Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  The man in the silk suit disappeared behind a crate. The freighter’s captain moved up a ladder back to his wheelhouse, and soon after that the rumble of the freighter’s engines subsided to a low grumble and Martinez walked out to the catwalk, raised the bullhorn to his lips. “Permission to board granted.” His English had suddenly improved.

  “Assemble your deck crew on the fantail, Captain Martinez,” Ehrlich ordered. He had to repeat it several times before Martinez finally ordered his men away from the rail and back toward the freighter’s stern.

  Things looked like they might be defusing, Ehrlich thought himself as he watched the Numestra s crewmen move away. “Prepare to board,” he now radioed to his men on the starboard rail, who began to holster pistols, sling rifles and pick up their mooring gear. He was about to order the helmsman to move closer when the radio suddenly came to life:

  “Skipper!” Judging by the background noise, the speaker was probably someone on board the Dolphin helicopter, which had been moving around the Numestra during the intercept, shining its searchlight across the freighter’s decks. “I see men carrying heavy weapons, moving to the port side of the freighter. Six of them, fore and aft. Disengage—”

  “Take cover, ” Ehrlich shouted, waving his arms, then turned and called to Applegate on the bridge, “Vector! Flank speed! Move . . . ”

  Ehrlich had taken about five steps when he heard the raspy, thudding pop-pop-pop of gunfire—even though he knew they were M-16s, they sounded like cheap kid’s toys. And then the night erupted into a sheet of fire.

  The six men on the foredeck of the Numestra spread out along the port railing near the front of the freighter, took quick aim and fired anti-armor bazookas at the Resolute—from only a few yards away they could not miss. Two high-explosive projectiles hit the 3-inch cannon, one round hit the foredeck and two rounds hit the bridge. Fire, smoke and red-hot glass showered the men on the forward half of the Resolute before they could react. One line-handler and the rifleman on the foredeck died instantly, the second line-handler on the bow was blown overboard by the force of the explosion on the cannon turret.

  The surviving Coast Guardsmen providing cover for the boarding crew returned fire but the attack wasn’t over. Three more bazooka rounds slammed into the Resolute, one hitting close enough to destroy a .50 caliber machine-gun mount. Heavy rifle fire from the freighter began to rake the cutter, and the Numestra’s engines roared to life as it began to head away from the crippled Coast Guard vessel.

  Ensign McConahay had survived on the bridge of the Resolute because as the Dolphin pilot’s warning echoed through the bridge loudspeakers he had moved behind his plotting table. So there was something solid between him and the freighter. And when the first shot rang out he ducked behind it just before the first LAWS rocket shattered the windows and blew away Applegate and the rest of the bridge crew.

  McConahay’s ears were ringing, he was dizzy and he tasted blood. He was covered with glass, bits of metal and some gooey stuff. Somehow he had managed to crawl to the aft bulkhead and find one of the auxiliary wall phones. He opened the phone’s cover, retrieved the handset and sank to the floor as another rush of vertigo hit him.

  “Bridge, this is Auxiliary,” a voice said. “Bridge! Respond!”

  “We’re under attack,” McConahay shouted. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

  “McConahay? Is that you?”

  “Yeah .. . yeah ...” Somehow hearing his name helped him think, and slowly a bit of his training began to filter through. “Radio for help. Call the day crew to the bridge.”

  “Where’s the captain? Where’s Mr. Applegate?”

  That was the first time McConahay had looked around the bridge, really looked around, and the sight brought a massive wave of nausea. The smell of the explosives, the stench of burned flesh, the acid smoke in the air . . . overpowering. It was also then that he noticed the bodies, torn and scattered across the so recently spotless decks.

  “They’re . . . they’re . . .” McConahay couldn’t finish the thought. He looked down at the tattered remains of his life vest, covered with glass and red sticky globs. His hands and arms were covered with it

  “Can you give us a heading?” the voice in Auxiliary Control shouted. “Can you give us a course?”

