“You don’t have to do anything else?” Snag asked.
“No. That’s it …”
The man realized his mistake a split second before Snag shot him in the forehead.
“Good,” Snag muttered. “I got things to do, and I was worried about leaving you alone.
Snag moved down the inside stairway and found the young deckhand cowering in the main deck passageway. The boy put up his hands. “Don’t kill me, mister, please! I’ll do anything you want.”
Snag smiled. “Relax, son. I won’t shoot you as long as you’re straight with me. Now what’s the best way for us to get off the boat?”
“Starboard side’s burning like hell, but the port side is all right. I can show you,” the boy said.
“No need,” Snag said, then shot the boy in the head and moved toward the port side. He exited the deckhouse and waved one of the boats over. He was about to jump aboard when he glanced toward the barges and saw the still figures of meth heads at the back of the mob. That wasn’t right; they should all be pressing forward.
He motioned for the boat driver to wait, then ran forward to climb the ladder on the port push knee at the front of the towboat. When his head was above the barge deck, he yelled at the milling mob.
“THE TOWBOAT IS ON FIRE AND SINKING!” He pointed to the burning shields on the barges. “AND THESE BARGES ARE FULL OF GASOLINE! Y’ALL NEED TO TAKE THAT SHIP AND TAKE IT NOW SO YOU CAN GET OFF THESE BARGES AND WE CAN MOVE THEM AWAY! AND DON’T TRY TO JUMP IN THE WATER, IT’LL SOON BE COVERED WITH BURNING GASOLINE. PASS THE WORD!”
Word spread through the back of the mob like fire through the nonexistent gasoline. The pressure from the back of the mob would likely counter any developing lack of enthusiasm at the front. Snag smiled. Sometimes you just had to know how to motivate people.
***
Hughes braced his rifle against the vertical stanchion, firing economically. Their impromptu plan was working better than he’d dared hope. Though sheltered behind their shields, the screaming cons were fully exposed when they topped the improvised stairways to drop over the rail on to the ship’s deck, and the defenders’ massed fire into each sally port was keeping the corks in all the bottles. Moreover, the growing piles of dead and wounded at the top of each stairway seemed to be noticeably diminishing the enthusiasm of those attackers still behind the shields.
The success of the main deck defenders left Torres and Alvarez little to do on the port side, but as the machine guns fell silent, Hughes heard the sporadic boom of the sniper rifles engaging targets to starboard. He keyed his radio.
“Captain to bridge. Request SITREP. Over.”
“The boats swarmed the gaps. The machine guns took some of them out, but there were just too many and too close. Estimate thirty to forty boats made it to starboard. Repeat. Estimate thirty to forty boats made it to the starboard side. Snipers and bridge machine gun are trying to engage, but most of the boats are sheltering close to the hull where they can’t be seen well without our guys exposing themselves to massed return fire. Do you copy? Over.”
“I copy. Can we re-task the lower machine guns to starboard? Over.”
“Negative. There are still a lot of boats behind the barges. If we change the guns, it will only get worse. We need to—”
Loud clangs from behind him on the starboard side diverted Hughes from the situation in his immediate front.
The PA system boomed. “GRAPPLING HOOKS AND BOARDING LADDERS SIGHTED STARBOARD SIDE. STAND BY TO REPEL BOARDERS STARBOARD. REPEAT. STAND BY TO REPEL BOARDERS STARBOARD SIDE.”
Hughes glanced up and down the line as the designated defenders responded, then turned himself and walked a few steps to starboard to crouch behind another pipe support. Gowan was there, focused on the rail where the top end of a boarding ladder appeared.
“Isn’t this some John Paul Jones shit?” Gowan asked.
Hughes was about to answer when a would-be boarder scampered up a boarding ladder and reached for the handrail. Hughes raised his rifle, but inexplicably, the attacker lost his grip and screamed as he fell from sight. Elsewhere down the starboard side, other boarders were falling, without a shot being fired.
“What the …”
“Damned if it didn’t work,” Gowan said.
“Damned if WHAT didn’t work?” Hughes asked.
