Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  “Hey!” The Guardsman saw that Burt was driving the truck up the ramp into the C-130. “He can’t do that!”

  “We have to. We have to keep that truck away from them.”

  “Away from them?”

  “Get it away from here.”

  “You’re going to fly it out?”

  “Yes. We’re both pilots.”

  “What’s on that truck?”

  “Highly specialized munitions.”

  “But you can’t do that.” The young woman, uncertain, looked back toward the bay—doubtless hoping to find her fellow Guardsman returning.

  Cat strode forward, snatching back her ID with her right hand and then, with the woman’s attention following the card, grabbing away the M-16 with her left.

  “There,” Cat said. “You’re officially disarmed by an intruder and absolved from any responsibility. Now you can stay at your post or go hide in one of those hangars until relief comes or you can come with us, which I’d strongly recommend. But choose now, because we’re leaving.”

  “Are you really Navy?”

  “Was. Not anymore.” That was for damn sure.

  By going underwater to the far side of the pontoon boat, Westman had deprived his adversaries of a clear fix on his location. This apparently confused and frustrated them, for they began shooting randomly along the marsh in the hope of killing or flushing him through chance. He was safe only for the moment, as they were working their way toward him, firing bursts as they came. If he broke away from the shelter of the boat, they’d have a clear shot at him. If he stayed, they’d have him trapped.

  He had to throw them off balance. Moving to the bow, he fired one shot wildly to attract their attention. Then he dove again, pulling himself under the starboard side float and rising quietly in the space between the two pontoons.

  One of the men called to the others. Then the sound of a boat intruded, a quite different engine noise than that made by pontoon boats or PWCs. Reinforcements possibly.

  The next noise he heard was deafening—automatic-weapons fire blasting the water just the other side of the pontoon. When the echoes faded, Westman heard someone moving close through the water on that side.

  As silently as he could manage, Westman returned to the bow, slowly peering around the float at what proved to be a man’s broad back not four feet away.

  Westman raised the automatic Cat had left with him, slowly pulling the trigger. It clicked, with no report. He yanked back the receiver to clear the chamber of the dud, just as the man turned around, banging his weapon against the boat.

  Erik’s next trigger pull produced the desired result.

  Burt had found chocks, cables, and hooks to secure the truck and was standing to the side of the big open hatch. After Cat had clambered aboard, he pointed to a lever.

  “That raises the ramp, but I’ve got to release the safety locks from up there first,” he said, pointing to the high flight deck up forward. “Wait till I start the engines, then push the lever. When the ramp and door close, we’ll be out of here.”

  “Don’t you need an external booster to start those big turboprops?” she asked, referring to the portable auxiliary power units that were used to provide ignition for the big engines of most cargo aircraft.

  “This is a J model. Has an internal APU. You could start it up in a cornfield if you had to.”

  “You really flew these things?”

  “Hercs first went into service in 1956. They’re almost as old as the B-52.”

  He squeezed her shoulder, then started forward—to Cat’s distress, dragging his right leg. She should have asked if he could have flown anything in his condition, but he moved resolutely on. One had to climb a ladder to reach the flight deck from the cargo hold. Burt took a painfully long time to complete the ascension, but managed it. In less than a minute, she heard a familiar whine of turboprop, then a few coughs and chuffs, and then the roar of the outboard port engine. Another soon joined in, and soon there was a full chorus.

  There was also more gunfire—very near. Bullets began striking the fuselage. Burt took note of this. The big plane began to move.

  Cat heard a horrendous scraping noise. The ramp was dragging. She’d failed to move the lever. She did so. The scraping eased, then was gone.

  Out of the shadows Cat saw someone running toward them. The C-130 was moving no faster than a walk and the runner was quickly closing the gap. Cat had given her pistol to Westman and now was glad of that. She stopped the ramp and leaned out over it to extend a hand to the young Air National Guard woman. Had Cat still been armed, she might have shot her.

