Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  “Fire control. Mission to fire.”

  “Fire control standing by, Commander.”

  “Mission is 2.75 rocket, Danno, your favorites. I want to turn the Bogs away from the beach. Walk a salvo of Hydras between the Union gunboats and the shoreline.”

  “On the way, ma’am,” a determined voice replied. “Programming launcher … Mission set to fire …Firing now!”

  The Queen’s port-side pedestal mount up-angled and vomited flame. Under precise computer control, the launch rail elevated a full degree during the half-second pause between the firing of each cell in the Hydra pod. The milky smoke trails of the rockets extended out in a smooth vertical fan across the azure sky.

  Then the projectiles fell, plunging into the sea, detonating, shattering the water, and lifting a wall of spray between the Boghammers and the land. The gunboats flinched away.

  “Well done, Mr. O’Roark.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Floater to Royalty,” Christine Rendino’s voice cut into the loop. “I hate to spoil your fun, troops, but you have some large company coming. We’ve got another Union gunboat out there. One of the big guys. He’s off Yelibuya Island and is heading north at four bells and a jingle. He will be a factor shortly.”

  “Acknowledged, Chris. This operation just keeps getting better. Stay on him and keep us posted. Royalty out.”

  Amanda looked up at the other occupants of the cramped cockpit. “I trust you heard that, people. It’s time we stop fooling around. Snowy, inform the squadron we will either be boarding or sinking the Boghammers shortly. Have them designate Hellfire targets and stand by. Fire control, new mission to fire—2.75 rocket again. This time drop them right across the bow of the lead boat.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am. Mission going out now!”

  Another rocket flight salvoed and another wall of white water sprang out of the sea with a rippling roar. Seven clean columns of spray lanced into the sky, barring the path of the Union gunboats. The message was clear and concise. This is the end. Go farther and you die.

  Bitterly, the Union flotilla commander looked over at his helmsman and made a slashing gesture across his throat. The helmsman closed his throttles and hit the kill buttons. The big outboards grumbled into silence and the Boghammer sank off the plane, wallowing to a halt. The other two craft in the flotilla followed suit a few moments later.

  The only sound was the low swish of the waves and popping and creaking of the engines overheated by their futile thirty-mile crash run. That and the triumphant shriek of the American hovercraft as they closed in.

  For the Union gunboat crews only one hope remained: the white flash of a bow wave on the southern horizon, closing fast.

  “Carondelet, you take the seaward boat. Manassas, you take the one inshore. We’ll take the leader. Get your prisoners aboard and get your scuttling charges set with all possible speed.”

  “Rajah, lead.”

  “Will comply.”

  “Chris, what can you give me on the Union heavy unit coming in on us?”

  “It’s the big daddy, boss ma’am. The Promise. The flagship of the whole damn Union navy.”

  “Acknowledged. This is going to be … interesting.”

  The Queen of the West settled off cushion and reverted to swimmer mode, motoring up onto the drifting lead Boghammer. With the turbines stilled, the intermittent servo purr of the cockpit scarf ring could be heard as Chief Tehoa tracked the Union craft with his guns.

  “We’ll bring the prisoners aboard over the stern ramp,” Amanda said, unplugging her headset from the interphone hardlink and jacking it into a remote belt unit. “Steamer, keep bow-on to the Union flagship as it closes with us and keep him covered with the pedestal mounts. Snowy, have the Manassas and Carondelet shift their Hellfire locks onto him as he comes into range. Open fire only if we’re fired upon, and notify me when he closes to one klick. Hopefully, this guy will talk before he shoots.”

  “Will do.” Lane nodded stolidly. The hover commander had donned a set of aviator’s shades to shield his eyes from the rising sun. The mirrored lenses concealed whatever emotion he might be showing, but a thin veneer of sweat made his skin sheen in spite of the cool draft issuing from the air-conditioning ducts. “Think he might try and take us on, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know, Steamer,” Amanda replied, starting aft for the ladderway. “We shall see, as the blind man said.”