“Rich and I greased up all the handrails last night.” Gowan glanced over with a lump-jawed grin. “I didn’t want to bother you with it, seeing as how particular you are about keeping the main deck clean and all.” He turned back toward the starboard rail and shot a stream of tobacco juice on the deck, then turned back to Hughes and grinned even wider, the picture of satisfied innocence.
“How is it you can piss me off even when you’re doing something good?” Hughes asked.
Gowan shrugged. “Just a knack, I guess.”
But Gowan’s smile faded at the clang of grapples and boarding ladders in two dozen more places along the side. Then an attacker was up and over, ignoring the rail and diving over it to roll on the deck. The man scrambled for the cover of a set of mooring bitts, but was shot several times before he got there. Incursions increased, each ending with a dead boarder. They were containing the assault, but using half their defensive firepower to do it. The gunfire increased in intensity behind them, and Hughes glanced nervously back over his shoulder.
Something had changed. The attackers were no longer probing tentatively from the sally ports, but vomiting out of them as if pushed from behind. Most were shot down at the rail, but the sheer volume and speed of their advance ensured a few made it to the ship’s deck. Some, but not all of those, fell to the guns of the overwatch; Torres and Alvarez were split now, port and starboard, and the surviving attackers found cover on board and began to return fire.
Hughes flinched as a bullet ricocheted off a pipe beside his head—from the wrong direction.
“DAN,” he shouted, “PASS THE WORD! EVERY OTHER SHOOTER TO STARBOARD SHOULD SWITCH BACK TO THE PORT SIDE!”
“I’M ON IT,” Gowan yelled back.
Hughes nodded and moved back a few steps to port in a crouching run. He glanced aft, relieved to see Laura and his twin daughters unharmed, firing steadily. But here and there along the line, he saw defenders down. He swallowed his panic and sighted down his rifle to take out an attacker.
“It’s like they’re friggin’ crazy or something,” said Jimmy Gillespie beside him. “I swear the last two bastards I shot were grinnin’ like idiots.”
Hughes’ radio squawked.
“Bridge to captain. Over.”
Hughes keyed his mic. “Go, Georgia.”
“They’ve broken out forward, just aft of the forecastle. We’ve lost control of the forward sally port and they’re pouring aboard.” Hughes heard the stress in her voice and glanced forward to see the backs of defenders falling back toward him, running backwards from one place of concealment to the next, firing as they fell back.
“It’s time, sir,” said Howell over the radio.
“What about the guys on the bow?” Hughes asked.
“Cut off,” Howell said. “The boarders are all the way across the deck and have hooked up with the attackers to starboard. The guys on the bow can’t turn the machine gun on them without risking that any misses will hit your position. There …. there’s nothing we can do for them.”
Hughes felt a hundred years old. Lose two good men … or risk everyone? He swallowed. “Sound the signal.”
The air was split with the mournful sound of the ship’s whistle and the raucous clanging of the general alarm, competing with but not blocking out the gunfire. Up and down the line, designated shooters held their positions as the rest fell back toward the deckhouse, establishing new positions to cover the retreat of the others. They leapfrogged aft, carrying their casualties with them, with Hughes always in the rear. He’d leave no one else behind.
The deck behind them filled with attackers spilling through the now undefended sally ports. Wit
h strength in numbers and the tide of the battle going in their favor, they grew increasingly bold and aggressive, and Hughes was only twenty feet ahead of the surge when two seamen slammed the watertight door of the deckhouse behind him and dogged it down tight. He gave an approving nod as they lashed the dog handles so it couldn’t be opened; then he started up the stairs for the bridge.
They were secure for the moment. As a precautionary measure before the attack, Georgia Howell had supervised the unbolting and removal of all the external stairways and ladders for the first two levels of the deckhouse and machinery casing. They’d hoisted them to the top of the machinery casing with chain falls, where they now rested in a jumbled heap, out of reach and of no use to the attackers. They’d also closed and secured all the steel doors anywhere on the deckhouse below the bridge and fitted heavy sheet-metal covers on the insides of the thick glass of the non-opening windows. No one was getting at them easily, but neither was anyone inside getting out.
