by David DeLee
“And the instructions to the others?”
“Done and transmitted. I have provided everyone with the information they need to replicate what we are doing here today.”
Faaid smiled. “Excellent.”
“Finally,” Bridget called out. “Release the clamps.”
The clamps released with a metallic snap and the canvas netting fell away. The boat dropped with a splash. Faaid and Zayd had to grab the railgun and hold on to keep from being thrown to the deck. They both shot annoying looks at Bridget.
She smiled. The boat bobbed and then settled. “We’re ready to go.”
Bridget activated the ignition. The boat’s twin 430-horsepower inboard engines rumbled to life. The water behind them bubbled and churned. She eased the throttle forward. The railgun boat slipped forward, away from the dock.
Bridget steered the boat from the cold dark shadows beneath the behemoth catamaran into the bright ocean beyond.
Faaid smiled, anxious to not miss their date with destiny.
-----
NOW ARMED, TARA QUICKLY took Brice and McMurphy to the well deck. She raced to the far end of the passageway. Her sandals slapped the metal grates, behind her Bannon and McMurphy were right on her heels, their boots pounding. A thundering herd of elephants would have been quieter.
The railgun boat had slipped from its nest. The netting floated abandoned.
“No. No. No!” She ran to the stern end of the passageway. The boat was already heading out to sea. She fired Bannon’s .45 at it, emptying the gun.
Bannon and McMurphy crowded around her.
She shoved the empty .45 at Bannon and pulled the M16 from his grasp. With the weapon pressed into her shoulder, she flipped the selector to full automatic and emptied the weapon at the boat in less than three seconds. A line of mini-geysers marked the bullets’ path but none reached the departing boat.
It was out of range.
Tara shoved the useless weapon at Bannon and slapped the railing. “Damn it.” She leaned back against the wall, dejected and tired. “So that’s it. We’re finished.”
Bannon took the weapon from her. “We’re a long way from done. Come on.”
McMurphy grinned. “Wait until you get a load of my new ride.”
“It’s a rental,” Bannon said, walking away from the departing boat.
They headed up to the passenger deck where they found a small group of crewmen gathered in the forward area. They were clamoring around an older man. He had dark-skin—they all did—and a white halo of hair around his dark scalp.
They were peppering him with anxious questions in Arabic.
Bannon handed his empty M16 to Tara who was a step behind him. He raised his hands, not in surrender, but to demonstrate he was unarmed. Tara and McMurphy trained their weapons on the group. No one could tell hers was empty.
“Your leaders have left you,” Bannon said, speaking loud and slowly. “We do not want to fight with you any longer, but if you force us, we will kill every last one of you.”
They stared at him. Guns aimed but their mouths hung open.
“Do y’all understand English?” McMurphy demanded to know. “Yes or no?”
“Nem fielaan,” the white-haired man said. “Yes.”
“Good,” Bannon said. “Put down your weapons and we’ll talk about what happens next.”
There was hesitation from the men. They looked to the white-haired man for guidance. He nodded, and with a collective clatter they put their weapons down on the ground.
“Are you the captain?” Bannon asked of the white-haired man.
It was clear he was afraid to admit it, but eventually he nodded. “Yes.”
“If you or your men don’t act against us,” he extended his hand to shake, “they will remain unharmed. You have my word.”
The captain looked down at Bannon’s offered hand. Again with much reservation, he took it. They shook hands.
“We’ll relay your position to the Coast Guard. The Dauphin will stay afloat until they get here. If…”
The captain narrowed his eyes. “If what?”
“If you tell us what Faaid’s target is. Where he’s taking that weapon? If not, we’ll blow your other fuel tank and you’ll be nothing but an oil slick by the time the Coast Guard gets here.”
“Threats are unnecessary. As you have said, they abandoned us, left us here to die. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. Faaid is going after the Oceanic Princess.”
“Who’s the Oceanic Princess?” McMurphy asked.
