by Dan McGirt
Urgent voices squawked on the radio. The RHIBs zipped past, one on either side, moving bow to stern. Galahad made six SEG troopers in each boat, plus the pilots. Their necks craned upward, trying to assess the situation on the crew boat. They could hardly miss the PUP on the weather deck and the absence of their SEG comrades.
They’d be back.
Galahad keyed his com as he pushed his the throttle up. “Jack, I got us a ride. Headed your way.”
No reply. Ahead, the helo was swept low, probably right on top of Jack.
“Jack, come in,” said Galahad.
Behind him the RHIBs came about. They made their approach running side by side in the crew boat’s wake.
“Jack, do you read me?”
No reply.
“Jack?” Galahad looked over his shoulder to see the RHIBs closing range.
Are they coming to board me or sink me?
The 12.7mm guns on both boats lit up, sending dual streams of tracers and hot rounds straight at the wheelhouse.
Sink it was.
9: Air Delivery
The Hound missile drew a trail of faintly luminous exhaust in its wake as it closed relentlessly on Jack and the PUP. There was no time to dive, no way to leap or swim clear of the coming blast. The only way out was up, two hundred feet up, where the Sikorsky overflew him.
Thought became deed. Jack threw himself backward off the sled. As he fell, he unclipped the magbolt gun and shot the sky. The magline round unspooled its monofilament at bullet speed. The magnetic disk shot struck the underbelly of the chopper and locked on. Slack left in the line gave Jack time to switch his grip on the needler before he was yanked upward. He never touched the water.
He was already a hundred feet in the air when the missile slammed into the riderless PUP sled, vaporizing it on impact. A geyser of hot spray shimmered in the starlight. A blast wave buffeted the helo and sent Jack swinging wildly, nearly wrenching his arms from their sockets.
There had to be a way to add extra grips to the next iteration of the magbolt without compromising the needler’s utility as a quickdraw sidearm, Jack thought. Maybe swingout plastisteel prongs, thin and lightweight? But they would need padding, which would add bulk and weight he wanted to avoid. Unless the grips were a compressed foam or gel composite that set instantly into a molded shape when opened? But that would throw off the balance of the gun. Jack had rarely used the magline without needing to shoot someone soon thereafter.
But this was a design problem to solve later, when he wasn’t dangling beneath a helicopter five hundred feet above the Gulf of Mexico.
Jack kept a steely grip on the needler as the microrotors in the magline round pulled him up. The strain on his arms and shoulders was like doing chin-ups in a hurricane. He danced in the air like a condemned man on a gibbet, wildly swinging and spinning with every dip and turn the chopper made. The helo pilot banked around and played the NightSun lamp across the water to confirm the hit on the PUP.
So much the better. With their attention on the water, they were less likely to notice Jack suspended in the dark beneath them. He was behind the searchlight and sensor package. The additional load of his 220 pounds wouldn’t burden the big Sikorsky enough to be noticed at once.
The magline reel stalled.
Jack was still fifty feet below the chopper. He started spinning like an ice skater.
This is a problem.
The magline’s microrotor was best suited for hauling its load up a stationary emplacement, like a wall, not a dynamic climb with all the added centripetal and other forces straining the actuators.
Come on, come on, urged Jack. If the reel died, he’d have to drop back into the water. The monofilament was too thin to climb by hand – it would slice his fingers off, assuming he could get a grip at all. Maybe a pair of special gloves with a charged climbing pad in the palms and fingers, something like a nanoscale Velcro, would enable climbing the near-invisible line – but that was another project for later.
For now, Jack tried the most basic fix of all: letting go with one hand and giving the magbolt gun a solid whack.
Nothing. Jack readied himself for his second high dive of the night.
Then the magbolt shuddered in Jack’s hand and the actuator came back to life, reeling in the line and zipping him up to the underside of the S-61.
A squawking sound came over Jack’s com. He heard Galahad’s distorted voice, but the thunderous whump-whump-whump of the helo’s rotors obliterated his partner’s words.
Probably asking if I’m still alive.
