A tremendous crash sounded in his ears: the sound of his own next heartbeat. Then he realized that the grenade was wet with someone else’s blood and that the safety lever and pin were still in place.
Elliot MacIntyre screamed an oath such as he had never before even attempted. Leaping to his feet, he ripped the pin out of the grenade and hurled it back where it had come from. Why in the name of sweet sleeping Jesus hadn’t he thought of that before? The explosion overhead made the plates ring, and he charged up the ladder, clawing his Beretta service pistol out of its holster.
Two Bugis seamen lay sprawled amid the broken glass on the bridge deck. Dead, alive or indifferent, each received a finishing triple tap of a nine-millimeter. There was only one other place to go—the radio shack with its door blown half off its hinges. Forgetting everything he had ever known about sane combat entry, MacIntyre threw himself at it.
The air inside the small communications room was thick with smoke, and fragments of half-burned paper were everywhere. A middle-aged, balding European in a white tropic uniform lay sprawled at the rear of the cabin, a dazed expression on his face, the four gold strips on his shoulder boards marking him as the Flores’s captain.
The man’s eyes snapped clear as he recognized MacIntyre and grabbed for the Walther P-38 that lay on the deck beside him.
MacIntyre emptied the Beretta. Panting for breath, he went into the automatic-pistol-reload drill, ejecting the empty clip and slapping a fresh one home. As he did so he noted the black and white Bakelite name tag standing out against the spreading scarlet stains on the man’s shirt. Onderdank. A funny sort of name.
Gradually, MacIntyre resumed conscious control of his own body, a little amazed at the berserker who had been in possession for a time. It had been rather like that little dustup over that Croatian gunboat. Not too bad, though. His breathing was easy and the old heart was steady. He might be a little out of practice, but he wasn’t ready for the breaker’s yard yet.
He glanced around at the exceptionally well-appointed communications room, noting the stack of large ring-bound notebooks that had been piled on the floor along with the contents of a sturdy-looking document safe. Obviously they had been stacked up and set ablaze in a frantic effort to destroy them, only to have the detonation of the concussion grenade blow the fire out.
As he tramped out a few of the smoldering documents he noted a small red cylinder lying in the corner. MacIntyre recognized it as a thermite bomb, the type used for emergency document destruction. The pull ring had snapped off but the pin was still frozen in place, a spot of rust showing where the humid sea air had gotten to the device.
And blown into another corner was the flat gray case of a laptop computer, blistered and charred from the fire into which it had been tossed.
But still essentially intact. Collecting it, MacIntyre turned it over in his hands, noting a data card slot but no networking ports. What had Chris Rendino said about those code computers of Harconan’s? It would be a stand-alone, with no physical means of networking it for security’s sake.
“Admiral MacIntyre?” A cautious voice called up from below. “You okay. sir?”
For the first time MacIntyre noted that the volume of fire had dropped off again in the cavern. “I’m fine. How’s the fire team?”
“The corpsmen are here, sir. I think they’re going to be okay.” A helmeted head poked up the ladder and looked around. “Holy shit, sir,” the leatherneck commented respectfully.
“Yeah, we had a little trouble. We have some critical documentation here. I want a couple of hands to get this compartment secured and get this materiel collected and ready to move. This laptop computer is to be personally hand delivered to Commander Rendino on the Carlson. Personally! Got that, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have we located Captain Garrett yet?”
“No, sir, and we have the ship cleared. The captain isn’t aboard any where.”
Damnation, Amanda, where the hell are you?
The first phase of the operation, the battle for the cavern, had ended in a defeat for the defenders. Crouching behind their barricades of stacked cargo and equipment on the rear shelf of the ship pen, they had found themselves stricken by some inexplicable and frightening force. Not mere bullets: The air itself seemed to explode over their heads, slashing at them with dagger tips of burning steel.
Their barricades provided no shelter, no firing cover, and the pirates and Morning Star mercenaries—those who were still alive, at least—were forced to retreat into the two main access tunnels.
