by Jack Du Brul
Rabidoux had gone below to help Munz, while Bruneseau was still finishing up their security sweep with the remaining Legionnaire.
Harry was at the ship’s wheel. Being at the helm of the ship seemed to have shaved at least twenty years off his age. He stood more erect, his mouth’s usual scowl replaced by a determined smirk that bordered on cocky. His eyes were clearer than Mercer had ever seen them. Lauren sat on a tall swivel stool next to him, her gaze fixed on Mercer. Foch was behind her and it seemed all three were waiting for his orders.
As the Legion team leader, Foch had taken the point when it came to assaulting the ship. Combat was his profession, and he was very good at what he did, but now he, like the others, looked to Mercer to make the final decision. He’d been the man who’d held them all together from the first contact with Hatcherly Consolidated at the River of Ruin. It didn’t matter to Foch, or to Lauren for that matter, that he wasn’t a soldier. He was a leader, blessed or cursed with the ability to inspire others to push beyond their limitations and perform the impossible.
Mercer felt he could no longer take up that mantle. In light of his feelings about what the torturer, Sun, had done to him, he didn’t feel it was right for him to take the lead. He doubted himself, felt tentative despite the calm front he put up. He wanted nothing more than to turn the responsibility over to someone else.
He searched deep inside himself for that well of determination that had always sustained him. He found it. It was empty. He’d taken the team as far as he could. To hell with the canal, he thought. They’d accomplished enough to prevent Liu from stationing nuclear weapons in Panama. An investigation into the explosions would reveal that this was an overt act. The United States would be within their treaty rights to land a sizable force to protect what remained.
The smart thing to do was to evacuate the Englander Rose and let her blow where she was. There would be no avoiding the destruction of the Pedro Miguel Lock, but it could be rebuilt in a few years.
What is the right thing? Mercer asked himself. Risk a handful of people to save what was really just an old machine? Don’t forget the workers who run the lock, a little voice said, innocent men and women who have nothing to do with Hatcherly Consolidated or Liu Yousheng. They would surely die when the Rose exploded. Did he owe them something?
If they died, Mercer knew that Mr. Sun would have won his battle in the torture chamber. He would have taken enough of Mercer’s will so that he no longer cared. And that was the line he would not cross. He couldn’t live with himself knowing he’d surrendered so thoroughly. Acknowledging the emotional consequences of running away made the choice to stay undeniable.
The well of determination was still empty, but that didn’t matter in the face of logic. He would go on, if not for himself, then at least to deny Sun his victory.
“Okay,” Mercer said at last, “Munz and Rabidoux have to stay aboard to try to stop this ship from blowing up. Harry needs to be here because he’s the only one who can conn her. Harry, turn us around.” Harry worked the wheel and bumped the throttles, mindful that the ship was barely two hundred feet shorter than the canal was wide. “Lieutenant Foch, recall Rene and your other man then meet them at the lifeboat station. I can’t give you time to launch it, but there should be life rings nearby. Lauren, I want you to go with them.”
Her anger came swift and hot. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving your lives. You don’t need to take this ride with us, and the more you protest the more I know you’re trying to play macho with me. Don’t. Get your ass off this ship and get as far from the canal as you can.”
“Philip Mercer, I should tell you where you can shove your idea and how far up there it should go.” Her eyes blazed like mismatched jewels.
“First day as captain and your crew’s already in mutiny,” Harry cackled at Mercer without taking his eyes off the water.
“I won’t speak for the French,” Lauren continued, “but my ass is staying right here. We’ve been through hell together and I’m going to see it through to the end.”
“Lauren, please-”
“Forget it. I’m staying.”
Foch had moved out of the argument, closer to the wing bridge so he could warn Harry if they got close to the shore. “It is a good thing, too.” He pulled his FAMAS off his shoulder in a sweeping arc. “We have company.” He moved farther out of the wheelhouse, clicking his radio to call Rene and the fourth soldier.
“What is it?” In their rush to reach the bridge door, Mercer and Lauren brushed against each other and didn’t break that slight contact until they hit the railing.
