Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  Popping the releases, Amanda let someone lift the MOLLE harness off her shoulders, not realizing until it was gone just how much of a burden its weight had become. Steamer Lane had the seafighter gaining way once more as she clambered up the ladder to the cockpit.

  “Glad to have you back aboard, Captain,” he called back over his shoulder.

  “Glad to be back aboard,” she replied, coming forward to hunker down between the pilot’s seats. “What’s our status?”

  ”Carondelet and Manassas have completed their fire suppression runs and are converging on the Bajara,” Lane replied as Snowy Banks passed Amanda a shipboard headset. “We’ll cover for the Frenchman and Rebel while they pick up the bulk of the boarding party. Then they’ll cover for us while we go in for the demolition team.”

  “Go with it, Steamer.”

  “Ma’am,” Snowy interjected, “Operations advises that the Union heavy gunboat group is going to be a factor shortly.”

  Amanda gave another nod. “I suspect they are, Snowy. But one thing at a time. For now, let’s get our Marines back.”

  Oil Tanker Bajara 0215 Hours, Zone Time;

  September 8, 2007

  The seafighters swept in, nestling against the rusty side of the Algerian oil carrier, staying up on the pad and holding themselves in place with snorting puff-port thrusters. Swarming up onto the PG’s weather decks, navy hands stood by to assist as the evacuation got under way.

  The Marine wounded went first, lowered over the tanker’s rail via a snap ring clipped through their gear harness, their pain numbed by morphine or suppressed by willpower.

  The Marine dead followed. None of Fox company would be left behind to burn.

  Last came the uninjured. Fast ropes had been coiled and lashed on the backs of the hovercraft. With one end lifted and secured on the tanker’s deck, and the other braced by the sailors below, the uninjured survivors of the boarding party slid down the heavy two-inch lines to the comparative safety of the hovercraft.

  With their full loads aboard, Carondelet and Manassas sheered off to take up their covering stations, making room for the Queen of the West to dash in and recover the last handful of men from the doomed ship.

  “All hands accounted for?” Quillain yelled over the idling moan of the PG’s fans.

  “All accounted for by the squad leaders and double-checked by me, Skipper. Everybody other’n us is over the side.”

  In the light of a single chemical glowstick, Quillain, Tallman, and the demolition team leader crouched on the tanker’s deck. An ominous-looking web of det cord converged on them, linking to a carefully taped-down pattern of blasting caps, M700 time fuse, and M60 fuse igniters.

  “Good, enough. Corporal, is this rig set?”

  The demo man nodded, his jaw working his well-used chunk of gum. “All connections made, igniters armed, and ready to rock and roll. I can light her up as soon as you get clear, sir.”

  Quillain shook his head. “That’s my job, Corporal. You and the top get over the side.”

  The sergeant and the demo man both started to mouth protests, but Quillain chopped them off. “Belay that noise! Both of you move out! Now!”

  Two reluctant “Aye ayes” came back. Tallman gave his C.O. an unhappy last glance and started for the ship’s side. The demo man hesitated a moment longer. “All that M-700 is cut from the same roll of fuse, and I time-tested samples myself, sir. You should have a solid five minutes of burn there, but I wouldn’t try and set my watch by it.”

  “Don’t worry, son. I’m not going to. I intend to light up these sparklers and then be over that rail just a-shittin’ and a-flyin’.”

  Quillain watched the two noncoms disappear down the fast ropes. He abruptly became aware of the dark and lonely emptiness of the decks around him. Well, a-shittin’, anyway, he thought, keying his radio. “Strongbow to Moonshade. All personnel clear. Igniting charges.”

  “Roger, Strongbow,” Amanda Garrett’s reply came back. “Standing by.”

  Hunkering down over the M-60s, Quillain pulled the safety pins and then sequentially yanked the pull rings of each igniter, drawing back the firing pin and allowing it to snap forward against the shotgun primer housed inside each little plastic cylinder.

  The primers popped and fuse started to burn.

