Amanda studied them for a moment from her place in the shadows, and deep within her heart and soul, she cast off the last line that linked her with her past life aboard the Duke. This was her place now, and there were no more regrets.
Over at the far side of the hangar, Stone Quillain was completing his final premission inspection of the boarding parties. Taking a step back from the tightly packed ranks, he lifted his voice over the fading thunder of the departing helicopters.
“Who are ya?”
“Marines, sir!” the shouted reprise rolled back.
“I SAID WHO ARE YA?”
“MARINES, SIR!”
“DAMN RIGHT! MARINES, SADDLE UP!”
The deck plates rang under the boot heels of the assault teams as they broke formation and double-timed for the stern ramps of the hovercraft.
Amanda swung up through the Queen of the West’s side hatch and climbed the ladder into the cockpit. Looking back from the control stations, Steamer and Snowy exchanged acknowledging nods with her.
“Squadron status, Commander?”
“All craft report ramps coming up. Ready to start engines, ma’am.”
“Make it so, Commander. Start engines and take us out.”
“Very good, ma’am. Frenchman… Rebel… this is Royalty! Engine-start sequence!”
The Queen’s air horns blared their warning, trailed by the sound of cranking turbines. Steamer and Snowy’s palms came up and met in their high five. Amanda didn’t recall until later that this time their fingers interlaced for a moment in a tight handclasp.
Amanda settled a Command headset over her ears. “I’m riding up in the hatch for a while, Steamer. Take departure at your discretion.”
“You got it, ma’am.”
As the Queen came up on her cushion, Amanda slid the overhead hatch back and lifted herself up into the gunner’s saddle. She jacked her headset into the intercom and looked forward.
And only then did she realize the platform was saluting the strike away.
The inboard rails of the two barges that flanked the launching ramp were lined solidly with Seabees, support hands, and seafighter base personnel. Underlit by the blue glow of the ramp guide lights, each crewman and woman held rigidly at attention, fingertips at their brow.
Amanda had heard of airstrikes being saluted out before, but never a naval sortie. But then, there had never been a naval unit like this before. Another tradition to build on.
The Queen’s drive fans roared and she tundled forward toward the ramp break. Amanda’s hand came up, returning the salute for the squadron. Then the seafighter pitched over the break and accelerated downramp for the sea. She hit water in an explosion of spray and powered clear into the night, the Carondelet and the Manassas following at ten-second intervals.
Spume and rain droplets stung at Amanda’s face as the squadron dropped into combat echelon and worked up to speed. On the snubmast aft of the cockpit, the Queen’s flag and Amanda’s command burgee whipped and crackled in the growing slipstream. The lights of the platform faded in the mist behind them. Somewhere ahead, the lights of Port Monrovia glowed.
The tea had grown cold and weak, mixing with the rain. Belewa paid no mind, tossing back the last swallow in his canteen cup. He hadn’t been able to stand the thought of waiting out this night back at Mamba Point. He had to be here, in the field, where he could think and breathe and do something.
Belewa set the empty cup inside the open tail ramp of the Styer command track. Unhampered by his sodden poncho, he climbed the side of the vehicle. Standing on its flat armored roof, he lifted his binoculars to his eyes.
From here he could see the battlefield-to-be.
His cluster of headquarters vehicles were assembled on the access road atop the southern harbor breakwater, close to the midpoint between the oiling pier and the tank farm. Just to shoreward, the tarpaulin-shielded arc welders of the tank farm repair crew sparked and sputtered as they raced to mend the severed pipelines.
Would God that they were finished now and the oil was flowing.
The shoreside piers and warehouse areas of the port had arc light illumination, as did the oiling pier and tank farm. Those lights blazed this night, power conservation be damned. The outer extremities of the vegetation-ridden breakwaters had no such lighting, however, save for the slow blinking navigational beacons that marked the mouth of the entry channel.
With little night-vision gear available, the Union defenders had been forced to improvise. Log and palm oil bonfires had been spaced along the breakwaters at fifty-yard intervals, and at each bonfire, an infantry squad. Roving patrols also prowled the lengths of the causeways.
The fires burned sullenly in the rain, however, guttering and threatening to go out.
I wish we could illuminate with flares all night, but we haven’t enough. Best to save what we have until they are truly needed.
At the end of each breakwater, covering the harbor mouth, a hardpoint had been established. A heavy-weapons platoon at each, backed by a cannon-armed Panhard AML armored car. The three gunboats of the Union navy’s heavy squadron also lay at anchor side by side, directly across the mouth of the channel, their guns manned and their searchlights and radar sweeping the darkness.
How do I best use the gunboats? When the Americans move on us, do I counterattack and send the navy out after them? Or do I keep the cork in the bottle?
Belewa had a full regular infantry battalion covering the breakwaters and port facilities, and a Military Police company guarding the tank farm. He’d also brought in a company of the Union Mobile Action Force, his personal “Praetorian Guard” grown out of his beloved old mechanized troop. The other three companies of the mechanized battalion stood by at the Barclay Training Center, ready to move at a moment’s notice as his reserve counterstroke. Other regular and militia units covered the beaches and city and harbor land approaches.
Belewa lowered his glasses. I wait for you, Leopard. Come out of the night and let’s finish this, you and I.
There was no answer. But he could sense her moving out there, somewhere beyond the curtain of mist and shadow.
Belewa dropped down from the top of the vehicle and climbed inside through the tailgate. The command track’s two radio operators hunched in front of their sets while Sako Atiba brooded over the deployed map table, his dark features hollow cheeked in the dim map light.
“Anything new to report, Brigadier?” Belewa inquired, brushing the moisture from the front of his poncho.
“No, General. Nothing to report. The helicopter group that launched from the American base platform has turned away to the south and has dropped below our radar horizon. Track has been lost. We continue to note much small-craft activity off the immediate coastal area, but no pattern has formed yet.”
“Very good, Brigadier.”
Once it would have been “Obe” and “Sako,” but somehow the names didn’t taste right in the mouth anymore. Belewa collected his cup once more and turned to the tea urn. Sometimes things other than men die in war.
A mile and a half northwest of General Belewa’s command post and a quarter mile off the northern breakwater, a cluster of small eight-man inflatable assault boats bobbed in the low rain-smoothed swells, a hood of radar and infrared absorbent material drawn over the huddled passengers in each craft.
In the stern of each tiny vessel, a sweating coxswain huddled, constantly cross-checking between the glowing palm size screen of his GPU unit and the flickering watchfires along the breakwater. Occasionally, he twisted the throttle of his silent electric outboard motor, using a brief shot of power to hold on station, awaiting the order to move in.