Havoc - v4

by Jack Du Brul

  The roar of the crane’s diesel masked another, deeper sound until it was almost at the work site. The powerful outboard on the bass boat that had gone by earlier sent an arcing fountain of water into the air as it approached the barge at nearly forty miles per hour. Mercer had been busy helping Cali off with her equipment and only sensed the fast-moving craft when it entered his peripheral vision. He saw that the four men in the sleek boat were focused on the barge, and three of them brandished automatic weapons.

  “Down,” he shouted, shoving Cali to the deck. As he whirled he saw the Bertram fishing boat that had been tied to the pier suddenly come alive, a boil of froth at her transom as the captain slammed the throttles to their gates.

  Mercer had kept his hand grip close at hand the entire day. He ripped open the zipper, fumbling for a frantic second, and pulled out an MP-40 Schmeisser. The weapon was the standard German submachine gun during World War Two. Mercer had bought it from Tiny, who’d taken it in trade on a gambling debt. He jammed a thirty-round magazine into the receiver and racked the slide. He stuffed six more magazines into his jeans pockets. While not the most accurate weapon, the gun’s high rate of fire made it devastating at close range.

  The fast-moving bass boat was still twenty yards from the barge when the three gunmen opened up with their Kalashnikovs. Crenna’s crew fell flat to the deck and Crenna himself leapt from the crane. He dove behind the big air compressor as rounds pinged and ricocheted off the barge’s metalworks. He tore off the gas mask and sat there panting.

  Ducking behind the cabin cruiser’s gunwales, Mercer shoved the grip to Cali. “There’s a Beretta in there.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. I just wanted to be ready.” He addressed Stan Slaughbaugh and Jesse Williams. Both were huddled at the transom and neither looked like he’d ever been on the receiving end of an ambush. “Go forward into the cabin. Fire up the engines, then stay down.” The two NEST scientists complied wordlessly.

  The bass boat continued to roar up the river, the sustained automatic fire popping over the throb of the big outboard. It looked to Mercer as if they were going to jump onto the far side of the barge. He chanced looking over his shoulder. The Bertram fishing boat had crossed half the river and was coming on strong, her blunt bows buried behind a creaming froth of water. The captain was in the high bridge while the other two were stationed on either side of the stern deck. They both carried weapons—Heckler and Koch HK-416s, the German arms manufacturer’s latest assault carbine. The compact weapons fired NATO 5.56-millimeter ammunition and were fast becoming the popular choice among the world’s elite military units.

  Cali saw where Mercer was looking and gasped. They were trapped. Even if they untied from the barge, the Bertram would easily outrun them. She drew a bead on one of the sport fishermen with her pistol when the vessel was fifty yards out. Mercer had turned back to see the bass boat decelerate as it came abreast of the barge. The men were still firing, although Mercer couldn’t see Crenna or any of his deckhands. A snap burst from one of the gunmen hit the hydraulic controls that anchored the barge to the river bottom. Hydraulic fluid pumped from the reservoirs like lifeblood. Mercer looked back and was about to tell Cali to stay put when he saw her about to fire on the Bertram.

  “No!” he shouted and pushed her hand into the air.

  The Bertram was thirty yards away, close enough for Mercer to see the look of concentration on Booker Sykes’s face as he drove the boat across the river. Mercer didn’t know the two Special Forces operators with him. They hadn’t been part of Sykes’s Delta Force team when they escorted Mercer into a Tibetan monastery once run by Tisa Nguyen’s father. Calling Sykes to provide security had dredged up fresh memories of the events leading to her death, but Mercer wouldn’t let his pain hamper the ongoing investigation.

  “They’re with me,” he said. “They are Delta Force commandos. The commander’s name is Sykes. Cover me.”

  Mercer eased over the gunwale and onto the deck of the barge. He could feel that the hydraulic system had failed and the barge was responding to the wind and waves, but so far he couldn’t tell if it was caught in the Niagara River’s relentless current.

