Plague Ship

“Wepps, I want you to take over control of the drone from your console and fire up its laser designator.

I’m going to use its camera to call out targets. When I laze ’em, open fire with the one-twenty.” The Oregon’s fire control was nearly as sophisticated as the Aegis battle space computer aboard a Navy cruiser. The small laser in the chin of the drone would light up a target, the computer could automatically calculate its exact GPS coordinates, raise or lower the ship’s 120mm cannon, and send any number of types of rounds downrange.

“We need to close in on the island. Helm is taking us in now.” Juan activated his flex-screen panel. He could see Max still sprawled on the dock, but it wouldn’t be long before they tossed him in the back of the pickup truck and drove him to the bunker.

With the Oregon pounding through the sea at flank speed, the wind across the deck was like a hurricane.

Juan and George raced to the Robinson, where crewmen were holding open Adams’s door. Juan’s had been removed. They had caught a break. The engine had just been shut down, so when George fired it up again he could immediately engage the transmission and start the rotor spinning. Only after the blades were turning did he pull on a headset and strap himself in.

“Helm, this is Gomez. We’re ready to fly. Decelerate now.” The Oregon’s pump jets cut out immediately, and then they were fired in reverse. It looked as though a torpedo had struck the bow when a gush of water exploded from the front end of the ship’s drive tubes, as she went into an emergency stop. While most vessels her size needed miles to come to rest, the Oregon’s revolutionary propulsion system gave her the braking ability of a sports car.

When an electronic anemometer, placed on one corner of the elevator platform, indicated the wind speed had dropped to twenty miles per hour, George fed the chopper power and lifted off the deck.

“We’re clear,” he radioed as the skids whizzed over the stern rail.

The propulsors were reversed once again, and the Oregon began to accelerate back up to flank speed.

The maneuver had been so well timed that they lost less than a minute.

“Well done,” Juan said.

“They say practice makes perfect. ’Course, I always believed starting out perfect never hurt.” Cabrillo grinned. “Ego, thy name is Gomez.”

“Chairman, this is Wepps. Computer says the one-twenty will be in range in eight minutes.”

“Fire off a triple salvo of flares,” Juan ordered. “Let Max know the cavalry’s coming.” He turned to George. “What’s our ETA?”

“I didn’t file a flight plan or anything. I don’t know, five minutes maybe.” Juan had synchronized his digital combat watch with the master countdown for the Orbital Ballistic Projectile’s impact. He had fifty-five minutes to rescue Max and get the Oregon out of the danger zone.

'ON YOUR FEET,” the English guard snapped, and when Hanley was slow to cooperate he was kicked in the hip.

Max held out his hands like a supplicant. “Take it easy, boys. You got me fair and square. I’m not going anywhere. Let me just get this tank off and get out of this suit.” Had he been thinking clearer, Max realized he should have rolled into the water. The suit was airtight, and the weight of the oxygen cylinder would have made him sink like a stone. Something out to sea caught his attention. He squinted into the setting sun and saw a tiny white orb hovering next to it. Another burst just below. And then a third.

If a hunter is ever lost in the woods, the internationally recognized call is to fire three evenly spaced rounds to attract search parties. The flares weren’t a distress call from a ship in trouble; it was Juan telling him the Oregon was here to rescue him.

He had never given up hope, so he really wasn’t that surprised, but it took effort to keep a smug look off his face.

Max slowly shed the heavy tank and peeled off the tattered remains of his thermal-insulation suits. While the front of the outermost suit remained shiny silver, the back was blackened by heat and soot.

One of the guards was on his walkie-talkie, getting orders from a superior.

“Nigel, Mr. Severance wants to see this bloke right away. They’re going to open the outer doors only when we arrive.” He poked Max in the back with his gun. “Move it.” Max took a halting step and collapsed onto the dock. “I can’t go on. My leg’s all cramped from crawling out here. I can’t feel it.” He clutched his knee with the theatrics of a soccer player hoping to draw a foul on an opponent.

The guard named Nigel fired a single bullet into the dock inches from Max’s head. “There. Bet it isn’t so cramped now, eh?”

Max got the message and hoisted himself to his feet. He made a show of limping ahead of them as they started for shore, and when he slowed too much for their taste he was shoved in the back.

The black Robinson helicopter suddenly thundered around the headland like a raptor chasing prey and dove straight for the dock. George kept the nose down so the blades chewed the air a few feet above the timber jetty. Max was already on his stomach from the push and was joined by the guards, throwing themselves flat, as the chopper roared overhead.

Gunmen in observation posts on both cliff tops overlooking the beach opened fire, but Adams danced the helo like a boxer avoiding a jab. The men didn’t have tracer rounds, so they couldn’t correct in time to hit the bird.

“We’ve got to wait until they get him off the beach,” Juan said. “They’ll kill us with that cross fire.” With shadows lengthening, the only way to spot the guards patrolling the beach was by the muzzle flash of their automatic weapons, as they added their weight of fire to the melee.

On the dock, each guard grabbed one of Max’s arms and dragged him toward shore, trusting their partners in the guardhouse and along the beach to keep the helicopter at bay. Max tried to fight them, but after the ordeal he’d been through his struggles were ineffective.

RACING OVER GREENLAND like a vengeful demon, the Soviet Orbital Ballistic Projectile satellite was going through the last of its systems checks as it prepared to launch one of its eighteen-hundred-pound tungsten rods. Inside the external case, the telephone-pole-sized projectile had been spun up to a thousand RPMs to give it stability for when it hit the atmosphere. The targeting computer, archaic by today’s standards but more than sufficient for the task, waited, with single-minded focus, as the satellite hurtled toward the proper coordinates.

A tiny burst of compressed gas vented from one of its maneuvering rockets when it detected the need for a minute course correction. The cover over the launch tube slowly peeled open, like the petals of a flower, and, for the first time in its life, the tungsten core was exposed to the vacuum of space.

It continued to streak over the earth, as the planet rotated below it, every second bringing it closer to its firing position with no regard to the drama playing out below.

'CHAIRMAN, WEPPS,” Juan heard over his tactical radio. “We are in range.”

“Lay an antipersonnel round on the eastern cliff,” Cabrillo ordered.

Eight miles out to sea, the autofeeder for the L44 selected the desired round from stores and rammed it into the cannon’s breach. The gun was located in the Oregon’s bow, in a hidden redoubt, giving it a nearly one-hundred-and-eighty-degree traverse when its carriage was fully extended. The outside doors had already been lowered and the barrel run out. Deep inside the ship, the targeting computer recognized the laser pip beamed at the top of the cliff by the drone and instantly calculated its position relative to the cannon. The barrel came up to the right elevation, and, when the bow rose on a wave, the big gun bellowed.

The computer was so accurate, it fired an instant early to account for the microseconds it took for the round to leave the barrel and the distance the earth would rotate while the projectile was in flight.

Ten seconds after leaving the gun, the shell split open, releasing a metal storm of hardened pellets that hit the top of the cliff like a massive shotgun blast. Clouds of dust exploded off the cliff, and somewhere within the choking pall were the minced remains of the two Responsivist guards.

“Nice shot,” Juan called. “Now the west.”

The men carrying Max dropped him when the headland disintegrated, and he scrambled to his feet to start running. He only managed a few steps before he was hit by a flying tackle and smeared into the rough asphalt road. Cursing incoherently, a guard clubbed him in the back of the head, and, for a moment, it was as if the sun had been snuffed out. Max fought the curtain of darkness and willed himself to remain conscious.