“Oh, we know the problem,” said Daryple, pushing back a stray curl of golden hair behind her ear. “It’s French missiles mixed with British radar and Russian controls.”
Narmada frowned. “Meaning?”
“We’re a hodgepodge, a mare’s nest,” sighed Chung in rank exasperation. “Bain tai, there are just too many different control elements all working at the same time for us to ever get proper synchronization on these damn missiles.”
“Then strip everything out,” said Narmada. “And just use the...” He stopped. “No, wait, we can’t do that either.”
“No, sir, we can’t.”
A minute passed in silence, then another.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” asked Narmada, tapping his fingers angrily on the cushioned arm of his oversized chair.
“Yes and no,” said Chung, pushing back his Navy cap to smooth down his mullet. “We can still launch the missiles by hand.”
“Just not in a salvo, from inside the bridge.”
Chung shook his head. “No, sir. We need men on deck for that. Electronics won’t do the job.”
“Not without a lot more work,” added Daryple, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. “Maybe in a week or two...”
“A week?”
“In essence,” said Narmada, “We’re screwed.”
“Yes, sir. Big time.”
“I wonder how Interpol and NATO ever get anything accomplished,” Daryple mused.
“Can we still use the new missiles in our ground-based batteries?” Narmada asked, looking to the left as if he could see through the hull and the hidden emplacements on the craggy hillside above the harbor.
“Sure, no problem, sir. But not on the ship.” Chung swept his hand across the fire control board. “We put the American missiles into American launchers, French into the French, and so on.” He patted the board. “But down here, we’ve simply got too many different systems, each trying to seize control.”
“Maybe if we used the actual missiles instead of simulations...” started Daryple, then stopped as everybody else on the bridge stared at her askance.
“But, of course, that would be way too expensive,” she quickly amended.
Swinging his chair around again, Narmada scowled at the three linked monitors. He should have expected this sort of international glitch.
“Now, we could easily install the laser onto the ship...” began Chung with a wan smile.
Narmada cut him off with an impatient gesture. “No. The American laser stays on top of the mountain for now. That gives it line-of-sight protection for almost three hundred nautical miles in every direction. More than enough firepower against anything the Italians or the Fifteen Families might send against us.”
“Unless they send in the submarines.”
Daryple laughed. “Those antiques? Not a problem. We have enough anti-submarine missiles to blow their Chinese toys apart.”
“If we can get some men on deck in time.”
“True. But first, the subs would have to get through those Chinese mines we installed last month and the Soviet underwater nets. No, my friend, we’re safe and secure.”
“Even if they grew some hair on their balls, the Fifteen would not jeopardize a close member of their family,” Narmada added, almost sounding bored. “Oh, the crime lords will bitch and moan, but they’ll never do anything as long as we have our hostage under lock and key.”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Fields interjected suddenly, looking up from the sonar board. “Sir, we may have a problem.”
Unfolding a map, Narmada started to look over the principle cities of Bermuda. “Something wrong, Lieutenant?”
“Maybe. I’ve been getting some odd readings on the sonar,” she said, one hand holding headphones to her ear, the other running across the complex control panel.
“More Greek scuba divers looking for sponges, or another school of sardines?” asked Narmada, spreading the map across an illuminated table and tucking it into place.
“Unknown. But there are a lot of clinks and what might be muffled footsteps.”
“Might be?”
“Best guess.”
“I see.” Using a pencil to circle the largest banks along the coastline, Narmada frowned. Destroy a few banks with long-range missiles, and the rest would be eager to start paying monthly protection. Extortion was the easiest way to earn a living. “Metallic sounds, you say...from under the water?”
“Yes, sir. Most puzzling.”
“From the direction of the Soviet anti-torpedo nets covering the mouth of the harbor?” asked Daryple, walking over to the sonar console.
“No, from the bottom of the harbor,” said Fields, pointing at the screen.
Bending over, Daryple bit a lip. “I don’t see anything.”
“Trust me, there’s something down there.”
“Last time it was a baby whale.”
