They had dodged the bullet.
But not without a price …
Hunter, Heath, Yaz, and Olson sat in the carrier’s messhall holding an impromptu strategy session. O’Brien was also there, giving them the bad news.
“We burnt out five tugs,” the Irishman said slowly. “Engines completely blown beyond any repair. Four others are in real bad shape, being held together by God-knows-what.”
Hunter shook his head. “We owe you a lot, Paddy,” the pilot told him. “You saved us from a very dangerous situation.”
“I know,” the Irishman said, the pain obvious in his voice. “It’s just that it happened so quickly, after all this time. And you can’t find a good tug these days. No one makes ’em.”
The room was completely silent.
“What’s worst is we can expect slow going from here on out,” O’Brien finally said. “One-third the speed we were making, and even that will take a toll on the remaining tugs.”
Heath looked at Hunter. “That is very serious,” the Englishman said. “We need to get to the Suez as quickly as possible. Lucifer’s troops are already aboard their invasion ships — so the radio intercepts tell us. They’ll be sailing very soon.”
O’Brien could only shrug. “The more strain we put on the tugs now, the more they’ll blow. As it is we won’t have much to maneuver with once we get to the Suez.”
Heath turned to Olson. “Captain, could we hook up a couple more of your ships for towing duty?”
“By all means,” the Norwegian said in heavily accented English. “But if we run into any more trouble, we’ll have to cut loose and respond to it.”
Hunter shook his head. “We’ll be in real danger of leaving the carrier dead in the water,” he said. “In which case it will be a perfect target.”
“A proverbial sitting duck, as they say,” Heath added.
“Exactly,” Hunter replied.
Again, the room was silent.
“But we’ve got other problems right now,” Hunter said finally. “Whatever the Briareus fleet does, they’ll eventually be on to us. Even if we make it to the Canal, they could come right in after us and we’ll really be squeezed between them and Lucifer’s forces.”
“What have you got in mind, major?” Heath asked. “We certainly can’t fight them on our own.”
“No way,” Hunter agreed. “But let’s think for a minute. This entire ‘face-in-the-sky, hundred-arms business’ is probably all an attempt to intimidate the Turks into handing over the oil platforms — and Crete — without a fight. These tactics have worked for Lucifer before all over the Mideast. He’s probably just assuming they’ll work here again. Just like during The Circle War, anything he can get by using mind over matter he’ll try for.”
“So what can we do?” Yaz asked.
“Well,” Hunter said. “We can screw up his little psych-out party. Get some real fireworks going.”
“An air strike?” Heath asked.
“No,” Hunter answered. “I’m thinking of something a little more subtle. If those ships out there take a little hostile fire, it just might dissuade them from coming after us. All I’ll need is one of Paddy’s ailing tugs, a few of Yaz’s electrical boys, and a couple of Harpoons.”
Chapter 31
The tugboat could hardly get up enough speed to carry them all. O’Brien spent most of the trip fretting over the boat’s gearbox and the lack of RPM’s coming from the engine. The motor — its rings and valves completely shot — would only provide sporadic bursts of turning power, causing the tug to lurch forward for a few seconds, then float for a few minutes, before another unpredictable surge would push them forward again.
Of course, this was exactly what Hunter wanted.
“If they have any close-in sonar listening devices on those ships,” he said, referring to the Briareus fleet, “they’ll be picking up our screw-turn vibrations. But the way we’re going, they’ll never suspect that a boat this shitty would be floating around out here in the middle of the night. They’ll probably be ripping apart their machines, looking for a glitch or something.”
The ships of the Briareus fleet were just two miles away, sailing southward at a leisurely pace. “They’re taking their time,” Hunter said to Yaz as they stood on the bow of the tug. “Probably waiting for the face in the sky to make its appearance.”
Four miles in the other direction was the cluster of Turkish oil platforms. Hunter had counted at least twenty of the rigs as they’d slipped by earlier in the night. By monitoring the radio transmissions from the platforms, he knew the men aboard them were armed, dangerous, but somewhat unsure as to whether they should fight the approaching, overwhelming fleet or just surrender the whole operation.
In all the confusion, the Saratoga flotilla had managed to slip on by them, undetected, fifteen miles to their southwest. The flotilla — with the lone exception of a single frigate — was now moving away from the potential battle zone, slowly but surely.
“I have to ask you again, how the hell does Lucifer do it?” Yaz said to Hunter as the tug went into yet another drifting mode. “This face-in-the-sky stuff? I mean, I’ve seen fireworks displays back home where they’ve made flags or whatever hang up in the sky. But nothing like this.”
“I’ll know more when I see it,” Hunter said. “But my guess is that he’s using laser projection. It would have to be pretty sophisticated, to be sure. Beamed from some distance away, maybe even bounced off a satellite or even his P-3 Orion.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s effective,” Yaz said, adding a whistle. “Anyone the least bit superstitious is guaranteed to jump right out of his shoes.”
“Well, Lucifer’s nothing if not clever,” Hunter said. “I mean, the face in the sky is the coup de grace, but he also had to have his agents do a lot of legwork on Crete and in this area in order to convince the people of the Briareus connection. You saw the horror show back around Casablanca — people trying to get the hell out of the way of the war. I’m sure that panic was for the most part caused by tactics like this. Intimidation. Rumors. Disinformation. Playing on people’s paranoia. Fleets popping up here and there. Faces in the sky. He managed to evacuate most of the whole frigging Med of unwanted citizens — and probably more than a few would-be soldiers — again, all without firing a shot.”
Just then, one of Yaz’s men appeared. “We’re ready when you are,” he said. The sailor was talking about the Harpoon antiship missile-launch system he and his crew members had just finished installing on the old tug.
Hunter and Yaz looked over the launcher. It was jimmy-rigged for sure, and its only power was a five-pack of small automobile-type batteries they had carried along. But a quick look at the electrical connections told Hunter that the launcher would probably work the two times they would need it.
Now they waited. O’Brien cut the tug’s engines and let the boat drift between the platforms and the slow-approaching Briareus ships.
“Any minute now,” Hunter said to Yaz and O’Brien as they searched the brilliantly star-washed sky.
“There it is!” Yaz shouted, barely able to contain himself. He was pointing to the eastern horizon.
Hunter scanned the area. Sure enough, he saw a single red star, burning brightly. “Definitely a laser,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Then another red star appeared. Then another. Soon, one part of the sky consisted of nothing but the red stars. Then they started moving. Circling. Changing positions. Forming patterns. Sure enough a face started taking shape.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hunter said. He had to admit the special effects were superb.
But not only that, the illusion was so real it almost appeared to be holographic in nature. It alternated between Lucifer’s devilish face and what Hunter imagined to be Briareus, the giant.