  “Good luck, ma’am,” Chief Tehoa called down from the gun saddle. The CPO’s words, spoken from outside of the overhead hatch, had a hollow sound to them.

  “Good luck to us all, Chief.”

  Down in the main bay, Stone Quillain had the boarding operation well in hand. As the Queen positioned in front of the Union boat, the hovercraft’s stern guns, mounted at the head of her tailgate ramp, covered the Boghammer’s crew. Two Marines augmented the grinning muzzles of the twin fifty-calibers, kneeling beside the mount with M4/M203 composite weapons leveled, a buckshot load in the grenade launcher, and a full magazine in the assault rifle.

  “All personal weapons over the side!” Quillain’s voice boomed out over the hovercraft’s exterior loudspeakers. “Knives, everything, over the side, now!”

  One minor blessing was that almost all the natives of Sierra Leone and Liberia spoke English. Sullenly, the Union men moved to obey.

  “Okay, hands behind the head! Everybody! Nobody moves unless you are ordered. Now, one man move slowly to the bow and take our line. One man! Slow!”

  Shortly the shovel-like bow of the Boghammer rode bumping and grating against the stern ramp.

  “We’re bringing you aboard one at a time! You in the bow, you first! Take it easy and nobody gets hurt! Screw around with us and you die!”

  As each Union sailor came aboard, he was met by a grimly efficient processing line. Two Marines yanked the prisoner up the stern ramp. Two more spun the man around, twisted his arms behind his back, and applied a pair of disposable nylon handcuffs. The third pair conducted a brief but clinically thorough pat-down search, while the final team slammed the African down onto one of the fold-out passenger benches, securing him in place with a tightly cinched seat belt.

  The transfer took only a matter of minutes.

  “Looks like we’re not having any problems here,” Amanda commented as the last gunboatman was strapped down.

  “We know our business,” Quillain replied curtly. “Corporal, you ready to set the demos?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” A youthful red-haired Marine stepped forward with an ominously bulging musette bag slung over one shoulder and a wad of gum cracking between his jaws.

  “How you gonna rig her?”

  The demolitions man shot an expert glance at the Boghammer bobbing astern. “Half a block of C4 in the bow and another under the steering station, tape a loop of det cord around the inside of the hull to fracture the flotation chambers,” he said, incorporating a pop of his gum into his reply. “Use an M-60 igniter and a yard of M700 fuse to set her off. The weight of the engines’ll pull her under. Five-minute job.”

  “Do it. And while you’re aboard, take a look around for any papers and documents. Likely they dumped everything over the side, but you never can tell.”

  “Sure thing, sir.”

  The explosives-laden Marine took two fast steps down the stern ramp and jumped into the bow of the Boghammer, displaying the phlegmatic attitude of a day laborer bearing a lunch bucket.

  “Captain,” Steamer Lane’s voice sounded in Amanda’s headset, “the Promise has closed to four thousand yards and she’s still standing on. We’re tracking her in, and Carondelet and Manassas have her designated.”

  “Has she taken any hostile action?”

  “Well, she’s not shooting … yet.”

  “Right. I’m going topside.”

 
; “Topside, ma’am?”

  “Yes. I’ll have a little talking to do here presently.”

  Amanda climbed the midships access ladder to the Queen’s weather deck. Making her way forward past the open gun tubs, she came up beside the cockpit, standing adjacent to Chief Tehoa in the gun ring.

  The burly CPO nodded to her. “She’s just about here, ma’am. Big son of a bitch, isn’t she?”

  “Uh-huh.” Amanda nodded. “It’s funny how they grow when their guns are aimed at you.”

  The Union flagship was less than a thousand yards away. The sea boiled under her sharp cutwater and a dense plume of diesel smoke trailed from her rakish stack.

  The rising sun blasted at Amanda, and she felt the sweat gathering under her battle vest. Impatiently, she tore open the Velcro tabs of the body armor and shrugged it off, allowing it to thump to the deck behind her. She dropped her helmet on top of the pile and took a step forward, shaking out her hair and relishing the brush of the sea wind against her back. A few layers of Kevlar wouldn’t be relevant against autocannon fire.

