“Don’t worry, son. I’m not going to. I intend to light up these sparklers and then be over that rail just a-shittin’ and a-flyin’.”
Quillain watched the two noncoms disappear down the fast ropes. He abruptly became aware of the dark and lonely emptiness of the decks around him. Well, a-shittin’, anyway, he thought, keying his radio. “Strongbow to Moonshade. All personnel clear. Igniting charges.”
“Roger, Strongbow,” Amanda Garrett’s reply came back. “Standing by.”
Hunkering down over the M-60s, Quillain pulled the safety pins and then sequentially yanked the pull rings of each igniter, drawing back the firing pin and allowing it to snap forward against the shotgun primer housed inside each little plastic cylinder.
The primers popped and fuse started to burn.
Quillain shot an automatic glance at his wristwatch, then touched the transmit pad. “Moonshade. Charges lit! Charges lit!” Grabbing his shotgun, he bolted for the rail and the fast rope.
He was half a dozen strides away from both when a burst of machine-gun fire flayed a shower of sparks off the deck around him.
Quillain responded by well-honed instinct, diving forward, rolling to one side, and bringing up his weapon in a single, continuous flow of motion, going to cover behind a valve bank.
The rain of Union illumination rounds had thinned out. As the current flight of flares sank toward the harbor, low-angled shadows crawled back aboard the tanker, blanketing her decks. Quillain switched on his night-vision visor. Lowering it over his eyes, he scanned for the source of the attack.
“Strongbow, we hear gunfire on deck. What’s your situation?” Amanda’s voice sounded sharply in his headset. “Stone, do you copy?”
“Yeah. I’m okay,” he murmured back into the lip mike. “But we missed somebody. We got a shooter up in the deckhouse.”
“Stone, are you pinned down? Can you get to the rail?”
“I’ll let you know in a second.”
Quillain nestled the stock of the Mossberg against his shoulder and flicked on the invisible beam of the targeting laser, his eyes tracking with the sweep of the death dot.
Movement! One level below the bridge. A head cautiously peered over the weather-deck rail. The death dot flicked over, acquiring the target. The sheet steel of the rail’s spray guard wouldn’t exist to the discarding sabot slug loads Quillain had in his weapon. He held his breath and took up the play in the trigger.
“Ah, Sweet Jesus!”
Stone hadn’t realized he’d left the talk circuit open. Amanda caught his softly breathed exclamation. “Stone, what is it?”
“It’s a kid, Skipper! We missed one of those goddamned kids!”
Overlooked somehow in the deck-clearing operations, one of the Union’s boy warriors had come out of his hiding hole to single-handedly challenge the attackers. With his submachine gun lifted to a thin shoulder, he leaned into the railing, ready to do battle, totally unaware that in minutes this particular battleground would be an inferno.
“Stone,” Amanda spoke levelly,” it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do. Get out of there. You only have four minutes left.”
Quillain dropped down behind the shelter of the valve bank. Nothing he could do? Hell no, there wasn’t anything he could do except to get off his tub! The little shit would just have to take his chances. He was old enough to pack a gun. His government figured he was old enough to fight and die for his country. The kid must figure the same. Cut it either way and it was no call or fault of Captain Stonewall Buford Quillain.
Quillain gauged the flare fall and the coming of the next patch of total darkness. Once he was over the rail and on the rope, he’d be out of the kid’s arc of fire. It would just take a couple of seconds and he’d be gone.
Tough luck, kid. You should have gotten off when we gave you your chance. The flare flight struck water and flickered out, bringing on full darkness. Stone rose to his feet and bolted for the fast rope.
And then for some reason he was past the rope and running aft for the tanker’s deckhouse.
He almost reached it before another flare hissed out over the harbor and lit off. With the reflexes of a striking snake, the boy warrior leaned out over the railing and opened fire, raining 9mm rounds down on Quillain.
Lunging forward, the Marine broke the line of fire, diving and rolling beyond the corner of the superstructure. Pressing back against the port-side bulkhead, he gripped at his bullet creased shoulder and swore silently and savagely at himself.
“Stone. What’s going on?” Amanda’s voice prodded from his earphones. “Do you need assistance?”
“Negative, negative!” he snapped back, shaking the numbness from his damaged arm. “One goddamn fool up here is plenty!”
Circling around to the foot of the exterior ladderway, he began to climb, keeping his footfalls light but not daring to use the usual deliberate stealth called for in such situations. He couldn’t, not with those fuses burning.
“Skipper, listen,” he whispered into his lip mike. “I don’t have time to explain what’s going on, but if I’m not over the rail at one minute to detonation, you guys clear out.”
“We are standing by, Stone,” the quiet reply came back.
Quillain scanned the ladderway overhead as he climbed, wondering just what the hell he’d do if the child warrior suddenly appeared on the next stage up, subgun leveled.
This is stupid. He thought the litany with each step climbed. This is stupid. This so goddamned stupid!
He risked a glance at his wristwatch. Three minutes and a few seconds more. Oh Lord, but this is stupid!
As he eased off the ladder onto his objective deck the mental chant changed. “Don’t run! You want me. Come and get me. Do not run! We don’t have time to play fucking hide-and-seek!”
Pressing his back against the bulkhead, he slid forward toward the corner of the superstructure, trying to hear beyond the whistle of the Queen’s turbines. Just at the corner of the deckhouse, the flare light guttered out again.
Quillain froze, not even daring to flip down his vision visor again. Was that the tick of metal against metal?
He couldn’t see it, but somehow, some… how he could sense the gun barrel easing around the corner from the other direction. Just at chest height. Just right for a kid to have shouldered. Right… here!
Quillain’s left hand closed around the perforated cooling jacket of a Sterling machine pistol. Yanking it away with a single explosive heave, he sent the weapon spinning over the rail. He heard a startled gasp close by in the darkness and he aimed for it with the back of his right hand, landing a tremendous buffet against the side of someone’s head.
Quillain yanked down his vision visor and found the stunned boy warrior sprawled at his feet. Watch! Ninety seconds! Not going to make it!
He slung the Mossberg over one shoulder and the boy over the other, racing for the ladderway and down.
“We are standing by, Stone.” Amanda Garrett’s voice whispered in his ear.
“I can’t make it,” he yelled back over the circuit. “Get clear!”
“We are standing by, Stone.” That husky, cool, and deliberate voice spoke words beyond words. We are not leaving you behind, mister. You don’t get that easy an out! If you die, then we die with you, so you had just better get about staying alive!
Boots ringing on the steel, he reached the main deck and ran forward for the fast rope. How far? Two hundred feet? To hell with it! Move! How long? Maybe a minute? To hell with that too!
At the fast rope, the Queen of the West lay nestled against the side of the tanker, her drive propellers flickering flat-pitched, her offside thrusters holding her in place. Sergeant Tallman stood holding the fast line taut. Snowy Banks stood in the cockpit hatch, ready to yell the go word to Steamer Lane, and Amanda Garrett stood in the center of the hover craft’s back, looking up, hands on hips, standing by.