by Chuck Dixon
They drew into the range of small arms, and the Northmen lined the gunwales to send a blizzard of musket balls out across the narrowing gap. The Mughals and their conscripts answered in kind with fire of their own. Volleys of arrows fell from above as well. They came in hundreds, wave after wave loosed from the platforms set on the main masts like branches on an evil tree. Men in white pantaloons, shimmering iron breastplates, and high red turbans pulled back on reflex bows to send forth the storms of three-foot shafts tipped with barbed heads of steel.
A man by Dwayne took an arrow straight through the crown of his head. The point exploded from the back of his neck before he slumped kicking to the deck. Another man fell from above, a pair of arrows in him. He landed in the fighting nets, spraying blood on those below. Other arrows found homes in flesh, causing many of the men to pull the decorative shields from their hangers along the ports and hold them overhead. From under this makeshift shell, the sharpshooters continued their fusillade, firing in volleys now. Men dropped from the gunwales of the Mughal boat; their bodies lost in the water churned to foam by the bite of the oars.
The tall bow of the transport was drawing closer; close enough to see the individual features of the men tensed and fierce and keen to board the vessel of their hated enemy. Faces mustached and bearded, eyes glaring beneath glittering helmets and colorful striped turbans. There were darker men there as well, naked but for loincloths, heads crowned with thick manes of matted hair. They waved curved swords and axes above their heads and leveled blunderbusses and pistols. Every face was a mask of fury and bloodlust. For certain, the majority of them found courage in hashish or some other drug.
For their own part, the Norsemen were getting their drink on as well. Hogsheads of ale and harder stuff sat on the deck with the tops knocked off. The men dipped mugs, helmets, and even hands into the open kegs to take in their fill even as shot and shafts flew past them. One guy bent to dip his head into a barrel like he was ducking for apples. An arrow took him in the ass up to the fletching, the point jutting from the flesh above his navel. He rolled on the deck yowling while his buddies laughed themselves sick at the sight.
Dwayne felt Samuel take his wrist in a vice-like grip. He turned to see Samuel trying to fix a silver bracelet onto his wrist. Samuel’s arm was bare, a tan line where his bracelet had been. He was trying to send Dwayne off with his own device. With a shove and jerk, Dwayne pulled from Samuel’s grasp. He backed away, Samuel following him across the deck, speaking with an earnest expression. Dwayne could guess what the other man was saying, but he wasn’t buying it. He’d never leave a man behind, and he’d damn sure never run from a fight. He continued away from Samuel, breaking through a clutch of men rolling a squat barreled mortar across the deck. He got to the other side of them and lost himself in the throng of warriors and sailors waiting for the fight to come.
Dwayne plucked a pair of pistols from the body of a man lying against a thwart. The man was missing a head and one arm. Dwayne’s eyes were for the pistols. Both big bore jobs with twin barrels. He made sure that each was loaded and primed before they went into his sash. His own sword was gone, lost when the blast tossed him. He found another, a broad-bladed claymore with a screaming falcon head atop the pommel. This he kept in his fist. There was a rising and falling susurration in his ears now. His hearing was returning. It was the voices of men calling in rhythm. The Norsemen were singing as the shadow of the enemy vessel hove closer.
The lead Mughal boat struck the Norse vessel hard abeam at an oblique angle. The impact sent a quake through the timbers, the deck tilting upward before falling once again and causing all to stumble. The force of it tore a long section of spar loose to swing across the main deck like a pendulum. A few men were caught in its deadly arc and fell with skulls cracked and ribs crushed.
Carried by its momentum, the enemy ship caromed along the starboard side, the iron-studded bow snapping oars off at the rowlocks. It shuddered to a stop; a section of its higher deck locked tight against the hull of the Norse ship.
A dense cloud of cream-colored smoke blossomed as each side spent one last volley before the killing began in earnest. Iron grapples were flung on loops of heavy rope, the blades biting into woodwork and decking faster than the pull ropes could be chopped away. The smoke cleared to show the side of the Mughal vessel covered in a torrent of men scaling down from the gunwales, dropping from lines or simply leaping the distance, shrieking like madmen.
