Chalk got a little hard.
CHAPTER 56
With night vision binoculars, Chalk watched Slagget’s Zodiac dash west around the island. It looked wet and cold, but fast as Tahereh had advertised. Slagget cranked the boat hard over into a turn to the north. Then further east to meet the island’s west side. Chalk estimated they were still a solid hundred meters from shore when there was tremendous flash of light from the left near Slagget’s boat. A blast, like an enormous naval artillery piece, thrummed his chest like a bass drum.
Chalk’s mind grappled to make sense of it. What had he missed? A floating mine? Maybe Slagget watched the shoreline too hard, hit a snag and blew the gas tank. The fireburst overwhelmed everyone’s NVGs, nearly blinded them.
Though it took seconds, what followed the flash stretched out in slow motion. Through lightly seared retinas, Chalk saw the front of Slagget’s Zodiac rip clean through from one side to the other. Between the torn sponson cells lay Abel Stein. Stein was free from worry about cracked ribs now. He didn’t have any ribs at all. It looked like his entire upper abdomen and thorax had been hollowed out from one side to the other by a giant ice cream scoop.
Tim O’Malley’s face, neck, and shoulder were splashed with fluids and bits. Chalk couldn’t tell if it was blowback from Stein’s gutting, or a nifty constellation of wounds O’Malley could call his own.
The inflatable’s forward sponsons collapsed; it shunted hard to the left. Chalk saw the bow auger deep into the water, the engine still driving full bore.
Slagget couldn’t reach the throttle in time to stop the boat from flipping. He was hurled to starboard and forward. The boat cartwheeled stern high.
Slagget and O’Malley cannonballed into the water. Given their brisk clip, it must have felt like hitting a cold brick wall. Slagget’s goggles smashed down hard, pulped his nose before they were swept away. He sank; the full weight of arms and ballistic armor now threatening to be his death instead of his salvation. Chalk didn’t see Slagget for a few long moments. With the Zodiac inverted, the outboard engine drowned, the prop stopped buzz-sawing the air. Then Slagget’s head bobbed up near the ruined boat. He must have cut himself out of the heavy body armor.
In an attempt to figure out what happened, Chalk chopped the Palestrina’s engine so he could hear.
Over the transceiver’s earpiece, he heard O’Malley in a muffled stage whisper. “Slagget! You good?”
No answer from Slagget. Might be too beat up to talk.
O’Malley thrashed in the water. Then the inflatable rocked as he grabbed on. O’Malley called again, “Slagget! I think Abe got it. Where are you? Slagget!”
Poor bastard, Chalk thought. What with the plane crash and the boating accident, this scion of Clan O’Malley was having one egregiously bad hair day.
Tahereh had no binoculars, could not see what Chalk was taking in. “What’s going on? What was it?”
“A glitch, sugar-britches. A nice distraction to help us.”
In the distance, O’Malley yelled, “Slagget!”
Chalk heard another voice. It could not have been Stein. He was dead.
The mystery voice yelled, “Slagget? Rhymes with faggot, doncha know!”
Like Slagget, O’Malley failed to find humor in the situation. Chalk heard O’Malley open up with the distinctive strains of his FN SCAR-H. Scarce as ammo was these days, O’Malley let fly like he owned stock in the company. Hosed down the darkness in a furious seven-hundred-twenty degree strafe. Chalk saw Slagget duck low behind the boat, less than confident O’Malley wouldn’t ventilate the one thing keeping him from drowning.
Toward the end of O’Malley’s burst, and with no need of the radio, Chalk heard the happy sound of a distant man screaming and cursing in profound agony. Hit!
Slagget shouted, “O’Malley! Fucking cool it!”
O’Malley stopped shooting. “Where are you!”
“Other side of the damn boat! I’m coming out. Safe that weapon, troop!”
Chalk watched Slagget claw around the boat to the opposite side.
Over the radio, Chalk barked, “What the fuck! Over.”
Slagget was winded from the run, but answered, “Somebody hit us hard, but the mick tagged him. This boat’s stonked. Come get us.”
“Negative! You got your orders! Swim!”
Chalk watched Slagget and O’Malley regroup in the freezing water. They resisted powerful temptation to climb onto the fiberglass bottom of the turtled boat. With the cries of a man in grievous pain filling the night, Slagget and O’Malley started paddling toward shore.
This changed things. Chalk had not expected to stroll onto the beach like General MacArthur returning to the Philippines during the second war to end all wars. Deadly fire before he even reached shore took him up short. The Smith Islanders had brought their A-game. So what! He was ready to play. He restarted the Palestrina’s engine.
Bill Slagget clearly stepped in some deep shit. Then Chalk saw another flash backlight the old hotel and illuminate the low clouds. Then another crump sound. A muffled explosion. Like a distant cannon. After a few long seconds, there was automatic gunfire in reply. Slagget and O’Malley doing their bit.
Then things got surreal. On his earpiece, Chalk heard a snippet of a weird nursery rhyme, “Then, cocka-doodle-do, said Little Chanticleer,” followed by a fusillade of shooting, like a firing squad with a dicey concept of unison.
Over the radio, Slagget muttered, “Cock-a-doodle-do yourself, you bastard!” There was a single gunshot, followed by more shots. Slagget was softening up the shore with gunfire. Good. Plenty of noise. Chalk didn’t have to ask him what was happening. The shooting, panting and blue-streak swearing in his headset told the story. Slagget’s push-to-talk mic was stuck open for a moment. The enemy was now looking west while Chalk came in from the south under the cover of a decent diversionary feint.
Chalk looked meaningfully at Tahereh and Pallaton. Gave it his best, declaiming, “Look sharp boys and girls. We’ve loosed the dogs of war. The chickens are coming home to roost in the breach. And nuts to your kids, who’ll wish they’d been here today to fight with us. Tally-fucking-ho!”
Tahereh and Pallaton looked stunned for a moment. Chalk felt it fitting. There’s nothing one could really say after a barn-burner battlefield exhortation like that. So what if his crew suspected he’d lost every last aggie, steely, and shooter from his meager bag of marbles. This did not bother him. Not his fault Smith Island didn’t have a drug store to renew his scrip, even if he wanted to. He was running on pharmaceutical fumes. Crazy was good! Crazy was unpredictable. The onset of madness gave him a wicked edge.
Chalk throttled up the Palestrina. A white mustache of foam curled away from her bow. Might as well make some noise. Confusion to his enemies. Chalk was on course for a glorious frontal assault with Semper Fi stamped all over it.
The next report did not roll across the island to Chalk from the north as a soft but pleasantly suggestive thrump. This was an ear-rupturing wham just to his right, practically at his elbow.