Foch wiggled forward and fired back, a barrage that missed the pilot boat altogether because he didn’t dare expose his head to properly aim. The counterfire came back even stronger, augmented by a half dozen type 87s.
“Take ’em out, goddamnit,” Harry shouted from inside. He’d ducked under the center console. “I can’t turn us around if I can’t see where we’re going.”
Foch fired another burst, covering Mercer and Lauren as they moved to the railing so they could get a bead on the soldiers below. All three fired simultaneously, forcing the pilot boat to sheer away momentarily. She began to draw near again with the machine gun blazing away. This time they were beaten back only a few feet from being able to heave grappling ropes over the Rose’s main rail.
This is why Captain Patke hadn’t tried to assault the Mario diCastorelli from the fishing boat, Mercer realized. They’d have been cut down if that ship had armed guards.
“Next time they may be able to board us.” Foch changed out his empty magazine without the need to look at his hands. “Bruneseau, where are you?” he shouted into his radio.
“Just cleared the forward hold. We’ll be on deck in just a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” Lauren said and sprayed a dozen rounds over the side of the ship.
“Heaven, Heaven, Heaven,” Mercer called into his radio. “Anything you can do about this?”
“Roger, we’re watching. Help is on its way. Ballistic trajectory of eighteen seconds. No guarantee the pilot boat will still be where we’re aiming, but it’ll rattle them some.”
“Do it!” Mercer checked the second hand on Harry’s watch, scooted so he could spot the thirty-foot gunboat and fired off the last of his clip.
Foch and Lauren concentrated their fire too, driving the Chinese away from the side of the Rose for what they hoped was their last time. Eleven seconds later, Mercer tapped Foch on the hip and dragged Lauren back to the enclosed bridge.
At that moment a string of six-inch shells from the VGAS cannon were some six miles above the earth and four miles downrange. Such was their ballistics that in those last seconds they accelerated to hypersonic speeds. There was no warning whistle, no long, drawn-out scream, nothing to give away the presence of five explosive shells fired from thirty miles away with an accuracy never before achieved with anything larger than a sniper’s rifle.
Despite the seconds-long interval between their firing, the rounds hit almost simultaneously along the starboard side of the Englander Rose. Four produced towering geysers that reached higher than the superstructure and doused the ship with water. The fifth shot hit squarely on the aft section of the pilot boat, sliced cleanly through her fiberglass deck, and impacted her diesel engine.
Her destruction was complete. Nothing larger than a postage stamp remained as her hull blew apart under the triple assault of explosives, kinetic energy, and her own load of fuel. Steel, plastics, and the remains of her crew rose on a column of fire and water that exploded outward in a plume that raked the side of the Rose and the jungled bank of the canal. When the sound rolled away and Mercer dared look over the railing again, a pool of burning fuel was the only marker for the men who’d died.
“Heaven to Angel Two.”
“Go ahead, Heaven.” Mercer’s voice was filled with awe at the power the USS McCampbell was able to throw so accurately from so far away.
“Our screens show target destroyed. We’ve reacquired primary target and await your order.”
“Roger that, Heaven. Nice shooting. Stand by.” Mercer roused himself. Rene and the fourth Legion soldier burst onto the bridge. Their clothes were soaked because both had been on the deck when the cannon ripped along her rail.
Bruneseau was breathless. “Was that from your ship?” Lauren nodded. “Mon Dieu. I never imagined such a weapon existed.”
“That’s only the first generation,” she explained proudly. “The production guns don’t go into full service for a couple more years.”
Mercer noted that Harry had gotten back on his feet and was once again working the ship. The old man nudged the Rose on her axis using the bow thruster and expert hands on her rudder and throttle. “Did they even have bow thrusters when you were a captain?” he asked.
“Nope,” Harry answered laconically. “But it’s the same as having a well-tended tug at the bow. I’ll have her pointed back at the lock in another minute.”
Much of the windscreen had been riddled by bullets and shrapnel. What pieces that hadn’t fallen away completely were starred and cracked and nearly impossible to see through. Lauren and Foch hammered away at the remaining panes with the butts of their weapons to improve Harry’s visibility.
Like he was parking a car, Harry spun the freighter in a tight circle, coming out early and backing the ship at an angle so he wouldn’t waste space when they moved forward again. He had a mastery over the vessel and her quirks as if he’d been at her wheel for years.
By the time he got her completely turned to face the lock he’d pushed her up the canal so a hundred yards separated the bow from the thousand-foot-long seawall extension that divided the two chambers. Harry looked to Mercer. “I’m ready.” His hands were relaxed on the wheel, ready to coax the great vessel rather than fight her.
“Okay,” Mercer replied. “Let’s do it. Foch, call Rabidoux and Munz. Tell them we’re going through.”
“Oui.”
“Heaven, Angel Two. Any time you’re ready.”
Harry eased the throttles to Ahead Full. The lock chamber was still flooded and her upper doors had remained open following the Englander Rose’s passage through. The lower doors, almost a half mile away, were closed, making the concrete-lined basin look like an enormous dead-end chute. Not for long, he thought. He could just see the top couple of feet of the lower doors rising above the level of water in the chamber. The steel doors, each weighing nearly seven hundred tons, were seven feet thick and sixty-five feet wide. They were all that prevented the untold billions of tons of water trapped in Lake Gatun from flooding the lower, and smaller, Miraflores Lake and the rest of the canal below.
Because the Rose was thirty feet above Miraflores Lake, he spotted the superstructure and funnel of a ship waiting for her turn to come up. In a minute, he knew she wouldn’t be there any longer.
“Firing now,” Mercer heard over his radio.
“Goddamnit!” Harry shouted at the same moment.
Mercer’s guts clenched. “What?”
“I have to take a piss.”
“Jesus, Harry, cross your legs or something.” He snatched up a pair of binoculars and focused on the tops of the lower doors, counting back seconds in his head.
Everything looked so normal. In the adjacent lock chamber, a container ship was slowly being raised to the level of the Gaillard Cut. Beyond her, several more vessels slowly made their way across Miraflores Lake. Workers were going about their duties along the locks, although a few had stopped to see what had exploded around the Englander Rose, and they were no doubt wondering why the ship had turned around and was pointed at them again.
Lauren too was counting the seconds. “Four, three, two, one.”
Mercer tightened his grip on the binoculars.
The first shell hit the two-story control house that sat between the locks and blew away its red-tile roof. Mercer barely had time to acknowledge the miss and the scatter of panicked workers when explosive rounds began to find their mark.
Exposed on the lower side of the lock, the doors looked like thirty-foot slabs of steel, rust-streaked but still amazingly sound after a century of use. They were designed to act as swivel dams that could be opened or closed to allow ships to move past them. They were never meant to withstand a naval bombardment.