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It had rained off and on through the afternoon, and thunder began to rumble. Good weather for the attempt. Still, they waited for the cover of night. Cottonmouth Four, the fastest of the boats, swept down the west bank to draw fire, then ran close to the boom.
Not so much as a single Grog potshot came from the bank.
"Very odd," Coalfield said. He'd put extra rivermen into boat One, along with the dynamite.
They moved forward cautiously, covered by the other four boats of Cottonmouth.
As the demo teams disembarked, Valentine examined the boom with a hooded light. It was simply a series of waterlogged boats filled with buoyant. The real danger came from the chains connecting them below the waterline. They would either hang up a boat or cause damage to the propeller and rudder.
A sudden flash and a thunderclap lit up the valley.
Valentine heard the engines first, coming from a loop on the river on the other side of the boom.
Every eye on Cottonmouth One looked across the sodden boom, downriver.
"Get back on board, here," Valentine told the demolition team.
"We can do it, sir!" the senior called back, wiring his charge.
"That'll just open it for them."
Fast-moving River Patrol attack boats were heading for the boom. In the center of them, like a foxhunter's horse among its dogs, a ship as big as a barge could be made out. It seemed to be moving impossibly fast, throwing up three different bow waves.
"Evasive pattern," Coalfield ordered into his radio to Cottonmouth . "Make smoke! What the hell is that?"
Valentine finally received his chance to tell the riverman something he didn't know.
"That's the Delta. Chinese-built littoral craft. Triple catamaran hull. Crew of twenty, or thirty if they're expecting ship-to-shore fighting. I knew her when I was with the Coastal Marines. She's River Patrol, but back when I knew her she alternated between Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Delta. Before my time it was called the Delta Queen, but some Biloxi Church busybody pointed out that queens and all that were part of the Old World everyone was supposed to forget, and by naming a boat after one, they were treating royalty and aristocracy as a aspiration, rather than a blight to be wiped off the earth. So it became the Delta."
"Get that smoke going, there," he called to the sailors aft, securing their explosives.
"Smoke won't help. She's got radar-controlled guns, rapid-fire cannon-two of them, one on each side just forward of the bridge."
Cottonmouth broke away from the boom.
The two sides exchanged tracer fire across the blockade. The Delta moved fast; either her captain was a reckless bastard or he was unusually sure of the Mississippi's depth. Of course, the catamaran hull helped.
"Shit!" the gunner roared as brass casings fell into the canvas recovery bags. "What's that thing made of, moon rocks?"
Valentine had never heard that moon rocks were bullet resistant, but the man was under stress.
A hot hand washed across Cottonmouth One and the gunner was gone, whisked away by bullets like a strong breeze plucking a loose piece of paper off a desk. Valentine heard distinct splashes as bits of the gunner struck river, his eyes blinded by the white streaks of tracer fire. Miraculously, he'd avoided being hit.
He jumped into the blood-splattered position, feet finding purchase on the rough platform. He checked the drums on the twin machine gun and opened fire.
The Atlanta Gunworks Type Three had more of a kick. The gun gently chattered in its mount. The hardest part was keeping aim with the boat rushing across river. As Cottonmouth One heeled he had to constantly adjust elevation.
The rain came down harder, shielding them from both visual and radar-or at least Valentine hoped for that to be the case. Cottonmouth limped upriver, leaving a single boat to watch matters at the boom.
They held a dispirited council of war at an abandoned riverside bar.
Some entrepreneur had tried to make a go of it as a rest stop for boatmen and River Patrol. It had been painted in the past ten years, and there was signage up, huge block letters advertising EATS BEERS MUSICS in block letters big enough to be read on the other side of the Mississippi.
The Delta's flotilla had paused near the boom, ready to protect it tonight or open it in the morning-if not sooner, with the weather clearing.
In the open waters of the Gulf, the Delta would have made short work of the Cottonmouth flotilla, where its speed and accurate fire would have reduced the boats to blackened wrecks in a quarter of an hour. But on the twisting Mississippi, she couldn't make use of her speed and even her supremely light draft only allowed her to use the relatively narrow barge channel. Cottonmouth boats could float on a heavy dew, as the rivermen phrased it.
Cottonmouth One had been so badly damaged by gunfire that Coalfield-himself with a painful splinter wound-had transferred flotilla command to Cottonmouth Four.
