“I’ll get them on the horn,” Akana said. “Then you talk your counterpart through what he or she needs to look for in order to fix their ship.”
Captain Goodrich had no flight computer to calculate the distance to the Chinese fishing trawler from USS Makin Island, but the admiral had said the trawler was approximately one hundred miles east of the mocked-up target vessel. The target vessel was roughly forty miles south of the LHD. He had two legs of the triangle. A squared plus B squared equals C squared… Sixteen hundred plus ten thousand… He started to factor, working to reach the square root of 11,600 in his head.
“One hundred and seven miles!” Captain Denny turned in the cockpit and looked at him as she spoke over the intercom like she was reading his mind. She must have seen him drawing imaginary triangles on his knee. “ETA sixteen minutes.”
The SEALs were already up, ready to follow the rigid hull inflatable off the ramp when they reached the two-mile mark. The crew chief had already rigged a thick 120-foot fast-rope to the trapeze above the rear ramp, and had it secured out of the way so the SEALs could egress.
Captain Scooter Denny wished she had one of those belly-mounted mini-guns on board. The Interim Defense Weapon System could lay down three thousand rounds per minute firing from the rear cargo hole, but it was a weight thing. At eight hundred pounds, the IDWS added a lot of weight. The scenario that involved attacking an enemy Chinese fishing vessel that had stolen a U.S. anti-ship missile had obviously been overlooked by her superiors.
They started to take small arms fire from a half a kilometer away. It wasn’t effective, but she could see the tracers flashing past. Both Ospreys had their ramps open now, GAU-21 .50-cals banging away as they flew past, gunners careful not to shoot toward each other.
“That’s like no fishing trawler I’ve ever seen,” Denny said into the intercom. “Looks like armor plating around the wheelhouse. No sign of the missile, but the crew is all making for the fortified wheelhouse.”
“Copy that,” Goodrich said. “Do you have the Chinese gunboat on radar?”
“Thirty-five miles southeast of us,” Denny said. “And closing. I don’t know if they can see him on the ship, but he’s just over an hour out, probably in contact with the trawler and coming for the missile. Wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see Chinese fighters any minute.”
“This is a shit show,” Goodrich said.
“Indeed,” Denny said. “SEALs should be on station anytime. I’ll make one more pass with the gun to clear the decks and then pull up into a hover. My wingman will keep anyone on the bow occu—”
A loud hiss, audible over the roar of the Osprey, streaked by the aircraft.
There was a sudden thud, like someone kicking a metal barn, and then a muffled explosion.
“RPG!” Denny yelled in the intercom. The pilot of the second Osprey responded that they’d been hit and they were about to get wet.
Captain Denny put her Osprey in a hover above the rear deck of the trawler. The SEALs had managed to get the other inflatables deployed before the second Osprey splashed. They now engaged the crew from the water, giving the FAST platoon a window to hit the ropes.
Goodrich’s natural instinct was to worry about his fellow Marines that had gone down. The Sonitus Molar Mics remained operational, and he could hear Captain Arthur, his assistant platoon commander, organizing his guys in the water. He said they, along with the crew chief, were all accounted for and were working to find the pilots. Focusing on the mission ahead, Goodrich isolated his squad on the comm and trusted Arthur to take care of his Marines.
Captain Goodrich had originally trained to fast-rope off the back ramp of a V-22, before the Weapons and Tactics folks had switched to having them deploy out the hellhole — the cargo hole in the belly of the aircraft. Now those same folks had decided Marines should once again disembark via fast rope from the ramp. This was going to suck for Staff Sergeant Ski, who would go down first, as the rope would swing violently due to downwash from the Osprey’s props. If he wasn’t being shot at, he’d hold the rope while the rest of the squad disembarked.
And that’s the way it worked out — except Staff Sergeant Ski did get shot at, as did the second and third Marines down the rope. They returned fire as soon as their boots hit the deck, chasing the remaining crew back toward the wheelhouse and engine room twenty feet farther aft.
Goodrich sidestepped around a metal box on the foredeck. It was the size of a dumpster, good cover for either side, but he hadn’t seen anyone behind it from the Osprey. Halfway around, two Chinese crewmen sprang out of the box itself, pushing open the entire side on a long piano hinge. Goodrich gave the first one a three-round burst to the face from his M4, but the second pressed in quickly, using his partner’s falling body to slam into the Marine and shove the rifle sideways.
Gunfire popped and zinged all around him, slapping and ricocheting off the metal hull. Goodrich roared, towering above the much shorter man. This was no fisherman, but a Chinese Special Forces soldier dressed as trawler crew. He knew how to fight, and came up with a knife, slashing at Goodrich’s chest. Goodrich parried, deflecting the blade with his rifle. He attempted to bring the muzzle around but the little guy was too close. He swatted the knife away a second and third time, hearing the blade scrape the metal rifle magazines in the pouches in front of his load-bearing vest. The same slash took him across the biceps, not to the bone, but bad enough. It was only a matter of time before something important got cut.
Chest-to-chest with the Chinese soldier, Goodrich used the M4 as a shield and transitioned to his sidearm. He drew the M9 and, knowing he was more likely to get cut at this point if he tried to create distance, pressed the muzzle directly against his assailant’s head, holding his thumb behind the slide to make sure it stayed in battery for a contact shot.
The Chinese soldier hit the deck before he realized he was dead. Goodrich let him fall. Holstering his Beretta, he fought his way to the wheelhouse door with little resistance. All the sailors had dogged themselves inside, presumably with the missile, to wait for the Chinese gunboat to arrive.
On board USS Makin Island, Black Sabbath finally stopped playing on the intercoms. IT2 Townsend, with her counterpart on the Fort Worth, had isolated the Calliope software and deleted it from the system. She, in turn, assisted the IT2s aboard the two destroyer escorts.
Admiral Peck was on the horn with Captain Avery Denny in the 11 lead Osprey, getting a sitrep. He felt as if he’d been slapped hard in the face when she described how 12 had been struck with an RPG.
One of the pilots had cut his leg egressing the bird, but everyone was alive. The MH-60s, cut off from any communication with the ship, had located both Skeet and Oh and were in the process of hoisting them to safety.
All good news, but Peck could hardly relax.
“Captain Goodrich?” he asked.
Captain Denny described how the trawler crew had bunkered up in the fortified wheelhouse. “He’s working on it, sir.”
“Radar is back online,” the operations specialist said from the console. “The Chinese gunboat and the trawler are closing on each other. ETA thirty minutes at their present speed.”
“Get Captain Goodrich on the radio,” Peck said.
“No contact, sir,” the OS1 said. “He’s working on a different band.”
“Scooter,” Peck said, using Denny’s call sign. “Get Goodrich and his men out of there.”