An affirmative reply might be premature.
Jack felt his hands cramp. He estimated the chopper’s airspeed at 40 mph. If he didn’t find a better handhold fast this ride would be over. That might prove tricky. The S-61 was an amphibious helicopter, with a smooth, boat-like hull – no handholds underneath.
The helo descended, now running at one hundred feet above the water – a survivable dive if he had to make it. The spotlight flashed across the waves. From his vantage, Jack saw the several vessels chasing Galahad half a mile to the southeast.
The magshot disk was attached to the helo’s skin aft and right of center. Jack swiveled his head left and saw a booted foot extending from the cabin doorway above him. Sharpshooter. He looked right and saw a pair of combat boots dangling from the opposite door.
His earlier guess was right. Two snipers aboard. Maybe a couple of other mercs supporting them. Pilot and co-pilot at the stick. Call it up to six men aboard. He’d have to work fast. Surprise could overcome numbers, but it was a rapidly depreciating asset.
This S-61 wasn’t a military configuration, or even search-and-rescue. It was most likely used for moving crew on and off Deepfire, especially higher ups who were too important to take the boat. Jack envisioned the interior. The cabin was six and a half feet wide, thirty-one feet long. There would be rows of bucket seats inside, three or four across, with a center aisle and not much space to move freely. The shooters were probably clipped in at the side doors with bungee cords and harness, more out of the cabin than in. The gunner to the right was closer – yet still out of Jack’s reach.
The chopper settled into a hover. They were still looking for him in the water. Time to move. Jack thumbed a switch on the needler and let out a yard of slack on the line, enough that he could swing, not enough to drop him out of range. Jack drew up his knees, flexed his hips, and kicked out. He swung back, forward, back again, then forward and release, flying free with hands outstretched like a circus aerialist.
I hope this guy isn’t too macho for the safety clip.
Jack’s hand’s clamped around the merc’s boots. His weight and momentum yanked the SEG trooper from his perch. He fell briefly, then jolted to a halt and bounced as he reached the end of the bungee line clipped to his harness. The flailing merc dropped his KH95 carbine, which dangled from a tac sling.
Jack grabbed the back of the man’s belt with his right hand, hauled himself up, and reached around to grab the front of the trooper’s harness with his left, pulling himself higher. He slashed his right arm up and around, delivering a hard chop to the startled mercenary’s throat.
Jack cinched his legs around the man’s torso and squeezed the air from his lungs with a python pinch, then clamped a hand over his nose and mouth until he passed out. It didn’t take long.
Jack hauled himself up the bungee line, got his feet on the unconscious merc’s shoulders, and levered himself through the cabin door.
The second sniper sensed something amiss. He turned his attention from below just in time to realize that he was now the target. Jack grabbed a seat back with both hands and did a jackknife kick across the cabin. As the trooper made an awkward half-turn, Jack’s feet struck him in the back and shoved him out the door.
Jack unclipped his dive knife, and sawed through the line supporting the merc.
“Trust me, the water’s fine,” he said.
There were no more gunners aboard. Jack dropped into the co
-pilot’s chair and grinned at the startled pilot.
“Hello, is this seat taken?”
“Who the—”
Jack elbow-smashed him in the face. The pilot slumped forward, senseless. His hand slipped from the stick. Jack switched control to the co-pilot, doused the Nightsun lamp, and turned the helo back toward Deepfire.
He keyed his com. “Gal? Come in.”
“Where you been, man?”
“Stealing the helo. Where are you?”
“I stole the crew boat. Keeping it may be a problem.”
Jack sighted the vessel – and the two swift RHIBs raking it with machine guns.
“Hang on,” said Jack. “I’m coming your way.”
10: Two To Go
Galahad hugged the deck. High velocity bullets ripped through the bulkheads around him and shattered glass on all sides of the wheelhouse, showering him with broken shards and punching puckered holes in the overhead. The boat lurched hard to starboard. Not the direction Galahad wanted to go, but he wasn’t about to get up and take the wheel with all this incoming fire.
