“What’s that all about?” Steve asked.
Where to start. Words fell from my lips in no particular order. Steve had us racing for the port with both the engine and sails. We were outdistancing the first troopships, but not by much.
Steve seemed to understand what I told him and pointed. Ashore, there were cars, trucks, motorcycles, and men on foot arriving. Scurrying like ants after someone scuffed their hill. Instead of fighting each other, they now had a common enemy.
I saw no sign of the cannon, bazookas, or rocket launchers. Just men and women running to join in the fight. We pulled Truant up to a floating dock, leaped out and tied her, then ran to join the others.
A kid about sixteen reached us before we put a foot on land. He wore cutoff jeans and sneakers. His tee-shirt had the logo of a rock band from a previous era. He pulled to a stop and asked, “Is one of you, Captain Bill?”
Sue jabbed her thumb in my direction.
The boy straightened and saluted. I returned it as I’d seen in the movies, confused again, but that was becoming my normal state of being.
He said, “Please come with me, sir.”
“Where?”
“HQ. They need you.”
I glanced at Steve and Sue. “Come on, both of you. I’m not doing this alone.”
The four of us ran. Behind several cars and trucks piled together, were at least twenty people and open wooden crates that had contained military equipment. All were painted the same dull green. People were arguing, shouting, and trying to figure out the instructions.
Nobody was in uniform.
Two more tan trucks with army decals pulled up.
The driver of one jumped out, raced to the back and dropped the tailgate as he shouted, “I got the magnets. Found them at a hardware store.”
As others, all armed with automatic weapons climbed down from the two trucks, an older man with white hair and an unmistakable military bearing marched to examine them. He pulled one magnet the size of a shoe free from the magnetic grip of the others. He stuck it to the metal frame of the truck. It stuck firmly, with a solid twang. He seemed satisfied.
“Captain Bill,” the boy announced as he motioned to me.
A skinny man in his forties snarled, “Thank God.” He was dressed in baggy cargo shorts and wore a Dallas Cowboys ball cap. “Major Dundee. Retired. No relation.”
He must have heard a thousand references to the movie he may have been named after in his career, but it made it easy to remember his name. “You in charge?” I asked.
“Until you arrived. Tell me what you need, Captain, and I’ll get it done.”
Others turned to look at me, pausing in their activities to hear my instructions. I turned to look at the troopships and found they had slowed. It looked like the first two had dropped anchor. Others were taking up positions behind them.
Hooks that normally held lifeboats on the sides of the ships swung out and started lowering gunboats already filled with armed soldiers. There were large machineguns mounted on their bows and within seconds the first of them splashed into the water. Each odd appearing boat was surrounded by what looked like a huge inflated innertube.
Steve whispered to me, “Self-sealing and partitioned hulls. A hundred bullets won’t sink them.”
The older man holding the magnet strode in my direction. Without introductions or permission, he said, “Used to be a SEAL a long time ago. Maybe I can help?”
I looked at him blankly. I’d seen SEALs in video games. They were the baddest of the bad. “How?”
He gestured to a set of crates. “C4. Explosives. Detonators over there,” he pointed.
I didn’t understand much of what he said and less of why I needed to know.
He continued, “Mold some C4 around a magnet, insert a detonator, and slap it on the side of a hull of one of those ships, and… boom!”
“How do you get close enough to put them on the side of a ship that has hundreds of men with guns shooting at you?”
“I’d suggest you do it fast,” he said without smiling. “Before they can shoot your ass.”
Sue stepped in front of me as if protecting me, which she was probably doing. She said, “Why don’t you go ahead and put them on a few ships and show us how it’s done?”
He smiled. “I was thinking the same thing. In the old days, I’d scuba to the ships, but things are different. No tanks or trained men. We could use fast boats to approach, but it only takes one bullet to sink us and then those on the ships can shoot at us for practice while we’re swimming away. We need to find another way.”
She glanced my way, “Captain Bill used kayaks for his midnight raids,” she turned to me. “Didn’t you?”
I nodded as he snapped his fingers and said, “That will work, Captain. Their radar won’t see us, and we can dart in, plant the C4 and escape. Can you get me some men?”
My instinct was to explain I had no idea what to do, so they needed to stop asking for my advice. But his idea with the kayaks and explosives sounded good. I stepped up on the bumper of a car and called out as if I was actually in charge of something, “I need ten good men who are familiar with small boats.”
Several approached and I motioned for them to talk with the SEAL. I overheard one say that there were several kayaks in storage at the marina. They huddled together as we watched more of the invader’s gunboats from other ships join with the first group.
One took charge, and together, they sped in our direction. Each was loaded with soldiers in full battle-dress. Their upper bodies were disproportionate, which probably meant bulletproof vests or life jackets or both. All wore helmets.
Their first problem was that the surface of the pier was probably twenty feet higher than the water. A few metal ladders would let them climb up, one by one. The first gunboats cruised past the pier as the men aboard fired automatics and the machine guns on the bow in our direction. Everyone hit the ground, but I didn’t see any casualties.
A gunboat pulled up to each ladder as five ran aground on the beach to the south side of the pier and men piled out. We had men positioned near there and a war broke out. As each invader reached the top of the ladders, he was met with a dozen shots, some of them fatal, despite the body-armor. After a few deaths at each ladder, no more appeared. The gunboats backed off and streaked past time after time, spraying a lot of bullets in our direction, with few hits.
At the edge of the pier, a man, one of ours stood up, a long green tube held to his shoulder. He peered through an eyepiece, steadied the unit, and pulled his trigger. A streak of flame shot from the rear, as well as another from the front. A spear of fire lanced a half-mile to the closest ship.
It hit ten feet above the waterline, blowing a hole large enough to drive a pickup through. A concussion loud enough to physically jar us came next. But it was too far above the waterline to let the sea rush inside. I hoped we had a hundred more rockets stored close to the waterfront.
Flames erupted inside the darkness within the ship and quickly spread. The black hole turned orange. Another small explosion told us the shell must have found something else to blow up or the flames reached explosives, fuel, or the like.
More flames licked the outer part of the hull and as the man reloaded his weapon, the first flames reached the main deck. The second shell entered the side of the next ship, entering below where the gunboats had emerged, very near the waterline. Cheering broke out behind me.
There was the initial explosion again, quickly followed by another, far larger. The side of the ship was torn open and water poured inside. In no time, the ship listed to one side, and men by the hundreds were leaping into the water from it.
The pier broke out in louder cheers and jeers. The fire on the first ship rose up the superstructure as men with firehoses fought to extinguish it and lost the battle. A few of them leaped off, then more.