Typhoon Fury

38

The guards checking the roofs of the trucks behind Juan and Linc were making quick work of it. They had only a minute left before a flashlight would catch them lying atop the cargo section of the lead truck.

Linc nudged Juan. “Our escape route is blocked,” he whispered.

Juan followed his gaze to the flashlights of a dozen guards scouring the jungle. And stealing the truck was out of the question since they’d have to take time to turn around and run the gauntlet of the guards behind them, all of whom were armed with automatic rifles.

Since the road ended at a rocky hill that would be impossible to climb without being exposed to gunfire, that left only one option.

“Looks like we’re going for a swim,” Juan replied, looking at the bay. He spoke quietly into his mic. “We need evac, Linda. What’s your ETA to the dock?”

“Three minutes submerged,” she said, “but we can be there in a minute if we surface.”

“No, stay under. I don’t want to tip our hand. We’ll meet you two hundred yards offshore and two hundred yards west of the supply ship.”

“Acknowledged. See you there.”

“Got your Spare Air?” Juan asked Linc as he removed a tiny air tank and goggles from his pack and stuffed them into his front pocket for quick access. The disposable tank had a mouthpiece and enough air for fifteen breaths.

Linc nodded and readied his own tank and goggles.

They edged closer to the truck’s cab, ready to climb down and make a dash for the sea, when the clouds parted. The uncovered half-moon bathed them in light.

They froze in place, but it was too late. One of the men in the jungle spotted their silhouettes through the trees and yelled to the others.

Juan and Linc tumbled onto the hood and to the ground as bullets raked the truck, smashing windows and tearing up the side of the hood. One of the rounds hit the still-hot radiator, and steam shot out of the grille. Another must have hit the fuel tank because Juan could smell gasoline, gushing onto the gravel road.

“So much for a stealthy escape,” Juan said, crouching by the hood.

“It’s a long way to the water,” Linc said. They were thirty feet from the seawall that had been built to buttress the road.

Juan took aim at the flashlights in the jungle. “I’ll cover you. You can return the favor from behind the seawall. Go!”

Juan opened up on the foliage, knowing he’d have to be incredibly lucky to hit anyone. Linc ran as Juan emptied his magazine. When he was out, he reloaded and stole a look behind him in time to see the huge former Navy SEAL dive over the seawall. Water erupted onto the rocks like he’d done a cannonball.

Then he saw Linc pop up, his submachine gun at the ready.

As Juan got into a sprinter’s stance to make his run across the open stretch of road, he looked to the dock and saw Tagaan level a scoped assault rifle in his direction.

Juan jumped back, narrowly avoiding the rounds that whizzed past. No way was he going to cross that distance without getting hit.

Then he heard Gomez’s voice in his ear.

“I got you, Chairman,” he said. “Get ready to run. Linc, start firing.”

Linc didn’t bother asking what their eye in the sky had in mind. He began hosing down the jungle with bullets.

“Now, Chairman,” Gomez said calmly.

Juan took off, his eyes on Tagaan as he ran. The communist no longer had his rifle aimed at Juan. Instead, he was swatting at the air with the weapon, vainly trying to smack the quadcopter drone that buzzed around him, but Gomez was too skilled a pilot to let it get hit.

It provided just the distraction Juan needed. He raced across the road, rolled over the seawall, and slipped into the water. He didn’t surface, instead taking the Spare Air tank from his vest and clamping his teeth around the mouthpiece attached directly to the small tank.

He breathed in and put his goggles on. The water was so clear that he could see Linc join him underwater with his own tank.

Juan checked the compass on his wrist and pointed in the direction where he told Linda they’d meet.

They descended to six feet to avoid the bullets hitting the water around them and began swimming.

“Keep shooting!” Tagaan yelled to his guards. “They’ll have to come up eventually.”

Twenty men lined the water, firing at any shape that looked vaguely human, but no bodies bobbed to the surface.

Tagaan had recognized the man who’d been in the missile-armed truck that had taken down the helicopter. Mel Ocampo or one of his chemists must have told him about this cargo drop. But the burning remains of the Magellan Sun meant they weren’t attempting to hijack the shipment. They were after something else.

He didn’t know how the two men remained underwater, but he knew that someone was going to have to pick them up. For that, he had a solution.

“Get the Kuyogs ready to launch,” he said to his lead mechanic.

The mechanic nodded and removed the tarps covering two objects floating in the water next to the dock. Painted a glossy black, each of the sleek watercraft was the size and shape of a Jet Ski, with the seats and handles removed. The only protrusion that interrupted the streamlined hull was a state-of-the-art imaging sensor that could detect anything bigger than a scuba diver’s marker buoy. Once the target was tagged by a laser, the internal sensor would lock on. The Kuyog would then doggedly continue its pursuit until it came within three feet of the target and detonated the hundred pounds of Semtex inside.

An accomplished marine engineer before joining Locsin’s cause, Tagaan had designed the Kuyogs himself. Though he had only two of them tonight, an unlimited number of Kuyogs could be unleashed on a single target, which was why he’d given them the Tagalog name for swarm.

Locsin had known that to control an island nation like the Philippines would require taking out its Navy, and the Kuyogs were specifically designed for the task. Asymmetric warfare was the term. Tagaan had learned the lesson from the bombing of the USS Cole, an American destroyer crippled by suicide bombers in a fiberglass boat that had come alongside and detonated four hundred pounds of explosives. But with Tagaan’s expertise, they now had a much more sophisticated attack plan. Hundreds more Kuyogs were already in various stages of construction, and this shipment from China was the final load that would allow a communist takeover of the country with the help of foot soldiers fueled by Typhoon.

Tonight was supposed to have been the test run for the Kuyogs. Tagaan had been planning to launch them at the oil supply ship once the cargo was unloaded from the Magellan Sun, but now he had a real challenge. If no boat showed up to pick up the two men who’d dived into the water, he’d send them after the disguised cargo ship that had fired the missile against the Magellan Sun.

The mechanic checked the diagnostics on each Kuyog, then said, “Ready, comrade.”

Tagaan held the powerful targeting laser as he scanned the sea. His drone showed the mystery cargo ship continuing toward them at high speed. It would be in range of his laser as soon as it came around the northern point of the bay.

Then Tagaan’s eye was drawn to movement two hundred yards away. He wouldn’t have seen the small submarine conning tower surfacing if it hadn’t been for the two men climbing out of the water onto it.

“Launch now!” he shouted.

The mechanic flipped a switch, and the two Kuyogs raced away from the dock. In seconds, they reached such a high rate of speed that they rose up out of the water to ride atop drag-reducing hydrofoils jutting from the hull.

Tagaan focused the laser on the sub’s conning tower. He heard the two-tone beep from the control pad indicating that the Kuyogs had locked onto the target.

Tagaan felt a surge of pride at how well the system was working, and soon he’d see the results of thousands of hours of effort. Given how close the sub was, there was no way the two men would be able to get inside and submerge before the Kuyogs blew it out of the water.