Marauder

by Clive Cussler

  The last round it fired, however, landed only a few yards from where Raven and the two families had been running away from the previous blasts.

  The smoke from the explosion concealed them, so MacD couldn’t tell if anyone had been injured. He looked out and saw the rail gun descend back down into the Oregon’s hull, where it was covered by a retractable deck plate. A huge white crest at the ship’s bow showed that it was speeding away around the far island to get out of view of any curious onlookers.

  Eddie and Linc had also disappeared in the mortar cloud. A moment later, the smoke cleared, and MacD could see Eddie and Linc kneeling over two prone figures.

  Eddie called on the comm system.

  “MacD, get down here pronto,” he said with a grim tone. “We’ve got casualties.”

  SIXTEEN

  Raven, lying on her back, grimaced as Eddie put pressure on her shoulder wound to stanch the bleeding. She’d taken a piece of mortar shrapnel from the last round. It didn’t look too serious as long as she didn’t lose much blood.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

  “I’ll live. Is anyone else hurt?”

  “Just one.”

  Emily Schmidt and her boy Kyle stood to the side, shaken up but unscathed. Oliver Muñoz, however, had taken a hit in his chest and was in shock. Linc tended to him while Muñoz’s daughter Elena knelt beside them, crying.

  “Please be okay,” she sobbed. “Is he going to die?”

  Linc shook his head. “Not if I can help it. But we need to get him real medical attention as soon as possible.”

  “It’ll take an hour for an ambulance to get him to a hospital,” Eddie said. “We’ll have to take him by air.”

  MacD arrived sopping wet from his ride down the slide, and Eddie handed Raven over to him.

  “You’re a mess,” MacD said as he pressed his hand on her shoulder.

  She rolled her eyes. “Nothing a little needle and thread won’t fix.”

  Eddie called Juan, who was in the Oregon’s operations center.

  “What’s the situation?” Juan asked.

  “We’ve got two wounded. Senator Muñoz’s husband took part of a mortar shell in his belly, and Raven is also injured. I recommend we get them to the Oregon’s infirmary right away.”

  “Gomez is on the flight deck with the turbines at full speed. Doc Huxley is coming with him. Can you get Muñoz to the parking lot?”

  Eddie scanned the area and saw an abandoned ice cream cart on wheels. They could lay Muñoz across the flat surface on top.

  “We’ll meet you there,” Eddie said. “ETA three minutes.”

  They hoisted Muñoz onto the cart. Linc pushed while Eddie steadied the patient, and Elena held his hand. MacD pulled Raven to her feet and supported her as they walked, herding Emily and Kyle with them. Linc tried to steer over the smoothest patches of pavement, but every bump caused Muñoz to groan in pain.

  They avoided the crowded main entrance and steered toward an emergency exit. By the time they reached the parking lot, Eddie could hear sirens in the distance. Thousands of guests had jammed the exits as they fled by car and on foot. Muñoz might be dead before the ambulance could even arrive through that chaos.

  Even though the waterpark had been crowded, the outer section of the vast parking lot was free of cars, leaving room for their ride to land. As they reached the edge of the cars, Eddie heard the sound of rotors approaching. He looked up to see a sleek tiltrotor aircraft swooping toward them.

  The AgustaWestland AW609 was a huge upgrade from the Corporation’s MD520N helicopter, which had been destroyed when the previous Oregon sank. The tiltrotor had a range of more than eight hundred miles and could cruise at three hundred miles per hour while carrying a complement of ten passengers and crew. Now Eddie was glad they’d sprung for the more capable aircraft. There was no way they could have stretched out an injured man in the chopper.

  The tiltrotor looked like any normal twin-engine private plane except the engines were situated on the ends of the wings to power the huge propellers. As it switched to hover mode, the engines turned vertically so that the propellers pointed straight up. The AW settled to the asphalt, the noise of its prop wash deafening.

