Chapter 67 - The Admiral’s Gambit
The twin searchlights turned the subterranean cavern into an operating theater of blinding white light. We were completely exposed on the narrow concrete slipway, twenty yards from the nearest cover, with forty feet of deep, freezing brackish water between us and the hull of the assault craft.
"Drop your weapons, Captain Miller," the loudspeaker on the boat crackled. It wasn't Sterling this time—it was the flat, professional voice of the tactical team commander. "Marcus Vance, place the titanium canister on the slipway apron and step back. The General has authorized lethal force on all targets if compliance is not established in five seconds."
Miller raised his Sig, his knuckles white, but he knew the arithmetic. A nine-millimeter handgun against a reinforced patrol craft with an automated turret was suicide.
"Marcus," Eleanor whimpered, falling to her knees behind my boots, clutching my uniform trousers. "Give it to them. Just give it to them... maybe he'll spare us—"
"He won't, Eleanor," I said, staring directly into the glare of the searchlights. "Sterling doesn't leave loose ends. He didn't leave them in Al-Qaim, and he won't leave them here."
"Three seconds," the loudspeaker blared.
"Marcus, what's the play?" Miller whispered, his voice trembling slightly from blood loss and adrenaline.
"The launch cruiser," I muttered, keeping my eyes fixed forward. "The fuel lines on that old boat were never drained. Dad had fifty gallons of aviation fuel stored in the deck tanks."
"Marcus, you can't reach that boat—"
Before Miller could finish, a tremendous, deafening roar tore through the cavern from the river mouth behind the Mark VI.
A thunderous shockwave hammered the water, throwing a five-foot wall of spray into the cavern. The Mark VI violently rocked on its beam, its searchlights tilting crazily toward the granite ceiling.
From the dark river approach, the blunt, gray nose of an eighty-seven-foot Marine Protector-class Coast Guard cutter surged through the narrow inlet, its heavy steel bow slamming directly into the stern of Sterling’s assault craft with a horrific screech of tearing metal.
The voice that boomed over the cutter’s external hailer was not Sterling’s, and it wasn't a mercenary’s. It was the gravelly, unmistakable roar of Admiral Thomas Hayes, Chief of Naval Operations:
"This is the United States Coast Guard Cutter *Chesapeake*! To the rogue elements on vessel Mark VI: Cut your engines and stand down immediately under authority of the National Command Authority! You are engaged in treason against the United States!"
The cavern erupted into madness.
The gunner on the Mark VI’s automated fifty-cal spun the turret toward the cutter, opening fire at point-blank range. Heavy armor-piercing rounds chewed into the cutter’s wheelhouse, shattering the ballistic glass into opaque spiderwebs. The cutter answered with its own forward-mounted twenty-five-millimeter Bushmaster autocannon.
The sound inside the enclosed underground cavern was catastrophic. The concussion of the twenty-five-millimeter rounds tore the air from our lungs, the sound bouncing off the granite walls with the force of continuous thunderclaps. Concrete chips rained from the ceiling like hail.
May you like
"Move!" I roared, grabbing Miller by the harness and Eleanor by the collar, dragging them toward the heavy steel blast doors of the Raven-Nine control room as high-explosive fragments shredded the wooden slipway into matchsticks.
***
