“I’m just worried is all.”
“You are worried?” Audy rolled his head on his shoulders. When he stopped, his eyebrow was doing its thing.
“Have you made certain you have enough supplies put aside here?” Audy asked. “Although I don’t see how you intend to get back here. It’s a long swim from Lord Madral’s estate.”
“I got a plan . . .”
The Jema stared at him for a moment before giving his head a shake in frustration. “From my perspective, only one of us is crazy. If anyone has a right to be worried, it is me.”
Jake slapped Audy on the shoulder, hard enough that the Jema flinched. “Don’t worry about being crazy! You’ll either get used to it, or it’ll pass. Just don’t forget about me. If I don’t show up in a month, send somebody to come and get me . . . maybe not Arsolis, somebody else.”
The wind on the Baltic, once they’d left the shelter of the islands, was strong enough to drive whitecaps that showed in the intermittent moonlight. The waves slapped against the hull of Arsolis’s cargo hauler with enough force that Jake could feel the vibration transmitted through the ship’s worn hull and even more ancient framing. If he allowed himself to stop and think about what he was doing, he figured he would have been having second thoughts. Best to just do it. He zipped up the insulated dry suit a little higher around his neck as the lights of the Kaerin lord’s estate came into view around the headland.
The RHIBs with their outboards had gone on ahead to Gotland with Audy. Arsolis was piloting this sail-driven tub loaded with his own people, their belongings, and more than a few animals stuffed down into the hold below. Two more similar ships sailed in a rough line behind them loaded with more supplies and the rest of Audy’s contingent. The smell wafting up from the hold was more than enough incentive to want to get off. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought. Then again, he’d had the same thought almost twenty minutes earlier. It required glances at his target every few minutes to discern that they were moving at all. In the black of night, with heavy clouds blowing past what little moon there was, the wind was doing its best to drive them ashore. His target was growing closer with a painful slowness.
Lupe worked his way aft across the deck, until he reached him and extended a hand.
Jake gave it a shake. “What’s this for?”
“You know, in case . . .”
“In case what?”
Lupe rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I just wanted to wish you luck.”
“No worries,” Jake answered. “You know this piece-of-shit tub is held together by barnacles, right? You guys will be lucky to survive the trip. Especially you.”
“What do mean, especially me?”
“I think the old man has figured out that you’ve been playing hide the alien chorizo with his only daughter.”
“But we . . . I haven’t.”
Jake shrugged. “Save it for somebody that’ll believe you. Between us, that is the exact story I’d stick to. Deny, deny, deny.”
“Screw you, Jake!”
Jake clapped Lupe on the shoulder. “That’s better. Now, help me get the scuba tank secured into the inflatable.”
Twenty minutes later, he was pushing the inflatable raft ahead of him through the troughs and peaks of the wind-driven waves. With his swim flippers, he was certain he was making better time than his previous ride had. Of course, the wind was blowing hard enough that when it caught the inflatable at the peak of a wave, it pulled him that much closer to the shore.
He wasn’t in any hurry. With the clarity of an after-action report, he now realized he’d jumped off the cargo hauler a little bit earlier than he should have. He could afford to let the wind blow him ashore as he half-assed an occasional kick or two to drive him parallel to the shore. His intention was to insert west of the estate, on the far side of the small marina that housed his two targets; the coal-fired, steam-driven paddle wheelers that passed for the local Kaerin navy. In the intervening moments between the swells, he could catch glimpses of the two vessels that reminded him of riverboat casinos tied up for maintenance. No gaudy strings of Christmas lights, no cheesy music.
But there were lights aboard, which meant that the boilers were at least fired and producing steam. It also meant there would be watch crews aboard. He wasn’t driven by the hatred he had come to have for the Strema, at least not yet. He had no doubt he’d get there; he usually did. For the moment, he settled on the fact that these were the assholes running the Strema. If there were innocent Hatwa draftees aboard, he couldn’t help that—they’d joined the wrong navy.