More grim news awaited them there. The surface entrances were blocked, smashed and caved in by the attacker’s shell fire. There was no way out.
From the cavern, strange metallic, inhuman voices spoke as loudly as the thunder, demanding in Bahasa that the defenders surrender, promising that none would be hurt. The last few dozen remaining of the garrison were shocked beyond rational thought, however. The flight-or-fight instincts had been triggered, and with flight rendered impossible, they would fight as a trapped animal would fight, to the death.
Crates of ammunition were broken open; they had a mountain of it to resist with. Other packing crates and cases were dragged from the lateral tunnel storerooms, and new barricades were hastily built, walling off the main passages from floor to ceiling with only firing ports left open.
In the haste of the construction, errors, critical ones, were inevitable. No one among the Bugis and Papuan survivors could be blamed for not being able to read the Cyrillic words for MORTAR SHELLS-120 MILLIMETER.
Stone Quillain sprinted across from the bow ramp of the Harconan Flores, angling wide to stay out of the line of fire from the tunnel mouths. His path took him behind some of the resistance points used by the cavern garrison, and he had to lengthen his stride to spring over sprawled bodies. Grudgingly he had to admit that the electronic do-jiggers bolted on to the Marine’s SABR weapons systems did seem to work as advertised.
The grenade-launcher half of the Selectable Assault Battle Rifle could be used to launch a 25mm “smart grenade.” As these rounds were fired, their microchip fuses could be programmed by the SABR’s integral laser range finder to air-burst at a specific designated distance from the launcher, such as directly over the head of an enemy concealed behind cover.
Such smart shells were also very handy for shooting around corners. Stone would never have believed it possible, but the foxhole was rapidly becoming obsolete.
Quillain slammed up against the rear wall of the cavern, joining the Marine squad that flanked the right-hand tunnel entrance. “Okay, what have we got?”
The squad leader intently studied the screen of a palm-size low-light television unit while one of his men cautiously extended its optic-fiber scanning head around the tunnel lip on an extendable aluminum rod.
“They’re back there just short of the first lateral tunnel, Skipper,” the noncom replied. “They got the tunnel blocked off with a whole pile of crap, and they got at least two medium machine guns set up to cover the tunnel mouth. If anybody sticks their head around that corner, they’ll saw it right off.”
“Damn, how ’bout the other tunnel?”
“Donaldson’s squad is covering that side and he says it’s pretty much the same setup. What we gonna do, sir?”
Stone scowled. “It looks like we got three choices: blast ’em out, gas ’em out, or wait ’em out. Let’s study on this a minute.”
The sound of boots slapping on stonework and the creak of equipment on a MOLLE harness sounded in the half-light of the cavern, and Elliot MacIntyre moved up to join the Marines. The admiral was helmet less and his graying brown hair was sweat-slick, but he was holding his M-4 ready at port arms and he was moving easily.
“Situation?” he demanded.
“Checked at a couple of barricades inside the tunnels. We’re still up against a valid defense. We’ve had the loudspeakers goin,’ yelling at ’em to surrender, but no takers so far.”
&nb
sp; “Any sign of Amanda?”
Quillain shook his head. “No, sir, not out here. Any sign aboard the ship?”
“Some western woman’s clothing in the captain’s cabin,” MacIntyre replied. “Looked right for Amanda … Captain Garrett’s size. There was some indication that the cabin was being used as a prisoner holding site. That’s all.”
“Hell, then they must have got her into the laterals before we hit. She’s inside here.”
“If she’s here at all,” MacIntyre added. “God save us and her, we might have figured this wrong. Have there been any attempts at negotiation by the defenders? Any threats against a hostage?”
“Just bullets so far, but if that’s going to come, it’s going to come soon.” Quillain snapped a command into his lip mike, and the recorded and amplified surrender demand ceased to boom from the crumpled upper works of the Sutanto.