  The bass boat was so low to the water that he couldn’t see it on the far side of the barge. He found cover behind a chain locker and waited for the gunmen to expose themselves again. Sykes arced the Bertram well behind the barge and was about to engage from the Canadian side of the river when another bass boat appeared around the north tip of Grand Island. Mercer counted four men in it as well, bringing the total number of attackers to eight. When he looked back to the first bass boat, he caught a fleeting glimpse of one of the men lunging onto the barge.

  His initial plan if they were attacked was to wait until he and Sykes could take out all the gunmen in a surprise counter ambush, but the sheer numbers made that option untenable. Another gunman raised himself over the low flank of the bass boat. His classic Middle Eastern features told Mercer two things. One was that the gunmen had probably received training in some terrorist camp in Iraq, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. The second thing he knew was that they were here to fight to the death.

  The Arab was exposed for only a fraction of a second but it was enough time for Mercer to bring the Schmeisser to bear. The old submachine gun bucked in his hand like a living thing as he fired off a five-round burst. Four of the rounds went wide but the fifth blew the gunman off the barge in a spray of blood.

  The counterfire from the other three terrorists was swift and sustained. The sound of bullets striking the chain locker was horrific. It felt like the noise would shake Mercer’s teeth loose from his jaw. But even over this racket he heard Sykes and his team engage the second bass boat, their assault carbines adding to the gun battle raging across the width of the river.

  Mercer waited until the firing stopped to blindly fire a few rounds over the chain locker and scamper to better cover near the crane. He nearly tripped over the prone form of Brian Crenna. He was huddled partially under the crane with one of his deckhands.

  “What the hell is going on?” Crenna shouted over the roar of automatic weapons.

  Mercer ignored the pointless question. “Where are your other two men?”

  “Billy jumped over the side.” He pointed out over the water. Mercer could see a man swimming toward Grand Island. “He’s a good swimmer. He’ll make it. I don’t know about Tom.”

  The second bass boat raced around to their side of the barge, Sykes’s big Bertram trying to keep up with the faster and more nimble craft. While one of the gunmen fired at the Bertram, two more raked the cabin cruiser. Several shots went wide and slammed into the crane’s turret, forcing the three men to cower further, as if trying to burrow into the steel decking.

  “Listen,” Mercer said when the outboard faded. “I’m going to cover you. Get to the cabin cruiser and get out of here.”

  He changed out the half-depleted magazine for a fresh one, waited a moment for Crenna and the deckhand to get ready, then ducked under the extended boom and cut loose with the Schmeisser. He raked the far side of the barge in a continuous sweep from stem to stern. The gunmen were out of sight so he nodded to Crenna. The two men took off in a loping run, covering the thirty feet to the side of the barge in seconds. Both vaulted over the rail and onto the cabin cruiser’s deck.

  Even as he concentrated on finding a target, Mercer noticed that the far bank of the river was moving ever so slightly. When the last round had cycled through the gun, Mercer ducked back under the crane, and as he changed out the magazine he looked at the near bank. Intellect overcame the adrenaline surging though his veins and he realized the land wasn’t moving at all. The hydraulic anchors had failed completely and the barge was at the mercy of the Niagara River. And in the few seconds it took to reload the Schmeisser he realized the barge was accelerating. The wind had picked up again and he estimated they were going six knots.

  Mercer was certain the cabin cruiser didn’t have the power to tow
the barge against the current. He needed to get to the tug moored to the far side of the craft if he was going to prevent them all from plummeting down the falls. Failing that, he had to get the crates of plutonium ore into the special bags so they wouldn’t smash open when the barge went over.

  “Cali,” he shouted. “We’re adrift. Cast off and get out of here.”

  “What about you?” she shouted back without revealing herself.

  “Sykes can pick me up.” For the moment, though, Mercer didn’t know where his friend was. The Bertram and the second bass boat had gone upriver. He would just have to trust that Booker Sykes would take out the second group of terrorists and return before it was too late.