  The woman flung herself onto the partially raised ramp first, then reached to take Cat’s hand. Rising, she gripped Cat’s arm with both hands, mouthing the words “Thank you.”

  She never got to say more. Cat could barely hear the gunfire now in the racket from the engines, but the girl’s body jolted twice and she released Cat’s arm, falling to the steel plating of the ramp and then rolling off onto the taxiway.

  “Burt!” Cat shouted. “Stop!”

  “What?” He sounded so distant.

  “STOP!”

  He hit the brakes. The Hercules rolled a few yards more, then lurched to a halt. This was a big mistake. Before Cat could jump out to see to the Air National Guard woman, two figures emerged from the dark and leapt aboard the ramp—a slender, long-haired woman and a huge man Cat recognized all too easily.

  Ducking back beneath the center of the pontoon boat, Westman began wading to the stern, wondering if he had made a big dumb mistake. If they discovered where he was, they could just keep blasting at the boat until they hit him or destroyed it. His best move now would be to remove himself from this location with all deliberate speed.

  Reaching the stern, he made a quick reconnaissance of the waters beyond. They seemed clear, though the engine noise from a new boat that was approaching indicated it was near and coming on fast.

  He had to get away. Pistol in hand, he took a deep breath and slipped beneath the surface, not rising for ten strokes.

  They were not enough. As he sucked in air, splatters of bullets hit the water ahead and to the right and then behind him. He went under again, changing course, heading north parallel to the shoreline. When he surfaced once more, he saw this ruse had worked. The shooters were firing in frequent bursts, but they no longer had a focus.

  And suddenly they had something else to occupy their attention. The approaching boat now swerved into view, trailing a wide, foaming wake. A searchlight came on at its orange-colored bow, sweeping toward the pontoon boats. Then Westman heard the delightful sound of a .50-caliber machine gun, which began working the water back and forth within the cone of light. Westman saw one of his adversaries drop, then another. His hopes that these were the last of them were dashed when return fire commenced farther down the shore.

  The big, bearded man whacked Cat along the side of her head with the edge of his huge fist, dropping her to the hard steel deck in a painful blur. She stayed conscious, but barely, as he stepped over her and moved forward along the side of the secured flatbed, heading toward the flight deck. Cat tried to get up, or at least call out to Burt, but nothing much happened.

  The big man spoke for himself. “Get down from there!” he shouted at Burt. “I’m taking this truck.”

  Schilling’s response was to shove the throttles forward and resume taxiing, only at a much faster speed. Gergan gripped the truck bed to keep his balance, then groped his way forward, pistol in hand.

  Cat rolled over onto her belly, then pushed herself to her knees, swaying from side to side. The bearded man was aiming his gun up at Burt. “Stop this fucking plane!” he shouted.

  Burt ignored him. The C-130 continued to increase its speed, bumping along on its low-slung landing gear over the lumpy asphalt.

  Swearing, Gergen swung up onto the ladder. Cat managed to get to her feet, but could think of no way to stop this man. Worse, the woman he’d brought aboard with him was
moving toward the ladder herself. And Burt just sat there, like an airline captain preparing for some dull flight from Topeka to Sioux City. Did he mean to get them airborne, so the tugboat captain would be at a disadvantage? He’d be dead before they got off the ground.

  There was a pry bar hooked to the bulkhead. Cat reached for it, slipped, then tried again. Working it loose, she struggled forward, far too late. The tugboat captain was halfway up the ladder and the woman was just below him.

  Wearing a pair of cut-off blue jeans and a halter top, the lady was armed as well. She glanced back at Cat, but then chose to ignore her, aiming her revolver as though she wanted to shoot past Gergen at Burt. But from that angle, she could have no shot.

  Actually, she did—a perfect shot—but at a different target. She fired twice, and Gergen dropped like a rock, hitting the deck with a thump louder than the four growling engines.