Galahad belly-crawled across the small compartment and slithered headlong down the ladder to the main deck. The two unconscious men in the wheelhouse would survive the fusillade if the gunners kept their angle of fire relatively high. That would make Jack happy. If they didn’t – well that was on LiquiOil, wasn’t it?
Galahad rolled into a narrow passageway. Behind him was the door to the aft deck, ahead a wide compartment lined with rows of padded seats. Galahad crab-walked forward. The RHIBs rode lower in the water than the crew boat, which denied the gunners a clear line of fire – but lower was still better.
Bullets thumped against the port and starboard bulkheads. Multiple rounds punched all the way through.
Galahad covered up and thought small.
That’s when Jack called in.
“Hang on. I’m coming your way.”
Air support was a good thing.
“Sooner the better, man,” said Gal into his com.
The shooting stopped.
So did the crew boat’s engines.
Had the barrage damaged the controls to the point of triggering a shut off? Clipped a fuel line?
No, that didn’t make sense.
Galahad reversed direction and duck-walked toward the aft door. The needler was a fine tool, but he was done with knockout darts. The RHIB teams weren’t trying to sink the crew boat. They had laid down suppressing fire ahead of a boarding party. If he could scrounge an NP5 from one of the SEG troopers he took out a few minutes ago, that would even matters up. Then he could—
Galahad sensed movement behind him.
A bearded man wearing grease-stained coveralls lunged out of a forward door and swung a heavy wrench at Galahad’s head. Caught in an awkward crouch, Gal could only tuck and roll to evade. The wrench glanced off his shoulder.
That would hurt like the devil later.
Galahad rolled onto his back and kicked, sweeping the attacker off his feet. Then he was atop the bigger man, pinning the arm that held the wrench with one hand, crushing his windpipe with the other. The struggle was brief. Galahad’s wrestling skills, honed since boyhood, overcame his opponent’s strength. He choked the man out, relenting when he lost consciousness. This was clearly the boat’s engineer, not one of the SEG mercenaries.
He cut the engine, Galahad concluded. The boat teams would be boarding any moment now.
He needed that KH subgun. Galahad scrambled for the aft door. Then a 12.7mm gun started up again.
But it wasn’t shooting at the boat.
***
Jack brought the helo in low. The two patrol boats raked the crew boat in a crossfire as they lapped it stern to bow. The RHIBs circled the slower craft and repeated the attack on a second pass. The darkened wheelhouse was completely riddled with bullet holes. There was no movement there, nor on the main deck, where Galahad’s bullet-pocked PUP sled slid freely. The crew boat seemed to be no longer under power, losing speed and giving itself over to the motions of wave and current.
One of the RHIBs stood off the port side of the crew boat at range fifty yards. The machine gunner trained the belt-fed 12.7mm on the bigger boat but withheld fire. The second patrol boat approached the drifting vessel from aft. The rail there was open, making it the best point to board.
Two SEG troopers secured a line and pulled the RHIB close. A six man team clambered aboard, leaving behind the RHIB’s pilot.
Jack lined up for a dive and hover to dissuade the assault team. Bullets sprayed the helicopter from back to front and shattered the glass on the right side of the cockpit. One round came within a whisker of punching thorough Jack’s skull.
Looks like they figured out this helo is under new management. The unconscious merc dangling from a bungee line might have given it away.
“Guess I’ll deal with you first,” said Jack.
He turned away from the crew boat and flew at the stand-off RHIB. The gunner tried to track the helo and mostly missed, but managed to score a cluster of hits to the underside of the cabin as the chopper loomed overhead. The RHIB pilot, too late, divined Jack’s intent and revved the outboard. Jack reacted faster, matching the new speed, and brought the big Sikorsky down hard on top of the patrol boat. The eight men aboard hit the deck or were knocked overboard. Jack bounced the helo into the air, then brought it down for a second smash that capsized the RHIB. It did a wide cartwheel beneath the climbing helo, hurling its occupants into the Gulf.