  McConahay dropped the phone and staggered to his feet. The Gulf breezes were slowly moving the acidic fumes out of the shattered bridge, and soon he could see the Numestra moving off to the right, heading away at growing speed. Then through the broken windows he spotted a few crewmen on the foredeck firing at the escaping freighter—and he saw that the 3-inch gun had taken some hits but its protective steel turret housing, although backward, was still intact.

  He found the auxiliary control phone underneath the forward instrument panel—it had been protected by its cradle well under the panel. “Auxiliary control, report. What’s the status of the cannon?”

  “The 3-incher is showing functional, ensign,” a voice replied, “but we’re showing a fault in—”

  “Come twenty degrees right, make flank speed, and stand by on the forward 3-incher,” McConahay broke in. He leaned as far as he could out the broken windows. “Clear the foredeck! Clear the foredeck!”

  “Ensign, we can’t make flank speed. We’re sending damage-control to—”

  “Then give me whatever you got,” McConahay shouted, “but get that cannon on line.” The riflemen scurried away from the gun turret as the huge cannon slewed left and lowered its muzzle to nearhorizontal.

  McConahay now checked the fire-control radar but it was a smoking hole in the instrument panel. Coughing through the acrid stinging smoke that nearly filled the shattered bridge, he found one of the seldom used pieces of navigation equipment intact—the pelorus. This simple device, resembling a surveyor’s instrument, had a precision aiming-reticle on a moveable wheel mounted on a compass rose that read bearings from the ship to a distant object. Using the pelorus and a little trigonometry the navigator could compute range and position. The pelorus had been replaced by the more accurate radar and other electronic navigation devices, but McConahay, out of navigation school only a few months, was still familiar with how to use it.

  And it came to him that, incredibly, he had what he needed to mount a counter-attack. Maybe . . .

  The 3-inch cannon needed range and bearing for an accurate firing solution. Bearing was easy—line up on the freighter and read bearing directly off the pelorus. He knew the approximate height of the freighter’s superstructure, and with the pelorus he got the angle to the top of it. He had all the angles and one side of a right triangle— height of the superstructure divided by the tangent of the angle would give the range in feet to the freighter.

  The superstructure was about a hundred feet tall—remember to subtract the distance above the waterline, McConahay told himself. He was about twenty feet above water, so that equaled eighty feet. The pelorus measured angles in degrees and mils—degrees for very tall objects and short distances, and mils for more precise measurements. Mils, originally used by Civil War artillery officers to compute distance for cannon fire, were made to order for this situation.

  The breeze through the shattered bridge windows was beginning to clear the smoke. Rubbing dirt and soot from his watering eyes, McConahay sighted through the scope at the retreating shape of the Numestra—the measurement scales were luminescently lit—and read the angle: twenty-six-and-a-half mils.

  He used his fingers like an abacus to make the range calculations. First, mils had to be converted to radians. There were 16 mils in a grad—that came to 1.656 grads. Multiply that by 0.9 to get degrees— that came to 1.49. Multiply . . . no, divide that by 57.29 to get radians—that came to 0.26. The tangent of that number was virtually the same—.026. Divide 80 feet—the height of the Numestra’s superstructure minus his own height above water—by .026, and moments later, dividing on his fingers, he had the range: 3,054 feet.

  “Auxiliary control, range to target three tho
usand fifty feet, bearing twenty-two degrees, estimated speed of target twelve knots, estimated heading of target . . . one-five-zero degrees magnetic. Deck clear. Report when ready to shoot.”

  “Ensign, do you know what the hell—”

  “I said report. ”

  Silence, then: “Ensign, ballistic-mode manual, lead mode manual showing feed fault after eight. Ready up.”

  McConahay shook drops of sweat out of his eyes. “Batteries released. Shoot!”

  The 3-inch cannon rang out, a tongue of flame leaping toward the horizon. McConahay, the recent student, probably didn’t need all his fancy precise calculations to hit the freighter—it was little more than a half-mile away—but in any case his figures were dead on. The first round hit the freighter just above the waterline and smack in the middle. A mushroom of fire blossomed into the night sky. The cannon fired one high-explosive round every five seconds, and each one hit home. The shells moved aft along the waterline, finally reaching the engine compartment. When the fifth shell hit, it sent a massive ball of fire erupting from the entire aft section of the freighter, and the hulk began to burn fiercely.