“We have to know if she’s in there or not before we can make our next move,” Quillain continued, “and if she is in there we need to figure where….”
The Marine hesitated, tilting his helmet slightly to listen, then a rare genuine grin flowed across his blunt-featured face.
“What is it?” MacIntyre demanded.
“A firefight. Listen.”
Now that the loudspeakers were silent, the sound of rifle shots and machine-gun fire could be heard echoing from somewhere back in the tunnel labyrinth.
Quillain’s grin widened. “Well, bless her heart. We might have known that the skipper wouldn’t be one to just sit around, tending to her knittin’.”
Amanda hadn’t wanted to fool with the sprawled bodies of the guards outside of the technicians’ quarters, so she had done the next best thing. She smashed the work light outside of the door with the butt of the Sterling, plunging the end of the tunnel corridor into darkness. She’d done the same with the closer of the two lights inside the room, leaving the remaining one to illuminate her prisoners. From her position in the door way, she’d be in the shadows while anyone coming at her would be backlit. After adding the last guard’s M-16 and ammunition to her arsenal, she crouched down to await events.
Given the multiple explosions and the sound of heavy gunfire, a hellacious fight was going on out in the cavern. Amanda did not doubt her people would win eventually, but she would have to hold out here until they could reach her.
She glanced at her prisoners, who were huddled against the back wall. None of them looked like much of a physical threat, except maybe for the Russian. Still, she wished she could have tied them up somehow. She hadn’t wanted to get that close to them or be that diverted from the door way. Without someone on her side, it couldn’t be helped.
“Ah, Captain … Captain.” It was Sonoo.
“What?”
“You must realize that we, none of us here, have had a part in any of the violence that has been done in this affair.”
“Really?”
Sonoo shook bis head. “Not at all, nor of any of the decision-making. We are only employees here under the instructions of our firms.”
Amanda shifted her vision back down the outside passage. “I see. You were only following orders. Well, Professor, I’m afraid that didn’t wash for Nuremberg, and it won’t wash here. At least the SS were following an ideology and not just a profit margin.”
“But Captain … you are a person of great authority in this situation. I am sure that if you could be … open enough to assist us in avoiding unpleasantness in this matter, we, our corporations, could be most generous … extensively generous.”
The breath hissed from between Amanda’s teeth, and she swung the stumpy barrel of her submachine gun back into the room to pan across the row of corporates. “I am sick,” she snarled, “of people thinking I will sell out for money or sex or anything else! You may take your employer’s generosity and shove it up your fat ass, Professor! You and your playmates are going to stand trial for your part in these crimes, and you are going to help convict your lords and masters of the same! Now, sit back, shut up, and pray my people reach us in time, because if they don’t, I intend to empty my last magazine into you leeches out of sheer self-indulgence!”
The paralytic silence she desired answered her.
She caught movement in the outside corridor and sank down into a prone firing position, trying not to think about the cooling slickness in which she was lying, using one of the guard’s bodies as a barricade and aiming down the passage.
Three Bugis were loping in her direction, their weapons at port arms, obviously in a hurry and obviously with this room as their destination.
Amanda half exhaled and took up the trigger slack.
The Bugis noted the pool of darkness they were running into and hesitated some fifty feet down the passage.
“Aim! Short bursts!” Stone Quillain yelled out of her memory. “Save your barrel! Save your ammo! Don’t hose it!”
She dropped two of the three men, the third springing aside into a lateral passage so her bullets only chipped concrete. He bounced back an instant later, snapping off a shot from his AK47. Amanda felt the body in front of her jerk, and she blazed an answer, driving the rifleman back around his corner.
Reaching inside the door, Amanda caught the carrying straps of the second Sterling and the ammunition pouches, dragging them up beside her. Guns hot, fangs out, and fight’s on.
“Do you really think it’s her?” MacIntyre demanded.
