Armageddon (28 page)

“Boston, where the hell are you?” he said again, firing a short burst in the direction of the boat.

Aboard
“Penn,”
heading toward the Brunei coast
0553

Zen saw the flashes in the right side of his screen even though the radar was having the devil of a time picking up the low-lying ship near the oil platform. He changed the input to only optical and saw what looked like a Civil War-era Confederate ironclad with stubby, sharply angled wings on either side. A cannon was firing at the oil platform from what looked like an open porch at the top of the hull.

Zen pushed left, moving to get the Flighthawk’s nose on the cannon. The pipper blinked red then went solid; he waited a half second and then started to fire. His stream of bullets punctured the side of the ship immediately behind the cannon. He pushed his stick left, trying to run the slugs into it.

And then the targeting screen abruptly disappeared. He was out of ammunition.

Off the coast of Brunei
0554

The ladder down to the dock extended from an open hatchway on the lower deck. It was completely exposed to fire from the water. Further down at the end of the deck a pair of close-set girders dropped to the edge of the platform; Danny thought he could climb down them and be protected from gunfire by their bulk.

He half-crawled, half-ran to the railing there, moving his large frame gingerly into the open space. His right hand started to slip as he swung around; his left boot missed the strut that ran between the two pier pieces. Danny clamped the hand to the metal, trying to somehow rub it dry without actually losing his grip. For a moment he dangled freely against the side, his weight supported by only one hand. A thick bolt extended from the girder in front of him; he was able to grab it with his left hand, the submachine gun falling and hanging by its targeting wire to his smart helmet. He managed to get a foothold as a fresh salvo of cannonfire rocked the platform. The vibrations tingled in his hands and knees, but his grip was tight. Danny managed to work his way down, slapping his knee hard against the steel. He climbed toward the waves, able to peek through the space but not seeing much of anything.

“Boston!” he yelled as he neared the platform.

He heard a squelch or something over the circuit, but no answer. Danny pulled his gun to his right hand, then swung around to the dock. The boat had pushed against the far side; he could see people in front of it.

“Boston?” he yelled, but still there was no answer.

VANITY HAD BROUGHT DAZHOU TI TO THIS POINT, AND VANITY now kept him from retreating. One of his men was dead, another overboard.

“Captain?” shouted his other crewman.

Dazhou didn’t answer. He knew he had made a grave mistake. They’d made it to the docking area, but there was no sense now going aboard; the
Barracuda
was pummeling it with shells.

And yet he wouldn’t throw the vessel into reverse.

Something moved in the water to the left of the dock and platform area. As he raised his gun to fire, a fresh round of bullets rained down from above. Dazhou turned his rifle upward abruptly and raked the spot; he continued to press the trigger even as the magazine was exhausted.

“All right,” he said in a whisper to himself. He reached for the motor, reengaging it. “All right”

Aboard
“Penn,”
heading toward the Brunei coast
0557

Dog came out over the water just as Zen announced that he had run out of ammo for his cannon.

“Bring up one of the AMRAAM-pluses,” Dog told McNamara.

“Uh, Colonel? An AMRAAM against a ship?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Uh, no, sir, if I can get the computer to allow it.”

“Use the manual setting if you have to.”

“Yes, sir.”

McNamara busied himself with the targeting screen. Though they were less than fifteen miles from the vessel, the radar had difficulty locating it, let alone getting a lock. Dog could see the vessel in the enhanced video screen. The gun had stopped firing, and smoke seeped from the opposite side.

“Got a lock:’ said McNamara finally.

“Fire.”

Off the coast of Brunei
0558

Dazhou had just pulled the small boat around to retreat when the missile or bomb struck the side of the ship. It plowed right through without igniting. Dazhou stared in disbelief, the sun glinting into his eyes.

It couldn’t have happened, he thought. He couldn’t have seen it.

