in position at the jammed door. He glanced at his dive watch and the red sweep second hand was rotating at warp speed. Less than five minutes.
Shit!
He tried to stick the sharp end of the iron bar into the side of the door opposite the hinge. Nothing there. The door was flush with the hull. He could see the thin outline of the edges but he couldn’t feel them with his fingertips… the fit was too tight. This is what you get when you give a builder a blank check: perfection. All he had was brute force.
He’d just have to jam the damn bar into the hairline crack using every ounce of his considerable strength. He figured he could get the thing open but he was worried about one thing: getting the hell out of the way of that damn JDAM when that door finally popped open… he slammed the crowbar’s thin edge right into the seam. Nothing. Once more. Twice more. On the third try, the bar went right through the hull.
Oh, yeah.
He torqued that bar hard toward the hinge and the little mother popped right open. He heard the whine of the engine and saw the thing coming barreling straight at him. The round red dome of the torpedo’s warhead was right in his face He was seconds away from instant death, either decapitation or vaporization if the warhead blew emerging from the tube. Instinctively, he ripped the cups off the hull, ducked, and the messenger of doom screamed out of the tube, missing the top of his head by maybe an inch.
Stoke clawed his way to the surface. He’d be damned if he’d miss this action. This was some serious Class-A wartime shit he was into now. This was living, baby, living large.
“Torpedo is away,” the FCO said, exultation and relief evident in his voice. “It is on track and I calculate thirty seconds to impact.”
All eyes on the bridge strained to see the dim grey outline of the Alvand through the thinning smoke.
“It’s going to be a hit,” Laddie said, grinning ear to ear. “A bloody, ruddy, beautiful damn hit!”
There was a loud WHAM when the warhead went off, almost instantaneously followed by a much louder and more prolonged WHRROOOOM, so close it sounded like one explosion.
“Must have hit the ammunition magazines,” Laddie said. “Looks like she was carrying an extraheavy load, probably intended for Taliban forces in Afghanistan. That’s why she’s riding so low in the water.”
“I’d like to see her riding a whole lot lower,” Hawke said. “Let’s go in and give those bastards a fast ride to the bottom. All ahead flank, maintain course.”
“Aye-aye, skipper,” Laddie said grinning. “All ahead flank, maintain bloody course.”
Blackhawke, now on a collision course with the Iranian destroyer, went storming in, under the enemy’s lee. She must have been a sight to the Iranian skipper as she advanced, her gun ports flung open, rolling her starboard cannon out as she came. The enemy vessel had been grievously wounded by the torpedo, but she was not out of the fight. Her big guns had not been damaged by the fire from the bow, and Hawke’s yacht was sustaining damage despite the high-tech Kevlar and ceramic armor. What the enemy skipper had not experienced was the unsettling scenario of ten Bushmaster 44s, each firing high-explosive shells at the rate of two hundred rounds per minute.
That was two thousand high-explosive projectiles being hurled at the enemy every minute. Withering fire was an understatement.
Alvand was now just over a thousand yards distant. You could feel the tension grow around the helm as the silhouette of the big destroyer hove into plain view out of the fog. The drumbeat of heavy rain from above. Below deck, scores of gunners, anxious sailors waiting for the signal to open fire.
“Closing fast,” someone muttered.
“Steady, lads, steady,” Hawke said quietly, as they drew near. There was no indecision in that voice now, only steely determination. He was taking the fight right to them, right down their bloody throats, his bow pointed dead amidships of the enemy. Laddie glanced over at him. Surely he wasn’t thinking of ramming?
He held his breath and waited for Hawke to signal a tack to port, bringing their starboard guns to bear once more on the enemy. The seconds turned into hours. Enemy rounds were shooting great columns of water into the air all around them. Some of them were striking home and the beautiful ship was sustaining significant damage. All they had to fight back with were the two bow cannons, doing what they could, but it was not enough. This was insane! But he knew Hawke’s reputation. The man had absolutely no qualms about ordering a tactic with even the slimmest margin of success if he felt it would ultimately serve the cause of victory.
“Sir, would you like the conn?” the skipper asked Hawke, seeing the closing distance dangerously diminishing and mopping perspiration from his brow. The silence at the helm was roaring inside his head.
“I would, thank you for offering,” Hawke said. Laddie stepped aside and Hawke took the wheel.
“You have the conn, sir.”
“I have the conn,” Hawke confirmed, as tradition dictated.
“Conn, aye.”
“Gun crews ready,” Hawke said into the command radio. “Fire as she bears.”
“Ready, aye.”
“Come left on my order.”
“Ready about, then, gentlemen.”
“Ready about, sir.”
“Hard aport,” Hawke barked, spinning the big wheel hard left so lightly though the tips of his fingers it seemed a blur, effortless. Carstairs watched this performance in awe. Here was a seaman in action. Here was a true warrior.
Blackhawke ’s massive bowsprit missed the hull of the enemy vessel by no more than a foot before finally falling off to port. It was as fine a piece of seamanship as Laddie Carstairs had ever witnessed in a lifetime at sea. The big black yacht rounded up into the wind and lay alongside the enemy at her stern quarter, slowing and matching her speed and course; Hawke’s devastating guns were now at the closest possible range. The Iranian destroyer’s big guns were now totally out of the picture, as their elevations would not allow for a target this close to their hull.
But Blackhawke ’s powerful Bushmaster 44 cannons were just six feet above the waterline.
Hawke’s plan all along, Carstairs thought, thinking of all the lives aboard this ship that had just been saved by the man’s natural naval battle instincts.
Get inside a man’s range and pull a gun.
The secret to close work, and by God Hawke knew it, on land or on sea.
At that exact moment, a SEAL team sniper fell from high in the rigging, landing on the deck just in front of the bridge windows, splayed out, a small fountain of blood bubbling at his belly, and clearly dead. Hawke was not looking at him, for he was looking at the enemy with total concentration.
“Starboard gun crews, fire as she bears, gentlemen.”
“Firing as she bears, aye.”
“Navy Six, Helm.”
“Navy Six, go ahead, sir.”
“Mr. Stollenwork, are your snipers in position for gun action?”
“Affirmative. SEAL Six is go.”
“I want suppression on the enemy automatic weapons who’ll be firing down on us from the rails. Kill them or keep them away from the gunwales, aye?”
“Aye-aye, skipper. Wilco.”
“Stoke, Helm. You okay up there by yourself?”
“I got a loader up here now. I’ll fire number one, then move to two while he reloads. How’s Harry?”
“He’ll live. He’s lying down in sick bay yelling at everyone. I’ll say this for him. He likes a fight.”
“I do too. Do what you got to do and don’t worry yourself about me.”
“We’re on it.”
And by God, they were.
The heavy cannons were pouring rounds into the Iranian destroyer right along the waterline. They were literally slicing through the hull and exploding on the far side, opening up her starboard side to the sea.
“All ahead one-third,” Hawke said.
Blackhawke began edging forward, the thunderous roar of her cannons and the result of that fire slicing the
