River of Ruin m-5

by Jack Du Brul

  Mercer looked farther up the waterway, where the stern of the Mario diCastorelli was just vanishing around a curve. A towering promontory of granite loomed over the ship where men and machines had once cleaved the path through the mountains. The other shore had been leveled further to a sloping plain that dropped into the water. He knew from what Roddy had told him, the ship would be in the canal’s tightest choke point in about fifteen minutes, a narrow gut at the exact center of the continental divide. There is where Liu intended to set off his explosives-laden vessels.

  Between him and the Mario was the dark shape of the second bomb ship, the Robert T. Change.

  “Oi!” The voice was amplified by a loudspeaker and came from above the pilot boat.

  Harry throttled back to keep pace with the huge ship. Mercer stepped aft, emerging from the cabin onto the small rear deck space. He looked up at the ship’s rail twenty feet over his head, steady rain drumming his upturned face. It was hard to tell but the man with the megaphone appeared Chinese.

  “We no need another pilot.” His accent was the same as the guard Foch had knifed in the parking lot.

  Moving slightly so the man above couldn’t see, Mercer asked, “Foch, any ideas?”

  “We’ve got him sighted,” the Legionnaire said. “As soon as I finish fashioning this anchor into a grappling hook, we’ll take him.”

  Foch sat on the deck out of view of the sailor. He worked to replace the heavy chain secured to a foot-wide anchor with rope he’d pulled from a locker. Behind him, two of his men peered through the windows, their eyes screwed into their assault rifles’ scopes.

  Mercer turned his attention back to the Chinese crewman. “We had a report that you needed us. It’s not true?”

  “No.”

  “Let me speak with Guillermo, the pilot,” Mercer bluffed.

  “No Guillermo. Pilot is Mr. Lin.”

  “Wait,” he cried as if making a sudden realization. “Is your ship the Mary Celeste?”

  “No. That ship behind. You go back.” The guard showed the butt of a pistol.

  “I’m ready,” Foch announced.

  Mercer dropped to his knees behind the gunwale. “Take him.”

  It took just one shot that sounded quieter than the shatter of the glass the bullet had gone through. The soldier had aimed perfectly, compensating for angle, deflection of the glass, and the wind that raced up the canal. The round caught the lookout in the soft part of the throat so that most of its energy was carried beyond his corpse. Rather than fall back, he slumped forward, draped over the rail as if he were studying something on the water.

  Foch was in motion an instant later, racing out into the open, the anchor ready to throw, loops of rope hanging from his left arm. Mercer recalled trying to snag the vent stack on the Hatcherly warehouse with Lauren and was amazed at how effortlessly the Legion officer heaved the heavy anchor over the Rose’s rail.

  It hooked in the shelter of one of the overhanging lifeboats on the first toss. Foch handed the free end of the rope to Mercer. With his FAMAS slung over his back, the soldier shimmied up the line using knots he’d tied as grips. Even before he reached the top, Rabidoux was ready to climb, and the others were lined up behind him.

  Mercer held the rope steady as one by one the Legionnaires strained their way to the deck of the Englander Rose. So intent on their mission, Lauren didn’t give him a passing glance as she muscled herself up the rope followed by Rene Bruneseau. For a moment Mercer considered taking the trailing end of the rope with him, stranding Harry on the pilot boat, but with what they were going to attempt, they desperately needed the old bastard’s seamanship skills.

  “Harry, come on,” he called into the cabin.

  Still at the helm, Harry jiggled the throttles until the two craft were perfectly in sync before looping a bungee cord around the wheel to keep her on course. He snatched up his cane and joined Mercer on the aft deck.

  Mercer handed him the rope, pointing out that Foch had tied a loop at its end. Knowing what to do, Harry placed his prosthetic leg into the loop and did something behind at his ankle to lock the joint. He held the line steady as Mercer climbed to the looming ship, his assent covered by two of the Legionnaires.