  Cali and Crenna spoke for a second and she covered him as he inched his way to the controls of the cabin cruiser. Cali wanted Crenna to use the cruiser to push the barge to shore so he opened the throttles and put the rudder hard over. The ropes securing the cruiser to the barge strained as the tired motor roared. To Mercer’s surprise and delight it seemed like her plan was working. The nine-hundred-ton barge slowly rotated and seemed to be heading for the Canadian side of the river. The gunmen on the bass boat hadn’t expected such fierce resistance so it was taking them a few seconds to regroup, but when they heard the cruiser they opened fire again. The windshield and side windows exploded, covering Crenna in a shower of glass, while chunks were ripped from the cruiser’s upperworks. It was a fluke shot that hit the cleat securing the cruiser’s bow to the barge. The boat slewed away from the metal side of the barge before Crenna could bring the wheel over or throttle down the engine. The tension on the rear cleat was too much and it gave way, tearing a large section of the transom in the process.

  The gunmen continued to fire as the two craft separated. The rear deck was chewed up by the barrage, forcing Cali to dive into the cabin. Greasy smoke began to boil from the engine cowling and the motor started to sputter. As soon as Crenna drove them out of range, Cali mounted the four steps to the cockpit. “We have to go back.”

  “Forget it, lady. You ain’t paying me enough for this. I’m going to pick up Billy and call the Coast Guard.”

  “Mercer will be dead by the time they get here.”

  “That’s his problem.”

  Cali cursed herself for emptying the Beretta. She wouldn’t have shot Crenna but she certainly would have threatened him. “Okay, I’ll drop you off at the dock but I’m going back.”

  “Not on my boat you’re not. Bad enough I might lose my tug and the crane if she don’t ground.”

  Cali exploded in rage. “Those crates we raised are filled with plutonium,” she shouted. “If they fall into the hands of a bunch of terrorists I’ll make sure you’re charged with treason and shot.”

  He looked at her. Cali’s eyes blazed with fury and her breath came in heaving gasps. Just as he was about to agree, a wave of heat washed over them. They turned in unison. The rear of the boat was a wall of flame. A bullet had severed the fuel line and the raw gasoline had ignited. “Jesus,” Crenna yelled. “Everyone off the boat. Now!”

  Stan, Jesse, and Crenna’s third mate scrambled from the cabin. More familiar with watercraft, the mate knew instantly that the boat was going to burn to the water line, so he threw himself over the side. Stan and Jesse saw that Cali and the captain were crawling out through the shattered windshield and they jumped into the swift-flowing river.

  Cali grabbed a pair of flotation rings that hung just below the windscreen and jumped into the water with Crenna right behind her. The shore of Grand Island was only a hundred yards away, and once everyone was together and holding on to one of the rings, they struck out. The boat drifted past. The fire had already spread to the cabin and flames shot from the cockpit. Tears of frustration stung Cali’s eyes. By the time she reached shore and found another boat it would be too late.

  Mercer needed to cross twenty feet of open deck to reach the little towboat. The gunmen were well covered and fired at him from the protection of their boat. Their only exposed flank was from the water, and since Sykes and his team were still upriver fighting the other boat, they could afford to be patient. Mercer was effectively pinned. He had yet to figure out their plan or spot the last member of Crenna’s crew, and time was quickly running out. The barge had drifted at least a mile from where it had anchored over the Wetherby and was fast approaching a series of rapids.

  He couldn’t wait for Sykes any longer. He had to end the standoff and get to the tug. He checked his ammo. The magazine in the Schmeisser was fresh and he had two more in his pockets. He fired a quick burst to keep the terrorists’ heads down and sprinted for the forty-foot tugboat. As he ran he watched for movement and as soon as one of the gunmen looked over the side of the barge he triggered another three-round burst. The bullets went wide but the terrorist ducked from sight.

  Mercer had just another couple of paces to go when the barge struck a rock as the river began to shoal. He was thrown flat and the barge spun on its axis, grinding across the hidden boulder until water pressure shoved it free. The crates of ore still suspended over the deck on the end of the crane pendulumed dangerously but didn’t fall.