  “Feed fault on the forward 3-incher,” the officer in auxiliary control reported.

  “Auxiliary control, cease fire, cease fire,” McConahay shouted into the phone. The cannon’s heavy pounding had felt like hammer- blows to his chest, and the vibration, along with the rush of adrenaline made his muscles actually quiver with exhaustion. “Relay to engine room. All stop!” Men were now rushing onto the bridge. McConahay let the phone drop, and found himself slumping to the deck.

  “I’ll be goddamned, you got the son-of-a-bitch, Mr. McConahay,” someone was saying.

  “Damage report . . . head count . . . send S.O.S. . . .” McConahay was mumbling. The emergency ship drills at the Academy were jumbling together with geometric shapes and trig tables in his head, and soon everything turned gray, and welcome darkness closed over him.

  Coast Guard Station, Mobile, Alabama,

  The Next Morning

  Reporters and camera crews were on hand in boats, in helicopters and along every dock in the harbor as the Resolute was towed into port with the crippled freighter Numestra del Oro alongside. A fire tug moved the Resolute, with a dozen firemen and engineers on deck studying the rocket-impact points and fire damage on the cutter’s starboard side. Another fire tug was covering the Numestra on the port side, but this one had as many armed FBI agents and Coast Guardsmen on it as firemen.

  Admiral Hardcastle stood on Resolute’s helipad just aft of the helicopter hangar, and was soon joined by Admiral Albert Cronin, Hard- castle’s boss and commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area. Cronin, just over five feet, had thick meaty hands, a waistline to match and a wrestler’s neck. Those friendly referred to him as “the fireplug” or just “Plug,” but Hardcastle never used that nickname even though the two men had known each other for fifteen years.

  Now they stood at the edge of the helipad looking over the freighter Numestra tied along the port side. Customs, DEA and FBI agents swarmed over its unsteady deck, taking photographs and making notes as if the badly damaged freighter would disappear in a puff of smoke any second.

  “I could use a smoke,” Cronin said gruffly. Hardcastle reached inside his jacket, pulled out a cigar, offered it to Cronin, then took one for himself as well. But as the Area Commander was about to light up Hardcastle held up a hand. “Better not, sir. Diesel fumes.”

  In fact, the air was thick with the nauseating kerosene-like smell; the Numestra had left a trail of fuel oil in its wake twenty miles long. Cronin’s scowl deepened. The two men, unlit stogies clamped between their teeth, continued to look at the Numestra as if it were King Kong brought to America on a barge.

  “They’re going to transfer McConahay,” Cronin told Hardcastle. “Kid’s on the edge of nervous exhaustion.”

  “He gave a damn fine account of himself out there last night,” Hardcastle said.

  “C’mon, Ian, he was a junior officer on the bridge of a cutter, scared shitless, and he went over the edge. Damn near every other man on the bridge gets biown to hell, he finds himself suddenly in command on a wrecked bridge, under attack, with major damage to the vessel. Now I don’t need to tell you . . . the first thing to do is alert the crew, take care of the injured and take charge of the damage control detail—not, for God’s sake, start shooting the damned cannon. Face it, the kid went ballistic, he was out of control—”

  “He scored five direct hits on that freighter, at night, without using one piece of electronic fire-control gear,” Hardcastle said, voice tight. “He made mathematical calculations in his head that you or I couldn’t do in a week or a year with a computer—”

  “Meanwhile his ship is taking on water and he’s thirty minutes away from being on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “He made a decision to stop a felon and aggressor from escaping.”

  “Escaping? That freighter wasn’t going anywhere. We had the patrol cutter Mcinitou only three hours away. We could have run that old tub down—”

  “Maybe so. But he couldn’t know that.”

  “Ian, there were crewmen that didn’t even know what was happening up on deck until several minutes after the attack. Just possibly three of the dead might have survived if the proper actions had been taken. McConahay was up there taking pot shots with the 3-incher instead of directing matters on his foredeck.”

