“We got range! Burn ’em!” Richardson roared.
The OCSW jackhammered, spewing high-velocity 25mm grenades. As each round was fired, the inductance coil wrapped around the barrel of the OCSW armed and programmed the proximity fuses of the deadly little projectiles for antipersonnel airburst.
The fire stream reached out for the row of moored Boghammers but didn’t quite touch them. The grenades detonated a few feet short of their target, each round producing a focused blast of shrapnel. Holding down the trigger button, the copilot ran his eyes over the trio of pirate craft, brushing the life away with a whisk broom of high-velocity fragmentation.
Amanda saw the airbursts dance like popping flashbulbs above the gunboats. She also noted the shimmer of moonlit wavetops beneath the helo’s skids. Trapped hair follicles ached under her helmet as she realized the racing aircraft was sinking below the level of the Piskov’s deck, the freighter’s steel flank looming like a cliff before them.
“Cobra?” The cry was a half-strangled one.
The pitch and collective levers slammed back. Wolf One gathered herself and sprang like a Thoroughbred leaping a fence, a skid heel tracing a line across the sea for a split second.
For another split second, a stunned Bugis pirate looked in through the side hatch as the helicopter screamed across the Piskov’s deck between the deckhouse and the foremast.
Amanda’s hands locked onto the jump-seat frame as the gunship flared up and over into an incredibly steep banking turn. All that could be seen outside of the left-hand door was the moonlit surface of the ocean. The door gunner, still standing on his platform outside of the aircraft, hung casually from his safety harness with the sangfroid of a commuter waiting at a bus stop.
With the Piskov’s superstructure deftly positioned to block the fire of the pirate deck gunners, the Super Huey snapped level again, racing away into the night.
“Did you say something back there, ma’am?” Cobra Richardson inquired, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Nothing important,” Amanda replied, trying to make her aching fingers release their grip.
With his eyes and face shielded by his gas mask, Stone Quillain gripped a safety strap and leaned out of the open side door of the HH-60 Oceanhawk transport helicopter. As he studied the approaching objective, Amanda Garrett spoke through the tiny inductance speaker taped behind his ear.
“Dragon 6, we are positioning for deck suppression run. State your position.”
“Ninety seconds out and inbound,” he replied into his throat mike, his words relaying via the PRC 6725 Leprechaun transceiver clipped to his chest harness. “Looking good.”
“I concur. It’s your show now, Stone. Secure the ship and crew and get me prisoners!”
“Copy, Skipper. Lord a’mighty woman, I heard you the first time.” Stone was careful to murmur the second phrase only after lifting his thumb off the Transmit key. Stone might have his doubts about some of this newfangled, nonlethal warfare gear they’d be using, but he could understand the need for human intelligence.
Rocking his thumb across the communications touch pad, he toggled over to the cigarette-pack-sized AN/ PRC 6725F squad tactical radio clipped to the side of his helmet. “On final. Lock and load!”
Within the darkened fuselage of the helicopter, well-drilled hands fingered magazines out of harness pouches, socking them home into magazine wells, two per weapon. As did Stone himself, all members of the fifteen-man Marine Force Recon platoon carried the new Selectable Assault Battle Rifles.
Stone wasn’t sure yet about all of the gee-whiz electronic gadgetry built into the new weapons, such as the laser-ranged proximity fusing system or the Heads Up display sighting link with their night vision visors. But Lord, he could sure appreciate the firepower.
The SABR was a composite weapons system, like the old M-16 assault rifle/M-203 grenade launcher pairing. It mated two superb Heckler & Koch designs, the G-36 assault rifle and a 20mm grenade launcher variant of the CAWS semiautomatic combat shotgun, into a single, lethal whole.
The SABRs were perfect for the kind of work to come. All sorts of useful things could be fired out of those 20mm tubes beyond mere high explosives.
Leaning out of the open side hatch again, Stone refreshed his situational awareness. Shattered and half-sunken, the pirate gunboats trailed alongside the freighter on their mooring lines, their weapons silenced and their crews dead. The Bugis boarding party, denied their escape route, must be frantically trying to organize a defense. Even as he looked on, the Piskov’s deck lights abruptly went out, plunging the vessel into darkness.
“Why, thank you kindly gentlemen,” Stone chuckled. Lifting his voice, he spoke over the tactical circuit. “Platoon! Vision up!”
With his free hand, he lowered his AI2 nite-brite visor, settling it into place over the lens interface of his gas mask. The world went bright in tones of luminescent green as the visor photomultipliers boosted the star and moon glow into the equivalency of broad daylight.
Now Quillain could pick out the two Seawolf Hueys converging on the Piskov, making their suppression run. As they got the range the 25mm turrets began to belch once more. This time, however, the gunships were firing anti-riot munitions. Stone’s night-vision visor overloaded as a flickering wave’ of blinding light washed over the freighter’s upperworks.
Aboard the Piskov, havoc rained from the sky. A barrage of proximity-fused flashbang grenades burst overhead, producing an eye-piercing magnesium glare and battering waves of concussion. Most of the topside gunners were thrown to the deck, the wind knocked out of them. And when they gasped for their lost breath, they found themselves inhaling a lung-scalding mixture of military-grade CS teargas and capsicum dust. Gas grenades had alternated with the flashbangs in the OCSW belts.
In seconds, a choking cloud of chemical vapor engulfed the Russian freighter. With their eyes swelling shut, the stunned and agonized Indonesians staggered through the haze. Retching, weeping, and cursing, they were incapable of reacting effectively to anything, even to the growing roar of rotors overhead.
The big HH-60 flared out and went to hover over the midships weather deck of the freighter.
“Stand up!”
The assault platoon rose to their feet, hunching against the curve of the helicopter’s fuselage.
“Rope out!”
The helo’s crew chief rolled the carefully coiled fastrope out of the hatch. With one end connected to the boom of the helicopter’s winch, the other snaked freely to the deck. Stone shot a last glance downward to verify that the aircraft wasn’t drifting laterally and that the end of the cable had indeed touched down forty feet below.
“Go!”
He was the first man out of the hatch. Throwing his arms and legs around the cable, he slid down it like a fireman descending a fire station pole. It was a tricky move, and a missed grip could mean trouble, but it lived up to its name: fastrope.
Stone grabbed loose and dropped the last couple of feet to the deck. Unslinging his SABR, he ducked aside, clearing the way for the next man coming down two seconds behind him. Whipping his weapon to his shoulder, he scanned for threats, both to himself and to the Oceanhawk overhead. A good chalk, well trained in fastroping, could clear a hovering liftship in thirty seconds. But in a combat zone, that could be twenty-nine seconds too long.
Stone caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The rotorblast had momentarily dispersed the haze of riot gas, and Stone spotted a figure moving out on the wing of the Piskov’s bridge. Instantly the Marine recognized the dangerous straightness of a rifle barrel. Not incapacitated by the gas, thanks to his position high in the superstructure, a pirate leveled an AK-47 at the station-keeping helicopter.