Matabu could never have been prepared for the horrific spectacle that exploded around him. It seemed to him as though the sky and air suddenly tore apart. His mind accepted only fleetingly in one stunned glimpse the total disintegration of the helicopter. It erupted in a giant fireball that was followed by a mushroom burst of shattered debris that rained down in a fiery torrent onto the river.
"The white bastards tricked us!" Ketou yelled in abrupt anger at having swallowed the bait. He rushed to the rail and furiously shook his fist at the Calliope. "Depress guns and fire!" he screamed at his gun crews.
"Too late!" Matabu cried in terror. The Admiral panicked and crouched there, frozen into immobility as he watched his crew crumple and die under the tearing slugs of Gunn's weapons. He stared petrified in disbelieving shock at the obscenely twisted corpses around the silent guns, all lying sprawled in fetal attitudes, their gore spreading across the deck. Matabu's mind simply could not accept a clandestine ship masquerading as an innocent yacht under a respected flag with the firepower to turn his comfortable little world into a horror. The stranger standing at the helm of the deadly boat had turned surprise into a tactical asset. Matabu's men were overwhelmed with shock they seemed unable to shake off. They milled about like cattle in a thunderstorm, caught off balance and struck with fear, falling without firing a shot in response. He realized then with blood-chilling certainty that he was going to die; he realized it when the turret above the stern of the sport yacht spun and unleashed another missile point blank against the gunboat that penetrated the wooden hull and struck a generator in the engine room before detonating.
At almost the same moment, Pitt's third toss struck home. Miraculously, the grenade impacted on a bulkhead and ricocheted into an open hatch of the second gunboat. In a concert of explosions, it exploded in a roar of flame, setting off the ammunition and cannon shells in the boat's magazine. Flying debris and swirling smoke shot up in an umbrella of splintered bulkheads, ventilators, pieces of lifeboats, and broken bodies. Shockingly, the gunboat ceased to exist. The shock wave came like a sledgehammer and drove Matabu's vessel hard against the sport yacht, knocking Pitt off his feet.
Giordino's missile blasted the gunboat's engine room into a holocaust of shredded metal and slashed timbers. Water gushed in through a massive hole ripped out of the bottom, and the gunboat began to sink quickly. Virtually the whole interior was a blazing bedlam with fiery tongues darting through the open ports. Veins of oily black smoke curled and billowed into the tropical air before drifting over the forested riverbank.
With no targets left standing at the guns or on the decks, Gunn fired his final rounds at the two figures on the bridge. Two slugs tore into Matabu's chest. He rose to his feet, stood there for several moments, hands in a death grip on the bridge railing, staring dumbly at the blood staining his immaculate uniform. Then he slowly sagged to the deck in a fat, inert lump.
For several seconds a desperate silence fell over the river, broken by the soft crackling of burning surface oil. Then abruptly, like a shriek from the very pits of hell, an agonized voice screamed out over the water.
"Western filth!" Ketou cried. "You've murdered my crew." He stood there against the gray sky, blood seeping from a wound in his shoulder, dazed by the sheer physical shock of the disaster around him.
Gunn stared up at him over the barrels of empty guns.
Ketou glared back at him for a moment, and then he focused on Pitt who was pushing himself off the deck and reaching for the wheel.
"Western filth," Ketou repeated.
"Fair is fair!" Pitt shouted back above the crackle of the flames. "You lost the draw." Then he added, "Abandon your ship. We'll come around and pick you up.
Fleetingly, almost like the blink of a camera shutter, Ketou leaped down the ladder and ran toward the stern. The gunboat had heeled sharply to port, her gunwales awash, as he struggled across the steeply angled deck.
"Get him, Rudi," Pitt snapped into his mike. "He's going for the stern gun."
Gunn said nothing but cast aside his useless weapons, ducked into the forward compartment, and snatched a Remington TR870 automatic shotgun. Pitt shoved the throttles to their stops convulsively, spinning the wheel to port and skidding the Calliope around in a violent sheer that ended with the bow aimed upriver. The propellers bit and dug in, the water boiled under her stern, and the Calliope leaped like a race horse out of the gate.
There was only oil and floating debris drifting on the river now. Commander Ketou's gunboat was starting its final slide to the river bottom. The river flowed into the shattered hull and hissed in clouds of steam. Water was swirling around Ketou's knees when he reached the aft 30-millimeter guns, swung the muzzles toward the fleeing sport yacht, and pressed the fire control button.
"Al!" Pitt hailed.
His reply was the hissing blast of a missile that Giordino launched from his turret. A streak of orange flame and white smoke shot through the air toward the gunboat. But Pitt's abrupt turn of the wheel and the thrust of sudden acceleration had thrown off Giordino's aim. The missile swished over the sinking gunboat and exploded in the trees bordering the river.
Gunn appeared at Pitt's side in the cockpit, took careful aim, and began blasting away with the Remington over the stern at Ketou. Time seemed to slow as the shot splattered around the gun mount and into the African boat commander. They were too far away to see the hate and frustration in his shiny black features. Nor could they see that he died over the gun sight, his lifeless hand doggedly forcing down the fire control button.
A burst of fire shrieked after the Calliope. Pitt swiftly cut a sharp bend to starboard, but the irony of battle had yet to take its fair share. Ironic because a dead man had fought back through catastrophic defeat with a precision he could never know. Jets of water skipped white and straddled the speeding boat as shells ripped away the airfoil above and behind the cockpit that held the parabolic satellite dish antenna and communications antenna and navigation transponder, blasting the remains into the river. The windshield in front of the cockpit shattered and was carried away. Gunn threw himself prone on the deck, but Pitt could only hunch over the wheel and ride out the deadly storm. They could not hear the impact of the shells over the thunderous roar of the flat-out turbo diesels. But they could see the bits and pieces of debris bursting all around them.
Then Giordino got in a clear shot and launched his last missile. The settling stern of the gunboat suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke and flame. And then the boat was gone, sliding under and leaving a large flutter of bubbles and a spreading slick of oil. The Commander-in-Chief of Benin's navy and his river fleet were no more.
Pitt forced himself to turn his back on the flotsam-filled river astern and look to his own boat and friends. Gunn was coming shakily to his feet, bleeding from a cut across his balding head. Giordino appeared from the engine room looking like a man who had just stepped off a handball court, sweating and weary, but ready for a new game.
He pointed up the river. "We're in for it now," he shouted the words in Pitt's ear.