Zero Hour

FORTY-TWO

Paul Trout stood on the bridge of the Gemini as the ship surged through the waves toward the MV Rama. The merchant vessel had been traveling northeast since finishing its Orion-like pattern, and the Gemini had been racing to intercept it for the last eight hours. They were finally closing to within shouting distance.

“Think we’re going to be able to do this alone?” Gamay asked from a spot beside him.

“We’ve got a fighting chance,” Paul said. He would have preferred some backup, but they were so far off the beaten track, there wasn’t a military or coast guard vessel for a thousand miles.

“If it wasn’t for the weather, we could at least get some air support,” she said. “A few threatening passes by a formation of military jets or an Australian antisubmarine aircraft circling the ship relentlessly might have helped.”

Paul agreed completely, but the leading edge of a gale had reached the area. It was whipping up the seas and slinging freezing rain across the Gemini’s deck. Not the kind of conditions aircraft made low, showy passes in. Especially fifteen hundred miles from the nearest land.

All of which meant the unarmed Gemini was the only hope of stopping the MV Rama and finding out if any of the Orion’s crew were aboard.

“What’s the range?” Paul asked.

They had the Rama painted on the radarscope, but with visibility at a quarter mile, they hadn’t seen her in the dark yet.

“A thousand yards,” the radar officer said.

“That’s it?” Paul replied. “She must be running without lights.”

“In this soup, we might collide with her before we spot her,” the captain added.

“No, we won’t,” Gamay said, looking through a pair of binoculars. “I’ve got her. Just off the port bow.”

Paul followed her directions, spotting the shadow of a vessel plowing through the dark.

“Light her up,” the captain ordered.

The executive officer flicked a series of switches, and a trio of powerful spotlights came on, piercing the dark and the rain and converging on the lumbering vessel. At three times the Gemini’s size, the Rama pitched and rolled less noticeably in the swells, but there was a wallowing quality to her progress.

“Time to put on the show,” Paul said, handing his binoculars to the captain.

“I’ll bring us up alongside of her,” the captain said. “You get ready to play commando.”

“I don’t have to tell you to be careful,” Gamay said.

“No,” Paul replied grinning. “No, you don’t.”

With that, Paul left the bridge and raced down the stairwell. Minutes later, he was standing just inside the forward hatch with a dozen other volunteers. They all wore black, with hastily made arm patches that displayed an approximation of the Australian flag’s blue field, with its stars of the Southern Cross and the Union Jack in the corner.

“Weapons, everyone,” Paul said. The Gemini’s weapons locker held six rifles and two pistols. The rest received wooden approximations of the M16 rifle that had been painted black. The volunteers from the crew laughed and pointed the guns at one another.

“What do we do if they don’t surrender?” one man asked.

“Either dive overboard or swing these things like Reggie Jackson,” another one replied.

Paul hoped neither act would be necessary.

He cracked the hatch a few inches and peered through the rain and fog. The MV Rama was just across from them, bathed in the spotlights, as the whoop-whoop of Gemini’s alarm blared like a coast guard siren.

They chased and harried the Rama like this for several minutes to no effect. Finally, the intercom buzzed.

“They’re not responding to our radio calls,” Gamay’s voice announced.

“Understood,” Paul said. “I’ll man the rocket launchers. Tell the captain to get us in close. Real close. And be ready to give them your spiel over the loudspeaker.”

“Will do,” Gamay said. “Good luck.”

Paul looked at the chief. “I’m heading forward. Get ready to take your positions on the deck.”

“We’ll be ready,” the chief said.

Paul made his way to another door and pushed out through the hatch and onto the pitching deck. He crossed the foredeck to a squared-off structure that looked convincingly like a warship’s turret, with multiple rocket-launching tubes on either side.

A hydraulic crane used to lift ROVs in and out of the water had occupied the spot hours before. The boom had been dismantled and the sheet metal façade of a turret welded onto the crane’s turntable-like base. Metal air-duct tubing had been removed from parts of the ship, cut to the right length, and affixed to the sides. Painted battleship gray, with a fake antenna dish mounted on the top, the “turret” gave off a reasonable impression of a lethal-weapons system.

Paul slipped inside, ducking through a gap in the metal. He found the Gemini’s crane operator at the controls.

Paul spoke into his radio. “Light up the foredeck,” he said. “Let them see what they’re up against.”

Seconds later, additional lighting shone down on the turret as Gamay’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker, roaring at the highest volume.

“This is Commander Matilda Wallaby of the Royal Australian Navy,” she called out. She was using a fake accent that was pretty close to the real thing. “Your vessel has been spotted poaching fish in Australian territorial waters. You will reduce speed and prepare to be boarded or we will disable your ship.”