“It is a what, one of your decadent American cruise ships. The vessel left Boston Harbor yesterday. It is on its way to Bermuda with five thousand drunken, hedonistic Americans. Aziza Faaid intends to blow the ship to pieces, sinking it and every living soul on board.”
Bannon fisted his hands as he felt the blood pulse in his temples. With the railgun, Faaid could do it with a single push of a button. An ocean liner large enough to accommodate five thousand passengers would require a large crew of at least a thousand. Six thousand people in all. That was nearly twice the death toll of 9/11.
He looked at Tara and McMurphy. “We need to move. Now!”
They left the crew of the Dauphin and climbed out onto the listing deck. They walked along toward the ship’s bow, holding on to the handrails as the catamaran continued to pitch, now beyond its earlier thirty degrees. As they shimmied along, Tara glanced back. The smoke coming from the blown-out fuel tank was now more a light gray than black and not nearly as thick. Sea water had rushed through the hole at the hull’s waterline, which helped put out the fire she’d started, but it also continued to pull the hull further underwater.
The Coast Guard would arrive in time to save the crew, but the Jean-Paul Dauphin was a goner.
CHAPTER THIRTY
McMURPHY CLIMBED AROUND BANNON and grabbed one of the helicopter tie downs to pull himself up the slippery incline that was the Dauphin’s bow deck. He turned to offer Bannon a hand but Bannon waved him on. “Go. Get that beast started. We’ll get the tie downs.”
McMurphy went ahead and climbed into the pilot seat.
Bannon looked back. Tara was struggling to pull herself forward. Her wounded arm was problem, but her forty-eight hours of captivity without food or much water had taken its toll on her, too. He could sympathize. The past two days hadn’t been a picnic for any of them.
He reached out his hand.
She looked at it and then at him. Accepting help wasn’t easy for her, they both knew it. She took his hand and he pulled her up. They reached the helicopter. She grabbed a handhold next to the open cabin door to hold on. The chopper’s engines whined to life. Overhead the rotors began to turn.
“He must be in seventh heaven,” she shouted over the noise, meaning McMurphy and his new toy.
“You have no idea. Get in. I’ll deal with the tie downs.”
She didn’t argue. He watched her scramble up through the open cabin doors. Once she was safely on board, he went to work on releasing the tie-downs securing the chopper to the pitching bow. He released three of them but the tension from the deck’s increased pitch pulled the last one too tight. There was no slack to get it undone.
The rotors were spinning at full speed now. Over the downdraught, McMurphy shouted, “Forget it!”
Bannon waved and jumped for the cabin door as the helicopter started to lift off. Tara grabbed him under his arm and hauled him inside.
As his fingers danced over the smooth touchscreen control panel, McMurphy called out, “Everybody in?”
Bannon shouted, “Go!”
The helicopter tilted to the right and forward, straining, the one skid still secured to the last tie down. The chopper slipped along the deck. If it continued, they’d be heading right into the drink.
“Hold tight!” McMurphy shouted.
McMurphy goosed the throttle. There was a surge of power, a straining whine of the engines.
Bannon and Tara scrambled to a couple of jump seats. Too l
ate to properly buckle in, they grabbed for the five-point harness straps and held on. The big engines whined. The chopper shuddered around them, feeling like it would tear itself apart as its rise off the deck was arrested by the remaining tie down. Then, suddenly, the tie snapped free and the chopper jerked into the air.
Over the whining engines and roar of wind and spinning rotors, Tara shouted to Bannon, “Thank you for coming to get me.”
“What choice did I have?” he said, deadpan. “You’ve any idea how hard good bartenders are to find?”
Tara punched him in his arm. “Then what you’re saying is I’m irreplaceable.”
He got serious. “You have no idea.”
“Does that mean you’re giving me a raise?”
“Not a chance in hell.” He smiled and she laughed.
With the helicopter flying high and steady, they could move around the cabin without fear of being pitched into the ocean below. Bannon said, “Let’s take a look at that arm.”
Tara unbuttoned the front of her coveralls and slipped her arm from the bloody sleeve. She pushed the coarse material to her waist, stripped down to her black bra with no inhibitions. Bannon set a first aid kit on her lap and went about cleaning and wrapping the wound.