The Vikings stood their ground, shoulder to shoulder, creating a wedge and firing weapons over the tops of the once-decorative shields. Any enemy who made it through that withering fire was brought down by spear points and ax heads while freshly loaded weapons were brought forward.
Emboldened rather than cowed by the carnage, the Mughal swordsmen and musketeers fell in greater number over the rails of their ship. They were being covered by archers lining the hull to fire at will with lethal accuracy. These were Tartars, with powerful reflex bows of sinew and horn. The shield wall bristled with broken shafts. Norsemen fell impaled on arrows that smashed through the shields or streaked over the tops of the moving defense.
A large knot of Mughal troops gathered for a rush as the wall of shields parted just enough to allow the mouth of that big-bellied mortar through.
It went off with a crack and a belch of black smoke. Driven by the kick of the discharge, it rolled away on its trunnions, men leaping aside to avoid being pulped under the wheels of the two-ton bulk of the beast.
The contents of the barrel, hundreds of balls of canister shot packed with wadding, turned the deck before it into an abattoir. A wide swath of rent flesh and blood covered the boards, unrecognizable as the gang of living men who were rushing forward a second before. The balls also took out a broad section of the starboard rail in its killing swath.
From the roar of the mortar or, more likely, the sudden change in air pressure, some of Dwayne’s hearing returned with a pop. He was dizzy for a moment and spit a thick wad of bloody phlegm to the deck. But he could distinguish individual sounds now. Rising above all was the hoarse roar of a Norseman shouting to the others, a musketoon with a burning fuse cradled in his arms. He was a stout fucker with arms thick as thighs. A fresh cut across his nose was sending blood into his mouth, and when he spoke, it was with a crimson spray. His eyes were wild with an exultant rage, the whites showing all around like a mad dog. The others responded with roars of their own.
The stout guy turned to a fresh shower of near-naked Mughals descending from the other ship. From the hip, he cut loose with the musketoon. A fine spray of shot spilled screaming men to the deck with missing limbs, trailing ropey bundles of guts from rent bellies. The stout guy tossed the smoking musketoon aside and jerked his sword from the scabbard on his back.
With a defiant wail, the mass of Norsemen rushed the gap in the railing and began climbing the hull of the Mughal ship. They hauled themselves up lines, leapt from rigging and climbed hand and footholds punched in the hull of the enemy ship by the point-blank mortar load. The sons of bitches were going on the attack. Dwayne stared in open-mouth admiration at the balls on these guys.
Swept up by the sheer insanity of it all, Dwayne charged with them for the face of the enemy hull. The others were calling out dire threats, the names of their gods or swearing oaths of courage.
“Hoo-ah! Rangers go forward!” Dwayne bellowed as he grabbed a swinging line and hauled himself aloft, his scabbarded sword in its bandolier slapping on his back.
45
Tail of the Leviathan
The crew of the Ocean Raj worked in a race with the weather. Darla had built to a Cat Four and was bearing down on them. The ten-foot seas and sixty-kilometer winds were just the outer bands of a monstrous bitch of a storm on a westerly course. Eskinder led the crew to secure the big barn of a floating platform as securely as possible to the Raj for a long tow. There was no time for welding. Chains, cables, and even rope lines were the best they could do. The tow would be a tricky one,
with the platform acting as a natural sail in the hurricane winds.
Jimbo, Bat, and Morris Tauber scoured the bridge, living quarters and guard shack for any kind of device that might be used to trace their position. Transponders, cell phones, radios, dishes, and any other electronics with radio, wi-fi, or satellite access were torn free and tossed overboard. They even unshipped the sonar and radar arrays and pitched them into the roiling water.
Lee and Shan continued the search for the phantom sniper but found nothing. Byrus clambered up in into the platform’s superstructure in winds that threatened to tear him away to the Colombia coast. He found no evidence of the man they sought.
Down in the wildly swaying hold, Parviz and Quebat took turns puking. Persians were not traditionally very able seamen.
Jason Taan and his former bodyguards sat securely locked in the improvised brig of a Conex container.
