Stone thumbed his fire selector to Autorifle and lined up on the target, but someone else beat him to the draw.
Wolf One lifted from behind the deckhouse. Her portside door gunner had also caught the move made by the Bugis boarder, and the multiple muzzles of his minigun swung to bear on target.
A powerful helium-neon laser sight had been married to the frame of the weapon. Its beam was invisible to normal human vision, but readily apparent in the gunner’s Helmet Mounted Display visor. To aim, he pointed the finger of coherent light at his target. Where the beam touched, his bullets struck.
The door gunner brushed his firing switch, and the minigun sang its death song. It wasn’t a clatter or a rattle but rather a brief, piercing tone, as from a giant tuning fork. The rotating gun barrels of the miniature Gatling gun blurred, a foot-wide ball of flame dancing before them. A needle-fine beam of light, visible to the eye this time like some science fiction blaster bolt, lanced from the heart of this fireball, linking the weapon with its target.
Indeed, this was a kind of death ray. The light marked a stream of tracer bullets. Even firing at low rate, the MX-214 delivered four hundred rounds a minute, better than six rounds of 5.56mm NATO per second.
The human frame is not designed to have congress with such a concentration of kinetic energy. The pirate did not merely die. He exploded.
The last Marine hit the Piskov’s deck, and the lift helo nosed down and hauled away into the safety of the night, leaving the two smaller gun ships to orbit watchfully.
Breaking down into two-man rifle teams, the Force Recon platoon dispersed. Each Marine had his SABR’s grenade launcher loaded with nonlethal riot munitions, but each also had thirty rounds of 5.56mn NATO on call for an instant, deadly backup.
Helium-Neon targeting lasers probed unseen through the lingering smog of tear gas. Foam-soled combat boots scuffed lightly on deck plates. Filtered American voices whispered terse progress reports over the squad radiolink. Other voices, choking and pain-wracked, cried out in Bahasa Indonesia, cursing or calling for aid.
Contact was swift in coming.
With their night-vision systems and gas masks, the Marines had the edge, a small one. A pair of SABR launchers roared, with the hollowness denoting “jellybag” rounds going out. A pirate gagged as the high-velocity blobs of dense polymer caught him in the gut and slapped him off his feet. Seconds later, the Bugis’s agony was compounded as nylon “disposacuffs” bit around his wrists. Then it was eased as a spring-loaded injector fired a potent dose of fast-acting barbiturate into his buttock.
“Bravo Team Two here. Hostile secured. Portside forward.”
“Roger. One down.”
Two figures in the murk recognized each other as enemy at almost the same second. Almost. The one in the Marine utilities brought the over-and-under barrels of his weapon up first. The one in the sun-faded denim caught the massive jet of concentrated capsicum powder full in the face. His assault rifle clattered to the deck and he followed, incapable of doing anything except scream.
“This is Charley One. Hostile secured at forecastle break. Forecastle clear. Working aft.”
“Roger.”
A sharp metallic ping sounded as a grenade safety lever flicked clear and a thumping rattle followed as a flashbang bounced across the deck. The two Bugis crouched in the theoretical shelter of a ventilator housing goggled at the little cardboard cylinder that rolled to stop at their feet.
WHAM!
“Double header. Portside quarter.”
From somewhere aft, an Uzi machine pistol cut loose, spraying the night, the wild shooting of a panicked gunner seeking to suppress his own growing fear with fire and noise. A SABR snapped back an angry three round burst in rifle mode.
“Able Two. Boloed one at the base of the deckhouse. Sorry ’bout that. Had to do him fast.”
“Shit happens, Able Two. FIDO.”
The front facing of the superstructure loomed through the dissipating gas screen. Quillain went flat against it. With his back against solid steel, he paused to regain his situational awareness. Over the next few seconds, Lieutenant Brice Donovan, the force recon platoon leader, his senior sergeant, and his communications specialist all scuttled in to join Stone against the bulkhead. A few feet away a body lay sprawled on the deck, the blood soaking the dead man’s ragged shirt black in the nite-brite visors. Stone and the other Marines ignored the fallen pirate. They had other, more critical points of concern.
“How are we doing, Brice?” Quillain inquired through the speaking diaphragm of his mask.
“Looking good, sir,” the younger man murmured back. “Weather deck sweep completed and all personnel hatches padlocked for’rard. All fire teams positioning to enter the superstructure.”
“Good ’nuff. Able takes the bridge. Charley goes for the engine room. Bravo goes for the crew’s quarters. We’ll try for officers’ country from this side. Let’s look lively. I bet somebody’s thinkin’ hostage about now.”
“Aye, aye.”
As Donovan relayed his orders over the squad circuit, Quillain cut over to the command channel on his Leprechaun transceiver, his own transmission paired down to the stark minimum of verbiage and a maximum of information. “Dragon Six to TACBOSS. Deck secured. Prisoners taken. No blue casualties. Going inboard.”
“Acknowledged, Stone. Good luck,” Amanda Garrett replied, taking the two-word luxury of a human concern.
An entry hatch was set into the superstructure bulkhead two meters outboard and to starboard of their position. Stone took a second to eject the jellyround magazine from the grenade launcher of his SABR, replacing it with half a dozen loads of good old-fashioned double-ought buck shot. Unhooking a flashbang from his harness, he glanced at the platoon sergeant and nodded toward the hatch.
Ducking low to stay out of the line of sight of the inset porthole, the noncom slithered along the bulkhead to the hatch. Flipping open the locking dogs, he crouched, ready to yank the hatch open and duck back.
“All teams ready to effect entry, sir,” Donovan reported.
“Okay,” Quillain replied, “we go on my mark. Three… two… one… mark!”
The sergeant flung the hatch open and Stone flipped his concussion grenade inside. Four seconds later the blaze and slant of the detonation made the seed of bulkheads ring. More hollow thuds reverberated through the ship’s structure as the other assault teams opened their paths into the deckhouse.
Stone and his section instantly followed the flashbang in, SABRs shouldered and leveled.
Nothing. Stone flipped up his night-vision visor. The interior lights were still on and the grilled fixtures in the narrow passageway overhead revealed chipped green paint and oil-grimy linoleum decking. The ventilator fans had apparently been cut off along with the deck work lights, so the internal atmosphere of the ship was comparatively gas free.
Directly ahead, down the passage, a metal frame ladderway extended up to the next deck. And from that level came the sound of slamming doors and angered, frightened voices.
Lifting a hand, Stone issued a series of wordless commands, swift, concise gestures that silently deployed his team. All hands pressed back tightly against the sides of the passageway. While Donovan and his R/T covered the front aspect of the ladder, Stone and the platoon sergeant slithered along the bulkheads. Staying out of the field of view of anyone peering from the deck above, they positioned behind the open structure ladder.