  He noticed Hardcastle’s shocked expression. “Relax, I’m not going to put that in my report. But this isn’t war, when maybe such actions might be in order. This is peacetime. Look it up. Whoever is in charge of a Coast Guard vessel is first responsible for his crew and his ship. One man doesn’t keep shooting when his shipmates are lying dead and wounded around him. But I agree, young McConahay’s been through enough without laying a review board on him. When the shouting dies down and he gets off convalescent leave I’ll recommend that he gets a detailed briefing on the appropriate procedures in such circumstances—including the fact that your crew and your ship comes first. We’ll call it counseling or reorientation. His permanent record won’t be touched. Satisfied?”

  “I agree, his record shouldn’t be affected.”

  “Admiral, you are a damned hardhead. Which isn’t exactly big news.” And then, as though feeling the need to explain himself further: “Whipping out a gun and shooting at the bad guys isn’t always the most appropriate action to take in an emergency. We lost a helluva lot of valuable evidence because you shot down that Shorts 330 instead of trying to force it down or trail it on radar to a landing zone.”

  “We’ve gone over this, sir ...”

  “Well, it’s the same with McConahay shooting at the smugglers.” Hardcastle pointed up to the deck of the Numestra, where Customs Service agents were hauling hand trucks full of plastic bags up onto deck. The bags, each the size of a refrigerator, contained cash, American currency in bills no larger than one hundred dollars—most in fives and tens. Customs had already stacked dozens of these bags on deck.

  “Look at that. This freighter was a floating smuggler’s warehouse,” Hardcastle said. “I’m told each one of those bags contains one hundred thousand dollars in small bills. They estimate they’ve got tons of cash below decks—not just millions, tons. Not to mention hundreds of pounds of cocaine and heroin and another hundred tons of marijuana. Customs says this ship alone could have hauled several such loads of cash out of the country already. Plus, they found automatic weapons, bazookas, LAWS rockets, mines, high explosives, even Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.”

  “I know all that—what’s your point? What’s that got to do with McConahay?” Knowing full well the answer.

  “Well, you’re saying that the appropriate action for McConahay was to disengage, look after his ship and let a smaller, less capable patrol boat like the Manitou go after those guys. I say that would have been a mistake. Frankly neither the Resolute nor the Manitou are well equipped to handle this kind of action, but
the Manitou would have had no chance—these guys could easily have sunk the Manitou. I’m saying, Admiral, that maybe McConahay did the right thing by hitting back at those smugglers. If those guys sailed away scot-free and then were chased by other Coast Guard or Customs forces we could have lost a lot more men. McConahay should be recognized as a hero, not as a junior officer who did an ‘inappropriate’ action.”

  Cronin privately not exactly disagreeing, but not able to say so, let it pass.

  “Anyway, we’ve got a bad situation on our hands, Admiral,” Hardcastle pressed on. “This is the second incident—third, if you count the Falcon attack and the attack on Geffar’s unit separately—where smugglers have used heavy weapons to attack law-enforcement units in American waters, on American soil or in international waters. These aren’t terrorist or military attacks—but they have elements of both. Their primary purpose is to defend their drug smuggling, plain and simple. Except their tactics aren’t so simple . . .”

  “Well, each Coast Guard station will be briefed in detail about these activities,” Cronin said. “Priority messages have been sent to each District. We’ve requested additional personnel for your District and for Admiral Kellerman's Eighth District as well, along with more air and surface units—”

  “Then I’d like to detach a unit and set it up specifically for handling this situation, Admiral. We need a unit that is specially trained and equipped to handle these guys.”

  “I don’t think that’s really necessary, Ian. I can’t approve of McConahay’s response last night, but at least it showed these smugglers that we’re able to respond with force—”

  He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth, Hardcastle thought. Cronin wasn’t a man who did that . . . unless he was less sure of his ground than he sounded . . .

  “I disagree, sir. In both situations the smugglers got the best of us, they had a Customs Service assault force and a Coast Guard cutter beaten. They suffered a loss of personnel and equipment because of some . . . unorthodox responses by myself and a green Ensign McConahay who didn’t know the rules said not to shoot back.”