"If I knew how to fly it, I'd fly it," Cal said.
Noyes, amazingly, grinned. "Can you shoot the M-240?"
"Will it do enough damage to get the job done?"
"You said you think they're not going to start shooting until after the shuttle launches. Do you know what spiking a gun means?"
"Yes," Cal said, and realized what Noyes meant. "Yes!" There was another way, a better way, and maybe no one else would die.
They conferred hurriedly and came up with a plan.
"There's only-"
"What?"
"They could shoot us down."
"I haven't seen anything bigger than a.22 pistol. They're traveling light. If you can stay out of range until the last minute, and if you're willing to take the risk-"
"Let's do it," Noyes said.
Cal looked at the crowd, and then at his watch. Six minutes. "We have to clear the hangar deck. Oh, Jesus. And we have to get rid of them."
"Them" was the CNN crew, now snaking its way through the crowd on a dead reckoning for the helo. "Start the engine, that'll get all the bright ones moving," Cal said, and slammed the door shut. He grabbed the first crewman he saw, which turned out to be FS2 Mellot. "FS2."
Startled, she said, "Captain?"
He looked past her. "SKC? YNC? Come here a minute." He led the food service officer and the two chiefs away from the helo, along the way collecting MK3 Ochiai and DC2 Milton, all reliably levelheaded crew members. "We need to launch the helo. Never mind why, it's an emergency, just help me clear the hangar deck. And folks? We have armed hostiles on board. Let's not attract any attention. As quietly as possible, please, get everyone down on the fantail. Now!"
ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
"T minus thirty-one seconds. Go for auto-sequence start."
Her mouth was dry and her heart was racing. Cal, Mom, Dad, she thought, watch me fly.
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
The rotors were beginning to turn and the noise of the engines increased. The hangar deck was deserted. Cal 's picked band of crew members had shoved, muscled, and strong-armed everyone down onto the fantail or into the hangar, the CNN crew protesting all the way.
He fought with an intransigent buckle on one of the tiedowns and swore out loud. The buckle came free and he threw the tiedown over the side to follow the first three. The last thing they needed was some piece of debris getting caught up in the rotors' backwash and he didn't have time to run anything back to the hangar.
Onshore, clouds of steam were beginning to boil up from beneath the shuttle's tail. Kenai, he thought, it'll be all right, I promise, go, go, go!
Camera lights went off like popcorn all along the main deck. He risked a look around the corner of the hangar. Was that a dark figure he saw slipping from shadow to shadow? They couldn't all hit the Darwin sorter, worse luck.
He duckwalked beneath the rotors and climbed in the back of the helo. Noyes was taking off as Cal 's foot left the deck.
Munro fell away beneath him.
ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
"T minus ten seconds. Go for main engine start."
"Five… four… three… two… one…"
The hold-down bolts blew and they were hit with seven million pounds of thrust from two solid rocket boosters and three main engines.
The noise was deafening, the vibration threatened to shake her hair loose from her head, and the G-force flattened her against her chair like a steamroller.
Her teeth were rattling so loudly in her head that she almost couldn't understand Rick when he said, "What the hell was that?"
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
The boom of the 76mm firing was loud even over the noise of the engine. Cal yelled something, he didn't know what, and looked over his shoulder to see the shuttle was off its pad, rising slowly into the air, straining bravely for the stars. He knew a wave of relief so strong it was dizzying.
"Get ready!" Noyes yelled, and the sound of his voice steadied Cal. The aviator had already unlimbered and loaded the M-240. Its barrel pointed out of the left side of the helo and Cal 's hands were tight on the grip. Noyes maneuvered the aircraft until it faced Munro port side to port side.
Cal 's finger tightened on the trigger and the M-240 chattered, spraying the hatchway leading to the gun deck where he was certain one of the terrorists was on guard. It's where he'd have stationed a man if he'd been running this op, it was a chokepoint in case anyone decided to rush the 76mm. He couldn't get a direct shot but with all the metal the ricochet was bound to hit something. He prayed it wouldn't be a member of the crew.
"All right!" he yelled, and Noyes crabwalked the helo in closer, so close it seemed to Cal as if the rotors were going to slice into the bridge. "Jesus, Noyes, be careful!" he yelled. He wondered for a wild moment if Noyes could even hear him over the engines. They hadn't had time to don helmets. He crouched next to the M-240 in the door of the helo.
There was a muzzle flash from the bridge, and the helo jolted hard.
"Fuck that," Noyes roared, "jump, goddammit, jump!"
Cal jumped, pushing against the doorframe of the helo with his feet, launching himself in a shallow dive for the gun deck. Behind him he heard the helo roar off, and more gunfire, and more impacts.
It was the longest two seconds of his life.
He hit hard, just forward of the gun deck port hatch. He actually remembered to tuck and roll, and by a miracle came up on his feet.
Nobody shot him. That was a good thing because for just one moment he was frozen in disbelief that it had been that easy.
In the next he broke and ran for the side of the house. His right foot stepped in something slippery and he went down to one knee. He was up again almost immediately. The slippery something was blood. Yes, man
down, one of them, groaning, pistol on the deck just beyond his outstretched hand. Cal scooped it up and ran back out onto the gun deck, for the exterior of the 76mm. He paused for one moment to try the hatch in the deck aft of the gun, just on the off-chance the men inside had forgotten to lock it. No, locked, and then someone shot at him from the starboard side of the gun deck, the shot clanging into the deck two feet away and whining off to port.
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.