Typhoon Fury

56

While Murph struggled to fight off the Kuyogs, Juan glanced at the fishing boats disappearing one by one behind the Negros Island peninsula. Locsin must have targeted the Oregon with a laser when they were distracted attaching the tow lines.

Since the attacking drones were shielded from view by the ferry, Max spoke to Murph on a private channel to tell him whether they were coming along the port or starboard side.

Murph couldn’t set the Gatling guns to automatically fire with the radar targeting system because of the stealth technology, so he had to switch back and forth between cameras on either side of the ship to see what he was aiming at. Both of the gun camera feeds were up on the big screen, along with the view dead ahead. Murph destroyed the first five Kuyogs, but he had only seconds to hit each one when it came into view.

The sixth one got through.

It struck the starboard side of the Oregon right at the waterline. Juan felt the ship rock as the explosion reverberated through the hull.

Juan looked at Hali. “Damage report!”

“We’ve got flooding in the starboard ballast tank,” Hali said. “Watertight doors are sealed and holding.”

The Oregon began to tilt to starboard as the tank filled. Murph continued to fire away as more drones came into range.

“Let’s get this list under control,” Juan said. “Flood port ballast tanks. It’ll slow us down, but we need the stability.”

Hali said, “Aye, Chairman,” and initiated the flooding procedure. The listing stopped, and the Oregon began leveling out, though it was now riding lower in the water.

“Our speed has been cut by twenty percent, Chairman,” Eric said.

“Push the engines as hard as you can,” Juan said. The beach was growing on the view screen, but too slowly.

“We’re already at one hundred percent power output.”

“Take us to one hundred and ten percent, and keep an eye on the coolant temperature.”

Juan could hear the objections from Max in his head, that the supercooled magnets that accelerated the water through the Venturi tubes would fail if they operated above the red line for too long. They might even melt, irreparably damaging the engines.

“Stoney, Murph said you and he had a possible way to decoy these drones away from the Oregon.”

“I also said that we needed a working Kuyog to test out the theory,” Murph said, the strain in his voice obvious, as he blew away another drone. “This wasn’t what I had in mind, but now might be a good time to try it out.”

“As long as Gomez has the UAV ready,” Eric said, “the beacon is set to go.”

“Hali, tell Gomez to get it into the air ASAP.”

“Aye, Chairman.”

Juan watched as two Kuyogs came in from both sides simultaneously. Murph hit the first one but missed the second, which was aimed directly at the Oregon’s stern.

“Incoming!” Juan called out.

The drone went out of sight of the camera and detonated in a huge blast that echoed through the op center. The aft end of the Oregon momentarily lifted up from the impact.

“Speed falling,” Eric said. “It must have damaged one of the engines.”

Juan didn’t want to distract Max from his duties helping out Murph, so he got Linda on the line. She was now on the ferry’s flying bridge with Max and MacD, who was propping himself up on the railing to take the weight off his injured ankle.

“Linda, did that explosion sever any of the tow lines?”

“No, they’re still intact,” she replied. “But it looks like the starboard Venturi nozzle was hit. It’s spewing water upward, so it’s doing nothing for propulsion. I recommend shutting it down.”

“Do it, Eric,” Juan ordered. “Linda, what’s the ferry’s status?”

“It’s just a matter of time before she goes under. The passengers are scared stiff, but Linc and Eddie are doing a good job keeping the situation from melting down. Everyone has been moved to the stern of the ferry to keep them away from the explosions.”

“Good work.”

Juan hated having his people on the sinking vessel. But there was no way to bring them back over now. And if the Oregon detached to fight off the Kuyogs, the ferry would sink before they could tow it to safety or evacuate the passengers.

They were all getting to the beach. Or none of them were.

From Linda’s vantage point, she could easily see the results of shutting down the Oregon’s starboard tube. Water no longer jetted up at an odd angle, and the froth on that side subsided.

She felt useless as she watched the Oregon struggle to pull the ferry to dry land. Max and MacD were beside her, noting the positions of the speeding Kuyogs and passing the information on to Murph, who continued to deftly take them out one by one. By this point, however, the Gatling guns had been spitting out 20mm tungsten rounds for far longer than normal, and she could see steam rising from the overworked barrels. If they overheated, the guns would jam, and there’d be no stopping any more drones.

The sea was being churned by waves from the approaching typhoon, making the progress of the two ships that much more difficult. Because they’d been able to modulate the closing of the water-tight doors, the ferry was no longer in danger of capsizing, but the bow was dropping closer and closer to the surface, with some of the bigger whitecaps now breaking onto the deck.

Linda glanced up at the sky, but, judging by the cloud density, it didn’t look like the worst of Hidalgo itself would be arriving before the ferry could be off-loaded by the Coast Guard. Assuming, of course, that there was a ferry left to off-load.

