The first half of the reply he received consisted of a barrage of shrill, defiant, and amazingly obscene invective. Then the muzzle of a Sterling machine pistol slithered around the door frame, the weapon’s clip being emptied in a single long barrel-burning burst.
“Okay, you little dickheads,” Quillain muttered. “You asked for it. Corporal, pass the word to all hands belowdecks. Mask up.”
Quillain doffed his helmet for a second and dug a gas mask out of its pouch on his MOLLE harness. With the other members of the firing team following suit, he popped the safety caps off the filters and settled the mask over his head, tugging the straps snug for an airtight seal.
“You boys set?” he asked over his shoulder, his voice muffled.
A string of equally muffled acknowledgments came back.
“Okay, Corporal, I want you and one other man with me. Have him put in another flashbang first. Then you and I follow it up with a couple of cans of CS. I want a fast, heavy concentration. We got to knock the fight out of these brats.”
“You got it, sir.”
“Okay, we go on three. One… two… three!”
The first Marine pivoted around the corner, aiming a hard thrown flashbang grenade at the hatchway. The flashbang was a nonlethal munition that, true to its name, produced a dazzling burst of light and a loud but harmless explosion potent enough to momentarily stun an unprepared target.
The piercing C-R-A-A-A-C-K of the munition reverberating in the passageway was the signal for Quillain and the corporal to move. Yanking the pins out of the tear gas cylinders, they pitched them into the bunkroom, glancing them off the open door so they landed on the deck inside. Two softer muffled thuds followed, then a growing chorus of gags and retches.
The boy soldiers had been unprepared for the charge of riot gas. Gasping from the flashbang’s concussion, they found themselves suddenly inhaling lungfuls of biting military strength CS. A scream resounded from the bunkroom as someone tried to snatch up one of the grenades to hurl it back into the passageway. The young hero had discovered too late that the grenade’s thermal antitamper charge had already heated the metal canister to a sizzling temperature.
Quillain and the two fire teams moved in to flank the bunkroom hatchway. Even through his mask, Quillain felt a coolness around his eyes, a leakage that indicated the gas concentration in the area was truly ferocious. No unprotected individual would be able to take it for long.
Sure enough, the first boy warrior came stumbling blindly out of the compartment, a warrior no longer, but a weeping, terrified child seeking escape. Quillain swatted the submachine gun out of his hands. Yanking the double-lapped cartridge belt from around his waist, Stone shoved him on down the line to the other Marines. The other youths followed, wheezing and helpless, all will to resist quashed.
“Get ’em up to the main messroom with the Algerians,” Quillain commanded. “And get ’em in life jackets.”
“Should we try and wash the tear gas off of ’em, Skipper?”
“Don’t bother. They’re going to be taking a swim here in a minute.”
Belewa shoved aside the barrel of the Carl Gustav launcher. “No rockets!” he yelled to the weapons crew. “That’s an order! No rockets! No grenades! We can’t risk setting fire to that ship!”
Dropping down in the shelter of a piling head, the General studied the pierside battleground through smarting, smoke narrowed eyes. The Americans had the position, no doubt of that. The tanker’s steel sides rose a good ten feet above the dock like the wall of a medieval castle, the gap between the hull and the pier’s edge serving as its moat.
The American Marines were taking full advantage of this high ground, pouring a steady hail of gunfire down from the deck edge upon anything that moved below. Other Marine marksmen raked the full length of the pier from the Bajara’s superstructure, the sprawled bodies of Union soldiers on the pier’s decking standing testament to both their position and accuracy. Nor did the Americans have any limitations on the weapons they could employ. Marine grenadiers had demolished and ignited the dockside sheds with high explosives and white phosphorus, the spreading flames further hindering the Union counteroffensive.
If the Americans had a weakness, it had to be in the limited size of their boarding force. Belewa could see but a single chance. The gangway amidships. The “drawbridge” to the “castle.” Seize that and the tanker’s decks might be regained. There the Union’s superior numbers would count once more.
With the clatter of treads and the bellow of an unmuffled diesel, a Steyr armored personnel carrier lumbered up to the base of the oiling dock. Too heavy to proceed out onto the pier decking, it dropped its tail ramp and discharged its rifle squad. Getting to his feet, Belewa ran to the side of the idling APC, ignoring the bullet strikes around his feet.
“Use your machine gun,” he yelled up to the track commander. “Hold this position and fire on the tanker’s deck house. Keep their heads down!”
The track commander nodded broadly in reply and swung his GPMG in line with the Bajara’s superstructure. As the weapon began chopping off short, aimed bursts, Belewa continued on to where the track’s infantry squad had gone to ground.
“Bren gunners! Lay down covering fire! Drive them back from the rail! Riflemen, follow me! Forward!”
Amanda doused the tug’s running lights as she came in on the tanker’s quarter. Spinning the wheel to its port stop, she whipped the Banner into a tight, foaming turn. Handy as with all of her breed, the little tug came about almost within her own length, her stern coming in line with the Bajara’s.
Amanda flipped the propeller controls into reverse. Prop-wash boiled forward along the tug’s flanks as it shuddered to a stop and then began to back down, sliding in toward the tanker like a car easing into a tight parking slot.
“On deck,” Amanda snapped into her lip mike. “Stand by the line thrower and the towing drum. Prepare to establish the tow.”
“Aye, aye.”
“On deck, aboard the Bajara. Are you set to receive our line?”
“This is the Bajara. Standing by.”
The sharp crackle of gunfire could be heard over the hot mike of the Marine line handler. The steel bulk of the tanker’s hull and the rumble of the Banner’s engines muffled the sounds of battle somewhat on the tug’s bridge. However, Amanda could sense the pierside engagement growing in intensity.
As yet, little of the firepower had been aimed in the direction of the Banner. Huddling in the tanker’s shadow, the tug was still not being considered as a factor by the Union defense forces. How long this fragile immunity would continue was anyone’s guess.
Playing with the throttles and propeller controls, Amanda eased the tug in as close as she dared, killing the tug’s stern way with a last burst of power. The tanker’s quarter loomed over them like a convex cliffside, the outlines of the Marine line team peering over her rail.
“On deck. Cast line!”
At the tug’s stern, a line thrower cracked and a rippling coil of thin nylon cord trailed the throw weight up and over the tanker’s rail.
“On the tug. We have the carrier.”
“Second carrier on. Heave away.” In the best navy tradition, the boatswain’s mate on the Banner’s aft deck didn’t bother with the radio; his own bellow overrode the sound of the gunfire.