And then the
Barracuda’s
stern slid down to the port side, bobbed upward, and then down, disappearing. The nose of his ship—his great, wonderful ship—rose from the water like the mouth of a shark getting ready to clamp on its prey. It stayed upright for a moment, locked in his stare, then slowly slipped away.

“No!” he shouted. Dazhou took his fist and began pounding the side of his head viciously. His mistakes had killed his men—his mistakes had killed his ship.

“No!” he shouted. “No!”

DANNY COULDN’T SEE BOSTON ANYWHERE. HE CROUCHED at the side, unsure exactly what was going on.

The boat that had tried to land at the oil platform was gone. The enemy ship had stopped firing.

A Flighthawk buzzed overhead, spinning around the derrick at the top of the platform like a midget racer completing a test lap. Danny went to the edge of the dock just in time to see the enemy ship put its bow up into the air and slide down to a watery grave.

But where the hell was Boston? Had he been taken prisoner by the men in the boat?

Something moved in the water to his right. Danny spun quickly, pointing his submachine gun.

A boat.

Danny aimed but stopped himself from firing only at the last second.

It was Boston, in a small aluminum skiff.

Danny pulled off his helmet and yelled at him. “Boston, why the hell didn’t you answer me?”

“I been answering you!” the sergeant shouted back. “I told you I found the boat and was trying to fire at the rubber raft. Everybody’s been trying to tell you. Your radio’s out or something.”

Danny nearly threw the offending helmet into the water. He turned and went back up the dock, looking in the direction of the ship that had been sunk. Another ship had appeared in the distance.

“I found this boat and thought I could flank ‘em,” said Boston, coming up on the dock. “It’s a little aluminum thing. We used to use them for fishing on the lake.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “All right. There’s another ship coming. Let’s get upstairs.”

Aboard
“Penn,”
heading toward the Brunei coast
0615

“They claim they’re a Malaysian salvage tug,” McNamara told Dog after he was able to raise the approaching ship on the maritime radio bands. “Damn nervous, too. They say they’re civilians, answering an emergency call from a Malaysian naval vessel.”

“Tell them they can recover the people in that small boat, but if they go within five hundred yards of that platform, we’ll sink them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How you looking, Zen?”

“Could use a refuel.”

“Now’s as good time as any,” said Dog. He started to climb, laying out a track where he could have the computer fly the Megafortress while the Flighthawk took fuel through the special boom below her tail. “Meet you at eighteen thousand feet.”

“Hawk leader.”

Dog checked in with Danny on the platform. His men had been bruised a bit, but none of the enemy’s bullets had penetrated their carbon-boron vests or helmets, and the cannon had done little damage to the platform. That tracked with U.S. navy experience during the Iran tanker war and the Gulf War, when some of the better-built platforms sustained hundreds and even thousands of rounds before being destroyed. Partly it was a function of the design of the platforms and their superstructure, and partly it was a function of the size of the bullets being fired—twenty or twenty-five millimeters just didn’t measure up to the mammoth shells
Penn’s
namesake had once dished out.

Dog clicked into the Dreamland Command frequency. “Dreamland, this is Colonel Bastian. Ask Major Alou if he can push up his schedule in
Indy;
we’re out of ammo. Then see if you can locate Jed Barclay and get him in touch with me. I have some information he’s going to find very important, diplomatic type information.”

“Right away, Colonel,” said Major Catsman.

Brunei International Airport
0800

They gave Mack a breakfast of some sort of fruit and then left him alone in a basement room of the terminal. He spent the time stewing, berating himself for saving Sahurah rather than sending the idiot to the fuel trucks where he could have had the fiery death a terrorist deserved.

The concrete had scraped the palms of his hands and little specks of blood dotted the flesh; he had cut up the side of his face as well and could feel it swelling. Tired, he lay down on the floor next to the wall—there were no chairs or other furniture in the room—staring at the ceiling but not sleeping. He was still there when the door opened and two men came in.

