They came swiftly, flicking their flashlights on and off like lightning bugs in order to see the terrain but not overly expose themselves. The Corporation team concentrated their fire on the men with the lights before realizing their mistake. The men carrying torches only turned them on when they were behind cover. The beams were meant for others scouting ahead.
“Come on, come on,” Mark chided himself as he tore through his pack, tossing aside gear with abandon. “I know it’s in here.”
Bullets stitched the side of the ship, several winging through a gunport and splintering wood inches from where he crouched.
Linda called to Eric. “On my mark. Go!”
They both popped up and let loose. In their scramble to find cover, a terrorist accidentally stepped into the beam of his partner’s light. He was climbing the old riverbank to gain access to the pier. Had he reached it, he would have been able to hose the deck and end the battle single-handedly.
The beam barely caressed his leg, but it was enough. Linda adjusted her aim, approximated where his torso would be, and fired again. She was rewarded with a scream that echoed over the rattling assault rifles.
She and Eric both ducked down when rounds filled the air around them.
“This is crazy,” Eric panted.
He couldn’t see her saucy grin but heard it in her voice when she said, “I’ve never been in a firefight that wasn’t.”
Something heavy rattled against the Saqr’s stern.
“Down,” Linda shouted.
An instant later, a grenade exploded. The shrapnel flew over the prone figures, tearing away more of the ship’s woodwork.
Linda’s ears rang, but she didn’t let it distract her. The grenade was meant to keep them pinned for seconds only, and she was determined not to give them even that.
She peered over the rail. Lights flickered from one side of the cavern entrance to the other. Linda fought the raw fear running through her veins. It was really two against a dozen, since Alana didn’t have a weapon, and Mark Murphy couldn’t shoot to save his life.
She searched an ammo pouch hanging from her combat harness and pinched off a wad of plastique. By feel, she selected a sixty-second timing pencil, rammed it home, and tossed it over the side. She laid down another three-round burst and ducked back again.
“We’ve got to stop them flanking us,” she called across to Eric. “I tossed some plastique. When it blows find some targets.”
She took the opportunity to change out her magazine, uncertain how many rounds she’d fired. If they had time, she would have Alana consolidate the spare ammunition in fresh clips.
The blast came a moment later. The concussion was like a kick to the chest, and she’d been ready for it. The fireball crashed against the ceiling, bathing the cavern in demonic light.
Linda and Eric opened up. Terrorists who were caught in the open raced for cover, rounds screaming past them before the pair could zero in and put the men down.
Return fire came from eight different directions. Linda’s chin was bloodied by a shard of wood torn from the rail, and as much as she didn’t want to lose the last of the light she had to stay under cover from such a deadly barrage.
When it lessened, she fired blind at the riverbank below the quay in case anyone was tying to climb it again. Then, over the sharp stench of cordite, she smelled a familiar odor: wood smoke.
She looked aft just as the smoldering decking that had been hit by the grenade caught fire. The flame was low and smoky, but every second saw it grow. If it got out of control, they were as good as dead. The Saqrwould become their funeral pyre.
“Mark, get that. We’ll cover you.”
Alana crawled from his side and approached Linda. “He’s working on something. I’ve got it.”
“Stay low,” Linda cautioned, impressed with the archaeologist’s courage.
The flames rose higher, first illuminating only the ship’s stern. But, like a rising sun, the light’s reach expanded rapidly. The terrorists used this to their advantage. They could see the vessel more clearly, and their accuracy improved.
Thirty feet from Linda, Alana slithered right to the edge of the burning section. She saw it wasn’t the deck afire, but a bench for the helmsman. She swung onto her back, braced her feet under the burning seat, and heaved. Rather than fly over the side of the ship, the bench broke in two, showering her with embers.
Alana beat out the ashes where they seared her skin, ripped her T-shirt over her head, and with nothing to protect her skin but the thin cotton she worked on snuffing out the fire by hand. All the while, Linda and the gunmen traded shots over her head.
By the time Alana extinguished the last of the stubborn flames, her shirt had all but burned up, and most the skin on her palms was gone, leaving behind nothing but raw red meat that hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced in her life.
The pain was so intense, she couldn’t crawl on her hands and knees, but rather had to slither like a snake to return to the others.
Linda shined a penlight on Alana’s injuries and gasped.
“I’ll be all right,” Alana managed to say.
“Cover your ears,” Mark Murphy whispered urgently.
He waited a beat, studying the array of winking flashlights over the touchhole of one of the Saqr’s great cannons. When he thought the time right, he slipped a timer pencil into the gun’s touchhole, where it sank into the plastic explosives he’d rammed down the barrel. Between it and the muzzle was a cannonball made up of dozens of small metal spheres fused lightly together.
The timer went off, detonating the plastique, and the gun belched the grapeshot in a ten-foot tongue of flame. The ropes secured to the cannon to prevent the recoil from pushing it across the deck failed at full stretch, and the two tons of bronze rocketed through the opposite rail and plowed into the steep riverbank below the pier.
The impact of the grape was lost in the gun’s mighty roar, but when Murphy looked out to where he’d aimed two of the three flashlights were no longer there.
It was as if the cannon’s blast had signaled the end of round one and the beginning of the second. The gunmen opened up with renewed fury, rounds chewing at the Saqras if to tear it apart piece by piece. The three Corporation operatives fired back, but the weight of the onslaught kept them pinned.
The cry of the terrorists’ charge carried above the din. They were coming with everything they had.
Eric took a glancing bullet to the shoulder when he tried to shoot back and stem the tide. Unable to hold his rifle against the wound to aim, he flicked to full auto and raked the ground thirty feet from the Saqr’s side, creating a curtain of lead the terrorists couldn’t penetrate.
When the rifle bolt snapped back on an empty magazine, Murphy took up the duty, blasting away in a desperate bid to break the charge. His gun, too, fell empty. Linda screamed like a Valkyrie as she hosed the dirt. It didn’t matter if she hit anyone. The intention was just to keep the terrorists back long enough that their courage would fail and they’d retreat for cover.
Bullets whizzed all around her, but to her absolute relief she saw the muzzle flashes were coming from farther and farther away. The charge had broken. They had stopped them.
She slipped down below the bulwarks, her entire body vibrating as an aftereffect of her rifle’s recoil, and she was covered in oily sweat. “You guys okay?” she called to her people as the gunmen’s fire slowed.
“I took one to the shoulder,” Eric reported from the darkness.
“I’m still pissed at myself for not grabbing the night vision goggles from Linc,” Mark said bitterly. “We go spelunking, and I forget the most important piece of gear we would need.”