“You were right. It’s not too serious,” he said.
“We’ll catch them, yes?”
Bannon finished wrapping the elastic bandage and closed up the first aid kit. “Done. Catching ’em isn’t the problem. We’ve got to stop them.” He pointed at the gun locker. “The only thing we’ve got in the weapons category is a few more M16s and Beretta peashooters.”
“Get close enough we’ll pick them off. One, two, three,” Tara said. They were both proficient enough marksmen to do it. “Or,” she said, “we can crash the chopper into the boat.”
From the cockpit, McMurphy called out, “Bite your tongue. This baby’s got a seven figure price tag. Lizzy’s already said, anything happens to her, it’ll be my ass in as sling.”
“No way you survive the crash anyway,” she assured him.
“Well, in that case,” McMurphy considered.
“Let’s delegate a kamikaze mission to plan B for the time being.” Bannon pulled out his sat phone. “Speaking of Grayson, I need to talk to her.”
Bannon stepped into the cockpit to make his call.
Tara used his knife to cut the sleeves off her coveralls then pulled it back up and buttoned it. Done, she opened the gun locker and inspected its offerings by checking then loading 30-round magazines into the M16s.
Bannon dropped into the co-pilot seat and pressed the phone to his ear, holding his hand over the other one, doing his best to block out the helicopter noise.
Kayla’s voice came on the line. “Brice? Brice, is that you? Are you okay?”
“We’re good. And the band’s back together.”
“Tara? You’ve got her? How is she? Is she hurt?”
Bannon glanced back into the cabin. She continued loading weapons. “We’ve got her. She’s fine, too. Nothing a few days of R&R won’t fix.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Kayla repeated everything he said, relaying the information to Grayson who was there with her.
“We’ve located the railgun,” Bannon said. “But we haven’t eliminated the threat.”
There was some static and background noise over the line. Then Grayson came on the line. “Brice, you’re on speakerphone, but it’s just Kayla and me here. Update us.”
Bannon gave them a quick debrief without going too deep into the details.
“The target is a cruise ship called the Oceanic Princess. According to the Dauphin’s captain, it left port the day before yesterday bound for Bermuda.”
He heard the tapping of keys on a keyboard. Kayla said, “I’ve got it.” She paused then gasped. “My God! Brice, there’s nearly six thousand people on board that ship.”
“I need to know exactly where that ship is right now. Faaid and Zayd are heading there as we speak in a boat capable of doing forty knots.”
“Working on it,” Kayla said.
Grayson spoke again. “Brice, a full-size railgun has a max range of one hundred miles. We can expect a scaled down version to have maybe half that.”
“I’m more concerned about the firing power. If it’s only capable of a fraction of what you’ve described, that cruise ship doesn’t stand a chance. You need to contact that ship, get the captain to alter course as soon as possible. Take whatever evasive actions he can in case we don’t reach Faaid in time.”
Kayla spoke up. “I’ve just got Air Station Cape Cod on the other line. They’ve pinged the Princess’s last SAT-AIS. I’ve texted you their most recent position, current speed, and course.”
Bannon showed the text to McMurphy. “Don’t spare any of that seventy-five hundred shaft horsepower.”
“Times three,” McMurphy reminded him. “I’m on it.”
Bannon felt the chopper respond to McMurphy’s call for speed and their adjusted heading.
To Grayson and Kayla, he said, “Have the Princess disable their SAT-AIS. Tell them to shut down everything except engines, running as silently as possible. I don’t know what technology that railgun uses for target acquisitioning, so they should reduce their profile as much as possible.”
“On it,” Kayla said.
“Do we have any assets in the area we can call on?” Bannon asked. “Anyone who can reach that cruise ship before us?”
“No, Brice,” Grayson said. “I’m afraid it’s up to you.”
Under his breath, McMurphy said, “Isn’t it always.”
“Then dispatch search and rescue,” Bannon said. “A full complement now, don’t wait to hear from us.” He disconnected the call.