  Behind her, she could hear the whurr click, whurr click of the pedestal mounts indexing as they tracked on target.

  “I miss anything yet?” Stone Quillain inquired, coming up to stand on the other side of the cockpit dome. He’d left his shotgun below and now carried the stumpy launcher tube of a Predator antitank missile slung across his back. Apparently, if the shooting started, he did not intend to be just an onlooker.

  Amanda concealed her smile. The Marine captain might carry a load of attitudes around with him, but some of them she could appreciate. “No,” she replied, “but I think that the main show is about to begin.”

  Three hundred yards off, the Promise put her helm hard over, kicking her stern around. Water seethed under her aft quarters as her engines went to full reverse. Cutting across the bow of the Queen of the West, the corvette came to a stop broadside-on to the hovercraft. Gun tubes trained outboard as the Union ship brought her batteries to bear.

  The conversion job that had turned the minesweep into a ship of the line had been crude but effective. The Emerson 30-millimeter guns forward had been part of her designed armament, while the twinned sets of Russian-made 57’s aft had been add-ons. They were mounted in serviceable-looking gun tubs built into her well deck and aft superstructure, giving her a superposed field of fire astern. Union gun crews nestled behind the gun shields, and Amanda and her people were close enough to see the brassy gleam of shell clips inserted into breech mechanisms.

  A voice whispered in Amanda’s earphone. “Fire Control 1 to TACBOSS. If we have to cut loose on these guys, ma’am, hug the side of the cockpit and get aft of the pedestals as fast as you can. The muzzle blast of the thirties will be pretty bad where you’re standing.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Danno,” she replied into the boom mike. “You just concentrate on taking out those fifty-sevens.”

  “The cocksuckers are dead if they touch a trigger … begging your pardon, ma’am.”

  “I got the bow thirties, then,” Tehoa commented conversationally. “What piece do you want, Captain Quillain?”

  “I’ll take the bridge,” the Marine growled. Sinking onto one knee, he shifted the Predator launcher to his shoulder.

  From across the hundred yards of water that separated the two vessels came the activating twang of a loud-hailer. “American gunboat, American gunboat, this is the captain of the warship Promise of the West African Union! You are violating Union Territorial waters and you are illegally holding members of the Union military prisoner. Release them immediately or we will open fire!”

  Amanda dropped her hand to the communications link at her belt and accessed the Queen’s own loudspeakers. “This is Captain Amanda Garrett, Commander of the U.S. Navy Task Group currently operating under the sanction of the United Nations African Interdiction Force. We request a clarification of the situation. Does a state of war currently exist between the West African Union and the nation of Guinea?”

  There was a protracted silence. Amanda keyed the speaker access once more. “I say again. We request a clarification of the situation. Is the West African Union at war with the nation of Guinea?”

  At last the reply sounded from the bridge wing of the corvette. “There is no war between the West African Union and Guinea. You are holding our sailors and naval craft illegally. You will release them at once!”

  Amanda replied into her microphone, speaking the words she’d mentally rehearsed half a hundred times. “Negative, Captain. Be advised that the individuals we have taken into custody have been observed conducting hostile actions against the people and government of Guinea. We have absolute proof of this. If they have been acting under the orders of your government, then the West African Union is guilty of initiating acts of war against the nation of Guinea.

  “If they have not been acting under the orders of your government, then they are pirates in the eyes of established international maritime law. As such, they are a matter of legitimate concern for all maritime nations. Again, I must ask, does a state of war exist between the West African Union and the Nation of Guinea?”

  The grudging reply came back. “The Union is not at war with any nation.”

  Amanda took a deep breath and continued walking down her convoluted trail of justification. “Such being the case, these men are pirates under international maritime law. The United States Navy has exercised its right of hot pursuit to enter your territorial waters and place these criminals under arrest. They will be delivered to the civil authorities in Guinea for trial. We will now withdraw.”