The shore was close enough that the frequency of the waves changed abruptly as the sea bottom came up to meet the surface. The wave height increased, but the surges between the peaks became longer and more powerful, threatening to smash him against the low wall of jagged black rock. A few kicks to the side, and he made certain the inflatable was between him and the rocks, acting like a man-sized dock bumper.
The inflatable stopped with a suddenness that let the wave behind him continue to push his body up and over the side of the small craft. He and a hundred gallons of water found themselves inside the tiny craft. The next wave compressed the boat against the rock, almost folding it in half and squirting him upward, riding a jet of water.
His curses were cut off as he suddenly found himself underwater, disoriented and, if there had been anyone else around to see him, professionally embarrassed. Holding his breath, he relaxed enough that he could discern which direction was up. He broke the surface at the edge of the inflatable; the hard rubber caught and ripped his swim mask downward around his chin as he breached.
He found a grip on the rock above him with one hand, and waited. The next wave came in and lifted him as he pulled for all he was worth. He managed to land atop the slick rock, amid the swirl of water that drained off quickly. He grabbed the raft’s towrope from around his ankle and took up the slack before the outgoing surge pulled it tight, threatening to pull him back in. Two waves later, he had the small inflatable up on the rock with him.
It took him ten minutes to move the suddenly very heavy and uncooperative bathtub of rubber along the edge of rock, until he found a place landward of the rock wall where he could legitimately go ashore. The watertight equipment bags were still tied in place, and the scuba tank looked intact, although even in the dark, he could see where its black paint had been scored in a long gash, exposing the aluminum beneath. Better that than his head.
“Fuck me . . .” he whispered to himself and let out a long breath of relief. This sort of shit was a lot easier when you had your team with you, and you weren’t thirty-five years old. He pulled the gear from the bags, feeling vindicated that Audy had relented when he’d insisted on bringing it along. By the time he was loaded down, he was missing the water that would help support the weight of the equipment he had tied to their own floats. His swim fins clipped to his belt, he moved east along a shore path. Given how close to the Kaerin estate he was, a foot patrol was his biggest worry.
He’d gone a half mile until the path curved inland, tracking with the edge of the estate’s marina. He pulled up and settled in behind a thick stand of young trees. The whole estate had electricity and the marina was lit up by light poles set into the wall fronting the estate house along the far side of the marina. There was single light pole standing on the solitary quay where both paddle wheelers were tied up. The solitary Kaerin guard patrolling the stone quay that ran between the two moored ships was visible until his path took him behind the nearest of the wooden ships. He saw nothing moving within or on the decks of either ship, but the light spilling from several porthole windows above the waterline and aft told him where the boiler watch was working.
Letting his sight picture in the binoculars drift across the open water of the marina to the estate house and the short wall surrounding it, he spotted two more Kaerin warriors, identifiable by the length of their swords at either end of the curtain wall that overlooked the marina. Those were who he had
to worry about. They were elevated enough that they had a much better view of the small harbor than the solitary guard patrolling the middle of it between the two ships. He looked hard for more visible signs of activity, but saw nothing beyond the occasional red spark that made it out the top of the stacks of the paddle wheelers.
He relaxed, and waited for a guard change. He didn’t know for a fact there would be one, but the Kaerin didn’t strike him as idiots, and military logic was the same everywhere. He was beginning to doubt that thought process when, nearly an hour later the guard at the northwest corner of the wall was replaced. He watched the short conversation, and followed the replaced guard as he walked the wall to the southwest corner and replaced that man. Two minutes later, Jake saw that guard walking the edge of the marina. True to form, he replaced the guard on the quay.
“And that’s why we are patient,” he whispered to himself. The Kaerin warrior who had been on the quay climbed the boarding ramp of the far paddle wheeler and replaced another whom he hadn’t seen. That one replaced another who had been hidden in the wheelhouse of the second ship. Finally, the last warrior in the daisy chain made his way off the ship, and walked around the marina back towards the estate house.