A pilot boat like the one they’d stolen had pulled from the marina. Its deck was loaded with Chinese soldiers, one of whom had set up a heavy machine gun on an improvised swivel mount. Whatever warning the captain of the Englander Rose had gotten out had been picked up by the shore-based guards, or perhaps they were suspicious about the ship beginning to turn in the narrow stretch of water just above the Pedro Miguel Lock.
“Oh, shit.”
The machine gunner down on the utility boat knew he was in range of the cluster of people on the exposed wing bridge the instant he saw them. The gun began to bark, a rapid choking sound that boomed louder than any thunder.
All three dropped flat as.30-caliber rounds chewed into the ship, blowing apart windows and ricocheting off steel as they sought to penetrate flesh. The five-second burst left the bridge reeking of scorched metal.
Foch wiggled forward and fired back, a barrage that missed the pilot boat altogether because he didn’t dare expose his head to properly aim. The counterfire came back even stronger, augmented by a half dozen type 87s.
“Take ’em out, goddamnit,” Harry shouted from inside. He’d ducked under the center console. “I can’t turn us around if I can’t see where we’re going.”
Foch fired another burst, covering Mercer and Lauren as they moved to the railing so they could get a bead on the soldiers below. All three fired simultaneously, forcing the pilot boat to sheer away momentarily. She began to draw near again with the machine gun blazing away. This time they were beaten back only a few feet from being able to heave grappling ropes over the Rose’s main rail.
This is why Captain Patke hadn’t tried to assault the Mario diCastorelli from the fishing boat, Mercer realized. They’d have been cut down if that ship had armed guards.
“Next time they may be able to board us.” Foch changed out his empty magazine without the need to look at his hands. “Bruneseau, where are you?” he shouted into his radio.
“Just cleared the forward hold. We’ll be on deck in just a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” Lauren said and sprayed a dozen rounds over the side of the ship.
“Heaven, Heaven, Heaven,” Mercer called into his radio. “Anything you can do about this?”
“Roger, we’re watching. Help is on its way. Ballistic trajectory of eighteen seconds. No guarantee the pilot boat will still be where we’re aiming, but it’ll rattle them some.”
“Do it!” Mercer checked the second hand on Harry’s watch, scooted so he could spot the thirty-foot gunboat and fired off the last of his clip.
Foch and Lauren concentrated their fire too, driving the Chinese away from the side of the Rose for what they hoped was their last time. Eleven seconds later, Mercer tapped Foch on the hip and dragged Lauren back to the enclosed bridge.
At that moment a string of six-inch shells from the VGAS cannon were some six miles above the earth and four miles downrange. Such was their ballistics that in those last seconds they accelerated to hypersonic speeds. There was no warning whistle, no long, drawn-out scream, nothing to give away the presence of five explosive shells fired from thirty miles away with an accuracy never before achieved with anything larger than a sniper’s rifle.
Despite the seconds-long interval between their firing, the rounds hit almost simultaneously along the starboard side of the Englander Rose. Four produced towering ge
ysers that reached higher than the superstructure and doused the ship with water. The fifth shot hit squarely on the aft section of the pilot boat, sliced cleanly through her fiberglass deck, and impacted her diesel engine.
Her destruction was complete. Nothing larger than a postage stamp remained as her hull blew apart under the triple assault of explosives, kinetic energy, and her own load of fuel. Steel, plastics, and the remains of her crew rose on a column of fire and water that exploded outward in a plume that raked the side of the Rose and the jungled bank of the canal. When the sound rolled away and Mercer dared look over the railing again, a pool of burning fuel was the only marker for the men who’d died.
“Heaven to Angel Two.”
“Go ahead, Heaven.” Mercer’s voice was filled with awe at the power the USS McCampbell was able to throw so accurately from so far away.
“Our screens show target destroyed. We’ve reacquired primary target and await your order.”
