“As far as the weapon is concerned, it still thinks it’s a Black Shark,” Jake said. “I’ve shot two in combat with no problems.”
Cahill crossed his arms and looked down.
“Well,” he said, “I probably won’t get a chance to use them. I think you’ll have all the fun, mate.”
“If all goes well, I won’t need to shoot, either. I’ll just be an insurance policy.”
Jake gulped from his water bottle, nursing the dehydration of the prior evening’s alcohol excess. His first use of naltrexone felt like a placebo, and he remembered behaving like a drunken sailor.
“You know,” he said. “In all our story swapping last night, we never talked about how you trailed the Razak. I mean, I assume it was you.”
Cahill smiled and winked.
“How’s the saying go? I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Thanks,” Jake said. “I guess I wouldn’t even have the Wraith now if you didn’t help me find it.”
“No hard feelings, mate.”
With Cahill taking three limpet torpedoes and Jake needing to remove Malaysian weapons from the Wraith to make room for his mix of limpet and slow-kill weapons, crane operations would consume the entire day’s activities under the covered wharf.
“Pierre offered to show us the railgun module. They’re running the final test today.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“I’ll call him,” Jake said. “We need a helicopter ride.”
Two hours later, the helicopter’s shakiness stopped as its wheels touched down on an anchored freighter. Jake jumped to the deck and ducked as he trotted from the rotor wash, which died as the pilot cut the engine.
Expecting Renard, he frowned when a junior Philippine naval officer greeted him.
“Mister Slate, Commander Cahill, I am Lieutenant Sanchez. Mister Renard sent me to escort you to the railgun module. Please, follow me.”
Trailed by the Australian, Jake followed the Filipino down girder stairways. The muggy heat became stifling as he descended into the ship’s superstructure until an air-conditioned boundary brought relief.
Upon reaching the bridge, he walked by its expanse of windows and took in the vessel’s enormity, its deck extending the length of two football fields below him. He and Cahill reached the vessel’s captain, a Philippine naval commander.
“Is the bridge secure?” Jake asked. “Can we talk?”
The commander glanced at the door to confirm it was shut.
“Yes. Everyone here is part of the sailing crew.”
“You’re heading to the Second Thomas Shoal, right?”
“Yes,” the commander said. “I’m delivering the payload to the shoal. Holes for the support columns have already been dug, and I sincerely hope to be anchored there for less than twelve hours.”
Jake looked again through the forward windows. Eight decks below, a gray circus tent concealed the payload, but he knew what rested under the canvas.
“It’s heavy,” he said. “Can your cranes handle it?”
“They already loaded it from the pier.”
“Do you have divers to help guide it into place onto the reef?”
“Divers are stationed aboard the Sierra Madre to assist.”
Jake recalled the shoal’s status — uninhabited except for the Philippine landing craft, grounded in its shallows for two decades. With the installation of the railgun module, the landmass would embark on a transformative era of military occupation, providing a defense for a vast region of drilling fields.
“If something goes wrong on the way over, is that module operational? I mean could it defend your freighter?”
“The module will remain hidden. But if needed, I can use it. It’s self-contained and fully functional. The only time the module will be useless is when it’s suspended from my cranes.”
“Gentlemen,” Lieutenant Sanchez said, “we should go. I don’t want you to miss the test.”
Jake followed the young lieutenant deeper into the superstructure. A final flight of stairs brought them to a door that issued to the sultriness.
An obstacle course around capstans, supports, winches, and cables brought them to the entrance of a tent that gave concealing shade to the railgun module, in addition to shielding it from distant prying eyes.
Underneath the fluttering curtain, the module dominated the freighter’s deck, spanning the area of a doublewide mobile trailer and standing four times as high. At first glance, it was a concrete obelisk atop thick pillars that would root the structure in a seaborne landmass. Chained to the deck for stability during transport, the self-contained weapon system appeared impregnable.
“There’s an eye-opener,” Cahill said.
“No shit,” Jake said. “It could probably take a few punches from five-inch shells.”
“Wouldn’t have to,” Cahill said. “Nothing would get within gun range against it. Not before it gets cut into Swiss cheese.”
Jake silently acknowledged the railgun’s range which, per Renard’s explanation, reached beyond one hundred miles. He realized that the hand of the CIA’s fastest rising executive, Olivia McDonald, extended across the globe. He could fathom no other explanation for the American-controlled BAE Systems hardware’s existence in the Philippines.
“Entry is from above,” Sanchez said. “There are stairs in the front.”
The steel steps rang with Jake’s footfall as he ascended the rectangular module. Half way up, he followed a horizontal plank outward to overcome the outer wall’s seaward slant, which minimized the impact angle of incoming weapons. At the top, he found a view in stark contrast to that from below.
From his study of the module, he recognized that hydraulic lifts had raised the upper weapons subsection. Atop the covering layer of pre-stressed concrete, he saw a fraction of a canted phased array radar. Below the concrete, a layer of plastic housed compartments of fluid designed to slow incoming weapons and to dissipate their heat, in case a projectile penetrated that far.
Under the fluid layer, a final defense protected the twin railguns and the crew and equipment below it. Used on Abram tanks, British Chobham armor erected a barrier of metal plates, ceramic blocks, and open space. The ceramic material would absorb blast heat and impact energy. Empty air pockets would relieve and redirect hot gases or the metal shards of an explosion.
Jake knew the advanced armor surrounded not just the hydraulically raised roof, but the entire module. The defensive covering would stop a five-inch round from a naval vessel, but how many rounds it could take in a successive pounding remained untested.
The twin guns were unimposing, deceptive in their lethality. With their barrels poking through the gap created by their hydraulic elevation, the guns appeared smaller than he expected. The greatest mass rose behind the breaches to absorb recoil, and as he walked deeper inside the module, he thought he could touch the top of the weapons standing on his tiptoes.
But a Phalanx close-in weapon system, complemented by an eleven-cell Rolling Airframe Missile launcher, blocked his path to either railgun. The point defenses of the Gatling gun bolstered by the RAM launcher added protection against airborne assailants.
“Impressive,” Cahill said.
“No shit,” Jake said.
“You think those railguns can hit incoming attack aircraft?”
“Yeah. In theory. The munitions are GPS guided.”
“Then why the RAMs?”
“My guess is that nobody’s tested the guns against anything more complex than a drone. A real pilot with his life on the line is going to juke and jive to get away. Not to mention incoming anti-ship missiles. Better to be safe than sorry and have the RAMs.”
“What about those?” Cahill asked.
Jake followed the Australian’s arm towards one and then the other of devices that resembled oversized surveillance cameras. Dumbfounded, he stared at them, pondering their purpose, until the truth sank in. Awareness of global weapons technology came with his job, and he recognized the United States Marine Corps’ ground-based version of advanced naval weaponry.