A black dot caught her eye as it danced in front of one of the ominous gray clouds. At first, she thought it was a bird, but the way it moved was more like a fly buzzing around a kitchen.

She nudged MacD and pointed at the darting object. “Do we have a UAV in the air?”

MacD peered at it and said, “Let me check.” He passed the question along to Max, who got a quick response from Hali that it wasn’t theirs.

“Then tell the Chairman we’ve got a spy in the sky,” she said.

Max called it in and got a confirmation that Juan would take care of it since Eric and Murph were busy.

Seconds later, a deck plate near the stern of the Oregon slid aside, and a large rectangular block mounted on a rotating armature rose above the Iranian flag fluttering on the jackstaff. On the front of the block was a grid of one hundred holes, which were actually the ends of the barrels of the Metal Storm gun.

Unlike the six rotating barrels in the Gatling gun that fired a stream of rounds fed by a belt, the Metal Storm antiaircraft/antimissile system was completely electronic, so there were no moving parts, making jams impossible. Rounds were loaded into the grid of barrels so that the projectiles lined up nose to tail. The electronic control allowed for a precise firing sequence that made the Gatling gun’s rate of three thousand rounds per minute seem pokey. With each barrel of the Metal Storm gun firing simultaneously at a staggering rate of forty-five thousand rounds per minute, the weapon could pump out its entire load of five hundred tungsten slugs in six milliseconds.

The Metal Storm gun swiveled around and tilted up until it was pointed at the unknown UAV, presumably Locsin’s observation drone watching his Kuyogs trying to finish off the Oregon.

The gun fired with a thunderous boom. The rounds flew out of the barrels so fast that it seemed like a single flash of light.

The UAV didn’t stand a chance. The heavy tungsten rounds formed a wall of shells that would be impossible for even the most dexterous operator to evade. In a fraction of a second, the UAV simply ceased to exist.

The Metal Storm gun then disappeared back into the deck for reloading in case it was needed again. At the same time, the Gatling guns continued their buzz saw howls as they picked off more Kuyogs. Linda counted more than fifteen destroyed so far, either by the guns or by the drones hitting their target.

A moment later, a large UAV emerged from the bowels of the Oregon on a deck elevator. This one was the Corporation’s heavy supply drone. Slung underneath it was a device Linda recognized as the decoy beacon that Murph and Eric had showed her. The supply drone’s eight propellers whirred to life, and it took off from the deck, flying low over the ferry.

Linda followed its flight path and paled when she saw what was behind her.

She hoped Eric and Murph’s decoy beacon was going to work because more than twenty Kuyogs were heading toward them in a side-by-side formation to deliver the coup de grâce. The Oregon didn’t have nearly enough firepower to take them all out before they ripped it to pieces.

“No!” Locsin screamed when the feed from the observation drone cut out. He grabbed Tagaan by the shirt. “Get it back! I want to see the Oregon die!”

Tagaan shoved the hands away. “I can’t. There was a flash on the ship’s deck before we lost it. They must have shot it down.”

“Then turn us around!”

He lunged for the fishing boat’s pilothouse, but Tagaan stepped in his way and pushed him back.

“Comrade!” he yelled. “We have what we came for! The Oregon will be destroyed. Even if it isn’t, it’s severely damaged. We need to get this supply of Typhoon to safety before the storm comes.”

Locsin was shocked by Tagaan’s pushback. He had never defied an order before, and the insubordination threatened to send Locsin over the edge. He very nearly grabbed one of the assault rifles to shoot Tagaan where he stood, until his right-hand man continued.

“You have your victory,” Tagaan said. “You outwitted Juan Cabrillo. Savor it. And when we take over the country and have factories churning out Typhoon pills, you will have whole armies at your disposal. No one will be able to stop us.”

Locsin took a deep breath and saw that Tagaan was right. The Typhoon pills he had in hand and the search for the orchid used to make it were the highest priorities. He straightened up and told the man at the wheel to keep heading for home.

Besides, he’d seen the last two dozen Kuyogs racing in for the killing blow. The Oregon would sink, he was sure of it. Cabrillo himself might survive the attack if he was too cowardly to go down with his ship, but if he wasn’t killed, he would have to live with the fact that Locsin had beaten him.

But Locsin knew it was even worse than that for Cabrillo. The former CIA agent was pointlessly bound by an overdeveloped sense of ethics. He didn’t have the unflinching long-term vision that Locsin possessed. That vulnerability had been Cabrillo’s undoing, and the memory of these events would haunt him for the rest of his life. It would always be the day that he’d failed to save the lives of twelve hundred souls.