The Emperor's Revenge

SIXTY-FIVE

Juan and Gretchen reached the stairwell behind the crew attacking the power supply room.

“What’s your sitrep, Stoney?” Juan whispered into his throat mic.

“Still here,” Eric replied. “We got three of them. Three left, but I’m almost out of ammo.”

“One mag for me,” MacD grunted.

“Okay,” Juan said. “We’re in position. As soon as you start shooting, we’ll rush them. On my mark. Three… two… one… Now!”

Two sustained volleys of fire came from below. Juan and Gretchen ran down the stairs and saw the backs of two men, crouching behind the doorjambs. The inexperienced crew members raised their assault rifles to fire, but Juan and Gretchen took them out with a couple of short bursts.

The one remaining man, who had advanced into the power supply room, whirled around at the shots behind him, exposing his position. MacD and Eric brought him down before Juan and Gretchen could finish the job.

They rushed in and found all but one of the bombs intact. Its timer had been damaged in the hail of gunfire. In spite of that, Juan thought enough explosives had been planted to take out the system.

“Remember, fifteen seconds,” Juan said to Eric, while Gretchen helped MacD up and covered their path out.

Juan entered the new time into the first detonator, but a high-pitched whine froze him before he could get to the next one. The eerie sound was followed immediately by a mammoth bang that shook the whole room.

They were too late. The railgun had fired.

The superheated air and smoke around the railgun’s barrel cleared almost instantly in the strong wind. Golov raised binoculars to watch the results of all his and Ivana’s hard work come to fruition. He silently mouthed the seconds to impact.

The vast station’s main transformer housing was unguarded except for a chain-link fence and barbed wire. Because it was unmanned, there would be no casualties — not that Golov cared. The building was shielded from the weather by a steel wall. The hypersonic round would drill through it as easily as it knifed through the air.

When Golov mouthed, “One,” a huge explosion engulfed the housing. Sparks flew from the transformers as they short-circuited, their oil-cooling systems blowing apart in succession like dominos. The spectacular chain reaction was even better than what he’d hoped for.

He dropped the binoculars and eagerly watched the TV monitors.

For a moment, there was no change, but Golov knew that it would take a few seconds for the cascade effect to ripple through the electrical system.

Then the first monitor went black. Amsterdam was dark. There was an elated cheer of victory from the bridge crew. They knew that meant their stolen money could no longer be tracked by investigators. By the time the grid came back online, the trail would be ice-cold.

Golov smiled wistfully and imagined Ivana’s pride at their accomplishment. He watched expectantly for the other screens to go dark.

But none of them did. The feeds remained up and running. The traffic lights remained functional. Vehicles continued to move.

His smile faded.

Then the live feed from Amsterdam came back online. The electrical grid was still intact. Golov stood staring in disbelief.

“No, no, no,” he muttered, hoping that there was just a delay, but after another few seconds, it was clear that there would be no cascading grid failure.

His mission had failed. Now there would be nowhere he could run without being tracked down.

His phone rang. It was Marie Marceau’s number.

He answered. “I’ll get you for this.”

“And my little dog, too?” Cabrillo replied, his voice masked by the sound of machinery in the background. “Give it up, Golov. Ivana’s program was deactivated. You’re done. If I were you—”

Golov hurled the phone against the bulkhead, shattering it.

He yelled at his XO, “Turn so we can fire on the Oregon!”

“But Captain, the railgun is overheating,” Kravchuk said. “It’s only a matter of time before the liquid-cooled capacitors explode, unless we shut it down.”

Golov grabbed him by the lapel. “Don’t you see that our only chance to get away now is to keep them from following us?”

“Sir, we risk destroying the Achilles if we fire a damaged gun.”

“I don’t care!” Golov shouted, practically spitting the words. “Destroy that ship!”

He stared down the helmsman, who finally set a new course. The Achilles began its turn. Kravchuk reluctantly ordered a new shell loaded into the railgun.

Now they’re turning on us,” Max told Juan.

“Don’t worry,” Juan said. “We’re about to take care of that.”

He pulled MacD to his feet and nodded to Eric. The timers were set at fifteen seconds. Eric flicked them on and they ran out of the power supply room. Leading the way and watching for any further gunmen, Juan sprinted up the stairs as Eric and Gretchen helped MacD behind him. They were two decks up, and moving down the hall toward daylight, when the detonators went off.

The blasts tore through the power room, spewing a jet of fire out through the corridor and licking at the bottom of the stairwell. The railgun wouldn’t be firing again. The detonation worked just as they’d hoped.

It was the next explosion that Juan wasn’t expecting.

Their C-4 must have damaged some system they weren’t aware of, setting off a secondary reaction, because a huge blast threw him down the hall.

Juan’s vision blacked out for a moment and then returned as he, strangely, found himself lying on the floor. He shook his head to regain his senses.

Down the hall, Eric writhed on the ground, holding his leg. Juan crawled over to him.

“Stoney, are you hurt?”

“My leg,” Eric said, grimacing. “I think it’s broken.”

“Hold on. We’ll get you out of here.” Flames crept up the walls on the other side of the yacht. The automated fire suppression system had been knocked out in the blast.

Juan looked around and saw MacD propped up in a seated position, regarding him with a ragged smile.

“Ah expected better amenities on a yacht like this.”

“Where’s Gretchen?”

MacD turned his head in surprise as if he’d forgotten she was with them.

They both spotted her at the same time. She was motionless, with her hip pinned under a beam that had fallen from the ceiling.

Juan ran to her and leaned down to check her breathing. She was still alive but unconscious.

Eric was in no condition to help Juan, and MacD wasn’t much better, but at least he was mobile.

“MacD, grab her arm and pull her out when I lift the beam.”

Using his good hand, MacD got hold of her arm. Juan thrust his titanium-framed combat leg under the beam and pried it up. He got just enough leverage for MacD to drag Gretchen out. When she was clear, Juan lowered the beam and picked her up very carefully, not knowing the extent of her injuries.

“Help Eric,” Juan said, then nodded toward the door leading out onto the deck. “There should be a life raft outside that exit. Come on. I don’t think the Achilles is going to be afloat much longer.”

Outside, Juan put Gretchen down for a moment, opened a hatch, and withdrew a life raft canister. There were also several life vests, which he handed to MacD and Eric, before fitting one on Gretchen.

The Achilles had slowed to half speed but was still traveling faster than most other ships could. It didn’t matter. They had to risk jumping overboard.

“This is going to hurt, Stoney,” he said.

Eric nodded in understanding. “I know.”

Movement caught Juan’s eye. He looked up, past the ruined railgun, to a man dashing out onto the flying wing outside the bridge. Golov glared down at him from the railing, yelling something that Juan couldn’t understand.

Juan gave Golov a mocking salute. Then with a nod to MacD, who was balanced on the railing alongside Eric, he threw the raft canister overboard at the same time that they jumped. The life raft inflated automatically when it hit the water. Juan gently lifted Gretchen’s limp body over the side and dropped with her into the Baltic Sea.

Golov watched as Cabrillo and the others with him were swept into the Achilles’s frothing wake.

“Captain, I must insist that we go,” Kravchuk said as he joined him on the bridge wing. “The Achilles is doomed.” The XO waved his hand at the fire raging through half the vessel.

Kravchuk was right. It was only a matter of time before the unchecked fire reached the fuel tanks.

Golov tore himself away from the sight of Cabrillo and the raft receding behind them, no doubt thinking they had successfully escaped.

But for Golov, this wasn’t over yet. He had one more card to play. An ace.

“We’re abandoning ship,” he told the XO. “Ready the submarine for launch.”