  The moment the tires touched down, Linc pushed the cart forward, and they all followed. Clamshell doors on the fuselage opened, with a short staircase on the bottom half.

  A woman wearing green scrubs, her brown hair in a ponytail, hurried down the steps carrying a lightweight backboard. Normally, Julia Huxley had a gentle demeanor and soothing bedside manner that belied her experience as a trauma surgeon and chief medical officer at San Diego Naval Base. But right now she was all business as she zeroed in on her incoming patients.

  She took a quick glance at Raven, who simply waved her off.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Raven said. “We’ll go find MacD a shirt.” The Ranger smirked at her as he escorted her to the waiting helicopter.

  Julia turned her focus on Muñoz, inspecting his torso before covering it with gauze.

  “It’s risky, but we’ll have to move him,” she said to Eddie. “He might not make it back to a hospital in Denpasar. The Oregon is closer. I’ll stabilize him there.”

  The ship’s infirmary, with an operating suite and a variety of diagnostic tools, was as well equipped as a big city hospital, and she and her staff could conduct any surgeries that didn’t require a specialist.

  They shifted Muñoz over to the backboard, and Eddie and Linc carefully lifted him through the door into the tiltrotor’s passenger compartment. Once everyone was packed inside and buckled in, Eddie closed the door and went into the cockpit. He took a seat in the copilot’s chair, strapping himself in with the four-point harness and donning a headset.

  “Welcome aboard,” George “Gomez” Adams said without looking away from his control panel. “Wish your first ride on the A-dub was under better circumstances.”

  Gomez, a strikingly handsome man with vivid green eyes and a handlebar mustache, came by his nickname because of a long-ago dalliance with a woman who looked just like Morticia from The Addams Family. The ace pilot was cocky about his flying abilities, but the self-assurance was well deserved.

  “Me, too,” Eddie said. “Doc says to get Muñoz to the Oregon. Let’s go home.”

  Gomez increased the throttle, and the helicopter lifted into the sky as if it were borne aloft by a cloud. As he transitioned the tiltrotor to horizontal flight, the aircraft accelerated forward and gained altitude.

  “This will be a quick trip,” he said to Eddie. “Next time, I’ll give you the full aerobatic demonstration. We’ve even got a hoist that we can attach for water rescues.”

  They banked away from the waterpark and out to sea. The stern of the Oregon came into view as it was rounding the nearest island. From this height, Eddie could see the landing pad between the two pairs of cranes amidships. It was marked by an H with a circle around it.

  “You can fit this thing there?” Eddie asked, amazed at the tiny target where they’d be setting down.

  “With room to spare,” Gomez replied. “And the hangar below deck has enough space to do any maintenance work that’s required.”

  The pad was designed to descend into the ship, after which it was covered by an identical pad that slid across the deck to conceal it.

  Halfway to the Oregon, Hali called over the radio. Eddie didn’t like the sound of his urgent tone.

  “Gomez,” Hali said, “we’ve detected two incoming aircraft closing at a high rate of speed.”

  “The terrorists have planes now?” Gomez said.

  “No, they’re Indonesian Air Force F-16s. They think you’re the jihadists fleeing the scene of the crime.”

  “Call them off. We’ve got kids aboard.”

  “I’m trying, but they’re not responding to my hails.”

 
; “Those idiots. Our IFF transponder is broadcasting as friendly.”

  “They don’t seem to care. The police reported seeing an unknown aircraft taking off from the terrorist event, and you fit the description.” Hali paused and then called out, “Oh, no. Take evasive action.”

  Gomez responded instantly, sending the helo into a dive. “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve detected a missile lock,” Hali answered. “They’re preparing to fire.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Juan glanced at the radar projected on the wraparound screen of the Oregon’s op center. The high-definition flat-panel display could show a one-hundred-eighty-degree view of the ship’s surroundings from any of the multitude of external cameras. Juan saw the tiltrotor diving toward the sea and the still smoking waterpark behind it in the distance. However, he was more concerned about the radar signatures of two F-16s flying toward them. They were forty miles out, but the AMRAAM air to air missiles carried by Indonesian fighter jets had a range of sixty miles. At that range, it would take less than a minute for a missile to hit the tiltrotor, and the jets were closing fast.