  There was another pause, and then the voice called back from the Union bridge, a tinge of apprehension sounding within it. “If these criminals have been apprehended inside Union waters, this is a matter for Union law. We request that these criminals be turned over to us for judgment.”

  “Request denied. All further discussion on this matter should be brought up with the government of Guinea.”

  There was no response.

  “Well now,” Quillain commented quietly. “I guess it’s pretty much raise or fold.”

  “Um-hmm.” Amanda nodded, resting her hands on her hips. “If they fold, we’ve got our precedent established for operating inside their territorial waters. If they raise, well, then I guess we just play it out.”

  “This is Floater 1, cutting in,” Christine’s voice sounded in Amanda’s headset. “Be advised that the Promise has just activated her main transmitter. Signal intelligence indicates that she’s hailing Union Fleet Headquarters.”

  “Acknowledged, Floater.” Amanda looked across at Tehoa and Quillain. “He doesn’t like his hand. He’s passing the buck.”

  Ben Tehoa shrugged. “Could be, ma’am, but then there’s still many a damn fool who’ll stick with a busted flush.”

  The cockpit side window at Amanda’s feet slid open. “Captain, the squadron reports scuttling charges rigged aboard all the Bogs.”

  “Very good, Mr. Lane. Order the fuses ignited and the gunboats cast off. Have the squadron start backing away. Swimmer mode. Nice and steady.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  The deck underfoot began to vibrate softly as the Queen’s electric propellers cut water. The abandoned Boghammer bumped slowly down the seafighter’s flank and then drifted into view, a marker in the widening gap between the hover craft and the corvette. The larger Union vessel lay unmoving, taking no action but with her guns still leveled.

  Quillain glanced at his wristwatch. “Not long now.”

  Abruptly, the flat crack of a small explosion sounded across the water, its echo mingling with the sound of two other nearby detonations. A puff of smoke and a spray of fragments jetted up from the Boghammer’s belly. Filling in seconds, the gunboat’s bow smoothly lifted into the air. As the demolitions man had predicted, the weight of its e
ngines pulled it under the waves. The other Boghammers sank just as rapidly.

  Smoke jetted from the Promise’s exhausts and propwash swirled behind her. The silhouette of the Union corvette narrowed as she started to come about.

  Turning away to the south.

  Quillain safetied the Predator round. “I guess the man just didn’t have the cards,” he said, getting to his feet. He slung the rocket launcher over his shoulder and glanced across at Amanda. “Not bad, ma’am,” he said, giving the briefest of acknowledging nods.

  “Thank you, Captain Quillain,” she replied with all seriousness. “That’s the nicest compliment I’ve had in a long time.”

  Inside the cockpit, Snowy Banks emitted a scream of exuberant relief and other cheers and rebel yells echoed up from inside the hull. Chief Tehoa lifted his powerful arms over his head, applauding, and Amanda stabbed her own fist into the sky in an acknowledgment of victory.

  “TACBOSS to Squadron,” she called into her headset. “All operational objectives completed! Close out the mission time line! Let’s go home!”

  The exuberance continued to build on the voyage back to Floater 1, leaping contagiously over the radio links to the Mobile Offshore Base and to the other elements of the UNAFIN blockade force.

  An EH 101 Merlin from the British Patrol Squadron and a dainty Sea Lynx from one of the French patrol frigates overflew the seafighter group as they approached Floater 1, the crew chiefs of the helicopters leaning far out of the side doors to wave a friendly acknowledgment.

  Steamer Lane led his squadron mates in a high-speed flyby of their own. Holding the tight echelon formation that was rapidly becoming their signature, the hovercraft ran a tight racetrack pattern around the Offshore Base before peeling off and heading for the ramp.

  The rails of the platform itself were jammed with service personnel, waiting to greet the squadron. Backs were slapped as the hover crews and Marines disembarked, embraces were exchanged and female hands found themselves mobbed by enthusiastic male ratings moving in for a congratulatory kiss.