“Shit, that’s heavy stuff!” Quillain yelled.
“And it hit somewhere aft,” MacIntyre assessed, twisting to sweep the inlet cliff edges towering above them. “The bombardment must not have taken out all of the shore batteries.”
The Marine made his disgust plain. “It never does!”
The frigate was tearing around the shallow curve in the inlet channel, and gunfire or not, Labelle Nichols was standing half erect behind the wheel, hunting for the critical strip of dark blue water off the bow.
A lurch radiated upward through the hull, and the rev counter on the lee helm console jumped as a prop blade nicked a rock.
MacIntyre caught movement along the forest line above the cliff edge. Amid the wood smoke and barrage-shredded vegetation, a team of Morning Star gunners had brought an artillery piece into the fight, hogging it around and down, angling it toward the ship passing beneath them. The gun and gun crew were damn near on a level with the frigate’s bridge, and MacIntyre found himself looking down the stumpy three inch tube of an ancient American-made 75mm pack howitzer, probably an abandoned weapon from the Second World War.
The piece vomited flame and a shell and the world exploded.
The portside bridge wing caught the round and was torn away, that side of the frigates wheelhouse caving in. A blow sent Maclntyre’s K-Pot helmet spinning, and his vision went from gray to red to black and back again. He found himself on his hands and knees shaking his head like a picadored bull. The helm stations…
Lieutenant Nichols was on her side on the deck, making a sound like a badly hurt cat. And the lee helmsman’s skull was blown open.
If Vice Admiral Elliot MacIntyre, USN, was going to prove anything to anyone, especially to himself, it had better be now.
He heaved himself to his feet, his hands closing on the blood-slick wheel, stopping its spin, reversing it. Answer up, you rust-bellied kraut bitch! Get back in the goddamn channel!
There was a scream and a groan through the frigate’s frame as stone ravished steel, and MacIntyre felt a faint vibration that meant seawater was cascading in through sundered hull plates. Still the propellers were turning and she was lining out for the cave entrance.
But that left the Morning Star howitzer. Its crew would have time for one more shot, and it would be aimed squarely at the back of Maclntyre’s head.
Crab’s Claw Base
0808 Hours, one Time: August 25, 2008
The sound of autoweapons fire was a steady roar as Amanda herded her charge down the lateral tunnel through the intermittent pools of illumination issuing from the wide-set work lights. So far she had been lucky: The call to battle stations and the following fight had pulled the Bugis garrison into the main ship pen, emptying the side passages.
She took the precaution of shoving Sonoo into a shadowed niche be tween two stacks of crates before speaking with him again. “All right,” she said, grinding the muzzle of the Sterling into the small of the Indian’s back. “Where are your quarters?”
Sonoo spoke in a stammering Hindi, then caught himself. “The end of this passage and to the left. A room off the connecting passage in back.”
“Will the others be there? The other technical representatives?”
“They should be. We were told to return there should there be trouble.”
“Guards?”
“Yes, at the door or escorting us…. Please, Captain, we are noncombatants! We have nothing to do with all of this!”
“You are a receiver to stolen property, an industrial spy, and an accomplice to mass murder, Professor,” Amanda grated back. “And if you want to come out of this alive and with a chance to turn state’s evidence, you will do exactly as I say. Understood?”
“I understand. I will cooperate in every way.”
“Good. We will be walking to the end of this passage and turning left. Go to your quarters as if you were just following your emergency drill. I’ll be walking behind you with this submachine gun. If I tell you to get down, do it fast. If you don’t, you may regret it… briefly.”
“I understand…. I understand.”
“Good. Go!”
Here at the end of the laterals, the air was still and dank, and lichen and seepage deposits encrusted the concrete tunnel walls. Heavy steel blast doors, their facings a solid sheet of rust, alternated on either side of the tall-man-high passage.
They made the turn. Perhaps forty yards ahead, past the other three lateral mouths, two armed Bugis stood talking in a light pool at the end of the gallery. Sonoo started toward them, his breathing ragged. Amanda paced close behind him, keeping the Sterling at port arms and concealed behind the Indian’s broad back.
As she walked, a thought snagged at Amanda’s mind, and she swore in silent fervor.
In his private SOC instruction program, Stone Quillain had been working her through the standard military firearms of the world, but they had yet to put time in on the L2 Sterling. She’d had instructions on how to load and fire weapons of its general class, however, and she knew that there would be a three-notch setting lever on the frame. Her thumb found the Sterling’s. One setting would be Safe and one Single Shot mode. The third and the one she wanted would be Autofire.
Which would be which?
They were within twenty yards of the Bugis guards. They were looking up and taking note of Sonoo, and Amanda didn’t have time to pause to read her damn gun. She took a deep breath and considered the guard who Harconan had sicced on her during her captivity. He had been good. He would have been one of Makara’s best, too smart a soldier to wander about with an automatic weapon not set to safe.
Amanda whispered “God bless our choice” and flicked the mode lever all the way to its opposite stop.
Ten yards. The two-man guard post had been set outside of one of the tunnel side doors, and light could be seen leaking around the corroded frame. The guards, one carrying another Sterling and the other an M-16 with a duct-taped stock, were frowning as they studied the approach of Amanda and Sonoo. Perhaps it was the lack of an accompanying guard or possibly the expression on the Indian’s face, but the Bugis with the assault rifle started to bring his weapon up to the ready position.
“Get down!”
Sonoo fell, whether in a swoon or a dive for safety, Amanda couldn’t say. She whipped the Sterling’s stock to her shoulder with one hand curled around its pistol grip and the other bracing its horizontal magazine.
Stone Quillain spoke to her. Choppers’ll climb as you fire a burst. Aim at their knees and hose ’em down with a zigzag pattern as the muzzle lifts.
Amanda’s call on the mode lever had been as correct as her Marine comrade’s training. The Sterling spat, its sharp-edged briiiiiiiiiipp of firepower reverberating in the tunnel. Enmeshed in the bullet stream, the Bugis door guards twisted, writhed, and fell.
Amanda felt an instant’s relief, then an indescribable cacophony of sound… warping and buckling steel, splintering wood, shattering stone — all reverberated through the complex. The entirety of Crab’s Claw Cape trembled under an earthquake’s shock.
Bridge of the Frigate Sutanto
0809 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008
Elliot MacIntyre looked up as something hurtled out of the smoke curtain rising above the head of the inlet: a chunky, sleek gray shadow that seemed to dive head-on for the frigate’s ruined bridge. Pulling up at the last second, it flared past, literally at masthead height. Rotor song thundered, counterpointed by the ripping scream of Gatling guns and the hammer of grenade launchers.