When he got to the bridge, he found Howell on the radio, confirming all possible entrances were locked down tight. He walked out to the port bridge wing, where Torres had his Barrett sniper rifle resting on the wind dodger, peering forward through the scope. Hughes heard a noise above him and looked up to see the Coasties from the stern setting up a second machine gun on the flying bridge. He glanced toward the bow and his blood ran cold.
“Good Lord,” Hughes muttered.
Beside him Torres nodded. “As soon as y’all got inside, most of the cons started for the bow. Looks like they’re real interested in that machine gun.”
Hughes glanced at the bow again and then back up at the flying bridge. Torres followed his gaze.
“Can we—”
“Not a chance,” Torres said. “Jones and Brown have shifted to deal with the threat, and we can’t tell exactly where they are in that mob. If we open up with the machine gun, we’re as likely to hit them as the bad guys. Alvarez and I have the same problem. It takes a lot to stop these fifty-caliber rounds. I could shoot through a tango and take out Jones or Brown without knowing it.”
***
“To your right!” shouted Pete Brown, and Jones whirled to drop a charging attacker with his Glock before ducking back behind the cover of the anchor windlass.
“We’re screwed,” Jones said. “We can’t open up with the machine gun, and we can’t hold out long with just my Glock and your AR.”
“Why not use the machine gun? We’re shooting aft anyway.” Pete snapped off a shot to the left.
“Too risky,” Jones said. “Even if we hit the cons, it will keep on going right through ’em and maybe hit our folks as well. Even if they all made it back to the deckhouse, it’s only thin steel. That gun will open it up like Swiss cheese. Besides—”
“Y’ALL SURRENDER AND WE’LL GO EASY ON YOU. BUT IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ON US, IT’LL GO TEN TIMES HARDER ON YOU. GIVE UP AND GIVE US THE MACHINE GUN AND WE’LL PUT YOU ASHORE AND LET YOU WALK AWAY,” yelled a voice from aft.
“Sounds like they really want this gun,” Pete said.
Jones nodded. “And they’ll get it, one way or another, if we don’t do something. Then our guys in the deckhouse don’t stand a chance.”
“Got any ideas?” Pete asked.
Jones snorted. “You know as well as I do there’s only one. We gotta ditch it, but we can’t reach the rail from here. We gotta get closer.”
Jones surveyed the situation. “It’s thirty or thirty-five feet to the rail on either side, and maybe fifty straight forward to the bow,” Jones said. “The bow is farther, but I’ll still have the anchor windlass between me and most of the shooters, at least partway.”
“We should draw straws or something,” Pete said.
Jones just looked at him. “Like it matters. Shoot me now or shoot me later. Besides, I got the gimpy arm and just the Glock. You can provide much better cover fire with the AR.”
Pete nodded. “When?”
“No time like the present,” Jones said. “Get ready to empty a mag at ’em, and as soon as you start shooting, I’m off. With any luck I’ll have it over the side before they figure out what’s going on. On three?”
Pete nodded, and Jones picked up the M240 with his good arm, took a deep breath, and began to count. When Pete leaped up to fire, Jones was off like a shot. He’d covered two-thirds of the distance when two rounds slammed into his back simultaneously. He heaved the machine gun as he fell, hoping against hope it would clear the rail.
***
Pete was changing mags when he heard the M240 clatter to the deck. He looked back to see Jones face down and unmoving, with the machine gun on the deck beyond him, ten feet from the bow. Pete slapped the fresh magazine home and rose without hesitation, running backwards as he fired.
A round slammed into his left shoulder, and he sprawled across Jones’ body as a dozen more rounds pierced the space he’d occupied a scant second before. His left arm useless, he clawed at the deck with his good hand and pushed with his feet to move forward on his belly as bullets ricocheted off the deck all around him. He reached the twenty-five-pound gun and rolled over on his back to grab it with his good right hand and sling it toward the bow in an awkward toss, then rolled over again and crawled after it, oblivious to the whine of bullets off the deck around him. One struck him in the shin, but still he crawled as he heard boots pounding towards him.
He reached the gun and looked up at the solid steel of the bulwark, towering four feet above him. It might as well be forty.