  Hands grabbed at him as he reached the railing and they dragged him over. He landed in a heap, swiveling around even as the Frenchmen began to haul Harry up the side of the ship. He added his strength to theirs, and seconds later Harry’s silver crew cut appeared. Harry steadied himself for the final effort and then he was with them. He unlocked his ankle and gave it an experimental flex.

  “I feel like a pirate taking a galleon on the Spanish Main,” he whispered, pulling the pistol from the corpse Foch had stuffed behind a ventilator.

  “We’ll call you Graybeard the Geriatric,” Mercer teased.

  That they had just climbed aboard a ship carrying several thousand tons of explosives hit them all at the same moment. They exchanged nervous glances. A blast of that magnitude wouldn’t blow them apart, or even vaporize them. Such a detonation would atomize them. The concussive force would be enough to render their bodies to their basic building blocks of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and the few others that made up a human.

  It would be like standing on the surface of a sun at the moment it went supernova.

  “Let’s go,” Foch said, taking point.

  The deck planking was slick with rain and twenty years of spilled oil and solvents. The metalwork had been so often painted that the underside of the railings were pebbled with hardened drips as thick as cake frosting. What machinery they could see looked frozen with grime. Had she not been tapped for this operation, the Englander Rose should have been sitting in a breaker’s yard ready for the cutting torches.

  With Foch in the lead and Rabidoux covering their rear, they crept under the belly of the lifeboat and edged toward a hatchway. The door was open a crack, probably left by the sailor who’d challenged them. Foch peeked through the opening and then slowly swung the door open with the barrel of his FAMAS, one of his men standing by so he could cover the lieutenant.

  “Clear.”

  They rushed into a utilitarian corridor that ran the length of the squat superstructure. He led them to the shelter of an open closet reeking of disinfectant.

  “Harry,” he asked, “with little space on their submersible, what is the minimum they could leave aboard this ship during a canal passage?”

  “I can feel by the way she vibrates she’s diesel powered,” the former ship’s captain answered. “Meaning they could pull everyone out of the engine room. Realistically, there could be as few as three, but no more than ten.”

  “D’accord,” Foch said, then lapsed into silence.

  “This is your show, Lieutenant,” Mercer prompted. “How do you want to do it?”

  He needed only a second to form his plan. “Rabidoux, lead Mercer, Harry, and Captain Vanik to the bridge. The rest of us will sweep the ship to prevent some hidden fanatic from blowing the charges himself. If you need backup pull a fire alarm and we will get to you as fast as we can.”

  “Bon chance,” Mercer said to Foch as he followed Lauren and Harry behind Rabidoux’s lead.

  Lauren walked just a step behind and to the left of the young Legion noncom, her M-16 ready to cover their flank. Harry stayed a few paces back with Mercer walking sideways behind him so he could cover their rear and still add firepower if they came upon any crewmen or guards.

  The hallway was deserted, and when they climbed narrow stairs set in an echoing well, they came out on another empty passageway.

  “Which way?” Rabidoux asked.

  Harry thought for a moment. “Head aft, there’ll be central stairs that run from the bridge to the bilge. It’s the most direct route.”

  The halls smelled of salt and rust, aged by a long career tramping around the globe. There was little in the way of amenities on board. The walls were painted metal and the decks were laid with peeling linoleum tile. The lights were bare bulbs in little cag
es. Passing a door marked “Head” left them moving through a reeking miasma of stale human waste.

  The attack came without warning.

  One moment they were closing in on the stairs and the next second the hall was filled with automatic fire. Mercer dove to tackle Harry, making sure to hit him in his fake leg. At the same instant Rabidoux pushed Lauren to the floor and counterfired with a sustained burst from his assault rifle.

  The soldier who’d fired at them ducked around a corner as the metal edge he used as cover sparked like a Catherine wheel under the onslaught of 5.56mm rounds.

  Lauren moved forward under the covering fire, slithering on her belly across the filthy floor. She had her M-16 to her shoulder and crawled using only the wiggle of her hips and what grip she could get with her elbows. Mercer shifted onto one knee, hugging a wall, and waited for the Chinese guard to appear again, his body shielding Harry’s prone form.