  The woman kicked the bearded man in the head. “You fucking bastard. Why’d you let them kill Leonard?” She kicked him again. “Think I wanted you instead of him?” Another blow. “You fat fuck.”

  She then turned to Cat, who had come a few faltering steps closer. “Take me to the end of the runway!” the woman commanded.

  “That’s where we’re going,” Cat said.

  “I want to get off there. I need to get to the highway.” She aimed her pistol at Cat’s belly.

  Cat was more than willing to comply. “Burt! Stop when you get to the runway!”

  There was no response.

  “Burt! This woman needs to get off! She’s okay! She helped us! She just took out Gergen.”

  When Schilling made no reply again, Cat willed herself out of her dizziness and exhaustion and began climbing the ladder. When she reached the top, she found Burt slumped in his seat and the C-130 only a few hundred feet from the end of the taxiway—the darkness beyond filled with every imaginable danger and disaster.

  Flinging herself into the copilot’s seat, she yanked back the throttles. When she could get her feet on the rudder pedals, she pushed down hard on the brakes.

  The Hercules shuddered, slowing, but not fast enough. Desperately searching the cockpit for the propeller pitch control, she at last found it, skewing the big paddles blade-first into the wind and rendering them highly inefficient. At last, the aircraft stopped.

  She looked back over the seat. “Okay. Go!”

  “I had nothing to do with any of this,” the woman said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Never mind. Just married into the wrong fucking family.”

  “Did you shoot that soldier?”

  “No. Only one I shot is him.”

  “Get going then.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.” The woman hurried down to the partially raised ramp and then leaped from it onto the tarmac.

  Schilling raised his head, blinking. “Get us out of here, Cat.” His voice was little more than a mutter.

  “I’ve never flown anything this big.”

  “Just point it down the runway and give it full throttle. You know the drill.”

  “This runway’s only four thousand feet.”

  “Hercs’ll take off full load in three thousand—less than two thousand empty. Back in ’63, one of ’em landed and took off from a carrier.”

  “Jeez, Burt …”

  He pushed himself up in the seat, wiping cold sweat from his brow and blinking some more.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. Stupid question. He was no more okay than she was, and she was now becoming so woozy and frazzled she wondered if she was going to be able to stay in the chair.

  “Fine, fine,” he said. “Just feelin’ my age a little.” Pushing himself up still higher, he took her hand from the throttles, then pushed all four forward, pressing right rudder to turn the plane. When the bulbous nose was pointed down the runway, he turned on the landing lights.

  “No preflight run-up,” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  He found the strength to put both feet on the brakes as he revved the engines to maximum RPM.

  “Burt! The ramp’s only partway up!”

  He released the brakes and the C-130 lurched forward. “No time.”

  She saw what he meant. Orange dots flashing to either side of the runway a hundred yards ahead showed that once again they were coming under fire.

  The swift-moving inflatable sped to within fifty yards of Westman, then slowed and briefly stopped—two of those aboard dropping quickly into the water. As the heavily armed craft moved away, the two started wading toward the shore. Westman recognized them even in the dark.

  “Tim. Hugo. Over here.”

  Dewey and DeGroot turned and froze like wild animals sensing the presence of a predator. “Westman?” Dewey said, his voice strained between a whisper and a shout. He had a side arm in hand, pointing it vaguely.

  “‘Service, integrity, justice,’” Westman replied. It was the CGIS’s official motto—as few people, especially foreign terrorists, could possibly know.

  Dewey started immediately toward him, DeGroot following behind.

  “I thought you were headed back to Cape May,” Westman said.

  “I was, until I got orders from the deputy assistant commandant for operations to ‘apprehend’ you at once,” Dewey said. “So I came back. I always follow orders.”

  “What’s the situation?” said DeGroot, coming up to them.

  “I got three of them. There’s a fourth one down but he was shot by one of his own. Had an unknown number on the landward side of the marsh—I think you saw them. Don’t know where they’ve gone, except I think they’ve moved to the south a bit.”

