“Sorry,” Rusty added. “I’ve got a target, sirs.”
“So I see,” Colonel Hamilton said as an infected trotted down the beach. It was hunched over as if it was sniffing for something. It was a young black male, nude as all the infected were, his lanky, twisted hair dangling down into his face so Hamilton wondered how he could even see. “Is the SOP to engage any target at will, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Commander Chen was nearly as nervous as Rusty. But he was better at hiding it.
“Infected are drawn to any sign of carrion, such as flocks of seagulls, sir,” Chen said. “Our SOP is to engage any infected that are in the target zone early and often. That begins the attraction process. And infected don’t seem to avoid the target zones. They cannot make the connection between loud gun noises and other infected dying. So, yes, sir, we engage if they are in the target basket, sir.”
“One last check,” Hamilton said.
“Uh, sir,” Rusty said, swinging his barrel towards the target. Just past it the barrel bumped up against the limiter. “It’s about to get off to the side.”
The infected was heading north on the beach and approaching the edge of the fire-limit zone.
“Then we shall wait for a better target,” Hamilton said. “For that matter…Do we know the current location of Division Five?”
The other four gunboat divisions had already left the rendezvous for their respective fire points. Division Five was going to be crossing the fire zone of Division One at some point. Admittedly, it was going to be nearly four miles away and on the other side of the island. OTOH, .50 BMG had a “general area of effect” range of…about four miles. Meaning if you had, say, a dozen .50 calibers firing at the right angle to drop their rounds into an area, they could, in fact, hole a boat at four miles. And probably sink it.
“No, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “I can find out pretty quick.”
“Let’s hold off firing until everyone is in their proper place,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Something to add to the SOP for this. In fact, in the future, we probably just need to have all the boats on one side of the island.”
“Some of the islands I wonder if it would be an issue, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “Islands like Saba, the interior topography is going to make it nearly impossible for us to have rounds go over.”
“Point,” Hamilton said, looking at the lowlying atoll. “Anguilla, however, is not such a case. Wait until all the divisions are in place, do a final check on the guns for their angles, then we can go to free-fire. In the meantime, have your gun crews unload and stand down. I can see that Rusty here, at least, is itching to kill him some infected. Right, Seaman Apprentice?”
“Yes, sir,” Rusty said.
“Call that in to all the divisions. They are not free-fire until all boats are in place, all limits are set and all guns have been checked by senior personnel for limits.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Bloody hell,” Sergeant Major Raymond Barney said, looking through the binoculars.
They were cruising east in the Anguilla Channel—which runs between the relatively low and small island of Anguilla and the much larger and more prominent St. Martin. The two islands more or less defined the juncture between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic in the area and the boat was rolling on waves coming in from the open Atlantic. Which was what had caused the oath on the part of the sergeant major. Not the waves, the mass of wrecked ships, carried in by the Great Southern Current and piled up on the jagged rocks of St. Martin. It looked like some sort of twisted regatta from Dante’s Inferno. There were freighters, tankers, yachts, sailboats, megayachts, lifeboats and life rafts, ships that didn’t quite meet any description he could come up with. There was even what looked to be a section of an oil platform.
“We came through this sort of stuff at night on the way in,” Lieutenant Matthew Bowman said. The skipper of the Golden Guppy and commander of Division Five was a thirty-five-year-old who had made his money early in tech and set out to sail around the world just in time for a zombie apocalypse. “But you could still see the outlines.”
“I mean, there’s usually wrecks,” Barney said, lowering the binos and shaking his head. “They were all over the Canaries. But that is bloody insane.”
The sergeant major was sixty-two, a retired British Army light scouts NCO and NCOIC of the Naval Landing Parties. His position was technically slightly ambiguous. As a British citizen and former soldier he could not, actually, “command” American forces. On the other hand, nobody really questioned who was in charge when Navy parties hit the beach. He’d been detailed to “accompany” Division Five, which was not hitting the beach, to “ensure safe practices” of the Navy gunners. After which he was going to have to take a fucking Zodiac all the way back around the island to link up with Division One. He’d flipped a coin with his nemesis, Chief Petty Officer Kent Schmidt, USN, as to who got the furthest out division and lost.
“Div Five, Flotilla.”
“Division Five, over,” Bowman replied.
“Status check.”
“Passing Forest Harbor at this time, Flotilla,” Bowman replied.
“Roger. Supplementary orders. Do not load weapons until all vessels report in position and ready to fire, over.”
“Do not load weapons until all boats in position, aye,” Bowman replied.
“Flotilla out.”
“Wonder what that was about?” Bowman said.
“Fifty-caliber Singer has a maximum range of seven miles, sir,” Barney said. “This island is three miles wide at its widest. Those bloody Singer rounds are going to be bouncing off these block houses and going all the way across the bloody island, sir. Our path takes us through three possible impact zones. And one of those rounds will go all the way through these cockleshells, sir. I’d rather wondered about whether we’d get shot up heading to the anchorage, sir.”
“You didn’t bring that up in the meeting,” Bowman said.
“I was leaving it up to the Yank colonel, Lieutenant,” Barney said. “But I’ll tell you I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye out for bits of ocean churned up by descending Singer rounds, sir. You might want to do the same in case others haven’t gotten the word, sir.”
“And what would that look like, exactly?” Bowman said nervously. He was now scanning the surface of the water intently.
“Bit like flying fish jumping, sir,” Barney said.
“Those are all over the place!” Bowman snapped.
“Really, sir?” the sergeant major said, smiling slightly and still looking through the binoculars.
“Oh, now you’re just yanking my chain!”
“Am I, sir?” Barney said, grinning. “What gave you that impression? In seriousness, the answer was honest and, of course, useless. The rounds can and will cross the island, spotting them incoming is hard to impossible since the tracers will have burned out and even then only one in five is a tracer. If it happens, by the time we know we’ll have a half-inch hole through ourselves, and that is not what you call a survivable wound. So we’d better bloody well hope that everyone’s got the word, sir.”
“How screwed up can one sailing cruise get?” Bowman said, shaking his head.
CHAPTER 14