“Roger that, Heaven. Nice shooting. Stand by.” Mercer roused himself. Rene and the fourth Legion soldier burst onto the bridge. Their clothes were soaked because both had been on the deck when the cannon ripped along her rail.
Bruneseau was breathless. “Was that from your ship?” Lauren nodded. “Mon Dieu. I never imagined such a weapon existed.”
“That’s only the first generation,” she explained proudly. “The production guns don’t go into full service for a couple more years.”
Mercer noted that Harry had gotten back on his feet and was once again working the ship. The old man nudged the Rose on her axis using the bow thruster and expert hands on her rudder and throttle. “Did they even have bow thrusters when you were a captain?” he asked.
“Nope,” Harry answered laconically. “But it’s the same as having a well-tended tug at the bow. I’ll have her pointed back at the lock in another minute.”
Much of the windscreen had been riddled by bullets and shrapnel. What pieces that hadn’t fallen away completely were starred and cracked and nearly impossible to see through. Lauren and Foch hammered away at the remaining panes with the butts of their weapons to improve Harry’s visibility.
Like he was parking a car, Harry spun the freighter in a tight circle, coming out early and backing the ship at an angle so he wouldn’t waste space when they moved forward again. He had a mastery over the vessel and her quirks as if he’d been at her wheel for years.
By the time he got her completely turned to face the lock he’d pushed her up the canal so a hundred yards separated the bow from the thousand-foot-long seawall extension that divided the two chambers. Harry looked to Mercer. “I’m ready.” His hands were relaxed on the wheel, ready to coax the great vessel rather than fight her.
“Okay,” Mercer replied. “Let’s do it. Foch, call Rabidoux and Munz. Tell them we’re going through.”
“Oui.”
“Heaven, Angel Two. Any time you’re ready.”
Harry eased the throttles to Ahead Full. The lock chamber was still flooded and her upper doors had remained open following the Englander Rose’s passage through. The lower doors, almost a half mile away, were closed, making the concrete-lined basin look like an enormous dead-end chute. Not for long, he thought. He could just see the top couple of feet of the lower doors rising above the level of water in the chamber. The steel doors, each weighing nearly seven hundred tons, were seven feet thick and sixty-five feet wide. They were all that prevented the untold billions of tons of water trapped in Lake Gatun from flooding the lower, and smaller, Miraflores Lake and the rest of the canal below.
Because the Rose was thirty feet above Miraflores Lake, he spotted the superstructure and funnel of a ship waiting for her turn to come up. In a minute, he knew she wouldn’t be there any longer.
“Firing now,” Mercer heard over his radio.
“Goddamnit!” Harry shouted at the same moment.
Mercer’s guts clenched. “What?”
“I have to take a piss.”
“Jesus, Harry, cross your legs or something.” He snatched up a pair of binoculars and focused on the tops of the lower doors, counting back seconds in his head.
Everything looked so normal. In the adjacent lock chamber, a container ship was slowly being raised to the level of the Gaillard Cut. Beyond her, several more vessels slowly made their way across Miraflores Lake. Workers were going about their duties along the locks, although a few had stopped to see what had exploded around the Englander Rose, and they were no doubt wondering why the ship had turned around and was pointed at them again.
Lauren too was counting the seconds. “Four, three, two, one.”
Mercer tightened his grip on the binoculars.
The first shell hit the two-story control house that sat between the locks and blew away its red-tile roof. Mercer barely had time to acknowledge the miss and the scatter of panicked workers when explosive rounds began to find their mark.
Exposed on the lower side of the lock, the doors looked like thirty-foot slabs of steel, rust-streaked but still amazingly sound after a century of use. They were designed to act as swivel dams that could be opened or closed to allow ships to move past them. They were never meant to withstand a naval bombardment.
The shots hit and exploded in a steady string that bit and tore at the metal like some enraged animal. Shrapnel exploded in all directions. It took just a few seconds before one of the doors broke off its huge hinges and fell flat into the lake. It floated away on the boil of water as more shells destroyed its twin.
