His fingers tightened on the binoculars. The rust-streaked hull of the Aranella towered like a wall of black steel above the small orange shape of the boarding boat. As always, the visual pairing was absurd: an eighteen foot semi-inflatable motorboat the color of a child’s toy, trying to bring a 40,000 ton cargo ship to heel.
Appearances aside, the size disparity between the vessels didn’t mean a thing. The success or failure of a boarding operation was dependent on the quality of the team, not the size of their boat. And Whitaker’s people were top-notch. Every sailor in that boat was smart, motivated, well-armed, and highly trained. Under the able leadership of Whitaker’s second-in-command, BMC Aldo Salazar, the boarding team was ready for anything that a merchant crew could possibly throw at them.
Even so, Whitaker had both of the topside .50-caliber machine guns manned. If his team got into trouble over there, the Sawfish would come rushing in with fifty-cals blazing.
He wasn’t expecting anything that serious, of course. Non-compliant boardings could get pretty hairy, but they rarely devolved into outright violence.
Whitaker swept his binoculars down the length of the suspect ship’s deck again, searching every crane housing, hatch cover, and gunwale for signs of human presence. Nothing. Not a single person visible anywhere. He shifted his visual search to the ship’s dingy white superstructure, scanning catwalks, watertight doors, and port holes. Still nothing. Even the freighter’s bridge windows were empty of faces and movement.
The crew of the Aranella was hiding.
They might be concealed in hidey-holes all over the ship, determined to make the crew roundup part of the boarding as difficult as possible. That had happened before, although Whitaker had never understood what the hell people thought they stood to gain from pissing off a Coast Guard inspection team.
The freighter crew might also be lurking at some ambush point down in the bowels of the ship — ready to attack the boarding team with wrenches, lengths of pipe, and the sorts of improvised weapons that are easily available in a shipboard environment. That had happened before too. Not often, but a few times. Whitaker couldn’t understand what people expected to gain from that kind of stupid shit either.
If you were caught smuggling, then you were caught. Get over it, put your fucking hands in the air, and accept the consequences. Serious jail sentences were rare, and any monetary fines would be paid by the ship owner. Attack the boarding crew and you were looking at hard prison time. It just wasn’t a smart move, but that didn’t stop it from happening sometimes.
Whitaker exhaled through his lower teeth again, and shifted his binocs to cover the boarding team. The orange boat was alongside now, the coxswain keeping his craft shoved snug against the hull of the freighter.
As Whitaker watched, one of the team members stood up, braced against the motion of the boat by the hands of his two nearest shipmates. That would be BM3 Connors, who was well practiced in the art of robot tossing.
Connors lifted the small dark shape of the Recon Scout robot on the end of a short nylon lanyard. He spun the little burden in a circle above his head, picking up speed with each revolution, like a cowboy swinging a rope lariat. Then, at some instant timed by his training and his internal clock, Connors let go of the lanyard. The small two-wheeled robot arced high into the air, and came tumbling down onto the deck of the freighter where it bounced three or four times and skittered to a stop. Another perfect throw by the resident Sawfish robot tosser.
Manufactured by Recon Robotics of Edina, Minnesota, the Recon Scout XT was a 1.2 pound throwable micro-robot, designed as a mobile surveillance sensor for battlefield use. Less than eight inches wide and only four and a half inches high, the tiny machine was basically an impact resistant video camera on wheels. It could transmit sixty degrees of visual or infrared video back to the handheld Operator Control Unit in real time.
Whitaker’s communications headset crackled with the sound of Chief Salazar’s voice. “Team Alpha to Sawfish—we are in position. Video feed should be coming on line now.”
Master Chief Whitaker lowered the binoculars and checked the display monitor zip-tied to the metal framing between two bridge windows. The seventeen-inch screen was several times larger than the handheld display of the robot’s Operator Control Unit. Which — with the typical irony of life in the Puddle Pirate Navy — meant that the Sawfish bridge crew would have a better view of the Aranella than the men who were doing the boarding.
The display pulsed with digital static and then resolved into a grayscale image of an electrical junction box and wiring conduits bolted to the side of the Aranella’s superstructure. Well, the robot would no doubt be looking at more interesting things in a few seconds.
Whitaker thumbed his mike button. “This is Sawfish. Video is coming in five-by-five. Be careful over there, Chief. I don’t like the smell of this one.”
Salazar’s reply came immediately. “Team Alpha to Sawfish—roger that.”
On the video monitor, the robot’s point of view swung to the left as BMC Salazar took control of the little scouting machine.
Whitaker caught a close-up glimpse of black high-laced boots topped by bloused pant legs in some mottled multi-shaded pattern. It took him about a quarter of a second to realize that he was staring at camouflage uniform trousers, tucked into the tops of combat boots. The camera pulled back, to reveal several figures crouched behind the raised steel gunwale on the Aranella’s starboard side.
Then the video screen went dark. That was when the shit hit the fan…
Whitaker yanked his binoculars back up to eye level and was just zeroing in on the boarding team when seven or eight camo-clad forms appeared over the top of the freighter’s waist-high gunwale. Every one of them instantly began firing down onto the boarding team, raking men and boat with bursts from short-barreled assault rifles — all set for automatic.
The orange pontoon hulls of the boat deflated visibly as the five Coast Guard sailors jerked and shuddered under the vicious hail of bullets. They were all down in a couple of seconds, but the gunfire didn’t let up.
Whitaker could barely make out the screams of his injured and dying men across the distance. The staccato rumbles of the assault rifles were much easier to hear.
“Left full rudder!” he shouted. “Full speed ahead! Fifty-cal mounts, fire at-will!”
The deck heeled under his feet as the bow of the Sawfish swung left and leapt toward the Aranella.
The helmsman followed her orders flawlessly, but she failed to repeat back the commands she had been given.
Master Chief Whitaker ignored the young sailor’s departure from bridge protocol. Somewhere behind him, she was softly chanting, “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”
Both of the Sawfish fifty cals opened up, peppering the gunwales of the Aranella and sending the uniformed attackers diving for cover.
Whitaker grabbed the microphone for the 1MC, and his voice boomed out of every speaker throughout the Sawfish. “Attention all hands! Boarding Team Alpha is under heavy fire! We are closing the target vessel to engage. This is not a drill!”