Two Bugis seamen lay sprawled amid the broken glass on the bridge deck. Dead, alive or indifferent, each received a finishing triple tap of a nine-millimeter. There was only one other place to go — the radio shack with its door blown half off its hinges. Forgetting everything he had ever known about sane combat entry, MacIntyre threw himself at it.
The air inside the small communications room was thick with smoke, and fragments of half-burned paper were everywhere. A middle-aged, balding European in a white tropic uniform lay sprawled at the rear of the cabin, a dazed expression on his face, the four gold strips on his shoulder boards marking him as the Flores’s captain.
The man’s eyes snapped clear as he recognized MacIntyre and grabbed for the Walther P-38 that lay on the deck beside him.
MacIntyre emptied the Beretta. Panting for breath, he went into the automatic-pistol-reload drill, ejecting the empty clip and slapping a fresh one home. As he did so he noted the black and white Bakelite name tag standing out against the spreading scarlet stains on the man’s shirt. Onderdank. A funny sort of name.
Gradually, MacIntyre resumed conscious control of his own body, a little amazed at the berserker who had been in possession for a time. It had been rather like that little dustup over that Croatian gunboat. Not too bad, though. His breathing was easy and the old heart was steady. He might be a little out of practice, but he wasn’t ready for the breaker’s yard yet.
He glanced around at the exceptionally well-appointed communications room, noting the stack of large ring-bound notebooks that had been piled on the floor along with the contents of a sturdy-looking document safe. Obviously they had been stacked up and set ablaze in a frantic effort to destroy them, only to have the detonation of the concussion grenade blow the fire out.
As he tramped out a few of the smoldering documents he noted a small red cylinder lying in the corner. MacIntyre recognized it as a thermite bomb, the type used for emergency document destruction. The pull ring had snapped off but the pin was still frozen in place, a spot of rust showing where the humid sea air had gotten to the device.
And blown into another corner was the flat gray case of a laptop computer, blistered and charred from the fire into which it had been tossed.
But still essentially intact. Collecting it, MacIntyre turned it over in his hands, noting a data card slot but no networking ports. What had Chris Rendino said about those code computers of Harconan’s? It would be a stand-alone, with no physical means of networking it for security’s sake.
“Admiral MacIntyre?” A cautious voice called up from below. “You okay. sir?”
For the first time MacIntyre noted that the volume of fire had dropped off again in the cavern. “I’m fine. How’s the fire team?”
“The corpsmen are here, sir. I think they’re going to be okay.” A helmeted head poked up the ladder and looked around. “Holy shit, sir,” the leatherneck commented respectfully.
“Yeah, we had a little trouble. We have some critical documentation here. I want a couple of hands to get this compartment secured and get this materiel collected and ready to move. This laptop computer is to be personally hand delivered to Commander Rendino on the Carlson. Personally! Got that, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have we located Captain Garrett yet?”
“No, sir, and we have the ship cleared. The captain isn’t aboard any where.”
Damnation, Amanda, where the hell are you?
The first phase of the operation, the battle for the cavern, had ended in a defeat for the defenders. Crouching behind their barricades of stacked cargo and equipment on the rear shelf of the ship pen, they had found themselves stricken by some inexplicable and frightening force. Not mere bullets: The air itself seemed to explode over their heads, slashing at them with dagger tips of burning steel.
Their barricades provided no shelter, no firing cover, and the pirates and Morning Star mercenaries — those who were still alive, at least — were forced to retreat into the two main access tunnels.
More grim news awaited them there. The surface entrances were blocked, smashed and caved in by the attacker’s shell fire. There was no way out.
From the cavern, strange metallic, inhuman voices spoke as loudly as the thunder, demanding in Bahasa that the defenders surrender, promising that none would be hurt. The last few dozen remaining of the garrison were shocked beyond rational thought, however. The flight-or-fight instincts had been triggered, and with flight rendered impossible, they would fight as a trapped animal would fight, to the death.
Crates of ammunition were broken open; they had a mountain of it to resist with. Other packing crates and cases were dragged from the lateral tunnel storerooms, and new barricades were hastily built, walling off the main passages from floor to ceiling with only firing ports left open.
In the haste of the construction, errors, critical ones, were inevitable. No one among the Bugis and Papuan survivors could be blamed for not being able to read the Cyrillic words for MORTAR SHELLS-120 MILLIMETER.
Stone Quillain sprinted across from the bow ramp of the Harconan Flores, angling wide to stay out of the line of fire from the tunnel mouths. His path took him behind some of the resistance points used by the cavern garrison, and he had to lengthen his stride to spring over sprawled bodies. Grudgingly he had to admit that the electronic do-jiggers bolted on to the Marine’s SABR weapons systems did seem to work as advertised.
The grenade-launcher half of the Selectable Assault Battle Rifle could be used to launch a 25mm “smart grenade.” As these rounds were fired, their microchip fuses could be programmed by the SABR’s integral laser range finder to air-burst at a specific designated distance from the launcher, such as directly over the head of an enemy concealed behind cover.
Such smart shells were also very handy for shooting around corners. Stone would never have believed it possible, but the foxhole was rapidly becoming obsolete.
Quillain slammed up against the rear wall of the cavern, joining the Marine squad that flanked the right-hand tunnel entrance. “Okay, what have we got?”
The squad leader intently studied the screen of a palm-size low-light television unit while one of his men cautiously extended its optic-fiber scanning head around the tunnel lip on an extendable aluminum rod.
“They’re back there just short of the first lateral tunnel, Skipper,” the noncom replied. “They got the tunnel blocked off with a whole pile of crap, and they got at least two medium machine guns set up to cover the tunnel mouth. If anybody sticks their head around that corner, they’ll saw it right off.”
“Damn, how ’bout the other tunnel?”
“Donaldson’s squad is covering that side and he says it’s pretty much the same setup. What we gonna do, sir?”
Stone scowled. “It looks like we got three choices: blast ’em out, gas ’em out, or wait ’em out. Let’s study on this a minute.”
The sound of boots slapping on stonework and the creak of equipment on a MOLLE harness sounded in the half-light of the cavern, and Elliot MacIntyre moved up to join the Marines. The admiral was helmet less and his graying brown hair was sweat-slick, but he was holding his M-4 ready at port arms and he was moving easily.
“Situation?” he demanded.
“Checked at a couple of barricades inside the tunnels. We’re still up against a valid defense. We’ve had the loudspeakers goin,’ yelling at ’em to surrender, but no takers so far.”