He pushed the nose over, left the power up. He had the cruise ship on radar … if indeed it was the right ship. She was twenty-five miles away. He wished visibility were better.
Waiting was difficult as the jets plunged deeper into the atmosphere and the range marched down. Gerhart set his radar altimeter to sound a warning at 1,100 feet above the sea. At 1,100 feet, he would open fire, and hold the trigger down for no more than a second. At 900 feet he should be off the gun and pulling out, right or left, to avoid any ricochets off the water.
He was at six miles when he saw the ship embedded in the haze. There, one, two, three skiffs on the starboard side. He didn’t see the fourth, but he could only attack them one at a time, so he picked the closest and went for it.
Power back, down to 420, now 400 … speed bleeding off, angle steep because he was diving toward a point well ahead of his target, which was paralleling the ship, moving toward a point perhaps twenty degrees right of his six o’clock.
He raised the nose to establish a ten-degree dive angle, put the pipper short of the boat, slightly left … saw 1,500 feet on the radar altimeter, 1,500 on the pressure altimeter, airspeed down to 350. A touch fast for his taste, but okay.
He would be shooting in three seconds.
* * *
Captain Arch Penney felt the heavy thud of a nearby grenade blast. Idly, he wondered how many grenades the pirates had brought along. Probably enough to murder hundreds of people.
Three minutes.
“Here come the jets.”
Penney risked a look. He saw only one, coming in fast, slanting down. It was coming from about ten degrees left of the bow and crossing over the extended centerline of the ship toward the starboard boats.
Even as he saw the jet, Penney realized it wasn’t going for the skiff nearest the ship, but one half a mile away.
He watched, mesmerized. The fighter came plunging down like a hawk.
The F/A-18 Hornet dipped low, perhaps a thousand feet, and began its pullout. The pirate boat disappeared in a cloud of sea spray as the audible buzz from the jet’s cannon reached him, seconds late.
“There’s a fighter over here, too,” someone called. “Hammered a boat.”
What would the skiff right by the ship do?
“Stick it to those balmy bastards,” another man yelled.
* * *
Mustafa al-Said was so intent on getting more RPGs into the Sultan’s bridge that he didn’t see the jet fighters at first. One of his men pointed … then he saw them. Saw one of the boats disappear under a hail of cannon shells. The jet was pulling out, climbing and turning for another pass.
Mustafa spun the wheel. The fighter pilot might not take the chance of shooting so close to the ship. Mustafa expertly brought his skiff to within ten feet of the speeding cruise ship. The sea between ship and boat was a river of foam.
The RPG man fired another grenade right into the bridge wing.
* * *
The explosion of the grenade smashed into the officers and sailors huddled on the deck of the bridge. The concussion momentarily stunned Arch Penney. He found himself sprawled on the deck. Blood. Everything was covered with a fine spray of blood. He looked around. Smoke … carnage … a severed arm lay nearby on the deck. Bodies all over. Harry Zopp was coming around, bleeding from the head. He met his gaze.
“Bloody hell,” said Arch Penney. He crawled to the engine controls and moved the handles to ALL STOP.
* * *
“Strike, Sea Wolf One Oh Five. The cruise ship seems to be slowing. There is a pirate skiff alongside.”
“Can you attack it?”
“Too close to the ship.”
But one boat wasn’t. Gerhart steadied up, checked his dive angle and pulled the pipper onto the boat. Closing … now! The radar altimeter deedled, he squeezed the trigger, the gun vibrated, then he was pulling.
He glanced back. Spray obscured the skiff. As it exited the cloud of water, he could see that the boat was losing way, that people were jumping into the sea.
The screws of the Sultan were no longer churning the ocean into foam. She was obviously decelerating. A pirate boat was alongside.
Dieter Gerhart turned back for a closer look.
“Gear, the bastards are climbing aboard.” That was Tom.
Gerhart got a glimpse of men going up the ropes hand over hand, assault rifles on slings on their backs.
Shit!
They had lost. The pirates were aboard! Two more boats were closing from astern. By the time the fighters got into shooting position, those two boats would be too close to the ship.
There wasn’t a damn thing two fighter jocks could do about it.
“Join on me, Tom. We’ll make a low pass, then go home.”
That is what they did. The two jets went over the Sultan just above the top of the radar mast at three hundred knots. Dieter Gerhart got a good look at two men climbing a rope up the ship’s side. He turned to the northeast, began climbing, and keyed his radio.
* * *
As he listened to Sea Wolf lead’s report, Admiral Toad Tarkington smote his thigh.
“Send a Flash message to Washington,” he ordered curtly. “Pirates just captured a cruise ship.”
The Assassin Page 42