Soon the burning ship was in sight. It was belching so much smoke, one-half of the horizon was completely clouded on the otherwise clear day. But that wasn’t what bothered the tanker captain. More serious was the fact that the smoking ship seemed to be moving toward a direct collision course with the supertanker.
The captain called down to his navigation room. “Are we going to hit it?” he asked, a slight panic rising in his voice.
“We’re deflecting, sir,” the reply came back, “but it keeps moving as we do.”
Goddamn, the captain swore to himself. It was too late to call ahead to Panatella to have them dispatch a couple of sea-jets to blow the boat out of the water.
“Hard again port!” the captain yelled to his steering unit.
Slowly the tanker began to heave to the left. But as the captain watched through his electronic binoculars, the burning ship continued its collision course.
“Hard port! Hard port!” the captain screamed. Again the tanker swayed to the left. Again the burning ship moved in its way.
“Jesus Christ!” the captain yelled. He had no choice, he had to slow down. Even then, there was a danger he’d ram the boat. With a belly full of highly volatile aviation fuel, the slightest bump could spell disaster. “All stop all engines!”
Five miles still separated the two vessels, yet there was panic among the tanker crew. They knew the danger of hitting a burning ship with a load of gas. Secretly the crew chief ordered the lifeboats struck and ready for lowering.
Then the captain got a call from his radar man. “Sir, we are picking up several more blips — smaller boats — in the vicinity of the burning vessel.”
Instantly the captain began to smell a rat. “What the hell is going on here?”
He knew soon enough.
Breaking out of the smoke screen laid down by the burning ship, two dozen high-speed craft streaked towards the supertanker. Then, off to the north, he saw four helicopters approaching.
Within a minute the tanker was surrounded by the boats and the choppers were buzzing angrily above. As the captain watched dumbfounded, six of the boats came up to the side of the tanker and started throwing grappling hooks up to its side rails. Soon men from the boats were scaling up the side of the tanker hull.
Most bizarre of all, one of the helicopters had come in low and a man with a camera was hanging out of its hatchway, filming the action.
“What the fuck is this?” the tanker captain screamed. “A pirate movie!?”
He was close …
As he watched the dozens of men scramble over the sides of his ship, he ordered the men on the bridge, “Stop those bastards!”
His second in command turned to him and asked, “How?”
The captain looked at him in a rage. “Shoot them, asshole.”
The officer glared back at him as the film chopper passed right by the bridge. “Shoot them? You’re the asshole. You start firing on this ship and we’ll go up like an atom bomb.”
The captain knew he was right — one spark and the whole ship would go up. There was nothing he could do but watch helplessly as the sea-jackers continued to swarm over the side of the ship. Within a minute, they had overwhelmed his crew.
Five men burst into the bridge, one of them a small man dressed in strange uniform, carrying a saber and wearing a hat like Napoleon.
“I am Commodore Antonio Vanaria!” the little man roared. “I declare this vessel captured and claimed in the name of the Freedom Navy!”
The supertanker captain and his eight crew members were put in a lifeboat and set adrift. Twenty minutes later they heard a great roar coming from the north.
“Christ! What the hell is that!” one of the crew members cried out.
Another spotted a series of dots materializing on the northern horizon. “Look! Out there, low over the water.”
The captain and the crew were stunned. Heading right for them were four chevron waves containing four jet fighters each. The airplanes were flying so low, their tails were nearly touching the wave tops.
“Who are they?” someone asked.
The supertanker captain knew his airplanes. The majority of the ones approaching him were swing-wing Tornados — eight of them in all. The green camouflage jets were loaded with antiship bombs. One chevron was made up entirely of cream-colored Swedish Viggens, each carrying two deadly racks of air-to-surface missiles. But it was the first formation of jets that was most impressive. This lead wave was made up of three Harrier jump-jets and a fighter that the captain didn’t think existed any more.
“Christ, is that an F-16?” he asked himself.
“Get down!” someone yelled. “The fuckers are going to swamp us!”
In a moment the first wave passed right over the lifeboat. The roar was deafening. The hot exhausts did stir up the sea enough to make the surface foaming and choppy, but not enough to capsize the boat.
In enviable precision, each wave passed over the lifeboat and disappeared over the southern horizon — heading directly for the “hidden, air-strike-proof” sea base off Panatella.
“Start paddling,” the captain said after the jets had disappeared from view. “Head northeast. We might make the shipping lanes off Malta.”
Then, looking back to the south where the exhaust trails of the jet fighters were still visible, he muttered, “We’re lucky those sea pirates hijacked us. The last place I’d want to be right now is Panatella … ”
The jets attacked without warning. As the helicopter containing the video crew hovered from a safe distance, the Tornados went in. Flying in pairs, they headed right for the neat line of Beriev flying boats. Cannons blazing, the British jets methodically ripped up the amphibians. After two passes with cannon, the Tornados commenced their missile attack, using modified antiship rockets. One by one, those flying boats not destroyed in the strafing runs exploded with missile hits. At the end of three missile passes, the Tornados withdrew, and climbed to 10,000 feet to provide air cover for the rest of the strike force.
The Viggens went in next. They concentrated on the converted oil platform, sending a murderous barrage of small air-to-surface rockets into the huge, ten-story structure. The missiles were penetrating the tough outer core of the floating building, crashing through to its center, and exploding within. Soon the structure was rocking back and forth with the power of the blasts. Its massive struts — connected to concrete counterweights below the surface — started to bend in the ferocity of the attack.
Still the Viggens attacked relentlessly. A huge fire broke out on the platform’s upper stories. Its topside crane came off in one direct hit, coming down with a mighty splash. Soon the platform was noticeably leaning to the port side, all of its floors belching fire and smoke. Bodies could be seen falling from the upper floors.
Two trailing Viggens swooped in and delivered the coup de grace, a pair of direct hits on the platform’s left-side struts. They took the full weight of the explosions, tottered for a moment, then gave way. The whole structure collapsed, falling over on its side in a massive, fiery crash. The four Viggens regrouped and flew over the utterly destroyed platform, each jet performing a 360-degree victory roll.
In the confusion, several pilots attempted to take off in the small sea-jets. But the Harriers were on hand to prevent that. Two sea-jet pilots gunned their engines and tried to make a break for it, ripping across the sea surface, hoping to escape in the pandemonium.
But the sea-jet pilots were terrified to see two Harriers hovering over them, watching their every move. The Harrier pilots waited for the sea-jets to lift off. Then two Sidewinders flashed out from their wings. Scratch two sea-jets.