The lights in the garage had been dialed down to match the outside overcast, so everyone’s face looked drawn and pale. Their eyes, however, were bright and their motions swift and sure as they checked over each other’s equipment. The sound of magazines being slapped home and actions being cocked was a reassuring symphony to Cabrillo’s ears.
He caught Tory Ballinger’s eye across the room. She had agreed, reluctantly, to stay with the assault boat when the team hit the beach. The Corporation mercenaries had trained together more times than any of them could count and been under fire more than any wanted to remember. In combat they moved and thought as one by seeming to read each other’s minds. He made her realize that her presence among them would jeopardize that hard-won unit cohesion.
He couldn’t dissuade her from coming on the raid, and he hadn’t really tried that hard. He saw that she needed to be part of this because of her survivor’s guilt over the attack on the Avalon. Until she’d exacted some measure of revenge, that incident would haunt her for the rest of her life. And he planned to help by making sure she’d see a little action as everything unfolded.
Tory gave him a thumbs-up and a silent nod. He shot her a cocky grin that made her smile.
Cabrillo’s headset crackled. “Juan, it’s Max.”
“Go ahead.”
“Murph says the video is about to come online. I’m piping it down to you.”
“Roger.”
Juan vaulted the assault boat’s gunwale and flipped on the cockpit flat-panel display. Autostabilizers built into the camera mounts compensated for the constant pitching and rolling, and Murph was doing a good job zooming in on what was unfolding as the Oregonsteamed into the bay.
The feeds flipped at a steady pace, first showing Juan an intense firefight near a large metal building built on a barge, then men who were clones of the pirates they’d taken out weeks ago attacking a tugboat that was in place to tow the barge; next he saw hundreds of Chinese workers running across the sloping moonscape of mud and boulders to get away from the expanding gun battles. He saw that the ships they’d picked up on radar were old cruise liners. All but one had settled deep into the beach, driven almost to their load lines by waves and tidal action. The lone exception might be a new arrival. Although the breakers that slammed her hull couldn’t make the vessel rock, she had yet to settle into the rocky beach. Finally Murph showed him a quick shot of the volcano in the distance. Its peak was wreathed in steam and smoke.
Cabrillo quickly sized up the tactical and strategic situation and began relaying instructions. His orders sent every member of the crew scrambling. Their shouts and calls echoed down the ship’s long passageways as they made their preparations. The Chairman had called for a desperation Hail Mary–type play, and for it to work he needed everyone at their sharpest.
A few minutes later the ship was close enough to the fighting to attract attention. The troops dressed in identical black uniforms, all of whom were Caucasians, ignored the Oregon,while the ragged-looking Indonesians fired hasty pot shots at the ship.
As soon as a pair of deckhands manhandled a large beam with lengths of chain on each end onto the assault boat, Juan ordered Eric Stone to turn the freighter away from the shoreline. While this presented a larger target to the gunmen, it allowed Cabrillo and the shore team to open the boat garage without being seen.
As the door rose smoothly upward, the shore team leapt into the assault boat, locking their arms through purpose-made restraining loops. Each team member called out as soon as they were secured. The driver, Mike Trono, fired the engine, and Juan nodded to the garage boat master. Like a giant slingshot, a series of hydraulic pulleys launched the boat down the ramp and out of the garage. The acceleration was brutal and got worse as Trono lowered the props into the water. The massive outboards bit deep, throwing a rooster tail of water back into the Oregonas the nimble craft came up to plane.
Cold air ripped at any exposed skin like sandpaper, and the sting of drops of water that hit them were cold enough to burn. The assault boat rocketed around the rust-streaked freighter, carving a fat wedge into the black sea. By the time anyone on the beach noticed the boat, they were moving at fifty knots, much too fast to accurately engage.
Trono constantly juked the boat across the sea as he made for the spot where Juan had indicated he wanted to land. It was in the shadow of one of the beached cruise ships, one that was so heavily grounded that workers had built a stone ramp up to the main deck. The area around the ship was strewn with trash too heavy for the surf to take away.
The boat arrowed through the breaking surf and had such a shallow draft that the team had only a couple of yards to wade to find cover on the boulder-strewn beach. Juan and Link dropped behind a house-sized chunk of stone that had been blown from the volcano during some prehistoric eruption. The assault boat had already worked its way back off the beach. Juan looked to make sure Tory had followed his orders to stay aboard, and his estimation of her rose another few notches as he saw her standing in the open pilothouse between Mike Trono and an ex-marine named Pulaski.
“What do you think, boss?” Linc asked.
“Looks to me we dropped in the middle of a little war here. I bet Singh is paying the Indonesians while Anton Savich’s guys are the ones in black.”
“So the enemy of my enemy ain’t necessarily my friend, eh?”
“That’s the attitude I’m taking.”
The team worked their way up the hillside, keeping the cruise ship between them and the main area of combat. Dozens of wide-eyed Chinese workers lay on the ground, cowering. They didn’t know what to make of the armed patrol. Juan tried to urge them to find cover, but they were all paralyzed with fear, and he gave up.
If he hoped to rescue any of the Chinese, he knew they’d have to put an end to the fighting.
“Chairman, we’re ready,” Max called over the tactical net.
The Oregonhad shifted position. The doors covering her Gatling gun were still closed, although the ship had maneuvered to give it a clear line on the two fishing trawlers lashed to the tug.
“We’re about set, too. Any luck finding Eddie?”
“Negative. Hali’s taken over the cameras from Murph so he can concentrate on weapons control. He’s getting good shots, but there are so damned many people on the beach that it takes a few seconds for the computer’s facial recognition software to sort through them all.”
“Check the area closest to the fighting. If Eddie’s in any kind of shape, that’s where he’ll be.”
“Good thinking. Hali?”
“I heard,” the Corporation’s comm officer said. “Shifting focus now.”
Cabrillo and his people reached a level strip of land several hundred yards above the beach. Further toward the center of the site was an area that had been heavily dug up. Water cannons for blasting the tough soil lay abandoned, their nozzles pointed skyward. The ground was littered with shovels and buckets. All the workers had fled, and their guards had gone down to join the fight.
They approached the workings cautiously, weapons held at the ready, eyes never settling on one spot for more than a second.
An explosion echoed up from below, a grenade blast behind the barge that momentarily drew their attention. The black-clad body of one of Savich’s men pinwheeled in a lazy arc before falling to the beach in a broken-limbed heap. At the same second came the chatter of an AK-47 firing at point-blank range.
Cabrillo dropped flat as clods of mud were thrown up all around him. He stitched the area around one of the water cannons in a reflex shot that emptied half a magazine. It was poor fire discipline but it forced the attacker to dodge for cover, and his gun fell silent.