That door also succumbed to the sustained hits so remnants hung off the remaining hinges like tattered pieces of skin. This alone wasn’t enough to give the water an unimpeded path from Lake Gatun through the cut and out. The canal’s builders had doubled up the most vulnerable doors, those on the downstream sides of the lock, in case one was ever broached by a ship slamming into them. The second set of identical doors, just a few feet from the ruins of the first, felt the strain of the lake pressing against them. Had they not been placed at a slight angle to each other, the pressure would have burst them apart.
The Englander Rose had steamed past the seawall extension and her bow was just entering the lock chamber. At her current speed, she’d hit the remaining gates in one minute. Men raced along the length of the seawall in a desperate attempt to get away from the explosions. A few stared incredulously at the old tramp freighter that was driving toward the smoke and burning metal erupting at the far end of the lock.
No ship in the history of the canal had ever moved faster through a lock. It was as if the vessel wanted to die by crushing her bow against the unyielding doors. For even at this speed, the gates would absorb her headlong charge the way a brick wall shatters a fist that dares to punch it.
Harry couldn’t resist. He gave the horn a long pull, adding the ship’s voice to the storm and explosions and frenzy of screaming men. He gave a demonic laugh. Mercer knew the crazy old bastard was loving this.
With another two hundred feet before the front of the ship hit the doors, the next barrage from the distant destroyer reached their target. The shots were surgically precise, targeting the lower hinge points. They hit concrete and steel, gouging through both, weakening the attachment points so that the gates slipped and a jet of water more powerful than a fire hose shot from a tiny gap near their base.
That was all the urging that gravity needed. Behind the gates was a thirty-foot-tall water column that was backed up for miles and miles. How many tons of water were pressing against the doors Mercer didn’t know, but he and the others certainly did feel it.
The burst came an instant later when the doors were ripped bodily from their sockets. The lock chamber drained in a fraction of a second. One instant the Englander Rose raced hard for the gates and the next she had dropped thirty feet and accelerated to forty knots as the torrent catapulted her down the chamber. There was no time for anyone to react. It was faster than any white-water raft ride, and twice as rough.
When she careened past
the ruined stumps of the first doors, fingers of steel ripped along her outer hull, peeling back her plating with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Fortunately none of the tears were below the waterline.
The ship that had been waiting to enter the lock was pushed aside by the rush of water sluicing through the open lock. She grounded against a shoal almost immediately, forced out of the double shipping lanes dug into the earth before Miraflores Lake was created.
Harry hit the horn again, a long blast that beat against the bottom of the storm clouds and echoed back. Like a raging river meeting a floodplain, the power of the rushing water slowly dissipated as it encountered the sluggish lake. The Englander Rose streaked past the grounded freighter before she finally began to slow. Once again Harry had a measure of throttle control. He kept her pegged, pushing the big marine engines far beyond their maximum because the race was far from over.
In a nearly straight line running from the Pedro Miguel Lock down to the Miraflores Locks, the lake was deep enough to accommodate the big ships, but outside that lane there wasn’t enough water to float a vessel the size of the Rose. They had to carry on past the five ships, including the luxury liner Rylander Sea and a pair of tankers, if they were to prevent a massive loss of life. Once across the lake, there was still one obstacle to face-Miraflores.
Unlike what they’d just survived, where there was only one lock to negotiate, these were double chambers, like two enormous steps each a thousand feet long. This is why Harry had come along. He alone could keep the ship centered as they went sucking through the locks like a leaf caught in a gutter.
Foch listened to his headset and reported that Munz and Rabidoux were all right and to make sure they were warned when they went through the next locks.
“Got it,” Mercer said. He looked at the others on the bridge. “Everyone okay?”
“I would feel better,” Bruneseau replied wearily, “if your friend wasn’t smiling.”
If anything, Harry’s grin deepened. His feet were braced wide on the deck and he’d placed much of his weight on his toes. Like a surfer feeling his board, he maneuvered the ship through touch as well as sight. “Hell of a ride,” was all he said around a cigarette that he must have lit an instant before the ship plunged through the lock.