“Got that AT round ready?” Freeman shouted, answering Salvini’s skepticism about being able to hit anything worthwhile, given the impediment of the sub. “Countdown from ten to fire!” he told Salvini and Choir.
“Ten to fire,” confirmed Sal, ready to heave up the stripped-down but still substantial M-60, the terrorists’ fire increasing, as if they had divined Freeman’s intentions. The general, his left side hugging the western edge of the islet’s rock wall, was ready to swing the AT-4 launcher around as Choir and Sal prepared, at great risk, to lay down covering fire, the enemy’s enfilade whacking loudly into the islet’s protective rock wall and surrounding water, other rounds whistling ominously overhead.
“Ten,” Freeman began, “nine, eight, seven — son of a — hold it!”
Sal, crouched, poised to come up with the M-60 firing before its folded bi-pod even had time to rest on the top of the islet’s protective wall, gave a snort of suppressed laughter. Despite the precariousness of their situation, the sub nosing out from its cliff-bottom berth behind the waterfall, and despite the worrisome fact that none of the three had seen any sign of Aussie or Dixon since the two divers had disappeared under the fall, the fact that in the middle of this murderous encounter Freeman should be so conditioned by modern technology that he stopped his countdown because his cell phone’s vibration had put him off his count struck Sal as singularly hilarious. Yet part of the reason Freeman answered the cell so promptly was that it was obviously working now, the atmospherics having improved sufficiently for communication to be reestablished.
“It might be Jensen,” said Choir, hoping the NR-1B was en route.
That the news wasn’t good from Jensen’s end was evidenced by Freeman cursing above the sound of the terrorists’ fire and the increasing bass of the midget sub’s diesel engine. “The goddamned NR-1B’s
“The only thing that might be available,” Jensen had told him, “is the patrol craft,” adding, “What’s all that noise?”
“A damned firefight!” Freeman bellowed, his voice whipped away by gusts that were turning the previously calm blue bay into a spindrift-veined caldron. “We’ve found the goddamned midget sub — only it’s not such a midget after all. Better send your patrol boat, send anything you’ve got — fast as you can, Admiral!” With that, Freeman gave Jensen the GPS coordinates on his cell.
“Sub’s coming through the falls, General,” Sal warned. “Bow at eleven o’clock.”
It told Freeman, still holding the AT launcher, that the bow had now moved away from its earlier two o’clock berth position to a point a hundred yards left of the islet. Which in turn told him that if he didn’t fire soon, the sub would be through, past the falls, and heading unhindered out to sea. And that the protected space behind the islet’s six-foot-high wall would then be exposed to unhindered lateral fire from the sub at virtually point-blank range.
Freeman shouldered the launcher. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …” A vicious gust punched the islet, combining with the ferocious backblast of the rocket motor as the cone-shaped 84mm warhead shot out from its fiberglass tube at sixty-four miles an hour.
Metal whacked metal, the sub’s progress so inhibited by the buckled steel basket around its prop that Freeman estimated its speed at no more than a knot. With its steering likewise affected, it was crabbing toward the eastern sandbank of a twenty-foot-wide exit channel. Choir, reading the situation as clearly as Freeman and Sal, was already in the RIB, the three warriors anticipating the consternation in the sub and preferring to take their chances in the RIB as a fast, mobile target rather than remaining on the islet. Freeman’s shot disabling the sub, ironically, had also exposed the islet as a target, should any of the terrorists mount the midget sub’s sail to pay back the Americans for their audacity.
“Where the hell’s Aussie and Dixon?” called Sal as Choir gunned the RIB, calling on all its horsepower.
“I see Dixon,” yelled Choir. “He’s stuck on that sea stack over there.” Choir indicated a stubby, Dumpster- sized, starfish-cluttered sea stack fifty yards west of them. The SEAL diver, having clung to the sea side of the stack, had now inched his way farther around it. While it didn’t afford any flat areas upon which he might rest, it was nevertheless scabrous enough with crustaceans that he had no difficulty hanging on to it out of the sub’s line of fire.