  The soldier ducked his head around the corner as soon as Rabidoux intentionally drained his magazine. Through the whirling smoke, his eyes naturally locked on the tallest target-Mercer. He never saw the slender shape less than three yards in front of him. Lauren adjusted her aim in the fraction of a second the soldier gave her and put one round through his neck and one into his forehead.

  She waited for two heartbeats before moving forward. Once she could see around the corner that had hidden the guard, she called back, “All clear.”

  The sudden attack had robbed their element of surprise so they mounted the stairs at a run, Mercer and Rabidoux moving side by side, step in step. Lauren and Harry remained a half flight below them as they corkscrewed up the decks. They reached the bridge level without incident, and when they saw the solid door blocking their progress, they understood why. Whatever crewmen were still in the upper decks had barricaded themselves in the wheelhouse. The hatch was solid steel, dogged tight and locked from the inside. Nothing short of a satchel charge, which they didn’t have, would blow it open.

  “Is there another way?” Mercer asked Harry.

  “Not on this level. We’ll have to go down one and then try to get in from outside. When we approached I saw a stairway leading from there up to the wing bridge.”

  Mercer looked at his watch. “We’re running out of time.” He keyed his throat mike. “Roddy, what’s your situation?”

  “We’re almost between Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill. We’re expecting the sub to try to divert us any moment.”

  “You’re ready for it?”

  “They used this trick to get me fired once. They won’t get away with it a second time.”

  Mercer looked to Harry again. “What about going up one deck and just jumping onto the wing bridge?”

  “You’ll either take them by surprise or they’ll take you,” Harry said seriously. “But it sounds better than trying to fight our way up from outside.”

  They backtracked to the stairs and climbed up a dim shaft that ended in a flat hatch. It took all Mercer’s strength and a push from Sergeant Rabidoux to unseal the hardened paint that had frozen the portal solid. Heaving against its dead weight they finally threw it open. It dropped flush with the roof of the wheelhouse. Rainwater eased the cordite sting from Mercer’s eyes and he let a few drops trickle down his throat.

  From this vantage he could see the Robert T. Change about a quarter mile ahead but the Mario diCastorelli was out of view as the three ships wended their way deeper into the mountains. The hills were bare, blasted rock, chiseled by explosives with the precision of the Egyptian pyramids. Some had been pinned with huge steel rods to solidify them further. Waterfalls splashed to the canal, torrents made greater because the ground was so saturated by the rainy season’s regular deluges. Something Mercer was sure Liu’s experts had counted on.

  He took in all of this in a moment’s glance. He was certain the captain of this vessel was radioing his counterpart on the other bomb ship and discussing options.

  Making sure to keep his footing on the metal deck, he shuffled to the edge of the wheelhouse while Rabidoux moved to the opposite side, positioning themselves above where the wing bridges cantilevered over the water. They exchanged a quick look to synchronize their timing and moved as one, dropping neatly the eight feet to the stubby flying bridges.

  Landing hard, he could see Rabidoux across the expanse of the bridge already had his FAMAS ready. Mercer brought up his weapon, picking his first target, presumably the captain because he was screaming into a handheld radio, and rattled off a tight three-round burst through the glass weather door that protected the bridge from the elements.

  As the glass fell in a crystal avalanche, the Chinese captain of the Englander Rose was flung as if body punched. Scarlet drops of blood danced in a tangent away from his crumpling corpse. The helmsman went down at the same moment, raked from hip to head by the French commando.

  The canal pilot standing next to him was Chinese, no doubt one of the Hatcherly employees that Liu Yousheng had been infiltrating into the Canal Authority. He dove for cover behind the control console. Rabidoux didn’t wait to see if he was armed, putting two rounds into the back of his neck before ducking through the ruined wing door. Mercer shifted so he could see the aft section of the wheelhouse as two men jumped behind the wooden chart table. Another figure ran farther aft, trying to reach the locked hatch where Lauren and Harry waited.

