire battered the superliner unme
rcifully, causing significant destruction but none that affected her vital machinery deep within the bowels of her hull.
One shell plowed into what had been the main dining room in the center of the hull and burst, shattering the bulkheads and the old stairway. The second exploded against the base of the foremast and toppled it over the side. The great ship shook off the onslaught. And then it was the turn of the Chinese weapons team of professional fighters who were geared to put up a tactical confrontation despite the odds. The battle was not about to be one-sided. There would be no turning the cheek after the first slap.
Their missile launchers, though armed for surface-to-air and not antitank, lashed out. One struck the lead tank without penetrating its armor but burst against the barrel of the 120-millimeter gun, effectively putting it out of action. It also killed the tank commander, who was standing in the hatch observing the results of the barrage and who never expected return fire. Another projectile struck the circular opening in the roof of the mortar carrier, killing two men, wounding three and setting the vehicle on fire.
Colonel Robert Turner, directing the fire from within his XM4 command-and-control vehicle, was slow to comprehend the magnitude of his mission. The last thing he would have predicted was for the old passenger liner to shoot back. It's downright outrageous, he thought. He immediately called Olson and said in a voice vague with shock, “We're taking hits, General. I just lost my mortar unit.”
“What are they using?” Olson demanded.
“They're firing portable missiles at us from the ship! Fortunately, they don't appear to be armor-piercing. But I've taken casualties.” As he spoke another missile blew the treads off a third tank, but its crew gamely kept up their rate of fire, hammering the rapidly passing liner.
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