It started to rain, a fine mist that in another week or two would be snow, as he sat down and pulled on his flippers. He couldn’t help but smile; the rain might help put out the fires, but it was going to make them a lot easier to light. He sincerely hoped the lord of the manor was home this evening. This was going to be a difficult performance made easier by the fact that no one on this planet thought the Kaerin could be attacked. It would be a real shame if the intended audience missed the play.
The water of the Baltic was brackish and a lot less translucent than normal seawater. He’d known that going in; he’d done training stints with the Norwegians and Danes years ago, on a different planet. At night, unable to use a light, he felt he was swimming through half-frozen ink. The compass strapped to his wrist glowed, and he could just make out his line of travel if he pressed it up against his face mask. Even with that piece of gear, courtesy of the US Navy, he nearly missed the paddle wheeler. He’d swam right underneath it and came up short against the stone of the quay.
He turned and floated upward until his free hand brushed the bottom of the vessel. The thick rubber gloves might be helping against the cold, but they were worthless in determining whether the hull was metal or wood underneath the braille of barnacles he could feel. He tugged on one of the ropes trailing behind him, attached to neutral buoyancy bags carrying his payload. He would have laughed at the memory of Kyle giving him a hard time about packing C-4; “Hey, you’re there to gather intel, not to start a war”; but laughter was ill-advised with a mouthpiece and regulator between his lips. They started it, he thought back on his reply.
He maneuvered the plastic explosive into place and secured it with the bag’s towrope, using barnacles to lace the two bricks up tight against the hull. Once he was certain they were secure, he pushed the button on the detonator, activating it, and pushed it into the brick. His mask was close enough to the package that he could see the small red indicator light glowing faintly through the murk. One down, one to go.
He pushed off from the hull with his hands and drifted down until he felt the muddy bottom. Keeping his right hand on the stone face of the quay, he kicked his way to the end, rounded it, and started back down the other side toward the second paddle wheeler. Machinery noise emanating from the boiler room of the second ship was audible through the water as he passed beneath its bow, and grew louder as he moved towards the stern. The Kaerin put one of the ships out on a short patrol every morning. He imagined it was their version of dick-waving for the locals. This one had its boiler up in preparation.
It also had a recently scraped hull and no barnacles to loop his rope around. He moved by feel, following the noise until his hand brushed against a metal grate. He could feel a slight pull from the water being drawn through it. That’ll do, he thought. He made quick work of emplacing the second improvised limpet mine, taking care to leave most of the grate unblocked.
He confirmed the detonator was active and started back the way he had come. At the end of the quay, he altered his path and dead reckoned an angle that should bring him out close to where he had put in, on the far side of the marina. By the time he met the bottom coming up, he was fighting the impulse to shiver from the cold. He focused on slowing his breathing, taking slower, deeper breaths. It helped a little bit, but he had the beginnings of a cold-water hangover by the time he broke the surface.
Before crawling ashore, he looked back across the marina and didn’t see any signs of alert. His gear was where he’d stashed it; he’d come out within twenty yards of where he went in. Still surprised there wasn’t a patrol on this well-worn path, he reattached his scope to the machine pistol that he’d had strapped to him as he swam. He dug out his transmitter, and dropped its antenna into the water. A quick glance at his watch told him he had just over three hours until the sun came up. He needed to be well gone by then, or well hidden. He definitely had a preference.
He eyed the trio of small sailboats tied to the marina wall, between him and the nearest paddle wheeler. He could have tried dragging it around the edge while he’d been in the water, but boats didn’t move on their own. Even these medieval shit heels would have been alerted by that. The flip side was that there was soon going to be a lot of ambient light, and he couldn’t exactly sail out when the storm troopers came running in response. He’d play it loose, and be ready to make his escape if he could. More than likely, he was going to spend a night or two in hiding before he could steal a boat that would get him offshore.
