Chris squeezed the trigger slowly. He tried not to anticipate the quiet pop from the sound-suppressed barrel or the recoil of the butt into his shoulder. He tried not to think about when the shot would fire. It was best to be surprised. Pop. The sound was no louder than a kid’s BB gun. Whiteface jerked, and he twisted toward the bow as if to see who hit him, but he was facing the opposite direction of where the shot had come from, and he seemed confused. Pop. Chris shot him in the back.
Whiteface’s back arched before he dropped to the deck, crying out in Russian for help. “Po-masch!” He dropped his weapon and crawled for the bridge, but Chris covered him with the red dot and fired again, this time hitting him on his uninjured side. He stopped crawling.
“Ivan!” Animus’s voice called out.
Ivan is no more.
Chris had focused so tightly on the bridge that he had to open his field of view again to possible enemy combatants on the rest of the starboard side. Hannah’s head rose above the Jacob’s ladder, and he assumed Sonny was directly below her.
An armed man hopped out of the starboard hatch of the bridge, stoking Chris’s pulse and breathing rates. “Armed man, bridge, starboard wing,” Chris reported over his radio.
Chris aimed at him, but he ducked before Chris could pull the trigger or Hannah could acquire him. Chris’s heart and breathing sped up. Then more appeared.
“More armed men, same location. No Xander yet,” Chris said into his mic.
He tried to figure who was the most senior of the men present in order to take him out first and weaken the remaining members, but it wasn’t clear who was senior. Adrenaline dumped into Chris’s system as he decided to take out the greatest threat first. But they all seemed equally threatening. While his mind raced trying to pick out the best target, the armed men spotted Chris.
Hannah, who was on deck by now, took a shot and missed as Sonny crawled up onto the ship.
Chris’s panic rose. He had wasted precious time choosing a target, and now he wanted to shoot any and all threats. The darkness of warfare covered more and more of his light as a pastor. Gunfire erupted from the starboard wing of the bridge, and the heat of the rounds clapped the air near him. With his mind hazy and his vision blurred, it became a Herculean effort to focus on target. He knew his life and the lives of his teammates were in danger, so he jerked the trigger, hoping to hit one of the enemy combatants, but he missed.
“Take cover,” he warned the others. The SOG trio ran toward the bulkhead and took refuge from the shit storm that rained down.
“How many?” Sonny asked.
“Five or six,” Chris answered.
“Xander is still the prize,” Hannah reminded them. As if they could forget.
Chris took a slow breath. He had failed to take an effective shot so far, but he shook off the discouragement. It was history, and there was nothing he could accomplish now by dwelling on it. The only thing he had any control over was the here and now.
“Xander and his men have less room up there to maneuver than we do down here,” Chris said, getting his focus back. “We can whittle them down from where we are before making an assault.”
Sonny nodded. “Smoke ’em.”
“Let’s do it,” Hannah said.
“If Hannah can stay here and keep an eye on this hatch and the main deck,” Sonny said, “it’ll free up you and me to home in on the bastards near the bridge.”
Hannah grinned. “My pleasure
It was a wise move, and it could help Chris ensure he followed the advice of his veteran SEAL mentor, a shooting guru named Ron Hickok. Don’t show your face twice in the same spot unless you want to get it shot off. Because Chris had already been spotted aft, he moved forward. Sonny moved forward, too. Chris covered port and Sonny took starboard.
Thick black pipes ran along the length of the deck, and Chris lay down beside them, using them to provide partial cover and concealment. He slithered into a better position while watching the bridge and its starboard and port wings. More than anything, he hoped to spot Xander and take him out.
A spiky-haired man with an AK neared the rail and looked around. He seemed to have spotted Sonny, but Sonny’s rifle spit twice and Spike dropped.
Hannah’s rifle sounded. “Good night,” she said quietly, as if to herself, but her voice transmitted over the radio, and then a man yelped.
Chris settled into a stable position, an advantage of being prone, which would aid his accuracy. Several people were inside the pilothouse on the bridge, but the windows were tinted and it was difficult to see who was inside. Outside, on the starboard side, someone hung his AK out and sprayed below. None of the shots zipped anywhere close to Sonny — yet. Chris put his red dot on the man’s shoulder and squeezed. The shooter’s shirt quivered slightly, showing Chris where he’d struck his target. The shooter almost released his weapon as he pulled away, back into the bridge.
Sonny reached the port side and went aft.
An aggressive gunman came out the port side then, aiming his weapon toward the bow, looking for trouble but failing to notice Chris lying down between the pipes. Chris’s red dot aligned over the man’s chest, and his finger applied pressure to the trigger. The recoil of the rifle pushed his shoulder, signaling the deed was done. The aggressive shooter sank out of sight.
Sonny aimed at a target near the bridge. Chris couldn’t see who Sonny was shooting at, but he heard the pop.
Someone on the port side backed into Chris’s view. Chris plugged him between the shoulder blades, and the man dropped.
Then the shooting stopped. Everything became quiet — too quiet.
Chris slithered toward the superstructure, and a bullet punched through the glass of the pilothouse window. Tang! The projectile struck a metal pipe next to Chris, the surprise of the shot jolting him. He dispensed with the slithering, hopped to his feet, and sprinted out of the line of fire. His body tilted as he ran, and he realized the ship was turning. Tang! A second bullet just missed his foot.
Chris joined Sonny and Hannah next to the port hatch out of the line of fire. There was Sideburns in a puddle of blood. “He told me I was too late,” Chris said.
The ship straightened its course, and the deck leveled off. They were less than two klicks away from the Shah Deniz Alpha oil rig now. Chris had read that the rig’s legs had to stretch a hundred meters below the water to touch bottom, and on top of those legs, thirteen meters above water, rested the platform that carried the drilling and production facilities with housing for well over a hundred crewmembers.
“Xander is on a direct collision course with Shah Deniz Alpha,” Chris said.
“That’s how he plans to interrupt the flow of gas through the South Caucasus Pipeline,” Hannah said. “And he’ll kill all the crewmembers onboard the Shan Deniz Alpha in the process.”
24
Moving in for the assault, Chris hurried to the nearest ladder, and Hannah and Sonny followed. When he aimed his weapon up at the port side of the bridge, there was no one there. Expecting the enemy to appear at any moment, he observed the hazard spots with his M4 as he climbed the ladder, but no one showed.
“Something’s wrong,” Chris whispered.
They ascended several levels until they reached the hatch leading to the bridge. Chris positioned himself next to the hatch with Hannah and Sonny forming the train behind him. He glanced back at Hannah, who had a flash-bang device at the ready so when Chris opened the hatch, she could toss it in and stun whoever was inside. He pulled on the handle, but it didn’t move, so he pulled harder. Still no luck. Then he used both hands to crank on it, but nothing changed. Then he heard it. From inside the bridge came a hissing sound.