“Only if you can commune with the dead,” responded Dalmar. “Your five men laid down their arms the moment they were surrounded! I was certain you would be very disappointed at their cowardice, so I executed them on your behalf.”
The lawyer shuddered.
“Mr. Charles Bettencourt,” continued the pirate, “I’ve found our rivalry thrilling, but I’m afraid the game is nearing the end. While you have earned yourself an honorable death by my hand, I have no quarrel with your people. Heed my warning. I give you a chance to evacuate Anconia Island before I strike. You have twelve minutes.”
“Dalmar, buddy, this isn’t a ship,”countered Bettencourt. “This is a city, a city in a really nasty part of the world. You can’t just tell everybody to leave. Where the hell are they going to go?”
He released the transmit button and resumed pacing, while the radio crackled silent, Dalmar unwilling to respond.
“You talk to him,” demanded Bettencourt, pointing at Jonah. “Tell him to divert course, give us more time, anything!”
“Why of course,” shouted Jonah, spitting flecks of blood as he spoke, filled with sudden anger. “Take a mulligan with Dalmar’s 180,000-ton battering ram. He’ll just stuff that ship up your ass on your schedule. How’s your Tuesday? Actually, strike that — I just looked and mine’s terrible.”
“Order a general evacuation.” the CEO said, pointing at his lawyer. “Get everyone out of the buildings and onto anything that floats — do it now!”
Around them, lights flashed and instructions appeared on wall-mounted screens. A public-address system calmly issued pre-programmed evacuation instructions.
“I’m not kidding around, Dalmar,” Bettencourt said, making one last-ditch effort to speak with the pirate. “I’m sorry about the attempts on your life and that of your men. Really, I am. I’ve clearly underestimated you. That’s my mistake. I own that. But you’re making a mistake here, too. Nobody’s done anything yet that we can’t walk away from. I can make this right. But if you do this — if you threaten the lives of my people, your actions will follow you for the rest of your short life. I’m not leaving. I will defend this city with my life.”
“Pish-posh,” interrupted Hassan. “You have no intention of dying on anyone’s behalf, not even your own.”
“I will throw everything, everything I have at you,” shouted Bettencourt into the radio, losing control. “And I swear by everything holy that I will end you this time.”
“You have eleven minutes to try,” said Dalmar. “Good luck. Dread Pirate Dalmar Abdi, Captain of the SS Fuck Your Mother out.”
“He makes a good pirate captain,” said Hassan.
“That he does,” mused Jonah. “He has style. Style is very important for a pirate captain.”
“He needs an eye patch though, don’t you think?”
“And a parrot,” Jonah nodded and squinted out the window, catching his first glimpse of the supertransport through the floor-to-ceiling penthouse windows as the massive ship bore down on Anconia Island.
“Mobilize everything!” Bettencourt shouted at the colonel. “Get all non-combatants to lifeboats and the jetway! Attack that ship!”
Face red and boiling with anger, Bettencourt picked the pearl-handled 1911 from his desk, strode up to Hassan and whipped the doctor across the face with the loaded weapon.
“Stop wasting time,” Colonel Westmoreland barked. “My men will launch drones and our helicopters will assault.”
No sooner had he spoken than a pack of eight triangular drones launched from underneath the island, correcting their trim and altitude with eerie synchronicity as they formed up for an attack run. The gleaming white drones were larger than Jonah had expected, each with wingspans of nearly thirty feet, jet engines whistling as they passed the penthouse at eye level.
Approaching the Erno Rubik fast and low, they simultaneously disgorged their missile bays into the tenstory bridge castle with a ticker-tape of white contrails. The barrage of missiles flew towards the container ship at impossible speed, tumbling out of formation as they impacted the massive bridge castle in a disorganized spread.
Flashes from the bridge castle — small arms fired at the now-retreating drones. The jet engine of a single drone puffed with white smoke and fell from the sky like a wounded bird.
“Out of missiles,” reported the colonel.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” demanded Bettencourt. “That didn’t do shit. Do they have time to rearm?”
“No time,” Westmoreland said. “But we can order the pilots to remotely ram the ship.”
“Do it.” Bettencourt, breathing heavily, wiped sweat off his forehead. A disorganized patch of hair fell over his face.
Orders received, the formation of drones whipped around and lined up for a final kamikaze run at the bridge castle. One after another, they threw themselves into the tombstone-shaped bridge castle from all sides. First burst out of the structure, consuming it in black, billowing clouds of smoke.
“It’s still coming!” shouted the lawyer.
“We’re not done yet,” said the colonel. “Just wait until my trigger-pullers get on board the Erno Rubik. They’re a pack of heartbreakers and life-takers. If I were Dalmar Abdi, I’d be shitting my pants right about now.”
“Certainly,” added Hassan. “It’s not as if your mercenaries have ever gotten their arses handed to them by a few pirates before.”
Three Blackhawk attack helicopters swooped in after the expended drones, preparing to board and take the container ship. Two of the helicopters came in low over the bow, dropping fast-ropes onto the deck. A dozen men slid out of the aircraft, distant and oblivious to the pirate’s intermittent fire into their ranks.
The third helicopter broke off from providing overwatch cover and charged the bridge. The Blackhawk turned to the side, exposing the side door gunner to strafe. The gunner fired a long staccato salvo into the bridge until the tail rotor caught a strand of nearly invisible high-tensile steel monofilament strung between bridge and the midship crane. The rear rotor blades sheared off, sending the out-of-control helicopter spinning downwards, knocking a tall stack of containers off the side of the Erno as it tumbled into the sea.
“Ouch,” said Jonah. “That looked expensive.”
“It’s insured,” replied Bettencourt, with a far-away look in his eyes.
“Your premiums might be going up in the near future,” cracked Jonah.
The remaining two helicopters retreated from the bridge of the Erno Rubik, firing continuously as they strafed, hanging back and away from the wires. Heavy gunship rounds impacted the structure until the helicopters broke off the attack, out of ammunition.
The SS Erno Rubik was now close, too close to stop the impact.
Far below the bird’s-eye view of the penthouse, the mercenary mothership made a desperate attempt to ram the cargo ship against the port side bow, frantically trying to push the cargo supertransport off course. It hit with a crushing blow, sinking her angular bow deep into the hull of the Erno like a prison shank. Hopelessly outclassed and disabled, the damaged ship scraped and bashed along the entire length of the Erno Rubik without so much as nudging the massive cargo ship an inch.
“Brace for impact!” Colonel Westmoreland shouted.
The SS Erno Rubik slammed into Anconia Island with the deafening impact of a tsunami. The penthouse rocked, knocking Charles Bettencourt to his knees while Colonel Westmoreland fell off his feet and onto the marble floor, glass shattering and raining down around them.
With the sound of a thousand diesel locomotives dropped into a chasm, the Erno Rubik drove deep into the heart of the city, splitting the fault line between platforms. The smaller office buildings on either side crumbled, joined by an avalanche of shipping containers. From the high vantage point, Jonah watched as the Erno Rubik cleaved the entire artificial island in half. The container ship wallowed, covered by collapsed stacks of shipping containers and demolished buildings, weighing down on the supporting structure of Anconia itself. On the jetway far below, dazed and disoriented masses stared up, forced to witness the destruction as the very ground buckled beneath their island.