  A shot came from behind the chart table, aimed where Mercer had been standing an instant before. The bullet pinged off the ship’s metal hide. Mercer was on his belly, crawling aft to get an angle on the two while Rabidoux maneuvered himself to the center of the bridge, which allowed him to cover both sides of the enclosed table.

  Mercer studied the construction of the cabinet, saw it was made of wood and knew it was unlikely to deflect the high-velocity rounds from his M-16. He fired a savage burst into the table. White splinters exploded from the varnished oak as the bullets bored through.

  One of the men sprang to his feet, swinging his type-87 assault rifle in a wild spread of fire, a lance of flame jetting from the barrel. His chest oozed from numerous hits, and a shard of wood had been rammed into his arm. And still he fought. Rabidoux put him down just before the arc of fire would have cut him in half.

  Mercer chanced looking past the table. The crewman who’d fled the wheelhouse was just undogging the door. He got it open only an inch or so when Lauren blew him back with a single shot to the face. Rabidoux moved closer to the chart table, edging forward with his FAMAS at the ready. The fifth man lay in a pool of purple blood that spread as slowly as jelly, his eyes wide and sightless.

  Covering each other as they explored the rest of the wheelhouse, they made certain that was the last of them. No one was hiding in the small radio shack or in an office belonging to the captain.

  “Okay, Lauren,” Mercer called aft. “We’re clear.”

  Looking forward past the crane and the vessel’s peaked bow, he saw the Robert T. Change moving steadily up the narrow canal, her wake like a lazy vortex of churned water. He couldn’t see anything to indicate her captain was altering their original plan. Good. This takes care of the easy part.

  Because the Legionnaires used their own radios, Mercer asked Rabidoux to get a report from Lieutenant Foch. He lifted his mike back in position to talk to Roddy.

  “It’s Mercer. What’s your situation?”

  A half mile ahead of the Englander Rose, Roddy Herrara was fighting his ship with everything he had. He’d been expecting the moment when the sub attached to the diCastorelli would try to shove the big freighter off course. He even had lookouts watching the water for propwash, but still couldn’t believe the force the submersible exerted.

  The Mario diCastorelli weighed probably twenty-five thousand tons and yet her bow continued to swing inexorably toward shore no matter how he worked the rudder and applied reverse thrust to her offside shaft. The remoralike sub was doubtlessly designed to act as an underwater tug, but even a powerful tugboat couldn’t move a freighter if she didn�
��t want to go.

  The parasite submarine had to be equipped with some kind of new technology, Roddy thought, something designed for the military, for their newest torpedoes maybe. Peroxide-powered hydrojets, or something even more exotic. Whatever it was, it moved the freighter’s bow a few points on the compass every minute and all Roddy could do was stall the inevitable.

  “Not now,” he answered and ignored whatever else Mercer asked.

  The great ship moved relentlessly toward the left bank no matter how he tried to keep her at her head. The entire vessel shuddered with the strain of fighting the diverter under her hull. They were deep in the mountains now, towering stone monoliths that loomed over the waterway like the sides of the Grand Canyon Roddy had seen on a family vacation to el Norte.

  Behind them, he knew, the Robert T. Change continued on her mission to destroy the canal. Roddy could almost feel her presence, something ghostly and evil. Something he was powerless to stop.

  The captain of the ship, a lanky Greek with the mouth-twisting name of Leonidaes Chaufleus, waited at the wheel for Roddy’s next instruction, one bony hand on the wheel, the other ready to massage the throttle levers.

  Roddy paced from one side of the bridge to the other, studying the canal and looking at the swirl of boiling water near the bow where the unseen submarine labored to ram the ship into the land. With each circuit of the bridge he had to step over the two trussed-up Panamanian guards who’d unknowingly been assigned to a ship destined to be destroyed. Wisely forgoing machismo for survival, they hadn’t put up a fight when the Green Berets stormed the vessel. Their instructions had been to defend against thieves, not an American assault force that moved with the fluidity of quicksilver.

  “Captain,” Roddy said as he was struck by a sudden inspiration. “Can you drop anchors from here?”

  “Is possible,” the Greek said.