  Quillain shot an automatic glance at his wristwatch, then touched the transmit pad. “Moonshade. Charges lit! Charges lit!” Grabbing his shotgun, he bolted for the rail and the fast rope.

  He was half a dozen strides away from both when a burst of machine-gun fire flayed a shower of sparks off the deck around him.

  Quillain responded by well-honed instinct, diving forward, rolling to one side, and bringing up his weapon in a single, continuous flow of motion, going to cover behind a valve bank.

  The rain of Union illumination rounds had thinned out. As the current flight of flares sank toward the harbor, low-angled shadows crawled back aboard the tanker, blanketing her decks. Quillain switched on his night-vision visor. Lowering it over his eyes, he scanned for the source of the attack.

  “Strongbow, we hear gunfire on deck. What’s your situation?” Amanda’s voice sounded sharply in his headset. “Stone, do you copy?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” he murmured back into the lip mike. “But we missed somebody. We got a shooter up in the deckhouse.”

  “Stone, are you pinned down? Can you get to the rail?”

  “I’ll let you know in a second.”

  Quillain nestled the stock of the Mossberg against his shoulder and flicked on the invisible beam of the targeting laser, his eyes tracking with the sweep of the death dot.

  Movement! One level below the bridge. A head cautiously peered over the weather-deck rail. The death dot flicked over, acquiring the target. The sheet steel of the rail’s spray guard wouldn’t exist to the discarding sabot slug loads Quillain had in his weapon. He held his breath and took up the play in the trigger.

  “Ah, Sweet Jesus!”

  Stone hadn’t realized he’d left the talk circuit open. Amanda caught his softly breathed exclamation. “Stone, what is it?”

  “It’s a kid, Skipper! We missed one of those goddamned kids!”

  Overlooked somehow in the deck-clearing operations, one of the Union’s boy warriors had come out of his hiding hole to single-handedly challenge the attackers. With his submachine gun lifted to a thin shoulder, he leaned into the railing, ready to do battle, totally unaware that in minutes this particular battleground would be an inferno.

  “Stone,” Amanda spoke levelly,” it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do. Get out of there. You only have four minutes left.”

  Quillain dropped down behind the shelter of the valve bank. Nothing he could do? Hell no, there wasn’t anything he could do except to get off his tub! The little shit would just have to take his chances. He was old enough to pack a gun. His government figured he was old enough to fight and die for his country. The kid must figure the same. Cut it either way and it was no call or fault of Captain Stonewall Buford Quillain.

  Quillain gauged the flare fall and the coming of the next patch of total darkness. Once he was over the rail and on the rope, he’d be out of the kid’s arc of fire. It would just take a couple of seconds and he’d be gone.

  Tough luck, kid. You should have gotten off when we gave you your chance. The flare flight struck water and flickered out, bringing on full darkness. Stone rose to his feet and bolted for the fast rope.

  And then for some reason he was past the rope and running aft for the tanker’s deckhouse.

  He almost reached it before another flare hissed out over the harbor and lit off. With the reflexes of a striking snake, the boy warrior leaned out over the railing and opened fire, raining 9mm rounds down on Quillain.

  Lunging forward, the Marine broke the line of fire, di
ving and rolling beyond the corner of the superstructure. Pressing back against the port-side bulkhead, he gripped at his bullet creased shoulder and swore silently and savagely at himself.

  “Stone. What’s going on?” Amanda’s voice prodded from his earphones. “Do you need assistance?”

  “Negative, negative!” he snapped back, shaking the numbness from his damaged arm. “One goddamn fool up here is plenty!”

  Circling around to the foot of the exterior ladderway, he began to climb, keeping his footfalls light but not daring to use the usual deliberate stealth called for in such situations. He couldn’t, not with those fuses burning.

  “Skipper, listen,” he whispered into his lip mike. “I don’t have time to explain what’s going on, but if I’m not over the rail at one minute to detonation, you guys clear out.”

  “We are standing by, Stone,” the quiet reply came back.

  Quillain scanned the ladderway overhead as he climbed, wondering just what the hell he’d do if the child warrior suddenly appeared on the next stage up, subgun leveled.