Then he spotted the bull nose chock penetrating the bulwark and crawled toward it, summoning the strength to lift the butt of the gun and rest it in the opening. He used his good leg to push himself forward a bit more and grabbed the barrel of the gun with his good hand and heaved, gratified when it slipped through the chock.
And hung up at the tripod.
He reached to free it as a shadow loomed over him.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT GUN, NIGGER!”
He looked up to see a big man approaching, not ten feet away, gun at his shoulder. With a speed Pete didn’t know he possessed, his right hand shot out and freed the tripod, and the machine gun disappeared to splash into the river below.
Pete Brown smiled. “Bite me, cracker.”
He felt the first round penetrate his gut; then his attacker’s head exploded.
***
“You got the bastard!” Hughes said, lowering the binoculars. “Keep the rest of them off him!”
Beside him, Torres squeezed off another shot, and Hughes heard Alvarez’s gun bark from the other bridge wing as well.
“We’ll try,” Torres said, his eye still glued to the scope, “but it looks like he’s already wounded and it’s only a matter of … wait. It looks like they’re losing interest.”
Hughes raised his binoculars. With the treasured prize no longer on offer, the mob was turning back toward the deckhouse. They moved down the deck in a wave, screaming like injured and enraged animals. Hughes lowered the glasses.
With an icy calm he didn’t quite understand, he turned to Torres. “Mr. Torres.”
“Yes, sir,” Torres replied, equally formally.
“Let’s kill as many of these bastards as we possibly can, shall we?”
Torres responded, his jaw clenched, “It’ll be our pleasure, sir.”
Torres yelled up to his men on the machine gun, and they opened fire, driving the attackers to cover as Torres and Alvarez pitched in with the Barretts. Elsewhere from the flying bridge and along the bridge wings, other shooters joined the line, eager to avenge their shipmates. Hughes walked to the telephone.
“Engine room, Chief,” Dan Gowan answered.
“You ready, Dan?”
“Just waitin’ on the word.”
“Do it,” Hughes said.
“One nasty surprise, comin’ right up,” Gowan said, and hung up.
Hughes went back to the bridge window and waited. Their attackers were spread out over the main deck now, taking advantage of
the ample opportunities for cover there to move on the deckhouse, despite the defenders’ fire. He spotted the old fire hose, visible in places as it snaked under the deck piping toward the bow, multiple lengths joined together and lashed at intervals to the stanchions supporting the centerline pipe rack. The after end of the hose was connected via a jury-rigged fitting and some Gowanesque chicanery Hughes didn’t want to know about to the engine room waste oil pump.
The hose was mostly obscured by deck piping, but Hughes picked out a visible section and waited. Soon it pulsated and a long black puddle formed along the centerline of the ship as used lube oil flowed from the perforations cut every three or four feet along the full length of the hose. It spread like a giant inkblot, covering the deck to run down the slight slope of the deck to each edge. In a nod toward pollution prevention, they’d plugged all the scuppers and deck drains, so the oil pooled at the edges of the deck and ran aft to run down each side of the deckhouse toward the stern.
Frantic cries rose from the main deck as startled attackers scrambled to escape the spreading oil, to no avail. In less than a minute, the previously pristine deck of Pecos Trader became one gigantic oil slick, and Hughes’ grimace morphed to a smile as attackers attempted to move on the deck below and slid from behind their cover. Rifles barked along the wind dodger as the defenders dispatched the newly exposed attackers.
Hughes walked to the console and dialed the phone.
“Cargo control room, Chief Mate.”
“All right, Georgia,” Hughes said. “The deck’s fully coated. Use all the ballast pumps and let’s get her off the bottom and put as much starboard list on her as you can. When you get all the ballast shifted, transfer cargo to help out if you have any slack tanks.”
“I’m on it,” Howell said, and hung up.
Hughes nodded at the familiar sound of the hydraulic deep well pumps coming up to speed.
Sun Oil Dock
Neches River
Near Nederland, Texas
Spike McComb cursed before lowering the binoculars to grab his radio. “What the hell is going on, Snag? Over,” he snarled into the radio.
Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) Page 36
