He shot back with the terrorist's pistol and they ducked back out of sight. Someone shot at him from the bridge wing. He ran around to the front of the 76mm.
The casing of the big gun was a smooth, slippery white surface. He stuck the pistol in the back of his pants and climbed on the railing in front of it. He put both hands on the casing and jumped up, grabbing, clutching, clinging to the casing, pulling himself up, his muscles straining, his teeth bared in a snarl of determination.
He heard excited voices coming from the gun room below the deck, voices speaking what he supposed was Arabic. The big gun moved on its mounting, tracking the shuttle as it rose into the sky. "No," he said through his teeth, "no, goddammit, not on my watch you don't!"
He pulled himself from the casing to the barrel, a snout longer than he was and a mouth large enough for the job. Clinging to the barrel like a leech, by an act of will not sliding off, he freed one hand, reached around for the pistol, and dropped it into the open muzzle of the gun.
He let go and fell to the deck, falling awkwardly this time. He limped around to the back of the gun. A bullet whined off the deck next to his left foot, spurring him into a shambling run.
He'd just reached the hatch behind the wounded terrorist when the 76mm fired for the second time. The round hit the pistol, lodged halfway down the barrel.
The barrel of the 76mm exploded, shredding into threads of twisted metal, some of it severed into shrapnel. Most of it went overboard. Some of it hit the forward part of the bow and the front of the house.
A dark, hot force caught Cal in the small of the back in mid-stride and lifted him up. He literally flew down the deck and hit the bow of Mun 2, sitting in its cradle.
He hung there for a painful second, watching the shuttle climbing slowly, steadily, and most beautifully higher and higher into the sky. He slid to the deck and knew no more.
WHEN THE 76MM BLEW, THE NOISE AND THE SHRAPNEL BLINDED AND frightened everyone. All the window on the bridge shattered. A moment later, the man Akil thought was the captain went for Yussuf, slamming him into the bulkhead and sending his guns skittering across the floor. Two others went scrambling after them. The woman must have ducked down behind one of the consoles because she was suddenly nowhere to be seen, or acquired for use as a hostage.
For a frozen moment Akil, ears ringing, was aware only of the bent and broken fragments of his dream, buried beneath alarms and smoke and flying metal. There were screams of fear and bellowed orders. On his left the space shuttle climbed into the sky on a column of molten gold.
The wreckage of the big gun caught fire, first a flicker, then a glow. An instant later a siren went off, almost painfully loud, impossible to ignore. Crew members began pouring up into the bridge. The man he thought of as captain began shouting orders.
He walked to the door with no outward sense of haste. On the bridge wing, he tossed his gun into the water and climbed over the railing. He kicked away from the side of the ship, falling feetfirst into the water, and struck out for shore.
25
WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 2008
"Isa got clean away?" Kallendorf was not pleased.
Neither was Patrick. "Unfortunately, sir, yes."
"Very unsatisfactory."
Patrick tidied his file together. "Not entirely, sir," he said mildly. "The attack was foiled. The shuttle and its crew made it safely into orbit, and they are now safely back. I understand the first round fired from the cutter's cannon got close enough for them to see. It gave them a few bad moments, but all in all, a happy ending, I would think.
"The helicopter, though damaged in the firefight, landed safely onshore at the Cape, although I understand the pilot was taken into custody by NASA security for a few hours until everything was sorted out. The cutter suffered severe damage when the gun exploded, but the hull remained intact and the cutter made it into port."
"How did they get control of the engine room?" Kallendorf asked idly. He wasn't all that interested.
Patrick allowed himself a prim smile. "Akil's people didn't know much about ships, sir. All the compartments are watertight, but there are many different entrances. The executive officer and the, what I believe is called the health services chief, or corpsman, colluded on a gas of some kind to introduce into the engine room. I believe the chief component was ammonia. When the terrorists became incapacitated, a welder cut through one of the doors and the terrorists were, uh, overpowered by the crew."
"Knacky people, those Coasties," Kallendorf said.
"Yes, sir. Always prepared is, I believe, their motto."
"Still. Isa escaped." Kallendorf sighed. "Not good, Patrick, not good."
"We now know who Isa is, sir, and where he comes from. This will, I believe, be a great help in predicting his future actions.
"And lastly, this attack underlined something the agency has been trying to get across to Congress for years."
"Oh? What's that?"
"That our nation is immensely vulnerable to attack by sea. This time it was a hijacked Haitian freighter. Next time? It might be a hijacked oil tanker, mined to explode as it runs aground…" Patrick shrugged. "Well. Pick a target, sir. Maybe, just maybe because of this action, Congress will listen the next time." He stood up. "Anything else, sir?"
Kallendorf looked at him broodingly. "You swore at me, Patrick."
"Yes, sir, I did." Patrick made a superhuman effort and didn't apologize.
Kallendorf grinned. "Get out of here."
"Certainly, sir."
Patrick went on his way rejoicing. When he reached his office, he paused with his hand on the door for a moment, and then went in. "Hello, Melanie."
"Hello, sir." There was a smile in her eyes.
"Any messages?"
"Just one." She handed him a slip of paper.
"Ah. Get Mr. Rincon on the phone for me, will you?"
THE CURRENT CARRIED AKIL SOME MILES NORTH OF CAPE CANAVERAL, where he managed to thrash his way to shore on a sandy beach that lined the edge of a swamp. He slogged through the swamp to a road, which he followed until he came to a town. On a clothesline in someone's backyard he found dry pants and a shirt. He walked to the next town where he caught a bus to Jacksonville. The woman across the aisle was reading the Miami Herald, which had a large, grainy picture of Adam Bayzani's doctored passport photo on the front page, but she never looked at him twice. Talk on the bus was all about the attempt to bring down the space shuttle. "We ought to just nuke the whole Middle East and be done with it," one old man said, and there were nods all around.