The wind was blowing the flames along the wing toward the fuselage but captain and co-pilot were busy standing on the brakes. One life threatening crisis at a time, s'il vous plaît.
At the far end of the runway the threshold markers were beneath the front wheel as he pivoted the aircraft left with the last bit of momentum, to buy a little more time before the flames reached fuel tanks that were still filled with vapour.
With brakes applied the captain pushed out the left side window as he unbuckled.
The cabin was filling with choking fumes but he had to check the crew.
Crewmembers were vacating the aircraft rapidly; the senior operator was last, coughing on toxic fumes. His co-pilot exited through the captains opened window and the captain himself followed the senior operator, dropping to the tarmac and running as fast as he could.
As the fire trucks arrived the open hatches were belching smoke. Fire could be seen inside the cabin as internal fittings caught alight. A thunderous bang sent flames and pieces of the starboard wing soaring as the vapour filled fuel tank gave way. A pair of less violent explosions announced the tyres of the right gear bursting.
The damaged wing sagged and the Atlantique leaned to the right, grey smoke pouring from the pilots open side window like a chimney, the fuselage completely engulfed in flame..
Cayenne airports fire crews had at least a proper subject to test their skills on now.
A signaller handed Li a message form, the Bao had sustained damage to her forward pressure hull where the depth charge had struck the casing. Submerging in that condition was possible but not advisable in ordinary circumstances. She had a double hull, but that pressure hull was not just there by idle design.
“Damn all we can do about that now, anyway.” He mused.
Bao was still on diesels but Dai remained on electrical power despite the chief engineer complaining the batteries were down to a 72 % charge.
He used the radar sparingly as that was a double edged weapon, but he could hear the approach of threats without the enemy using that against them.
A flash off in the jungle caught his attention and a fraction of a second later he heard the sound of mortar rounds detonating.
Those damn bloody French mortars again! He thought.
They had to be firing blind though, possibly alerted to their approach by the sound of Bao’s noisy diesel engines.
Two more rounds landed, well short, one on the bank and the other splashing into the river without going off. There was only mud and silt where that particular mortar round had landed, nothing solid enough to crush the soft nose cone and fire the fuse there.
Captain Li gave a moment’s thought to the weight of a mortar round. How many could those helicopters carry?
Jie would have known of course.
To be on the receiving end of a mortar attack was doubly hazardous as they made no sound, no advance warning to dive for cover, unlike the mournful drone he know heard!
Bao’s radar mast was fully extended and rotating.
A 100mm shell from a naval gun smashed into the bank between the two submarines, digging deep into the soft earth before exploding.
Li shouted down the open hatch.
“Make to Bao…they are ranging in on your radar energy, but at least we know there is a surface warship in gunfire range.”
The rotating radar ceased but three more rounds impacted in the vicinity, white hot steel fragments striking the Dai’s conning tower.
He raised his night glasses once more, looking back towards the river mouth. The river was widening now.
Dirty water sprayed over the conning tower from more mortar rounds landing in the river.
A round struck the bank beside Bao, the air sentry on the Kilo’s after casing screamed and fell, sliding down the curved steel pressure hull into the river. Bao did not heave-to, and the rating was floating face down as the Dai reached him. Li watched the corpse disappear behind them in the darkness.
“Engine room…switch to diesels once more. We need to run on the surface for a little once we regain the estuary.”
The mortar rounds continued to harass, raining down around them but the naval gunfire had curtailed with the cessation of the Bao’s radar sweeps.
A rating appeared at the top of the ladder looking a lot like a caricature of a Mexican bandit, draped across the shoulders with belted ammunition for the 23mm.
“This is the last cannon ammunition, sir.”
Li nodded in acknowledgement and instructed him to start throwing empty cases over the side once the new belt was attached to the end of the existing one.
If they had to run silent it would not do to have brass shell cases rolling around and knocking into each other and the steel sides at such times.
Bao chugged backwards past the old and abandoned Kourou ferry.
In the distance, highlighted against a black skyline, the sparks from the plastic augmenting charges that fitted about a mortar bombs ‘tail’ hung in the air like fireflies before dying. It was of no use to the gunner though as it is almost impossible to judge the distance to a light at night with the naked eye. What may appear to be the light from a farmhouse window on a hillside two miles away may in fact be a glowing cigarette end six feet off, and vice versa of course.
Coloured flares again reappeared, falling though the cloud to be followed by another parachute flare. They were trying to assist the mortar crews and whatever warship was out to sea but instead its light revealed on shore the tiny figures of the French Foreign Legionnaires serving the two mortar barrels at Pont Les Roches.
Bao’s quick eyed gunner had seen the sparks and now he was on it, the barrel aiming up at an angle of perhaps as much as forty degrees.
Dai’s 23mm joined in, working the stream of tracer left and right, wreaking a terrible revenge upon the mortarmen. Plunging fire dropped upon them wherever they crawled to seek cover, behind protrusions in the ground or the crudely crafted logs, laid out as park benches. The automatic cannons shredded the logs, reduced the protrusions in the earth and annihilated whatever was hidden behind.
No more mortar rounds came their way.
Bao’s helm came over as her captain sought to turn bow on to the ocean again, at long last.
Dai now motored past the old ferry slipway too and Li put his glasses to the southeast, looking for the French warship.
The captain of One Eight finished his flare run across the estuary without himself or any of the crew catching sight of any action on the ground.
It was the fast patrol boat, La Capricieuse, which informed the Atlantique that the enemy submarines were emerging from the river into the estuary.
As sophisticated as they were, the Atlantiques onboard systems were unable to separate the submarines from the ground clutter while they were on the river. They were built to seek out targets on the surface or peeking up from below.
The patrol boats greatest asset was her speed, but this came at the cost of armament and armour. Her plywood hull was light and tough enough to deal with stormy seas, and her weaponry would be devastating against drug and gold smugglers vessels, but they had limited value against other warships.
“’Poseidon One Eight’ this is La Capricieuse…enemy sighted!” Her commander was a young lieutenant not long out of the Brest naval academy.