“Robert? Hey, mon?”
There was no answer to Thomas’s soft call except for the suck and hiss of the waves among the great stones.
“Robert?” Spray touched Kajenko’s face, carrying with it a chill. He felt his way a few feet farther along the water’s edge to where he was certain he had left his compatriot.
“Rob…” The name died off in his throat as his hand closed on wet steel. A FALN rifle like his own lay against the slimy rocks, half submerged in the surging water.
Suddenly, the sea tore open at Kajenko’s feet. Powerful hands closed around his ankles and heaved, yanking his legs out from underneath him. Kajenko found himself falling. He opened his mouth to yell, but gained only a terrifying inrush of cold salt water. Steel-strong arms sheathed in rubber closed around him, dragging him deeper into the sea, dragging him deeper into the darkness that encompassed him.
The waves broke over a second lost rifle at the base of the breakwater. Then shadows trickled up and out of the sea. Black-faced, wet-suit-clad shadows wearing soft-soled coral boots. Half a dozen of them flowed silently up the face of the seawall to merge with the shaggy salt growth along its top, moving in to surround the rain-dimmed bonfire on the access road.
The shadows looked on as a four-man mobile patrol walked in out of the night to exchange a few routine words with the squad leader at the fire. The shadows had already clocked the schedule of this mobile patrol. They noted how the squad leader stirred his men into a semblance of alertness shortly before it was due to arrive and how they rapidly sank back into lax casualness after it departed. Weapons lain aside, the Union soldiers stood close to the warmth of the bonfire in the rain, staring into its flames.
The shadows moved closer. Drawn Ka-Bar knives gleamed like bared fangs.
“The Bearclaw team should have the door open for us soon,” Amanda whispered from raft to raft.
“Should,” Quillain growled back. “Hey, can you tell me something? Where in the hell did we get this screwed-up list of call signs? Dewshine, Bearclaw, Fathertree, damnedest damn things I ever heard of.”
“Oh, uh, Christine came up with them. I think they’re out of some kind of comic book she’s fond of.”
“Shoulda known—” Quillain broke off, listening to a voice in his headset earpiece. “Okay. That’s it,” he said after a moment. “The door’s open.” He keyed his tactical transmitter. “This is Strongbow lead to all Strongbow and Moonshade elements. Move in. I say again, move in.”
Quillain’s and Amanda’s raider craft cast loose from each other, both surging forward toward the breakwater in an electric motored rush. Kneeling in the bow of her boat, Amanda touched the transmit pad of her own PRC Leprechaun transceiver.
“Moonshade to Palace. Starting penetration. I say again, starting penetration.”
The stealth hoods were thrown back and hastily stowed. The passengers aboard each small craft flexed and stretched cramped muscles in preparation for the explosion of exertion about to be called for. Ahead, the dim luminescence of a single, shielded glowstick marked the landing point.
This night, the assault teams were using CRRCs — Combat Rubber Raiding Craft — a fifteen-foot inflatable rubber boat with a soft bottom instead of a rigid keel and bellypan. Less seaworthy and more fragile then the RIB-class raiders, they had one decisive advantage. They were far lighter to carry, and that would become critical over the next few seconds.
Riding the low waves, the boats nosed into the side of the breakwater.
“Over the side!” the coxswain commanded in a fierce whisper.
Amanda and the others of her boat team rolled over the low bulwarks of their little craft. She plunged chest deep into the sea, her boots scrabbling for purchase through the algae slime that coated the steep-sloped rock jumble of the breakwater wall.
“Haul out!”
Like a pack of gigantic horseshoe crabs seeking haven on the shore, the boats began a many-legged crawl up the side of the seawall. Hands clutching nylon carrying loops, the Marines heaved themselves and their equipment and motor-laden burdens upslope a few agonizing inches at a time, the only sound of protest being the harsh whistle of breath through clenched teeth.
Amanda scrambled up the breakwater with her own team, straining at her own share of the burden. A muscle cramped from her long hours huddled on the wet bottom of the raider and hot agony tore up her leg from calf to thigh. She fell forward onto unyielding granite, her palm tearing open on the sharp-edged quarry stone.
She ignored both. Gathering her legs back under her again, she caught up the carry loop once more and arched her back into the next lift. At that moment she would have died without hesitation rather than push her share of the load off on the straining silent men around her.
They crested the slope and pushed through the rain-sodden brush that fringed its top, coming to a halt at the edge of the service road. The enemy was close, no more than a hundred and fifty feet away in either direction.
“Hold.” The barely breathed ghost of a word drifted down the line from Stone Quillain. The nearby watch fire burned low now. No one was left to cast wood and palm oil upon it. The wet-suit-clad point men of the Bearclaw team had already hauled the last body out of sight.
Quillain waited until all five of the assault boats were aligned along the edge of the road, then he waited a moment more, granting a second of rest to let lungs recharge on oxygen and nerves steady down.
“Stand ready.… Step out on my mark… three… two… one… go.”
Moving simultaneously, the five teams hustled their boats across the narrow roadway. An observer at the watchpost fifty yards to shoreward would see only a single, brief occulting of the next bonfire along the line, a single shadowy passage that would not be repeated. Something easily shrugged off as unimportant.
The climb down the inner side of the breakwater was only marginally easier than the pain-racked ascent of the outer wall. The rubber boats slithered smoothly onto the water as if grateful to be returning to their proper element, the raider teams scrambling back aboard with equal gratitude.
Unseen hands grasped Amanda’s MOLLE harness, hauling her over the gunwale. She collapsed into her place in the bow, the water sluicing from her soaked utilities pooling in the bottom of the boat.
The power cells engaged and the electric outboards came to silent life, the tiny flotilla moving off into the rain-misted shadows of the inner harbor. Amanda could feel the difference here, the sheltered smoothness of the water. And there was silence beyond the faint ripple of the bow wave. No gunshots. No shouts. No flares. No hooting alarm sirens. They’d done it.
She reached up once more for the touchpad of her radio. “Moonshade to Palace. Penetration successful. In harbor. I say again, in harbor.”
Back atop the breakwater, the Bearclaw team settled into the rank foliage once more. Their evacuation craft waited for them offshore. However, they had one more task to accomplish here.
In approximately ten minutes, the Union foot patrol that scouted this section of the harbor rim would return to this point on their sentry-go. If they found the squad assigned to this outpost gone, an alert would be sounded. However, if the foot patrol also quietly disappeared, it would likely be at least another fifteen minutes before an alarm would be raised.
The Bearclaw Marines unwrapped their silenced auto-weapons from their protective plastic covers. Nestling gun stocks to shoulders, they lay quietly and waited for the crunch of boot soles on gravel.