“Aye, sir, will do.”
The cavern was a chaos of sharp-edged echoes. From the forecastle and upper works of the wrecked frigate, Marine SABR men and SAW gunners were engaging targets on the cavern floor, a score of different weapons types replying from the shadows.
Stone Quillain directed the developing fight from his ad hoc command post on the bridge wing, the Sea Dragon commander issuing a steady flow of orders, some over the tactical radio net, some by sheer leathery lung power.
“Heavy weapons. Hold and secure the frigate! Corporal, get your fire team dispersed aft along the portside rail. Yeah, to port! Maintain the suppression firebase. Assault Able, clear the LSM’s upper works and put the right side of the dock area under fire! Assault Baker… Hey you dumb bastard! Keep your head down! You plan on dying young?… Move into the LSM’s superstructure and commence compartment clearing! Watch out for hostages. I say again, watch out for hostages!”
MacIntyre moved in behind the Marine and clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it up, Stone,” he yelled over the gunfire. “I’m going across with Assault Two. Keep me advised. See you later;”
Quillain didn’t even look around. “Aye, aye, sir. Good luck. Recon Alpha and Bravo, hold in reserve on the main deck….”
It wasn’t until after MacIntyre had started down the tilted outside ladderway that Quillain looked after him. “Gillruth, heads up,” he said into his lip mike. “Eddie Mac is comin’ down to hook up with your platoon. I want him back alive! You hear me, Lieutenant? Alive!”
Assault Platoon Baker made its jump off from the settling stern of the Sutanto, crossing to the higher fantail of the Flores. This kept the LSM’s superstructure between the Marines and the volume of fire from the cave front.
It also mandated a leap up to the LSM higher-deck edge and a five foot vertical haul to get oneself over the lip. Eddie Mac prided himself on the conditioning he maintained for his age, but as he sprang and straight armed himself up he heard and felt long-forgotten musculature pop and creak in protest.
Dammit to hell entirely, Eddie Mac, a red Corvette would have been a whole lot easier!
A youthful Marine, carrying three times Maclntyre’s burden, effortlessly bounced over the rail at Madntyre’s side. Turning, he reached down, extending a hand to the admiral. He was rewarded with a glare that could have maimed, and he hastily retreated.
Marine fire teams were already at work inside the deckhouse. Flash bangs were plentiful and they were doing a fast and dirty cleanout: a concussion grenade through every door, followed by a charge and a sweep around the space with a ready gun barrel.
Not too ready, however; these were SOC Marines, drilled in hostage rescue work. Fingers were kept off triggers and held extended out parallel to the weapons’ frames, mandating that extra fragment of conscious thought to fire, a deliberate risk taken to avoid a blue-on-blue kill of the hostage they were there to rescue.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
The shouted chant from the fire-team leaders resounded through the passageways. No resistance met. The crew of the Flores had abandoned rather than fighting it out ’tween decks.
There was no cry of “We got a friendly,” either.
MacIntyre attached himself to the squad climbing two levels to the upper deck and to officers’ country and the wheelhouse. The things they were looking for would be there if anywhere aboard.
According to the rebuild diagrams MacIntyre had seen of the refurbished Froche LSM, the captain’s quarters and those of the three mates were located in a deckhouse just forward of the squat exhaust stack and under the wheelhouse and radio shack.
As he and the Marines worked forward around either side of the funnel, MacIntyre noted a curious sense of oppression and claustrophobia totally alien to what should be felt on the decks of a ship. A man couldn’t stand erect atop the LSM’s wheelhouse without striking his head on the rock ceiling of the cavern. The admiral jumped as something black flickered past his face, a panic-stricken bat fleeing its sanctuary, preferring even the hated day to the growing chaos.
The fire team rushed the rear entry of the deckhouse, and flashbangs roared again.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
Four for four again. No contacts.
Having gotten the Sutanto inside the cavern, MacIntyre hadn’t wanted to sit on his thumb aboard the hulk, waiting while somebody else did the dirty work. He’d wanted in on the hunt for both Amanda and Harconan. But he also wasn’t a fool. He was quite aware he wasn’t an SOC Marine and that many of his Special Boat skills were rusty. He’d been content to be the trailer at the rear of the clearing squad, with no more mission than to look back over his shoulder.
That’s what he still was, outside of the exterior hatch with his back to the steel of the bulkhead, when it happened.
Inside the deckhouse he heard the clunk, and clatter of something bouncing down a ladderway.
“Grenade! Grenade! Gre—”
There was an explosion — not the sharp crack of a flashbang, but the crash of the real thing. Two of the SOC Marines who had preceded MacIntyre through the door were hurled back out through it, partially by the force of the bomb and partially by their mad scramble to escape its effect.
He could not consciously recall how he got there, but MacIntyre found himself kneeling in the doorway, his carbine up-angled and firing ready. Only two Marines lay sprawled in the central passage of the deck house; the others had either been in one of the four cabins that opened off it or had dove for cover there. The attack had come from overhead, down the ladderway that led to the bridge.
Fortunately the grenade had been an offensive concussion model that didn’t spit shrapnel. It had flattened the assault force, however, leaving them open for a follow-up attack.
The carbine in MacIntyre’s hands was firing and he didn’t know why, ripping off burst after three-round burst at the top of the ladder. Then he caught up with himself and realized he was firing at movement seen through the opening in the overhead.
And what was he yelling at the top of his lungs? “Hostiles on the bridge! Hostiles on the bridge! Men down! Men down! We need corpsmen!”
Someone in the wheelhouse screamed and a second hand grenade dropped to the passageway deck. Now totally detached from his own actions, MacIntyre wondered what he was up to now as he dropped the M-4 and lunged forward.
The evil little sphere of the grenade skittered across the linoleum, and frantically MacIntyre groped for it. His time sense was so adrenaline-distorted that he couldn’t count the passing seconds. He got his hand on the bomb and twisted to throw it… but where? Semiconscious and wounded Marines sprawled in every adjacent compartment and outside of the only open exterior hatch. The ship’s funnel blocked a clean pitch over the stern.
The searing realization of his own mortality seized Elliot MacIntyre by his throat. A crazy, kaleidoscopic jumble of images tumbled behind his eyes. His sons, his late wife on her wedding day, his daughter Judy as he had held her in his arms that first morning in the hospital, Amanda Garrett as she would have looked smiling up at him in that black-lace chemise. He clutched the grenade to his stomach and wrapped himself around it to smother the blast.
A tremendous crash sounded in his ears: the sound of his own next heartbeat. Then he realized that the grenade was wet with someone else’s blood and that the safety lever and pin were still in place.
Elliot MacIntyre screamed an oath such as he had never before even attempted. Leaping to his feet, he ripped the pin out of the grenade and hurled it back where it had come from. Why in the name of sweet sleeping Jesus hadn’t he thought of that before? The explosion overhead made the plates ring, and he charged up the ladder, clawing his Beretta service pistol out of its holster.