“Ah, be advised, TACBOSS, Seawolf Lead, and Dragon 6, this is Raven’s Roost. We have a situational update. Stand by to copy.” The intel officer’s voice sounded in Cobra Richardson’s earphones, tersely clipping off the data.
“Target ship is Russian motor vessel Piskov, twenty-four thousand tons displacement, six hundred and ten feet in length. She is a Finnish built roll-on/roll-off trailer carrier…. Outbound from Vladivostok to Haifa, Naples, and Marseilles. All cargo decks loaded. Stern offside ramp, starboard side… high deckhouse aft… short mast at break of forecastle…. Midships decks are clear except for a double row of ventilator housings…. Vessel is dead in the water, but illuminated.
“We can see approximately eight armed hostiles topside…. The crew is apparently being held belowdecks…. We have three Boghammers tied up alongside, starboard side aft…. A fourth Bog is holding off the stern…. Heaviest weapons apparent are assault rifles and light machine guns.”
Richardson found himself grinning in an appropriately wolfish manner. It would be a challenging tactical setup, but a fair first bag.
Amanda Garrett, leaning forward between the pilots’ seats, must have read his mind. “Remember, Cobra,” she warned, “I want pieces to pick up afterwards.”
He glanced across his shoulder at her. “Three out of four adequate?”
“I can live with that.”
“Got it covered, then.”
“And not too many holes in the Russian,” she added. “I need her seaworthy.”
Cobra shot another glance down his shoulder. “You do enjoy doing things the hard way, don’t you, ma’am?”
She gave a wry grin. “If you wanted things easy, you could have stayed with the Air Commandos.” Reaching up, she toggled her lip mike from Intercom to Radio. “Dragon 6, are you back there?”
“Roger that, Skipper,” Stone Quillain’s radio-filtered reply came back. “We got you on our FLIRS. We’re about two miles astern of you.”
“What do you think of the setup?”
“Sounds like we’ll have to fastrope aboard. We’re going to need a weatherdeck saturation with gas and flashbangs, then we’ll go in amidships. Kinda tricky, but I think we can swing it okay. The big thing is fire suppression when the lift ship is in hover, especially from the freighter’s deckhouse and bridge. We’ll need the bad guys kept off of us for about thirty seconds.”
Richardson thumbed the Transmit button on the end of his collective lever. “Consider that the least of your problems, buddy. The Wolves will be present and accounted for.”
“Roger that. ’Preciate ya.”
Amanda keyed her lip mike again. “Sounds like we have a plan, gentlemen. Raven’s Roost, this is TACBOSS. Do you have any other suspicious surface traffic in the area?”
“Acknowledged, TACBOSS. We have what look like a pair of good sized Bugis schooners loitering about eight miles astern of the Piskov. There’s a high probability these are your pirate mother ships.”
“I concur. They’re holding off until the boarding parties have the target secure, then they’ll close to take aboard the loot. Stay on those mother ships, Raven’s Roost. They are your new top priorities. I want to know where they head after we intervene at the Piskov.”
“We’re not taking them down too, ma’am?” Richardson inquired.
Amanda shook her helmeted head. “Not this time, Co. I want the mother ships to run home to Papa.”
“Ah, nuts.”
At that moment, Wolf One’s copilot lifted a hand and pointed beyond the windscreen. “Lights on the horizon. Bearing zero off the bow!”
Amanda glanced down at the Active GPU display, then she flipped down her nite-brite visor for a fast visual verification. “That’s it. Target in sight. All strike elements, guns clear! Gentlemen, the show is yours!”
“You heard the lady. Wolf Two, heat ’em up. We’re going downtown.”
Cobra felt Wolf One bobble slightly as internal weight shifted. In his sideview mirrors, he saw his door gunners step out onto the small metal grid platforms mounted outside of the Huey’s doors. Supported only by their monkey harnesses, they hunkered against the hurricane blast of the slipstream, targeting visors down and miniguns braced.
Ahead, the lights of the Piskov drew closer.
On the decks of the big Russian freighter, the pirate deck watch paced slowly, assault rifles slung. They were not lax, but they were relaxed. The difficult part of the night’s work was over. The rest should be an often-practiced routine.
The boarding had gone well. A few bursts of machine-gun fire at the bridge had coerced the crew into stopping their engines. The Russian seamen had been herded into their quarters and safely locked away. Prizemaster Mangkurat and his cargo handlers were already below on the vehicle decks, prying open the locks on the trailers listed in his orders. Soon it would be time to call up the pinisi for loading. By the dawn, they would be sailing for home with wealth packed in their holds.
More than one man smiled at the thought of joyous families to greet, of young women to impress, of gifts to bestow.
And then came the thudding drone from out of the darkness, growing in intensity.
Cigarettes were flicked onto the deck. Rifles slid off of shoulders. Bolts ratcheted back. Dark seamen’s eyes narrowed, seeking to pierce the wall of darkness beyond the freighter’s deck lights.
There shouldn’t be any threat or danger out there in the night. The raja samudra had promised it would be so.
Cobra keyed his lip mike. “Wolf Two, this is Wolf Lead. That one Bog trailing astern of the Piskov is yours. Kill him with a Hellfire. I’m taking the guys alongside. I will engage, overfly the freighter, then break left. You break right, cross behind me, and come down the freighter’s starboard flank. Clean up anything I might miss.”
“Roger D.”
The Super Huey shuddered in its shallow dive, redlining just below rotor stall. The Piskov was no longer a glowing constellation on the horizon. Now she showed herself as a gaunt, long-lined freighter, outlined in the glare of her deck arc lights.
“Vajo,” Richardson barked. “You got the twenty-five. Load lethal and arm for proximity airburst.”
Wolf One’s copilot lifted a hand to the overhead ordnance panel, calling up one of the two turret magazines for the grenade launcher and setting the system configurations. A computer graphics cartwheel sight materialized in front of his eyes, projected on the visor of his Helmets Up display.
As his head turned and his point of vision shifted, the chin turret indexed, the muzzle of the Crew Served Objective Weapon tracking on the death pip in the center of the helmet sight. The copilot stared at his target, his thumb flipping the combination safety guard and arming switch open on his pitch lever.
“Turret up! Proximity set! I got arming tone!”
“Acknowledged. Ten to range.”
“This is Wolf Two,” a voice interjected over the radio. “We are opening fire!”
Blue-orange flame glared from beyond the windscreen. A navalized Hellfire missile slid away from beneath one of Wolf Two’s snub wings. Blazing toward the pirate gunboat loitering astern of the freighter, the hundred pound PGM bobbled along the path pointed by its guidance laser.
The targeted Boghammer dissolved in a pulse of flame and spray. The fight was on.
A tracer stream arced up from alongside the Russian ship, a second and a third following as the pirate gunners engaged the airborne threat. Additional muzzle flashes sparked and danced along the freighter’s rails as the boarding party joined the battle. For the moment, there wasn’t much that could be done about the deckside riflemen, but it was definitely time to deal with those gunboats.