The Emperor's Revenge

SIXTY-THREE

As the Achilles surged forward, Juan, Eric, MacD, and Gretchen proceeded with caution through the interior. Juan thought there was still a chance that Antonovich was lying and leading them into a trap.

They reached the main lounge and crept through it, keeping their eyes on all of the doors. Through the panoramic windows, Juan could see the bulk of the Oregon pressed against the yacht’s hull, trying to drive her sideways and keep her from getting in position to fire on either the cruise ship or transformer station. The .30 caliber machine guns hidden in the rusty barrels aboard the Oregon had popped up and were firing at unseen targets on the deck above. Max could stop any boarding party Golov tried to send over.

Juan was sure Golov had a shipwide search going on for them. When they got to the bow end of the lounge, Juan took point and moved down the hall.

At the third cabin on the right, Juan tried the door handle, but it was locked.

With everyone ready, he kicked the door in. He rushed inside with his submachine gun prepared to fire, but the room was deserted.

“Hurry up, Eric,” Juan said. “We don’t have much time.” Gretchen kept watch at the door, and MacD prepped the C-4 they’d brought with them to sabotage the railgun.

“On it,” Eric said, taking a seat at the keyboard. The array of monitors came alive with a tap on the space bar. He input several passwords from the list Murph had sent over. The fourth one worked and he was in.

All of the file names were written in English, the universal language of hackers. Eric looked up which files had been copied most recently.

“I think this is it!” he announced triumphantly. He pointed at a file called Dynamo Break Config. He opened it to display a control panel for operating the circuit breakers remotely. “I can use the Achilles’s network to get this to Murph.”

Gretchen snapped her fingers and whispered, “We’ve got company. Main lounge.”

“Send it,” Juan said quietly.

“Already on its way,” Eric replied. “One more thing to do.” His fingers flew across the keyboard.

“You’re done,” Juan said, pulling him up. Eric resisted for a moment and tapped the ENTER key before he was yanked from the chair. A window popped up on the screen, but Juan didn’t take the time to see what it said.

Gretchen fired her MP5 in three controlled bursts at the main lounge. They were answered by screams of those hit and shouts of the remaining survivors.

“Move!” she yelled, and unleashed an extended barrage of suppressing fire.

MacD and Eric shot as they retreated in cover formation while Juan ran down the hall to clear their path. By now, he could see that the Achilles was beginning to pull away from the Oregon. They didn’t have much time before she would be free to maneuver into a firing position on the transformer station.

Juan was met by three men attempting to flank them by coming down from the deck above. Juan got the first one in the chest as he was coming down the stairs, but the other two retreated upstairs, sporadically firing to cut off escape in that direction.

Juan led MacD, Eric, and Gretchen down the stairs. Their destination was the railgun’s main power supply.

“These guys don’t seem as well trained as the other mercs we’ve run into,” MacD said, barely breaking a sweat as they ran down the stairs.

“Golov probably sent his best people on the raid in the Netherlands,” Gretchen said.

“They still have us outnumbered,” Juan reminded them. “It won’t take them long to figure out where we went.”

They sprinted through the corridor to the room housing the railgun power supply. Two men inside raised pistols as the team rushed in, but Juan put them down before they could fire.

The large room, filled with electrical panels, consoles, computer terminals, and wiring conduits, hummed from generators charging the massive capacitors. It had doors on either end, one toward the bow and the other toward the stern, making defense of the space particularly difficult.

“Gretchen, Eric, take the doors while MacD and I plant the explosives. MacD, set them for sixty seconds.”

Juan worked as quickly as he could to mash the C-4 against the control panel.

Max had the Oregon’s engines at full throttle, but they still couldn’t keep up with the Achilles’s fantastic speed. Despite Linda’s expert helm control, the yacht was pulling away.

Their hulls continued to grind together, but the armored plating of both ships withstood the enormous pressure. The Achilles’s stern was now almost even with the Oregon’s bow.

Max forced a last few drops of power from the magnetohydrodynamic engines and ordered, “Hard aport!”

Linda slewed the Oregon around and it mashed even harder against the Achilles’s stern in a shriek of metal.

But it was no use. The Achilles was free.

Max tried to open the panel to expose the 120mm cannon, but the impact had crushed the doors and jammed them shut. They were out of operational Exocet missiles, and the Oregon’s torpedoes were useless against the Achilles’s mini-torpedoes.

He brought the Gatling guns to bear on the yacht. The angry buzz-saw sound of the rotating six-barreled guns was accompanied by the chunks of the Achilles flying away as the tungsten rounds chewed into her stern, but they did nothing to slow her down. In seconds, she’d be in position to fire on the transformers.

Juan and his team were now the only ones who could take out the railgun.