Heading for him, the RIB began taking fire from a dozen or so of the hooded terrorists who positioned themselves along the “dock”—a crescent of crushed shell and sand to the left of the cave. Inaccurate though it was, given the fast-moving RIB, neither Freeman, Sal, nor Choir had much more success at hitting their terrorist targets once they’d “looped” Dixon aboard. One second they were firing from atop a four-foot chop, the next they were shooting on the downslide, the loud, crackling firefight coming from both sides unable to exact any serious punishment. Then Aussie, having successfully sought the turbulence of the waterfall-sea interface to hide in, saw the sail of the midget, which had appeared much larger from the water, coming alive with men wearing black balaclavas and overalls.
Like soldier ants erupting from their hive, half a dozen of the terrorists were already on deck, another cramped four remaining in the sail. Two of the latter, Aussie could see, were a machine gunner and his feeder. Of the other duo, one was obviously what U.S. military attaches around the world colloquially called the TIC — terrorist in charge — his authority evident as he directed a work party hurriedly toward the stern. The other man held an AK-47.
While the TIC continued to instruct his minions aft via what Aussie guessed must be a throat mike, two of the six soldier ants opened up with Kalashnikovs, the sound augmenting the tarpaper-ripping noise of the sail’s heavy.50 caliber machine gun, whose fan-shaped sweep of fire moved unhurriedly but with relentless intensity through a seventy-to-ninety degree arc, from the RIB that had picked up Dixon across to the interface of the waterfall and the open sea. It was as if the TIC had anticipated that the remaining American diver — Aussie — possibly wounded, would seek the camouflage of the falls, perhaps using its noise as a cover in the event that he was so badly hurt he could not silence his pain.
Freeman, unable to see Aussie Lewis, nevertheless refused to risk losing the RIB in looking for him. He knew Aussie would have made the same decision — no point going after one man when it was critical that the RIB, by using the sea stack and islet as protection, could continue to harass the sub to buy time until Jensen’s patrol craft and/or aircraft could arrive. And should the sub, despite the violent cavitation of its shaft, somehow manage to get to deep water and dive, Freeman knew it was imperative that he, Choir, Sal, and now Dixon mark its position for the massive antisub attack that would be launched. In any event, even if it managed to maintain a knot — or more, should the soldier ants repair the prop’s basket — the four Americans seriously doubted that the sub would get beyond the main channel.
Freeman, Choir, and Salvini also understood that despite their RIB’s maneuverability and firepower, now that they’d expended the AT-4 launcher, their collective small arms fire would be no match for the sub. Though a midget, it nevertheless dwarfed and outgunned them with the big.50 mounted on the sail.
Aussie, his strength waning as he trod water in the sunlit mist of the falls, also understood the necessity of the RIB biding its time, now using the protection of what would afterward be known as “Dixon’s sea stack.” Aussie further understood something his four companions couldn’t because their line of sight was obscured by the waterfall’s mist and the islet east of them: A work party of four of the black-clad submariners was already busy with monkey wrenches, a man with a sledgehammer standing by. The four men were obviously trying to unscrew the four bolts that held the prop’s protective basket in place, one of the two starboard bolts already undone. If they managed to remove and jettison the protective basket in time, the prop’s shaft, free of the warped basket, could surge to full power. Then the sub, even at six or eight knots, would be out and crash diving in minutes.
Aussie knew that even if the general had reestablished contact with Admiral Jensen, and COMSUBPAC-GRU-9 had dispatched the cavalry, it was highly doubtful they’d detect the midget, because the sub was sheathed entirely in a kind of sound-absorbing anechoic tile he’d never seen before, the tiles so barnacle-free that Aussie guessed they must be virtually brand new and impermeable to antisub sonar. Added to this was the one great advantage the diesel-electric subs had over the nuclear super subs, such as Captain Rorke’s late Virginia-class
Aussie intuitively flinched as another long burst of the sub’s heavy caliber machine gun raked Dixon’s sea stack, the.50 rounds zinging off the basalt rock, sending beehive-humming fragments of starfish and crustaceans into the air. Perhaps, Aussie thought, if he could muster enough energy to dive and swim to the sub, coming in on