His head was throbbing with the aftereffect of the cold water, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he dry-chewed three aspirin. It was happening; he was starting to hate them. He could be back home on Eden right now, fishing the Upper Snake River with a bottle of Audy’s rotgut. But no, these Kaerin assholes had to go and start some shit.
Checking his weapon, he confirmed the Kaerin night watch were all still in position through his scope. He switched the detonator transmitter to the first channel. It had been so dark underwater he’d operated by feel alone. It was something they practiced a lot in the teams, but tonight had been the first time he’d actually accomplished it operationally. He had no idea which detonator was going to be set off by the first channel and it didn’t matter.
He thumbed the trigger. The ship farthest from him erupted, shooting a gout of flame and steam up through its aft deck. He wanted to shout, just like he had as a kid when he and Brent Bowman had discovered Uncle Pierre’s stash of M-80s. This was so much better than launching hubcaps. A second explosion, more of a whumpf than a crack, obliterated the paddle wheeler amidships. The far paddle wheel was blown off its axle in close to one piece. It flew across the water to slam up against the wall surrounding the manor house.
The paddle facing him came apart in a million pieces, some spinning through the air over the nearest ship and splashing down not far from where he hid. The surviving ship caught most of the burning wood shrapnel and was rocked in its mooring by the shock wave. It was burning in half a dozen places, and when it settled down, it was clear its mooring lines had been severed and was drifting free from the quay.
“Huh, hadn’t figured on that . . .” he mumbled to himself as he settled in to watch the Kaerin’s reaction. Hopefully, the second charge was still attached. The far ship settled quickly; ship’s blown in-two tended to do that. Its upper structures were burning hard, but he could hear the hissing of flooding water putting out the fires belowdecks, even as stored rifle ammunition popped off from the heat. The Kaerin used waxed paper cartridges for the most part, and he could tell they were cooking off with much more of a fizzle than the brass or steel variety would have. The steam billowing out of the wreckage obscured much of the far defensive wall, but he could see half a dozen warriors standing along its ramparts overlooking the marina.
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Shouldering his weapon, he scanned the house itself and stopped immediately at a top-floor window overlooking the marina. A solitary man stood half in, half out the window, screaming at the warriors on the walls below him. The head asshole himself, he guessed. He resisted the urge to put a round through the man’s chest. So far, this could be a boiler accident. It was a distraction he was after, not an initiation of open war. The latter would come, as surely as he knew the sun would rise.
Several dozen warriors streamed out from behind the walls and ran down towards the quay. They were shouting at the sailors fighting the small fires aboard the free-floating paddle boat, no doubt telling them to get the ship away from the fire. Jake watched as a harsh, screaming whistle of escaping steam rent the harbor, and every sailor on the deck of the remaining ship stopped what they were doing. A cloud billowed out from below. The concussion must have cracked a seal or something on the remaining ship. He didn’t hesitate as he switched channels on the transmitter and thumbed the switch.
The second ship’s ass end was blown out of the water. The entire vessel hung in the air at about 30 degrees relative to the water as Kaerin sailors and warriors went flying. Its keel snapped in two as it hit the water, sending a wave of up onto the wide path edging the harbor. Its boiler, contained in that broken-off subsection, was underwater when it blew, sending up a second fountain of black water, harbor mud, and steam.
He nodded to himself. Pops had always said, “A job worth doing is worth doing right.” His work here was done. He took in the disorganized scene of destruction. There were only a handful of warriors on their feet within the confines of the marina, and most of those had just arrived. Any of the Kaerin who had reached the quay between the explosions were unmoving, in pieces or floating out in the harbor. He could see a couple of warriors laid out on the marina’s skirt, struggling to pick themselves up even as a handful of new arrivals emerged from the gate to the estate beyond. It was time to go, and if he stole one of the sailboats right now, he would risk being spotted.
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 33