  This is stupid. He thought the litany with each step climbed. This is stupid. This so goddamned stupid!

  He risked a glance at his wristwatch. Three minutes and a few seconds more. Oh Lord, but this is stupid!

  As he eased off the ladder onto his objective deck the mental chant changed. “Don’t run! You want me. Come and get me. Do not run! We don’t have time to play fucking hide-and-seek!”

  Pressing his back against the bulkhead, he slid forward toward the corner of the superstructure, trying to hear beyond the whistle of the Queen’s turbines. Just at the corner of the deckhouse, the flare light guttered out again.

  Quillain froze, not even daring to flip down his vision visor again. Was that the tick of metal against metal?

  He couldn’t see it, but somehow, some … how he could sense the gun barrel easing around the corner from the other direction. Just at chest height. Just right for a kid to have shouldered. Right … here!

  Quillain’s left hand closed around the perforated cooling jacket of a Sterling machine pistol. Yanking it away with a single explosive heave, he sent the weapon spinning over the rail. He heard a startled gasp close by in the darkness and he aimed for it with the back of his right hand, landing a tremendous buffet against the side of someone’s head.

  Quillain yanked down his vision visor and found the stunned boy warrior sprawled at his feet. Watch! Ninety seconds! Not going to make it!

  He slung the Mossberg over one shoulder and the boy over the other, racing for the ladderway and down.

  “We are standing by, Stone.” Amanda Garrett’s voice whispered in his ear.

  “I can’t make it,” he yelled back over the circuit. “Get clear!”

  “We are standing by, Stone.” That husky, cool, and deliberate voice spoke words beyond words. We are not leaving you behind, mister. You don’t get that easy an out! If you die, then we die with you, so you had just better get about staying alive!

  Boots ringing on the steel, he reached the main deck and ran forward for the fast rope. How far? Two hundred feet? To hell with it! Move! How long? Maybe a minute? To hell with that too!

  At the fast rope, the Queen of the West lay nestled against the side of the tanker, her drive propellers flickering flat-pitched, her offside thrusters holding her in place. Sergeant Tallman stood holding the fast line taut. Snowy Banks stood in the cockpit hatch, ready to yell the go word to Steamer Lane, and Amanda Garrett stood in the center of the hover craft’s back, looking up, hands on hips, standing by.

  Gloves! Forgot my goddamn gloves! To hell with that entirely! Quillain swung over the rail and plummeted down the fast rope, the flesh flaying off his hands, boy and Marine piling up on the deck.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Quillain’s bellow was unnecessary. The Queen’s inboard thrusters shoved her off from the side of the Bajara, the drive propellers blurring into a roar of power as the seafighter lunged ahead. With no time to get belowdecks, Tallman and Amanda dropped flat beside Quillain and his dazed prisoner. Steamer locked the Queen’s rudders over, curving her away from the doomed ship, scrabbling for distance.

  And then the whole world burst into flames.

  A two-hundred-foot jet of fire geysered from the Bajara’s deck. A second, a third, more sequential flaming eruptions, merging and intertwining into an eye-searing incandescent mushroom of scarlet and gold that continued to grow, lifting into the sky for three times the length of the dying tanker. The thermal plume it generated boiled even higher, ripping open the cloud cover over Port Monrovia and evaporating the rain even as it fell from the sky.

  The light of it turned the harbor’s night into a furnace bright day. And the sound, not an explosion in any classic sense, but a deep and vibrant thundering, like the wrath of God rolling across the sea.

  The moisture steamed from Quillain’s utilities in the radiant glow. Looking across at his POW, Quillain found that the youth had regained consciousness. He also discovered that a miraculous change had taken place. Like the other boy warriors they had taken from the ship, he had reverted back into a child, bravadoless, bewildered, and now awed by the holocaust he and his captors were leaving behind.

  Sprawled on the deck beyond the youth, Amanda Garrett looked back into Quillain’s eyes and smiled.