“Mr. Mack Smith, you are to come with us,” said one of the men. He held a Beretta in his hand; Mack noticed that the gun shook slightly.

“Okay,” said Mack. He pulled himself up slowly. The other man stood back by the door with some sort of rifle; the gun had a folding metal stock and looked as if it had been cut down. Though both were in their thirties, the men were clearly nervous, and Mack moved as deliberately as possible, aware that their fear was probably twice as dangerous as their weapons. The light in the hallway hurt his eyes; he held his hand over his head as he walked to the stairway. The two men stayed behind him, and Mack thought of making a break for it when he reached the top. But there were other guards there, younger but just as jumpy, their bodies visually twitching as he approached.

The Brunei airport would never make a ranking of the busiest airports in the world or even Asia, but it looked positively forlorn now, an empty plain of concrete and roadways. Only two vehicles were in the parking lots as Mack was led from the building. One was a burned out Toyota that sat in a black heap near the main entrance to the terminal. The other was a white pickup truck, also a Toyota, idling near the access road a few hundred yards away. The men led Mack to it, then made him get up into the back.

This’ll be easy, he thought, envisioning jumping off the side. But then two other men approached with chains and manacles. They locked his hands and then chained his leg to the back of the truck with several sets of combination locks. Mack settled against the side, sweating in the sun until the truck set out.

Zamboanga International Airport (Andrews Air Base), Philippines
0805

Breanna stepped out of the Beechjet, finally deposited on Philippine territory after what seemed like a marathon of short-hop plane rides. Dreamland had set up shop on a small corner of the airport, and the U.S. air force jet—actually a multi-jet trainer borrowed temporarily as a taxi—had deposited her about fifty yards from their hangar area; she could see the tips of a Megafortress V-shaped tail sitting over the building to her right. She passed through the double line of security—Filipino and regular U.S. air force, but no Whiplashers—and walked around to the back of the building, where the Dreamland Command trailer had been set up as a temporary headquarters on the tarmac. Inside, she found Major Alou getting ready for his mission to relieve the flight currently patrolling over Brunei.

“Just in time,” Alou said as Breanna walked in the door. “I can use a copilot. Russ’s stomach is acting up. He’s in the bathroom stinking it up.”

Breanna bristled at being made copilot—she had trained Alou on the Megafortress—but protocol and manners called for her to smile. Besides, she was eager to get into the action—whatever it was. “Sure,” she told him.

Alou recapped the situation—Jersey had been located at the airport; it was out in the open and an easy target. But at the moment it wasn’t fueled and didn’t seem likely to be used. Their orders directed them to preserve it for the sultan unless the terrorists made an overt attempt to use it as a weapon. They would patrol over the island and destroy it if any attempt was made.

Danny Freah and his Whiplash team had taken up a post on a platform offshore, which they intended to use as a base while deploying the LADS system. They had just fended off an attack by a high-tech Malaysian boat with the help of the other Megafortress. Their Quick Birds were being outfitted for. a return flight; the MC-17 had left a short while ago with supplies that would be parachuted nearby, allowing them to shore up the platform so the choppers could land there. The team had found a small boat which they would use to recover their Zodiacs; once the boats were inflated and operational, the rest of the material could be easily plucked from its floating containers.
Indy’s
job would be merely to watch and make sure no one came back for another go at them.

“Kick and Starship have the Flighthawks,” Alou added. “We may be able to share some of the video input with the Brunei army.

He pointed to a large map of Borneo that showed the areas of Brunei where the guerillas had taken over. Strongholds of loyalist troops were shaded in blue in the south of the country.

“The sultan has joined up with the army and is organizing a counter-offensive,” added Alou. “We’re not exactly sure what form it will take, but it looks as if they’re moving north”

“Are we authorized to help them?” asked Breanna.

“Not at this time. Our only mission is to make sure the Mega-fortress is not used by the rebels. We blow it up if it takes off. And we can protect our own people on the platform.”