  Mercer scrambled up just as the three terrorists recovered and let loose with their Kalashnikovs. He fell from the barge and onto the deck of the small tug, bullets exploding all around him. He lay flat for a moment and glanced back toward the gunmen when the firing stopped. One of them stood upright, a long tube resting on his shoulder. It was an RPG-7, a venerable Russian-made tank killer. The rocket popped from the launcher a second later, its motor engaged, and it streaked across the barge. Mercer threw his hands over his head just as the rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the tug’s wheelhouse. The explosion shattered the big windscreen, allowing most of the blast to vent away from Mercer, but the overpressure wave was a crushing weight that seemed to suck the air from his lungs and left his ears ringing. He could no longer hear the roar of Niagara Falls only a mile or two downstream.

  Mercer slowly sat upright. He hadn’t been hit by any debris, but the pilothouse was ruined. There was no way now to stop the barge from going over the falls and he had just minutes to get the crates into their protective bags. He looked down the river. There was a structure of some sort jutting into the water from the Canadian side. It was the water intakes for a massive hydroelectric power plant. The barge had drifted too close to the American side for it to be drawn toward the intakes. Instead it was steering for the rapids that preceded the most powerful waterfall in North America.

  A movement caught Mercer’s eye. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A man in a black jumpsuit had just landed on the center of the barge, his parachute billowing before he cut it away. A second man landed a moment later. Above them a dark helicopter began to descend toward the barge. The gunmen must have thought Mercer had died when the tugboat was hit because they cheered and ran up to embrace one of their comrades. The second parachutist, who was Caucasian rather than Arab, made straight for the crates.

  Mercer steadied his submachine gun on the edge of the tug, took careful aim, and fired. His rounds stitched through the group. One of the parachutists was hit across the hips and collapsed, screaming in agony as bright blood pumped from his femoral artery. Two of the gunmen were raked across the chest because no matter how Mercer fought his Schmeisser, he couldn’t stop the barrel from climbing. The last gunman and the second parachutist dove for the bass boat. Mercer didn’t give them time to recover. He charged across the deck shouting incoherently. He was halfway there when the barge slammed into another rock and stopped dead. He staggered but didn’t fall. He reached the edge of the barge and was about to fire into the bass boat when he realized there was no point. It had been caught between the barge and the rocks and had been crushed flat. Only the big outboard had survived the impact and to Mercer’s eye even it looked a little narrower than normal.

  The river kept the barge pressed tightly to the rock, and as Mercer stood over the ruined bass boat, panting, it seemed li
ke it was jammed solid. A few hundred yards away he saw a billowing cloud of mist as the river dropped nearly two hundred feet to the gorge below. He checked the gunmen. All were dead with the exception of the man with the shattered hip, but he had already slipped into a shock-induced coma as he bled out. Mercer wasted no more time with them.

  The helicopter the two men had parachuted from came within two hundred feet of the barge and Mercer opened fire. He missed at that range but the big chopper pirouetted in the air and thundered over the Canadian border and out of view.

  Having logged hundreds of hours running everything from a twelve-thousand-ton walking dragline to a compact skip loader, Mercer had little trouble deciphering the controls to Crenna’s crane. He retracted the boom and lowered the crates until they were a few inches from the deck. He jumped from the cab and carefully arranged the bags so he could close them around the wooden chests. He was about to lower the crates that last little bit when he felt the barge move again. The current had found a tiny angle to exploit and started swinging the craft around the rock. The deck began to move and the grind of metal against stone reached a fierce crescendo as the barge came free and was again drawn toward the falls.

  Mercer hurriedly lowered the crates and ran back out to the deck. He scanned for the helicopter as he wrestled the first crate into place and began closing the bag. There were four different seals. First there was a wide adhesive strip, then Velcro, and then a heavy-duty zipper. Those took seconds. It was having to lace the bag closed with wire that took several minutes.

  The barge continued to hit against rocks. It would hold steady for a minute or two, then continue downstream while the flat bottom constantly scraped against the shallow bottom. Three shots in rapid succession made him drop flat and pick up his Schmeisser. He looked around. There was no one. Then he looked upstream and saw Booker Sykes standing at the stern of the Bertram, his assault carbine resting on a cocked hip. The Bertram was a wreck. Part of the bow was smashed in and the hull was riddled with bullet holes. Mercer could just imagine what was left of the second bass boat.