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Juan felt the Oregon’s deck shiver ever so slightly. Her big pumps were rapidly draining seawater from her saddle ballast tanks. They were going in.
In the op center, Max Hanley sat at the fore helm. Like Juan, he’d listened to the entire exchange, but unlike the Chairman he’d been able to at least watch some of the action. Next to him was the weapons tech. Every exterior door was folded back and every gun run out. The ship literally bristled.
He killed power to the pump jets, then reversed the flow.
Water exploded in a churning wave from the bow tubes, and the ship slowed so quickly her stern lifted slightly out of the water. As soon as she was clear of the Aggie Johnston, he cut reverse and applied forward pressure through the tubes. The cryopumps keeping the magnetohydrodynamics chilled to a hundred degrees below zero began to sing as the jets demanded more and more energy.
The Oregon accelerated like a racehorse, carving a graceful curve around the back of the tanker. In front of him was the low gray silhouette of the Libyan frigate.
He could imagine the consternation on the Sidra’s bridge when a ship twice its size suddenly appeared without warning from around the supertanker. After what had to have been a stunned thirty seconds, the airways came alive with expletives, demands, and threats.
Max nimbly tucked the Oregon between the two vessels even as McCullough turned sharply northward to gain sea room and safety.
“Identify yourself or we will open fire.”
That was the second time Max had heard the challenge, and he doubted there would be a third. There was still a big enough gap for the Sidra to rake the Oregon with her three-inch cannons. He resisted the strong impulse to snatch up the handset and identify themselves as the USS Siren.
Watching on the monitor, he saw a cloud like a big cotton ball bloom in front of the Sidra’s forward gun. The shell shrieked by the bow and exploded in the sea fifty feet off her beam an instant before the concussion of the shot rumbled across the Oregon.
“Warning shot’s free, my friend,” Max said tightly. “Next one and the gloves come off.”
The rear gun discharged this time, and an explosive shell slammed into the wing bridge, blowing it completely away.
Max could barely keep himself in his chair. “That’s it. Fire at will.”
The narrowing gulf between the two combatants came alive as the Oregon’s 30mm Gatling guns and bigger Bofors autocannon spewed out continuous streams of fire. The Sidra’s own antiaircraft guns added to the thunder of her main batteries, which were firing at a four-shot-a-minute clip.
The Oregon rang like a bell with each staggering impact. The rounds from the AAA penetrated her hull but were stopped by the next bulkhead. The deck guns’ rounds burst through.
Already three cabins were in ruins, and slabs of marble had been ripped from the walls of the ballast tank that doubled as a swimming pool. Every impact saw more destruction. The boardroom where the senior staff met took a direct hit. The five-hundred-pound table was upended, and the leather chairs turned to kindling.
The automated fire-suppression system was battling a half dozen simultaneous blazes. Fire teams had been told to stay on the opposite side of the ship with the rest of the crew rather than risk themselves during the duel.
But the Oregon was giving as good as she got. All the Sidra’s bridge windows had been shot out, and enough tungsten rounds poured through the openings to mangle all the navigation and steering equipment. Rounds sparked off her armored hide. Her lifeboat shook like a rat in the jaws of a terrier when the Gatling hosed it. When it moved on, the craft was riddled with holes and hung drunkenly from one set of pulleys.
None of their smaller-caliber weapons could penetrate the armor protecting the turrets, so the weapons officer loosened the bow-mounted 120mm cannon. Because it used the same stability control system as an M1A2 main battle tank, this main gun had unbelievable accuracy. Its first round hit where the turret met the Sidra’s deck, and the entire mass jumped five feet into the air before smashing back again, greasy smoke billowing from the guns’ barrels.
The two ships continued to pound on each other, each capable of absorbing tremendous punishment, as the gap grew narrower still. At point-blank range, there was no need to aim. Rounds impacted almost the instant they left the guns.
Nothing like this had been seen in the annals of naval warfare for a century, and despite the danger Max Hanley wouldn’t have wanted to be anyplace else in the world.
Not so for the Chairman and the men on deck. They were hunkered behind a section of rail that had been triple reinforced, but when a 30mm autocannon raked the bulwark they all felt naked and exposed.
Juan couldn’t imagine fighting this way as a normal course of events. Technology had sanitized warfare, made it cold and distant. The press of a button was all that was needed to vanquish your enemy. This was something else entirely. He could feel their hatred. It was as if each shot they took was an expression of personal loathing.
They wanted him dead. And not just dead but blown out of existence, as if he had never been born at all.
Another shell slammed into the armor plate, and for a moment it felt to Juan like his insides had liquefied. For a terrifying moment, he thought he had made a huge mistake.
Then he thought no, these people would not stop until someone stood up to them. If they wouldn’t listen to reason, they would have to face the consequences of their own barbarity.
There came a brutal shudder. The Oregon was alongside the Sidra. Max had known to ballast their ship so the two railings were even. Juan snatched up his compact machine pistol and threw himself over the side.
The shimmering trail of an RPG launched from a concealed redoubt astern of the Sidra’s rear turret passed inches over his head and hit the armored plate just as the rest of his twelve-man team was following. The hit couldn’t have been luckier or worse. Ten of the men were blown back by the blast, bloodied and suffering concussions, and two were tossed forward just as a wave separated the ships slightly. They plummeted down into the tight space and hit the water simultaneously.
Max had seen the disaster on the closed-circuit television system and immediately hauled the Oregon away from the Sidra so the hulls wouldn’t slam together and smear the men into paste. He didn’t know if they were alive or dead, but he ordered the rescue team standing by in the boat garage to immediately launch a Zodiac.
A tech moved a joystick to swivel the camera and scan the Sidra’s deck.