  “Hail them again,” he said to Hali Kasim, who had his eyes closed as he concentrated on whatever he was hearing over his headset.

  “I’ll try, Chairman.”

  Although the ship had a bridge at the top of her superstructure like any other cargo carrier would, the Oregon’s was merely for show. The real heart of the vessel was the op center buried deep in the middle of the armored ship for protection. The op center had a tiered design, with the captain’s chair at the center of a semicircle of workstations and the entrance at the room’s rear. Cool lighting and smooth finishes made the space feel like the bridge of a futuristic starship. Except for a few dedicated switches and buttons for use in emergencies, all of the controls were touch screens, including one in the arm of Juan’s chair, which allowed him to drive the ship on his own if required. Everything was controlled by computer, and the purpose of this shakedown cruise had been to test out their systems while supporting the Bali operation.

  Hali shook his head in frustration. “The fighter pilots won’t respond.”

  “Then tell Lang that the Indonesians are about to shoot down a plane with the families of two U.S. Senators aboard.” Langston Overholt IV, the Corporation’s CIA liaison, had given them this mission, and he was currently monitoring the situation. Their best bet to stop an attack was Overholt’s backchannel connections to the Indonesian government.

  “Aye, Chairman,” Hali said.

  “Stoney,” Juan said to Eric Stone, who was seated at the helm, “all stop.”

  “All stop, aye,” Eric said. Like the previous Oregon, the new ship was equipped with an advanced magnetohydrodynamic propulsion system that could push the 590-foot-long ship to speeds normally seen only in hydrofoils, while thrust-vectoring nozzles made her more agile than ships a quarter her size. The Oregon was powered by stripping free electrons from the seawater, providing a virtually limitless operating range.

  Juan turned to Max Hanley at the engineering station.

  “If those fighters fire their missiles, we’ll have to give Gomez some help. Is the Kashtan software working yet?”

  The dual Gatling guns that had performed so well to destroy the Dahar’s lifeboat had since developed a problem with their code that Max and Eric had been struggling to diagnose. There were three of the weapons systems on the Oregon, two in the crane towers, plus another hidden on the stern.

  Max shook his head, even more frustrated than Hali had been.

  “I’ve finally gotten the cannons operational, but now the sleeves covering them won’t come down.”

  “Then we’ll have to try out the LaWS.”

  Max frowned. “We haven’t even had a trial run with it yet.”

  “Then this will have to be our first try. It worked with the rail gun.”

  “Yeah, and then it promptly overheated on the first shot. I’m working on that next after I get the Kashtans online.”

  “Then we’re fortunate that Linda is a crack shot.”

  Juan’s gaze shifted to Linda Ross, her green hair shining in the screen’s light. She was seated at the weapons station, a spot normally reserved for Mark Murphy.

  “We can’t count on Lang getting to them in time,” Juan said. “Bring the LaWS online.”

  “LaWS activating,” she answered.

  “Put it on-screen.”

  A portion of the exterior view was replaced by an image of the Oregon’s black smokestack, non-functional since there were no diesel fumes to exhaust. The top of the smokestack peeled back, revealing a white device that looked like a telescope. It rotated on a turntable and pointed up in the direction of the fighter jets.

  LaWS was an acronym for Laser Weapon System. The defensive armament allowed them to target incoming enemy missiles and aircraft without revealing the origin of the attack. Although the Oregon would eventually be equipped with other weapons such as anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles, and torpedoes, they had to sail before any of those weapons could be installed.

  “Linda, what’s its status?” Juan asked.

  “Functioning . . .” Linda hesitated as her attention was caught by something on her screen. “Missile in the air.”

