The remainder of the bridge windscreen dissolved in a jagged shimmering spray as automatic-weapons fire raked the tug’s upperworks. Amanda threw her arms up, shielding her face from the stinging bite of the shattered glass. Sinking to her knees beside the wheel, she hunched down, keeping under the minimal cover of the steel bulkheads below the now-empty windscreen frames.
Peering forward, she held her course, her right hand on the wheel. The Bajara was fighting the tow. Running stern foremost with no one at her helm, the big tanker kept falling off the line of advance, veering erratically at the end of the hawser. Amanda had to keep correcting, hauling the big sullen bitch back into the channel.
God save us all if we ground making the turn.
“Not far,” she whispered aloud. “Not far now.”
Again, a sleeting storm of high-velocity metal swept over the tug. With no glass left to shatter, the bullets glanced and whined off the heavier fittings and punched through the bulk heads with a dull pock, pock, pock sound like the opening of a string of pull-top cans.
Suddenly something smashed into Amanda’s back with the impact of a sledgehammer. It hurled her forward onto the glass-covered deck, the air smashed from her lungs in a choked shriek. She lay facedown in the darkness, unbreathing, unable to breathe, a searing heat centered in her back. Dazed, she hung on to the edge of consciousness, asking a question of the Universe. Is this death?
The Universe answered: No… It was a voice on the Leprechaun circuit. Christine…
“Moonshade! Moonshade! Do you copy! Moonshade! You have motor launches converging on you. Amanda, do you hear me?”
Amanda pushed herself up to her knees. You can die later! Move, goddamn you! Move!
She broke the lock on her lungs and dragged in an agonizing load of oxygen while fumbling for the switch of the tactical communicator. “On deck!” She couldn’t recognize the rasping croak that emerged from her throat. “Repel boarders! Repel boarders!”
“Roger,” the terse response from the fire team leader snapped back. “Engaging!”
Another kind of repIy raged from the Banner’s lower deck, as the Marines opened up on the new threat. Pulling herself upright at the center console, Amanda fought to regain situational awareness.
The Port Monrovia pilot’s launch had been pressed into service as an ad hoc Boghammer. Running twenty yards off the Banner’s port side, Bren guns flamed from its foredeck while Union soldiers packed its cockpit. Flank to flank, the two commandeered craft exchanged small-caliber broadsides like Napoleonic ships of the line.
Amanda forced her eyes to focus on the miraculously intact compass dome. God, We’re failing off course again. Helm, come right ten points! She gave the command to herself, as she would have to a duty quartermaster. Spinning the wheel, she kicked the rudder over, ignoring the scalding pain that still radiated from her back.
“Amanda,” Christine’s voice sounded in her headset again, an electronic guardian angel looking down from on high. “Watch it! A second boat’s coming in on your starboard side.”
And the Marines were already committed. Damn! Damn! Damn!
She clawed the interphone out of its cradle. “Engine room! Repel boarders to starboard!” Dropping the handset, she threw herself across to the far side of the bridge.
A small outboard skiff carrying half a dozen Union soldiers was trying to come alongside. Bucking the wash that churned down the tug’s flank, the soldier in the skiff’s bow groped for the rail.
Amanda couldn’t recall making the conscious decision to draw her weapon, but the .45 came up on target, both of her hands closing around its grips. The wavering flare light made for poor shooting, but the long hours of relentless drill under the instruction of Stone Quillain compensated. The big Colt roared as its sights came in line, the seven-round clip consumed in seconds.
Her target toppled limply over the skiff’s side and the open boat staggered off course, someone aboard it rattling off a wild answering volley from a machine pistol. Then a pair of shotguns opened up from the Banner’s engine-room hatch, lashing the small craft with a storm of buckshot. Silenced and with no living hand at its engine tiller, the skiff whirled away astern.
So did the pilot launch that had come in from the other side. The Marine grenadiers scored with multiple 40mm hits and the launch exploded into flames. In the glare of the blazing hulk, Amanda caught the silhouette of a buoy sweeping past down the port side.
The marker for the entry channel! Turn her! She got back on the helm, bringing the tug’s nose around, aiming her for the gap in the breakwaters.
Easy! Easy! Not too sharp. Follow me, you big bastard!
Amanda played the wheel and engine controls, attempting to keep excessive strain off the towline as the Bajara’s stern slowly indexed around, aligning in the channel.
All right! Well done, Helm!
The tug and its tow were almost at the dead center of the harbor now, temporarily beyond the reach of effective shore fire. Amanda attempted to take a deep breath and found that she could. The burning near her spine had faded to a mere hotness. She reached back to find a lump embedded in her flak jacket. Distorted first by its penetration of the steel bridge bulkhead and then again by its impact against the vest’s ballistic plate, the machine-gun bullet popped out into the palm of her grimy hand.
She fingered the little cooling lump of death for a moment and found herself grinning a tight feral grin. This wasn’t the one.
She held the Banner on course for the harbor mouth.
“Damn near there,” Macintyre muttered.
“Getting close,” Christine agreed wearily. “Signals, advise the seafighter group to power up and stand by for extraction.”
“Latest situational update from Queen of the West indicates they are already up on the pad and standing by for the word, Commander,” the S.O. replied.
“Very good, Sigs. You can advise Commander Lane that he can expect the word shortly.”
“Aye, aye.”
Christine knew the trailer air-conditioning was already pushed to its maximum setting, but her uniform shirt was sodden with sweat. Even Admiral Macintyre, for all his stone faced stoicism, had darkening circles of perspiration under the arms of his flight suit.
“What else can the Union hit us with?” he demanded quietly.
The intel’s temples throbbed, her thoughts thickening in her brain. Hey, God, isn’t there anybody else out here who can answer questions?
“I think the gunboats are the Union’s last hole card, Admiral,” she replied.
Closing her eyes, Christine leaned back against the conference table, wishing for just one true lungful of cool dry air. Maybe like you could get out on the Mojave in the early morning. She let that mental image wash out reality for a moment, seeking that breath of desert breeze.
“Commander Rendino! Radar has acquired a bogey launching from Payne Field!”
The mental image exploded and Christine’s eyes snapped open. “Identify!”
“Single target. Possibly a helicopter. On heading for Port area. Coming in fast.”