Target Lock

Bridge of the Frigate Sutanto 0808 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008

How long to cross half a mile at twenty-five knots? Not long at all, but Elliot MacIntyre had crouched in that disintegrating wheelhouse for eternity, watching the black rock cliff face inch closer with the speed of an advancing glacier. He could feel the deck below him heating from the touch of flame and a trickle of blood down his cheek from a raking metal splinter.

You wanted all this back, damn you! Well, how do you like it?

He lifted a hand slowly as if through chilled honey to stare at it. The callused fingers curved without trembling. Well, it’s no worse than the old days, he answered himself, bemused. I guess I’m doing all right.

Something struck the Sutanto’s superstructure with a slam heavier than anything felt before, a whiplash of shock reverberating through the steel.

“Shit, that’s heavy stuff!” Quillain yelled.

“And it hit somewhere aft,” MacIntyre assessed, twisting to sweep the inlet cliff edges towering above them. “The bombardment must not have taken out all of the shore batteries.”

The Marine made his disgust plain. “It never does!”

The frigate was tearing around the shallow curve in the inlet channel, and gunfire or not, Labelle Nichols was standing half erect behind the wheel, hunting for the critical strip of dark blue water off the bow.

A lurch radiated upward through the hull, and the rev counter on the lee helm console jumped as a prop blade nicked a rock.

MacIntyre caught movement along the forest line above the cliff edge. Amid the wood smoke and barrage-shredded vegetation, a team of Morning Star gunners had brought an artillery piece into the fight, hogging it around and down, angling it toward the ship passing beneath them. The gun and gun crew were damn near on a level with the frigate’s bridge, and MacIntyre found himself looking down the stumpy three inch tube of an ancient American-made 75mm pack howitzer, probably an abandoned weapon from the Second World War.

The piece vomited flame and a shell and the world exploded.

The portside bridge wing caught the round and was torn away, that side of the frigates wheelhouse caving in. A blow sent Maclntyre’s K-Pot helmet spinning, and his vision went from gray to red to black and back again. He found himself on his hands and knees shaking his head like a picadored bull. The helm stations…

Lieutenant Nichols was on her side on the deck, making a sound like a badly hurt cat. And the lee helmsman’s skull was blown open.

If Vice Admiral Elliot MacIntyre, USN, was going to prove anything to anyone, especially to himself, it had better be now.

He heaved himself to his feet, his hands closing on the blood-slick wheel, stopping its spin, reversing it. Answer up, you rust-bellied kraut bitch! Get back in the goddamn channel!

There was a scream and a groan through the frigate’s frame as stone ravished steel, and MacIntyre felt a faint vibration that meant seawater was cascading in through sundered hull plates. Still the propellers were turning and she was lining out for the cave entrance.

But that left the Morning Star howitzer. Its crew would have time for one more shot, and it would be aimed squarely at the back of Maclntyre’s head.