Jack brought the chopper back around to the crew boat and lit up the Nightsun, dazzling the assault team as they moved across the rear deck toward the superstructure. Their advance faltered. The mercs flattened themselves against the deck as the Sikorsky swept by, mere feet above them. One trooper brought his weapon around and got off a shot before the port sponson struck him in the face, shattering bones and knocking him hard against the bulwark.
“Cavalry’s here,” said Jack.
“Never say that to a red man,” replied Galahad over the com. “Coming out the back door. Give me room.”
Jack climbed and banked the helo to hover above the wheelhouse. The hot searchlight beam seared the eyes of the SEG team but was at Galahad’s back as he emerged from the main compartment door with needler in hand. He efficiently shot three of the mercs. The two remaining men returned fire, but, shooting blind, missed wildly. Galahad dropped to one knee and calmly gunned down one, then the other.
“All clear,” he said, shouting over the rotor noise.
“I’ll hover over the back deck,” said Jack. “Can you magline up?”
“I just got whacked with a wrench, man.”
“Roger that. I’ll dip it down.”
“Just hold steady and try not to behead me.”
Jack brought the S-61 around so that its axis was perpendicular to the crew boat’s beam. There wasn’t room to land and he was in danger of the rotor blades clipping the boat’s superstructure with catastrophic results, but he held the chopper as steady as he could over the pitching deck. The belly of the helo bumped against the port and starboard bulwarks. The rotor wash was insane, blasting the deck with gale force, but Galahad crouch-ran forward. He somehow kept his footing – his balance was almost as good as Jack’s – and leapt up like an NBA player doing a slam dunk to get a handhold in the open cargo door on the side of the chopper.
“Go!” he shouted.
Jack pulled the stick and broke the precarious hover, rising away from the crew boat. A tracer round from the machine gun on the second RHIB tracked near the chopper, but the Sikorsky was out of the line of fire before the lone remaining merc on the patrol boat could acquire target.
Galahad pulled himself into the cabin.
He was startled to see a SEG mercenary clambering in the opposite door. It was the sharpshooter Jack had left hanging from a bungee line. Bruised, battered, bloody from being flung against the deck, and wet from a dip into the water when the first RHIB was chopper-slammed, the merc
braced himself in the door and brought his carbine up.
Galahad lunged into the cabin, grabbing the barrel and shoving it out of line as the merc squeezed the trigger. The shot punched through the back seat back and chipped the unconscious pilot’s scapula on its way through the windshield.
Gal wrenched the carbine from the trooper’s hands before he could squeeze off another round, pulling his trigger finger out of socket in the process. They grappled, both men on hands and knees first, then upright. Gal head-butted his opponent. Blood splattered the faceplate of his Nereus dive mask as it crushed the merc’s nose. The momentary advantage allowed Galahad to gain leverage with both feet and thrust the trooper back out the door he came in, once again dangling from the sling.
“Stun round!” barked Jack.
Galahad unclipped his dive knife and slashed the bungee line, sending the SEG mercenary plummeting more than five hundred feet into the dark waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“Oops,” said Galahad. He closed the side doors, which reduced the rotor noise immensely, then peeled off his bloody dive mask.
“Check the pilot,” snapped Jack.
“He’s bleeding.”
“I know. Find the first aid kit and patch him.”
“He’s SEG.”
“He’s not a shooter.”
“Yes, I am still in one piece, thanks for asking.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “You’re fine. Just bandage this guy. He’s having a bad day.”
The pilot moaned and stirred. Galahad unclipped his needler and shot him. The pilot slumped forward again.
“Stun round,” he said. “For the pain.”
“Your bedside manner needs work, buddy.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Galahad unbuckled the inert pilot and dragged him to the passenger compartment, propping him into a seat. He located the first aid kit and went to work. He sliced open the pilot’s uniform at the shoulder, doused the wound with alcohol, and grimaced at the mess. “Flesh wound,” he said. “Except for the fractured bone.” He applied a ribbon of antibiotic cream, then squirted out a tube of liquid bandage coagulant foam to stop the bleeding. “That should hold you,” he said. He patted the pilot’s cheek. “But no tennis for a while.”