Aboard the tug vessel, Geteye glanced now and then at the starred depression in the glass of the windscreen that was level with his eyes. Someone came close to taking his head off if not for the heavy tempered panes meant to protect the bridge from the impact of gale winds and tons of water.
“Too close,” he said.
“Good as a miss,” Boats said.
“Too many close misses, skipper. I am using up all of my luck.”
The tug captain and his two crewmen looked from one man to another. They’d been joined by the other four crewmen of the tug. All were seated cross-legged on the deck in a forward corner of the bridge away from any hatches. They barely understood this exchange between the two Americans. They did have a sense that this was over. Though what that meant for them, none of them knew.
“Listen, captain,” the red-bearded giant said. “We’re almost done here. We’ll be leaving you. I suggest that you have two choices. You can try to get back to port into the teeth of that.”
Boats nodded toward the crying wind and the thrashing rain outside the bridge.
“With no radio?” the captain said.
“Exactly. Glad you agree. Best thing for you is to run ahead of the storm,” the SEAL said. “I’d suggest south-sou’west. Head for deep water.”
“You let us live?”
“We got what we came for,” Boats said. His face split in a broad grin.
The smile was returned by all as the American’s words were translated for the others.
The next twelve hours were a grueling slog that felt like as many days.
The cargo freighter fought its way up the face of rolling waves, towing the Dex-Tan rig behind them. The dead weight acted as a sea anchor as well as a rogue sail. Sometimes it threatened to be a bludgeon as it rose high behind the stern on its towlines, looking as though it could come crashing down on the aft deck of the Raj with the next wave.
In the bridge, Boats and Geteye worked at the unforgiving grind of navigating through a tropical depression. Mile after mile of humping green hills and black valleys marched to the horizon. Eyes locked on the sea ahead, they worked throttle and wheel to keep the bow up, and the course as true as the weather would allow. They were making their way east/ nor’east at best speed possible which was turtle slow. Still, they were a few knots an hour over the following storm’s best speed.
It wasn’t until the following evening that they saw stars in the sky. The Raj was clear of all but the outer effects of the storm. Darla had veered south to follow the coast of the isthmus bound for the Guianas.
Boats returned to his bunk with a bottle for a well-deserved crash. Geteye retired as well after assigning mates to a rotation of short watches so they could rest in spells. They continued the Raj’s course into the Pacific and far from any of the commonly frequented shipping lanes.
Down in the chartroom, the way ahead was being planned over eggs, bacon, and generously laced Irish coffee. The ship was quiet after days of evil weather and frantic activity. Most everyone but the Rangers and Morris Tauber was racked out on bunks somewhere.
“This will work, right?” Jimbo said.
“Theoretically,” Morris said.
“Shit,” Bat said.
“Fuck me,” Lee said.
“No. There’s no reason I can see that this isn’t perfectly feasible,” Morris said.
“Even though I really need some sleep.”
“I don’t like leaving that big ugly box where anyone can find it,” Chaz said.
“Boats assures me that even an object the size of that floating platform will be nearly impossible to find on the open sea. Especially when they won’t know exactly what course we took,” Morris said.
“How ‘nearly impossible,’ Mo?’” Lee said.
“In his words, ‘the Pacific Ocean is just stupidly, fucking big’ and finding the platform will be like ‘finding a virgin in Iceland.’”
“And how hard is that?” Jimbo asked. He was honestly curious.
“Well, according to Boats, in Iceland, there’s a virgin behind every tree.”
“Fucking sailor,” Lee said.
“Still don’t like it,” Chaz said.
“We’ll only need to leave it anchored for a few days,” Morris said.
“But you said that it might take weeks to get what we need,” Lee said.
“I know you’re bushed, bro. But try to keep up,” Jimbo said.
Lee sighed then growled as he rubbed the heel of his hand into an eye.
“Yeah. Yeah. Time machine. Fuck.”
“So, you told us where we’re going. But when are we going?” Chaz said.
“1976 should work,” Morris said.
The rest were too tired to make even the feeblest joke about disco.
46
Tomorrow’s Doorway
The sea was on fire.
