The Emperor's Revenge

SIXTY-FOUR

On the Achilles’s bridge, four of the monitors were showing live street webcam feeds from Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Brussels. When the screens went black, Golov would have confirmation that Europe’s power system had been fried.

It was a struggle to keep his mind off Ivana’s death, but he did his best by focusing on the havoc he was about to wreak, a bittersweet revenge for his devastating loss.

The Oregon was in pursuit but falling behind quickly. Her rotary cannons relentlessly hammered away at the Achilles.

“Bring us around, Mr. Kravchuk,” Golov said, standing defiantly in the middle of the bridge to show that he would not succumb to the worst that Cabrillo could dish out. “Take aim on the main transformer housing.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The Achilles swung around, continuing at flank speed. The railgun’s elevation lowered. The targeting reticle on the screen was coming into focus on the transformer station.

Juan was planting the last explosive charge in the railgun’s power supply room when he heard Max in his earpiece.

“Juan, you’re out of time. They’re lining up to fire.”

“Got it.” Juan turned to MacD. “Okay, you heard him. Let’s cut down the time to fifteen seconds and hope that we—”

A barrage of bullets from the aft door cut him short. MacD was hit in the shoulder and fell back. Juan dragged him out of the line of fire, while Gretchen took down the first of half a dozen attackers. Eric shot two men trying to box them in from the bow side. More rounds ricocheted around them, forcing them to retreat behind an equipment panel before they could arm the bombs.

They all returned fire, but they were at a stalemate. Neither side could advance.

“We’re stuck,” Gretchen said. “They’d cut us down before we could arm the explosives.”

Juan reported the situation to Max while he pictured the layout of the Achilles in his mind. There was a corridor one flight up that would allow him to circle around and ambush the gunmen from the rear, if they remained where they were.

“You two stay here and distract them,” Juan said to Eric and MacD.

Without another word, he looked at Gretchen and tilted his head toward the door. She understood and nodded.

Under cover of a withering fusillade from Eric and MacD, Juan and Gretchen crawled out of the room.

As soon as they were out of sight, they sprinted up the closest set of stairs.

The command center personnel at the Continental Control Hub silently watched Murph as he waited in frustration for the program Eric sent him to install on his laptop. They all wanted to crowd around to see what was going on, but Linc and Eddie kept them back to give him breathing space. Although Murph was used to working under pressure, this was a whole new level. He was essentially trying to deactivate a nuke that was going to take out the entire grid for hundreds of millions of people, and the clock was ticking.

Antonovich, who stood off to the side under the guard of the facility’s security team, had shown him the exact cable Ivana had connected her own computer to. The little blue progress bar on Murph’s screen filled in with excruciating sluggishness.

Max was on a speakerphone, calling a play-by-play on the Achilles’s attempt to line up a shot on the transformer station.

“He’s turning now,” Max said. “It’s allowing us to make up some of the distance.”

“How much?” Eddie asked.

“Not enough. They’ll be able to fire in less than a minute.”

Linc leaned over the speaker. “Is there any way you can stall them?”

“I’ve done everything I can. And Juan has his own problems. It’s up to you now.”

Murph’s fingers hovered over the mouse and keyboard as the last five percent of the progress bar counted down.

When it reached one hundred percent, the application opened. Several of the command center employees cheered, but Murph knew that they weren’t out of the woods yet.

The app confirmed that he was connected to the Control Hub’s system. He swiftly scanned ShadowFoe’s user interface, searching for the command to deactivate the lock on the circuit breakers.

He found the proper menu item and a command window popped up: DEACTIVATE BREAKER LOCK. He clicked on it.

A pop-up window helpfully asked, Are you sure?

“What am I, an idiot?” Murph said, and clicked OK.

Every eye turned to the big board. After an agonizing wait, one of the red lights turned to green. Then a second light switched to green. Dozens more remained red, but the program seemed to be working as a third red light converted to green.

“The Achilles is in firing position,” Max announced.

Murph held his breath. This was going to be close.