“This is too small a disturbance for a whale, even,” Chung said dismissively. “It’s probably the evening garbage dump settling into the mud. Or at worst, Davies and his techs have built another still.”
“Sailors do love to drink,” Daryple said.
Both explanations made sense, but Narmada did not like the timing of the noises—just as they were running missile tests. “Send Ensign Hillerman and some armed squads to check the hold and the bilge. If there is a still, destroy it.”
“And the men?” asked Chung, slowly standing and adjusting his gun belt.
“Dock their pay a week for disobeying orders.”
“Nothing more?”
“No, at the moment, we need them. Everybody has their weakness, eh?
But just in case,” Narmada added slowly. “Have the guards run a full perimeter sweep. Check our hostage, check the laser and release the dogs.”
Chung burst into laughter. “An attack? Here? Now?”
“The wise warrior prepares for what an enemy can do, not just for what they might do,” said Narmada, rising from his chair. “In fact, sound the alarm. Alert the entire base. It’s been far too long since we last had a full drill.”
* * *
AT THE GRASSY heliport on top of the cliff, Bolan spun to the side and hit the ground hard. Rolling away a few yards, he rose into a prone firing position with the Beretta raised and level. The guard was still firing, but Bolan’s sudden change in location had thrown off his aim. Bolan felt the bullets hum by, and he returned fire. The guard cried out as his life was torn away, and he collapsed.
Now a voice called out from the darkness. Quickly, Bolan tossed a small stone to the left. As the guard appeared from the trees, Bolan moved in fast from the right. With one hand, he grabbed the man’s jaw to keep it closed and stabbed his combat knife deep into the man’s head just behind the right ear. The murderer went stiff, then Bolan turned the blade slightly. Instantly going limp, the corpse sagged to the ground.
Moving in a zigzag pattern among the neat row of helicopters, Bolan paused when he heard panting. He spun around with the Beretta firing. Dogs! Something large flashed past Bolan in the half-light, and he barely swayed out of the way in time to avoid being knocked over. Damn, these dogs were fast! If he went down, they would tear him apart in only a few seconds.
Bolan fired again and was rewarded by a muffled grunt. He disliked harming animals, and these dogs were only doing what they’d been trained to do. But these killers were on the attack. He had no choice if he wanted to stay alive.
Just then a sharp whistle cut the dawn, and a guttural voice called out in a foreign language. Bolan dropped his partially empty magazine and eased in a full one as silently as possible. Come on, killer, he thought. Talk to your dogs.
As if in reply, the whistle sounded once more, and Bolan unleashed a long burst from the Beretta. A dozen more
dogs of various sizes and breeds were running toward a large man wearing a Navy peacoat and a black wool cap. Spurting blood from a chest wound, the pirate fell backward over the edge of the small rill.
A siren began to howl from the harbor below, and then searchlights began to sweep the lightening sky overhead.
Shouting curses, more guards appeared from the bushes, firing their weapons in every direction. One man yanked out a short-barreled pistol and fired straight up into the sky. Flare gun!
Diving to the side, Bolan took refuge behind the tail assembly of a Blackhawk, holstered the Beretta and drew the Desert Eagle. Kneeling down, Bolan took a long breath to steady his aim, then cut loose at the larger dogs—wolf dogs, German shepherds, even a mastiff and several pit bulls. Just then, a shotgun boomed, and a barrage of pellets ricocheted off the rear housing of a Blackhawk near Bolan. He felt something hot score his cheek as yet another flare thumped high. Reloading as he moved, Bolan circled around an Apache gunship and dropped flat. As the guards approached, he rolled under the gunship and blew off their knees. They dropped to the ground, screaming in pain. With cold deliberation, Bolan sent them into the abyss. It wasn’t fair or brave, just efficient.
Now machine gun fire rattled from several directions, the cross fire chewing irregular lines of destruction along the cold hard ground. Tufts of dust rose with every hit, and several of the larger dog bodies jerked as the hot lead of their former masters stitched across their cooling forms.