Paul stared through an aiming slit in the sheet metal. He detected no response from the Rama, but he saw lighting changes in the bridge area.

“Hopefully, they’re looking this way,” he said.

By now, the Gemini had pulled directly alongside the blocky superstructure near the aft end of the containership. The captain had eased the ship in closer. No more than fifty feet separated the sides of the two ships. As one swell rolled through, the Gemini rode up and almost sideswiped the larger vessel.

“Anything?” Paul asked into the radio.

“Not yet,” Gamay replied.

“Give them another warning, and have the chief fire off a clip of tracer shells.”

Gamay’s voice echoed over the loudspeaker again. “Merchant vessel Rama, this is your last warning. Reduce speed and prepare to be boarded or we will open fire.”

“Let’s show them what we’ve got,” Paul said.

The crane operator powered up the base unit and pressed a small joystick to the side. The turret and its attached missile tubes began to pivot on the crane’s turntable. It turned counterclockwise until the missile tubes were pointed at the Rama’s bridge.

Using a secondary actuator, Paul pitched the missile tubes up and down in an exaggerated motion designed to be obvious to the Rama’s crew. When he’d done as much as he thought he could get away with, he locked them in place again, pointed roughly at the Rama’s bridge.

“They have to see us,” he said.

The crane operator just shrugged.

Meanwhile, the chief and his commandos were deploying onto the deck with their rifles raised.

“What do you think, Paul?” the radio squawked.

“Go ahead and shoot, chief.”

The racket of gunfire rang out, sounding like a series of sharp pops over the wind. Paul watched as a series of glowing tracer shells raced past the bridge of the Rama and out into the night. Through his binoculars, Paul could see figures on the Rama’s bridge, staring out the windows. He hoped they were getting nervous.

“Our turn,” Paul said, lowering the binoculars.

Two makeshift rockets had been prepared using gunpowder, propellant from a box of flares, and the artistic skills of the men in the machine shop. They wouldn’t cause any damage, but they might make an impression.

Paul loaded one of the rockets into the launch tube and shut the breach.

“Turn us five degrees to the right,” he said. It would do no good to have the rocket hit and prove itself to be a dud. The missile had to cross in front of the Rama, close enough to scare the crew, far enough away to be convincing.

The turret turned and stopped.

“Wait,” Paul said as the Gemini rode down a swell and began to come back up. “Wait…” He was gazing through the aiming slit like a World War One gunnery officer, guessing at the rate each ship would rise and fall on the waves.

“Wait…” he said again.

The Gemini reached the top of the swell and paused. “Now!”

The crane operator pressed a switch, and the makeshift rocket ignited. It burst from the tube, showering the interior of the turret with sparks and smoke. It crossed the gap, spewing a tail of fire, and passing no more than twenty feet in front of the Rama’s bridge.

“Great shot!” Paul shouted, coughing because of the smoke. “That was perfect.”

Seconds later, Gamay’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker once again. “The next missile will hit your bridge,” she insisted. “Reduce your speed or we will stop you by force.”

Aboard the MV Rama, the ranking Russian commando had been arguing with the Vietnamese captain since the appearance of the Gemini. He’d ordered them to leave station off Heard Island to avoid any trouble or repercussions should Gregorovich succeed in detonating his bomb. Running into an Australian frigate was not the outcome he’d hoped for.

“I will not surrender!” he said.

“You can’t fight them,” the captain said.

The tracer rounds flashed by in the dark. That concerned him but did not change his mind. Then the “missile” was launched.

“Incoming!”

The commandos and the bridge crew hit the deck just as the missle lit up the world in front of them, rocketing past the main windows.

“That was too close,” the captain said.

“They wouldn’t fire a missile at poachers,” another commando insisted. “They must know we’re here and what we’ve done. If we don’t stop, we’ll all be killed.”

“We cannot fight them,” the Vietnamese captain repeated. “But you can negotiate once they’re aboard. Diplomatic immunity. That’s what you’ll claim. But only if you’re alive.”

The commando doubted the captain’s take on International Maritime Law, but he believed he would be better served, and more likely to live, if he surrendered rather than fighting.

“Do as they say,” he agreed reluctantly.

On the Gemini’s bridge, Gamay waited tensely. If their bluff didn’t work, they would have to try to risk a dangerous boarding maneuver in the storm.

She was about to make one more threat over the loudspeaker when the marine radio squawked.

“This is the MV Rama,” a voice said in accented English. “We will reduce speed to seven knots and allow your men to come aboard.”

A cheer went up on the bridge, and Gamay relayed the message to the others.

“Great work Commander Wallaby,” the captain said.

She smiled. Now the boarding would only be risky, not foolhardy beyond belief.