  “I sent the other inflatable that way,” Dewey said. He studied the landscape between their position and the airport buildings as might a Naval gunnery officer. “I don’t like this ground. It’s too open.”

  “There’s firing on the other side of the airport,” DeGroot said.

  “That’s where they took the truck,” said Westman.

  “What truck?” asked Dewey.

  “The truck that has the bomb on it.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I helped them put it on the truck.”

  “Where are they now—your friends?”

  “They were in the truck.”

  “All right,” said Dewey. “Let’s try to help them.” Keeping low, they started wading to shore.

  As Dewey and Westman prowled along the shoreline, the two Coast Guardsmen aboard the other inflatable flushed some gunfire and immediately engaged the shooters, the .50-caliber dominating. The exchange was so intense the flashes illuminated the marsh for hundreds of yards. Westman was reminded of the machine gun course at boot camp.

  Moving at a crouch, he led Dewey and DeGroot in an encircling movement. They hurried across the parking lot and headed for the side of a hangar, flattening themselves against it.

  There was more gunfire, but it was quickly drowned out by the sound of airplane engines—turboprops.

  “What the hell’s that?” DeGroot asked.

  “Let’s find out,” Westman said.

  Erik led the way, darting from the one hangar to the next, and then on to the one after that. Finally, there was nothing but open meadow. He turned the corner of the last hangar and ran in its shadow to the taxiway side. Looking to the end of the runway, he saw an enormous airplane with its landing lights on. It was moving toward them—very fast.

  Westman noted two shooters running out onto the runway and firing at the oncoming aircraft. As it came closer, engines roaring, the gunmen quickly retreated to the side of the runway.

  The big cargo plane lifted from the asphalt just shy of them, the engines beginning a high-pitched drone as the aircraft lumbered into the air. The bad guys kept firing at it as it continued to climb. Not wanting to miss, Westman emptied one pistol at the nearest of the shooters. The man jiggled and jolted his way to the ground. His companion stopped firing, dropping his weapon. “Okay, okay!”

  “I was hop
ing we’d get some prisoners,” Dewey said to Erik.

  Westman watched the big airplane continue to rise slowly into the night sky, its navigation lights twinkling. He could only wonder who they were and where they were bound. Cat saw Burt’s head fall back and hands slip from the controls. She quickly gripped the wheel on the copilot’s side, checking the airspeed indicator as an incipient stall alarm began to sound. There was too much drag from the ramp at this altitude. She pushed the control wheel forward, dropping the nose slightly. The airspeed crept up, but not enough.

  Too near, the narrow bay passed beneath and they were over sandy Assateague, the ocean beckoning beyond. If she could not get more thrust out of this big clown of an aircraft, she’d be doomed to repeat Burt’s experience of four decades before—only there was no way she could drop their cargo in time.

  “Burt?”

  His head was still tilted back, but he opened his eyes. “Cat.”

  “Can’t get enough altitude, Burt. I’m afraid I’m going to stall.”

  “Gear up, Cat. Couldn’t …”

  She felt like an idiot, more so now because she’d no idea where the lever was that operated that hydraulic.

  Burt raised his hand, pointing. She yanked it back quickly, letting out a long breath of air as she heard the multiwheeled tricycle gear rise into place. It wasn’t quite like slipping a dog from a leash, but the Hercules began to climb much faster.

  When she was over the sea, she put the plane in a slow bank and altered course to the north. The flight to Dover Air Force Base would be short. She didn’t want to go there. Even if she were able to land this monster, it would mean the end of everything for her.

  As if there was anything left.

  But it would be the same wherever she went. Dover, at least, had a tremendously long runway. It gave them their best chance of avoiding the death that they had just now so narrowly escaped.

  The lights of Ocean City were passing on the left. Ahead, she could see the other shore towns all the way up the coast to Delaware Bay.

  “Doin’ fine, Cat.”