The dogs had been the innocents in this fight. Just trained by thugs to obey, the animals served the pack as well as they could. Bolan bore them no ill will. Slaves never really knew what the fight was about until long afterward.
More sirens were sounding from the harbor below, and now the running lights were illuminating on the Uruguayan warship.
The flare gun spoke again, the trajectory coming from behind a hillock. Suspecting a trap, Bolan fired a 20 mm shell into the nearest stand of pine trees. The resulting blast blew a young sapling in half, and a man staggered into view, cursing and blindly firing his revolver.
Trying to reserve his few remaining shells, Bolan drew the Beretta and sent a whispering lead to the son of a bitch. Spinning around wildly, the dead man gushed dark blood from the hole in his temple, then flopped lifeless to the ground and began rolling down the slope. Standing perfectly still, Bolan listened with his entire body. Reloading, he reviewed the fight from every possible angle. There was only the wind rustling the pine trees and oregano bushes. Then a twig snapped to his left.
Bolan spun around in a crouch, triggering both the Beretta and the Desert Eagle. A shotgun boomed in reply, and he was knocked back from the hammering arrival. In spite of the body armor, it felt like he had been hit in the chest with a cannonball, and Bolan had to force air into his aching lungs. Good thing it had been a shotgun. Anything more powerful would have torn through his lightweight vest and sent him into a world of pain. Even now, his entire chest hurt, and he tried not to think about internal bleeding. Still on my feet, still in the fight. That was all that mattered at the moment.
The other man was sprawled on the ground, the shotgun suspiciously still in his hand. Warily, Bolan fired a single round from the Beretta. The 9 mm slug twanged off the barrel of the shotgun, sending the weapon spinning away into the darkness.
Muttering curses, the man rolled over, dark fluids gushing from a ragged array of holes in his body. The stream of 9 mm rounds must have just missed his vital organs, but the rock shrapnel had done the job. Or more accurately, it soon would.
Listening intently for any more guards or dogs, Bolan reloaded both of his weapons then heard a low rumble from the harbor below. Glancing over the cliff, he saw the waters churn and slowly rise. The entire harbor seemed to jump, and a huge bubble erupted along the shoreline, spewing out massive volumes of smoke and fire. Hot chunks of the underwater Soviet submarine sprayed across the harbor in an umbrella of destruction. The ragged debris crashed into the dockyard, ripping open fuel lines and crushing men like insects. As one pirate fell, his gun went off, sparking a raging inferno that swept along the shoreline, tracing the titanic fuel spill.
Even though he was high on the hillside, Bolan felt the powerful vibration in the ground. Down below, the four Russian trawlers shook and danced from the powerful shockwave, the men on deck shouting and running, several of them going overboard as the ships tilted. The harbor seemed to boil, great bubbles bursting on the surface, releasing dark patches of oily fumes and bursts of bright flames.
As the flames grew high, Bolan could now clearly see the Soviet shrapnel had punched numerous holes into the Russian trawlers, the old wooden hulls riddled with splintery openings. Two of them were starting to sink, and the others were listing badly, even as the emergency pumps began spewing out great arches of water from inside the vessels.
Only the big Uruguayan warship seemed inviolate. The riveted hull was badly dented in several spots, but it was still intact. As the harbor swelled under the warship, it merely moved backward, the anchors holding firm.
Glancing at his watch, Bolan saw the time tick away to zero, and he sprinted toward the bushes the guards had swarmed from. Sure enough, a Hummer was parked on a gravel road, the engine still idling.
Climbing behind the wheel, Bolan revved the engine and turned the vehicle around to start down the road. Then the fuel depot exploded, a writhing column of orange fire rising high above the misty forest, the blast dotted with cracked branches and the broken bodies of men.
Lurching the vehicle off the road, Bolan crashed through the brambles and bushes, snaking his way along the steep hillside. A group of guards appeared from the shadows, and Bolan merely ran them down, their screams cut short under the heavy tires of the lumbering Hummer.
Chapter 14
More explosions sounded from below, the natural shape of the harbor making each echo slightly.