  “Estimated time to impact?”

  “Twenty-eight seconds. It’s locked on. Second missile away.”

  The tiltrotor was flying barely above the waves, but that hadn’t fooled the F-16’s electronics. Gomez was an exceptional pilot, but even he couldn’t avoid an air to air missile.

  “Target that missile. Hali, tell Gomez to get as close to the Oregon as possible. See if he can hover behind the ship.”

  Hali and Linda both said “Aye” simultaneously.

  Although the LaWS had a range of only three miles, its biggest advantage was its pinpoint accuracy. That was, of course, if it worked at all.

  The tiltrotor was still a mile out. It would never reach the safety of the Oregon’s shadow before the missile impact.

  “We’ll have about four seconds from when the missile comes into range until it hits the target,” Linda said.

  “Do you have a lock on the first missile?”

  “Locked and tracking. I have a firing solution.”

  She didn’t have to tell Juan what he already knew, which was that the laser would begin firing as soon as the missile was in range. The LaWS worked by superheating the warhead until it exploded.

  “Put the missile on-screen,” Juan said.

  While half of the screen kept focus on the tiltrotor, the other half switched to a view of the sky. A pinpoint of light from the first missile’s rocket motor was visible in the distance. The F-16s were still too far away to see.

  “Ten miles out,” Linda said. “Five seconds to LaWS firing.”

  She counted down. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . Laser firing.”

  Nothing changed in the view of the weapon itself. There was no gleaming finger of death reaching out like a movie special effect. The system’s operation was completely invisible unless there was haze to illuminate the light’s beam. Today was clear.

  The missile’s rocket was growing brighter by the second. Juan held his breath as the AMRAAM streaked toward the tiltrotor seemingly unhindered.

  Then without warning, the missile erupted in a ball of flame.

  But Gomez and the others weren’t out of danger yet.

  “Targeting second missile,” Linda said.

  The tiltrotor circled the Oregon and came to a hover position behind the superstructure, which meant the second missile was now aimed directly at their brand new ship.

  By now the second missile was even closer.

  “LaWS activating,” Linda said.

  The missile seemed to be coming straight toward the camera. Juan leaned forward in his
chair, literally on the edge of his seat, waiting to see if the laser would do its job.

  Just when it seemed too late to work, the missile disappeared in a fiery explosion less than a half mile from the ship. Juan watched pieces of shrapnel peppering the superstructure and smokestack.

  “F-16s approaching,” Linda called out. “It looks like they’re circling around to use their cannons.”

  Juan could easily shoot the two fighters out of the sky, but doing so against a friendly government would cause an international incident, not to mention killing two innocent pilots doing their jobs. However, he had to protect his people.

  “Linda, keep an eye on their guns,” Juan said. “If they open fire, target the remaining missiles they’re carrying.”

  The two F-16s screamed out of the blue sky and dived toward the Oregon, but before they could get into position to fire on the tiltrotor, the jets banked away and flew off into the distance.

  “I just got a call from the lead pilot,” Hali said. “He said they were ordered to abort their attack.”

  Juan sat back in his chair, relieved that the friendly fire incident hadn’t turned deadly. “Tell Gomez he can land.”

  “Aye, Chairman. And I’ve got Langston Overholt on video.”

  “Let’s see him,” Juan said.

  A dignified older gentleman in a three-piece suit appeared on the view screen. Overholt, Juan’s former boss at the CIA who had supported the creation of the Corporation, was seated in his stately Langley office.

  “I’m glad you stayed at work so late tonight,” Juan said, knowing that it had to be in the wee hours halfway across the world in Washington. “I suppose we have you to thank for calling off the Indonesian Air Force?”

  Overholt, trim and vigorous for a man his age, nodded. During his decades with the agency, he’d seen everything and knew every secret the CIA and its people held. Despite being well past retirement age, his experience and connections made it impossible to oust him before he was ready, which Juan didn’t think would be anytime soon.