“Monkey, give the Guards a hand pulling those barrels on deck.”
Monkey handed his MG to Mcdonald and with three of the Algerians, wrestled the two barrels of kerosene onto the deck and to the stern.
They shoved one to the port side and the other to starboard. Sergeant Boutrous pried the tops off both of them.
Duncan scratched his head. Good idea, if they could get it lit and build some smoke before the Algerians blew them out of the water. What he needed was time. Time for rescue and reinforcements to arrive.
“Mats oui, Man Capitaine. C’est tres bien pour le smoke screen.”
“Right! Whatever you say, Sergeant Boutrous.” Duncan wet his finger and held it up. The wind was coming from aft, blowing across the boat.
“Don’t light it yet. If you do it’ll blind us.”
Duncan hurried, as fast as his injured leg allowed, to the front of the boat. He frowned when he saw H.J. and Bud. “What’s wrong with you two? Can’t obey orders?”
“And let you have all the fun, Captain?” Bud asked.
Duncan looked up at the exposed bridge. “Beau, bring the boat around so the wind is off the starboard bow. We’re going to lay a smoke screen and hope the Algerians don’t know how to fire with radar.”
Bud reached in his satchel and pulled out a flag. “Captain. I’ve always carried this with me and we may want to fly it now.”
Another shell whistled, overhead, exploding twenty yards to port.
Mcdonald and Monkey raked the fast-attack craft that had maneuvered to within five hundred yards of the boat. The Kebir rolled to port as its powerful engines moved the patrol craft out of range.
“Beau,” Duncan said. “Take this and run it up the mast in front of you.”
Beau reached down and took the flag from Duncan. Steering to starboard with one hand, he unwrapped the mast line with the other. A quick release of the wheel, and Beau ran the American flag up the mast. The shifting wind to starboard quickly caught the fabric. The yard-long flag snapped like a whip in the wind. Duncan glanced at the flag. A cheer from the stern of the boat erupted from the SEALs at the sight of Old Glory challenging the Algerians. They might die in the coming minutes, but the Algerians were going to know whom they were fighting.
Duncan cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Light the barrels!”
The Palace Guards patted their pockets. The sergeant tugged on Mcdonald’s shirt, making a flicking motion with his fingers. Mcdonald shook his head as he patted his pockets. He didn’t smoke.
The Guardsmen looked at Duncan and shrugged their shoulders. Sergeant Boutros made a flicking motion to Dun can.
“Beau, we need a light!” Duncan yelled, and then added excitedly, “Flares! Beau, are flares up there somewhere?”
Keeping one hand on the helm, Beau reached down and ripped open the small doors to a storage cabinet on his left. He pulled the junk inside onto the deck.
“Here they are!” he cried. He held up a square metal tin with a fading picture of a flare on the top of it. He pitched it down to Duncan.
Duncan caught the box and hurried aft. A cannon boom announced another inbound shell. This one exploded about thirty yards astern, sending sea spray raining down on the water carrier.
He pulled two magnesium flares from the box and tossed the residue on the deck. Duncan ambled aft, holding the magnesium flares in his left hand. He handed them to Sergeant Boutros, who popped the trigger and tossed them, one after the other, into the kerosene. Flames shot ten feet into the air before quickly disappearing. Dark black smoke billowed out as the conflagration sent waves of smoke flowing at sea level off the port side. Within seconds an impenetrable barrier hid the water carrier from the Algerian patrol craft.
A shell whistled by, splitting the aft mast in half, before it impacted off the starboard quarter. Gibbons was hurled forward off the mast like a shot from a catapult. He landed in the water twenty yards off the port bow. Beau whirled the wheel to port, aiming the bow toward Gibbons.
Gibbons floated facedown, unmoving. Thirty seconds passed before the water carrier closed the distance. Gibbons bounced off the side of the port bow of the low-riding boat, and continued to bounce along the side of the water carrier as the boat moved past. Two Guardsmen and Monkey grabbed him and pulled him aboard.
Monkey rolled his friend onto his back, touched his neck for a pulse.
Feeling nothing, he tilted Gibbons’s head back and began CPR. Duncan moved as fast as possible past the Guardsmen who had helped rescue Gibbons.
“Don’t give up, Monkey,” Duncan said. He picked up the MG-60 from the deck.
Beau estimated the direction of the smoke barrier, and changed course slightly so the water carrier paralleled the smoke screen. The engines of the Kebir could be heard oscillating wildly from the other side of the smoke as it maneuvered in its search for the water carrier. A shell exploded nearly a hundred feet off their port side. The gunners on the Algerian warship were firing blind.
Beau steered, watching the burning diesel fuel and keeping the water carrier near the smoke screen.
Duncan expected the patrol craft to appear through the smoke at any moment. Dreaded anticipation drove his anxiety. But when several minutes passed and no Kebir appeared, Duncan began to suspect that their small-arms fire had achieved its purpose and made the Algerians overcautious. So overcautious that he knew the Algerians weren’t going to come charging through the smoke screen until they knew where the water carrier was. They had surface radar, so they had to have some idea where the water carrier was. Then he noticed the shoreline, and recalled that surface radar became ineffective this close to land — land smear they called it.
Gibbons coughed twice, vomited up a lungful of water, some of which went in Monkey’s mouth.
Monkey spat several times. He rubbed his mouth briskly. “Hey, man, just because I saved your life don’t mean you have to spew up in my mouth.”
Monkey rolled Gibbons onto his side to make it easier for the SEAL petty officer to cough up the remainder of the seawater. “That wasn’t a spew, Monkey. I was kissing your ugly puss,” Gibbons mumbled.
Beau turned the water carrier north and began another smoke screen at an oblique angle to the first one.
Duncan rubbed his knee, trying to ease the ache, as he watched the smoke rising from the stern. This second smoke barrier Beau was building would let the water carrier zigzag from one to the other, playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with the Algerian patrol craft.
What would they do once the kerosene burned itself out?
Another shell landed further right than the last one.
Suddenly, less than one hundred yards off their stern, the Algerian patrol craft ripped through the smoke screen. A scurry of activity broke out on its bow near the cannon with excited pointing and shouting by those on its bridge. They were as surprised as the SEALs. Algerian sailors hurried to turn the cannon toward the water carrier.
Duncan and Mcdonald raked the deck of the ship with their machine guns. Two sailors fell. Duncan raised his sights and peppered the bridge. The people on the bridge of the Kebir disappeared behind the armored sides. The gunners on the forward deck twisted the cannon toward the water carrier.
No way they can miss at this distance, thought Duncan.
Beau whirled the wheel to the right, and the tiny water carrier slowly turned to port and eased into the smoke screen.
An Algerian sailor, near the cannon, grabbed his chest and tumbled backward onto the deck. The patrol craft tilted sharply to the right as the warship increased its speed just as the cannon fired.
The unexpected hard-right rudder of the Kebir threw the Algerian shot off target. The shell sailed over the water carrier and exploded directly astern, knocking Duncan, Mcdonald, and the Palace Guards off their feet. Monkey was hurled outward. He grabbed a line, once connected to the destroyed aft mast, and as his momentum carried him toward the edge of the deck, his firm grip brought him up short of being thrown into the sea.