And through the door thus kicked open came the Three Little Pigs, hunting for a fight.
Howling through the channel entrance, the three seafighters conducted a fleur-de-lys separation, the Carondelet and the Manassas peeling off to the left and right, paralleling the seawalls while the Queen of the West stood straight on for the Banner.
The flanker boats raced down the mile length of each breakwater, trailing fire, death, and destruction as they ran. A raking barrage spewing from their weapons mounts, they buried the Union defenses under a focused storm of rockets, grenades, and shell bursts.
“Yes!” Amanda pounded her fist down on the tug’s wheel. This was why she had so carefully husbanded the fighting strength of the seafighter group until this moment. Stealth and audacity might get them in, but only the guns could get them out again. “Strongbow. Arm your charges and stand by for extraction! Let’s get out of here!”
“Roger D, Roger D, Moonshade! Ready to go here and about time!” Quillain’s jubilant response resounded in her headset. “Hey, you know that Moonshade’s a damn pretty name after all.”
“Acknowledged, Stone. We’ll be alongside for you in a minute.” Shifting communications modes, she grabbed up the interphone handset. “Engine room! Finished with engines. Arm your scuttling charges and get topside on the double. Our ride’s here!”
“Don’t have to tell us twice, ma’am! We’re gone!”
Decelerating, the Queen of the West came around in a wide fish-hook turn, coming alongside the tug, starboard to port. With a final braking flurry from her puff ports, the hovercraft’s inflated skirt bumped softly against the tug’s rail, salt mist boiling up around both vessels. The PG’s starboard grenade launcher mount had been swung back out of the side hatch and the Queen’s hands stood by to help pull the tug’s prize crew aboard.
“Go!” Amanda yelled over the turbine wail as she dropped down the exterior ladder from the wheelhouse. One after another the prize crew scrambled up the slippery skirt slope and into the hatch until only Amanda and the fire team leader remained, standing at the tug’s open engine-room hatchway.
“Set to blow, ma’am!” the Marine yelled over the steady-state engine shriek, holding up the pistol grip of the hand igniter.
“I’ll do it! Get aboard!”
“You sure, ma’am?”
“Yes. Get moving!”
“Okay, ma’am.” He passed her the igniter. “Just pull the pin and squeeze.”
She gave him a second to start up to the hovercraft, then turned back to the tug’s engine-room hatch. They would use the Banner in the same way they had used the hulk of the British minehunter during the hurricane, as an anchor to hold the Bajara in the harbor channel. Shaped, “cookie cutter” charges of plastic explosive had been molded against the tug’s hull plates to sink her.
Amanda yanked the safety pin from the top of the klacker, then hesitated for a second. The Union Banner had been her ship, under her command, if only for a matter of minutes. The little tug served her well, doing all that she had asked of it. The mariner in Amanda felt a pang of regret at what she must do now. She rested her free hand on the hatch frame for a moment, then squeezed the igniter.
She felt a thud under the soles of her boots as two meterwide patches of steel were sliced out of the Banner’s hull. Peering down through the hatchway, Amanda caught a glimpse of water boiling up over the engine-room deck plates just before the interior lighting went out. Willing hands hauled her up into the Queen’s main bay as the tug’s deck began to settle beneath her.
Popping the releases, Amanda let someone lift the MOLLE harness off her shoulders, not realizing until it was gone just how much of a burden its weight had become. Steamer Lane had the seafighter gaining way once more as she clambered up the ladder to the cockpit.
“Glad to have you back aboard, Captain,” he called back over his shoulder.
“Glad to be back aboard,” she replied, coming forward to hunker down between the pilot’s seats. “What’s our status?”
”Carondelet and Manassas have completed their fire suppression runs and are converging on the Bajara,” Lane replied as Snowy Banks passed Amanda a shipboard headset. “We’ll cover for the Frenchman and Rebel while they pick up the bulk of the boarding party. Then they’ll cover for us while we go in for the demolition team.”
“Go with it, Steamer.”
“Ma’am,” Snowy interjected, “Operations advises that the Union heavy gunboat group is going to be a factor shortly.”
Amanda gave another nod. “I suspect they are, Snowy. But one thing at a time. For now, let’s get our Marines back.”
The seafighters swept in, nestling against the rusty side of the Algerian oil carrier, staying up on the pad and holding themselves in place with snorting puff-port thrusters. Swarming up onto the PG’s weather decks, navy hands stood by to assist as the evacuation got under way.
The Marine wounded went first, lowered over the tanker’s rail via a snap ring clipped through their gear harness, their pain numbed by morphine or suppressed by willpower.
The Marine dead followed. None of Fox company would be left behind to burn.
Last came the uninjured. Fast ropes had been coiled and lashed on the backs of the hovercraft. With one end lifted and secured on the tanker’s deck, and the other braced by the sailors below, the uninjured survivors of the boarding party slid down the heavy two-inch lines to the comparative safety of the hovercraft.
With their full loads aboard, Carondelet and Manassas sheered off to take up their covering stations, making room for the Queen of the West to dash in and recover the last handful of men from the doomed ship.
“All hands accounted for?” Quillain yelled over the idling moan of the PG’s fans.
“All accounted for by the squad leaders and double-checked by me, Skipper. Everybody other’n us is over the side.”
In the light of a single chemical glowstick, Quillain, Tallman, and the demolition team leader crouched on the tanker’s deck. An ominous-looking web of det cord converged on them, linking to a carefully taped-down pattern of blasting caps, M700 time fuse, and M60 fuse igniters.
“Good, enough. Corporal, is this rig set?”
The demo man nodded, his jaw working his well-used chunk of gum. “All connections made, igniters armed, and ready to rock and roll. I can light her up as soon as you get clear, sir.”
Quillain shook his head. “That’s my job, Corporal. You and the top get over the side.”
The sergeant and the demo man both started to mouth protests, but Quillain chopped them off. “Belay that noise! Both of you move out! Now!”
Two reluctant “Aye ayes” came back. Tallman gave his C.O. an unhappy last glance and started for the ship’s side. The demo man hesitated a moment longer. “All that M-700 is cut from the same roll of fuse, and I time-tested samples myself, sir. You should have a solid five minutes of burn there, but I wouldn’t try and set my watch by it.”