Jarl Dalgaard’s massive dreadnaught was engulfed in flames and burning down to the waterline. Members of its crew who made it to the water either drowned outright or were executed by arrow and shot by Mughals using them for sport. Another Norse ship careened about, leaving a thick haze of black smoke in its wake, sails ablaze.
The rest of the men-of-war were either overwhelmed by boarders or shot to lifeless hulks under brutal broadsides from Mughal ships passing in columns down either hull unopposed. Longboats lay capsized or demolished to smears of flotsam carried away on the current. Mortar barges, left behind by their towing vessels and abandoned by their crews, drifted without course, tangled together in their towlines.
On shore, Njarl’s forces lay in the jaws of a vice; their assault stalled by the fierce resistance of the fort’s defenders. Emboldened by the approach of friendly banners, the Mughals within the walls fought all the harder. Skiffs were let down from troop ships and disembarked a fresh horde of howling warriors, all under the cover of punishing suppression fire from shallow draft gunboats pulled close to shore.
To a man, Njarl’s company fell on the blood-soaked sand under blade, shot, and shaft. Njarl Hadradi died gargling curses, his back to the outer wall of the fortress, an arrow through his neck, and the blade of a Mughal tulwar sunk deep in his guts.
Miles from the clash of armadas, three ships lay locked on their own private war.
Bound by grapple and line, the Mughal and Norse ships spun at the mercy of the wind while their crews battled for survival on the blood-slick decks. Vikings drove off the first wave of boarders and clambered over their own starboard rails to climb aboard their attacker.
A second Mughal vessel, another fat-bellied transport, made its way around the floating melee to tie up to the bow end. It moved to close for a direct assault on the man-of-war from the port side.
Mughal archers fired down from the gunwales and tops of the boat bound in a death struggle with its enemy. Shafts struck deep in the mass of Northmen climbing the hull to engage. Men tumbled back to the deck of the Viking man-of-war or dropped into the gap to be mashed to pulp between the grinding keels. Even the deadly shower of arrows was not enough to slow the momentum of berserker rage.
Musket fire from the to
ps of the Norse ship poured down on the Tartar archers causing them to retreat. The momentary lull was all the Vikings needed to clamber over the gunwales, swinging axes and swords. They fired pistols and blunderbusses into the packed bowmen, sending them back against their own foremast. More howling men swung over on lines to drop to the deck. The knot of boarders in the fo’castle grew in number and advanced at a run at the startled Mughals. Dwayne charged with them. He fired a double charge from a pistol, turning a man’s face to bloody mush. The other pistol loads drove a massive swordsman to the deck boards, slipping in his own guts. Gripping the discharged pistols by the barrels, he flailed away into the first rank of archers. The iron-capped butt ends acted as blunt weapons. The Mughal archers had abandoned their bows and raised short swords in defense. They were joined by pikemen, who made a hedge of spear points. Behind them shrieked war whoops could be heard from above through the cacophony. Among the company of defenders were red Indians paid in silver to fight in the army of the Khans. Hurons and Creek in fearsome war paint under iron helms. They wielded muskets held like clubs; the stock ends capped in studded brass to add a killing heft. They threw tomahawks with fatal skill, sending them spinning into the ranks of the Vikings.
Without hesitation or fear, the Northmen battered spear shafts aside and rammed hard into the line of defenders to create a gap that split the mob at the foremast in two. Into this breach poured more bearded Northmen until they gained the main deck. The Mughal defenders were driven back to their own quarterdeck, those who were not shoved against the gunwales and slain outright. Shot and arrows still rained down from above but were paid no heed by the attackers high on bloodlust. Northmen fell to the fire, and their brothers stepped over them to press the attack.
Painted with the blood of other men, Dwayne raised his sword arm again and again, at the head of the merciless phalanx grinding through the Mughal crew. This was the work of battle. A strong arm and a determined mind. The first adrenaline rush of battle was waning. Now he had to draw on the same reserves of will that saw him through so many other days that seemed lost. The last brutal leg of a survival course back at Benning. An ambush in Tikrit. A pitched battle with an army of cannibals. Standing outnumbered against a Roman century. Now it was about stamina, training, and grit. No glory, no brotherhood. Just the strenuous labor of murder.
