The designation box snapped into existence around the target, and the shrill deedle-deedle-deedle of the audile prompt sounded in her ears. Lock established. An invisible thread of modulated light linked her and the Boghammer now. Upon its launching, sensors in the nose of her missile would recognize the coding of that one specific point of flickering illumination and would home in on it unerringly.
“Target red designated.”
“Target green designated.”
“Target yellow designated,” Amanda completed the litany. “Commence firing.”
“Target red, on the way.”
Danno squeezed his actuator trigger. One hundred pounds of hypertech destruction sprang off its launch rail. Its flame trail studded with shock wave diamonds, it arced up and over the shoulder of the hovercraft, seeking its last home.
“Target green, on the way.”
A second ripping roar and orange-blue glare, the acrid, chemical fumes of rocket exhaust concentrating within the cockpit.
“Target yellow…”
And then the realization came to Amanda Garrett. For fully half her life she had served as one of her nation’s military officers. She had been involved in numerous battles and had commanded in engagements where hundreds had died. And yet not until this moment had she ever personally aimed and triggered a weapon that would take another human life.
Downrange, two of the three surviving Boghammers blazed out of existence as the high-explosive/fragmentation warheads of the Hellfires did their job. Amanda commanded her finger to close on the joystick trigger… repeatedly.
“Cockpit…” a perplexed voice inquired over her headset. “Captain… do you have a hangfire?…Do you want us to assume the round?”
Amanda’ s lips parted to whisper yes.
But at the same instant, an enraged scream welled up from deep within her, directed at herself and resounding within her soul… HYPOCRITE! Amanda’s hand closed convulsively and the final round of the battle howled on its way. She forced her eyes to stay open, following the dwindling fire plume away into the night until it climaxed in a white flare on the surface of the sea.
Without needing orders, Lane backed off on the hover’s throttles. The battering torrent of wind pouring in through the empty windscreen frames softening to a brisk breeze. Amanda took a deep and deliberate breath. “Maintain this heading, Steamer. Let’s see if there are any survivors out there we can pick up.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am. That was one hell of a show.”
“It’s not over yet.” Amanda switched the com over to base frequency. “This is Little Pig Lead to Floater 1. Bogs are down. I say again, Bogs are down. Initial phase complete. I think we got them all. Can you verify?”
“We verify, Little Pig Lead,” Christine Rendino replied. “Twenty-six out. Twenty-six down. Good shootin’, Tex.”
“Acknowledged, Floater, and thank you. Now let’s go see how the Marines are making out.”
She switched back to intercraft, her nerves beginning to loosen. “Attention, all hands. This is the TACBOSS. Stand down from action stations and rig for search and rescue. Hey, Chief, it looks like we’ve swept the seas clean. Do we have a broom aboard we can tie to the masthead?… Chief?”
A sudden icy chill rippled down her spine. Twisting around in her seat, she reached up into the shadows, toward the gunner’s saddle of the cockpit mount. She touched Chief Tehoa’s leg and her fingers came away covered with a warm dark wetness.
“Steamer! Shut her down! The Chief’s been hit!”
The hover commander slammed back his drive and lift throttles, dumping the Queen onto the swells with a skidding heave. Leaving the turbines idling, he and Snowy scrambled out of their seats to help Amanda ease the CPO’s flaccid body down out of the gunring.
“Oh, jeez! There’s blood all over the place back here!”
“He must have been hit back at the Carondelet! He never made a sound!”
“Snowy, bring up the cockpit lights! Hey, down in the main hull! Somebody get the medical kit up here! On the double!”
Scrounger Caitlin appeared at the head of the ladder bearing the Day-Glo-orange aid kit. Stunned and wide eyed, she looked as Lane pulled off Tehoa’s helmet and tore down the zipper of his flak jacket, seeking for the wound while Amanda held the big man upright in her arms.
Lane worked for a few frantic moments more, then stopped.
“Ah, hell.”
Steamer rocked back on his heels, his face a despairing mask of his own dried blood. “It’s no good. He took one right in the throat, just above his body armor. He never knew what hit him.”
“It must have happened back there when those two gunboats cut across our bow,” Snowy said quietly. “He must have been hit right after he saved us.” Without realizing herself that she was doing so, she moved closer to Steamer Lane, her shoulder lightly brushing his.
At the rear of the cockpit, Caitlin clung to the rungs of the ladder, sobbing aloud and unashamed. Amanda continued to hold Ben Tehoa, one hand coming up to lightly stroke his dark hair. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to someone no longer present. “I’m sorry.”
In swimmer mode once more, the Queen of the West inched closer to the Union coast. Standing on the weather deck beside the cockpit, Amanda watched as an awkward shadowy mass emerged from an inlet mouth, creeping crablike out to meet the PG over the moonstruck waves.
Drawing closer, it resolved itself as a big twenty-four-foot rigid inflatable raider boat, one of the type carried aboard the Cyclone-class Patrol Craft. The two pirogues lashed to its flanks distorted its shape, and a line trailed astern to the pinasse it had under tow. Outboard burbling under the strain, the RIB drew slowly alongside the Queen.
“How did your half go?” Amanda called down.
“Pretty fair,” Stone Quillain replied, standing in the bow of his flagship. “A few smugglers got away into the swamps, but we figure we pretty much got all the boats and the gas.”
This had been the other half of OK Corral. Amanda had sprung her trap immediately adjacent to an extensive stretch of isolated coastal swamp, a perfect sanctuary for a flotilla of small smuggling craft under attack. At the start of the engagement, the Union oil carriers had scattered into the protective cover with alacrity, only to find that someone else had gotten there first.
Nights prior, Stone Quillain and his Marines had stealthily infiltrated this same stretch of coastal marsh. Cramped and mosquito-chewed, yet with the patience of a pack of hunting crocodiles, they had lived under camouflage nets aboard their small raider craft, waiting for their prey to be driven into their arms.
“I’d say we still have around forty, fifty prisoners all told, Stone went on, gesturing toward a small, sullen cluster of African boatmen crouched under Marine guard amidships. “What do you want us to do with them?”
“Dump them on that little peninsula over to the west,” Amanda replied shortly. “We’ll let the Union worry about getting them home. We can’t be bothered with them now. Any trouble?”
“Nah. Not really. One of the Bogs got past you and tried to hide up in the swamps, but our Predator teams busted him. Beyond that none of these old boys were packing any guns worth mentioning. Once we got the drop on them, they all gave it up pretty quick.” Quillain’s head turned, examining the bullet-scarred bow of the Queen, the battle damage apparent even by moonlight. “How’d you all do with the Bogs?”