“I can’t think of who else would be shootin’ at these guys.” Quillain slammed the touch pad on his harness. “Hey, Donaldson! We’re getting fire inside the tunnel complex. You hear it?”
“Roger that, Skipper,” the reply from the far side squad leader came back in his earphone. “I can hear it.”
“Does it sound like it’s coming from your side—you know, from up your primary tunnel?”
“Kinda hard to tell with the echoes, but I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so, either. Stand by. All Sea Dragon elements, this is Sea Dragon Six. Rally! I say again, rally! Position to the left and right of the primary tunnel entries! Move it!”
Stone tore a smoke grenade from his harness. If the Lady was in a fight at the rear of the tunnel complex, he intended to pull attention to the front. Yanking the pin, he flipped the smoke bomb into the entry. As the white chemical smoke began to billow, the Bugis machine gunners cut loose, their tracer streams snaking wildly out of the tunnel mouth and spraying across the ship pen.
“Admiral, if the Lady’s shooting it out in there, we don’t know what shape she’s in or how long she can hold. We gotta do this fast and dirty.”
“I concur fully, Stone. The faster the better!”
“Right! Donaldson, put some smoke into your tunnel entry. Get me some satchel charges up here! We’re going in!”
Amanda’s lips ached from the tension of the fighting snarl fixed on them. The Bugis recognized that she, as a hostage, might be their only means of escape. Obversely, if they couldn’t have her as a hostage, then they wished her dead out of vengeance.
Of the six magazines she’d had for the machine pistols, she’d already burned through five, holding them back. After that, there were only the sixty rounds for the more clumsy assault rifle. The body she had used for a shield had been chopped to hamburger by incoming fire and burned by her own muzzle blast. The scent of charred flesh made her want to vomit.
The shooting had fallen off out toward the ship pen, and she heard, or thought she heard, a noise in the room beyond the ringing in her ears. Convulsively she rolled on her side, whipping the smoking barrel of the Sterling around.
The Russian, Valdechesfsky, had eased to his feet and was lifting a long-shafted screwdriver out of a tool kit.
“Drop it and sit down, you son of a bitch!” she hissed. “Try that again and you’re dead!”
Glaring, he obeyed.
From up the corridor someone emptied an Uzi from around a lateral corner. Slugs chopped and whined about her, and a jagged fragment from a rico
chet laid the skin of her forearm open. Crying out, she rolled back and fired, spraying the passage side, driving the gunner back at the price of half a precious magazine.
She tried to swallow and wished for just one sip of cool water to clear her powder-parched throat.
Somewhere down the passageway she heard a commanding voice bellow an order in Indonesian, repeating it twice as the speaker apparently met resistance. Amanda thought she recognized it, then she was sure.
“Amanda? Are you all right?”
“Makara, is that you?”
“Just me. I’ve sent the guards out to reinforce the main tunnels. I don’t think it will do much good. We don’t have much time.” His voice, reverberating up the passage, was amazingly conversational. “We’ve got to be going. Amanda.”
“No one’s going anywhere, Makara. You have to surrender. End this without the loss of any more of your people.”
“That’s simply not a valid option for me,” the reply came back. “Be careful, now, I’m stepping into the passage. I don’t want to startle you.”
He appeared in the pool of work light fifty feet away. His hands were empty and he wore no weapons at his belt. Disheveled, dust-grimed, yet still standing tall and undefeated. He smiled. “I must say, I am impressed; I’d never have imagined anyone ever finding this place or breaching its security. Your people are good, Amanda, you’ve trained them superbly, imprinting your flair for the daring and the unexpected onto them. You are everything they said you were.”
Amanda rose onto her knees, leveling the Sterling. “Give it up, Makara.”
“As I said, that’s simply not possible. You would have to hand me over to the Indonesian authorities, and before I could arrange the real thing, I’d be shot trying to escape. I’m too dangerous, and Jakarta knows it now.”
Target Lock Page 49