Straining to remember the layout of this side of the island, Bolan almost drove off a cliff and had to quickly back up and ford a rushing stream. There, he came upon a SAM bunker. It was equipped with a spinning radar dish on top, but more important, it had no windows. Logically, that meant it was computer-controlled.
Narmada was letting his distrust of people shade the island’s defenses. Bad move.
Racing toward the bunker, Bolan saw two guards standing alongside a steel door. Accelerating the Hummer, he simply drove straight at them. It took the guards a moment to realize what was happening, then both of them swung up their AK-101 assault rifles and started firing. Ducking low, Bolan crashed into them. Their weapons discharged into the ground as they doubled over the front hood of the military transport.
Bolan jumped out of the Hummer and rummaged through the bloody pockets of the dead men until he found their keys. But as he unlocked the smeared door, it suddenly jerked aside, revealing another guard with a Skorpion machine pistol in his fist.
As the weapon chattered into operation, Bolan fired the Beretta. The 9 mm round knocked aside the Skorpion and sent it spinning into the forest. Incredibly, the guard jerked his arm forward and produced a Remington .22 automatic. His first shot caught Bolan in the shoulder, the tiny slug flattening against the body armor. Bolan turned sideways to try and deflect the round, then kept spinning and thrust out a hand, burying his knife in the pirate’s exposed throat. As the dying man staggered backward, his weapon kept firing into the floor and walls. Moving fast, Bolan finished him off quickly with a slash across the carotid artery.
Inside the bunker, the air was filled with the low, powerful hum of an electrical generator. Smart. An independent power source. Going to the fire control board, Bolan attempted to realign the array of launch tubes, but it was locked. There was power, and everything was in working condition, but nothing would respond. Looking around for a keypad, he noticed a slim black slot off to the side of the console.
Almost smi
ling, Bolan reached under his shirt to produce the biometric card recovered from the drowned pirate. He inserted it into the slot, and with a subtle click, the fire control board began to hum softly.
It only took Bolan a few seconds to rearrange the launch tubes outside. They were loaded with everything possible—LAW, LOKI, Javelin, Sidewinder and Redeye. Apparently, Narmada expected to be attacked from land, sea and air. Which was not an unreasonable assumption, considering the current situation.
Sitting down in the command chair, Bolan started flipping switches, resetting the automatic controls to manual and then choosing his targets. Several more SAM bunkers were linked to this one, and Bolan activated them all. Major Cortez was going to be very happy about this....
When he was finished, Bolan locked the controls and left. As he stepped outside, a rumble came from overhead, and Bolan looked up to see a full wing of MiG-15 jet fighters streak across the sky. Had the Russians...no, the markings were Albanian. So the Fifteen Families had joined the fight at last. Good. The more the merrier, in his opinion.
But as Bolan started the Hummer, one of the jets started to warp, the wings losing shape, almost as if it was crumbling apart from age. Then a wing snapped off and the MiG spun out of control and fell from the sky.
To Bolan, that type of destruction looked suspiciously like the plasma damage caused by a PEP laser. But how in the name of God could Narmada ever have gotten his mitts on one of those?
Spinning sideways, the remaining MiG-15 fighters separated fast, spreading across the island, diving down into the valleys and out of his sight. Because the PEP laser operated invisibly, Bolan had no way of knowing how the Albanians were now doing against the pirates. Hell, he couldn’t even tell where it was located. Logically, it would be on the very top of the island’s highest peak. Unlike a missile or artillery shell, the laser was limited to its line of sight.
Bolan’s watch began to vibrate.
Inside the bunker, he knew power gauges would be flickering alive on the fire control board. Hydraulics began to thump, and the array outside swung into a new position. Streaking away in a loose orchestration, the missiles and rockets lanced downward across the harbor and slammed into the Uruguayan warship. A Javelin hit the main deck and bounced off, plowing through the wheelhouse. But a Sidewinder punched through the hull and disappeared inside the vessel. A moment later, a gargantuan explosion blew open every porthole and doorway, wild tongues of flame lashing outward for dozens of yards.
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