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He tapped his radio to get Linda’s frequency as another fusillade slammed into the drill string. “Linda, its Cabrillo. Forget about the workers and get your butts up here double time.” When she didn’t respond Juan repeated her name. “Where in the hell is she?”
SHE’D spent five hours a week every week for two straight years. More than five hundred hours training on the mats Eddie Seng had brought into the Oregon’s fitness center dojo. He’d learned from a master who no longer bothered with rankings because there were few people on the planet capable enough to certify him.
Hearing Juan’s voice was enough to get Linda Ross over her moment of panic and into action. She stepped out and back so quickly that the killer didn’t realize the receiver of his gun was now against her hip. Slamming her elbow into his sternum sent a wave of rancid breath across her face. She then smashed her fist between his legs, recalling Eddie’s words at this point in the oft-practiced counterattack: “If you feel his weight on your back, toss him. If not, grab on until he goes down.”
But she felt the man deflate against her. She reached for his arm, cocked her hip, and threw him over her shoulder, holding on to him so their combined weight crushed him against the deck. Unable to get air into his deflated lungs the terrorist gasped like a fish. Linda chopped him at a pressure point on the side of his exposed throat and his eyes fluttered and rolled back into his head. He’d be out for hours.
She got to her feet to see the man she thought of as “the sniper” peering at her through the open counter to the dining hall. He was just lowering his AK for a shot he hadn’t dared to take. She gave him a little curtsy and was rewarded with a broad smile.
Linda threw a pair of flex cuffs around the nearby stove’s leg and secured the terrorist’s wrists as a precaution. Returning to the mess hall, she saw her other two men still guarding the door to make sure none of the workers left to face another slaughter on the deck.
Bodies littered the floor. A few of them were dead but most had just been wounded in the mindless melee. Some of their coworkers were already trying to help get them into more comfortable positions and pressing rags and wads of napkins into their wounds. One man in particular seemed to be leading the medical efforts. He was a white man with a fringe of sandy hair around his red scalp and the biggest hands she had ever seen. He was also one of the most ruggedly handsome men she’d ever seen. When he got up from examining a crewman leaning against an overturned table he noticed her and came across the room in five long strides.
“Little lady, I don’t know who you are or where in all get all you came from, but damn, darlin’, am I glad to see you.” He towered over her and his voice was pure west Texas. “I’m Jim Gibson, this here rig’s tool pusher.”
Linda knew that was the title given to the boss on an offshore platform. “Ross, my name is Linda Ross. Hold on a second.” She resettled her radio earpiece, which had been dislodged during the fight. “Juan, it’s Linda.”
“Thank God. I need you and your men up here now. We’re taking a pounding. Worry about the workers later.” The sound of a firefight raging in the background underscored his urgent words.
“They’re secure and I’m on my way.” She looked back up at the big Texan. “Mr. Gibson.”
“Jim.”
“Jim, I need you to keep your people here. There’s still terrorists topside. They’ve done something to the platform so oil’s pouring into the ocean. When we take care of the rebels, can you guys stop the crude?”
“Hell yeah we can. What’s going on?”
Linda put a fresh magazine into her machine pistol as she answered. “A group of rebels from the Congo were hired to take over several platforms and the main tanker terminal.”
“Is this some political thing?”
“Jim, I promise when this is over I’ll explain it all, but right now I’ve got to go.”
“You can tell me over dinner. I know a great Portuguese restaurant in Cabinda City.”
“I know a better one in Lisbon,” Linda called over her shoulder, “But you’re still buying.”
MIKE kept the Liberty driving straight for the seawall before cranking the wheel and chopping the throttles at the very last second. Though already off her foils, the boat settled deeper in the water as her side kissed the concrete so lightly that it didn’t disturb any of the mussels clinging to its side.
The forward hatch was open and men began streaming out of the boat and onto the quay, seeking whatever cover they could find. A smattering of small-arms fire came from the direction of the terminal, but between Mark Murphy’s efforts and Trono’s deft abilities with a boat, only a few of the rebels were yet in range.
Mike gathered up his gear and jumped for the wall. There was nothing to tie off the boat to so he unholstered a special gun from behind his back. Actuated by a .22-caliber cartridge, the gun fired a six-inch steel rod into the cement. He jacked the gun to reset it and fired a second bolt, then tied off a line dangling over the Liberty’s side.
The freedom fighters hadn’t forgotten their hard-won lessons in the years since their civil war. They were properly fanned out with each man able to cover the soldier to either side. Their first objective was less than a hundred yards away. Mike glanced at the metallic patch of cloth on the inside of his left sleeve and cursed. The feed was down.
With no choice, he led the charge, leapfrogging from position to position, always with men firing from behind to keep the terrorists at bay. Though there were only a handful of rebels at the moment, each passing minute saw more arriving in the area, having evaded the Oregon’s sophisticated array of sensors.
The sixty-man contingent took their first casualty when a gunman suddenly emerged from behind a small utility shed and opened fire Hollywood-style, his AK held low at the hip and his finger never leaving the trigger as he sprayed bullets. It was a suicide attack and the counterfire obliged him, but four of Mike’s men were down, one of them obviously dead.
Undeterred they ran on, dashing and weaving, holding up where they had protection so they could cover the skirmish line’s advance. It was urban street fighting at its worse, with enemies able to pop up almost anywhere.
Mike’s radio crackled so he skidded behind a shot-up tow truck to listen. “Liberty, this is Eagle Eye, sorry about the delay but I’ve got you patched back in.” It was Tiny Gunderson flying the UAV.
Trono
again glanced at the odd square embedded on the sleeve of his black battle jacket. The silvery material had morphed to reveal a picture of the tanker terminal beamed to the E-paper screen from the drone. The flexible monitor’s resolution was as clear as the big flat panel in the Oregon’s op center, though power constraints allowed for only snapshots to be sent from the UAV on ten-second intervals rather than a continuous feed. The technology was state of the art, and still prone to bugs, so it was still years away from deployment with the U.S. Army.
The image changed as Tiny zeroed in on Mike’s location. He saw there were three rebels on the far side of a warehouse who were about to outflank his men. Rather than explain how he knew, he leapt from behind the tow truck and dashed back so he could get a bead on the corner of the building where they huddled. A knob on the grenade launcher slung under his machine pistol constricted the barrel a fraction of a millimeter and thus slowed the projectile, allowing him to set any range he wanted. He estimated the corner of the building was forty yards away and dialed it in. The weapon made a funny, hollow bloop sound when it fired but the results were anything but comical. The grenade landed a foot from the edge of the building and detonated, shrapnel tearing through the thin corrugated metal and flesh.