  Because we’re the good guys …

  PGAC-02 USS Queen of the West 0227 Hours, Zone Time;

  September 8, 2007

  The slipstream tore at Amanda as she swung her legs down through the overhead cockpit hatch. Before dropping down into the control deck, she paused for a last look around Monrovia Harbor.

  Carondelet and Manassas had re-formed combat echelon, with the Queen and the trio of seafighters streaking for the harbor mouth, leaving behind the death pyre of the Bajara. Even though the PG squadron was fully illuminated by the ruddy petroleum glare, gunfire from the breakwaters had trailed off to almost nothing, the stunned Union defenders finding they had nothing left to defend.

  Arching her back, Amanda slid down into the cockpit. With the Union prisoner and Sergeant Tallman secure in the main bay, Stone Quillain followed her through the hatch. Regardless of his damaged shoulder and hands, he kicked down the gunner’s saddle and assumed station at the twin-mount Browning fifties.

  “Situation,” Amanda demanded, dropping into the navigator’s seat.

  “One bitch left, Captain,” Steamer replied. “The Union gunboat group’s made it back! They’re coming in from the southwest and they’re going to be waiting for us outside of the harbor mouth. They’re maneuvering to engage, ma’am.”

  “Fine!”

  Startled, Steamer and Snowy twisted in their chair harnesses to look back at her. A part of Amanda’s own mind was surprised by her explosive exclamation as well. Yet a cool flush flowed through her, a kind of battle madness or battle focus that erased the tensions and terrors accumulated during the night’s action.

  Along with it came a sure and certain knowledge that this fight wasn’t over yet, but that it soon would be.

  Amanda accessed the squadron command channel. “Little Pig Lead to Little Pigs! Enemy gunboats coming in on bearing two one zero. Maintain combat echelon and come left to engage as we clear the harbor entrance. Fire as you bear! I say again, fire as you bear! We’re finishing this, now!”

  “Acknowledged!”

  “Rajah!”

  “Doing it!”

  Hellfire rounds and rocket pods slithered up out of the pedestal tubs and slammed onto firing rails. Auxiliary gunners screamed for cool barrels and reloads, and the shell humpers scrambled to respond. Accelerating to full war power, the Three Little Pigs blasted out through the narrow mouth of Port Monrovia, once designated by twin navigational beacons, now marked by the flaming hulks of the Union’s armored fighting vehicles.

  Skiddi
ng in their turns, the seafighters came around to face their new attackers. However, even before the turn was completed, autocannon tracers streamed in toward them.

  The Union corvette Promise was closing the range at full speed, her two smaller sister gunboats running at her flanks. Their bow waves glinted bloodred in the light of the fire column, and their forward gun mounts raved at the American squadron, hosing death. They had no hope of victory now, only the chance for vengeance.

  “Little Pig Lead to Little Pigs! Enemy in sight! Engage! Engage! Engage!”

  Mobile Offshore Base, Floater 1 0227 Hours, Zone Time;

  September 8, 2007

  In the briefing trailer, the intel and the Admiral could only stare up at the overhead speaker. With the Eagle Eye drone knocked out, their only link to the battle was the squadron’s Talk-Between-Ships command channel. Disembodied voices called out from the Little Pig cockpits, the adrenaline-wired words backed by the yammer and shriek of gunfire and missile launch.

  “Hostiles turning to port! They’re crossing the T on us!”

  “Acknowledged, Frenchman. Target the column leader! Get on the Shanghai! Rebel, engage column trailer! We’ve got the corvette!”

  “Rog that, Little Pig Lead, Hellfires on the way!”

  “Yeah, baby, pour it on! Closing to thirty-mike range! Going to guns!”

  “Frenchman, come left! You’re blocking my arc, dammit!”

  “Rog that. Rebel, where are you … ?”

  “Little Pigs, break echelon. Independent maneuver!”

  “Acknowledged, Lead … Oh yeah! We just tagged that fucker!”

  “Heavy fire … watch the big guy! Breaking left … going for stern enfilade on enemy column.”