McMurphy looked over at him as Tara came to stand between the two seats. He asked, “Ready to rock and roll, boys and girls?” McMurphy pointed. “Cause there she blows.”
Ahead of them could be seen the white triangle wake of a fast-moving boat.
“I give you three psychopath terrorists.” He raised his finger toward a black line, little more than a smidgen of darkness on the horizon. “And one sitting duck.”
“A sitting duck,” Bannon agreed grimly. “With six thousand innocent people on board.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE RAILGUN BOAT SKIMMED across the surface of the water at thirty-five knots. Bridget Barnes stood on the open bridge, one hand on the throttle, nudging it forward, the other on the wheel which shimmied in her hand. The sun was high in a nearly cloudless sky and the day was warm, but the blow-back of salty ocean spray was chilly. Her red hair whipped in the air.
Zayd manned the podium-style console that had been mounted in the forward section where the seating had been stripped out. Her ponytail kept most of her thick black hair out of her face as she worked with a furrowed brow inputting data and double-checking calculations, trajectories, and other targeting information.
With a mechanical whine, the impressive railgun pivoted thirteen degrees off center.
Faaid stood at the break between the bridge and the bow, staring through binoculars held to his eyes. His gaze was in the same direction as the railgun. He pointed. “There! I see it.”
In the distance, the long black silhouette of the Oceanic Princess could be seen near the horizon.
“We’re close enough,” Zayd said. “You don’t need to see it.”
Faaid lowered the binoculars. “We are about to strike the greatest blow against our enemies in over twenty years. You cannot want to miss witnessing it, in person. Not this! Allah’s greatest victory.”
“Unlike you, Faaid, I do not want to die,” Zayd said.
“Nor do I, my dear. As long as I’m alive I can strike against our enemies again and again. And I will, thanks to you. Should this test run of yours be a success.”
“I assure you, it will be.”
“Then there is no reason for any of us to die this day. This day we shall cripple the hearts and the spirits
and the souls of these insufferable people.”
Bridget glanced over her shoulder, squinting. “You might be a little premature in that prediction, Faaid. We’ve got company.”
Faaid twisted around. He didn’t need the binoculars to see the dark military helicopter closing in on them fast. He looked once more at the Oceanic Princess. He frowned. He wanted to be close enough to see the ship crippled. To see the fires burn and to watch the bodies, the dead falling and the living jumping overboard, only to perish in the cruel seas as Allah’s just revenge rains down on them.
“Go faster,” he shouted at Bridget.
“I can’t outrun a helicopter, you idiot.”
“Well, do something.” He dropped the binoculars to the seat beside him and faced the fast approaching helicopter. From a compartment underneath the bridge cowl, he pulled out a most magnificent weapon. One he’d been most anxious to try. It looked like a metallic flying saucer with two pistol grips attached to it underside. He’d been told it was a centrifuge force weapon, capable of firing two thousand rounds per second without gunpowder. Thus, the weapon had no kick, making it so even a small child could accurately fire it.
“Go faster,” he repeated. “Get us as close as you can to the Princess. Ms. Zayd, fire at will.”
He turned his attention back to the helicopter, already so much closer. Between the pistol grips of the weapon was a small LCD readout the size of an average cell phone screen. Faaid stepped to the back of the boat and raised the weapon, aiming it at the helicopter. He flipped a switch, activating the tracking and targeting system. The screen glowed green with a bright yellow bullseye. A small yellow dot moved on the screen. The helicopter.
When he had a target lock, he shouted, “I will have my revenge! Die, infidels, die!”
-----
TARA SQUINTED TO SEE through the sun glare reflecting off the helicopter’s curved windshield. They were close enough now to see the figures on the railgun boat. Bridget Barnes stood at the wheel of the Bowrider, doing an excellent job of piloting the boat smoothly over the water at a high rate of speed. They were rapidly closing the distance to the Oceanic Princess. Much faster than any of them liked, but what was worse, they were easily within range of their target.
